Inaugural Weekend IV

Cardinal Law, champion

of Common Ground

Well, the inauguration is over and it is time for the President and his administration to move forward—a point I think he well made in his inaugural address.  And he received an important inaugural gift from the Pope last week when the Vatican came out strongly behind his efforts to impose some rationality over access to fire arms.  Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the “papal press secretary,” editorialized in both print and radio supporting the President’s desire to ban assault weapons and “to limit firearms that are making society pay an unacceptable price in terms of massacres and senseless deaths.” 
Of course Father Lombardi, while a Jesuit and may think he is infallible, is not the Pope and does not share magisterial authority.  But then one must understand how the Vatican uses different spokespersons at various levels.  When the Pope speaks it is a matter of teaching to be received.  When a curial official such as a Cardinal or Archbishop who heads one of the Vatican dicasteries speaks, it is a rule—at least if the prelate is speaking in the area where his dicsastery has authority. (Cardinal Law has no such office and Cardinal Burke tends to run at the mouth about any subject that pecks its ways across his somewhat limited intellectual capacity.)  So when the Pope wants to give an opinion on a current matter without binding the faithful, it falls to Father Lombardi.  In other words, he is speaking for the Pope but in a way that does not bind the faithful.  Would that he spoke more often permitting others, including Benedict, to stand in holy silence.  I think we would all do well if we were more often given things to think about and less often directives to follow, but then I foolishly think that most of us can make morally responsible choices.          
In any event, Father Lombardi went on to say that it would be rash to think that the elimination of firearms alone would prevent tragedies such as the Newtown Connecticut massacre, but at the same time he insisted that while such massacres are carried out by people who are deranged by hatred or anger, in the final analysis the victims are killed by guns.  So yes, while people kill people one can also say that guns kill people.  That does make sense to me. 
This call to limit access to guns fits into the long-time policy of the Vatican for disarmament and for bans on the “production, commerce, and contraband of all types of arms;” and the accusation that the weapons industry is fueled by “enormous economic and power interests.”  Ya think?
So here is some common ground between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration.  Of course going back to the days when those giants of moral integrity, Cardinals Law and Hickey, savaged the eminent Cardinal Bernardin, the Katholic Krazies have had no use for common ground.  Hopefully Father Lombardi’s endorsement will prod some of our more audacious prelates to speak up in support of strong gun control laws but they will face the wrath of those who always agree with the Vatican as long as the Vatican agrees with them. 
Tomorrow marks 40 years of Roe v Wade.  Because of the inaugural services being delayed a day, the annual March for Life has been delayed until Friday, January 25^th.  I hope the March is a strong witness for Life in a culture that is fast devolving into the “culture of death.”  But I think Father Lombardi’s editorials seal the deal, that to be pro-life you must also be in favor of some measure of gun- control. It is not enough to be anti-abortion to be pro-life.  There must be a consistency in the ethic of life for one to truly embrace the Catholic commitment to a culture of life. 

Angels of Light; Angels of Dark

Here are two perspectives on the issue of the Vatican and the American nuns.  Give them a watch and see who you think is speaking the message of Christ.  (just click on them and they should take you to the videos).  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axVOA96tWOA&list=UUsUgCCaaOfESPA4REUfZ33g&index=9&feature=plcp

Cathedral of Spoleto, Fra Lippo Lippi

"Dancing Angels"  I think they belonged

to the LCWR-at least they look like

those liberal nuns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALx-eolC1FI&feature=youtu.be

Genuine Spiritual Hungers and Pious Charletans

How is it that a Marcel Guranizo or a James Haley can have such devoted followers who swear to their “holiness” while at the same time Church authorities see it necessary to remove them temporarily (Guarnizo) or permanently (Haley) from ministry?   Now granted there are dozens of stories in the history of the Church where good men—and women—fell afoul of the Institution and paid the price for their integrity.  This past week I related the story of Margaret Anna Cusack, the foundress of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace, whose persecution by Archbishop Corrigan led her not only to leave the Sisterhood she had founded but to return to the Anglican Communion in which she had been baptized and raised.  Saint John of the Cross was persecuted by his fellow Carmelites and even imprisoned for nine months in a monastic prison for his “disobedience” to his religious superiors when all he was trying to do was encourage reform among his brothers.  Saint Mary MacKillop, Australian foundress of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, was excommunicated because she wouldn’t buckle under to the local bishop’s demands to control her religious order.  But even as they say that being paranoid doesn’t mean that people aren’t out to get you, so too persecution is no sure sign that one is a saint.   
       I have never met either James Haley or Marcel Guarnizo, but their ecclesiastical status is troubling vis a vis the perceived sanctity about which their defenders are loud and long.   There are degrees of censure.  “Administrative Leave”—the status of Father Guarnizo is probably the lightest form of censure under which he could be put.   It is not, I believe, even a canonical category.  As I explained in an earlier blog (April 25)  it seems that it is just removing him from the public eye while circumstances totally unrelated to his refusal of communion to Barbara Johnson are investigated to make sure that in his involvement with Aid to the Church in Russia and the Educational Initiative for Central and Easter Europe he has done nothing illegal or that would otherwise “embarrass” the Church.  His administrative leave only affects his ministerial status in the Archdiocese of Washington.  He is totally free to return to his home diocese, the Archdiocese of Moscow, and serve there at the will of that Archbishop.  In fact, he probably is free to assume ministry in any other diocese, even in the United States—or the world—with permission of the local bishop. 
       The next most serious step would be for a priest to be deprived of his faculties and this would bar him entirely from priestly ministry but leave his clerical status intact.  Such censure would apply only the diocese where the faculties were withdrawn.  This is sometimes used against religious order priests to force them from a diocese where the Bishop finds them troublesome for their preaching social justice themes or their failure to adhere strictly to liturgical norms, but it could be used against secular clergy as well.   Another bishop, another diocese, is free to admit the priest and restore his faculties for the new diocese.  Suspension a divinis which bars him from public ministry would be the next most serious step and in this case the accused is not able to resume ministry even in another diocese unless and until the suspension is lifted by the priest’s canonical superior who had placed him under suspension. 
      For a priest to be defrocked is the most serious punishment and it is rarely used. It is invoked only when the priest’s behavior would continue to bring extraordinary disgrace on the Church.  The priest is not only prohibited from exercising ministry but is returned “to the lay state”—that is to say he is no longer acknowledged as a priest.  Persistent and public immorality would be one reason this censure would be invoked, but it might also be used to distance the Church from a priest with serious psychological problems for which he either refused or is unable to be treated.  A priest with a sexual addiction that cannot be brought under control might be defrocked.    A man who uses the priesthood or the Church in a serious financial scam might be defrocked.  In both those—and most other cases—the individual usually would first be given the opportunity to resign his priestly ministry voluntarily but the refusal to do so would result in his being defrocked.  
        I don’t know why James Haley was defrocked but the fact that he was not only defrocked but then, according to his defenders, excommunicated is an indication of some very serious misdeed which he will not acknowledge.  It may be that psychologically he cannot accept responsibility for whatever misconduct has brought down this punishment but in any event it is a tragic story not because he didn’t deserve the punishment but because he cannot bring himself to take responsibility for his actions and be restored to the unity of the Church.  If this were a case, as in the case of Mary MacKillop, of an individual bishop, it could be a personal vendetta but if the excommunication comes from the Holy See—as “defrocking” would have to (the local bishop not having that authority)—the charges must have grave weight.      
Reading various blogs and entries on the internet, both Father Guranizo and James Haley have impressed many people with their being “holy priests.”  How is it that people are so easily impressed?  A colleague of mine was a parishioner at Saint Lawrence Church in Arlington where James Haley had once served as parochial vicar.  I remember this story because my friend and his wife left Saint Lawrence, their long time parish, and joined Saint Matthew Cathedral parish across the river in Washington, precisely because of James Haley.  Then-Father Haley would speak at Mass of the “visions” he had while gazing into the chalice of the newly consecrated Precious Blood.  They found this very disturbing without being able to explain precisely why.  Other parishioners, however, ooohhhed and aaahhhed at Haley’s profound “mystical gifts.” 
       Many are taken in by great piety and devotion because they confuse piety with true holiness and this is one of the structural faults in contemporary Catholicism.  A newly ordained Methodist pastor with whom I was speaking recently told me that when she was in seminary she and other Protestant students cross-registered with a Catholic seminary for courses in spirituality because the Methodist faculty didn’t offer any courses while the Catholic theology school had an entire department of spirituality.  Yet, she was surprised that most of the students in the spirituality courses were Protestants or lay people.  Candidates for the Catholic priesthood were too busy with their canon law and liturgics classes to have the room in their schedules to study the mystics.  This corresponds with my own experience where I find the secular clergy in particular to be grossly ignorant of the mystical tradition in Catholicism.   I think these accounts for much of the poor preaching today when Catholics are either subjected to pious drivel or drowned in doctrinal complexities, neither of which belongs in the pulpit.   Modern people have great spiritual hungers and the Catholic Church is blessed with a rich tradition of spiritual teachers such as Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Ignatius Loyola, Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Bernard of Clairvaux,  Elizabeth of the Trinity,  Thomas a Kempis, as well as a host of lesser known writers—Brother Laurence, Dom Augustine Baker, Marie of the Incarnation, Hadewicjh of Antwerp, Jan Ruysbroeck.  The work of many of these writers is available in the Classics of Western Spirituality series by Paulist Press.   In addition to these great writers of the past, current Catholic spiritual writers such as Thomas Keating, Ronald Rohlheiser, Ruth Burrows, Joan Chittester, Richard Rohr, are writing books that are helping tens of thousands of people—Catholic and non-Catholic alike—on their spiritual journeys.  And of course the work of the twentieth century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (d. 1968) continues to inspire countless people.  And yet, do we hear about the spiritual journey in our parishes?  All too rarely.  One of my students last year mentioned that her pastor had cancelled a talk by the Trappist monk William Menninger  because  as her pastor told her “contemplative prayer is for monks and nuns, not people like you.”  What a pity.  Richard Rohr writes:
      Much of the Western world has given up on the church and is going other places for wisdom.  Unfortunately, in these other places they are sometimes “willingly filling their belly with the husks the pigs are eating” (Luke 15:16) But we in the church must ask ourselves if we have not been the parent who sent them away because there was nothing trustworthy or life-giving at home.

I think he has a point.

Trouble, Right Here in River (Tiber) City

I haven’t had a chance to finish the next piece I am preparing and a friend sent me this Reuters article by Philip Pullella.  I think that it is somewhat off but as a person who has lived in Rome a considerable period of time over the last twenty years, I don’t think it is totally off base.  I will comment on it in future entries.  Meanwhile, thanks to my friend Chris for sending along the article and to my buddy Greg for the great photo. 

"It is a total mess," said one high-ranking Vatican official who spoke, like all others, on the condition of anonymity.

The Machiavellian maneuvering and machinations that have come to light in the Vatican recently are worthy of a novel about a sinister power struggle at a medieval court. 

Senior church officials interviewed this month said almost daily embarrassments that have put the Vatican on the defensive could force Pope Benedict to act to clean up the image of its administration - at a time when the church faces a deeper crisis of authority and relevance in the wider world. 

Some of those sources said the outcome of a power struggle inside the Holy See may even have a longer-term effect, on the choice of the man to succeed Benedict when he dies. 

From leaked letters by an archbishop who was transferred after he blew the whistle on what he saw as a web of corruption and cronyism, to a leaked poison pen memo which puts a number of cardinals in a bad light, to new suspicions about its bank, Vatican spokesmen have had their work cut out responding.  

The flurry of leaks has come at an embarrassing time - just before a usually joyful ceremony this week known as a consistory, when Benedict will admit more prelates into the College of Cardinals, the exclusive men's club that will one day pick the next Roman Catholic leader from among their own ranks. 

"This consistory will be taking place in an atmosphere that is certainly not very glorious or exalting," said one bishop with direct knowledge of Vatican affairs. 

The sources agreed that the leaks were part of an internal campaign - a sort of "mutiny of the monsignors" - against the pope's right-hand man, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. 

Bertone, 77, has a reputation as a heavy-handed administrator and power-broker whose style has alienated many in the Curia, the bureaucracy that runs the central administration of the 1.3 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church.

He came to the job, traditionally occupied by a career diplomat, in 2006 with no experience of working in the church's diplomatic corps, which manages its international relations. Benedict chose him, rather, because he had worked under the future pontiff, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in the Vatican's powerful doctrinal office. 

"It's all aimed at Bertone," said a monsignor in a key Vatican department who sympathizes with the secretary of state and who sees the leakers as determined to oust him. "It's very clear that they want to get rid of Bertone." 

Vatican sources say the rebels have the tacit backing of a former secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, an influential power-broker in his own right and a veteran diplomat who served under the late Pope John Paul II for 15 years.  

"The diplomatic wing feels that they are the rightful owners of the Vatican," the monsignor who favors Bertone said.  

Sodano and Bertone are not mutual admirers, to put it mildly. Neither has commented publicly on the reports. 

WHISTLE-BLOWING ARCHBISHOP 

The Vatican has been no stranger to controversy in recent years, when uproar over its handling of child sex abuse charges has hampered the church's efforts to stem the erosion of congregations and priestly recruitment in the developed world. 

But the latest image crisis could not be closer to home. 

It began last month when an Italian television investigative show broadcast private letters to Bertone and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, the former deputy governor of the Vatican City and currently the Vatican ambassador in Washington. 

The letters, which the Vatican has confirmed are authentic, showed that Vigano was transferred after he exposed what he argued was a web of corruption, nepotism and cronyism linked to the awarding of contracts to contractors at inflated prices. 

As deputy governor of the Vatican City for two years from 2009 to 2011, Vigano was the number two official in a department responsible for maintaining the tiny city-state's gardens, buildings, streets, museums and other infrastructure, which are managed separately from the Italian capital which surrounds it. 

In one letter, Vigano writes of a smear campaign against him by other Vatican officials who were upset that he had taken drastic steps to clean up the purchasing procedures and begged to stay in the job to finish what he had started. 

Bertone responded by removing Vigano from his position three years before the end of his tenure and sending him to the United States, despite his strong resistance. 

Other leaks center on the Vatican bank, just as it is trying to put behind it past scandals - including the collapse 30 years ago of Banco Ambrosiano, which entangled it in lurid allegations about money-laundering, freemasons, mafiosi and the mysterious death of Ambrosiano chairman Roberto Calvi - "God's banker." 

Today, the Vatican bank, formally known at the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), is aiming to comply fully with international norms and has applied for the Vatican's inclusion on the European Commission's approved "white list" of states that meet EU standards for total financial transparency. 

Bertone was instrumental in putting the bank's current executives in place and any lingering suspicion about it reflects badly on him. The Commission will decide in June and failure to make the list would be an embarrassment for Bertone.  

ITALIAN POPE?  

Last week, an Italian newspaper that has published some of the leaks ran a bizarre internal Vatican memo that involved one cardinal complaining about another cardinal who spoke about a possible assassination attempt against the pope within 12 months and openly speculated on who the next pope should be. 

Bertone's detractors say he has packed the Curia with Italian friends. Some see an attempt to influence the election of the next pope and increase the chances that the papacy returns to Italy after two successive non-Italian popes who have broken what had been an Italian monopoly for over 450 years.  

Seven of the 18 new "cardinal electors" -- those aged under 80 eligible to elect a pope -- at this Saturday's consistory are Italian. Six of those work for Bertone in the Curia. 

Bertone, as chief administrator, had a key role in advising the pope on the appointments, which raised eyebrows because of the high number of Italian bureaucrats among them.  

"There is widespread malaise and delusion about Bertone inside the Curia. It is full of complaints,"  said the bishop who has close knowledge of Vatican affairs. 

"Bertone has had a very brash method of running the Vatican and putting his friends in high places. People could not take it any more and said 'enough' and that is why I think these leaks are coming out now to make him look bad," he said. 

POPE "ISOLATED" 

Leaked confidential cables sent to the State Department by the U.S. embassy to the Vatican depicted him as a "yes man" with no diplomatic experience or linguistic skills and the 2009 cable suggests that the pope is protected from bad news. 

"There is also the question of who, if anyone, brings dissenting views to the pope's attention," read the cable, published by WikiLeaks. 

The Vatican sources said some cardinals asked the pope to replace Bertone because of administrative lapses, including the failure to warn the pope that a renegade bishop re-admitted to the Church in 2009 was a well-known Holocaust denier.  

But they said the pope, at 84 and increasingly showing the signs of his age, is not eager to break in a new right-hand man.  

"It's so complicated and the pope is so helpless," said the monsignor. 

The bishop said: "The pope is very isolated. He lives in his own world and some say the information he receives is filtered. He is interested in his books and his sermons but he is not very interested in government."

The Church and a Culture of Power

Our old friend, Cardinal Burke, (then Archbishop)

dressing up for another trip into his fantasy world

of bygone days of glory.  Perhaps he needed a strong
masculine figure earlier in his younger years. 

The final reason I want to give for the deterioration of papal authority, indeed Church authority in general, during—and since—the pontificate of John Paul II is the perceived wealth of the Church.  Note: perceived wealth.  I am reluctant to say that the Papacy or the Catholic Church is wealthy.  It is a bit like saying that the United States is wealthy.  There are wealthy States and there are States where there is much poverty.  The Catholic Church is not a single entity.  Financially each diocese is self-administering as is each religious order.  There are dioceses where there are considerable assets and there are dioceses with few assets.  Just as even poor States have budgets measured in hundreds of millions of dollars, so too even poor dioceses have huge budgets—though, of course, not at all comparable to any State budget.  One would say that relative to other nations, we are a wealthy nation and our citizenry are—by comparison to much of the world—wealthy.  So too the Catholic Church is a much bigger financial organization than other religions, but relative to the size of its membership probably not out of the same ball park as other religious groups.  The central administration of the Church, the papacy, is an enormously costly operation but then its expenses are also enormous.  The Holy See, as the administration is known, maintains diplomatic missions with over a hundred nations.  It was one of the oldest entities to send and maintain embassies and probably the oldest to do so on a continual basis to the present.  I don’t see where Jesus explicitly authorized embassies as part of the mission he entrusted to his disciples, but I would have to admit that over the centuries papal diplomacy has often played a crucial role in history  (not always to the good) and papal diplomatic channels were very important in both World War I and World War II as well as the Cold War, so they could be subsumed under the Church’s commission for peacemaking (Blessed are the Peacemakers—you remember that one from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5: something or other) if not always for evangelism.  In other words, I am not criticizing the Church for its actual wealth of which I think it is a pretty good steward.  The problem is its perceived wealth.  I have lived in Rome off and on over the years and still go there frequently (like next week) and I continued to be dazzled by the splendor of the Churches.  By and large I detest baroque style but you know it was costly to build (and costly to maintain, but that is the Italian Government’s, not the Church’s, problem).  I have been to the Louvre, the Prado, the Hermitage, the British Museum and dozens of other art collections.  The Louvre and the Hermitage are comparable to the Vatican museums but nothing else.  “The pope should sell all this art” some people exclaim and maybe he should. After all,  Jesus didn’t need art—“the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head,” if your remember.  But the problem is that great art doesn’t belong to the Vatican or the Louvre or the Prado.  Great art belongs to civilization as a whole and whether it is the French Government or the Russian Government or the Holy See—they are only the custodians.  I wish we had never gotten into the art business but now that the Church has it, they also have a responsibility.  And as long as it pays for itself (and the Vatican Museums are not cheap for entry)—well, it is a bit like babysitting a kid: you can’t put it up for sale just because it becomes an embarrassment. 
     I think the problem is not the budgets it takes to run a diocese or a religious order or even the Vatican.  I don’t think the problem is the basilicas or the Michelangelo’s.  I think the problem is the “culture of wealth” that the Church inherited from a previous generation when bishops were princes and the Church itself was a monarchy and which needs to be dismantled and replaced today.  During the Renaissance and Baroque eras until the French Revolution the alliance of “Throne and Altar” made bishops princes and endowed prelates with all the trappings of great men of monarchial states.  Cardinals and bishops and prelates and abbots lived in palaces with leagues of servants and carriages and silver and gold plate off which they dined.  They wore ermine and silks and were accustomed to have people kiss their hands on bended knees.  They were entitled to titles: Excellency and Eminence and whatever.  I doubt Jesus was impressed but the whole idea was that everyone else would be.  The bishops and great men of the Church were drawn from the noble families and they moved comfortably in the corridors of power.  (Karol Wojtyla, aka John Paul II, was the first Archbishop of Krakow not to come from the nobility of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.)  The Gospel was something read at Mass, not something generally believed or preached, but the system worked—at least according to the norms of the world in which the Church found itself.   
     Of course the Church paid dearly for this alliance at the time of the French and subsequent revolutions.  But peace was made, monarchy and Church restored at the Congress of Vienna, and while the earthly powers gradually learned the lesson and moved away from the monarchial models—the Queen of the Netherlands keeps riding around on a bicycle as did her Queenly Mother and Grandmother in their reigns—the Church seems slow to understand that model has changed.  The various monarchies that survived World Wars I and II drastically reformed their courts in the 2oth centuries reducing the pageantry (and expense) and Paul VI did the same in the late 60’s with the papal household.  But damn if that stuff doesn’t come creeping back.  Cardinal O’Malley sold the Archbishop’s Palace in Boston (in part to pay the settlements against the Archdiocese for the sex-abuse suits), but how many other Archbishops and bishops have spent considerable funds buying and furnishing very elegant homes for themselves.  When a priest I know complemented Archbishop John Myers of Newark on his matching Episcopal ring and cufflinks—antique Roman coins—“His Grace” (as he like to be known) dismissed it saying: when you’re the Archbishop you never pay for these things.  In order to simplify the public ceremonial of the Church and to move it away from the baroque courtly appearance of earlier centuries, Paul VI did away with any number of prelatial accoutrements such as the monsignoral and episcopal mantelletta or the fur hood of the winter cappa magna (and discouraged the use of the cappa magna itself though he only banned it in Rome) but that hasn’t stopped the Tridentine Revivalists of Summorum Pontificum from raiding the closets of their dead predecessors to dress up once again in princely finery.  The result is not only to turn sacred worship into a costume ball but to focus on ideas such as “power,” “pomp,” “majesty” attributed not to God—with which no one would have a problem—but towards the Church and Churchmen.  That model reduces Catholicism to an anachronism and trivializes our faith.   
       We need new models to express our identity as a Church, but even as most bishops, thank heavens, turn away from this ridiculous prince-bishop model, too many seem to choose the corporate CEO model instead.  We don’t need shepherds in eight-hundred dollar suits who belong to the Country Club and the University Club so that they can entertain bank presidents and County Executives.   You go to a chancery office these days and it looks like a prestigious law firm or advertising business.  Don’t get me wrong, I think we need a certain professionalism in how the Church is run, but we don’t need the corporate culture. 
        Last week I had the occasion to attend an event over which a Byzantine Rite bishop presided.  I was embarrassed because during the preliminaries I was speaking with him and didn’t know he was the bishop until after he walked away.  I had thought I was speaking with some simple priest or other.  (I mean “simple” here as “unassuming” neither as “mere” nor “stupid.”)  During the Liturgy—which is certainly not ritually bland—he comported himself with an unassuming reverence and attention to prayer.  Afterwards he mixed very easily with parishioners, waiting in the buffet line chatting with those around him and unselfconsciously telling some jokes and making amusing and self-deprecating observations.  There was nothing of the great man about him.   Of course the various Eastern Rite dioceses are smaller in numbers but far more widespread than our Roman Rite dioceses.  Nevertheless I was impressed at the more simple and pastoral impression the bishop gave.  Simple and humble would have much more impact than the self-important style we too often see. 
      Ironically, I wrote this before seeing the gospel for today with its sobering reminder that stone will not be left upon stone.  We need to remember that too—that the earthly and institutional dimensions of the Church are not destined to last.  Something to think about, Your Grace. 

More abut Martin Luther's Trip to Rome

This is not what it looked like in Luther's Day, or even

a century ago, but here is a contemporary picture of

the Vatican Basilica at night.

As I mentioned in the last entry, Martin Luther went to Rome in  late 1510.  He was a young priest, twenty-seven years old and ordained only three years.  Martin was a very scrupulous man and had undergone a “conversion” as a young man of twenty-one when he was nearly missed by lightening on his way back from home to the university where he had been studying law.  Giving up the profitable career in Law he entered a reformed monastery of Augustinian hermits in Erfurt.  Luther was by own admission a monk’s monk—scrupulous in every detail of his religious life.  He strived to say ever prescribed prayer, keep every mandated fast, avoid even the smallest sins.  He worried endlessly about his salvation.  A wise superior, knowing that the young friar had to loosen up a little, sent him to Rome as the companion of an older friar who was going on business for the Order.   Luther could use a break and could use also to see that sin ran deeper in the human experience than this naïve friar allowed for.  Unfortunately, with an idealist like Martin, this strategy was not the wisest.  
     Luther spent about two months in Rome.  Passing through the city gate he fell to his knees and prayed: Hail, Holy Rome, Thrice Blest for the Blood othe Martyrs who died here!  This guy was a believer!  He ran from church to church, said mass at every shrine he could arrange.  He climbed the Scala Sancta (The Holy Stairs—a set of stairs supposedly brought to Rome from Jerusalem where it was said Christ had climbed these steps on his way to be judged by Pilate.)  He sought out relics for veneration and lighted votive candles. He made a general confession of all the sins of his life.  As I said this boy was a believer.  But his eyes were gradually opened to the corruption of the city.  The priest to whom he confessed treated lightly the sins that Luther bore with such serious guilt.  He saw that there were brothels reserved for the clergy and the monks.  The Cardinals and other high churchmen were immensely wealthy and amidst the poverty of the crowds they displayed their wealth in a show of red silk and fine horses and luxurious palaces.  Priests were sloppy in their duties and said mass with little or no reverence.  Luther himself claimed to have seen a priest distributing communion declare “panis vinumque es et panis vinumque manebis”  ( Bread and wine you are; and bread and wine you will remain.”  Personally, while I am sure that most of the Roman priests said mass with little or no attention to the sacred rites, I suspect this story is what the clergy refer to as a “pulpit tale;” that is a preacher’s exaggeration or fabrication to illustrate a point.  The reason I say that I believe this story to be unlikely is that I don’t believe that a priest would undermine his own earning ability by making little of the Sacrament; furthermore at the time it was only the bread that was given to the faithful at communion, not the wine; and finally I wonder how many priests then—or now—would know enough Latin to be able to put together an original sentence.  But who knows—the situation was every bit as bad as Luther described it.  And I am not convinced—as a person who has lived in Rome for considerable periods of my life—that it is all that better now.  When Martin Luther headed back on his two month journey to his monastery in Erfurt, he was a far less naïve fellow.  He had not lost his idealism but he had lost his confidence in the institutional Church.  Meanwhile Julius’ church was rising, the artists were hard a word, and the chamberlain of the Roman Church—the Cardinal in charge of finding money to pay the bills—was working hard to come up with new sources of revenue to finance this renaissance.             

History in the Making: Some Thoughts About the Beatification of John Paul II

One of the thousands of Posters that
dotted the streets of Rome during
the funeral of  Pope John Paul II

This is the weekend that John Paul II will be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI—just six years after his death.  The beatification is not without some controversy and, to be honest, I am surprised that it has all come about this fast.  For one thing, I had heard over the last several years that Pope Benedict was not anxious to advance the “cause” of his predecessor. In part, I think this was a prudent reservation on the part of the current Pope.  The papacy of John Paul will be an extremely complex one to historically evaluate.  “It was,” as one BBC commentator replied at the time, “the best of times; it was the worst of times.”  John Paul was probably the most significant individual in the collapse of the Soviet Empire, not only demolishing the tyrannical regimes but  making Stalin a posthumous laughingstock for his derisive comment “How many divisions does the Pope have?”  John Paul had immense popularity—especially with the world’s youth and never passed up an opportunity to reach out to them.  Yet one cannot say that he brought them back to the practice of the faith, much less to the moral standards which the Church teaches.    He took some remarkable steps with interreligious and ecumenical dialogue.  At the same time, since his death there has been some serious rethinking of those very same interreligious and ecumenical advances, not least of all by the current Pope.  Probably more seriously, there are questions regarding his handling of the Sex Abuse situation in the Catholic Church—how much did he know and in what ways did his policies hinder justice and leave young people exposed to predators?  Too, some observers believe that that he greatly weakened the Church by selecting bishops for their loyalty without sufficient regard to their pastoral skills, prudent judgment, or intellectual ability.  Certainly we can see in the United States that we no longer have sufficient numbers of articulate or intellectual leaders among the American Bishops to write the sort of pastoral letters that the Bishops turned out on Just War Theology and Nuclear Weapons or the Economic Morality that the bishops of thirty years ago turned out.  Of course good leadership or bad leadership does not reflect on the personal sanctity of the candidate.  We have had saintly popes who failed to meet the leadership challenges of their times.  But the question remains—in what way the example of Pope John Paul II reflects the extraordinary degree of sanctity and virtue that sainthood represents.  He was pious, granted—but piety is not holiness.  I am not saying that this beatification is a mistake—only that it will be corrected—if corrected it need be—by time’s passing and history’s critique.

As for the rapidity of the process—note here some medieval canonizations (not beatifications) and see their time line:    

Name                       Year of death     Year of Canonization       

Anthony of Padua            1231                       1232    
            Francis                                 1226                      1228

Claire of Assisi                   1253                      1255

Hugh of Grenoble            1132                      1134

Elizabeth of Hungary      1231                      1234

Thomas Becket                 1170                      1173

Galgano Guidotti              1180                      1184

Hugh of Cluny                   1109                      1120

Gilbert of Sempringham1190                       1202

Dominic                              1221                       1234

Bernard of Clairvaux       1153                      1174

I am sure there are other “quickies” in addition to these, but it does show that at one time the Church didn’t scruple to move ‘em thru.  By the way, I will be in Rome this week and doing some travelling for the next week or two so be patient.  I won’t be posting every day but I will be collecting photos and doing some research. 

Old St Peter's Basilica: Caught in the Della Rovere-Medici Crossfire

 Julius II had  been the cardinal-nephew of Sixtus IV Della Rovere.  Sixtus who had headed the Franciscan Order before his election, named a number of his nephews Cardinals and they, in turn, had spent much of his papacy fighting one another for power and influence (and money).  Most of them weren’t worth spit but Guiliano was a cut above the rest and proved himself competent enough to hold several important offices in the Roman Curia as well as being entrusted with a variety of bishoprics—holding eight at the same time, though being an absentee pastor in each of his dioceses.  It was common to name important Roman officials to dioceses not only in Italy but throughout Europe so that they could collect the salaries as a means of financial support.  This drew money from all over Europe into the Roman economy and empowered these Curia officials to build the palaces and  churches of Renaissance Rome. 

Speaking of Roman palaces, another of Sixtus’ cardinal nephews, Raffaele Riario hosted an evening of gambling at which Franceschetto Cybo, bastard son of Pope Innocent VIII (the current pope and successor to Giuliano’s uncle, Sixtus IV), lost 15,000 ducats (Two and a half million modern dollars).  Not a lucky night.  The pope asked Cardinal Riario to return the money, but the Cardinal explained that he had already spent the money to finance the construction of a new palace—the beautiful palazzo della Cancelleria near the piazza Campo dei Fiori.  If it is any consolation to the memory of Innocent VIII, the palace is still owned by the Vatican and it serves today to hold various administrative offices.  It truly is one of the most lovely buildings in Rome—won all in a night’s gambling.   As for Cybo, he was not a cardinal as he was married (to a Medici—rivals of Pope Sixtus, Cardinal Giuliano, and other Della Roveres.  Mortal enemies as we shall see.  While unable to be made a Cardinal, Cybo was entrusted with several military and administrative offices, including the governorship of Rome, that provided him a handsome income.  He was, after all, the Pope’s son. In 1490 he attempted to steal the papal treasury to finance his extensive gambling debts, but as Dad was still pope, he was not prosecuted for his lack of good judgment.  One of his own sons would become a Cardinal—not only was he the grandson of a pope (Innocent VIII) but remember he was a Medici on his mother’s side, so one of his uncles was destined to reign as Leo X—the pope at the time of Luther’s saying that he had enough of the whole Roman Church. “Everything is for sale in Rome.”  When you see this sequence of events, can you blame Luther?  Well, we will talk about that in future postings.

We are still not ready to return to Julius yet as there is one more important story about his Cardinal Cousin—Rafaelle “lucky at cards” Riario.  The seventeen year old Cardinal stopped in Florence on his way from Pisa where he was studying canon law (how would you like to have a Cardinal in your canon law class?) to Rome.  Unbeknown to the lad, his visit was used as a pretext by his uncle the Pope and several others to lure the Medici brothers—Lorenzo and Giuliano—out of the Medici Palace to attend High Mass at the Cathedral.  It would have been considered rude, a snub to the Cardinal, to miss the mass in his honor.  The elevation of the host was used as a signal for the conspirators to attack. Giuliano was stabled to death on the Cathedral floor; Lorenzo, seriously ( but not fatally) wounded escaped to the sacristy where, once in, the doors were barred for his protection. The plot failed as the Florentines supported the Medici and in the subsequent bloodshed many of the conspirators were killed—including the Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, who was hung naked from the walls of Florence’s town hall, the Palazzo della Signoria.  The young Cardinal seems to have been only a pawn in his uncle’s game and, though arrested, he was shortly set at liberty.  In fact Lorenzo and Pope Sixtus soon made up.  In Renaissance Italy, attempted murder was no reason to break off a friendship.  It was done all the time.   But the plot does tell you something about this Della Rovere family.  They played for big stakes and they played for keeps.  Well, back now to Julius, but also note tht  Raffaele Riario was also the patron who first brought Michelangelo to Rome. 

Julius, or more properly at this pont, Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere, also had his ups and downs as we have seen.  He fled to France after his enemy Rodrigo Borgia was elected Alexander VI.  In France he became buddies with Charles VIII whom he persuaded to invade Italy in hopes of deposing Alexander.  Though Charles did get to Rome, Alexander out maneuvered Giuliano’s plan and Charles, instead of convoking a Council to depose Alexander, moved on to fight a war with Naples in a vain hope of adding it to his realms.  In the second 1503 conclave, however, Cardinal Della Rovere’s fortunes improved and he was elected pope.

As I pointed out, the Della Roveres were strong people.  The family had been poor until uncle Sixtus had become pope and started making all the nephews Cardinals.  They were scrappers and they didn’t mind a fight to get what they wanted.  Indeed Julius himself loved a fight—a real fight in which he could put on armor and get on a horse and go out and bash some heads. In a 1506 battle for Bologna, the pope was one of the first up the scaling ladders and over the city wall.  He was a man’s man which isn’t to say that he didn’t enjoy having a man in bed.  While he had an illegitimate daughter, Julius seems to have been either gay or bi-sexual.  I have heard stories that he made one of his lovers the Archbishop of Ravenna but I can’t find this anywhere and I wonder if the sources are confusing him with Julius III whose lover was a street urchin, Innocenzo Ciochhi Del Monte, whom, in his infatuation, he made Cardinal. 

As I said yesterday, Julius’ great passion was for his projected tomb and that returns us to the fate of Old St Peter’s and the Destiny of New Saint Peter’s. Before we pick up the story of the Basilica, however, one more thing about Julius.  As part of the terms under which he was elected pope, Julius had promised to convoke a Council of the Church to address the need for reform.  (Ya think there was a need for Reform???)  He delayed this as long as possible, but finally on July 18, 1511 he convoked the Council to meet at the Lateran on April 19, the following year.  Finally fifteen Cardinals, two Latin Patriarchs, ten archbishops, fifty-six bishops, various abbots, the generals of the mendicant orders, and ambassadors from various states convened on May 3^rd 1512.  Giles of Viterbo, the charismatic General of the Augustinian Friars preached the opening sermon—a bombastic demand for reform in root and branch.  Julius would die the following February, escaping any personal worries about having to reform. 
the image today is Giuliano de Medici, killed in the Pazzi Conspiracy due to the rivalry between the Della Rovere family and the Medici.