These are a few of my favorite things...

Alma Mater, Thee We Hail

One other nice thing about the papal visit for me is that when people see me wearing my "Catholic University of America" sweatshirt, for a little while at least people might know what the heck it is...
(Worst incident:
Harvard Student: "Oh my God, that's totally funny, like a generic Catholic university, haha."
Me: "Well, actually, I received my B.A. from it."
HS: "Oh. Um, sorry.")

Venue profile of CUA here.
CUA's main website for the visit here.

Distinguishing gay men from pedophiles

In almost a throwaway line from his remarks while on "Shepherd One" en route to the U.S. this afternoon, B16 distinguishes homosexuality from pedophilia. Not a big gay rights advance, but it will certainly (hopefully?) give pause to those who identified the presence of gay men in the clergy as the cause of the sexual abuse crisis.

“It is a great suffering for the church in the United States and for the church in general and for me personally that this could happen,” he said. “As I read the histories of those victims it is difficult for me to understand how it was possible that priests betrayed in this way. Their mission was to give healing, to give the love of God to these children. We are deeply ashamed and we will do what is possible that this cannot happen in the future.”

Apparently drawing a distinction between priests with homosexual tendencies and those inclined to molest children, the Pontiff said: “I would not speak at this moment about homosexuality, but pedophilia which is another thing. And we would absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry.”

Papal Visit Round-Up

Just wanted to round-up a few of the best sources for reliable information as Benedict's visit to the U.S. begins today, and then add my own two cents...

Rocco at Whispers in the Loggia is obviously the norma non normata of Vaticana these days. Expect him to have the earliest scoops and the best inside information.

Another great source is David Gibson's blog on the papal visit entitled "Benedictions" and sponsored by Beliefnet. Where Rocco brings a heartwarming admiration to the table, Gibson also has the critical, sometimes cynical eye of a seasoned journalist, but with (shock) actual knowledge of the Catholic Church and an ability to distinguish big issues from side issues. And he's fun - check out his article in the Star-Ledger (yes, the New Jersey Star-Ledger) on papal fashion choices.

The New York Times has the fanciest pope visit page, combining some of this past weekend's journalism on the current state of the Catholic Church in the U.S. with live reports on everything that's happening. Expect them to have the best pictures. Crucially, they also have an updating schedule up, so if you've got a map of the eastern seaboard and a little yellow tack, you can follow the pope like a hurricane up the coast.

The Boston Globe also has a good page on the visit, and Michael Paulson is a long-standing, careful observer of things Catholic; though less flashy than the NY Times page, my money's on his analysis's being a bit more insightful.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has shown a good deal of media savvy for the trip, and has their own, high quality blog on the papal visit. It's almost entirely the official line-up of who's who and why they're important, but it will be a good source for photos as well.

If you're following the visit from home, most major television carriers will no doubt be carrying it. EWTN will be streaming it all (and smoke, drink, or donate some money to the Democratic Party at the same time, if you want to offset your possible support for their advertisers...). And you can follow along using the papal missal for the trip, released last week by the Vatican in pdf form.


So what am I thinking about all of this?

Well, I think it would be difficult to be a Roman Catholic Christian and not feel a great deal of excitement and pride about the visit of a pope. For someone raised within the church, the sheer visual and musical spectacle of it all hits all sorts of deep nerves within me. I'm particularly struck/excited by the proposal to ring bells in Catholic churches across the country at 4 pm today EDT, the time of Benedict's plane's arrival.

I respectfully disagree with some of what this particular pope has done, both as the prefect of the CDF where he hurt people who were close to me, and even now as pope. But on the other hand, this is one of those occasions, almost like a funeral or wedding, where one puts aside some of those differences. If he's truly functioning as a symbol not of his own sometimes poor, IMHO, choices, but as a symbol of the universal church and its presence with our own churches here in the United States, then a papal visit cannot but help remind us of that. Plus, B16 is simply a better theologian than JPII, so if John Paul's visits were focused on the question of what John Paul did, I'll be looking on this trip to see what Benedict says.

And yet I think that my experiences -- as a gay man, as a theologian, as a feminist, as an overly-educated academic -- will give me a sense of distance from some of the visit. I can't but approach this visit without some serious question, and while that might be dismissed as not "getting into the spirit of the thing," I think it's actually a saving grace in a quite literal sense. B16 knows (and, I think, knows better than his immediate predecessor) the danger of the pope-as-spectacle becoming a focus for a cult of personality, for an idolatry that places the pope in the place of Christ. After all, he was a child in Nazi Germany, he knows how easily this very human excitement at being fascinated by the spectacle, at being caught up in the moment and losing oneself in the crowd, can be turned, twisted, and misused for something grotesque. So, bottom line, I'll be watching for the next few days with real, unfeigned excitement, and yet with a bit of a critical eye. I think my own experiences, and my generational location, may have saved me from the untrammeled cynicism about all things papal that I find in some of my elders, as well as from some of the uncritical papolatry, in the strict sense, of some of my peers.

I'll be glued to the TV with the rest of America, and I'll be sincerely praying with and for the pope on this trip - but one of my students attending the Mass at Yankees Stadium has instructions to acquire a Benedict XVI popener for me (a papal-themed bottle opener....)

Viva il papa!

Pope Videos

Two fabulous videos:
1) The Holy Father's message about his visit to the United States next week:


2) And the D.C. Metro's ad (now yanked) for the day, featured B16 in bobblehead form (thanks to Whispers for the tip):

April 13, 2008

Set your calendars now...the Pope will be in Boston, likely celebrating Mass on the Common.

That other motu proprio

Faithful readers who survived the blogging drought that was most of this past year will remember another, less famous motu proprio on papal conclaves that came out in June. Sandro Magister has an illuminating article by, IMHO, one of the greatest living canon lawyers, Ladislas Örsy, S.J., on why such a seemingly small change by JPII, and its restoration by B16, makes such an important ecclesiological difference.

Summorum Pontificum

As usual, Rocco has the scoop on the Latin Mass motu proprio over at Whispers in the Loggia -- and he's careful to point out that he didn't break any ecclesiastical laws by promulgating substantial parts of the document ahead of its, well, its promulgation...

That being said, I'm leaving this morning for a beach weekend down at Rehoboth in Delaware, thanks to one of my dearest friends in the world...

Happy Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul

Today is one of the major patronal feasts of Rome, and, in honor of the occasion, the famous statue of St. Peter at the Basilica gets dressed up...

But it is a joint feast, the idea being that the church at Rome is founded not on the witness, the martyrdom, of Peter alone but of Peter and Paul, two great apostles who, tradition suggests, both met their end in Rome. And last night at services at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, B16 announced that on June 29th, 2008, a Pauline year in celebration of the 2,000 anniversary of Paul's birth will begin.

Nicely coincidentally, next year will also be the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Paulist Fathers, founded by Isaac Hecker under the patronage of St. Paul. Exciting times!

Motu proprio

Not _that_ motu proprio....but now that I've got your attention:

B16 released a motu proprio today re-establishing the previous practice of the conclave to elect a pope only by a 2/3 vote, rather than the scheme JPII instituted by which a deadlocked conclave would eventually switch over to a simple majority -- raising the specter of an intransigent minority that could hold out indefinitely until the 2/3 voting was over. It's another sign, in my opinion, of B16's desire to undue some of John Paul's more, um, creative innovations...maybe Divine Mercy Sunday is next??

In other news, I'm defending my dissertation tomorrow afternoon, so keep me in your prayers!

Next Synod of Bishops, Upcoming Motu Proprio, Etc.

Two upcoming items on the Vatican front.

The Next Synod of Bishops
So only Nixon can go to China. From Fr. Z, a priest and blogger from Rome who spends a lot of time talking about proper translations of liturgical texts from the Latin, as well as the return of the use of Latin in the Mass. The Lineamenta, the planning texts, for October's Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, have been published. The theme will be "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church." The Synod was called for by Christus Dominus at Vatican II, and has functioned as an occasional advisory body to the Pope since then. But Fr. Z notes an important change that B16 has made to the juridical process of the synod, a change that furthers the pattern of slow, deliberate yet marked de-centralization that reflects a theology of the papacy as the primate among the bishops, rather than above the bishops. Fr. Z's text in full:

For a rigid backward looking conservative, Pope Benedict XVI sure does some progressive things.

The most recent surpise from His Holiness is a change to the Synod of Bishops.

Originally the Synod, called to meet occasionally to discuss questions put to them by the Pope, could before only offer observations and statements. Pope Benedict has now given them deliberative power concerning certain precise questions.

The new edition of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis indicates the changes in new statutes for the Synod.

The Synod will be able to vote on issues, but the vote must be ratified by the Pope. Thus, in certain specific questions, it seems the Synod will become a kind of micro-Council.

This move brings the Synod perhaps more in line with the way ancient Synods worked. It also resonates with the way the Orthodox bishops deliberate, though clearly they don’t have the Petrine dimension excercized by the Pope.

So, this Pope seems to be bent on loosening the vice clamping around some dimensions of the Church’s life since Pope Paul VI. He is exploiting the provisions in Canon Law about the Synod and relaxing artifical and harmful restrictions imposed on the Church’s liturgical life.

The Motu Proprio
And the next news that's likely to come from Rome is the upcoming motu proprio expected to allow a much wider use of the 1962 Missale Romanum (that's Mass in Latin, for my fellow post-conciliar Catholics). Expect lots and lots of people to freak out.

For all of your basic questions for information, Amy Wellborn has put together a "Motu Proprio Tip Sheet" that will, assumedly, receive further detail after the actual publication of the document.

Should those of us who aren't Latin Mass goers freak out? Not necessarily. I expect that the key to the interpretation of the document will be a clause or paragraph in which B16 will signal that a crucial aspect of the wider allowance of the Latin Mass cannot be understood in any way, by bishops, clergy, or laypeople, as suggesting the illegitimacy of the vernacular versions of the Mass. That's the rub that sparked the excommunications of the Lefebvrists back in the day; one cannot, in the Catholic church, promote the use of the Latin Mass because one understands the vernacular masses to be invalid. I expect that the motu proprio will make that clear.

Given that, I'm optimistic that the wider use of the Latin Mass won't make much difference to most people. Releasing a document like this in 2007 is a lot different than it would have been in 1978; there is no way of turning back the clock on the vernacular liturgy, and most clergy, laypeople, and bishops have little interest in returning to the old Mass. If it's strongly emphasized that a preference for the Latin Mass is just that, a preference, and not a matter of faith, then allowing a diversity of usage within the church seems a good move to meet people where they are.

At least two practical issues need to be addressed, however, that may get lost in the shuffle to re-publish 1962 Missals. First, there is the minor issue of a unified calendar; many people were expecting the publication of the document yesterday, on the feast of St. Pius V, the post-Tridentine pope whose publication of the Missale Romanum standardized Latin Catholic usage for the next 400 years. But it's just as possible that the document may be published
on May 5th, his feast day under the Latin Catholic calendar. This in itself signals the difficulty of allowing two distinct calendars within the Latin rite. Some sort of calendar reform within the Latin rite would both make sure that Roman Catholics are celebrating the same feasts on the same days, and would also show the relativity of the Latin Mass -- the Mass is under the regulation of the bishops, and not the reverse. Simply being old doesn't make it scripture.

The second, more substantive issue is the question of how the texts of the Latin Mass understand the relations between Jews and Christians. I have a 1962 Missale here in my library, and a quick leafing through can find those lovely Good Friday prayers for the "perfidious Jews." The Boston College Center for Christian-Jewish Learning has already raised these concerns and suggested some responses.

In both cases, the caveat seems to be that if greater re-introduction of the Latin missal is not going to undermine some of the other developments in post-conciliar Catholicism, it can't be introduced as a museum piece, but must be made a living part of the church, and that includes modifications that will upset true traditionalists by suggesting that there are other reasons for allowing Latin liturgy than a negative evaluation of the conciliar reforms. We'll see shortly, according to all the scuttlebutt, exactly what will happen next.

BXVI Quote of the Day

"It was easy to know the doctrine. It's much harder to help a billion people live it."

Technically, yesterday, from David Gibson's NY Times article on BXVI after two years.

Happy Birthday, B16

He celebrated with a cute new mitre and his new book on Jesus.

E pur si muove

From the Italian magazine Panorama by way of Whispers in the Loggia, a whimsical map of curial influence, organized by nationalities. Of interest: note how close in some of the Americans are, and also note the strange Italian orbit, pitting B's close collaborator (and new Secretary of State) Tarcisio Bertone at one end vis-à-vis his predecessor Angelo Sodano. Way inside baseball, I know, but here we have a visual reminder of the danger of beginning any sentence "The Vatican teaches...", never mind "The church teaches..."

Benedictus Discalceus

This photo says it all: if B16 is willing to take off his red prada shoes for interreligious dialogue, then what more can we ask of him to show his commitment to peace and mutual respect? Hasn't he suffered enough?