The Old Order Passes: Francis I

So what to make of the new Pope?  Well, no one who has his or her feet planted firmly on planet earth expected a pope who was going to change the Church’s position on abortion, same-sex relations, the ordination of women to the priesthood or probably even contraception.  And Pope Francis won’t.  But while change of substance would be an unrealistic expectation (excepting of course the bread and the wine), a change of style is not only a possibility but a necessity.  Most of us Catholics can live with the dichotomies of doctrine and every day practical decisions but what is squeezing so many of our sisters and brothers out of the Church is the doctrinaire tone in which the magisterium is being shoved down our throats.  As I have written (and said) elsewhere, everyone knows these days what the Catholic Church is against; few can tell you what it is for.  This is a disastrous strategy for public relations—or what we call public relations in “church talk, “the new evangelization.” 
To be fair to all those concerned, this counter-productive tone cannot be attributed to the former Benedict XVI or the late John Paul II.  It is the sin (and I use that term deliberately) of middle management.  Incompetent but mitered boobs like Archbishop Lori or Cardinals Law and Burke or Bishops Olmstead, Martino, Morlino, or Dewane have done and continue to do incomparable damage to the Church with the arrogance and narrow-mindedness with which they attempt to “teach” the faithful the moral code of the Church.  This shrill and pharisaical tone often drifts down to the level of the local parishes where priests who lack a shepherd’s heart (not to mention common sense) bully their parishioners with inane and inappropriate dictums that only alienate good souls rather than bring them to comprehend the teachings of the Church and follow the call of the Gospel. 
Pope Francis is certainly signaling a change of tone.  The name Francis is the first and foremost signal.  An obvious reference to the poverello of Assisi, everyone immediately remembered the admonition of Christ appearing in the San Damiano Crucifix to Saint Francis: Rebuild my Church which is in ruins.   The simple down to earth tone of Francis’ first day as pope is a good sign of a pope who has his feet on the ground.  
Something that has been overlooked by most commentators is the argument that allegedly took place in the “room of tears” as Francis was being vested in the papal habit.  He refused to put on the lacy rochet and fur-trimmed velvet mozetta (short cape) which the pope wears for formal occasions.  Monsignor Marini, the papal master of ceremonies was insistent—the pope does not appear in the simple white simar (cassock) for formal occasions; the Pope was insistent—the velvet and fur is not his style.  The Pope won.  The papal simar—a plain white cassock with an elbow length over-cape—is the normal working habit of the pope.  (A prelate or even a simple priest can wear the same sort of cassock though in black; a prelate’s is edged in the color of his rank, the priest’s is plain black.)  It is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a business suit.  For formal occasions a bishop or higher ecclesiastic wears a cassock in the color of his rank, a rochet (a shorter white camisole, sometimes trimmed in lace according to the taste—or lack thereof—of the wearer), and a mozetta—a short cape in the color and material of his cassock.  Popes traditionally wore a mozetta of red velvet trimmed in ermine in the winter and of scarlet silk in the summer.  Paul VI did away with the velvet and fur variation, Benedict brought it back.  Francis apparently has ditched it again.  This all seems to be a bit of a tempest in the ladies’ department but it is significant that Francis is both eschewing the revived pomp of the late papacy and telling the old guard that their days of control are over.  He will set the tone.  Of course it will only make the boys who like to get dressed up in fur and yards of silk look even more outré but I suspect that Raymond Burke for one is too slow-witted to notice that he has become a low-class relic of a passed époque.     
All this is a good beginning but while we can’t expect a change in substance, we do need to see a substantial change of style.  Francis is sending all the right signals but let us pray that as he begins to speak he assures us he is also a Pope who listens and listens carefully to his flock.  Again, we are not children.  Like the Pope himself we are educated adults.  That does not mean that we don’t have things to learn but it does mean that we need to be educated as adults.  There needs to be conversation.  There has to be a freedom of discussion without topics being “off limits” of discussion.  The methodologies and presuppositions of the material being taught must to be open to critique.  As a former professor and as a man with a scientific (chemistry) background, it can be hoped that Pope Francis understands this and will not be patronizing.  But then Benedict and John Paul (and Paul VI and John XXIII) were not patronizing men.  The problem is middle management.  Let us hope that Francis will begin choosing intelligent and educated pastors for the flock—bishops like Sean O’Malley and Timothy Dolan and Rowan Williams (whoops, wrong Church) and Gerald Kicanas, and Howard Hubbard and William Curlin and John Ricard, and Robert Morneau, and Mort Smith, and Bernard McLaughlin.  Just give us good shepherds with listening and attentive hearts and we will be fine.  Solomon asked for a lebh shomea (a listening heart); it worked for him and it will work for Francis I. 

New Day Dawning

Cardinal Avery Dulles SJ 
1918-2008

  I  am sorry of this most recent hiatus—some unexpected travel came up and I am behind in my lecture preps for class and….well, to be honest I am just not as organized as I would like to be and you know, it takes a big chunk of time to prepare these posts.

To pick up where we left off—and I am anxious to get over this topic and on to some things that have happened lately—I had most recently posted that there are two distinct traditions in the Catholic Church in the United States.  The one tradition, dating back to the Maryland colony and English Recusant Catholicism was a plainer, more Spartan Catholicism with a strong tradition of devotional reading, intellectual emphasis, and centered on devotion to Jesus Christ.  The other tradition, arriving later in mid 19^th century America with the waves of immigration, was given to more public displays of pomp and colorful devotion, less intellectual and more emotional, and centered more on devotion to the saints.  That is an over simplification, of course, but I also recently posted references to some previous postings on this blog that elaborate more on the theme and give examples of what I am talking about should you be interested. And I suspect that it is a theme that I will return to time and again as it particularly interests me.  In the very last posting earlier this week, I mentioned that Catholics whose spiritual life followed that old Maryland/Recusant tradition were more prepared for the changes of the Second Vatican Council while those who found comfort in the immigrant Catholicism found that the conciliar changes really ripped away much of that in which they found their Catholic identity.  Most of those who want a full or partial restoration of the pre-conciliar Church come out of that immigrant Catholic heritage. 

Now that we seen the Maryland tradition vs the Immigrant tradition, and the pro-Vatican II and contra Vatican II factions, I want to “slice the cake” of American Catholicism along another axis.  Cardinal Avery Dulles writing in his book on the Catholicity of the Church, The Catholicity of the Church (Oxford University Press, 1987), stated that while the 1000 years of the Church were about evangelization (he actually says “witness”) and the second thousand years were about power, that the third millennium will be about service.  I think—as regular readers can attest—that Dulles is among the best modern writers on the Church and that he is dead on with this statement.  But that means, of course, that as a Church we are precisely at that place where the Church’s tectonic plates are shifting as the old millennium of power gives way to the new millennium of service.  The ground beneath our Catholic feet is shaking and trembling and this causes fear and anxiety.  Some of us, of course, are looking forward to this period of service; others are frightened by the loss of power as the old order passes away.  I think this “ecclesiastical earthquake” is very much at the heart of the strife and struggles within the Church of today.  I admit that I make fun of Cardinal Burke and Archbishop Cordileone and others for parading around swathed in their furs and yards of silk—but precisely because I see this as a ridiculous holding on to the symbols of a dying Catholicism, a moribund Church of power while the Church that is rising up is that Church of service.  I think that Burke and company are buffoons, however, while the Cardinal Law and Archbishop Lori types are far more dangerous because it is not the silken rags of faded glory that they are clinging to but real manipulative power that seeks to control—and bind—the hearts and minds of Christ’s faithful people.   But again—for those who cannot conceive a Church of service and know only the past any loss of power seems to be a weakening of faith itself.  On the other hand, for those of us who were raised in the old American Catholicism of the Maryland strain—Christocentric, intellectual, and devoid of the European trappings of princedom, the switch to the servant model of Catholicism is something that we welcome.  The heroes to us are not the buckled-shoe and caped wonders, but bishops with their feet on the ground like the late Dom Helder Camara, or Tom Gumbleton, or Matt Clark. or Howard Hubbard—or even Avery Dulles, and certainly Carlo Maria Martini.  We remember Paul Émile Léger who resigned his See of Montreal to work in a Leper Colony in Africa.  To us the nuns of the LCWR are the heroes and American Church women who were killed in El Salvador in 1980 or Sister Dorothy Stang who was killed in Brazil in 2005 for defending the peasants there.  We like Richard Rohr and Joan Chittester and Ronald Rohlheiser because they articulate a vision of the future that we recognize as truly Evangelical—witnessing the Good News of God’s Victory.  I did a posting not long ago (August 18) on Monsignor Ralph Beiting, a remarkable servant of God who spent 60 years serving the people of Appalachia.  I have known scores of priests and sisters—and hundreds of lay people—over the years who model this Church of the Servant Christ and I see this model of the Church slowly rising as the earth beneath the slipper clad prelates sinks into irrelevance—but that is history. History is about  change.  To live is to change and to be perfect is to have changed often.  Keep moving forward!!!   To look back is to risk the Church becoming a pillar of salt.