Fr. Agustine Di Noia O.P. / Pope Benedict XVI
Posted on 06/16/2009 9:54:20 AM PDT by NYer
.- This morning, the Vatican announced a significant change by Pope Benedict at the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, the body charged with overseeing the liturgy. The American priest, Fr. Agustine Di Noia O.P., was appointed by the Pope to be the secretary of the Congregation and raised to the level of archbishop.
Pope Benedict's appointment of a native English speaker will prove to be valuable as the Congregation prepares to approve and introduce a new English translation of the Roman Missal.
Archbishop-elect Di Noia will be working under Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, who was appointed by Pope Benedict last December.
Prior to his new appointment, the Dominican priest worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where he served under the future Pope Benedict XVI from 2002-2005.
The archbishop-elect was born in New York City in 1943 and ordained a priest in 1970. He received his licentiate in theology at the Dominican House of Studies, and holds a doctorate in philosophy from Yale University.
As part of being assigned to his new post, Archbishop-elect Di Noia will be given the titular see of Oregon City, Ore.
The current secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith, has been appointed by the Holy Father to be the Archbishop of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
Ping!
**Archbishop-elect Di Noia will be working under Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, who was appointed by Pope Benedict last December.**
May he bring the USCCB, the ICEL and the NAB into traditional language!!!
PS. (I wanted to say — hammer the bishops —<sarc off)
**As part of being assigned to his new post, Archbishop-elect Di Noia will be given the titular see of Oregon City, Ore.**
Wow! A good place to start! LOL! I hope to meet him.
I see that he's one of BXVI's friends from his CDF days ... that's a good thing. I think.
If he ever gets to Oregon City. LOL!
Fr. Di Noia is awesome. Great speaker, incredibly well-read. I’d like to say he is a work horse rather than a show horse but he does both very well.
http://priory.dhs.edu/preaching/J_Augustine_Di_Noia.aspx
How did Oregon City end up as a titular see?
I can think of several US cities that are better qualified for this honorific.
Good question......that’s why I laughed at it.
I am hoping I can get to his consecration Mass on July 11th at the Wash DC Basilica Shrine of the IC.
For those of us who are not as wise in Church titles, the following is from Wikipedia;
“A titular see in the Roman Catholic Church is a Diocese or Archdiocese that now exists in title only. Until 1882, such titular sees, were distinguished by the Latin phrase in partibus infidelium (”in the territory of the infidels”) or more often simply in partibus. It is led by a titular bishop or Archbishop, a bishop who is not a diocesan ordinary but either an official of the Holy See, an auxiliary bishop, or the head of a jurisdiction that is equivalent to a diocese under canon law.”
Titular Sees are established in places where there is no resident bishop. In the vast majority of cases, they are in areas that were formerly Catholic but have been overrun by Muslims or other apostates / infidels. A Titular Bishop is said to be the bishop "In Partibus Infidelium" (in the land of unbelievers).
I think this is a tremendously astute move on the part of the Vatican (whether personally by the Holy Father or, perhaps, on the initiative of Archbishop de Noia.
Oregon City is almost co-located with the infamous Oregon Catholic Press. De Noia, being the new #2 guy for the Congregation for the Liturgy...it's a natural. It sends a subtle but unmistakable message in the direction of OCP, particularly considering that the titular see was established back in 1996 and its first bishop is de Noia!
Hippo was St. Augustine’s diocese and is now a titular diocese. San Francisco never attained the heights of Hippo but is at least as hostile to the Faith. Maybe Gay Francisco should become a titular diocese.
To add clarity to the quoted Wikipedia article, titular sees are sees in title only. Some such sees existed as actual sees in formerly-Christian lands such as North Africa, Turkey and the Middle East. Since the vast majority of the sees in these lands were conquered by the Muslims in the 7th-15th centuries, they now exist in name only.
Also, sees that once were are sometimes suppressed as new sees created solely for demographic reasons. One example is the state of Mississippi which, until the mid-20th century, was headed by one Catholic diocese - the Diocese of Natchez. In the latter part of the 20th century, the state was divided into two new dioceses: the Diocese of Biloxi and the Diocese of Jackson. The Diocese of Natchez was suppressed, becoming a titular diocese.
The need for titular sees can be traced back ancient Church disciple which teaches that there is to be only one bishop per diocese. To keep in line with this dicipline, bishops not tied direclty to a diocese (like those in the Roman curia) and those who serve as assistant bishops within a diocese which already has a bishop, are assigned titular dioceses (sees).
This was typed quickly, off the top of my head. Hope it makes sense!
A titular see is a flock-less see employed by popes to provide a canonical basis for episcopal ordinations for Vatican curia.
There is/was a wayward bishop that JP2, of happy memory, removed from his French diocese and installed him instead as the bishop of “Partenia”, which is in an unpopulated third world desert.
Thank you for posting such detailed information. I had no idea. Also, the great insight into the subtlety of assigning him Oregon City. ;-)
A diocese can have only one bishop for in a sense the bishop is “married” to his diocese, thus it would be polyandry for a diocese to have two bishops. Since retired bishops have in effect “died” as far as having any authority like a husband over his diocese, they are not a problem. Thus the auxiliary bishop is given his own wife somewhere in a desert some place or in this case Oregon City. In this way for many years the bishop and his diocese were seen as a model for married life and the bishop was expected to stay with his diocese til death. (Historians can insert here the famous trial of a bishop who left his diocese for another) HOWEVER, in the course of time some bishops began to see that the grass was greener elsewhere and they left their brides to seek a more beautiful girl who had the first name of Arch. The deserted bride usually remarried after a time - we don't know if an annulment was obtained of if it was a simple divorce. Along the way the example of the bishop married to his diocese as an example of the marriage commitment got lost. OK for them, but.....
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