The Symbolism of the Empty Chair

British newspapers have now turned "empty chair" into a verb.

• TV debates: broadcasters will 'empty chair' leaders who refuse to take part (Guardian 23 January 2015)
• TV election debates 'will go ahead' as broadcasters threaten to empty chair David Cameron (Telegraph 6 March 2015)
  

The intention appears to be to go ahead with the election debates, without the Prime Minister but with an empty chair (or podium) to draw attention to his absence. Similar gestures have been used in the United States.

When Pope Francis failed to turn up to a Vatican concert in June 2013, a few months after his election, a white chair was left prominently on display.

Commentators were quick to speculate about the meaning and motivation of the empty chair. Writing in the Catholic Herald, William Oddie wondered whether the incident indicated a curial conspiracy against the Pope. "How come that photo of the empty chair became, and so quickly, such an 'enigma'? How did it get itself plastered all over the Italian media? Why, as soon as it was known that the Pope wasn’t coming, wasn’t the chair simply removed?"

In Catholic circles, the term "empty chair" (in Latin, Sede Vacante) has special redolence, as it indicates the interval between two popes. Some anti-modernists (known as Sedevacantists) deny the legitimacy of recent popes, claiming that the Holy See has been sede vacante at least since the death of John XXIII in 1963, if not earlier. Perhaps the Vatican Curia was consciously or unconsciously making a point.

Likewise, there are undoubtedly members or former members of the British Conservative Party who detest the current prime minister, and regard the party and country as being essentially without a genuine conservative leader since the demise of Margaret Thatcher. For such people, an empty chair at the election debates would have extra significance.

Maier, Vivian. “New York, NY.” Street 2. Web. 19 Oct. 2014.
<http://www.vivianmaier.com/gallery/street-2/#slide-34>.

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Clint Eastwood defends 'empty chair' convention speech (BBC News, 10 September 2012)

Andy Borowitz, POLL: Romney trails empty chair (New Yorker, 31 August 2012)

Oliver Duggan, Party leader TV debates: How David Cameron could learn from Clint Eastwood's empty chair (Telegraph, 14 January 2015)

Tom Kington, Pope Francis 'snubs' pomp and ceremony of Vatican Beethoven concert (Telegraph, 23 June 2013)

William Oddie, How come that empty papal chair has become so widely interpreted as symbolic, even sinister? Is this part of a curial anti-Francis conspiracy? (Catholic Herald, 26 June 2013)

Tanisha Randhawa, Vivian Maier and [Nothingness] (19 October 2014) 

Wikipedia: Sede Vacante, Sedevacantism

Dissing the Pope

What is the purpose of the phrase "f...ing pope", shouted across a busy newsroom? A Catholic sub-editor at the Times newspaper felt that the defacto purpose of the phrase was "harassment on grounds of religion", with the (intended? predictable?) effect of creating an adverse working environment for himself and other Catholics. There is an interesting question here about conscious motivation and deliberate action.

The Employment Tribunal and the Employment Appeal Tribunal disagreed. If Mr Heafield experienced the environment as adverse, that was unreasonable of him. They didn't ask - but we might well ask - what was Mr Heafield's real purpose for pursuing the case?

Although some Renaissance popes allegedly led active sex lives (appointing their "nephews" to prominent positions in the Church), the term "f...ing pope" is probably regarded by Catholics and non-believers alike as a term that doesn't refer to any living person. (Bertrand Russell's Theory of Descriptions could be relevant here.)

Screaming pope maybe. Would it count as "harassment on grounds of religion"to display a reproduction of Francis Bacon's famous painting?



Daniel Barnett, Harassment on Grounds of Religion (14 February 2013)

Pope Peter the Roman

Last time the Vatican changed hands, there was mild interest in the Prophecy of St Malachy, a detailed but slightly cryptic catalogue of the next 112 popes produced by a 12th century Irish bishop. Many people claim that Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI fit Malachy's descriptions of popes 110 and 111 respectively, and that therefore the next pope will be the last. He will be called Peter the Roman, and he will be black.

As it happens, one of the front-runners to succeed Benedict XVI following his surprise resignation is called Peter, and there have been calls for an African pope to be elected.

Doubtless the cardinals will be aware of this prophecy, and will therefore be unable to avoid either self-consciously avoiding fulfilling the prophecy or self-consciously following it. What they cannot do is select a pope as if the prophecy didn't exist.

Thus a prophecy can influence behaviour, either positively or negatively.

The Purpose of Marriage

formerly What is Marriage For?

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@lfeatherstone, who is a Lib Dem MP and Equalities minister in the Coalition government, argues that neither the state nor the church "owns" marriage. Quoting a remark by a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, who had said that the Church doesn't own marriage, she interprets this to mean that marriage should belong to the people, and urges people not to polarize the debate on extending marriage to same-sex couples.

However, Lord Carey disputes her interpretation of his remark. "When I said that not even the Church owns it (marriage), I meant that the Church has no authority to change the definition of marriage as far as Christian thinking is concerned - there is a givenness to it."

Meanwhile for Pope Benedict XVI, marriage owns reproduction. Wrapping up a 3-day Vatican conference on infertility, His Holiness asserted that marriage and marital sexual intercourse (putting it in and jiggling it about a bit) is the proper way to create a human being, and reiterated his attack on artificial procreation (including IVF) as a form of arrogance. Matrimony, he said, “constitutes the only ‘place’ worthy of the call to existence of a new human being”.

The opposition to same-sex marriage seems to be based on the converse assertion, that reproduction owns marriage. The purpose of marriage being to propagate the species, or so the argument goes, therefore no relationship can count as true marriage if it lacks the potential to propagate.

We might imagine that this exclusion would also rule out the marriage of infertile people, as well as those who are past child-bearing age. But there are many examples in the Bible of elderly and infertile women suddenly producing children (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Hannah, Elizabeth, ...), so if faith can overcome such obstacles, why can't a child spring (like Dionysus) from the thigh of a man?

Elsewhere, the purpose of marriage is said to be companionship, binding two people together in love and spiritual union, although theologians tie themselves in knots when they try to restrict this to sexual love. (Why shouldn't two elderly sisters who share a house have the same rights of inheritance as a lesbian couple? Why is civil partnership only available to those who share a bed? And what about the curious concept of a celibate civil partnership, which seems to be the only option available to homosexual priests?)

The confusion here is that marriage has many purposes, including social and legal ones. We may not wish to pry into the bedrooms of our friends, and we may be very reluctant to grant the immigration and tax authorities the right to pry into anyone's bedroom. And when a couple (of any kind) proudly and lovingly produce a child, it really shouldn't matter by what feats of acrobatics or bioengineering, and with the collaboration of which other parties, the child was engendered. 

But I'm guessing that Archbishop Carey and Pope Ratzinger aren't going to be in a hurry to bless the offspring of - to pick a random example - Elton John and David Furnish.

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Lynne Featherstone, This is not gay rights versus religious beliefs (Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2012)

John Bingham, Lynne Featherstone tells Church 'don't polarise gay marriage debate' (Daily Telegraph, 24 February 2012)

Church 'does not own marriage' (BBC News, 25 February 2012)

Pope decries artifical procreation; fertility treatments as ‘arrogant’ (New York Daily News 25 February 2012)

Pope says arrogance drives infertility field, tells couples to shun artificial procreation (Washington Post, 25 February 2012)

Juniper Berry, What the Bible says about God and the infertile woman (Squidoo)


Updated 13 June 2015

Don't Waste A Miracle

Until this week, the term "Miracle of Chile" generally referred to the disputed economic transformation of Chile from the 1980s onwards, attributed by Milton Friedman to monetarism and by Amartya Sen to the rejection of Friedman-style economic liberalism. See Wikipedia.

Yesterday's dramatic rescue of 33 Chilean miners from a mining accident in San Jose has been popularly described as a miracle [Channel4 News, Daily Telegraph, Get Religion, Washington Post]. The Vatican had sent rosaries to the trapped miners, and will doubtless wish to use this miracle in justifying some future beatification or canonization procedure - perhaps even that of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI himself.

In Don't Waste A Crisis, I discussed the cliché "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." We might also think that a miracle is a terrible thing to waste: see my earlier post on The Purpose of Miracles. I don't think we've heard the last of those rosaries.

Purpose of Miracles

Several writers have expressed scepticism about a miraculous cure from back pain following routine surgery. The patient himself, who happens to be a deacon of the Catholic Church, has attributed his cure to a picture of Cardinal Newman [BBC News 13 September 2010].

@mjrobbins asked Is God scraping the barrel for miracles? (Guardian 13 Sept 2010) and suggested that Vatican's latest miracle is evidence of a worrying decline in God's powers.

But clearly the purpose of this particular miracle was to allow Vatican to beatify a Cardinal whose own view of such professed miracles is expressed in the following passage from his first essay on Miracles:

"Much more inconclusive are those which are actually attended by a physical cause known or suspected to be adequate to their production. Some of those who were cured at the tomb of the Abbé Paris were at the time making use of the usual remedies; the person whose inflamed eye was relieved was, during his attendance at the sepulchre, under the care of an eminent oculist; another was cured of a lameness in the knee by the mere effort to kneel at the tomb. Arnobius challenges the Heathens to produce one of the pretended miracles of their gods performed without the application of some prescription." [Essays on Miracles]

Similar controversy surrounds the miracle attributed to Mother Teresa for the purposes of her beatification.

In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, after the application of a locket containing Mother Teresa's picture. Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor. Critics — including some of Besra's medical staff and, initially, Besra's husband — insisted that conventional medical treatment had eradicated the tumor [Wikipedia: Mother Teresa].

In March 2010, the miracle cure attributed to the late Pope John Paul II, for the purposes of his beatification, ran into some difficulties.

The inexplicable cure of a young French nun from Parkinson's disease ... seemed difficult for the Vatican to certify as a miracle. According to the Vatican's own rules, the medically inexplicable cure must be instantaneous, complete, and lasting. Some are arguing that the world will have to wait her entire lifetime to determine whether it was lasting, in case the symptoms return. In addition, doubts have been cast about whether she had Parkinson's to begin with [Miracle under scrutiny in John Paul beatification Independent, 29 March 2010].

Within a year, Pope Benedict XVI formally approved this miracle [BBC News 14 January 2011]. Obviously he had no choice. "Nuns can be very useful." [Jesus and Mo, 16 April 2007]

During 2013, a second miracle emerged to enable Pope John Paul II to be canonized. This took the form of a mere memory of the late pope, which was able to emerge from somewhere (a diary perhaps) and cure somebody. (This sounds suspiciously like a horcrux. Clearly the Jesuits have been twisting the Harry Potter books for their own purposes.)

The Holy See has yet to reveal what the miracle was or where and when it took place but Vatican sources said it would “amaze the world”.

Nick Squires, Vatican to announce John Paul II 'miracle' (Telegraph, 19 Jun 2013). See also Barbie Latza Nadeau, After Second Approved Miracle, Pope John Paul II Likely to Become a Saint (Daily Beast July 2013). Pope John Paul II and the trouble with miracles (LA Times, July 2013).

Lacking the sophisticated theological thinking with which the Vatican is blessed, or the devious logic often associated with the Jesuits, popular journalism tends to describe all cases of unexplained recovery as miraculous. For example, an elderly widower appears to have regained his sight after kissing a photograph of his late wife.

It's a miracle! Daily Mail 17 Feb 2011. Obituary notice November 2009.

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Meanwhile Lourdes. In 2007, Pope Benedict offered special indulgencies for anyone visiting the site of the Virgin Mary's miraculous appearance in the 150th anniversary year. The BBC offered the following explanation for the spiritually unenlightened.

Indulgences became infamous in the 16th century for being sold rather than earned, helping, historians say, trigger the Protestant reformation. While some might consider indulgences an outdated concept, great spiritual importance have been assigned to them by Benedict XVI and his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. BBC News 6 December 2007

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If a dramatic and unexpected cure can be regarded as a miracle, what about a dramatic and unexpected death?

For example, an 80-year-old Spanish cardinal Agustin Garcia Gasco Vicente, in Rome for the beatification of late pope John Paul II in May 2011, died of a heart attack shortly before the start of the ceremony. [News24 1 May 2011].

For another example, an Italian man was killed when a giant crucifix toppled on top of him. The crucifix had been erected to celebrate the canonization of the late Pope John Paul II in April 2014. In a bizarre twist, the dead man is said to have been living in his home town of Lovere on a street named after Pope John XXIII, who was to be canonized on the same day. (BBC News 24 April 2014, Christian Today 25 April 2014, Huffington Post 25 April 2014).


Don't these deaths cancel out the miracles?

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Update 2019

A second miracle has been attributed to Cardinal Newman, which will allow Pope Francis to declare him a saint. "I was healed by Cardinal Newman" (Catholic Herald, 5 July 2019). This one seems less amenable to a conventional medical explanation, but how does it satisfty the cardinal's own notion of what might count as a miracle? After all, Newman thought it was "often very difficult to distinguish between a providence and a miracle". The key question seems to be about agency - to what extent can the cure be credited to Newman himself (because the woman cured had been praying to him) rather than to God alone (which Newman referred to as providential mercy).

Commentators have also observed that both the miracles attributed to Newman occurred in the United States. Newman's view was that miracles were more likely to occur "in a country in which faith and prayer abound".


See also

Adam Buick, Newman on Miracles (The Sceptic, 22 September 2010)

Christopher Howse, Cardinal Newman's miraculous bones (Telegraph, 23 Aug 2008)

Colbert I. King, This country is in need of a miracle (Washington Post, 19 April 2019)

Peter Le, David Hume and Henry Newman on Miracle (undated)

Garry Wills, Stealing Newman, (NYR Blog September 2010), Does the Pope Matter? (NYR Blog March 2013), Popes Making Popes Saints (NYR Blog July 2013).

Papal Canonizations a Lesson in Subtle Art of Catholic Politics (Newsmax 25 April 2014)

Wikipedia: Canonisation of John Henry Newman, Mother Theresa


Updated 7 July 2019

John Rock's Error

What the inventor of the birth control pill didn't know about women's health

Two or three of my Christmas presents this year were recommended to my friends and family by our local bookseller (who probably knows my taste in books better than most) including Malcolm Gladwell's latest book "What the Dog Saw, and Other Adventures".

I expect several of the chapters of this book will inspire blogposts, but I wanted to start with the chapter on the Birth Control Pill, because it echoes some of the themes I've been talking about recently.

Partly for religious reasons (he was a devout Catholic), John Rock designed the birth control pill to be a "natural" method of contraception. He believed that the pill was merely reinforcing the established rhythm method, and he was bitterly disappointed when Pope Paul VI banned the Pill along with all other "artificial" contraceptives.

Rock and his colleagues had designed a pill with a twenty-eight day cycle, because they thought that this was the proper menstrual cycle for women, and they wanted to replicate and regulate this cycle in order to make the rhythm method (which only worked effectively for women with a regular menstrual cycle) more effective.

As Gladwell puts it, the Pill was

"shaped by the dictates of the Catholic Church - - by John Rock's desire to make this new method of birth control seem as natural as possible. ... But what he thought was natural wasn't so natural after all, and the Pill he ushered into the world turned out to be something other than what he thought it was".

For when female scientists look at patterns of menstruation, they typically find that the twenty-eight day cycle is not "natural" at all - it is a product of urban modern life. Furthermore, the artificially induced cycle has both short-term side-effects (period pains) and longer-term health risks (cancer).

So here is how Gladwell describes the consequences of John Rock's desire to please his Church.

"In the past forty years, millions of women around the world have been given the Pill in such a way as to maximize their pain and suffering. And to what end? To pretend that the Pill was no more than a pharmaceutical version of the rhythm method."

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I've been exploring different kinds of problem-solving recently, including a common preference for solutions that seem to preserve the structure of the problem. But such structure-preservation often turns out to rely on hidden assumptions - in this case, assumptions as to what counts as "natural".

Describing a solution as "natural" implies that it is safe and unobjectionable and somehow innocent. But when we unpack what counts as "natural", we may find a hidden agenda buried within the allegedly "natural". The Pope refused to see the Pill as an innocent technology, and perceived it as a source of disruption to traditional family values.

So what is interesting here is that Rock and the Pope, two men with very similar religious beliefs and values, both Catholics, should interpret the POSIWID of the Pill in such completely different ways. Meanwhile, Gladwell's interpretation is different again. The purpose of the Pill depends who is telling the story.

Not yet quite back into the fold after all ...

What exactly is the purpose of an apology? 

The Vatican has rejected an apology by Bishop Richard Williamson, who had denied the full extent of the Holocaust, and said the bishop needed to "unequivocally and publicly" withdraw his comments. [BBC News, 27 Feb 2009]. This follows Bishop Williamson's earlier excommunication (which was for reasons unconnected with his opinions about the Holocaust) being controversially cancelled, as I discussed here a few weeks ago [Back into the Fold].

The Catholic Church now feels that Bishop Williamson's apology is ambiguous and grossly inadequate. 

In September 2006, the Pope himself was forced to apologize after making some comments about mediaeval Islam. Some Moslems were dissatisfied with the Pope's apology; they felt that his Holiness appeared to be apologizing for the response rather than for the words themselves. 

As I said at the time, an apology - especially a forced apology - often reveals a disconnect between intention and outcome. [Papa Ratzi 4]

 

Update March 2009: The Pope says that the Vatican needs to pay more attention to the internet as a source of information. [BBC News, 12 March 2009]

Back into the Fold

It is a time for reconciliation and return. Old political rivals welcomed back (Hillary Clinton, Peter Mandelson, Ken Clarke). And the Vatican has restored relations with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist Catholic organization, founded in 1970 by the French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Most controversially, the Vatican is cancelling the excommunication of four SSPX bishops, including Holocaust denier Richard Williamson.

I don't know whether this is bad luck or bad judgement on the part of the Holy Father, but Bishop Williamson appeared this week on Swedish television, denying the existence of the gas chambers. So much for Jewish-Catholic relations then.

The Holy Father appears to have a precise legalistic mind, in which there is no logical connection between the original reasons for Bishop Williamson's excommunication and his extreme views on the second world war. If the excommunication no longer serves a valid purpose, it must be cancelled; you cannot keep someone in a state of mortal peril just because you disagree with, or even disapprove of, his opinions.

Many will be offended by the pardon for Bishop Williamson and his SSPX friends, interpreting it as a further sign of an anti-Semitic turn at the Vatican. However, His Holiness doesn't seem to worry much about offending people.

Meanwhile, the Society of St. Pius V (SSPV), an organization that split from SSPX in 1983, holds that the papal seat is currently vacant ("sedevacantism"), as all the popes since 1958 (or perhaps 1963) are excessively modernist and therefore heretical. Perhaps Benedict XVI is trying to win their approval and acceptance.

 

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Update 2022

Following more recent controversy concerning Bishop Williamson, I found a more detailed account of the history of SSPX, including the role of Cardinal Ratzinger. 

Michael Warren Davis, SSPX: Back to the Bad Old Days? (Crisis Magazine, 22 October 2019)

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Sources 2009

• Pope 'to lift SSPX excommunications' just as Bishop Williamson denies Nazi gas chambers (Telegraph, 22 January 2009)
• Pope could welcome Holocaust denier back into the fold (Times Online, 23 January 2009)
• Bishop faces probe for Holocaust outburst (Independent Online South Africa, 23 January 2009)
• Pope move ignites Holocaust row (BBC News, 24 January 2009)
• Bishop Richard Williamson, Holocaust Denier, Reinstated By Pope (Huffington Post, 24 January 2009)
• Pope lifts SSPX excommunications (Ruth Gledhill, 24 January 2009)
• Benedict and the SSPX: the backlash begins (Telegraph, 22 January 2009)
• Pope admits Holocaust row errors (BBC News, 12 March 2009)
  

Related posts

 

Not Yet Quite Back (February 2009), The Symbolism of the Empty Chair (March 2015)

Papa Ratzi 5

I have just read an extremely interesting analysis of Pope Benedict's lecture and the ensuing row on the Duck of Minerva blog - Misdirected Offense. 

In my earlier comment Papa Ratzi 3, I wondered why His Holiness had chosen to include the offending quotation, which didn't seem to add any logical weight to his argument. As PTJ points out, the lecture wasn't actually about Islam at all, but about the place of force within Christian tradition. So why did the Pope talk about Moslem violence, when history contains so many examples of Christian violence? 

PTJ suggests that the Pope was merely adopting a cheap rhetorical trick against Christians who disagree with his Hellenistic position. Many Christians have believed that God is above reason, but the Pope chooses to associate this belief with Islam (which he regards as an alien and inferior religion), and then uses the ad hominem fallacy to dismiss this belief without proper argument. 

Whom was the Pope addressing in the offending lecture? Some people have noted that the Pope's words have caused some violence in the Moslem world, and imagine that this violence somehow proves the Pope correct. (It doesn't - he wasn't talking about that kind of violence.) And imagine that he was talking directly to the Moslem world. Surely we cannot see the Pope as some kind of provocateur, deliberately stirring up trouble in the Moslem world in order to demonstrate that Christianity is more civilized? This seems extremely unlikely, if only because this Pope probably doesn't think the superiority of Christianity needs any demonstration. 

PTJ constructs a system frame in order to make sense of the out-of-context quotation - what assumptions does the Pope seem to be making about his audience, in order that this quotation might contribute (albeit fallaciously) to his argument. According to PTJ, the Pope thought he was addressing Christians who share his ignorance about (and aversion to) Islam. If Islam is the Other, then the only acceptable course for Catholics is to believe the opposite of whatever Moslems believe. 

In short, PTJ assumes that the use of the offending quotation was carefully chosen to produce some (rhetorical) effect within some (academic) context. This explanation appears to be sufficient to explain the Pope's original speech, as well as his professed surprise when the speech was widely interpreted as anti-Islamic. Within the system frame of giving an academic lecture, it might seem reasonable for the Pope to ignore effects outside this frame. But this system frame is embedded in a much larger system frame. The Pope has advisors who can warn him of the wider effects of his words, but only if he choses to listen to these advisors. 

In this situation, the Pope's lack of awareness and lack of consideration must be regarded as (the consequence of) a strategic choice.

Papa Ratzi 4

Last week, the Pope managed to offend a large number of Moslems. (See my previous post Papa Ratzi 3.) He has now made a statement of apology [BBC News: Report, Text]. Here is the key sentence.

"I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims."

As several Moslems have already observed, this appears to be apologizing for the response rather than for the words themselves. The BBC quotes Turkish State Minister Mehmet Aydin :

"You either have to say this 'I'm sorry' in a proper way or not say it at all - are you sorry for saying such a thing or because of its consequences?"

From a POSIWID perspective, an apology - especially a forced apology - often reveals a disconnect between intention and outcome. The Pope does not repudiate his intention, stands by his original lecture, merely regrets the way that other people have taken his words. In contrast, here is another apology, from football manager Glen Hoddle who had the temerity to express an opinion on reincarnation when he should have been worrying about England's poor match-form.

"I accept I made a serious error of judgement in an interview which caused misunderstanding and pain to a number of people. This was never my intention and for this I apologise." [BBC News]

As UK readers may recall, a number of able-bodied people (including Tony Blair) felt that disabled people might be outraged by Hoddle's remarks [BBC News]. Many people thought that it would have been wiser for a football coach to conceal his religious views. Presumably nobody expects the Pope to conceal his religious views. He has already signalled his intention of taking a tougher stance against Islam than his predecessor. Meanwhile, Tony Blair is being uncharacteristically quiet ...

Papa Ratzi 3

When Pope Benedict XVI was elected, few people expected that this elderly German scholar would be able to handle the complex political pressures of the modern world with the same compassion and charisma as his predecessor. In my post Papa Ratzi, I quoted Timothy Garton Ash, who predicted that "the new Pope will hasten the decline of the old continent's formative faith" (Guardian April 21st, 2005).

Last week, in the middle of an otherwise dry and intellectually demanding lecture about Faith and Reason at the University of Regensberg, the Pope threw in a quotation about the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) from a 14th century Byzantine emperor. [BBC News, Wikipedia]

Robin Wilton read the whole lecture closely, to find out what did the pope actually say. He concludes that the lecture as a whole represents a fairly reasonable and tolerant position about Islam, and implies that it is the outrage that is unreasonable.

But what I don't quite understand is why the Pope chose to include the offending quotation at all, since it doesn't seem to add any logical weight to his argument. Lecturers often include quotations in order to produce some effect - to amuse or stimulate or shock the audience. We don't know what effect the Pope intended on this occasion, but we know very well what effect this quotation has had.

Papa Ratzi 2

You are old Papa Ratzi, the young priest said,
And your clerical hat has gone white.
And yet you incessantly preach to the right,
D'ye think conservative doctrine's got cred?

When John-Paul II was here, we were all taught to fear
The very mention of condoms as sinful.
Better that African children should all die of AIDS
Than our doctrine get chucked by the binful.

Here in Europe, the Holy Father went on,
We face Orthodox, Russian and Greek.
And if Turkey join Europe there will be more Moslems than Catholics
This is no time for ecumenical speak.

I'll make sure my successor is more right-wing than I
The time for liberal tolerance is passed.
And according to the Prophecy of St Malachy,
The next pope is going to be ... the last.

Papa Ratzi

Timothy Garton Ash, writing about the election of Cardinal Ratzinger ("Papa Ratzi"), questions the ability of the modern Papacy to achieve its stated goals (Guardian April 21st, 2005).

Atheists should welcome the election of Pope Benedict XVI. For this aged, scholarly, conservative, uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely hasten precisely the de-Christianisation of Europe that he aims to reverse. ... An irony of John Paul II's pontificate was that, by hastening the end of communism, he helped unleash [into Eastern Europe] those forces of capitalist modernisation that contributed to secularisation in Western Europe.

Does POSIWID reveal anything useful about this kind of system behaviour? More generally, does POSIWID reveal anything useful about a broad class of apparently counter-productive behaviours?

• meddling or tampering - ill-considered interventions that make the problem worse
• counter-productive systems that achieve the opposite of their stated goals
• unstable systems whose internal contradictions undermine their long-term viability
• systems that apparently have a death wish

The POSIWID principle says that we can infer purpose from behaviour or outcome. In other words, failure is the result of a system oriented towards failure. But for this principle to be useful rather than simply fatalistic, we need to interpret it carefully. The system that is oriented towards failure is often not the one you are looking at. What POSIWID entails is that we must question the way the system of interest is scoped. (Just as Deming tells us: we need to understand (and if necessary reframe) a varying system before trying to control it.)

So in order to understand the election of another conservative pope, we need to look at a system that is broader than a bunch of elderly cardinals. (Note how the little dramatic flourishes such as the white smoke and the temporary chimney and the Michaelangelo ceiling are all designed to focus our attention on the wrong system.) We look at the shifting spiritual allegances within Europe, potential changes to geopolitical boundaries to include more Orthodox, more Moslem. In the recent past, Ratzinger has preached against these changes, although many people pray that as pope he will prove more conciliatory.

Bloggers are searching for other ways to make sense of the election. For example, the Prophecy of St Malachy allows us to construct a different system, whose purpose is fulfilled by a given series of popes. Perhaps the fundamental purpose of the Catholic Church is not to be a popular, wealthy and powerful institution, but to return to early Christian principles of austerity, modesty, sincerity and devotion. Even many atheists could drink to that.

Technorati Tags: POSIWID Deming pope

Pope JP2

While my co-blogger John tends to view all religion and all religionists as equal, I tend to find the differences between them more interesting.

The late Pope John-Paul 2 has had a remarkable tenure as Pope. Not only one of the longest-serving popes in history, but also one who has devoted his time to a strong agenda combining politics (think Poland and the fall of communism), doctrine (think contraception and AIDS) and theology (think Padre Pio and the Virgin Mary).

He has spent most of his time looking outward from the Vatican, and until slowed by illness he made an unprecedented number of foreign trips, with his characteristic gesture of kissing the tarmac on arrival at every airport.

His predecessor John-Paul 1, who died suddenly after only a month, also had a strong agenda, but one that involved looking inward at the Vatican and the hierarchy. Sadly he did not live to carry out this agenda. Although the rumours that he was murdered are doubtless completely without foundation, it has been suggested that the selection of a non-Italian pope with an entirely different agenda may have suited some elements within the Vatican. The rumours may even have encouraged the new pope to concentrate his energies on exernal matters. We may note the same tendency among secular leaders, who prefer the international stage (where they are regarded as statesmen) to the domestic (where they are regarded as mere politicians).