Happy Friday friends,
And a very happy feast of Corpus Christi, whether you celebrated yesterday or will on Sunday.
For those who may not realize, the feast as strictly instituted falls on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. Though its transfer to the next Sunday is almost universally effected, the feast is kept on its proper day in Rome and in my house, at least, so there you are.
Ahead of the day, I was delighted to read Pope Leo’s comments on the immemorial custom of street processions to mark the occasion, calling them a “beautiful manifestation of public witness to the faith” and encouraging the faithful to “keep them alive.”
I am a big believer in popular and extremely public acts of devotion as an ordinary part of parish living. I’ve written before about the great risk of Catholic life being kettled into the church building and within the invisible walls of the parish community.
The Church, as a people elect, an ecclesia, has as its essential characteristic the apostolic mandate. Parish life must, of its nature, suffuse and permeate the wider community in which it exists — to evangelize is an active, not passive verb.
I should say that I am mostly, though not entirely, unsold on Eucharistic processing as an especially effective means of evangelization, per se. The mystery of the sacrament doesn’t immediately announce itself to the casual spectator, and while I am of course open to moments of spontaneous grace occurring through the exposition of the sacrament in procession, I think presuming upon their ubiquity to carry the burden of announcing Christ comes a little close to rei-ification of the sacrament and a kind of talismanic magical thinking.
It seems to me that the truly bankable power of a Corpus Christi procession — for better or worse — comes from we, the people, and the faith we manifest towards the host. Do we model a joyful aspect which plants a question among those watching? Does our communion stir in them a desire to join us and to approach the focus of our devotion? This is, I think, what Pope Leo was especially praising this week.
But if I am being honest, I think the best thing that can come out of popular acts of piety like a Corpus Christi procession is it desensitizes us, as Catholics, to being publicly and ostentatiously Catholic in our neighborhoods.
The real work of evangelization should, I think, come person to person, cor ad cor, and involve each of us being ready to give a witness of our own encounter with Christ in the Church and the actual real effects it has had in our daily lives.
We need to be ready, willing, and able to talk about Jesus to the people we meet. And for a variety of reasons this sometimes comes with a strong ick factor attached.
Coming together as a community to affirm our faith in public is, I think, an excellent school for overcoming this — a moment to stand publicly with and behind Christ in the sacrament to fortify us, the better to carry him individually to those we meet.
Here’s the news.
The News
An appeals court in Canada has rejected a request by the Congregation of St. Basil to dismiss a lawsuit against the congregation and its prominent member and former Vatican communications advisor Fr. Thomas Rosica.
A June 4 decision upheld a ruling that the case against Rosica may move forward and ordered Rosica’s congregation to pay $14,000 in legal costs.
Rosica, who is accused of sexual assault, and the Basilians, who are accused of negligence in his oversight, argued that because Rosica is accused of assaulting another priest, the civil court should have no jurisdication and the case should be treated as a purely canonical matter.
Which is not an argument I have ever heard made anywhere else, but there you are.
The judge ruled the suit can go ahead against Rosica who was a high profile invitee and vocal attendee at Pope Francis 2019 summit on the abuse crisis, having previously been something of a fixture around the Vatican communications department.
Prior to the accusations that he sexually assaulted a young priest, Rosica’s star dimmed somewhat after allegations, some would call them proof, emerged that his published works were made up of substantially plagiarized material.
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The College of Cardinals’ extraordinary consistory in June will discuss the situation of local Churches, the doctrine of just war, societal changes and the desire for God in light of Magnifica humanitas, and the next steps in the synodal process, the Vatican has announced.
While there had been speculation that the liturgy would feature as a formal discussion topic, several cardinals told The Pillar there was little expectation among the college this would be the case, especially after Pope Leo said in an April letter to the College of Cardinals that he wished to focus on the subject of evangelization and the text Evangelii Gaudium.
Read all about the meeting, and what to expect, right here.
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Patriarch Kirill of Moscow issued a decree transferring Metropolitan Hilarion from the Czech Republic to Brazil Wednesday, the same day Czech media reported that a white substance found in Hilarion’s car was confirmed to be cocaine.
Patriarch Kirill decreed June 3 that Hilarion would serve in the Russian Orthodox Eparchy of Argentina and South America, while residing in southern Brazil.
Russian Orthodox media reported that the transfer was arranged because it was impossible for Hilarion — once seen as a potential successor to Patriarch Kirill — to continue overseeing a church in Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, “due to objective circumstances.”
It’s the latest somewhat bizarre turn of events for the metropolitan, who has been the subject of considerable controversy over his personal conduct since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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The Chinese government is reportedly using state-sanctioned Church bodies to promote a contentious new law aimed at ethnic minorities.
In the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia priests reportedly handed out booklets on the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, scheduled to go into effect July 1.
The new law embeds Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s policies promoting the “Sinicization of ethnic minorities” into the country’s legal framework. It requires state organizations, social institutions, schools, and religious groups to foster “the communal consciousness of the Chinese nation,” in practice moving the country away from a model of ethnic autonomy adopted after the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949.
Officially recognized Church bodies, such as the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, are expected to support the law through the promotion of ethnic unity, social cohesion, and the Sinicization of religion.
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The new patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church reflected on the power of faith amid fear during the homily at his installation Mass, and outlined several “principal features” for the future of the Baghdad-based Church.
Patriarch Paul III Nona was elected in April to lead more than 600,000 Catholics belonging to the Chaldean Church.
He had served previously as Archbishop of Mosul, Iraq, from which he was forced in 2014 into exile as ISIS took control of the area and Christians fled or were killed, leaving no flock in his archdiocese. He was soon after appointed to lead the Chaldean Catholic diaspora in Australia and New Zealand, serving in that post until his April election as patriarch.
The election came after Cardinal Raphael Sako’s resignation as patriarch earlier this year. Sako resigned amid controversy over his handling of the resignation of San Diego-based Chalden Bishop Emanuel Shaleta, who stepped down while facing criminal charges of embezzlement from his diocese.
Read all about the new Patriarch right here.
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An Andorran minister has said that the decriminalization of abortion in the country will be approved before parliamentary elections are held next year, amid negotiations with the Catholic Church in the principality.
The Andorran minister of institutional relations, Ladislau Baró, said in a Jun. 1 interview that the proposal to decriminalize abortion in the country is finished but thorny negotiations with the Holy See might delay the bill.
Andorra has an unusual political arrangement, with two co-princes serving as heads of state: the president of France and the Bishop of Urgell. As a result, legalizing any measure contrary to Catholic teaching can involve delicate political and ecclesial tensions, as a change in the law could theoretically involve the bishop.
Read all about the negotiations right here.
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A German Catholic youth organization has voted to retain St. Thomas More as its patron after a two-year review of his suitability.
The Katholische Junge Gemeinde adopted a resolution at its May 27-31 annual national assembly keeping the 16th-century English martyr as its patron, “while also acknowledging and critically assessing problematic aspects of his life.”
Specifically — and I am not making this up — the group took issue with, and opted to publicly distance themselves from, More’s opposition to the Reformation.
I know. Only Germany. You can read about it here.
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Last week saw resolved the final case to come out of the Independent Commission looking into historical clerical sexual abuse cases in Portugal.
However, as Filipe d’Avillez reported for us this week, while the commission produced a list of 114 alleged abusers, only 10 people were subsequently sentenced to some form of punishment by the dioceses, and the commission’s work was considered decisive in only four of those cases.
As you might imagine, there is considerable debate over the commission’s effectiveness, and why there appeared to be such low uptake of its findings by dioceses.
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Forgotten but not gone
Although it went unremarked upon, this week was the 10th anniversary of perhaps the most quietly controversial act of the Francis pontificate.
On June 4, 2016, Pope Francis issued the apostolic letter motu proprio Come una madre amorevole, which while couched in the tone of parental solicitude was, perhaps, the most sweeping piece of canonical penal legislation issued in the Church since the Second Vatican Council.
The law provided that a diocesan bishop could be removed from office “if he has through negligence committed or through omission facilitated acts that have caused grave harm to others, either to physical persons or to the community as a whole. The harm may be physical, moral, spiritual or through the use of patrimony.”
Those “harms” were not further described or developed in the letter’s short text. It was interpreted at the time as a sweeping criminalization of episcopal conduct in office — so vague was the wording and so subjective its potential application that virtually any act of governance could be deemed “harmful” if it proved sufficiently unpopular.
The law was further notable for the barest of processes outlined for what amounted to an extra judicial process for removing a bishop, acknowledging but not delineating his rights to due processes and to make a legal defence.
General reception of the law at the time was somewhat muted, since it closely followed but pointedly did not adopt the recommendations of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors for the creation of a special tribunal to hear and try cases of episcopal negligence on matters related to clerical abuse of minors.
The general consensus was that Francis had acted and communicated a sense of urgency, but opinion was divided between those who saw Come una madre as a bold reform and those who thought it a repetition of the status quo — leaving the work of assessing bishops to already competent dicasteries of the Roman curia, rather than creating a new court.
For myself, and I wrote as much at the time, the new law was the first real hard evidence of how Pope Francis conceived of himself in relation to the Church — and what he really thought of the Second Vatican Council.