ASK FATHER: Wedding of Catholics with a non-priest out in Mother Nature

Posted on 15 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

traditional marriage certificateFrom a reader…

QUAERITUR:

My son and fiancee are Catholics and considering having a non-priest perform the ceremony in the Outer Banks, NC. We have two family members saying that as Catholics, they can’t attend the wedding because it is outside of the church. Is there some rule that is keeping them from attending the wedding?

Once again we wade into the harsh waters that flow between the permissible and the prudent.

Catholics are obliged to marry in the presence of a duly delegated official witness of the Church, almost always a priest, deacon, or bishop. When a Catholic marries a non-Catholic, the Catholic’s bishop can (if certain conditions apply) give a dispensation, and permit the marriage to take place without the presence of such a duly delegated cleric. If two Catholics wish to marry without the presence of a duly delegated official witness, the only one who can grant that dispensation is the Holy Father himself. Quite rare, but it does happen. There would have to be some serious conditions for that to take place (the Catholic Duke of Grand Fenwick is marrying the Catholic Archduchess of Unst, and the Lutheran bishop of Grand Fenwick must officiate at the wedding for some obscure constitutional purposes…).

The Pope is not going to grant a dispensation for two Catholics who simply want a pretty backdrop for their wedding pictures.  And that is 99% of the reason for this sort of folderol, these shenanigans, this tomfoolery.

First question that needs to be asked: Why are your son and fiancee not getting married in a Catholic church by a duly delegated priest?

Let’s see what is permissible.

Nothing in the law prevents Catholics from attending invalid marriages. There is no prohibition, there are no penalties, nothing prevents this from happening.

There is also nothing in canon law that prevents Catholics from

  • sticking their heads into the mouths of sharks,
  • running with scissors,
  • eating processed cheese-flavored products, or
  • rooting for the Yankees.

The fact that something is not prohibited by law does not, thereby, make that something a good thing to do.

Prudence, that queen of all virtues comes in to play here.

Does a Catholic, who attends a wedding he knows to be invalid, show support for something that is patently wrong?  Does his presence give the couple and their guests the impression that, “Hey, this apparently is not a big deal!”?

Or would it, as it does in some cases, mean that the couple, who know that what they are doing is wrong, conclude that Aunt Betty still loves them and maybe is even leaving the door open for them to come to their senses and return to the practice of their faith once their marriage situation is resolved?

We must return to the other question: Why is this couple not following the laws of the Church, which their Catholic baptism obliges them to follow? Were they poorly catechized? Do they not care about their faith and hence, about their eternal destiny?

As a parent, you are presumably quite concerned about their well-being.

Have you, or someone else close to them, taken them aside and said, “You need to get yourself married in the Church. It’s not just about window dressing. It’s about the state of your souls. Here’s Fr. Gelasius’ phone number. Please call him.  Talk this over with him. Please.”

The moderation queue is ON.

Posted in ¡Hagan lío!, ASK FATHER Question Box, One Man & One Woman, Our Catholic Identity | Tagged , ,
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Sr. Simone “the Contemplative” Campbell

Posted on 15 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Simone CampbellI read a story about Sr. Simone Campbell, of Nuns on the Bus fame.  You will remember how she lobbies constantly and vocally for the platform of the Party of Death (aka Democrats) including abortion-promoting Obamacare (aka Unaffordable Care Act).

Sr. Campbell was at a conference in Rome, talking.  Talking, she said, inter alia:

[…]

Sister Campbell, whose religious congregation is rooted in the Benedictine tradition, said that “the biggest problem is mistaking spiritual leadership for rule enforcement; they don’t know the real spiritual high, the journey of the contemplative way of knowing what the Spirit who is alive in our midst is about.”

At the conference, after listening to women refugees from Rwanda, Syria and Burundi, a millennial woman from Australia and two older women from India and England talk about their struggles for justice and what their faith has meant to them, Sister Campbell remarked, “I really believe that the church needs a contemplative renewal, and maybe that’s what women are going to bring to it.”

The contemplative way has been an integral part of her own life journey. It was so back in 1978 when, after gaining her doctorate in law, she founded the Community Law Center in Oakland, Calif., and for the next 18 years was its lead attorney, serving the poor. It has been so also since 2004, when she began her work as executive director of Network and a lobbyist on Capitol Hill. “I lobby from a contemplative stance in D.C., and it’s about the deep listening to the Spirit moving among us, to the deep needs of our people, and letting your heart be broken. That’s what we’re called to do,” she said.

[…]

Contemplative, eh?  For a contemplative listener she sure talks a lot.

“Contemplative”… her word, repeated, not mine.

If Sister thinks world needs a “contemplative renewal” from women, especially women religious, perhaps she should set the example and… pipe down and contemplate.

Am I getting this wrong?

The moderation queue is ON.

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NEW BOOK: The Cardinal Müller Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church

Posted on 15 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

I bring to the attention of the readership a new book from Ignatius Press. It is clearly meant to hearken to the now-classic and still relevant Ratzinger Report (US HERE – UK HERE). Joseph Ratzinger was Prefect of the CDF then, as Card. Müller is Prefect now.

The Cardinal Müller Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church

US HERE – UK HERE

I have yet to read this.  It’s going on my wish list for now.  While I don’t expect that it will have quite the impact that The Ratzinger Report had, I suspect it will add interesting insights.

Posted in REVIEWS, The Campus Telephone Pole | Tagged
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UPDATE – Book recommendations as things fall apart

Posted on 14 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

US CLICK!

UPDATE:

Today I saw at First Things a review of three books along a common theme.  Guess which three books they were.

Here is an interesting point (for links to the books, scroll down):

All three of these books make reference to the decline and fall of Rome. Esolen’s Out of the Ashes begins with a quote from Livy lamenting the eclipse of the Roman Republic, followed by lines from St. Jerome after the sack of Rome in 410. Esolen writes that America, like Rome, declined not ultimately “from without,” but instead fell by “sagging into lethargy and indifference from within.” Both Dreher in The Benedict Option and Archbishop Chaput in Strangers in a Strange Land devote pages to the famous closing lines in Alasdair MacIntyre’s sweeping critique of liberal modernity, After Virtue….

_____

Originally Published on: Mar 13

I suspect that many of us are acutely aware that things are not going well in the world and in the Church.   Structures are toppling, literally.  What to do?

I bring to the attention of the readership a couple of books I am presently into.  I alternate for the sake of variety.   My Kindle is getting a work out.  US HERE – UK HERE for an entry level option.

Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World by Archbp. Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia. US HERE – UK HERE

I’ll have more to say about this one in the future. And, no, it isn’t a science fiction book. (Some of you will get that reference.)

Along the same line … which goes to show that great minds think alike…

Anthony Esolen’s Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture  US HERE – UK HERE

What to do?

Do we rebuild?  Do we walk away from the wreckage and withdraw?  Do we engage?  De we retreat?

I’ll be attending soon a talk about this very matters with Rod Dreher, who will spark some conversation about these matters in The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation– US HERE – UK HERE  This is to be released on 14 March (tomorrow, as I write), and so it is available now, today, at a greatly reduced pre-order price.   I’m putting it on my Kindle Wishlist.

BTW… “Benedict” here refers to St. Benedict, the 6th c. abbot.

Meanwhile, let’s have some Yeats:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Posted in REVIEWS, The Campus Telephone Pole, The Coming Storm, The future and our choices | Tagged , ,
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ASK FATHER: Only the Sorrowful Mysteries during Lent?

Posted on 14 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Combat Rosary right to bear armsFrom a reader…

QUAERITUR:

Someone told me that during the Lenten season, every day one would pray the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. True?

The wonderful, indulgence-laden prayer of the Most Holy Rosary is prayed in different ways in different places. There are variations from country to country, ethnic group … community… etc. The most important element that they have in common is that they all PRAY the Rosary, however it is done. We don’t have to force unity in the matter of these devotions.

Keep in mind also that the sets of mysteries themselves – while not exactly arbitrary – are, well, a bit arbitrary.  We have the sets of Mysteries which have developed over the centuries.  Their number developed to parallel the number of the Pslams (150).  The Rosary was for a time seen as a substitution for the Psalms.  Our Lady of Fatima asked the recitation of “one third” of the Rosary (150/3=50 “Aves”).  The introduction by John Paul II of another set of Mysteries (the Luminous) goofed that up a little.  (When the Luminous were issued, some people freaked out because one third became 66.6 “Aves”.. get it?  666?  Get it?)  You are not obliged to use the Luminous Mysteries.  You aren’t obliged to use the other sets of the Mysteries either, strictly speaking.  The requirements to fulfill the work of an indulgence, however, ask for the recitation of the prayer along with pia mysteriorum meditatio… pious meditation of the mysteries.  The Enchiridion doesn’t specify the mysteries, or the day they are pondered.   Local devotion takes care of that.   So, were you on a Friday of Lent to meditate, while saying your beads, instead of the standard Sorrowful Mysteries, upon l. The Lord’s Betrayal by Judas 2. The Mocking by the Soldiers 3. The Help of the Cyrenian 4. The Last Breath 5. The Piercing of His Side… would you have said the Rosary. Sure.  Would you get the indulgence?  Probably.   For my part, I don’t see many good reasons to change anything.  But, hey, someone might slip and use one of the Stations of the Cross in place of a Mystery.

So… if you really wanted to meditate for the entire year on just the Joyful Mysteries… go for it.

You can pray which ever of the sets of Mysteries that it occurs to you to pray. Yes, there is an order which seems to have become standard, to the point of being called the “traditional” order. That order makes sense. It is time tested. It works. Hence, it makes sense to pray the sorrowful Mysteries on Friday, because the Lord’s Passion occurred on Friday. Since every Sunday is a “little Easter”, it makes sense to pray the Glorious Mysteries. Given a couple fixed points, and having the desire to play all the mysteries regularly, the order developed. It might make sense to someone to pray the Sorrowful Mysteries on a Sunday of Lent. Fine. Even every day during Lent. Fine.

That said, I find it consoling to think that so many other people are praying using the same Mysteries that I am, and that this is relatively predictable.

The paramount thing is that you pray the Rosary with attention and devotion.

And please reserve a couple of the beads for me.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Our Solitary Boast | Tagged , ,
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ASK FATHER: “Disposing” of the Eucharist and the Sacrarium

Posted on 14 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
Typical sacrarium in an American sacristy with a sign warning never to pour away the Precious Blood.

Typical sacrarium in an American sacristy with a sign warning never to pour away the Precious Blood.

From a reader…

It is my understanding that if a Communion host or the precious blood has to be disposed, it is to be poured into water to dissolve/mix with the water, then poured into a sacrarium or into the earth. My question is, what if there is an underground perforated pipe (such as for water drainage) that leads to a sewer? The contents poured into the ground could get into a perforated pipe and drain to an unwanted area. I’m not sure of any cases were this occurs, but i suppose it is a possibility. Thanks.

For those of you in Columbia Heights, the sacrarium is a special sink in a sacristy whose pipe drain goes down into the earth rather than into a septic or sewage system.   Anything that has to do with the Eucharist or other blessed objects shouldn’t be put into the sewage system.  Rather, it should be put onto or into the ground.  Hence, priests would themselves rinse sacred linens for Mass (because their hands are consecrated).  After they are rinsed then others can take care of them.  The water for the first rinsing would go down the sacrarium or, sacrarium lacking, onto the ground.

There are a couple things to consider.

First and foremost, the Eucharist must never never never be “thrown away”, simply disposed of.  That crime incurs an automatic excommunication, the lifting of which is reserved to the Holy See or those confessors to whom the Holy See grants the faculty.

In the Latin Code of Canon Law we find:

can. 1367: Qui species consecratas abicit aut in sacrilegum finem abducit vel retinet in excommunicationem latae sententiae Sedi Apostolicae reservatam incurrit; clericus praeterea alia poena, non exclusa dimissione e statu clericali, puniri potest … A person who throws away the consecrated species or takes or retains them for a sacrilegious purpose incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; moreover, a cleric can be punished with another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state..

The word abicit, abicere, means here “throw away”, and this was clarified by the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative Texts, at their plenary session on 4 June 1999, as not … not… being restricted to “throw away” in a spirit of contempt, or intent to do dishonor.  It really does mean “throw away”, which is what happens when you put a consecrated Host or the Precious Blood down a sacrarium without first making sure that the substance of the same is first broken down (by dissolving).  Precious Blood, of course, should be consumed.

That said, in the case of any objectively sinful act which incurs an excommunication (e.g. throwing away the Eucharist), there are always the circumstances to be considered (e.g., the person’s will and knowledge, external compulsion, fear, etc.).

Redemptionis Sacramentum distinguished different levels of liturgical abuses.  The worst are in the category graviora delicata (graver crimes).  Among the graviora delicta is throwing away the Eucharist (cf. RS 172).   This grave crime is reserved to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

To the question.

You have to trust that the sacrarium was made properly and that it is functioning in the intended way.

We are not obliged to tear the church building apart and excavate to verify that the sacrarium pipe is doing its job.  Nor do we have to send optics down the pipe.  If there is a sacrarium, we can be morally certain that it is doing its work.

 

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Canon Law, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000 | Tagged , , ,
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ASK FATHER: Can the pastor force me, a priest, to wash women’s feet on Holy Thursday?

Posted on 13 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

B16 foot washingFrom a priest…

QUAERITUR (edited):

Emboldened by the Pope’s new legislation last year, my pastor is determined to force the small parish which I primarily serve  in the cluster to introduce women into the Holy Thursday footwashing rite.  [This old thing again… sigh.]

As the celebrant of the small parish’s Triduum, I have wrestled with what to do: Should I quietly omit the mandatum? Or maybe I might refuse vocally and on principle. The bishop himself cannot compel or forbid me from legitimate options, yet, I truly love my bishop and honestly do not want to grieve him.

Or should I grudgingly obey

Please advise.

This is the plight of the assistants.  Assistants, or “parochial vicars” as they are sometimes called, have the right to a Christian burial and that is about it.

I ran this by a some trusted priests, one a canonist, a pastor, a vicar general whom I know.  They are rock solid and celebrate the TLM.   We concur.

You are right: you can’t be “forced” to wash women’s feet. It’s sad that the pastor is trying to push this through onto a community that seems not to want it, and especially through the instrumentality of his assistant who is also opposed to it.

The cleanest option is to drop the optional mandatum rite.  That will no doubt get back to the pastor. The effect will be: you “disobeyed,” you are rigid, disobedient, backwards.  The pastor, during the last few weeks of your assignmment, might treat you with disdain and talk about you at future clergy gatherings.  You could be a faithful hero in some circles, trad scum in others.

Talk to the pastor first.

“Listen Dick, I know you want me to wash ladies’ feet at St. Amphilocius on Holy Thursday, but in conscience I just can’t do it, and here’s why: … I know we disagree on this, and you probably think I’m a horrible, rigid person for sticking to my beliefs, but I hope that you can at least respect my disagreement with you on this matter. Please, respect the integrity of my beliefs and allow me the decency of letting my actions be in conformity with my beliefs. More scotch?”

Respectfully voice your concern and objection privately to the pastor and perhaps also the bishop.  State your preference to omit the optional foot washing.  Don’t make a public issue of this, however.

If the pastor or bishops insists that you do it, then I think you have to go along with what the pastor decides.

Hang on and be prudent.  You will be a pastor of your own parish one day.  Learn from this how not to be a pastor, how to be a good pastor, and how to work well with assistants.

Finally, thanks for wanting to do the right thing and in the right way.

Posted in "How To..." - Practical Notes, ASK FATHER Question Box, Liturgy Science Theatre 3000, Mail from priests | Tagged ,
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Wherein Fr. Z is sore tempted – UPDATE

Posted on 13 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

UPDATE 13 March:

I am delighted that one of my priest friends is able to come to help with our Triduum!  However, I really would like to have one more priest come.

So, I’ll give in to the temptation.  Fathers?

___

Originally Published on: Mar 7, 2017

I am having a temptation.   I am tempted to put out a notice to any priests out there who would like to have an experience of serving as a sacred ministers (deacon, subdeacon) in the Triduum in the traditional rite.

Were I to do so, I would probably put out a note on this blog and ask priests to write to me.  Such a priest would, of course, have to have traditional interests, strong singing skills and would need to be able to work with Latin… and he would have to come to Madison, of course.  That would mean suitability letter, etc.

HA!  What a thought.   As if there would be any priests not already engaged.

 

 

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“O you who come to this abode of pain…”, thoughts on ‘Amoris laetitia’

Posted on 13 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

“O you who come to this abode of pain. . .beware how you come in and whom you trust. Don’t let the easy entrance fool you.”

Today at The Catholic Thing Robert Royal has a short and suggestive piece about sex and deception. Dante – Il Poeta  – gives him a lift.

Royal recounts teaching Dante’s Inferno, the first part of the Divine Comedy,  to students.

One of the more famous bits in Inferno is the hellish plight of Paolo and Francesca, adulterers, destined eternally to lash about twisting in the whirlwind as they cling to each other.  Oh, the pathos!  Oh, the sympathy as they recount their deeds, which lead to their deaths and this doom!

How unfair it all seems for such a little transgression, right?  After all what’s adultery in the face of eternal punishment.  Right?

Royal makes an important point. Before we – with Virgil and poetic Dante – reach Paolo and Francesca, we are warned against deception.  Minos, judge of the underworld…

“…  tells them: “O you who come to this abode of pain. . .beware how you come in and whom you trust. Don’t let the easy entrance fool you.”  [Because in Hell, the damned will lie to you.  Don’t believe everything you here.]

Virgil, a smart pagan, thinks Minos is just trying to block their way. But that’s not what he said or did. He’s warning them about infernal deception, especially how easy it is to find yourself entangled in it. It may, thus, be something that even Virgil’s pagan wisdom doesn’t see clearly on its own. And since what follows is two adulterers presenting a touching and almost beautiful picture of their sin, maybe the pagan poet, for all his wisdom, is not the best guide in this particular case.”

I turn now the reader’s attention to the arguments that have been offered for giving absolution to those who do not have a firm purpose of amendment and then admitting them to the reception of Holy Communion.

For example, stories as plaintive and touching as the tale of Paolo Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini are described in defense of admitting the divorced and civilly remarried to the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist, even though they do not intend to amend their lives.   Oh, the pathos!  Such dire circumstances these (adulterers) are in!  Is it really so bad what they are doing?  After all, they are in love.

Can the warning of Minos serve to sober us up a bit?

I’m sure it never entered Prof. Royal’s mind to suggest a link between the scenario of Inferno Canto V and Amoris laetitia.

Read the whole thing over there.

Anthony Esolen, by the way, translated Dante’s Divine Comedy into English and did a great job of it.

If you have never read the Divine Comedy, you should.  It is perhaps the greatest work ever written, saving Holy Writ.  You could start with Esolen (Part 1, Inferno- US HERE – UK HERE) or perhaps with the late, great Inkling Dorothy Sayer’s fine version (Part 1, Inferno, US HERE – UK HERE).  There are many renderings to choose from.  I would very much like to teach on Dante someday.  Maybe it’ll happen.

When you make the excellent choice to read the Divine Comedy, here are a couple tips.  First and foremost, make the decision that you will read the whole thing.  Don’t read just the Inferno.  The really great stuff comes in Purgatorio and Paradiso.  Also, be smart in your approach to Dante.  Read straight through a canto to get the line of thought and story and then go back over it looking at the notes in your edition.  Sayers has good notes.  Dante was, I think, the last guy who knew everything.  Hence, every Canto is dense with references.  You will need notes to help with the history, philosophy, cosmology, poetic theory, politics, theology, etc.  Really.  You will need help.  Take it.

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‘Monday Vatican’ analysis of the state of the pontificate

Posted on 13 March 2017 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

In the wake of last week’s cover of the Rolling Stone, Andrea Gagliarducci in his Monday Vatican offering does some analysis of the status quaestionis, the present state, of the pontificate of Pope Francis, especially in view of the MSM.

Read the whole thing, which is well reasoned.   Here are some tidbits:

Is Pope Francis really a “pop Pope”?

[…]

After four years, however, things might have changed. The Italian Rolling Stone cover is perhaps why some say that Pope Francis’s honeymoon with the media is coming to an end, or at least that his image is undergoing decline. But at the very least, the cover shows the secular world’s determination not to see what really happens around Pope Francis.

[…]

Likewise, the several commissions established during this pontificate came about out of sentiment. Joking (but not too much), Pope Francis once said that when someone does not want to accomplish something, he establishes a commission.  [Right.  Like the deaconette commission.]

Commissions and external consultants represent a risk: that they use their position to collect information and later destroy the Vatican system from within.

But the biggest risk that lies behind the appointment of commissions comes from a certain mentality. The risk is that people will eventually think that “new is good, old is bad,” without making any judgment between the harvesting of fruits and the ability to produce them. This is the risk of this pontificate, and the media helps to emphasize the “new is good” issue.  [That’s an important point.]

It is noteworthy that media pervasiveness and the continual flow of news prevent a lucid and detached analysis. Reading back the articles published at the beginning of the pontificate, it becomes evident that the words most used are “revolution”, “Pope Francis’s style” and “new Church”. These formulas are used by the media to generate readership, but also to give the readers the notion of a Church that is going to change completely. The Church, however, does not change suddenly, and Pope Francis is always a priest with a traditional deposit of faith – no matter how he eventually denies it.

So, there probably was an agenda at work behind Pope Francis’s back, but the fact is that this effect was also a media invention to sell more newspapers and to attract readership. That is part of how the market works.

[…]

This is his way of doing things. And it is typically Jesuit: no possibility is excluded a priori, everything must be discussed, reasoned, in a never-ending dialogue with the world that the Pope wants to develop within the Church.

Even within the Church, Pope Francis shows his traditional roots, yet they are filled with the notion of pueblo, and this Latin American populism has some hidden Marxist categories in it. The Pope is traditional when he speaks about “Holy Mother Hierarchical Church.” He is also traditional when he centralizes powers: Pope Francis listens to everyone, and then makes his decision, sometimes without regard to any particular suggestion he had been given. This behavior underscores the fact that Pope Francis is often alone in command. Simply put, people wait for clarity, with the understanding that a different opinion can be argued by opponents.  [Yes, Gagliarducci mentions the Five Dubia of the Four Cardinals™.]

This entire situation must be carefully addressed, because any claim of normality in Pope Francis’s pontificate is strongly targeted. The Pope is the Pope: he places trust in the people he wants, he has his personal spoils system, and he also has an inner circle of counsellors that counts more than the Curia. That is normal. But the narrative wants the Pope to be collegial, open to the world, synodal. Above all, the narrative wants the Pope to be “pop”, and any time this image is debated, the reaction is harsh. In his biography of Pope Francis, Paul Vallely recalls that after the years of his provincialate in Argentina, Bergoglio left a Society of Jesus divided in “pro Bergoglio” and “anti Bergoglio” camps. The same is happening in the Church.

[NB] How much Pope Francis is intentionally creating this division is yet to be assessed. Looking attentively at his moves, it seems that he does not opt simply for the right or the left. The final goal seems to be a sort of revenge of the South and of the pueblo, that is, the people in the positive sense in which Pope Francis interprets the term. This revenge is attested by an increased representation of the globe in the College of Cardinals, by his meetings with popular movements, by his insistence on the profile of priests with the smell of sheep.  [Pope Francis seems to ascribe to a special brand of “liberation theology” that stems from the pueblo and popular devotions, etc.]

[…]

There is quite a bit more. Read the whole thing there. These are just a few samples intended to hook you.

Andrea’s Monday offerings can be longish, but, as he states in this week’s piece: media pervasiveness and the continual flow of news prevent a lucid and detached analysis.

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