World Over - 2021-02-25 - The Papal Posse with Raymond Arroyo

[Music] this week's big story out of rome his eminence robert sarah is no longer head of the vatican's office on liturgy and the sacraments pope francis accepted his resignation upon reaching the retirement age of 75 but other cardinals have gone on to serve well beyond that cardinal sarah of ghana is still a voting member of the college of cardinals so what does this move tell us about the pope's ongoing curial reform and who will replace sarah joining me now with in-depth analysis is the papal posse editor-in-chief of the catholicthing.org robert royal and canon lawyer and priest of the archdiocese of new york father jerry murray thank you both for being here i want to begin with your reactions to pope francis accepting the resignation of cardinal robert sarah he's long been considered a possible candidate for pope in the next conclave and his views on sexuality celibacy and the liturgy have often been at odds or seemed at odds with those of pope francis here's what the cardinal himself had to say via twitter earlier this week he said today the pope accepted my resignation of my office as prefect of the congregation for divine worship after my 75th birthday i am in god's hands the only rock is christ we will meet again very soon in rome and elsewhere uh father jerry now pope francis continues to reshape and reform the korea the college of cardinals uh after the last consistory francis has appointed 57 of those cardinal electors my question is what message might this be sending not keeping cardinal sarah in place father jared well i think it's fair to say that pope francis had some disagreements with cardinal sarah those have been noted uh during the time that the cardinal was in charge of the congregation for uh sacraments and worship um on the other hand uh he did reach 875 so that's when cardinals do send in their resignation so there's nothing irregular about this it's not a removal for cause let's say but we do know that cardinal sarah has a great influence in the church because of his profound spirituality his vigorous defense of catholic doctrine and his challenge to the secular west i mean here is a cardinal from africa who has come to be one of the prime defenders of christ and his church in the face of hostility in the western world so i think we're going to see and hear cardinal sarah continuing to speak and i certainly wish him you know well in his retirement but as we've seen with other roman cardinals when they retire they're often busier than they were before yeah bob we reported earlier last year that or early last year rather that cardinal sarah encountered controversy over that book he wrote defending priestly celibacy at the same time francis was considering a relaxation to the rule and then you remember pope benedict was uh wrapped up in that they said he'd collaborated with cardinal sarah on the book did that episode doom cardinal sarah in your opinion and what kind of man do you believe will be chosen to replace him at that congregation well i agree with father murray that there's it's fair to say that there's long been a difference of opinion even you might say something of a conflict between the two visions um the pope very much a kind of a western internationalist cardinal sarah very much in that traditional african mode so whether that book was you know the last straw i i don't really know um it was a bitter controversy and an oddity in a way because i think both the pope and cardinal soros sorry in particular i think is a great gentleman they kind of went out of their way not to conflict with one another and yet at the same time even prior to that book as we know um some some years ago basically the entire staff of that congregation for divine worship was replaced which meant that cardinal sarah was pretty much lonely at the top with a group of subordinates who were not sympathetic to his way of doing things anyway look this is um his father says this is not unusual there wasn't an immediate removal that sometimes happens when somebody just turned 75 and they're sort of immediately put out to pasture there was a almost a year of it that they waited we'll see what happens but i also think that this is going to give cardinal sarah a chance to be even more active than he was in the past he's not going to have those uh responsibilities in the courier and he's still a very vigorous very healthy and i think spiritually powerful figure yeah and and everyone i talked to it seems he's still pop people probably uh you know in the running for the for the papacy should he you know should that moment come upon him uh speaking of reshaping the courier pope francis has stepped up his outreach to women in church leadership recently appointing french sister natalie bequart named her under secretary of the senate of bishops now this is a major first as she will have voting rights in the next senate pope francis also named katia samaria as promoter of justice for the appeals court of the vatican city state how significant are these appointments father jerry particularly having that sister being a voting member of this synod well there are significant you know himself because lay people and lay women in this case are being promoted to roles formerly held by bishops and priests uh the fact they should have a voting role this is an anomaly because uh it was never conceived when the rules were written that there would be a layperson occupying that position and if it is a senate of bishops it makes no sense for non-bishops to have voting rights now the senate is merely consultative it's not a decision-making body it doesn't carry any jurisdictional power uh so we can advise the pope and if the pope is within his rights to give voting rights to people who aren't bishops but i don't think it makes sense theologically to go that way now another question we really have to face is is it good for lay people to be assuming roles that uh in improperly understood belong to clerics uh this is what we've been warned about the clericalization of the laity that they only have importance in the church if they do the things that priests and bishops have done in the past and i am very hesitant about that i think this is confusing lay people are the vast majority in the life of the church and but they are not the shepherds uh christ chose the apostles and their successes of the shepherds so to give people the idea you only count if you have some kind of shepherdly role uh not a good idea in my opinion bob very quickly your take on this yeah i agree you know at the last synod i think it was the one on youth um there were several congregations of women who were represented there and this question came up why should they be allowed to participate in the deliberations and yet not have a role in voting well as father rightly says this is a synod of bishops and if you want to redefine this if you want to take that that body that that body of consultation that the pope assembles every now and then and make it into something else well then i think you have to give it a different name but if it's going to be a synod of bishops it should be bishops who have been designated in the the theological way the father was talking about that are actually making these decisions we know that this is a way of kind of introducing women into into more and more roles um i don't myself think that this is going to satisfy anybody it's a it's a step in the direction that lots of people would like to see the church move but it's not going to be the end it's going to be the beginning and it's clearly a kind of a camel's nose under the tent moving elsewhere in europe the german bishops continue their so-called sonatal way which ostensibly gives the laity more shared responsibility in church leadership in germany now the german bishops released a letter called power and separation of powers in the church common participation and sharing in the mission here's a little excerpt the goal is to guarantee the shared responsibility and participation of all the faithful in both deliberative and decision making processes sounds familiar it is also necessary to readjust the constitutional structure of the church in order to strengthen the rights of the faithful in the governance of the church now father jerry i know you've written a piece about this uh give me your sense in the catholic thing this week your thoughts on where the german church seems to be going here um in the column that i wrote i said this is can only be called an attempt at self-destruction because this document is revolutionary it basically casts aside everything that the catholic church has understood about herself right from the beginning that we are founded by christ on the apostles the apostles were sent out to preach the gospel and that there is a hierarchical structure uh that you you have a guiding role in the church through sacramental ordination uh the this document basically wants laypeople to take control uh they they want to make offices in the church subject to election and even recall uh it's a wild document it basically undermines doctrine morality and it puts the catholic church on a footing with you know a self-governing protestant church in which every everybody gets to vote on who's going to be their leaders this is a very dangerous document and it's very distressing that bishops are putting their name to something which if this had been brought before pope pius xii or paul vi this would have been immediately condemned and i hope the same thing happens now that it's made public rome needs to condemn these ideas we can't play around with fire because houses burn down and we don't want the church in germany to burn down yeah now bob do they have the authority to cede the hierarchical structure of the catholic church in their country yeah well this is what's hilarious from what i understand from friends in germany this is a small but very vocal radical group and as often happens with these kind of groups outside of the church as well as inside their influence is is disproportionate to their numbers and who they are i mean no one who appointed them to make these decisions about a church that is based in truth i really encourage everyone to read father murray's um column from the catholic thing this week because it did yeoman's service in reading through a document that's pretty painful to read through what you come up with is that an idea of a church they actually say this it's going to have have diverse interpretations of various things about the catholic faith which is to say that it's basically going to become what the secular society is in other words we're going to be there are going to be people in the german church who affirm homosexual marriage transgenderism female priests and bishops uh abortion so we there will be no distinction whatever on the model that they're proposing between the church and the world it will just be a church that goes along with the world now you can set a church up like that if you want you don't really have to set one up in germany because there are many of them and they're called protestant churches well bob this this this church already exists it's called the united nations i mean and look if you join that church you also don't have to worry about sunday obligations fasting any of those bothersome moral clauses i mean i i don't see the distinction here it seems this is an extinction pact that's what they're talking about this is writing themselves out of history and out of relevance in society and i don't know why you would violate your core principles which i thought was jesus christ maybe i missed that memo when we jettisoned what that guy was saying but if christ something is all the world to save us if christ came into the world to save us and he did and to bring us the truth about god and ourselves um are we going to have multiple interpretations of these things or are we going to submit ourselves to that revelation that god himself has sent to us they seem to think that that truth does not matter and that what we're going to do is we're going to order our lives by you know whatever a majority happens to agree to right now and by the way they say we hope that the minorities will understand that they more or less have to they have the right to remain silent is the way i would put it but they're they're the ones that get to do the talking everyone else is just supposed to go along with what they propose okay i'm going to move ahead because we've got lots to cover pope francis will be making an ecumenical visit to iraq in early march he'll be visiting a devastated christian community that's still reeling from the islamic state devastation pope francis told catholic news service earlier this month he's making the trip because quote i am the pastor of people who are suffering end quote he'll also be conducting an historic meeting with a shiite muslim leader at the birthplace of abraham father murray what is the pope hope to achieve in iraq and his statement there he's the pastor of people who are suffering i mean they're suffering catholics in china i don't i don't see them getting much of a side glance much less a mention these days from rome well uh we'll take the china question up in a minute but as regards this trip uh you know he definitely is uh sympathetic to and really his heart is bleeding for the persecuted christians in the middle east and i think this is his way of showing solidarity particularly in that area which have been under the islamic state now those christians in small numbers have returned they're rebuilding their churches he wants to show that the chief shepherd is there with his flock he also wants to show that peaceful relations between catholics muslims and others is possible in the middle east and elsewhere and he's making symbolic gestures uh by meeting and praying together um what i would say on the china thing of course this is a continuing source of frustration that us the complaints of some catholics are put on the back burner ignored whereas others get attention i think the pope needs to remind all of us that the catholics in china who are suffering as a result of the vatican's deal need they deserve a hearing and they deserve relief from what is in fact a communist oppressive situation bob you've covered christian persecution for decades um your thoughts on this and the importance of this uh trip to iraq well i i think it's fine for him to do this and if it were not for some of the more worrisome statements that he's made um about this ecumenical outreach we all remember that he spoke in in that um that document with the muslims about god has willed the plurality of religions right this is just something that seems to be inc unconscionable for the leader of the the catholic church to be to be saying that's something that we need to keep an eye on of course and and you know we know that there are deep deep historical tensions in the middle east and it's fine to reach out to that we just want to make sure that that that desire to prevent violent conflict right now does not carry everything before it including the the truth claims of christianity i want to move on to some pandemic news uh the vatican issued a decree on february 8 that any vatican employee that refuses a covet vaccination would risk being fired the decree stated that vatican employees who opt out without a proven medical need risk sanctions up to and including the interruption of the relationship of employment later on february 18th the governor of the vatican city state walked that back just a little bit saying alternative solutions would be found for employees not wishing to be vaccinated uh father your take on this this seems to fly in the face of the idea that vaccinations uh you know at this early stage should be voluntary i mean i is this morally valid never mind human race the human resources aspect to this well it's a difficult question because you do want to ensure a workplace in which you have minimized the risk to employees of disease being transmitted so that's a valid moral and good way to act now the question is is getting vaccinated the only remedy for uh this and i think for the vast majority of people it is but there have to be exceptions let's say you've already had the covid uh 19 and that you recovered from it i'm not clear because i'm not a scientist whether you need to be vaccinated or not i think they're recommending it and then you also have some people will have concerns regarding their own personal health situation i think doctors should be able to evaluate those so i will say i think as a matter of principle it is fair and moral for employers including the church to require people to have a vaccination in order to guarantee as much as possible a healthy work environment but there need to be mechanisms for exceptions based on medically reasonable grounds uh bob you want to take a quick crack at that yeah and it was quite odd that initial statement because the vatican is quite allergic to firing anyone there the vatican finances are very very fraught right now um there are large deficits year by year that the vatican experiences and even so uh pope francis has made it pretty clear that he doesn't want to fire anyone even though it looks to outside observers that the vatican would have to fire something like one quarter or one third of its uh employees in order to be solvent but to put that out there um that i i wouldn't make too much out of this a lot of times i've said on this show before things that we think are kind of doctrinal often turn out to just be bureaucratic and then they they tend to be clunkily blur bureaucratic because the internal communications in the vatican aren't always the best and there could be a pr gap between off one office and another but for all the reasons that father said i mean this is a difficult question there's a lot that we don't know about this virus individuals have comorbidities they're vulnerable um i think we want to be be prudent in how we deal and be individualistic we've got to basically recognize that not everybody is in the same situation i want to move on to the senate confirmation hearings going on this week in washington d.c california attorney general javier barcera was president biden's pick for hhs secretary becerra is a catholic he was grilled about his stance on abortion as well as the state of california's case against the little sisters of the poor utah senator mitt romney peppered becerra with questions about his thoughts on partial birth abortion most people agree that partial birth abortion is awful you voted against a ban on partial birth abortion why so senator here um i understand that people have different deeply held beliefs on this issue and i respect that i have worked as i've mentioned for decades trying to protect the health of men and women young and old and as attorney general my job has been to follow the law and make sure others are following the law i will tell you that i i hope to be able to work with you and others to reach that common ground on so many different issues romney gave up and conceded that it didn't seem like common ground with would be possible with becerra this was mostly a duck and weave operation why is bersera so unwilling as a catholic to make his position clear do you think father jerry well there was a complete non-answer to the question and it revealed the fact that he's typical of those who take an objectionable action knowing that it betrays what they're supposed to believe in as a catholic you cannot believe that partial birth abortion is good so for him to claim that he's been working to protect the health of men and women he's not doing that at all this was a question about what he voted on it's unconscionable for him to claim that he was just following the law when in fact he was trying to write the law in a new way by his vote against the partial birth abortion statutes have to deal with viability of people and uh when someone is in the process of being born to kill them is to murder them this is wrong uh this is a the wrong man for this job for many many reasons he has no background in this area uh and he did go after the little sisters of the poor hold on i want to get to that i want to get to that okay but sarah's probably best known as the attorney general who went after the little sisters and again that was to force them to provide abortifacience and contraceptives to their employees but he seemed to have a different view of history when questioned by john thune watch it does seem like as attorney general you spend an inordinate amount of time and effort um suing pro-life organizations like little sisters of the poor or um trying to ease uh restrictions or expand abortion i understand that uh americans have different deeply held beliefs on this particular issue and and i absolutely respect that by the way i have never sued the nuns any nuns i have taken on the federal government uh he may want to review this this is actually the lawsuit state of california versus little sisters of the poor is becerra saying that he didn't personally sue nuns bob why is he splitting hairs here he sued the little sisters of the poor well you you know why he's splitting hairs with all these lawyerly answers i never did this i never did that look the blame here goes back to president biden because he's the one who has put forward a man who has no experience running health care that doesn't belong in the sensitive position that when you're the head of hhs there are all these these um these moral questions that arise and so i i think that president biden has to bear the blame for nominating this guy i've got a column coming out in the next few days because you know everybody's been speculating how uh the president and the pope um there's a certain synergy to their catholicism they care about the environment and about refugees and immigration and the poor but the pope has also said that you don't hire a hitman to solve a problem in other words to somebody to perpetrate an abortion i think that javier becerra is a catholic hitman well i i'm i'm tickled by the critique here where they say well uh alex azar wasn't a doctor either and he didn't have health and that's totally wrong i mean in this sense alex azar ran eli lilly and thank god that he did because that allowed operation warp speed to move forward and he got around so many of the pharmaceutical industries because he knew the the territory what does becerra know aside from you know being attorney general of the state that it's a very different skill set so we'll see how this shakes out but regarding catholics in public office very quickly i want to get your thoughts on the us bishop's decision to disband their working group on president biden and how to deal with a catholic president who so openly defines catholic teaching very quickly father jerry a good idea it was a great idea to have the committee to look at this because it's a this is a major scandal in the life of the church right now that a president who talks all the time about how important his catholicism is to him is using his power now to attack catholic teaching and cause mayhem in the lives of the unborn and others now the the committee sad to say has been disbanded and i was very disappointed when uh this press spokesman for the u.s bishops was asked about it that she had no comment and i say to myself now wait a minute all we got was that the bishops are now going to have the doctrinal committee issue a statement wait a minute why did you have a committee in the first place you could have tasked the doctrinal committee from the start with this so i i regret that it happened um leadership in this in this regard is important and i hope the doctrinal committee will issue a very good statement because it's quite manifest a catholic politician who uses his power to pay for and promote abortion is gravely acting against his faith and against the common good and he needs to be reminded of that and brought to task if there's no accountability for that then basically we're saying well the catholic church just watches what people does but never tries to correct them bob very quickly was this due to pressure do you think from the vatican i know they were displeased with archbishop gomez's initial statement after biden's inauguration yeah i think that there's an internal struggle going on with a bishop some are behind quite a few are behind gomez a few strong voices cardinal cupich bishop mcelroy and san diego have of course taken an opposite view look we'll see what the doctrinal committee does the doctrinal committee is headed by bishop rhodes of south bend he's very good uh we'll see if he can get through some um some good statements get them into the public realm uh and by um perhaps by divine providence bishop rhodes is the bishop of south bend indiana where notre dame we are hearing is mulling whether to give an honorary degree to joseph biden [Music] well we will leave it there commentary by robert royal and father jerry murray can always be found at the catholicthing.org thank you gents [Music]

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021