Pillar subscribers can listen to Ed read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR
Happy Friday friends,
And a happy feast of the Sacred Heart to you all.
Fair warning, I am supposed to be going on vacation once this is out, so it’s possible I might not be here next week. I say it is possible, I’m not especially good at going on holiday, so we shall see how that goes.
This weekend is also the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, probably the most Catholic feast there is.
Sure, its very existence doesn’t give our separated brethren the vapors like the feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, but nothing so encapsulates the reality of the Church as the joint commemoration of a coward and a jerk as her greatest apostles.
This is what I have always loved about Peter and Paul.
The calendar is full of saints whom we remember and celebrate for their piety, wisdom, courage, clarity of thought, charisma, and unflinching devotion to the Gospel. We have devotions to exemplars of the Christian life, and particular patrons of all sorts of things — just look at the current popularity of Carlo Acutis, a teenager who saw the Eucharist for exactly what it was with such enviable clarity.
But we remember Peter and Paul chiefly for their sins and weaknesses, Peter’s denial of Christ and Paul’s persecution of the Church, and for the transformative power of their encounter with the person and mercy of Christ.
While both met the risen Lord prior to embarking on their great evangelising travels, neither became perfect as a result. They remained sinners, with the same weaknesses, until the end of their lives — Peter was still tempted to back down in the face of those demanding Christian converts adopt the Judaic laws, and Christ still found the first Bishop of Rome on the road out of town, and Paul never stopped flying off the handle, or writing of the “thorn in his flesh” which no prayers would shift.
But both learned to lean on the Lord in their weakness, to accept correction, and ultimately give their lives to proclaim he who gave his life for them, and for all of us.
In a society which increasingly expects and celebrates bombast and utter self assurance, and openly reviles masculine examples of humility as unconscionably feminine, this feast seems more important than ever. These are the men — and the kind of men — Christ called to lay the foundations of his Church, theirs is the pattern for their apostolic successors to follow.
Sinners can be saints, cowards can be rocks of leadership, violent men can be tender shepherds. What is more Catholic, and worth celebrating more than that?
Here’s the news.
The News
In this morning’s bolletino, the Vatican announced that Pope Leo has appointed Bishop José Antonio Satué to be the new leader of the Spanish Diocese of Malaga.
Why does that matter, you ask? Well, for a couple of very interesting reasons — but most immediately I’d point out that our own Edgar Beltran predicted the appointment in an analysis earlier this week.
Satué is an interesting figure, and his new assignment is part of an emerging shift in how Leo is picking bishops for Spanish dioceses.
And Edgar’s called a few more forthcoming appointments, so don’t miss this.
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Christians in Syria are still mourning their dead following the terrorist attack on a Greek Orthodox church in Damascus last Sunday.
Who are Syria’s Christians? Who carried out the attack and why? And what’s likely to happen next?
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In Los Angeles, immigration raids have continued, and local parishes have reported a significant decline in Sunday Mass attendance among Hispanic parishioners.
According to some local pastors Jack spoke with, the pastoral situation facing many parishes — and the tactics being adopted by clergy — aren’t a million miles from COVID.
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In Germany, a forthcoming episcopal appointment to a small Bavarian diocese is shaping up to be a litmus test of how Pope Leo plans to approach the country’s controversial synodal way.
Hanke was one of four diocesan bishops who refused to take part in either the synodal committee or the national synodal body, potentially undermining the synodal way project.
Leo’s decision on who will replace Hanke is hotly anticipated in Germany, and being set up as a signal on what the pope’s plans are for the Church in Germany more broadly.
But is that a reasonable expectation, or a bit overblown?
Read Luke’s analysis to find out.
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As war continues in Ukraine, and as new government regulation of religious bodies with foreign affiliations comes into force, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church metropolitan is taking pains to distance the Church he leads from Moscow.
The Russian Church is considered an “accomplice to war crimes and crimes against humanity” under the country’s Law on the Protection of the Constitutional Order in the Activities of Religious Organizations, passed last year.
So what is the status of the investigation, what does this mean for freedom of religion in Ukraine, and what do Catholics make of it all?
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As conflict continues in Ukraine, and expands across the Middle East, Pope Leo has continued to call for peace, as did his predecessor, Pope Francis.
It seems to me that while Pope Francis echoed clearly the language and tone on Pope St. John XXIII in Pacem in Terris, Leo shows early signs of being more in line with Pius XII’s encyclical during the outbreak of World War II.
The major difference I can see, so far, is the way the popes proclaim Christ to a skeptical or indifferent world in times of violence.
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A Philadelphia priest who pleaded guilty to using $40,000 of parish funds for cell phone video games is facing a canonical investigation for theft.
Kozak, the former pastor at St. Thomas More parish in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, was removed from parish ministry and reported to police in 2022 after internal parish audits found an "astronomical amount of Apple transactions” in the parish’s credit card records.
But while Kozak remains on “administrative leave,” it is not clear whether the priest will be found canonically responsible for his actions, especially in light of a 2016 brain injury.
The case raises interesting questions about canon law, diocesan policy, and the scope for pastoral responses to egregious circumstances.
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Obedience is a key part of religious life, one of the evangelical counsels professed upon entry to any order. As such, obedience is a crucial aspect of the spirituality of religious life.
Church documents on the renewal of religious life have consistently emphasised the role of the proper law of the institute in ensuring a healthy and flourishing community life, she writes.
But, concretely, what role can law play in the relationship between a member and superior, especially when so much may come down to matters of conscience?
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Public education
Earlier in the week, I took a look at the pending appeal of Libero Milone in his Vatican City lawsuit against the Secretariat of State for wrongful dismissal. I’m not going to rehash the facts of the case, or the thrust of the analysis here, you can read it yourself if you haven’t already.
Suffice to say, there is on deposit at a Vatican court hundreds of pages of evidence which, in the minds of the judges, demonstrates “immoral and indecent” behavior among the most senior ranks of the Roman curia during the previous decade.
According to the current judicial reasoning, it is in the “public interest” that this evidence not see the light of day. Now, while I have my own reflexive opinion on the premise of that finding, I have not myself read the evidence in question — though I would like to, if someone has a mind to send it to me — so I cannot express an absolute conviction on the matter.
But, it seems to me, that whatever the court has currently under seal is (or should be) of immediate interest to Pope Leo since, as the new pope begins to reshape his curia to suit his own pontificate, it would be good for him to know whom he can trust.
Of course, what he does with that information is another matter.
I am open to the argument that, past a certain point, it might genuinely be “in the public interest” not to launch a series of high profile criminal prosecutions of senior clerics — especially when there would almost certainly be class-action defense of a previous culture of semi-official tolerance.
And while there may or may not be solid evidence of wrongdoing by senior officials, there is a risk that bringing them all to trial could look like a witch hunt, or like Leo was essentially putting the Francis pontificate on trial.
But, that said, I think there has to be some reckoning with instances of known and documented criminality within the papal court.
Let’s look at a particular example.