Catholicism

It’s been a pattern under Joe Biden’s time in executive office. As much as he has prefaced his political career in the media on his deeply held faith as a Catholic, time and again it is his administrations, as vice president and now as president, that have targeted American Catholic organizations with burdensome and often ridiculous regulatory challenges. The Little Sisters of the Poor met the ire of the Obama administration. Now Biden's Department of Health and Human Services is demanding that the largest hospital system in Oklahoma, Saint Francis Health System, literally snuff out the flame of their belief to keep their doors open. St. Francis, a nonprofit hospital system which opened in 1960 and now serves 400,000 Oklahomans every year, has chapels, you see.

It was Benedict XVI’s election as Pope, his speeches and his writings that prompted my conversion, and it was his words at Bellahouston Park during his 2010 visit to the United Kingdom that first made me seriously consider my vocation. Without Pope Benedict XVI I would not have become a priest. His passing is for me incredibly personal, but it’s not just because of that, that I find him so incredibly difficult to sum up, it’s because whatever his detractors and admirers insist, he didn’t follow an ideology so much as a person.  ‘Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.

There is a lot to dig into amid Pope Francis’s recent interview with America magazine, but the most interesting tidbits might be his commentary on foreign affairs. Whereas the traditional head of state represents the interests of a nation, the Holy Father’s most important duty is the shepherding of the Catholic faithful. His message thus carries much weight, not because of the raw power at his disposal, but because it is backed by the moral authority of the Catholic Church. The pope has been in some hot water recently over both the war in Ukraine and the Vatican’s relations with China. Though he has long condemned the violence in Ukraine, he has not been as clear in condemning Russia and Putin specifically.

Few institutions can match the global prestige of Oxford University. Just look at the gifts lavished on it, like offerings brought to some mighty emperor of the ancient world. There’s the Saïd Business School, controversially funded with £50 million from Wafic Saïd, who helped to broker the British-Saudi arms deal. There’s the carbuncular Blavatnik School of Government, criticised by Russian dissidents for how the funder made his millions. There’s the new student housing at St Peter’s College, partly paid for with a donation whose original source was the mid-20th-century fascist demagogue Oswald Mosley. Yes, people do sometimes ask whether there’s any cash the university won’t accept. And now they have an answer.

If you think your diary looks busy over the next few days, spare a thought for Pope Francis. The 85-year-old, who was confined to a wheelchair for several months this year, is preparing for a big weekend. He will be spending it in the company of the world’s cardinals – the red-clad figures who are supposed to be his closest advisers but seldom meet en masse in Rome these days. Now the pope has finally decided to gather them together – in the Eternal City’s unforgiving August heat. The pope will be adding to the cardinals’ number today. Tomorrow, he will be dashing off to L’Aquila, the Italian city that boasts the tomb of Pope Celestine V, who resigned in 1294.

San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone’s recent announcement that Nancy Pelosi has been barred from receiving communion brought fresh to Cockburn’s mind a memory he has of once having accidentally attended church with the Speaker of the House (and lived to tell about it). Sometimes alcohol can stir in one a devotional feeling, and so it was that Cockburn found himself at Mass one day at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown, seated a few rows behind Pelosi. When the time came, Cockburn refrained from receiving communion, but wondered as he watched Pelosi head toward the altar whether anyone should tackle her to the ground to prevent the sacrilege.