Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (2025)

The Impossible Irony of Vatican I

Harvard Theological Review, 2020

It is hard to imagine the rhetorical dexterity and scholarly finesse it takes to transform the facts of a nineteenth-century church council—particularly one described as “lumbering and fumbling” (119) and marked by an “excruciating tedium” (163)— into a gripping good read. Yet, with Vatican I: The Council and the Making of the Ultramontane Church, John O’Malley has done just that. In his new book, O’Malley takes us from the early years of Pius IX’s papacy (which began with indications of a promising liberalism), through the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, the proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, and the infamous Syllabus of Errors, to the convocation of the First Vatican Council on 8 December 1869 as an expression of hardened resistance against the problems of rationalism, materialism, and religious indifference posed by the modern world. With characteristic economy and clarity, O’Malley tells the story of Vatican I and the making of the ultramontane church—and, most importantly, why it matters. “ ‘The past,’ ” he reminds us, citing Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun, both in the epigraph to the book and in its final sentence, “ ‘is never dead. It’s not even past.’ ” To what extent and in which ways the specter of Vatican I haunts the Catholic Church of today are questions that linger at the margins of the book, questions never answered directly by the author but posed, persistently, to the reader. Vatican I, which joins David Kertzer’s The Pope Who Would Be King (2018), John McGreevy’s American Jesuits and the World (2016), and Nancy Schultz’s Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle (2011) to fill out the picture of nineteenth-century Catholicism,

In the Wreckage of an Imperious and Imperial Papacy

Karol Wojtyla was elected Pope in 1978, took the name of John Paul II, ruled the Church for 27 years until his death in 2005. He appointed Joseph Ratzinger Cardinal-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1981, which he led for twenty-four years, he himself was elected Pope in 2005, took the name of Benedict XVI until his resignation in 2013. There was much continuity-long and close association-between the two papacies, much overlap in orientation, policy, and governance so that for the practical purposes of this paper, they will be considered one continuous papacy. I characterize this papacy as imperious, marked by arrogant assurance, because it eliminated without much ado all aspirations, manifestations, and instrumentalities of collegiality, a core doctrine in the governance of the Church that was taught by Vatican II. It therefore is also imperial, characteristic of an empire or an emperor, 1 which befits the Roman Catholic Church as the restoration of Rome (Heather 2013), but again which Vatican II tried to correct with its image of the Church as the entire Pilgrim People of God. The wreckage from the imperious and imperial Woytyla-Ratzinger papacy is what now confronts Pope Francis, especially as it presents itself and afflicts the Catholic Church in the United States. Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen In the wreckage left in the Catholic Church by the Wojtyla-Ratzinger papacy, the case of Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, archbishop of Seattle from 1975 to 1991, stands out because of the reasons his life and career were destroyed, for the tactics used in his persecution, and for the purposes he was sacrificed. It happened, Kenneth Briggs (1992) told us, in "the year that shook Catholic America," between the notification to Rev. Charles E. Curran in August 1986 that he was being stripped of his right to each as a Catholic theologian to Pope John Paul II's visit, hailed as a "superstar," to the United States in September 1987. It included, among other things, the dismissal of Rev. John J. McNeill from the Jesuit order for speaking out against the Church's stand on homosexuality and the issuance of arrest warrants for American Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus for his role in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. He, however, flourished under John Paul II. One feels the heaviness of heart as ecclesiastical authoritarianism imposes its will on a Church most recently declared to be the People of God. This is the feeling I get from reading this immensely interesting, painfully researched, and very well written book by John McCoy who first followed this story as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and headed the communications departments of the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle and World Vision

The Power of Description. Review of "In the Closet of the Vatican" by Frédéric Martel - Syndicate, January 2019

MATER ET CAPUT OMNIUM ECCLESIARUM: Visual Strategies in the Rivalry between San Giovanni in Laterano and San Pietro in Vaticano

The Basilica of Saint John Lateran to 1600, 2020

Dedicated to Sible de Blaauw, a bit too late for his sixty-fifth birthday In October 2014 a conference was held in Mannheim on 'The Popes and the Unity of the Latin World'. The papers from this conference have recently been published under the title Die Päpste: Amt und Herrschaft in Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance. 1 The book cover shows the silhouette of Saint Peter's basilica combined with Arnolfo di Cambio's statue of Pope Boniface VIII as one of the most famous representatives of the medieval papacy. But why the dome of Saint Peter's? Why not San Giovanni in Laterano, which is still the cathedral of the bishop of Rome and therefore stricto sensu the head and mother of all the other churches in Rome and the world? The honorary title OMNIVM VRBIS ET ORBIS ECCLESIARVM MATER ET CAPVT was officially assigned to the Lateran basilica by papal bull in 1372 and can be read still today in an inscription on the eighteenth-century façade of Alessandro Galilei (Fig. 15.1). 2 The fact that the organisers of the Mannheim conference did not even comment on their choice of Saint Peter's basilica for the conference flyer and the book cover proves the close and unquestioned link between papacy and Saint Peter's in our perception today. The basilica of Saint Peter's actually seems to have turned into a cypher for the pope and for papacy as an institution. It is Saint Peter's that is regarded as the 'most important church in Western Christendom' and the 'most significant religious site in Western Europe', at least in the eyes of those colleagues who in March 2010 held a conference about

HST 5845: History of the Papacy (Fall 2018)

2018

Using class visits to sites as diverse as catacombs, Roman ruins, and Christian churches this class examines how the entire fabric of the western, if not the global world, is intertwined with the 2000 year old history of the Catholic Church and the papacy. In doing so it examines the major events, ideas, persons, and places that have influenced the evolution of the Church, beginning with the origins of the Church as a religious sect and political movement and ending with the establishment of the Vatican City State in the twentieth century. It concludes by discussing the future of the faith as Christians numbers decline in the wake of a rising secularism and a resurgent Islam.

Vicars of Christ : Popes, Power, and Politics in the Modern World

1997

Vicars of Christ: Popes, Power, and Politics in the Modern World (review)

The Catholic Historical Review, 2001

Sense and Nonsense of Pius IX The History, Meaning, and Triumph of Moderate Interpretations of Papal Infallibility during and after Vatican I (2016)

My purpose in writing is to offer ordinary Christians and experienced pastors a way of coming to grips with the heart-breaking divisions and monumental uncertainty and confusion that exist among our bishops and among our family members regarding the sense and nonsense being said about papal infallibility. Protestants vigorously condemn this doctrine on the grounds that the faith of the church is declared in the bible and that, accordingly, everyone in the church, the pope included, is bound to submit their judgment to God’s infallible judgment as expressed in that book. Many Protestants suppose that Catholics have taken the extreme and unorthodox position of upholding the pope’s declarations as binding even if and when they find no warrant in the Sacred Scriptures. Even Catholics themselves are mired in misunderstandings. . . . For this reason, it is imperative to examine the history of the formulation of papal infallibility. I have undertaken, therefore, to write a brief narrative which explores the conduct of the bishops before, during, and after Vatican I against the backdrop of the social unrest of the nineteenth century. In order to focus and make manageable the vast amount of materials pertinent to this question, special attention shall be given to the activity of Archbishop Purcell of Cincinnati during and after the council. During the council, we will thus discover how Archbishop Purcell, with his keen historical understanding and his dedication to the American form of government, was able to identify and neutralize exaggerations upheld by other bishops speaking in favor of infallibility at Vatican I. After the council, we will discover how Archbishop Purcell was able publically to defend a moderate view of papal infallibility against the exaggerations found among Protestants and Catholics alike. In this way, we shall find our way toward a clear and balanced assessment of what is and what is not to be included in an informed assessment of papal infallibility. We shall have sorted out the sense from the nonsense. My book ends with an examination of how Pope Francis is leading the Church toward implementing an understanding of papal authority that would make Archbishop Purcell proud. Full text and end notes are available here: https://payhip.com/b/M7JG Persons interested in presenting a short review can do so on the webpage found in Amazon.com. A full-length review is welcomed. Please contact the author at sales@churchonfire.net in order to obtain a full copy of the text in MS Word format.

Guarino, Thomas G.: The Disputed Teachings of Vatican II. Continuity and Reversal in Catholic Doctrine; Wicks, Jared: Investigating Vatican II. Its Theologians, Ecumenical Turn, and Biblical Commitment

2020

The Pilgrim Pope at the Time of the Contagion

2020

The author tries to understand if the act performed in Rome, Sunday, March 15, 2020, by Pope Francis, who went on pilgrimage to the basilica of St. Mary Major to venerate Our Lady Salus populi romani and the church of St. Marcellus al Corso to pay homage to the Crucifix, is to be ascribed to the category of devotional or penitential pilgrimage. In communicative terms, what Pope Francis did in Rome is not an irrational, unconscious, impromptu action. Pope Bergoglio does not seem to put his person in the foreground. His constant conviction is to address everyone, without distinction of faith. His choice to go alone to St. Mary Major and St. Marcellus and his act of veneration of the Salus populi romani and the St. Marcellus Crucifix in St. Peter's Square on March 27, 2020, respond to the same project of wide-ranging evangelization, which does not distinguish between believers and non-believers.