(1.) The name of Cardinal CAÑIZARES LLOVERA as a replacement for Cardinal Arinze as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments was once again mentioned in the Italian press - this weekend, by Paolo Luigi Rodari, in Il Riformista. The change would take place only in November, after the fiftieth anniversary of priestly ordination of the Nigerian prelate.
According to Rodari, a Cañizares appointment could have a double meaning: that of placing a non-liturgist and esteemed papal friend in a place in which it would be useful to have a man with administrative skills, "faithful to the Pope and capable of taking certain decisions, possibly troublesome, which the correct administration of divine worship frequently requires"; and, also, maybe, that of implementing a new, Bertone-led, strategy regarding the relationship of the Catholic Church and the government in Spain.
(2.) RORATE Note: The first motivation is credible; the second one not so much. It is not as if the Catholic hierarchy has been monolithic in its position regarding the Zapatero government. Cañizares has often been quite subdued - and the moderate, almost spineless, attitude of the Cardinals of Andalusia (AMIGO, in Seville) and Catalonia (MARTÍNEZ SISTACH, in Barcelona) has been met with no cease-fire from the Socialist-led governments in these two autonomous regions.
A Ralliement in Spain (Rodari uses the term Ostpolitik) would have the same disastrous result of the previous ones: even more hostility towards the Church, as it happened in the French Third Republic and during the Spanish Second Republic. What compromise may the Church be able to achieve with a political establishment which, intimately, regrets not having been able to utterly destroy all traces of Catholicism in Spain in the 1931-1939 period?
The current Socialist government is being very successful in its ideological war against the Church - and the one true "hostile" action on the part of the Church has been not retiring one single very popular talk show host (Federico Jiménez Losantos) from the Episcopal Conference's national radio network (the COPE). Jiménez Losantos, who is harshly critical of the government, but whose positions are partisan and not religious in nature, has the apparent support of the most powerful Spanish Cardinal, the Archbishop of Madrid and President of the Conference (ROUCO VARELA, who will be 75 only in 2011) - but not the support of Cañizares. If he is the one about whom Cardinal Bertone is concerned, a direct Vatican order for his removal would be much more straightforward and useful than a massive change in the Spanish hierarchy for the sole reason of pleasing the Socialist government.
According to Rodari, a Cañizares appointment could have a double meaning: that of placing a non-liturgist and esteemed papal friend in a place in which it would be useful to have a man with administrative skills, "faithful to the Pope and capable of taking certain decisions, possibly troublesome, which the correct administration of divine worship frequently requires"; and, also, maybe, that of implementing a new, Bertone-led, strategy regarding the relationship of the Catholic Church and the government in Spain.
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(2.) RORATE Note: The first motivation is credible; the second one not so much. It is not as if the Catholic hierarchy has been monolithic in its position regarding the Zapatero government. Cañizares has often been quite subdued - and the moderate, almost spineless, attitude of the Cardinals of Andalusia (AMIGO, in Seville) and Catalonia (MARTÍNEZ SISTACH, in Barcelona) has been met with no cease-fire from the Socialist-led governments in these two autonomous regions.
A Ralliement in Spain (Rodari uses the term Ostpolitik) would have the same disastrous result of the previous ones: even more hostility towards the Church, as it happened in the French Third Republic and during the Spanish Second Republic. What compromise may the Church be able to achieve with a political establishment which, intimately, regrets not having been able to utterly destroy all traces of Catholicism in Spain in the 1931-1939 period?
The current Socialist government is being very successful in its ideological war against the Church - and the one true "hostile" action on the part of the Church has been not retiring one single very popular talk show host (Federico Jiménez Losantos) from the Episcopal Conference's national radio network (the COPE). Jiménez Losantos, who is harshly critical of the government, but whose positions are partisan and not religious in nature, has the apparent support of the most powerful Spanish Cardinal, the Archbishop of Madrid and President of the Conference (ROUCO VARELA, who will be 75 only in 2011) - but not the support of Cañizares. If he is the one about whom Cardinal Bertone is concerned, a direct Vatican order for his removal would be much more straightforward and useful than a massive change in the Spanish hierarchy for the sole reason of pleasing the Socialist government.
