More on When Bishops Forgot They Were Apostles

Cardinal Mundelein 

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

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

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

The Fire Truck the Cardinal 

donated to Mundelein IL 

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

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

The Residence of the Archbishops

of Chicago 

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

Back To The Bishops Who Forgot They Were Apostles

Cardinal Bonzano kneeling before the outdoor

altar at Soldier Field during the 1926 Eucharistic

Congress

Another great prince of the Church was Cardinal George Mundelein, Archbishop of Chicago from 1916 until his death in 1939.  Mundelein was born in a Middle Class family of German parentage in Manhattan in 1872.  He attended Manhattan College before entering Saint Vincent’s Seminary in Latrobe and then going on to the Pontifical Urban College in Rome.  He was ordained to the priesthood in 1895 and named an auxiliary bishop of Brooklyn in 1909. 

Mundelein was named Archbishop of Chicago in December 1915 and installed the following February.  At that time he was the youngest American Archbishop, but also one of the most capable administrators.  Despite the restrictions of war-time economy (World War I) he was able to lay the foundations of economic administration that would permit a tremendous expansion of the Archdiocese even during the years of the great depression which lay ahead.  In 1924 Pius XI named Mundelein to the College of Cardinals—the first American Cardinal west of the Alleghany Mountains.  Returning from Rome with his red hat, Mundelein was given an exceptional civic reception in Chicago.  Arriving by special train from New York, the new Cardinal was greeted by the Mayor and members of the city council who escorted him to his cathedral in a parade with marching bands.  The cardinal’s limousine was emblazoned with his Coat of Arms and escorted by Chicago’s finest walking alongside.  At the Cathedral the Cardinal presided at a service of thanksgiving before proceeding to a reception for five thousand guests. 

Mundelein did everything on this scale and his magnificence made quite an impression on Chicago, but his crowning achievement was the construction of an opulent campus for  his new seminary and as a site for an international gathering of Catholic prelates and laity planned for 1926. 

In 1844 the State of Illinois had chartered a Catholic College at the request of Bishop William J. Quarter.  The school was meant primarily for the education of future clergy but the financial burden proved insupportable and the school closed in 1866.  Mundelein revived it in 1921 and situated it on the campus of a failed experimental educational institution in Area, Il—a village whose name was changed in 1925 to Mundelein in honor of the Cardinal.  Cardinal Mundelein spared no expense in building the campus of his new seminary.  A magnificent chapel—larger than many parish churches and built in a distinctly American Architectural style—was flanked by a huge library to the one side and a matching administration building and faculty residence on the other.  The philosophy wing stretched out the campus to one end, the theology to the other, all in perfect symmetry around the central chapel.  The campus also contains a gymnasium and theatre as well as a golf course.  Running down from the chapel  to an artificial lake are flights of stairs. The lake is the center point of the campus.  Three large piers reach out into the lake, the larger center one directly below the chapel with the two smaller ones flanking it.  The entire campus was designed as the location for the 1926 Eucharistic Congress Mundelein hosted in Chicago. 

Nothing bespeaks Mundelein’s princely tastes like the 1926 Eucharistic Congress.  Mundelein met Cardinal Bonzano, the papal legate, in New York and escorted him and Cardinals O’Donnell of Armagh (Ireland), Hayes of New York, Charost of Rennes, Reig y Casanova of Toledo (Spain), Du Bois of Paris, von Faulhaber of Munich, Piffl of Vienna, and Czernoch of Esztergom (Hungary) back to Chicago.  Each of the Cardinals had his own private Pullman car for himself and his entourage, painted Cardinal red and decorated with his coat of arms.  The train made a grand sweep of the Catholic Northeast—Utica, Syaracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo where it was greeted by throngs of devout Catholics. On the morning of Thursday, June 17^th, The train arrived at Chicago’s Park Row station on Michigan Avenue from which the Cardinals were taken in parade to Soldier Field for a Mass with over a half-million people present. 

Mundelein’s triumph was resented by Cardinal O’Connell of Boston who, though he had to be present, refused a place on the Cardinal’s train and instead came from Boston by steamer across the great lakes.  In full Cardinal’s regalia, he led 500 pilgrims from Boston off the ship to the celebrations. 

The entire Congress was a meant to be—and was—a triumph of Catholicism over the dominant American Democratic Protestant culture. For a week, Chicago was flooded with the scarlets and purples and magentas of Cardinals, bishops, and monsignors in their finery.  The final ceremony, held at Mundelein’s new seminary with a procession around the lake and Solemn Benediction being given to the crowd of one million from the central pier below the seminary chapel was perhaps the most outrageously extravagant piece of liturgical theater in this country’s history—a sort of Catholic precursor to the dramatic Nuremburg rallies of the third Reich.  The cost of the entire event will never be known and certainly today could never be duplicated.  I am not sure what Jesus would have thought of this, but in many ways Mundelein, while over the top by today’s standards, was, in his own time, an effective evangelist.  First of all it must be remembered that he built Chicago’s Catholic Charities, the largest charitable institution in the City of Chicago.  He had a Saint Vincent de Paul association established in every parish.  He built a Catholic School system that provided both immigrant and American children a quality education that afforded them a chance to break out of poverty and into the Middle Class.  He built a network of Catholic hospitals and health-care institutions that ministered to all Chicagoans, regardless of religious affiliation. 

Mundelein was a political liberal and strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal.  He was a good balance to the autocratic Cardinal O’Connell of Boston—with whom he had a rivalry and contest for power that was anything but friendly.  Mundelein took on the infamous Father Coughlin when Coughlin began using his radio pulpit to push anti-semitism.  And Mundelein famously referred to Adolph Hitler as “an Austrian paper-hanger, and not a good one at that.”  To a great extent his princely style enhanced his public presence and enabled  him to wield the sort of power he needed to accomplish the good that he did.  He created a mystique of power around himself that awed Catholic and non-Catholic alike.  It would not work today, indeed today would be a scandal, but we cannot judge people in the past by today’s standards.  In the end, I am a bit nonplussed by George Mundelein.  I find that I can’t respect him for his style, but neither can I judge him for his accomplishments.  He is a curiosity from an age that I am glad has passed but have to acknowledge for the successes of its own day.  

Time for New Directions --Let the Sheep Lead the Shepherds

Bishop Franz Peter Tebartz van Elst

This past week Pope Francis appointed Bishop Manfred Grothe, auxiliary bishop of Paderborn, to replace Franz Peter Tebartz van Elst as Bishop of Limburg.  You may remember that the Holy Father furloughed Tabartz van Elst several months ago after complaints that the bishop was spending forty-three million dollars on refurbishing the Diocesan Center which includes his residence. Among the luxuries the bishop was installing was a 20,000 dollar bathtub and over 600,000 dollars of artwork.  Tebartz-van-Elst is a Benedict XVI appointee and very much of the sort of Bishop that Benedict favored.  Like Benedict he comes from the Middle Class (despite the “van” in his name: in German, “von” would denote nobility.)  And like Benedict he is given to an exquisite (if somewhat baroque) taste in matters of liturgical vesture, ceremonial, and surroundings.  He has been a strong advocate of Benedict’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificium encouraging the use of the pre-conciliar 1962 liturgical rites.   Unfortunately for Bishop Tebartz van-Elst, there has been a new sheriff in town these past twelve months and he has some very different priorities than his predecessor Pope Benedict. 
Tebartz-van-Elst was a bit of an easy target—not simply because he spent such outrageous funds on the renewal of his diocesan center.  Frankly, given the historic nature of the buildings themselves as well as the plan to open a diocesan museum with many historical artifacts available to visitors, much of the expense could be justified—though probably not the 20,000 dollar bathtub, or the 300,000 dollar private chapel.  The problem is that the bishop has a bit of a track record of falsifying financial reports to hide his extravagances. 
This sort of sense of entitlement has long been closely woven into the clerical state and particularly for prelates.  A friend of mine, Father Dominic Monti, is a Franciscan friar.  Father Dominic always tells the story of how people, in their generosity, give the friars a bottle of Macallan 15 year old Scotch, or they send a tray of Italian pastries from Ferrara’s on Grand Street, or a pair of tickets to a Broadway Show (orchestra seats, of course) because “nothing is too good for the friars.”  And, as Dominic points out, the friars come to believe it and won’t drink their Johnny Walker Red anymore or eat Sara Lee or Entemann’s.  And if this is what happens to the green wood, what about the dry?  It is very easy for clergy, both religious and secular, to become used to the finer things in life, and it isn’t easy to go back to the farm after you have seen Paree.
When it comes to bishops and their life styles, the culture of opulence is even stronger.  There was a day when American Bishops like John England of Charleston or Saint John Neumann of Philadelphia had threadbare clothes and worn out soles.  But that day didn’t last.  The Michael Augustine Corrigans and George Mundeleins and William O’Connell’s felt that if the Church in American was to come into its own, its bishops had to live like the barons of business who were America’s new-blood nobility.  Palatial residences were built and chauffer driven cars were the norm.  Rings and pectoral crosses were heavily jeweled.  The protocols of the Roman palaces were observed with a silver tray to hold the prelate’s saturno placed in the foyer as a sign that His Excellency (, Grace, or Eminence) was at home.  The expectation was that the Bishop would live like the mightiest of his neighbors.  Those expectations die hard.  Young clerical wanna-be’s get the hunger for the finer things from early on.  Read the autobiography of Fulton Sheen.  From the time he was a seminarian he never travelled except first class.  He set his heart on being a bishop and prayed for that call every day of his life from when he was a young man.  And when it came to clothes or housing or graciousness of life, he never compromised.  So why are we surprised when men become bishops and will not settle for anything less than the best.
John Joseph Myers, Archbishop of Newark, dined at a rectory some years back before celebrating confirmation there.  The Pastor had received the instructions that “His Grace” drinks a particular gin along with some tonic and lemon.  He will have a filet mignon along with a baked potato and broccoli for dinner.  At dinner, he was showing the clergy his cuff-links and how they matched his episcopal ring.  All three were set with Roman coins from the time of Jesus.  When a young—and tactless—curate said “that had to put you back a penny or two,” His Grace replied “O, an Archbishop never pays for these things.”  Hmmm.  Trinkets don’t go on trees. 
Well, His Grace had no plans of paying for the 3,000 square foot addition to his vacation home either and now all this is blowing up in his face.  Pope Francis has changed the style of life for the Pope  You might think bishops would follow suit.  Unfortunately, to change the men who have embraced that style is a long slow one-by-one procedure and Francis may well not have the time in his pontificate to do it.  Yes, Bishop Tebartz-van-Elst was relieved of his responsibilities as Bishop of Limburg.  And yes, Myers was given a strong hint that he is free to resign when he was given a coadjutor Archbishop last autumn—though Myers seems to be too thick to take the clue.  But there are dozens, no, scores, of bishops who don’t seem a bit tone deaf to Francis’s new tune.  Culture is slow to change, even when the Gospel is so clear in its call to service rather than aggrandizement.  But then, while decay often begins at the top (and Italian proverb says that “the fish rots from the head down,” reform usually begins at grass roots.  Rather than condemn those prelates who think they are still prelates, perhaps we need to look at ourselves and ask ourselves how we can respond the to the gospel call to be a Church of service to those in need rather than be a Church of pomp and circumstance.  It would be great to have shepherds to lead us, but for the interim, the Gospel is more than enough to point out the path. 

Gay Lobby in the Vatican? Ya Think?

Does this make
me look gay?

So Pope Francis says there is a “gay lobby” in the Vatican?  All due respect to the Holy Father, but there has been a gay lobby in the Vatican so long that it might actually qualify as “Apostolic Tradition.”  Peter Damian complained of it in the eleventh century and it was nothing new then.  
And we have had our share of gay popes.  Pope Paul II Barbo (reigned 1464-1471)—the Pope who built the fabulous Palazzo Venezia in Rome—died while being sodomized by a page.  Sixtus IV dellaRovere, (1471-1484) the Pope who built the Sistine Chapel, was openly homosexual during his pontificate and his nephew, Julius II dellaRovere, (1503-`1513) the pope who hired Michelangelo to fresco the Chapel ceiling, was a bisexual who allegedly rewarded one male lover with an archbishopric. Leo X Medici (1513-1521) was also said to be a practicing homosexual.  Julius III Ciocchi del Monte (1550-1555) made his lover,  a beggar youth of fourteen, a boy of great beauty and little intelligence, a Cardinal, and eventually Secretary of State, to the scandal of Church reformers such as Reginald Pole and Giovanni Carafa (later Paul IV).  To be fair, most popes of this period were, or had been before their election, sexually active; these few just preferred the company of gentlemen in their beds to those of the ladies.  There have been some rumors about more recent popes but at this point they are only rumors and not accepted as historically reliable stories. 
Not so for members of the Roman Curia or the Sacred College.  Among the American Cardinals it seems that Cardinal O’Connell of Boston (Archbishop 1907-1944) was blackmailed by his nephew, Monsignor James P. O’Connell, to keep secret a sexual relationship the Cardinal had with a judge.  There are some particularly salacious stories about O’Connell’s Roman Patron, the English/Spanish Cardinal Rafael Merry Del Val who served as Secretary of State (and almost vice-pope) to Pope Saint Pius X.  Upon the election of Pius’ Successor, the prudish Benedict XV, Merry del Val’s was pushed to the margins and his influence never again the same as it had been.  Stories alleging the death of George, Cardinal Mundelein (Archbishop of Chicago 1915-1939) was related to a homosexual love triangle have long circulated but what gives them credibility is that among those who told the gossip was the eminent Catholic Church historian, Monsignor John Tracy Ellis, himself a priest of Mundelein’s Archdiocese of Chicago.  And of course the stories about the homosexual double life of Cardinal Francis Spellman (Archbishop of New York 1939-1967) are widely accepted as factual.  Some stories even have ties between Spellman and the double life of long time FBI director, J.Edgar Hoover.  If the Spellman stories are true, and I think there is sufficient evidence to warrant their credibility, Spellman had to have protectors and allies not only in the Church but in law enforcement.    
As for the current scene in Rome, having lived there off and on over the last twenty-five  years and being a frequent visitor to the city, the gossip about prelates and priests with same-sex orientation abounds at every dinner party, every religious house, every seminary, every coffee bar.  The “Gay Bars” of Rome thrive with clerical customers.  Some prelates make little or no attempt to hide their homosexuality with their handsome young priests or seminarians trailing behind them whether to a Papal Mass at Saint Peter’s or embassy receptions.  Other prelates and priests live in fear of being betrayed or discovered but still have their liaisons with Swiss guards or young monks or petitioners who have come to Rome seeking some favor or dispensation.  Every so often the newspapers report a priest or monsignor being picked up by the police at the Termini (the train station) or the Pincio for soliciting sex and it never seems to be from a woman—though sometimes it is from one of Rome’s famous transvestite prostitutes.
So is there a “gay lobby” at the Vatican.  No doubt.  No surprise.  What this experience should teach the Church is that there is a need to rethink its theology of human sexuality from the foundations up.  Not only the mystery of sin and grace that is revealed to priests hearing confession should call for a re-estimation of sexual moral theology, but the lived experience of the clergy themselves should make them evaluate the true nature of human sexuality, whether “gay” or “straight.”   I am not saying that  that there should be a carte blanche for irresponsible sexual behavior but it does mean that we should know from our own experiences of grace that the magisterium’s current moral definitions are far more narrow than the parameters in which God works.