Yesterday, I referred to Pope Francis I delightful acts and spontaneous way of exercising his office. It has only been a little over a week but I think that what we are seeing is what we will get. I certainly pray for that.
I have no doubt that many people on the Vatican staff, people that Pope John XXIII always called the “prophets of doom,” have gathered around Pope Francis and have urged him, “Be careful, be careful. Tradition is too important. We know how things are to be done here. Please follow our advice. Familiarity breeds contempt. Etc., etc., etc.” I can only hope and pray that the pope will be firm, strong and self-determined. In a matter of days, he has changed the opinion of the tens of millions of people about the papacy. Through this man they are able to see it for what it really is – an extraordinarily important gift in the life of the Church but one that is carried out by frail and limited human beings.
In these early days I hope he will take a look at these medieval vestments that speak to wealth and power and not to the carpenter of Nazareth. At least in the West, since our churches are air-conditioned and our roofs do not leak, the value of the chasuble is questionable in terms of weather protection. I suggest the retention of the beautiful white alb (the Roman toga?) and the tie of the 1st century, which we call a stole. That is what most priests wear when they are celebrating Mass by themselves or with a few other priests privately.
 

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Persons not of the Catholic faith are often either amused, confused or sometimes resentful about the amount of publicity the media gives to Roman Catholic news and events. There are several reasons for this. The Catholic Church by itself, numerically speaking, is larger than all other Christian denominations together. But I think a bigger reason is that the Church is so colorful. It is photogenic and its ancient customs fascinate persons in this 21st century.
In Rome, the big story today is that the American Cardinals have been shuttered in terms of improved communications with the rest of the world. They had scheduled a press release yesterday and then mysteriously it was cancelled. Monsignor Federico Lombardi, the Vatican communications director, issued a statement that the American prelates were not blacked out. It was just a general consensus among the cardinals to keep their discussions absolutely private. The result? The Italian newspapers are filled with unsourced details, innuendos and gossip. The Americans do believe in improving Church communication and more transparency but the Vatican’s commitment to secrecy, a policy that has caused it tremendous problems in the past, continues on.
Onward through the fog

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Benedict XVI is going to go down in history as a very real hero. Hero? Yes, indeed. Tradition is such a powerful force in the life of the Catholic Church that it takes extraordinary courage to go against it and Benedict did that last month when he announced that he would be resigning as the 265th Bishop of Rome. There were only three other resignations in the 2,000 year history of the Church and in each of those situations it was brought about by very special circumstances. Benedict, with a clear mind and in relatively good health, announced that it was time for a younger person to take over. Today, the Petrine Office is vacant. The cardinals have gathered and I am sure that within the next week or ten days we will see an elderly cardinal walk in out into that magnificent balcony of St. Peter’s and tell the excited crowd of several hundred thousand, “Habemus Papam!” – we have a pope.
Who will it be and, more importantly, what kind of Supreme Pontiff will he be? Most commentators say that there are only two possible directions for the new pope to take. He could reach back and recommit himself to tradition and continue doing, and in the same manner, that which has been going on for the last 30 or 40 years, the slow de-emphasizing of the Second Vatican Council. Or that new pope, blessed with the grace of the office, could recommit himself to the work of the 2,500 bishops of the Second Vatican Council and triumphantly announce that the Church is recommitting itself in an explosive manner to its missionary nature, that it will present the message of Jesus Christ with all of its joy and triumph in a way that will be unencumbered by the barnacles of time but will be pristine, pure, clean and precise. And with that, there will be that which recent popes have called for and pleaded for but were not able to see themselves free to do – move the Church forward to a world that is awaiting it and desperately needs it.
May God bless the new pope, whoever he is.
 

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They say it has been more than 600 years since a Pope retired, and only three have done it in 2000 years, so it certainly is a noteworthy event!

Serious Catholics are almost all vitally interested in the upcoming election. They hope and pray that a Cardinal will be elected who has the faith, vision, courage and strength to lead our Church during this very difficult time.
You know the list: sexual scandals, inadequate clergy, doctrinal conflict, persecution in the Islamic countries, etc. etc. The new Pope will have his work cut out for him.

But Catholics are not the only ones who are interested in this election. Millions of others, of widely varying faiths, will be watching the evening news with fascination. Why? It’s because this news will,in many ways, take them back six or seven hundred years. Most leaders in today’s world do not sit on thrones. Our White House and Capitol are not nearly as inspiring as St. Peter’s and its Piazza. The method of communicating the election of a new Pope is certainly strange, but delightful! If they fail to elect a new Pope, they burn wet straw on a tiny stove in the corner of the Sistine Chapel, thereby emitting black smoke from above the Papal palace. If a new Pope is elected, the smoke is white. Both messages, of course, depend heavily on the wind of the day. My guess is that there is about a billion dollars worth of communications equipment down in the Piazza and in the surrounding balconies, all looking for that precious white smoke.
Back to the serious side, a Roman Catholic Pope can be a tremendous source for good in the world, so everyone- whether they be of the Catholic faith or not- should be hoping for an outstanding new leader. Have the straw ready!

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Once the bishops of the world had swept aside the unacceptable working documents from the Vatican staff, they set about reorganizing themselves. Since there wasn’t a man there who had ever been present at a worldwide Council of Bishops, it was challenging, exciting and filled with hope and Christian joy. Small working groups hammered out a series of major issues that they felt ought to be studied and adopted during the working months of the Council and hopefully implemented in the life of the Church across the world.

When the Council had adjourned in 1965, they had finished their work on 16 documents of various lengths and titles. Some were called “constitutions.” They were the ones considered more important by the Council fathers. Documents on revelation, liturgy, the nature of the Church were constitutions. Others were “decrees” such as the one on communications, ecumenism and priestly formation or simply entitled “declarations” such as the ones on education and religious freedom. All in all, it was an extraordinary amount of work. The bishops returned to their dioceses leaving Pope Paul VI with the awesome task of implementation. His heroic efforts would continue for many years into the future.

Simply to refresh my own memory and possibly my readers, I am going to do at least one blog on each of these 16 documents, but that will spread over the next month or so. I will go back to a variety of issues as we move forward.

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There was good news out of the Vatican last week. Vatican City State announced that it had hired an international expert on money laundering to help it get rid of its reputation for shady dealings following a Council of Europe call for tighter controls. Rene Brulhart, a Swiss lawyer, 40 years of age, has been taken on board to help strengthen financial regulations and improve transparency as the Vatican endeavors to crack down on terrorist financing and fraud. This announcement was made by Federico Lombardi, chief spokesman for the Vatican. He is a very good and dedicated man and he certainly has had a difficult job in the last few years.

A study released by the Council of Europe’s Anti-money Laundering Body gave the Vatican poor marks. It scored unsatisfactory ratings in 7 out of 16 “key recommendations” and satisfactory ratings in 9. While this represents progress, the Council urged that the Vatican redouble its efforts. Brulhart’s main task will be to try and clean up the Vatican’s murky image following a long series of scandals, including allegations that bank accounts belonging to clergy in the tiny state are being used by the Mafia for money laundering. You may remember that back in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s with the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, where the Holy See was the principal shareholder, the bank was accused of laundering money for the Sicilian Mafia. That was a far bigger issue than whether or not the butler did it!

The chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging under a London bridge in 1982. While mobsters were suspected of the murder, no one has ever been convicted.

Let’s congratulate the Vatican for its efforts to clean up and help align this tiny state of 108 acres to utilize more faithfully new global standards of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development White List of Financially Virtuous Countries.

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I have been observing and participating in the ecumenical movement since the mid-1950’s. It is still alive but struggling. This all-important movement towards unification of Christian churches has seen a number of ups and downs.

There really wasn’t much of an ecumenical movement prior to the Second Vatican Council. The Protestant churches frequently talked to each other in an unstructured way under the title of Councils of Churches where the pastors of the various Protestant churches would meet monthly over barbecue and listen to a speaker from the local Rotary Club. It was not a surging mass of theological and pastoral movement.

The Catholics, of course, were all back on the Roman ranch and they didn’t talk or mix with anyone other than themselves. Then came the Second Vatican Council and the Catholics, peering through the circled wagons, saw that this large group of people outside were a major religious group known precisely as non-Catholics. While they were circling our wagons, they were not attacking. Maybe we should talk to them.

Then began what might be called a cozy, warm-up period. We began to go to each other’s meetings, we formed some ecumenical structures, intending to do some work together where there was no conflict with the faith traditions of the individual churches. This was not a period of real accomplishment but it was a period of progress and greater openness.

Meanwhile, on the back burner, the Vatican and the World Council of Churches launched a series of worldwide meetings bringing together the best theologians from both traditions. With that real progress began to be made. It was quiet progress, yes, behind the scenes, yes, but, nevertheless, real and measurable progress. Throughout that half century, theological documents on profound issues, such as baptism, the Eucharist, faith and salvation were undertaken. These documents have all been published and are available from both the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Council of Churches in New York City. Regretfully, there has been very little follow-up.

Doing ecumenical theology is hard work. You have to know as much as possible about your own faith tradition and its history and nuances. At the same time, you have to give great attention and study to the basic positions that mark the faith of others. I am sorry to say that virtually none of that is going on at the present time to my knowledge. This is a tragedy.

Christians are a minority in the world. We must not only defend ourselves and our theological positions that we share together, but use our combined resources to expand our holy faith across this battered planet. Are we beginning to forget the last message from our Lord on that Holy Thursday night?

“That they all shall be one, just as you, my Father, are in me, and I am in you, so that they also shall be one in us.” (John 17:21)

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There has been communications problems of late between the Vatican, bishops of the United States and the various orders of religious women in the country. Most of us are very familiar about that and it is certainly regrettable when there is a lack of harmony within the community of faith. However, there are bright spots too.

I was very thrilled to see the bishops’ evaluation of Congressman Ryan’s proposed budget and the evaluation of NETWORK, the action arm of religious women in this country. Both of them see Ryan’s proposed budget being blisteringly hard on the poor and the vulnerable and cutting back on resources for internal development of the country and unwisely beneficial to the more wealthy members of our society. Catholic social theory has always taught that the poor always have to be our first concern. I forget which president, I think it was Harry Truman who said, “The wealthy can take care of themselves. I have to be concerned about the poor and the vulnerable in our country.” That is certainly true in keeping with general principle in Catholic social theory.

David Brooks of the New York Times recently wrote a thoughtful, and I think somewhat erroneous column, on the fact that the age of the Welfare State is over. He is certainly right about the fact that we are going through convulsive economic and social changes, but the poor and the vulnerable are still here. If we eliminate the programs that have been set up over the last fifty years to care for the needy in our society, what will happen then? Changing into one international market with less and less need for unskilled labor, we will still have a vast reservoir of people who are unable to function productively in this new economic situation. Today there are tens of millions of them. It is not likely that they will just disappear. I think that the governmental operations will have to continue doing what they have done for the last fifty years for some good time into the future.

We must travel this difficult road together.

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We in the United States of America are blessed with some serious, responsible TV networks. This obviously describes ABC, CBS and NBC. Each network has its own policies making decisions or choices in how they handle the news for editorial positions you naturally can be suspected of being prejudiced one way or another, but these networks do a rather good job in covering the various sides of issues. They do not come down too hard on one side or the other.

And then there are other “networks.” I think immediately of MSNBC and Fox News. The names of either generate laughter and guffaws among people who are interested in objective reporting. Fox News is essentially a front for the Republican Party while MSNBC is the best-known outlet for the Democrats. None of this is against the law. The owners of the networks are perfectly free to cover anything that they want and to decide what accent they will give to the stories they are presenting. But they are not objective and those searching for objectivity tend to ignore both of them!

In the meantime, the Vatican is in desperate need for better public relations. Mistake has followed mistake and embarrassing situation to embarrassing situation, misstep following misstep. When a few of the late night comedians do stories on Vatican City, you know that the central office of the Church is in disarray. Given all of that, I was very disappointed to see that the Vatican has hired the head of the Rome bureau for Fox News and that person has taken over coordination of public relations for the Vatican. I wish this new office every success. They certainly have their work cut out for them but when so many objective professionals are in the field. In my opinion, this was not a good move. I hope that I am wrong.

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Usually, when a Church story is taken out of the religion section and makes it to the front page it does not last to the second day. Well, the story of the Vatican concern about Catholic nuns in the United States is still going strong after two weeks and it is doing a great deal of damage. There is nothing wrong with differences of opinion within the Church. The Vatican has a very real duty to struggle to maintain doctrinal purity across the planet. In so doing, the Holy See should make every effort to make sure that people understand what action they are taking and why they are doing it. This story is making the Church leadership look insensitive and indifferent.

No doubt, Church leadership has the responsibility for Christian correction but they have a corresponding responsibility to carry it out gently and lovingly. When bishops are perceived to be harsh and chauvinistic by a large segment of the population, it is the bishops who are being hurt. That is very much what is going on right now.

Either the Holy See knew that their decision on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious would create a bombshell of bad publicity or they did not care. If they anticipated the obvious reaction, they should have been much more careful in their approach, much more gentle. If they did not anticipate it, then they have a different problem; namely, that they are out of touch with the world to which they are sent.

Onward through the fog.

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