Carl Trueman: Why the pope matters

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, May 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

As cardinals convene in Rome to select a new pope, their decision will echo far beyond Catholic circles. WORLD Opinions contributor Carl Trueman argues that in the eyes of secular society, it’s the pope who embodies the moral witness of Christianity.

CARL TRUEMAN: In a sense, the pope has little significance for Protestant churches. Even in the world of Anglicanism, an archbishop is not a pope. He may be one who holds an historically significant post but he occupies a much more modest office in his denomination than the Roman Catholic bishop of Rome. The pope believes himself the successor of Peter—the one on whom Christ would build His church. It is the basis for seeing the papacy as foundational to the unity and the authority of the Catholic Church. Famously, the pope claims infallibility.

This is often misunderstood by non-Roman Catholics as meaning that everything he says has to be taken as true..that he can never make a mistake. In fact, his infallibility is restricted to what are called matters of faith and morals. And this only applies when he speaks publicly as the head of the Roman Catholic Church and with its full and final authority. Thus, the many tweets, off-the-cuff press conferences, and even official speeches by Francis would not count as infallible statements.

Protestantism assigns no such a role to any human leader. We share some creeds with Rome—for example, the Nicene Creed. But we do not consider them authoritative because the pope or a church has endorsed them. We consider them authoritative because they summarize in a clear and accurate form the revelation of God as found in scripture.

But the papacy should still be of interest to Protestants. The outcome of this election will have repercussions even for non-Catholics. Protestantism benefits in several ways from strong and clear papal leadership. First, a vigorously Catholic pope, such as John Paul II or Benedict XVI, makes it easier to see where the points of alignment and the points of disagreement lie between Catholics and Protestants. On things such as the doctrine of God and the moral significance of the human body, Protestants have much to learn from Rome. And yet we must not lose sight of the serious differences on things such as the sacraments and the nature of justification that cannot be swept aside as trivia. A pope with a knowledge of, and commitment to, his own church’s theology, will make Protestants think more clearly about the importance of these similarities and differences.

Second, we must remember that the non-Christian world does not see the importance of doctrinal and ecclesiastical differences as we do. And that means that when they see the head of the largest church body in the world, they see a microcosm of what they consider Christians to be. A pope who is at least clear on basic issues such as gender and human sexuality—indeed, on what it means to be a creature made in God’s image—will benefit us all. Francis spoke with clarity on gender, but his mixed signals on sexuality and equivocal actions on child abuse served to weaken Christian witness across the spectrum.

That leads to a third reason for hoping that the next pope is a man of clear convictions. If the Roman Catholic Church squanders its legacy on questions of ethics, of what it means to be human, and of religious freedom, all Christian churches will suffer. Rome with its public profile and its intellectual and financial power provides cover for us all in wider society.

None of this is to minimize the important differences that exist between Rome and Protestantism, differences that have the office of the papacy at their heart. Ecclesiastically, we have nothing at stake in the papal election. But culturally we Protestants do have an interest in who the next pope will be. Let’s hope he’s less ambiguous than the last.

I’m Carl Trueman.

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