Social Science and Natural Science Disciplines of Catholic Cardinals

Analysis of the educational background of those engaged in the selection of the new Pope

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Explanation

The election of a successor to Pope Benedict XVI in March 2013 raises the question as to the range of "disciplines" which might be called upon (or valued) by the members of the College of Cardinals, namely by those cardinals recognized as being allowed to engage in the selection process.

The following table is an extract from that presented in Wikipedia (Sortable list of living cardinals). For this purpose, the list has been sorted by ascending age in order to enable exclusion of those members of the College of Cardinals who cannot engage in the electoral process of the Papal Conclave.

Pope Paul VI limited the electors to cardinals under 80 years of age. A two-thirds supermajority vote is required to elect the new pope, which also requires acceptance from the person elected. The list should not be considered authoritative because of the complication of actual birthdays in relation to the time of the conclave, the meaning of "under", and the implication of the fact that at the age of 75 Catholic Bishops are required by canon law to submit an offer of resignation to the Pope. It is therefore unclear whether those whose resignation was accepted should be included in the following list. Those over 80 have been excluded from the table. Others eligible to attend are under pressure to decline because of their alleged complicity in the clerical sex abuse scandals, as recently summarized (Lizzy Davies, Difficult path to papal conclave as Rome prepares for new era, The Observer, 23 February 2013).

To the extracted list have been added the two columns on "social science" disciplines and "natural science" disciplines. The procedure used was to access the profiles of each of the cardinals in Wikipedia. The profiles were then scanned for reference to formal academic training. Any "disciplines" found were apportioned to either of the two columns. When this was not fully clear, the discipline was placed in parentheses. A more systematic analysis is however required. Another attempt at such a systemic analysis, focusing on the doctorates of current cardinals is available separately (Does the next Pope have an S.T.D.? Catholic Light, 16 February 2013; Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, Cardinals and their doctorates, or not, Fr. Z's blog, 18 February 2013 by ). This notes that Canon Law #378 lists several official requirements for the bishops (who may be named cardinals), and one is that he hold a doctorate or at least a licentiate in sacred Scripture, theology or canon law, from an institute of higher studies approved by the Apostolic See, or at least be well versed in these disciplines.

The implications of the table below are self-evident. The absence of disciplines from the right hand column makes it clear that very few cardinals have any formal training in the "natural sciences", most notably in mathematics. It would be an exaggeration to claim that cardinals were dangerously innumerate -- as this might however be claimed by mathematicians (or by other faiths attaching greater significance to numbers and their symbolism). See below the table for further commentary.

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