13 october 23
Back in Rome. As of today, it’s a month already since I arrived in Italy. Thanks be to God this has been a much more relaxed week than the first three! I didn’t even realize how tired I was until we had a day off on Monday.
There was one more notable happenstance before I left the Casentino to come down here. Each year the Italian Catholic magazine Il Regno holds a meeting at Camaldoli. This particular magazine was founded by the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart in 1956 as a source of thought and information about Christian inspired culture. It often deals with political issues and usually invites a prominent figure in church and/or politics. This year the guest was none other than the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who was to speak on “Europe as a Horizon of Peace.” I was doing my last conference at Poppi during his actual talk on Sunday, but he was also presiding at Mass and I really wanted to hear him speak, so Sr. Deborah drove me over to Camaldoli when I finished. He did indeed preside but Alessandro offered the homily, so I did not actually get to hear him speak, alas. I was sitting in choir with the other monks, basically right next to the good cardinal and couldn’t help but notice that throughout the liturgy he looked very tired or distant or detached––I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He obviously would have a lot on his mind with the attack on Israel having just occurred.
Afterward we had lunch in the refectory of the monastery, with all the monks from the Sacro Eremo in attendance too. The first two tables had been pushed together, covered with a tablecloth, and set up very fancily for the Prior General and the guests of honor, cloth napkins, flowers, etc. I sat way in the back with the young guys from the Eremo. We were supposed to leave for Rome at exactly 1:30 so I had to slip out a little early. As I was trying to sneak by the head table Giuseppe was serving the after-dinner vin santo and he grabbed me by the arm wanting to introduce me to the cardinal––il priore di New Camaldoli nella California. As opposed to his demeanor at Mass he got up and was quite animated, wanted to talk about California and the music for the Synod. I was taken off guard a little. The only thing that threw me was he kept using the formal lei with me which I was supposed to use, of course, for him as well, but I kept slipping and using the tu, unaccustomed as I am. But he did not seem to mind. We Camaldolese are certainly brushing up against the top of the hierarchy these days.
Monday we had the day off so I kind of crawled into my shell and only came out to eat. Actually, that evening I went over to San Gregorio to say hello to the brothers there and have Mass and dinner with them. It’s quite a crowd there now with all the students back for the start of the school year, quite near the largest community in the congregation, and very international. Besides the Italians from Camaldoli, the three young Tanzanians who I met in 2021 are there now, John, Sylvester and Onesforo. I was surprised at how happy they were to see me, or that they remembered me at all. Then there is Adaikalam from India who has now begun his studies in Hebrew and Greek for this specialty in Scripture, and Fabian from Hildesheim. I think they are 13 monks plus three long-term guests––a young man from Spain who works as a tour guide and two other young Italian student, non-monastics––living with them. It was a fun evening seeing them all together.
Aside from that we have fallen into a nice pattern. Fabio from San Gregorio picks us up here at Sant’Antonio at 6:45 AM each day and we whisk (and I mean whisk; I hang on for dear life) through the streets of Rome and inside the Vatican walls, waving our Synod badges (animazione liturgica) past two different sets of security guards, and have a parking place right between the basilica and Paul VI audience hall. There is a surprising amount of activity back there, a real little city––and even there they drive very fast! Matteo meets us and we walk into the sacristy building which is attached to the basilica by a set of staircases and a long hall, through the sacristy itself (actually sacristies: cardinals have a separate one marked off for them), and into the basilica. It is not unusual for there to be several Masses going on or being prepared at the same time.
Caveat lector: I’m about to write some disappointing things about St. Peter’s Basilica…
The place really does feel like a giant museum. Not that I have the absolute best antennae for these things, but I get a sense of awe and splendor and might there, but rarely any sense of holiness or recollection. There is one huge statue after the other (and, as I keep pointing out to my younger brothers, not one with even the hint of a smile), one monument to great men after another, blocks and waves of marble everywhere, everything made large to make you feel small, and constant people milling about, custodians ever-present dusting or riding floor buffing machinery, picking up plastic bottles, barriers all over the place forbidding entrance here or there.
And the liturgies themselves have been very pedestrian, shall we say. First of all, these are supposed to be Masses for the Synod delegates, but very few show up, most days between about 25 and 40, some days a lot less, and we are in the Holy Spirit Chapel which could easily accommodate 500. There is the usual procession of priests, bishops and cardinals who sit a quarter mile away in the presbytery and every day a different cardinal presides (I think they have all been cardinals), sometimes in various languages or a mix of languages. (We’ve had French, English and Spanish besides Italian.) Our friends, four sisters from the congregation of Pie Discepole, are in charge of the music. Sr. Miriam, who also plays the cetra (zither) at the Synod prayers and who I had met when she was living at Poppi two years ago, put it all together in a booklet. I don’t know much of it, but I intuit that it’s stuff that would be used in a parish––or would have been used some time ago. We get there about 7 AM and spend the next half hour deciding what to do. Usually one of us monks sings or improvises the responsorial psalm from the ambo and Emanuele or Fabio play the organ All a little a casaccio for my sensibility. Often when the language is other than Italian there is nothing provided for people to join in so there is little or no response on the part of the assembly. And then all the clergy go processing out to some triumphal piece of organ music. It feels like a weird drama. That being said, some of the homilies have been good, I must say. Cardinal Tagle from the Philippines for instance was really wonderful.
One day, Wednesday, was especially memorable. There was another, obviously more important, Mass going on somewhere else in the basilica and we were told that we could not use the organ until it was done. There was hardly anybody at our Mass anyway. Luckily, I had brought my guitar with me, and we were going to sing Bob Hurd’s “As the Deer Longs.” Well, apparently someone had seen me walk through the sacristy carrying my guitar over my shoulder and sent Matteo to tell me that playing the guitar was not allowed in the basilica. Though it should not be such a big deal, I have rarely felt so offended. I got over it (kind of) and we sang the first half of the Mass acapella, even the ostinato of “As the Deer Longs,” the Italian refrain with English verses over the top. Halfway through the Mass we got a thumbs up that we could use the organ, so we still got to end with a triumphal processional for the little line of priests, bishops, and cardinals.
There is no word in Italian for “underwhelming.”
The prayers in the synod hall instead have gone well and are much appreciated. Most days it’s just a hymn and three psalms, but Matteo has been asking us to add some other music here and there. Thursday was especially touching: a woman read the gospel in Arabic as the reading and then another woman sang the Taize Nada te Turbe first in Spanish and then in Arabic. I accompanied her on the guitar. This week when all the attention has been focused on outrage, and rightly so, for the Hamas attacks on Israel, there is obviously also grave concern for the innocent people in the Gaza Strip being killed, wounded and displaced by the retaliation. (As I write, Israel has issued its evacuation warning for the north of Gaza, an impossible feat, and everyone is on tinter hooks waiting for the ground invasion which will simply wipe out the entire region.) The Holy Father called the pastor of the parish in Gaza and the patriarch of Jerusalem has tried to be a voice of reason, and we are all praying for the improbable––a measured response on the part of Israel.
Not that it makes it any worse or better, but often people forget how many Palestinian or just plain Arabic Christians there are. As a matter of fact, I stop often at a little fruttivendolo on my way home from the gym run by a guy from Egypt. There was Arabic chant playing in the background and I said how beautiful it was, assuming it was the Qur’an and it being Friday. He told me it was the Mass! I thought there might be some complaint that too much sympathy was being shown to the Palestinians, but no. I was disappointed to hear that someone complained, not that the Gospel had been read in Arabic but that it had been read by a woman. Sigh.
I have been surprised and touched by how many people are tuning in to the live stream from the States (I don’t know the link) and/or watching each day later on YouTube. That I know you can see via Vatican News. It was the first time we had used the guitar in the audience hall and unfortunately the sound guy did not do a good job of it and it was kind of boomy. Maybe it will be banned there too now…
I don’t think you can watch any of it on EWTN. I ran into a program the other day on YouTube, hosted by Raymond Arroyo, lead anchor for the network and also a Fox News contributor, just trashing the whole Synod in no uncertain terms. He had Cardinal Burke on as one of his guests. At one point one of the guests suggested that it was not a problem to be questioning the pope on this because it is like your mother is being attacked and you have a moral obligation to defend your mother, the Church. Wow.
I spoke with Cardinal O’Malley again the other day. He came over and greeted me. I was delighted he remembered my name. He doesn’t think the Church is under attack. I also got to speak with Fr. James Martin, SJ yesterday. None of them reveal anything of what is actually said in the synod hall, but he did say that the conversations have been very deep and filled with disagreements. I say, “At least they are talking!” Trying to make the Church as pastorally inclusive as possible does seem to me to be a wonderful thing. Let’s ask the questions: “What if?” and “What about?” If we don’t get the answers we wanted, fine, but at least we have talked about it. Mr. Arroyo was complaining that conservatives were not invited. It is simply not true. There are ample conservative (orthodox, traditional) voices among the delegates who are speaking their mind very clearly, and every bishop’s conference got to vote for their representatives. Our American delegation is made up of at least two bishops who are known not to be favorable to Pope Francis. And Bishop Barron is here, and I am told has been very articulate. Bravo for Francis for not being afraid of the conversation.
I just always worry about the people who feel un-invited, not welcome, or indeed pushed out of our churches. Who will feed them? Who will minister to them? Because “they are like sheep without a shepherd.” We can’t always be so self-referential. At times the only thing we can do is go out to them and do whatever we can for them where they are at. “You give them something to eat!” Jesus said. The Holy Father used a great image in his homily opening day. Jesus is always knocking at the door (the image from Revelation), but sometimes he is knocking from the inside, from inside of our churches, wanting to get out and be near the poor, the lost and the lonely.
Enough of my harangue.
Anyway, after we sing in the morning, we are pretty much free for the day. We make our way through a huge traffic jam back to Sant’Antonio. Emanuele is working on his dissertation up at the library at Sant’Anselmo each day. I have been getting to the gym every day this week and getting lots of time to read and write. I’m also arranging meetings with several people who are here in Rome: my old friend John Wong, OFM, who is the definitor for all of Asia for the order and travels extensively, is stationed here (We went for Indian food, which was quite a culture shock, meeting with my Malaysian friend from Singapore in Rome, eating Indian food); our friend and oblate Nate Bacon is here; Monday I am meeting a young priest from LA who is here studying at the Opus Dei seminary. Sr Maria Cimperman is here, as is Sr. Carol Marie Hemish who I know through the Composers’ Forum. They both want to meet for coffee, and Jim Martin too offered me a tour of the Jesuit Curia (!). I did go up to Sant’Anselmo the other day to see if I could greet Abbot Gregory Polan, an acquaintance and good friend of the community, but he was out of town. It’s fascinating: this time more than ever I feel like Rome really is a meeting place for the world, at least the Catholic one.
Our Federico is studying at PIMS––the Pontificio Instituto di Musica Sacra, and he wanted us to attend a concert there with him on Thursday, which Emanuele and I did. It was really wonderful, a young (27-year-old) Sardinian prodigy. That got us home pretty late that night. And then one last adventure on Friday: As I said, I had met our friend and oblate Nate Bacon the other day for coffee. He is part of the missionary group called Interchange that works with troubled youth. Currently he lives in Guatemala, where his wife is from and where Zacc visited and stayed for a few months in 2020. Nate did a sabbatical year here a few years back and is in Rome again right now translating for another missionary congregation. We had a wonderful visit and conversation and then he was expecting a friend to join him after we met. She showed up while I was still there, and we struck up a stimulating conversation too. Her name is Shaza, she is from Syria and work for the FAO––the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations whose building is within sight of San Gregorio. (As a matter of fact, every now and then the monks host one of their staff as a long-term guest.) She also has an organization here in Rome called “Hummus Town,” which is a catering business that aids Syrian refugees and gives them work. She invited Nate and I to a fund-raising event for Hummus Town last night. It was in a neighborhood somewhere south of here on the terrazza-roof of an apartment building. It was quit interesting. The most prominent language spoken was English but there was some Italian of course and lots of Arabic. The young people (teenagers and younger) all spoke what sounded to me like perfect American-accented English. Being a part of the UN, many of them go to American schools here, and Shaza’s kids all speak all three languages fluently. Nate had to take a Zoom meeting during the dinner and Shaza was busy hosting, so I was rather awkwardly left on my own for a bit of time. But Shaza came to the rescue and ensconced me with a very nice older Italian couple with whom I had a great conversation. I was afraid we were going to have trouble finding a taxi home, but they offered to drive Nate and I all the way back to the Aventino. But that was two late nights in a row still having to drive off to the Vatican at 6:45. So that’s enough excitement for the time being.
We’re all going to lunch at San Gregorio today and we’ll see what Sunday and next week brings.
Best to all. Tuesday the patriarch of Jerusalem has asked be a day of fasting and prayer for the Holy Land. Let’s join it and never never never lose hope for peace––with justice.
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The coro camaldolese in the Holy Spirit Chapel |
