Another Prelate For Whom Being An Apostle Is An Ill Fit

Cardinal Bertone--just because

Pope Francis wants to rough it, 

why should the rest of us suffer.

Pope Francis decision to live in a two-room suite in the Santa Marta Guesthouse rather than occupy the nine-room papal suite in the Vatican Palace has chided many bishops—not, however, Archbishop Myers of Newark or Bishop Tebartz-van Elst (formerly of Limburg)—into looking at their own living arrangements.  Ironically the papal suite in the Apostolic palace is not as opulent as one might think, and Francis’ rationale for continuing at the Domus Sanctae Marthae (as it is officially known) was not to avoid luxury but to avoid isolation.  Francis compared the papal apartments to an inverted funnel—spacious but with narrow entry—meaning that while the apartments were large they narrowed the pope’s world because living there kept access of people to him highly limited.   Pope Francis wants to have people around him and prefers the more open atmosphere of the guesthouse.

While other prelates have begun—often for some with embarrassment and for others with reluctance—to scale down their princely residences, one brave soul among the College of Cardinals has decided to raise the banner of resistance and flaunt his ecclesiastical princedom right in the face of the Holy Father.  Cardinal Tarcisio Pietro Bertone, SDB, former papal Secretary of State, has taken over two apartments—each somewhat spacious in its own right—in the Vatican San Carlo Palace to create a supreme Vatican bachelor pad for himself.  Bertone was brought in by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006 to replace Cardinal Angelo Sodano as Vatican Secretary of State.  Sodano’s administration had been tarnished by allegations of corruption on various levels, most notably failures to deal effectively with issues of clerical sexual abuse and  financial issues concerning the Vatican Bank, and Bertone was seen as a “reform” candidate.  Benedict sincerely wanted to clean up the Vatican mess but was unable to do so as was demonstrated by the episode last year of the papal butler stealing incriminating documents from the pope’s desk to leak them to journalists.  Bertone turned out to have no cleaner hands than his predecessor, however, and had strong ties to Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the former head of the Vatican Bank, who was ousted in 2012.  The bank’s integrity was called into question under Tedeschi’s administration for money laundering and lack of transparency.  Bertone was also anxious to restore Italian control over the Curia and his appointments to key posts tended to advance disproportionately his fellow Italians.   In a similar vein, he also has been accused of a sort of nepotism for having advanced a remarkable  number of Salesians of Don Bosco—the religious congregation to which he himself belongs—to posts in the hierarchy. 

Bertone was considered a quite possible successor to Benedict in the Conclave of 2013 and when Cardinal Bergoglio was elected as Francis I, Bertone “took an early retirement.”  In fact he was pushed out in Francis’ determination to clean out the “old-boys” network in the Roman Curia, a network built in part by Bertone as Secretary of State.  This fall from power delighted Cardinal Sodano whose own forced retirement from the Secretariat of State had made room for Bertone and who never forgave Bertone for his own loss of place.  In fact, as a sort of ecclesiastical Cheech and Chong, both these men tarnished the office once held by such notable Secretaries of State as Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII), Mariano Rampolla, Dominico Tardini, Amleto Cicognani, and Pietro Gasparri.  But they had all belonged to an age of diplomats and statesmen and a Church had had not only the trappings of royalty but ministers that could equal a Metternich or a Talleyrand or a Pitt.  Of course, what Jesus would think of that is another question, but the above named were all great Secretaries of State.

Having lost his post, Bertone is no admirer of Pope Francis and once his new home is renovated—and will be ten times the size of Francis’ suite—he will be able to look down—literally—from his roof-top terrace on the humble papal hotel room where the Successor of the Apostles sleeps at night.   Now most Cardinals, Bishops, and priests—including Archbishop Myers and Bishop Tebartz-van Elst—do not have a vow of poverty.  Only members of religious orders take a vow of poverty.  The Holy Father is a religious—a Jesuit—and has a vow of poverty.  Cardinal Bertone also is a member of a religious congregation—the Salesians of Don Bosco—and as such has a vow of poverty.  This new 6500 square foot “apartment” is not a shabby home for this son of Don Bosco with a “vow of poverty.”  I wonder what Don Bosco would think of it?  I wonder if that even every crossed the good Cardinal’s mind.  

More on When Bishops Forgot They Were Apostles

Cardinal Mundelein 

We looked at Cardinal George Mundelein’s grandiose projects in the building of the Seminary at Saint Mary of the Lake in Area, IL—a town that would exchange its name for that of the Cardinal in tribute for the prominence to which Mundelein brought the town by locating his new seminary there.  Mundelein would thank the town for the honor by buying its first fire-engine.

But since we are focusing on episcopal lifestyles and residences in this series, let’s look for a moment at Mundelein’s living arrangements.  I had once heard that the residence of the Archbishops of Chicago had been given to the Archdiocese by a wealthy family but with the stipulation that should it cease to be the archiepiscopal residence, it would revert to the family’s ownership.  In other words, it was sort of on loan to the Archdiocese for an official residence but not actually owned by them.  However, a look at the Archdiocesan webpage about the residence unmasks that legend.  (cf. http://www.archchicago.org/about_us/archbishopsresid.shtm) 

The truth is that when Chicago was raised to an Archdiocese in 1880, its new Archbishop, Patrick Feehan, decided to commission a residence suitable for a prelate of such stature.  The residence was built in 1885 and was designed by Major James H. Willet and is three stories of red brick banded by white stone.  The building can be said to be in “Victorian eclectic” style that tries to integrate (somewhat unsuccessfully) architectural features from a variety of earlier periods—in this case Italianate villa and French chateau along with English Tudor.  There are 19 chimneys to suit the many interior rooms and a porte-cochère to allow the Archbishop or his guests to alight from their carriages without the inconvenience of snow, rain, or other inclement weather.  The Archbishop’s suite occupies sections of the mansion’s second and third floor. 

The Fire Truck the Cardinal 

donated to Mundelein IL 

While this house suited Mundelein’s grandiose scale, he—like Archbishop Myers—wanted a country retreat.  And so he built a second mansion on the grounds of his seminary at Saint Mary of the Lake.  Across the lake from the seminary complex, Cardinal Mundelein’s “villa” in red brick was modeled on Washington’s Mount Vernon.  It was a favorite residence of the Cardinal and it was there he died suddenly on October 2, 1939. 

Monsignor John Tracy Ellis (died 1992), the dean of American Church historians, would tell a story of how the Cardinal died under rather shameful circumstances and that how, to avoid an embarrassing inquest in the predominately Protestant Lake County, the body was rolled up in a carpet and driven to Chicago where a friendly coroner could be counted on to mask the circumstances of his death.  I had always taken this story—which admittedly I heard years back second hand from a priest friend who had just returned from having lunch with Monsignor Ellis—at face value. 

The Residence of the Archbishops

of Chicago 

But in checking the newspaper accounts of Mundelein’s death, it was always openly stated that he had died in his villa at the seminary.  The story is often repeated, however, among historians (and gossipy clergy) and I suspect that only an exhumation and examination of the Cardinal’s remains could determine its truth.  I have always subscribed to the dictum that one should “never let the truth spoil a good story,” but alas—as a historian I have to try to get the facts straight even if my interpretation at times is biased.  Too bad—because it is a great story.  

When Bishops Forgot They Were Called To Be Apostles cont.

Cardinal O'Connell's mansion in Brighton MA

News accounts say that Archbishop Myers is going to be presented with a petition of 17,000 people—not all from the Newark Archdiocese—to sell his retirement home to which he has been adding a 3,000 square foot addition at the projected final cost of a million dollars.  (The $500,000 construction cost covers neither the architectural fees nor the furnishings and landscaping.)  Personally, I think it is all a tempest in a teapot.  I can’t say that I am disappointed in the Archbishop for providing himself with such a lovely home; when it comes to evangelical values, my expectations of His Grace of Newark—and of most of his fellows on the Episcopal Bench—are low.  There is, as I am pointing out in this series, a long established precedence of the hierarchy fulfilling their role as “princes of the Church” rather than as worthy successors to the Apostles.  Of course Christ had Apostles and Disciples, not princes—but it has never stopped the Church hierarchy from improving on Christ’s original design. 
I debated a bit on including Archbishop Corrigan in this series as his fault was not so much the personal extravagance of  a Myers or a Gregory, as it was overlooking the material needs of his faithful in order to “fit in” with the WASP establishment of Upper-Crust New Yorkers.  I must admit—in full disclosure—that I have always detested Corrigan for his role in the McGlynn case and his opposition to the liberal policies of Gibbons, Ireland and the other Americanists.  So let the reader be aware of my biases and make the necessary corrections in his or her mind. 
While Corrigan lived comfortably in his Fifth-Avenue mini-mansion (mini, that is, compared to the Villard mansion across Park Avenue or the Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor, Frick or other Robber Baron establishments), there was a new breed of bishops coming along that would not settle for the comparative modesty of the Cardinal’s House adjoining the Cathedral. 
Now before I get into our next targeted prince-bishop, let me—again in the interest of full disclosure—admit that despite a total lack of interest in sports in general and baseball in particular, I am a New York Yankee fan and the reason that I am so passionately enamored of the Bronx Bombers (a team that I hated in the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers—and yes, I am that old) is not about the Yankees but because I hate the Boston Red Sox.   And the reason that I hate the Red Sox has nothing to do with them personally (individually or collectively), but that I hate everything about Boston.  And the reason that I hate everything about Boston—a city I have been to only three times in my three-score plus years—is that I once had a boss from Boston and he was TLGC (The Lowest of God’s Creatures).   I mean this guy was a lazy, self-indulgent, arrogant, narcissistic, lying, stealing sack of shi*.    (Yes, I am in touch with my feelings.)  And I tend to associate this worthless personality with Bostonians because X was not alone in his sociopathic temperament but shared it with the prelate who was possibly the slimiest American ever to wear a miter.
William Henry O’Connell was actually born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1859 to John and Bridget O’Connell.  His father died while he was still a child and the family had financial distress.  William was not much given to the athletic side of life but excelled at music and was an accomplished pianist.  He went to study under the Sulpicians at St. Charles College in Ellicott City Maryland.  The Sulpicians—and this is important for later on in his story—deemed him unfit for the priesthood and sent him packing.  He continued his studies under the Jesuits at Boston College where he excelled in both the sciences and in philosophy.  Taking up studies again for the priesthood he went to the North American College where he could avoid the Sulpicians who at that time ran the Boston Archdiocesan Seminary. O’Connell was ordained in 1884 in Rome by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi and then returned to Boston.  He was a priest in the Boston Archdiocese only ten years before returning to Rome as the Rector of his Alma Mater, the North American College.  In 1901 he was consecrated in Rome to be Bishop of Portland Maine.
It is very interesting to note the consecrators for this episcopal ordination.  The principal consecrator was Cardinal Satolli who had been the first Apostolic Delegate to the United States.  The co-consecrators were Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val.  Satolli was a natural choice given his American experience.  Stonor, an Englishman from an old recusant family, was chaplain in Rome to various groups.  But it is Merry del Val who gives us the curious link to O’Connell’s rise. 
Rafael Merry del Val was born in 1865 in London where his father, the Marquis Merry del Val, was secretary to the Spanish Embassy.   His blood line was intriguing—with English, Scots, Dutch, and Irish progenitors.  In fact the “Merry” in the Merry del Val name and marquisal title was a legacy of his Irish ancestors who had settled in Seville at a time that many noble Irish had fled their native land as a result of a failed rebellion against the English.  Merry del Val thrived on his English connections and even after the family returned to Spain in 1878 continued much of his education in Britain.  He was a trusted advisor to Leo XIII and a member of the Papal Household.  He was on the 1896 commission that advised Leo to issue the Bull, Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican Orders invalid.  He served as one of the Papal delegation to England for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.  (The diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the English Crown in the 19^th century are a fascinating topic that I would love to explore at some point.) 
Merry del Val’s influence would rise with the election of Pius X in 1903.  Merry del Val had been secretary of the Conclave that elected Pius and he seems to have played a strong role in the defeat of the expected choice, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro.   Pius, a man who knew he was inexperienced in the matters of world diplomacy, was exceptionally dependent on Merry del Val who as papal Secretary of State was almost a “shadow pope.”  O’Connell hitched his wagon to this rising star.
The friendship between Merry del Val—an aristocrat’s aristocrat—and the vulgar but affected son of Lowell textile factory worker is hard to explain.  They were totally “chalk and cheese” as the Irish say.  Merry del Val was cultured, understated, and while having an iron fist invariably kept it in its velvet glove.  He maneuvered this diplomatically so that you didn’t realize he had stabbed you in the back until you read your obituary in the Times.  O’Connell on the other hand was—despite his skills with the piano—crude, outspoken, openly vicious and retributive.  Merry del Val hid his ambition within the folds of his superb competence.  O’Connell was shameless in seeking advancement and using power with a vengeance to keep others from challenging his position.  What they did have in common was membership in what today is referred to as the Vatican’s “Lavender Mafia.” 
In 1906, at the urging of Merry del Val, O’Connell was designated as coadjutor and successor to Archbishop John Williams of Boston.  Williams had the courtesy of dying just over a year later and so giving O’Connell free rein (or, in this case, reign). 
Henry Morton Robinson wrote the 1950 novel, The Cardinal, with an auxiliary character, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon, being based on William O’Connell.  (In the 1963 film version, Glennon was played by the famous director, John Huston.)  The Glennon character is a bit of a curmudgeon but an honorable man none the less.  That is one of the things that makes The Cardinal pure fiction.
In 1927 O’Connell built for himself a huge (33,000 square feet) four-story Italianate villa on the grounds of Saint John’s Seminary in Brighton, just outside Boston.  This remained the home of his successors until sold, along with an adjoining 28 acres, by Cardinal Sean O’Malley to settle law-suits against the Archdiocese incurred by his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, for clerical sexual abuse issues.    
Unlike Corrigan and his contemporaries, O’Connell was not trying to crack the fortifications of the old WASP social network.  O’Connell saw that the rise of the middle class and the burden of income and estate taxes were leveling the playing field.  He had nothing but contempt for the old Boston Brahmins.  With John  (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald and James M. Curley as mayors, the Back Bay Irish Catholics now held Boston.  O’Connell proudly crowed: “The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains. 
Ella B. Eades, a Boston Brahmin who converted to Catholicism and served in Rome as secretary to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect for the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith and who holds the distinction of perhaps having the most viperish tongue in Vatican history—a honor among honors—hated O’Connell and had this to say about him:
“Monsignor Pomposity…is so invariably rude, ill-bred, and disobliging…I suppose he does not know better, being low-born and common, pitch-forked, suddenly to a position which has turned his head. Like all ill-bred Paddies, I am not, in his eyes, sufficiently rich, or fashionable to be treated with even ordinary courtesy.”
More on this Prince of the Church in the next posting. 

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. 

Too Late for Tara

Archbishop Wilton Gregory's Tara 

The gracious living of the “Old South” ain’t the only thing Gone with the Wind. It looks like Archbishop Myers and Bishop Tebartz van Elst aren’t the only ones coming under scrutiny for their new and costly residences.  Atlanta Archbishop Wilton Gregory recently built a 2.2 million dollar residence and now is ‘fessing up about it.  It seems that Joseph Mitchell, nephew and heir of Margaret Mitchell (author of Gone with the Wind) left 15 million dollars to the Archdiocese with the bulk of it earmarked for the Cathedral—Mr. Mitchell’s parish.  The Cathedral had an expansion program that required the demolition of the clergy house and so the parish bought the Archbishop’s residence to use as a Cathedral rectory.  Thus the Archbishop needed to find a new place to live.  Archbishops have meetings and also host social events connected to fund-raising and charities.  His advisors were only too quick to “discern” what the Archbishop might need and Mitchell’s one story home in a fashionable neighborhood was torn down and a handsome Tudor Revival mansion built on its site.  In addition to suites for the Archbishop and several of his key aides, the house has several large meeting rooms as well as more formal rooms for receptions and social events.  There was a time when no one would have thought twice of a bishop owning such a home, but Pope Francis’ style has changed all that.  Unlike Myers or Tebartz-van-Elst, Gregory got the message early on and has signaled his willingness to move and have the home sold should the various diocesan advisory groups recommend that course.  Given the publicity they can hardly do elsewise. 

Gregory issued a statement saying:  “I am disappointed that, while my advisors and I were able to justify this project fiscally, logistically and practically, I personally failed to project the cost in terms of my own integrity and pastoral credibility with the people of God of north and central Georgia.” He went on to say: 

"I failed to consider the impact on the families throughout the Archdiocese who, though struggling to pay their mortgages, utilities, tuition and other bills, faithfully respond year after year to my pleas to assist with funding our ministries and services," he added.

Unlike the home of Archbishop Myers, Gregory’s residence does not belong to him personally, but to the Archdiocese.  Whether or not the Archdiocese sells it, it would be surprising if Archbishop Gregory doesn’t move out and into somewhat more discreet quarters.