Humpty Dumpty's Challenge--cont.

I have heard it attributed to Rousseau, Diderot, Voltaire and even Mark Twain, but whoever said it, it is one of my favorite axioms: “God created man in his own image and man, being a gentleman, returned the compliment.”  I am constantly amazed at how many people’s “God” is nothing more than a projection of their biases, hopes, dreams, fears, and ambitions.  I am not speaking here of atheists or agnostics or Muslims or Hindus—I am speaking of every-Sunday-in-Church Catholics—sometimes even daily communicants.  They can tell you with great assurance for whom “God” (their deity) wants you to vote, what God wants you to think about Muslims, what his solution is to illegal immigration, and a host of other ideas.  And it is just amazing how God always agrees with them.  There was a day when people were absolutely convinced that God wanted them to take the land that belonged to the Native Americans, keep the black folk enslaved (hear that Cliven Bundy?), and let only White Protestants from Britain, Scandinavia, and Germany come to our shores and become Americans.   For a lot of people, the issues have changed but a God who favors the haves over the have nots is still alive and well—at least in their pious imagination. 

Today the Church canonized Pope John XXIII.  I am not so sure, as I posted yesterday, that that is a great idea.  Don’t get me wrong—I like Pope John.  I remember when he was elected.  I remember when he announced that he was convoking a Council.   I remember when his Council opened.  I remember when he died.  And I have spent hours sitting in Saint Peter’s Basilica in front of the glass casket that holds his remains—an island of peaceful prayer in the midst of the combination Grand Concourse and Tourist Destination otherwise known as St. Peter’s Basilica.  But the Pope John of popular imagination is not the Pope John of historical fact.

John XXIII was a warm and outgoing man.  He was remarkably personable and he stood in stark contrast to the introverted and austere personality of his predecessor, Pius XII.  But he was no liberal and had he been younger and lived through his Council, things most likely would have been remarkably different. 

For one thing, John—unlike the current Pope—loved the baroque trappings of the papacy.  He liked wearing the triple-tiara that his successor, Paul VI, would retire.  He liked the Cardinals decked out in their long (9 yards) trains of scarlet silk and ermine.  His Vatican apartment was over-decorated with red damask walls and heavy gilt furniture that can only be described as “Italian exuberant.”  He liked being carried shoulder high on his portable throne, the sedia gestoria, and he liked the accompanying fans and canopy.  He loved the elaborate ritual of the Solemn Pontifical Mass.  It is highly unlikely that he would have approved of the remarkable changes to the Catholic liturgy enacted under his successor, Paul VI.  He probably would have gone for allowing the readings to be read in the language of the congregation but it is unlikely that he would have permitted the entire Mass to be in the vernacular, much less the dramatic changes in the structure of the liturgy that also marked a major theological shift in the way that Catholics understand the Mass.  Nor would he have favored the dramatic changes in clerical and religious life with priests and nuns wearing ordinary clothes and the dropping of many monastic customs that had crept into the apostolic life over the centuries in favor of a more secular lifestyle.  When it comes to ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, John had always been cordial, even warm, to people of other faiths and religions, but how far would inter-faith dialogue have proceeded in pontificate?   I doubt that the Assisi meetings of 1986, 2002, and 2011 that brought a Pope into prayerful dialogue with non-Christian religious leaders would have taken place.  John was always very conscious of his being Pope. One did not meet John on a peer level and while he was very welcoming, he met other religious leaders as his brothers but not as his peers.  Many of the Decrees of Vatican II would have passed his muster—especially Gaudium et Spes, Nostra Aetate, and Reintegratio Unitatis—but others such as Christus Dominus and Lumen Gentium  (with its teaching on Collegiality)  may well not have.  Dei Verbum, on Divine Revelation, may have been significantly different as well as well as Ad Gentes, on the Missionary Activity of the Church.  Dignitatis Humanae with its declaration on the sovereignty of conscience may also have gone further than John would have permitted.  I think the decree Optatum Totius on the formation of clergy might have been implemented very differently under John had he lived than it was under his successor.  The fact is that most of the “liberal” accomplishments of Vatican II were not the work of John XXIII but of Paul VI.  None of this is meant to be a criticism of John—simply the observation that he, like all of us, was a person of his  times and for his times he was forward looking—but he was born in 1881 and he was just short of 78 when elected to the papacy.  It is remarkable that he was as progressive as he was, especially given the intellectual paranoia that pervaded the Vatican in the final years of his predecessor, Pius XII.   

I am not saying that John XXIII was not a good pope—his calling the Council won him a seat as one of the most important popes in history—but I am saying that the John XXIII of popular imagination is not exactly the same man as the John XXIII of history.  What has elevated him to sainthood, I am afraid, is the Pope John of the popular imagination, the Pope of Vatican II and Catholic aggiornamento to balance the ticket with John Paul II, a even more complex (and much more complex) figure to analyze but much beloved by the Catholic-Right-of-Center. 

There was a lot in the newspapers and on the internet about the fact that Pope Francis waived the need for a miracle for the canonization of JohnXXIII—unlike John Paul who had several to spare.  I am surprised that there were miracles lacking for “Good Pope John.”  Back in the ‘80’s—almost twenty years before John was beatified, a friend of mine, the late Father Alcuin Coyle OFM, told me an interesting story.  Father Alcuin had worked for many years at the Franciscan Generalate in Rome and one of his fellow Franciscans was the postulator for Pope John’s “cause.”  The postulator is the person responsible for “pushing” the cause through the various congregations and committees that have to review the evidence and propose the candidate first for beatification and then for canonization.  According to Father Alcuin there were almost two dozen miracles attributed to Pope John but the cause was being held up for “political” reasons—namely that the more conservative pontificate of then Pope John Paul II, was not anxious to advance John XXIII to sainthood as he was identified with the liberal wing of the Church at the very time that John Paul II wanted to correct the Council’s course and steer it in a more conservative direction.  I will be doing an entry on John Paul next and while I don’t have the evidence—other than Father Alcuin’s opinion—that John Paul was not anxious to advance the cause of John XXIII (I won’t go so far as to say he was blocking it, but draw what conclusions you may), I must say that I think John Paul’s canonization is no more opportune than Pope John’s.  However, Pope Francis is Pope—I am not—and so I defer to his judgment.   At the end of the day, we have two new saints. 

The John Paul Papacy, A Mixed Legacy II

Pope John Paul with Religious Leaders at Assisi
Prayer for Peace 

In my last post I wrote about the ambiguous nature of the Papacy of Pope John Paul II.  It was a papacy that hugely successful and hugely disastrous.  I want to explore that dichotomy further in this posting.

One of the most remarkable events of the papacy of John Paul II was his gathering of religious leaders in Assisi on October 26, 1986 to pray for peace.  Over 160 religious leaders including Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama, and Native American John Pretty on Top met together to pray.  Shinto priests, Lutheran bishops, Buddhist monks, rabbis, mullahs, and Mennonites—representatives of over 45 religious groups—Christian denominations and non-Christian religions from around the world—gathered first to pray in their particular groups and then came together in the beautiful Church of the Portiuncula to pray for peace among the human family. 

Thanks to a remarkable group called the Communità di Sant’Egidio (Community of Saint Egidio) based in Rome, this gathering has been commemorated annually by their organizing other such prayer assemblies in various cities around the world.  Many of us who have lived in Rome see the Community of Saint Egidio as the first and most precious fruit of the Second Vatican Council.  Started by a group of then secondary school students in 1968, what was a small faith-sharing group has grown into an international community that was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  I don’t want to go too far down the road of the Saint Egidio Community in this posting—we can look at it another time—but the Community was very helpful to John Paul in his Papal Ministry and in his work as Bishop of Rome.  John Paul depended on them to organize a second Assisi Peace Prayer on January 24, 2002.

Not everyone was happy with the Interfaith Assembly.  Many neo-traditional Catholics saw this as religious syncretism and were appalled that the Pope would meet on equal footing with Protestants much less with non-Christian religious leaders.  They were even more offended that Catholic sanctuaries were permitted to be used for non-Christian worship.  Even Cardinal Ratzinger had his reservations and threatened not to attend the 2002 prayer unless some changes were made to the program.  In the end there were few concrete effects from the Assisi Prayer, at least as far as the papacy is concerned.  The Saint Egidio community has developed the ties to be able to be an unofficial network for cooperation and collaboration among the various religious groups and to serve as a channel of communication, but the ecumenical and inter-faith advances of John Paul’s reign have not only faded but were for the greater part undone in the papacy of his successor.  Pope Benedict did attend a gathering of religious leaders in Assisi on October 27, 2011 but there was suggestion of common prayer.  It will be interesting to see what Pope Francis chooses to do in pursuing an ecumenical and interfaith agenda during his Petrine Ministry.  

The Crisis of Inter-Religious Dialogue

Plaque commemorating the 1986

Assisi Gathering At the Basilica

of the Portiuncula in Assisi    

In my previous posting I mentioned that Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, was anxious to succeed John Paul as Pope in order to correct certain directions that John Paul had set for the Church in his 27 years as Pope.  We have already looked at the imprecise boundaries that John Paul had fostered regarding the validity of the sacramental systems of some Christian denominations, especially in the protocols involving hierarchs of the Anglican and Lutheran communities.  Again, with my jaundiced eye of an historian I think the battle about “valid” and “invalid” orders is much ado about nothing, or more precisely, that it has to do with the politics of certain historical situations rather than with any objective realities, but then I am no theologian and so perhaps I am missing something in a field in which I am only an amateur.  In this posting, however, I want to look at Ratzinger’s discomfort with John Paul’s dealings with non-Christians and especially with those who do not worship “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  

One of the best known episodes involving John Paul and an alleged trespassing of religious boundaries was that on February 2, 1986 during a visit to Delhi, the Pope was greeted with a traditional Indian rite of greeting and a tilak, a dot of paste, was put on his forehead in welcome.  Detractors claim that the woman administrating the rite was a Hindu “priestess” and that the ceremony invoked various Hindu deities to bless the Pope.  Local Catholic authorities claim that the woman was a Catholic Sister and the rite was purely cultural and not religious.  I frankly don’t know the facts, but certainly if the rite were a Hindu ceremony it would be a potent violation of Catholic doctrine and discipline for any Catholic to participate in non-Christian worship at this level. On the other hand, the tilak has no specific religious significance—it can be given in various forms and designs and it can be a sign of many diverse devotions or discipleship paths—and it also can be merely a cultural tradition.  Whatever the rite and its meaning, however, it caused considerable consternation outside India and especially among evangelicals and Catholic “traditionalists.”

On October 27, 1986 John Paul hosted a Day of Prayer for Peace that was a convocation of 160 religious leaders representing 43 different religious traditions—32 Christian denominations and 11 other religious traditions including Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Shinto, Native Americans, and African ancestral religions.  The celebration was organized by the Community of Saint Egidio, a Roman Catholic fellowship that does remarkable work among the world’s poor and in efforts of peace, and it was held in Assisi.  Organizers arranged for various churches in Assisi to be given over to the diverse religious groups to be used for prayer services in their specific traditions before all came together for a interfaith “celebration” that was not a worship service but which did include prayers for peace in the different religious traditions.  Catholic “traditionalists” were appalled that Catholic worship sites were permitted to be used for non-Christian worship and the various sedevacantist factions claimed that this was one more example of why the person sitting in the Vatican was not actually a “true pope.”  Cardinal Ratzinger knew better, of course, but he was determined that this sort of things should not be repeated as it gave the impression of religious indifferentism—that is that all religions are of equal value and “truth” in their approaches to the Divine.  He initially refused to attend a second gathering organized for Assisi 25 years later; however when plans were made to give the various non-Christian religions gathering rooms in the Sacro Convento for their prayers rather than Catholic worship sites, he relented as was present.  He was present under pressure from Pope John Paul, however, and he was still not pleased with the overall arrangements.  Nevertheless when a third gathering was held in 2011 Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, attended a much modified gathering—a “conference” at which there was no interfaith worship. All in all, it must be said that Benedict has had much lower (some would say more realistic) expectations when it comes to ecumenism and interfaith relations and that the Catholic Church is at the lowest point in its relationship with both other Christian denominations and other world religions since John XXIII’s momentous announcement of changed policies regarding ecumenism and interreligious dialogue on January 25, 1959 when he convoked the Second Vatican Council.   Is this one more step of turning back Vatican II or is it simply a more realistic policy that acknowledges the immense difficulties in healing the breaches within Christianity, much less in building bridges of understanding among the religious traditions in the human family?  In either case, Benedict has made happy neither the progressives who want to move forward on religious dialogue nor the “traditionalists” who want to retreat into the pre-conciliar ghetto and wall up the world outside.  Granted the Holy Father can’t please everyone but this is one more indication of a lackluster papacy. 
Special Greetings to Kevin and Rolf

History in the Making: Some Thoughts About the Beatification of John Paul II

One of the thousands of Posters that
dotted the streets of Rome during
the funeral of  Pope John Paul II

This is the weekend that John Paul II will be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI—just six years after his death.  The beatification is not without some controversy and, to be honest, I am surprised that it has all come about this fast.  For one thing, I had heard over the last several years that Pope Benedict was not anxious to advance the “cause” of his predecessor. In part, I think this was a prudent reservation on the part of the current Pope.  The papacy of John Paul will be an extremely complex one to historically evaluate.  “It was,” as one BBC commentator replied at the time, “the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  John Paul was probably the most significant individual in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, not only demolishing the tyrannical regimes but  making Stalin a posthumous laughingstock for his derisive comment “How many divisions does the Pope have?”  John Paul had immense popularity—especially with the world’s youth and never passed up an opportunity to reach out to them.  Yet one cannot say that he brought them back to the practice of the faith, much less to the moral standards which the Church teaches.    He took some remarkable steps with interreligious and ecumenical dialogue.  At the same time, since his death there has been some serious rethinking of those very same interreligious and ecumenical advances, not least of all by the current Pope.  Probably more seriously, there are questions regarding his handling of the Sex Abuse situation in the Catholic Church—how much did he know and in what ways did his policies hinder justice and leave young people exposed to predators?  Too, some observers believe that that he greatly weakened the Church by selecting bishops for their loyalty without sufficient regard to their pastoral skills, prudent judgment, or intellectual ability.  Certainly we can see in the United States that we no longer have sufficient numbers of articulate or intellectual leaders among the American Bishops to write the sort of pastoral letters that the Bishops turned out on Just War Theology and Nuclear Weapons or the Economic Morality that the bishops of thirty years ago turned out.  Of course good leadership or bad leadership does not reflect on the personal sanctity of the candidate.  We have had saintly popes who failed to meet the leadership challenges of their times.  But the question remains—in what way the example of Pope John Paul II reflects the extraordinary degree of sanctity and virtue that sainthood represents.  He was pious, granted—but piety is not holiness.  I am not saying that this beatification is a mistake—only that it will be corrected—if corrected it need be—by time’s passing and history’s critique.

As for the rapidity of the process—note here some medieval canonizations (not beatifications) and see their time line:    

Name                       Year of death     Year of Canonization       

Anthony of Padua            1231                       1232    
            Francis                                 1226                      1228

Claire of Assisi                   1253                      1255

Hugh of Grenoble            1132                      1134

Elizabeth of Hungary      1231                      1234

Thomas Becket                 1170                      1173

Galgano Guidotti              1180                      1184

Hugh of Cluny                   1109                      1120

Gilbert of Sempringham1190                       1202

Dominic                              1221                       1234

Bernard of Clairvaux       1153                      1174

I am sure there are other “quickies” in addition to these, but it does show that at one time the Church didn’t scruple to move ‘em thru.  By the way, I will be in Rome this week and doing some travelling for the next week or two so be patient.  I won’t be posting every day but I will be collecting photos and doing some research. 

Origins of Radical Catholicism XVI: The Apostolic Delegation part 4

The Apostolic Delegation was established and Archbishop Satolli named Delegate on January 22, 1893.  This followed the presidential election of 1892 so as not to influence the outcome of the election, Republican incumbent Benjamin Harrison having invited Papal representation at the Columbian exhibition and thus having furnished the Holy See with an excuse for getting Satolli into the country.  Harrison lost his reelection bid, but the Vatican having sent a papal Ablegate to the States probably had little or no effect on his defeat.  There were other reasons having nothing to do with religion that Grover Cleveland and the Democrats retook the White House. 

Satolli, had been lured out onto very thin ice by the liberal faction, most notably Monsignor Denis O’Connel and Archbishop John Ireland.    His lifting the excommunication of McGlynn (see blogs of March 9, 10, 11, and 12) not only had infuriated Corrigan but also Cardinal Mieczyslaw Ledóchowski, the new head of Propaganda Fide in Rome.   Ledóchowski, was a conservative and would have had far more sympathy with Corrigan, but he probably had not yet figured out the game that the liberals in America were playing with Corrigan.  As a “new kid” on the block and self-conscious of his authority, Ledóchowski, would have resented Satolli’s independence in acting without consulting him as Propaganda still had control over the American Church.  Furthermore, Ledóchowski,’s appointment to Propaganda Fide put tension between his congregation—Propaganda Fide—and the Secretariate of State and Cardinal Rampola.   Rampola had set a pro-French policy for the Church which is something we will talk about very soon.  Ledóchowski, was pro-German in his policies. Not a good mix.  Satolli, as a papal representative had been answerable to the Secretariat of State while the territory to which he was accredited, the United States, was under Propaganda Fide.  So in the background of the McGlynn affair was a turf war.  Satolli was going to lose whichever way he handled the McGlynn matter.  Moreover, while Satolli was—at least for the time being—in the paws of the liberals, Ledóchowski managed to secure the appointments of the number two and three members of the Apostolic Delegation for his loyalists which caused deep concern among the liberals.  Of course—and keep this in the mix—the fact that Leo’s esteem for Gibbons, at times it seems almost a blind esteem, gave the liberals some weight that even Ledóchowski had to consider.  And Corrigan, for some short-sighted reason, kept muddying the waters as his diocesan newspaper continued to print articles decrying the Delegation.  While Corrigan denied responsibility for these articles and complained the editor would not divulge the name(s) of the authors, the editor himself turned on Corrigan and sent Rome correspondence showing that Corrigan was indeed behind the anti-Delegation articles.  It was very foolish of Corrigan who never got the Cardinal’s hat either because Rome deemed him not sufficiently loyal or more than sufficiently stupid to trust him any further than they had already committed in naming him Archbishop of New York.  But then, to be fair, Corrigan had no right to expect a red hat as previously only one Archbishop of New York, his immediate predecessor, was so honored.  All his successors have been named Cardinals and it is presumable that the current Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, will be made a Cardinal when his predecessor turns 80 and can no longer vote in a conclave. 

The big mistake that led to a wedge between Satolli and the liberals came in the World Parliament of Religions in September 1893.  Rome had always forbidden Catholic Participation in any such ecumenical or inter-faith gathering, even if it did not involve prayer.  The American Archbishops, at the urging of Ireland, had decided to participate in this gathering, claiming that the opportunity of presenting Catholic Doctrine and Truth outweighed any danger of religious indifferentism (the idea that all religions are equally truthful and valid ways of approaching God).  The liberals—Keane, Gibbons, and Ireland—were all prominent participants.  Gibbons explained that the Church needed to stand with other religious leaders against the common enemies: “materialism, agnosticism, and atheism.” Rampola back in Rome was not impressed at this violation of Church policy though he communicated to Gibbons that Leo XIII recognized the “good intentions” of the Americans in participating.  Satolli, though he understood America and the American mind well, was still first and foremost a Roman and saw this as a breach of the stringent ban on any such pan-religious activities.  Ledóchowski, likewise, was totally appalled when he heard of it and communicated this to Satolli. This moved Satolli somewhat more to Ledóchowski’s camp.  Despite the earlier assurances that the American Church would be free of Propaganda Fide once a Delegation had been established, authority was split and Satolli had to answer to Ledóchowski regarding ecclesiastical matters and Rampola regarding political and diplomatic matters.  Given Ledóchowski’s conservativism, Satolli knew which way the wind was blowing and anxious to kiss and make up with Ledóchowski for the way he had handled the McGlynn absolution.  At the same time Satolii began to disengage himself from Gibbons, Ireland, and the liberals. 

There was one more nail in the coffin of the liberal’s hope for control of the Delegation.  During the World Parliament of Religions the Archbishops held a meeting and could not come to a consensus on the issue of secret societies and whether Catholics could belong to them.  Under consideration were specifically The Oddfellows and the Knights of Pythias.  The prelate’s failure to make an outright condemnation shocked Satolli as the Holy Office (today’s Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith) had been unambiguous in previous cases in condemning Secret Societies.  Satolli finally saw that the Americans were not given to be little ducklings in a tidy line behind the Roman hen.  For the most part, the old generation of bishops, liberals or conservatives, didn’t accommodate themselves to the authority of the new Delegation but Rome would soon begin appointing bishops who knew who the boss was.  Before we get there, however, we have some other issues to look at—notably the Americanist heresy and Rome’s alarm at the American understanding of Catholicism. 

Let me say that though I use a variety of sources in my research for this series, I am particularly indebted to Gerald P. Fogarty SJ and his The Vatican and the American Hierarchy 1870 to 1965.  I am so dependent on Fogarty’s work that I would be a plagiarist (at least) if I didn’t acknowledge it.  Today's image is the plaque on the front of the Basilica of the Portiuncula (Saint Mary of the Angels) in Assisi commemorating the two inter-faith meetings held their under the auspices of John Paul II.  Such meetings were once prohibited.