Three popes at once

The Council of Pisa in 1409 is convened by cardinals from both the Roman and Avignon obediences who are exhausted by thirty years of schism and have decided to take matters into their own hands.

The council declares both existing popes — Gregory XII in Rome and Benedict XIII in Avignon — deposed on grounds of schism and heresy. It elects Alexander V as the new universal pope.

Neither Gregory nor Benedict accepts the deposition. Alexander V is a real pope to most of Europe but not to the obediences of the other two. The church now has three simultaneous claimants to the papacy, each excommunicating the others, each with his own curia and his own support base.

Alexander V dies ten months after his election. His successor John XXIII — not the same John XXIII who called Vatican II in 1962 — is elected in 1410. He is one of the most disreputable figures to hold the papal title: the charges against him include piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest. He is deposed at the Council of Constance in 1415.

The Council of Constance is the low point and the turning point. It deposes three popes, elects one, and declares the principle of conciliarism: that a general council has authority over a pope.

The conciliarist principle will be debated and eventually rejected by the papacy. But the demonstration it rests on — that the institution can fail so completely that outside intervention is necessary — cannot be undone.

John Hus attends the Council of Constance under a guarantee of safe conduct. He is arrested and burned. We will meet him in Volume 4.

The early church resolved its crises in councils — communities of leaders gathering, arguing, praying, deciding together. The Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is the model: it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us.

The conciliarist movement was trying to recover this model — the conviction that no single leader, however exalted, is above the collective discernment of the community.

The papacy eventually suppressed the conciliarist principle. But the question it raised has not gone away: how does any institution maintain accountability when those at the top claim to be beyond correction?

Every institution — church, corporation, government, family — faces this question eventually. The ones that answer it well survive. The ones that don't produce their own version of three popes.

What accountability structures exist in the institutions you are part of? And what happens when someone at the top needs to be corrected?