The current office of the Bishop of Rome still retains the trappings of a feudal monarchy. No matter how hard the pope and the cardinals try to engage with the world, they are limited by a strict notion of hierarchy. The most responsive faith experiences are initiated first among the priests and the laity. They reach the ears of the bishops only later and only when the Spirit opens their hearts to change.

Vatican II set trends in motion that have already changed the role of the papacy, beginning with a redefinition of infallibility. Infallibility is expressed by the belief of the people of the Church who are in union with the popes and bishops. The people have to believe and accept a teaching for it to be a true belief. In his role as the visible head of the Church, the pope is infallible in teaching Christ's message and in his moral rulings, but it has been acknowledged that he can err.

The idea that the pope can sin and make mistakes in governing the Church or ruling on temporal matters opens the door to a different kind of papacy. Even moral and religious teachings of the past can be reformed, if they are not taught by a consensus of theologians and received by the people of the Church. This may lighten the heavy load of tradition within the Church and allow later popes to lead the Church in a new direction.

Potential Reforms of the Structure of the Church

This change would have to rest on a reformed Church structure in which the voices of the laity reach the top more quickly. The laity is already playing a stronger role in the Church because of the shortage of new priests. If they succeed in creating structures at the national Church level that are more responsive to lay concerns, they could begin to dissolve the hierarchy. The pope would remain a spiritual leader, reinterpreting Christ's message for every age with the help of the Holy Spirit, but Church structures would be decided and operated by laypeople.

The papacy might be a movable office under this new regime. Perhaps national Church leaders would elect popes for a fixed term of five or ten years. The seat of the Holy See itself could shift around the world with the nationality of the current pope, becoming a movable Vatican. The role of the pope would be that of a peacemaker, mediator, and ethical counselor who fosters dialogue and keeps communication lines open among different parts of the world.

The character and convictions of the pope have enormous influence on the direction the Church takes. Any adult male Roman Catholic is a potential candidate for the papacy, but in the last 450 years, only cardinals have been elected. The 123 cardinals elect the pope in a twenty-day period after the death of the previous pope. The changing background of the cardinals can therefore affect what kind of pope is elected.

Other Christian churches have models for more democratic leadership, but none has a spiritual leader of the stature of the pope. One of the Church's goals is unity among Christians. This could be the task of a reformed papacy. As of now, no one has yet suggested a course that would bring all Christians together.

In a less reform-oriented Church, there is a different danger for the papacy — the widening rift between the liberal Western democratic ideals of Europe and the increasingly dominant representatives of developing countries. This could split the Catholic world, with the Western Church rejecting the authority of Rome, if not in words, at least in action. The papacy would then lose its spiritual hold over the hemisphere that dominates world economies and become less influential in its teachings.