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Post by hibernicus on Aug 3, 2012 17:06:19 GMT
I am trying to learn more about Vatican II and its aftermath, and as part of this I am trying to improve my knowledge of the life and thought of Bl. John XXIII. It is clear that he made an immediate impression of holiness on everyone he came into contact with and on the world at large (with some obvious exceptions such as Ian Paisley, who marked his death with a hellfire sermon about his alleged damnation). Since his death, he has been presented by various shades of liberal and radical, Catholic and non-Catholic, as a sort of patron saint of the "hermeneutic of rupture" who would have abolished the magisterium if he had lived longer. Some traditionalists share this view and seem to take a positive delight in hating him (cf certain sedevacantists whom I had to kick off this forum for, among other things, their rants about "red Roncalli the freemason" - the fact that some of his published letters equate freemasonry and the devil is of course no deterrence to these gentlemen, for they are oblivious to argument and take positive delight in the belief that everything is the opposite of what it seems but only they are clever enough to perceive the truth). Others argue that he never intended the more disturbing side-effects of Vatican II, which were anyway due as much to pre-conciliar problems as to what came before, and that he should really be seen as a conservative or traditionalist. I have just been reading Meriol Trevor's popular life of John, published in 1967 - i.e. before it became completely clear what an enormous crisis would follow Vatican II and how much division would arise within the Church. She writes from a liberal standpoint - she was a biographer of Newman and her view of the Curia is coloured by some of Newman's complaints about the hermetic culture of the Curia in his day- and she has a tendency to argue that aspects of his career which she dislikes, such as VETERUM SAPIENTIAE the letter promoting the use of Latin, or the crackdown on the French worker-priests and condemnations of communism in the 1950s, were imposed on him by others (the relevant documentation not being available, whether it has become available since I do not know). She also has a tendency to argue from the excesses of the anti-Modernists to suggesting that there were no, or very few, real Modernists and their fault was to take up real questions in the wrong way. OTOH she does not feel the need which certain later writers have to demonise Pius XII by attributing his practices to egoism (she points out, for example, that while John liked to talk to the gardeners and Pius forbade them to approach him, this was because Pius used his walks for meditation; and that the practice of the pope dining alone, abandoned by John, while it did contribute to the image of the pope as remote and godlike was originally adopted as a legitimate reaction against the previous practice of costly and showy papal banquets). Oddly enough she does not mention his work in rescuing Jews from the Nazis during his period as nuncio in Istanbul; perhaps it had not at that time been publicised. A few scattered thoughts: (1) John's relations with his family are very moving (NB he was not a "surplus child" vocation - he was the eldest son and would normally have inherited the farm). They were not the poorest of the poor, but they were poor enough, and throughout his life he gave them what help he could and kept in touch with them. His letters home show his concern not just for his siblings and parents but for a larger network of cousins, and in that the resemblance to old-style Irish farm families is notable. Until his appointment to Venice he expected to retire to his home village (where he rented a house) and be buried in the parish church, much as our present Holy Father used to dream of returning home to Bavaria. (2) He was a historian (which Trevor suggests inoculated him against the forms of neo-Thomism which saw theology as timeless - she is of course exalting Newman's developmentalism). One of his heroes was the Oratorian Cardinal Baronius, the great church historian and disciple of St Philip Neri, and for many years his chief leisure activity was editing the records of a visitation by St Charles Borromeo, the great Tridentine reformer and Archbishop of Milan, to his own native diocese of Bergamo. He was also a good Latinist, fond of Cicero (whose stoicism and belief in moderation might go well with John's simplicity and trust in Providence). (3) I assumed that he spent his whole career as a diplomat, and that he lacked the pastoral experience of St Pius X, since he was never a parish priest. In fact he spent several years as a chaplain to various bodies (including in a military hospital after being conscripted in World War I) before he got called to Rome by Benedict XV to oversee the reorganisation of various bodies for the propagation of the Faith. (4) He had a strong interest in the Eastern Rites, dating from his appointment as Apostolic Visitor to Bulgaria; he played a role in the appointment of an exarch to the small number of Bulgarian-rite Catholics. This of course continued during his stay in Turkey which involved wartime visits to Greece. (BTW one rather painful reflection is that the vicious anti-Romanism found in sections of the Greek Orthodox Church derives not just from the events of 1204 but from the Italian role in the wartime OCcupation. Trevor notes that before the war Greeks used to speak of Latin-rite clergy as "French priests" because of the numbers of French clergy staffing charitable institutions; after the war they spoke of "Italian priests".) It is also clear that he was not seen as a second-rater at this time, as sometimes suggested; Istanbul was a very important and sensitive diplomatic post and the Vatican would not have kept an incompetent there as long as they kept him. (5) In France he was generally perceived as conservative, both because he used the devotional language he had acquired in his youth when he began to practice interior prayer, and because when he visited sites around the country he tended to talk about their history and the great saints of the past. (BTW he seems to have made the Spiritual Exercises with great frequency.) Two incidental points - the image of France as a mission country which was a major theme of postwar French Catholicism was linked to the decline of the traditional peasant society in the historically Catholic areas of western France in the decades before and after WWI (a comparison might be made with the decline of traditional smallholding society in the West of Ireland after 1945) as much as with the longer-standing secularisation of the urban working class; there was a sense that the traditional reservoir of French Catholicism was running dry. SECOND, the crisis involved in the failure of the worker-priests movement is attributed by Trevor to a difference between the Italian and French working-classes (and even their respective communist parties); the Italians remained culturally Catholic and in contact (however nominal) with the Catholic calendar and the parish system in a way that the French (who had a much stronger sense that religion was run by the middle-class and the right and was hostile to them) were not. (6) The reference to John's personal devotion to Pius IX is actually found in his JOURNAL OF A SOUL - his best-known writing - for 1959; John refers to Pius's sufferings as emblematic of the true Christian's submission to the will of providence, and he says that he would like to canonise Pius. Trevor discounts this somewhat, but this says more about Trevor than about John. (7) One very problematic point - Trevor talks about John's concern for the rehabilitation of priests who had broken their vows (which included relaxing the rules on laicisation so that those who could not live as priests could at least be married in the Church and receive the sacraments) and his favour for Fr Gerald Fitzgerald's Order of the Servants of the Paraclete, founded for the purpose of rehabilitating priests who had gone astray. In recent decades the Servants of the Paraclete have got a deservedly bad name, because while Fr Fitzgerald knew and declared from experience that child molestors were irreformable, his subordinates and successors took a laxer view and were responsible for recycling many priest-abusers back into ministry to commit further crimes. Now what worries me is that this may suggest that there is something to be said for the hostile interpretation of John XXIII's document on investigating clerical abusers, CRIMEN SOLLICITATIONIS (as distinct from the rival view that it is simply a codification of existing practice on how to conduct an investigation, and its emphasis on secrecy is only meant to apply for the duration of the investigation). Someone whose primary concern was rehabilitating priests, and who was naive about the particular horror of child abuse and the danger of recidivism, might well take the view that once a priest had been "cured" it would be desirable to maintain secrecy about his former offences for the sake of his rehabilitation. I am not saying that this was actually Pope John's attitude, but Trevor unintentionally suggests to me that it is a possibility.
All in all, I must say I want to know more about Pope John, and he does leave an overwhelming impression of goodness.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 3, 2012 21:00:16 GMT
A couple of subsidiary points that I recall on reflection- after the Bulgarian Church became autocephalous Rome had significant hopes of reconciling with it; these were founded on the Slav Church's resentment of the Greeks (who under the Ottomans ran the Orthodox Church within the empire, for the Ottoman's administrative convenience, and took the opportunity to suppress Slavic liturgy and learning as much as possible in ways that are still resented by the Slavs). This is what underlies the various and unfortunate dealings in marital matters of the Vatican with the initially-Catholic branch of the Hohenzollerns who ruled Bulgaria, in which John was unfortunate enough to be caught up. Trevor's attitude to the various Popes tends to be of the "well-intentioned ruler manipulated/invoked by obnoxious underlings" type. She is critical of Pius X as over-fearful of the world, imposing harmful restrictions on Catholic Action, and going too far in hunting real and alleged Modernists, and of Pius XI in his early days for his authoritarian personality and sympathy for fascism (though she argues that "his better qualities emerged in his later years" as she realised how he had been mistaken). Her attitude to Pius XII is a bit difficult to pin down (partly because John was away from Italy for much of his reign); she argues that he tended to centralise matters in his own hands to make sure it got done properly, so that as he grew weaker in his last years his household came to exercise power as guardians of the channels to him, and the curial officials got used to invoking his name for their own preferences in areas where he was not directly involved. BTW one reason I hadn't grasped for the personal enthusiasm Pius XII aroused among Romans by visiting the sites of Allied air raids on Rome (he got blood on his cassock) was not just that he had stayed in Rome when the civil authorities ran away (as soon as Italy changed sides the king and government fled south to avoid capture by the Germans - this might have been reasonable in itself but they made no attempt to warn their lesser officials or their troops, who were left at the mercy of the occupiers) and that the Romans believed his presence protected them from air raids, but that it was unheard of for the Pope to come out of the Vatican and go down into the city, so that Pius's doing so signalled the level of his concern - and why John's routine strolls around the city made such a tremendous impression. (She makes the significant point that he normally wore leather shoes, in contrast with his predecessors' slippers.)
Trevor articulates the "Curia bad" analysis to a level I have not found among its present-day protagonists (who tend to be much more cursory in analysis, and much less reluctant to denounce the Pope himself). Her argument is that the Curia operated like a court with the Pope as remote monarch, in contrast to John's later emphasis on the Pope as brother bishop and first member of the College of bishops - one point she makes is that John ordered that all cardinals should be bishops partly because he did not wish to have diocesan bishops ordered around by curial officials who were not bishops (a state of affairs which would imply the officials were an extension of the Pope and shared his full authority rather than deriving their authority from their own positions). Her view is that the curia had developed a particular culture deriving from its dominance by hardline anti-modernists in the Pius X era and continued by their apprentices, which was dominated by an ahistorical view of the Church as bastion of perfection in a wicked world and the Pope as a godlike figure whose merest wish (or the wish of the curial officials, assumed to speak in his name) must be obeyed as the voice of God, and that one (predictable) effect of the Council was to show what a small part of the Church this was and how out of touch it was with the pastoral and intellectual needs of the day. (She emphasises, however, that they were sincere reactionaries, as distinct from the view that they were merely hungry for power which tends to dominate cruder liberal polemics.) She is also very critical of the monastic style of seminary formation, and notes as one of its problematic products the style of saints' life which refuses to mention any human failings the saint may have possessed or to contextualise them in relation to their historical period. She expresses support for a vernacular liturgy (she notes VETERUM SAPIENTIAE in promoting Latin does not mention the liturgy, but does not explore the possibility that this might have been because the possibility of vernacular liturgy did not occur to its authors), thinks clerical celibacy should be optional, and believes in diminishing the gap between priest and bishop and lay/cleric; but she assumes all this will be done by the Church authorities, and does not mention the possibility that they might not play ball; nor does she seem particularly curious about how this might actually be accomplished (e.g. she does not suggest the Curia should be abolished or diminished, a favourite nostrum of certain people in later years precisely because it would reduce the Pope to a figurehead). I wonder what position she took when Paul VI sounded the alarm in later years (her references to him are casual, but usually favourable).
One last little detail. Trevor mentions (I am not sure on what authority) that John disliked being carried on the sedia gestatoria, but nonetheless accepted it in a spirit of submission to Providence, and that when he was first carried on it, he wrote in his journal that the experience reminded him of how, seventy years before, his father had carried the child Angelo on his shoulders.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 4, 2012 21:21:37 GMT
A couple of very nice quotes from his letters to his family (Pope John XXIII LETTERS TO HIS FAMILY 1901-1962, translated by Dorothy White (London, Dublin & Melbourne 1970): p.550 16 JANUARY 1947 - to his nephew Battista Roncalli: My life here [Paris] in the service of the Holy See puts me in daily contact with the so-called great ones of this world: statesmen, diplomats and scientists, who had and still have the power in their hands. When I am dealing with them I always think of the simplicity of our fields and of our family life, and from this thought I draw the inspiration to treat all my fellows naturally and unaffectedly, with a modest and persuasive friendliness into which the Lord pours his own light and love, making success more speedy and more lasting. All this is inspired by a common sense which finds the easiest and most apt solutions, and which is generally the result of the peaceful natural world into which we were born, and the simple notions of what is right, honest and truly evangelical which governed our upbringing. The perfection of the good priest must also be seen in his relations with his kith and kin, whom we must learn to love in the Lord, that is with tenderness but also with moderation and wisdom.
p.606 3 OCTOBER 1948 - To his niece Giuseppina Roncalli [Sister Angela - his own baptismal name of course was Angelo] Your name in religion... must encourage you to get to know your own guardian angel, and all the guardian angels of the people you know and love, of Holy Church and of your own Congregation. What a joy it is for us to feel our heavenly guardians so close to us, guiding our steps and witnesses of our most intimate actions. I recite the prayer 'O Angel of God' at least five times a day and frequently hold spiritual conversations with him, but always calmly and peacefully. When I have to visit an important personage on business for the Holy See, I beg him to get in touch with the guardian angel of this illustrious person, and to ask him to do all he can to influence this man for good. It is a little devotion which has often reminded me of the Holy Father Pius XI, of revered memory, and I have found it very useful..."
The letters certainly give a remarkable impression of his basic simplicity and his love for his family [though the Trevor biography notes that he is also accommodating himself to their lower level of education, and states that this simplicity had to be consciously cultivated at first - that when he was a seminarian his mother was irritated by a sense that he was lecturing her, an experience which many parents and children have at a certain stage in the latter's education]. It is also possible that he was the family diplomat in the sense of resolving tensions, and that the Roncallis who had to live at close quarters had somewhat more tensions than would be gathered from him - though such tensions certainly appear from time to time, and he is not wilfully idealising (for he recalls how sad it was that their grandfather's siblings, whom he remembers from his youth, rarely spoke to one another, how good it is that he and his siblings and their parents were all on friendly terms, and how he hopes the following generations will preserve such fellowship). They certainly were poor and in debt, and it is very striking to see how carefully he counts the pennies when helping them (as he did frequently, as well as other local charities) and how straightforward he is about how much he can and cannot afford; it is really striking how often he reiterates that he wishes to leave nothing when he dies and that it is a disgrace for a priest to die rich. The Roncallis were numerous and migrated; he encounters cousins and other relatives living in Milan, in Switzerland, in Belgium, even in Sweden. BTW Mgr Thomas Ryan, who was Bishop of Clonfert 1963-82, was his secretary for a few years when he was Apostolic Delegate to Turkey, and John records him as speaking of his farming family and his aunts who were nuns, and comments that they seem to be very like the Roncallis. Did Bishop Ryan ever publish any recollections of his contact with Pope John?
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 4, 2012 21:43:43 GMT
There are some passages in his letters to a nephew studying for the priesthood which suggest that VETERUM SAPIENTIAE reflected John's personal opinions and was not foisted on him by reactionaries in the Vatican, as sometimes suggested: LETTERS TO HIS FAMILY [see previous post for full citation] p.595 14 MARCH 1948 - to Battista Roncalli ... I would like to see you equally enthusiastic about Latin, and making good progress in this too, but the study of Latin requires self-sacrifice, application and diligence, three qualities no longer popular with the young ecclesiastics of today, who like to get quick results in all spheres, to the prejudice of sound learning and the neglect of treasures of former scholarship - and this means the loss of all that is most valuable in the sacred apostolate and gives true dignity and prestige to the Lord's Church. Love Italian by all means, but study Latin diligently, without neglecting the grammatical forms which have to be learnt at an early stage in order that future progress shall not be impeded. And do your best to learn Greek too [laments his own backwardness in Ancient Greek]...
p.610 10 NOVEMBER 1948 to the same Try very hard in Latin because in my humble opinion familiarity with Latin is the real test of the progress of a good priest's training. If you knew what a joy it is later on to be able to read St Gregory and St Ambrose, in whose writings the most beautiful and profound mysteries of Christian life are firmly and incisively portrayed! But for this purpose you must accustom yourself to understanding, writing and even speaking Latin...
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 6, 2012 21:04:52 GMT
I thought of putting this in our Marian Apparitions thread, but I think it is better placed here. Certainly it provides an example from which certain overzealous fans of debatable apparitions could learn. In May 1944, as the Allied armies fought their way up the peninsula, with the usual consequences of battle for those unfortunate enough to live in the area, and the Germans and Mussolini's puppet Salo Republic placed ever-increasing burdens on the people of occupied Northern Italy, a young girl called Adelaide Roncalli (probably a remote cousin) claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary at a spot some distance from John's birthplace, and within the Diocese of Bergamo. Large crowds gathered, and all Italy paid attention. John was clearly fascinated by the story (LETTERS TO HIS FAMILY pp486-487); he recalls his personal associations with the parish where the apparition took place, and some of the priests who had served there. "These occurrences must all be accepted with gratitude and humility. All things are possible to the Lord, but he prefers to make use of simple and innocent souls, to the confusion of the powerful and pretentious". In a later letter (7 December, p.491) he expresses interest in the report that St Joseph also appeared to the visionary - he had a particular devotion to St Joseph, both because his middle name was Giuseppe (remember he told the Jews of Rome "I am Joseph your brother") and because as many others do, he saw St Joseph as the model for the celibate priest who devotes himself to the service of Jesus and Mary. (pp489-490, to his niece Giuseppina, who was contemplating a vocation to religious life) "You and I are under the special protection of St Joseph, who is the principal director of the interior life. How sweet is the fragrance of St Joseph in the garden of Holy Church! It is like that of a flower which we cannot see because it hides itself shyly from our glance, but its perfume is spread all around, so that we say 'St Joseph must be here'. Ah, if only this could be said about us! We must try to sanctify ourselves and others humbly and in secret". But before discussing the apparition, however, he says that while "there is nothing impossible in this... But here too one must proceed with caution and beware of exaggerations. Probably... the Bishop and the ecclesiastical authorities will already have indicated the wisest way to think of these occurrences. Those who obey the bishop will make no mistake, whereas those who think they know better are generally deceived". In this he was wise, for in April 1948 the Bishop of Bergamo declared there was "no proof of the reality" of the apparitions - the editors of the correspondence do not explain matters further, but quite possibly the child's over-active imagination reacted to the fearful situation of the country at that time.
ADDENDUM - In the original post I suggested that Pope John's statement to the Jews of Rome "I am Joseph your brother" has some profound and interesting subtext. On reflection I confess I was being too clever by half and failed to do justice to Pope John's profound simplicity. Under all the circumstances - the history of Papal relations with the Jews of Rome, in which though protected they were also ritually humiliated and exposed to numerous restrictions and pressures (whatever the rationale for these, they should be a matter of shame and regret to Catholics; and we Irish should blush that not so long ago Fr Denis Fahey was proclaiming that the papal legislation which enforced these restrictions should actually be regarded as the expression of profoundest divine wisdom and used as matter for religious meditation) - the recent memory of the Holocaust, in which rightful praise for and pride in those Catholics and others - including Pope John himself and Pius XII -who resisted and who sought to rescue the victims should not obscure the fact that many Catholics behaved like Pilate, Judas and Herod. In face of these things, it was even more necessary to proclaim without qualification, to the world and to the Jews themselves, that they are our brothers; that is not the sum total of our relations with them, but it is the foundation-stone, which had been obscured by dirt, and dirt piled up by Christians. So when Pope John said "I am Joseph your brother" he meant precisely that, and it was enough.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 23, 2012 22:17:00 GMT
Because of other occupations I only recently got round to finishing LETTERS TO HIS FAMILY - a few additional points: John had a strong devotion to St John the Baptist (his father was called Battista and the name ran in the family, and the parish church was dedicated to the Baptist). This appears to have been why he took the regnal name John. The image of John as a relentlessly optimistic Pollyanna is shared by many liberals (because they think the Pollyanna attitude is the correct one) and traditionalists (because they see him as having naively opened Pandora's Box). It is quite clear from the letters to the family that this is not so - part of what underlies his references to how fortunate the Roncallis are to have their small plot of land is that as a diplomat he had come into contact with many refugees who had lost everything and had nothing (he makes frequent references to them in Bulgaria and during the Second World War)- his spirituality was built around Ignatian detachment from the things of this world (which implies that they are to be used for what they can do but that we are not to be attached to them), around the Cross, and around awareness of death. (He was greatly impressed by the holy death in 1914 of Bishop Radini-Tedeschi, whose secretary he was, and aspired to have such a death.) No-one who served in a military hospital in WWI and who witnessed the aftermath of the wars in the Eastern Mediterranean and Italy could be a Pollyanna. At least one of the letters when he was nuncio in Paris makes passing reference to the possibility of martyrdom if the communists come to power. What really underlay his cheerfulness (and his optimistic views on the prospects for the Council) was a sense of trust in God - whether events worked out as he anticipated may be another matter, but in the end he will be proven right in this; that God will prevail. He has a very strong sense of the extended family, not only in earth but in heaven, and the power of their prayers. In some respects the last part of the collection is sad, because as Patriarch of Venice he suffered a series of bereavements - one of his brothers died as did three of his sisters; two of these sisters were unmarried and particularly close to him; they kept house for him when he was a monsignor in Rome, he could not take them with him to Sofia, Istanbul, and Paris, and when he was named to Venice and could have had them to live there, they were too ill to make the move and died soon afterwards. It is also sad, after having gone through the whole series of letters and realised how close he was to his family, to see that after his election to the Papacy there are only a small number of letters, mostly routine family blessings and instructions on visiting him. He explains in one of the few long letters that his workload, and the nature of the Papal office, means that he cannot correspond with them as freely (in talking of his plans etc) as he did before, but that he still loves them and prays for them and is glad that he has made the name Roncalli known and honoured throughout the world. (A few years earlier he had remarked that in a century's time Cardinal Roncalli would only be remembered for his editions of the Acta of the visitation of St Charles Borromeo to Bergamo, and he also made some humorous comments at the expense of a "crazy Frenchman" who claimed to have had a private revelation that Cardinal Roncalli would become Pope.) Certainly that letter makes one understand why when John accepted election he said "I accept the crown of thorns and the chalice of sorrow" and one thinks of our present Pope who wished to return to Bavaria and instead has to bear so many burdens in his old age. (One interesting last detail. John Cooney in his biography of John Charles McQuaid describes McQuaid's comparison of John to St Pius X as grotesquely delusional on the grounds that nobody could possibly see a resemblance between the great liberal John and the reactionary Pius. This would have come as news to John, who in one of these last family letters as Pope says specifically that he sees Pius X as a role-model, a Pope who was poor and died poor. But of course John Cooney thinks John XXIII's own views on such a matter are of less value than those of the great Cooney. John also spoke of Pius XII in an earlier letter to his family (mid-50, when he was reporting the Pope's ill-health) as a great Pope.) I do not know -yet - what John's diary is like, but it is clear from those letters that he was a saint. A diary can be self-deceiving, but you can't keep up a pretence of this sort with those who know you best.
One problem of being a historian, or I suppose of taking an interest in events, is that you often entertain hypotheses, partly because you haven't enough information, partly because you feel smug and superior to the uncritical, and when you learn more later on you are ashamed. I remember before I read Cardinal Newman I was struck by the fact that so many of his contemporaries who disagreed on so many things united in thinking he was a sophist and/or self-deceiving, and I really thought there might be something in it - but when I actually got to know that fine mind and that limpid faith I was ashamed. Again, for a long time I suspected the first (canonical) apparition at Knock might be phony or delusional because the later supposed apparitions were clearly the product of auto-suggestion, and because so much was unclear about the circumstances and context - but when I was reading a book which discussed the commission (with the aim of debunking it) I saw the apocalyptic and eucharistic symbolism latent in some of the unedited accounts as well as in the standard description, and I realised this was not the sort of thing the witnesses could have made up. Now I wish to say that I used to suspect, and occasionally suggested in conversation, that John XXIII was like St Celestine V - a holy but naive incompetent. This was a nasty piece of condescension and the sort of thing that leads by a slippery slope to intellectual pride and in some cases to sedevacantism. I retract, I repent, I ask God's forgiveness through the intercession of Bl. John XXIII. It will be quite a while before I find time to study John XXIII further, and I feel presumptuous in having posted so much on the basis of knowledge so scanty and so recently-gained, but I hope I will be able to bring you more thoughts on him when I have learned more. We ought to know more of him, not because he was a conservative or a liberal, which are problematic concepts anyway, but because he was a saint.
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Post by Beinidict Ó Niaidh on Sept 4, 2012 18:12:20 GMT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=fldlJrYuq8cSee President Auriol place the red biretta on Cardinal-elect Roncalli's head. Seems some cardinals designate received the red hat in the Quinirale. Anyone know anything about this?
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 4, 2012 21:01:19 GMT
According to John XXIII's letters to his family (he explains the ceremonial procedures to them at some length), Auriol asked that he should confer the title of Cardinal on Roncalli as a special mark of personal esteem. (Auriol BTW was an atheist, and quite open about it.) Apparently the President of France has the right to do this but does not always exercise it. Auriol did not exercise it for the two French Cardinals created in the same consistory, so they went to Rome. In cases where the President of France conferred the title (he read out the Papal Bull of appointment) the Pope conferred the Red Hat on the new Cardinal at a subsequent ceremony, but he was a cardinal from the moment of his conferral by the President (i.e. if Pius XII had died the day after Auriol conferred him, Roncalli would have had the same entitlement to vote in conclave as any other Cardinal). I don't know if this custom still exists or has been abolished. Since the galero is no longer conferred they must have changed the ritual in that respect anyway.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Sept 5, 2012 13:39:48 GMT
The opening presentation was in the Quirinale rather than the Elysees - did the Italian president have a similar privilege?
Where other conferrals in other consistories carried out in similar ways?
Incidentally, our rad trad friends have a lot to say about this.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 5, 2012 20:08:56 GMT
I suspect the Italian president may have inherited this from the King of Italy via the Lateran Pact, but I really don't know. Did Catholic monarchs do it? (The French arrangement is inherited from their monarchy, though I am surprised it survived the abolition of the Concordat in 1905.) I have seen radtrad sites (including the one I got the photo from!) which suggest that accepting the conferral by a professed atheist was dubious conduct by Roncalli. Of course it was Pius XII who made the actual appointment, and once Auriol had opted to exercise the prerogative, refusal would have been an insult to France as well as to him - and if these people think there is something discreditable about a nuncio being on friendly terms with a non Catholic head of state to whom he is accredited, they know nothing of diplomacy.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 6, 2012 8:44:57 GMT
Hibernicus' rational answer is something that the rad trads don't examine. The irony is that the prerogative that President Auriol exercised is rooted in how their precious Catholic monarchies were. Hibernicus' question is also interesting. I would be very surprised if the Austro-Hungarian King-Emperor didn't have a similar privilege, but that the Austrian republic deliberately abrogated it in an effort to distance it from the Habsburgs - I'll ask Ralf Siebenbürger if he knows anything about it.
I suppose the only monarch still around who might inherit the privilege is the King of Spain and I suspect he doesn't do it for constitutional and political reasons.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 6, 2012 23:17:05 GMT
Alasdair's point about the origins of the privilege in the monarchies is well taken. I suspect its origin was as a sign that the king's approval was needed for what was the conferring of a title of nobility by another monarch on one of his subjects (though if that were the case it would be odd to apply it to a Papal diplomat serving at his court). The use of a cardinal who was the monarch's subject to convey a royal veto in a Papal election (last and most famously by the Archbishop of Warsaw against Cardinal Rampolla on behalf of emperor Franz Josef in 1903) would be analogous, and some Radtrads are nostalgic for that too (or at least suggest Rampolla was a crypto-Modernist and Franz Josef thereby saved the church; the real explanation seems to have been that Franz Josef resented Rampolla's handling of the funeral after the Emperor's son committed suicide). Spain is the likeliest monarch to have such a privilege - Monaco, Liechtenstein and Luxemburg are too small to have Cardinals, and Belgium is a nineteenth-century creation which deliberately distances itself from sacral kingship (the king takes an oath in parliament instead of being crowned).
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Sept 7, 2012 9:42:53 GMT
Yes the veto of Cardinal Rampollo is famous. Apparantly, Austrian intelligence recommended Cardinal Sarto also be vetoed, but the Archbishop of Vienna didn't have that info to hand at the conclave and then the new Pius X forbade the veto on the pain of excommunication.
Rad trads really can be entertaining.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 16, 2012 22:12:05 GMT
I have been looking at MISSION TO FRANCE, which is a collection of his statements and official correspondence from his nunciature in 1944-53. Naturally this contains material relating to the presidential conferring - he mentions in his letter to Auriol that both his revered mentor Bishop Radini-Tedeschi of Bergamo and the future Pope Pius XI (whom he speaks of as both patron and personal friend) had acted as Papal representatives at a similar ceremony in 1893 and this gave him an added interest in the experience. (The messages which he delivered every New Year to President Auriol on behalf of the diplomatic corps, and Auriol's responses, are also printed and certainly suggest considerable mutual respect.) A footnote states that the privilege of conferring the Red Hat was exercised by the Heads of State in Portugal, Spain and Austria and that it was interrupted in France between 1897 and 1925. [The note does not make it clear whether the privilege was used by republican heads of state in Portugal and Austria after the end of their monarchies, or whether Franco used it in Spain - I presume the Spanish republican presidents did not do so between 1931-36.] The idea that one must move boldly forward despite the storms of life and that faith will be rewarded in the end recurs in his statements from these years. Oddly enough, the idea that the similar language John used in summoning the Second Vatican Council reflected the optimism of the late 50s and early 60s is clearly mistaken - he is using it quite explicitly in reference to the much darker world of the late 40s and early 50s, in the sense that if we do the right thing without hesitating as St Peter did when he walked on the water, God will watch over us. (One little detail that had not struck me but which is mentioned is of course that the fall of Bulgaria behind the Iron Curtain meant that people whom he knew when he was Nuncio there would have suffered under the Communist regime - he makes specific reference to the eastern Rite Catholics there whose church he had helped to organise and who of course aroused particular hostility from the communists. The collection also contains many reminders that he arrived in Paris when the Second World War was still being fought, and that one of his tasks was to try to help those displaced or otherwise suffering in its aftermath.) I would say that John's optimism arose from a spirit of detachment from earthly things - a feeling that it is useless to regret or to look backwards and that one must go forward with confidence and carry out one's duty to the end. This I really think is the Ignatian view - use the things of this world insofar and only insofar they can be made to serve God. Such detachment is also an useful quality for a historian or a diplomat, both of which John was. (It is interesting to see his remarks about how diplomacy is a form of pastoral work rather than being detached from it, and the fact that his episcopal motto Obedientia et Pax was derived from the favourite saying of the great historian and disciple of St Philip Neri, Caesar Baronius pp10-11.) One other interesting source for his view about boldly going forward amid fears and opposition is St. Pius X. There are several passages in the book where John speaks of Pius X's acting as he thought right irrespective of fears as an example to be followed - for example see the eulogy on Pius "the Pope of our youth" which Cardinal Roncalli delivered 24 March 1958 at the consecration of the church at Lourdes dedicated to Pius X, and which singles out for praise Pius's asserting the supernatural against "the vaunted triumph of extreme rationalism... exaggerated reliance upon scientific theories" [i.e. against modernism].(pp207-210) "The voices of those very people who implored the Church to compromise in order to save some worldly advantages, under the false illusion of thus achieving a greater advantage, have now been silenced, and it has been recognised that the sacrifices then imposed have turned out to be a source of great blessings. This is the glory of the humble country priest, the humble bishop and cardinal, the humble servant of the servants of God, the glory of Pius X: he aroused the desire to emulate the accomplishment of the great deeds of his illustrious predecessors and trace for those who would follow him and occupy his honourable position the wide shining path that would lead to increased influence and prestige for the Roman pontificate, in the midst of hardships and difficulties for the Church, amidst the sufferings of the whole world at this present time". (p.209) Once again may I remind you of John Cooney's remark that John Charles McQuaid's comparison of John XXIII to Pius X was self-evident proof of insanity, as the two Popes could not possibly have had anything in common. Does Mr Cooney think the insanity extended to John himself? But of course it is unreasonable to ask that Mr Cooney should sully the fine bloom of his ignorance by reading John's actual words before setting himself up as a guide to his readers. BTW the book also has some remarks by John on his pleasure in celebrating the Use of Lyons on a visit there in June 1945 "the majesty of your liturgical tradition, to which you are so justly attached and which, in its sumptuous ceremonies, frequently recalls the solemn rites of the great Roman basilicas." (p.29)
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 19, 2012 22:05:53 GMT
Another odd little detail from MISSION TO FRANCE - he says in a couple of places that he admires Fr Faber's devotional writings, and particularly mentions a book called BETHLEHEM. Fr Faber's reputation is as an uncritical importer of Italianate devotions into English, so it is a bit surprising to find the influence going the other way (though of course close imitation of Italian-style devotion might well appeal to an Italian).
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