Quote:
Originally Posted by Sumeragi
How often are we going to have that many old popes being elected, or that many popes serving more than twenty years? My point was that the general history is weighted against there being a tradition in the first place, and furthermore such tradition would be contrary to the laws of the Church, where resignations must be purely voluntary. A tradition is NOT voluntary, since it is a form of pressure.
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Actually, Popes are almost always extremely old when they are elected, the average age over the last 500 years being about 64, and there have been 12 instances where there was a "year of 3 popes" where the pope elected died before the end of the year, and there was 1
year of four popes.
With people living longer today, and infirmity, senility and dementia being increasingly common, it may be necessary for more popes in the future to resign, as they will lack the physical or mental capacity to carry out their duties (in fact, it's possible that the Catholic church stagnated somewhat during the later years of John Paul II due to his infirmity).
Having an age limit on the Papacy is not without precedent. Every other ecclesiastical office has a mandatory retirement age, namely priests at 70, Bishops and Arch-Bishops at 75, and Cardinals lose their voting privileges at the age of 80 (though otherwise the position is for life).
It might be beneficial to the vitality of the Church if they introduced a tradition of resignation for the Pope, when he feels he is no longer fit for it's duties. As it is, the Church has many difficult problems to overcome if it is to keep people within the Catholic Church. I can't speak for other countries, but the slide into irrelevance in Ireland has been very swift, used to be the Church pretty much ran the country.