Recently, in a quick visit to New York, Queen Elizabeth of England was shown on television and in news photos wearing her traditional flowery bonnet and a conservative print dress. Not surprising for a person her age – she has been Queen since 1952 – she looked matronly. But, more than that, she looked quaint. So, yesterday, as Carly Fiorina might say.
Nothing wrong with quaint. It can even be charming, as it is in the case of Elizabeth II. The monarchy in England is a mere remnant of a long-gone era, and the Queen as figurehead has played her ceremonial role impeccably for almost six decades. Today all the real power in the U.K. is vested in the Prime Minister and the Parliament. The only time we hear anything about the Queen is when one of her children is naughty and the tabloids get all breathless and atwitter.
Too bad the Vatican can’t get the flick that Elizabeth understood from the time she was crowned Queen more than a half century ago. Nothing more quaint than the Vatican — from the Pope and the Cardinals on down to many of their hand-picked bishops and archbishops throughout the world. All of them wear funny looking hats and dresses, too, but presumably they think these trappings are a sign of real power and authority, a power they are desperately clinging to in the face of growing indifference on the part of the Catholic faithful, especially in Europe and the United States.
Sadly, they are mistaken. They have become quaint and so yesterday, and they seem to be the only ones who don’t know it. Hoping to avoid a schism and hold the Church together as it was in some mythical bygone era, they don’t realize that a major schism has already occurred. The only difference these days is that dissidents no longer tack their theses on cathedral doors. They just shrug their shoulders, walk away, and get on with leading their Catholic lives as they see fit, paying scant attention to the anathemas and excommunication threats of the Vatican, cardinals, and bishops. The Vatican has largely squandered its moral authority, and virtually every week it seems to get worse. When I read about Vatican spokesmen equating the moral gravity of priestly pedophilia with ordaining women as priests, I shudder with sadness and embarrassment, wondering how these presumably educated people could become so clueless.
Perhaps the hidden grace in all this upheaval is that over the last few decades the locus of power has shifted in the Church and the laity is realizing more and more that we are the Church and we must carry out our responsibilities without looking to higher authorities for inspiration and moral guidance. Not all Church authorities, of course. Many priests and Catholic writers, for example, are serving the Catholic community extraordinarily well, but you need to shop around because from where I sit these appear to be more the exception than the rule.
Ultimately, I hope and pray that the Vatican one day wakes up, sends its funny hats, dresses, and other trappings of bygone power to the Vatican Museum, and begins to refocus its attention on the unfinished agenda of love and compassion that Jesus so clearly left in our hands.
Gerald E. Lavey
Amen, Brother!
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