Posted on 03/30/2013 2:42:00 PM PDT by NYer
· After his election, he came down from platform to greet the cardinal electors, rather than have them come up to his level to offer obedience.
· He appeared on the loggia without the red cape. (The BBC report, unconfirmed, is that he said to his aide, “No thank you, Monsignore. You put it on instead. Carnival time is over.”)
· In his greeting he referred to himself only as “bishop,” not as "pope."
· He referred to Benedict as “bishop emeritus,” not “pope emeritus.”
· He appeared without the stole, only putting it on to give the blessing. He then took it off in public (!), as if he couldn’t wait to get it off.
· He asked for the people’s blessing before he blessed them.
· He doesn’t wear red shoes.
· Or white stockings.
· Or cuff links.
· He rode the bus back to the residence with the cardinals rather than take the papal limousine.
· When he went to Mary Major to pray, he declined the papal Mercedes and took a Volkswagen Passat.
· On his way back from Mary Major, he stopped at his pre-conclave hotel to get his luggage and pay his own bill.
· Though he has taken possession of the apostolic palace, he continued to receive guests at St. Martha’s House rather than the palace.
· He drank Argentinian tea in public when receiving the Argentinian president – protocol is that popes are seen publicly consuming no food or drink except the Eucharist.
· His first Mass with cardinals was celebrated facing the people. (Pope Benedict started this way, but then did a “reform of the reform” and celebrated at the old high altar in the Sistine Chapel facing away from the congregation. Apparently this has been reversed.)
· He doesn’t chant the prayers, he recites them – but this could be because of an impaired lung or his singing ability.
· The wall of candles between celebrant and congregation, another of Pope Benedict’s “reform of the reform,” was moved away with three candles on each side of the altar.
· At his inauguration Mass, photos show that the candles were originally set up across the front of the altar, but by Mass time they had been moved to the side.
· The crucifix on the altar was a small one at his first Mass.
· He wore his own simple miter from Argentina, not the papal miter.
· He preached from the ambo without miter – rather like a simple parish priest. (The concelebrating cardinals gradually realized what was going on and had to remove the miters they had started to put on after the Gospel reading.)
· He brushed aside the prepared Latin homily and preached in Italian without text.
· In general, less lace.
· His hands are folded during the liturgy, not the pious (some say prissy) way with palms together.
· He didn’t genuflect at the Supper Narrative of the Eucharistic Prayer – is this really because of bad knees?
· He asked the cardinals not to wear their red cardinals’ robes, but black.
· He stood on the floor of the Clementine Hall to greet the cardinals rather than sit on the throne on the platform.
· He called them “brother cardinals” rather than “Lord cardinals.”
· He bent to kiss the ring of a cardinal who kissed his ring.
· At his meeting with over 5,000 journalists, after Archbishop Celli introduced him, he got up to walk over to him (popes don’t do that) and thanked him.
· He didn’t bless the journalists like popes do, since not all of them are Catholic or believers. Instead he prayed for them in silence, then simply said “God bless you.”
· After the meeting with journalists, he waved away the papal limousine and walked to the Vatican residence.
· When he saw the papal apartments he said, “There’s room for 300 people here. I don’t need all this space.” He has yet to move into the apartments, and some wonder whether he will.
· At Mass Sunday at the Vatican parish Sunday morning, he gave the Kiss of Peace to the deacons and Master of Ceremonies, not just the concelebrants. This is breaking the rules – but perhaps also a nice show of support for MC Marini, who must be reeling from all the sudden changes.
· The deacon didn’t kneel before Pope Francis for the blessing before the gospel (as they did for John Paul II and Benedict XVI).
· He doesn’t wear the dalmatic. Pope Benedict revived the practice, not foreseen in the reformed liturgical books, of wearing this deacon’s vestment under his papal vestments.
· He doesn’t distribute Communion as the missal foresees of the celebrant, but is seated while others do so.
· He listened to the words of the Patriarch of Constantinople seated on an armchair rather than the throne that is customarily used in the Clementine Hall. When he thanked Bartholomew I, he called him “my brother Andrew.”
· He has simplified his coat of arms, keeping the miter rather than tiara (as Benedict also did) but removing the pallium from it.
· He is wearing a second-hand pallium.
· He has chosen a simple ring, re-using a ring once made for Paul VI’s secretary.
· Pope Benedict recently began wearing a fanon under the pallium for big feasts, but Francis did not wear it as the inauguration Mass.
· He undid Pope Benedict’s decision that all the cardinals would come up to pay obedience to the Pope at his inauguration, and decided that six representatives would be enough.
· Rather than being seated while they came up to pay him obedience, he stood and greeted them informally.
· Contrary to protocol, he has given a phone call to the Jesuit superior general, the people holding a prayer vigil outside the Buenos Aires cathedral, and the guy in Argentina who sold him his daily paper (to cancel his delivery).
· When he met the Jesuit general, he apologized for not keeping protocol and insisted on being treated like any other Jesuit with the “tu” informal address, rather than “Your Holiness” or “Holy Father.”
· He is not celebrating Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord’s Supper in St. Peter’s Basilica (he hasn’t yet taken possession of his cathedral, John Lateran), but in a juvenile prison.
· He celebrated an unannounced Mass at St. Martha’s with hotel workers, Vatican gardeners, and people who clean St. Peter’s square. He showed up before Mass and sat in the back row to pray a bit.
· In his official photograph, he signs his name simply “Franciscus” without “PP” (“pontifex pontificum”) used by previous popes.
This list is from praytell for goodness sake. It’s like asking the democrat party chairman what the republicans are concerned about.
This is my take as well. I have to admit, I was (and remain) leery of a Pope who pays his own hotel bill and cancels his own newspaper subscription - doesn't he have more important things to do? To me such overt signs of regular guy-ness dredge up images of an incompetent Jimmy Carter. However, all this other stuff that RadTrads are getting worked up about don't bother me at all. I pray Pope Francis will be able to be a strong leader and not one who will be giving away the Catholic Panama Canal.
Just don’t forget to pray.
They only wear those for ceremonial duties. the rest of the time they have either a military uniform they wear or they dress like U. S> Secret service agents.
We like the uniforms. So do the Swiss Guards themselves. They only wear those for ceremonies and guard duty at a few places. Otherwise they wear plain clothes and blend it rather well.
I’d like to see you charge into a pike phalanx, no matter how they were dressed ;-).
I’m curious that so many seem to view them rather like Navy SEALs or the Israeli Mossad, an elite force, when the photos I’ve seen are pretty much teenaged boys, no sense of their being hardened or potentially lethal at all, they could be a marching band.
Is there a ceremonial group for the young and a defense group with older guards who have received extensive military training or something?
I’m obviously an outsider but that would unnerve me, seeing as how your Pope Francis appears to have become something of a polarizing figure fairly quickly. I don’t grasp all the uproar, the foot washing is a very appropriate, humbling gesture for a Christian in position of authority to me, so I approve of it. Then, there’s the whole Ann Barnhardt thing, I saw that thread, Catholics calling him satan for not genuflecting.
There’s cause for concern, imho. So, I hope you’re right.
All four are available IN SPANISH for ordering now.
The first two will be combined into one volume and will be available IN ENGLISH sometime in April.
Man, Ignatius Press moves fast!!
Me charging into a pike phalanx is nothing anyone needS to worry about, lol. Someone you might need to worry about isn’t going to do that either, though.
They’re Swiss. They’re tougher than you’re giving them credit for.
Ever look at the Secret Service agents who guard the U.S. President? A lot of them don’t look like much. All of them are willing to take a bullet for the president, however. That’s what counts.
They’re Swiss? What a coincidence, I have some Swiss ancestry too. Not Catholic, though. Moravian, from Canton Basel. Fled persecution, went more or less underground for decades on the estate of a sympathetic Count, eventually forced out there too, fled to Rotterdam, boarded a ship for the colony of Pennsylvania, then walked to North Carolina, arriving in 1753. Still here.
You wrote:
“They’re Swiss? What a coincidence, I have some Swiss ancestry too. Not Catholic, though.”
No, they were Catholic. Then they became something else.
“Moravian, from Canton Basel. Fled persecution, went more or less underground for decades on the estate of a sympathetic Count, eventually forced out there too, fled to Rotterdam, boarded a ship for the colony of Pennsylvania, then walked to North Carolina, arriving in 1753. Still here.”
It’s a shame they never discovered the truth. To suffer for a falsehood like Protestant sectarianism is so unnecessary and wasteful. If the Moravians had anything good, they started to lose it long before the time of Mary Matz.
Petunia’s not going to charge any pikemen; I don’t think that comes up even in Somalia!
As for the Swiss Guards, they’re not the Mossad or the SEALS, but they’re a trained, professional police force and bodyguards. Nobody is untouchable, but they’ll provide all reasonable security.
Pope Benedict was an easy client in recent years, because his health didn’t permit too much movement.
How nice. I should put my Spanish to the test. We could get “Puente de los asesinos,” too.
Still the same old Vlad I see, lol. Their persecution wasn’t always at the hands of the Catholic Church but it was invariably at the hands of a State Church. Appreciate that and maybe the claws won’t be coming out quite so often. No church is perfect, not even yours. A religion assuming the trappings and authority of a nation-state does create problems. History shows us this. So does the Bible.
you wrote:
“Their persecution wasn’t always at the hands of the Catholic Church but it was invariably at the hands of a State Church.”
Actually it would invariably be at the hands of the state if anything.
“No church is perfect, not even yours.”
The Church is without spot of wrinkle in all that matters - if you believe Jesus. The people in it? Far less than perfect.
I've always wondered why a small “sect” like the the Moravians are such an apparent bee in your bonnet, though. Does it have anything to do with their having Eastern Orthodox origins, suppressed by Hapsburg nobles installed by force at the direction of Rome?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravians_(religion)
That's a question for another time and another thread. Quite the inconvenient curiosity, that the first “Protestant” church predated Martin Luther by a considerable amount of time and arose via the Orthodox, isn't it?
You wrote:
“I’d love to debate with you Vlad but this honestly isn’t the thread for it.”
But then you’ll do it anyway, right?
“I’ve always wondered why a small “sect” like the the Moravians are such an apparent bee in your bonnet, though.”
I think you’re imagining things. There are no bees in my bonnet, and no bonnet as a matter of fact.
“Does it have anything to do with their having Eastern Orthodox origins, suppressed by Hapsburg nobles installed by force at the direction of Rome?”
The Moravians have no “Eastern Orthodox origins” - except perhaps in the mad ravings of modern revisionists. The Moravians have origins perhaps in the Hussites - who also have “Eastern Orthodox origins” but only in the minds of raving modern revisionists.
“That’s a question for another time and another thread. Quite the inconvenient curiosity, that the first “Protestant” church predated Martin Luther by a considerable amount of time and arose via the Orthodox, isn’t it?”
No, since it never happened. No Protestant church predates Luther for the following reasons:
1) None of them are “churches”. There are only sects among the Protestants.
2) The two ecclesial bodies, the two sects, among the Protestants today which predate the Protestants in any way are the Hussites and the Waldensians. Both groups went through such massive changes because of Protestant contacts that they have little or nothing to do with their pre-1517 ancestors. The Italian Waldensians, for instance, are Methodists today. The Hussites and their descendents abandoned their belief in Utraquism as a necessity of salvation.
3) Neither group had any connection with Eastern Orthodoxy. Such a connection is a modern invention. Such inventions are common among Protestants who lack any real history predating 1517. Thus, they have created a fraudulent history to salve their consciences. You can see this with Carroll’s Trail of Blood which is a completely ahistorical and unhistorical and imaginative product.
The Waldensians who left their historic home in the Cottian Alps for religious freedom in the late nineteenth century aren't. Their settlement is just up the road from me, about an hour away. Beautiful stone church. They obviously cherish it.
You wrote:
“The Waldensians who left their historic home in the Cottian Alps for religious freedom in the late nineteenth century aren’t.”
But they’re still Protestants nonetheless for they abandoned their own previous beliefs for Protestantism. Just read Euen Cameron’s The Reformation of the Heretics: The Waldenses of the Alps, 1480-1580 (Oxford Historical Monographs) to see what I’m talking about.
“Their settlement is just up the road from me, about an hour away. Beautiful stone church. They obviously cherish it.”
A shame they didn’t cherish more of their own beliefs dating back to the 12th century. Instead they threw them away just like they did orthodoxy.
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