Reminder - The Pillar Podcast is having a live show next Wednesday, Sept. 23 in St. Louis for the beatification of Fulton Sheen! We’ll be at the Schlafly Taproom at 2100 Locust Street, starting the show at 9pm but come early if you want! See you there!
Happy Friday friends,
No one enjoys slighting the French more than me. It really is one of life’s innocent little pleasures. There’s something about the Gallic national character which, for some of us, just aches for deflating a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, I like both France and the French, generally speaking. Food, wine, language, art, architecture — to say nothing of the inherent beauty of the country itself — all make it a wonderful place. And, I don’t hesitate to say it, the vast majority of French people tend to be pretty salt-of-the-earth types, open minded, interested and interesting, and just generally good company.
The truth is that when people like me admit to enjoying needling “the French” what we really mean is “Parisians.”
Paris is to France what New York City is to the United States; a permanently dysfunctional, crime ridden, overhyped and overpriced tourist trap, where the food is subpar, the streets unswept, and the locals contemptuously superior. It’s the kind of combination that gives honest people the urge to provoke them — this is how and why Chicago deep-dish pizza was invented.
I mention all this because the French, or rather the Parisian, press are in a bit of a flap this week because, apparently, the Vatican have said a polite but firm non to a host of requests for Pope Leo’s upcoming visit to the country. I read with interest that the Holy See has declined for the pope to be received with a full military guard, invested with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, subjected to a state banquet and shackled to President Macron for a private tour of Notre Dame.
Now, I would like to think that Leo, as a son of Chicago, is just showing some no-nonsense Midwestern impatience with unnecessary pomp and circumstance and a native allergy to jagoffery. But I don’t think that is quite it.
France is in the midst of the same toxically acrimonious political cycle as the rest of the West right now, and the list of things to which Leo has said thanks-but-no-thanks is being widely interpreted there as the Vatican cannily avoiding the pope’s trip being co-opted into a weeklong series of presidential photo-ops.
It seems clear enough to me that Leo has always intended his brief swing through France as a pastoral visit by the chief shepherd of Christ’s flock, not a state visit by the Father of Princes and Kings. This distinction is both formal and fairly obvious from a diplomatic perspective, and well established in papal travels.
St. John Paul II’s trip to the UK in 1982 was the first in history by a reigning pope, but while he met with Queen Elizabeth II in her capacity as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, not head of state, he — by mutual agreement — steered clear of the head of government, Margaret Thatcher. By contrast, Benedict XVI’s visit in 2010 was a full blown state occasion with all the sorts of fanfare, literal and metaphorical, for which Macron has apparently asked, and been denied.
I would expect that Leo’s expectations for the trip had been made clear from the get-go and the Élysée was simply hoping to squeeze some extra juice out of a pope in his rookie season. The Vatican state department aren’t newbies though, and Leo is no rube.
I’m glad he’s keeping his diplomatic powder dry, and reserving the head-of-state star power of the papacy for when he, and he alone, chooses to deploy it. The question is, where will that be? That will be worth watching.
Here’s the news.
The News
The international Marian shrine of Fátima, Portugal, does not plan to remove or cover a massive Rupnik mosaic, despite other countries moving to do so.
Indeed, some Portuguese ecclesiastical leaders have told The Pillar that they believe that art from the allegedly sexually abusive Rupnik should be judged distinctly from the man who created it.
With the prospect of a papal visit to Fátima next year, it is possible the shrine will face ongoing questions over the controversial mosaics, especially since this doesn’t seem to have been Pope Leo’s take on the whole affair.
—
The Syriac Catholic Church has become the first Eastern Church sui iuris to initiate a process to depose its patriarch, following the promulgation of canonical reforms by Pope Leo XIV on Aug. 29.
The senior bishop of the Eastern Church’s synod of bishops initiated the process for a vote to remove the patriarch Patriarch Ignace Youssif III Younan on September 4, just days after Pope Leo XIV issued the motu proprio Mutua concordia, allowing for the prospect of Eastern Catholic bishops moving to remove their patriarchs.
In the Syriac Catholic Church, the bishops are expected to convene in late September or early October for a meeting that could involve deposing the patriarch, although Youssif has responded to the move by himself calling for a synod that would gather in November.
I wrote at the time the new law came out that it looked a lot like clearing a path for increased Roman intervention in the leadership disputes of Eastern Churches, and I frankly don’t see how the Vatican stays out of this one.
—
Leading Church figures gathered in Austria this week to devise a “roadmap” for synodality in Europe.
More than 180 people representing 31 countries and 29 bishops’ conferences attended the Sept. 14-17 symposium “Shaping Synodality in Europe: From Vision to Roadmap” in Wels, a city in Upper Austria with Roman roots.
The event was organized under the patronage of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences, and there were two competing visions of synodality: one emphasizing structural change and the overriding value of equality, and another seeing the process largely in terms of encouraging improved communication between the laity and hierarchy.
These rival visions have some very different priorities and plans, and it is very much worth keeping an eye on what’s happening.
—
Staying in Austria for a moment, the country’s largest Catholic women’s organization urged the country’s bishops Tuesday to open the role of bishops’ conference general secretary to lay people.
The appeal was prompted by the announcement that Fr. Peter Schipka, the general secretary of the Austrian bishops’ conference since 2011, will step down in November. Schipka chose to resign two years before the expiration of his latest six-year term to serve as a professor of education.
The Austrian Catholic Women’s Movement noted that canon law does not require a bishops’ conference general secretary — who plays an administrative and coordinating role within a national bishops’ conference — to be a priest.
But the phenomenon of appointing lay people to the top administrative role in a bishops’ conference is relatively new — and has a historical connection to the Church in the United States.
—
When presidents of bishops’ conferences and Eastern Catholic patriarchs gather in Rome next month to discuss Amoris laetitia, their meeting will have been organized largely by the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops.
But the meeting is not a synod. And its thematic framework was originally published by the Dicastery for the Laity, Family, and Life.
As Edgar Beltran wrote this week, the now-leading role that the secretariat has taken on in preparing for the meeting is part of what seems to be a growing influence of the Secretariat of the Synod under Pope Leo. That’s an interesting, and I think unexpected development for a lot of people.
You can read the whole analysis here.
—
A professor of theology at The Catholic University of America was recently announced as the new head of cultural outreach at the Department for Homeland Security’s Office for Partnership and Engagement.
The move is, in many ways, not unusual. Tenured professors at many academic institutions, including CUA, take leaves of absence either to work on special projects or to serve in some external role for a period of time. In the case of Catholic U., faculty stints in government service are not at all uncommon.
But this particular appointment has drawn attention since the professor is taking up a post at the government department responsible for one of the Trump administration’s more controversial policy areas — immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation.
Those policies, and the manner of their implementation, have drawn public and direct criticism from bishops across the country, including Washington, D.C.’s own Cardinal Robert McElroy, along with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and Pope Leo XIV.
As such, many have asked if there is tension between such a government role and an ongoing status as a tenured theologian at the university most closely linked to the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
In fact, the unique status of CUA and its theology faculty actually add layers of canonical nuance to the whole issue.
How? Well, that’s interesting, and The Pillar explains.
In nomine ecclesia
I’m somewhat curious to see how the appointment of a Catholic theology professor as head of “cultural outreach” for the Department of Homeland Security is going to shake out.
As a general principle, I think it wonderful that my alma mater Catholic U. makes faculty free to serve in government. The founding mandate of Pope Leo XIII was, after all, to give the republic her best citizens. It seems totally reasonable that the terms of academic tenure allow for this sort of thing. Plenty of professors before, and I hope after this, have and will continue to do so.
While I think it’s reasonable to allow that things might get “interesting,” should the immigration enforcement debate heat up again between the Church and the Trump administration, I guess I err on the side of assuming the appointment will likely be the last time it is especially newsworthy — at least I assume that’s the plan. After all, the cast iron rule of political comms is that any time a government official becomes the story, instead of the message, that’s a failure.
But, as our explainer unpacked, this appointment comes with a particular complication because this professor comes from — and while on leave maintains a place at — an ecclesiastical faculty. This poses a potential wrinkle, as I see it. One that I would suggest everyone involved might consider addressing before it has the chance to become “a thing.”