Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

The Papacy and the Interregnum

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Sede Vacante
Sede Vacante

There is nothing in the world like the papacy. Beginning with Saint Peter, who was appointed head of the church by Christ himself, a scant 265 men have served as the Bishop of Rome and head of the Christian church. Most have been great men. A few have been down-right diabolical. But all down the line, the successors of Saint Peter—and the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church that they shepherd—have been protected by the Holy Spirit from teaching error in matters of faith and morals. Christ promised as much when he appointed Saint Peter to lead his people: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:19, RSV-CE).

But, despite what some might claim, the Holy Spirit doesn’t sweep down from heaven and ordain a new pope. In 1997, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—the man who would become Pope Benedict XVI only eight years later—said, “The Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined. There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!”

This is consistent with the establishment of what we now call the papacy as recorded in Holy Scripture. Christ told Peter that the powers of death (or the ‘gates of hell’) would not prevail against the Church. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t make inroads at times. That doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be dark, evil days in the development and spread of the Christian faith. That doesn’t mean that our priests, bishops, and even our popes wouldn’t fall woefully short at times. No, it just means that their sins (and ours) can never completely eclipse the underlying truths of the Christian faith. And they haven’t. Sin has bruised us, and hurt us, and embarrassed us . . . but it has not beaten us. It can’t. Sin has already been conquered.

So how does the election of a pope work?

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Gratias Tibi Ago, Papa Benedictus XVI

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Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI

I was not born into a Catholic family, although I do happen to be named after a close Catholic friend of the family. In fact, for much of my childhood, my branch of the Bradford clan wasn’t particularly religious at all. We were nominally Christians of some protestant flavor, but we weren’t weekly churchgoers and the faith didn’t play a particularly strong role in our lives. I have only two distinctly ‘religious’ memories from my early life: I recall attending a religious preschool (affiliated with Fairfax Church of Christ), and I recall my father reading the nativity story from Holy Scripture each Christmas eve.

When I was in fifth grade, around the age of ten, we began attending weekly services at Community of Faith United Methodist Church in Herndon, Virginia. This was the beginning of my more-than-sixteen years of affiliation with the United Methodist Church (UMC) denomination. I received the Sacrament of Baptism there and then went through the Methodist confirmation process.

As I grew—physically and in my faith—I went on mission trips and participated in youth groups, particularly as part of the Lane Memorial UMC youth group in Altavista, Virginia. For a [brief] time, I even discerned whether I might be called to become a Methodist pastor. In adulthood, back at Community of Faith, I served on the church’s administrative council, served on the staff/parish relations committee, and represented the church several times as a lay delegate at the UMC’s Virginia Annual Conference.

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A Six-Month Balanced Budget Plan

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First, the simple truth: The United States federal government is spending much, much more than it brings-in. There are two basic approaches to fixing this. First, we can reduce the level of federal spending to match current and projected tax income. Second, we can increase taxes [drastically] to pay for the current level of government spending. (And, of course, there is a spectrum of options in-between that mix the two approaches.)

So far, President Barack Obama (D) and the Democratic Party have said they favor a ‘balanced approach’ of tax increases and spending cuts, but they have, in reality, not proposed any actual spending cuts whatsoever. They have only proposed reducing the expected increases in the federal budget over the next decade. Imagine that your annual cost of living is $100,000, even though you only make $75,000 per year. You already expect your costs to increase to $125,000 next year. The Democrats propose spending $115,000 next year instead, and then proudly tell the public that they’ve cut $10,000 from the budget. Except that’s not a ‘cut.’ They’re still planning to spend $15,000 more than what they’re spending today. They also have a plan to increase income to $80,000 though, so that mitigates the impending disaster . . . slightly.

You might think that the Republican Party has a better plan. If we continue with our example, the Republicans plan to spend $105,000 next year and keep our income flat at $75,000. Like the Democrats, the Republicans lie through their teeth and say they’ve proposed cutting $20,000 from the federal budget. In truth, they’re still proposing deficits as far as the eye can see, and they’re still proposing actual increases (not reductions) in federal spending. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (and again, and again): the two parties are fighting to the death over how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.

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Give Hagel an Up-or-Down Vote

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I’m a week late (blame my vacation, followed by an illness) . . . but I can’t let it go without mention that Republicans in the United States Senate have filibustered President Barack Obama’s (D) appointee to serve as Secretary of Defense.

Obama, perhaps in an effort to appear bipartisan and even-handed, has nominated former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE)—who will be his token cabinet Republican after Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s (R) resignation takes effect. That would be fine if Hagel didn’t have a history of wishy-washy statements on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or if  he hadn’t made such a generally-embarrassing and ill-prepared showing at his Senate confirmation hearings. I don’t blame anybody for wanting to vote against his confirmation; by all accounts, he’s a bad fit for the job. But filibustering nominations—a popular pastime of Republicans and Democrats alike—is not a valid, constitutional option.

The United States Constitution (Article 2, Section 2) clearly states that, “[The President] shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law. . . .” In other words, the president must make an appointment, and the Senate must vote on confirmation. The Senate has every right to refuse to give consent—to reject an appointment—but the Senate may not sit on its thumbs and do nothing. A filibuster is not advice, nor is it a vote on consent. A filibuster is abdication of a clearly indicated constitutional responsibility.

I think the filibuster is stupid in general, but the Constitution gives the Senate the authority to make up its own rules for how it operates. So our hundred senators are welcome to filibuster regular bills any time they like in accordance with the rules of their house. But the Senate may not use the filibuster to avoid doing the things it is explicitly required to do, like evaluate nominations, hold impeachment trials, and count presidential electors. These are not optional activities that may be done or not-done at-will. They are part of the duties of the Senate.

Every presidential nominee—Hagel included—must be given an up-or-down vote in the Senate. If the Republican minority really doesn’t think he is qualified, they can [and should] vote against him. He’ll probably be nominated anyway. So be it. That’s how it works. Many Republicans complained bitterly about Democratic minority obstructionists in the Senate who blocked many of President George W. Bush’s (R) federal court appointees, and many of those same Republicans—now that they are in the minority—have turned into obstructionists themselves. Enough. Vote yes or no, and move on.

Update, February 26, 2013, 5:23 p.m. (ET): The Senate narrowly voted to end debate earlier today, and then voted to confirm former Senator Hagel as the next Secretary of Defense.

2013 Cruise: Behind the Fun and Disembarkation

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We woke up early on Saturday, the last full day of our cruise. Unfortunately, Melissa wasn’t feeling very well and seemed to be running a bit of a fever. She told me that she thought she might be getting another kidney infection, like the one that she had about a year ago. We didn’t have any time to do much about it, except to get a good breakfast and drink some juice.

We gathered in the ship-board piano bar just before 9:00 a.m. for our last ‘excursion,’ which wasn’t really an excursion since it took place on the ship. Carnival has begun offering a ‘Behind the Fun’ tour, which takes you to parts of the ship that usually aren’t open to guests.

Behind the Fun

Unfortunately, cameras and cell phones were prohibited on the ‘Behind the Fun’ tour. Supposedly this is for security reasons, but nothing I saw seemed particularly secret to me. After all, if something is really a secret, it wouldn’t be the subject of a tour.

So our tour started with a metal detector to ensure that none of us had any recording devices. There were two tours, each with only sixteen people. The size of each tour was limited, since some of the places we went were pretty tight.

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Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.