American Elections, Bishops’ Edition. the Numbers and the Moves Backstage

By Sandro Magister
The Chiesa
November 18, 2016

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351417?eng=y


November 18, 2016 – Seven days after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, the more than two hundred bishops of the United States also went to vote. To elect the one who will preside over them for the next three years.

A vote to which they came “as for a referendum on Pope Francis,” in the plain statement of John L. Allen, the top vaticanista in the United States.

And indeed it was a bit like this, even if the new president, Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, immediately made a point of saying that it is “crazy” even to think that he is not on the side of this pope, who is “doing some marvelous things for the Church.”

The fact is that when Francis visited the United States, in September of 2015, he ordered the bishops to change course and get into step with him.

Enough with “preaching complicated doctrines,” with the “harsh and divisive language,” with “making the cross a banner of worldly struggles.”

Yes, instead, to the “culture of encounter,” the only one capable of transforming the Church of the United States into “a humble home fire which attracts men and women through the attractive light and warmth of love.”

Jorge Mario Bergoglio accompanied these peremptory guidelines with a series of appointments of bishops close to his way of seeing things, in the first place that of Blase J. Cupich as archbishop of Chicago, who on November 19 will also be made a cardinal.

But when, as is the practice in the months leading up to the election of the episcopal conference leadership, each bishop wrote his five top names on a form, only one of the ten most voted for - and as a result designated as official candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency - was a favorite of Bergoglio’s, Santa Fe archbishop John C. Wester.

The other nine, in alphabetical order, were the following:

Gregory M. Aymond, archbishop of New Orleans;

Charles J. Chaput, archbishop of Philadelphia;

Paul S. Coakley, archbishop of Oklahoma City;

Daniel N. DiNardo, cardinal archbishop of Galveston-Houston;

Daniel E. Flores, bishop of Brownsville;

Jose H. Gomez, archbishop of Los Angeles;

William E. Lori, archbishop of Baltimore;

Allen H. Vigneron, archbishop of Detroit;

Thomas G. Wenski, archbishop of Miami.

But let’s examine how the voting went.

That for president was the first and the most predictable, because the winning candidate is almost always the vice-president of the previous three-year term, with the sole exception of 2010, when New York cardinal archbishop Timothy M. Dolan won a surprise victory of 128 votes to 111 over the candidate of the progressives, Gerald F. Kicanas, bishop of Tucson and outgoing vice-president.

And this time it also went according to tradition. Appointed vice-president in 2013, Cardinal DiNardo was promoted to the next level in the first round, with 113 votes out of 206, easily outdistancing the other candidates, all with 30 votes or fewer.

DiNardo was one of the signers of the famous letter “of the thirteen cardinals” that infuriated Pope Francis at the beginning of the synod of October 2015. And so was Dolan.

But this does not turn out to have hurt him when it came time to vote. On the contrary.

More uncertain and crucial, however, was the subsequent election of the new vice-president, the one who according to tradition also becomes the president “in pectore” for the next three-year term.

Here the winning candidate was Los Angeles archbishop Jose Horacio Gomez, born and raised in Mexico, a member of Opus Dei and a staunch defender of life, family, and religious freedom, the main battlefields between the American episcopate and the civil authorities, but also an impassioned champion of the cause of migrants, many of whom are Hispanic like him and a growing segment of Catholics in the United States.

Los Angeles is the largest diocese in the country, but Pope Francis has so far refused to make its pastor a cardinal. And perhaps in the election of Gomez there was a touch of revenge for this refusal.

It took three rounds of voting to elect the new vice-president, with Gomez always in the lead.

In the first round he received 60 votes, followed by Aymond with 56, by the Bergoglian Wester with 31, and by Chaput with 21, this latter a mentor of Gomez himself, who was one of his auxiliaries in the previous diocese of Denver.

In the second round Gomez had 105 votes, Aymond 81, Chaput 17, Wester 14.

And at the final ballot Gomez prevailed with 131 votes against Aymond’s 84.

It must be noted that Aymond also came in second in the voting that elected DiNardo as president. With 30 votes, followed by Wester with 20 and by Gomez with 15. Among the bishops, he is the rising star. He enjoys widespread appreciation for his ability to address matters in a direct way and with clear words, and for his ability to create consensus without ever yielding on principles. He was among the opponents of the honorary degree given by the Catholic university of Notre Dame to the pro-abortion Barack Obama.

But even more worthy of note is the similarity between these rounds of voting and the ones before them, in 2013.

In the 2013 election the most votes for the presidency, after those that elected Joseph E. Kurtz, went in order to DiNardo, Chaput, Gomez, Lori, and Aymond.

While for the vice-presidency, after the winning candidate DiNardo, there again appeared the names of Chaput, Gomez, and Aymond.

In 2013, however, there was also among the ten candidates a name that disappeared three years later, that of then-bishop of Spokane Cupich, the favorite of Bergoglio, who later promoted him to Chicago.

In the voting for the presidency Cupich came in seventh, with 10 votes, and in that for the vice-presidency he came in fifth in both rounds, in the first with 24 votes and in the second with 17.

This year nothing. Cupich did not even make it among the ten candidates. And perhaps this is another reason why Francis is making him a cardinal.

The shakeup Bergoglio has begun in the episcopate of the United States, therefore, is still far from producing a change in the leadership and in the marching route.

But this should come as no surprise, because the same thing happened with John Paul II, who was also a promoter during his long pontificate of a massive shakeup of the bishops of the United States, which however made a strong showing only during the reign of his successor, Benedict XVI.

The first real watershed in the leadership of the episcopal conference, in fact, took place in 2004, when Cardinal Francis E. George, archbishop of Chicago, was elected vice-president with the slimmest of margins, 118 votes against 114, over then-bishop of Pittsburgh Donald W. Wuerl, now a cardinal and a mainstay of Pope Bergoglio.

In 2007 George became president and Kicanas vice-president, beating Dolan at the ballot by 128 votes to 106.

But in 2010 Dolan won a surprise victory as president, surpassing Kicanas at the ballot by 128 to 111. With Kurtz who at the ballot for the vice-presidency outstripped Chaput by 147 to 91.

And in 2013 everything went according to tradition, with Kurtz elected president in the first round with 125 votes out of 236, and DiNardo elected vice-president over Chaput by a margin of 147 to 87.

Getting back to the voting this year, attention must also be paid to the election of the presidents of five commissions.

Portland bishop Robert P. Deeley was elected head of the commission for canonical affairs and Church governance, with 111 votes against the 89 for Rockford bishop David M. Malloy.

Scranton bishop Joseph C. Bambera was elected head of the commission for ecumenical and interreligious affairs, with 115 votes against the 90 for Oakland bishop Michael C. Barber.

Los Angeles auxiliary bishop Robert E. Barron was elected head of the commission for evangelization and catechesis, with 122 votes against the 90 for Bridgeport bishop Frank J. Caggiano.

The military ordinary, Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio, was elected head of the commission for justice and peace, with 127 votes against the 88 for San Diego bishop Robert W. McElroy.

Lafayette bishop Timothy L. Doherty was elected president of the commission for child and youth protection, with 128 votes against the 86 for Yakima bishop Joseph J. Tyson.

Among these, it is worth pointing out one of the winners and one of the losers.

The loser is McElroy, who together with Cupich makes up the dynamic duo of the ultra-Bergoglians and is a spiritual descendant of John Raphael Quinn, archbishop of San Francisco from 1977 to 1995 and the theorist of a radical reform of the papacy. McElroy was Quinn’s secretary and was consecrated bishop by him when in 2010 he was appointed auxiliary of San Francisco, with Wester as co-consecrator.

The winner is Barron, a favorite of Cardinal George in Chicago and as of a year ago in Los Angeles as auxiliary bishop to Gomez.

As for Gomez, his election as vice-president of the episcopal conference has entailed his resignation from the post of president of the commission on migration, to which he was appointed in 2015.

Elected in his place as president of the commission on migration was Austin bishop Joe S. Vasquez, with 109 votes against the 91 for the Bergoglian Wester.