Pope Francis on Sunday announced a consistory for the creation of new cardinals, and it’s a bumper crop. On September 30th, eighteen new red hats will gain voting rights in the next conclave, bringing the total number of electors to 137. Ninety-nine of them have their hats directly from Francis.
With the new creations, as the making of cardinals is officially known, Pope Francis will blast through the soft cap of 120 electors set by his predecessor, Pope St. Paul VI. By this, he may or may not be successful in securing a successor who will preserve and continue his work. But it is abundantly clear now that he is trying—and in a hurry—to secure his legacy.
There will be time to explore in more and greater depth the stuff of that legacy, but one thing Pope Francis certainly has done is to re-open discussions that most, in and around the Church, believed permanently closed—especially regarding the Second Vatican Council.
He has re-ignited controversies and opened battles that had been by all appearances won and lost, over issues ranging from moral theology to liturgy and even the precise structure of governing power in the Church.
Those are weighty matters, and important.
Nevertheless, it is how Pope Francis has wielded power that is most likely to be in the fore of electors’ minds when they gather to choose the man who will come after Francis. In that regard—how Francis wields power—one name among the new cardinals-to-be stands out as particularly telling: Archbishop Agostino Marchetto.
Archbishop Marchetto—as he will continue to be known until Pope Francis puts the red hat on his head at the end of September—is perhaps best known as a career diplomat and advocate in behalf of migrants and itinerants. He is also a serious intellectual, and among the chief proponents of what came to be called the “hermeneutic of continuity” i.e. the idea that the 1962-1965 Council did not constitute primarily an “event” separable from the documents the Council Fathers actually produced, nor a repudiation of anything the Church had previously thought and taught.
Pope Francis has praised Marchetto’s ample, rigorous, and always winsome, if occasionally combative work, in the history of the Council on numerous occasions. Now, it appears he is paying more than lip service to the prominent historian.
Other historians will have to say whether Pope Francis has governed the Church in continuity with the mind of the Council as Marchetto understands it and has articulated it. This much, however, is clear: Pope Francis believes he has done so. At least, not unlike the alien-hunting FBI agent from The X-Files, Fox Mulder, Francis wants to believe he has done so.
It is also possible that he wants people to believe he has done so, or is trying to do so. In other words, he may be giving himself and his main supporters in the commentariat, if not in the College—though quite possibly there, too—some plausible cover. So bluntly and brutally stated, the thing may sound jaded if not cynical.
If so, try thinking of it another way.
Archbishop Marchetto is 82-years-old, and will be 83 by the time he gets his hat. He is past voting age, and among the three “cardinal theologians” Pope Francis intends to create in recognition of their signal service to the Church over their many long years and decades of earthly pilgrimage. It is undoubtedly an honor, and a great one, however you slice it.
It is an honor Francis has given sincerely, and one Archbishop Marchetto will doubtless accept gladly. At the same time, it is safe to honor Archbishop Marchetto now. He is retired, and past voting age.
According to this line of thinking, Archbishop Marchetto’s impending creation is of a piece with Pope Francis’s nomination of Cardinal Gerhard Müller, one of Francis’s most outspoken critics, to the upcoming Assembly of the Synod of Bishops that will meet in Rome to discuss the nature and scope of synodality in the life of the Church.
Pope Francis is not afraid of criticism. He does not mind it at all. He has little use, however, for anyone who either does not think with his mind, or, even thinking with his mind, reaches different practical conclusions regarding the best course to take.
In Pope Francis’s synodal Church, everyone really does have a voice. The thing is—and Francis has been clear about this from the get-go, and he’s not wrong on the point, whatever the implications for synodality as a real mode of governance for the universal Church—the pope has the final say, hence the only real say.
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Would an honest Pope, if he were validly God’s elect, need to increase the number of Cardinals beyond historic numbers?
He only consults 9 for his polit-bureau…
If an honest Pope were chosen by God, would he have to secure a self-declared “Rupture” a Cancel-Culture Programme for those detestes “Doctrinally Rigid Catholics” ? Would an honest Pope, presently emptying the Church in Germany alone of half a million faithful a year, see that as a success and extend the project of Synod on Sodomy to the Universal Church?
I am just a average Catholic woman with a deep faith – what am I to make of all this? A Pope is to be immune from theological error in his actual writing. So we do need some things clarified. Could he be trying to see if the majority will go against the world so their decisions are more believable? I am a Servant Leader to the helpless & homeless; I am receptive to immigrants; I am friends of other beliefs & homosexuals; I am understanding of “God’s Way is not my way”; but, I still think we need clear rules & regulation, safe borders & limits, Canon Law & the Magisterium – and deep thinking Catholic men to lead our Catholic Church in this mixed up world. Dear God, please give all these men the Holy Spirit to guide them to what you want. The Holy Spirit will keep the Church from error – let not the Gates of hell prevail!
“A Pope is to be immune from theological error in his actual writing.”
That is not what the Church teaches. It’s what we would hope for, but the charism of infallibility is far, far more specific and narrow than this.
Or perhaps he is simply taunting his critics as he uses the power of the papacy to destroy the power of the papacy.
Precisely. And since the Pope supposedly likes criticism and endless encyclicals, allow me to belabor your profound and concise point with messy blathering.
Müller was invited to have him watch spectacularly unqualified people vote against him to destroy what he has given his life to defend. Müller will look like Mr. Smith on the floor of the Senate, assuming Wretch and Holerlick even let him talk. No, this papacy is a bundle of insecurities, fueled by petty vindictiveness. It doesn’t just cancel Cardinals like Müller and Burke, but bishops who dare defend the Deposit of Faith in far off places like Puerto Rico and Texas. Strange to say, Pope Francis reminds me of President Trump.
“Strange to say, Pope Francis reminds me of President Trump.”….. Huh???
It would be more accurate to equate these behaviors in Rome with those of the current administration in Wash DC. Talk about vindictive…
Of course, these could work for Biden as well.
This is a papacy that is clearly in place by dint of a program of affirmative action. It was an conclave election based on feeling sorry for a bunch of homosexualist activists and idiots.
Trump is a populist who gives a voice to the working class. Pope Francis’ politics is that of the Davos globalist elites. Day and night difference.
In the doublespeak that you keep showing, you are not “God’s Fool”, a pretension of sanctity, but as you disfigure reality right along with those who hate any small trace of truth and integrity, you demonstrate more of how a “Devil’s Fool” behaves and speaks.
The very imperfect doers of what’s right are hated because, in spite of their tons of faults, defects and sins, they have stood for what is right quite frequently, something we are all called to do in spite of our many personal faults and the violent opposition of God’s enemies, which is a good definition of an authentic God’s Fool: despised, mocked and slandered by the sinful world, yet standing for God and Truth.
So a devoted elitist supporter whose value system is dedicated to global elitism and, with contempt for the very idea of immutable truth in the highest position of the Church God created to give witness to immutable truth, you see as similar to a politician whose entire political ideology is anti-elitist?
To communicate to the world about “the legacy” of the Pontiff Francis (and his cultists) the Pontiff Francis and Justin Welby can simply switch places.
Par for the course for leftists.
Where conservatives typically hire the most qualified candidates, regardless of political affiliations, lefties will only actually consider fellow leftists for any important post.
Which is how they are able to co-opt so many organizations so quickly.
Universities, charitable foundations, news outlets, corporations — and now, unquestionably, the Catholic Church — are transformed from useful, dedicated, independent institutions into captive functionaries that can be trusted to further the cause of leftism, whatever hideous and insane policies that might entail.
Dark, dark days are ahead for the Mystical Body of Christ. We can be assured that the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it. Not completely anyway.
But they are in the process of prevailing against big chunks of it. Thanks to Bergoglio and the rest of his cadre.
On the bestowing of red hats, Pope Francis has yet to make the ultimate surprise of appointing a lay person to the College of Cardinals. The last lay person to be made so was Teodolfo Mertel back in 1858. In this present batch of Cardinals the Pope included a non-bishop priest, the superior general of the Salesians, Angel Fernandez Artime.
Church is a dynamic movement of fellow pilgrims led by the Spirit. Cardinals come and cardinals go. May each one of them be blessed with good health of mind and body.
Mind and body? See you don’t mention their soul?
Oh, oh, oh, pick me to be a Cardinal. I promise not to mention Christ. Invite me to the Synod. I don’t even need a vote, since I’ll be a Bishop. I can help Fr. Radcliffe OP spiritually sooth the feelings of the papal guests. Trust me, I won’t mention Fr. Aidan Nichols OP. Mercy alone is all I ask. It is wrong to make a fool like me synodal alone like this.
Let’s not forget that the Holy Spirit can work in mysterious ways. Satan is in control of the world, but he is not in control of the church.