Lay Conclave and Election of a Pope:
©Prakash J. Mascarenhas. Revised 23rd May 2003.
Is it Possible? Is it legitimate?
I have shown, satisfactorily, I hope, how it is legitimate to innovate. Now we can take up the question I had posited earlier: What can be done when the bishops are incapable of assembling in a Council to elect a pope?
[Bishops are incapable of convening in an Acephalous Council and of supplying/electing the pope. This is because all bishops fell away with the great Apostacy. And those that we have obtained though they possess valid orders and the tacit permission and supply by the Church to function, they do not possess or are supplied Authority... ]
It is agreed, I hope, that the supplying of a pope is a pressing matter and admitting of no delay.
Therefore, some have advocated as an alternative, a lay election, a lay conclave of all the believers to elect a pope. Thrice was this attempted, resulting in the papal claimants or purported popes Michael 1, Pius 13 and Linus 2.
Very many have denounced this idea of a lay organised and dominated election as preposterous and presumptive. Yet is this so?
Constance had for its main initiators the University of Paris, France together with the other Catholic Universities of Europe, joined later by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and other laymen. The attendants at the Council were overwhelmingly non-Episcopal clerics and laymen, so much so, that the bishops present at the Council could be really dismissed as being insignificant to the conduct of the Council. I am not making this up: you can look up the Catholic Encyclopaedia on the subject.
If ever we needed a precedent for a lay gathering, Constance could be it.
Nevertheless, we are entirely within our rights in proceeding without this incomplete precedent, for as demonstrated, we do have the right to innovate.
Because the Church has no other means of gaining itself the next pope, Cardinals and bishops having all fallen away, and this need of supplying the Church with its head being urgent, the duty does not lapse. (Can the Papacy ever lapse completely? If this duty lapses because of the failure or inability of the bishops to fulfil their responsibility, then it must be necessarily understood that the Papacy is lost forever! And this is impossible; a monstrosity!) But the Cardinals and bishops failing, the right passes on to the Church-In�General, from which it can never lapse!
Therefore, a lay gathering for this end is certainly possible and legitimate. To possess legitimacy, such a gathering must notify all the believers and invite them to participate, and it must be conducted as a Catholic, Christian gathering, under the relevant rules governing Catholic, Christian gatherings. Principally this is the rule, that all those eligible to attend should be invited to attend and participate. ("For ecumenicity in the adequate sense all the bishops of the world in communion with the Holy See should be summoned, but it is not required that all or even a majority should be present.")