There was a piece in last Sunday's Chicago Tribune about the impending appointment of a new archbishop here in Chicago. Cardinal George is suffering from a recurrence of his cancer (pray for this good man, please), and has asked that the papal nuncio begin the process of choosing his successor. He submitted his letter of resignation three years ago when he turned 75, per Church law, but first Pope Benedict and now Francis have yet to accept it. The article was pretty standard, but there was one quote that stuck out at me as being terribly wrong headed:
"'For a place like Chicago, obviously the eyes of the world are upon it, especially given the fact that this is the first cardinal-level diocese in the country to be named by Francis,' said Rocco Palmo, a Philadelphia writer who covers the Catholic church hierarchy."
My almost instantaneous reaction to this line is unprintable. I don't think that Mr. Palmo has bad intentions, but this line of reasoning is exactly what's wrong with how the Church is covered in the press, and how too many people inside the Church view things like curial appointments and papal conclaves. "The eyes of the world" are upon Chicago? Really? I don't think any average Catholic, or average anyone else, in Santiago, Chile, for instance knows who the archbishop of Chicago is now, let alone cares about who his successor will be. For that matter the same holds true for the rank and file in New York, Los Angeles and Kalamazoo (OK, there is a good chance they may know who Cardinal George is, but that's about it). The faithful care about who their pastor is, and maybe the local bishop, maybe. Beyond that they have lives with concerns that weigh on them with more urgency that matters of popes and cardinals. In 2005 the only people who knew who Josef Ratzinger was were priests, seminarians and the staffs of the National Catholic Reporter and Ignatius Press. As famous as he was to us on the "inside," few average people knew who this little German bishop was before he appeared on the Loggia as Benedict XVI.
My point is that this focusing on things like who the next archbishop of Chicago (or pick your elccesiastical posting) will be can be a futile and counter productive occupation. It's natural for priests and employees of a diocese, or members of a religious order to speculate and debate on such things when a change of leadership is pending. Discussion and discernment of such things is not only natural, but essential when a process of consultation is called for. But a preoccupation with such things leads to looking inward, making the inner workings of the Church bureaucracy the important thing, when quite the opposite is true. When the Church is proclaiming the truth even, and maybe especially, when it is controversial she draws a response from the world. Sometimes it is positive, sometimes it is hostile, but when the Church proclaims Jesus Christ to the world she is relevant. When she gets caught up with office politics she is decidedly irrelevant to the wider world as well as to the flock. We should be concerned about Cardinal George, for sure. But not nearly as much about who might be sitting in his chair in the near future. There are simply more important things to concern ourselves with.
Francis has said, in reference to the role of women in the Church, that women are more important than bishops. True enough, but we could also say non ordained men and children are equally more important than bishops or clerics in general. Jesus came to reach out to those outside the religious structures of his day, not because the structures were bad in and of themselves, but because those on the inside of those structures had forgotten why the Temple and the synagogue existed to begin with. They were not there to be self sustaining and self referential institutions but rather bridges that would bring people in closer contact with the God who is Love. Whether we want to believe it or not, it's God who is ultimately in control of the leavers, who happens to be wearing the miter and bearing the crosier at a given moment is less important than we may think, as long as he is leading the flock toward Christ and welcoming those on the outside in.
Last Sunday we celebrated the canonizations of Sts. John XXIII and John Paul the Great. The eyes of the world were indeed on St. Peter's Square as Pope Francis raised these two giants of the twentieth century to the altar. It was covered widely by the secular as well as Catholic press because this was an example of the Church celebrating two men who, though the ultimate insiders, used the Church's institutional reach to build bridges to the world. Both were signs of hope in a world ravaged by war and genocide, barbed wired walls and oppression. Both are great saints because they were holy, faithful disciples of Jesus Christ, not because they were popes. Sunday past no one cared about the intrigues, real or imagined, of the respective conclaves that elected them, or their appeal to one church "party" or the other. The world watched because they saw close to a million people flock to Rome to see these two men canonized and wondered why. They watched because they sensed, if they understood it fully or not, that Christ was reflected in the lives of St. John and St. John Paul. A light that emanates in Christ and reflects back to Him; Jesus does not see us a competitors, but rejoices to share His glory with His servants who faithfully serve the Gospel.
As a Church we are not called to serve the institution but use the institution to serve Jesus Christ and His Gospel. I will have more to say on this, and in my next post I'll show how our Blessed Mother is the model of the Church par excellence in this regard. She never looked to herself, but always pointed the way to Jesus, and still does.
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