The Blue Flower

Someone with the initials JV recently commented on one of my posts and said:

You certainly have a keen sense of what is at issue, for the the future of the Roman Church. Sadly, most RCs are blinded to such a view.

Why should I be able to perceive things other people who are more “in touch” are not “getting”? I followed the link to JV’s blog and found A Real Live One. Going by the links he gives, he is obviously a Roman Catholic and probably a layman. He describes himself:

I am a theologian by degree, a linguist by professional interest. I currently teach at area undergraduate programs in addition to other professional ventures outside of Theology. What’s the purpose of this blog? Well, have you ever glanced at the typical Theology blog? Purpose number one: I want to take this material that I find incredibly interesting and convince you that it is indeed interesting. That means dropping the pretension and dropping the often tortuous academic jargon. I won’t, however, insult your intelligence. I’m going to give you some meat to sink your teeth into. Purpose number two: there are topics best left out of an academic environment, be it the classroom or in potential research papers. This is a place to discuss those topics and see where the discussion takes us. Sit back, click, and enjoy! Your Friend, V.

It’s rather interesting to think that I was giving an English lesson last Wednesday to some engineers working for a company in a town near my home. We entered into the discussion of what they write to explain physical forces in view to reducing the risks of failure of a new machine. As a translator, I sometimes come up against obtuse and pompous language which is very difficult to translate into English and get it right. What has higher priority, doing a good job or showing off for the sake of one’s own conceited sense of self-importance? I do a better job of translating if the French engineer writes plainly and simply, without ambiguity or exaggerations in style. My translation will then be highly accurate, and the concepts will be faithfully conveyed to English-speaking readers as the French author intended. JV makes a very good point about theology – getting away from jargon and pseudo-intellectualism to clarity and concern for the reader.

This is a great difference between an encyclical by John Paul II and the simpler and more straightforward style of Benedict XVI. He needs no pompous style of writing to show his ability as a theologian! This was something very refreshing about Ratzinger as opposed to Rahner or some of the other theologians of the Vatican II era.

JV expressed his admiration of Benedict XVI’s style in Last thoughts on Benedict XVI, Papa emeritus and his flattering evaluation of my own writing in A Healthy Perspective on the Roman Church.

In the first of these postings, I quote:

Benedict’s papacy may well prove to be the consummation of many things in the Roman Church. It was a last ditch attempt to save the Second Vatican Council from the road to irrelevance which so-called progressives had unwittingly set it upon. I maintain that, gradually, Vatican II will become ever more distant as there is no one left to evoke their memory of the Council. This papacy was an attempt to sure up priestly identity and the significance of the sacramental ministry as well as restore the traditional aesthetic of the Roman liturgy. It was, as his choice of name suggested, an attempt to re-evangelize and restore the faith in Europe, the historical home of the Roman Church. Benedict’s supporters know well that all of these things were works in progress, nowhere near completion. There is the distinct sense that one era of the Roman Church is coming to an end and a new one is upon us.

Benedict himself has alluded to the storms battering the bark of Peter and his inability to successfully guide the Church amid them. Now is a time for decision in the Roman Church. I personally do not think the cardinals can afford to vote for the status quo. I also do not think the cardinals should be such intellectual derelicts to vote for every liberal whim – statistics can tell you how well the Episcopalian and Anglican churches have done by following that line.

Something is coming with the next conclave. God only knows what.

It’s an interesting idea, which would vindicate the SSPX, a return to the nineteenth century and the final combat against the world and the Devil. I would dread such a course being steered. It would be the way of the Third Secret of Fatima and the vision of Saint John Bosco and heaven’s endorsement of extreme Ultramontanism. I frankly doubt things would go that way, but I can see a vision similar to that of the continuing Anglican Churches and the traditionalist communities – that the Church is lived in the local Eucharistic community. Giving more to local bishops will be double-edged, leading to evils in some dioceses and freedom for good in other dioceses. Likewise, the episcopal conferences need to be dismantled so that each bishop is truly the bishop of his diocese, and each parish priest truly has responsibility for his local flock. Much of the bureaucracy and reinforced Papal authority was actually a result of Vatican II! How many times have I read ideas like this in Ratzinger’s books?

Do away with Vatican II? I don’t see it, but it would be a way of solving the problem of hermeneutics of continuity, cognitive dissonance and pushing square pegs into round holes. Reiterate the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent? The only thing the Renaissance and our time have in common is that they are both times of crisis, but the difference is as between black and white! I don’t think Rome run by the SSPX would appeal to me!

Then we have the kind write-up of my own ideas, I am thankful that my extremely limited perspective is coming in useful for those really concerned by these questions. He picks me up on the issue of making Catholicism local rather than a global bureaucracy. Reduce ecclesial units to human dimensions and you don’t need paperwork beyond registers for the Sacraments and a few files of documentation for contentious canonical trials such as marriage nullities. Make the Bishop the father of his people, driving himself around in a modest car or even cycling or walking, going to the market, visiting homes and farms, and keeping an eye on factories and having good influences there too with workers and executive staff. That’s what Jesus did – walking around with his disciples doing what needed to be done at the right time. It used to be like that in some of the Italian dioceses like Montefiascone, Bagnoregio, Orvieto or Gaëta among so many others. Some of those dioceses had no more that twenty or so parishes and measured little more than twenty or thirty kilometres between the most distant points of their territories. Then Paul VI in the 1970’s grouped them into bigger dioceses and brought in the bureaucracy.

No system of Church government is perfect or sheltered from abuses by bad men, but decentralisation would prevent the bad from becoming uniform and incontestable like a totalitarian dictatorship. Untie the hands of diocesan bishops and parish priests. Get rid of 99% of the bureaucracy – and we will find that at least some bishops and local priests are good and holy men, and will have the freedom to impregnate the wider Church with their godly leaven.

One lesson that Benedict XVI has taught us is that bishops and patriarchs with primacy of honour are useful for the Church but not essential. What is essential is the Episcopate, the communion of all the Bishops in the sacramental Mystery and the profession of the Apostolic and Patristic faith of all ages. On that basis, A Church of Churches can be built. This is what we are trying to do as continuing Anglicans and independent sacramental Christians.

A change of paradigm will be incredibly difficult and dangerous. I think this is what the old Cardinal Ratzinger meant about the little “pure” Church. An attempt to change things will cause most of the faithful to walk away in search of emotional security. Faced with the terrifying task of putting words into practice, Benedict XVI tried it brick by brick. That is the wisdom of a parish priest reintroducing good liturgy and the eastward position. Do it too quickly and the people will revolt! Few would have a finesse of understanding as some of us have in the light of intellectual study, synthesis and bitter experience. As JV asks, what is left to lose? As things are, there’s not much left where we Europeans live, precious little other than the empty buildings and increasing cynicism from the media.

A few days ago, I reminisced about the vacancy of the papal see in Sede Vacante 2005. How does it seem this time?

After the death of John Paul II, when I was already far from being in that Church as when I was with the Institute of Christ the King, I felt a sense of despondency and cynicism. It was almost a climax of a de facto sede vacante as Pope John Paul II slowly declined into death.

This time, we can have the impression that Benedict XVI, like Benedict XIV in the eighteenth century, was a brief ray of light and left his desk tidy. I have no way of knowing other than by what I read on the internet – and that is often very unreliable. All I can give is a couple of impressions like last time. For news and predictions about the next Pope, there are plenty of other sites and blogs from Novus Ordo Watch to Catholica Forum, representing every point of view from resurrecting Pius IX or making Ms Jefferts Schori pope with her army of lawyers.

I too am in my own way in sede vacante, being, as one blogger put it, Fr Anthony Chadwick, a non-parochial priest living in France, who runs a blog, and whose ecclesiastical status has been unclear since Hepworth retired. In fact, I am discreetly discerning the future, with a trip to England on the horizon, and I am quite confident that things will turn out in a quiet way. Hmm, enough of that for the moment.

Naturally, the sede vacante in Rome and the election of the new Pope will have no bearing on my own pilgrimage. As I have said before, I am concerned for a large but dwindling number of Christians who rightly or wrongly look to Rome for example and leadership.

Late last night, I caught up with the videos and goodbye speeches as I got home from an evening with some musical friends. The question of many retired men is what they will do with their time. I don’t think Benedict XVI will have any difficulty for as long as he is reasonably healthy. I hope he will write new books and continue his profound reflections on the liturgy as when he was a Cardinal and at the CDF. I would imagine that the eye of the media will be off him when they start reporting on black smoke and white smoke over the Sistine Chapel roof and making their guesses about the winning horses.

Sede vacante is a time of anti-climax and emptiness. The various Roman Catholic blogs and forums exchange ideas. Our Anglican blogs are very quiet. Fr Smuts is keeping very quiet – it is Lent and he is certainly occupied with his parish ministry and the good work he does with the fire brigade. Deborah Gyapong has the occasional article to post from the Ordinariate point of view. All the other Ordinariate watering holes are quiet. The Anglo-Catholic had a rumbling about Bishop Williamson (former SSPX) being about to start consecrating bishops, and then nothing. Virtue Online goes on as ever with its articles, some informative and others of local American interest. My own blog can hardly do more than repeat someone else’s new reports – I hardly see the sense of that – or give reflections from the point of view of a canonical “outlaw”.

Many are grateful for the little Benedict XVI has been able to achieve in the face of the “old guard” from the days of Paul VI and John Paul II. Others are downright mean, both traditionalists and “liberals” (I could call them left-wing anti-conservative conservatives) and say that they chanted Santo subito! when John Paul II died, but not this time. Normally, we would be mourning and praying for the soul of a deceased Pope, but the outgoing Pontiff is still alive and behind closed doors out of sight.

The conclave horse fair will go on as planned in something like a couple of weeks, and I feel very cynical about that. I prayed uno cum famulo tuo papa nostro Benedicto in the Mass, as recognising the Papacy as an ideal symbol of Church unity in the west. Now, that little phrase is omitted. Will I say uno cum famulo tuo papa nostro Pio or Leone or whatever? I am uncertain. I am an “outlaw” and will certainly continue as some kind of Anglican in a continuing Church living out my days doing what I can do with the gift of the priesthood I received. I often think I should not have received it, and I would certainly have done something else in life has I known about the trajectory I would follow. But, I have received it, and it is my duty to put it to the service of the Church in some way. I suspect I will limit myself to praying in union with my diocesan Bishop and the Queen of my country.

With the conservative / liberal dialectics as they are, I see little light at the end of the tunnel. If the Roman Catholic Church were to collapse, really collapse, I wonder how well the rest of us would do out of it. I think such a collapse would discredit Christianity almost entirely except the most rabid anti-Catholic Evangelical Protestantism in its modern American form. What will give the Church its credibility? If that question can be answered, there is hope.

During the last sede vacante, we felt that something had to move in the stagnant stillness. Now, we look for signs of stability and light, that the baby not be thrown out with the foetid bathwater. Cardinal Ratzinger seemed the obvious hope back in 2005, but most of us believed he would not be elected. Who is the obvious hope now?

There will be a new Pope, but what I am really interested in is the availability of the Church at a local level through small dioceses of human dimensions with very little paperwork like in some parts of Europe up to the 1970’s with equally small and welcoming parishes. When Cardinal Ratzinger talked about little communities of faith, I think this is what he meant and not some kind of “spiritual genocide” against the weak and mediocre. This is something we can do whether we are Roman Catholics or belonging to “ragtag” churches like the continuing Anglicans or other independent sacramental communities trying to live the way of the Gospel.

So, instead of lamenting about the sede vacante as I did back in 2005, there is something to do about it, because Christ still occupies his place.