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I usually share descriptions of the churches I visit with Café readers, but sixteen days in Scotland, Iceland, and the Netherlands did not present many opportunities to see Roman Catholic Churches. We had hoped to attend Mass in Amsterdam before our ship set cruise, but inclement weather cost us that opportunity; you don’t want to board your ship soaking and shivering.
Our voyage called for stops in Scotland coming and going, with a week in Iceland in between. Thus, our first visit to a Roman Catholic Church was on the Island of Lamb Holm, in the Orkney Islands chain. The edifice is known as the “Italian Chapel” because of its unusual history. The chapel/church was built during World War II by Italian prisoners of war, who were put to work by the Allies building fortifications again possible invasion from the north by Hitler’s armies. Given that the church’s construction was undertaken by volunteers with limited material, it is a very worthy site of worship. I asked a guide if the church was still in use and was told that it was packed every Sunday for the single Mass. Wikipedia has more detailed history and several photos. During our visit day to Edinburgh, Scotland—the rainstorm that thoroughly soaked us—we did manage to visit St. Giles Cathedral. St. Giles was originally a Roman Catholic cathedral. However, its fiery priest-pastor John Knox, converted to the Protestant reform movement of the 1500’s, early Presbyterianism, and evidently the crown and the congregation went along. Knox is a pivotal figure in Reformation history, including the process of the British Empire adapting to established religion. Britannica has an excellent summary of his life, and I plan to take a new biography of Knox to read in Ireland. My visit to St. Giles impressed upon me the challenge of Protestant reformers with their message of simplicity and biblical worship attempting to conduct worship in Catholic edifices with medieval art and grandeur. I have a photo of St. Giles’ pulpit, which illustrates the change, I think. Iceland is a story unto itself. The size of Kentucky, Iceland has seven Catholic Churches in the country. This is not surprising, as Catholics make up 3% of the country’s population. The archdiocese has a colorful webpage. I did several AI searches on religious distribution in Iceland; one entry stated: “Iceland is predominantly Lutheran Christian, with growing secularism and a revival of Norse paganism.” The general report says that church attendance is not a major priority. Something of a late bloomer in terms of social and economic establishment in the European family of nations, Iceland has a different feel. Climate and geography may have something to do with that. Straddling the Arctic Circle and given the limited population—700,000 in the entire country—my guess is that there is a hardy individualism, possibly akin to the American settlers past the Mississippi. Given that we were on a cruise ship making multiple stops and taking multiple tours, it was hard to do much face-to-face conversation, though Icelanders have marvelous mastery of the English language. On our return home we were successful in hunting down a functioning Catholic parish in Lerwick, Scotland. We had found St. Olaf’s in a printed guide, and we walked a bit from the busy shopping district only to discover that, as in the United States, many churches are closed. But a kindly pedestrian told us to proceed around to St. Margaret’s Church, which was open and provided us some time for Eucharistic Adoration. I will put several photos on Facebook; Linked In only accepts six, so I will see what I can do. The church’s web page notes that there is coffee and tea for Sunday worshippers [my kind of church] and an effort is made to provide Mass several times per week. As it turned out, we were there for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Mass was scheduled for 5 PM, but our cruise ship was leaving at 4. Next week we head to Ireland, beginning with two weeks in Galway. I was there in 2024, and I would bet that there are more Catholic churches in Galway than in the entire country of Iceland. As we are lodging, not sailing, there is no excuse for me to skip frequent daily Mass, except on excursion days we have booked. If my memory of the history of Ireland is correct, one of the giants of the Irish hierarchy in the latter 1800’s was Cardinal Paul Cullen. An energetic leader, I seem to remember a quote attributed to him: “A Catholic church within three miles of every Catholic Irishman.” When I travel through Ireland, it really feels that way. Of course, the Café will publish periodically during this next trip on Facebook and Linked In.
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I had hoped to write more about my summer vacation [part one] during the actual trip to Iceland and Scotland while on the scene, so to speak, but this experience in the far north taught me, among other things, that I am not a kid anymore. It takes me longer to digest one intriguing experience after another, and I go to bed earlier. Age wise, I am just behind President Trump who turned 80 yesterday. I have no idea what he feels about ageing, though The New York Times has an interesting piece suggesting that talk of age and death makes him uncomfortable. Tucker Carlson opines that the proposed victory arch for Washington is the President’s battle against dying and being forgotten. I have watched enough HGTV restoration stories to know that no one will want my detritus when I die, including the cap I bought twenty-four hours ago in the Amsterdam Airport.
We spent two days in Amsterdam before launching forth on the Celebrity Eclipse for points north, very north, and returning to Amsterdam to fly home through Boston yesterday [Sunday]. I have a certificate from our ship’s captain awarding me for crossing the Arctic Circle. [I don’t think I’ll leave that to my posterity, either.] Our destinations were Scotland and Iceland. As a kid, I had a globe of the world, and I imagined Iceland as a snowy landscape with polar bears. In fact, Iceland has no large mammals. Its weather makes tree survival minimal, and its weather and geography—mountainous in places, with rivers and thermal bubbling pools—is not conducive for large mammals to survive in the wild. Cows and sheep are herded and cultivated. Our tour guide on one trip also worked as a school bus driver and rancher, no easy routine when one considers that daylight lasts two to four hours per day through the winter at best. We, on the other hand, visited Iceland when the sun was up for all but 90 minutes of a twenty-four-hour day. I should reword that to say there is continuous daylight, not continuous sunshine. You are more likely to get windburned than sunburned. At certain of the country’s national parks the lasting tourist memory is of an olfactory nature: intense bubbling pits of sulfur. You probably know what that smells like…particularly if you went to an all-boys’ high school. I quietly remarked to our guide that I was going to need a lot of Old Spice before presenting myself in the ship’s dining room that night. The capital of Iceland is Reykjavik, a city about the size of Pittsburgh at 425,000 when counting its expanding suburbs. The entire country’s population is under 700,000. Reykjavik is a modern city surrounding an old, quaint neighborhood. It possesses universities and cultivates the arts. Our time was somewhat limited by the ship’s schedule; we spent an entire day exploring natural wonders within two hours of the city. The next day we completed a walking tour of the city itself, climaxed by a visit to the country’s most famous church, the Lutheran Cathedral Hallgrímskirkja, completed in 1986. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is Christ the King; the Diocese of Reykjavik encompasses the entire country. Catholics number 3% of the country’s population. We did not have an opportunity to visit any Catholic church in Iceland, there being only seven. The web page of the Diocese is quite interesting; it includes a map of all seven churches spread around the country. I was curious about immigration and the country’s policies and sentiments. Evidently the government is concerned with a falloff in applications: 3,000 in 2024, 1,500 in 2025. Apparently, there are efforts underway to assist immigrants in adjusting to Iceland’s life and community services. Most applications come from Ukraine, Venezuela, Palestine, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. After we left Iceland, I learned that the United States is remembered fondly in Icelandic history. Given its vulnerable location, Iceland declared itself neutral during World War II. In 1940 a combined force of British and American armies “invaded” Iceland, which was delighted to see them and assisted in their settlement. The presence of these allied soldiers provided a boost to the nation’s economy, helping Iceland recover from the Depression and enter the postwar Western economy. The United States built what would become the nation’s hub for regional and international air traffic, Keflavík International Airport. The Catechist Café will be hitting the road for the summer, and you will be welcome to come along. In a few days we are heading across the Atlantic to Amsterdam for a quick visit to a city we are very fond of. About ten years ago we rented a houseboat moored near a centuries-old windmill. Amsterdam’s tram-rail service ran close enough to our location so that we could get from our houseboat to the transportation hub downtown in about thirty minutes. It was the best of both worlds.
But this time our Amsterdam visit will be brief, and we will tote our bags from the hotel to the Celebrity Cruise Line boarding center. [They are next door to each other!] Celebrity will spirit us off for some [very] new adventures: for a week we will be circling and exploring Iceland, including two days in Reykjavik and several straddling the Arctic Circle. We will be there before Iceland experiences a total eclipse of the sun in August, but we witnessed a total eclipse in 2017 from Clemson University’s golf course in South Carolina, of all places. Iceland is expecting an onslaught of tourists later in the season. I know nothing about the country, per se, so I am looking forward to investigation the nation’s religious heritage. It is not covered in ice; it is thermally active with some sites offering the opportunity to take hot water baths from springs. There are beautiful landscapes resembling Ireland in some places. There is a place where you can cross a walking bridge between tectonic plates, North American and European. So, we expect to learn a lot. The cruise continues to Edinburgh [my first visit to Scotland] and several British islands before returning to Amsterdam and an immediate flight to Orlando. After a 10-day break at home to do laundry, take a physical, and pay bills, we hit the transatlantic route again, this time flying to Shannon Airport. Ireland is our home away from home, and we will be there for six weeks, including two weeks each in both Galway and Valentia Island, and prolonged visits to Killarney and Dingle. On Valentia, we expect a lot of company as my in-laws and Margaret’s cousins from the area will be joining us in a large rental at Knightstown, a tiny port town overlooking the Atlantic and the Skellig Islands. The Catholic Church is open every day [Mass every other Sunday]; there is a fine bookstore for an island of six hundred residents, a little market with fresh baked goods every morning, and a countryside rich with relics of the good, the bad, and the tragic. I developed my love for the aroma of peat logs in the fireplace on Valentia Island. My goal for the next ten weeks is to post as close to daily as possible, providing commentary, particularly on the religious settings and the scenery that touches the soul. Unfortunately, I can only do the posts on the Facebook and Linked-In sites of the Café [both sites named “The Catechist Café.”] The “technical base” will be back in Florida and unavailable on the road. I hope all of you can connect, though, and if you have questions or commentary, send them along and I’ll meditate on them as I meander my way across the countrysides. First Communion Season is upon us, and last Saturday night, April 18, our 5 PM Saturday Mass—the liturgy Margaret and I attend every week--was designated as one of several observances of First Communion for children in my parish. As you might expect, Mass on Saturday led to full-blown mental playback of my First Communion in 1956. I wish I could say they gave me goosebumps, but in truth my First Communion was a major disappointment. Even today the sting of disappointment is still felt as clearly as it was 70 years ago.
I attended Catholic school in Buffalo, so our catechesis for First Communion was conducted primarily as a school subject. The big emphasis was Real Presence, Jesus truly in the bread and wine—though back them we only received the consecrated bread. Drinking from the chalice was still a decade away. The issue of Real Presence revolved primarily around “messing it up” on reception day. We were instructed to keep the communion host away from our teeth when receiving, lest we chew the consecrated host which, looking back, sounded a lot like sacrilege. If the host stuck to the roof of one’s mouth, the idea of using one’s finger to dislodge it was strictly forbidden. The advice given to us on this touchy matter was “don’t let it happen in the first place.” Then there was the matter of the communion fast law, which began at midnight the evening before. I honestly can’t recall if the fast law included water in 1956; my dad was in the choir and used to joke about trying to sing with a dry throat at the 10:30 AM Mass. But my home room teacher, a young sister, regaled us with stories about kids who had accidentally swallowed toothpaste or frosting from their First Communion cake on the way out the door to church. In either case, the errant child would not be allowed to participate in the First Communion Mass. Add to that the countless hours of rehearsal for the Mass, down to stepping on the proper tiles on the center aisle floor as we processed in for the Mass. [For all of that, I was told after the Communion Mass that I had returned to my seat too slowly and held up the students behind me.] Unfortunately, home was no escape from the stress, either. My mother and I made a required appointment at the convent to choose what First Communion Mass Book and rosary my family wanted to buy. The humor in that: we weren’t allowed to bring them to First Communion Mass anyway. Then I remember being dragged from store to store looking for a white suit, a collared dress white shirt, white tie, and of course, solid white dress shoes. My mother was not at her best at the time, and in one store she muttered something about “my odd shape and size.” That hurt, and it wasn’t true, either. [see photo]. But in “old age,” as I look back, I must consider this. I made my First Communion just a decade after the end of World War II. My father served four years in the medical corps before marrying my mother, went to night school upon return to the U.S. and worked as an accountant for a TV repair company. He was worn out after the War and contracted malaria. When I was eight, we were a family of five and living in our own house. Finances were always a consideration, and a First Communion event was not cheap. In fact, financially speaking, the expense was wasteful. First Communion suits and dresses were worn once, or twice if the second grade was involved in the Corpus Christi procession two weeks later, as it was in my parish. [My mother’s frustration with clothes shopping may have reflected a search for affordable Church ware.] Families were expected to entertain extended relatives and neighbors. Buffalo was a blue-collar city. My dad was one of few men on our street who wore a tie to work. My First Communion class had Monday off from school the day after the event. I decided to wake up early and walk alone to my parish church for the early sunrise Mass for workers and seniors. With no pressure upon me, I took my place in line with grown-ups [there were no other children] and received communion in peace. I returned to my pew and talked to Jesus with my face buried in my hands, just like all the other grown-ups. Ever since then, I have memorialized Monday, May 21, as my first personal engagement with the Eucharist. In 2018 St. Mary’s Press and the Center of Applied Research for the Apostolate released a landmark study, “Going, Going, Gone: The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics.” The full text is available on Amazon for about $8 as of this morning. Among its findings: the mean age when young people decide to disengage from the practice of the Catholic Faith is 13 years old, with some making the decision as early as 9! When I received my First Communion, I was 8. Trust me, we will talk more about what runs through the minds of the younger folks in the pews…and the importance of taking nothing for granted. I am grateful to several of my close friends who have asked if the Café could summarize what Pope Leo has stated or taught in his first year of the papacy. I agree that it is [1] difficult for a Catholic to connect with a critical national or international news source or sources to stay on top of the pope’s schedule and pronouncements; [2] there are different “layers” of papal announcements—from the pope’s Easter sermons to full blown universal letters or encyclicals; and [3] Pope Leo is still absorbing the Vatican bureaucracy, which comes as quite a shock to anyone who has been elected pope. Add to that, Catholic media has tendencies toward a Fox-MSNBC divide like secular media which becomes more extreme the further you go down the social media food chain. Pope Leo XIV’s personality is steadied and cautious. There is little doubt in my mind that some Catholics on both the right and the left have already grown a bit restless with the personality and inner workings of the pope’s mind. Leo has already prayed with King Charles and Queen Camilla in the Sistine Chapel, and this past week he extended prayer and good wishes to the new Archbishop Bishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, senior cleric of the Church of England. On the other hand, he has reaffirmed mandatory celibacy for priests and has expressed no inclination to ordain Roman Catholic women deacons anytime soon. A superficial reading would find this papal thinking contradictory. But that would be a misunderstanding of the man and his vision. To understand Leo XIV, it is helpful to review the papacy of his predecessor, Francis. If we think back, the first half of Pope Francis’ reign was that of a spirited leader unafraid of communicating thoughts of innovative reforms in Church life. Who can forget his remarks to reporters about homosexuality: “Who am I to judge?” Expectations were high for a reform of sorts, until it became clear that a sizeable measure of Catholics in the U.S., for example, actively opposed him for his continued teachings on many issues of Church life. Notably, Pope Francis was not enamored with American free market economics which, in his view, was antithetical to the Gospel teachings of the Eight Beatitudes and other moral actions of Jesus. Consider how American bishops ignored the pope’s call for “synodality,” the mass convocation of clergy and lay persons in every parish and diocese. Toward the end of his reign Francis seemed to pull on the reins to prevent further disharmony that threatened the unity of the Church. In governing content, Leo XIV seems to respect his predecessor’s good intentions to reform the Church along the lines of Jesus’ teachings. Leo is extremely critical of America’s war in Iran, for example. However, he strikes me as a cautious and precise teacher. He pays attention to the full two millennia of Catholic Tradition; he is not easily swayed by the argument to “change [doctrine and tradition] with the times.” For this pope, the argument for change would need to be airtight. On the other hand, he appears genuinely committed to “listening” to the entire Church, lay and cleric [and perhaps more so the laity.] He believes in Synodality, the process of dialogue within the Church, but he trusts the Church [and individual churches] to determine the best arrangements for that. Leo is devoted to the New Testament’s teachings on unity and love for one another; he speaks of evangelism as a compassionate embrace of those looking for God and a place to break bread with followers of Jesus. He is not likely to enact a teaching which would further divide the Church or the world. In January 2026 Leo called for the entire Catholic Church to read the documents of Vatican II [1962-1965]. Having lived through the unveiling of each of the sixteen documents, my impression today is we scanned the writings without giving full weight to the actual texts. I was shocked to discover in recent years that Vatican II’s document on worship [particularly the Mass], Sacrosanctum Concilium, is considerably more directive on how the sacraments should be celebrated. For example, SC assumes that parts of the Mass will be celebrated in Latin, as a rule. It occurs to me that with better, more precise examination of SC back in the early post-Vatican days, the argument about today’s form of the Mass, the 1970 Mass of Pope Paul VI versus the 1570 Mass of Pope Pius V might have taken a lesser acerbic tone. I am concerned that the pope’s January call for Vatican II study has gained little or no publicity or traction to date. With this preliminary introduction, we turn to specific moments and what they might mean. GETTING DOWN TO CASES... UNITY: At his first Mass as pontiff, Leo XIV defined the Church as united, “a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world." Leo is concerned over conflicts both inside and outside the Church. Prior to his election, he assisted Pope Francis in the selection of bishops around the world. This would make him one of the most informed men to take the Chair of Peter in some time. A lifetime of unity and evangelization would probably be prerequisites for episcopal candidates in the future. Will Leo be able to find such men? LISTENING: On October 10, 2025, Pope Leo stated that “there can be no peace without freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and respect for the views of others.” During Vatican II there was tension over the idea of interfaith dialogue, for example. Many bishops argued that to engage with another faith, or with atheists, was an admission that parts or all the “opposition’s arguments” was a complementary nod. There is truth in that, in the sense that the partner in the dialogue is a child of God and worthy of breathing God’s air. “Listening,” as Pope Leo defines it, is the beginning of mutual love and the first step in the evangelizing process. It goes without saying that our country is divided in multiple ways. But the solutions begin personally and locally, not politically. The pope will depend heavily upon the bishops, pastors, and all the faithful—that is, the local churches--to go beneath the angers [and fears!] that drive us apart. To listen requires skill, honest interest, and the tolerance to live with provisional solutions for issues related to the living of the Faith. Given this challenge, what about the local shepherds who must direct it? BISHOPS: On the role of a bishop, the Pope had this to say to gathered bishops in Rome on June 25, 2025: "Be men of communion, always promoting unity in the diocesan presbyterate" and make sure every priest, without exception can sense the fatherhood, brotherhood and friendship of his bishop.” The Episcopacy of the United States may very well be Pope Leo’s greatest American challenge. Much like the Congress of the United States, the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops [USCCB] has not energetically engaged in much forward planning and programming. It may be that the national body of bishops is strapped for cash, and it does appear that one of the USCCB’s showpiece programs, the Campaign for Human Development, has gone broke as of 2023. The most recent audit of the entire USCCB can be found here, 2024, by KPMG. This would be prior to the 2025 federal cuts made by the Trump Administration to a variety of Catholic assistance projects. There are several issues that the USCCB seems reluctant to address, not least of all its own divisions. This was noticeably clear in the bishops’ discomfort with Pope Francis and the conference’s tendencies to install officers with reservations about Francis’s papal direction. Pope Francis’s call for synodality and the bishops’ inaction is a good example. If I had to guess, I doubt that Leo will permit the papacy to suffer disrespectful public attitudes from American bishops, many of whom have aligned themselves with Trump, ostensibly on the abortion issue alone. Leo has publicly spoken on the immorality of the Iran War. Not every U.S. bishop has signed on. Among other troubles, not only is there a shortage of priests [see below] but also an equal shortage of [1] Catholic ministerial professionals, in multiple positions—directors of faith formation, parish business managers, young adult ministers, etc. and [2] an absence of certification and/or professional standards for church ministers. Until recently the benchmark requirement for a “DRE” as we used to say, was a master’s in theology or religious education or its equivalent. PRIESTS: Sometimes my posts write themselves. Over lunch today Margaret read to me Pope Leo’s papal intention for the month of April: “For priests in crisis: Let us pray for priests going through moments of crisis in their vocation, that they may find the accompaniment they need and that communities may support them with understanding and prayer.” Again, I will only reference the United States, without forgetting that priests in more than a few countries continue to be murdered for exercising their ministry. Priests in the U.S. are having a challenging time of it. Their workload is generally well known. Their congregations are divided in many places over multiple issues. But there is more beneath the service. For starters, consider relations between priests and their bishops. There is statistical evidence that the relationships of priests to bishops is not what it should be. This has been verified by many sources: Well-being, Trust, and Policy in a Time of Crisis: Highlights from the National Study of Catholic Priests [2022 study]. Ave Maria [2021 survey; highly comprehensive on the life of priests. 2025 Our Sunday Visitor [2025] report on current update of the “Well Being” study cited above, conducted by Gallup, Catholic Weekly, Sydney, Australia, on Pope’s words for priests in crisis. [April 2, 2026] It is worth noting that last week Pope Leo elected to wash the feet of twelve priests from his Diocese, Rome. One of my favorite “underground” Vatican sources, The Pillar, reports that the Pope received scattered criticism for exclusion of women from the Holy Thursday washing rite, choosing instead to wash the feet of recently ordained priests. Pope Francis, as you may recall, used to wash the feet of prisoners and the poor of both sexes on Holy Thursday. Today the pastoral, spiritual, and professional care of priests [not by priests, as we are accustomed to think] at this moment is a major preoccupation of Pope Leo. My sense is that the major Catholic publications are dancing around the issue of priest morale very gingerly. However, after exhaustive searching through my AI sidekick, there are two statistics that in a strange way complement each other. First, Vatican officials admit that of priests under consideration for appointment to the episcopacy, i.e., to become bishops, about 35% of those priests decline the offer. If you grew up a Catholic years ago, the bishop’s staff and miter was the ultimate reward of the ecclesiastical pyramid. Why would a priest turn down such an offer? Pressures of the job? Personal sense of inadequacy? Or is it that the priest has a secret history that would lead to disgrace if revealed? The other statistic indicates that at any one time, 35% of priests are not living their vow of celibacy. I learned in researching this post that in 2019 the Vatican quietly developed policies dealing with priests who fathered children, and particularly the welfare of the children themselves. In any case, the Pope is a realist about the challenge of Orders. He knows the depth of support necessary to maintain the excellent work of priests. A safe bet for further attention. SEX AND MARRIAGE: On November 21, 2025, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued Una Caro: In Praise of Monogamy, Doctrinal Note on the Value of Matrimony as an Exclusive Union and Mutual Belonging. That same week, the Pope addressed the staff of the Roman court of annulment petitions: Per EWTN, “the pontiff emphasized that theology, law, and pastoral care must be understood in a harmonious way, not as separate or opposing areas, and pointed out that annulment proceedings are not merely technical procedures to obtain the “free status of persons” but rather an ecclesial service based on the search for truth and on family pastoral care. Una Caro laid out the Church’s official teaching on marriage. The document is surprisingly beautifully written and inspiring, with considerable human insight and common sense. It is, to be sure, an ideal. When placed side by side with the instructions to the Dicastery on annulments, the message seems to be that all pastoral discussions, rulings, and catecheses will begin as current practice for future pastoral discussions. That said, I would be surprised if there were not at least quiet meetings at the Vatican about how confessors deal with contraception [and possibly other moral circumstances] in the ultimate forum of the secrecy of the confessionals. AND FINALLY, WHAT MIGHT WE SEE IN THE YEARS AHEAD? Point 1: Pope Leo’s history and temperament—not to mention his public statements on the Iran War and the plight of immigrants—are evidence that he will institutionalize the needs of peace and recognition of the cultural sins of conflict in the life of the Church for generations. While nearly all popes of the Vatican II era have attempted to move the Church forward in its scripturally based responsibility to create a just earth, Leo has the opportunity and the will to realign the operations of the Church toward justice and unity. As a sidebar, it will be interesting to see how American laity and clergy respond when the Pope leans forward on his mission. Point 2: An overhaul of both catechetics and institutional Catholic education, cradle to grave. Leo is ten years younger than me and thus was immersed too in early faith instruction by religious sisters in Catholic schools. Leo needs no reminder that schools are dwindling, Catholic colleges are closing doors or cutting back, that teaching religious are rare, that there are acute shortages of skilled catechists and certified teachers, little or nothing of systematic teaching for Catholic adults, that applicants for seminaries need greater immersion in the full Catholic life. Much has been made of increased numbers of converts in many dioceses of the United States, as well as greater enthusiasm among college students through campus ministry programs. As a former college chaplain, no one is happier than I am to see this growth. I would pass along here two maxims, though. First, “Piety comes and goes; stupidity remains.” The second phrase comes from medieval times: the definition of theology as “faith seeking understanding,” or the principle that faith in God motivates a believer to pursue deeper knowledge and comprehension of divine truth.” Cultivation of the heart and mind is God’s intended gift to the Church. We have an exceedingly long way to go in Catholicism until understanding catches up to pious enthusiasm. Point 3: Just an observation from the blogger’s desk, but truly little of Leo XIV’s thought, preaching, and writing is percolating down to the general Catholic public. This entire post today was inspired in part by a friend’s observation that he had heard something had come from the Vatican about marriage and annulments, but with no context. There is no one answer to this real dilemma. [You can get a free on-line subscription to Vatican News at this address.] Preachers can integrate papal thinking into their homilies; catechists can do likewise. Point 4: Seminary training for future priests will be enhanced. Several dioceses have added an extra year of on-site training in an actual parish. One journal noted that the goal of an on-site year was to assist seminarians interact personally with women. This takes us into two more delicate areas: increasing numbers of seminarians of various cultures/languages, and the situation of heterosexuals and homosexuals living side-by-side in seminaries and rectories. Pope Leo XIV admitted to an interviewer that the issue of homosexuality is delicate, “As we’ve seen at the synod, any issue dealing with the LGBTQ questions is highly polarizing within the Church.” In another interview the Pope quoted an Eastern bishop as telling him that Westerners are obsessed with sex.” Still, Leo wants all people to feel welcome into the Church. The devil is in the details. Point 5: The pope has already made his mind well know on the sanctity of marriage and annulments. The fact that he is concerned about the quality of annulments is actually an encouraging pastoral sign, not a roadblock. An annulment should include something that addresses the psychological currents of a failed marriage, for the benefit of the petitioner, to avoid similar pain and brokenness in a second union. Having processed annulments myself for nearly two decades, the emphasis in annulment proceedings seemed to be too much legality. I always felt that the “inner facts” in an annulment needed to be heard in a healing psychological fashion. I advised parishioners to see a therapist to address factors in a failed first marriage with an eye toward understanding and healing. [Sometimes the diocesan tribunal recommended the same thing.] Point 6: There are many contested moral teachings that need further debate, discussion, and explanation. Contraception comes immediately to mind, but science has delivered new concerns to our doorstep: in vitro fertilization, vaccines, etc. Transgender medicine, particularly involving surgery, is currently much in the news. Truthfully, we know less than we should, scientifically speaking, about gender identity, same sex attraction, etc. In July 2025 during a long interview, Pope Leo made a revealing comment. He called out what he said can be a western “obsession” with sexuality, saying a fellow cardinal from the global east during the Synod of Bishops on Synodality convened by Pope Francis had lamented that “the western world is fixated, obsessed with sexuality.” “A person’s identity, for some people, is all about sexual identity, and for many people in other parts of the world, that’s not a primary issue in terms of how we should deal with one another,” Pope Leo said. He admitted that this comment remains “on the back of my mind, because, as we’ve seen at the synod, any issue dealing with the LGBTQ questions is highly polarizing within the Church.” An enigmatic observation from the Holy Father, to be sure. Stay tuned to his piety and his mind. Was it Mark Twain who famously said, “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated?” I need to explain that my ten-day absence was for good reasons. During the last two weeks I have been preparing a proposal/outline for an adult education program for my parish, the target audience being similar to the Catechist Café—motivated students of the Faith who wish to explore Catholic life and writings under a bigger microscope. I make my pitch next week, and most of the prep work is now completed—a one-year proposed curriculum. Hopefully, my program will help my parish next year, but my pastor wants a look under the hood, and rightly so.
I spent several days reconnecting with long-time friends via phone or over long lunches. And I have been researching Church life from the angle of sociology, which is not one of my strongholds. Back in 1971 I took an elective on “urban planning” at Catholic University as Washington, D.C.’s subway was being built, and that’s about it. What made me return to the social field was a new book from Eerdman Press—a company that continues to surprise me with valuable books and sponsored research. In this case the work at hand is The End of Theological Education [2023] by Ted A. Smith, a look at the agendas of seminaries vis-à-vis the exodus of people from organized religion, from the point of reference of human behavior. What intrigued me about this work—admittedly after a lot of sweat—was the author’s focus upon mostly Protestant churches. Protestants, and even many Evangelicals, have gone off searching for spirituality without the “religious communities” or congregations of decades before. [The author seems to focus on Presbyterians, which brings hard specificity to the observations he makes.] Sometimes I can get so absorbed in Catholic issues that I overlook the experiences of our sister churches, many of which are far more painful than ours and possible indicators of worse to come for Catholics. On another track entirely, our Trappist prayer group met this week. One of our members has completed her theological training for the Lutheran Priesthood…which brings up for me the question of ordaining women deacons in the Roman Catholic Church. From what I understand, this discussion is one of several that Pope Leo XIV wishes to discuss as he continues Pope Francis’ work of synodality and discernment for the Catholic future. I’ve started collecting resources for that topic. This week marked the end of Windows 10, which means the computer that has served the Café faithfully over the years is now on borrowed time. I have a new model selected, but it’s the bells and whistles that drive you crazy. I am looking for an email program by which Café readers can get an instant link to a new post instantly. [A lot of our friends have given up on social media.] I have the Geek Squad on speed dial. And finally, the happiest news of all: today Margaret and I celebrate our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. There is something incredibly special about love later in life; we were 50 years old when we married in 1998. These have been the happiest twenty-seven years of my life. To that I can only add that her energy, her humor, her spirituality, and her love and concern for the poor give me the example to push on into seniority with the idealism and energy of a teenager. I’ll be back on Saturday or Sunday with a “plain old post. “ I am almost 78 years old, but I still break up the year into “semesters” in my head. And so, it seems we are coming around the corner to the reopening of schools and all that goes with that. Central Florida schools open August 11 this year. It is also the time of year when I scour the internet for the first church bulletin panic appeals for volunteers to teach the fall semester. [If you, the reader, are first to catch sight of a church bulletin pleading for religious education teachers for the 2025 season, let us know and we’ll honor you as “barista” of the month here at the Café.]
But seriously, it is no laughing matter, and every year we send good hearted but ill-equipped folks into settings to instruct, teach, and form young Catholics. The ministerial sites may be classrooms, small groups, families, etc., but we do an injustice sending good people, or “faith formers,” into classes or family faith groups without the basic theological/pastoral learning and the skills to teach and manage groups of any age. The challenge isn’t just managing kids, either, although that is harder than it used to be. I instructed adults for my diocese for the better part of forty years—they were catechists, Catholic school teachers, parish ministers working toward a local diocesan certification, etc. During one class, a woman stood up and yelled that I was a Muslim, teaching Islamic heresy. That was a first for Tom el Sheik here, but I was probably 65 years old then, so I had experience to fall back upon. But that would be frightening for a new catechist. It takes a special kind of courage for a Catholic whose own religious formation extended to Confirmation, maybe a parish youth group, to embark upon a parochial teaching ministry. Teachers of the faith never seem to get the public respect and appreciation they deserve from the entire parish. There is a value in students’ encountering such generous individuals like my frequent lunch buddy Mike, a former prison guard among other careers, who is still teaching in his parish as he approaches 80. There are few ministries more demanding in multiple senses than parochial faith formation. Not only do catechists do their work without much recognition, but they are generally expected to pay for their minimum training, where it exists or where it is required, out of their own pockets. Not only that, but the theological products that many of our current faith formation personnel must choose from will never be confused with accredited institutions of Catholic learning such as Notre Dame, Catholic University, Villanova, Dayton, Boston College, etc. Some of these noted Catholic schools offer quality on-line/interactive education. See Dayton’s online program; scroll down to Religious Studies and Theology. For something as central as religious studies, it amazes me that as a Church we haven’t figured out standard issues for religious study of catechists [among other ministries] i.e., issues of preparation and certification. Vatican II, in multiple places, describes ongoing faith formation as a normal and natural endeavor of a baptized person. Given that Baptism “recreates” a person [including infants] into a Christ-bearing source of divine wisdom, our faith data briefcases are awfully thin. Jesus is spoken of in the early New Testament texts as “working signs and wonders” but if you reflect back to the Gospels, much of his work was teaching. HOW DID THE U.S. INTERPRET VATICAN II ON POST-COUNCIL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION GUIDELINES? Ten years before the Council, in 1955, the Church historian Monsignor John Tracy Ellis made waves when he published an assessment of Catholic education in the U.S, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life.” The document can be retrieved here for the analytically inclined, but the gist of his paper was the inferior state of Catholic education in the U.S. [In the 1930’s Ellis found the doctoral history program at Catholic University so deficient that he attempted a transfer to Northwestern University, a public institution.] Ellis saw what few other bishops and analysts failed to see, that American Church learning, like the Rio Grande River, was a mile wide and a foot deep, a description which has not lost its relevance as of 2025. In Ellis’s day, every diocesan bishop and most clerical orders maintained individual seminaries, making for an enormous number of college/graduate school seminaries, four-year colleges, and universities staffed by mediocre professors. Catholics, clerics and eventually lay persons of academic promise, studied in Europe, and continue to do so. A good indication of America’s religious studies atrophy is the dynamic of Vatican II itself. Only one American Catholic cleric of note, the Jesuit Father John Courtney Murray, made a major contribution to a Council document, Dignitatis humanae, the “Declaration on Religious Liberty.” Consequently, the implementation of the sixteen Vatican II documents posed a major challenge to bishops in the States since every aspect of Church life had been reformed and renewed at the Council. This included, of course, religious education. Those in Church authority had to reeducate themselves as well as convey the Council teachings to all the faithful. Looking back on the educational scene, I think most bishops believed they had more time for adjustment than they really had—i.e., they could keep the old Catholic school/CCD model for some years yet, perhaps till the end of the twentieth century. Catholic elementary and secondary schools would continue as before, they hoped, as the option of choice, with CCD as the backstop, where faith formation was concerned. What the U.S. Conference of Bishops failed to recognize were advances in theology and catechetics, professional and spiritual unrest among “teaching” religious orders, particularly women’s orders; the spiraling cost of operating schools that many pastors at least privately were anxious to unload; and the noticeable decline in vocations and departures from the priesthood and religious life. Seminary enrollment dropped like a rock in the late 1960’s. THE BISHOPS RESPOND TO THE COUNCIL WITH “TO TEACH AS JESUS DID [1972] I was more than a little surprised to see that “To Teach as Jesus Did” is still available on the market: Amazon Prime has new copies for $441.75 as of today—I can only imagine that all 140 U.S. bishops in 1972 autographed the text! TTAJD is a 52-page guide from America’s bishops on religious faith formation. I reviewed this work on Amazon a few years ago, mostly from the vantage point of historical wear and tear on its premises. There are few things in my review I would change today. The most surprising thing about this little book is the unspoken assumption that Catholic parents now had post-1972 choice for their children between Catholic school formation and free-standing religious education offered by the parish. This is a reversal of the 1880’s Plenary Council of Baltimore’s mandate that all Catholic children must attend Catholic school, except for serious reasons. I am surprised that few, if any, Catholic analysts or commentators picked up on this in the 1970’s. It may be that the schools were a burden to those who managed them, taught in them, and funded them. Unfortunately, no one picked up the correlation between schools and CCD: as schools closed, and fewer religious maintained parochial presence, the professionalism of free-standing religious education also declined as the Catholic school teachers disappear. In practically a generation, religious ed instruction passed from professional religion teachers [most vowed religious] to parent volunteers with minimal preparation provided for their ministry. A funny thing happened in the 1970’s; for some reason, the term “CCD” became unfashionable. If you visit Facebook sites today for religious faith formation of minors, you see a variety of synonyms for what used to be called CCD. But if you Google “CCD” you see a remarkable story on Wikipedia: In 1536, the Abbot Castellino da Castello had inaugurated a system of Sunday schools in Milan. Around 1560, a wealthy Milanese nobleman, Marco de Sadis-Cusani, having established himself in Rome, was joined by a number of zealous associates, both priests and laymen, and pledged to instruct both children and adults in Christian doctrine. In 1562, Pope Pius IV made the Church of Sant' Apollinare their central institution; but they also gave instructions in schools, in the streets and lanes, and even in private houses. As the association grew, it divided into two sections: the priests formed themselves into a religious congregation, the Fathers of Christian Doctrine, while the laymen remained in the world as "The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine". History is a marvelous thing. What we see here is that in a true moment of Church crisis—Luther had posted his theses in 1517, and the Reformation was in full swing—a rich, educated Catholic layman sparked a movement of fellow laymen and priests in which they educated themselves and quite literally took to the streets to teach the Faith. Of note is the fact that they pledged to instruct “both children and adults in Christian doctrine.” Their mission was more revolutionary than they knew, and years later the popes and American bishops put thought to adult education, as I will highlight in a few weeks. Apparently, lay men and lay women can shape tomorrow’s church if given the tools and the training. But for all practical purposes, ongoing structured adult Catholic study does not exist as part and parcel of American Catholic parish or diocesan life at the present time. What would such a commitment look like? I’m not sure, but I’d know it if I saw it. To be continued…. As a Buffalo kid educated in a parochial school, I was exposed to considerable history of the building of the Erie Canal, perhaps more than students in Billings, Montana, or Fort Lauderdale, Florida. We were proud of the Canal. The Erie Canal, in its original routing, ran through the Buffalo city limits. [Today the “official route” runs north of Buffalo and ends at the Niagara River in Tonawanda—at a swell breakfast restaurant on your way to Niagara Falls, about six miles downriver.] The Canal was the first mega-project of the United States. Completed in 1825, it was the first water route from the Midwest to New York City.
The New York City to Albany stretch was already cut by nature, the Hudson River. It was the 360-mile segment from Albany to Buffalo/Lake Erie that faced planners. Carol Sheriff’s The Artificial River: The Erie Canal and the Paradox of Progress, 1817-1862, is a captivating description of the obstacles facing construction: swamps, rocky escarpments, lakes along the route, rattlesnakes, and malaria. The route was broken into fifteen segments, and private companies bid on each leg of the project. Each of these companies faced a massive problem: manpower. It is possibly a measure of conditions in Ireland that thousands of its sons made their way to New York to build the canal with all its dangers and hardships. I attempted to find “immigration procedures” for 1817 at the Port of New York, but there was nothing I could nail down. The Canal Project was approved by the State of New York, the bonds and loans arranged, and the Governor of New York, DeWitt Clinton, was enthusiastically waiting for the first shovel. I have a suspicion that “not too many questions were asked” regarding custom status and paperwork. The Irish worked their way across the state for eight years—on schedule--to complete a project that would prove to be a financial windfall for the empire state, notably the port cities of New York and Buffalo [the latter becoming the tenth largest city in the United States.] Much of the construction connected farm communities; the canal would reduce shipping costs 90%. One would have thought that the upstate citizenry would have welcomed the canal and the men who labored to complete it. But the truth was quite the opposite. Historian Sheriff describes the construction march as a pitched battle between local farmers and the Irish laborers. Irish workers were killed in the line of duty. The Irish had a grim time in America. President John Adams attempted to expel those Irish living in the United States because they tended to vote for his opposition. [Adams is remembered for his “Alien and Sedition Acts” of 1798 which some present-day politicians would like to restore with greater vigor. Thomas Jefferson allowed three of the four acts to lapse.] But the bigger issues, as most readers might suspect, were immigration and Catholicism. To an extent, Americans might be forgiven at the turn of the nineteenth century of fear of recent arrivals from overseas, given the excesses of the French Revolution, Napoleon, and general turmoil in Europe. Many of today’s immigrants have fled to our shores to avoid chaos and disorder in their own countries. Curiously, the reactions of fear experienced by many Americans was not so terribly different from several of the popes of the nineteenth century, notably Pius IX [r. 1846-1878] and his Syllabus of Errors, in which he condemns democracy, science, and freedom of thought, pillars upon which the American experiment was built. Irish came to be seen as disrupters of the status quo in the U.S., a predominantly English-Protestant nation. There is irony in that these “foreigners” built the waterway that would eventually strengthen the American unity. But this reality was lost upon Americans, and later the “Know Nothing Party” of hatred of immigrants and Catholics would become a significant political force through the 1850’s when Abraham Lincoln began his run for the White House. In an 1855 letter to a friend, Lincoln muses: I am not a Know-Nothing– That is certain– How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid– As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal" We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics". When it comes to this, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty– to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy. When I was in Ireland last year, at the Museum of the Potato Famine in Dublin, I came across a remarkable event in time: when the Irish were starving to death in 1847 in an engineered genocide by the British, an outpouring of cash aid came from the United States, specifically from the Choctaw and the Cherokee Tribes. These were the same tribes that Andrew Jackson in 1830 removed militarily from their homes in Mississippi in the infamous “trail of tears” to the far and unsettled reaches of present-day Oklahoma; 6,000 of the tribes died on that forced march. Like many of you, I am distressed daily by governmental and grassroots attitudes and actions toward vulnerable persons. We live in a time where there is infectious fear. I look at myself and say, courage. The line that keeps coming to me is Jesus’ command to keep the lamp burning bright: that we are open in sharing our inner joy, loving in our charity, wise in our judgments and strategies, peaceful in sharing our truth. What will save our country is what will save our Church. When Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected to the office of the papacy not long ago, he took the name of Leo, the fourteenth successor of St. Peter. Our new pope did not specify which of his thirteen predecessors was predominant in his choice. Later, it appeared that he had Leo XIII in mind; Catholic school students years ago learned that Leo XIII had written Rerum Novarum, the encyclical remembered for its defense of the working man and the Church’s first modern foray into what we refer to in this age as “social justice.”
Before I jump into the procession of Leonine popes, I need to remind myself that the history of the Church is unimaginably complex. Even the geography of Christianity is diverse. The Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are clear that the Church, as a structured community, developed its first generation in Jerusalem. It was not until c. 50 A.D. that the Church became missionary, as we see in the Scriptural letters of St. Paul. Paul’s efforts to convert the world to Christ took him to Greece and Rome, setting the table for new centers of pastoral leadership to emerge in Rome, Athens, Byzantium [modern Istanbul], and Alexandria, Egypt. While Rome would eventually hold a spiritual preeminence because it was the resting place of the bones of St. Peter, each of these major cities enjoyed a preeminence in their region, and most of those regions were Greek-speaking and Greek thinking, as opposed to the more barebones Latin West, specifically the Italian peninsula. By the time of the first bishop of Rome named Leo, 440 A.D., the Roman Empire itself had moved its base and its military east to Byzantium, renaming the city Constantinople after the famous emperor who had legalized Christianity a century before. Rome was rapidly decaying and was in fact sacked by Alaric and the Visigoths in 410, unable to defend itself militarily. Nor was the Latin western half of the empire contributing much to the formulation of the Christian Creed; the bishop of Rome did not attend the Council of Nicaea in 325 but sent a deacon to represent him. The time was more than ripe for a Western Christian voice to join the Greek-speaking and Greek philosophizing Church Fathers in the formulation of the Church’s repository of Faith. Which brings us to… Leo I [r. 440-461 A.D.] If you are looking for an answer to the question of which Pope Leo was the most important in the history of the Church, you would have to say the first Leo. The Catholic Church’s full title for him is St. Leo the Great, Doctor of the Church. He was an aristocrat, a man of deep faithfulness to the Christian Church, a student of philosophy and theology, and a competent civil manager, no small credential for a time when Rome was falling into the Dark Ages. He brought his own name into the office of Bishop of Rome [Leo, as you might have guessed, means “Lion” in Latin]. He served as a deacon to his bishop before his own popular election in 440, and his wisdom and theological acumen became known to his Greek peers to the East. The Greek Church fathers, having established that Jesus is God and that God is Triune or Trinity, were now debating the internal life of Jesus. Put simply—much more simply than the major players of that day—what was an accurate rendering of Jesus’ psyche? Did He think like a man or like God? Did his divine nature trump his humanity? Given his divine nature, was death even possible for Jesus? As Bishop of Rome, Leo followed these discussions which were now coming to debate in the Council of Chalcedon [451 A.D.] He offered for consideration one of Christianity’s most famous texts, The Tome of Leo. In his offering, Leo essentially set the outer limits on much one can know, and how far one can speculate the question of Jesus’ two natures. Leo stated that the humanity and the divinity of Jesus were/are perfectly compatible. Going farther was to say more than the Scriptures themselves revealed. Speculation on the experience of Jesus was to question the very nature of the Incarnation; in short, it was heresy. Chalcedon accepted his teaching, and the creedal beliefs of the Holy Trinity were enshrined for all time. There is considerable irony that a Latin Westerner would put the exclamation point on four centuries of primarily Greek theological speculation. In doing so, Leo I salvaged something of the authority and respect for the Chair of Rome in its darkest days. His diplomatic skills came into play for another purpose entirely. He was successful in persuading Attila the Hun, and three years later the Vandals, from sacking and destroying the northern regions of Italy. Leo II: [r. 682-683] Leo was possibly from Sicily; in the seventh century the Sicilian Island was under attack by Islamic forces, and many clergy fled to the relative safety of Rome. Leo’s installation was held up for nearly a year, awaiting the approval of the Byzantine Emperor. Wikipedia defines the years 537 to 752 as the era of the Byzantine Papacy, “when popes required the approval of the Byzantine Emperor for their episcopal consecration…” The East-West differences evident in Leo I’s reign [above] were much more significant by Leo II’s time. The pope himself was a man of distinguished charity who fought to maintain fidelity to the earlier Credal formula, particularly Chalcedon. His reign, sadly, lasted but a year. Leo III: [r. 795-816] The third Leo is a major figure in Church History. Unlike Leo the Great, whose major contribution was doctrinal, Leo III’s lasting influence was/is political: his actions created the union of the Western secular world with the Church world, creating “The Holy Roman Empire,” the marriage of church and state. If you teach or study Church History, you have probably seen authors debate the church-state issues from both sides, i.e., how much relationship between the Church and worldly culture, notably political policy, is a good thing? There are rich and influential Catholics today [see the Napa Valley Summer Institutes] who long for a return to Christendom on earth. Leo III’s election to the papacy in 795 was not welcomed by his predecessor’s followers, who tried to rip out his tongue and blind him. Leo escaped to the shelter of the one man who enjoyed success in uniting large tracts of land in Western Europe as a counterweight to the Byzantine East. Charlemagne helped Leo to restore order and papal holdings on the Italian peninsula. In return, Leo famously crowned Charlemagne emperor of the Holy Roman Empire on Christmas Day, 800. Together the Emperor and the Pope would work for the advancement of temporal and spiritual goods. How large was the Holy Roman Empire? For most of its history the Empire comprised the entirety of the modern countries of Germany, Czechia, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Slovenia, and Luxembourg, most of north-central Italy, and large parts of modern-day east France and west Poland. It finally dissolved in 1806 in Napoleon’s time. Of course, this union was not a perfect weave by any stretch of the imagination, but it ended the dominance of Eastern Christianity over the West and led to the formal break of Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Orthodox Church in 1054. Leo IV: [r. 847-855] Leo IV is remembered for repairing Roman churches that had been damaged during the Arab raid against Rome, and for building the Leonine Wall around Vatican Hill to protect the city. He organized a league of Italian cities who fought and won the sea Battle of Ostia against the Saracens. For centuries after his death the rumor circulated that his successor was “Pope Joan,” a woman disguised as a cleric. However, historians have discredited the tale. Leo V: [r. 903-903] One of history’s hard luck stories, Leo V was captured by another Cardinal, Christopher, upon his election and was either murdered or died in prison. Christopher was believed to be the genuine pope for the next year, at least, and listed in the official Church records as such until 1900. Today Christopher’s papacy is not recognized by the Church, though small comfort to Leo. Leo VI: [r. 928-929] Leo was elected during the saeculum obscurum or dark age/century of the 900’s. The famous historian Will Durant refers to the period from 867 to 1049 as the "nadir of the papacy.” Leo came to the throne through the influence of one Marozia, whose husband had killed Leo’s predecessor. In his one year as pope Leo did conduct administrative matters. He settled disputes and banned castrati from marrying. Leo VII [r. 936-939] Leo VII was something of a welcome break from the conduct of those manipulating the papacy at this time. He was a Benedictine monk who encouraged reform of the German clergy and forbade forced conversions of Jews. A trend we will see over the next several centuries is the model of monastic life invoked as an ideal for the clergy at large. Leo VIII [r. 964-965] On this pope, I quote from the Vatican 2001 publication Annuario Pontificio: "At this point, as again in the mid-eleventh century, we come across elections in which problems of harmonizing historical criteria and those of theology and canon law make it impossible to decide clearly which side possessed the legitimacy whose factual existence guarantees the unbroken lawful succession of the Successors of Saint Peter. The uncertainty that in some cases results has made it advisable to abandon the assignation of successive numbers in the list of the Popes.” The problem with Leo VIII is that he took office while his predecessor was still alive, making Leo an antipope. Later, Leo was properly elected. He owed his restoration to the Emperor Otto, and during his brief reign he approved legislation giving emperors rights to intervene in papal elections. However, there is some doubt among historians that Leo wrote these decrees. And, as you probably noticed, despite the recommendation of the Annuario Pontifico, we still number our popes today. Leo IX: [1049-1054] If the previous centuries were not glorious ones for the papacy, Leo IX was a beacon of reform. Born in modern day France, he became a bishop at 25 and embarked upon a reform of the monasteries and the clergy in his area of Toul. He was named pope at age 47 by Emperor Henry III, but he insisted upon a popular election by the people and clergy of Rome. As pope, he addressed the issues of clerical concubinage, simony [buying church positions] and lay investiture, i.e., kings and other royalty selecting and installing clerics to high office…such as Henry’s appointment of Leo to the Chair of Peter! He brought together a standing council of some of the greatest Church minds to address general reform, a body that would evolve into today’s College of Cardinals. Of this group, Britannica writes: “These men succeeded in transforming the papacy from a local Roman institution into an international power. This farsighted and able group was determined to make papal ideology a social reality. The pivotal point in this ideology was the primatial position of the pope as so-called successor of St. Peter—an ecclesiastical expression for papal monarchy.” With this advice ringing in his ears. Leo’s attention turned East to relations with the Greeks. Leo understood the papacy as a universal governing position, which meant that he needed the submission of the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius. Leo dispatched Cardinal Humbert to Constantinople to obtain the Patriarch’s oath of submission to the Roman pontiff. Cerularius refused, and again in the words of Britannica, “On July 16, 1054, in the full view of the congregation, Humbert put the papal bull of excommunication—already prepared before the legation left Rome—on the altar of the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Thereupon the patriarch excommunicated the legation and its supporters. This marked the final breach between Rome and Constantinople. This schism was to last, with short interruptions, until the modern age.” In summary, the official break of the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches dates to Leo IX, though Leo was dead three months before the dramatic scene in Hagia Sophia. Leo X: [r. 1513-1521] I was hunting around for sources on this Medici pope who succeeded Julius II, a Borgia. Surprisingly, there are several books on Leo X listed on Amazon. Most appear to be defenses of him written by Catholics years removed from the events of his times. The objective treatments of Leo appear in respected historical texts of this era; my “desk copy” of Leo and his times is Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450-1650 [2016, Yale University Press]. By the time Leo X became pope, Columbus had been to America four times, the printing press was revolutionizing the exchange of ideas, and Western Europe was in the pleasures of the Renaissance. The Renaissance looked backward at classical beauty in all the arts. Leo, a peaceful artisan, was a product of the Renaissance who won kudos for his efforts to make Rome a cultural center, including the construction of the new St. Peter’s Basilica we are all familiar with today. To finance this work, Leo authorized a sale of indulgences in Germany. Unfortunately, the Renaissance was a very insular world, too. Leo—and the men who surrounded him—had little sense of the common man’s outrage at the commercialization of the Church and the rage embodied in reform minded thinkers and teachers such as Martin Luther, who nailed his theses of protest during Leo’s reign. In a strange way, Leo is best remembered in history for what he did not do: [1] call a true reform council of the Church, and [2] take Luther seriously. Leo XI: [r. 1605-1605] Leo’s papacy lasted from April 1 to April 27, 1605. His very brief reign occurred forty years after the reform Catholic Council of Trent, and in his brief time he labored to implement those reforms. As AI puts it, “Despite his short reign lasting only 27 days, Pope Leo XI's reforms aimed to enhance governance and address pressing issues within the Church and the broader community. His efforts to reform the electoral process, mediate conflicts, and ease the financial burdens on his subjects reflected his commitment to a more harmonious and effectively governed Church, even amid a turbulent period marked by the Protestant Reformation and other challenges.” Leo XI was a nephew of Leo X and thus chose his papal name to remember his family predecessor. Leo XI died of a cold he apparently caught during the exertions of his papal installation. [The same thing happened to a U.S. president, William Henry Harrison, who died exactly one month after his inauguration in 1841.] Leo XII: [r. 1823-1829] There is considerable irony in the fact that the conclave which elected Leo was told that the candidate was gravely ill. The future Leo XII pulled up his robes to show his ulcerous legs and announced, “You are electing a dead man.” Which is exactly what the conclave was looking for, a place holder after the lengthy reign of Pius VII. In truth, Leo XII [Della Genga prior to his election] had been a handsome and articulate papal diplomat who traveled through the courts of Europe during the dangerous era of the Napoleonic Wars. After his election to the papacy, he proved to be an energetic worker despite his illnesses. There is a significant amount of information about the man and his policies. He was, in today’s parlance, an “ultraconservative” in both his political and magisterial Church teachings. The nineteenth century development of democracies, freedom of conscience, and even medicine [he was rumored, probably falsely, to be an “antivaxxer”] was considered by many churchmen in Rome as threatening the Church’s supreme teaching and governing position. He was deeply engaged in the Spanish-American wars of independence, essentially steering his policies there to those parties loyal to the teachings of the Church. Leo’s reign was an effort to reform society and morals. Wikipedia notes that “[Leo] decreed that a dressmaker who sold low or transparent dresses would incur ipso facto [immediate] excommunication.” He revived medieval restrictions against the Jews on owning property and goods and reinstated the requirement that Jews wear identifying clothing. He was not generally liked by the faithful, who found him a busybody and a nag in his crusade to manage their lives. Leo XIII [r. 1878-1903]: Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci is the fourth longest reigning pope in history; he succeeded the longest, Pius IX. He had the good fortune to present an academic paper to cardinals while still a student and consequently was marked for a church career. Leo XIII’s life is so lengthy and varied that I linked his Wikipedia biography here for greater detail, with a second link to his encyclical against Americanism late in his reign. In truth, Leo had significant interest in the United States, and his famous encyclical on social justice for the working man, Rerum Novarum, was issued simultaneously with labor organizing in the United States. But the millennium-long belief in the union of Church and state, the “Holy Roman Empire” described earlier, still lived in the minds and hopes of popes till the early twentieth century. Leo found America’s separation of church and state a potentially dangerous situation, particularly for Catholic children attending public schools. In 1899 he issued Testem benevolentiae nostrae against “the American Heresy,” in which he warned of what we now call “cafeteria Catholicism,” but in fact few people in the United States even knew of its existence. The bigger picture of Leo XIII is the peace and tranquility he brought to the Chair of Peter after years of the authoritarian Pius IX. In fairness, Pius suffered the brunt of the Italian Revolution for democracy and independence from clerical hegemony. Pius issued “The Syllabus of Errors” what was basically a condemnation of the Enlightenment and the modern age, and later he summoned the Council Vatican I [1868-1870] at which time the doctrine of Infallibility of the pope was decreed. Leo undoubtedly had a broader world view, having engaged with monarchs and diplomats as far away as England. He had a developing sense of the relationship of business to public life, and much firsthand experience in his dioceses of the need to care for the victims of floods, plagues, homelessness, and even victims of the Mafia. He knew how to work with local officials, no small feat when the population and the new leadership of Italy was decidedly anti-papal. On the spiritual tone of his reign, Leo’s devotion to the Virgin Mary was intense and he advocated frequent recitation of the rosary and the wearing of the scapular. He was the author of the famous prayer to St. Michael the Archangel—recited at the end of every Mass until the 1960’s. I am looking for a full biography written in this century on Leo XIII; such a book, if well done, would double as a history of Catholicism in the nineteenth century. I will keep my eyes open. + + + + How did our new pope, Leo XIV, select his name? There are many who believe he is following the tenets of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum in his concern for a just society. But I wouldn’t overlook the first Leo, “The Great,” whose wisdom brought us greater understanding and humility in our following of Christ. When put together, those two popes set out a blueprint to know and love Jesus, and consequently to do his works. I get more than a little nervous listening to Cardinal Dolan on CNN talking to reporters about praying for the repose of the soul of Pope Francis. If a pope needs prayers, my goodness, how many prayers will I need? But there is an unspoken doctrine of Catholicism that if you pray for someone who is already in heaven, the prayers get “spread around” to those in Purgatory. It is doctrine that every person, living and dead, is remembered at every Mass offered anywhere. Listen closely to any of the Eucharistic Prayers at Mass—it’s in there. And so, the memorial Masses celebrated around the world over the next few weeks are blessing us, the living, as well as our loved ones who have died. Stop a few times to think about that. We are part of something greater than anything we can imagine, under the provenance of a God who is a mystery of love.
When I reflect on Pope Francis, I remember that we were both pastors, ordained just five years apart, although he was a decade older than me. The difference, of course, is that his churches, particularly his final one, St. Peter’s, were a little bigger than mine. But no matter how big or how little your congregation is, the world looks different from the position, and nothing really prepares you for it. I was poorly prepared for the priesthood spiritually and mentally, and when that happens, you just dig a deeper hole. The Vatican agreed and gave its blessing to my efforts to begin a new journey of marriage, mental health practice, and teaching. My pastoral issues were miniscule compared to Pope Francis’ life as a cleric and Jesuit. Reading his career biography from Wikipedia is quite a revelation. The fact that Pope Francis died in the heart of the Easter Celebration is stunning to me, that he gathered his strength to survive the Lenten Season and celebrate the Easter Eucharist with his “parish” one final time—I just can’t get over that. My first reaction was tears: not grief, exactly, because his physical sufferings were beating him down and now, he is at rest. But call it an emotion without a name that needed to be expressed. I was well enough on Easter to dose myself with Dayquil and attend the sunrise Mass, which was quite moving. Our associate pastor delivered one of his best sermons ever. He stopped, extended his arms to the sky, and invited us to behold the moment. Early dawn, Venus shining brightly in the East, birds singing, music to fit the mood. I could not help but notice, too, both Sunday and on Holy Thursday, that our parish is becoming visibly multicultural, a wonderful thing. I’ve been in this parish for thirty years, but I was hard-pressed to remember a more powerful Easter observance. I am grateful for a recommendation a few weeks ago to read The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change [2024] by Tomas Halik. It’s philosophical and it is slow going, but I found an interesting summary on Amazon: “The fruitfulness of the reform and the future vibrancy of the Church depends on a reconnection with the deep spiritual and existential dimension of faith. Halík argues that Christianity must transcend itself, giving up isolation and self-centeredness in favor of loving dialogue with people of different cultures, languages, and religions. [Emphasis mine.] The recommendation came from my pastoral colleague of a decade, “Sister Carol,” as everyone in the parish called her. Back in the day when all of us on ministry staff had giant theology libraries, Carol, a Dominican sister, actually read the books. Looking back, I see today that it was a great mistake not working her into the preaching rotation on Sundays. When Pope Francis told every guest he met to pray for him, he was dead serious, for he faced countless decisions every day of how best to lead, teach, and best love the People of God on the delicate matters of Faith and practice. “Who am I to judge?” Did he later regret saying that in reference to LBGTQ Christians, in the sense that he raised hopes before the Church as a whole was ready to “own” the outreach? Rome may be the “Eternal City,” but its bishop for the past twelve years has been an Argentinian, the first pope of the Americas. Will our next Holy Father come from Africa? Or Asia, notably the Philippines? It is entirely possible. What will our visceral reaction be to that? After all, we do belong to a global Church. ON THE LIGHTER SIDE: This morning’s New York Times has a good sketch of the dozen or leading candidates. From experience, I have found that in the secular press, “handicapping the Conclave” is usually a better source of straight-up analysis. Understandably, Catholic publications play down such discussions as unseeming. You can bet on the outcome of the Conclave with major betting houses, believe it or not. In 2005 the industry’s favorite was Jorge Bergoglio, but Joseph Ratzinger carried the day. In 2013 Bergoglio was not even on the board because of his age, but the high rollers were wrong again. Pope Francis is going to be buried at St. Mary Major, one of the four major churches of Rome which predates St. Peter’s by a millennium or more. In 2013 there was an ATM machine behind the church, and I used a major credit card for a $700 cash withdrawal to pay our private guide for several days of work. To my chagrin, there was a $200 limit on the machine, but she agreed to wait for final payment. As luck would have it, on the crowded subway her wallet was stolen on the way to St. Paul Outside the Walls—but thankfully she was not carrying our full payment when it happened. |
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June 2026
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