Tango Popes And Female Cardinals

Not forbidden to dance, either...

Is it forbidden for a Pope to wear a tutu and start dancing in St. Peter's square? Strictly speaking, it isn't. In fact, I do not doubt if Francis were to do something as stupid as that there would be no scarcity of enthusiastic bloggers and journalists saluting the begin of a “new style” of Papacy, heralding the truest of the true “new evangelisations”.

Still, the reality on the ground is that such an act is practically unthinkable, and that not everything that is theoretically possible is in the realm of the realistically feasible, much less of the advisable.

A Pope dancing in tutu on St. Peter's square would, of course, be far less subversive than the same Pope appointing a woman as a Cardinal. The first act of stupidity would be easily archived as definitive proof Papolatry is rubbish, but the second would have a far more devastating effect on the way the Church not only works, but understands herself.

Now, is it realistically thinkable that Francis ever wears a tutu and dances in St. Peter Square? Not really. He hasn't the age anymore, for once. But I am reliably informed that he appears to like the Tango – an obscene dance created to be performed by prostitutes – so the scenario isn't so far fetched as you would think. By the by, if you thought you would never see the day when a Pope expresses his sympathy for the Tango you clearly haven't been paying attention in the last 50 or so years.

The “female Cardinal”, then. An extremely ignorant journalist was yesterday theorising not only such an appointment, but even stating this would open the way for, one day, a female Pope, and one wonders whether these people are paid, or whether they are already going to school. Still, there and elsewhere the issue was raised. Is it unthinkable? No, not in theory. The Pope waives the requirement that a Cardinal be ordained, and that's that. A Cardinal is, strictly speaking, an adviser, and the Pope can decide what kind of advising job this is. Still: is it in the realm of the sensible? No, of course not. It is, in fact, absurd because of the huge expectations it would awake and implications it would have, besides the impossibility of practical execution at every meaningful level of modern activity of a Cardinal. It is, practically, absurd. But so is a Pope who loves the Tango, or dances in a tutu on St. Pwter's square, or – arguably, more gravely still – washes the feet of women and infidels on Maundy Thursday in a blatant liturgical abuse.

Father Lombardi knows that. He knows there's little that is not expressly forbidden and this Pontiff could not, one day, do if it promotes his own cult of humbleness. Not liturgical abuses, not heretical statements, and not the appointment of female Cardinals. Francis can't even describe the Trinity to an atheist without sounding eerily confused, so you know where you are.

Father Lombardi says, then, that the rumours of a female Cardinal in the February consistory is utter rubbish; but crucially, he does not say the concept is rubbish in itself. Why is that? Because he knows his boss is such of a maverick that there is no saying what stupid things he could do next or, perhaps, in a couple of years.

An unreal circus performance will now start: by saying that there will be no appointment of female Cardinals in February, Lombardi has started the tsunami of requests and demands and expectations that there will be such appointments in the future. Francis, the Tango-lover, will be confronted with a growing expectation that such appointments do, in fact, happen, though he will hopefully be spared from the arguably less scandalous demand that he dances the Tango with the one or other more or less sluttish female adviser of his. The circus might go on for years, will reach its highs at every consistory, and will create a climate in which the barely thinkable becomes not only feasible, but demanded. The next Pope will inherit a huge pressure in that sense and, if he is one in the mould of Maradiaga, will probably not hesitate for long before he acts; perhaps starting with some old harridan above eighty in order to make the thing less devastating on a practical level.

This is where the Aggiornamento has led us. A world in which everything that is not expressly forbidden is suddenly thinkable, or even practiced, and the speaker of the Pope can't even say to journalists “stop playing with the idea of female Cardinals and go back to play in the park”. He very well knows why.

You just can't trust a Tango-loving Pope.

Mundabor