When Sheldon Cooper Was Pope

Coat of Arms of Pius XII 

I remember the death of Pius XII.  It was a Wednesday night—a school night—and we had just gone to bed, probably about 9:30.  For some reason I had gotten up after about a half hour and gone back downstairs where my parents were watching television.  I heard the news bulletin break through the television show they were watching. In those days, it was black and white, of course and I vaguely remember that the program may have been Bat Masterson, but I do remember clearly how startling an idea it was that the Pope was dead.  I didn’t know any other pope, of course.  When one is young, one does not think  of a pope dying.  The Pope was an institution, not a human being.  Pius XII.  There had been a Pius XI, but that was long before me.  As a kid still in grade school, I had never given it much thought but presumed there had only been Piuses.  Twelve of them.   A link through the centuries to Peter and through Peter to Jesus, to God.  I really was pretty unsophisticated, I guess but for a generation who only knew John Paul II, the shock was similar.  Popes just seemed to be the bridge between us in this world and God in the world above.  Of course, Pius XII was, or seemed to be, no mere mortal—he transcended the world of the simply human—this was a Pope who seemed to float above our everyday world, who represented the Divine to our spiritual imaginations.  When it came to Popes, Pius had lulled us into a sort of monophysitism where his humanity had been absorbed into a papal divinity. 

This was no accident.  Pius was a man who invented the papacy for his age.  He understood, at least at a subliminal level, the idea that the “medium is the message” long before anyone heard of Marshall McLuhan.  And for those of us of his generation, no Pope would ever measure up to Pius XII.  He set the bar as to what a Pope should be. 

Now I don’t want this to be taken as a negative, and I am not trying to be funny or to ridicule, but in fact, Pius was somewhat of an ecclesiastical Sheldon Cooper.  He was a brilliant man but a social misfit who was incapable of normal human relationships.  He was all intellect and no conscious affect; a man of rigid protocols and compulsive routine.  He was born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli on March 2^nd 1876 to a Princely family of the “Black Nobility”—the Roman aristocracy that refused to recognize the Kingdom of Italy and its claims on the former papal states. The Pacelli were steadfast supporters of the Papacy and its lost claims to civil power, and family members were among the most active employees of the Holy See.  Eugenio was one of four children—two boys and two girls and was educated as a day student in various private schools.  At eighteen he enrolled in Rome’s most ancient seminary, the Collegio Capranica.  The Capranica is not only the oldest seminary in Rome but perhaps the most exclusive, admitting less than a dozen new students each year.   At the same time it has turned out a remarkable number of prelates for the Church.

There was no doubt that Pacelli was not to be a simple parish priest but would go on for a career in the Church.  His family connections and social position guaranteed that, but still Eugenio could not handle life in the seminary.  He had been a coddled child—not inherently delicate but much cossetted by his parents, particularly an over-devoted mother.  He had never been encouraged to form friendships with other children at school.  He had no peers—others lacked the impeccable social standing of the Pacelli.  His inability to develop peer relationships made life at the Capranica impossible, but no other collegio was suitable—and, in any event, would have been no less disturbing to the introverted young seminarian.  Yet it was unthinkable that he should withdraw from priestly studies.  Permission was sought and easily obtained that he should live at home while continuing his studies.  This, of course, only served to reinforce Eugenio’s isolation and retard his social development.   

Now when I say that his social skills were arrested, I do not mean that he lacked the proper forms of etiquette.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Like other families of the Black Nobility, protocol was very air which they breathed.  The Pacelli, like other Black families, were rigid in maintaining their public appearance in matters of dress, speech, conveyance, entertainment, table-manners, and other aspects of social niceties.  Frankly, they would have made Downton Abbey look like the Beverly Hillbillies.  The honor of the disenfranchised papacy depended on the uncompromised social propriety of its nobility.  But again, this very artificial living environment made Eugenio compulsive (at the least) in all matters of public persona.

When it came time for ordination to the priesthood, Eugenio was not ordained with the other candidates for the Diocese of Rome, but was ordained by himself in a private ceremony in the personal chapel of Archbishop Francesco de Paolo Casetta, Patriarch of Antioch and soon to be Cardinal, on Easter Day 1899.  As ever, Eugenio was to stand alone—he had no peers.  He had a brief assignment to his home parish, the Chiesa Nuova, allowing him to continue to live at home, but after two years was given a post in the Secretariat of State and given the assignment to be the personal representative of Pope Leo XIII to deliver condolences to King Edward VII of England on the death of Queen Victoria.   This is an interesting assignment.  Pacelli was 25 years old and a simple priest and yet was sent to a King on the personal behalf of a Pope.  Rome and England had no official diplomatic ties of course—and English Law prohibited any such official ties—yet diplomatic niceties required the personal—if not official—condolences.  The messenger obviously had to be totally unofficial—thus not a prelate—and yet a person of sufficient standing to represent a Pope and not be a slight to the King.  Pacelli was perfect.  While not a prelate, he was a noble.  And he could be counted on to have the gravity and savvy to carry this off.  It also was a clear sign that he was going to be someone.

Pacelli’s rise was quick.  He received the Roman Doctorate and became a monsignor by 28.  He stood in favor of Pius X’s Sectretary of State—and, for all practical purposes, vice-pope—Cardinal Merry del Val.  He accompanied Merry del Val to London for an International Eucharistic Congress in 1908 and he was sent back to London to deliver the congratulations of the Holy See to George V upon his coronation in 1911.  On these trips he met several Englishmen, including Winston Churchill, whose contacts would be invaluable during World War II.  By 1917 he was an Archbishop and papal nuncio to Bavaria.  As such he handled all diplomatic ties of the Holy See for the German Empire as Berlin and the Holy See did not have formal diplomatic ties.  This was the final year and a half of World War I, so it was a crucial post at a crucial time.  His post as nuncio was formally moved to Berlin and the Weimar Republic in 1920 and he continued in this post until recalled to Rome in 1929.  He was prescient about Hitler and the evils of National Socialism, but he also had had to deal with the threat of a Communist Revolution in Munich after the German collapse of 1918.    In 1929 he was created cardinal and named papal secretary of State to Pius XI, a post in which he continued to serve until h is election as Pope in March, 1939. 

Pius was a skilled diplomat but, unlike his successor as Pope, Giuseppe Roncalli (later John XXIII) he owed his success not to personal charm but to his rigid rationality and aristocratic manners.  Pacelli was not a man, he was a machine.  Very atypical to the Italian personality, he was highly structured and manically organized.  He was a stickler for detail and he never let down his guard regarding the dignity of the offices he held whether it that of the priesthood, a papal diplomat, or Cardinal Secretary of State.  Not the slightest jot or tittle of protocol was overlooked.  Ever.  He was always dressed impeccably and to his rank.  His manners were flawless.  His residence, whether official or while in transit, was perfectly in keeping with the demands of his station.  The guard was never let down.  There was no personal life nor any personality—he was always exactly what he was expected to be whether in public or in private. 

During his time in Germany he built a staff of very talented aids that were to remain around him for the remainder of his life: Monsignor Ludwig Kaas, Father Robert Leiber SJ, and the Franciscan Mother Pasqualina Lenhert.  These were talented and competent people, and like Pius, people who were totally devoted to the institutional aspects of Catholicism and who tended to view the world from a structuralist perspective.  They would have been totally unable to understand the personalist philosophy and policies of John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis would send them totally around the bend.  Pasqualina was particularly interesting as she was cut of the same protective—and isolating—nature has had been Pacelli’s mother.  Again, think of Sheldon Cooper.

Pius was elected Pope on his 63^rd birthday, March 2, 1939.  There was nothing of the Italian parish priest about him as there had been of his predecessors Pius X or Pius XI.  (Benedict XV, Pope between the two Piuses, also lacked a personal warmth, but was not the automaton that was Pacelli.)   As Pope Pius maintained the austere personal habits he had followed his entire life.  Moreover, no detail of papal ceremony or prerogative was overlooked or abandoned.  He took his meals in absolute privacy as he had always done.  He ran his life by a schedule as rigid as the German railways.  His housekeeper, the German nun Mother Pasqualina, served as bouncer to the Papal apartment, determining who had access to the Pope and when.  No breach of lèse majesté was tolerated.  Even senior Cardinals could not get past her.  Appearing in public, Pius always had an ethereal look on his face.  He could not look another person in the eye or bear to be looked at in the eye—this was all his inability to sustain human contact. 

Allegedly Pius had once “vice”—and that was a love for speed.  When travelling the road to the papal summer residence at Castle Gondalfo  in the Alban Hills south of Rome, he would order his chauffer to go faster and yet faster. 

So it was Sheldon Cooper in Papal drag.  Sadly for many neo-trads this “otherworldly” figure has become the papal ideal.  John XXIII and John Paul I were huge disappointments, for some even scandals. Paul VI and Benedict XVI came closer to the ideal, but still fell considerably short.  Francis seems to them to be no more than a buffoon in what shambles of a papal vesture remain.  This is what happens when we confuse eccentric with holy, arrested development with the “spiritual.”  Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that Pius was not a good man.  He was an extremely complex man and a rigid moral code was part of that complexity, too rigid in fact.  But we never saw the man—only the persona that he created to keep the man hidden.  Pius may have been an extreme when it comes to this artificiality, but he is not unique.  For many priests the persona or the mask of the perfect priest is the way that they keep from having to deal with the man behind the mask, or the penis beneath the cassock.  Strange for a religion whose central doctrine is the incarnation?  Good to have a Pope like Francis where what you see is what you get.  

Well, What Do Liberal Catholics Want?

One of my regular readers—and a good friend—drew my attention to this article by Damon Linker.  You can check out the article at http://theweek.com/article/index/255064/what-do-liberal-catholics-want

What drew my attention was the following paragraph

After reading an endless stream of gushing commentary by liberal Catholics on Pope Francis, I'm beginning to wonder if they ever really cared about reforming doctrine in the first place.

Now I am not sure that Linker knows his Catholicism sufficiently to know what is doctrinal and what is not.  He lumps disciplinary matters like mandatory celibacy in with theological (doctrinal) matters such as abortion and same-sex marriage.  But that isn’t my argument with him.  Frankly, I don’t think “liberal” Catholics have any expectation—or desire—for doctrinal change.  Polls show that while American Catholics stand with the majority of Americans in not wanting a total ban (note the word “total”) on legal abortion, the vast majority of American Catholics believe that abortion is a moral evil in as that it is the deliberate taking of a human life.  Similarly the majority of American Catholics favor the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, but I don’t know any American Catholics (which isn’t to say that there aren’t some, I just don’t know them) who quibble with the Church’s policy of sacramentally celebrating only the marriages of a man and a woman who are free of previous valid marriages to marry.  Similarly, I don’t know of any serious calls to recognize “second marriages” although many would favor lifting the ban on communion from those married outside the Church.  What “liberal” Catholics have long wanted and now found in Pope Francis, is not a revision of doctrine, but a change of tone.  We had just grown tired of being such an unfriendly Church where any who did not conform to our idea of righteousness were judged worthy of only being cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  We were getting known for what we are against rather than what we stand for—and a negative label is never good for morale.  Nor does this sort of Jansenist condemnatory tone proclaim the Good News (evangelion, Gospel) of salvation. 

The one area where there most likely is a desire for change is the matter of opening the ordained ministries to women.  The two previous popes have declared this to be a theological issue but, frankly, have not been convincing.   Many—including some of the finest theological scholars today—have said this is a matter of discipline and not of doctrine.  The argument is that because the bishop and presbyter (the Latin word for a priest, and better term when talking theologically) sacramentally represent Christ, and Christ was male, the bishop and presbyter must be male to represent him.   Granted the Bishop and the priest sacramentally participate in the Unique Priesthood of Jesus Christ—which is to say that Christ is the only priest in the Christian faith and the bishop and presbyter are sacramental-representations of Christ the Priest.  The bishop or presbyter have no priesthood of their own, but only that of Christ in which they participate.  Of course all the baptized participate in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ by virtue of their baptism—but those who are ordained do so in an unique way proper to and restricted to the Sacrament of Orders.  And granted that Jesus is male.  But is the masculinity of Jesus essential to his being, much less to his priesthood?  What is essential to Christ’s Nature, according to the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon is his humanity, not his masculinity.  But again, we are verging on the theological here and I want to avoid going too far into that field and stay to the historical.  Let us just say that other than the possibility of ordaining women to the ministries of Bishop and Presbyter most “liberal” Catholics are quite content for doctrine to go its slow path of evolutionary development rather than have the Pope—even Good Pope Francis—just start changing the key teachings of the faith willy-nilly.   

Let me also say that as someone who would generally fall into the category of “liberal” Catholic, that I don’t want the Pope to change teachings about contraception, abortion, same-sex marriage, or even ordination of women or priestly celibacy.  I want things to be open for study, research, and intelligent discussion.  I am far more interested in a good process than any particularly desired product.  I think we have a lot we need to think about and talk about before we get into substantial change.  Theologians need to reclaim their historic role in moving the discussion forward and not simply providing the rationale for unilateral magisterial decrees.  We need—as we had at Vatican II—bishops making decisions that were enlightened by the theologians.  And we need to involve the faithful in those discussions.  I think Pope Francis and the faithful have learned—and learned instinctively (which is to his credit)—to sing in harmony.  We need for the faithful, the theologians, and the magisterium all to learn how to sing in harmony, realizing of course, that harmony permits descants. 

Finally, let me just add that as a “liberal Catholic” I would hope that any substantial change in Church discipline and any significant development in doctrine would not come from the Chair of Peter  acting unilaterally but from a Universal Council.  What would really seal the Vatican II revival of Francis’ pontificate is the calling of the next Council.  Remarkable things happen when the Holy Spirit gathers the Church and is allowed to “do her (Pentecost) thing” 

A Red Hat For (A Once) Anglican See

Cardinal-designate Nichols

Well, despite holding the premier see in the United States Bill Lori didn’t get his red hat this time around.  In fact, no US Cardinal was named for this upcoming consistory, but Lori was the only one who had a right—if there be a right to such a thing—to expect one.  Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia might expect it in the future, but his predecessor, Cardinal Justin
Rigali, is still (barely) under 80 and Rome tends not to give the hat to two Cardinals in the same town while one still has the possibility of being a Cardinal elector in a putative conclave.  (If I were Archbishop Chaput and wanted the hat, I would start mending my ways as Chaput’s track-record is not in the Francis' style.  Chaput, when Archbishop of Denver, had a policy that children of same-sex couples were not to be enrolled in Catholic Schools and isolating children for the “sins of their fathers” doesn’t seem to be Francis’ –or Jesus’—style, not that Jesus’s style has had a lot to do with things until somewhat recently.)  Also Philadelphia has been rocked particularly hard by the clerical sexual abuse scandal and that might make Francis a little gun shy about drawing attention to the See until he is sure that it is cleaned up.  Admittedly, the Philadelphia mess wasn’t Chaput’s doing and while I am in general no fan of Archbishop Chaput, I will be the first to say that he is a man of integrity.   But we will see if integrity alone ever translates into a red hat.  Meanwhile, let’s pray for him that he get the Archdiocese cleaned up and back on track.  When one looks at the last several Archbishops of Philadelphia—well, actually one can go back to Dennis Dougherty who was named Archbishop in 1918—one sees a line of arrogant autocrats: Dougherty, O’Hara, Krol, Bevilacqua, and Rigali, that demonstrates Lord Acton’s axiom that “Power Corrupts and Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely.”  We should not be surprised that Philadelphia ended up in the scandal to the level it did as there was an unbroken line of prelates that held themselves accountable to no one.  Let’s hope that Archbishop Chaput’s Capuchin/Franciscan vocation will kick in and that he can become the sort of Shepherd that Francis seems to want for the Church. 

But I hadn’t intended to get sidetracked into Philadelphia and Archbishop Chaput, but rather highlight a man who did get the red hat, Vincent Nichols—or rather highlight his See.  Nichols himself isn’t that exciting.  He is 68 years old.  His parents were teachers.  He has a couple of Master’s Degrees—including one from Loyola in Chicago, a fairly liberal place.  He was himself considered a liberal when younger but seems to have moved slightly to the right under JPII and Benedict.  He worked well with Rowan Williams when the latter was Archbishop of Canterbury and finessed the delicate matter of Anglican groups who wished to come over to the Catholic Church because of such Anglican developments as the ordination of women to the priesthood.  English conservatives have been disappointed in him for not taking a hard line against gay adoptions or sex education Catholic schools.  He also has been more open on inter-religious dialogue—especially with Muslims—than neo-traditionalists like.  While Nichols does not seem to have celebrated Mass in the pre-conciliar rite, he has given permission for it in his Cathedral on several occasions and rather than ban it, seems to have tried to make sure that those who favor the old liturgy are well catechized and conform to Church legislation and doctrine.  Over all, Archbishop Nichols is no ideologue, walks the middle of the road, but is pastorally approachable by any and all.     

What I really wanted to write about was not Archbishop Nichols but his See—Westminster.  When the English hierarchy was “restored” in 1850 there was a huge nationalist outcry.  Who was the Pope to award English titles to his clergy in the United Kingdom?  Pretending to dispense titles to Sees within the Kingdom of Great Britain was an affront to Queen Victoria’s royal prerogatives.  A law had been passed during the reign of George IV prohibiting any but bishops of the Established Church (Church of England) from using the titles of the historic sees—Canterbury, York, Durham, London, Winchester, etc.   Thus new titles were used for the newly appointed Catholic bishops.  But Westminster was an opportunity not to be missed.  There had been a Diocese of Westminster, erected by—of all people—Henry VIII, and suppressed after his death by his successor, Edward VI.   When Pius IX named Nicholas Wiseman to lead the newly restored English hierarchy, naming him Archbishop of Westminster was the pontifical way of delivering an ecclesiastical “FU” to Henry, to the Church of England, and to the Parliament that had forbidden Catholics to restore their ancient titles.   Unfortunately the old Abbey did not go along with the title as Cathedral (as it had been under Henry) and so the Catholics had to build their own.  They did.  Westminster Cathedral in the borough of Westminster in London is somewhat akin to our Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC.  It is large.  It is expensive.  It is of questionable taste.  But it is a lively center of Catholic life and worship.  Unlike our National Shrine, any number of Cardinal’s hats hang from its ceiling over the tombs of its Archbishops there interred.  (Actually there are nine hats suspended over the tombs of the nine deceased Cardinal Archbishops.) 

By ceding the point and not claiming the ancient titles, Rome (probably inadvertently, though Rome never does anything inadvertently) recognized the legitimacy of the Anglican hierarchy standing in succession to the pre-Reformation Church and made “Roman Catholics” a new Church introduced into the British Isles.  I am not saying that Rome recognized the validity of Anglican Orders (it didn’t and it hasn’t), but rather it recognized the legitimacy of their hierarchy.  Church law always differentiates between validity and legitimacy.   We will eventually look at the complicated issue of Anglican Orders but in avoiding naming Catholics to the ancient sees and in creating new jurisdictions, Rome tacitly broke the historic cords and left the claim of legitimate succession to the Anglican place-holders.  This in turn leaves the Church of England able to claim that it is and remains a branch of Christ’s Church, similar to Orthodoxy.  Catholicism has always rejected this branch theology, but ceding the point of Anglican titles gives a foothold to ultimately revise our understanding of Anglicanism.

Dumb and Dumber --And I am not talking about Comedian Jim Carey

I was listening to NPR as I did some errands this morning and there was a very interesting program about the problem that women with an internet presence—bloggers mostly—have in dealing with sexist and sexually harassing responses.  I didn’t have the opportunity to hear the entire program as I was in and out of the various places I had to be, but this is obviously a real problem for any number of women on the internet.  Being a man—and identified as such on my blog—I have had no such problem.  But what I found interesting was the sort of remarks that were directed to women.  “Lesbian!”  “Baby-killer,”  “feminist bitch.”   There were others of a more generic sort: “bitch” (of course), “whore” and others of that ilk.  But what I found captured my interest was those first three that I quoted (they were not necessarily the first three mentioned by the commentator).  “Lesbian,” “Baby-killer,” and “feminist bitch” would all indicate the harassers to be coming from a right-wing perspective.  And I must admit that I am not surprised.  In my trolling various right-wing blogs (it is cheaper—and more effective—than taking medicine for low blood pressure) this is often the sort of anger-language I find used and encouraged. 

You might remember that some weeks back, Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson raised some ire by his anti-gay remark in a GQ interview and as a result was temporarily suspended by A&E from the popular (?)“reality” show.  I don’t watch Duck Dynasty—or A&E for that matter—and I didn’t have much of an opinion on Robertson’s comments or supension.  But I was a bit caught off guard when our old friend Michael Voris came to Uncle Phil’s defense and took a shot at the bishops for not doing the same.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1g_hPBtC18)  But this is precisely what I am writing about: why do these crazies keep pushing hate-speech?   Well, actually I guess that is what crazies do, or not all crazies—there are nice eccentric crazies—just the evil ones.  And speaking of losing one’s moral compass—how can Michael Voris hold up Phil Robertson as a moral paragon?  Sure Phil talks about Jesus but talkin’ aint’ what’s goin’ to get you into heaven.  If you will bear with me quoting the Huffington Post, we can look at some other things Uncle Phil says: 

The  2009 footage, which was posted on Youtube,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDhCxER2fqM&feature=youtu.be

shows the 67-year-old reality TV star speaking at a Christian retreat in Georgia. During the speech, he tells a story about advising a young man to find a good Christian girl and marry her.

“Make sure that she can cook a meal. You need to eat some meals that she cooks, check that out. Make sure she carries her Bible. That’ll save you a lot of trouble down the road," Robertson said.

He then went on to say that men should wed girls who are young.“They got to where they're getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting ‘til they get to be about 20 years old before they marry 'em,” Robertson said. “Look, you wait ‘til they get to be 20 years old the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks."

Robertson also had some comments on Blacks in the old South

“I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I’m with the blacks, because we’re white trash. We’re going across the field.... They’re singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, ‘I tell you what: These doggone white people’—not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues,” Robertson said.

Now I am willing to believe him when he says that he never saw the mistreatment of any black person. I don’t think he is an evil man and have no reason to think he would countenance evil—but while I will give the benefit of doubt for conscience, I won’t credit him for consciousness.  Whether it is blacks or gays or women I think ol’ Phil just lives in the bubbled world of the old South.  He has no reason to come out of it.  He is not uneducated—he actually has a Master’s Degree in Education.  But once out of school, he has chosen a path through life where he has not had to exercise his intellect.  He belongs to a Church that doesn’t challenge him to think.  He has pursued a career that has been successful and lucrative but which requires no philosophical/theological/critical thinking.  He is surrounded by people whose lives and ways of thinking are no more broad than his.  The world of his mammy and his pappy and of their mammies and pappies is the only world he knows, needs to know, or wants to know.  It works for him and God bless him.

But I am sorry Michael Voris, it doesn’t work for us Catholics.  And you should know better.  That static cosmology of an unchanging world is not what you learned at Notre Dame and it is not what you learned at the Angelicum—or whatever American campus it was that granted you your cute little Sacrae Theologiae Baccalaureatus  (Bachelors in Sacred Theology) in its Angelicum wrapper.   But I am not surprised to find on a Voris video or the blogs that push them, encouragement of that sort of hate speech of which the women bloggers were bringing to public attention on the radio.  This is the problem.  Michael and his winged monkeys might think that they are more Catholic than the rest of us, but there is nothing Catholic about them.   Catholics may be conservative, but they we are not anti-intellectual. There is nothing in our Tradition that would justify our rationalizing the sort of bigoted, racist, and sexist ideas represented by Mr. Robertson.   Our theology of marriage may see its sacramental nature in the union of man and a woman as representative of the Union between Christ and his Church, it does not see marriage as requiring a teen-age slave-bride to pluck your ducks—no euphemism intended.  Shame on you Michael Voris for being an apostle of ignorance and bigotry.  

New Sheriff, New Rules, Missing: One Red Hat

 Father Robert Nugent, SDS, died last week at the age of 76.  Father Nugent had been the founder—along with Sister Jeannine Gramick—of New Ways Ministries, one of the first and most effective ministries to Gay, Lesbian, and transgendered Catholics.  New Ways Ministries set its agenda for opening a dialogue between the LGBT community and the Church so that the hierarchy could have a better understanding of the complex issues and questions facing Catholics with same-sex attraction, but in doing so did not “lay down the law” in terms as black and white as some thought should be.  (This was, of course, before the “Who am I to judge” approach of our current Pope.)  in their open approach, Father Nugent and Sister Jeannine attracted the particular ire of the late Cardinal James Hickey, then Archbishop of Washington.  His Eminence could be, and most often was, totally irrational at the mention of either name—Father Nugent or Sister Jeannine—or at any reference to New Ways Ministries.   

As an example of his irrationality when it came to New Ways Ministries, in 1998—shortly after the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepherd—several Catholic organizations published an advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to hate crimes against LGBT persons.  Pax Christi USA was one of these organizations.  New Ways Ministry was another.  Many priests and religious signed the advertisement.  Among them were Father Bruce Bavinger SJ—pastor of St Aloysius Gonzaga Church in Washington DC—and Father Larry Madden SJ, pastor of Holy Trinity in Georgetown.  Cardinal Hickey called their Jesuit provincial and insisted that the provincial make both priests swear an oath that they would never again support any statement sponsored by New Ways Ministry.  Now remember, New Ways Ministry was only one of several sponsors of this advertisement which only called for an end to hate crimes.  Reputable Catholic groups had co-sponsored this petition and the list of signees included many leading Catholics.  The advertisement in no way undermined the moral teaching of the Church on sexuality issues.  That did not matter to Cardinal Hickey—any association, no matter how remote, with New Ways Ministry was enough to get you on His Eminence’s fecal roster. 

In 1999 Cardinal Hickey used his influence to persuade then Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a “Notification Regarding Sister Jeannine Gramick SSND and Father Robert Nugent SDS” which made it clear that New Ways Ministry was not—at least as it had been reported by Cardinal Hickey to the CDF—consistent with the Church’s moral teaching.  This began a persecution of Father Nugent and Sister Grammick.  Sister Jeannine’s Order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, were pressured into dismissing her.  Fortunately a more stalwart group, the Sisters of Loretto, took her as a transfer.  Father Nugent was forced into abandoning any ministry whatsoever to persons with same-sex attraction.  So much for searching out the sheep that was lost.

I will not say that Cardinal Hickey was a bad man or even a bad priest.  Granted, his priests found him cold and distant but he actually was just a strong introvert with very poor interpersonal skills.  He was a “company man” who could not understand the Church’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel except in the model of maintaining the ecclesiastical institutions and their power.  To his great credit, he recognized the unique gifts of Capuchin friar Sean O’Malley and advanced O’Malley’s career.  Nevertheless, he can be considered as one of the darker blots on the roster of men chosen to shepherd the Church in the United States.  If it were only the unjust ways in which he acted against Nugent and Gramick, his autocratic ways could perhaps be attributed to a personal antipathy, but his treatment of fellow Cardinal, Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, reveals a most despicable side, a pathology of fear, that impelled the Cardinal to dogmatically fortify his opinions rather than to advance the cause of the Gospel.  When Cardinal Bernardin established the Catholic Common Ground Initiative in 1996 Cardinal Hickey and Cardinal Law—another and darker blot on the history of the Church in the United States—then Archbishop of Boston, publicly attacked Cardinal Bernardin and united their voices and power to do their best to sink his project of opening dialogue with disaffected communities within the Church to discover how the Church in the United States could avoid the polarization and culture wars that were threatening to eat away its vitality.  Hickey and Law made it absolutely clear that in their scheme of things there is no room for dialogue.  Their way or the highway.  They ignited the very firestorm Cardinal Bernardin was trying to avoid from engulfing American Catholicism.  We were privileged to watch he fate of Cardinal Law who, like Lucifer, has fallen like a star from the heavens. Cardinal Hickey went to his grave—actually his mausoleum in the rear of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral—in October 2004, just short of four years after his retirement from the See of Washington at the age of 80.     

While Sean O’Malley is a testimony to the better angels of Cardinal Hickey’s nature, there was—as I pointed out—another side to the man and to that side, another protégé.  His Eminence had a most peculiar relationship with Father William Lori.  I have written elsewhere about Lori—now Archbishop of Baltimore—but perhaps the most telling is the final paragraph of my August 18, 2012 entry on the late Monsignor Ralph Beiting, one of the most outstanding Christians I have met in my lifetime.  Father Beiting, a priest of the diocese of Covington, was for his entire life an outstanding servant of the poorest Americans in Appalachia.  Lori had begun his studies for the priesthood in that same Diocese but as a student, transferred to Washington “because there is no upward mobility in Covington.”  He found that upward mobility in the favor of Cardinal Hickey who appointed Lori as his secretary and kept him close by his side.  Lori, for his part, fawned over the Cardinal in ways that others who were present found nauseating.  It paid off.  Hickey had Lori named one of his auxiliary bishops and before his death was able to secure for him the Diocese of Bridgeport. 

Archbishop Lori, by all accounts, was expected to get a Cardinal’s hat in this upcoming consistory.  Baltimore is the oldest See in the Church of the United States In the last fifty years, each Archbishop of Baltimore but one were named Cardinals.  Moreover, Lori’s enjoys the patronage of Carl Anderson, Supreme Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus and generous dispenser of funds to the Vatican and to various conservative causes.  Anderson used his influence to have Lori promoted to Baltimore.  Pope Francis may pay for his decision not to give Lori his coveted hat, but he has sent a significant signal that there are new rules to the game.  I hope for Archbishop Lori’s sake, that he can learn to play by those rules and be the sort of bishop Francis is calling for.  While I have never liked Archbishop Lori, I would like to see Baltimore to have a wise and good Shepherd at its head. And, for that matter, I would like to see each bishop, including Archbishop Lori, be the sort of Bishop Pope Francis seems to want for our Church.