Saints, Popes, and Boatrockers

This morning the pastor at my parish gave a very good homily for the feast of Saint Martin of Tours.  I was impressed as I have always had a deep devotion to Saint Martin and know quite a bit about him whereas my pastor is not a particularly pious man and often has somewhat of a featherweight approach to our Catholic heritage and culture—a typical problem for today’s undereducated clergy whether of the liberal or the conservative bent.

In his homily Father dragged out the old Saint Martin chestnut about cutting his cloak in half to give one half to the beggar—whom Father referred to as “a homeless man,” going somewhat beyond the hagiographical text and introducing a (not unreasonable) anachronism to help us today connect with a saint of seventeen centuries ago.  Unfortunately, not being a historian he didn’t get it quite right.  Martin didn’t cut his soldier’s cloak in half as much as he cut the lining out of it to give the beggar the warm fur lining while keeping the uniform part of his cloak for himself.   I mean, he did cut his cloak in half, but not from top to bottom but rather separating outer from inner.  Small point, but if one is going to be pedantic, as I like to be, these things matter.  

What I really want to highlight in Father’s sermon today though was not simply the story about the beggar and the cloak, but the larger picture that Martin had a passion for the poor.  He had this as a catechumen (when he divided his cloak) to when he was a monk to when he was a bishop.  For Martin, the poor defined the Church and set its mission.  That emphasis is so often lost on those for whom random acts of charity are sufficient fulfillment of the Gospel.  For Martin, and especially as bishop, it was not a matter of occasionally giving of his—or the Church’s—surplus as it was of focusing all the Church’s attention on the needs of the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters. 

This is the Church to which Pope Francis is trying to return us.  We live in a world afflicted by diverse poverties: spiritual, material, social, psychological, emotional.  Francis’ desire for the Church to minister to the spiritual hungers of those who have suffered the pain of failed marriages, of those who find themselves emarginated because of their sexual orientation, of those who give themselves without the surety of commitment are all extensions of his concern for those who live under the weight of the cross of material poverty.  Ironically—or actually without any irony at all—those who cannot see the pain of the spiritually poor most often are those who are content to throw a few crumbs of their leftovers to the materially poor and think they have satisfied their obligation as Christians.  Like those critics of Jesus who were scrupulous on their tithing of garden herbs but neglected the weightier matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness—they fuss over standing for communion or which way the priest faces the altar, but pay little or no attention to the gross injustices and severe pain in which so many today are trapped.  Like the Priest or the Levite in the Gospel of Luke, they walk down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho turning a blind eye to the suffering of those who have been robbed and beaten by life but even worse than the Priest or Levite they are resentful of those who would stop and try to bind up the wounds of the suffering.  And so Pope Francis’ vision of a Church that reaches out to the poor and the pained disturbs their comfort and they find refuge in the fantasyland of a Cardinal who traipses around the world in the furs and silks of a bygone princedom and call it religion. 

Pope Francis’ agenda for the Church is truly revolutionary as he has set out to identify the Church not with those who have long comfortably occupied its pews but with those who, like the beggar of Martin’s day, shivered outside in the cold.  His focus on those immigrants who line the shores of Tunisia in hopes of a boat to Lampedusa or those who huddle by our fenced southern border in hopes of finding their way through the desert has enraged countless of “good Catholics.”  His washing the feet of prisoners and sick—including women and Muslims—has been decried by those who confuse patriarchy with the Church and confuse Allah with a deity other than the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Jesus.  His condemnation of the death penalty irritates those self-styled pro-lifers who can’t see the inconsistencies of their argument.  And his pastoral concern for those who are divorced and remarried, or are gay, or who live together without marriage baffle those who think that because of their moral rectitude they, not “sinners,” should bask in the papal limelight.  As for me, I like it when Peter rocks the boat.  It startles me into remembering how the Master did the same.  

Election of bishops

John Carroll, the United States’ first Catholic bishop, was elected bishop by the clergy of his new diocese in April 1789. Twenty-six priests cast the electing ballots, Carroll received 24 of the votes. His election was confirmed seven months later by Pope Pius VI. Carroll favored the idea that his successor(s) would also be elected. This was not as radical an idea in 1789 as it would be today. In fact, until the French Revolution most Catholic bishops were elected rather than appointed by the Pope. The right of election generally belonged to the canons of the Cathedral Church and the “chapter” of canons, in turn, was most often comprised of the rectors of the principal churches of the See City of the Diocese. More precisely the canons of the Cathedral generally held “prebends” (an endowed “stall” or seat in the chancel of the cathedral) whose endowments consisted of the title (the rectorship) of the principle churches of the Diocese and thus were often called "prebendaries." The French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic conquest of Europe deprived the Church of most of its endowments, including the prebendaries, as the vast land-wealth which the Church had acquired over centuries was secularized (confiscated by the State). The Chapter of Notre Dame in Paris, for example, was allegedly so impoverished that it could barely afford to buy a broom for cleaning the Cathedral when Divine Worship was reestablished there 1802.
During and after the Napoleonic era the Holy See through a system of concordats (treaties made with the Holy See) with the various courts of Europe was able to bypass the newly reconstituted chapters and arrogate to itself the right to appoint bishops, though in a number of dioceses, particularly in Switzerland and in the old Austrian Empire, cathedral chapters often still have the right of election today. Generally this is worked out in such a way that a candidate favored by the Holy See is chosen by the canon-electors but on a number of occasions in the past three decades the Holy See has sought, if not to usurp the chapter’s rights, at least to appoint bishops to the respective dioceses before the chapter can exercise its traditional prerogative. The election of the pope by the Cardinals who are nominally the deacons of the diaconal churches and parish priests of the principle parishes (along with the seven Cardinal bishops of the seven ancient suburbican sees, and since 1965 those among the Eastern Catholics partriarchs who have been named to the College of Cardinals) is a surviving remnant of the election of bishops by the clergy of the diocese.
In the early Church the laity participated with the clergy in the process of electing the bishop. This was not always a tranquil procedure. In 374 the Christians of Milan were on the verge of riot as the Catholics and the Arians were in a bitter dispute over who the new bishop should be. Ambrose, as the governor of the region, a political post responsible for—among other things—the good civil order of the citizenry, arrived to quell the disturbance. An immensely popular governor the had the respect and trust of all. Someone in the crowd shouted “Ambrose for Bishop.” The crowd took up the cry. Ambrose insisted on declining—he was not even baptized much less a priest. But the crowd—and then the Imperial Court—would not hear of his refusal and he eventually was baptized, ordained and consecrated bishop. His disciple Augustine was elected bishop by the Christian community of Hippo Regius at the request of his predecessor who wanted a coadjutor to help him while he was still alive. Martin of Tours was elected by acclamation of the people of that city to be their bishop in 371. Lay participation in the election of bishops survived in many places of the Western Church, including Rome itself, until the Gregorian Reform in the eleventh century when the right of election was generally restricted to the clergy. At the same time, however these elections were rarely free. Political pressure by the Emperor, various kings, or powerful nobles was often applied to the clerical electors to choose the candidate that was the Imperial or Royal choice. While some advocate a return to the election of bishops in the contemporary Church, the experience of Protestant denominations which elect their bishops should give us some caution about politicizing Church leadership and about how such politics can be manipulated for doctrinal matters.
The image today is Francisco de Zurbarán's "Saint Ambrose"