Posted on 08/12/2019 8:40:06 PM PDT by ebb tide
The diocese of Ischia is as small as the island that bears this name, celebrated since antiquity for its hot springs.
But curiously, its history crossed paths a few days ago with that of China, the Asian giant with which Pope Francis is enamored. So enamored as to present to the Chinese rulers - with the secret provisory accord signed on September 22, 2018 - the right to choose for themselves every Catholic bishop in the future, although the pope will have the faculty of accepting or rejecting the appointment, but only in the second round.
The “patronage” of state authorities over the appointment of bishops has weighed for centuries on the history of the Catholic Church, and only in the twentieth century was it laboriously eliminated almost everywhere, in the name of that “libertas ecclesiae” which Vatican Council II at last defined as indispensable. Only to see it reappear, of course, in the 2018 accord with China.
That which, however, Francis has granted to the authorities of Beijing he no longer permits, as of this summer, for the citizens of two little municipalities in Ischia that for seven hundred years had the privilege of selecting their own trio of priests from which the bishop chose the pastor.
The paradox is precisely this. That which the pope extols in China as a positive step forward has been eliminated in the diocese of Ischia as “anachronistic” and “feudal.”
In brief, this is how things went.
Last January 7 the bishop of the diocese of Ischia, Pietro Lagnese, 58 - appointed there on February 23 2013 by Benedict XVI during the very last days of his pontificate, after he had announced his resignation - informed the mayors of Casamicciola and Forio that he had the intention of revoking the age-old “patronage” of their citizens over the appointment of the pastors of their respective parish churches, one named after Saint Mary Magdalene the Penitent and the other after Saint Vitus.
The two municipal administrations protested, but the bishop stuck to his guns and on April 11 2019, ten days before Easter, issued two decrees revoking the “patronage.”
The mayor of Casamicciola Terme, Giovan Battista Castagna, asked the bishop by letter to withdraw the twofold decree, pointing out that the right of “patronage” over the appointment of pastors had been reconfirmed for the two municipalities of Ischia “in the not-too-distant 2012” by the Vatican congregation for the clergy, and had always been exercised in recent decades “with full respect for the ‘sensus fidei’ that belongs to us as patrons of our beloved parish.”
In effect, in the other municipality as well, that of Forio, everyone remembers that in 1967 the selection as pastor of Fr. Giseppe Regine - now past the age of eighty and still in office as of this summer - had an illustrious “patron” in the person of Senator Maurizio Valenzi, a leading representative of the Italian communist party, at the time a municipal councilor and afterward mayor of Naples and member of the European parliament.
So shortly after Easter both municipal administrations, that of Casamicciola Terme and that of Forio, the mayor of the latter being Francesco Del Deo, appealed to Rome, to the congregation for the clergy, asking for the cancellation of their bishop’s decision.
But the appeal failed. The Vatican congregation, whose prefect is Cardinal Beniamino Stella, among the most influential advisers of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, confirmed the decree of the bishop of Ischia and on July 17 had this confirmation “approved in specific form” by the pope, definitively closing the matter.
Why, then, is that which is no longer allowed not only for the little diocese of Ischia but practically all over the world being brought back into practice in China, and for the appointment not of pastors but much more importantly of bishops?
Last February 28, in a speech at the Pontifical Gregorian University dedicated precisely to accords of the Holy See with states from the nineteenth century to the present, cardinal secretary of state Pietro Parolin indicated Vatican Council II as the point of no return for the age-old efforts of the Catholic Church to guarantee “its independence in the face of the desire of sovereigns and of rulers to interfere in its life and organization.”
But when it came to the 2018 accord with China, Parolin abstained from any appraisal, going only so far as to call it “sui generis.”
He compared it, instead, with another accord stipulated a few years ago by that Holy See, that with Vietnam, it too secret and it too concerning the appointment of bishops.
“At times,” the cardinal said, “the most delicate and important matters have been regulated secretly among sovereigns or among heads of state” with a “gentlemen’s agreement,” meaning an “informal accord between the two sides, the essential characteristic of which is that its implementation is based on honor, on good faith, and on respect for the giving of one’s word, and that it cannot be defended legally. One concrete case is represented by Vietnam, where episcopal appointments take place according to a procedure agreed verbally with the government.”
This procedure - although Parolin did not say so - assigns the first choice to the Holy See, allowing the Vietnamese government to veto the name indicated.
But in China it is the other way around. The first selection goes to the authorities of Beijing. The “patronage” of the state over the Church is back, and it speaks Mandarin.
Making secret gentlemen's agreements based on honor, on good faith, and on respect for the giving of one’s word with communists is never a wise idea.
Ping
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