On April 19, 2005, I was in the fifth of my six years of seminary formation, serving as an intern at a rural parish in the northeastern part of the Archdiocese of Detroit. That morning, I was to accompany my pastor to a vicariate clergy meeting at a nearby parish.
An ecclesial event of even greater importance was happening in Rome that day. It was the second day of the papal conclave that took place after the death of Pope St. John Paul II earlier that month. It turned out also to be the last day of the conclave. The white smoke rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel and the preparations were made for the introduction of our new holy father. All the priests present huddled around the television just in time to hear:
Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum:
HABEMUS PAPAM!
Eminentissimum ac reverendissimum Dominum,
Dominum Iosephum Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ Cardinalem Ratzinger,
Qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti decimi sexti.
At the moment the name “Ratzinger” was pronounced, three things happened in rapid succession:
- First, my heart was immediately filled with pumped-up-itude. This was exactly the result I had been hoping and praying for.
- Second, at the very summit of my triumph, a pastor present let out an audible groan and made his disappointment clear to the assembled priests.
- And, third, in reaction to his reaction, I became troubled and somewhat scandalized.
To this priest’s credit, he approached me several years later at a clerical function and apologized to me for his reaction that morning. He told me what a good pope he thought Benedict XVI had been. I have rarely seen a priest so humble and apologetic, and I was truly edified.
Looking back at the contrasting reactions this priest and I had at the election of Pope Benedict, a few thoughts occur to me (here comes another list of three things):
- First, it only stands to reason that each of us will have opinions about individual popes, insofar as they are all individuals with unique sets of strengths and weaknesses, as well as distinct personalities, pastoral approaches, and points of emphasis.
- Second, our enthusiastic or critical stances toward certain particular traits of any given pope must always be subordinate to our respect and filial charity towards both the office and the person of the Holy Father.
- Third, and most fundamentally, we must remain steadfast in faith, trusting that the Lord Jesus is present and active in His Church and in His vicar, the pope. I don’t mean in every pope’s every word and action. Even the job performance of St. Peter was susceptible to criticism on certain points. Just ask St. Paul. But I do mean that we must never discount the power of Christ’s presence in His Church and her popes.
We have to admit, however, that there are times in the Church’s history when the sailing seems smooth and fidelity seems relatively easy, and other times when we feel put to the test. For example, the priest I referred to earlier felt put to the test by the election of Pope Benedict. And I trust that it was his fidelity to the Lord and the Petrine Office helped to bring him around, and not just the fact that he happened to like what the pope was saying or doing.
It would be foolish to deny that today many are feeling put to the test in various ways, with so many vital theological and pastoral questions being debated all over the Universal Church. Many of our people, and I suspect no small number within our own community, would like to have the security that goes with having things settled, with having things well, thoroughly, and clearly articulated.
We may at times be tempted to feel as the disciples felt in the storm on the Sea of Galilee, when they feared they were perishing as Jesus slept in the boat. We can be tempted to feel that the storms surrounding us pose a mortal threat. We can be tempted to forget that Jesus is with us, or become discouraged because He seems to be asleep.
There is a great story about Julius Caesar that may help us here. Once Caesar was making the crossing from Durazzo, in modern-day Albania, to the Italian town of Brindisi. The captain of the boat he was riding in became afraid, however, because of a great storm that whipped up in the Adriatic Sea. Seeing the man’s trepidation, Caesar said to him, “Take courage, my friend, take courage and have no fear. Caesar is your passenger, and Caesar’s fortunes are your freight.”
Now, for Julius Caesar, such a declaration may have been the boasting of an egomaniac. Or perhaps he had a God-given sense that death at sea was simply not his destiny that day. I don’t know which it was.
But for those of us who are passengers on the Barque of Peter, the Catholic Church, our confidence is infallibly well-founded, because the Divine Passenger Who accompanies us is inviolable.
No matter what storms rage around us, no matter how much water the Ship of Salvation seems to take on, the Lord is always with us. He promises to take care of us. And He has more than enough power to make good on His promises.
Christ is always present in His Church (cf Matt 28:20), He is present in His vicar on earth (cf LG, 3), and He is especially present to us in the Holy Eucharist, offered and received at every celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass (CCC 1324). Whatever troubles our hearts, whether those troubles concern the Church, the world, our families, or our own vocations, we must not be terrified, must not be among those “of little faith.”
Instead, we pray and we trust. We discern when true obedience requires us to voice our concerns, and when we do better to remain silent. And we find peace in the firm conviction that Christ, the Son of the living God, is here among us and that He is the Lord of all things. He has built His Church up upon the rock of Saint Peter and his faith. May we persevere in the faith of the Church until death, until that moment described by St. Peter: “When the chief Shepherd is revealed, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” (1 Peter 5:4).
(Note: This essay was posted originally on February 22, 2024.)
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“Christ is always present in His Church. He is present in His vicar on earth”. But the Pope once said:” I am not His vicar”.
There are ways of God being present. As creator of the universe keeping all things in being. Even after some are condemned. And there’s the way of personal sanctification. Finally, there’s the way of sacramental presence specifically in ordination, in which charisma from God does not necessarily require the holiness of the recipient. As was Judas before his betrayal, able to heal the sick, expel demons.
Jesus our Lord son of God tells us in John ch. 8 “if you continue in My Word you will know The Truth”, in John ch. 14 “I am The Way The Truth and The Life”; why would we doubt when He tells us in todays reading Mt.16
“And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church,and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it”.
Amen
I bit late to the game with this comment; but nevertheless, this is the beauty of our Church. I remember imagines of the Pope also becoming visibly scandalized by people kissing his Papal ring. Regardless of the Pope’s own feelings about being the Pope – which as a man, he may at times wrestle with – he still is whom the Holy Spirit has anointed to be Christ’s Vicar on earth. A simple statement from a man, any man for that matter, no more undoes that fact, than a mortal sin can affect the Transubstantiation of the bread and wine, or the Forgiving of Sins in the confessional from a wayward, but duly ordained and commissioned priest. There’s great reason for us to Hope hidden in that simple fact.
Fr. Fox could supply a more complete LG citation for the assertion that “He [Christ] is present in His vicar on earth (cf LG, 3). Is LG Lumen Gentium? Does ‘3’ reference a paragraph, a footnote, a sentence, or a chapter? Where exactly does this assertion occur in Lumen Gentium?
Of course the claim that Christ is present in his vicar takes on questionable significance. In his 2020 papal Annuario, Jorge Mario Bergoglio designated himself only as “Bishop of Rome.” Notably, unmistakably, unquestionably he relegated all other papal honorifics of Tradition to history.
“The College, which does not exist without the head, is said “to exist also as the subject of supreme and full power in the universal Church.” This must be admitted of necessity so that the fullness of power belonging to the Roman Pontiff is not called into question. For the College, always and of necessity, includes its head, because in the college he preserves unhindered his function as Christ’s Vicar and as Pastor of the universal Church.” (Lumen gentium, 3)
Recalling transparency in devotion and the discipline of recollection:
‘ ….. and the closing recitation of the prologue of the Gospel of St. John, a “hymn to the redemptive incarnation” that “sets in your mind once again the great reality which you have encountered and in which you have participated.”
On the other hand, Cardinal Burke says, the practice of reading scriptural passages in modern languages has been a “tremendous gift” of the post-Vatican II liturgy that should be incorporated in the Tridentine Mass. And he says that the newer version of the Mass, in which the priest typically faces the congregation, can encourage a deeper appreciation of the “transparent devotion” with which priests should celebrate both forms of the liturgy.
On a related note, I’ve been reading Cardinal Burke’s new book, Divine Love Made Flesh:The Holy Eucharist as the Sacrament of Charity, and have found it to be a catechetically-rich work that reflects with great clarity on writings by Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI about the Eucharist. Recommended! ‘
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/07/09/cardinal-burke-reflects-on-fifth-anniversary-of-summorum-pontificum/
I don’t feel, believe, or think I’m in a Church-boat where Jesus has fallen asleep. I believe He is there with us, fully aware of our plight, and supporting us in ways we may not know or now understand. I have trust in His word.
I believe this: Jesus has granted permission to one Jorge Maria Bergoglio and many other ecclesial hierarchs to dissemble their steer of Christ’s church in the direction HE would approve. I believe that our storms result from the pride and failures of both Church leaders and the majority of her to recognize and revere the divine gifts of faith, hope and love of His presence in our church.
The working of God in history has allowed chastisement, persecution, and martyrdom so that eyes and ears may open to Him. The God of history allowed the persecution, torture, death, and crucified martyrdom of His Very Own Begotten Son. Why should He not allow the same to us barely living whiffs of dust with souls clinging to His animating Holy Spirit?
I believe in climate change and the desecration of our church leaders and our church properties as the vessels, the instruments through which the great Creator seeks to speak. Did He not allow his sun to descend in the sky in Fatima in 1917? Did He not place a star in Betlehem some 2050 years ago? We now experience the storms of a great apostasy and chastisement; whether we are in His prologue, climax, or denouement is not known. Surely we may Ask Him. If it is for our good, if we can handle the news, He will let us know His time in history.
That is the “Felici Note”. A number of things can be said. Here are some -not in order.
It was meant to give effect a juridical expression of hierarchical communion worked from charity. It does not limit charisms to the Pope, or his office, or his personal role. There could be better ways to express the idea than Felici’s to better grasp and facilitate “the sacred mind of the Council”. Prior papal documents have a necessary bearing. All is subject to faith and morals. You can’t do disservice to the college.
More could be found and this is not complete. I will leave it at this for now. The Note can’t reduce LG to something it is not.
Pope Francis himself said not to be legalistic and this I think would be a sensible way of understanding and applying of the intents.
If, without more, it would be fair to say Bishop Strickland should not have been removed, then Pope Francis has enough before him to revoke that decision. No-one will be at fault later for not having “said more” about it “in order to convince Pope Francis” to reinstate.
Fr. Fox juxtaposes comments on the Barque of Peter and Julius Caesar…So, here, a real “paradigm shift”, and two post-synodal perspectives:
FIRST, how the Church of the future might still put two and two together? That is, what if the real “paradigm shift” can never be ambiguity about Revelation (the nature of God and the nature of Man), but rather the terrestrial game board. What if the 20th-century Globalism model and even the Westphalian nation-state model of 1648 are being eclipsed by Caesar-like spheres of influence: Russian, Chinese, North American, and Islamic? (Modernday Caesars might then say: too bad for Ukraine and its mineral wealth, for what’s left of the British Commonwealth and Canada, for Denmark’s Greenland, and maybe even for Taiwan….is the real game spheres-of-influence and a resuscitated colonial grab for world resources?).
What, then, about sacral nature of Creation, and the sacramental, universal and perennial Catholic Church, and proclamation of the Gospel? And, the incarnate Jesus Christ IS the Gospel! All this in a looming worldview best fitted to Muhammad and Charlemagne, but without Charlemagne’s or the later Constantine’s protection of Christendom…
SECOND and however (!), by the intervention of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, the Church’s articulated self-understanding (Lumen Gentium, Ch. 3, with the unambiguous Prefatory Note) is resiliently “collegial”—with the bishops and now cardinals from all over the “world” in union with papacy and “never without him”—the latter as the direct successor of Peter, and the former as direct successors of the other apostles. What does THIS Church of the apostolic succession have to say (Dei Verbum) in this resurgent Apostolic Age?
THIRD, Singapore’s CARDINAL GOH was onto something when he remarked that mongrel “synodality” did raise some themes, but now might have to be followed by a real “synod of bishops;” and, that many in the Church have been preaching only half of the Gospel:
“…So you might need to have another level, where it is just basically bishops, with the Holy Father, to determine certain doctrinal issues [a theme currently blurred with other pastoral and ethical themes under the post-synodal Study Group #9].” [AND] “…that is my fear: that, today, even Church leaders are compromising the Gospel. I don’t think Jesus ever compromised the Gospel, even for the adulterous woman….” https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/05/03/cardinal-goh-of-singapore-deep-encounter-with-jesus-is-key-to-passing-on-the-faith/
FOURTH, on our perennial moment in history, the layman G.K. CHESTERTON got it right:
“Those runners [‘messengers of the Gospel’] gather impetus as they run. Ages afterwards they still speak as if something had just happened [!]. They have not lost the speed and momentum of messengers; they have hardly lost, as it were, the wild eyes of witnesses. . . .We might sometimes fancy that the Church grows younger as the world grows old” (The Everlasting Man, 1925).
The “earlier” Constantine.
In your 6 years of seminary formation, what percentage of church tradition is taught over the scriptures? My brother was in Santa Barbara for 2 years and was rarely taught the true scriptures.
And what percentage of the scriptures you learned were taught through the lens of a closed minded fundamentalism independent of history and tradition?
First,
What seminary exists in Santa Barbara? I found news of a defunct secondary school ‘seminary’ online. Secondary schools typically do not teach higher level philosophy, theology, and exegesis as post secondary (college, university) seminaries teach.
How do you define “true” scripture??? Is some scripture “false”?? By what authority do you claim the right of grace or the right of knowledge to distinguish?
Also, you may want to investigate the learned Church Fathers on how tradition and scripture are interrelated.
Meiron, you ask, “How do you define ‘true’ scripture???” To which, the response of Brother Brian is to pointeth, surely, to the true line foundeth in A.D. 1519, and that eraseth the false line of St. Paul: “So then, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thes 2:15).
Meaning, here, that Christ was/is proclaimed either by letter OR word, such that the latter and written letter is part of the living Tradition–the apostolic and Catholic Church having written the Scripture, rather than the other way around.
Peter,
Most Assuredly Brother Brian should so point. But he would thereby contradict St. Paul. Would he so knot?
He likely knows nothing of St. Ignatius of Antioch…disciple of St. John and likely disciple of St. Peter too.
And what percentage of the scriptures you learned were taught to you through the lens of a closed-minded, pharisaical fundamentalism that is disconnected from history and tradition?
I am certainly no theologian of the learning and wisdom of Fr. Fox. And I certainly agree that with him that Christ is always present in His Church, His Mystical Body. But I stumble over his statement Christ is also always present in his vicar.
Seems that there is no dispute that there have been some really bad popes in the history of the Church in whom the presence of Christ was certainly not manifest.
Yesterday we celebrated the feast of St Peter Damian who had to fight against morally corrupt clerics including the disgraceful Pope Benedict IX. Just don’t know how I can defend to my non Catholic evangelical friends that Christ was present in a pope like Benedict IX.
I agree wholeheartedly that, yes, there have been terrible men serving as Pope. I think that an important point to clarify is that the Pope doesn’t become Christ. God remains present in His Church, His Sacraments and in a very special way in the Office of the Pope; but the power of God will not transform a person (any person, for that matter) without the consent of his will. It has been tragic to see villainous men occupy the Chair of Peter; but that a villain can assume that Chair can happen precisely because God safeguards his right to freely choose, or reject, the vocation that He offers him. The choice of an individual has no power over God’s vocational gift once it is received. I can choose, for example, to divorce my wife, to “marry” another woman, and live as though the new relationship that I assert is real; but Reality, that is Truth, would testify to the Objective Fact that I am still married, and only married, to the woman whom I would have left during my divorce. So, too, by analogy it is with the Pope. This can be difficult for Protestants (and, Americans by extension) to accept because of the theological primacy many denominations (and, broadly speaking, society) place on choice and autonomy. Simply put, we, as humans, are not powerful enough to undo what God Ordains. That’s both a great mystery, and a great reason to Hope in His Church.
God dwells in everyone and everywhere as He is the reason and cause of all life. He created each and every human soul. It follows then that God’s spirit is in everyone (including wicked human beings and/or popes who may reject His being or His teaching).
My earlier answer suffices as “ecumenical.” Catholics will more readily accept Christ’s Presence as Christ’s Vicar because of the Pope’s and other bishops’ (cardinals) apostolic succession.
Meanwhile, I see Bloomberg News reporting that our current pope is in critical medical condition. So I suppose we’ll soon witness the successors of the apostles appointing a new Bishop of Rome. Pray God they will consult Him, and He will bless us in consolation.
The hope is that the members of the next conclave—whose freedom of will is not annihilated by the freedom of God in whose “image and likeness” we are—will discern and follow the lead of the Spirit who indwells the institutional Church and each of its members. Indwells, but does not dictate. One good bet is that the overreach of Fiducia Supplicans has turned the lights on. In the meantime, sincere prayers also for Pope Francis. Whatever else, he was not dealt a royal flush.
Yes, one hopes that visions of hell seen in the likes of Fiducia sufficed to turn men from darkness and to seek the Light. Yes, Francis did show us the cards in his hand, and yes, he had neither a royal nor a straight flush. Maybe he held a single high, but I don’t recollect it. Was there one?
So then you do not believe that Christ is in the person of faith even when he sins?
Christ the Holy Spirit is given to us in Baptism and is with us throughout our lives,
even in times of falling, doubting, questioning. We are not robots, He has given us brains to question, and to disagree, and that includes all of us, even the Pope.
And what percentage of the scriptures you learned were taught through the lens of a closed minded fundamentalism independent of history and tradition?