UNITED STATES
Whispers in the Loggia
For everything that was different about this week’s Baltimore Plenary, there was a bit of deja vu in the air… well, besides Archbishop Allen Vigneron being denied the Divine Worship chair for the fourth straight time – now an apparent custom of the bench, going all the way back to 2005.
In one of this week’s great surprises, for the second time running, Archbishop Charles Chaput was the runner-up for a seat in the USCCB’s topmost leadership. The result made for a rather striking contrast to this meeting’s run-up as, going into the sessions, many felt this was his protege’s hour, with the votes accordingly to swing – beyond being head of the largest diocese these shores have ever known, Archbishop José Gomez had become the first Hispanic in recent memory to make the USCCB’s presidential slate, and the choice of the Mexican-born Angeleno ecclesially bred in Texas was advanced by his champions as an evocative, providential amplification of both the Latino ascendancy into Stateside Catholicism’s largest ethnic group, as well as the source of the first-ever American pontificate, albeit south of the border.
Yet when Decision Time came, Don José’s mentor – a veteran of the last five 10-man slates (more than any other contender) – edged again into the runoff by all of one vote.
Of course, the demographic and Roman fronts aren’t the only ways the world has changed since the 2010 Fall Classic. Keeping with Rome’s long-standing habit for the almost-vice-president of the US bishops, eight months after last time’s near-miss, Chaput was sent to the country’s next open cardinalatial see… yet even if he’s the lone US prelate to occupy the chair once held by a saint, to describe the modern-day archdiocese of Philadelphia as any sort of “consolation prize” would simply be perverse. …
From the outset – indeed, even before a months-long forensic audit revealed the grotesque picture in its full light – this was already perceived to be the most difficult situation an American bishop has faced in the last half-century. Now, having watched the most determined, unflappable figure on the US bench look as if he’s aged 20 years over the last 26 months – at points doubled over in anguish and grabbing his head over what he was made to inherit – it seems safe to say that taking on this inferno would’ve killed anyone else. But to know Chaput – the guy who, once upon a time, famously played a younger priest into a heart attack on the racquetball court – is to know that, where it matters most, the Capuchin always comes to win.
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