Cardinal Joseph Coutts, the retired bishop of Karachi, Pakistan, speaks to reporters outside the Vatican May 5, 2025. (CNS/Pablo Esparza)
This photo of Joseph Cardinal Coutts of Pakistan and yours truly was taken last fall after a dinner with the good Cardinal at the rectory of Saint Gregory the Great in Bluffton, South Carolina. I asked him about the upcoming conclave, given Pope Francis’ advanced age and many serious health problems. He was soon to turn 80 and wouldn’t be in the conclave once he turned 80.
Evidently, His Eminence is in the Conclave still 79 but not for long!
But he said, the cardinals don’t know each other because of Pope Francis.
23 comments:
So have I said for years, Francis never had a consistatory in order to keep them disorganized and ripe for manipulation by his cadre come conclave time. The parting gift from our own holiest of holies pope Francis.
If cardinals don't know each other it's their own fault, not Pope Francis'. They have phones, zoom conversations, emails, texts, and, heaven forfend!, face-to-face meetings that don't have to be arranged and chaperoned by the bishop of Rome.
Cardinals who can't pick up a phone, send a text or an email have no one other than themselves to blame for not knowing others cardinals.
The pope doesn't make "Play Dates" for grown-ups.
I agree. At the same time, coffee chats are not equivalent to collaborative laboring and cross pollination. Not ensuring the generals know how to work together is a managerial shortcoming.
Strange comment coming from a priest whose spiritual growth is stunted in 1970s dreck and pablum
yeah...sure...right....internet or phone, singly or small group chat, takes the place of everyone together discussing the issues of the day, straightforwardly or evasively, and able to make estimates of character or leanings and observe body language....they should just each and every one call each and every other cardinal throughout the world across every possible time zone, language barrier, and many hostile borders on phones and computers subject to surveillance....
yeah....right....sure....
why aren't you saying the same thing as to synods?
Bob,
Part of the breakdown simply must be that the American cardinals only use iMessage, and the non-Americans all use WhatsApp. If only this obstacle had been overcome, they could have all joined a group-text to get to know each other, because that's how people form meaningful personal and professional bonds.
Nick
Father Kavanaugh called it. "If cardinals don't know each other it's their own fault, not Pope Francis'."
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At every turn, Pope Francis' detractors have long concocted ways to defame Pope Francis. Had he summoned Cardinals to Rome for a few days of "meet and greet," his detractors would have declared:
"What a waste! Two-faced Bergoglio talks about conserving the earth's resources. But he has wasted precious resources by having summoned Cardinals to Rome when they could have gathered together via virtual means."
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It is interesting that such blogs as Rorate Caeli purport to comment expertly upon one Cardinal after another. The Cardinals do not know each other.
But Rorate Caeli, for example, possesses supposedly profound information in regard to a Cardinal's worthiness to serve as Pope.
Oh. Okay. If the above is valid, then the Cardinals should be embarrassed that bloggers, as compared to Cardinals, possess greater knowledge of this, or that, Cardinal.
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One Cardinal after another has noted that God is in charge of His Church.
The Cardinals have expressed confidence that via God's guidance, that they will elect a holy man who will teach, govern, and sanctify us successfully.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
FMJK makes an excellent point in that, what with Nick's observation of incompatible group-chat platforms (no doubt the major cause of problems between China and the West, as well as Russia), that all the cardinals should just hop flights to visit every other cardinal in the world for several days to find out what pressing issues they find most important and what they would do about them if ever made pope...
As FMJK properly notes, had they done this the entire Francis pontificate, they might be done almost halfway by now on the visits (except for those replaced due to age/health/death), and not be half so clueless, which cluelessness clearly is not the fault of Francis for not calling them together semi-regularly as done by other papacies.
"It is interesting that such blogs as Rorate Caeli purport to comment expertly upon one Cardinal after another. The Cardinals do not know each other.
But Rorate Caeli, for example, possesses supposedly profound information in regard to a Cardinal's worthiness to serve as Pope."
So do commenters on this blog! How unusual that people express their opinions based on the information in their possession. What's not unusual is that other people have more sources in Rome than this blog's most-long-winded commenter.
"If the above is valid, then the Cardinals should be embarrassed that bloggers, as compared to Cardinals, possess greater knowledge of this, or that, Cardinal."
If nothing else, the cardinals should be embarrassed that it took a commenter on this blog to come up with the idea of joining a group-text with each other.
"One Cardinal after another has noted that God is in charge of His Church.
The Cardinals have expressed confidence that via God's guidance, that they will elect a holy man who will teach, govern, and sanctify us successfully."
Oh, there you go again. How you expect us to take you seriously when your comments would have it that God chose the likes of Benedict IX or Rodrigo Borgia to teach, govern, and sanctify His Church is beyond me.
Nick
oh, puh-LEEZE....what vapidness you spout when you digress from only cut/paste, and small wonder you generally limit yourself to disjointed, out of context quotes.
And by "vapid", I mean your building an argument upon a false premise right out of the starting gate. And that premise was a doozy of a falsehood. Go to confession.
How he automatically infers that each and every pope, no matter how wicked or corrupt, was "holy" and hand-selected by God via using cardinals as absentee ballots, shows an irremediable ignorance not only the Church, but of God and the freedom God imparts to each and every human, as well as scriptural ignorance...
All God guarantees is that the Church will never utterly fail, meaning so long as even one Christian is left, the Church still exists, and Mark is free to argue if that one person must be the Pope or not, and scripture is plain that most will be deceived and fall away. Meanwhile, conclaves give us the Pope which God sees fit to inflict upon the Church, for good or bad, for our own education...and many of God's lessons are hard indeed.
Bob - The American cardinals meet regularly at the USCCB meetings and at USCCB committee meetings throughout the year. The seven Brazilian cardinals also meet with the Brazilian Conference of bishops regularly. There are 53 European cardinal electors who can meet easily. Now, granted, the one cardinal elector in Australia, Bishop Mykola Bychok of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Eparchy of Saints Peter and Paul in Melbourne, might have a bit of a tougher time getting to know the other members of the club. In any case, I suspect the cardinals they know enough about each other to make a wise choice in the days to come.
Bob,
MT Suit will either disappear from this thread or blithely ignore your fact based response and post more blather. That is his modus operandi which is why almost no one takes him seriously
aaaand... FMJK handily ignores how so will Brazilian meet Ukrainian meet US, meet western Europe, meet Asia, meet Africa, meet Polynesia etc etc etc? I know.....CONSISTATORIES....
of course he will...just as he always waits and tries to get in the last post after the initial flurry....it's in his manual along with all the stored quotes organized by subject for every Junior P-man on the net defending the progressive cause with sweetness and light, he even has a badge....
I doubt he posts much elsewhere playing contrapoint as any other outfit would have banned him for being only an automatic out of context quote generator taking up space and bandwidth and offering no real discussion or argument. But, other folk might read his claptrap, and since it is allowed to post, others here must waste time answering since his posts might mislead readers.
Or, we can all bail and let him have the comment section to share with FMJK, who obviously thinks consistatories are not needed, and likely not a conclave, either...just vote for the guy with the most consonants in name because it sounds cool and is impossible to pronounce.
Nick said..."Oh, there you go again. How you expect us to take you seriously when your comments would have it that God chose the likes of Benedict IX or Rodrigo Borgia to teach, govern, and sanctify His Church is beyond me."
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Nick, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ selected Saint Peter as His first Pope. In horrific fashion, Saint Peter three times had denied that he had known Jesus Christ.
Saint Peter acted in violent fashion. His behavior led to his having been confronted to his face. At the end of his life, he had fled temporarily his spiritual children at Rome...Quo vadis?
Nick, in light of the above horrific behavior, based upon your logic in regard to "bad" Popes, have you found it difficult to believe that Jesus Christ had chosen such a terribly flawed man as Saint Peter to have served as our first Pope?
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Nick, God selected Saul of Tarsus to have carried out a mission of monumental importance to the Church. Saul was a hater and fierce persecutor of Jesus Christ, as well as Jesus' followers. Saul was complicit in murder.
Nick, do you find it difficult to believe that God poured out his favor upon such a dreadful man as Saul of Tarsus?
Why does God select men with serious flaws to serve His Church? Saint Paul revealed that answer via his first Letter to Saint Timothy: Chapter 1, verses 15-17.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Bob, among God's guarantees is that our soon-to-be Pope will...
-- Preserve the Catholic Religion immaculately.
-- God will speak through our Pope, as well as bishops who are in communion with His Holiness.
-- God will entrust to our Pope the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
-- Our Pope will be blessed with never-failing faith.
-- That which our Pope will bind on earth will be bound in Heaven. That which he will loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven.
- Our Pope will be blessed with "the supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom." (Pope Venerable Pius XII, Encyclical, Mystici Corporis Christi.)
Pax.
Mark Thomas
MT,
Since you are a master of cut and paste, have you found stuff on how Francis disciplined the gay clerics at the Vatican for engaging in a cocaine fueled gay sex orgy? Holy, hoiies!
MT,
You mean events that occurred before (1) Peter's took up vicarious leadership of the Church, as Christ was still here on Earth, and (2) Paul's conversion? Or are we to suppose that Peter's hypocrisy and flight from Rome while Vicar of Christ on Earth were ways in which he "preserved the Catholic Religion immaculately," "God [spoke] through [him,]" he demonstrated his never-failing faith and "supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom"?
You, as always, also fail to account for anything countering your chosen narrative. Remember that “the head of the Church is Christ, not the Pope”; “the figure of the Pope is praised too much. One risks falling into the cult of personality”' and “the Pope is not an oracle, he is infallible only on very rare occasions[.]” But I suppose these words are horrible Satanic attacks the likes of that horrible Rorate Caeli would hurl at the holy, holy, holy of his holiness who is God's mouthpiece on Earth and can never make any mistakes because God chose him specifically, whoever he is.
You also ignore that the gifts of God, such as knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, avail us only to the extent we cooperate with them--even the pope. It is not automatic. God does not remove free will--even the pope's.
Anyway, I'll brace myself for another little-short-of-blasphemous chorus of holy, holy, holy assigning the praises due to God to the pope.
Nick
Mark, simply to illustrate your pathological dishonesty in cherry picking out-of-context quotes to ascribe super-powers to the Pope alone, the full quote of Pius XII you inaccurately cite reads...
"...it is He who enriches pastors AND teachers AND above all His Vicar on earth with the supernatural gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom, so that THEY may loyally preserve the treasury of faith, defend it vigorously..."
AND you utterly omit from the same document...
"And if at times there appears in the Church something that indicates the weakness of our human nature, it should not be attributed to her juridical constitution, but rather to that regrettable inclination to evil found in each individual, which its Divine Founder permits even at times in the most exalted members of His Mystical Body, for the purpose of testing the virtue of the Shepherds no less than of the flocks, and that all may increase the merit of their Christian faith."
Bob,
Well-spotted.
Nick
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