Pope Francis diversifies his cardinals. But will they have clout where it counts?

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Pope Francis’ new cardinals, who will be formally installed on Saturday (Feb. 14), represent everything the pope says he wants for the future of Catholicism: a church that reaches out to the periphery and the margins, and one that represents those frontiers more than the central administration in Rome.

That’s why he picked cardinals for the first time ever from countries like Myanmar and Cape Verde, as well as one from the Pacific archipelago of Tonga, which has just 15,000 Catholics out of a population of 100,000 spread across 176 islands.

The 15 new cardinals who are of voting age — five new “honorary” cardinals are over 80 and ineligible to vote for the next pope — come from 14 countries and include prelates from Ethiopia, Panama, Thailand and Vietnam, and from places in Europe far removed from the traditional power dioceses of Old World Catholicism.

In fact, only one new cardinal comes from the Roman Curia, the Italian-dominated papal bureaucracy that Francis is struggling to tame in the wake of a series of scandals that revealed a deep dysfunction at Catholicism’s home office.

But will diversifying the College of Cardinals make it look more like the church’s global flock of 1.2 billion members? Or will it leave the electors so fragmented by geography, language and viewpoints that they won’t be able to serve as a counterweight to career churchmen in Rome?

“Prelates who have no Vatican experience, who don’t speak Italian, and who don’t themselves have the experience of running a large and complex ecclesiastical operation, may feel a natural tendency to defer to the old hands” who have been blamed for Rome’s troubles, veteran Vatican expert John Allen wrote on the Catholic news site Crux.

“The bottom line is that Francis may run the risk of bolstering the old guard rather than cutting it down to size,” he said.

Certainly the breadth and depth of the transformation in the College of Cardinals is remarkable.

In the 2013 papal conclave that elected Francis — an Argentine and the first pope from the Southern Hemisphere — Europeans made up 52 percent of the electors; today they account for just over 45 percent, the lowest level ever. The new cardinals bring the total voting-age membership of the College of Cardinals to 125.

Meanwhile, cardinal-electors from the continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, where the majority of Catholics live, now comprise about 41 percent of the electors, up from 35 percent in 2013 and their highest level ever.

At the same time, the percentage of curial officials has dropped in these two years, from 35 percent to 29 percent.

But while their numbers are smaller, could the curialists have a home-field advantage that would allow them to slow reforms or run the table at a future conclave? Several cardinals and church officials say they don’t think so.

Archbishop John Dew of New Zealand, one of the newly minted “princes of the church,” argued that Francis has already shifted “the balance of power” away from Europe by appointing leaders from “the end of the world,” as Francis referred to himself at his election.

“It’s an opportunity to have a voice and to be heard so (that) it’s not just the curial cardinals speaking, which it’s tended to be for a long time,” said Dew, 66. “So it isn’t all the Roman mentality, the European mentality” dominating church governance.

Dew also noted that Francis is deliberately bringing all the cardinals together in regular meetings to advise him on challenges facing the church and on reforming the Curia. He is also convening regular synods, or meetings of top bishops together with leading cardinals who come from outside Rome.

That leadership approach has two effects. One, it lets the Curia know that the bureaucracy is there to serve the wider church, not the other way around.

And two, it allows the cardinals — who are the ones who will have to elect the next pope from their ranks — to get to know each other better, and to work together. “That does give a sense that we’re in this together,” Dew said.

“You see the function of cardinal, the position of a cardinal, is changing,” Cardinal-designate Berhaneyesus Souraphiel of Ethiopia told National Catholic Reporter. “It’s no more a big honorific task.”

“This is more those who will be nearer to the Holy Father — when he asks our views, our opinions, he will be able to get them,” Souraphiel said.

In the past, such gatherings of cardinals in Rome were so infrequent, or had so little to do with governing the church, that cardinals really didn’t know each other very well. That’s changing fast, and along with it the dynamics of how the church operates, with a much greater stress on decentralization.

“This is a very healthy thing that we are seeing,” Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl said during a break between the series of meetings that the pope has been holding with his cardinals over the past week.

Wuerl, who has long experience dealing with Rome and is today a key American adviser to Francis, said that on a practical level, Francis’ efforts to diversify the College of Cardinals — and the Curia — has suddenly made the Vatican much less Italian and therefore much easier for cardinals with little Roman experience to contribute.

Wuerl recalled that as recently as a synod meeting in 2012, months before Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned, Latin was the official language of the discussions.

The next year, after Francis was pope, Italian replaced Latin, and now cardinals are increasingly simply speaking in their mother tongue.

“I think we are already seeing a way of dealing with the fact that not everybody has to speak Italian, which is the lingua franca of the Curia,” Wuerl said. “If you speak in English or French or Spanish, chances are everyone in the room will understand what you are saying.”

“I’ve never experienced that before,” he said.

Ash Wednesday

Image: "Blessing the Dust" © Jan Richardson

February 18, 2015

Click here for scripture readings.

Ashes are not so much grim as they are true. They are real. They tell an honest story, perhaps more honest than any story about our human life that we=re listening to anywhere else in 21st century American life.

The ashes are nothing if they are not the Gospel summons to enter into Lent as a church.

Here we are, the ones who will be marked with ash, the ones told to remember and to repent.

Let=s be clear about a few things that Lent is not.

First, Lent is not a one-day show.

Lent is today and every day until we are exhausted and ready to enter that amazing grace of Three Days that get us from Holy Thursday night to Easter Sunday.

Second, Lent is not some sort of churchy self-improvement program that asks just a tiny bit of self-denial and rewards us with lost pounds or saved money.

Third, Lent is not something I do by myself, my own little good resolutions, my own little prayers, my own little coins for the poor.

What is Lent?

It is literally breathtaking and life-giving.

It is hard and deeply disturbing because it is not about your piety or mine, not about sins, not about earning grace or points or anything else.

It is the church becoming the church.

It is baptized people becoming baptized people.

It is good human beings like ourselves trying to grapple with what the Gospel asks of good human beings now, here, the end of February 2007 and in our city, our nation, our world that is so beaten down by greed gone wild, yet remains the world that God so loved.

Ashes are honest, and today we wear them to remind each other that they summon us to take these 40days and get ourselves, however young or old we are, into training to do and be all that we promised and all that we renounced at our baptism.

By learning how to pray,

by learning to fast in some ways that will tell us what we really hunger for,

by learning to give what we callAours@without counting on anything except the mercy of God: that is what Lent will be for us.

No one does it alone.

I don=t keep Lent.

  You don=t keep Lent.

The church keeps Lent.

And more than any other season, in Lent we so need to see each other here on the six Sundays of Lent,

we so need to hear each other singing,

we so need to join each other at the table and in the procession that surrounds the table.

We so need to bring here our best efforts and our constant failures.

We so need to hear the stories Sunday by Sunday, the crucial stories that will unfold in us what our baptism means.

So let=s make a Lent like we have never made a Lent before.

We will pray in many ways.

We will fast and discover what it is that we should be so hungry and thirsty for.

We will begin to let go of our desperate hold on what we call Aours,@ and start working ourselves out of slavery and into the freedom of God=s children.

And doing this, we=ll walk boldly and yet with trepidation toward that font where on the night of the sacred Easter Vigil we will dare to promise and renounce anew

and we will dare to baptize those newcomers who want to drown all the works of sin and want to live freely and as servants in Christ our Lord.

Sixth Sunday Ordinary Time B

February 15, 2015

Click here for scripture readings.

What a contrast between the first reading and the gospel today!

Both readings deal with the treatment of lepers, although the approaches are radically different.

In the first reading, an exclusive approach is the norm: quarantine.

Lepers are segregated from other people, excluded from society, banished to the margins of society, stripped of their dignity— a rejected and dejected people.

There is little reason to wonder why those who suffered from the dread disease that we now call Hansen's disease, were referred to as "the living dead."

It was a death sentence for those who contracted this disease.

The first reading gives a sample of the purification rite whereby the afflicted could be restored to the community.

Why, if leprosy is incurable?

The word "unclean," encompassed more than Hansen's disease.

Taking no chances, dermatological disorders of all sorts were considered unclean, for example, psoriasis, eczema, acne, boils, ulcers, rashes, and even dandruff.

Unlike leprosy, many of these conditions were curable, and those were the people reinstated into the community.

"Go, show yourself to the priest." (Mark 1:44)

In the gospel, Jesus adopts an inclusive approach.

He refuses to exclude from his space the leper who speaks to him.

He is happy to touch the leper.

He wants to cure the leper and he does so.

He respects his dignity.

Jesus always looked toward the edges of the crowds gathered around him and he invites those who have been banished to assume a center-stage role.

Often this was much to the annoyance of the other people.

In daring to touch the untouchable, Jesus becomes the outcast, the one who must hide.

No, I haven't seen any lepers standing in rags announcing that they are "unclean."

Our "lepers" today may be those who stand in front of us in the grocery checkout line with food stamps

or our young people who wear jewelry in the "wrong" places on their bodies.

You get the picture.

Today's lepers are quite aware that we resist standing near them, that we hope they'll choose another row to sit in, or that we caution our children about speaking to them.

They, and we, know well the depth to which we humans can stoop in our desire to distance ourselves from those we deem unacceptable.

There is one other facet to this story about those who are "unclean."

It may be relatively easy to identify who the "lepers" are for each of us.

The question is this:

Can we identify and acknowledge the "unclean" place within ourselves?

Those limitations or sins that discourage or embarrass us?

Do we touch that which is "untouchable" in ourselves?

If not, there's probably little chance we will have compassion for the flaws of others.

We are about to enter the Lenten season, a time to strip away our pretenses and defenses

to discover what lies beneath the layers of accumulated "stuff."

Should we choose to look deep inside, we may find that place within our own unique "leprosy" that is still in need of healing.

Perhaps we will be prompted to approach the One who can touch us lovingly, and make us clean.

Perhaps, kneeling together, we will recognize that in our deep, secret flaws,

we and the leper are one.

In that discovery, we might be willing to widen our circle to include all those we keep at arm's length, untouchable for whatever reason.

Perhaps, come Easter, may each of us, like that healed leper, have something worth shouting about!

Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time B

February 8, 2015

Click here for scripture readings.

 A woman was the mother of ten children - the wildest kids you could imagine.

The father traveled extensively in his work, so she was, for all intents and purposes, raising these hellions alone.

The poor woman's life was unbearable.

A sister from the local parish heard of her plight and called her.

Seeing their small house and the behavior of the children, the nun's heart went out to the poor woman.

She tried to provide what little help and support she could.

Sister offered the woman a playpen that someone had donated to the church.

The distracted woman, who had never heard of a playpen, nonetheless welcomed the gift.

Sometime later, Sister met the woman at church.

With tears in her eyes, the mother thanked her for the gift.

 "That playpen has saved my life!" she said to Sister. "It's marvelous.

 Every afternoon at three o'clock, I jump into the playpen with a book and the children can't get to me."

Like the poor harried mother, we all need that "out of the way" place to re-center our lives on the things of God.

When I used to have three masses a weekend, after the 2nd mass on Sunday, I would feel like I didn’t want to talk or see another human being for at least the rest of the day, so I would usually hibernate in my easy chair or vegetate in front of the tv

All of us regularly need to escape the crowd at times.

Like Jesus' rising at dawn and going to a deserted place, we must create our own "out of the way" place in our own schedules:

an early morning hour before the rest of the house rises,

a brief visit to a church during lunch,

the last few minutes each evening before retiring.

It can be a time for quiet prayer, for reading the Scriptures; for offering the Liturgy of the Hours,

for reflecting on the words and insights of some of the great spiritual writers.

Finding that "out of the way place,"  creating within our day that "sacred time" to be alone with God,

can be the source of insight and grace that will illuminate every place and moment of our life.

we can't experience God, we can't grow spiritually or mentally or emotionally, if we don't find our own way of taking a "time out" regularly.

 Click here for Scripture readings.

A papal call for mercy, and a warning against a 'closed caste' church

Pope Francis today delivered an impassioned defense of what has become a leitmotif of his pontificate – the church of mercy that reaches out to the marginalized vs. the church of rules that closes itself into a “closed caste.”

The pope’s homily was addressed to a group of new cardinals gathered for Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica. But one had the impression that it was also aimed at in-house critics who have questioned some of Francis’ statements and who have warned against an over-emphasis on mercy at the expense of doctrinal truth.

The pope said the Gospel account of Jesus’ curing of the leper was, in a sense, a model for how the church must operate with compassion to “reintegrate the marginalized” – including fallen-away Catholics – even when it provokes criticism.

“Jesus does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized by any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual boxes, by any caress or sign of tenderness which does not fit into their usual thinking and their ritual purity,” the pope said.

The pope said the modern church, too, stands at a crossroads of two ways of thinking: “We can fear to lose the saved and we can want to save the lost.” The thinking of the “doctors of law,” he said, would remove danger by casting out the sick or sinful person. But God’s way is to show mercy and accept this person, turning condemnation into salvation.

That has always been the church’s way, too, he said. This means the church must “leave her four walls behind” and not only welcome people who knock at its doors, but also seek out those on the “outskirts” of life, including the sick, the suffering and the spiritually alienated. It also means “rolling up our sleeves and not standing by and watching passively the suffering of the world,” he said.

The pope told the cardinals: “Total openness to serving others is our hallmark, it alone is our title of honor!”

He asked them to help make sure the modern church turns to the outcast, resisting the temptation to become “a closed caste with nothing authentically ecclesial about it.”

They should see Jesus, he said, in everyone who is excluded – the sick, the imprisoned, the unemployed, the persecuted, and even in “those who have lost their faith, or turned away from the practice of their faith.”

“Truly the Gospel of the marginalized is where our credibility is found and revealed!” he said at the close of his remarks.

The homily was a capsule version of the vision that inspires so many of Pope Francis’ actions to date, including his consideration of new policies for divorced and remarried Catholics, for example, or his efforts to make the Vatican bureaucracy more responsive to real-world problems.

With most of the world’s cardinals in attendance, the pope made it clear that this vision of the church’s mission is not something he invented, but is rooted in the words and actions of Christ.

Cardinal Burke is right: Women are terrifying!

An interesting article from Cardinal Burke who, before being relieved of his position, advised our pope on who was competent to be named a bishop in the United States. This is what terrified me!

Click here for article.

Ash Wednesday & Lent in 2 Minutes

Click here for video.