Secrecy and the Election of the Pope...

I was reading this story on Yahoo! (from Reuters) about the former Archbishop of Boston Bernard Law giving a memorial mass for Pope John Paul II when a paragraph caught my attention. It read
"Andrew Greeley, sociologist and religious affairs commentator from Chicago, sharply criticized the cardinals' silence in the period before the conclave."

The article just mentioned this almost in passing and didn't elaborate, so I did a quick Google search and came up with this article that Greeley, apparently a regular contributor to the Chicago Sun-Times wrote about the secrecy of the cardinals before the conclave to elect the next pope.

Now, I am not Catholic and have certain problems (based on my understanding of Scripture) with even the idea of a pope, but this article demonstrates to me a more pressing issue. Greeley seems to be of the opinion that the Catholic Church has an obligation to make their deliberations public. While I do not argue that the cardinals are not obligated to Catholics to pick the best pope they can, I do not believe that those deliberations should be made public.

When the Constitutional Convention of 1787 was held in Philadelphia, the delegates there decided that it was in the public interest to have their meetings in secret, and that none of the delegates would make any public statements regarding the Convention while it was still ongoing. Why did they decide such a thing? The purpose was that when the Constitution was unveiled, the delegates would appear united behind it. The public would not have been aware of whom disagreed and argued with whom, although they knew that arguements and disagreements must have taken place. It was important for a young, barely united nation to have leaders who were united in spite of their differences, and for this reason they kept meetings that had a very public impact private.

The situation is not much different for the Catholic Church today. Catholics, especially in America, are divided on any number of issues. The cardinals are charged with an obligation that is no smaller than the one the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were charged with. They must appear united in their decision, despite any differences and disagreements they may have.

For this reason, their secrecy is not only understandable, but necessary.