Will the Francis Revolution Last?

A reader wrote in in regard to the previous posting:

Do you have an idea of what percent of the cardinals and bishops support Francis?

Not everyone 

gets the style.

The simple answer is “No,” but this calls for a response that is far more complicated than can appear in a reply posting.  This is a classic example of trying to read the data and write the history as it is unfolding.  As for those who support or don’t support the direction Pope Francis is moving in, it is somewhat easier to get a read on the Cardinals than on the bishops as the Cardinals are fewer in number and far less able to conceal their opinions but even in the case of the Cardinals, there is a “silent majority” that is very difficult to second guess to what extent they support Pope Francis’ agenda for reform. 

Let’s look first as what a Conclave might look should Francis’ papacy come to an end in the next six months. (God Forbid, I might add.)  There are 120 Cardinals eligible to vote in the next conclave.  As of the most recent consistory with its newest class of Cardinals we have 30 potential electors who were appointed by Pope John Paul II.  We have 59 electors appointed by Pope Benedict XVI.  And we have 31 electors who were appointed by Pope Francis.  We can surmise that the Cardinals, to some extent, reflect the thought of the Pope who appointed them.  But again we have to be careful.  One of Francis’ strongest critics regarding his desire to find a “pastoral solution” to the problem of the divorced and remarried receiving the sacraments is Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith.  But Müller is a Francis appointee.  Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga, on the other hand, is perhaps Francis’ most trusted right-hand man and is a John Paul appointee. 

What the numbers, arranged by the Pope who appointed the Cardinals, show is just how fast the complexion of the College can change.  With only two “classes” of his nominees, Francis already has appointed more members of the College than John Paul.  Probably with two more classes, three at the most, his nominees will have a simple majority in the College.  This will presumably make a return to the pre-Francis days far more difficult. 

But all is not smooth sailing.  Last year before the Synod, five Cardinals wrote a book, Remaining In The Truth of Christ, in order to stall Francis’ agenda.   This year eleven Cardinals teamed to write: Eleven Cardinals Speak on Marriage and the Family: Essays From A Pastoral Viewpoint.  One of the authors of the second book, Cardinal Basileos Cleemis of India, is only 56 years old.  He will be voting in conclaves for 24 more years.  Another, Cardinal William Jacobus Eijk, has 18 more years.  This means that they will probably play a role not only in choosing Francis’s successor, but his successor’s successor—and perhaps even a third and fourth successor.  Cleemis is a Benedict appointee as is Eijk. 

There is no doubt that whatever opinions you hold the next Conclave is going to be a “Battle for the Soul of the Church.”  The most articulate of Francis’ supporters, Walter Kasper, is too old to vote or even to be in the Conclave.  The Francis faction will probably be led by Cardinals Maradiaga, Marx, Tagle and Schönborn.  The anti Francis, or perhaps better the “reverse direction” party will be led by Raymond Burke (who can participate in conclaves until 2028), aided by Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka.  There are a number of Cardinals, including Müller, who are opposed to Francis’ agenda on finding ways to allow people in irregular unions a deeper participation in the Church’s sacramental life, but who are on board with the wider Francis’ agenda.  While the “reverse direction” faction may have only a few spokespersons within the Sacred College, I suspect that there is enough of a “silent majority” to have an impact on the election and the direction of the Church.  While I doubt there will be an attempt to go back to the Church Triumphant model of the last papacy, I think there are enough doctrinal hard-liners in the Sacred College to want very clear guidelines on the limits of pastoral outreach to the LGBT community and to the divorced and remarried.  I think there will be stronger support for tighter liturgical discipline or at least for those who want the optional use of the pre-conciliar rites.   Francis has thrown a few bones to the liturgical conservatives but he is clearly not interested in any return to the pre-Conciliar rites.  Nor do I think is he interested in advancing further reforms in the Liturgy despite his own pastoral style.  I suspect his successor will be a man who in naming bishops divides the power a bit more evenly than Francis has.  On the other hand, each Pope of recent years has “stacked” the College to some extent with men who think like himself. 

This brings us from the Cardinals down to the bishops.  Francis is clearly appointing men who comprehend his agenda of a more simple Church.  The Chicago appointment (Archbishop Cupich) is particularly telling.  It will be even more telling the next time red hats get passed around to see among the Americans who gets one and who doesn’t.  Many of the American bishops have expressed—usually off the record except for Bishop Tobin of Providence—a dismay at the change in style and tone set by Francis.  The American hierarchy are particularly conservative, however.  On the other hand, American Cardinal-Archbishops Dolan, O’Malley, Wuerl, DiNardo are pretty much following Francis’ lead.  O’Malley is particularly interesting as he is one of Francis’ most trusted advisor—and rightly so, a man of exceptional talent—yet he pretty much stands above the fray whereas Dolan is an Irish street-fighter and gets down and gets dirty.  Wuerl too doesn’t mind skating out onto thin ice in following Francis’ lead.  We need to see more new bishops to get a good read on Francis and what he is doing with the American hierarchy.  I will be surprised to see Lori of Baltimore get his coveted red hat in this papacy but Chaput—despite his rigid conservativism—might as a reward for the upcoming World Meeting of Families.  It will be interesting and, if he doesn’t get the hat, very telling.  There are some key dioceses that need to be filled and it will also tell us a lot whom Francis chooses.  I am particularly interested in Arlington Virginia whose bishop turns 75 this month and whose diocese has long proved to be somewhat unmanageable with obdurate clergy who live in a time warp, convinced that it is 1955. 

I have painted this with a pretty broad brush—there is a lot one could write or say on it and a lot of subtlety I have glided over.  Let’s say in summary that Francis is building a College of Cardinals that wear his colors; but it takes longer to get that same impact on the world’s bishops.  Let’s hope the man has the time to do it.  

Hope the Miter Doesn't Cramp the Brain Beneath.

I just read that Pope Francis has named Father Robert Barron to be auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles.  Father Barron has been rector of Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary/University in Mundelein IL but is more famous for his evangelization work with Word On Fire.   Theologically he is very “middle of the road” with his Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Institute Catholique in Paris where he wrote his thesis: Creation as Discipleship: A Study of De Potentia of Thomas Aquinas in Light of the Dogmatick of Paul Tillich. It is an interesting title.  Creation as Discipleship is a somewhat post-modern take.  Thomas and De Potentia is about as classic Catholic as you can get. (And it is interesting that it is titled “Thomas Aquinas” and not “Saint Thomas Aquinas”—again, a hint of the post-modern.) And using Tillich’s critique brings not only a modern Protestant dimension to the thought of Thomas, but inserts the thesis in the mainline of current orthodox theological dialogue.  It sort of sums up Father Barron.  He is open to a variety of ideas, not afraid to express himself in contemporary vocabulary and thought processes, but at the base is a classic Thomist.  I am excited that he will be among the episcopacy—we can use some theologians there to balance out the canon lawyers who have made the Church too cautious and the Burke-disciples who want to turn the clock back to a combination of Cardinal Mazarin and Tomás de Torquemada.  Of course the krazies will be beside themselves.  I can hardly wait to troll the blogs.  

Wolves in Shepherd's Clothing

At least ten pastors in the Diocese of Venice have written a joint letter to the Papal Nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, complaining of the maladministration of Bishop Frank Dewane.  According to the allegations raised by his priests Dewane has refused any oversight or transparence of Diocesan finances in violation of Canon Law that requires both a finance board and the consent of the board of Diocesan Consultors on expenses over a given amount.  Even more serious, however, are the charges that Dewane has been verbally abusive to clergy and employees and that he has  “repeatedly ruled those under his authority with intimidation, the use of fear, shaming, bullying and other non-Christian behaviors.” The letter goes on to say that Dewane’s “mean-spirited demeanor with clergy make him impossible to work with.”  The bishop has a reputation among staff and clergy of being a “rageaholic” who intimidates by uncontrollable outbursts of anger.  This may of have worked for him in the corporate world in the days before he was “called” to the priesthood.  (The Bishop worked for NBC and for a subsidiarity of Pepsi in his early 30’s.)  It is not becoming a successor of the Apostles. 
One particular case is that of a retired priest from a religious order who lives in a retirement home in the Diocese of Venice.  When the bishop received a letter of complaint that Father had an Obama bumper sticker on his car during the 2012 election, Bishop Dewane called the priest in and demanded that he remove the bumper sticker even though the bishop had no authority over the priest whose membership in a religious order exempts him from the authority of the diocesan bishop.  There are frequent stories of the Bishop’s high-handed and arbitrary use of power. 
Bishop Dewane, for his part, dismisses the accusations as non-credible since the authors of the letter refuse to come forward.  A copy of the letter released to the press did not include the names of the authors and when the Papal Nuncio sent Dewane a copy of the letter, the Nuncio also deleted the names of its signers.  The official response from the diocese states
“Bishop Frank J. Dewane and the Diocese of Venice in Florida take seriously all letters of inquiry. However, anonymous letters or unsigned correspondences, as such, in professional circles lack all credibility… This is a clear attempt to maliciously and publicly damage the reputation of Bishop Dewane and the Diocese of Venice.”
Of course the letter was not anonymous or unsigned but the signers asked the Nuncio not to give the bishops their names for fear of retaliation—a fear that, according to several sources in the Diocese of Venice, is well founded.  “The bishop is known to be a frightened and insecure man, even on the edge of paranoia” one priest said.  “Many more priests would have signed the letter but they did not trust that their signatures would remain confidential and Bishop Dewane always gets his pound of flesh.” 
One of Dewane’s idiosyncrasies is his instruction that when he comes to a parish, no altar server is to be taller than he.  As he is not a tall man this can be a challenge for a pastor trying to organize a liturgy.  He also does not like women in the sanctuary or participating in an active way as readers or other liturgical ministers. 
Dewane was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to be Bishop of Venice in 2006. Along with Robert Finn of Kansas City MO, Robert Morlino of Madison WI, David O’Connell of Trenton NJ, Thomas Paprocki of Springfield IL, Michael Sheridan of Colorado Spring CO, Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix AZ, and Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco CA, Dewane is considered to be among the “old school” bishops who pretty much ignore the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council and rule as petty princes in their own kingdoms.  Unfortunately, about the worst thing that happens to bishops guilty of ineptitude or even the abuse of authority is that they don’t get promoted, leaving a Bishop like Dewane in place for many years to come—many years in which he can hunt down and move in for the kill on those whose complaints have thwarted his rising through the ranks.  Meanwhile clergy morale plummets and the energy of the Church is drained for the lack of effective leadership.
This is not the first time that priests have written the Holy See about the bad leadership being given by their bishop.  A much larger group of clergy appealed to Pope John Paul II about the maladministration of Cardinal Edward Egan, the Archbishop of New York.  The appeal went unanswered.  There is need in the Church today for a serious system of review for bishops to make sure that they have the confidence of their clergy and faithful.  Bishops do not serve at the will of the faithful entrusted to them, but neither should they have some automatic tenure when so many abuse the power entrusted to them.  Of course, we can pray and hope that Pope Francis will give us bishops who embrace his understanding of the Church and share in his openness to the faithful, but it will take several years for him to appoint sufficient bishops to alter the direction of the Church in a sounder ecclesiology.  In the meantime, the bishops who do not “get” Francis’s direction need to be held accountable for their responsibility to be wise and loving shepherds for the flocks entrusted to their care. 
We Catholics make much—perhaps too much—of the Apostolic Succession of our bishops: the claim that through the unbroken chain of the laying on of hands, the office of bishop (and by extension, that of priest) can be traced back to the apostles.  But what good is the “Apostolic Succession” if the Gospel the clergy preach is not the same Gospel as the Apostles handed down and if the live they lead are so openly contrary to the Apostolic life.  No, we need better bishops than many of those we have been given these last thirty years or so. 

When Bishops began to forget they were Apostles

The Archbishop's Residence built by Cardinal

McCloskey in the 1880's. 

The Civil War was a watershed in American history in many ways.  While so many on both sides were devastated by loss, and the South in particular was hit with economic ruin, fortunes were made and lost as speculators and government contracts offered opportunity for the canny and the enterprising—and especially the canny—to profit from this national tragedy.  The War—and the social and economic revolution that accompanied it—changed the way Americans thought about wealth.  The Calvinist Boston merchant or the cautious Virginia planter may have been wealthy, but there were bounds to their wealth.  Whether your fortune rested on the tobacco and cotton crops or on the safe return of a China clipper you always had to hedge your bets, but the industrial revolution that followed the War created a new kind of wealth—an obscene sort of wealth—that would create the magnificent Fifth Avenue mansions known as “Millionaire’s Row” as well as the palatial summer residences of Newport in Rhode Island.  The Fricks, the Vanderbilts, the Dukes, the Whitneys, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, the Astors, the Goulds, the Morgans and scores of others made fortunes never before seen this side of the Atlantic in steel, oil, banking, shipping, coal, and newsprint.  It was not always done honestly as the Crédit Moblier scandal of 1872 proved.  It was always done on the backs of armies of poorly salaried workers—usually immigrants—whose poverty stood in vast contrast to the exorbitant wealth of their employers.  For the greater part, these “Robber Barons” came from old well-established families that had been in America from before the Revolution and who had the capital with which to generate more capital.  However, you also had a few men like Andrew Carnegie whose incredible talent impelled him from a penniless immigrant to one of the richest men in America. 
At the same time these new fortunes were being made, Americans began looking more and more to Europe for cultural inspiration.  John Adams, or even Francophiles like Jefferson and Franklin, would have been chagrined by the wholesale sell-out of Americana to European effeteness.  Marble House in New Port and the Vanderbilt Petite Chateau in New York—along with dozens of other palaces of the Robber Barrons were built in French or Italianate style.  The Metropolitan Opera was founded in 1880 to bring European artists to America to sing in Italian or German or French.  La crème de la crème of America’s wealthiest families purchased their private boxes in the splendid new opera house.  In 1887 the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of New York undertook to build a magnificent cathedral—larger than any other house of worship this side of the Atlantic—and in the European Gothic style.  Six years later, Prominent Episcopalians influenced Congress to issue a charter for a “National Cathedral” in Washington DC—again, built in the English Gothic style.  Wealthy Episcopalian congregations established choir-schools to provide the choristers for English-style choirs of men and boys.  The scions of the wealthy American families went abroad on their “Grand-tours” to soak in France and Italy and whatever culture they might pick up along the way.  Their grandmamas made their annual trips to Paris to buy their frocks and to Florence and Rome to snap up antiquities for their various chateaus.
It was in this atmosphere that changes took place in the Catholic Church in the United States.  Catholics weren’t part of this cultural metastasis of the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons.  There were wealthy Catholics to be sure—though few (if any) to match the wealth of the Vanderbilts or the Roosevelts and their ilk.)  Often the Catholic nouveaux riches came to their more temperate fortunes through ways no less reprehensible than the Robber Barons, but ways considered vulgar by the Protestant Pharisees.  It was often politics—with its graft and greed—or breweries and distilleries that created Catholic wealth.  Catholics couldn’t crack the securely Protestant (mostly Episcopalian and Presbyterian) “400” and so created a shadow society of their own.  If they weren’t invited to the balls and soirees of American aristocracy, nothing stopped them from acquiring mansions of their own or buying a box at the opera. They carefully studied and then aped the habits of Protestant upper crust.  And bishops like John England or John Neumann with their threadbare clothes and simple lifestyle would make Catholicism a hindrance to the dream of social acceptance in a world with the likes of Episcopal Bishops Henry Codman Potter or Philips Brooks and their impeccably blue blood.
A key step forward was the elevation of John McCloskey to the cardinalate in 1875.  Roman protocol demanded a certain style for a Prince of the Church.  He had to have his own carriage and could not travel in public transportation.  (The maintenance of a carriage was a huge expense as it required the horses and the grooms as well as a driver.)  He was required to have a home sufficient for his servants and staff as well as for such ceremonial as a throne room should the Pope stop by.   (It was unlikely the Pope would drop in on a New York Cardinal, but still he had to be ready and the throne room was there at least until the time of Cardinal Cooke.  It may still be there for all I know as I am not a frequent guest in the house.)  In addition to his clerical staff—secretary, chaplain, etc., a Cardinal was required to have a valet and several “gentlemen”—butler and footmen. Then of course there were cooks, maids, laundress, etc.  In the established Roman palaces or the various arch-episcopal palaces such as Paris or Prague or Venice that usually housed Cardinal arch-bishops, all this was taken for granted.  But McCloskey had to build a residence for himself—which he did—adjoining his Cathedral.  Compared to the Arch-episcopal palace of Vienna or Prague or Krakow, it is a modest cottage, but by New York standards it was, while not grand like the Frick or Whitney or Carnegie homes—quite respectable.  Actually, McCloskey was no grand prelate and given the expectations laid on him, kept things fairly discreet.  But Catholics seeking to crack the Protestant Establishment in Boston or Chicago or Philadelphia saw advantage to their bishops adopting the princely trappings of European prelates.  And the American elite whose only Catholic acquaintance might be their parlor maid or their carriage driver, took note of prelates who lived and dressed in the European princely mode.  They may not have been ready to entertain such a prelate in their homes but it gave the Church a certain amount of social recognition if not respect.  We will see that some of these princely prelates—William O’Connell comes to mind—only proved you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but others such as Gibbons of Baltimore or Wood of Philadelphia or Williams of Boston had discreet and genteel personalities.   Silk purses or sows ears, however, the pattern was set and day of poor bishops was over. 

When bishops were Apostles, cont.

Bishop John England

We looked in our last posting at the first generation of American bishops—John Carroll, Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, Luke Concannen, John Connolly, Michael Francis Egan, and Benedict Joseph Flaget.  None of these were men who were impressed by their being bishops but viewed their vocation in terms of the mission of the Church to spread the Good News and serve the poor and the sick.  They set the pattern and most of the American bishops up until the time of the Civil War were similarly men of great apostolic zeal and personal humility.  John Timon of Buffalo, William Quarter of Chicago, Fenwick of Cincinnati, Lamy of Santa Fe, O’Conner of Pittsburgh stand out for their hard work and apostolic zeal.  Many of them—such as O’Conner—did not want to be bishops and tried to get out of it.  None of them were given to the prelatical luxury that so many of today’s bishops find addictive.  But there are two men who really stand out in this period of American Catholic history: John England and John Neumann.   

In 1827 Pope Pius VII divided the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and named an Irish priest from Cork, John England, as its first bishop.  England was a gifted preacher and teacher as well as a budding ecumenicist who was able to harmonize Protestant and Catholic elements in his native Ireland.   England was consecrated bishop in September 1820 and refused to take the required oath of allegiance to the British Crown, declaring that he would seek citizenship in the American Republic as soon as he arrived.  He embraced the American spirit from the beginning.  He wrote a constitution for his diocese and annually held a convention of clergy and laity to advise him in its administration.  He also instituted the first diocesan newspaper in the country.  Charleston was a challenge as the diocese held approximately eleven thousand souls—7500 in South Carolina, 3000 in Georgia, and 500 in North Carolina.  Many of these were Irish immigrants and it was feared that without pastoral care they would slip away from the Church into Protestantism.  (And many in fact did.)  He had few priests with which to cover the widely scattered Catholic communities that comprised his flock.  England was arduous in conducting regular visitations of his diocese, travelling from town to town and preaching wherever he could—in taverns, town halls,  and court houses.  He himself was a remarkable speaker and was often invited by Protestant clergy to preach in their churches.  In 1826 he became the first Catholic clergyman to be invited to address Congress.  Such a missionary life did not lend itself to comfort much less to pomp and England seemed to have that Irish disdain for folderol.   He reached out to the African American population, bringing in the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (not to be confused with the Sisters of Mercy) to run schools for both children of the wealthy and African-American girls.  The Ursulines later joined in the ministry of the diocese as well.  In pre-Civil War Carolina, England took a very unpopular stand in the South, opposing nullification.  Every Sunday he preached early Mass to the African American community and preached to them again Sunday Afternoons at Vespers.  Unable to finance the work in this diocese so large in size and small in numbers, Bishop England turned to European sources and the Leopoldinen Stiftung, an Austrian charity established by Archbishop of Vienna Leopold Maximilian Graf (Count) von Firmian in memory of and named after an Austrian Princess, Maria Leopoldina, who had become Empress of Brazil but had died at age 29 in childbirth.  England made a voyage to Europe in search of funds in 1841 and exhausted himself travelling from place to place seeking any help in funds or manpower.  After a very rough return voyage and extensive preaching in both Philadelphia and Baltimore, he returned to Charleston only to collapse and die at the age of 56.    

John Neumann was born in what is now the Czech Republic but was then the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Austrian Empire.  His family were ethnically German, not Czechs.  He came to the United States in 1835 in order to become a priest—there were so many priests in his part of Bohemia that the Bishop would not ordain any more.  Bishop John Dubois of New York ordained him and sent him to work in what is now the area around Buffalo New York where he was an avid circuit riding preacher, going from mission to mission.  In 1840 he entered the Redemptorist Order, at the time an all-German congregation, and professed his vows in 1842.  Neumann was their first vocation in the United States and within six years of his profession was chosen to be their provincial.  He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1848 and four years later Pius IX named him Bishop of Philadelphia.   
The diocese of Philadelphia was growing rapidly as immigrants fled civil unrest in Germany and Italy and famine in Ireland.  Neumann opened a new parish at the rate of one a month.  He also built the first Catholic School system in the United States—growing from one school in the diocese to over 200.  Bishop Neumann, an immigrant himself, was sensitive to the plight of immigrants and opened national parishes where people could hear preaching in their own language and where the children could be educated bilingually.  To aid in his educational program he brought the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Germany as well as organizing a new religious congregation, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Philadelphia.  The Philadelphia congregation in turn founded Franciscan communities in Buffalo and Syracuse.  He also supported the work of the Oblate Sisters of Providence who are a congregation of African American religious Sisters and whose work is among African Americans.
Neumann was noted for his austere personal frugality.  His clothes were inevitable threadbare and when people would give him new clothing—they never gave him money as he would use it for the diocese and not himself—he would pass the clothing on to the priests of his diocese whose needs were even greater than his own.  He wore out the soles of his shoes countless times, but would never buy a new pair.  He died at age 48—collapsing in the street worn and exhausted.   Neumann and England are two more examples of the early American bishops who were driven by mission and not by a personal need for power, recognition, pomp or wealth.   This was the norm in the American Church up through the time of our Civil War—but things were to change and not change for the better. 

Rabbis Would Make Good Bishops

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel with

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King with

whom Heschel worked in the Civil

Rights movement and marched in 

Selma in 1965.   

As readers probably note, I don’t post the responses I get to this blog.  The first reason is that 80% are from folks who are otfw (a synonym of sorts for “just plain crazy”) but the more important reason—not unrelated to the first—is that I am not intending to start discussions but only to bring out historical information or shed on contemporary situations historical perspectives with which many people are unfamiliar.  Nevertheless, I do pay attention to those postings that seem to be from normal people (as opposed to extraterrestrials and escapees from a parallel universe where people never heard of the Second Vatican Council) and try to bring up subjects about which they comment or to indirectly answer questions they raise.  But I had a much appreciated and valuable comment after my posting on The Politics of Spirituality (Dec 12 2012) in which the responder pointed out a podcast about Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, one of the truly significant figures in American Religious History.  The podcast (and my correspondent) quoted Heschel as saying
“It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined, not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid."    
This is so true.  And it is one of the reasons I do this blog.  Our Catholic Church in the United States is being taken down the road of being “irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid.”  It doesn’t have to go that path.  We have a Tradition, as Catholics, that is immensely relevant, exciting, liberating, and stimulating but we have been hijacked by moronic buffoons who are successfully undermining the our mission as Church to be the Gospel’s Light for our world.  As I have written before, thanks to our bishops and their short-sighted (and retrospective) “leadership,” everyone knows what the Catholic Church is against but no one knows what it is for. There could not be a more disastrous plan for “the new evangelism.”  We are running a negative campaign against our own mission! 
Well, to help us focus on a gospel message that is pertinent, electrifying, liberating, and energizing, let’s turn to another quote from Rabbi Heschel: “The God of heaven and earth is profoundly concerned with the widow and the orphan.”   Now that is a message worth proclaiming.  Why is it that when what we need is a Rabbi, God sends us bishops?  Well, of course, maybe it isn’t God who sent them.  Or then again, maybe he sent us what we deserve and not what we need.  I hope that we are not becoming as mediocre as our leadership. 
To hear that podcast about Rabbi Heschel plug this in:  http://www.onbeing.org/program/spiritual-audacity-abraham-joshua-heschel/227

 

OK, don't give up hope just yet

Cardinal O'Malley and

You Know Who

Belated Happy Thanksgiving
Sorry for the hiatus.  And this is just a short posting to catch up.  We left off with Cardinal William O'Connell and I am anxious to get back to him.  O'Connell was called "Monsignor Pomposity" by one of his detractors--Vatican commentator Ella B. Edes, and to be honest she was being kind.  Today we are subject to O'Connell redivivus in such prelates as Cardinal Law and Archbishop Lori and especially Cardinal Burke.  Gosh, Burke is scary because he is so much like O'Connell that it is as if O'Connell came out of his tomb and walks the earth again--avoiding direct sunlight of course  But currently occupyng the cathedra once held by O'Connell is one of the few prelates who still is worth listening to, Cardinal Sean O'Malley.  I just found this Your Tube of O'Malley in which he "defends" Church teaching but in a way that is open and dialogic.  It gives us some hope that the American hierarchy isn't being taken over by aliens or zombies.  Anyhow, check it out--not great, but hopeful.   The man may walk the party line but he is reasonable. 

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/11/20/keller-large-one-on-one-with-cardinal-sean-omalley/


 

A Void In Leadership

Saint Augustine, Bishop and
Theologian

Well the election is behind us.  As of the time I am writing the results have not yet begun to come in—that will be several  hours from now but until then I want to move away from Church and State issues and look at some other aspects of our Catholic life from a historical perspective.  In fact I am making myself (and my readers) a promise that I will go for a week without dealing with politics unless, of course, an issue arises that merits instantaneous comment.  Like that charming little girl http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjrthOPLAKM “I’m tired of Bronco Bamma and Mitt Romney.”  
So let’s go on to another topic.   How about this one: bishops confusing themselves for theologians.  This is a very significant shift in our Catholic ecclesiology over the last fifteen years or so as American bishops have increasingly taken it upon themselves to evaluate the work of such distinguished theologians as Father Charles Curran, Professor Elizabeth Johnson, Sister Sandra Schneiders, and others who have earned distinction in the academic community.  The view of these pretentious prelates (yes, I know that seems to be redundant these days) is that they, the bishops, are the theologians of the Church and the scholars task is to stand awed before their inspired episcopal intellects before they, the theologians, undertake their humble task of explaining to more popular audiences the profound and august theological insights of the mitered dons.  Boy do they have it wrong.  Bishops are meant to be teachers not theologians.  In that sense they need to rely on the serious academic work of qualified and academically proven scholars just as Sister Sophrinus had to read up on American history before she taught it to us in the seventh grade. 
Well, they protest—look at the great bishops who were doctors of the Church—Augustine, Ambrose, Leo, Chrysostom, Gregory—and one can plainly see that Episcopal ordination confers by grace of the Sacrament Theological competency.  What they have overlooked are the tens of thousands of mitered idiots who were (and are) complete theological nincompoops.  Augustine and company were not theologians by virtue of the fact that they were bishops—they had been elected bishops because they were great theologians. 
Would that bishops today, at least our American bishops, were men chosen for their knowledge of our Catholic Theological heritage, their intelligence and their insight.  Frankly, we have a sorry lot of leaders.  There are exceptions of course—not theologians of proven stature but some intelligent and articulate men.  I remember hearing when I lived in Rome a professor opine:

In Germany the bishops are chosen from among the scholars

In Italy from among the shepherds of souls
And in England from among the gentlemen.
But in America there are no scholars, shepherds of souls, or gentlemen and so they get businessmen.  

Alas, but that seems an all too true insight.