Let Whomever Has Ears With Which To Hear, Hear

Pope Francis preaching on
Immigration at Lampedusa, July
2013

The issue of the day is the destiny of the men, women, and especially children that have come to the southern borders of our country looking for safety, for a better life, and to belong to a society which they see as far greater than that in which they had been born.  No one important—of either political party, of the Congress or the Presidency or the Judiciary, of the governors of the various states or their peoples—are ready to give them a welcome.  To the contrary, hostile mobs surround the busses that are meant to transport them to the “processing centers” demanding that they be thrown back across the border and never allowed a future in this country.  I can understand that.  This is a land of limited opportunity.  As the gulf between the those who have and those who have not grows wider and wider; as the middle class slides steadily into a life of less while the few rich grow even more obscenely rich, there is barely enough for you and for me; how can we allow the little that is left be stretched even further?  Perhaps we should look back at the homily that Pope Francis gave just over a year ago at Lampedusa  about the immigrants that are flooding the shores of Europe.  Yes, he was talking about immigration to Europe and we are talking about immigration to our nation, you objection is?  No, these words are meant for us as well. 

HOMILY OF HOLY FATHER FRANCIS



"Arena" sports camp, Salina Quarter
Monday, 8 July 2013

 Immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death. That is how the headlines put it. When I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated! First, however, I want to say a word of heartfelt gratitude and encouragement to you, the people of Lampedusa and Linosa, and to the various associations, volunteers and security personnel who continue to attend to the needs of people journeying towards a better future. You are so few, and yet you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you! I also thank Archbishop Francesco Montenegro for all his help, his efforts and his close pastoral care. I offer a cordial greeting to Mayor Giusi Nicolini: thank you so much for what you have done and are doing. I also think with affection of those Muslim immigrants who this evening begin the fast of Ramadan, which I trust will bear abundant spiritual fruit. The Church is at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and your families. To all of you: o’scià!

This morning, in the light of God’s word which has just been proclaimed, I wish to offer some thoughts meant to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.

"Adam, where are you?" This is the first question which God asks man after his sin. "Adam, where are you?" Adam lost his bearings, his place in creation, because he thought he could be powerful, able to control everything, to be God. Harmony was lost; man erred and this error occurs over and over again also in relationships with others. "The other" is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort. God asks a second question: "Cain, where is your brother?" The illusion of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God himself, leads to a whole series of errors, a chain of death, even to the spilling of a brother’s blood!

God’s two questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever! How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another! And when humanity as a whole loses its bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.

"Where is your brother?" His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. I recently listened to one of these brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others, people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have suffered! Some of them never made it here.

"Where is your brother?" Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: "Who killed the governor?", they all reply: "Fuente Ovejuna, sir". Everybody and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: "Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?" Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul…!", and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!

Here we can think of Manzoni’s character – "the Unnamed". The globalization of indifference makes us all "unnamed", responsible, yet nameless and faceless.

"Adam, where are you?" "Where is your brother?" These are the two questions which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would like us to ask a third question: "Has any one of us wept because of this situation and others like it?" Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – "suffering with" others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: "Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no more". Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this. "Has any one wept?" Today has anyone wept in our world?

Lord, in this liturgy, a penitential liturgy, we beg forgiveness for our indifference to so many of our brothers and sisters. Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts; we beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!

Today too, Lord, we hear you asking: "Adam, where are you?" "Where is the blood of your brother?"

At the end of Mass, the Pope said the following words :

Before imparting my blessing to you I want to thank you once again; you people of Lampedusa, for the example of love, charity and hospitality that you have set us and are still setting us. The Bishop said that Lampedusa is a beacon. May this example be a beacon that shines throughout the world, so that people will have the courage to welcome those in search of a better life. Thank you for bearing this witness! And I also want to thank you for your tenderness which I have felt in Fr Stefano himself. He told me on the boat what he and the parochial vicar do. I thank you all, and I thank you, Fr Stefano.

Where is your brother?  When will acknowledge that these men and women and children crossing the borders are our brothers and sisters—brothers and sisters!!!  Unless, of course, we are some sort of unbelievers who don’t take God at his word—these are our brothers and sisters we are turning our back on.  Governor Perry and Speaker Boehner and President Obama and the whole lot of them, Democrat or Republican, make me ashamed in how they exploit this situation for political purposes.  To quote the Pope:

These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!

I am grateful that Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Kicanas went to the border and celebrated the Eucharist there, handing the Body of Christ through “the wall,” that symbol of how selfishly sinful we are.  There is nothing more un-Catholic than that wall.  God did not put a wall of separation between peoples: in fact Christ died to bring down any wall of separation between God and us or between us and one another. But where are the majority of our bishops?  Where are our clergy?  Silent as they were for centuries in the face of slavery.  Silent as they are in the face of state-sponsored murder in the death penalty.  Silent as they are in the face of so many gross systemic injustices.  When the history of the Church comes to its final conclusion in the face of the King who comes on his royal throne to separate the nations as a Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (cf Mt 25:32), the response of American Catholics to the plight of our immigrant brothers and sisters will be as shameful as any inquisition, as collaboration in the Holocaust, as the burning of “heretics,” as the sex abuse scandal.  We need to change that while there is still time.  

Bishops (and a Pope) Who Remember That They Are Called To Be Apostles

Tucson Bishop Gerald Kicanas

giving communion through the

fence at the border to would-be

immigrants on the other side.

Well the Katholic Krazies are all over the blogosphere again about how Pope Francis “set a bad example” by “profaning” the Holy Thursday Mass by including women in the mandatum—the ritual foot washing.  Part of the problem is understanding what the mandatum is about.  (By the way, the word Maundy—as in Maundy Thursday—is a corruption of the Latin word mandatum which means “commandment” or “mandate.”  You can see this Latin root in in the word commandment.)  Some understand this to be a ritual portrayal of Christ washing the feet of his Apostles.  Others see it as fulfilling the command Christ gave to his disciples that night before he died of washing the feet of others in humble service.  For those for whom it is a ritual portrayal, the idea of including women as “Apostles” is dangerous because it remotely opens the door to women’s ordination.  For those who see the ceremony as fulfilling the command of Christ that the Apostles (represented in the ordained clergy) should was the feet of others—it is no problem.  Actually the best practice I have seen is when the clergy wash the feet of several congregants who then turn and wash the feet of their fellow parishioners who then take up the towel and basin and wash the feet of still others until all have both washed feet and had their feet washed.  When Jesus told his disciples at the Last Supper to wash the feet of others, he did not intend to create a liturgy to be done once a year, but rather a humble service that would be part of everyday life.
For centuries the mandatum was a ritual that was not limited to Holy Thursday but part of regular life.  In some medieval monasteries, the abbot (or when he was not there, his representative) would wash the feet of pilgrims and guests.  Abbesses would do the same in women’s monastic houses.  Bishops often performed this service for the sick or the lame.  Clergy might do it in their parishes.  This might be done not just on Holy Thursday but at various times of penance—ember days, the beginnings of Great Lent or St Martin’s Lent (the period from St Martin’s Day, November 11^th until Christmas).  Sometimes Kings or Nobles were commanded to wash the feet of the poor as part of a penance—and sometimes Kings (and Queens) or nobles did it voluntarily out of their own holiness.   In pilgrim centers or monastic guesthouses it might even be a regular feature of hospitality.  Nowadays it is a much sanitized sort of thing as congregants present a well-scrubbed foot, with nails freshly clipped, out of a sock without holes and from a well-polished shoe to the priest to have warm water scented with lemon poured over it and be rubbed try with a nice fluffy towel.  Jesus probably just rolls his eyes at how we have sucked the need for humility out of the whole process. 
By the way, as this was not part of the Holy Thursday Mass but a separate service usually carried out in the monastic refectory or the cathedral chapter house, there were not normally restrictions about the sex of the participants.  (In monastic houses, however, it would generally be seen as improper for a man to wash the feet of a woman or a woman that of man unless the recipient of the deed was quite elderly.)        

The real problem with those who want to keep the Foot-Washing to be a ritual reenactment of Christ washing the feet of his disciples is that they want to overly spiritualize things.  We keep it Jesus and his disciples: no problem for us, they’re all dead—well except for Jesus of course, but he doesn’t count, he’s God.  It doesn’t have to bring us face to face with Christ-in-our-world.  There is a firewall between our religion and the exigencies of everyday life.   Ultimately such spiritualization of our faith is a denial of the Incarnation.  Everything is in the realm of the (pseudo)spiritual so it doesn’t impact on me and the choices I make in this world.  When Pope Francis goes to a youth-detention center or to a center for the disabled to wash feet on Holy Thursday (or any other day) it brings Christ and his disciples into the nitty-gritty every day realities that I must confront.  I can’t keep Jesus locked away in a tabernacle but run the danger of seeing him in the least of his brothers and sisters and being reminded of my responsibilities to him in those same brothers and sisters.

Just over two weeks ago Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson led a delegation of American Bishops to celebrate Mass at the fence that marks the border with Mexico—you know, that fence we have put up to keep Latino immigrants out of the United States.  The Blogosphere exploded with the Katholic Krazies talking about how the Mass had been “profaned” by this “little bit of episcopal nonsense.”  George Weigel—whose own brand of Catholicism has been shredded by the papacy of Pope Francis—declared “It’s not clear to me how holding Mass in these circumstances can be anything other than politicized…. To turn the Mass into an act of essentially political theater is something I thought we had gotten over in the Church, no matter how noble the cause might be.”   Of course what Weigel and the Krazies both overlooked is that Pope Francis had done precisely this same thing when he journeyed to the Italian island of Lampedusa and celebrated Mass to call attention to the plight of the thousands of Africans entering Europe illegally.  Like that Mass wasn’t political?  But then for some there is a difference between “their problem” (Africans coming into Europe) and our problem (Latinos coming into the United States).  For O’Malley and Kicanas—and Pope Francis—it is one and the same: “I was a stranger and you gave me welcome....  Whatever you do for the least of my sisters and brothers, you do for me."  What George Weigel overlooks in his somewhat monophysite Catholicism is the Incarnation is the most political act of all. God has chosen to enter history and history is forever changed.  For those of us who believe that the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us (John 1:14), nothing can be more political than the Eucharist.  Every time we encounter Christ in his Body and Blood we must also encounter him in his Body, the Church.  And when we encounter him in  his Body the Church, we cannot escape coming face to face with the least of his sisters and brothers: the immigrant (legal or illegal), the AIDS patient (gay or straight), the abused (sexually, physically, emotionally, bullied), the aged, the poor, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped—whomever.  If you don’t believe in political Christianity you are caught in the heresy of denying the Incarnation.  So nothing proclaims our Orthodoxy more than Pope Francis washing the feet of the disabled or Cardinal O’Malley handing the Body of Christ through the fence to communicants on the other side.  A Blessed Good Friday.    

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. 

Of German Popes and American Bishops

Cardinal Sean O'Malley, Archbishop of Boston

with Boston College President, Father William

Leahy,SJ

We have been talking about the German Reform popes and I just want to share one or two reflections on the eleventh century reforms of the Church that might give us something to think about for reform and renewal in the contemporary Church. 
    In a few days I want to review the system of papal elections as one of the chief innovations—or reforms—of the Gregorian Reform was to define the exclusive right of the cardinal clergy of the Diocese of Rome to select a pope.  There were two problems.  One problem was that the custom had arisen of the Emperor, as Vicar of Christ, to appoint the popes.  Fortunately these papal appointees—Sylvester II,  Clement II, Damasus II, Leo IX—were good men and men ardent for Reform.  In fact, the reason the Emperors usurped the ancient rights of the clergy and people of Rome to elect their pope was that the Romans had a tendency to elect men who blocked reform.   Nevertheless, as we shall see, these very same reform minded popes came to see the danger of outside appointment—that the papacy could get caught in politics and the Church might be used for political purposes rather than be allowed to perform its own function given it by its Lord of continuing His work of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  
     I think this should give us some thought for today in regard to the selection of bishops.  At one time, being a historian, I favored a return to the ancient practice that bishops be elected by the clergy and faithful.  As I am older—and either wiser or more cynical, I am not sure which—I have come to believe that this would be disastrous at least in our American environment.  The danger is that the election of bishops would devolve into the most crass forms of partisan politics. One of the reasons for the failure of “parish councils” to be effective in most American parishes is that we Americans automatically think “majority rules” and we failed to understand that councils were meant to be an opportunity for discernment rather than governance.   Americans seemingly cannot help but becoming caught in the whirlpools of politics and then devolve into partisan factions.  The fact that American Catholics are already quite divided into social (and political) liberals and conservatives is a harbinger of impending schism should “democracy” be introduced into Church structures.  In a culture that has given us the Tea Party, and the recent denouements of the irresolvable debt crisis, the Church would tear itself to shreds in such episcopal elections.  We see the issues being faced by the Episcopal Church and to some extent the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America today and I believe this is no time to experiment with democracy in the life of our Church.  In fact, I am not sure that Americans any longer merit democracy in their government.  In saying this, I certainly do not want to change our form of government, but I would like to see our citizenry wake up to their political responsibilities to be informed about the issues and civil in their political discourse. I remember the words of Benjamin Franklin to a woman who asked him, at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what sort of government we were to have under the new Constitution.  Franklin replied: “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”  A Republic demands a responsible citizenship that is informed and educated on the issues before it.  Without mentioning names or espousing one political party over another, it is clear that today’s Americans depend on 15 second sound-bites for their information about some very complex questions.  It would be even worse if the Church with its two millennia of rich and vibrant theological Tradition fell into this trap.  American Catholics—clergy and faithful alike—are too often frightfully ignorant of what it means to be Catholic and fall into the trap of believing what they hear on a “Catholic” radio or TV station or read in blog (even this blog) that portends to speak for the Church.   (This blog has always clearly established that it speaks for no one but its author and that it limits its statements to the historical and make no claim of theological competence.)   
   In expressing my reservations about electing bishops, I am not saying that a process by which clergy and faithful would have a voice in the selection of bishops would not work.  I think the system needs change to permit a genuine discernment process.  But the easy fix of election of bishops would be, I believe, even worse than the current system of papal appointment.  Frankly, it is hard to think of a worse system than the system we now have, but open election would surely be among the possible suggestions.  Papal appointment of bishops is an innovation in Catholic practice, for the most part dating only from the early nineteenth century when, after the defeat of Napoleon, the papacy made a series of concordats with the newly reconstituted European States giving the Holy See the right to appoint bishops in their territory.  For most of history, bishops were elected.  In the early Church they were elected by an assembly of clergy and laity; in the Middle Ages the election tended to fall to the Cathedral Chapters, bodies of clergy that were appointed to staff the Cathedral and often also held the pastorates of the principle churches in the cathedral city.  John Carroll, the first American Catholic bishop, was elected by the Catholic clergy of the new republic and he hoped that future bishops would likewise be elected. Alas, this was the very time that the papacy was wresting the right of election away from the European clergy and was hardly going to grant it to the Americans whose overthrow of monarchy was a challenge to everything the Holy See believed in regarding authority and its Divine Right to govern both in the civil and religious spheres. 
     I think we need to look at the American episcopacy and ask ourselves—and the Holy See—if this is the best they could give us.  Granted we have some outstanding men.  Sean O’Malley of Boston is heads and shoulders above his peers.  Donald Trautman of Erie has a too often overlooked perspicacity.  “Teddy” McCarrick, emeritus of Washington and Cardinal-none-the-less, while sly and ambitious, is a man of unparalleled talents who has well served both the Holy See and the American government in many behind the scenes diplomatic maneuvers.  A trained sociologist, McCarrick has his hand on the pulse of the American Catholic, but alas has gone unheeded by both his mitered peers and Rome.  In fact, the Holy See could not have been more happy to accept his resignation when his 75^th birthday came round some years back.    Another bright boy whose intelligence won him no friends in Rome is John Quinn who took an early retirement (to the relief of Rome and American conservatives) from his post as Archbishop of San Francisco.  Howard Hubbard of Albany and Matthew Clark of Rochester are two survivors of what is now the “Old School” –bishops appointed under the influence of Jean Jadot, the Apostolic Delegate in the late ’70’s.  They have done wonderful work in their respective dioceses, but their influence has been eclipsed by the mediocrity of the vast majority post-Jadot appointees.   There are other bishops of note, but they seem to be in the minority.  Wilton Gregory, once the hope for the future, has fizzled into a bit of a disappointment. Gerald Kicanas was maneuvered out of leadership by the machinations of the intelligent but visionless Cardinal George of Chicago; Timothy Dolan of New York was George’s candidate for president of the Bishops Conference in place of Kicanas.  Dolan seems to have some promise, if not of above-average intelligence at least of good pastoral sense.  Wuerl of Washington has a record of being overly cautious.  He lacks his predecessor’s (McCarrick’s) Machiavellian streak, but he also lacks McCarrick’s dash.  As for Olmstead, Bruskewitz, Chaput, Sheriden—well, alas but mediocrity is beyond their highest reach.  Chaput’s move to Philadelphia and its prospects of a red hat are an indication that the system is broken.   Archbishop Chaput is no Raymond Burke; his Capuchin-Franciscan roots save him from Burke’s pomposity and make him a decent human being but he is not a man of any but the most narrow vision.  Overall, the state of the American Episcopacy is appalling.  When one looks at the outstanding work done in the early ‘80’s with two superbly researched and well thought out  pastoral letters, one on economic morality and the other on the moral issues surrounding nuclear weapons, it is frightening to reflect that today’s hierarchy lack the talent to deliver much needed guidance on contemporary issues.  Sometime I will have to write on why (I think) there has been a dumbing-down of American bishops.  But that will be in the future.  Perhaps a blog on the relationship of John Paul II and Ronald Reagan will give us insight.