One factor about the Papacy usually overlooked, is how many ceremonial occasions like this popes do in a year. They must be endlessly draining and time consuming, especially for someone elderly or near elderly, a category which includes almost all popes. Small time to be Mary, when one must be busy about many things like Martha. A good book could be written about exhaustion and the Papacy.
PopeWatch: Draining
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I always wondered how much of that is really necessary. I also think every cardinal should seriously contemplate how he should respond if he were elected pope. Perhaps Cardinal Ratzinger’s acceptance was a costly mistake on his part.
It must be especially tough when you have an infatuation with pop culture celebrities worthy of a 12-year old girl, as this pope clearly does. Got to make room on the schedule for all those People Magazine photo ops. 🤦🏼♂️
Too much. Especially without contemplation. A Pope should not venture out without Spending at least an hour with the Boss.
I must be about my Fathers Business.
CWN Editor’s Note: Argentina’s 73 dioceses have only 57 new seminarians—down from 256 new diocesan seminarians in 1997.
The overall number of diocesan seminarians has declined from a high to 2,290 in 1990 to 481 this year.
Enough said.
Not sympathetic. The Pope can set his own schedule.
See Ronald Reagan, who was told that an officer from the CIA would be arriving at 7:30 am each day for a briefing. His reply, “Fine. I’ll be there at 9:30”. Michael Kinsley’s assessment of Mr. Reagan’s work habits and Mr. Carter’s was that you can only accomplish so much in a day, no matter how many hours you ‘worked’. Mr. Reagan was a natural in the realm of public administration; none of his four immediate predecessors were.
Now, here’s a cheap way to reduce the amount of papal busyness:
A. Stop traveling. You are metropolitan of the province of Rome. You make the rounds of the cathedrals in your province and of the parishes in your diocese. You don’t need anyone traveling with you but a chauffeur and a couple of goons, if that. Prior to 1963, Popes did not move around much at all.
B. Shut up. The traditionalist complaint about John Paul II was that he said too much and that risked confusion in teaching. He was at least a man with something to say; Francis has nothing to say that is salutary. The Church has a compendium of 2000 years of teaching. You don’t need to elaborate much on it with bulls, encyclicals, motu proprios, trade books, or what have you. (If we land a satisfactory Pope after Francis, he’ll have enough to do to clean up the Frankenchurch mess in which we’re marinating).
C. Preach from the lectionary. You should have developed during your years in ministry a file of sermons for every Sunday and Holy Day of the liturgical year. Adjust them now and again if you find something in the Church Fathers or have apposite remarks you can incorporate in regard to the readings other than the Gospel. You should be saying at least one public mass per week, For your homily, draw from that file.
D. Reduce distractions. The only real property and treasures the Holy See should own should be in the province of Rome. The rest should be deeded over to local ordinaries or superiors or just liquidated. Actively managed business should be sold or liquidated. The Holy See’s diplomatic corps should rent digs and the assets should be in the form of cash, paper, bonds, stocks, and precious metals. The funds should be under the supervision of lay trustees who are faithful Catholics and financial professionals and should be domiciled in a variety of hard currency countries. Shut down the Vatican Bank; its a serial embarrasser.
E. Reduce headcount. There’s a mess of offices and dicasteries and secretariats you could do without. If it wasn’t there in 1962, why is it there now? What are they doing all day?
F. Look at every pro-forma gathering you attend and ask how long it has been done and what function it serves. Why are there ad limina visits, anyway?
Hmmm, this is why the Good Lord created Chiefs of Staff. Usually unsmiling
no- nonsense types who guard their boss’s time like a pit bull.
I’m going to add my voice to Art Deco’s prescriptions. There was a reason that papal audiences–with few exceptions–were done according to a strict protocol and great formality in the good ol’ days: they reduced the unnecessary expenditure of energy and time.
One exception I would make to Art’s list: the Holy Father really has no need to appear so frequently, certainly not at a public Mass of any kind. That practice is yet another post-Vatican II innovation. In the past, the Holy Father said his daily Mass with the papal ceremonieri and some of the household and offered Mass only rarely “in public,” usually in the Sistine Chapel, once or twice a year in St. Peter’s (Epiphany, Easter, Pentecost).
Even in the days of papal grandeur and weighty affairs of state such as the 16th century, Pius IV had to order his entourage to appear busy when his saintly nephew (St. Charles Borromeo) showed up unexpectedly. Moments before everyone suddenly pretended to be poring over a map and other documents, they had been relaxing in the casino garden next to St. Peter’s.
Seems the general consensus among the active Catholics in this conversation is that we would rather the popes do less.
Could be because much of what has been done is a bruising instead of a blessing, confusion in the stead of clarity 💔
Pope ????? Cardinals pray at politics and we Catholics have only God to look to for guidance in all things.
Art,
I sadly suspect Francis knows about these means. If we here would prefer he run a much tighter ship, …he doesn’t seem to view things that way.