The Conclave Crew: Inside the Conclave - Your Questions Answered

I know you all have questions about this conclave, and we've gathered them all and we've got some answers, and that ain't blowing smoke on this edition of the Conclave Crew. Welcome to this Arroyo Grande series, The Conclave Crew, Vatican Edition, Episode five. Can you believe it's been five? And this series has been brought to us by our friends at Taylor for Gone Capital Management, Faith, Family and Finances there at TAYLORFGHNE dot com, as well as Floriani revitalizing sacred

I guess.

We have gotten so many questions from you. I want to get right to the conclave clue. Are you ready?

Oh?

Yes, all right, Okay, here we go. First one for Bob. Will the conclave be looking outside the box for a successor of Saint Peter? How about the credentials of Bishop Robert Barron or someone like that?

Well?

I love Robert Baron.

I mean he's a controversial figure for some people, but I think he's a very rock solid guy. He's very well educated, very well spoken, speak several languages, understands really very deeply. He understands the moment that we're in right now, and it's a very difficult cultural moment as well as it is an internal church moment.

But unfortunately, I think.

This time around, the bets have been laid largely that the leading candidates are large are probably going to be among the finalists that we're going to see, although I think some of the ones like Padline, who are really at the top at the beginning of their stars, have sunk quite a bit. So we may see a surprise, but it's very unlikely that they're going to go outside the box, if what you mean is outside the cardinals.

Cardinals for a minute there, Bob, when you were talking about Bishop Baron's language skills and everything, I thought I'd have to go to ed Pentton and have them update the College of Cardinals report and doing addendum with Baron at the back. Maybe next time we'll do that. One viewer wrote, father, I seriously doubt that this particular way of voting goes back two thousand years. Well, let me, I'm going to handle this one. It's called a tradition.

Yeah, it was useful back then, it's useful now, I mean too deep politicize.

Let's say the whole process.

There are no speeches being given in the Sistine Chapel, and people's vote is a secret.

It's not a voice.

Vote where you could try to, you know, look at people and persuade them to go along with you. So no, it's a very respectful process to let people vote their conscience.

Yeah, and I like the way. I like that it almost has a wave quality, you know, one candidate rises and then others shift alliances because they're concerned and suddenly somebody else comes up. There's something. Well, it's mysterious. It's mysterious. It allows the Holy Spirit to operate a bit. Father, this one's for you. Why the lady wrote this? I didn't write this. Why are all the cardinals wearing red dresses? Father? Is that a vera wang or an omani? Why are they wearing red?

Well, it actually comes from Target, you know, tell hers, Yeah, pretty cheap. No, they don't wear dresses. The cassock is not a dress. The cassock is that long garment meant that the priests wear. It's black for your ordinary priests, and then cardinals get red. They wear because that symbolizes that they're willing to shed their blood to promote the faith and be faithful to Jesus Christ. So, no, the

Yeah, and the evolution of that is really something. I mean that goes right back to Roman garb. And I mean there's a lot of interesting Again, the church collects up all of these bits and pieces from history and carries it on and deserves it.

Let me throw that in.

I mean, yes, in Rome, important people were purple and purple was the color of the nobility and the senators, and so the church use that for the bishops. So the bishops wear purple and the cardinals were red.

Yeah, and you know, just as a side note, a contemporary cultural side note, one of the most visited met Gala exhibitions at the met for the costumes and and you know, what do you call that? Finer fashion ended up being the year that they focused on the Catholic Church and what it did for fashion, and it was mostly papal regalia, and you know, cardinal and bishop's outfits. It's kind of cool, that's what they were looking at.

Anyway.

Bob Maurene asks, is the new pope allowed to come into the Vatican with his own entourage that he can trust? Interesting question.

Well, look, the pope is a boss.

He can come in with whoever he wants, and presumably he is going to want to have people around him that he can trust. We've talked about this before that a pope can't rule a large entity like the Catholic Church on his own. Although we In this recent papacy, we saw a lot of the usual offices and channels

Along with him.

And it's not a matter of being permitted. He's the boss at that point, and he can he can even reconfigure what the officers are going to be like with the people who are going to help him, as Pope Francis did.

Yeah, no, no, we're we're we are bracing for a big shift here one way or that. It doesn't matter who the man is, he inevitably will bring his own sensibility and put his own stamp on this papacy.

Father.

What happens if a cardinal is elected and refuses the nomination? Someone wrote in our comments does the conclavor zoom voting?

Yeah, that's an excellent question, because yes, in order to become pope, you have to accept the election. So it's a very And it's similar if the pope names an archbishop, let's say the Archbishop of Phoenix or somebody, and the letter comes in and the man, the pre nominated archbishop Phoenix says no, then he's not the Archbishop of Phoenix. So likewise the pope can say no to the cardinals and then in that case they would have to resume voting. Yep, that's the way it is because it has to be

Yeah, and then they go back to another round of balloting. Can't make them happy, They've got to be you know, this group wasn't too happy after the long stay in Rome. I can't imagine what they're going through now. You know, it's sequestered in the in the Sistine Chapel. You know, all you see is only outside. You see is the boss taking you back and forth from the Santa Marta house to the assisting travel father. Can you explain about

Yeah.

Within the College of Cardinals, there are three ranks or levels cardinal deacons, cardinal priests, and cardinal bishops. And this reflects the practice going back many centuries in Rome, where you would have deacons, who are the first order of sacred orders that they were serving in Rome, and actually in Rome they organized their church or what they're called deaconries, and deacons were in charge of charity. So they'd have deacons and they have priests who would serve in the

So the bishops and priests and deacon cardinals all enter according to their rank.

Wow. Yeah, that's cool the way it's broken up. And again you see all that history there again, the church preserving this history. Even when things have fallen away, the classifications, the rank, the tradition remains. Bob. Vatican two, one of our viewers wrote, Vatican two had serious problems, even heresy within that has not been addressed. What about the heresy of modernism that's devastated the church in the past sixty years?

You would say, what, Well, as I mentioned earlier, I think that Bishop Baron has a good grasp on that. And you know, we just have to recognize that we all live in a culture that is deeply marked by modernism, which is to say, a kind of a materialistic scientific.

View of the world. I mean, there's nothing wrong with true science.

And the true study of the physical world, but that has kind of encroached on our understanding of faith, of morals, of what human beings are. Are we just animals or are we something that go beyond that? And so I think that this is not a cultural question that can be solved very quickly. And some of these ambiguous statements I would call them that came out of Vatican too, were of course exploited by people who wanted to use

Father. Here's an interesting question. Can a cardinal vote for himself in a conclave?

A cardinal can vote for himself, accept in the runoff, and it's a technicality. So yeah, a cardinal can vote for himself in each round leading up to I guess it's the thirty third round. So if they haven't elected anybody by around thirty three, what they do is the top two vote getters enter into a runoff.

The cardinals.

The two cardinals who are in that category cannot vote for themselves, so no one could say that they were the deciding vote for themselves. And I think that's a wise decision.

Well that was kind of a setup for this question that one of our viewers has submitted, who would Jesus vote for in the conclave?

Well, you know, until the runoff number one, the Good Lord was not a cardinals, so you know he's the he's the God incarnate who the cardinals worship and obey. So no, and you know, in the free Will, in the rather excuse me, in the gift of free will to mankind, God left in the church decisions to be made by us, not by God directly. So we believe in providence, in God's help, but we do not believe that. You know, God is voting in the Each cardinal votes,

Yeah. Well, when I read that question, I thought, if Jesus walks into the Sistine Chapel, I could promise you they'll all vacate. There'll be no need to have a vicar of Christ if you have Christ, right. Yeah, well, well wait till he goes back to heaven and then you have another conclave. I guess here's an interesting question, Bob. This lady, she says, I am confused as to what the cardinal How do the cardinals vote on the fourth day?

Yeah, we talked about this the other day, and I think they have some latitude in what they're going to do. They could take the whole day off, they could take the half day off. And I think there's a certain prudence that if people are exhausted or they feel that they kind of have reached an impasse about where the vote is going, maybe it's a good thing to take a whole day. And if it's Sunday and they back off and they have a chance to pray, go to Mass and have a little bit of recreation and come

Father.

Why do the cardinals have to change their handwriting when writing their ballot? This viewer said, I heard that they have to disguise their handwriting. Is that true?

It is because the voting is anonymous. When you submit your ballots, you don't put your name on it, and when the ballots are deposited in the urn, those who are counters are supposed to mix them up. So that's like if you could see the last cardinal and he's on the top of the stack and take his name out first.

Everybody know he voted for that person. So now the goal here is to not allow the.

Individual names or votes to be known, so that it can't be a form of moral persuasion or even you know, kind of like a certain amount of coercion that you have to vote with cardinals x set. Now, disguising handwriting presumes that the counters will recognize the handwriting of the others. In the modern world, very few people send letters by snail.

Mail, you know, they don't write out letters and email.

You know, there's no signature unless you use that automatic signature thing which is always made up. So no one really, I think, will know the handwriting. But some of them may know the handwriting of each other. So yeah, disguising it as best you can, that's just another means to try to preserve the anonymity and privacy of what's happening.

And I've known older cardinals who've gone in and they have an inframani, who's a person, you know, basically a nurse somebody to help them, and they can if the cardinal can't write, if they have the sheiks or a tool. They'll write the name for them and actually do that, which I didn't realize. But those functions those people do. Nurses if you will, they are allowed in, but they

I think the answer, unfortunately, is there's nothing that they can do that. It's kind of like the popular vote in a presidential election or whatever other type of election. If the process has been followed, one hopes that both because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and the prudence of the men in the room, that that would not result in somebody who was obviously and openly heretical.

And so if.

People were watching this see a figure who's elected who they suspect of heterodoxy, they're gonna, you know, they're going to react and they're hope that that someone can be saved. This is a different kind of process. This is is a slower, older type of process, and that can be frustrating, but at the same time it may provide some safeguards.

Next question, what do the cardinals do in between votes? Father do they talk amongst themselves. Do they get up and speak, do they read? Do they pray? What's the protocol for dinner's lunches and the in between periods in the Sistine Chapel. I'll let you both talk about that.

Sure.

No, well, all of the above. You know, they're once they leave the Sistine Chapel, then they're going to be able to speak to each other. They get on the bus which takes them that short distance from the Sistine Chapel around the back of Saint Peter's over to the Saint Martha House.

Inside they can take.

A walk, you know, around that area where there's a sort of like parking lot air in front of Saint Martha's. The better said, and then the Vatican gardens are up the hill a little bit.

Uh.

They can certainly go in and discuss at dinner. They can also relax with a book. But they can't do is call anybody, send emails, listen to the radio, watch television, watch the Royal Grande podcast. They can't do any of that. So and I guess our shot. I know, but no, it's you know they are. It's it's similar to being on a retreat because there are times of prayer and silence,

What do you think?

Hmm. Yeah, that's when the that's when the heavy the heavy pressure and the politicking sort of begins.

Bob.

But I was told that they whisper and talk to the people aside them in the in the Sistine Chapel as well.

Yeah, yeah, look, they're they're they're free because they are actually behind kind of a paywall, if we want to put it that way, right, you know, I sometimes worry how how much behind uh anonymity they actually are. I mean, they take all these steps, they bring in, you know, security experts to sweep for bugs. But we've seen in the past that in such events somehow always managed to leak it to a certain extent, if not immediately then then after the fact. And they're not supposed to even

Being the pope, yeah, father, speak to that for a moment. The I mean, when Pope Francis was elected, suddenly you know, there was a journalist, Austin Ivory who came out with a book. He had letter in verse of not only the agreements made before the conclave, but conversations had in the vote com I mean today he was sending out the vote com Oh. At this point, Francis was already up ten points. I thought this was supposed to be secret under penalty of excommunication.

Now that's actually the canon law. It's supposed to remain. So you're not supposed to speak about anything concerning the election. Now that doesn't mean you can't say I walked in and my seat was uncomfortable because it was a plastic you know, wooden bench.

Rather, that was not a nice seat. That's trivia.

But you cannot come in and say, you know, I saw a cardinal Lets get up and then everybody was smiling. And no, you're supposed to keep it all secret, but people do leak. This is one of the had realities of the modern world that people do not take odes seriously. And this we see it in courts of law, and now we see it.

You're right.

There have been many books written about how the voting went in the last papal conclave and it's stunning. Now I'll say I'll be completely honest here. Poe Francis himself talked about yes, he did the voting subsequently, and people noted that, wait a minute, you're not supposed to do that. Now you could say, since he's the lawgiver, he could dispense himself from observing that law post facto.

But you know the.

Casualness nowadays with which people assume, well, we say that for public consumption, but in reality we call our journalist friends.

That's something I think that needs to be stamped out.

Yeah, Bob, I saw it today. I'm walking I'm walking home from the from the Vatican. There are people on the phone after the first vote, and they're relating tallies and I hear this one's moving up, and that one's in the li and this one lost some votes. I'm like, what app are these people on?

Yeah, I've been looking at the Italian press, which is not always reliable. In fact, it's quite unreliable, but they are very reliable in that they convey every rumor that there is floating around in it and around the room at the same time.

Yeah, you know.

I mean there's a story that was told. This is an interesting story by Messagero that before they closed the doors today, the Cardinal Ray, who gave the homily at the final Mass before they possessed into the conclave, said to Cardinal Paroline, he used an expression that I've never

Was going in.

What they heard that this as meaning is I hope you win number one, but also I hope you do well in managing, because he's also the manager of.

What's going on inside the room there.

So this is kind of thing that the Italians look at and they think that maybe it's going to tell things one way or another. I'm a little skeptical, but it's interesting the way that they read every tiny detail.

Every utterance. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Are you looking for financial management that reflects your deepest values? Taylor for Gone Capital Management actively manages portfolios designed for those who prioritize faith, family, and long term stewardship throughout their mutual fund, separately managed accounts, or family office accounts. Taylor for Gone Capital values driven investing to support your faith, family, and

One of our viewers, right, Oh man, this is a hard question.

I know.

Yeah, if it's Cardinal Paroline, it's I mean, it's his baby, so he's going to have to go back on some of the things that he did there. Still, you know,

You know, Bob, it's interesting to say that I ran into a few African and South American cardinals and they were mentioning John Paul. We need a John Pole the second like pope because of what you just raised. He did confront Nicaragua, he did confront the Russian regime. He did confront these fascists and demanded religious freedom in them and brought the moral suasion of the church. I know it's a balancing act, but a fellow like Perline, I

Well, my estimation is would be Africa.

You know, if we get a European this time, who knows how long he'll reign over the church as pope. But you know, the African Church is growing all the time, and the African cardinals, you know, assume, you know, great relevance in the life of the churches. They represent an area where Christianity is not dying. It's sad to say in Europe statistically, Christianity is losing numbers and influence in

Next a pope? Now, where the future will come from?

Which wouldn't be the first time. In the early centuries of the Church we had a string of Africans, mostly from Tunisia, right.

Yeah, North Africa.

Yeah, they were you know the Roman North Africa is the Roman province, so the Christianity spread there.

Yeah. Bob william asks why are the older cardinals over eighty not allowed in the conclave, and especially why not allow them to be involved given that their knowledge is unparalleled.

Yeah, I think that's a bit of a sore point. But look, look, you have to have rules about when when people can be active in an organization, when when they cannot. I mean, it's simply the case in the Catholic Cheurche that bishops at age seventy five are supposed to send a letter to the Holy Father presenting their resignation. The Pope can accept it right at that moment, or we can say, well, you know, I want you to

So it's a rule. In some cases it's.

Probably unjust, but it would be unjust no matter how you kind of cut it. So you make a decision and that's how it goes for.

Yeah, I think it was Paul the six rule, right, father, Yeah, Yeah, Can I throw in on this one, yeah, because yeah, Paul the Six put that rule in place, and it was understood at the time to be an effort to diminish the influence of older, presumably more conservative.

Cardinals in the next papal election.

The irony is, of course that you cannot vote for a pope if you're over eighty, but you can be a pope if you're overeatey.

So you know.

Which is more important. Being a pope is more important than voting for one. So if you can do the greater, you can do the lesser. That's the usual principle of law. So I think I also say the retirement of bishops of seventy five is not of that was only introduced. Also after the Second Vatican Council we got into the managerial mindset of efficiency, I think, you know, which is remember the managerial revolution after the Second World War.

You know, we're going to fix the world's problems by better man. The jury is in on that.

Yeah, Yeah, I don't think I don't think we should have these rules because I would much rather have cardinals Zen voting than simply being an advisor to the others.

Because he's a man of extreme lucidity and experience.

Yeah, and then people look to the elders, particularly if they're venerable like Zen and have been through the fires of you know, facing down a regime like China and still you know, waving the flag. Here's father. This is one for you. Why can't there be an American pope?

There can be.

It's just, you know, the church exists in history, so historical factors have to be examined, you know. I mean my colleague here, Bob Royal, has written the whole history of theology in the twentieth century. You have to look at the way things develop, you know, theologians react to secular trends and then challenges and then biblical studies and all the rest. So on a political scene, I would say,

But I'd been through what Bob had to say.

Yeah, Bob, that's the concern, right, you don't want the superpower having the other superpower.

I don't know.

I think you're running, Bob. That's why you were talking all those cardinals this week. You were trying to slip them the bill.

I mean, look, if they were the proper candidate. And some people think that the Cardinal Prevost, who has been the head of the bishops the committee that selects the bishops, and spend time in Latin America is a front runner. He's a possibility, even though he kind of just appeals to some of the Latin America because he spent time in Latin America, and of course he's been in Rome a lot. I just don't know what kind of pope

Going on in the world.

It's not necessary that a pope grasp you know geopolitical things. Certainly Pope Francis did not.

John Paul did.

Jean Paul happened to be a man who came from a country where he was in the midst of everything that was going on in the world at that moment. But why not, you know, there could be an American at some point. I think at this moment there's a fair degree of anti Americanism, and I think the Trump factor would maybe play into that as well, unfortunately, But anybody can become a pope, any person from any country around the world, and we may be surprised even this time around.

Do you feel as I look out as I talked to so many of these men and we all did this week, it seems that this is why I kind of when I heard Prevost and so started looking at him and reading and watching interviews. It seems the pope now, the pope that everyone collectively is yearning for, whether they give you a name or not, is a sturdy man. John Paul was that sort of sturdy man of faith who had kind of been through the fires and was ready to complete the mission and declare the Gospel in

I think there's a desire for, you know, a strong father figure and you know, and you know, this is where you know, somebody said once, you know, gentleness is a sign of true strength, and I think that's what we all expect from our dads. You know, they lay down the law, but then you know they restrained the punishment to a degree in order to teach us good lessons. So you know, that's one reason why African cardinals are so attractive. You know, I've dealt with African parishioners in

I mean he faced down a fascist regime down there Obongo the same. I mean, these people suffer for their faith. Of some of the Sudanese bishops, they've got, you know, marauding groups of Islamisists burning down villages and killing people. So they know what it means to suffer for the faith in the way that we in the West. You know, I'm going to play golf today. I'm going to skip the masks. Our African brothers and sisters don't understand that approach.

I'll just throw in Nigerian bishops, you know, the cardinals in Nigeria are as Bob has recently said in a public presentation, no country in the world has suffered as many executions of Christians, i e. Martyrdoms than Nigeria.

Okay, I'm going to there are a couple of other questions here. I'm going to try to get this quickly in what was the actual state of liturgical practice in the church before that it can too and they're asking I'd love to hear your views on the role of Latin in the Church. It seems discussion center on one pole of the other tridentine or no Latin at all. Perhaps we could intstoll more Latin in the and keep the homilies in the vernacular. Bob, I'll start with you.

Yeah, you know, some people who write for us at the cat thing and who are advocates of Latin, as I myself am, have pointed to the fact that during Vatican Two a lot of the speeches were in Latin, which not all the cardinals, bishops, et cetera at that time understood very well. So some of the problems that we see in the end, may I've had something to do with that. We've seen in this past week that there's a lot of Latin that is being used, as in this run up to the conclive and even in

But this question is not going to go away.

There needs to be a universal language, and either it's going to be the universal language of the Old Empire or it's going to be the language or the New Empire. Probably, And that also touches on turgical matters which I'm not going to touch, but I'll leave to the cannadist to explain.

Okay, resident candidates, you're up, so I'll start by me. Don't speak in Latin though.

No, no, well, bell leaeve the lingual Latin side. No, I want to endorse a Bob just said English should be the language of the curia, and the reason being it's the language that most the largest number of Catholics in the world either speak and English as the first language or learned it. So therefore it's useful. It's not because of anglosphere domination, just the reality. I mean, we're just following Hollywood and the economic world. The diplomat French

Because for those who do take the trouble to.

Learn Latin and pray in it, you know, peace and joy come from that beautiful association with the historic worship.

Of the Church. For people who go to the New Mass, which is in the vernacular, they've come to learn to appreciate that, and that should be allowed to continue. Also, yeah, yeah, that's a great point.

And he did try to reconcile the Latin and the tradition of the Church with the vernacular, and they do fit together. They can fit and enrich one another. To pity that with stup. Okay, here's a question that came in. I've been giving a lot of these questions, so it's a good way to answer it. Are you going to be live during the conclave? Are you all going to be on site at Saint Peter's. Well, I'll take first crack at this. We're all going to be live, but

We all head to the back country in Australia and pray like grace.

Look, you know.

This may be sound like a flip answer, but every human being is bad to a certain extent.

We're all sinners.

Every pope is going to have, you know, limitations. John Paul wasn't a particularly really good administrator. Benedictine wasn't either, but they were great men, great great men in various ways.

What you do with you, you do what a Catholic does.

You go to Mass, you go to confession, you bring your children upright, you practice charity, you keep your faith and don't allow extraneous especially in this media environment where every day everything has to be a you know, histrionic and dramatic and it's the end of the world. I mean, our faith is in the name of the Lord who

Yeah, that'll work.

Father, you're what should the lady do if we get a.

Bit, Well, they had to have faith in God and continue to pray, remain faithful to the doctrine of the faith. You know, I'm reflecting back. You know, we had immoral popes in the in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, and I can't remember which pope was, but he made the statement he had illegitimate children. That's the lead into it.

But yeah, we faithful.

I mean, we've had so many problems. The Reformation was a time of great upheaval. Now, the popes, you know, defended the Catholic Church against the Protestant Reformers, but many clergy didn't and they fell in with it. And then of course secular rules persecuted. I mean here in Rome we have the Venerable English College, which sent countless priests back to England to be martyred. So, you know, if they could be faithful in the midst of turbulence, we can too.

And when you look at the really bad popes and the venal ones, some of whom you mentioned, Father, they did leave this amazing art and architecture. You know, they there was something that they were used for to contribute to the ages, even though they were pretty despicable characters themselves. But God is away of taking care of those people, and he has the final judgment.

Thank God.

The Arroyo Grande Conclave crew, we'll close it out there. This Vatican addition will continue. Don't miss our next episode. Subscribe to a Royal Grande Show on YouTube or a Royal Grande podcast wherever you get yours. And this episode is brought to you by our friends at Taylor for gone Capital Management, Faith, family and finances. Visit them at Taylorforgan dot com. On behalf of Robert Royal father Gerald Murray. We will convene again, gentlemen. I'm Raim at Royo from