That is: a doctorate in sacred theology?
In 1995, the eminent canon-law professor Ed Peters wrote a piece for Homiletic and Pastoral Review about the need for bishops to set aside some young priests with academic ability, and get them enough advanced study so that they would be prepared in the future, if called, to serve the Church as bishops. At the time, Peters foresaw a “coming bishop crunch” in the U.S.: a lot of bishops reaching retirement age and perhaps a shortage of qualified priests possessing an advanced degree as required by canon law for a bishop.
Canon 378 lists several official requirements for bishops, and one is that he “hold a doctorate or at least a licentiate in sacred Scripture, theology or canon law, from an institute of higher studies approved by the Apostolic See, or at least be well versed in these disciplines.”
(In case the word “licentiate” is unfamiliar: it’s a graduate degree of lower rank than a doctorate, but it qualifies the holder to teach in a Catholic seminary awarding the bachelor’s in sacred theology.)
I thought about this topic the other day when I saw Sandro Magister’s column; it was a little chatty talk about some of the cardinals attracting interest as possible choices to succeed Pope Benedict XVI.
One of the names mentioned happens to be my local bishop, Cardinal O’Malley, and it always surprises me to see him on a list like that, since he doesn’t happen to hold either of those degrees. He does have a PhD, but it’s in Spanish and Portuguese literature. While I trust that he’s well versed in theology, I suspect that the cardinals are probably not going to elect anybody Pope unless he really fulfills the requirements with an earned degree in one of the sacred sciences named; and preferably at the doctoral level.
So I decided to make a little survey of the cardinal electors and see who studied what. For the sake of simplicity, I excluded about half the cardinals from my study population: those over 75 and those under 60 years of age, since I doubt that the cardinals will want to elect them.
Dr. Peters’ web site has a helpful table of the cardinal electors soon to choose a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, with links to biographies of the 118 current electors. Here’s a summary of who has earned a doctorate, and in what field; the lists are in descending order by age, and names marked with a star appear more than once.
Cardinals age 60-75 as of 2/17/13:
Doctorates in canon law
Romeo (IT)
Coccopalmerio (IT)
Monteiro de Castro (PT)
Cafarra (IT)
Brady (IE)
Grocholewski (PL)
Rai (LB)
Vallini (IT)
Bertello (IT)
Tauran (FR)
Versaldi (IT)
Sandri (AR)
Piacenza (IT)
Gracias (IN)
Filoni (IT)
Burke (US)
Harvey (US)
Erdö (HU)*
Doctorates in theology
Amato (IT)
Dziwisz (PL)
Hon (CN)
Wuerl (US)
Scola (IT)*
Irosa Savino (VZ)
Rodriguez-Maradiaga (HN)*
Calcagno (IT)
Sepe (IT)*
Cipriani Thorne (PE)*
Onaiyekau (NG)
Ouellet (CA)
Ricard (FR)
Schönborn (AT)
Alencherry (IN)
Cañizares Llovera (ES)
Collins (CA)
Braz de Aviz (BR)
Scherer (BR)
Koch (CH)
Erdö (HU)*
Doctorates in moral theology
O’Brien (US)
Rodriguez-Maradiaga (HN)*
Pengo (TZ)
Doctorates in Sacred Scripture
Monsengwo Pasinya (CG)
Betori (IT)
Turkson (GH)
Other fields:
Doctorates in philosophy
Scola (IT)*
Rodriguez-Maradiaga (HN)*
Bagnasco (IT)
Sepe (IT)*
Cipriani Thorne (PE)*
Filoni (IT)*
Barbarin (FR)
Miscellaneous
Pell (AU): Church history
O’Malley (US): Spanish literature
Rylko (PL): Social science
Nycz (PL): Catechetics
Dolan (US): Church history
Which cardinals have the most academic accomplishments? Well, it’s a little hard to say, since I’m leaving out the licentiates here. But within this limited survey, the top is Oscar Rodriguez-Maradiaga of Honduras, with doctorates in theology, moral theology, and philosophy, plus a diploma in clinical psychology and conservatory studies in piano! What a guy!
Perhaps the most unusual field one of the cardinals has studied is industrial engineering. Cdl. Cipriani was an engineer working for W.R. Grace before he entered priestly studies.
To summarize: of the 67 cardinals in this age range, 18 have doctorates in canon law; 21 in dogmatic theology; 3 in moral theology, 3 in Scripture.
And 24 do not have that top-level degree in one of the sacred sciences required by the canon — which really surprises me.
And the names of those outliers include some illustrious cardinals whom I would not mind seeing as Pope: George Pell (Australia), Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don (Sri Lanka).
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Category: Canonical
CDF publishes document on apparitions 34 years after its first issuance
Thanks to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has just published its 1978 document of guidance for bishops discerning private revelations.
Yes, you read that right. It’s 2012, and we’re talking about the publication of a 1978 document. If anything proves the old quip “Roma eterna, sed civitas Vaticana sempiterna” (“Rome is eternal, but Vatican City is almost eternal”), it’s this.
The document, usually known as Normae Congregationis from the first words of its title, was issued in 1978 and sent to bishops. It contains principles and general procedures for bishops on how to judge a claimed private revelation. It was issued with the intimidating marking sub secreto, a warning that it was not to be published: not because it contained anything startling, but probably because it hadn’t undergone the full review process a public document would receive.
But “information wants to be free”, as the saying goes, and from 1994 to 2010 various writers, from Japan to France, and from Canada to Italy, have published it in Latin and in vernacular versions. It appeared in at least one canon-law dissertation, and I even contributed to its spread a little by publishing an English translation made with two colleagues (and yes, the leader of the project did have permission from his bishop). Most recently, the vaticanist Andrea Tornielli got a copy by simply asking the CDF for it, and his copy had no instructions about keeping it secret, so he published the Latin text and an Italian translation in February 2012.
Cdl. Levada writes in a preface that the document had in effect passed into the public sphere, so CDF chose to make its release official, here in Latin and with five vernacular translations, including the English version, Norms regarding the manner of proceeding in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations. Cdl. Levada’s preface also discusses the issue of private revelations in general and mentions how the topic came up in the bishops’ Synod on the Word of God, and expresses his hope that the document will be helpful to pastors and experts needing to deal with this pastoral issue.
“Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church”
I just finished reading the anthology Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church: Reflections on Recent Developments, edited by Stephen Cavanaugh (Ignatius Press).
The collection of essays is an orientation to the “Anglican Use” phenomenon by some of its leading advocates: the book covers its origins and development, its current status and possible future, with helpful articles about liturgy, ecumenism, and the experience of entering into full communion with the Catholic Church.
I’m particularly grateful for the articles on liturgy. Brother John-Bede Pauley, OSB’s essay on the monastic character in Anglican liturgy is a help in understanding what the “Anglican patrimony” means as a gift to the Church. Prof. Hans-Jürgen Feulner’s introduction to comparative liturgy and its use in studying the development of rites and texts indicates the sort of studies the Church will need in order to develop a set of rites for the new Anglican Ordinariates. These will need to be suitable for the Ordinariates in various countries, and thus will have to improve on the current Book of Divine Worship, developed hastily in the 1980s for “Anglican-use” congregations in the US; it drew heavily on texts of that era: the U.S. Episcopalian 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the 1975 ICEL Roman Missal (soon to become obsolete).
Green Bay bishop approves 1859 apparition, first in US
It’s not often you get to say that a bit of news reflects a history-making event, but this is one: Bishop David Ricken of Green Bay has been studying the case of a Marian apparition reported in 1859, witnessed by a young immigrant from Belgium by the name of Adele Brise.
Today, the bishop announced his verdict: the event is confirmed to be of supernatural origin, and the faithful are free to believe in the apparition.
This makes the appearance of the Virgin Mary in Wisconsin, under the title of “Our Lady of Good Hope”, the first and only Marian apparition in the United States to be validated by Church authority. I can only wonder what lies ahead as the grace of this event is to be explored and shared for the good of God’s people.
Today’s announcement from the diocese is on-line, along with the relevant decrees by the bishop presening his judgment on the apparition and designating the long-standing chapel at the site to be a diocesan shrine. The web site of the newly-designated Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help (Notre Dame de Bon Secours) at Champion, WI also has information.
New York Times Smears (2)
UPDATE (4/6): Please note the correction to this story added below.
It just wouldn’t be Holy Week without a media attack on the Church, would it?
First, a recap for those who haven’t seen much of the story yet: a March 25 NY Times article accused Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) of shielding a pervert priest from punishment under Church law in 1998.
As John Schultz cited below, a piece for National Review Online by Canadian priest and writer Fr. Raymond de Souza compared the Times’ shoddy article with the documentation it offered as evidence, and showed that the paperwork contradicts the Times’ claims. Moreover, the primary source for Laurie Goodstein’s so-called reporting, the disgraced former Archbishop of Milwaukee Rembert Weakland, has more axes to grind than the crew on American Loggers.
Now an authoritative eyewitness to the case has joined the controversy directly.
Canon-law judge Fr. Thomas Brundage, JCL, who conducted the trial against Fr. Lawrence Murphy, states that neither the Times nor any other media outlet has bothered to contact him to verify any of the facts, or even the statements which the Times presented as quotations from Brundage.
He says that the basic premise of the Times story is wrong: Murphy’s trial was never actually stopped, even up to the day of his death. Without that, the whole trumped-up accusation against Cdl. Ratzinger collapses.
Since the website of the Catholic Anchor newspaper has been swamped with readers today and is currently unable to function, here’s a link to Brundage’s article, reproduced in full in Damien Thompson’s weblog at the Daily Telegraph.
CORRECTION (4/6): Fr. Thomas Brundage has issued a correction about a statement he made in the article cited above. Based on documents, he acknowledges that the trial was indeed stopped by Abp. Weakland, shortly before Fr. Murphy’s death. The point that CDF did not stop the case remains valid.