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

Cardinal O'Malley leads today's inter-

faith service at Holy Cross Cathedral

Boston for victims of the Boston

Marathon Bombing. President Obama

is in the pulpit speaking his message

to the assembled congregtion. 

In our last post we looked at four of the eight Cardinals Pope Francis has appointed for the Reform of the Roman Curia.  In this post we will look at the next four. 
Cardinal Reinhard Marx is the 59 year old Archbishop of Munich und Freising in Germany—a post held previously by Josef Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus.  Cardinal Marx is chair of the German  Bishops’ Conference Commission on Social Issues.  In the Curia he serves on the Congregation for Catholic Education, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. He is also President of the Bishops Conferences of the European Union.  He holds a doctorate in theology from the Ruhr University Bochum.  German doctorates are probably the most academically sound degrees in the entire academic world, but Bochum is, by European (and even American) standards a new university without an established heritage.  Typical to German universities it houses distinct faculties both in Protestant and Catholic theologies and it hasn’t yet had the opportunity to earn the sort of reputation for excellence as Tubingen, Freiburg, Mainz, or Munich.  Cardinal Marx would be slightly right of center in his theology but socially progressive.  In 2008, playing on his name, he published a book:  Das Kapital: A Plea For Man which subjects free market capitalism to the critique of Catholic Social Ethics.   Capitalism is judged and found wanting.  However Marx goes no further in his critique than the papal magisterium which has found capitalism to be rooted in materialism, the same heresy from which springs Marxism.     
Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya is the 73 year old Archbishop of Kinshasa in the Congo.  He studied in Rome at the Urbaniana and the Pontifical Biblical Institute and in Jerusalem at the Pontifical Biblical Institute.  He is a disciple of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit biblical scholar and former archbishop of Milan who before his death last year opined that the Church “is 200 years behind the times.”  Monsengwo Pasinya is co-President of Pax Christi International.  He is a member of the Congregations for Catholic Education and Evangelization of Peoples, and the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, Culture, and Social Communications.  In seeing the connection between the Social Order and Justice, Peace, and Christian Spirituality, he is a sort of Catholic Desmond Tutu.  He is probably the most progressive member of this commission. 
 Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, SDB, is the 70 year old Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.  A member of the Salesians of Don Bosco he would normally be presumed to be a team-player of Cardinal Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone, a fellow Salesian who has used his powerful post to plant members of his religious order in key positions throughout the Church, a sort of Salesian mafia.  Nevertheless, Rodriguez Maradiaga took on (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) Bertone over the shameful treatment the Secretary of State handed out to the former Secretary of Caritas International, Lesley-Anne Knight (see entry for February 16, 2012).   Various sources connected to Caritas—of which Rodriguez Maradiaga is President—say he is his own man. 
Like many Salesians, Rodriguez Maradiaga is incredibly over-educated.  He holds Doctorates in Philosophy, Theology, and Moral Theology.  He also holds a diploma in clinical psychology and psychotherapy and is a classically trained pianist.  He speaks at least six languages.  Named an auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa in 1978 he became Archbishop of the same diocese in 1993 and was named a Cardinal in 2001.  In addition to his responsibilities with Caritas International, Rodriguez Maradiaga is a member of the Congregation for Catholic Education.    He is probably the sharpest member of this commission which is a distinction given the high quality of his colleagues.  He works very well with laity and doesn’t suffer from the misogyny that afflicts many of the prelates whom he is being sent to investigate.  No liberal in American terms, he is one of the more progressive members of this commission.
Sean Patrick O’Malley is the 68 year old Archbishop of Boston and the only U.S. member of this commission.  Born near Pittsburgh PA, O’Malley professed first vows as a Capuchin Franciscan at the age of 21.  Five years later he was ordained a priest.  Cardinal O’Malley holds a Masters in Religious Education and a Doctorate in Spanish and Portuguese Literature from the Catholic University in Washington DC.  He briefly taught at Catholic University before becoming Vicar for Hispanic Ministry in the Archdiocese of Washington.  He brought incredible organizational skills to this ministry, opening centers offering legal and medical assistance to immigrants and starting a Spanish language Catholic newspaper.  The late Cardinal James Hickey, when Archbishop of Washington, took O’Malley under his wing as a protégé.  O’Malley managed to work closely with Hickey while maintaining his integrity,  no small feat given Hickey’s unholy alliance with Cardinal Law.  Undoubtedly his Franciscan spirituality is what has kept O’Malley focused on the Church’s mission to the poor while other protégé’s of Hickey’s have drunk the careerism Kool-Aid.    In 1984 O’Malley was named coadjutor bishop of Saint Thomas in the American Virgin Islands and succeeded to the see the following year.  In 1992 he was moved to the Fall River MA diocese where his ability to speak Portuguese was a great pastoral asset.  While there he did a remarkable job of handling the sex-abuse crisis in his diocese.  In 2002 he was sent to the Diocese of Palm Beach to clean up the scandal there where the two previous bishops themselves had been named in charges of misconduct.   Given his reputation he was a natural choice for the Boston Archdiocese where the arrogance of Cardinal Law, then Archbishop, in refusing to respond responsibly to charges against numbers of his clergy led to a total loss of credibility in the Church.  While O’Malley did heroic work in addressing the cleanup of the sex-abuse crisis, the need to close numbers of schools and parishes because of financial difficulties and personnel shortages has made O’Malley less than popular among many Catholics.  Conservatives have been further outraged by the Cardinal’s presiding over the funeral of the late Senator Ted Kennedy and his welcome to President Obama to the Cathedral for the Kennedy Funeral and then for the Interfaith Service marking the tragedy of the Boston Marathon Bombing.  O’Malley is somewhat right of center—you don’t get to be a Cardinal ordinarily if you are too left wing—but his personal integrity and apparent spiritual depth raises him above the ideological divide to be one of the most admired prelates in America.  He also is a possible key ally in giving the sisters of LCWR a fair hearing in the halls of a reformed Curia.  
Next time: how this all ties together for the job at hand.

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.