Cardinal Virtues

This week I will take a break from my Synod series and rejoice in some CARDINAL actions.
First, of course, is Women’s Ordination Worldwide’s terrific nighttime witness. Despite all the problems the Vatican presents for us, evening in St. Peter’s Square is magical, and our creative leaders added to the magic with their message.

Second is WOW’s more courageous and less magical daytime witness. Clever and clear umbrellas and seven women in Cardinal red greeted those going into the meeting Pope Francis convened with the princes of the church. Less magical because the women were close enough to those entering to be seen by them and therefore by the Roman police and all the reporters. Here are three accounts of their arrest: NCR, Sojourners, and RNS. Four hours later, they were released out of a cage with their passports and IDs and threats of future action.

I emphasize courage to highlight a U.S. Catholic article by Fordham professor/priest/prophet Bryan Massingale. He says “Courage enables us to translate our moral convictions into moral action.” Despite risk, despite fear, despite ridicule. That’s why Aquinas find this the most necessary of the cardinal virtues. Massingale inspires and affirms us. We are proud of the seven in Rome and hope some Cardinals understand what action they must take because of the witness they observed.

They were going into a meeting to discuss the new rules Pope Francis has promulgated this year. Christopher White summarized what participants told NCR: “that discussions centered around the extent to which lay individuals can be granted authority in church governance, term limits for Vatican officials, and the city-state’s finances.” The format one day was table discussions in language groups, like every grassroots Synod gathering I’ve heard about, so I hope the Cardinals took seriously the Pope’s encouragement to “speak from the heart.”

Just like WOW’s witnesses, these were international meetings, more international than ever before because of the new Cardinals appointed earlier in the weekend. Bravo Pope Francis for appointing these sixteen new Cardinal electors. The most complete profiles are in America. While not every one of them is on board with my full agenda, especially regarding LGBTQ issues which are sometimes mentioned, or women’s issues, which are not, they represent religious orders that I never knew existed and church history in places around the world about which I had no idea. Goa has had a bishop since 1533. At 67, the youngest represents 1300 people in Mongolia. Ponder the politics of all that.

The most complete examination of women’s issues is in a long article by Joshua McElwee in Commonweal. He places the weekend in the much broader context of the Synod, and concludes with an interview with the only new American Cardinal, Robert McElroy.

When I asked McElroy about the lack of women in the room for the meeting among the cardinals and pope, he pointed to the effect that the 2021–23 synod process is already having on the Church. The San Diego prelate, who has publicly indicated he is in favor of ordaining women as deacons, said he has read about a dozen of the synod reports released by various dioceses in the United States, from a range of places. “What was said was more or less the same in every place,” McElroy told me. “One of the major themes was inclusion. LGBT inclusion, and, very predominantly, the inclusion of women. I think the synodal moment hopefully will be one in which we wrestle with that in much greater depth. I think that will have to be an outcome of this process.”

The American Catholic press is wild about McElroy, I conclude as I read about this appointment, but few others take up the woman question with him.

Michael Sean Winters finds “ecstatic” an appropriate feeling in a profile of the new Cardinal that’s more personal than his usual analysis. He also posts an interview with San Jose Bishop Oscar Cantu and Boston College theologian Cathleen Kaveny in which they praise McElroy’s pastoral abilities – as well as his scholarship.

McElroy has a Ph.D. in foreign policy and a S.T.D. with a book on John Courtney Murray and religious liberty. He still publishes serious articles about church structure and practice. In an interview with Gerard O’Connell after the Cardinals’ meeting, McElroy makes a fine distinction about the main objections others raised there:

…the theology of synodality affirms the hierarchical nature of the church. It doesn’t begin with that concept; it begins with the concept of synodality. But it is certainly present there; it is embedded there and certainly affirmed explicitly.

I have to say the notion of beginning with the hierarchical nature of the church, rather than with a synodal concept or something close to synodality, to me risks a retreat to the vision of the church that sees it first of all as a perfect society rather than the pilgrim people of God. I think that’s the problem with the critique of synodality as it’s been presented.

I’m not cheering about this, but I think he’s echoing the Pope’s thinking. He does the same when it comes to the environment.

I first came to admire McElroy because of his leadership during the immigrant crisis. YouTube posts a San Diego ABC10 video of McElroy’s May 31 press conference after his appointment. When asked why the Pope chose him, his reply slid gracefully over the other California possibilities: “I believe the Pope wanted to have a Cardinal on the West Coast,” to say that Francis recognized “a diocese on the border,” because “he’s very concerned for immigrants and refugees.” In answer to whether he’d be in line to be Pope, he said no American should be. “In the universal community of the church, the United States still has so much power on so many levels: economically, politically, internationally.” Perhaps he brings this sensitivity from his international studies. Certainly it will help him fit in well with the other new Cardinals.