Please go look at Amy Welborn’s photo essay on the whole new pope business. Unless, like my father, you won’t get any of the pop culture jokes because you don’t watch those shows. And even he will get the point about “Did you NEVER read a freakin’ GOSPEL before March 13?” without knowing the setting.
Here you go. One of the most interesting parts is Weigel on why Bergoglio was the runner up in 2005 – and who was using him against Ratzinger. And why they didn’t vote for him this time.
I’ve had a chance to read some things now, including a few articles and blog posts written before the LAST conclave, where Bergoglio was also a strong candidate. According to some unconfirmed (I believe) stories he was the final candidate beside Ratzinger before Benedict XVI’s election – so there was some coverage about him then.
A piece by Sandro Magister about then Archbishop Bergoglio on baptism is the most interesting thing I’ve come across: Go forth and baptize, the wager of the Argentinian church.
In some parts of Europe, baptizing a child has already become the exception, requiring an unconventional decision. But now, the number of unbaptized infants, children, young people, adults is also rising in Argentina.
This decline in the practice of baptism is the result of a weakening of family ties and a withdrawal from the Church. Some of the clergy have drawn this conclusion: where they see the signs of faith being extinguished, they maintain that it is right to decline to administer the sacraments.
But in Argentina today, the Church authorities are moving in the opposite direction.
Already in 2002, the archdiocese of Buenos Aires and the diocese in the surrounding area had published an instruction urgently recommending the baptism of both children and adults, and explaining how to overcome resistance to the celebration of the rite.
But now the bishops of the area have returned to the task with a booklet entitled “El bautismo en clave misionera,” which reproduces the 2002 instruction and supplements it with other guidelines for parish pastors.
So beginning this year, the most conscientious pastors are regularly holding “baptism days,” on which they administer the sacrament to children and adults in situations of poverty or with broken families, who have been helped to overcome their own uncertainties and those of the people around them.
His approach speaks to the need of missionizing and evangelizing -and the need to think hard before rigidly putting formal barriers like a 3 month sequence of classes (not to mention the expectation of parties and receptions) between people and sacraments.
This is probably an interesting symptom for understanding what kind of pope Francis will be.
via Father Zuhlsdorf, who has a reflection of his own.
Here’s John Allen’s profile. Useful.
Wow – three firsts – first Pope to take the name Francis, first Jesuit, first pope from the Southern Hemisphere (or the Global South to use the current term). Of course, he’s of Italian parents. I don’t know what’s more interesting. Maybe the idea that the first Jesuit pope took the name Francis instead of Ignatius?
This certainly seems like the easiest way to open to the Global South – choose someone who might even be a native speaker of Italian! That will assuage some national pride there – and if the agenda for the next papacy includes tangling with the bureaucracy (and everyone seems to think it does) one must be able to speak the language of the back stairs.
Check out the Paddy Power odds on the next pope! I have no idea – but they currently have Richard Dawkins at 666/1.
I saw this on Google news and thought “It’s not April yet!”
And I think his statement to the consistory (Father Zuhlsdorf has it here) calls for a younger successor.
Archbishop Gomez takes action:
Archbishop Jose Gomez said retired Cardinal Roger Mahony will “no longer have any administrative or public duties,” while Mahony’s former top adviser on sex-abuse issues, Thomas Curry, has stepped down as a regional bishop.
A little more here. A lot more here. Accountability in one diocese.
Pray for those in Purgatory!
Monument in the North Street Cemetary, Geneva. The inscription (broken up kind of weirdly), SIMPLY TO THY CROSS I CLING.
Ok – AppleTV has brought me a good number of surprises so far. But tonight, a showery night with rain sounds outside, my “recommended for you” queue pulled up Brideshead Revisited. That music!
He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously, for days beyond number, had been suddenly cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name which was so familiar to me, a conjuror’s name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantom of those haunted late years began to take flight.
I’ve been teaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher this week in Early Medieval Art and Architecture, without ever explaining that I love Helena more than Krautheimer, even if Krautheimer is the background I teach out of.
I need to read the novel again before I start typing out quotations. “The women are still doing what they do before they come downstairs. Sloth has undone them – we’re away.”
I was trying to upload a photo to illustrate my post, but WordPress is not cooperating. Oh, well – my ARTH 101 students turned in a homework on Friday about crosses in the graveyard behind Houghton House. They’re pretty good! I’m encouraged for the semester.
They’re pretty good that is except that most of them lump the dead together as “followers of the Christian religion,” as if there is such a discrete organization. SIGH.
Venere.com found me a really comfortable bed and breakfast near Termini – very comfortable! As in if you need somewhere very near the station sometime, check with me. But all good things come to an end, so I’m packing.
Last night I found out that the Corpus Christi procession from St. John Lateran to Sta. Maria Maggiore has NOT been transferred to Sunday. It was worth the wait. I’ll have pictures later (grrr).
I’m not sure if this is an iPad + WordPress thing, or a Flickr thing, or what – but I’m having troubles. Go to my Flickr account and look at the Isola Bella pictures. I promise I’ve tried all sorts of ways to post them here!
I had 2 very pleasant days in Padua — the Arena/Scrovegni Chapel the first evening (they weren’t overbooked – I went in with a party of 15, when 25 is the usual size). I museumed and duomoed and visited the Shrine of St. Anthony. My. That’s really something. I didn’t bother with Venice. My foot was hurting too much (damned gout – I have ibuprofened it into submission).
Today is Monday, and all the other museums would have been closed anyway, so I turned this into a travel day and ended up in Arezzo — hometown of Piero della Francesca, Aretino, and Vasari (at least). I was lucky, because it also rained all day (at least after I got to the Padua train station). Trenitalia did one of those very annoying track changes TWICE – both in Padua and in Bologna I had to change platforms at the last minute. I brought too much luggage. I bought some souvenirs in Padua, but they’re quite light (Father Baker, I bought you THE tackiest St Anthony object ever, but it was not part of the problem). Then I watched it pour from inside a nice train seat.
In Arezzo, the hotel loaned me an umbrella and I had my windbreaker. Lucky for me! As I started up the hill to San Francesco (and the Invention of the True Coss) the heavens opened. POURing rain. Hail! Really! I huddled in a church porch for about 20 minutes.
Eventually I continued up the hill and saw the frescoes. YOW. Giotto on Satuday and Piero on Monday. Visual living doesn’t get a lot better!
Last night at the Easter Vigil we not only had the new translation (yay, bees!), but we had a seminarian to sing it. He did a really good job. There were no baptisms this year, so the whole thing went a little faster.
First they sell the Crystal Cathedral (sic) to the Diocese of Orange. Which they had to do because of money problems, of course.
Now the congregation is fracturing.
The Crystal Cathedral’s senior pastor announced Sunday that she was leaving to start a new church, a move that appears likely to split the congregation.
“This is the last Sunday we will be worshiping in this building,” Pastor Sheila Schuller Coleman told congregants during an emotional 11 a.m. service in the 10,000-pane glass cathedral, designed by architect Phillip Johnson.
But even her parents aren’t going with her!
“We will bless her faith pursuits as we have blessed all our children, but we will not be moving with her to the new location nor are we willing, at this time, to commit to participating in worship at the Crystal Cathedral,” according to the statement. “How we will express ourselves in worship remains up in the air.”
