I’m English living in rural France, not Argentinian, but there are traditionalists who have experience of Cardinal Bergoglio as their Ordinary.
It’s pretty hard. Comments would be welcome from anyone who has experience of life in South America or Argentina.
Pope Francis is already being described as an “anti-Ratzinger”, which is probably based on a serious misunderstanding of Pope Emeritus Benedict. We do obviously have to come to terms with the possibility that the Church is no longer the question of the western world. I remember Bergoglio’s candidacy at the 2005 conclave, and the idea that if the Papacy went to South America, it’s over in Europe. The Pope of 2005 was in my mind the last chance.
We Europeans will need to see things in a different way, our Christian faith and our relationships with people of all social milieux. The Church in many European countries alienated the poor and working classes a century ago, aligning itself with money, privilege and political power. Pope Francis seems to represent something else, a Jesuit priest and missionary, loved by his people and a man of prayer. I heard those words back in 2005.
Are we going to get a lot of Vatican II claptrap and vacuous talk, or the simple mysticism of a man who wants to address our suffering world? What is the Church like in Argentina or Brazil? I have never been to any of those countries. When Latin people are religious, they are very exuberant. Francis I may well be the first slum pope like the Victorian Anglican ritualist priests in London’s East End and the South Coast. Something inspired is there. Perhaps the Ordinariates will be called to a forgotten Anglican tradition of ministry to the poor and downtrodden.
South America is not the secular west, but people struggling for their lives and helped by God. Blessed are the poor in spirit… Buenos Aires today is perhaps like London a hundred years ago. It seems that a Church of the future will not be afraid of the world, or to be poor – because worldly power is not what we need. We need prayer, humility and service of our neighbour. We must take to heart the words of St John:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
Lent brings us to face our own mortality and that of our loved ones. We have not to worry about our own survival but the needs of those who need. The Church has to break its contract with the secular world and its deceits. This self-sacrifice is the kenosis of Christ.
Whether we are Roman Catholics under Pope Francis or other Christians looking to his inspiration and example from some distance, we need to look to a humble, mystical and free Church. We must even be prepared to go into the night and live a long Holy Saturday, a long winter. Perhaps a Franciscan Church will find those who were passed over by the Benedictine Church!
We will see with the eyes of faith, hope and empathy with suffering humanity. At least, if we see things in a different way, we may understand the event of this evening.
That being said, many of us will form our communities of faith with older liturgical styles and spiritualities, and we may have to learn to live our faith in the catacombs. The days of triumphalism are over. How everything has changed, but God is always there.
We had the white smoke and the bells of St Peters about fifty minutes ago. I’m watching Rome Reports live on the Internet.
I’ll edit this posting when we know who the new Pope is.
* * *
The new Pope is Cardinal George Bergoglio SJ who takes the Papal name Francis.
I don’t know what to say. I’ll look at the reactions.
Pope Francis asks our prayers for Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and is now praying the Our Father and Hail Mary in Italian. The emphasis is definitely on prayer. Evangelisation. Could this be like the response of St Francis of Assisi to the corruption of the bishops and priests in the thirteenth century? He is obviously a man of prayer and simplicity. There is also St Francis Xavier canonised with St Ignatius Loyola on 13th March 1622. Which Francis? Perhaps both…
The downside is that he doesn’t go down at all well with the traditionalists. On one blog, someone in Buenos Aires, his archdiocese until now, tells us that he “persecutes” orthodox priests and “de facto prohibited the application of Summorum Pontificum“. He doesn’t go down well with the progressives either, even if he will be using flat Novus Ordo. He is quite conservative in some ways and will stick to celibacy, no contraception, etc.
On the other hand, we get this commentary from Damian Thompson in Pope Francis I: a humble man from the New World whose first challenge is to end the scandals:
… a priest of holinesss and tremendous modesty of manner – a man who, until now, has taken the bus to work. His challenge is clear. He needs to learn from Benedict XVI’s greatest success – and his greatest failure. The success was the restoration of reverent, mystical worship to the centre of Catholic life, an achievement that has inspired a dynamic generation of young Catholics. The failure was Benedict’s inability to reform the corrupt structures of the Roman curia, which should be recognised as the rotten core of the abuse crisis, and which is likely to have loomed large as an issue in the conclave. The historic decision to choose a Pope from the New World will perhaps make that task easier.
We’ll see à l’usage. It’s no use judging – and actually presumptuous. Leave him to his job and see how he does over the next year or two.
In my posting of 5th March, Towards the Unknown, I mentioned an individual described by the secular press as a fake bishop who tried to infiltrate himself into a pre-conclave meeting of Cardinals. I made fun of the individual mainly on grounds of his mistakes in terms of dress. Actually, the man’s name is Ralph Napierski, a German who appears to have received vagante ordinations.
I decided to do a little research, and found this fellow had been consecrated, by a German bishop called Athanasius Seiwart, himself consecrated by one Jean-Gérard Roux. Roux claims, on the basis of lies and false documents, that he was consecrated by Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục personally in a place called Loano in Italy. A witness affirms that the Archbishop was in Munich on the day in question! What more needs to be said? Roux is a fraud known to the French authorities and has a rich criminal record to his credit. Such a record would not invalidate the transmission of Holy Orders, if Roux received them validly from someone, but this is not someone we would want to invite to dinner.
To substantiate my position on Roux’s consecration, I quote the words of Dr Eberhard Heller in Einsicht – Röm.-Kath. Zeitschrift, December 1993, page 95.
Da sich der Erzbischof, den ich am 29. Januar 1982 in Nizza mit dem Flugzeug abgeholt hatte, zu diesem Zeitpunkt in München befand- er flog erst am 1. Mai 1982 wieder von München nach Nizza (Abflug: 15 Uhr 35, Ankunft: 17 Uhr 05), wo er von Herrn Norrant mit dem Auto abgeholt wurde -, kann eine Weihe zu diesem Zeitpunkt nicht erfolgt sein.
I have also seen a dated video of his priestly ordination in November 1985 by Bishop Jean Laborie – and this also refutes his claim to have been consecrated by Archbishop Ngô Đình Thục. I read reams of material about 14 years ago provided by an acquaintance who lives in Nice, and I still have much of it in my archives mouldering away in a cardboard box in my loft! There’s nothing personal: I just hate to see this kind of person besmirching the credibility of Christianity.
The above photo is Napierski in Roux’s chapel in France, at La Ferté Gaucher, some way to the north-east of Paris in the Seine-et-Marne near Meaux. A site still exists – Abbaye de Marie Reine – but is “closed for administrative reasons”. Perhaps Roux can still be found on Facebook if you’re interested. I’m not.
Roux has had himself photographed with Pope Benedict XVI, unless the photo was a Photoshop job, which is not difficult. I guess the photo was taken in the Paul VI Audience Hall, but how the heck did this creep do it? What is even more ironic is that Roux is an on-and-off sedevacantist!
Napierski’s consecrator, Seiwart, claims to have been reconciled with Rome and accepted as a valid bishop. I don’t believe that. Rome never takes back “apostate” clergy. Seiwart got himself “in” with Pope John Paul II. He is wearing Mass vestments and it is clearly a Papal Mass in St Peter’s Square, so I suppose concelebrating clergy are not required to show credentials called a celebret, what we Anglicans call a canonical licence. Of course, Rouxs’ forgery department and department of dirty tricks might at last have found a way to do a good job on their papers!
Now, Naperski describes himself as a bishop in communion with the Roman Catholic Church – katholischer Bischof in Union mit der römisch-katholischen Kirche. How do these guys have the cheek to do this kind of thing? They might have got valid ordinations from somewhere, as I did to my shame, but with claims to be genuine Roman Catholics, they are indeed fakes and frauds. They discredit many independent Old Catholic and other Sacramental Christian clergy with genuine vocations.
These bandits are not the only ones. There is also a bishop by the name of David Bell who also somehow gets into Papal Audiences and Masses.
If there are any accusations of libel, they should be addressed to my source of information – The strange case of “His Eminence” Bell.
But who is David Bell and what is the Roman Catholic Society of Pope Leo XIII really? Bell is a forty two year old Englishman who was ordained priest and then bishop within the Brazilian Catholic Apostolic Church (ICAB). ICAB is a group that was created in Brazil during the 30’s and was made up of priests and a bishop who did not want to follow the teachings of Pius XI against communism. Over the years, ICAB has adopted certain old Catholic positions, refusing to recognise the dogma of papal infallibility imposed by the Second Vatican Council and opening up to the idea of priests being able to marry. Today in Brazil, the ICAB has a number of bishops and communities which celebrate new marriage ceremonies for divorcees who wish to remarry.
It was ICAB’s superior, the elderly “patriarch” Luis Fernando Castillo Mendez, inappropriately referred to as “cardinal”, who consecrated Bishop Bell in 2006, proclaiming him “cardinal” in 2009, shortly before he passed away. Mendez had been in contact with the Holy See at the end of the 80’s but had not yet accepted John Paul II’s outstretched hand.
A video of Bell’s consecration ceremony is available on YouTube. Both the international and Italian Society of Pope Leo XIII websites regularly publish photographs of Bell kissing the Pope’s hand during one of the Wednesday Audiences in June 2011. There is even one image of the bell and another bishop from the congregation apparently co-celebrating mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Bell is undoubtedly a valid bishop, but he is a false Roman Catholic, hardly a way to endear himself to the instances of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for his reconciliation. The quote article points this out clearly. The problem is not being an independent bishop, but pretending to be what one is not!
The latest rascal is Ralph Napiersk gate crashing a meeting of Cardinals, at least for the purpose of getting himself photographed with them for the purpose of getting false credentials. Get Religion links to various versions of the story. Napierski’s site is Corpus Dei, and he shows us what he’s got or claims to have. It’s strange the site is in English and not in his native German. The reason is not given.
I will end this unsavoury subject by a few reflections. Men like these cause all independent priests and bishops to be tarred with the same brush and called fakes and phony. That has been going on for a long time with the famous books by Brandreth (Episcopi Vagantes and the Anglican Church) and Peter Anson (Bishops at Large). I remember reading Anson’s evaluation of Freidrich Heiler, a man he respected on account of his intellectual achievements. Most of the others were aping something they were not or were at the limits of honesty to understate it.
I have written articles under the category Independent and Old Catholicism, and I am still sympathetic to the idea of independent sacramental communities in which the Church can subside through the Priesthood and the holding of the full Apostolic Faith. A community might be one priest or bishop and a handful of laity, or he might belong to an organised Church like one of the Continuing Anglican bodies. There are communities that identify with orthodox Catholicism whilst being honest about not belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. There is no problem there.
The problem is being a “wannabe” Roman Catholic and setting out to imitate what one is unable to become. This just plays into the hands of apologists and polemicists of all kinds. The “blood-crazed ferret” Damian Thompson wrote Wandering bishops, grief-crazed Lib Dems… and Hillary Clinton’s Croydon facelift some time ago. It isn’t flattering. Who can blame him when you get the more honest bishops doing a Post the Host service and other shenanigans? It is heartbreaking.
I tip my hat to the blog Bože!, which inspired me to look into the case of Napierski and write this article from my own perspective. Bishop Alexis, who runs this blog tells of his painful awareness of the proportion of men in the independent sacramental world who are either mentally ill or suffer from some personality problem like narcissism. He points out that the mainstream churches also have bad clergy. Alexis’ approach is praiseworthy, which consists of blogging, researching and writing and putting a positive side to a spiritual world that is not well known, and against which the bad eggs bring adverse publicity. This is also one of the purposes of this blog – dispelling ignorance and prejudice through education and reasoning.
But, some characters are indefensible and show nothing to condone!
Well, obviously the doors are closed, and if we hear of secrets being divulged through some form of modern technology, then there’s big trouble. I haven’t heard or read anything.
That’s not the question. What I am afraid of is a kind of Catch 22 dilemma between the power of the Roman Curia and the national Episcopal Conferences. Either way, the local Bishop is trumped by bureaucracy – and whilst this is the case, the Church is eclipsed.
In the second article, he brings up the notion of world order in Cardinal Sodano’s homily for the Mass of yesterday. Just what does that mean coming out of the mouth of a priest?
Perhaps the only good agenda I can see coming out of all this is a slimming down of all bureaucracy and power structures, so that the Bishop means something in his diocese and the parish priest means something in his parish. Then those who want to be traditionalist will be free to do so, though the “other side” will also be free. We have the same problem in Anglicanism – the tyranny of bureaucracy.
If this problem doesn’t get solved, then a lot more people are going to lose hope in the Church.
In the real 1989 I was a student at Fribourg University. A friend knocked on my door and told me the Soviet empire had imploded. You must be joking! – I said, but saw the amazing footage on TV. The Berlin Wall was down.
I draw your attention to Damian Thompson’s Conclave 2013: a battle between ‘Rome’ and ‘reform’?.
It’s not about liturgy, theology or politics: it’s about the Roman culture of secrecy that Sodano, Bertone and the old guard in the curia did so little to dismantle, despite the urgings of Pope Benedict. That culture enabled child abusers to escape justice and punished senior clergy who called for fundamental reform of a sleepy and malignant bureaucracy.
The “business-as-usual” brigade are surely going to be working very hard over the next few days like the Old Guard in Moscow in the early 1990’s.
The meaning of the word “liberal” seems to have changed, and surely has nothing to do with other people’s freedom. It seems, according to this article, that the old guard that was able to frustrate everything good Benedict XVI tried to do is discredited. If this isn’t wishful thinking, changes are on the way.
Mr Thompson favours Cardinal Schola, Archbishop of Milan, known to be infuriated by curial corruption and fully implementing Benedict XVI’s liberation of the Latin Mass.
The elephant in the room still glares – the old Pope is still alive. We can only wait and see. Already, if the conclave takes more than three or four days, something is really afoot…
I offered my Mass today for the Cardinals going into Conclave in Rome this afternoon. Yes, it does matter to those of us who are “outside” because the way the Roman Catholic Church fares will affect all Christian communities.
I have been reading the articles – and the Robert Moynihan articles sent around by Dr William Tighe. There is some good and noble thinking going on, but we still remain is suspense and anxiety.
In the end of the day, it is not how a Church is governed that matters – with the cat o’ nine tails, keelhauling and fulminating excommunications all round or gentle theological reasoning, by a Pope or college of bishops, by episcopal conferences and bureaucracy, by parish councils. If authority is about the common good, great. If it is for career-building, cronyism and self-interest – then they have no business blaming secularism for people leaving the Church!
What does matter is whether the Gospel of Christ – faith in God and empathy for other people – is still in the hearts of the Cardinals and the one to be elected Pope in a few days’ time. May God watch over the Cardinals and bless them as they accomplish their historic duty.
A couple of days ago, the subject was Linked In – now it is Snowed In! It doesn’t only happen in the northern US and Canada. England and France got it right in the neck from Scandinavia and Germany.
We’re snowed in with a two-day blizzard. I skidded twice yesterday morning taking my wife to the train. Yesterday night, she stayed with her mother in Rouen to be able to go to work. It will probably be the same tonight.
The snow is being accompanied by 40-knot north-east winds, so it is fairly thin on the roofs and the snow drifts are enormous. We have never had anything like this before! The first two photos are in the back yard (my boat very forlorn in the second). The third is the street just outside our house – snow on sheet ice, wonderful for driving, I don’t think!
Possibly a reader or two has done what is necessary for me to be invited to connect with them on Facebook and LinkedIn. They may think me rude for not obliging.
I have an e-mail address (anthony.chadwick AT wanadoo.fr) and comments can be sent to this blog. Otherwise they can write letters to me at my postal address. I am not interested in using Facebook except for an occasional glance at my “wall”, where there is rarely anything of substance, and I am not interested in LinkedIn either.
As for “xxxx poked you on Facebook“, I find the idea horrifying. It sounds to me like using a cattle goad on someone! It is something I would be tempted to do in supermarkets when groups of retired people hold committee meetings in the alleyways between the shelves of goods – but it is still rude. I’m all for progress, but for keeping things sensible.
There you have ways to communicate with me, since I am not a radio ham – though I am considering a portable VHF for boat outings, but it would only have a range of about six nautical miles, and it is really only for emergencies. Though I sail, I have not learned Morse code or semaphore either. I suggest sticking to e-mail or comments on the blog (if the messages are not private).
If this is true and this man gets his way, one can only imagine the pain this will cause to everyone who had hope in the incomplete attempts by Benedict XVI to bring some transparency into the Church.
The Ordinariates may be in some difficulty if the Papacy goes that way.
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The Blue Flower 