The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.
In spite of commenting on nearly every social trend imaginable, one thing that I've generally not done here is to comment on Pope Francis, at least not often, even though I'm obviously Catholic. The reasons are several fold.
For one thing, the Pope is the Pope, like the Pope or not. As the Pope, he deserves respect of a special kind. Every occupant of the office deserves that.
Additionally, orthodox Catholics believe that no Pope can damage the essential teaching of the Church, and I’m an orthodox Catholic. This is often misunderstood. The Holy Spirit protects the Church from error, but not from having bad Popes, and we've had plenty of them. We were exceedingly lucky in recent decades in having excellent Popes, with the examples stretching from at least St. Pope John Paul II the Great up to Pope Benedict (well, I guess that's two Popes) being paramount. This is not to dis the examples prior to that, although there are some things that the Pope John and Pope Paul did that I'm not thrilled with, but there are things that they did which I think were outstanding.
To really get horrifying examples of bad Popes, you need to go to the Middle Ages. But at the same time, they provide a comforting example, as even though there were some that exhibited terrible personal vice, and at least one who was elected specifically to attempt to make a major theological change, they didn't damage the Church. Indeed, the one who was inclined to make a major theological change, couldn't do it when he was elected. He felt himself held back, which is an example of my point.
Modern media tends to exaggerate things and not grasp it, while current audiences in the Internet Age tend to do the same. And all this focuses attention on everything the Pope says or does, which was never the case to this extent in the past, and certainly not in the pre World War Two past. This really impacts how we see the Pope. Today, lots of Protestants who don't really understand the Papacy and have a Protestantized inaccurate view of the Church and its history will cite to the example of Galileo as something horrible the Pope did (not grasping that neither the Pope nor the Church did what they think was done), but at the time, the average Catholic would have known nothing about it, which would include most Priests. For most of the post Apostolic Age history, the local Bishop mattered more to the average Catholic, in terms of day to day living, than the Pope did, which is not to say that they were not aware of the Pope.
Pope Benedict was really the first Pope of the Internet Age, with Pope Francis being the second. Pope Francis has been particularly liable towards being misunderstood and misquoted due to change in information technology. He has actually said some extremely orthodox things that get very little attention, and some of the things he's otherwise said or written have been highly misunderstood.
In an example of the latter, in what we'll not coin as the Fox News Effect, the Pope's early encyclical that discussed economics was immediately branded by conservative American Catholics as "socialist" when it was anything but, really being more Distributist in nature. However, Internet media allowed for an audience that was already expecting anything written by the Pope to be left wing leaped on it, which was made easier as current Americans are pretty much wholly unaware of Catholic Social Teaching and the concepts of Distributism. If it ain't Capitalism, it must be Socialism, and therefore Pope Francis must be a Socialist, ran the defective logic.
Finally, in something I've noted for a while but which I heard just this past week in an interview of the head of EWTN News (with EWTN actually being a media source that the Pope has criticized), Pope Francis has a very odd, and slow moving, management style in which he draws things out over a very long time, while rising up things to the top that he actually opposed, only to cut them off at seemingly the point at which they're fully developed. I've suspected for some time that the upcoming Synod On Synodality1 will feature that, with all sorts of radical things being suggested and then cut off, issuing something pretty orthodox.
Having said all of that, and while being respectful of the Pope, I don't think the Pope grasps very well the nature of the Church in its loyal orthodox quarters and his managerial style doesn't correlate with the modern Internet Age at all. For that reason, it's hurting the Church. Not only hurting it, but it's pushing it towards schism.
Pope Francis issued some blistering criticism of the German Bishops and their radical views arising out of their synod, for example. While getting into the mind of the German Bishops is something we really cannot do, and they deserve respect as Bishops, it seems clear that they ignored his entreaties and pushed ahead with the potential goal of trying to influence what the Synod on Synodality will do. It's worth noting that the Church is really suffering in Germany, and there's no good reason to believe that abandoning St. Paul's guidance and instruction on matters will change that. There's certainly no good reason to believe that this can validly be done. The Pope spoke, but he didn't crack down on things. He seems to have allowed it to play out, knowing that it will come up again in the Synod. Interestingly, while it hasn't gotten very much attention in the U.S., he's appointed at least one German critic of the German Bishops, who is a Bishop, as a German voting delegate.
Again, I suspect that he intends to allow a general airing of everything, and then cut off that which is not orthodox. Not that there won't be changes made.
Anyhow, this slow motion managerial style is hurting the Church and driving it towards schism. Pope Francis doesn't seem to realize, or if he does, appreciate that by the time the Snyod arrives we may be so far down this path that avoiding a massive level of damage may be impossible.
I feel so strongly about this I ardently wish that Pope Francis would resign and a younger, more plainly orthodox Pope, and much less culturally European one, be elected.
Indeed, one of the things that I feel really needs to occur is that there be a general overhaul in Bishop's ages. It's the old Bishops, and lots are old, that seem to be rooted so strongly in the 1970s that they can't get their Weltanschauung out of it. The artwork for the Synod bizarrely demonstrated that, as it was right out of the horrifying 1970s in appearance, complete with Comic Sans Serif font. The appearance of that was almost calculated to disinterest anyone born after 1960, let alone 1980. Added to that, the announcement early on, which was from the Vatican, that there be local meetings of parishioners for input just doesn't match, in my view, the reality of every location in the Church. My guess is that in Africa, where the Church is strong and orthodox, you would get a lot of rank and file parishioners at meetings. In the worn out industrialized West, you aren't going to. And I'm not the only one with this view. Indeed, I read a blog entry by a highly orthodox Priest, Fr. Dwight Longnecker, a convert from Anglicanism, who wrote a really bitter blog entry which noted:
All these efforts are akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They all have minimal results and are usually remembered for their sappy media efforts (badly produced videos- tacky brochures with stock photos of smiling Christians doing good things–ill conceived “youth events” etc) and their inept attempts to be cool, relevant, up to date and simply irresistible.
However they are all highly resistible. Ordinary people smell a committee and simply ignore it or run the other way. The only people who get involved are the earnest activists who use the gimmick to promote their own agenda and ideology.
* * *
In the meantime vast numbers of ordinary Catholics are simply going about their business of living the historic faith and getting the job done.
That's much more bitter than I'd dare post, and I think it may cross the line on respect to the Pope, but the committee thing strikes me that way. The Catholics you need to speak up are the young, orthodox ones, in the pews, not the aged hippy Boomer parishioners who have time on their hands and who like committees.
If I were the Pope, and of course I'm not, and never will be, I'd open the Synod with a request that any Bishop over 40 years old resign. If they wouldn't, I'd start reassigning them to Bishopric's dating from the early Church in North Africa (which does happen, actually, in order to preserve their place) and appoint new ones. But I'm not the Pope.
That's really rude, of course, and not all of the Bishops are ancient by any means. I saw that one of the former Bishops of my diocese, who I'd regard as an orthodox, and not ancient, Bishop was appointed by the Pope to go.
Bishop Etienne of Seattle, who was once the Bishop of Cheyenne, who has been appointed by the Pope to attend.
And indeed, perhaps that Bishop, Bishop Etienne, may be more representative of the general ages than others that I seem to have in mind.
I hope I'm wrong about all of this, and I don't expect the Synod to do anything so radical as to be destructive, other than that its current format itself is doing damage. I don't expect it to endorse sodomitic unions, or anything of the like. I expect that it will confirm what the Church has always taught about marriage and the like. It may very well suggest that Priests be allowed to marry, which I think the Church should, but which s really only a popular idea amongst practicing Catholics in certain regions, rather than globally, which raises another problem. I think the Pope, coming from Argentina, and of strongly European background, doesn't really get that the problems in some regions are totally different than those elsewhere.
In terms of controversy, I do suspect that some controversial things will be done, with possibly allowing women to be deacons to be one. And I fear that. The Church in the United States has never really gotten over the "Spirit of Vatican II", which wasn't actually the same thing as Vatican II itself. There's a real risk here that some efforts to reach "understanding" on things that are solely European culture developments and byproducts of wealth and idleness, such as self-absorbed focus on gender, will end up in a "Spirit of Snyodality" which will breath a last gasp of life into the Boomer era and all its resultant ills. It's not hard to go from, essentially, don't oppress the those afflicted with gender confusion into localized clerical blessing that were never actually authorized.
Leaping back to something noted just above, I'm going to leap back to Fr. Dwight Longnecker's blog entry, where he stated:
One of the precious Catholic principles is that of subsidiarity which teaches that “solutions should be found and initiatives taken at the lowest local level possible.” In other words, “Live local. Do what you can with what you have where you are.” The clergy, the bishops, the Diocesan hierarchy and the Vatican are all there to serve, direct and guide these local efforts. The synodical process made a show of consulting at the local level, but it was the ordinary clergy and people at the local level who were expected to serve the synodical process by filling in a form of carefully worded “Questions”–questions devised by the synod people in order to facilitate their pre arranged agenda.
In any business of even moderate level of success the leadership will watch what is going on, see what is working well, support those efforts and seek to replicate them throughout the business. If you ran a chain of hamburger restaurants and you had one branch that had sales greater than everyone else’s you would study what was working well and motivate the other branch managers to imitate that success.
But in the Catholic Church there does not seem to be any awareness of such a tactic. We have reports of parishes and schools closing, dioceses amalgamating parishes, Catholic colleges languishing, religious orders closing down and dying out while at the same time we have reports of parishes packed with young families, schools with waiting lists, religious orders thriving with many young novices and colleges and universities with record enrollment.
If subsidiarity instead of synodality were the guiding principle the Catholic leadership would look again at the parishes, schools, colleges and religious orders that are thriving and ask why they are bucking the depressing trends and how their example might renew the church. This strategy might just inspire and motivate the clergy and faithful. More top-down mandated committees steered by failed ideologues will not.
Again, without really endorsing everything he has says, I think he's really on to something.
St. John by Rubens.
The Church was spread by fairly young Middle Eastern men, at least one of whom (St. Peter) may have had a family in tow. Some of them lived into their 60s, which is remarkable for their era, and all the more remarkable as their deaths came violently. St. John lived to the blistering old age, then or now, of 88. The real exception of St. John aside, and noting that it's remarkable that some lived into their 60s, and one perhaps into his very early 70s, it's interesting to note that they commenced their work when still int their vigor, and it was concluded when they still were as well, it being the case that save for the ill or very injured, men in their 60s are still pretty able.2
There's a real lesson in this. St. John, the last living Apostle, never became the Pope, and he lived into the papacy's of at least two successors to St. Peter. He never became head of the Church. That went to younger men.
Right now, the College of Cardinals are voting in Pope's who are well above the ages that the first Popes were, and well above the ages of the Apostles.
Those Apostles spread the Church from a localized subset of Jews to a Church which, even during their own lives, stretched beyond the borders of the Roman Empire. It's not folly to think that regaining ground lost, and gaining new ground today, needs the involvement of orthodox men who are of the same age now that the Apostles were when they started off. And it's not folly to think that a Church spread by a fire lite in Africa by the orthodox devout shouldn't now be spread by a fire burning in Africa, by the orthodox devout.
If the Synod accomplishes something, and we should all hope it does, perhaps it should accomplish that. The problem today isn't the passing relevance of a small number of clerics in European cultured countries who took up their vocations in a different era, let alone the lingering zeitgeist of a small number who took up vocations to escape the public eye when homosexuality was disdained, or the culture of countries that are so rich that they have nothing to think about but food and sex.3 The problem may be, in part, the problems that those problems are causing, but there's reason to think that regions of the globe that haven't addressed them culturally aren't going to clerically. Africa, and North America are where things have more hope, Africa in particular. Fr. Longnecker's point above would suggest that a really radical solution to the problems in the Church today might be warranted, grounded in subsidiarity and solidarity, but that's not going to come out of state funded churches that are a legacy of a German concordat or from a those sectors of the globe where pondering sex all day prevails.
Footnotes:
1. The official title is the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.
2. It can be hard in some instances to know when the various apostles were born or died. Indeed, the circumstances of their deaths, undoubtedly known to the early Church, have been lost over time. To the extent that I can easily find references, their ages ate their times of death were:
St. Peter and St. Paul were both martyred in their 60s.
St. Andrew was between 55 and 65.
St. James: 40s?
Thomas was 62 or 68
St. Bartholomew was 68 to 70.
It's really worth noting that all of these men lived pretty long lives, except for St. James, who was martyred in his 40s. They didn't live easy lives at all, but they lived into ages that many people did not, due to disease and injury. Given their travels, this is all the more remarkable.
3. The entire focus on homosexuality and the made up category of LGBTQ+ is a Western World, rich country, thing.
We do not mean to say that same sex attraction, or people afflicted with a desire to be a different gender (or even species. . . yes that occurs) doesn't happen, but the concept that it categorizes a person or that it is "normal" is entirely a European culture thing and occured only very, very recently.
We've gone into this before, but in some cultures, including cultures which are very well populated and frankly outnumber our own, the concept that people "are" something like LGBTQ is disdained and not believed. It's regarded, in fact, and perhaps rightly, as an evidence of a vast stage of cultural and moral decay.
As noted in other posts, as recently as the late 19th Century Western culture didn't recognize homosexuality or gender bending as anything other than odd vices, although it treated them as very serious odd vices. It's only much more recently that they were treated as psychologically organic in the person afflicted with them, and for much of that time these were regarded as mental illnesses. Treating them as "normal" is very recent, and comes with virtually no scientific backing whatsoever. Indeed, the entire field of psychology in this area is really just European cultural sociology focused on radical individualism. Not only, therefore, might it be wrong, but evolutionary biology would suggest that it probably is wrong.
The reference to misdirected vocations here refers directly to a thesis developed here that the appearance of homosexuality in a small number of Catholic clerics in the middle section of the 20th Century is related, in the author's opinion, to an effort by middle class American (and probably other) men to have an excuse as to why they didn't marry. Unmarried men were a suspect class throughout the second half of the 20th Century, after societal wealth rose to the level that bachelorhood due to economics no longer provided an excuse for being single. Prior to that, actually, quite a few men didn't marry simply because they couldn't afford it and marriage was often noted to be a heavy financial burden for men. Middle class men who, prior to 1940 could have passed it off due to circumstances no longer could. For Catholic men, the clergy presented an opportunity for a more or less middle class career where the question of "why aren't you married"" wasn't going to arise. Again, only a small number of clerics were every homosexual, but it doesn't take a large number to do damage.
It's become popular to immediate declare that this really has no relationship to the Priest abuse scandals that the Church has been rocked with, but to at least a certain extent, this is a willful ignoring of the evidence. The John Jay report clearly noted the following:
From the John Jay Report.
Usually you are supposed to issue an immediate disclaimer and note that homosexuality isn't associated with pedophilic behavior. Well, frankly, homosexuality was associated with homosexual men hitting on homosexual teenage boys. It simply was, and this was very well known prior to the official shift in attitudes.
With that shift in attitudes has come the entire "homosexuality is normal" mantra, while at the same time nobody wants to say the next few lines, which is that if homosexual attractions are normal, and wanting to be another gender is normal, then why wouldn't trying to bed teenagers and children be normal? Indeed, they would be. In truth, however, they're all abnormal, and we know that instinctively.
But in the rich Western society of the late 20th Century and early 21st, we now hold that all sexual inclinations and desires, other than ones that drop below a statutorily set line, are normal. That we know that is wrong is part of what is enraging conservative Catholics now, as they watch Fr. James Martin, S.J. be appointed to the Synod. And its hard not to be sympathetic with the upset. Fr. Dwight Longnecker suggested, in jest, that Fr. Z be appointed, but not in jest, I really wish he would have been.
But here's the thing, the entire Priest scandal thing is really old news. The young Priests have rocketed past it, and are orthodox. This topic is really, in may ways, a Death of the Reformation, death of the WASP class, topic that we don't need to discuss at all. That we are, shows a focus on a decaying, Boomer centric, European society that will itself move past this, one away or another, as Boomers fade.
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