Well, that was quite an Easter week, wasn’t it? I don’t think many of us saw the pope’s death coming quite so soon—but here we are.
The conclave can’t begin officially until 16 days after the pope’s death, so round about 7 May (next week).
But you can bet that the lobbying has started already. In fact, I think it probably started well before Pope Francis’s final illness.
The new pope is already there in the college of cardinals. In fact, there are probably several potential new popes in the mix.
The Holy Spirit is now waiting to see what choices each individual cardinal will make.
Not all of them will make good choices, or choices motivated by higher intentions. That’s because not all of them are the good men we would hope to see in the college of cardinals.
There used to be an old saying about how it was best to stay out of God’s kitchen. Rome quite often reminds me of God’s kitchen, especially at times like this.
And yet here we are with a lovely crop of new Easter converts—new passengers on our big barque of Peter.
Over the next week or so, they will get to see how smelly and dangerous God’s kitchen can be.
So there’s no ideal time to become a Catholic. Or perhaps there is.
Which brings me to ask you something I was chewing over just before Pope Francis died.
If you were a “cradle” Catholic, do you think you would have chosen to convert to Catholicism as an adult?
I find this very challenging to think about, because I have been completely shaped and formed by my Mass-going Catholic upbringing.
My first difficulty is imagining exactly who I would be if I wasn’t a Catholic already. What kind of person would I be?
I think I would be very different. I might not even be alive any more.
After all, it was only my religious beliefs that stopped me ending my life when things were very bad for me, any number of times, and when I was very tempted.
I can think of all sorts of other terrible life decisions I didn’t make because of my religious beliefs.
I am smart, strong-willed, determined, energetic, sharp-tongued, and can make very tough decisions and stick to them if I believe in them. Who might I have become in the world with just that skill set?
The more I think about it, the more I realise that the only set of brakes I have had for most of my life were my religious beliefs.
And even then, they didn’t always work. Or rather, like my late father and the car in the garage, I had my foot pressed firmly on the accelerator instead.
My religious formation had to start as soon as possible. God knew that, because he knows me inside out.
This might also help to explain why almost all the adult converts I’ve ever met are such lovely people.
I can testify that the ones I know personally were also lovely before they became Catholics.
God gave them sweeter natures than me, and usually a much clearer sense of right and wrong.
I’m very grateful to him, because it would be a terrible world—and church—if everyone were like me.
And why shouldn’t God have lovely friends, as well as awful ones?
Why shouldn’t he gather the sweet-natured, amicable, pleasant people to himself as well as the rotters?
In my darker moments, I used to wonder privately why such naturally good people would want to become Catholics when we were such a rum bunch.
But then I realised that it was about their longing to receive Jesus in the sacraments.
Once a person who’s already a believer in Jesus starts to realise the full truth of the church’s claims, you can’t hold them back.
They will gallop right over you to get there—but, being lovely people, they will probably also briefly stop and apologise on the way.
So all of us, cradle Catholics and converts alike, are now praying for a new pope.
We are all watching the staff in God’s smelly and dangerous kitchen at work and trying not to choke on the fumes.
Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to lean heavily on the poor decision makers in the college of cardinals and bolster up the good decision makers.
And let’s all of us welcome the new guy—whoever he may be—and let’s try to make this work, all over again.
That’s really all we can do.