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[ by Charles Cameron — concerning a valid bishop acting in an illicit manner ]
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Whatever language you speak in this era when a polyphony of tongues might indicate Babel (not so good), Pentecost (way better), glossolalia (no comment) or heteroglossia (yowza!), it’s apparently easy enough to label Ralph Napierski (left, black hat, shaking the hand of Cardinal Sergio Sebiastiana, to his right, red skullcap) a non-bishop:

The Queen’s English, Imposter dressed as cardinal sneaks into Vatican ahead of conclave to elect pope and gets as far as synod square before being led away English

English with Australian accent, Fake bishop Ralph Napierski tries to sneak into Vatican

French, un faux évêque s’immisce parmi les cardinaux

Spanish, el falso obispo que se coló en el Vaticano

German, Falscher Bischof mischt sich unter Kardinäle

Portuguese, Falso bispo tenta entrar em pré-conclave de cardeais

or Norwegian, Falsk biskop snek seg inn i Vatikanet

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Not so fast!

Massimo Introvigne, sociologist of religions, founder of the international Center for Studies on New Religions and Chairman of the Observatory of Religious Liberty set up by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, monitors religious movements small and large. He commented on a scholarly listserv today, and I quote him with permission:

Some of you may be curious about Bishop Ralph Napierski, who today managed to enter the Vatican with the cardinals preparing the Conclave, and even gave some interviews, before being identified as a non-Catholic «imposter» and thrown out.

Napierski is not a simple prankster dressed as a Bishop. He is one the so called “wandering Bishops” claiming a consecration as a Bishop which from the Catholic point of view is not “lawful” – since lawful consecrations of new Bishops should be approved by the Pope – but nonetheless is “valid” according to the (prevailing) Catholic doctrine, which maintains that a Bishop, even excommunicated, maintains the power to validly consecrate another Bishop, who in turn may consecrate further Bishops. “Validity” means that this “illicit” Bishop, although automatically excommunicated, will have the power to ordain priests who would be “real” priests, i.e. from the Catholic point of view will have the power of converting bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, provided they perform the correct ritual and believe in it.

The greatest manufacturer of wandering Bishops in the 20th century was the former Archbishop of Hué, Vietnam, Pierre-Martin Ngo-Dinh Thuc (1897-1984). Among others he consecrated as a Bishop Clemente Dominguez (1946-2005), later to proclaim himself Pope Gregory XVII for the Catholic Palmarian Church headquartered in Palmar de Troya, Spain. Dominguez consecrated in 1978 his German follower Alfred Seiwert-Fleige, who however in 1980 organized a schism among German members of the Catholic Palmarian Church. And our Napierski was originally consecrated by Seiwert-Fleige for his group.

As many other wandering Bishops, Napierski makes a living by selling titles in bogus Orders of Chivalry and degrees from his Jesus Christ University. He also appears often at LGBT events. He acquired some notoriety years ago by claiming that Dan Brown was right and Jesus did indeed marry Mary Magdalene.

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The Episcopi Vagantes or Wandering Bishops are a fascinating lot, and given my interest in the byways of Church history I’ve been intrigued by them since I first read Peter Anson‘s Bishops at Large while at Oxford.

My good friend the painter Jan Valentin Saether is a priest in one such succession, that of the Ecclesia Gnostica under Bishop Stephan Hoeller.

[ by Charles Cameron — on the exclusion of worldviews not consonant with grey suits and security clearances ]
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These two persons are likely being polite.

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I’m wondering how any people at State or in the Agency or wherever know what it feels like to be one of the flagellants in Iran during Muharram, in Qom or Masshad perhaps… or at the Jamkaran mosque, and to believe the Mahdi is waiting close by in the wings… or to be in Afghanistan, Sunni, and expecting his army with black banners will sweep down on Jerusalem from Khorasan in accordance with hadith… or in Palestine, reliant on the hadith of the rocks and the trees, certain that Israel will soon fall… in Pakistan, listening to Syed Zaid Zaman Hamid and mentally preparing for the Ghazwa-e-Hind?

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I suppose I’ve been struggling to say this for years:

The sanction for extremist violence, even to the point of death, is that the cause is just and right. The sanction for messianic violence is that the cause is not only humanly just and right but divinely so — and final, for the entirety of the cosmos, for all Creation.

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Sources:

Jami Miscik, tesimony, House Intelligence Cttee
Reuel Marc Gerecht, Spooky Sex

h/t Nada Bakos

Further readings on messianisms:

Mahdi in the wings, Iran
Khorasan, army with black banners, Afghanistan
Hadith of the rocks and the trees, Palestine
Ghazwa-e-Hind, Pakistan

David Cook, Contemporary Islamic Apocalyptic Literature
David Cook, Studies in Islamic Apocalyptic
Timothy Furnish, Holiest Wars
Gershom Gorenberg, The End of Days
Anne-Marie Oliver & Paul Steinberg, The Road to Martyr’s Square
Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam
Syed Saleem Shahzad, Inside al-Qaeda and the Taliban
Ali Soufan, The Black Banners
Richard Landes, Heaven on Earth

[ by Charles Cameron — totus mundus agit histrionem ]
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Or as Shakespeare‘s Melancholy Jacques famously observed in As You Like It: All the world’s a stage…

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On the off-chance that you’ll take a few minutes to read it once again, profound beauty being a river into which we cannot dip too often, I’ll give you the whole speech:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

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Sources:

Bérubé, A Theory of Theory of Mind
Plotinus, Third Ennead, ii, 15
Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II Scene vii.

[ by Charles Cameron — the Pope announces his retirement — from a life of power to a life of prayer ]
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The Code of Canon Law states in Canon 332, No. 2:

If it should happen that the Roman Pontiff resigns his office, it is required for validity that he makes the resignation freely and that it be duly manifested, but not that it be accepted by anyone.

In accordance with this canon, Pope Benedict XVI made the declaration seen in the video above, in which he said that he would resign from his pontificate at the end of this month. The Vatican’s English text of his Declaratio reads:

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

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Pope Benedict’s tweet as @pontifex yesterday offers an instructive and succinct insight into the Holy Father’s personal considerations:

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I have written on Pope Benedict’s ecumenism, all too briefly about his sacramental theology and liturgical writings, of his interfaith work with Muslims, of his remarks contrasting power and the kingdom, and exalting humility and joy as the prime Christian virtues — and most recently and lightheartely, of his opening a twitter account.

The Anglican blogger who styles himself Archbishop Cranmer (despite the fact that his namesake was burned at the stake in 1556 for declaring the pope of his own day the antichrist) gets it right IMO when he writes:

Pope Benedict XVI has been the most searing intellect to occupy the Chair of St Peter for at least a couple of centuries, and the vacuum he leaves will be immense. It was an enormous blessing to the Church that his pontificate coincided with the archepiscopacy of Rowan Williams: together they were theological giants in a sea of prelate pygmies.

Likewise, I am with Damian Thompson, who blogs at the Telegraph, in saying:

He has renewed the worship of the Church, reconnecting it to the majesty and deep piety of the past. He has forged new links with non-Catholics, for example by bringing ex-Anglicans into the fold through the Ordinariate. He has promulgated teaching documents further integrating the love and teaching of Christ with the structures of the Church – structures that, it would appear, he feels now unable to continue ruling.

and concluding:

He will be intensely missed by those of us for whom he was, in his quiet way, the most inspiring Pope of our lifetimes.

Pope Benedict’s great gift to the Church has been his emphasis on beauty in liturgy, his great gift to the world his Encyclical on social justice, Caritas in Veritate: now, perhaps, he is giving himself the greatest gift, that of retirement into “a life dedicated to prayer”.

[ by Charles Cameron — not just “thinking outside the box” — how about upending the whole thing and seeing what shakes out? ]
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FWIW, this isn't the world, nor is it upside down -- it's just a rather different map, eh?

A celebrated stanza by the Indian poet-saint Kabir — beloved of both Hindus and Muslims — asks:

Is there any guru in the world wise enough
to understand the upside-down Veda?

There’s a style of poetry used by Kabir and others to describe experience of the divine called “ulatbamsi” or the “upside down language” — and Linda Hess, Kabir’s great translator, writes of it as a language “of paradoxes and enigmas” — not too dissimilar, perhaps, to the koans or meditation paradoxes often encountered in zen training.

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Boom! The French have the word “bouleversé” to cover the way we feel when suddenly our whole world seems turned upside down.

Maybe it’s a modern idea? Bob Dylan, I’m delighted to say, no longer belongs to Robert Zimmerman except for purposes of copyright — his songs have entered the cultural bloodstream. Here’s his version:

The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’

The world often seems upside down, our values are often quite the reverse of what they might be if we had the kind of clarity that is implied in Samuel Johnson‘s celebrated quote:

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.

And then there are those great ones for whom our world is manifestly unjust, manifestly topsy-turvy — or “through the looking-glass”, if you prefer.

I mean, what else can being “in the world, but not of it” be all about, if it’s not about a major shift in perspective?

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I’m writing about this at such length because I just read one of those paragraphs that turns my own world upside down. It came in the middle of a long piece on “restorative justice” and it focuses on the power of forgiveness.

This particular paragraph describes how an Indian-American woman, Sujatha Baliga, came to see the unexpected power of forgiveness, and for her it occurred in a Buddhist context — but the power itself is beyond the boundaries of specific religions:

Baliga had been in therapy in New York, but while in India she had what she calls “a total breakdown.” She remembers thinking, Oh, my God, I’ve got to fix myself before I start law school. She decided to take a train to Dharamsala, the Himalayan city that is home to a large Tibetan exile community. There she heard Tibetans recount “horrific stories of losing their loved ones as they were trying to escape the invading Chinese Army,” she told me. “Women getting raped, children made to kill their parents — unbelievably awful stuff. And I would ask them, ‘How are you even standing, let alone smiling?’ And everybody would say, ‘Forgiveness.’ And they’re like, ‘What are you so angry about?’ And I told them, and they’d say, ‘That’s actually pretty crazy.’ ”

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I like the dark blue “sky” and the “clouds” at the top of the map I began this post with — but then, I’m a mostly vertical human who seldom stands on his head, so it looks “natural” to me. But that’s simply a matter of my point of view.

I imagine maps like that one must please our friends “down under”.

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A hat-tip to Hadar Aviram, whose California Corrections blog first pointed me to the article about Sujatha Baliga.