A Letter to the Bishops

Comments on the mark for this:
* Thanks for the perceptive reading, Amy. I scanned the letter earlier and just couldn’t cut through the fluff.
* Unfortunately, the personal “philosophy” which the Pope expresses (don’t impose abstractions, “time is greater than space”, etc.) is itself an abstraction and even a mystification.
* I couldn’t finish reading the letter. I know this isn’t the first Pope in my life time to speak elliptically or be difficult to follow, but I’m just so tired of the delicacy of the writing, the “We shepherds must always be careful” language. No, that’s not what this sheep wants. This sheep wants the courageous, driven, single minded shepherd who loves us enough to sacrifice for us. It is not careful. It is not gently finding unity where there is division. I see all the time what they call “prudence” is only prudent for shepherds, not for the sheep. Whenever I hear words like this, I think “The vast majority of bishops and cardinals are still not even sorry.”
* The line in the Holy Father’s letter that sent chills down my spine was this:
“Clearly, a living fabric has come undone, and we, like weavers, are called to repair it.”
The first thing that came to mind was the motto of the Bohemian Club – “Weaving spiders come not here” from A Midsummers’ Night Dream. The thought of the bishops as “weavers” seems… odd.
even moreso if the fabric is living. Does that call for surgeons, not weavers? Weavers don’t generally repair – they patch. New cloth over the old. How else does weaving repair a cloth that has come undone?
It’s a very odd analogy.
* I think one of the Jesuits surrounding PF wrote this in an attempt to preserve the status quo. I hope our bishops will see the reality under the fluff and act appropriately.

Charlotte was Both

Pope Francis wrote a letter to the American bishops, on retreat at Mundelein Seminary this week.

Here’s the text.

It is, honestly, the usual strange/not-strange message from Pope Francis. Strange in that he goes all over the place except to the specific place where the problem resides, and not-strange in that, well, this is what he usually does, and there’s always a reason for that.

Your experience of reading the letter might be like mine (or it might not – who knows!) – I read it and nodded and thought, Well, not bad, that’s true, sure, it’s good for these things to be said, nice point there and then I finished, thought about it for a minute, and realized that none of the specific problematic issues had actually been addressed and further, the spiritual context which Pope Francis recommends for going forward, it could be argued, actually enables the original…

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Reporting as an art form: W.H. Auden on Henry James

Henry James, W.H. Auden, some reporters

Not for attribution

W.H. Auden said it took imagination “of a very high order” to “extract importance” from events while remaining faithful to them, “free only to select and never to modify or add.”

He was introducing a 1946 edition of Henry James’s The American Scene, a travel book that Auden considered more than that. Travel he called the “easiest subject for the journalist” who requires only “a flair for being on the spot where interesting events happen.”

For the artist, on the other hand, it’s that “high order” performance.

However, I’ve known journalists who like James as Auden described him, or at least somewhat like him, picked what mattered, extracting importance without modifying or adding to it.

It’s been a goal worth striving for, even on deadline.

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Pope Francis’ Argentinean Protegé Accused of Sex Abuse

Daily Beastly treatment of The Man from Argentina, how it’s done in cynical/realistic/in-your-face,front-page style, in which the story’s the thing. Not a or any story but the story:

DON’T CRY FOR HIM

Pope Francis’ Argentinean Protegé Accused of Sex Abuse

An Argentine in a suspiciously cushy job in the Vatican’s treasury is now credibly accused of abusing seminarians in Argentina—and everyone wants to know what the pope knew when.

What are the beastly to say, in face of such a story?

ROME—When 53-year-old Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta abruptly left his post as bishop of Orán in Argentina in July 2017, he cited “health reasons” and a need for “treatment.” Many were concerned that he might have a terminal disease, according to local press reports at the time. After all, the popular bishop didn’t even seem well enough to hold a farewell mass.

Zanchetta tendered his resignation to Pope Francis, who often sits on such matters for months. Instead, the pope granted it within three days, according to the Associated Press, which broke the story, and soon Zanchetta was on his way to Rome, first spending time at an undisclosed location in Spain.

Now safely in Vatican City where he enjoys diplomatic immunity, the bishop stands credibly accused of sexually harassing young seminarians in the home country he shares with Francis.

Look. How ridiculous can a pontiff get? Having done his best to be a Beastly kind of pope, he’s become a Beastly kind of butt. Moral high ground, from which he can take a lead role in making this a better world? Not quite.

Not long after resigning, Zanchetta showed up on Pope Francis’ doorstep in Rome, apparently miraculously cured. Francis, who had made his fellow countryman a bishop right after becoming pope in 2013, naturally helped him out. Francis, back when he was Cardinal Jose Bergoglio and archbishop of Argentina, apparently knew Zanchetta well. He gave the younger man a high-ranking position in the Argentinean Bishops Conference when he was president of the organization. It made sense that he would find a place for a fellow Argentine in the Curia in Rome.

You just don’t get that sort of coverage from the boldest of politesse-equipped church-oriented media, whose market would be caught dramatically unaware. Can’t be done, that is, by some with more skin in the game than pushing the story. Which story this beast seems to have discovered.

Minds meet and collide on Wall Street . . .

. . . in its Journal, where news is

Tax Refunds Will Be Paid During Shutdown, White House Says

New policy meant to ‘mitigate the impact’ of shutdown, Vice President Mike Pence says

Mind one:

J  Why do you love Trump more than the American people?

Mind two:

S 

1. Two thoughtful, competent, ethical, moral and constitution directed jurists appointed to the Supreme Court. More to follow.

2. Moral, ethical and grounded jurists appointed to the Federal Judiciary

3.. America’s tax structure made somewhat competitive with its global competitors

4. A tax code even more fair, one that fewer than 50% of Americans actually pay any Federal Income tax despite a government that spends $78,532 per capita.

5. Rebuilding our Defenses is underway.

5. Lowest unemployment for Blacks, Latinos and other minorities that have been paid lip service to for over a century

6. No more apologies by POTUS to other nations.

7. Substantial reductions in the millions of pages of regulations hung on the economy by 8 very very long years of Obama

8. Our daughters not having to fear men masquerading as women in the ladies’ restroom

9. Obamacare in its last days of its always certain death march, the end of its ‘death’ squad panels.

10. etc. etc.

Crash.

Jansenists, strictest of the strict, promoted liturgical reform a la Vatican 2 . . .

Before 20th-century liturgical change agents were 18th-century church people who beat them to it . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

. . . in the 18th century, according to a “non-Tridentine [Trent] model,” say scholars who researched Jansenist liturgical reform. (As cited by Brian Van Hove, S.J. in the American Benedictine Review, “Jansenism and Liturgical Reform,” in 1993.)

An American, F. Ellen Weaver, noted these changes which are familiar to us today:

. . . introduction of the vernacular, a greater role for laity in worship, active participation by all, recovery of the notion of the eucharistic meal and the community, communion under both kinds, emphasis on biblical and also patristic formation, clearer preaching and teaching, less cluttered calendars and fewer devotions which might distract from the centrality of the Eucharist.

Even the “kiss of peace” was practiced at [Jansenist center] Port-Royal, and a sort of offertory procession was found there and elsewhere among Jansenist liturgical reformers.

Their liturgy was to serve the reform which they had in mind. Prayer…

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The Pope’s Laxity Catches Up With Him — The American Spectator

Something there is that doesn’t love a two-timer, a worrisome thing that makes you sing the blues . . .

He dings the American bishops for a lack of credibility as his own takes another hit in the wake of a new Vatican scandal.

Pope Francis lectured the American bishops this week on their “crisis of credibility” even as his own reputation took another hit in the wake of revelations about one of his protégés. It turns out that another McCarrick-like predator has been nesting at the Vatican under the patronage of this famously permissive pope. “Pope Francis’ Argentinean Protégé Accused of Sex Abuse,” reported the Daily Beast.

The accused bishop is Gustavo Óscar Zanchetta, a crony of Pope Francis’s from his days as archbishop of Buenos Aires. According to the story, Zanchetta, who has been accused of preying upon priests and seminarians, has long benefited from his friendship with the pope, first in Argentina, where Bergoglio orchestrated his elevation to a top-ranking position within the Argentinean Bishops Conference and then “made his fellow countryman a bishop right after becoming pope in 2013.” Zanchetta didn’t last long in that post, resigning in 2017 under a mysterious cloud of priestly complaints and claims of poor “health.” He scurried out of Argentina without even saying a “farewell mass,” according to the story, only to turn up shortly thereafter on “Pope Francis’ doorstep in Rome,” where Zanchetta was quickly thrown a new papal plum: . . . etc. etc.

This pope, he’s a two-faced thing, seems not to know he can’t fool all of the people all of the time. We of the watching and listening unwashed can only hope he gets it one of these days, I mean, how obvious can you be? Tsk, tsk, tut, tut . . .

More, more, culled at random, embarrassing riches:

The Vatican is once again playing dumb, claiming it knew nothing of the allegations against Zanchetta at the time of his new appointment. But who believes that? This is a pontificate that turned a predator known to Francis, Theodore McCarrick, into a papal envoy and dispatched him to the ends of the earth.

The pope’s plum-throwing to perverts is simply a habit he can’t break, not even at the most intense moment of the abuse scandal. A couple of weeks ago the pope vowed that the Church would “never’ conceal predators again. At that very moment, Zanchetta was working down the hall, overseeing the real estate holdings of the Church, even though one of the reasons for his disappearance from his diocese was that he had misused Church funds in furtherance of his misconduct.

Woe.

Vatican Aims to Expedite Trial of U.S. Archbishop – WSJ

Sign of renewed awakedness by Pope and his men:

VATICAN CITY—The Vatican plans to try Archbishop Theodore McCarrick as early as this coming week , in order to make a final decision on his fate before next month’s Vatican summit on sex abuse, according to people familiar with the matter.

Vatican officials understand that Pope Francis wants them to act swiftly in the matter, to keep the U.S. archbishop’s fate from overshadowing the summit, scheduled for Feb. 21-24, these people say.

Clearing the decks. Good.

[McCarrick] has said he has no recollection of the incident from the 1970s and believes he is innocent. A lawyer for the archbishop declined to comment on whether he is contesting the charges.

Special handling:

Ordinarily, clerics accused of sex abuse are initially judged by local church authorities around the world, where the process can take years. Appeals are heard at the Vatican, and ordinarily take a minimum of two months.

Rush job, apparently.

While Vatican officials are firm in their plan for the McCarrick trial to take place this coming week, the pope could still choose to change the timing or decide to judge the case himself, in which case there would be no possibility of appeal. A Vatican spokesman said proceedings in the case are under way, adding: “We are awaiting the results.”

The uncertainty is disconcerting. The charges are even more so:

One charge involves the son of friends whom the future archbishop allegedly abused over a period of years beginning when the victim was 11.

The trial will also consider the charge that Archbishop McCarrick repeatedly abused another boy starting at the age of 13.

His other life also:

In addition, allegations that the archbishop sexually harassed adult seminarians and priests over a period of years will also be considered at his trial, even though the CDF ordinarily tries abuse cases involving minors only. Accusations of a bishop’s misconduct with adults are usually dealt with by the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops.

Gets complicated. CDF is Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, once known popularly as the Holy Office, or (long ago) the Inquisition, as in Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Woe.