The Indian Summer Pope

A few weeks back Pope Francis had to cancel several days of appointments due to a health issue.  This was a bit frightening to many of us, especially given the traditional protocol where the Pope is never sick until he’s dead.  (Up through the pontificate of John Paul II the Pope was always reported to be in “good health,” regardless of the actual situation) until he was in extremiis.   So what does it mean when they tell us that the Holy Father is somewhat under the weather? Has a fever?  Is indisposed?   Or is it something much more serious. 
Actually, it is not a huge surprise that his health is not as ironbound as they have been claiming.  I remember blogging last September after having been at a Wednesday Audience that he grew more and more visibly tired as the ordeal wore on.  (And ordeal it was, an interminable exercise in the summer heat of Rome. Remember too that he has only one lung, having lost one to a childhood disease.) He was so exhausted that he begun slurring his words and was difficult to understand at some points.  Several other people who have been at various papal functions this past year have reported seeing him visibly worn out by the long ceremonies or audiences.  This is, as I wrote last September, a cause for concern.
I don’t want to be a crepe-hanger and I certainly don’t want to begin second-guessing the next man up to sit in Saint Peter’s chair.  But so that we can better appreciate what we have, I do want to consider what will happen when Pope Francis, either by his choice or God’s, no longer occupies the post. 
The first thing people will watch for is to see where he will live.  The next Pope will not be able to move back into the palace without setting off mass disillusionment; yet neither will the cardinal-electors allow him to continue living in a suite of rooms in the hotel.  This hotel stint is annoying prelates from Rome to Newark to Limburg.  Should Benedict pre-decease Francis or at least his retirement, I surmise the next pope will move into Benedict’s digs in the former convent.   This will give him privacy (and discreet comfort should he choose) without making him look like a vagabond.  There is nothing wrong with the palace, of course, but the symbolism of moving in after the symbolism of Francis’ moving out (or actually refusing to move in) would not be lost on us Francis fans—which is about 99% of the world.  There is a practical matter as well.  The Papal Bedroom, located above Saint Peter’s Square, and visible from numerous sites on the Janiculum as well as the Square and its environs, is probably a security hazard in this day and age.  We all know President Obama lives in the White House and Queen Elizabeth lives in Buckingham Palace, but we don’t know precisely where, and each of those buildings is far more securable than the Vatican Palace.  But that is not the primary point; the primary point is the symbolism of living in a 1400 room palace when there is a significant homeless problem in Rome itself, not to mention that homelessness is known to most world cities. 
Secondly I think we will see the next pope dress a bit snappier.  We won’t go back to the red Prada shoes (that weren’t Prada after all, but handcrafted for Benedict by his shoemaker up near Milan) but neither will see black shoes with a white cassock.  It is like wearing brown shoes with a black suit.  It works for Francis as part of the mystique is to be somewhat shabby, but only a Jesuit would be so sloppy.  (And, to be fair, if he were a fashion plate in five thousand dollar suits and seven hundred dollar ties, one could say that only a Jesuit would know how to dress.  Those boys love extremes which is why I love them.)   The days of seeing a Pope dress in a business suit, even with a clerical collar, is not going to happen—at least in our lifetime or the next thirty-two.  No, when people get their pictures taken with the Pope, they want him to look like a Pope, consequently the white dress.  Nor will we see the stunning liturgical vesture favored by both Benedict and JPII in his final decade or so as Pope.  I doubt the fur trimmed little cap or cape will reappear.  But I think the liturgical vesture will be of simple design as Francis prefers but higher quality material and workmanship.  I think too we will see the rochet and mozetta come back, though probably not the red satin mozetta but a plain white one so that for formal occasions he looks like any other bishop but in white.   And I think the black slacks that show through a white cassock will go the way of the black shoes.  These are not crucial matters, but even a liberal pope should look like somebody, if not himself, pays attention to his wardrobe. 
All this is, of course, just the fluff.   Though fluff it may be, his somewhat down-at-the-heels look has reinforced Francis’ mystique as a man-in-the-streets Pope. Many bishops don’t like that, but they also have bigger fish to fry than the papal couture.  What the Cardinals are really going to go for is a man who stays on script and doesn’t shoot from the hip.  For those of us who have just delighted in the breath of fresh air that Francis has brought into what was becoming a very stodgy old religion, his candid unrehearsed off-the-cuff talk has been exactly what we have needed, but trust me, the bishops aren’t happy.  And when the bishops aren’t happy, you can bet that the Cardinals are really annoyed.  Many of them keep trying to do damage control, saying “What the Holy Father actually means…” when in fact their comments do only more damage.  We all know what Francis means and we all like what he says, but it has the effect of bypassing all the middle managers and speaking directly to us.  The middle managers feel cut out when the number-one guy seems to tell us that we can think for ourselves and are big enough to make our own decisions, and they want to put a stop to that. 
The next guy can’t change the basic drift of Francis’ message, at least right off the bat.   He will have to tell us how great Francis is (was) and how his concern for the poor will shape the new papacy as well.  But I think it will be more rhetoric than practice, probably a great encyclical Deus Pauperes Amat or something like that, but in the Church’s operational scheme it will be back to the day-by-day business as usual. (Though the Vatican Bank will have to be as clean as a whistle.  Those good old days of fiscal corruption at the bank are over, but not thanks to the Church.)  And little by little we will hear the judgmental tone regarding those who don’t conform to our ideas of human sexuality growing just a little bit louder and louder to where we when we talk about “sin” we will be talking about “sex” and not about systemic injustice.  In fact, while our bishops shake their heads at systemic injustice and its consequent human suffering, they will reinforce it by their various political alliances just as they did from the days of Ronald Reagan to the Fortnight for Freedom.   By year five or six of the new pontificate, it will be time a for a new “lay-down-the-law” encyclical condemning the modern world and all its “disordered affections” from contraception to homosexuality.  But by that time we will have lost another sixty or seventy million who have just shaken their heads as they walked away puzzled at the gulf between the gospel and the magisterium.   
I think Francis wants to make sure that his reforms take hold in the Church.  To that end he needs to get to appoint a sufficient number of bishops (and even more important, Cardinals) who are on board his train.  He is fighting a hierarchy, at least in this country, whose social-political-economic philosophy is at odds with his vision.  Even more tricky is that a considerable number (and I am afraid even a majority) of the younger (50 and under) clergy are just on a totally different page, interested in different questions and operating out of a very different ecclesiology than the Holy Father.  Even if he can avoid making these men bishops, they will be the pastors whose job it is to make sure that papal teaching reaches down to the person in the pews.  These guys wont’ do it; they aren’t doing it now.  They don’t agree with Francis and they are waiting this Pope out.  While with Francis’ leaving the chair of Peter, they won’t get the sort of Pope they want who says the TLM and reinforces the exclusivity of clerical power in the Church; neither will we see another Francis.  So enjoy it while we’ve got him, pray for his health, and push the agenda as much as you can.  Francis may be the Church’s Indian Summer before the winter of our discontent.      

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.  

Papal Resignations IV

Well, we have seen some previous resignations, so now let’s look at this papal resignation.  It was a shocker when I turned on the news last Monday morning at 5:30 AM to be greeted with an announcement that the pope was resigning.  As a historian I never expected to see this.  I remember the 1978 election in which Karol Wojtyla was elected as John Paul II—the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years and what a bombshell that was, but it was small news compared to a papal resignation. 
One of the most obvious things to Vatican watchers is that this resignation caught not only me but the papal household by surprise.  While a few close aides undoubtedly had some heads-up on it—someone had to check the text for Benedict’s Latin; he’s good but even a good Latinist knows to get his work checked out before he does an official document—it was clear from his confusion that Federico Lombardi, the Pope’s Press Secretary wasn’t in on the secret.  The poor man didn’t know whether to **** or go blind talking to the press Monday, obviously unprepared for such an announcement.  And Jesuits hate to be unprepared.  They rarely are.  And then all this confusion about a conclave and when it can begin and how it gets convoked with Cardinals tripping over one another to make the necessary plans.  Indeed the timing was not thought out and the announcement would appear to be somewhat spontaneous as the timing projects a conclave on the eve of Holy Week, a time that most of the Cardinals have responsibilities in their home dioceses.  Had Benedict consulted anyone he would have been advised to have done this either a month earlier or made it effective for after Easter.  No, while Benedict may have given the matter thought for some time, the actual decision was clearly somewhat spur-of-the moment and without consultation of his top officials.    
So what is the story?  My hunch is that Benedict was well aware of the fact that the papal power has drifted into the hands of Curial officials and that he had become unable to reassert papal control over his own bureaucracy.  The only possibility for the pope to be allowed to be pope is for a younger and more energetic man to come in and shake up the curial apparatus.  If you remember some earlier postings I have brought up rumors that Cardinal Bertone, the papal Secretary of State, had managed to consolidate the day to day running of the Church into his office, leaving Benedict to be the face but not the guts of the papacy.  Moreover, while Bertone was put in place to clean up the corruption of his predecessor, Cardinal Sodano, it seems that his ambition for power has, displayed Lord’s Acton’s famous principle that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  (See entries for June 7, 2011, February 15, 16, June 4, June 10 2012)
Josef Ratzinger, like all of us, has his shortcomings.  He probably has fewer of them than most of us.  He certainly has fewer failings than I.  But one thing Benedict has and has in plenty is integrity.  I suspect that it is this integrity that led him to personal decision to move aside and let someone come in and try to regain control of the Church’s central apparatus.  If he found himself unable to lead the Church into the paths he believes the Church must follow, Benedict would see the need to resign rather than to maintain the charade that he was pope while decisions were being made in his name but with which he could not agree.  More in the next posting

Clean It Up or Pay the Consequences

John Paul II, he left

a sullied heritage and

a Church in need of

Reform

During the conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI I heard an American priest commentator for RTÉ, the Irish National Broadcasting network, say that what was needed in a pope was “someone who would come in and clean out that rats’ nest of pezzi grossi monsignors, the Roman Curia.”  The commentator was in Rome with the Dome of Saint Peter’s in the background; sitting in the Dublin studio was Bishop John Magee where the show’s moderator asked Magee—former secretary to Popes Paul VI, John Paul I, and John Paul II—if he, Magee, were part of that rats’ nest.  Magee was not amused, but as time has gone on it has become clear that he indeed was one rat among the pack, and that he lost out to bigger rats.  When John Paul’s private secretary, (now Cardinal) Stanislaw Dziwisz wrote his 2007 memoirs of his 40 years of service to Wojtyla both as Archbishop of Krakow and as Pope, he never mentioned Magee, the only aide to John Paul Dziwisz hadn’t mentioned.  Given Magee’s role as secretary and then as Master of Ceremonies to John Paul this was a gratuitous slap to the Irishman and his service.  Dziwisz had been jealous of John Paul’s personal affection for Magee, the nicer and more gentlemanly of the two men.  Unfortunately, a gentleman though he may be, Magee’s bad judgment in the Diocese of Cloyne where John Paul named him bishop, led to one of the most serious breakdowns of justice in the whole Irish sex-abuse scandal and Magee eventually resigned his diocese in disgrace.  Dziwisz, for his part, has since been exposed as a self-serving bureaucrat who made a fortune from the “gratuities” people offered him in exchange for access to the Pope—in other words Dziwisz was selling access to the Pope.  He often dragged the frail and ailing Pope from his quarters to meet some wealthy visiting socialite or politician who wanted a picture with John Paul.  Moreover, in the Pope’s final years Dziwisz practically ran the Church by inserting himself as the only channel of communication between the Cardinals in charge of the various dicasteries and the increasingly incapacitated Pope.   With the election of Benedict, Dziwisz has gone home to Poland as Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, but the rats’ nest of conspiracy and intrigue has continued.  The current Vatican Dr. Strangelove is Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a member of the Salesian Order and the apparently the target of the current palace coup that involves the Pope’s butler having leaked confidential papers to an Italian journalist in an effort to expose Bertone’s consolidation of power in his (Bertone’s) office, the Secretariat of State.  (For more about Bertone, look at entries for June 7, 2011, and February 15 & 16, 2012.)  Bertone has nominated named a disproportionate number of his fellow Salesians to be bishops and seems to be engineering a return to an Italian papacy in the next conclave.
        Frankly, I have no idea of what is going on the Vatican other than what I read in the papers, but the idea of the Pope’s personal aide-de-camp stealing state papers and turning them over to journalists, the precipitous firing of the head of the Vatican Bank, the Bank’s failure to meet international standards on fiscal accountability and transparency, the opening of burial vaults looking for evidence in child-kidnapping (see entry for May 15, 2012), the struggles to impose more curial control over Caritas Internationalis and its fiscal power, are all signs that while it has been centuries since something has been rotten in the State of Denmark, much is rotten in the Vatican State. From a historical point of view, the Church is ripe for Reform.  Will it be a reform from within a la Innocent III or a reform from without, Luther style?  That all depends on how willing (and able) the Pope elected that day I heard the RTÉ commentator speak is to come in and clean out that rats’ nest of pezzi grossi monsignori. 

Preparing the Ground for a New Luther?

Are we facing in the wrong

direction?  not only at the

altar but for God's Work in

the world?

I was at Mass Saturday evening and heard the Gospel:

"All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you."

What concerns me most about the nonsense right  now with the Vatican’s complaints about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the “scandal” with the Pope’s butler leaking confidential documents,  the Vatican Bank and its inability to meet transparency standards set by international conventions, Cardinal Bertone’s alleged coup to consolidate all power in his Secretariat of State, the issues about Caritas Internationalis needing more hierarchical  supervision, Cardinal  Burke parading around thinking he is Louis XIV—and then the nonsense here with the alternative magisterium of Michael Voris and “Real Catholic T.V.,”  Carl Anderson and the mismanagement of the Knights of Columbus, and everything else going on is that—wait a minute: we have a mission and we have taken our eyes off that mission. 

     “Go and make disciples of all nations”—where is that in this current mess? 

     Somewhere in the reign of John Paul II the steersman took his eye off the course of proclaiming the Kingdom of God and the bark of Peter has been foundering in waves of turmoil ever since.  The Second Vatican Council is about more than putting the liturgy into everyday language, turning altars to face the people, (neither of which things the Council itself actually did, mind you); what the Council did do was to set a course for the Church to proclaim the Gospel in the Modern World.  What is going on today is nothing more than a free for all as those with power jockey for more power whether on the level of the Vatican bureaucracy or the American hierarchy.  The political connivance, led by Cardinal Francis George of Chicago in 2010, that kept Vice President of the conference, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson from becoming president of the conference—the first time that a sitting Vice President did not become President of the USCCB—is only one example of the misdirected energy that is going to infighting rather than carrying out a vision for the Church here in the United States.  The connivance of Archbishop Lori (who owes his Baltimore See to the generosity of Carl Anderson and the Knights of Columbus money which Anderson uses freely for some very  biased agenda items), with Cardinals Burke, Law, and Levada to go after the American Sisters  is yet another.  The transformation of a personal vendetta of an American bishop into a scathing attack on Sister Elizabeth Johnson—a more sound scholar and better theologian than any of the bishops—for her book Quest for the Living God is a third example of wasted energy that should be devoted to bringing Christ to people with profound spiritual hungers.  Richard Rohr has written

      Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home."  (Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993, p. 26)
      This is precisely the situation in which we are finding ourselves as Church—we have a tremendous storehouse of spiritual nourishment to share with a world that suffering in immense distress and hunger of every sort but instead of bringing the Gospel and its life-giving hope, we are squabbling over who holds the keys to the pantry.  And when the internecine squabbling stops long enough for the Church to speak something to the world beyond its doors—it is always a message of negativity.  As I have written before: today everyone can tell you what the Catholic Church is against but very few can tell you what we stand for.  
       From a historical viewpoint this situation is fraught with signs of danger for the Church.  The loss of reputation for moral integrity, the concern with power and wealth by many prelates, the ignoring of advances in scientific knowledge and learning, the alienation of an educated and competent laity, the defense of antique social and political structures in a rapidly evolving society—these are all reminiscent of situation that led up to the Protestant Reformations of the 16^th century.  Vatican II was called to heal the divisions in Christianity but the betrayal of the Council over the last thirty plus years is threatening us with further discord and schism.  We need to refocus on mission and be willing to surrender our personal ambitions for the sake of advancing the Kingdom of God. 

Trouble Right Here in River (Tiber) City II

Melozzo da Forli: Angel Playing a Lute
The only angels in the Vatican are in the
the art museum

Yesterday’s posting was an interesting article by Philip Pullella and published by Reuters claiming that there is an internal war, or as Pullella puts it “a sinister power struggle”  going on in the Vatican for control of the Catholic Church.  It talks of corruption, intrigue, financial irregularities, prelates backstabbing one another, plots to control the next papal election and even a possible attempt on the pope’s life.  If you have read various entries on this blog—especially about the medieval and renaissance papacies (see entries for  January 15, April 18, June 6, 9, 18,  2011)—you will know as we pray: sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper in saecula saeculorum, or in the vulgar tongue: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. 

      At the root of the problem seems to be a deep ideological division between Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the current Secretary of State and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the previous Secretary of State.  (Papal Secretaries of State are more like Prime Ministers in terms of the power they hold; they are not just Foreign Ministers as in our country.) 

     Sodano ran a notoriously corrupt machine when he was in office.  He protected Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, from his accusers who were charging him with sexual abuse of seminarians. In the event the Maciel saga was far more sordid than anyone had ever thought. (see entries for June 2, Sept 22, October 27, 28, 2011)  Not only were the charges of abuse against young men substantiated, but Maciel apparently fathered two illegitimate children.  Maciel threw vast amounts of money at Vatican officials to not only shield himself from investigation but to enhance his reputation and influence.  Cardinal Sodano was a key player in this scheme, protecting the wayward priest even from the reaches of Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) who was one of the few in the Vatican who seemed genuinely interested in cleaning up the sex abuse crisis and restoring the Church’s reputation.  Bertone’s appointment to replace Sodano was seen as an attempt to clean up the Vatican, but as power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, Bertone now seems to be no better than his predecessor. 

      As Benedict has aged word has it that Bertone has eased the reins of power from the pope’s hands into his own.  The debacle surrounding the Vatican’s turning down the re-election of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight as Executive Secretary of Caritas International (see entry for June 7, 2011) shows just how much power the Holy Father has ceded, willingly or unwillingly, to Cardinal Bertone.  According to Pullella (and common gossip in Rome) Bertone is stacking the College of Cardinals with his cronies as he readies for the next papal election.   He certainly has pushed forward a disproportionate number of his fellow Salesians (the Religious Congregation to which he belongs) to various posts in the hierarchy.  It’s Bertone’s Church these days.  

      I remember when Benedict was elected that a priest being interviewed from Rome by RTE (The Irish National Television Station) referred to the Curia as “That rats’ nest of pezzi grossi monsignors.”  It evoked a reaction from several commentators but to those of us who live in Rome, it was an understatement, almost an euphemism.  We had hoped that the change of regime would sweep it clean.  Benedict, or rather Cardinal Ratzinger, was—for all his harshness—one of the few prelates with an unquestioned integrity.   Nevertheless, I have thought from the get-go that the election of Benedict was a poor choice.  Despite stories to the contrary, he wanted the election and he worked hard to get it.  I was living in Rome during the final years of John Paul’s papacy and one could see then-Cardinal Ratzinger slowly and patiently (and much less conspicuously than Bertone today)  constructing the machine that would carry a conclave in his favor.  I said that Cardinal Ratzinger was a man of integrity and I don’t believe he was seeking the papacy for power but rather that I think he believed that John Paul had taken the Church down some paths that needed to be corrected, if not reversed.   He was painfully aware that John Paul was weak theologically.  He saw John Paul as far too open both to other religions and to other Churches within the Christian fold.  (As a historian, I prefer not to use the theological distinction between “churches” and “ecclesial communities.”  It may be theologically precise, but it’s snotty.)  I think Benedict had some ideas on Liturgical Reform he wanted to implement as well. He seems to have wanted to restore a Pius XII sort of mysterious majesty to the papacy after the grandfatherly John XXIII and John Paul I, the Hamlet Paul VI, and the ol’ soft-shoe John Paul II.   And he was more ready than John Paul to give room—or I should say “even more room” to the “Traditionalists” who rejected Vatican II in an attempt to corral them back into the Petrine fold.  At the same time, I think he wanted to be somewhat less polarizing than John Paul and use a more dialogical model of reconciliation.  Like most academics, Benedict was naïve and I think he achieved very little of his agenda.  The Church is no better off at the end of his regime than it was when he became Pope.  In fact, I think it is considerably worse.  His olive branch to the Traditionalists has been met with only more demands from them.  His rigidity on ecumenism and interreligious dialogue has only isolated Catholicism more at a time when secularism has taken up its holy war against the public face of any and all religion.  His liturgical plans have not materialized (and for that I am grateful).  Instead of austere majesty, the Papacy is just sinking into archaic irrelevance.  And even as a lean and hungry Benedict once stood next to an aging and increasingly ineffective John Paul II, now the lean and hungry Bertone  guides the tremulous hand of Benedict.  The Church deserves better.  I don’t mean the Curia Romana or the Papacy deserve better.  Pullella’s article makes it clear that much as in Catherine of Siena’s day, the Curia Romana and its ambitious officials deserve the stench and fury of the everlasting fires.  I mean the Church—you and me, the People of God—we deserve  better. 

Trouble, Right Here in River (Tiber) City

I haven’t had a chance to finish the next piece I am preparing and a friend sent me this Reuters article by Philip Pullella.  I think that it is somewhat off but as a person who has lived in Rome a considerable period of time over the last twenty years, I don’t think it is totally off base.  I will comment on it in future entries.  Meanwhile, thanks to my friend Chris for sending along the article and to my buddy Greg for the great photo. 

"It is a total mess," said one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke, like all others, on the condition of anonymity.

The Machiavellian maneuvering and machinations that have come to light in the Vatican recently are worthy of a novel about a sinister power struggle at a medieval court. 

Senior church officials interviewed this month said almost daily embarrassments that have put the Vatican on the defensive could force Pope Benedict to act to clean up the image of its administration - at a time when the church faces a deeper crisis of authority and relevance in the wider world. 

Some of those sources said the outcome of a power struggle inside the Holy See may even have a longer-term effect, on the choice of the man to succeed Benedict when he dies. 

From leaked letters by an archbishop who was transferred after he blew the whistle on what he saw as a web of corruption and cronyism, to a leaked poison pen memo which puts a number of cardinals in a bad light, to new suspicions about its bank, Vatican spokesmen have had their work cut out responding.  

The flurry of leaks has come at an embarrassing time - just before a usually joyful ceremony this week known as a consistory, when Benedict will admit more prelates into the College of Cardinals, the exclusive men's club that will one day pick the next Roman Catholic leader from among their own ranks. 

"This consistory will be taking place in an atmosphere that is certainly not very glorious or exalting," said one bishop with direct knowledge of Vatican affairs. 

The sources agreed that the leaks were part of an internal campaign - a sort of "mutiny of the monsignors" - against the pope's right-hand man, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. 

Bertone, 77, has a reputation as a heavy-handed administrator and power-broker whose style has alienated many in the Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the central administration of the 1.3 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church.

He came to the job, traditionally occupied by a career diplomat, in 2006 with no experience of working in the church's diplomatic corps, which manages its international relations. Benedict chose him, rather, because he had worked under the future pontiff, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in the Vatican's powerful doctrinal office. 

"It's all aimed at Bertone," said a monsignor in a key Vatican department who sympathizes with the secretary of state and who sees the leakers as determined to oust him. "It's very clear that they want to get rid of Bertone." 

Vatican sources say the rebels have the tacit backing of a former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an influential power-broker in his own right and a veteran diplomat who served under the late Pope John Paul II for 15 years.  

"The diplomatic wing feels that they are the rightful owners of the Vatican," the monsignor who favors Bertone said.  

Sodano and Bertone are not mutual admirers, to put it mildly. Neither has commented publicly on the reports. 

WHISTLE-BLOWING ARCHBISHOP 

The Vatican has been no stranger to controversy in recent years, when uproar over its handling of child sex abuse charges has hampered the church's efforts to stem the erosion of congregations and priestly recruitment in the developed world. 

But the latest image crisis could not be closer to home. 

It began last month when an Italian television investigative show broadcast private letters to Bertone and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former deputy governor of the Vatican City and currently the Vatican ambassador in Washington. 

The letters, which the Vatican has confirmed are authentic, showed that Vigano was transferred after he exposed what he argued was a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to contractors at inflated prices. 

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state's gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure, which are managed separately from the Italian capital which surrounds it. 

In one letter, Vigano writes of a smear campaign against him by other Vatican officials who were upset that he had taken drastic steps to clean up the purchasing procedures and begged to stay in the job to finish what he had started. 

Bertone responded by removing Vigano from his position three years before the end of his tenure and sending him to the United States, despite his strong resistance. 

Other leaks center on the Vatican bank, just as it is trying to put behind it past scandals - including the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano, which entangled it in lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - "God's banker." 

Today, the Vatican bank, formally known at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), is aiming to comply fully with international norms and has applied for the Vatican's inclusion on the European Commission's approved "white list" of states that meet EU standards for total financial transparency. 

Bertone was instrumental in putting the bank's current executives in place and any lingering suspicion about it reflects badly on him. The Commission will decide in June and failure to make the list would be an embarrassment for Bertone.  

ITALIAN POPE?  

Last week, an Italian newspaper that has published some of the leaks ran a bizarre internal Vatican memo that involved one cardinal complaining about another cardinal who spoke about a possible assassination attempt against the pope within 12 months and openly speculated on who the next pope should be. 

Bertone's detractors say he has packed the Curia with Italian friends. Some see an attempt to influence the election of the next pope and increase the chances that the papacy returns to Italy after two successive non-Italian popes who have broken what had been an Italian monopoly for over 450 years.  

Seven of the 18 new "cardinal electors" -- those aged under 80 eligible to elect a pope -- at this Saturday's consistory are Italian. Six of those work for Bertone in the Curia. 

Bertone, as chief administrator, had a key role in advising the pope on the appointments, which raised eyebrows because of the high number of Italian bureaucrats among them.  

"There is widespread malaise and delusion about Bertone inside the Curia. It is full of complaints,"  said the bishop who has close knowledge of Vatican affairs. 

"Bertone has had a very brash method of running the Vatican and putting his friends in high places. People could not take it any more and said 'enough' and that is why I think these leaks are coming out now to make him look bad," he said. 

POPE "ISOLATED" 

Leaked confidential cables sent to the State Department by the U.S. embassy to the Vatican depicted him as a "yes man" with no diplomatic experience or linguistic skills and the 2009 cable suggests that the pope is protected from bad news. 

"There is also the question of who, if anyone, brings dissenting views to the pope's attention," read the cable, published by WikiLeaks. 

The Vatican sources said some cardinals asked the pope to replace Bertone because of administrative lapses, including the failure to warn the pope that a renegade bishop re-admitted to the Church in 2009 was a well-known Holocaust denier.  

But they said the pope, at 84 and increasingly showing the signs of his age, is not eager to break in a new right-hand man.  

"It's so complicated and the pope is so helpless," said the monsignor. 

The bishop said: "The pope is very isolated. He lives in his own world and some say the information he receives is filtered. He is interested in his books and his sermons but he is not very interested in government."

History in the Making: Today's Need for Reformation I

The question of  what happens when the papacy itself needs reformation has created problems for the Church at several periods in history.  We have been looking at the turbid position in which the Church found itself in the tenth century during the so-called “pornacracy” or “rule of whores” when the papacy found itself a pawn in the hands of a ruthless family determined to exploit its wealth and power through the efforts of the notoriously lascivious Marozia and her mother, Theodora.  We will see in one of our next entries that the Emperors Otto I, II, and III came to the rescue and cleaned up the papal act.  And we will also see that there are times that the papacy will lead reform in the Church as typified in the aggressive programs of Gregory VII (11^th century) and Innocent III (13^th century). But there are other times when the Church stagnates because there is no one to call the leadership of the Church to account.    In the fourteenth century there was the Great Schism when the Church found itself divided among three rival claimants to the papacy.  In that situation the Emperor and the bishops tried to resolve the crisis and eventually met with success, at least in narrowing papal claimants to a manageable number, one.  The television series, The Borgias,  has made people aware of to just what depths the papacy sunk in the Renaissance period—and trust me, Alexander VI Borgia was only one of several wicked men to used the papacy to their own and their family’s advantages while leading thoroughly immoral lives.  This was the situation that provoked Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Müntzer and others into the Protestant Reformation.  A papal led Catholic Reform did come about, but too late for the unity of the Church.  The damage had been done, and the papacy reduced to “the Whore of Babylon” in Protestant polemics. There have been other situations in which the lack of a counter-weight to the papacy has left the Church “naked unto her enemies.”  The captivities of Popes Pius VI and Pius VII by Napoleon left the Church with ineffective central leadership for a period of almost twenty years which, due to the relative independence of local bishops in pre-Vatican I era it could survive, but which today would paralyze Church administration.  Indeed, during the Second World
War Pius XII was well aware of the crisis that would befall the Church should he have been taken prisoner by Hitler.  He allegedly had plans to evacuate the papacy to either Lisbon or Dublin and, should that have failed and he been taken captive, had prepared a letter of abdication to be made public upon his arrest. 

It is unlikely that a pope today would be taken prisoner by a political leader, but that does not mean that the popes exercise their authority unimpeded.  The final years of the papacies of Pius XII and John Paul II presented some troubling questions over who was truly overseeing the Church at the time.   Much has been made of the influence of Mother Pasqualina Lehnert, the major-domo of Pius XII.  This German nun, often termed La Popessa, had organized Pius’ household for over forty years, beginning during his term as Papal Nuncio (ambassador) to Bavaria in 1917.  Always a strong influence on Pius, after his serious health decline of 1954 she had almost total control of access to him.  No one, even the Dean of the College of Cardinals—at that time the Vatican’s number 2 officer (Pius, serving as his own Secretary of State)—could have access to the pope unless she permitted it.  For the last four years of his life, all papers passed through her to the pope.  While the situation was never as grave as her detractors portrayed it—with her exercising papal authority in Pius’ name—it did create serious administrative issues and all but stalled Church administration.  Cardinals, bishops, and prominent laity found they could do an end-run around the Vatican bureaucracy by going directly to Mother Pasqualina.    In fact, the very first act of Eugène Tisserant as Cardinal Dean upon the death of Pius was to banish Mother Pasqualina from the Vatican—allegedly told to move out, bag and baggage, that very day. 

The situation toward the end of the pontificate of John Paul II was different.  There was no La Popessa here, no single person of influence.  Yet it was clear that the pope was increasingly incapacitated by the 1990’s.  Curial officials made use of the lack of oversight to expand their own powers and influence, often squabbling in rivalry with others over who had jurisdiction in particular instances. Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s chief private secretary, like Mother Pasqualina had total control of access to the Pope, and allegedly, unlike Mother Pasqualina “sold” that access—getting individuals access to private audiences or attendance at the Pope’s morning mass in his private chapel for sums up to $50,000.   Dziwisz was closely tied to Father Marcial Maciel, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, who was accused by numerous former seminarians of having sexually abused them.  Despite the number and credibility of allegations, neither Maciel nor the Legion of Christ were never held to accountability during the pontificate of John Paul, one of the most serious flaws in his papacy.   Only in the current pontificate have the charges of sexual and financial impropriety been duly investigated and been found to be even more outrageous than previously charged.   Another case in which John Paul’s incapacity resulted in the Curial “old boy” network triumphing over good judgment was the nomination of Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced archbishop of Boston, to a cushy position in Rome.  Law’s arrogance in defending clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse is what brought down the wrath of Americans—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on the American Episcopate.  While the majority of American Catholics still seem to have great confidence in the clergy, particularly their own parish clergy, the American bishops have largely become shepherds without sheep.  The Catholic Church in America is prone to this problem in any event as our Protestant culture predisposes us to see the Church congregationally—that is to identify Church primarily with the local congregation to which we belong.  In fact, American Catholics tend to see the Church on two tiers: there is “the Church”—i.e. Rome; and there is their church—that is the parish community to which they belong.  Bishops seem only sort of middle-men; local agents of the central authority as it were.  If the American Catholic knew how much of his Sunday collection-plate dollar went to the bishop, he would be very unhappy.  But what little credibility bishops have in America has been all but destroyed in the sex-abuse crisis where so many bishops have not dealt effectively with pedophile clergy.  Cardinal Bernard Law, the former Archbishop of Boston, is the poster boy for bad bishops.  It was not the protecting of accused clergy that did him in—it was the unmitigated arrogance with which he defended himself and his indefensible policies.  Finally forced to resign just to quiet the outrage, he was rescued from serving retired nuns as their chaplain in rural Maryland and installed in the palatial quarters of the Archpriest of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major in Rome.  And then, despite these being said to be the most luxurious cardinalatial apartments in the Eternal City, he undertook to renovate and expand his suites.  This is part of an old-boy system in Rome where they take care of their own.    It is not that they don’t care about the public-relations aspect of the Church; they honestly don’t understand that in today’s world they are being held accountable and their failure to be responsible seriously undermines the credibility of the Church and indeed dichotomy of what the Church teaches and how so many of its leaders function undermines the credibility of the Gospel itself in as that it reduces, or at least appears to reduce, the Gospel to snake-oil whose sale is only meant to enrich those who “sell” it. 

The papacy of John Paul II is one of the most paradoxical papacies in the history of the Church.  As one commentator for the BBC said, echoing Charles Dickens, when John Paul lay dying: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.   John Paul’s policies gave the coup de grace to European communism and provided the restoration of democracy in the countries of Eastern Europe.  His internal policies in the Church were another matter with an ever deepening gap between progressives and conservatives.  This division was only aggravated as he aged and gradually lost power to the curial machine which took on a life of its own.

It was hoped that the election of a curial cardinal to the papacy would bring the curia and its various bureaucrats back under control.  Popes like Pius XII and Paul VI who had curial experience usually knew how to keep the Curia working for them rather than trying to run the Church their way in spite of the pope.  Popes whose previous experience had been as residential archbishops—popes like John XXIII and John Paul II—had more difficulty in managing the politics of the Curia.  So Joseph Ratzinger, having spent so many years in Rome as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, should have been able to bring the Curia back under papal control, but experience is showing that he can’t.  The recent controversy where Cardinal Bertone, the papal Secretary of State, blocked the nomination of Dr. Lesley-Anne Knight for a second term as General Secretary of Caritas Internationalis is one example of how the papal hands are tied.  Dr. Knight’s election to her first term met with a hostile reception in certain Vatican circles, apparently for no other reason than she was a woman.  The papal audience at which she and the rest of the executive committee were to be presented to Pope Benedict all but turned into a brawl when some Vatican monsignore just refused to believe that such an important person might possibly be a woman and tried to remove her from her reserved seat and force her to the back of the hall in the Apostolic Palace where the reception was being held.   It took a cadre of Caritas officials to put a protective ring around Dr. Knight in order for her to keep her assigned place.  Similar episodes have been reported at ecumenical welcomes when women bishops from various Protestant groups have been due to be presented to the pope.  Curial officials have long memories and before this year’s General Assembly of Caritas, Caritas was notified that the Vatican would not approve a second term for Dr. Knight.  When Cardinal  Rodriguez-Maradiaga, the president of Caritas Internationalis went to intervene with Pope Benedict the Pope supposedly threw his hands up in the air and said that he had no say in the matter.  It was beyond his power.  The decision had been made.  Incidentally, Bertone is one of six members of his religious congregation, the Salesians of Don Bosco, in the College of Cardinals.  ,    

The reputation of the Curia is far from good in other ways beyond their internal bickering and jockeying for power.  While Italians tend to take a more jaundiced eye than we Americans about the weaknesses of human nature—after all can you imagaine an American politician getting away with what Sylvio Berlascone gets away with?—and while most clerical misconduct goes unnoted in the press, it is not unknown to see a story in the Roman newspapers about some low-level Vatican official who has been caught picking up a transvestite prostitute or having sex in a public park.  A 1998 double murder/suicide involving two officers in the Swiss Guards, attributed to the one officer’s being refused a promotion, is rumored to involve a homosexual relationship between the two guards.  Vatican immorality may not be at the extravagance of the Borgia’s Banquet of the Chestnuts, but the Curia certainly aren’t the angelic choirs either and there seems to be no one to whom anyone is accountable.   

It would be good to think that a Gregory VII or an Innocent III could reform the Church from within but although Vatican II has brought many changes, and I believe changes for the good, it has not brought genuine reform or renewal.  A weakness of the current structure of Church leadership is that there is no person or group who has the authority to call the Church leadership to realign itself to the demands of the Gospel.