The Pope gets it from both sides

Posted by Sappho on May 10th, 2005 filed in Catholic Church News, News and Commentary

I shouldn’t laugh. I know this is all serious business. But there’s something darkly humorous in blog commentary on the Pope during the past few days. First, we have Reese’s resignation from America – greeted with dismay among liberal Catholics, and a certain satisfaction in conservative Catholic quarters. OK, so God’s Rottweiler is doing what everyone expected him to do, and the people who expected to be upset are complaining – this isn’t the funny part.

The dark humor comes with the next revelation, where Dom Bettinelli reported (soon to be followed by Time and CNN) that Archbishop Levada, of the San Francisco Archdiocese, has been tapped to head the CDF (Pope Benedict XVI’s old post). And suddenly, there’s a flood of concern from the conservative side. I used to live in the SF Bay Area – at one point lived right around the corner from St. Patrick’s Seminary, actually – and was still there when Levada took over from Quinn. I remember him as more conservative than Quinn, and not much else. Little did I know – evidently, he’s gravely deficient, and God’s Rottweiler is already showing signs of being a mere lapdog, by appointing such a man.

Dom Bettinelli starts it off:

This is not good news. Archbishop Levada is the prelate who compromised with the city of San Francisco over the city’s demands that Catholic Charities and other Church organizations provide “domestic partner” benefits to employees. His archdiocese is also a mess with dissenting priests, homosexual activists running all over the place, the University of San Francisco trampling the faith, and more.

OK, I realize people will be upset about the domestic partner issue (for what it’s worth, here’s Levada on the “domestic partner” benefit compromise responding to flack from both sides.) But the rest: Huh? Under what conceivable archbishop wouldn’t San Francisco have “homosexual activists running all over the place.”

Someone in Amy’s comments gets worked up over the fact that Levada allows women servers at the Eucharist (a practice that, everyone concedes, the Catholic Church explicitly permits). This really weirds me out, because, I would have thought that even conservatives might consider that going into a diocese where people lean feminist and trying to end an explicitly permitted liturgical practice might not be the best choice of battles. It’s not as if Levada, who is just as pro-life as you’d expect a Catholic bishop to be, will be getting fan mail from NOW any time soon.

What does come out is that Levada has worked with Pope Benedict XVI at CDF in the past; since no one disputes the new Pope’s intelligence and administrative ability, and since he knows Levada, I assume Levada has the administrative competence for the job. And that’s about all I assume – for all I know, he could be either the mildest head of the CDF yet or a new Torquemada. Beyond that, a few specific grievances come out – some dust up among the Jesuits in the SF Bay Area where Levada didn’t step in and prevent the liberals from winning over the conservatives (given that religious orders like the Jesuits have their own separate structure, I’m unclear on at what point their internal disputes are supposed to be the archbishop’s business – but maybe they are), and a few specific praises – someone reports that Levada was both firm and pastorally skillful in defending orthodoxy in Portland.

Mostly, though, I’m left watching the truly weird spectacle of St. Blog’s freaking because the Pope may have appointed someone insufficiently rigorous to the CDF. Who knew that Levada was a dangerous liberal?

UPDATE: It’s confirmed: Levada is indeed the new head of the CDF. Via Amy Welborn.