It was an operatic week in the Vatican. Well, maybe soap-operatic.
The week opened with an Italian animal rights group complaining about the literal circus Cardinal Konrad Krajewski – the papal almoner – put on for poor and needy people in Rome.
An outfit called the Organizzazione Internazionale Protezione Animali issued a press release the day after the circus event, in which OIPA’s president complained that the pope “isn’t on the side of the animals” and called the whole circus trade “contrary to the pope’s ‘ecological magisterium’.”
Oh, bother.
Among the 2,000-odd people Pope Francis and his charity czar treated were orphaned boys and girls, those who have fled war and hunger in their native lands, folks without a roof over their heads, those who are out of work or underemployed, and lots of others variously down-and-out or on the skids or just plain stuck with hardscrabble existence. Some reports said there were more than a hundred prostitutes among the invités.
“The circus offers a different look at life,” Italian papers quoted Krajewski as saying of the show. “What is impossible in human terms, is possible in the circus,” he also said. That’s it – and – that’s pretty much all of it. I mean, no one will accuse this scribbler of shilling for Francis, but if giving homeless people and working poor folk and orphans and refugees and even hookers an afternoon of wholesome fun is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
About the complaint, one gets the feeling it was a case of carpe diem – a chance for OIPA to get itself in the papers – and it looks like it paid off.
The week closed with another red hat – the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, Cardinal Arthur Roche – getting hot under the collar over a Pillar analysis that wondered whether Roche wasn’t out of his lane in issuing rules for the implementation of Traditionis custodes that were more restrictive than the law itself, which already severely curtailed permissions to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and other older rites.
“In recent months,” wrote JD Flynn – himself a trained canon lawyer – in a Feb 9th piece, “Roche has [told] at least some U.S. bishops that they do not have the authority to dispense from certain provisions of Traditionis custodes, even while – to the mind of many canonists – the papal text itself does not support that claim.”
“It is an absurdity,” the Where Peter Is blog quoted Roche as saying in response to request for comment, “to think that the prefect of a dicastery would do anything other than exercise the wishes of the Holy Father as clearly outlined in their mandate and the General Norms of [the Apostolic Constitution] Praedicate Evangelium [laying out the Vatican bureaucracy’s new organizational chart].”
“The article in the Pillar,” Roche went on to say, “is not really an attack on me but on the pope’s authority which for Catholics is an astonishing act full of hubris.”
Well, give me garlic and call me smelly.
For one thing, it is anything but absurd. Surely, Roche remembers as far back as 2017, when Pope Francis very publicly told Roche’s predecessor in the Vatican’s liturgy office, Cardinal Robert Sarah, to get back in his lane and stay there after Sarah presumed to interpret some just-issued rules regarding the approval of liturgical texts in translation. Roche should recall the contretemps, as he was secretary under Sarah at the time.
For another, Roche has done the thing Flynn said he’s done, and canonists have wondered whether Roche hasn’t overstepped. It may be a moot point, given that Francis does not seem displeased – for now – with Roche’s management of the Traditionis custodes business. Francis is the pope, and the pope holds all the cards. Nevertheless, it is an open question.
Ink-on-ink is far-and-away this Vatican watcher’s least favorite journalistic sub-genre, and Cardinals-on-ink isn’t far behind, but Roche’s solicited rejoinder is an object lesson in how not to do it. It’s just too good an object lesson to pass up. One is tempted to say that Roche almost illustrates the biblical wisdom: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding” (Prov. 17:28).
It’s not quite John Mitchell telling Carl Bernstein, “Katie Graham’s gonna get her [redacted] caught in a big, fat wringer,” if The Washington Post published their story linking him to the secret campaign fund that paid for the Watergate burglary. Still, it’s not a great look.
The WaPo published Mitchell’s remarks, and the rest is history. Watergate blew up, Nixon resigned, and several of his erstwhile henchmen — including Mitchell — got prison sentences. Ben Bradlee, at least, knew what he was doing. Roche’s remarks will not likely lead to more than eye rolls. All the same, it goes to show you: Ask. The worst you’ll get by way of response is crickets.
• Related at CWR: “Liturgical double standards and the hermeneutic of rupture” (Feb 13, 2023) by James Baresel
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We read in the concluding line: “The worst you’ll get by way of response is crickets.”
Well, maybe etomology is more relevant than theology…it is recalled that the only thing to survive the 23 atomic bomb test blasts on Bikini Island was roaches.
You guys are bringing
too much politics into our catholic family to tear apart. Why not form your church or churches to promote your believes instead of creating choats and confusion in our beloved family because you can write. Keep away!
If the author of this snarky attack filled with clerical insider tidbits can take a deep breath long enough to pass on to casual readers of CWR what are “the other older rites” regulated by traditionis custodes, this would be helpful in understanding the whole controversy over the Pope’s bottom line on the proper place for all traditional practices.
Duh? Mr. Altieri fails to define and explain ‘older rites’ in the context of Traditionis Custodes and traditional practices, and this is a problem?? If this is the best criticism mounted against the article, one should understand that ostriches don’t always live with their heads in sand. Sometimes they come up for air, and that on their own initiative too.
P.S.: The Pope’s bottom line is only difficult to understand for those who do not see.
Wishing you well, Jim.
There’s an argument to be made that it applies to all the Latin Church’s liturgical rites except the Roman Missal of 1970/2002.
That includes the Tridentine rituals for Sacraments that are not the Mass (Confession, Baptism, Matrimony, Annointing, Holy Orders, Confirmation), funeral/graveside rituals, reception of Holy Communion outside of Mass, blessings, minor exorcisms, etc.
It also includes other liturgical Rites besides the Tridentine Rite as a whole. Such as: the old Dominican Rite, the Rite of Braga, the Mozarabic Rite, the Sarum Rite, the Roman Missal of 1955, and probably about a dozen others that I don’t recall. The Zaire Rite would probably be included as well, although it is even younger than the Novus Ordo, because it isn’t the Novus Ordo.
More style than content.
I checked out the Where Peter Is podcast. I thought I was reading The “Catholic” Reporter. I’ll stick with The Pillar, TYVM.
I say give Roche more rope.
As to the question implied by the website that calls itself WPI, “P” is buried under the altar in the basilica in Rome.
As to where “the-Pontiff-of-unintentional-idolatry” is, everyone can see.
As to the “Eminence Roche,” he is a very apt clone of the late “Excellency” Bugnini, chair-person of “the-committee-to-fabricate-a-NEW-MASS” (the NO called the great liturgical disaster by Adam DeVille, contributor to CWR), who was described by his reluctant committee subordinate Fr. Louis Bouyer as “a man as bereft of culture as he was of basic honesty.”
Just another pathetic week in “the-new-carnival-of Pontiff-Francis” of whom we could say: “WPIN.”
The ambitious, unscrupulous Roche is a figure we know, the courtier who will always do his master’s bidding, no matter how much evil it works. But one would think those who do not stand to gain riches and favors from blind obedience to illegitimate, arbitrary decrees would exhibit more Catholic sensibilities. “Where Papolatry Is” has now become an embarrassing parody of what Protestants believe of Catholics, that we lobotomize ourselves in the face of papal aberrations and obvious nastiness. But then, in the Catholic blogosphere, perhaps that is how you earn followers and financing after all…
Great observation about papolatry.
Right on target! Thank you!
If further proof is needed that brevity is the soul of wit, I commend this piece to wit.