Rating Possible Popes: The Ratzinger Factor

Everybody is doing it. Predictions or at least possibilities regarding the next pope appear everywhere in the media.  Enjoy it while it lasts--which won't be long. Chances are, a week from now we'll know. The conclave begins tomorrow and in the last century it has taken 3 or 4 days on average to elect a pope. It's possible we might run ten to twelve days this time, but highly unlikely that things will go beyond that long.

Ratzinger continues to be the focus of a lot of media discussion.  Some of the media can be dismissed as trying to poison the well--to get the attention of cardinals or more likely their advisors before they go to the conclave and to create the impression that a Ratzinger papacy would be a disaster. 

But not all of the Ratzinger coverage can be dismissed as media propaganda or even liberal media paranoia.  It seems obvious that Ratzinger is the frontrunner.  He is among the strongest of the JP II men in the Vatican. He is an intellectual, a former diocesan bishop, a theologian of seismic proportions, and the man JP II put in charge of dealing with the clergy abuse problem when it became clear the bishops were not getting the job done on their own.  He understands the problems of the Church and the modern world like no one else.  And he knows how to administer the affairs of the Vatican, having worked in the Vatican bureaucracy for over twenty years.  He is often depicted as an ultraconservative and as the Panzerkardinal, but these characterizations are media fictions probably most, if not all, the cardinal electors see through--even those who aren't necessarily going to vote for him.

By most accounts Ratzinger does not presently have the requisite 2/3 majority (77 votes) to win outright (though of course we don't know for sure).  The interesting question is whether he has a simple majority (58 electors).  If so, it is possible that the Ratzinger supporters could simply run through 30 ballots or so (about 12 days worth of voting) until they are allowed to elect a pope by a simple majority. If we get to day 11 with no pope, there is a good chance that will be happening.

We'll see.

Even if Ratzinger doesn't have the votes to win, whether outright or with a simple majority down the road, he will certainly be an influential figure in the conclave. Perhaps the most influential.

Here is a good piece from Catholic World News on the prospects: http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=36564.

Comments

[C Neumeier]

Game theory would say that we ought to take into account that the Cardinals also know that a small majority can elect their candidate if they hold firm. Thus, if Ratzinger (or anyone else, for that matter) gets 58+ votes on enough successive ballots, I would expect other electors to join the bandwagon -- nobody really wants a long conclave, do they?
The question then becomes how many ballots is "enough successive"; that, I would not care to guess.

[Mark Brumley]

Looks like folks joined the "bandwagon". My scenario was simply a hypothetical if Ratzinger mustered only a simple majority at the outset and couldn't pick up significantly more support in successive balloting. As it turned out, he had more support. It would be interesting to know what the initial vote was. Obviously, having gotten elected on the 4th ballot, Ratzinger must have had some fairly helfty support from the outset, even if it was only implicit.