Let's Play Dressup--The Canons of Gricigliano

The Canons of Gricgliano process through their
property in Tuscany  

 The Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest is an Institute of Pontifical Right based in Gricigliano (Italy)  that was founded by Monsignor Gilles Wach and Canon Philippe Mora in 1990.  Monsignor Wach and Father Mora were both trained under the late Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, onetime Archbishop of Genoa and foe of all things Vatican II.  Some Catholic conspiratorialists believe that Siri was elected Pope in 1958 but forced by a cabal within the Sacred College to step aside for the “radical” John XXIII, an alleged Freemason, whose plot to destroy the Church bore fruit on the Second Vatican Council.  Cardinal Siri may have been a traditionalist but he was not a nut-case and neither is Monsignor Wach nor Father Mora.  Well, that actually is a matter of perspective.  The institute is a bit bizarre. 
     The Institute is technically an association of secular priests.  Its members are not religious—that is to say they do not have the vows of religion: poverty, chastity, or obedience.  They are of course, as are all priests, chaste.  (ok, as all priests are called to be and the [sexual] moral integrity of the priests of the Institute has never been called into question.)  They are, I presume, obedient as authority is a huge deal with them.  Poverty?   Well, frankly, they are not about poverty.  Nor must they be any more than is any other secular priest, or, for that matter, any disciple of Jesus Christ.  Anyone who is a disciple of Jesus is bound to set their heart on the Kingdom of God and not on those earthy treasures which “moths devour and rust destroys and thieves break in and steal” (Matt 6:19).  Supposedly their “rule of life” is based on that of secular canons.  I have never seen the “Regula” (rule) for the pious priests of Gricigliano but I am not sure how it is based on the “Rule” for secular canons as secular canons have never had a “Rule.”  (Religious canons usually follow the Rule of Saint Augustine.)  Secular canons are prelates, named by the local bishop, to officiate at his cathedral or a collegiate church within his diocese.  We don’t have secular canons here in the United States but they are standard in Europe where they have functioned in cathedrals and various major churches since the early Middle Ages.  Three  of the four archbasilias of Rome—Saint John Lateran,  Saint Peter’s, Saint Mary Major’s all have secular canons; the fourth—Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls, has an abbey of Benedictine Monks that functions in the same way.  (Actually, there is something in the back of my mind that says that Saint Paul’s may have canons as well, though this is most unusual arrangement.)  In any event, unless one joins the Institute of Christ, Sovereign Priest, one cannot just become a canon on one’s own initiative.  As it is a prelacy, one has to be named to it by either the Holy See or the bishop who has the right of nomination to the particular chapter to which the canons belong.   Joining an “order” of canons is somewhat like naming yourself a Monsignor.  I have known priests who have done that, by the way.  And these boys are into a lot of the same stuff as monsignors vis a vis dress up.  Like monsignors of old, they “neither toil nor spin, but not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these” (Matt 6:29). The “habit” of the Institute is based on the monsignoral Domestic Prelate costume before the reforms of Paul VI. They wear a choir cassock and rochet over which is worn a manteletta faced in blue.  Over the manteletta is worn a mozetta—black for the priests, blue for the superiors.  A black biretta with a blue pom-pom tops the costume.  The black cassock, manteletta, and mozetta are piped in blue.  A small silver pectoral cross is worn suspended from a blue and white ribbon around the neck.  Shoes are black and silver-buckled and I understand from the tailor shop behind Santa Maria Sopra Minerva where their supplies are bought in Rome, the stockings are blue.  It is a striking outfit.  Their ministry in the Church is restoring the splendor of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.  They celebrate Mass in the old Roman Rite and, to their credit, with all the pomp that was normally lacking in most parishes.  While I am no fan of the old liturgy, I will admit without reservation that when it was done correctly and well—which it rarely was—it was a thing of beauty much as Swan Lake or Semiramide  are things of beauty.  I saw Semiramide once, at the Lyric in Chicago.  Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne sang the leads.  Bless my soul, were I not a religious person, I might say that it was the most beautiful thing this side of heaven!!!   But I take the Liturgy too seriously to make it a theatre piece or even to swoon at it aesthetics though it should be marked by reverence and beauty.  The Mass presents us, brings us face to face, with the Saving Death and Glorious Resurrection of Christ and it is a profound confrontation with the challenge to reorient our lives once again to our baptismal commitment to enter into death with Christ, to be crucified with Christ, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ Jesus who lives in us.  Such Mystery can never be reduced to ritual, no matter how elegant, much less can we let it become theatre.  The confusion of pomp for reverence or gilded lilies for beauty detracts from the austere solemnity of the Mysterium Fidei even as arcane language makes a mockery of genuine prayer.  But that was the glory of the old liturgy, when done well it gently wafted us along on the breezes of pious tunes and aesthetic smells and left us untroubled in our souls about the Christ who is crucified still in the family that lost their home, in the alien who fears deportation, in the child trapped in the urban public school, in the Krone’s patient without insurance, and in countless others of the least of His brothers and sisters.  But you know, those blue-faced mantelletas look really sharp; I only hope that no moth devours them nor rust destroys the shoe buckles.    

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"