More Thoughts on Pope Francis' "Merry Christmas" to the Boys in the Curia

a heart contrite and humbled, O

God, you will not reject.  

Let’s continue our “examination of conscience” as we look at Pope Francis’s call out to the papal Curia in his bombshell of a Christmas message.  The reform of the Church needs to be in root and branches—that means not only those men in long red dresses lunching at da Roberto in the Borgo Pio or at Scarpone up there on the Janiculum—but here on the local level as well.  And not just Monsignor Quinn at the chancery or Father Jasek in the parish but you and me and the rest of the people in the pews.  There is no shoe-size that only fits a Cardinal. 

The disease of excessive planning and of functionalism. When the apostle plans everything down to the last detail and believes that with perfect planning things will fall into place, he becomes an accountant or an office manager. Things need to be prepared well, but without ever falling into the temptation of trying to contain and direct the freedom of the Holy Spirit, which is always greater and more flexible than any human planning (cf. Jn 3:8). We contract this disease because “it is always more easy and comfortable to settle in our own sedentary and unchanging ways. In truth, the Church shows her fidelity to the Holy Spirit to the extent that she does not try to control or tame him… to tame the Holy Spirit! … He is freshness, imagination, and newness”.

Planning is a good thing.  Jesus tells us in the gospel that a man building a tower will sit down and plan his finances to see if he can complete it; a king preparing for battle will come up with a plan to defeat a larger army or flee the field.  But there are those for whom the Church is a business and not a mission.  They have a business plan.  It is their plan.  The Christian knows that we need to stand back and prayerfully discern God’s plan and our place in it.  What is even more off-putting are those whose plan is not to advance the mission of the Church but for their own advancement in the Church.  This has been a huge problem for decades now.  In the heady years after Vatican II there were many priests who would have made good bishops but they didn’t want to give up the “work in the trenches” of parishes and schools and so they declined the appointment.  We too often were left with the second-stringers, the ones who wanted to get a red dress of their own, the careerists.  The situation deteriorated even more when under John Paul II and Benedict, loyalty to the institution rather than dedication to mission became the bottom line in choosing bishops.  We were flooded with men like Fabian Bruskewitz (now retired of Lincoln) or Paul Loverde of Arlingtion or Joseph Martino (now emeritus of Scranton), or Edward Egan (retired of New York) who couldn’t think for themselves but swallowed the “party line” hook, line, and sinker.  Even worse we got the opportunists who were bright enough to think critically but sufficiently cynical to suck up in hopes of advancing their own careers, people like Robert Finn of Kansas City or Robert Morlino of Madison or Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco.  (Actually Teddy McCarrick, formerly of Newark and Washington, was one of the worst of these until he got his red hat and once having arrived as far as he was going to go, showed a little backbone.)  It got so that intelligence and integrity were almost a barrier to a miter.  We need bishops who have a vision of the Kingdom of God and can see a path to lead us there, bishops who buy into God’s plan with a prophet’s eye and wise man’s heart.  The task is not to preserve what we have—our own “sedentary and unchanging ways” but to allow the Holy Spirit full freedom to spread his wings wide and soar into the future God has planned for us. 

Sometimes we see this problem just as strong on the local level where priests and more interested in keeping things smooth with the chancery than providing their people with the spiritual nourishment they are looking for.  One of my favorite movies, back in the day, was Mass Appeal starring Jack Lemmon as a priest who sold his soul in order to be loved by his wealthy parishioners, but I have met far too many “don’t rock the boat” priests over the years who either for popularity or for advancement have gladly surrendered their integrity.  Sycophantism  does not become the holiness of the priesthood. 

The disease of poor coordination. Once its members lose communion among themselves, the body loses its harmonious functioning and its equilibrium; it then becomes an orchestra which produces noise: its members do not work together and lose the spirit of fellowship and teamwork. When the foot says to the arm: “I don't need you ”, or the hand says to the head, “I’m in charge”, they create discomfort and scandal.

This is another subject for which we Americans have long been condemned by people in Rome who are even more guilty of it than we are.  Americans are individualists.  It has long been so.  Tocqueville mentioned it in his 1835 Democracy in America.  But the Curia Romana has long deteriorated into one of the most pitiless aggregates of individuals in the history of bureaucracy.  The jealousies and rivalries as the various prelates try to slither up the caterpillar pillar, each constantly trying to edge the others off to reach the purpled destiny they lust after rather than working for the common good of the faithful has long scandalized any outsider who has had to work with them in any capacity.  But we often see this same malady in the local chancery offices or among priests vying for “better” and “better” parishes.  And as women take their place in chanceries and parish administration they are often no less ruthless in eliminating any opposition to achieving their particular vision of Church rather than being responsive to the needs of the rank and file.  And how often do we “go to the mats” to defend our own ecclesial turf?  “I am always the lector at 10 am Mass.”   “Father Joe comes to all my parties.”  “I do the purificators and corporals around here.”  “I pick the music!” 

The sixth malady the Pope mentioned in his message is:

There is also a “spiritual Alzheimer’s disease”. It consists in losing the memory of our personal “salvation history”, our past history with the Lord and our “first love” (Rev 2:4). It involves a progressive decline in the spiritual faculties which in the long or short run greatly handicaps a person by making him incapable of doing anything on his own, living in a state of absolute dependence on his often imaginary perceptions. We see it in those who have lost the memory of their encounter with the Lord; in those who no longer see life’s meaning in “deuteronomic” terms; in those who are completely caught up in the present moment, in their passions, whims and obsessions; in those who build walls and routines around themselves, and thus become more and more the slaves of idols carved by their own hands.

This is perhaps the saddest.  Here are men who have so completely fallen in love with the power and perks of their office that they have forgotten the Love that first called them to the priesthood or the Religious Life.  Their heart is given to “the Church”—but not the Church as the spotless bride of the Lamb but the Institution with all its what the old baptismal rite used to refer to as “pomps”  as in “Do you renounce Satan and all his pomps.”  They salivate over cappae magnae and mitrae pretiosae and long ceremonies with numerous acolytes to carry a bugia or a thurible.  Love for the Crucified has been reduced to a ceremonial kiss of an ivory crucifix while kneeling on a damask draped prie-dieu at the Church door.  Zeal for souls expresses itself in keeping people from Holy Communion.   “Prayer” is the self-indulgent piety of a daily Holy Hour in one’s private chapel where one prays with the good gentleman of Luke 18:11-12.  Religion, granted “the true religion” has replaced God in this forgetful heart.  Where is the boy who dreamed of going to Africa to minister to lepers?  Where is the young man who dreamed of monastic solitude?  Where is the young priest who made midnight calls to the hospital?  What makes us forget why we raised our head and cocked our ear to a soundless call for sheer love?  It is so easy to slip into vocational dementia.  And that is true for all of us.  Why is it so easy to turn over on Sunday morning and sleep when once we never would have missed Mass?  Why is it so easy to relegate one hour a week to God when we used to find our social life in the parish and its outreach?  Why have we forgotten that beneath that panhandling drunk or that old woman in the nursing home lurks Jesus himself.   Why has love grown cold when it was once so ardent?  

Foundations of the Anglican Church, XXX

The Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich, on

the site of the Palace of Placentia, principal home

to Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon

I mentioned in my last post that Henry and Katherine of Aragon were married in a private ceremony in the Greyfriar’s Church in Greenwich, near the royal palace of Placentia which was at the time the principal royal residence.  The palace, which fell out of royal favor later in the reign of Henry VIII—perhaps because it was associated with his first marriage—eventually fell into disrepair and was demolished in the 17^th century during the English Civil War.  It stood on the site of the present royal naval hospital and observatory which marks “Greenwich Time,” longitude 0^o, by which the world’s clocks are set. 
The Greyfriars are the Franciscans, so named for the color of the Franciscan habit in the middle ages when it was made of undyed wool.  (Today elements of the Franciscan family have returned to wearing grey rather than the brown robes we usually associate with the family of the Assisi saint.)  Dominicans were called “Blackfriars” and Carmelites “Whitefriars” for the color of the mantles of their habits for the same reason.  But the Greenwich Greyfriars were not merely Franciscans, they were Franciscan Observants.  Almost from the time of the death of Saint Francis in 1224 there had been a faction among the friars calling for a reform that would keep alive the simplicity of Francis.  The pressures of the Church for the friars to be highly educated and the pressures of civil society for the friars to become involved in civic affairs were challenging the Franciscan spirit.  Francis had wanted his sons to remain simple brothers who by their poverty and gentle spirits would witness to the humility of Christ.  In the developing economic culture of medieval Europe with the rise of mercantile capitalism and the polarization of society into a small very wealthy capital class and large and semi-impoverished working class (hmm, sound familiar) Francis felt that the witness of men voluntarily adopting the life of the working class would align the Church with true Christianity of the masses rather than being the Church being coopted by the hierarchy for the service of the wealthy.  (hmmm, and why did the current Pope choose the regnal name “Francis?”  Cardinal Burke, Archbishop Lori, and others, are you paying attention?)   This was especially true because most of Francis’ followers came, as he did, from the wealthy merchant class not from the lower working classes.  For the sons of the wealthy to embrace voluntary poverty in witness to the poverty of Jesus the Carpenter, was indeed a powerful evangelism tool, as the current Pope keeps telling us.  Nevertheless the temptations of a comfortable life were hard to resist.  Bonaventure, Francis’ seventh successor as head of the movement, pushed education.  The brothers should study at the University.  Even in Francis’ lifetime students and professors had flocked to the Franciscan movement and education is an important tool for the clergy.  Simplicity is fine, but not stupidity.  Ultimately a sound theological education would have to be part of the friars’ formation.  But education requires books and books were a very expensive luxury in the thirteenth century.  And in education you constantly talk about abstract ideas and ideals—and few are less savvy in the everyday practicalities of life than the intellectuals.  Just spend some time among university faculty today and you will see the difference between knowledge and wisdom.  It was not long after the death of the Saint that the Franciscan spirit began to slide down the slippery slope to spiritual mediocrity.  The friars, once educated, were entrusted by the bishops with urban ministries among the professional classes.  The friars were invited to build churches and convents in the better neighborhoods.  The wealthy began showering them with gifts.  “Nothing is too good for the friars…” and the friars began to believe that themselves.  They wanted to look respectable and the patched robes of Francis’ day were replaced by habits of better fabric and more elegant tailoring.  They were living in the better neighborhoods so the ramshackle barns or wattle huts of Francis’ days gave way to fine stone convents with large rooms and airy courtyards.  The occasional treats which people sent for their table for feast days became the ordinary fare ordered from the grocer.  But some of the brothers could not let go of the ideals of their saintly founder and tried to return to the original spirit.  The first movement in this direction went overboard and the “Spirituals” as they were called were condemned by John XXII and ordered to give up their extreme poverty or face excommunication.  But the spirit of reform did not die and it was not long before new reform movements, very careful to avoid criticism of the wealth of the Church lest the face the fate of the Spirituals, sprang up.  They wore simpler habits.  They lived in smaller houses, often in more out of the way towns or villages rather than in the large cities.  They did not disdain education but neither did they allow their members to give in to its conceits.  In 1517 Pope Leo X separated the “Observants” from the “Conventuals” and the various observant groups became independent of the unreformed friars.  It was to one of these “observant” movements that then Greenwich friars belonged.  The observant Franciscans were admired throughout Europe, wherever the movement spread, but they had especially strong ties to the English royal family and to the Spanish royal family of Katherine as well.  Isabella’s confessor and spiritual mentor, Cardinal Ximénez de Cisneros was an Observant Franciscan.  Indeed Ximénez and Isabella had been responsible for great reforms in the Spanish Church that purged it of much of the decay that in other countries would lead to the Protestant Reformations that would break out in Europe in the middle of the sixteenth century.  And the Franciscans at Greenwich were a sign of reform beginning in the English Church as well—reform that had it continued on a Catholic trajectory could have resulted in a very different England that would eventually come about.  But historians know you can’t play the game of “what if?” 
The Church in England, like the Church in most of Europe, was in desperate need of reform.  The Spanish Church, due to Isabella and Ximénez, had faced its decay and reversed the trend early on, creating an almost puritanical and certainly a rabid Catholicism, but a spiritually healthy one none the less.  England had potential for reform.  There was a strong and educated professional class—families of guildsmen—whose sons entered the service of the Church and the Crown—often entering the service of the Crown by beginning in the Church and then as bishops and abbots holding royal appointments.  Among the laity, the professional classes tended to be devout and had a taste for spiritual reading.  The Rhineland mysticism of Eckhardt, Ruysbroeck, Tauler and others had spilled over into England and England had its own mystics and spiritual writers in Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and others.  While most of the monasteries of England had settled into comfortable complacency there were those such as Glastonbury which had undertaken some reform and observance.  In addition to the Franciscan Observants, the Charterhouse monks (Carthusians) were known for their zeal and integrity.  Intellectual circles were alive with discussion of Church reform.  The Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus spent much time in England where he was friends with Dean Colet of Saint Pauls’ in London, Bishop Fisher of Rochester who had been tutor to the young Henry VIII, and Thomas More who was later to be Lord Chancellor. 
The type of reform envisioned by Erasmus, Colet, Fisher, and More was the culture of the old fashioned pan-European “Christendom” rooted in Christian antiquity and patristics that saw the Church as a transnational Christian imperium, the ark of salvation in which all humanity could be gathered without distinction of race or nation.  This was distinctly out of step, however, with the growing national consciousness of the emerging nations of Europe where people no longer saw themselves primarily as Christians with a commonality with other Christians but as Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or Spaniards, or as Portuguese, or as Scots, or as Genoese or Neapolitans, or Franconians, or as Saxons.  (Germany or Italy would emerge as nations only much later than the French or English or Spaniards.) 
In any event, the impetus for reform from within the Church would not have time to mature in England as it had in Spain.  Reform in England would initially be imported by the universities, Cambridge in particular, from Luther’s Germany and then become of tool of the Crown for ends more political than religious.  Finally the Crown would lose control of Church Reform and it would become a tool of the landed aristocracy for self-enrichment and then of the mercantile classes to justify their self-interested commercial revolution.  In the process the Church of England would first become far less Catholic and then more Calvinist and finally attain a sui generis identity as England’s organ of moral self-validation.  This would transplant to America where the expectation of religion would be to uphold the traditional social order and, in the case of Catholicism, give us the Spellman Catholicism of the 1950’s.  But all that is in the future. 

Roots of the Reformation XXI: The Ottonian Reformation 2

Otto I with Knights and Nobles

Well, we have strayed a bit from our theme of Reformation and the “Ottonian” Reformation of the Emperors Otto I, II, and III in particular.  The power of Otto I’s daughter, the Abbess Matilida, led us into a digression on women and ecclesiastical authority and then we looked a bit at the issue of Same Sex Marriage due to the passage of a bill legitimating gay marriage in New York State.  So let’s return to the Emperor Otto I and his attempts to reform the Church.

Otto had to carve out the position of Holy Roman Emperor after the title had fallen into disuse in the late ninth and early tenth centuries, but as King of Germany he had great power north of the Alps.  He tried to clean up the papacy which was going through one of its most discreditable periods in history, if not the single most discreditable period, but he did not have great luck.  He had allied himself with the reprobate John XII with the Diploma Ottonium in which he agreed to serve as protector of the Church, but the last thing John—one of the most immoral of popes—wanted was the Emperor interfering in the Church and any curtailment of John’s own power.  When John turned against Otto and his authority, Otto deposed him and saw that Leo VIII was elected in his place.  Church historians today see such a deposition as “invalid,” but at the time it was seen as a legitimate prerogative of the Emperor and the election of Leo was seen as valid. The Romans never accepted Leo—they saw him as a creature of the Emperor and resented the “foreign” interference in the election of their bishop.  John fled to the mountains outside Rome where he gathered an army from among family, friends, and retainers.  Otto was no sooner on his way back to Germany when John’s army attacked Rome and caused Leo to flee.  Otto turned around determined to beat John once and for all, but God called John to judgment before Leo had his chance to do the same.  With John dead, the Roman’s chose Benedict V but Otto was determined for Leo and had Benedict deposed and Leo re-installed as Pope.  Modern Church historians recognize Leo as the legitimate pope from this time (965) on.  Poor Benedict had a somewhat remarkable decline from the papacy.  Leo personally ripped the palium (the sign of his office as pope) frm his shoulders and his papal staff (crozier) was snapped in two over his head and he was reduced to the rank of deacon and sent into exile in Hamburg, Germany—about as far from Rome as you can get.  When Leo died, John XIII became pope—a compromise candidate acceptable to both the Emperor and the Roman Populace, though the first choice of neither.  John and Otto had some success in reforming the Church though no significant reform in Rome itself where the vested political interests of the different Roman noble families would resist change.  John and Otto established a number of new Archbishoprics in Germany—pushing missionary efforts eastward towards what is today the Czech Republic and southern Poland and northward into the Baltic.  John also established several Latin Archbishoprics in southern Italy which still had ties to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire and where Christianity tended to follow the Greek rather than Roman pattern.  John’s expanding of his authority into the southern reaches of Italy shifted that alliance so that when the break between Rome and Constantinople occurred in 1054, the southern parts of Italy and Sicily remained in the Roman orbit rather than moving with Orthodoxy. 

If Otto’s success in Church reform south of the Alps was not as prolific as he might have wished, he had far greater influence in Germany where his power was stronger.  He was very proactive in the selection of bishops and abbots, choosing men who would be loyal to him (and thus balancing the nobles who resented the diminution of their power) and who saw eye to eye with him on Church matters.  He was particularly successful in pushing missionary activity along the eastern borders of his realm which not only won souls to Christ but subjects to his crown.  Otto had his son Otto II crowned in 961 while he, Otto I, was still alive in order to guarantee the succession.  The nobles having the right to elect the German King, Otto needed to be alive to make sure the election came out the way he wanted.  Otto lived for twelve more years, father and son nominally reigning jointly but the father holding on to power to the very end.  He died in 973 and was buried in the cathedral of Magdeburg, one of the Archiepiscopal Sees he created.   

Roots of the Reformation XXI: Leave it to the ladies: An Abbess' progress

Quedlinburg Abbey

Well, let’s go  back to the Emperor Otto and his determination to reform the Church.  In the first place Otto, like Charlemagne before him, needed the Church if he was going to bring unity to his vastly diverse empire.   It would be religion that could provide a common basis for all the different races and tribes, languages, legal codes, and traditions that comprised the empire he was trying to forge out of his vast holdings.  Otto also needed the Church—or to be specific—the bishops and abbots to be a counterweight to the power of the nobility and attain a true political supremacy and not just the imperial title.  Even so, supremacy did not come easily and Otto had to put down several rebellions by various dukes who were used to independence from any outside authority. 

Otto’s first brush with the papacy was when John XII, a particularly unworthy pope, appealed to Otto for help against Berengar II who was occupying the Papal States.  (Check entries for June 6^th, and June 18^th for more details on John and his alleged crimes ranging from incest to the invoking of demons.)  Otto defeated Berengar and Pope John crowned Otto as emperor.  Together they issued the Diploma Ottonianum—an agreement by which Otto pledged himself to defend the Church.  John was treacherous, however, and not wishing Otto to have control of Italy any more than Berengar, John tried to build an anti-Imperial alliance with the Magyars and the Emperor of Constantinople.  The Emperor returned to Rome and convoked a synod that deposed John and elected Leo VIII. Today the Catholic Church says that this deposing a pope by a synod and at the insistence of the Emperor was invalid and Leo was (initially) an anti-pope, but in that time and for centuries afterwards this was recognized as a legitimate act.  The Emperor claimed—and was accorded—this right to “make and break” popes as part of his oversight of the Church.  The story doesn’t end there, by the way, but we need not go further for our purposes other than to say that Leo may not have been as evil as John XII, but he was no worthy successor of Peter either.  It would be a while before the Emperors were able to get men of good moral character on the papal throne.

That doesn’t mean that Otto wasn’t sincere about Church reform, but the greatest efforts of reform during his reign were actually accomplished by his daughter, Matilda, the Abbess of Quedlinburg.  Quedlinburg was an abbey of canonesses.  A canoness is a woman religious much like a nun (or even, one might say, a type of nun) whose chief purpose is to serve the church to which her community of canonesses is attached by providing for the daily round of liturgical offices.  Just as canons are (usually) religious (in this case, men) whose chief work is to sing the offices in their abbey church, so too canonesses are obliged to sing the liturgical hours for the edification of the faithful.  They differ from monks and monastic nuns who, while the sing the daily offices, have their chief work in lectio divina (contemplation of the Word of God) and manual labor (ora et labora).  That distinction is a bit simplistic but perhaps in a future entry we can explore canons and canonesses more deeply.  I am using an awful lot of parentheses today, bear with me. 

Anyway Quedlinburg was a somewhat exceptional abbey.  It had been established by Otto’s mother who, in her widowhood, served as its first Abbess.  Otto appointed his daughter Matilda as its second Abbess when she was just eleven years old.  When Otto went to Italy to sort out various problems with the papacy, he left his daughter the Abbess Matilda, as regent in Germany.  She subsequently served as regent for her brother, Otto II, when he was occupied in Italy with various issues regarding the papacy.   While still in her teens, she convoked a reforming synod of the German prelates.  She was determined to end many of the abuses that were plaguing the Church at the time—especially the domination of important abbeys and dioceses by the various nobles who interfered with the election of bishops and abbots to put family members or clients in those positions.  This was ironic, of course, as Matilda herself had been appointed Abbess by her father, the Emperor. 

The Abbess of Quedlinburg, like the abbesses of many other imperial abbeys, was exempted from the authority of the local bishop and, indeed, had a virtual diocese of her own having jurisdiction of the many churches that belonged to the Abbey.  It was not unusual in the Middle Ages for abbeys, both of men and women, to be Abbeys Nullius—that is an abbey where the Abbot or Abbess held “ordinary” jurisdiction, i.e. the administrative (though not necessarily the sacramental) jurisdiction of a bishop.  Such Abbots and Abbesses had their own canonical tribunals, appointed pastors, gave letters dimmisorial  permitting ordinations, gave dispensations, granted faculties to the clergy and the various other jurisdictional responsibilities of bishops.  Today Roman authorities claim that one has to be in Holy Orders to exercise jurisdiction in the Church, but history testifies that this was not always the case.  In 1540 the Abbess and canonesses of Quedlinburg embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, becoming Protestant, but they continued leading their lives of prayer and education until suppressed by Napoleon (along with Catholic abbeys) in 1802.