TEXTO PORTUGUÊS ENGLISH TEXT TEXTE FRANÇAIS
He who must be placed at the head of all, must be elected by all. (Pope S. Leo the Great, sec. V)
The autocratic election of the Pope is evangelically illegitimate and a serious usurpation to the People of God!
Today, any modern society can achieve the main objectives without the participation and motivation of all its members. This basic principle of participatory democracies is already clearly afirmed in the Gospels, when Jesus Christ insists several times with the Apostles, concerned about the future leadership of the group, that the most important of their Church was not themselves but the Community of which they were servants. In fact, the question of the exercise of power, essential to human organizations throughout history, would also involve the restricted group of Apostles who were apprehensive with the announced departure of Christ (even they not knowing how it would happen), discussing it in secret among them the question of succession and forcing Christ to intervene several times, in order to prepare them for a new model of exercising power in their organization. It was like this in a first discussion of the apostles about which one would be the greatest, on the way to Capernaum, when they arrived there, Jesus asked them: "What were you discussing on the way? They were silent, because they had discussed along the way, with each other, who would be the greatest. Sitting down, he called the twelve and said to them: if anyone wants to be the first, be the last of all and the servant of all " (Mk.9, 33-37). Similar was the response of Jesus, in the episode of the sons of Zebedee (James and John) who approached him with a strange request, indignant to the others apostles: "Master, we want that you do what we ask ... Grant us that , in your glory, we sit one at your right and one at your left ... The other ten, having heard this, began to be angry with James and John. Jesus called them and said: You know that the leaders of the nations they make their dominion over them and the great ones their authority. Don't be like that among you; whoever wants to be great among you, will be your servant, and whoever wants to be the first among you, will be a slave to all "(Mc.10, 41-45 / Mt.20,24-28). Christ even gave concrete examples of what he wanted from his apostles when, in a speech denouncing the behavior of scribes and Pharisees, he forbade his disciples to act like them:
But despite what had been said to them, the apostles persisted in discussing leadership, even during the Last Supper, with Christ taking advantage of the example of a meal at the table, to end the long dispute. The episode of "meal at the table", only narrated by evangelist Lucas, during the Last Supper, is the first great definition of Power as Service to others, the paradigm of participatory democracy, inverting the old model of the hierarchical pyramid:
Being consensus that those who are at the table are more important than those who serve, Christ defines his apostles as those who serve and not as those who are served. However, it is necessary to draw the conclusion, implicit in this episode and that the Church has ignored in the last centuries. Now, if the most important are those who are seated at the table and not those who serve, this implies the intrinsic dependence of those who serve (hierarchy) in relation to those served (Christian community), either in the context of their choice process, or in the service evaluation, making no sense that the Church servants (hierarchy) choose themselves autocratically in the exercise of power, completely ignoring the will of the lords they serve (People of God) and in whom resides the true authority that was confered to them by Christ.
Although this new evangelical commandment was not understood by the Apostles and by the society of that time, it was assimilated by the first Christian Communities that functioned in a participatory way. The great example was soon given by St. Peter, in the first Community of Jerusalem (120 people), assembled to replace the vacancy of Judas (the traitor) and whose process was conducted in a genuinely democratic way (Act.1,15-26 ). Indeed, the apostle Peter who presided over the Assembly, refused to be him appointing the substitute of Judas and asked the Community to provide two names among them, with Joseph and Matthias being nominated. Then, continuing to abdicate of his power, he asked everyone to pray, then promoting a drawing, through which Matias was chosen. Christian communities functioned in a democratic and participatory way, throughout the first centuries of the Church, with the Assembly being the maximum organ of all decisions. Dominican theologian Bento Domingues, in a text published in the newspaper "Público", mentions some historical data of this practice:
This model lasted in the Church until around the century IV, when the pagan Emperor Constantine the Great (272-337), after an important military victory (312), converted to the new religion, officially recognizing Christianity as a religion (Editan of Milan, 313). Since then, and like most of the old political regimes, the Church organized itself according to the model of absolute, hierarchical and autocratic power, so described by theologian Anselmo Borges:
The permanence of this obsolete model is now extremely serious, because, while western societies, from the 18th century evolved into Democratic Models, the Church became attached to the hierarchical pyramid model, losing the great opportunity to also renew and transform itself in a gigantic autocratic organization that ignores the fundamental rights of the People of God. In a society in which democracy has generalized in the majority of peoples, it is unacceptable that the Church remains captured in a system contrary to the principles of its Founder, ignoring the evangelical commandment, according to which the choice of servants is always the responsibility of those seated the table. For this reason, the current hierarchical model of power, in which the Pope appoints Cardinals who, in turn, choose the Pope, without any participation from the People of God, is hooked from the beginning, is evangelically illegitimate and invalid, with an ecclesiastical minority (about 300 cardinals), which is perpetuated in power, operating in a closed circle, without being accountable or being evaluated by the vast majority of the baptized (about one billion and three hundred million), who constitute the Church of Christ and represent the People of God!
Thus, is necessary a change of Copernican type, inverting the hierarchical pyramid, at top of which must be the People of God, according to legitimacy attributed by Christ (Luk 22,24-27), in him residing all the power of Church and the right to elect the Pope universally, making his autocratic election evangelically illegitimate and a serious usurpation to the People of God!
JOSÉ LEMOS PINTO -Ovar, 04/04/2020
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