Romanian Rain on Francis’s Common Easter Parade

Pope Francis’s idea of launching a “common Easter” hit a road block when the Orthodox Patriarch of Romania voiced objections. His primary objection was exactly the condition Vatican II set 61 years ago in the long-dormant appendix to Sacronsanctum Concilium that Francis wants to resurrect: there needs to be consensus among other Christian communities (primarily, the Orthodox). The Romanian pointed out that doesn’t exist and the mechanisms to effectuate it are still aborning.

I recently wrote about why Francis’s idea is a bad one (here). In summary: It doesn’t address the real underlying problem—calendar disparity—that owes to what I consider a flawed Orthodox approach to faith and reason as well as their inability to speak with one voice. Abandoning the nexus between Easter and Passover, a theologically significant point which the current formula for calculating Easter largely maintains, in favor of an arbitrarily picked Sunday in April is bad theology. Forging forward when the largest national Orthodox church — the Russian — is likely not on board, is a recipe for disaster, religiously and politically, especially in Ukraine.

How Francis intended to finesse the Council’s stipulation about pan-Christian “consensus” — especially absent the Russians — would have been interesting to see. Would he have “popified” the Patriarch of Constantinople and claimed Bartholomew’s agreement sufficed? Would we have been told by the anti-clerical Pope that a “consensus” existed and so we should afford religious assent to the clerical decree?

The Romanian Patriarch noted that efforts at a pan-Orthodox Synod, where such a consensus might be forged, are still in their very earliest stages. That too should challenge the narrative which pretends Francis’s synodality is just what the East has been doing for centuries, despite their denial of that claim. The Orthodox are taking their effort at pan-Orthodox synodality seriously; you can’t create a synod, especially an adapted one, just by telling the Vatican gentil uomini to rearrange chairs in circles on the synodal deck. Although reference to the common Easter proposal shows up in the last Synod’s final document, it would be an interesting piece of research to see just how much that idea even surfaced in the endless talk sessions that preceded the synod. That might show how much the final product is one orchestrated from above.

On the Ecclesiology Front

The neo-ultramontane “Where Peter Is” website features an article (here) by Italian ecclesiology professor Rafael Luciani, the gist of which is that synodality à la Francesco is the rightful development of Lumen gentium’s teaching about the Church as “People of God.” Many things immediately struck me about the piece. One was that it explains the absence of this concept in the first 50 years after the Council as the consequence of the “interruption” of its “reception” under Popes St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, a process only now recovered. See, two Popes who were actually part of the Council and among the greatest Catholic philosophers and theologians of the 20^th century were “interruptions” while the current ecclesiastical leadership has finally recovered the right track. Another was its claims of the Church’s “historicity,” which completely ignores what historically happened in the last half century in order arguably to cut a novel concept of “synodality” out of whole cloth and attempt to sew it to the Conciliar fabric. Seems rather that this is the latest incarnation of ignoring what the Council actually wrote in favor of the ever novel and evanescent “spirit” of the Council. Seeing what has been done in the name of that “spirit” since 1965, I’d call an exorcist.

Is the Vatican Tone-Deaf?

Two items that might make the case: The Vatican Bank recently fired a couple. Their offense? They got married. That violates the “fraternization” policies of the Bank, intended to staunch “corruption.” Globalist “best practice,” fixated on procedures, maintains such policies defeat nepotism. I am not necessarily convinced. Yes, if she is Bank President and he is Vice President of Loans, the potential is there. But average, operational bank people? Tellers? If people don’t meet in the workplace, where are they supposed to meet? Bars? Nightclubs? Online? In church (maybe an option in the Vatican but not likely in much of the rest of the world)? Such “rules” promote corporate efficiency and check appearance boxes about self-policing, but they subordinate the person to the business. Is that what the Church should be doing? Are you really going to tell me that relatively modest-level employees of the Vatican Bank can’t be kept account of? The Vatican wants to promote marriage. But Pope Francis approved the bank rules. So, will he waive them for this couple (probably with a lecture about how we need to be “pastoral?”) or keep them in place, since he approved them?

The same week that this story hit the press, the Pillar announced that the brother of Cardinal Angelo Becciu and a local bishop were indicted in an Italian court for embezzlement of church funds. Cardinal Becciu’s own two-year trial for financial abuse, resulting in conviction, was marked by a hot-and-cold Francis: not giving Becciu the testimony he wanted but going to celebrate Holy Thursday Evening Mass in the cardinal’s apartment. Seems to me that the Vatican’s banking problems are found less with people who took vows of marriage and more with those who took vows of celibacy.

Speaking of celibacy, the Pope concluded a Vatican meeting on children February 3 with an announcement he is writing a document on children’s rights. The photos of the meeting show him speaking, with Al Gore looking on. Sorry, but I had to guffaw. Does nobody in the 12-year-old amateur hour known as Bergoglio’s staff see any incongruity with the Pope writing a document about children’s rights and protections after having presided for the past six years over the drip-drip-drip of predator priests and coverup bishops buggering children? Does anybody think Francis’s document is going to receive “religious assent of mind and soul” from the world as they consider the ongoing failure of this pontificate to rip out, root and branch, the clerical predations — primarily homosexual — that bedevil the Church? I won’t even comment on having an American politician who represents a party ideologically committed to expanding the extermination of children — whose every member in the U.S. Senate voted January 22 against a ban on infanticide — as a witness to that papal promise.

Chalk it up to either tone-deafness or chutzpah. Kind of like Hillary Clinton’s tweet this week that Elon Musk should not have access to government computer systems. At least not without one’s own server.

Indecent Exposure

I also wrote about how trans ideology undermines rule of law by rendering laws against indecent exposure incoherent (here). The gist of my argument is that if “gender identity” is established by somebody’s claims, not their biology, then indecent exposure ceases to be in the eye of the beholder and, instead, migrates to the mind of the exhibitor. A great cartoon this week on X captured this argument. “How to Flash in the Woke Era” (here) has two boxes. In earlier times, a guy flashes himself to a woman, who yells “pervert!” and then there’s his mug shot, captioned “indecent exposure.” Now, a guy flashes himself to a woman, she yells “pervert,” he yells, “I’m trans!” and there’s her mug shot, captioned “hate speech, bigotry, TERF, discrimination.”

The Party of Death

I above noted that every U.S. Senate Democrat voted January 22 against banning infanticide, refusing to criminalize the abandonment or positive euthanasia of a distressed newborn born after a late-term abortion. Every one (including 13 disgraceful nominal “Catholics,” the “noes” being the majority of Catholics voting that day)!

Meanwhile, let’s take a quick trip to Dover, where Delaware Democrats are taking yet another crack at bringing doctor killing (a.k.a. “physician-assisted suicide”) to the First State. Meanwhile, as the Virginia Legislature reached its midpoint of its current session, state Senate Democrats took a group photo to cheer their “achievements” of the session. Top of the agenda: writing abortion-on-demand-through-birth (with no parental consent rule for minors or care of distressed neonates) into the State constitution. At least Virginia Catholics have a chance to stop this insanity by flipping the lower house come fall and keeping a pro-abortionist out of the governor’s mansion.

Finally, Live Action reports a survey that claims 75% of Dutch citizens, living in a country where killing is legal, support “duo euthanasia,” i.e., both spouses choosing to die together. Would they also endorse sati, the historical practice where Hindu Indian widows more or (mostly) less freely threw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre to immolate themselves alive? Does that give new meaning to “till death not do us part?” And what proportion of the 25% that apparently did not support “duo euthanasia” might find themselves recipients of “Spousally-Assisted Suicide” instead?