20 March 2023

Primacies

Genuinely, I don't know what to think about one feature of the Bergoglio papacy: its down-playing of local primacies. 

Sees which seemed regularly entitled to be graced by a Cardinal's Hat, no longer appear to be thus honoured. Milan (even dignified until recent vandalism by the possession of its own ancient Rite), Naples, Venice (styled Patriarch because of his wide sway within the Eastern Mediterranean), Palermo, Turin ...

In many cases, these sees exhibited the last vestiges of what used to be called local primacies, particularly where, as in Italy, the modern 'Nation State' is very much a johnny-come-lately phenomenon compared with older political units (La Serenissima; the Papal States; the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies ...). Dix counted some half a dozen prelates who bore the monniker Primate of Gaul.

My hesitancy: should my innate conservatism incline me to deplore this erasing of gracious historical dignities, endowed with massive auctoritas; or should I applaud a sensible insistence upon modern reality?

It looks to me like deliberate destruction of a local primacy when a Previous Archbishop Big is made to coexist with a suffragan wearing a Cardinal's hat: having two Archbishop Bigs elides the auctoritas of each. Is PF really incapable of coexisting with another centre of auctoritas anywhere in the world?

One thing I dislike, in either case, is that the Red Hat Game still continues in the Curia. Why should the Italian prelates I listed above, and their congregations, be humiliated while the Roches of this world continue to galumph around with the inappropriate grandeurs of the baroque era?

Is it simply so that they can outrank really considerable men in local sees, rather like a Harbour Admiral always being able to outrank a mere ship's Captain?

In other words, is it yet another example of PF's dislike of anybody who might stand up to him?

15 comments:

Arthur Gallagher said...

We have an example here in America, where the previous archbishop of Philadelphia was never made a cardinal, even though the archbishop of Newark was made a cardinal. Newark? It is bizarre.

The C Life said...

I wonder if the bestowing of the Red might not be better reserved for some feat of perseverance such as being able to hike up a mountain like Moses or have to spend some time in jail like St Paul. In the event of a tie between likely candidates, the relevant Bishops should have to wrestle or box for the honour of being made a Prince of the Church. It would make it far more interesting, or at least random. It would put off the ones who are looking for a cushy life.

Jhayes said...

The central question in appointing a diocesan bishop is whether he is capable of providing good care of souls for his diocese. The central question in appointing a cardinal is whether he is capable of exercising good judgement in selecting the next pope.

They are distinct roles and the person who is good at one may not be good at the other. That is why it better not to link the two by seeing some dioceses as deserving of a cardinal as their ordinary

“Good judgement” will mean different things to different people, but it is the Pope’s decision to make

Seamus said...

Arthur Gallagher: Equally bizarre is the fact that the Archbishop of Baltimore, which would be the primatial see of the United States, if we had a primatial see, hasn't been given a red hat. (It's true that the same thing happened when William Borders was Archbishop of Baltimore, but he really should not have been made a bishop, much less a cardinal.)

Banshee said...

The new archbishop of Toronto, who did a guest stint at my old parish while studying nearby, is probably never going to be made a cardinal even though the archdiocese is huge. Because I guess Vancouver is the new cardinal place for Canada. (Obviously Canada could have several.)

Shrug. Some people just like to mess around with things. The cardinal hobby is mostly harmless, although probably it is really about packing conclaves.

FrB. said...

Nothing bizarre about it. Francis's minions are on the look-out for the purple hats most loyal to The Party, then they get brighter bunnets to wear.

Mike Lutz said...

Mr. Gallagher,

And Los Angeles vs. San Diego?

MJL

Titus said...

Philadelphia and Newark are not even the most bizarre examples in the U.S. Los Angeles and San Diego are far more anomalous (although Los Angeles had only been a cardinalatial see since 1953, and Philadelphia since 1921), as Newark is not a suffragan diocese of Philadelphia. Only Washington and Chicago, among the traditional cardinalatial sees, have had their red hats renewed by Francis.

Chaput, of course, lost out on his because Benedict followed the custom of not elevating a sitting bishop to the college while his emeritus counterpart was still eligible to vote. If anything positive comes out of the current fiasco, one has to think that it will be a sense of freedom on the part of a future pontiff to do as he pleases with respect to doling out red hats and the offices that warrant them. Benedict and John Paul II elevated a lot of miserable candidates---and, it turns out, deprived others---through adherence to the "system."

Joshua said...

And it is a disgrace that Australia, after the recent death of the late great Cardinal Pell, has no Cardinal - the Archbishop of Sydney should certainly have been elevated to that dignity, as has been customarily done (there has been a Cardinal who is a present and/or former Archbishop of Sydney from 1885 to 1911 and from 1946 to 2023).

The only other Australians to have been Cardinals (1973-1983 and 1991-2021) had spent long years in the Papal diplomatic service

The fact that the current Archbishop of Sydney is good, orthodox and an expert in bio-ethics probably weighs against him during this Pontificate, sadly. The Bishop of Parramatta has attempted to be sufficiently heretical to capture Papal attention, but has so far failed.

Stephen said...

How does any cardinal archbishop, much less any ordinary, have any power unto himself since Pastor Aeternus' consolidation and concentration of ultimate power in the Bishop of Rome? When was the last time the local canons of any see elected their bishop? When was the last time a suffragan bishop was sacked by his Metropolitan? Catholics made a bet long ago to centralize all things in Rome as a bulwark against innovation, and not without some justification; but nobody through all those generations would ever have conceived that Rome would be the home for innovation, and once they gave away the natural, inherent powers of subsidiarity and decentralization to the second millennium Papacy, they are in no position to halt the progressive nature of the third millennium incarnation of the Papacy. Kyrie Elesion!

coradcorloquitur said...

All of the above comments certainly partly explain the tinkering with the cardinalate appointments that Papa Bergoglio has been engaging in. But it seems to me that the major underlying cause for all this anomaly is the revolutionary spirit that Francis shares with all Leftists that compels them to leave their footprint everywhere---in other words, unbridled hubris coupled with a half-adolescent/half pathological urge to unsettle custom. It is hatred of tradition and a sinister desire to upset other human beings that nurtures Francis's iconoclasm---and such power was handed to this misfit in the most murky of circumstances.

Mark said...

To answer your question, Father, exactly. This is part of Francis stacking the College of Cardinals.

Moritz Gruber said...

Dear @Stephen,

it's not the Metropolitan's rôle to sack suffragans, and to my knowledge never has been (excepting the times when people called metropolitan what we now call Patriarch). Even if it had, though: the occasion where an actual diocesan bishop, married to his Church for life (yes, yes, I know, I know) is to have this tie cut against this will is, obviously, an encroachment into episcopal autonomy of sufficient weight so as not to be done by anyone who is not really the bishop's superior.

And the metropolitan-suffragan relationship is not a superior-subordinate relationship, but really a primacy of honor, as the Eastern Orthodox call it. The only actual superior of bishops is the Pope; and (among the Latins) this has always been the case. If I remember correctly, our reverend host mentioned that in 1500, the Archbishop of Canterbury did have a lot of power over English bishops, but qua legatus natus. Primates as far as I know never had this power, that is not qua Primates. One metropolitan only arguably had this power, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and he had it only over some of his suffragans (Gurk, Seckau, Lavant, Chiemsee) but not others (Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Brixen), and this was as much of a rarity in Christendom that there is a specific word for it (Chiemsee was Salzburg's Eigenbistum or "proper bishopric").

>>When was the last time the local canons of any see elected their bishop?

November 2018 I guess, when the canons elected the Freiburgian auxiliary-bishop Michael Gerber to the See of Fulda. (The canons of Chur could have had an election in 2021 but took the - actually really rather unprecedented - step of saying "no thanks, dear Holy Father, you decide".) There are elections-by-chapter in Germany-other-than-Bavaria (Bavaria taken in its borders of 1932, i. e., including the Palatinate), in the Archdiocese of Salzburg and in Switzerland.

Moritz Gruber said...

Dear @Stephen,

it's not the Metropolitan's rôle to sack suffragans, and to my knowledge never has been (excepting the times when people called metropolitan what we now call Patriarch). Even if it had, though: the occasion where an actual diocesan bishop, married to his Church for life (yes, yes, I know, I know) is to have this tie cut against this will is, obviously, an encroachment into episcopal autonomy of sufficient weight so as not to be done by anyone who is not really the bishop's superior.

And the metropolitan-suffragan relationship is not a superior-subordinate relationship, but really a primacy of honor, as the Eastern Orthodox call it. The only actual superior of bishops is the Pope; and (among the Latins) this has always been the case. If I remember correctly, our reverend host mentioned that in 1500, the Archbishop of Canterbury did have a lot of power over English bishops, but qua legatus natus. Primates as far as I know never had this power, that is not qua Primates. One metropolitan only arguably had this power, the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, and he had it only over some of his suffragans (Gurk, Seckau, Lavant, Chiemsee) but not others (Freising, Passau, Regensburg, Brixen), and this was as much of a rarity in Christendom that there is a specific word for it (Chiemsee was Salzburg's Eigenbistum or "proper bishopric").

>>When was the last time the local canons of any see elected their bishop?

November 2018 I guess, when the canons elected the Freiburgian auxiliary-bishop Michael Gerber to the See of Fulda. (The canons of Chur could have had an election in 2021 but took the - actually really rather unprecedented - step of saying "no thanks, dear Holy Father, you decide".) There are elections-by-chapter in Germany-other-than-Bavaria (Bavaria taken in its borders of 1932, i. e., including the Palatinate), in the Archdiocese of Salzburg and in Switzerland.

Eric said...

Titus is right about some of the cardinals elevated under JPII and BXVI and about the need to get rid of the 'system'. The old Patriarichal and Metropolitan Sees are nothing like what they once were and haven't been for a very long time. It has been centuries since Venice held any sway anywhere east of Trieste. Neither would giving any of these guys a cardinal's hat make them any kind of a rival to the massively overly centralized bureaucritized 21st century papacy. For better or worse we have entered into the time such as has not been since the nations began until this time and we need to realize where we're at.