Archbishop Jose Gomez

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Attention U.S. Catholic bishops: You are not allowed to say that this pope isn't Catholic

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Attention U.S. Catholic bishops: You are not allowed to say that this pope isn't Catholic

If you look up the cliche “Is the Pope Catholic?” online, you will find several ways of stating the obvious.

As for me, I like this offering from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus: This is a response “used to say that the answer to a question you have just been asked is obviously ’yes’.”

At this point, it is safe to say that Pope Francis wants the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (these men in particular) to know that the answer is “yes.” He also wants them to know that — when it comes to worship and doctrine — he believes that he, and he alone, gets to decide the meaning of the word “Catholic.”

Oh, and Pope Francis gets to decide the “Catholic” status of German bishops who are marching forward on blessing same-sex relationships. Ditto for progressive Bishop Robert W. McElroy of (tiny) San Diego, who is now a cardinal, and conservative Archbishop Jose Gomez of (massive) Los Angeles, who is not. Pope Francis gets to judge the “Catholic” status of President Joe Biden and Jesuit social-media maven Father James Martin (watch for new photo opportunities).

In other words, the Donald Trumpian “You’re fired!” message that Pope Francis sent to Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler isn’t about one loud Texan. What matters in Catholic life, right now, is who gets promoted (in various ways) and who gets punished. Actions matter more than mere words.

If religion-news consumers want to know what happened in the Strickland case, they can turn to the Vatican to know what progressive Catholics are saying and to the Catholic press to learn what conservative Catholics are saying (and what candid progressives are saying in response).

That’s true, but it appears seems a few reporters are learning how to handle both halves of that equation. I say that in praise of the solid Associated Press story — “Pope Francis removes a leading US conservative critic as bishop of Tyler, Texas“ — that is running in newspapers far and wide. Let’s walk through a some key passages:

ROME (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday ordered the removal of the bishop of Tyler, Texas, a conservative prelate active on social media who has been a fierce critic of the pontiff and has come to symbolize the polarization within the U.S. Catholic hierarchy.

Bingo. The U.S. Catholic bishops — who gather today in Baltimore — go in the lede.


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Archbishop Broglio elected to lead USCCB: Press focuses on (#surprise) political issues

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Archbishop Broglio elected to lead USCCB: Press focuses on (#surprise) political issues

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops assembled in Baltimore two weeks ago to elect a new president. Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Military Services, tasked with overseeing Catholic ministries to members of the U.S. armed forces, was elected to lead the USCCB.

The 70-year-old archbishop won election to a three-year term on Nov. 15 after emerging victorious from a field of 10 candidates. What Broglio’s election means for the church, our national politics and for everyday Catholics depends on whom you ask.

Certainly, news coverage of Broglio’s election seemed to focus on the priorities of the media organization’s own political priorities rather than impartial, fact-based reporting that included the church’s own positions on an array of subjects Broglio will have to deal with in his term.

As we say here at GetReligion: Politics is real. Religion? Not so much.

The New York Times framed their coverage under the headline, “U.S. Catholic Bishops Elect Leaders for Anti-Abortion Fight.” This is how their story opened:

BALTIMORE — A week after bruising losses for anti-abortion forces in the midterm elections, America’s Roman Catholic bishops rededicated themselves to ending abortion and elected a slate of new leaders to support that goal during their annual meeting. …

The job ahead is “perhaps even more massive than we thought,” said Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, who has chaired the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “We have to engage in this with mind and heart and soul.”

The bishops chose Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, who leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services, as their new president. Archbishop Lori, the runner-up for the presidency, will serve as vice president. Both men have taken strong positions against abortion and are expected to continue the conservative leanings of the hierarchy on an array of social issues.

Archbishop Broglio supported religious exemptions for military service members who did not want to receive the Covid-19 vaccine “if it would violate the sanctity of his or her conscience.” The Vatican had approved of the vaccines, but some Catholics and others opposed to abortion asked for religious exemptions because of the use of stem cells derived from aborted fetuses to develop some vaccines.

He has previously suggested that homosexuality was to blame for the church’s sexual abuse crisis, though studies have found no connection between homosexuality and child abuse.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but the news story managed to get the words abortion, vaccines and homosexuality in the first five paragraphs. Broglio is made out to be some deranged right-wing politician.


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Vatican game that never ends: Knowns and unknowns with covering next papal election

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Vatican game that never ends: Knowns and unknowns with covering next papal election

It might seem ghoulish to outsiders, but the media have a duty to closely monitor news personalities’ retirement plans, health woes, aging processes and impending deaths, whether that of a British queen, U.S. president, Supreme Court justices, tycoons or even Hollywood superstars.

Or a pontiff.

Currently, there’s a season of speculation about Pope Francis’s future and whether his newly chosen cardinals to be installed August 27 are his final bid to shape the conclave that will elect the next pope.

Careful. If you figure he’s making sure it will be a fellow liberal, don’t forget that the conservative Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI named the cardinals who elected Francis.

Speaking of successors, AP Correspondent Nicole Winfield follows the Rome bureau’s legendary Victor Simpson, who covered four popes across 41 years. On Sunday, she knowledgeably sifted some Francis scenarios.

Francis has just announced that when the cardinals gather in August he’ll visit the Italian hometown of Celestine V, the pope who famously resigned in A.D. 1294.

Surprisingly, Benedict did the same in 2013. So, is this trip a signal, or only a trip? Francis has remarked that Benedict was “opening the door” for resignation by future popes, hinting he might consider the idea. But Vaticanologists figure Francis will not resign so long as another ex-pope is alive.

At age 95, Benedict is alert but frail. Francis, age 85, appears reasonably healthy but underwent colon surgery last year and recently appeared in public in a wheelchair for the first time due to chronic knee pain.

Then there’s this. The cardinals elected Francis partly in hopes he’d reform the perpetually troubled Roman Curia (as in the sprawling Vatican bureaucracy). Restructure is now set in a Francis edict that took effect on Sunday. But fully implementing the scheme may be thorny and Francis may feel a responsibility to pursue his project.

Surveying the batch of incoming cardinal electors, Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego stands out as the only American and as a mere bishop, not an archbishop (see this tmatt “On Religion” column about this drama). Francis again snubbed nearby Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, the Mexico-born head of the nation’s largest archdiocese and the elected president of the U.S. bishops. Did membership in the Opus Dei organization count against him?


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Red hat for San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy: Vatican message to U.S. Catholic bishops?

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Red hat for San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy: Vatican message to U.S. Catholic bishops?

Two years before long-standing rumors about Cardinal Theodore McCarrick leapt into headlines worldwide, America's most outspoken activist on clergy sexual abuse met with his local bishop -- San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy.

"It was clear to me during our last meeting in your office, although cordial, that you had no interest in any further personal contact," wrote the late Richard Sipe, a former Benedictine priest who then worked for the Seton Psychiatric Institute in Baltimore. While church officials asked him to report to McElroy, "your office made it clear that you have no time in your schedule either now or 'in the foreseeable future' to have the meeting that they suggested."

Sipe's 2016 letter to the San Diego bishop was later posted online and is frequently cited as an example of a bishop ignoring warnings about the now defrocked McCarrick, who often boasted about his clout as a Vatican kingmaker. Now it will receive more attention because Pope Francis has named McElroy to the Sacred College of Cardinals. This promotes the San Diego bishop over several prominent archbishops -- including Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez, who leads America's largest Catholic archdiocese and is president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In his hand-delivered report, Sipe told McElroy that his ongoing research indicated that 6% of American priests were guilty of sex with minors. Meanwhile, a "systemic" trend was clear: "At any one time no more than 50% of priests are practicing celibacy."

As for the powerful McCarrick, Sipe noted: "I have interviewed twelve seminarians and priests who attest to propositions, harassment, or sex with McCarrick, who has stated, 'I do not like to sleep alone.' "

Debates about McElroy's elevation have focused on other divisive issues in Catholic life, although decades of sexual-abuse crimes loom in the background. He has, for example, supported the ordination of women to the diaconate, allowing them to preach, perform weddings and serve -- one step from the priesthood -- at Catholic altars.

McElroy has openly clashed with American bishops anxious to address "Eucharistic coherence" as prominent Catholics, especially President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, support -- with words and deeds -- abortion and LGBTQ rights.


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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

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Bishops meet in secret about 'culture war' stuff: What does this mean for Catholics?

While Pope Francis was presiding over a ceremony at the Vatican to consecrate Ukraine and Russia on March 25, a group of high-ranking American bishops met in Chicago.

That could be a news story.

The gathering at Loyola University — entitled “Pope Francis, Vatican II and the Way Forward” — was co-sponsored by Boston College’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture. Its aim was, according to what news coverage there was, to create a dialogue between theologians and bishops.

“We want to show that opposition to Pope Francis — not universally, but to a large extent — is opposition to Vatican II,” said Father Mark Massa, a priest and historian of the American Catholic Church, to describe the goal of the meeting. “Francis is trying to cash the check that Vatican II wrote — synodality was the big thing.”

Synodality is an invitation to build deeper communion within the body of Christ, according to the Vatican, and part of a process the pope has embarked on this year to create dialogue between Catholic believers and clergy. Or a certain type of clergy.

In other words, moving forward into the spirit of Vatican II. That is a big news story.

The two-day meeting, by invitation only, didn’t appear to fit the description of synodality. Rather, as Massa said, it was meant to see “how we can move the American church away from these culture wars divided between conservatives and liberals … to a united position where it’s possible to be on a spectrum of positions and still be considered a good Catholic and not be called names by people who disagree with you.”

Critics in the conservative Catholic press read that statement to mean how the 70 prelates in attendance — with help from progressives within the American church in the form of academics, journalists and theologians — could bolster this pope’s agenda. Those on the Catholic left in the National Catholic Reporter billed it as a way bishops “can better support the agenda of Pope Francis.”

I reported at the end of 2021 that this year would “be the one where the battle between this pontiff and doctrinal traditionalists intensifies even further.” The culture war that is dominating our politics at the moment has spilled over into our religious institutions and the Catholic church’s hierarchy.


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New podcast: Are the bitter wars over the Latin Mass about politics or Catholic doctrine?

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New podcast: Are the bitter wars over the Latin Mass about politics or Catholic doctrine?

I like hearing from readers. I really do.

However, every now and then I write a national “On Religion” column and I just know that I am going to hear from readers about a specific angle that — for reasons of space — I had to leave out. This happens less often here at GetReligion, since length is not an issue in online forums of this kind.

Anyway, this week’s “On Religion” column was about the tensions among Catholics about Pope Francis and his crackdown on use of the old Latin Mass. I focused on developments in the Archdiocese of Chicago, where it is clear that there’s more to these “worship wars” than use of the Tridentine rite.

That column is already online in some mainstream newspapers, with headlines such as this: “Latin Mass meets Chicago rules.” That column served as the launching pad for this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in), which also looked at an important analysis piece at Crux about five kids of Pope Francis stories — both doctrinal and political — that readers can expect to see in 2022.

When I clicked “send” on that column (including my private listserv to family and friends), I knew that some Catholics would ask why I didn’t address a, well, colorful Mass that recently took place at the progressive St. Sabina Parish in Chicago. Here is the top of the Catholic News Agency story about that:

Outraged by a freewheeling Christmas Eve Mass that featured jazz musicians, choreographed dances around the altar, and theatrical lighting effects, some Catholics are calling on Cardinal Blase Cupich to crack down on liturgical abuses in Novus Ordo Masses in the Archdiocese of Chicago, rather than imposing severe restrictions on reverential Traditional Latin Masses.

Father Michael L. Pfleger, a well-known social activist in Chicago, celebrated the Dec. 24 evening Mass. … Many of those upset by the Mass say it crossed the line from worship to entertainment. That view is fueled, in part, by the fact that it is not clear from the nearly 2½ hour video of the service, billed as "Christmas Eve at Sabina," when the liturgy actually begins. There is no apparent greeting, penitential act, or opening prayer, all required Introductory Rites of the Novus Ordo liturgy.

In the video, posted on YouTube, Pfleger does not appear on the altar until after nearly an hour of musical and dance performances.

Well, it is unusual for a Mass to include music by Stevie Wonder and the classic Vincent Guaraldi soundtrack from the Peanuts Christmas special.


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New podcast: When popes and presidents meet, headlines may not tell the private stories

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New podcast: When popes and presidents meet, headlines may not tell the private stories

Sometimes, the calendar isn’t friendly to columnists and podcasters.

This week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was recorded before the lengthy, closed-door chat (with photo ops before and after) between Pope Francis and the “devout” Catholic President Joe Biden. Thus, host Todd Wilken and I took a kind of “tomorrow’s headlines” approach, surveying the advance coverage of the meeting and some fascinating features that looked at images and the realities of some previous pope-president meetings.

In this podcast I predicted that the headlines and public pronouncements would focus on their agreements about the environment, immigration, poverty and COVID-19 strategies.

Why? Well, the mainstream press believes that these meetings are, first and foremost, political events and these are political topics, even though they clearly have doctrinal content for those with the eyes to see that.

Biden and the pope agree on these subjects and, at this point, the progressive Pope Francis has little or no motivation to hurt a Catholic progressive in the White House. They have many of the same goals and they, to be blunt, have all the same enemies — especially among American Catholics who wear the red hats that mark them as cardinals (and those who have not received red hats).

Would anything significant happen in the private discussions?

That’s the kind of question that Catholic publications will probe and, here at GetReligion, I’ll leave commentary on that topic to Clemente Lisi (it helps that he is fluent in Italian).

If you are looking for a perfect summary of the elite press template for coverage of this meeting, and the ties that bind these two modern Catholics, this block of Washington Post material — from a political-desk story, of course — is pitch perfect:

… The resonance is also personal, given the similarities between the 84-year-old pope and the 78-year-old president, who have in a sense become allies. Both attained ultimate leadership late in their lives and quickly moved in a liberal direction. They have faced internal resistance. Both are treated warily by conservative American bishops.


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Ties that bind? Concerning journalism, Grindr, secrecy, homophobia and the Latin Mass

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Ties that bind? Concerning journalism, Grindr, secrecy, homophobia and the Latin Mass

Early in my religion-beat career, a veteran Catholic leader gave me wise advice about the challenges reporters would face covering the emerging national scandals about sexual abuse by bishops and priests.

Never forget, he said, that these scandals are not about “left vs. right.” Plenty of people, across the whole spectrum of Catholic life, have secrets in the past and some in the present.

Soon after that, I heard almost exactly the same take from the late A.W. Richard Sipe, the former Benedictine monk, priest and psychotherapist who spent more than a half-century studying the sexual secrets of Catholic clergy. A strong voice for progressive Catholic causes, he served as a witness or consultant in at least 250 civil legal actions. As I wrote in an “On Religion” column, soon after Sipe’s death:

"Sooner or later it will become broadly obvious that there is a systemic connection between the sexual activity by, among and between clerics in positions of authority and control, and the abuse of children," he wrote, in a 2016 letter to his local shepherd, San Diego Bishop Robert McElroy.

"When men in authority — cardinals, bishops, rectors, abbots, confessors, professors — are having or have had an unacknowledged secret-active-sex-life under the guise of celibacy an atmosphere of tolerance of behaviors within the system is made operative."

Once again, the key is secrecy, because a fog of secrecy, sin and shame can be use to hide all kinds of painful issues.

I bring this up, of course, because of the firestorm that has greeted an investigative report from The Pillar that ran with this headline: “USCCB gen sec Burrill resigns after sexual misconduct allegations.” Here is the overture:

Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, former general secretary of the U.S. bishops’ conference, announced his resignation Tuesday, after The Pillar found evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct, while he held a critical oversight role in the Catholic Church’s response to the recent spate of sexual abuse and misconduct scandals.

“It is with sadness that I inform you that Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill has resigned as General Secretary of the Conference,” Archbishop Jose Gomez wrote July 20 in a memo to U.S. bishops.

The key evidence was information drawn from signals on the hookup app Grindr, which a Vanity Fair feature once called “The World’s Biggest, Scariest Gay Bar.”


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New podcast: What are the future news hooks as U.S. bishops wrestle with Holy Communion?

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New podcast: What are the future news hooks as U.S. bishops wrestle with Holy Communion?

Let’s say that, at some point in the future, multimedia crews manage to discover where President Joe Biden was attending Mass on a given Sunday.

As the president attempts to leave, journalists shout an obvious question, something like: "Mr. President! The U.S. bishops are almost done with the final draft of their document on abortion, politics and Holy Communion. Are you concerned about this?”

Recently, Biden responded to a similar question by saying: "That's a private matter and I don't think that's going to happen."

This kind of language, that specific doctrinal issues are “personal” or “private,” has been part of American Catholic code ever since the famous 1984 address at the University of Notre Dame by the late New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. But let’s say — as I suggested in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (CLICK HERE to tune that in) — that Biden decides to tweek this reply at some point in the future.

What would happen if he said this: “That’s between me and my father confessor, so I will have no response at this time.”

This response would have several implications. First of all, it would mean that Biden is saying that he (a) has a father confessor, (b) that he has gone to confession, (c) that he has confessed his sins, (d) that his confessor has assigned him some for of penance and (e) absolved him of his sins. That last part, of course, could be assumed if Biden is receiving Holy Communion.

Oh, and there’s one implication here: That this is happening with a blessing, to one degree or another, from the bishop in authority over Biden’s father confessor. Ah, there is the main news hook.

The bishop and the priest would not, of course, discuss the contents of the president’s confessions. The bishop, however, could say that Biden’s ongoing actions clashing with church doctrines — linked to abortion, same-sex marriage, trans advocacy or some other issue — require the denial of Holy Communion since these actions are, under Catholic doctrines, a threat to the president’s eternal soul.

After all, as the journalists (and canon lawyers) at The Pillar recently noted:


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