I got a text message from a friend of mine the other day. He posited that it didn't make sense for a guy like the pope who takes a vow of poverty to wear Prada shoes. You might have heard that Pope Benedict XVI sports bright red kicks from the chic shoemaker Prada, whereas his predecessor, Pope John Paul II often wore tired old brown loafers. You've probably heard it by now, that Papa Benny is a bit of a shoe dandy and has expensive taste in footwear despite his humble office. Two notes: (a) The pope doesn't take vows of poverty, (b) Those aren't Prada.

To explain:
(a) It's a common misconception that priests take vows of poverty. In fact, most priests do not take that vow--but the vocabulary makes it confusing. All priests and religious (nuns, monks, friars) take a general public vow called a "religious vow" that says they dedicate their life to follow a calling by God to a type of religious living. That's a basic agreement to be a priest or religious (read "religious" as a noun, not an adjective). Beyond that, some priests and religious join organizations that ask other commitments, generally called "professed vows" (see how the vocab is nebulous?) that are the big three that everyone knows: Poverty, Chastity, Obedience.

Poverty is not actually a promise to be poor, but to have no goods greater than the community, and that all goods should benefit the community; some of the old Benedictine Abbeys could actually be quite rich if you measured the value of their land, buildings and religious stuff on a balance sheet--but all the monks wear plain black robes and don't get HDTV. But if someone donates a Lexus to the monastery, you might see some monks in a pretty nice car.

Chastity does not mean the same thing as Celibate, but in the 21st Century, we conflate the two words. Celibacy is a charge to all Catholic priests and religious, which means they promise to lead a sexless life. Chastity is a virtue of sexual moderation; married people are supposed to be chaste in relation to their spouses, which at its most basic understanding, means not sleeping around. I don't really understand the difference in chastity versus celibacy in priests, and if they're leading celibate lives, why ask for chastity on top of it? It seems redundant. But in truth, we're ALL responsible for living chaste lives--as single people, married people or religious people.

Obedience is an agreement to respect the bishop, abbot, abbess or whomever leads whatever abbey, friary, convent or organization that the person joins.

The three professed vows are commonly known, but not universal to all priests or religious. For example, Benedictine Monks (i.e. Dom Perignon) are part of a very old organization--the "Rule of Saint Benedict" is from the 6th Century. They make pledges of Obedience (to the Abbot who heads the Abbey), Stability (committed to one particular Abbey, there are different Benedictine communities all over the world) and "Conversion of Manners" (which included forgoing private property and living celibate chastity). Franciscans (i.e. Friar Tuck) and Dominicans (i.e. Saint Thomas Aquinas) are mobile kinds of groups that could do a lot of traveling for their ministries, so they dropped the Stability vow and profess the regular poverty, chastity and obedience.

But you regular run-of-the-mill priest doesn't take the professed vows. In fact, any priest at any church might actually be kind of rich--at least, it's his right to be so. His income from the parish/diocese probably doesn't amount to much, but the priests could come from rich families, have made good investment decisions, or have some other specialty. Good examples might be if they are authors, artists, lecturers, musicians, etc. Of course, most priests aren't rolling in dough, in fact I'd wager that they probably don't earn much more than what they need to live--as most of the time the congregations they serve are cash-strapped already.

As pope, Pope Benedict is basically a privately elected king of a rich monarchy. In fact popes used to even wear tiaras (not the Miss America kind, mind you) when they were acting as head of state or in any other official capacity (not during Mass); it was a pretty common practice until the Second Vatican Council when Pope Paul VI famously "renounced Human Glory" and laid down the tiara as a sign of humility. I'd probably assert that this was the part of the bigger "dumbing down" of Catholicism of Vatican 2, but that's all Church politics and not really part of this question. But the pope could be considered as pretty rich if you consider him as head of a monarchy. I don't think he draws a salary (or know what it would be used for?), but let's say that he lives a pretty lavish life for a clergyman. There are a number of papal tiaras, and if this pope-- or any future pope-- wanted to pick one up and wear it around, it's his total right to do so. There's even one on display in the United States: Paul VI donated his theretofore unused tiara to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in our nation's capital.

(b) A lot of the "fashion" choices that this pope makes are not really about fashion, per se, as much as they are about Catholicity. Pope Benedict's big thing is to see and teach about a thread of continuity between the Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the Nineteen Hundred Years before 1962. When Paul VI laid down the tiara, a lot of the truly ancient practices of the Church came to a staggering close. The music changed. The architecture changed. The Mass changed. The way people thought about other Catholics changed. The way people thought about the Church changed. The way people thought about God changed. It was a pretty striking departure from the traditions of the Church that will take GENERATIONS to sort out. If this sounds like pithy exaggeration, I promise it's not. It's really like there is 2 Churches, the pre and post V2 Catholic Churches. Benedict's big thing is to show that the aesthetic and the spirit and the essence of the Church didn't have to be thrown away wholesale like the 60's and 70's would have you believe, so he's digging out of the Vatican closets to bring out some of the old clothes, music, prayers and practices that were otherwise forgotten--in a hope to rejuvenate the way Catholics think, pray, worship and believe.

A good example is the "camauro" hat that you'll see this pope wear in winter. We'd call it a "Santa Hat", but it was a pretty common thing for popes to wear since sometime around 1100 A.D. right up until Pope John XXIII died in 1963. The pope's camauro is not going to make someone a better Catholic, but it's one small part of rebuilding a Catholic Identity. Our common image of a pope is just an old dude in a white suit. Likewise for the red shoes--they're an old and longstanding part of how popes dress--but people my age haven't ever seen it because popes stopped dressing like popes in the 60's.

Pope Benedict actually had the reputation for a stodgy old curmudgeon before being elected pontiff. He is very quiet and shy, a soft-spoken college professor who cares more about playing Mozart on the piano with his brother than he would about appearing with celebrities (like John Paul II was famous for doing). So digging out old vestments from the papal attic is not really a part of trying to garner attention as much as it is about reconnecting to the historical aspects of Catholicism.

So those are real, honest-to-goodness red pope shoes from a real cobbler in the mountainous Piedmont region of Northern Italy , not some fashionista accessory from 5th Avenue.

To wit: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4218136.ece:

The Pope wears Prada? That's cobblers, says the Vatican The Times Online Richard Owen June 26, 2008

The Devil may wear Prada -- but the Pope does not, according to the Vatican.

The pontiff has been hailed as a "style icon" since his election just over three years ago and speculation has been rife that he enjoys designer clothes. Attention has focused not only on his often elaborate headgear and fashionable sunglasses but also on his dainty red shoes, or moccasins, widely assumed to be made by Prada.

However L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, categorically denied reports today that the shoes were a Prada product, saying this was "of course false".

According to Vatican sources the Pope's shoes are made by a cobbler from Novara called Adriano Stefanelli, who makes them from calf or kid for the winter and nappa leather for the summer. Papal shoe repairs are carried out by Antonio Arellano, a Peruvian shoemaker in the Borgo, the medieval quarter next to St Peter's. The article, on "Ratzinger's Liturgical Vestments", was written by Juan Manuel de Prada, the noted Spanish writer and author of The Tempest, who is not related to the fashion company. De Prada said that the image of the German-born Pope as concerned with "frivolity" was at odds with the truth, which was that he was a "simple and sober" man. Suggestions to the contrary were "stupid and banal".

On the day of Benedict's election as pontiff "the whole world" had seen the sleeves of a "modest black sweater" peeping out from beneath the cuffs of his papal robes, De Prada said. It was true that Pope Benedict paid a great deal of attention to his clothing, but only because of its liturgical significance.

"The Pope is not dressed by Prada but by Christ," he said. Rome residents recall that as a cardinal Benedict was austere rather than flamboyant, and used to cross St Peter's Square from his office to his flat wearing a black beret and black overcoat and carrying a battered leather briefcase.

De Prada said that an article in Esquire magazine describing Benedict as among the world figures who were the "epitome of elegance" had been greeted with "amused perplexity". The Pope had revived traditional papal headgear, from the fur-trimmed red medieval caumaro he wears at Christmas to the wide-brimmed red saturno, or "Saturn hat" he has been wearing in the current heat wave in Rome. These had been worn by previous Popes, as had the Renaissance fur-trimmed velvet cape or mozzetta.

Vatican watchers nonetheless noted that these hats and outfits have not been used since the days of Pope John XXIII, who died in 1963. Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, was usually seen in the same pair of well-worn brown shoes, and invariably wore simple outfits such as a basic white cassock and white gold-trimmed sash, although in winter he tended to don a crimson wool cloak trimmed with gold braid.

Pope Benedict has been seen wearing Serengeti sunglasses, and is also known to have been given Geox loafers by Mario Moretti Polegato, the Geox CEO, who is a friend of Joaquin Navarro-Valls, the former papal spokesman. When he retreats to the mountains of northern Italy in the summer he wears a jaunty white baseball cap.

After his election the Vatican denied reports that Pope Benedict was abandoning the Rome ecclesiastical tailors Gammarelli, who have been making papal cassocks since 1792, for a rival firm, Maninelli, which supplied his robes when he was a cardinal. "There are no cassock wars," a spokesman said.

So it's not about designer shoes.

Though I'm sure the Pontiff would like to visit Kansas anyway, why does the pope really wear red shoes?

To keep his socks clean!

Next week: why do firemen wear red suspenders?

Since the Supreme Pontiff arrived in America, the three branches of US Government welcomed His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in their own unique ways.

The President greeted the pope at Andrews Air Force Base, then threw a welcome ceremony with 13,500 people, the Marine Corps band and a 21-gun salute.

The United States Congress passed a resolution welcoming the pope, even though Senator Barbara Boxer noted she does not value each and every human life.

For their part, the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to kill people. There are 5 members of the Court who are Catholic: Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas and Alito. They were joined by Breyer (Jewish) and Stevens (Protestant), all voting for more death. The two dissenting justices were Ginsburg (Jewish) and Souter (Episcopalian).

Welcome to America, Holy Father. Ora pro nobis.

There’s a famous quote, attributed to the late New Yorker columnist Pauline Kael from right after the 1972 presidential election: ”I can’t believe that Nixon won. Nobody I know voted for him!”

This line echoed in my head when I read Lisa Miller’s Newsweek column, Why This Pope Doesn’t Connect (H/T: Off the Record). Please go and read the column. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Finished? Very well.

In the column, Ms. Miller charges that American Catholics are ignorant or disinterested that the pope is coming. Ignorance is easy to understand—after all, the media is the media—Ms. Miller, included. But as for her suggestions that Catholics are disinterested, she offers only anecdotal evidence from three sources. I have no reason to question the integrity of Fr. Gerald Fogery, S.J. who has an obligation to the students of the University of Virginia. Likewise, for Fr. John Dufell, because a parish priest’s obligation is to his parish. I’m not sure why the D.C. lawyer Paul Kane laughed at the idea of seeing the pontiff, but his attendance at church at Georgetown would suggest a couple of ideas. And I haven’t seen any bulletins from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but if Barbara Breshcia has been praying several mornings a week at the noted Cathedral, I have a hard time believing she didn’t know the pope was coming, though admittedly, the Cathedral website mentions it only once, buried in the middle of the “Monthly Events” section of their site. Maybe it’s my point of view from a fish eating, practicing American Catholic, but I have been absolutely fascinated with the pontiff’s trip. I mean, we’re not hosting just some foreign dignitary or religious leader, these United States are welcoming the very Vicar of Christ here. But I think it’s also fair to say that Ms. Miller’s column is part of a bigger problem, that the press just doesn’t ”get” religion. Sure, they understand the broad strokes. Some of them may even be adherents to a religion. But like I, as a sports fan, couldn’t write a column on Major League Soccer that would be passable to any MLS fan (wherever that guy is), most members of the press just don’t see past their nose on religion. They have to reduce the story to some opportunity to show how far out of tune the Vatican is with America, then act like it’s the Church that’s not upholding their end of the deal.

Today’s Chicago Tribune also leads off its papal coverage with mentioning the sex-abuse scandal that rocked the Church in America. I hate this story. I hate it because the scandal was real and was just awful. I hate it because I’ve personally known 2 priests in my own Archdiocese to be wrapped up in the scandal—one of whom I knew well and to whom I looked up to a lot. I hate it because I know it wasn’t just priests in America—Canada had its own problems before they reared their ugly head in the USA. I hate it because I hear the jokes people tell, thinking they’re funny; I hate it because real people got really hurt; I hate it because the scandal has given people concrete reason to walk away from Christ’s Church and never turn back. But I also hate it because it’s the first story that non-Catholics can come up with when they think of Catholicism. A little over a week ago, I wrote some words that my mom told me when I went to college: “If you stop learning about your faith when your 18 years old, you’ll always have an 18 year old’s understanding of your faith.” It applies here, too. If the last time that journalists handled the Catholic Church, it was about Bernard Cardinal Law and his grievous mishandling of the Boston Archdiocese, then that’s the thing they have to mention in their article. Hopefully, for the next few years, the press can offer a story about Catholicism that mentions the Pope’s apostolic mission to the United States, since this is the most recent story they’ll have in their file.

These are heady days to be a Catholic in America. Some churches are being closed and locked for lack of parishioners, others cannot fit enough services into a Sunday morning to handle the crowds, everyone is feeling the impending crisis of a priest shortage, because a whole generation walked out of the Seminaries at once after the Second Vatican Council—and not many are stepping up to fill that void. The pope will land on shores of people who have let go of their faith, who never learned about their Faith, who never taught their children, whose children won’t have anyone left to teach them. The Pope will find dioceses who financially bankrupt, universities who are theologically bankrupt and a citizenry who are morally bankrupt. BUT! He’ll find a church who is rediscovering Tradition in a world that once cast it aside, he’ll find a church that has wandered for a long time, he’ll find a church that is hungry for leadership. A church that wants something to hope for, for a change. A church that has cried a lot of tears lately. A church that wants, more than anything, to be alive again.

This is the stuff that you don’t find in Newsweek.

Hope isn't printed on the pages of Newsweek.

It’s in a different kind of book.

Hope.

For the fine folks of beautiful Kansas City, the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas has posted a notice that Time Warner Cable will be dedicating their Channel 5 MetNet to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI. Popeavision will run 17.5 hours a day, and hopefully won't stink. I've always wondered what the seemingly useless MetNet was for, apparently they were holding it for the Pope.

I remember as a kid that EWTN was on the standard cable package, but I didn't watch it. These days, you have to pay extra for the fancy extended channels-- we just don't think it's worth it to us. I kind of doubt that I'd watch much EWTN if it were on my tube today. But it's nice that we Catholic Americans can get some good comprehensive coverage of the Pope's trip to the USA.

My mother converted to Catholicism in 1970, in the tender days right after the New Order of the Mass was being rolled out to parishes around the world. My dad converted a couple years later. They’re genuine Novus Ordo Catholics, good faithful products of the Second Vatican Council. Mom’s been a Eucharistic Minister for as long as I remember, Dad started doing the same sometime while I was in college—it wasn’t until a couple months ago that I had any idea that “E.M.” means Extraordinary Minister, not Eucharistic Minister, and that the very design of that position was to be not-Ordinary. But I won’t critique them here; as it stands, the position as an E.M. has been around for as long as I’ve been born: through as many pastors as I can remember, and with the tacit or expressed approval of all of our Archbishops in my lifetime.

Pope John Paul II was elevated to the papacy just a few months before I was born, and until his death in April 2005, was the only pope I had ever known. And with my entire Catholic formation under John Paul II, I think it’s safe to say I was a JPII kind of Catholic. What does this mean? It’s a question for a series of posts, but I think it can be nicely summed up to say that there was a great emphasis on being a good person and not a lot of emphasis on being a good Catholic. We were encouraged to think of piety as second to charity—that the qualities of a Catholic were seen in the quality of a person’s character. And what a lesson! We’d sing in church that song by Rev. Peter Scholtes “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love” (copyright 1966) and it perfectly fit what it meant to be a Novus Ordo Catholic.

Please don’t get me wrong—that is not a critique! Indeed, our lives should be to love each other—it’s part of Jesus’ Greatest Commandment. And when that pope slipped the surly bonds of earth, I joined in the chorus of people who called him John Paul the Great, and felt like we had really lost a spectacular vicar.

Enter Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the quiet academic who carried the nickname “God’s Rottweiler”, though I didn’t really understand what that meant. I remember reading a few blogs that touched on religion here and there, and all of them portended ominous things from this new pope. I kind of hoped that the new pope would take the name “John Paul III” and that he would continue in the footsteps of his predecessor, so when he took the name “Benedict”, I was taken aback. A pope chooses a name that would suggest what kind of pope he wants to be, and Pope Benedict XV was an interesting pope—his papacy lasted 8 years, during World War I and the years that immediately followed, leading the faithful through some of the most turbulent years of the last few centuries. But most notably, BXV condemned the “modernist scholars” of the Church, a faction that the Church has to deal with from time to time. Again here, I won’t attempt to delve into modernism for the untutored gentle reader because it’s a subject of a unique series of posts, but this seemed alarming to me at the time. After all—my only pope, John Paul II, was a notably modern pontiff—traveling around the world, jogging in the Vatican gardens, and hanging out with U2’s Bono (at a time that doing so would be considered pretty cool).

Not to mention that the original namesake of “Benedict”, Saint Benedict of Nursia, was a pretty strict guy himself. The “Rule of Saint Benedict” literally saved European civilization during the dark ages and he can be quite arguably recognized as one of the most influential people in most of medieval Church history, but the same Rule (a series of rules, actually) is extremely rigorous and challenge to follow—Benedictines lead a pretty austere life, with rigorous work, prayer, meal and sleep schedules, with vows of stability, manners and obedience, even their comings and goings are regulated by their superior.

A pope who would take the name “Benedict” seemed pretty far off and remote to me, a guy who had only known popes who celebrated Mass in soccer stadiums and had the reputation of being a Holy pop star.

So let me say with no understatement, that I was totally caught off guard when I realized that I was a MAJOR FAN of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI.

Here is a quiet octogenarian who suggested that he wouldn’t travel very far outside of the Vatican, a former college professor who is more interested in playing Mozart concertos on piano than hanging out with Bono, a priest who found great power in the words of the Holy Mass—a Mass that I’d always recognized as important, if admittedly, a little banal (I cannot believe that I typed that). And this quiet octogenarian has been thoroughly profound.

Hearing that this pope was going to make small reforms in the Holy See (the “government” of the Vatican, for lack of a better term) by downsizing the numbers and merging some of the Councils (departments, again for lack) didn’t seem to personally matter much, then or now. But as I learned more about his critiques of Relativism, or that Rationalism is inseparable from Christianity, or that Consumerism is a poison to which we aren’t even realizing we are succumbing—I have to tell you that I was really caught off guard. Not that I was caught off guard because he was saying what I wanted to hear; rather, I was caught off guard because I didn’t want to hear this and yet it was striking a chord in me.

Have you ever had a moment where you realize that you had been really really wrong about something?

Gentle reader, I had been really really wrong.

And it kind of caught me off guard that I had been so wrong.

For a lot of my teenage and young adult life, I think you could sum up my religious and moral opinion as Relativist, or in other words, “nothing is wrong or right; religion and morals don’t matter beyond that morality and religion push us to be better people”. I hope I’m explaining this well. I had reduced religion to a “code of conduct” between people, where our greatest obligation was to be nice to each other. I had passively overlooked the first part of that Greatest Commandment—not outrightly abandoning or ignoring it, mind you, but I didn’t spend a lot of time with it. At one point, I had even taken this train of thought so far as to get into a pointed argument with a Fundamentalist Christian where I took a position that I could now describe as “heresy”, though I didn’t have the words or the frame of reference to do that then. But after a while, the trunk of my stunted theology bore its stunted fruit.

If religion is just about being good people, then why bother going to church? After all, I can be a good person on Sunday mornings from my couch watching the McLaughlin Group, right? If religion is just about being good people, then why even pray? After all, I can be a good person without cranking out some “Our Fathers”, right? And if religion is just about being good people, then why even bother with God at all? Atheists can be good people, right?

And indeed, all of these things are true! But they are also only one part of the picture, and the sad logical result that I ended up with because I had left half of the Greatest Commandment behind. So when Pope Benedict XVI showed up, wearing his ancient vestments, saying Mass facing the wrong direction, and riles up the religious world by altering a four sentence prayer that is said once a year in a form of the Mass that MOST of the Church hasn’t used for 40 years, I kind of thought our good Pontiff might be some kind of a space alien. Imagine my further surprise when I found myself curiously drawn to this pope—part of a spiritual reconciliation that I’ve been going through for the last few years—a person who seemed so remote that I didn’t really understand the man at all.

But he’s drawn me in! His Summorum Pontificum (language note: Latin) was a quiet invitation to join in the Church in a way I didn’t even know existed just a handful of months ago. His planned USA visit is a promise so compelling that I considered getting a plane ticket to Washington D.C. just for the hope I might catch a glimpse of the pope (a quick audit of my wallet cancelled my trip). But more broadly and more importantly, Pope Benedict XVI has taught me that some things do matter—a simple lesson that has filled my brain more rapturously than any amount of papal pop-culture cache ever did.

Pope Benedict XVI is going to turn 81 years old here in a few days. And yet, his work is just beginning. In 2005, I surmised (hoped, even) that this new pope was going to be a “transitional” pope, a quiet pontiff who would not rock Saint Peter’s boat until a younger, more charismatic pope could be named. And in small, subtle ways, I am being proven wrong. His Holiness is bringing the Church back to Mass, or in another way, re-placing the Mass at the center of Catholicism. The Holy Mass is the highest form of prayer in which Catholics can partake, and until I found Tradition and re-found Catholicism and discovered just how much I’d been missing.

In short, thank you, Pope Benedict XVI. I am proud to call myself a papist.

The late Pope John Paul II, Servant of God, passed away this day in 2005.

Resquiat in pace.

How little did we know what was, and what was to be.