It Just Never Ends, Does It?

Ah, Cardinal Pell sneaking out for his afternoon gelato.  

Pope Francis, Pope John Paul II, the Krazies, and the Synod

Cardinal Donald Wuerl

As mentioned in my most recent posting, the mid-term relatio has caused quite a stir, especially among the neo-trads who can’t see how the Church could ever move away from their pre-conceived ideas about marriage and family life.  On the Synod floor, several prelates such as the resolute Cardinal Burke, the somewhat less steadfast Cardinal Pell,  the less known South African Cardinal Napier, and Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki who heads the Polish Bishops’ Conference have raised serious challenges to the relatio.  On the other hand, the American Cardinal Wuerl, German Cardinal Reinhardt Marx, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Shönoborn, and Italian Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri have lined up solidly behind Cardinal Kasper and Archbishop Forte in pushing for the agenda advanced in the relatio.  Meanwhile, out in Saint Peter’s Square and in the world beyond—especially in the blogosphere—each side is claiming the tide is turning in their favor.  Who knows?  In a certain way, the relatio is bound to be the high-water mark of the Synod—or at least of this Synod which is only phase I of a two-Synod process.  The final document of this Synod is bound to reflect to some degree the objections of the Burke/Pell faction to the proposed relatio.  The extent to which the conservative reaction will alter the final product is yet to be seen. 
And, as I pointed out several entries back, it gives Pope Francis and his frontmen, Cardinal Kasper and others, a year to answer the objections of the conservative wing as well as to shuffle the deck to a certain degree.  I say “to a certain degree” because the Holy Father does not get to appoint the heads of the various bishops’ conferences who come as delegates, though he may appoint others of his choice to be voting members of the Synod and he appoints the officers of the Synod as well.  And too, in the end the Synod is advisory to the Holy Father and not deliberative.  The final recommendations of the 2015 Synod will probably mark out how far Francis will go in pushing for change in the Church, but it won’t deter him from going to those limits.  It will be very interesting to watch the Holy Father’s homilies and especially his Sunday Angelus messages to see how he tries over the course of the year to shape the direction.  Of course, he has already lost the confidence of the Katholic Krazies who will watch every move and yell bloody murder whenever they hear him say something that tries to push his progressive agenda.  It is just so much fun to see the buskin on the other foot.  But let’s go back to the proposed relatio and in particular to continue on the current subject of argument, paragraphs 50-52 on “welcoming homosexual Catholics.”  Paragraph 52 reads:

Without denying the moral problems associated with homosexual unions, there are instances where mutual assistance to the point of sacrifice is a valuable support in the life of these persons. Furthermore, the Church pays special attention to [...] children who live with same-sex couples and stresses that the needs and rights of the little ones must always be given priority.         

Several of the Krazy bloggers have gone after Cardinal Shönborn for his defense of the love that exists between partners in same-sex relationships, questioning how this love could be “holy” when it is so gravely sinful.  The Cardinal had related that he has friends who live in a registered same-sex partnership in Vienna where he, Shönbron, is Archbishop.  As one of the partners became ill, the Cardinal said the other “has not left is side,” Shöbron went on to say “It was wonderful, human, and Christian, as the one took care of the other.”  Why is the Cardinal so surprised about the depth of commitment and why are the bloggers questioning how this love can be considered to be holy.  All love between or among people is holy.  There may—or may not—be a legitimate question about the sanctity of a sexual relationship between two people but the love between the partners can be just as holy—or, in some cases even more holy—than the love between two people in a sacramental marriage.  Ideally, of course, the most perfect human love would be between two people joined in Christ in the Sacrament of Matrimony, but as objectively holy as this love should be, in the reality of the mystery of sin and grace there is no reason that the marital love in a particular sacramental marriage might not be surpassed in sanctity  by other human bonds, including that of two men or two women whose sexual relationship falls outside the Christian ideal but whose love is nevertheless real and extraordinary in its self-gift. 

Ironically the shift in understanding of human love that we are seeing at the Synod can be attributed to the emphasis on personalism which characterized the writing of Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II.  In Philosophy and Theology we are never to lose sight of the uniqueness of the individual person as a manifestation of the Creator’s goodness, an object of the Creator’s love, and a collaborator in the Creator’s design.   As a consequence the individual must always be accorded human respect and given the opportunity for self-realization in the context of the larger society.  He or she can never be subordinated to the good of that larger society, though Christian faith makes the willing self-surrender of the individual for the common good an act of virtue (and in the extreme of heroic virtue) in imitation of Christ’s free self-surrender both in the kenosis of the Incarnation and in the Sacrifice of the Cross.  Indeed, for the Christian, because we are called to conform ourselves to Christ, it is precisely in this self-gift that we find ourselves most perfectly “realized.”   To the extent that we not merely love but love in such a way as ourselves to incarnate that Love which is the Divine Nature in whose image and likeness we have been created, we truly self-realize.  But pardon me, other than saying that such self-emptying love is not limited to marriage, nor is it always found in marriage (even Sacramental marriage), let me admit that I am crossing the line here from history into philosophy and so let me retreat to a historical perspective. 
For centuries people in the Church, including some at the uppermost levels of the hierarchy have—and at times purportedly in the Church’s name have—overlooked the intrinsic value of each human person and sanctioned biases and bigotries that have ignored the value and dignity of the human person.  I could go through the usual list of atrocities that the Church’s detractors drag out—the base slaughters that accompanied the fall of Jerusalem to the Crusaders in 1099, The Albigensian Crusades, the persecution of Muslims and Jews in the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella, the long and ugly history of anti-Semitism in Catholic Europe, the sanctioning of slavery, the linking of colonialism and evangelization, the persecution of the Huguenots,  the betrayal of the Jesuit missions to the Guarani—the list goes on and on but despite the polemics the facts are there.  We, as a Church, have too often been on the wrong side of racial and religious bigotry.  We have too often totally ignored the fact that each and every human person has an intrinsic and inalienable right not only to life, not only to basic human dignity, but live in such a way as to realize the potential God has created in him or her and to make the contribution to the human family for which God has created him or her.  This is not contingent on one’s sexual orientation anymore than it is dependent on one’s race or religious beliefs. 
I have lived a considerable portion of my life below the Mason Dixon Line.  I have seen the Catholic Churches in Maryland and Virginia and Louisiana and other places and I have seen their balconies where non-white Catholics were relegated to sit at Mass.  I have heard the stories from men and women who remember that they had to come to Holy Communion after the “white folk,” that they could not be altar-boys because they were “colored,” that they were told that they could not join a particular religious order because of their race.  This has only changed in living memory.  I know priests who told me that they were, as young priests, forbidden by law to marry couples of mixed race.  They never questioned those laws.  When the Civil Rights movement began to work for change in American society, many of these priests were told by their bishops that they were not to speak out in favor of racial equality.   I know of bishops who insisted, when they visited an African-American parish for confirmation, that the altar servers who handled their miter and crosier wear gloves.  The Personalist philosophy of Pope John Paul runs contrary to this sort of bigotry but there is still plenty of bigotry in the Church today.  We may not see it when it is directed to the LGBT community but then we didn’t see it either when it was directed to non-whites. 
This Synod threatens to pull the rug out of those who justify their bigotry on “moral” grounds.  The Synod is not changing any moral doctrine.  It points out very bluntly that there are moral quandaries associated with same-sex relationships.  It makes it very clear that same-sex unions, while they may achieve an equality before the civil law with “traditional marriage,” cannot be reconciled with our Christian faith as presented in the Catholic Tradition.   But the relatio does seem to be calling us to treat all God’s children with that inalienable respect to which they are entitled as human persons.  It does seem to be admonishing us not to discriminate against people—or against the children entrusted to them—in name of “Christian morality.”  It can hardly do less and be faithful to Christ and to his Gospel. 

The Papal Posse: White Hats, Black Hats, Red Hats

Will the Reformers get

beyond the guards? 

So Pope Francis has appointed a commission of eight Cardinals to spearhead the reform of the Roman Curia.  There is no doubt that such a reform is needed—indeed we can only hope that the reform will be as thorough and go as deep as it must to restore morale in the Catholic world.  So who is this reform team?  In this post we will look at four of them and hopefully, in the next post, the remaining four
Giuseppe Bertello is the seventy year old President of the Governatorate of the State of Vatican City.  As such he is a member of the Roman Curia though unlike most curial officials his principle duties are not spiritual or theological but involve the civil administration of Vatican City.  Cardinal Bertello spent years in the Vatican diplomatic corps serving as Papal Nuncio in several African countries as well as to the United Nations in Geneva, to Mexico, Italy, and San Marino.  While his primary duties are in civil administration, he also sits on the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the (very powerful) Congregation of Bishops, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.  He also holds the doctorate in Canon Law.  Along with Cardinal Pell, he is probably on the side of this commission more sympathetic to the curial party.   
Cardinal George Pell, 71, is the Archbishop of Sydney Australia.  Pell, a native of Ballarat, Victoria, did his theological studies at the Urbaniana in Rome and was ordained priest in 1966 in Rome.  He went on to earn a D.Phil. in history at Oxford.  He also holds a Masters in Education.  He was named an auxiliary bishop of Melbourne in 1987, Archbishop of Melbourne in 1996 and translated to Sydney in 2001.  He was named a Cardinal by John Paul II in 2003.  Pell tends towards more liberal views politically, supporting Australian republicanism but theologically conservative views, especially in regards to liturgical celebration.  He is very much, in Church matters, an “institution man.”  He is not particularly well liked by the clergy or faithful of his diocese for his high-handed ways, but he is not pastorally insensitive and tends to see Church reform—at the pastoral level—as evolutionary through educational processes and not to be imposed arbitrarily.  Pell was President of the Vox Clara commission which advised the Congregation for Divine Worship on the new English Translation of the Roman Missal.  In this role he greatly frustrated the members of the re-constituted ICEL (International Committee for English in the Liturgy)—as conservative as they were, he was even more so and much of the clumsy syntax of the new missal is due to his turgid style. His pompous pedantry should not be confused for the stupidity that marks other prelates of that ilk.  He is no dummy just a bourgeois trying to pass as a grandee.  Pell has served on a number of Vatican Congregations, Commissions, and Councils including that of Justice and Peace, of the Family, and Doctrine of the Faith.  He currently serves on the Congregation for Bishops.  Pell was highly critical of Pope Benedict for resigning fearing that such action to set a precedent that future popes will feel bound to.  In 2002 Pell was accused of sexual abuse dating back to an incident when he was a seminarian in 1960.  Pell cooperated with investigators and the charges were eventually deemed not credible by the investigative board. 
Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa is the 79 year old Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago Chile.  He is a member of the Schoenstatt Movement, a secular institute of priests and laity and served as their coordinator in Chile from 1965-1971.  He went on to serve on the General Council from 1971 to 1974 when he was elected superior general.  He remained in this post until he was named an Archbishop and brought to Rome to be secretary of the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life (generally known by the previous title Congregation of Religious).   In 1996 he was named bishop of Valparaiso and two years later translated to Santiago.  He was made a Cardinal in 2001.  He holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Fribourg.  He serves on the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of the Consecrated Life, the Pontifical Council on the Family, and the Council on the Church in Latin America.   He has an alarmingly poor record in dealing with the issue of clerical sex abuse indicating that he does not understand the gravity of the problem.  Overall, however, he is seen as a person sensitive to the needs of the poor and would take a more personalist approach to issues than an institutional one. 
Cardinal Oswald Gracias is the 68 year old Archbishop of Mumbai.  Cardinal Gracias comes from the background of the Catholic community of Goa established by the missionary work of Saint Francis Xavier in the sixteenth century.  he was educated in India not in Rome, however after ordination studied at the Urbianum where he received the doctorate in Canon Law.  He taught in seminaries in Mumbai, Poona, and Bangalore and was president of the Canon Law Society in India.  In 1997 he was named auxiliary bishop of Bombay, in 2000 Archbishop of Agra, and 2006 Archbishop of Bombay.  Benedict XVI named him a Cardinal in 2007.  He is a member of the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.  He is also a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Congregation for Catholic Education. Much like Pope Francis, he is more relaxed in his style than many of his peers. 
We will have to look at the remaining four prelates to get an estimation of the reform board but it can be said that these four all seem to be men of personal integrity.  Pell in particular would be more to the right, but none are American style liberals.  On the other hand, none seem to be particularly beholden to the curial party though Pell and Bertello in particular would probably be less inclined to drastic restructuring.  But in the end, who knows?  Time will tell. 

A Note on the Costume of Prelates



Archbishop-Designate Salvatore Cordileone

of San Francisco processing through the

streets of the Bay Area--seriously,  not

making this up!



You may have noticed that I don’t post the comments that come into my blog as it isn’t my intention to hold discussions but rather to present little known aspects of history or to make commentary on current situations in the light of the Church’s previous experience.  When I do get a question or a comment that merits some attention, I do try to respond indirectly.  In my last posting, I showed a picture of François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon,  (1651-1715) Archbishop of Cambrai (1696-1715) and it included a picture of the Archbishop wearing a blue mozetta over his rochet.  I had an inquiry asking if Fénelon were a Sylvesterine Benedictine as, my correspondent (an obvious lover of arcane knowledge) reminded me, until Paul VI reformed the costume of prelates in 1969 prelates  who were Benedictines of this congregation wore blue.  But the answer is no—Archbishop Fénelon was not a religious but rather that the custom of bishops and archbishops wearing amaranth purple (actually a red tending towards the purple) is a fairly recent phenomenon.  Previously this reddish color was reserved for monsignori of the papal household.  The Gilbert Stuart portrait of John Carroll, the first Catholic Bishop for the United States, has Carroll in a green mozetta.  Only those bishops and archbishops who, in addition to their responsibilities in their own dioceses, were made honorary members of the papal household wore the amaranth purple habits.  Sometimes people ask why monsignors dress like bishops when in fact historically it was bishops who began dressing like monsignors.  This reminds me of the old joke that while we don’t know when Jesus instituted the priesthood—was it the Last Supper (Do This in Memory of Me) or Easter Night (Whose Sins you Forgive are Forgiven), we do know when he instituted Monsignors.  You can find it in Matthew 6:28.  “See the lilies of the field—they neither toil nor spin; yet not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.”  In any event, in the middle of the nineteenth century it became all but universal that a man, on being made a bishop, was also automatically named an honorary prelate of the papal household and the green or blue episcopal habit disappeared in favor of the red.  The relic left behind, however, is that on his coat of arms a bishop’s (or Archbishop’s) hat is green, not red.  And the cord by which his pectoral cross is suspended is intertwined green and gold, not red and gold. 

Archbishop John Carroll, a man of

more restrained taste

Until the reforms of Paul VI, bishops (and Archbishops and Cardinals) of the monastic and mendicant orders wore choir vesture of the same design as secular prelates but of wool (not of silk) and in the traditional colors of their orders.  Thus most Benedictine prelates wore black; Franciscans grey; Dominicans  and Cistercians, white and black; Carmelites, brown and white and so on.  Prelates who were religious of the various societies and congregations (as distinguished from the “Orders”) such as Jesuits, Theatines, Oblates, etc. wore costumes of amaranth red (bishops and archbishops) or scarlet (cardinals) but of wool or broadcloth in deference to their vows of poverty rather than the silk of the secular clergy.  It made for a more colorful Church and was a bit more fun.  In 1969 however, Paul VI made drastic changes in the vesture of prelates.  He not only standardized the choir habit of all Western Rite prelates in color and design and fabric, but he abolished from papal ceremonies the cappa magna—the great cape with a train of nine yards that bishops could wear in their jurisdiction and Cardinals could wear wherever they wished.  He didn’t forbid prelates from wearing it in their own dioceses or Cardinals from wearing it outside the Diocese of Rome, but the vesture almost died out.  It has received a recent resurgence through the pomposity of such distinguished hierarchs as Raymond Burke, George Pell, Dario Castrillón-Hoyos and now Archbishop-designate Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.  Of course in San Fran Archbishop Cordileone will fit right in wearing a long train of silk.  I’m sure he won’t be alone in his penchant for lots of silk.          

More on the Papacy of John Paul II

the Cardinals file into Saint Peter's Basilica in the

procession bringing the body of Pope John Paul to the

Basilica for the lying in State.

I have been thinking about John Paul and his papacy since I wrote the last entry. While I had seen Paul VI during my first visit to Rome several months before he died, and I have seen Pope Benedict  numerous times both as Cardinal Ratzinger and after his election as pope, John Paul was the only pope I have ever actually met.   He was a charismatic man and even though I was long critical of his papacy, I always found it tremendous—in the classic sense of that word—to be in his presence, sort of a mysterium tremendum et fascinans in his own right.  But as a historian I am troubled by his papacy.  I can’t say that he left the Church better than he found it. Of course, to make such an evaluation one has to first select the criteria by which the papacy should be evaluated and one simply cannot find a consensus on that subject these days. But that is precisely the problem.  I think in 1978 when John Paul acceded to the Chair of Peter it would have been possible for scholars—historians, theologians, sociologists,--to reach a consensus, at least sufficient consensus for a worthwhile discussion, on the qualities of a beneficial papacy.  (I want to avoid words like “good” that are too value weighted.  Good is balanced by bad.  There is no room for nuance. Between beneficial and detrimental there is a considerable middle ground.)   I think even the folks in the pews, or at least the more thoughtful and well read of them, could have had intelligent and worthwhile discussions on the pros and cons of a particular papacy.  Today I think the Church, like the larger society, is far too polarized for there to be significant communication among the various factions that call themselves “Catholics.”  That polarization may not be John Paul’s fault—in its entirety.  It certainly isn’t his fault—in its entirety.  But did he contribute to it?  Did he make dialogue obsolete by insisting on a one-way chain of communication?   He showed a remarkable friendliness to the larger world, but did he show an openness to other sources of insight?   I think—and the 20^th century papacy is not my field of historical expertise—but I think that even Pius XII showed a respect for the opinions of the bishops of the world in making his pronouncements.  In fact, re-reading his encyclical letters such as Divino Afflante Spiritu, Mediator Dei, and Mystici Corporis I sense a tone of proposing doctrine to the Church rather than imposing it.  I should probably check the Latin text for subjunctives and not just rely on the English translations but I think John Paul actually envisioned a papal autocracy far stronger than pre-Vatican II Catholicism.  And I think he picked bishops, at least for here in the United States, that would fall like wheat before the wind to his authority rather than speak to him their thoughts and the faith of their flock.  The model seems to have been three hundred little gilt chairs in the Clementine Hall and John Paul would come in and tell the bishops what he had to say.  And then those bishops would come back to the States and come into a parish hall with three hundred aluminum chairs and tell their priests what he, the bishop, had to say.  And then the priest would get up in the pulpit and tell the people what he, the priest, had to say.  But this was where the wrinkle came into the process—on their way out of Church, or by a drop (or increase) in the weekly offering, or by dwindling attendance the people did talk back.  They had a voice to send their agreement or their disagreement.  But there was (is) no channel for the priest to bring the message back to the bishop, nor the bishop to the pope.  And so the voice goes nowhere.  The frustration of not being heard eventually disheartens, the sense of belonging fades.  What is worse is that one of the sources of revelation—the consensus fidelium—is bottled up with a stopper.  The system is broken and over the last forty years or so the “system” has gradually lost its force.  And all the Raymond Burkes and George Pells with their trailings of scarlet silk won’t bring it back.  And all the screaming harangues and pulpit pyrotechnics of the birettaed neo-con priests won’t put the toothpaste of moral authority back in the Catholic tube.   Don’t get me wrong—I am a historian, the Church will survive.  The papacy will survive—and flourish.  But the particular institutional model with which we have been familiar won’t.  It is already dead,  a hollow shell.  

The crowd was diverse but young

     One of the most interesting things about the papacy of John Paul II was the phenomenon of his funeral.   I was living in Rome at the time—and had been for several years.  The street I lived on was closed to traffic because the lines to enter the basilica to pay respects snaked past my door.  (I had a pass that enabled me to enter the Basilica through the sacristy and so I didn’t have to wait.)  The night he collapsed in his apartment I had been getting ready for bed—around eleven thirty in the evening—and one last check of the internet revealed that he had suffered a serious medical crisis.  I immediately got dressed and walked over to Saint Peter’s Square.  There were about a hundred people there at the time—and lots of police starting to set up barricades and get ready for the crowds that they knew would begin to gather at dawn when the word began to spread.  As I stood at the railing looking up at the windows of his apartment the man next to me pulled out a microphone/recorder and asked if he could interview me.  He did and then asked for my card.   The next morning I had a call from the BBC radio asking for a meeting and they brought me on as a commentator.  Before I knew it I was on all the major networks, radio and television, in the UK the US and Ireland.  One of the funniest stories was my sister-in-law was fixing dinner and said to my brother—“who’s your brother talking to in the family room?”  She heard the voice from the television and thought that I had come home unexpectedly and was in the next room talking with one of my nephews.  It was only when she started listening to what I was saying she realized I wasn’t there but on the television.  All this is prelude to sharing my impressions of the crowds.  It was a young crowd—I am sure that 70% of those lined up were under 30.  “Why did you come?”  I would ask and the people would say how much John Paul meant to them.  They would say how much they loved him.  They told me how much they admired him.   Now these were almost all Europeans—French, Germans, Italians, Poles, English, Irish, Scots—Canadians, and Americans.  They were there in their jeans and their halter tops or their t-shirts and they were chatting away and exchanging emails and phone numbers and taking each other’s pictures.  And I am sure that they did love John Paul and admired him.  Despite their very casual dress and buoyant attitude there was nothing disrespectful.  They had, most of them I am sure, interrupted trips to various parts of Europe to converge on Rome for this massive event.  They were orderly, if not well dressed.  They would break into prayer or religious songs as well as chatter and picture-taking.  “But,” I asked myself, “while they have come out of admiration for this man like an old uncle or grandfather—do you think they take him seriously about birth-control? Or homosexuality?  Or pre-marital sex?  Or even about the legal status of abortion?” 
     John Paul left a very different Church than he found.  The brief pontificate of John Paul I aside—it is only a blip in history—the Church itself had seemed old and discouraged with the final years of Paul VI.  John Paul was just as old by the time he died and yet he left a Church that cherished him as an old man.  But while the Church cherished him personally, did he have the same moral authority as had his predecessors?   For all his efforts to strengthen the papacy, I think it lost ground—and with it authority of the Church itself lost ground—in his pontificate.  I think his pontificate will be a significant marker in the historical evolution of the papacy.   

Two Churches--To Serve or to Be Served

The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve
Matthew 20:28

I am anxious to move on to the subject of the Gregorian Reform but should finish exploring the need for Reform in the contemporary Church beforehand.  While I love the past and can regale myself—if not others—for hours with historical details, I firmly believe that history is not about the past.  Those interested in the past qua past are not historians but antiquarians.   History, on the other hand, employs the past as a means of discussing and understanding the present and constructing the future.   In the August 1  posting I made a claim that the conflicts over the “correct” interpretation of the Second Vatican Council have left us with a bifurcated Church,  with one branch looking backwards to a world of power and pomp and another looking forward into a new world and a new role for the church in the world.  Avery Dulles wrote in his book The Catholicity of the Church, (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1985.  p. 136):  
... papal primacy in the first millennium was envisaged principally as witness, and was closely linked to what had been called the apostolicity of the Church.  In the second millennium, until Vatican Council II, papal authority was understood as a matter of power, and was linked to the Church’s attribute of unity.  A more recent kind of theology, reflected in the documents of Vatican II, links papal primacy rather with service, and interprets it in relation to the catholicity of the Church.    
      It is an interesting observation and if there is a flaw in Dulles’ analysis it is that applies this three-millennia-schema to papal authority when in fact it actually fits the wider self-understanding not simply of the papacy but of the Church itself.  It was not only the papacy, but the Church itself that understood its apostolic mission to be kergymatic, that is to witness to the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That understanding of mission shifted as the first millennium gave way to the second, the very time of the Gregorian Reform of which we are soon to speak, and not only the papacy but the Church itself saw that its “mark” of unity required to have a universal dominion, i.e. a power that extended over all peoples of all times.  The transition was not a smooth one as well shall see—in fact well into the second millennium there were still voices such as Peter Waldo and Francis of Assisi—who rejected the power model in favor of the witness model.  Nonetheless, the power model won out and the Church fitted its structures to accommodate it.  The papacy picked up the trappings of monarchy, the bishops forged alliances with the princes—indeed were often princes themselves.  The hierarchical nature of the Church became more evident as ecclesial power consolidated itself in the hands of prelates and indeed as the evangelical concept of authority gave way to the notion of “power” in ways that Jesus had explicitly condemned.  The liturgy too evolved in ways that emphasized power and hierarchy.  Ecclesial and social hierarchies mutually collaborated to reinforce each other’s dominance over the working and peasant classes and the Church became hopelessly (though at the time it was seen not as hopeless but as the ideal) entwined with the civil powers to create the ancien regime.  When that regime came tumbling down with the Bastille in 1789 (and the subsequent decade) the Church worked for its reestablishment, despising democracy, trumpeting absolutism and monarchy.  If you recall the various entries in this blog about “Americanism” you will remember that the Holy See really didn’t know how to deal with the unique situation of the American Church with its republican convictions in a world of monarchial Catholicism.   
     And so, according to Dulles, the time has come again to shift the paradigm—this time from power that guarantees the Church to be “one”   (though it never really did) to the catholicity of the Church marked by an upcoming millennium of service.  And here is where the conflict lies.  There are those who cannot let go of the “power” paradigm with its trappings of monarchy and lordly domination.  They love their Tridentine Mass which so clearly displays the hierarchy of persons in ecclesial society.  The Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest based at Gricigliano in Tuscany epitomizes this ecclesiology of obsolescent fantasy and the ostentatious displays of Cardinals Burke, Pell, and Castrillón Hoyos as they travel the world in their ermine trimmed cappae magnae keep alive the hope of those who believe in a world of kings and peasants and hope to see once again throne and altar united and Catholicism supreme throughout the world.  
      There is, on the other hand,  those who recall and regard as prophetic the speech by Bishop Emil deSmedt  in the first session of Vatican II calling for an end to “triumphalism, juridicism, and clericalism”  There are those in the Church today who have a radical vision of a Church putting itself at the service of the poor.  Some, like Mother Teresa, embraced this new vision from a very conservative perspective.  Others, like Dorothy Day came at it from a very left field.  Some, like Archbishop Helder Camara or the American bishop, Bernard Topel just walked away from cumbersome pomp of their office and became witnesses to a truly apostolic Gospel.  Others, like the martyred Oscar Romero had been “party men” who found themselves surprisingly, even against their own expectations, converted to a radical Christianity.  Some were simply hard workers who pitched in and got things done like the four American churchwomen (Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, Dorothy Kazel, and Jean Donovan) martyred in El Salvador.  Some, like theologian Monika Hellwig,  left religious life in order to live the Gospel even more authentically than would have been possible as a religious.  Others—like Dulles himself—found that religious life and the institution of the Church gave them the better platform from which to make their contribution.   
       There are those who find this paradigm shift to be very difficult, indeed threatening, to accept and who do what they can to resist it.  Gamarelli’s stays in business supplying silver buckled shoes and purple stockings for those curial monsignori who are not about to give up the buttons and bows they’ve dreamed of since their seminary days.  Those members of the Roman Curia who are members of or have influence with the Congregation for Bishops try to insure that men named to the episcopacy today are not too inclined to the service model foretold by Dulles.  Certainly in the United States most bishops are quite friendly to be with and usually without much pretense,  but at the same time are corporation men through and through who will not effect any drastic social reformation within the Church or regarding the Church’s position in society.  But the wheels of history, while they do turn slowly, turn nonetheless and eventually one will come to the Chair of Peter who knows that humble service speaks the gospel more convincingly to our contemporary world than do the circumstances of pomp.  Dulles, I have no doubt, is right—service will mark the Church of the third millennium but we are only in the second decade of that epoch and there is much time to come.  The autocracy and the silk gowns alike will one day appear as ridiculous anachronisms  and the battles over models of the Church will be a historical footnote—at least until the paradigm must shift again.