“If the season ended today…” is a favorite of baseball pundits with little to say and nothing to lose. I thought of that throughout last week and over the weekend, as I kept up some correspondence and put off replies to other conversations, while wending my way through fellow Vatican-watchers’ copious and labyrinthine speculation surrounding Pope Francis’s health and the future of his pontificate.
Pope Francis suffers chronically from sciatica. Over the past year or so, he has had a significant length of colon removed. He has a bad knee that doesn’t appear to be getting better, and – something the pope reportedly wants to avoid if he possibly can – may require surgery. Even if those issues weren’t there for him, he’s 85 years old and refuses to take any real down time.
The announcement of a big batch of red hats for late August – I don’t envy anyone who’ll be there – and the first meeting of the full College in seven years, and the recent spate of cancelled trips and other appointments due to ill health, have all been grist for the mill.
One of the things I said to a few people privately, however, was that we need to have longer memories when it comes to pontifical downslides. Pope St. John Paul II, for example, was really sick for a really long time. He was not really running the show for the last five years of his pontificate, and struggled to keep his hand on the tiller during the five years before that. In fact, that’s one of the things that led to the curial mess we have today.
The breakdown in governance during the long decline of Pope St. John Paul II’s powers – a decline, I hasten to add, that only exacerbated trends well established during the more active years of the sainted pope’s globetrotting reign – did not receive any really adequate address during the reign of Benedict XVI.
When the cardinals elected Francis in 2013, they gave him a mandate to reform the Roman Curia. Everyone knew that something needed doing – lots of somethings, maybe all the somethings – and lots of people had at least a few ideas about what, but nobody really wanted the job. At least, nobody really wanted the job, who had a snowball’s chance in Roman August of getting it.
It’s fair to say that, outside the professional cheerleading class, no one is particularly satisfied with the result of Francis’s reform effort. I’d include Francis in the unsatisfied group, by the way: “Reform on the go,” as veteran Vaticanista Andrea Gagliarducci has dubbed it (riffing closely on Pope Francis himself), is by its very nature an “ open and incomplete ” project.
We heard, early on in Francis’s pontificate, about the new pope’s predilection for “starting processes” and “discerning the times” rather than “occupying spaces” – we heard a great deal about all that – but, not to put too fine a point on it: What does it all come to?
“Open and incomplete” could be the language one uses for a brilliantly designed (almost self-perpetuating) institutional attitude of reform that always is on the lookout for things that could use work, coupled with a willingness to try new things. On the other hand, it could be euphemistic wordplay designed to soften if not disguise the fact that the head man has neither a plan nor the desire to get one, let alone bring it to any sort of reasonable fruition.
For years – nearly half a decade – we heard that the draft law reforming the Curia was basically done, and that we’d be seeing it very soon. When that line passed its sell-by date, we heard from several Roman hands – Cardinal Parolin the highest-ranking one of them – that “the reform – de facto – has already been accomplished,” though Cardinal Parolin frequently offered such and similar remarks as asides, or while granting interviews about other things.
In any case, the College of Cardinals will convene for an extraordinary consistory that will follow the ordinary one for the new red hats, during which they will receive a briefing of some sort on the New & Improved Roman Curia ™. Now the reform is passed, they’ll find out what’s in it.
Maybe.
Then, maybe it doesn’t really matter. The whole business seems designed not to work. At least, it appears designed not to work as a governing and administrative apparatus – as a bureaucracy – which is unfortunate, if it is so, because the Roman Curia is just that. Whatever else it is, or may be, the Roman Curia is a bureaucracy, which as such must be able to do things.
Pope Francis’s program, such as it is, appears to have been focused on reforming the bureaucrats, rather than the bureaucracy. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Repetita iuvant, and all that. Having a care for the moral quality and spiritual health of the men in one’s charge is part — the biggest part — of being a pastor and especially a religious superior. Still, believing that one can create a well-ordered bureaucracy by getting holy men to fill curial posts, well, that’s like believing that one can solve the problems of a dysfunctional ball club by putting the best players in the front office.
Also, Pope Francis hasn’t been trying to put holy men in curial jobs (though I’m sure he’s done that), so much as he is trying to put holiness into men who already have offices.
“Holiness” is the goal of Christian life, but it is neither a blueprint for reform nor a plan of government. Bureaucracies need to function, whether the bureaucrats be saints or devils. How it will do what it is supposed to do is anything but clear at this point.
I guess we’ll wait and see.
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We read: “Bureaucracies need to function.” That is, the curia must be able to govern.
Or, if not the intent, in effect is default into non-governance “the plan”? Such that synodal fiefdoms replace the curia? And, such that the papacy is reduced to little more the “Bishop of Rome,” although maybe still a quaint figurehead?
This outcome would move us not forward, but backward, a full five centuries to when Henry VIII decided that the Bishop of Rome had no authority in his island realm, but that he himself did, especially since kings govern by “the divine right of kings.” Therefore, the bigamist schismatic declared himself the pope of the Church of England. And the two rigid bigots in the realm (Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher) couldn’t do anything about it. Off with their heads!
But, unlike the German fiefdom today, and the super-Synod relator Cardinal Hollerich, even Henry VIII didn’t decorate himself with a mangled sensus fidei (“the divine right of synods?”) to hopefully redefine the priesthood, as well as the very meaning of marriage and binary human sexuality—into a spectrum of three options with 78 personal pronouns.
“Also, Pope Francis hasn’t been trying to put holy men in curial jobs (though I’m sure he’s done that), so much as he is trying to put holiness into men who already have offices.”
LOL
His success rate is the same as the Vatican II Super-Council hobbyhorse that he incessantly rides.
Like the puppet President in the White House and his cabinet of evil and incompetent sychophants, the puppet Pope in the Vatican and his Curia of evil and incompetent sychophants has an unmatched record of institutional failure, destruction, and catastrophe. This disgraceful farce and farago of a papacy cannot end soon enough.
Nice, cleaver wording; but little said about nothing.
Striking last paragraph , even prophetic for our times ? serving to sort of summarise the theme of the pontificate, of giving holiness the prime place, esp. in its endearing Fatherly gentleness as the need of our times, Holy Father being well aware of the spiritual warfare too , thus warning the flock often enough on same .
That is good for all esp.after the many misunderstandings .
The example given us as to what’devils’ in bureaucracies can do – the O.T readings of the day on Ahab, Jezebel, Elijah …Russia too similar lesson ..
Another gentler than the past reflection on the moral issues addressed by the Holy Father –
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/understanding-pope-francis-it-s-the-moral-theology-stupid
We know the Holy Father would not call any one as ‘stupid’ – may be as being ‘rigid’ 🙂
there too Russia an example , seeing themselves as so very holy to have distanced themselves, now aggressive beyond belief ..not seeing that taking pride in the house as swept clean yet without the charity of Love has served as invitation for the seven times worse agents …
Advocating to not let certain sins be seen in a rigid manner always, but to see if the Holy Spirit can help all to get up again to keep walking towards the holiness in the Father’s Heart .. that itself a powerful blessing ..
May same ring bells even in ears that seem closed off ..
The College of Cardinals elects new Popes and requires a minimum of 66% votes to elect new Popes. Pope Francis shall have appointed 66% of the College of Cardinals on 2/3/23 when Cardinal Calcagno turns 80, and the College has 82/124 whom Pope Francis appointed Cardinal. He need not appoint more before then, given his 16 new ones. The next 4 to retire at 80 are not “Francis Cardinals.” That shall occur on 9/17/23 when Comastri retires as # 4. Francis also need not appoint more before then. The “Non-Francis” Cardinals shall be reduced to only 25% on 9/15/24, which is only 27 months from now, when Piacenza turns age 80.
Also remember that Pope Benedict is 95. Pope Francis shall be 95 on 12/17/31 should he be Pope. On that date, the members of the current College, who are not “Francis Cardinals,” shall be down to only 5.
Seven current Cardinals already were born before 1960, and the new appointee Cardinal Marengo is only age 47. Those 8 shall elect 2 successor Popes, and more young Cardinals appointed by Francis shall follow them to do the same. Successor Popes elected by “Francis Cardinals” shall last at least 30 years, and their Popes shall appoint “Francis Cardinals” after Cardinals after Cardinals; and whether Francis permanently is in a wheel chair or later in a hospital bed and whenever he departs. Also, Francis never shall retire while Benedict is alive: 3 living popes!? To those who do not like Pope Francis, remember an old saying: “you don’t have the numbers.”
Who is the cause of this? Pope Benedict XVI is the cause of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio being The Pope. Benedict still would be the Pope today as he still is alive, had he not chosen to retire. Those who do not like Pope Francis need only look to Benedict as the cause of Francis being Pope because Francis is Benedict’s real Papal legacy. Benedict gambled that his successor Pope would be like him and did not remember another old saying: “the House always wins.”
Insightful and a good run down of the affairs of men! Does anyone have complimentary words regarding the Curia? Yet, Pope Francis has garnered his fair share of criticism and rebuke as well.
We are told that “we get the government we deserve”. Does this axiom have carry over to another institution?
Hebrews 12:2 Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.