Happy Friday friends,
The wisest priest of my acquaintance is fond of reminding people in confession that pride is the great force multiplier of all sin. It is the underlying driver of almost every bad action to which I am disposed, and the great barrier between me and reconciliation with God at any given moment.
The opposite of pride, in every respect, is humility, which is always disposed to receive the love of God. But, he likes to note, the only way of receiving the grace of humility is to pray for humiliations — and one should be careful what one prays for, because the Lord has a tendency to listen to our prayers.
I was thinking about that this week, since I have attained the age at which doctors now like to schedule me for what they euphemistically call “procedures,” though I should state clearly there is no reason to believe there is anything seriously wrong with me.
I’ve been through all manner of procedures in adult life, following the necessary steps to, for example, buy a house, renew passports, register a business etc. Medical procedures are a thing apart, though, since none of the others require you to be stripped buck-nekked and sedated like an obstreperous zoo animal so they can insert surveillance hardware into your innards.
It is, in all senses, a humbling experience in that you have to surrender all forms of artifice and make a true and accurate account of your actions to the anesthetist. But I found it morally salutary, along with humiliating. Heaven has a narrow gate, the Church often reminds us, and once must stoop low to enter.
The constant temptation for me is to armor myself to walk tall, the better to defend myself and my family against the variables of the world. In fact, as I fought the urge to sass my wife for being (I thought) overly solicitous before and after my “procedure,” I realized that lying on a gurney utterly dependent on others is a far better encapsulation of my true state before God — and likely the closest approximation I can have to prepare for my own eventual encounter with Him face to face.
Getting a practical reminder of that is, I am sure, good for me in all sorts of ways. Quite apart from being a good remedy for the sort of pride my priest friend warns against, humility is itself an attractive quality in people. We know it when we see it in friends, coworkers, preachers, family and so on. It tends to make us want to spend more time with a person, listen to them more carefully, and value more what they say.
At the most basic level, one cannot proclaim the Gospel well except from a disposition of humility, since one can’t claim to have understood it well and remain personally prideful. All this by way of saying, schedule your annual check-ups, people. They are good for the soul.
Here’s the news.
The News
Two things to start with.
Tomorrow will see the beatification of five Franciscan missionaries who were martyred in 1597 in the region known as La Florida, along the coast of modern-day Georgia.
You should not sleep on the heroic example of these early American witnesses to the faith, nor fail to apply to them for their intercession.
You can read our explainer who who they were right here.
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Entirely predictable news emerged this week that Pope Leo XIV has registered to vote by absentee ballot in the coming mid term elections.
Apparently, that an American pope who took his name from the predecessor who wrote apostolic letters on American democracy would exercise his civic duty has caught some people by surprise.
Not us. In fact, we were looking ahead to this eventuality from the earliest days of Leo’s pontificate. So what are the implications of Leo’s American citizenship while being sovereign head of another country? Can he vote, does he have to pay taxes?
Well, yes, And it’s complicated. We’ve been charting it for a while.
You can read our explainer on it here.
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And for those who wonder if it is workable for Leo to be both an American citizen and foreign sovereign, or if the complications might be a bit too much, well you’re not alone.
Back in the day, senior members of his own curia were quietly floating the idea he might be better off renouncing his US passport — though the pope himself was never going to go for that.
You can read our coverage of that here.
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In an ongoing dispute over a traditionalist pilgrimage in Rome, a Vatican spokesman told The Pillar that he was not aware of letters published this week, which appear to call into question previous Vatican claims about the group’s requests for accommodation at St. Peter’s Basilica.
Last week, the Holy See Press Office told The Pillar that a request for the pilgrimage to process into the basilica had been rejected, but if the group wanted to have Eucharistic adoration or time for prayer within the basilica, as in other years, “they should’ve made a specific request to that end.”
Well according to the letters published this week, they did just that.
You can read the whole story here.
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A Polish diocese said Thursday that it plans to appeal the conviction of its bishop for failing to report abuse allegations promptly to civil authorities. The ruling is the first of its kind against a bishop in Poland.
Bishop Andrzej Jeż was handed a non-custodial sentence for not swiftly notifying law enforcement after receiving credible information about alleged sexual offenses against children under 15 by two priests.
Prosecutors had requested a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for three years, and a fine of 20,000 złotys, while the defense argued for acquittal. The defense had called for Jeż’s acquittal, arguing there was legal uncertainty about whether the duty introduced in 2017 applied to offenses committed before the change took effect.
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The U.S. bishops will meet in Baltimore next month for their annual fall plenary assembly, when they will vote for a conference secretary.
The current secretary, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, was elected last year to fill the role for the remainder of the term left by Archbishop Paul Coakley, who was chosen president of the conference.
The bishops will also vote for the chairman of six standing committees. Winners will serve one year as chairman-elect, followed by a three-year term as chairman of the committee.
You can read our preview of the elections and who is standing right here.
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The bishops will also elect a new general secretary to lead the conference’s administrative offices.
As JD pointed out in an analysis this week, while that election will come under decidedly less urgent stakes than last time, it does come as the USCCB faces several significant challenges that will require real leadership.
And at the same time, the election comes as perceptions about the role of general secretary might themselves be changing among the U.S. episcopate.
You can read his whole analysis right here.
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At least 60 people were killed in attacks on Christians in Ethiopia’s Oromia region, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church said this week.
The Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church announced Oct. 26 that more than 20 others were seriously injured in the attacks and 20 homes burned to the ground.
What’s the background to the massacres? And who is responsible? Read all our coverage right here.
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The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople has been in Rome this week, meeting with Pope Leo XIV before meeting with Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
The relatively low profile, or at least muted reception, of the two audiences itself speaks volumes about the tenure of Bartholomew, who has served as patriarch for 35 years, over the course of which major ecumenical gestures between East and West have gone from historic to almost quotidian.
At 86 years old, he shows no signs of slowing down and, with the Russian Orthodox Church continuing to drive a wedge in the Eastern communion, his leadership remains very much in demand. But what are the prospects and options for a big breakthrough with the patriarch? And can the momentum he has built continue past his reign?
You can read my whole analysis right here.
If you love reading The Pillar, you should be listening to Sunday School, our weekly readings podcast. Each week, Scripture scholar Scott Powell breaks down the Sunday readings. Whether you’re a priest preparing your homily, or a Catholic wanting to go deeper with Scripture, Sunday School is worth a listen. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
A liturgical Rorsach report
The bishops of Panama were in Rome last week for their ad limina visit. It is not, you would think, an event to generate much in the way of international discussion. And yet…
And yet the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments released a pro forma statement following the Panamanian visitation which managed to get a lot of people worked up. All things being equal, and whatever the drafters’ own intentions, I thought it read like a very neutral rundown of the issues discussed, many of which would be familiar to Catholics discussing the liturgy in American dioceses.
The bishops and the dicastery talked about, inter alia, that “the need was emphasized to prevent any instrumentalization of the sacraments: in the case of Marriage, a certain commercial logic; in the case of Reconciliation, individualism and a tendency towards psychologizing the sacrament, which risk obscuring its nature as an encounter of the penitent with the Father of Mercies.” So far, so self-explanatory, I hope we can all agree.
“The Bishops also stressed the importance of formation, particularly in relation to the parallel information circulating through blogs and opinions of various kinds, acknowledging the difficulty of developing adequate formation programs.”
“The discussion then turned to liturgical singing, which must be authentically in keeping with the criteria of sacred music, without expressing individualism, mere emotionalism, or local folklore. The need was also recalled for the texts of hymns to contain doctrinally sound content, free of concepts borrowed from other religions.”
This one brought a “hell yeah” to my lips, having just recently been subjected to a rendition of “All Are Welcome” during a Sunday Mass, despite the USCCB branding the obnoxious little ditty as doctrinally unsound years ago.
But then the DDW readout got a bit spicy:
“The dialogue also brought to light the danger of extremism in the liturgical sphere and of the instrumentalization of the Eucharistic celebration by certain groups of the faithful. These groups tend to provoke division and confusion by raising issues such as receiving Communion kneeling and in the hand, or the use of the veil by women. It was reaffirmed that the Eucharist is the sacrament of unity and cannot become an object of contention.”
That’s when just about everyone who read the DDW release appears to have gone full tonto. So let’s talk about it.
Everyone I have seen reacting to the report seems to have taken these passages very personally indeed, especially if their tastes tend towards the traditional. “How dare the dicastery,” I have seen and heard it asked, “brand the wearing of a veil as ‘extremism’?” … “A Vatican department thinks taking Communion kneeling is an act of division? We must be in the end times!”
I think everyone needs to just take a breath and re-read what the report actually said, look at how people have reacted, and consider that maybe, just maybe, the DDW have a point here.