The Old Order Passes

I wrote in a recent entry that there is no reason that the College of Cardinals could not include women.  That provoked a rash of responses telling me just why the Sacred College is limited to men and that only demonstrates that the issue of admitting women to Sacred Orders in the Catholic Church is not a theological matter but is driven by a fear of allowing women access to power.  There may or may not be theological reasons not to ordain women,  Speaking as a historian, I am not convinced of theological reasons.  I think that poor theology is being used to mask blatant misogyny.  I say this because whatever the reasons that may or may not be valid for ordaining women there is absolutely no theological reason why women cannot be created Cardinals and entrusted with major administrative responsibilities in the Church.  The College of Cardinals is totally a matter of man-made (and I am using that in a gender specific way) traditions. 
The modern role of the Cardinals developed in the eleventh century from the principal clergy of the Diocese of Rome.  The Cardinal Priests were the pastors of the principal parish churches in the city.  The Cardinal Deacons were the deacons of the principal diaconal churches of the city.  The diaconal churches were not parishes but were centers where people could come for food and other social services in times of famine or need.  You notice that I keep using the word “principal”—that is actually a good translation for the word cardinal.  Cardinal comes from the Latin “cardo,” the word for “hinge.”  A hinge is a crucial element because doors swing open and shut on the hinge.  There are also Cardinal bishops—they are the titular bishops of the seven ancient dioceses that surrounded the city of Rome—Ostia, Porto Santo Rufino, Sabina-Poggio Mirteto, Velletri-Segni, Frascati, and Palestrina. 
Today cardinals still break down into Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.  Each Cardinal carries the title of Bishop of a suburbican see, or priest of a particular church, or deacon of a particular diaconal church.  And today, by canon law, a Cardinal must be a priest and unless he has a papal dispensation, must be or become a bishop.  But these are human regulations.  The last cardinal not to be a priest died in 1899.  Teodolfo Mertel was a layman when created Cardinal by Pius IX in 1859 and two months later was ordained deacon so that he could have his titular church. He never advanced to the priesthood. 
There were throughout the history of the Sacred College a number of Cardinals who never received major orders and remained laymen their entire lives.  Since the College of Cardinals is entirely of Church design and not a matter of divine law, there can be no theological reason why it cannot be structured to admit women.  And there are certainly women in the Church who would bring honor to the College.  As honor is somewhat in need of being restored to Church institutions these days that may not be such a bad idea.  There is Lesley-Anne Knight who served as general secretary of Caritas International.  She would be great in the Sacred College.  Mary Ann Glendon is a respected legal scholar who is certainly conservative enough to please the most loyal Vatican enthusiast and yet has demonstrated a noteworthy intellectual ability that would raise the collective IQ of the Sacred College.  While Sisters Simone Campbell or Joan Chittester might be a bit too radical for some (though not for me) and unfortunately Elizabeth Johnson is probably out of the running for the same reasons,  Patricia McDermott, President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, has demonstrated good leadership and excellent administrative skills that could be put at the service of the larger Church.  Dr. Mary Lyons, president of the University of San Diego would be another great addition.  I wish I knew more about the Church in some other parts of the globe to be familiar with women from Latin America or Africa or Asia who might make this sort of contribution.  (Lesley-Anne Knight is, of course, from Africa, but I do not know any others.)  But I think it is time that cardinal’s robes came in a feminine cut as well as a masculine.  Well, actually, when I look at the brussels lace, I am  not sure they do come in a masculine tailoring.  Let me put it this way, if the guys think they look good in all that red, think how smashing the ladies will be.             
There has been some talk about this conclave turning to an American for Pope.  Given the complexity of world politics and the Church’s need to keep its neutrality highly visible, I would not have thought of the possibility of an American Pope, but reports from Rome are that the talk is genuine.  Three Americans are being looked at—I still think they are longshots—as possible men for the task: Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston, Timothy Dolan of New York and Donald Wuerl of Washington.  Their (still remote) likelihood is given in that order. 
Well this is as far as I got before my brother telephoned to tell me that there was white smoke and I went to the television and everything began to unfold.  An Argentine—and a Jesuit!  The first Jesuit pope!  And the name Francis—boy does that say a lot.  Moreover in making his apperanceon the balcony he had refused the Master of Ceremonies’ “invitation” to wear the velvet fur-lined mozetta and he kept his simple silver cross around his neck.  He is sending signals about not only a new sheriff but a new style in the Vatican.  Hmm.  More soon.
p.s. Chris--sorry you lost out on ballot 9 in the lottery.  I would have thought you had the ideal number but what do I know?

Papal Election II

The word conclave comes from the Latin—cum clave—meaning “with a key” denoting the fact that the Cardinals are locked into the place where the election of the pope takes place.  As I mentioned yesterday this is not necessarily the Sistine Chapel and over the centuries the popes have been elected in a variety of places both in the city of Rome and beyond—sometimes far beyond—Rome. 

The Cardinals elect the pope not because they are Cardinals but because as Cardinals they are the pastors or deacons of the principal parishes of Rome.  This is a formality, of course, none of them actually functions as a pastor or deacon, but each one carries the title Cardinal priest of (name of church) or Cardinal deacon of (name of diaconal church).  In addition there are seven Cardinal bishops who hold the title of the seven ancient dioceses neighboring Rome.  These titles too are formalities.  Nevertheless, they represent the suffragen bishops, local pastors, and principal deacons of the Roman Church who for the first thousand years of the Church’s history had the right of election of the bishop of Rome.  The right of the Cardinals to elect comes from their holding title to these churches or dioceses.  There are also four patriarchs of eastern Churches in union with the See of Rome who currently are Cardinals.  Since the days of Paul VI such patriarchs, when they are named Cardinals, rank with the Cardinal bishops but do not carry a title. 

In any event to go back to the conclave and its development in the process of papal elections: in 1216, only two days following the death of Innocent III, the Cardinals meeting in Perugia were locked into the bishop’s palace for the election.  But this was a very peculiar election.  There were seventeen cardinals present and eight who were unable to be there because of the distance.  Among the eight is counted Stephan Langton who upon being named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1207, had resigned his position as Cardinal Priest of San Crisogono and so it is not clear whether or not he was still a cardinal and had a right to vote.  As he was in England and could not have returned in time, the point is moot.   The seventeen Cardinals present chose not to elect a pope.  Instead they elected a committee of two—Cardinal Ugolino de Segni, nephew of Innocent II and future Gregory IX and Guido de Palestrina—to choose the pope.  The two-man committee selected the 68 year old Cardinal Cencio Savelli, known as Camerario (the waiter) who became Honorius III.  Being locked in for the election was an innovation and seems to have been imposed by the cardinals themselves to make them focus on a quick elective process. 
The situation was different in 1241.  The Cardinals were meeting in Rome and there was great pressure on them as the Church had been at war with the Emperor, Frederick II.  The Emperor had Rome surrounded by his army and was blocking the arrival of several cardinals hostile to his interests.  He was keeping two Cardinals prisoner at Tivoli, just outside Rome.  The people of Rome under the leadership of Senator Matteo Orsini, wanting the election to be fast and efficient, forced the Cardinals under guard into the Septizodium, a ruined palace over a thousand years old on the Palatine Hill.  Conditions there were miserable.  The roof leaked—an aggravation increased by the guards stationed there urinating on the roof with their urine leaking down along with rain into the electoral chamber. The cardinals were only allowed two servants each, the food was horrid and still, after three weeks, there was no candidate.  At this point, Orsini locked the doors allowing no one in and no one out.  The situation was so bad that one Cardinal, the Englishman Robert Somercotes, the Cardinal Deacon of Sant’Eustachio, died.  Other Cardinals began to suffer health problems.  Finally on October 25, Cardinal Goffredo di Castiligone was elected as Celestine IV.  It is unknown how old Celestine was at the time of his election but he was among the oldest of the cardinals.  His health was so compromised by the conditions of the conclave that he himself died only two weeks later.  The papacy would be empty for two years until the election of Innocent IV.   Most historians consider this 1241 election the first conclave for while the 1216 election had been conducted in seclusion it was self-imposed whereas in last two weeks of the 1241 election the enclosure had been imposed on them.  Such enclosure did not always insure a quick election however, though it does so these modern days. 
Speaking of quick elections, Cardinal Sean O’Malley said that this will be a “long” conclave.  I agree but, of course, “long” is a relative term.  Five days will be a long conclave and I will be surprised if we do not have a pope by the weekend.  One friend of mine has drawn “nine” on a lottery based on which will be the decisive ballot.  That would be Thursday evening (noon EST) and that sounds about right to me.  But it is all a guess.   In the meantime, prayer is our best way of participating.  These are critical days for the Church and the choice of a chief Shepherd to lead us out of this morass is fundamental to the credibility of the Church

Papal Transitions 2

The change in papal administrations has drawn out a journalistic increase in stories about clerical sex abuse—not that there are new charges of misbehavior but as the old stories, especially those of how charges were mishandled—are revived and rehashed.  The records of various Cardinals, Archbishops, and Bishops are examined and reexamined for everything from criminal malfeasance to simple incompetence.  And I think we have to expect this—not only because these are the stories that “sell” newspapers, but because the person-in-the-pews is not yet convinced that sufficient reforms are in place.  But what triggers my concern is several articles that have appeared recently with scathing critiques of Mother Theresa of Calcutta.  The journalists claim that given the amount of donations the saint received she could have given a much higher level of care to patients in her “houses for the dying.”
Mother Theresa didn’t have an American understanding of her mission.  She was more interested in surrounding her dying patients with love and support, alleviating their loneliness and fear, than she was in offering high-tech treatments that would have prolonged life but at the cost of removing the human care and treatment her nuns and volunteers offer.  The American approach to death has long been to see it as an adversary that must be fought no matter what the price—price both in fiduciary and humane terms.  Fortunately the hospice movement is starting to change our perception of death and we are coming to see it as the closing part of the process of life and, like Mother Theresa, understand that what is really needed is to provide people with an environment of spiritual, emotional, and humane security. 
The motives beneath the attack on Mother Theresa’s work is, like the other articles “exposing” the Church, that these are the stories that sell newspapers.  But there are more baleful reasons.  There are those who realize that shining a spotlight on the Church, and indeed on religion in general, could—were it not for their mudslinging—be an opportunity for others to give consideration to the positive roles that religion plays in society.  Not only Catholicism but organized religion is at an all-time low in its standing in western culture.  One of Benedict’s goals in becoming pope was to reverse that trend.  He had no success whatsoever in reaching this goal.  It will remain to his successor who will first have to shovel the church out from beneath the avalanche of offal that has not so much fallen upon it as has been drawn down upon the Church by its own prelates who just never “got it.”   This papal election is perhaps the most critical of the last five hundred years as the direction in which this pope sets the Church could be its call for revival or its death-knell. 

Papal Transitions

I want to bring your attention to an op-ed piece by Timothy Shriver recently printed in the Washington Post.  I would not necessarily agree with the article in its totality but I think it raises an important consideration that needs to be discussed at every level of the Church.    

 The next pope should be a mystic

Timothy Shriver is the chairman of Special Olympics.

There’s no need to rehash the recent disastrous track record of the all-male Roman Catholic hierarchy. The sordid abuse of children by priests, the sinister coverups, the callous treatment of nuns, the deaf ear turned toward Catholics who happen to be gay or divorced — it’s all on the front page. The Catholic Church is hemorrhaging moral authority.

What’s much more devastating is that it is losing believers, too. If you can’t trust the messengers, why trust the message? It is not too much to say that the crisis in the church is contributing to a crisis of faith in the Gospel itself.
This is a crisis not of management nor of theology. This is a crisis of the spirit. But before the church can address its great moral collapse, it will have to recover its spiritual bearings. The next pope should be a mystic.
A mystic? Absolutely! Contrary to popular perception, a mystic is not a magician or a crystal-ball-gazer. A mystic is rather a person who has had an experience of God’s love so unmistakable that it changes him or her forever, imparting a confidence that cannot be shaken, a humility that cannot be doubted, a freedom that exudes love and gentleness and authenticity. A mystic knows from experience, not books, that we are each beautiful beyond our understanding, loved beyond our capacity to love, united beyond our perceptions of difference and division.
Happily, mystics have a rich history in the Catholic tradition. I’d like to see a pope who is a devoted follower of the anonymous 13th-century author of The Cloud of Unknowing, who taught the practice of silent prayer and meditation. Like many contemporary teachers of meditation, this person taught students to enter meditation meekly through a “cloud of forgetting” and discover a state in which “the soul is one with God.” Today’s millions who are disillusioned with metaphysical formulations or religious creeds would love an invitation to that experience.
It would also be wonderful if the new pope led retreats based on the teachings of Saint Teresa of Avila, who wrote that “any real ecstasy is a sign you are moving in the right direction. Don’t let any prude tell you otherwise!” The future of the church depends on its capacity to embrace the healthy and wonderful human longing for love and unity and intimacy. Teresa could be the model who celebrated the love of Christ as a lover would, a pioneer who believed that, through the practice of loving God, we can become better lovers of other human beings.
The new pope could update his iPod with the enchanting sacred music composed by Hildegard of Bingen — a 12th-century hermit who longed to become a “feather on the breath of God.” We live in search of experiences of “flow,” where our identity is swallowed up in a unifying consciousness not all our own. Hildegard would be a wonderful guide in the search for that lightness of being, and her music could illuminate our search.
The new pope might also remind believers of the often painful detachment that comes with the mystical pursuit of the purest love of God. He need only teach the writings of Saint John of the Cross, who found himself “living darkly, with no ray of light.” John is a voice for those who feel the void of meaninglessness, but in that same darkness, he is also given the discovery that often comes with spiritual rigor: “[L]ove gives power to my life . . . . Love can perform a wondrous labor which I have learned internally, and all the good or bad in me takes on a penetrating savor, changing my soul so it can be consumed in a delicious flame.”
Today’s searchers can also look to modern-day mystics. American Franciscan Richard Rohr offers guidance about how to seek a heart at peace with others and infused with purpose. Rohr teaches the mysticism of Saint Francis, mysticism as part of everyday life. Rohr reminds us that the Gospel is like the gay rights movement in one way: It’s an invitation for us to come out of our closets and bask in the reckless love of God.
Can a pope be like Saint Francis or Saint Theresa?
It depends on how much the cardinals are willing to risk. They should risk it all, just like Jesus.
Theirs is a church founded on the audacious premise that “God is love.” Jesus trusted that love to enable him to take the greatest risks possible: to love his enemies, to believe that God’s presence was in all things, to teach poverty and humility and the beauty of children and flowers and meekness and peace. It was that depth of spirit that allowed him to say, “[God] the Father and I are one.”
We need a pope like him, a mystic for our times. Nothing less than a mystic can reveal the depth of the beauty of the church to a new generation of seekers, still hungry to believe, still ready to fall in love with God.

I submit that we need to give thought to an article like this not  because we have any say in who the new pope will be but  because whoever the new pope may  be, I think this gives us some direction for the renewal of the Church at the local level.

I gave a lecture last evening at a Church in the Potrero Hill district of San Francisco.  San Francisco is a vibrant city but the Church in San Francisco is dead.  When on March 28 1776 the Spanish explorers established a military base (the Presidio) and a Mission (Mission Dolores) here, it was intended to be a Catholic stronghold.  Today not only has the Catholic Church, despite its magnificent Cathedral of Saint Mary, become irrelevant to the life of this great city but San Francisco is the bastion of American secularism.  We need a new evangelism but for it to be successful we also need religious leaders who know the difference between evangelism and apologetics.  We don’t’ need more doctrine and rules and rituals to be shoved down our throats.  We need the guidance that can open to us and invite us into the experience of God.  This doesn’t mean rejecting the doctrines of our faith or its ancient rites, but it does mean addressing the hungers of the human soul rather than what has become the business as usual of trying to exert power and control over people’s lives.  We need a Shepherd, not an Inquisitor nor a warden. 

The Reform of Papal Elections, Part 2

A medieval manuscript from Krakow shows

a pope surrounded by members of his court, or

in Latin, his Curia

In our last posting we looked at the evolution of the papal election process from the second century up through the tenth.  Rome, like other local Churches, elected their bishops—the clergy (priests and deacons) voting, first presenting the candidate to the faithful for their approval and then presenting the bishop-elect to the surrounding bishops for consecration.  Those neighboring bishops could refuse consecration to the bishop-elect if they had serious question about his orthodoxy, his morals, or other suitability issues.  As we have seen in a number of postings, the system ceased working well in Rome by the ninth century when the “faithful” turned into mobs controlled by Rome’s leading families who were vying to place their candidates on the papal throne in order to control the wealth and the power of the Church for their own family benefit.  This led to a succession of notably bad Roman bishops in the ninth and tenth centuries.  There were exceptions—Nicholas I (858-867), Adrian III (884-885), Theodore II (897), John IX (898-900) and Benedict IV (900-903), but by and large this was a time of tremendous scandals in the papacy.  (check out entries for January 15^th, June 5^th, 6^th, 9^th, August 5^th among others) with stories of papal adultery, gay popes, murders to become pope, conspiracies and even the exhumation and  posthumous trial of a dead pope.   The Ottonian Emperors cleaned it up, but only by usurping the traditional privilege of papal election and appointing their candidates.  At first this was done with the façade of election, but then—as we saw in the reign of Henry III—it became mere appointment (see entry of August 13^th).  Imperial appointment actually gave the Church a number of excellent popes but it also created a dangerous precedent.  In the first place it clearly subordinated the Church to the political power.  Had this not been corrected the Catholic Church would have found itself in the same position that first the Greek Church and then the Russian Church found itself in with regard to the Byzantine Emperors and Russian Tsars respectively.  The popes would have ended up meaning no more than mere chaplains to the Emperors and the Emperors would have been the heads of the Church.  Indeed, as we shall see in a future post, Henry VIII would make the claim that since “the Crown of England is and ought by right to be a Crown Imperial” that he, the wearer of that crown, was by right head of the Church in his “imperial” realm.  But that is for later.  No sooner had the Emperors cleaned up the papacy than that very reformed papacy knew it had to break the imperial power over the Church.  That would lead to the investiture conflict, but before we go there let’s stay focused to the matter of papal elections.  Nicholas II in the papal bull, In Nomine Domini, moved to establish a definite protocol of election.  In the first place the Emperor was given no right of nomination.  The process began with the Cardinal Bishops as Nicholas empowered the seven Cardinal Bishops to select a candidate to be presented to the Cardinal Priests and Cardinal Deacons for their “election.”  This candidate would then be presented to the Roman people for their acclamation.  Only then did the Emperor have voice, having a right of confirmation; but the process was so structured that power remained with the Cardinals and their choice; there was no practical way for the Emperor to overturn the fait accompli.  By the end of the eleventh century, the separate roles of the Cardinal Bishops on the one hand and the Cardinal Deacons and Priests on the other melded so that all Cardinals participated equally in the election.  This was almost inevitable given the relatively small size of the Sacred College—rarely as many as thirty and often only a dozen or so. Remember too that at this stage of history, the Cardinal Bishops, Priests, and Deacons were all actual bishops, pastors and deacons of the Diocese of Rome who (normally) lived there and were key in administering the local Church.  They were not the international assortment they are now. 
     The Emperors were not happy with losing their right of nomination and, in fact, it was only in 1122 at the Council of Worms that they conceded the loss of that right.  As late as 1903 in the election that produced Pope Saint Pius X the Emperor (by then of Austria—the Holy Roman Empire having been terminated in 1806 when Francis I of Austria abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire (where he had been Francis II) following defeat by Napoleon and loss of territories to France) Franz-Josef vetoed the impending election of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla.  Pius abolished the imperial right of veto as one of the first acts of his pontificate.  We will look more at this problem of Imperial interference in papal elections in our next posting.  For now, let’s go back to the election process.
     The right of the Roman people to “acclaim” the election persisted well into the Middle Ages but it gradually ceased to have any determinative role in determining the legitimacy of the papal selection.  The fact that in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries any number of papal elections were held outside Rome whether at Perugia, Viterbo, Naples, or Avignon and that automatically excluded the Roman crowd from participation.   Nevertheless, remember that when the papacy returned to Rome after the Avignon “Babylonian Captivity” in 1378 it was still deemed necessary to present a candidate acceptable to the Roman Populace.  By a century later that would no longer be any concern and the Roman populace was openly hostile to various popes in the sixteenth century. 
     The custom of the conclave began in the thirteenth century when, on occasion, prolonged meetings of the Cardinals failed to produce a candidate due to internal divisions among the electors.  Sometimes the papal office was left empty for over a year!  Upon the death of Innocent III in 1216 the city of Perugia—where the election was being held—blockaded the cardinals into the bishop’s palace until they came up with a pope.  After the death of Celestine IV in 1241, civil officials in Rome did the same to the cardinal electors when after 19 months they had not made a choice.  Clement IV died in 1268 and two years and ten months passed before the Cardinals came up with a pope.  The citizens of Viterbo not only barricaded the cardinals inside but first tore the roof from the building and then permitted only bread and water to be passed to the electors within.  The pope elected at that conclave, Gregory X, established the norm that the Cardinals would be secluded under relatively austere conditions until an election was forthcoming.  It didn’t always work but that is for future postings. 
    The key point we want to observe is that the Church broke the imperial hold on the selection of popes.  This was an important step in freeing the papacy from political power.  At times, it would find itself again beneath the thumb of some emperor or king but for the most part, the pope has played at least as an equal to the political forces in the world around him.  the next task would be to free the bishops from imperial and royal control.     

Papal Conclaves

I was walking home last evening after dinner with some friends and as I passed the manica lunga of the Quirinale palace it struck me that most people think that papal elections have always taken place in the Sistine Chapel when, in fact, the regular use of the Sistine for papal conclaves is rather recent. The 1800 conclave was held in the Benedictine abbey of San Giorgio in Venice due to the French occupation of Rome. The elections of 1823, 1829, 1831, and 1846 were all held in the Pauline Chapel of the Quirinale Palace, then the principal papal residence in Rome. (At the fall of the Papal States, Pius IX abandoned the Quirinale to take up residence at the Vatican and the Quirinale became the official residence of the Italian Kings and later, with the establishment of the Italian Republic, the Presidents of Italy.
While many of the popes of the sixteenth-through the eighteenth centuries had been elected in conclaves held in the Vatican Palace, the actual elections were not necessarily in the Sistine Chapel. The Pauline Chapel (The Capella Paolina) was also used for conclaves. I have also read that the small chapel frescoed by Fra Angelico, the Chapel of Nicholas V, was used at least for the 1464 and 1534 conclaves but I find this hard to believe as the chapel probably could not hold ten cardinals standing in their underwear much less even the small number of participants (15-25) typical in that period seated in their full regalia. Before the sixteenth century popes had been elected in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the Lateran, in Santa Maria Maggiore, in Santa Sabina, in Santa Maria in Cosmedin, San Pietro in Vincoli, San Gregorio Magno, San Marco, San Pancrazio, and a ramshackle palace on the Palatine called the Septizodium. In the High Middle Ages—the 12th, 13, and 14th centuries—when the papacy was notoriously peripatetic, conclaves had been held in Perugia, Viterbo, Naples, Agnani, Bologna, Ferrara, and Pisa. Some conclaves were even outside Italy—the Abbey of Cluny and in Lyon (both in France), along with Konstanz (in Switzerland) and of course Avignon where conclaves were held in 1334, 1342, 1352, 1362, and 1370.
Paul VI had residential facilities constructed for the Cardinals participating in future conclaves rather than the makeshift accommodations that had been arranged ever since the conclaves had been moved to the Vatican from the Quirinale in the conclave of 1878. He also had a potential voting hall incorporated in the Audience Hall which he had designed by Italian architect Pier Luigi Nervi, but in the interregnum after his death, the Cardinals decided that they would prefer to retain the Sistine Chapel as the place for elections.

The photo is the Quirinale Palace taken from the Castle San Angelo. From this perspective it bears an uncanny resemblance to the Potala