Posted on 10/18/2007 7:58:22 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- With his latest batch of cardinal appointments, Pope Benedict XVI has confirmed some important directions and priorities of his pontificate.
First, the pope's picks have once again boosted the European and U.S. presence among voting-age members of the College of Cardinals.
The list of 23 new cardinals, announced Oct. 17, included 18 under the age of 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave. Two are Americans, which will leave the United States with 13 under-80 cardinals, matching a historically high number.
The pope's choice of Cardinal-designate Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston was particularly significant because it went outside the group of U.S. dioceses traditionally headed by cardinals, instead looking to the South, where the Catholic Church has grown most rapidly in recent years. Over the last 20 years, the number of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston has increased by nearly 80 percent.
Cardinal-designate DiNardo, 58, will be the first head of a Texas archdiocese to wear the red hat, and he comes with a bonus feature that could enhance his influence -- several years of experience as an official of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.
Ten of the 18 voting-age cardinal appointees are from Europe, which means that Europeans will constitute approximately 50 percent of the potential conclave voters. Of the 30 cardinals Pope Benedict has named to the under-80 group since his election, 16 have been European.
The pope's choices this time included only two residential bishops from Latin America -- one from Brazil and one from Mexico. Brazil, which has the largest Catholic population in the world, will now have four under-80 cardinals; Mexico, which has the second-largest Catholic population, will also have four.
All of which goes to show that Pope Benedict does not follow geographical quotas when he makes his cardinal selections.
After the Nov. 24 consistory, the global breakdown of voting-age cardinals will be 60 from Europe, 21 from Latin America, 16 from the United States and Canada, 13 from Asia, nine from Africa and two from Oceania.
Seven of the new picks are active officials of the Roman Curia or Vatican-related organizations, including U.S. Cardinal-designate John P. Foley, pro-grand master of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher. While there has been much talk about reducing the number of curial cardinals, it appears that Pope Benedict is not going down that road.
Three of the pope's cardinal appointees are in their 50s, including Cardinal-designate DiNardo. Overall, the residential bishops among the new cardinals have an average age of 64 -- which may not sound like the fountain of youth, but is 13 years younger than the average age of current cardinals.
At the same time, Pope Benedict named a record number of five over-80 cardinals, rewarding a Roman Curia veteran, an Argentine pastor and two Roman academics.
Iraqi Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim Delly, 80, was perhaps the most significant of these appointments. In naming him a cardinal, the pope was showing symbolically his concern for the suffering Catholic population in Iraq, where violence and intimidation have forced tens of thousands of Christians to leave.
So, explain to a non-Catholic what this really means. I assume that there’s more to this than just dots on a map.
They vote for the next pope. The Pope’s power is largely in his appointments.
OK, but this article makes it sound like this is more about geography than policy or theology.
Theologically, based on the new cardinals I know anything about, the appointments are conservative. However, the article was obviously written by one who seems to think entirely in geopolitical terms!
However, there are some important aspects to this. For example, while the Houston diocese is big, it’s not a traditionally high-profile diocese (such as NY or DC). This shows that the Pope is broadening the scope and actually looking at his picks on a personal basis, both in terms of the individual and his diocese, rather than simply “rewarding” a big or well-known diocese.
The basic job of cardinals is to elect popes, but they have other functions as well. They advise the pope, and many of them are heads of various offices in the central administration of the Church (the “curia”). So it is obviously a good thing to have cardinals from all over the world, so that the leaders of the world-wide Church know what’s going on in different places. There is also the symbolic importance. Having cardinals from all over shows in a very visible way the supra-national and universal character of the Church. Another consideration is that the Church in regions where it is a small minority or under persecution or otherwise threatened can be strengthened by having their local leader be a cardinal. That tells the dictator -— or whoever -— that what they do to the Catholics is not going to go unnoticed in the wider world. That is why, for instance, the top clerics in Communist countries were often made cardinals. Similarly, the top bishop in Nicaragua was made a cardinal when there was all the trouble with the Sandinistas. That also gives these bishops more visibility when they denounce oppression.
(On the other hand, there are practical reasons to have a lot of Italians in the curia. There is a long tradition of Italians running the Church, and so a lot of experience there. Moreover, many Church institutions are located in Rome -— seminaries, heads of orders of nuns and monks, colleges, etc. -— and so a lot of the business of the central adminsitration of the Church is done in Italian.)
One thing I noted — if they are younger than usual: the younger ones are NOT the ‘clown-mass, let’s change Catholicism to our own image’ folks. When we did RCIA, the Monseignor there was complaining he could not get any good priests. “All the new priests are so CONSERVATIVE,” he complained.
Yah God.
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