Social media upended the news world by providing ordinary people an opportunity to raise and discuss matters the establishment media didn’t or wouldn’t. I’ve also found it a place to discover ideas that deserve further discussion but which, because they aren’t on the immediate news cycle, won’t get their due.

Like the age bishops should retire. One Irish tweeter raised the question about when bishops should leave office. Pope Francis replaced Kansas City in Kansas Archbishop Joseph Naumann on April 8. Naumann had reached 75. The Pope also filled the see of Providence, RI. Under changes instituted by Pope Paul VI, bishops must submit their resignation at age 75, which the Pope can accept or defer, but must leave at age 80. Paul’s rule was not applicable to the Bishop of Rome, the title by which Francis prefers to style himself. Every Pope since that rule became effective, including Paul VI but excluding John Paul I, left or will leave the papacy after age 80.

My Irish tweeter asked whether Paul VI’s rule ought to be reconsidered. It seems, he suggested, that the rule is being used politically. Some bishops’ resignations are accepted on their 75^th birthday; others (e.g., Cardinal Cupich) remain in office. At the time Paul made that rule, the exception seemed to be built-in for sees where appointing a successor would be difficult, e.g., behind the Iron Curtain. One suspects there is no shortage of candidates for the Windy City.

I want to tease my tweeter’s question further, particularly in light of the Pope’s recent serious illness and extended convalescence. Modern medicine has extended lifespans, but age and illness still exact their tolls. Media, not just social media, have made the papacy much more visible. Past popes may have “slowed down” and lingered behind Vatican walls. That’s a lot harder to do today. The stories beginning to seep out after Joe Biden’s presidency ended suggest he was not wholly performing his job consistently not just in the past year but earlier in his administration, and that much of what was done by “Joe Biden” actually came from his staff. Given those reports, is it fair to ask: Is there a papal auto-pen? If yes, who holds it?

John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 finally focused Congress’s attention on the matter of presidential succession, resulting in the 25^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (see here). In many ways, the Amendment was less immediately necessary than prescient; the process of succession for a president killed in office was established and already applied four times. Nobody was questioning LBJ’s legitimacy. But the 25^th Amendment was visionary. It envisioned future scenarios where the legitimacy of succession would be questioned. It therefore provided a mechanism to replace a vice president when the incumbent succeeded to the presidency, something implemented less than a decade later with Gerald Ford. And it set up a way to declare if a president was incapacitated, incapable of acting as president or stepping aside. (We’ve had kidnapped popes.)

I am not arguing for such changes to canon law. I am suggesting we need some discussion of these situations.

Take my tweeter’s question. Should bishops have to leave at 75, or 80 “for those who are strong” (or have papal friends)? I am not so sure. Paul’s rule was seen as a practical norm for “retirement” of bishops, a way of personnel change and of having vital and engaged men in charge of dioceses. But is “retirement” the proper lens by which to see a bishop? Is one a bishop or does one do bishop “duties?” Catholic sacramental theology would affirm the former. But if that’s the case, should we distinguish between being a bishop and exercising episcopal functions?

John Paul II remained pope despite his increasing frailty because he saw being a bishop as being a spiritual father. Fathers do not stop being fathers or even doing paternal things when they reach 80. What they can do may be limited, but what they still do is paternal. John Paul resisted the idea that identity and function should readily be separable. And I would say that was his deeply held belief, plumbing all the way back to before the 1960s when, in Love and Responsibility, he insisted being a priest was a “spiritual paternity.” Unless a man saw himself as a loving person giving life in that way, he would be just an old bachelor observing a discipline.

Something similar may be true of Francis. Perhaps he is not so accenting the “spiritual paternity” angle, but — like John Paul II — he is showing the continuing value of a person, infirmity and illness notwithstanding. But even here, it seems one has to come back to the “spiritual paternity” point. One can demonstrate the value of the aged and incapacitated without necessarily staying in one’s position if that position is primarily a function. But if that position is primarily an identity, e.g., “spiritual father,” it’s a whole other equation.

Many Catholics found Benedict XVI’s resignation disconcerting. Should one give up the papacy before God Himself declares it sede vacante? Even those who for principled or ideological reasons were happy to see Ratzinger go, found subsequent joint appearances of a pope and a pope emeritus cognitively dissonant. Benedict in many ways wisely kept to a life of largely prayerful seclusion.

But that then brings us back to the “identity versus function” question: Are they so readily divisible? Let’s be honest: few Catholics are quite as invested in their diocesan bishop the way they are in the pope. Some ecclesiologists may chafe at that, but that’s how it is and maybe is even telling us something about the sensus fidelium. Like it or not, Catholics just aren’t as into John C. Reiss (a former bishop of Trenton) as they are into John Paul II (a former bishop of Rome).

My point? Two. First, the fact people don’t think of their own bishop the way they do of the pope may account for why people don’t sense the same dislocation when a local bishop resigns as they did when the pope did — and, therefore, why they may have more readily acquiesced to the Pauline age rule. But, if we are to believe that the pope is who he is by virtue of his primacy within the college of bishops, should the “retirement” rule be different for them and him? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m asking. If the pope can “pick and choose” at age 75, how does one protect against what looks like an ecclesiology the Vatican would insist it opposes as alien to Vatican II: pope as CEO who hires/fires episcopal franchise directors?

Second, if (as I am now leaning) the difference in rule between Bishop of Rome and other bishops is not justified, should we be putting bishops out to pasture because they reached a certain age? In saying this, I acknowledge we run the risk of extended times when diocesan bishops “slow down” and are less active with their flocks. But that’s true of the papacy, too. Why is that a problem in Rochester but not Rome? On the other hand, a “slowed down” Bishop of Raleigh can be assisted by a coadjutor bishop. Would such a thing be possible in Rome? (Clearly not one “with right of succession.”) Or is it de facto what the papal vicar for Rome does anyway?

In this anniversary year of Nicaea, perhaps it’s appropriate to ask how the Orthodox churches — which in fact have real bishops — handle the question of age, office, infirmity, and “retirement.” I don’t know.

I am not recommending any particular course of action. But, at this juncture in the Francis papacy, as cardinals ponder the Church’s future, and in light of my tweeter’s question, I do want to raise the discussion, noting the inconsistencies our current disciplines showcase. Like the 25^th Amendment, perhaps this is a moment of grace, a kairos, to think more broadly about what papal succession means in the world and times in which we live.