Four days ago, Pope Francis issued a Motu Proprio suggesting that his bishops once retired ‘live austerely and shun power’. The document is apparently aimed at those elderly clerics whose lifestyle after retirement has caused considerable comment.
We must also hope that Cardinal Zen, well known to us all on this blog, takes a hint. With all due respect t to his eminence, it is undoubtedly time that he learned to keep his mouth shut. Only a week or two ago, his contribution to the delicate ongoing process of discussions with the Chinese Government and the Vatican was: ‘Either you surrender or you accept persecution’.
The first thing that springs to our minds- and I remind you that the youngest member of ‘To Feed The Flock’ is in his late seventies –is what the hell has this to do with him? Obviously we can have only the vaguest idea of what it is to live under a totalitarian regime, and the underground Catholics who have kept the Faith deserve far more than the congratulations than they can ever get in this world. But the 86 year old cardinal feels they are being let down by the Vatican. What he means is that they are not adhering strictly to Canon Law.
Yes, Canon Law. We may have already mentioned the old academic joke in a book review, about a writer using statistics for support rather than illumination , but the principle certainly applies to some of the edicts of Canon Law, which must be one of the most paranoiac documents ever written , and is permanently embedded in a psychic Rome in 1917, and the fears of a new Garibaldi.
All one can say – or all we can say- about the history of China is that if ever a race was messed about it has been the Chinese. Now that it is a modern state, and let’s accept it, the world’s most successful one at the moment , it must be given its place.
Most important of all, why do we only hear about reactions to the ongoing negotiations, which are in any case too delicate to be subjected to the opinions of cantankerous old men, from the same old men? Could it be that the persecuted minority became persecuted so that China could be brought into the Church?
Have they ever been asked? Do they really care about what Cardinal Zen and his like think? Or unlike Cardinal Zen and his like, can they visualise their own country and their own young people moving into a life in this chaotic and dynamic and unpredictable century with the support of the Eucharist ?
The rest of us should . It will affect us, our children, and grandchildren.