Rod Dreher

Truth Quest or Happy Quest?

Corrupt Cardinal Giddy As A Schoolgirl

By Rod Dreher • March 17, 2013, 12:18 AM

Rorate Caeli, the Catholic traditionalist blog, notes that Cardinal Mahony is tweeting like a drunken sorority girl, so giddy is he about the new pope. They say:

@cardinalmahony What’s “Franciscan” or “humble” about your diocese bleeding another $10 million FOR YOUR FAULTS while you’re in Conclave???

— Rorate Caeli (@RorateCaeli) March 16, 2013

Amen, brothers, amen.

BUT … praise God, for the first time since 1054, an Orthodox leader — the Ecumenical Patriarch, no less — will attend a papal inauguration mass.

UPDATE: Go, Ross Douthat, go! Excerpt:

If Catholicism has a future in the Western world as something more than a foil, an Other and a symbol of the Benighted Past We Have Safely Left Behind, it needs its leaders to set an example that proves these voices wrong. Before anything else, that requires a generation of priests and bishops who hold themselves to a higher standard — higher than their immediate predecessors, and higher than the world.

It also requires more from the new pope than an evocative name and a humble posture. Catholicism needs someone like Pius V, the 16th-century pontiff at whose tomb Francis prayed on the day after his elevation — a disciplinarian whose housecleaning helped further the Counter-Reformation. The Vatican needs purgation at the top, to enable real renewal from below. And the church as a whole needs to offer and embody proof — in Rome, the local parish and everywhere in between — that the alternative Catholicism preaches can actually be lived.

Actions, not words. Actions.

Posted in Christianity. Tagged Cardinal Mahony, Catholic, Catholicism, Rorate Caeli.

21 Responses to Corrupt Cardinal Giddy As A Schoolgirl

JohnG says:

March 17, 2013 at 1:32 am

Let us pray that if Pope Francis decides to divest the Church of any of its riches he finds a straighter way than Mahoney did. Who writes his stuff anyway? The Onion?

And that’s two hits in a row for Douthat on the new Pope.
Rambler88 says:

March 17, 2013 at 6:13 am

Actions, not words. Actions.

And symbolic actions won’t do.

When Pope Francis called for “a poor church for the poor”, I wonder what he means by “poor”. Does he mean real “poor”, like poor laypeople live with, or symbolic “poor”?

Real poor people are not just painfully short of money, as are many or most clergy. Real poor people can’t figure on lifetime meal tickets, however scanty. Ditto healthcare. They’re not automatically exempt from taxes or conscription. When they organize for some common purpose, or start businesses, they don’t get exemptions from certain laws, for instance expensive labor laws. They don’t get courtesy exemptions from other laws. When you’re real “poor”, you have no cushions. One misfortune could put you over the edge. Laws, especially in our legalistic, big-government society, are pregnant with misfortune for the poor, and not just for the poor. When you get close enough to the edge to look, you find that most of the alleged social cushions provided by the government are not for the responsible poor. Those cushions, whatever their original rationale may have been, are now there to buy the votes of the permanent welfare class. As they ratcheted up, they pretty much created the permanent welfare class as a voting bloc that could demand even more–tailored specifically for them, since there’s only so much money to go around. The responsible poor, who persist in doing the things needful to try and stand on their own feet, can no longer give the required answers on the application forms.

With the exception of being short of money, all of the above is true of the middle class (except for government employees, of course). Many in the middle class are badly short of money too. The issue of uncertainty and insecurity is an in-your-face issue even for many in the middle class these days. This is not uncertainty about being able to hang onto the luxuries of life, or even to the inessentials. For some, it’s uncertainty about winding up in the street. The more fortunate majority looks at those who wind up ruined and think “There but for the grace of God (or blind luck) go I”. For the responsible poor and middle class, uncertainty hits the birthrate and marriage rate hard too.

If Francis were to lead his church toward real “poor”, including uncertainty and excluding privilege, that would be an exercise in humility that would make a biiiiiiiiiig impression on everyone, including many “pagan” moderns who are badly worried or actually on the skids. “Pagan” moderns–and perhaps also Christian moderns who have lost faith in organized religion–are not impressed by guilt raps from clergy whose material circumstances allow them a remarkable degree of insouciance even in the absence of cash. Nor are they impressed by “spirituality” that is always accompanied by exceptional privilege.
Tony says:

March 17, 2013 at 8:43 am

Rod, I loved Ross’s article, but what does the fact that Cardinal Baloney likes him have to do with anything? A lot of bad people admire good people, that only proves the power of goodness
Fr. Frank says:

March 17, 2013 at 9:48 am

I can’t read Cdl Mahony’s mind, but I suspect his tweets are feigned praise. I would imagine he’s scared of what could happen to him under the new pontificate; thus, the nauseating “See, see, I voted for you! I’m your good buddy!” To which, I confess wishing His Holiness would reply, “Thank you for your support. Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect 660 million dollars.”
grendel says:

March 17, 2013 at 10:28 am

hopefully not the same actions though. Perhaps it’s my Lutheran background, but Pious V and religious intolerance go hand in hand. The man vastly expanded the Inquisition. He enthusiastically advocated and approved the torture and execution of religious dissidents. He even made a special point of attending the tortures and executions personally. So yes, Ross is right he is was a strict disciplinarian, but I rather hope the current pope does not follow in his footsteps.
JohnG says:

March 17, 2013 at 11:12 am

Cardinal Baloney! God forgive me but I love it. He makes caritas difficult. Perhaps that is God’s purpose for him now.

I checked out Mahony’s blog this morning. Since his infamous outbursts after being disciplined, he has stressed the theme of forgiveness. He has God’s forgiveness, why can’t he have man’s? Why can’t Church authorities be more like Jesus and less like the Pharisees and be content to say “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and stop sinning,” and not be obsessed with his past but hopeful for his future.

But he neither ignores the victims of the child-rape scandals (though it is easy to lose sight of his concern for their suffering in the midst of wallowing in his own), nor his own problems with humility.

Using the three types of humility described by Ignatius Loyola he can say of the first two, “In my own life, I certainly cannot suppose those levels of humility ‘attained,’” and of the third, “But through God’s grace, I am for the first time realizing that I should be praying for the very things from which I cringe, the disgrace I abhor, the fool that I seem.” He ignores that the third flows from the first two and his failure there makes glorying in the third seem like a twisted kind of pride.

He can see that “What makes Jesus’ suffering so different, and so important for us, is that he lived out Isaiah’s prophecy fully: ‘…he did not open his mouth…’” but he can’t shut his own.
Do Tyrants Need Excuses says:

March 17, 2013 at 12:09 pm

To Rambler88:

You have my most sincere empathy, but playing the victim game does no one no favors. Our Lord, was an innocent man put to death because he he preached love. Did he ever claim to be the victim, did the apostles ever claim he was the victim, did the martyrs claim victim hood. To endure our persecutors with a faith in Christ that works through love is the most powerful act of defiance any human can make. I am sorry if my position seems callous or dismissive, that is not my intention. But, if the change you and I want are to be realized in this world, we have to resolve to be so faithful and loving the clergy and the hierarchs feel shame for the weakness of their witness. We must become the spark that ignites the zeal in their hearts. We hear the cries of agony, we can no longer expect or hope someone else will answer them. We must become the first response, if only to give hope to those in distress. God bless you; God preserve you; may the labor of your witness bear many fruits.
Consequences2 says:

March 17, 2013 at 12:21 pm

I’d have a lot more — well, any — faith in revealed religion if sacred texts contained mysterious anachronisms, things that referred to developments thousands of years hence, dutifully preserved in the Word until their purpose became obvious. Things like “Thou Shalt Not Tweet”, for example.

Have the folks at Rorate Caeli decided they were perhaps a bit hasty in rending their garments over the new pope or do they just hate Mahony more? Mean girls…
Richard M says:

March 17, 2013 at 1:52 pm

The underhanded shots at Benedict XVI are bad enough, especially now that it’s safe for Cdl. Mahony to belittle the man he tried to derail in the 2005 now that it’s safe to do so.

But it’s especially risible to hear a man rant about the need for a poor church and poor vestments, when no prelate in Church history has done so much to impoverish a diocese, both financially ($670 million and counting!!) and spiritually through years of protecting and enabling child rapists under his care.

A good start for the Holy Father would be to dispatch his newest (unwanted, I suspect) cheerleader off to a monastery to work out his penance in solitude. And to send Cardinals O’Brien, Daneels and Law along with him.
LaurelhurstLiberal says:

March 17, 2013 at 2:21 pm

I would be (pleasantly) shocked if Mahony had anything to worry about from the new Pope. Cracking down on liberation theologists is one thing, cracking down on corruption in high places is quite another.

I’ve been reading a rather good book by Andrew Roberts about World War II called “The Storm of War”. I just finished the section about the Japanese capture of Singapore, which concludes that the British Empire in the Far East was hollow, resting on a centuries of tradition, pomp, and a splendid show, and couldn’t stand up to an aggressive push by the Imperial Japanese army.

I can’t help but see a certain parallel with the Roman Catholic church, with its splendid tradition and impressive visuals but shaky leadership.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

March 17, 2013 at 2:29 pm

The Counter-Reformation would never have happened without the Reformation. Iron sharpens iron, to look at things on their most positive side. But grendel is correct that what the Romans actually did involved a good deal of slaughter and torture, as well as cleaning up their own act.

The RC church is not going to dwindle away. It has plenty of inertia behind it, millions of believers, it obviously appeals to the religious sensibilities of a fair percentage of humans, and it should be there for them. Of course if it did disappear, all the other branches of Christianity would have to lean entirely on their own merits, rather than, as some do, on the fact that “we’re not Rome.”

On the whole, this Bishop of Rome sounds like he may do some good in a worldly sense, which is all I’m entitled to comment on. Whether he allows married men to serve as priests and priests to marry, whether he finds a sound Scriptural basis for women to be ordained (or a basis in the history of the early church), is between him, God, and his fellow Catholics. But if he feeds the poor, and asks why they are poor, this republican Protestant will quietly applaud.
NRF says:

March 17, 2013 at 5:05 pm

FIRE, defrock, and excommunicate every archbishop, bishop, or priest who knew about a child molesting priest and covered it up. EVERY one.

Then report them in writing to the police, no matter how long ago the molestation and the cover-up.

Until then, I’ll never trust or respect “my” church again.

These strange, incomplete, arrogant, emotionally and psychologically and socially stunted “men” whom we call bishops and priests — it’s time for a housecleaning. And the new priests should be normal, well-rounded MEN who have, or strive to have, wives and children, like the Protestant clergy.

Now let’s see how long it takes for some “devout” jackass to tell me how I’m not a real Catholic anyway or how I “lack faith” or “lack forgiveness” or how I’m “full of hatred.” That’s exactly the kind of attitude that continues to drive people away from the church, compounding the disgust we feel over the massive molestation of children at the hands of priests.
Charles Cosimano says:

March 17, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Ross needs to figure out that in our culture there is no such thing as a “higher standard.” There are only different standards and no one outside the camp is going to be very impressed by anything the Pope does.

The Catholic Church will remain what it has been since the Reformation, culturally and intellectually insignifant.
Richard Parker says:

March 17, 2013 at 6:21 pm

@Consequences2

“I’d have a lot more — well, any — faith in revealed religion if sacred texts contained mysterious anachronisms, things that referred to developments thousands of years hence…”

Surely you jest and tug on our legs; anachronisms prove the falsity of a document, not its truth.
NRF says:

March 17, 2013 at 10:27 pm

P.S. and next time, how about a pope who less than seventy freeking years old??? Are they TRYING to look as decrepit and out of touch as possible, picking men this old time after time?
Blindfella says:

March 17, 2013 at 10:34 pm

Anyone who doubts the reality of a schism in the Roman Church need only witness the spectacle of a senior Cardinal mocking and ridiculing a living pontiff (emeritus) via “twitter”.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

March 18, 2013 at 1:09 pm

I must admit, I’m a little worried about Francis praying at the tomb of Pius V. I just ran across an old note to remember one of the most under-celebrated holidays on the calendar: April 27, 1576, the day that Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth I of England.

Elizabeth paid about as much attention as Charles Cosimano would. Pius cemented the endurance of the Reformation in Christianity, ensuring that British North America and the growing power of the British Navy would be firmly behind a theology that could have dwindled away into a quaint sect in the backwoods of northeastern and north central Europe.

A good result… but not an act to recommend its author as model.
Charles Cosimano says:

March 19, 2013 at 3:27 am

This talk of helping the poor reminds me of an event back in the 80s. The Conference of Catholic Bishops put out a statement involving that, I don’t remember the details, and there was a Catholic theologian being interviewed on the radio one night in Chicago about it. And the host asked that in the light of the statement, when the theologian’s daughter had to choose between giving the money to the poor and buying a pair of designer jeans, what would she do. And the theologian, in a display of honesty rare in that profession, said, ruefully, “She’ll buy the designer jeans.”

Another thing in all of this talk of cleaning out the Vatican is a line from Andrew Jackson, “Mr. Justice Marshall has made the law, let Mr. Justice Marshall enforce it.” What will the Pope do when he issues a decree and the Curia simply ignores it? And even if it doesn’t, so what? It will still be a collection of oddly costumed foreigners living under the illusion that they matter.

That is why the Catholic Church will remain the ineffective Other, the foil that serves more as comic relief than any serious opposition to the culture of the West, not as merely a symbol of that which we have left behind centuries ago and good riddance to it, but also as something that is taken seriously in the global south, and no one cares what the global south thinks about anything.

Oh and Siarlys is all too right. By excommunicating Elizabeth I, Pius the Evil probably did more to destroy the intellectual and cultural power of the Catholic Church than Julius II and Leo X combined, for it was the guns of the British navy that protected the Great Heretic, Sir Isaac Newton and, as Jacob Bronowski so aptly put it, “by the time he was through it no longer mattered what any Pope thought about anything.” And it still doesn’t.
David J. White says:

March 19, 2013 at 9:12 am

Another unfortunate result of Pius V’s excommunication of Elizabeth I was that English Catholics — who might, under other circumstances, been able to carve out a kind of grudging toleration from the government — came under automatic suspicion of treason for the mere fact of being Catholic and thus owing “allegiance” to a foreign, and hostile, prince.
David J. White says:

March 19, 2013 at 9:20 am

P.S. and next time, how about a pope who less than seventy freeking years old??? Are they TRYING to look as decrepit and out of touch as possible, picking men this old time after time?

No, NRF, they are trying to ensure that they don’t have another 25+ year pontificate. John Paul II was, I believe, 58 when he was elected. Not everyone thinks that such a long pontificate is a good idea. Of course, Benedict deliberately set a modern precedent by resigning, so that electing a younger man wouldn’t automatically practically guarantee a long pontificate; but it looks like the Cardinal Electors didn’t want to take a chance.

Over the last 150 we have seen a number of oddities, in historical terms, with regard to the papacy, things we have come to regard as normal, even though in historical terms they are atypical. One is the cult of personality surrounding the papacy, which reached its apogee in the “media rock star” pontificate of John Paul II. Another is pontificates that are, in historical terms, unusually long. The three longest pontificates on record occurred in the last 150 years (Pius IX, 1846-1878; Leo XIII, 1878-1903; John Paul II, 1978-2005), and three others during that same period lasted for 15 years or more (Pius XI, Pius XII, Paul VI). Returning to pontificates lasting ten years or less would actually be returning to something more historically typical.
Siarlys Jenkins says:

March 21, 2013 at 10:49 am

I agree that England, as well as English Catholics, would have been better off under a grudging toleration, rather than suspicion of treason for being Catholic. But, this is the natural result of the Pope being, indeed, a foreign prince, rather than the leader of one variant of Christianity, who happens to be based in central Italy. Fortunately, with the Pope having no divisions, there is much less need to suspect Catholics of being agents of a foreign power. Bishop Burke tried to cast the church as an agent of treason to the United States, but Rome didn’t exactly made a crusade of it.