When Bishops Forgot They Were Apostles, Resumed

The Mausoleum Chapel that had been the tomb

of Cardinal William O'Connell before his remains

were expelled from what is now Boston College

grounds.

  Well, I guess the Pope Francis is going to “profane” the Holy Thursday Mass again this year by indiscriminately washing the feet of men and those lesser people we call "women" as well.  O well.  “The old order passeth away and giveth place unto the new.”  But we aren’t going to go there, other than giving a shout-out to the Holy Father for letting us know that some rules are just stupid and should be treated as such.  Are you listening, Bishop Morlino?   Probably not.  If bishops listened we wouldn’t be in the mess we are now.  Of course, on the one hand Archbishop Gregory listened; Archbishop Myers apparently has not which brings us back to our topic of Bishops living like princes. 
I left off half-way through the saga of William Cardinal O’Connell.  I had already mentioned his palatial Italian Renaissance villa in Brighton which he built for himself and his successors and which Cardinal O’Malley ironically had to sell off to pay the debts incurred by the malfeasance of his predecessor, Cardinal Law, in handling matters of sexual abuse.    But there is so much more to the O’Connell story that I am not ready to move on. 
When it comes to irony, my favorite O’Connell story is irony’s payback to one of the most mean-spirited acts of cold revenge that I have ever encountered.  Remember that I mentioned in a previous posting about O’Connell that he had been expelled from St. Charles Seminary in Ellicott City MD by the Sulpician Fathers who ran the seminary?  They determined that he was “not fit” for the priesthood—an euphemism that generally meant he was discovered to be sexually inappropriate with other members of the seminary community.   (It could mean other things but as O’Connell’s history will indicate, the usual meaning is the more probable.  O’Connell certainly did not suffer from academic limitations or from health issues, the other reasons often given for dismissal, but not usually under the ambiguous banner of “not fit.” )  In any event O’Connell went on to complete his college work at Boston College and then re-entered studies for the priesthood in the Boston Archdiocese.  He did not study at the Boston seminary of St. John’s—which was run by those picky Sulpicians who had cast him once before into the outer darkness—but went on to the North American College in Rome.  Eventually he ended up as Rector of the North American and then returned to the States first as Bishop of Portland MA and then as Coadjutor Archbishop of Boston.  O’Connell took over the diocese in 1907 and in 1911 had his revenge on the Sulpicians—ordering them out of St. John’s seminary.   What makes the story really great—and gives us an insight into the soul of this Prince of the Church—is that he told the Sulpicians to “get out, and take your dead with you.”  The Sulpicians had to dis-inter their deceased confreres from the seminary cemetery and arrange for their reburial outside the Archdiocese of Boston. 
Now for the irony.  When Cardinal O’Malley sold the Cardinal’s residence to Boston College as part of BC’s campus expansion, there was an issue about a small chapel on the grounds.  Cardinal O’Connell had not wanted to be buried in the Cathedral crypt along with the other Bishops/Archbishops of Boston and constructed a mortuary chapel on his palace grounds.  Boston College announced that they didn’t care to have the Cardinal buried on their newly acquired property and so O’Connell—like the Sulpicians whose mortal rest he had disturbed—was dug up and moved.  His new grave is in the seminary from which he had the Sulps carted away.  Even Cardinals are subject to karma.     Maybe expecially subject to karma.
There is much more to tell of this prince.   O’Connell was to prove a major embarrassment to the Church over the years of his Cardinaliate. His nephew, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, was aware of the Cardinals’ homosexual affair with a married judge and used the knowledge to cover his own embezzlement of funds from the Archdiocese to support a secret wife. O’Connell had made the nephew, a Monsignor James O’Connell, chancellor of the Archdiocese, a position which gave him access to diocesan monies. The nephew secretly married a woman in Ohio in 1913. O’Connell’s secret was safe as long as Merry del Val was running the Vatican. Merry del Val fell from power with the death of Pius X in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.  During the War years there was little communication between the American Church and Italy because of the disruptions of war and the Pope, Benedict XV, was preoccupied in trying to bring about a peace, but O’Connell’s injudicious behavior would come back to haunt him.  In 1922 when confronted about his nephew, O’Connell lied to the newly elected Pius XI—and was caught in the lie—which sealed his fall from influence in Rome.  (Pius was an inveterate foe of Merry del Val and the Spanish Cardinal’s influence came to an end with Pius’ election.)  O’Connell still had great power in the American Church,  however, where he continued to exercise a bullying influence over the other bishops especially after the death of Cardinal Gibbons in 1921. O’Connell found an unholy ally in Cardinal Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia in attempts to suppress the emergence of a national bishop’s conference. There had been the National Catholic War Council, organized in 1917 under the auspices of Cardinal Gibbons, to coordinate an American Catholic response to the social needs created by World War I.  O’Connell and Dougherty wanted this body disbanded as soon as the war was over but fortunately the Gibbons party outmaneuvered them and established the National Catholic Welfare Council to succeed the National Catholic War Council.  Gibbons knew he was an old man and that O’Connell was just itching to step into his place as leader of the American hierarchy—and he knew as well that O’Connell’s agenda and style would be very different from the Americanist and democratic style which he, Gibbons, used in consulting with the other bishops.  O’Connell and Dougherty, in Rome for the conclave that elected Pius XI in 1922, obtained a decree suppressing the NCWC, but with the help of Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri (another Merry del Val opponent), the Executive Committee of the NCWC won a delay on enforcing the decree while they polled the American bishops about their desire to continue with a national conference.  O’Connell protested to Rome that this “plebiscite” was just proof that the American Church had been taken over by “Democracy, Presbyterianism, and Congregationalism.”  (So much for  his claim that “the Puritan had passed.”  Apparently the Puritan [Congregationalist] had simply become a Catholic and the sort of Catholic that O’Connell didn’t want.) 
O’Connell and Dougherty believed their position as Cardinals should have given them authority over the other bishops and rendering any sort of consultative body superfluous.   As I said, however, O’Connell’s stock was low in Rome and he lost the case.  The NCWC continued and its successor nowadays is the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops—still the bête noire of the Catholic wing-nuts. 

When Bishops Forgot They Were Called To Be Apostles cont.

Cardinal O'Connell's mansion in Brighton MA

News accounts say that Archbishop Myers is going to be presented with a petition of 17,000 people—not all from the Newark Archdiocese—to sell his retirement home to which he has been adding a 3,000 square foot addition at the projected final cost of a million dollars.  (The $500,000 construction cost covers neither the architectural fees nor the furnishings and landscaping.)  Personally, I think it is all a tempest in a teapot.  I can’t say that I am disappointed in the Archbishop for providing himself with such a lovely home; when it comes to evangelical values, my expectations of His Grace of Newark—and of most of his fellows on the Episcopal Bench—are low.  There is, as I am pointing out in this series, a long established precedence of the hierarchy fulfilling their role as “princes of the Church” rather than as worthy successors to the Apostles.  Of course Christ had Apostles and Disciples, not princes—but it has never stopped the Church hierarchy from improving on Christ’s original design. 
I debated a bit on including Archbishop Corrigan in this series as his fault was not so much the personal extravagance of  a Myers or a Gregory, as it was overlooking the material needs of his faithful in order to “fit in” with the WASP establishment of Upper-Crust New Yorkers.  I must admit—in full disclosure—that I have always detested Corrigan for his role in the McGlynn case and his opposition to the liberal policies of Gibbons, Ireland and the other Americanists.  So let the reader be aware of my biases and make the necessary corrections in his or her mind. 
While Corrigan lived comfortably in his Fifth-Avenue mini-mansion (mini, that is, compared to the Villard mansion across Park Avenue or the Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor, Frick or other Robber Baron establishments), there was a new breed of bishops coming along that would not settle for the comparative modesty of the Cardinal’s House adjoining the Cathedral. 
Now before I get into our next targeted prince-bishop, let me—again in the interest of full disclosure—admit that despite a total lack of interest in sports in general and baseball in particular, I am a New York Yankee fan and the reason that I am so passionately enamored of the Bronx Bombers (a team that I hated in the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers—and yes, I am that old) is not about the Yankees but because I hate the Boston Red Sox.   And the reason that I hate the Red Sox has nothing to do with them personally (individually or collectively), but that I hate everything about Boston.  And the reason that I hate everything about Boston—a city I have been to only three times in my three-score plus years—is that I once had a boss from Boston and he was TLGC (The Lowest of God’s Creatures).   I mean this guy was a lazy, self-indulgent, arrogant, narcissistic, lying, stealing sack of shi*.    (Yes, I am in touch with my feelings.)  And I tend to associate this worthless personality with Bostonians because X was not alone in his sociopathic temperament but shared it with the prelate who was possibly the slimiest American ever to wear a miter.
William Henry O’Connell was actually born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1859 to John and Bridget O’Connell.  His father died while he was still a child and the family had financial distress.  William was not much given to the athletic side of life but excelled at music and was an accomplished pianist.  He went to study under the Sulpicians at St. Charles College in Ellicott City Maryland.  The Sulpicians—and this is important for later on in his story—deemed him unfit for the priesthood and sent him packing.  He continued his studies under the Jesuits at Boston College where he excelled in both the sciences and in philosophy.  Taking up studies again for the priesthood he went to the North American College where he could avoid the Sulpicians who at that time ran the Boston Archdiocesan Seminary. O’Connell was ordained in 1884 in Rome by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi and then returned to Boston.  He was a priest in the Boston Archdiocese only ten years before returning to Rome as the Rector of his Alma Mater, the North American College.  In 1901 he was consecrated in Rome to be Bishop of Portland Maine.
It is very interesting to note the consecrators for this episcopal ordination.  The principal consecrator was Cardinal Satolli who had been the first Apostolic Delegate to the United States.  The co-consecrators were Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val.  Satolli was a natural choice given his American experience.  Stonor, an Englishman from an old recusant family, was chaplain in Rome to various groups.  But it is Merry del Val who gives us the curious link to O’Connell’s rise. 
Rafael Merry del Val was born in 1865 in London where his father, the Marquis Merry del Val, was secretary to the Spanish Embassy.   His blood line was intriguing—with English, Scots, Dutch, and Irish progenitors.  In fact the “Merry” in the Merry del Val name and marquisal title was a legacy of his Irish ancestors who had settled in Seville at a time that many noble Irish had fled their native land as a result of a failed rebellion against the English.  Merry del Val thrived on his English connections and even after the family returned to Spain in 1878 continued much of his education in Britain.  He was a trusted advisor to Leo XIII and a member of the Papal Household.  He was on the 1896 commission that advised Leo to issue the Bull, Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican Orders invalid.  He served as one of the Papal delegation to England for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.  (The diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the English Crown in the 19^th century are a fascinating topic that I would love to explore at some point.) 
Merry del Val’s influence would rise with the election of Pius X in 1903.  Merry del Val had been secretary of the Conclave that elected Pius and he seems to have played a strong role in the defeat of the expected choice, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro.   Pius, a man who knew he was inexperienced in the matters of world diplomacy, was exceptionally dependent on Merry del Val who as papal Secretary of State was almost a “shadow pope.”  O’Connell hitched his wagon to this rising star.
The friendship between Merry del Val—an aristocrat’s aristocrat—and the vulgar but affected son of Lowell textile factory worker is hard to explain.  They were totally “chalk and cheese” as the Irish say.  Merry del Val was cultured, understated, and while having an iron fist invariably kept it in its velvet glove.  He maneuvered this diplomatically so that you didn’t realize he had stabbed you in the back until you read your obituary in the Times.  O’Connell on the other hand was—despite his skills with the piano—crude, outspoken, openly vicious and retributive.  Merry del Val hid his ambition within the folds of his superb competence.  O’Connell was shameless in seeking advancement and using power with a vengeance to keep others from challenging his position.  What they did have in common was membership in what today is referred to as the Vatican’s “Lavender Mafia.” 
In 1906, at the urging of Merry del Val, O’Connell was designated as coadjutor and successor to Archbishop John Williams of Boston.  Williams had the courtesy of dying just over a year later and so giving O’Connell free rein (or, in this case, reign). 
Henry Morton Robinson wrote the 1950 novel, The Cardinal, with an auxiliary character, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon, being based on William O’Connell.  (In the 1963 film version, Glennon was played by the famous director, John Huston.)  The Glennon character is a bit of a curmudgeon but an honorable man none the less.  That is one of the things that makes The Cardinal pure fiction.
In 1927 O’Connell built for himself a huge (33,000 square feet) four-story Italianate villa on the grounds of Saint John’s Seminary in Brighton, just outside Boston.  This remained the home of his successors until sold, along with an adjoining 28 acres, by Cardinal Sean O’Malley to settle law-suits against the Archdiocese incurred by his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, for clerical sexual abuse issues.    
Unlike Corrigan and his contemporaries, O’Connell was not trying to crack the fortifications of the old WASP social network.  O’Connell saw that the rise of the middle class and the burden of income and estate taxes were leveling the playing field.  He had nothing but contempt for the old Boston Brahmins.  With John  (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald and James M. Curley as mayors, the Back Bay Irish Catholics now held Boston.  O’Connell proudly crowed: “The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains. 
Ella B. Eades, a Boston Brahmin who converted to Catholicism and served in Rome as secretary to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect for the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith and who holds the distinction of perhaps having the most viperish tongue in Vatican history—a honor among honors—hated O’Connell and had this to say about him:
“Monsignor Pomposity…is so invariably rude, ill-bred, and disobliging…I suppose he does not know better, being low-born and common, pitch-forked, suddenly to a position which has turned his head. Like all ill-bred Paddies, I am not, in his eyes, sufficiently rich, or fashionable to be treated with even ordinary courtesy.”
More on this Prince of the Church in the next posting. 

Why Are They Afraid of Pope Francis?

Henri de Lubac

 I have wanted for some weeks now to take a look at the famous interview with Pope Francis that has caused so much consternation and see why it has made voices on the right raise the alarm about the Holy Father.  For many of us who have read the interview conducted by Father Antonio Spadaro SJ and published in La Civiltá Cattolica and reprinted in America, the interview was a breath of fresh air, a sign of a new springtime in the Church in which we were beginning to feel a winter freeze that we feared heralded a return to the pre-conciliar ice age.  What is it exactly that has terrified the extreme right wing? 

An initial point that some have missed was that in the preliminary conversations, the Holy Father told Father Spadaro that the greatest influences on his own intellectual development were the works of Henri de Lubac and Michel Certeau.  Both de Lubac and Certeau were 20^th century Jesuit intellectuals and each signaled a departure from the faux-traditional Catholic methodology of neo-Thomism established by Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century as the “official” Catholic intellectual system. 

Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) came from an aristocratic French family but unlike many of the old French nobility did not identify with the Action Française  and French royalist movements that fashioned the views of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and others who would lead the rebellion against the Catholic Church and the Second Vatican Council.  de Lubac began studies in chemistry but suddenly switched and entered the Society of Jesus.  At the time the Jesuits and other religious communities were banned from France and so he entered a province in exile in England.  He left to fight in the French army in WWI but re-entered the Society after the War.  He was ordained in 1927 and appointed to the theological faculty at Lyon in 1929.  Up until WWII he spent his time in research, writing, and teaching.  He was identified with the nouvelle théologie. 

The nouvelle théologie was an intellectual movement primarily among French and German theologians in the first half of the twentieth century that rejected the neo-Thomism pushed by Leo XIII and Pius X in their reaction to “modernism,” in favor of returning to a use of the scriptural and patristic sources in doing theology.  Other proponents of the nouvelle théologie would be Yves Congar, Marie-Dominque Chenu, Jean Daniélou, Edward Schillebeeckx, Karl Rahner, Hans Kung, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the (then) young Josef Ratzinger.  With Fascism, Nazism, and Marxism sweeping Europe in the ‘30’s, and then the War from 1939-45, the Holy See was preoccupied with political matters, but when the dust settled “orthodox” Curial commissars were appalled at the spread and influence of this “new theology” which they saw not so much heretical in its conclusions as rebellious to papal authority in its methodology.   After all, Popes had all but canonized the Neo-Scholasticism of such pseudo-Thomists as Gaetano Sanseverino, Josef Wilhelm Karl Kleutgen, and Giuseppe Pecci, the older brother of Leo XIII. 

In the 1950’a under the intellectual police state created by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, Prefect of the Holy Office (today’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith), most of the Nouvelle theologians found themselves silenced, prohibited from teaching or publishing.  Much of this intellectual repression was carried out indirectly through the religious orders of the respective theologians rather than by the Holy Office itself.  (It would only elevate the status of a theologian to attract the negative attention of Ottaviani and his winged monkeys.)  The Jesuit General, Jean Baptiste Janssens ordered de Lubac’s works—Surnaturel, Corpus mysticum, and Connaissance de Dieu—removed from Jesuit libraries and, as far as possible, from circulation altogether.  De Lubac was removed from his editorship of Recherches de science religieuse and from teaching at the Catholic University of Lyons.   The Encyclical Letter of Pius XII, Humani Generis, was widely thought to be directed against the proponents of the nouvelle théologie though not against de Lubac personally. 

Though de Lubac was under a ban, he continued to research and even to write.  His work was subject to censorship, but he was able to publish quite a bit nonetheless.  He published a study of Origen, three works on Buddhism, and several works on ecclesiology that would help shape the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church at Vatican II.  He also wrote several commentaries on and defenses of the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a friend and fellow Jesuit.  This did him no favor in Ottaviani’s office in Rome as the aged Cardinal had a relentless pathological hatred for Teilhard de Chardin’s work.  Nevertheless, to Ottaviani’s extreme displeasure, John XXIII appointed de Lubac to the preparatory commission for the Second Vatican Council and also named him one of the theological periti (experts) for the Council, a move to break Ottaviani’s stranglehold on Catholic “orthodoxy” before it could subvert the Pope’s plans for the Council.  In the years after the Council Pope Paul VI offered de Lubac a Cardinal’s hat in recognition for his contribution to Catholic thought, but de Lubac declined.  John Paul II urged him to reconsider and in 1983 de Lubac accepted the Pope’s nomination to the Sacred College. 

You can see why the neo-traditionalists would be so unhappy with Pope Francis saying that Henri de Lubac was one of the two great influences on his thought.  de Lubac represents everything the neo-trads hate.  He was one of the key figures in dismantling the pseudo-orthodoxy of their neo-Thomist stranglehold on Catholic thought.  The nouvelle théologie which he represents is precisely what undermined the static world of pre-Conciliar Catholicism with its “unchanging” liturgy, its simplistic catechisms, its pyramidic hierarchy, its identification with monarchy, its confusion of doctrinal assent for faith, and its embalmed doctrines.  But if de Lubac is “bad,” just wait until you see Micheal de Certeau.

Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) was also a Jesuit, though never a cardinal.  He was not a theologian—he was something far more dangerous, a historian.  And, influenced by the dramatic and revolutionary French historiography of the inter-war period he brought history into dialogue with psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the social sciences.  Psychoanalysis—now there is a word that strikes fear into the chilled hearts of the neo-trads.  And what is worse, Certeau was not only into psychoanalysis, he was a Freudian.  In fact he was one of the founders of the École Freudienne de Paris.  These Jesuits—when they go into freefall, they just soar with the eagles.  They never do anything in half-measures.  Certeau came to fame with his critique of the social revolution that swept France in May 1968 when over 11,ooo,ooo French—students and workers—threw the country into chaos as the Communists and Socialists joined together in an alliance to demand radical social change.  Certeau was interested in how history is written to justify power—the old “history is written by the victors” and how it has served as a tool of colonialism to destroy the culture and identity of indigenous peoples in order to subject them to colonial powers.  Great—we have a theological revolutionary in de Lubac and a political revolutionary in Certeau and the Pope is their disciple.  No wonder the right wing-nuts are just about ready to s***.  We have a Pope who is used to thinking outside the box.  Hold on to the hand-rails folks, this could be a wild ride, but then I have always loved roller-coasters.  Sure beats the glacial re-freezing that had been setting in before the Argentine Spring.  

Things Change, Kundun

The altar at World Youth Day 2013

I mentioned in the previous post about the author of the Les Femmes website and her complaints of the Pope’s Mass for World Youth Day.  Drawing on the video of John Vennari of Catholic Family News, she noted the following things to have been “objectionable” about Pope Francis’ Mass. 

 Profane music more appropriate to a rock concert and in violation of the rubrics on music,

Dancing more appropriate to an aerobics class than the liturgy,

Drums and other rock instruments specifically prohibited by sacred documents on music,

Solo singing reminiscent of a cabaret act,

Plastic cups for distributing the Body of Christ???

Some of these objections are obviously highly subjective: whether a particular solo is more appropriate for a “cabaret” than for worship or whether particular dancing is more appropriate to an aerobics class than for worship.  Others are just disinformation: there is no ban on the use of drums in the Sacred Liturgy. 

I don’t think there is malice on part of the good lady, only ignorance.  And this is the problem.  I gather from reading her posts and her news letter over the years that she and I grew up at the same time, I north of the Mason Dixon and she south.  I gather that we both went to Catholic Schools where we had the good nuns who taught us the music of the Latin Liturgy (especially Mass 8), and told us about Pope Saint Pius X and his insistence on the organ being the only instrument for the liturgy.  Pius was reacting to the orchestra masses of the 18^th and 19^th century—the Mozart Coronation Mass for example—in which the congregation was reduced to the state of an audience while professional singers were required for performance.  Pius’ determination to restore chant was precisely to restore active participation in the Liturgy.  Pius’ Liturgical reforms were a tremendous step forward, but they were not the final step in liturgical development. Now I am not saying that Pope Saint Pius X would have loved the Copacabana Mass.  I am sure he would not have.  But like all us mortals, Pius lived in a fixed period of time which shaped his worldview.  The Church is a living organism, as is its liturgy.  It has continued to develop since the days of the Pope who made such a difference in Catholic devotion with permission for daily Holy Communion.  Pius’ norms remained in effect for decades but change did come and it came before Vatican II.  First came the encyclical letter of Pius XII, Mediator Dei approximately fourteen years before the Council opened.  Then came Vatican II and Sacrosanctum Concilium which mandated serious revision of the Sacred Liturgy (though not perhaps as serious a revision as we were given in the Missal of Paul VI) and encouraged “inculturation” to permit the liturgy to be adapted to the various cultures in which the Church finds itself.  Sacrosanctum Concilium was followed by innumerable other documents carrying out the mandate of the Council that the Liturgy should involve a full, active, and conscious participation on the part of the laity in the Mass.  All sorts of permissions were given and some permissions were denied.  Some permissions—dance for example—were allowed in certain cultures and banned in others.  The Papal Masses, both in Rome and when the popes were “on the road” became models for what could be done with the Liturgy and different cultures used Papal Visits to showcase their unique gifts and now being worthy of an offering to God.
Personally I am delighted that Pope Francis has signaled an end to the attempts at partial restoration of the pre-conciliar rites.  His choice to wash the feet of women in the Holy Thursday liturgy was the first clear sign that there is a new sheriff in town.  His choice of the simplest of vestments, his insistence on celebrating facing the congregatgion (versus populum as opposed to versus apsidem), his use of the “for all” (as opposed to the “for many”) in vernacular celebrations, and other gestures have been clear signs that we don’t have to worry about the peculiarities of the neo-trads being imposed on us at prayer.  I know it upsets the good lady from Woodstock and others of her ilk who thought that they were about to restore the traditions they knew so well but which had begun to fade from pious memory, but it is allowing the rest of us to get on with a serious and focused approach to our faith.      

Too Severe a Judgment?

Cardinals Gibbons and

O'Connell--not a mutual

admiration society

I had mentioned in the previous blog that among the horses’ asses honored with a miter (and later with a Cardinal’s hat) in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States was William O’Connell who from 1907 until 1944 was Archbishop of Boston.  Some have thought I was too severe on O’Connell and other named prelates in this judgment but I think the history bears out O’Connell’s reputation for one of the most undeserving of men to rise to power in the American Church.  Sean Winter, writing two years ago for the National Catholic Reporter, and comparing the tragedy of O’Connell’s rise to that of the equally fatuous Cardinal Raymond Burke in an essay “Gibbons Cried,” wrote:

It is said that when, in 1911, James Cardinal Gibbons learned that Archbishop William Henry O'Connell was named a cardinal, Gibbons cried. O'Connell was referred to at the time, by a woman who worked at the Vatican, Ella Edes, as "Monsignor Pomposity." He was most known for his efforts to have the U.S. Bishops Conference disbanded and his opposition to laws against child labor.

Cardinal Gibbons was no enthusiast for O’Connell whom he recognized not only as lacking in ability but strident in his antediluvian views on social reform.  Not only did he oppose laws outlawing child labor but he ridiculed the theories of Albert Einstein, suggested that priests refuse communion to women wearing makeup, and decried such singers as Al Jolson for their “crooning” which he considered effeminate.   

O’Connell’s promotion in the American Church was due to his sycophancy towards Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, the Machiavellian Secretary of State of Pius X.   O’Connell was to prove a major embarrassment to the Church over the years of his Cardinaliate.  His nephew, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, was aware of the Cardinals’ homosexual affair with a married judge and used the knowledge to cover his own embezzlement of funds from the Archdiocese to support a secret wife.  O’Connell had made the nephew, a Monsignor James O’Connell, chancellor of the Archdiocese, a position which gave him access to diocesan monies.  The nephew secretly married a woman in Ohio in 1913.  His secret was safe as long as Merry del Val was running the Vatican.  Merry del Val fell from power with the death of Pius X in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.  In 1922 when confronted about his nephew, O’Connell lied to the newly elected Pius XI—and was caught in the lie—which sealed his fall from influence in Rome but not from power in the American Church where he continued to exercise a bullying influence over the other bishops especially after the death of Cardinal Gibbons in 1921.  O’Connell found an unholy ally in Cardinal Denis Dougherty of Philadelphia in attempts to suppress the emergence of a national bishop’s conference.  O’Connell and Dougherty believing their position as Cardinals should have given them authority over the other bishops and rendering any sort of consultative body superfluous.  O’Connell died in 1944—but there are humorous stories there as well.  Perhaps next time.    

Popes: Pickled, Preserved, and Putrefying.

the image today is the catafalque for the funeral of Pius XII

There is a lot of excitement about the upcoming beatification of John Paul II including speculation about whether, when the body is disinterred, will it be “perfectly preserved.”  There are plans that his coffin will be on display for a period of time in Saint Peter’s Basilica, but some are hoping that the remains will be intact and the body of the pope will be put on display.  When the body of John XXIII was disinterred in 2001 it was found to be in remarkably good shape, but the Vatican has said that there is nothing miraculous about this as the body had been properly embalmed before its burial in 1963.  When one visits Saint Peter’s Basilica today one can see the remains of John XXIII in a glass coffin beneath the altar of “The Last Communion of Saint Jerome” on the eastern side of the basilica’s north transept.  John does look pretty good for someone who has been dead almost fifty years.  On the other hand what you actually see is a finely crafted wax mask and “gloves” covering the actual face and hands of the deceased pope.  There apparently was some discoloration of the skin over a period of time which is not abnormal in embalmed bodies.    

There are several other deceased popes and prelates on view beneath the various altars of the basilica, most notably Pope St. Pius X (pope from 1903-1914), Pope Bl. Innocent XI (pope from 1676-1689) and Saint Josaphat, Greek Catholic Metropolitan of Polotsk (martyred 1623).  Their bodies are all on display, but faces and hands—the only visible parts—are concealed by silver masks and gloves.  I do remember my first several trips to Rome before the time when Josaphat’s face and hands were covered and I would describe the remains more as “mummified” than as “preserved” if, what one means by “preserved” is appearing as natural as at the time of death.  Perhaps I will do some entries in the future about various saintly remains in Rome and elsewhere that are deemed to be “incorrupt.” 

But all this brings up the topic about preserving papal bodies.  When John Paul I died, somewhat unexpectedly, the lack of an autopsy was explained by the “fact” that papal bodies are never autopsied.   But this is not true—autopsies were performed on a number of popes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  Furthermore, it was a common practice as part of the embalming practice of the time to remove the entrails and internal organs of the popes and place them in canopic jars which were then inhumed in the Church of Saints Anastasio e Vincente facing the Trevi Fountain.  Twenty-two of the popes between  Sixtus V (d. 1590) and Gregory XVI (died 1846).  (I have heard as many as 25 popes and as late as Leo XIII (d. 1903) but the information varies from source to source and I have chosen the most conservative statistics.  I hope that when I am in Rome again next month I might be able to check for myself the plaque to the left of the altar that records the information).    This Church was chosen as the depository for the remains because of its proximity to the Quirinale Palace which was the usual residence of the Popes from the end of the sixteenth century until the fall of Papal Rome in 1870.  The Church was long referred to as the parrochia  pontificale —the papal parish.

There has been no consistency on the issue of embalming papal bodies.  John Paul II supposedly was not embalmed but “prepared.”  It seems that what the Vatican meant by “prepared” was sufficient embalming to prevent an embarrassing incident during the laying in state.  News reports at the time said the pope was not arterially embalmed (which would have involved replacing the blood in the arterial system with a preservative fluid) as was John XXIII, but that at least visible parts of the body—hands, head, and neck were injected with sufficient preservatives to keep the body presentable until burial.  Orifices (mouth, ears, nose) would have been sealed to prevent leakage of internal fluids while the body was on display.   This sort of embalming would not prevent or even significantly delay decomposition.  I saw the John Paul’s body twice—once as it was carried into the Basilica for the laying-in-state and once (the day before the funeral) while it lie-in-state before the central altar.  He didn’t look great—I must admit—but most dead bodies don’t unless under special lighting and the Vatican makes no attempt for its deceased to “look like he’s just  sleeping.”   I don’t recall how John Paul I’s body held up or what preparation had been done to it, though I seem to recall that like his successor the body had been “prepared” rather than embalmed.  Paul VI likewise had been only lightly embalmed; he had died August—the hottest and most humid month in Rome and thus not a good time for dead bodies awaiting burial.  By the time came to put him in his coffin and close it most sources agreed burial had been delayed a little too long.  

One of the reasons that John XXIII probably had been thoroughly embalmed is the disaster over the preparation of the body of his predecessor, Pius XII. You know, this whole thing is getting a little macabre and it’s about to get even more ghoulish, much more.  Pius’ physician, Riccardo Galeazzi-Lisi, a man of questionable skill and no discretion, organized the embalming according to a new method devised by Professor Oreste Nuzzi from Naples.  A papal funeral is not the time to experiment, but Galeazzi-Lisi and Nuzzi put the pope’s body in a plastic bag filled with herbs, spices, and resins “that,”they claimed,  were “the same with which the body of Jesus Christ was preserved.”  Well, Jesus wasn’t dead that long, and what happened to Pius wasn’t pretty.  Pius died in October and the summer of 1958 was a lingering one.  The heat at Castle Gondolfo was oppressive and enclosing the body in an airtight bag actually accelerated the decomposition.  After the body had been “treated” it was dressed in pontifical robes and put in a coffin for the journey into Rome and the funeral at St. Peter’s Basilica.  During a ceremonial stop at the Pope’s cathedral, St. John Lateran, a rumbling noise and “bang” was heard from within the coffin—Pius’s chest cavity had exploded from built up gasses.  Galeazzi-Lisi and Nuzzi had to treat the body two more times but body parts began to detach and the skin turned green and then black—all this within four days of his death.  Several Swiss guards standing watch at the catafalque fainted from the stench and the body had to be recoffined and interred on October 13, 1958—seven days before the scheduled funeral.  At the official funeral on October 20^th, an elaborate three tiered catafalque surmounted by the papal tiara replaced the body.   Part of the fault for this debacle goes to Pius himself as he had not wanted the internal organs and workings of the body altered in any way and an essential part of embalming is to release the gasses that build up in the chest and stomach cavities.         

Popes had been routinely embalmed—as had various other world leaders such as Queen Victoria when funerals were to be public and there was to be some delay before burial.  Pius X, a man who always—even when Patriarch of Venice and then as Pope—had cherished the simple customs of his peasant background left instructions that he was not to be embalmed—which makes his reported incorrupt status somewhat remarkable.  Of course embalming techniques before the latter part of the nineteenth century were not only primitive but verged on the barbaric.  Papal bodies—unlike British Royalty and current American practice for public funerals—were traditionally displayed for burial not so much for religious reasons as to demonstrate that the body of the deceased did not show poison, strangulation or other obvious violence. 

Benedict XV died at 6:00 a.m. on January 22, 1922.  The un-embalmed body (the New York Times, January 24^th 1922 says that this was “contrary to the usual practice”) was taken on the 23^rd to the Basilica of Saint Peter’s where it lie in state behind the closed grille of the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament from eleven in the morning until that evening when it was removed to the crypt and interred on the afternoon of January 24^th—just over 48 hours after his death.  Pius XI died seventeen years later on February 10, 1939.  The following day his body was brought to the Vatican Basilica where it lay for four days until its internment.  I have not been a able to find any information as to whether or not he had been embalmed but the delay of five days between death and burial suggests he may have been.

Well, enough of this morose subject.  Perhaps we will revisit some idiosyncrasies of papal  interments at another time, but I knew this one would be an attention grabber.    

The Origins of Radical Catholicism XXII: Fear strikes to the heart

Ok so we agree that it is not a good idea for the pope to reconcile himself to progress, liberalism and modern civilization—or at least we agree to that if we are faithful to the teachings of Pius IX and the syllabus of errors (published 1864).  It is interesting to see how in the nineteenth century the papacy grew very frightened of the world around it.  In the century since the French Revolution had destroyed the old alliance between Throne and Altar, a world in which the Church could no longer dictate its decrees to the populace and expect government and society to enforce them, the Church was like a child who had lost her mother in the mob and had no idea how to carry on for herself.  Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon use a wonderful image in one of their book comparing the Church (in their example Protestantism, but if fits for 19^th century Catholicism as well:  “Like an aging dowager, living in a decaying mansion on the edge of town, bankrupt and penniless; house decaying around her but acting as if her family still controlled the city, our theologians and church leaders continued to think and act as if we were in charge, as if the old arrangements were still valid.” (Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, Nashville:Abingdon, 1989, p. 29)   Leo XII, Pius VIII, Gregory XVI, Pius IX—none of them seemed capable of realizing that the old order was over and a new day had dawned.  It was an age of the bourgeoisie, not the nobility; an age shaped by rational thought, not religious doctrine; an age of democracy not absolutism; an age of people thinking for themselves, not of being dictated to.  Catholicism was seen as a relic and few people thought it would outlast the secular power of the popes.  They were wrong, of course, but the Church survived by—despite the syllabus of errors—adapting itself to the modern world—maybe not fully and certainly not happily, but adapting none the less.  All that being said, Leo XIII who became pope in 1878 seemed to usher in a new era.  He was a man who was practical, yet wise.  Leo liked liberal thinkers—we have seen that with Gibbons and Newman. But the fact of the matter is that when he realized the implications of modern thought for the faith, he panicked and he put his views of Doctrine and Society in separate compartments—air and watertight.  Remaining a social liberal, he reacted strong to liberal theology affected by higher biblical criticism and the critical spirit of contemporary Protestant dogmatics.    Leo established the Pontifical Biblical Commission not to suppress higher biblical criticism completely but certainly to restrict its growth by establishing some strong limits to what conclusions biblical scholars could come to regarding Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures and Scriptura inerrancy. 

Leo’s successor Pius X, unlike Leo, was no liberal.  A man of deep personal piety (he would one day be canonized a saint) he was no intellectual and was frightened of new ideas.  He was more than frightened; he was actually paranoid of modernism and reacted precipitously at the slightest accusation of modernism, directed towards any theologian.  In 1907 he issued a list of 65 theological propositions he considered to be “modernist “and heretical.  Pius’ concern was to assert the authority of the Pope and Bishops over Scripture and theology so that the role of theology became not an understanding of the faith as found in Scripture and Tradition, but justifying the faith as defined by the magisterium.  The Catholic approach to understanding the scriptures were all but reduced to the most crass fundamentalism ignoring the insights of linguists and historians.  Like the Syllabus of Errors, this condemnation (contained in the papal brief,  Lamentabili Sane Exitu) shows just how frightened the Roman authorities were of authentic scholarship.

There were several agendas at work.  Fear was one—and a legitimate fear of people losing their faith if faith were subject the critique of reason.  Indeed, as many of the points that Pius X had condemned have found their way into Catholic audiences in mid-twentieth century, we have seen a grave decline in religious practice in Western Europe and—to a lesser but still dangerous extent—in North America.  I think there was also a sense of insecurity when popes and bishops, lacking the intellectual expertise of the scholar, cannot hold their weight as equal partners in the discussions, begin to claim a higher authority not subject to critique by scholars.  And I think even further that the Church itself—or rather the men at the helm—were just plain terrifiedthat the bark of Peter would come apart at its seams amidst the turbulent waves of late 19^th and 20^th century intellectualism. 

In the end modernism offered a threat to Church authority by empowering voices other than the pope and bishops to discuss doctrine and practice.  Modernism was not an issue in the United States—frankly the Americans were not sufficiently serious scholars to ask the deep and penetrating questions.  The American Church has always been a Church of businessmen and lawyers (bishoply businessmen and lawyers, but businessmen and lawyers nonetheless) rather than intellectuals and scholars.  Nevertheless to the men behind the desks in Rome—who were not intellectuals themselves, at least for the most part, the independent spirit of both the Americanists and the Modernists made them appear to be interrelated—that wasn’t good for the traditional degree of autonomy which the American Church enjoyed.    
The image today is Pope Saint Pius X