February Grab Bag
The Synod Study Groups Make Progress, a Spyware Scandal Touches the Catholic Church, and More
I want to begin by asking readers to pray for Pope Francis, who is hospitalized with pneumonia. Pray for the recovery of his health and for spiritual strength.
The entire Catholic world looks to Rome as Pope Francis’s hospitalization for double pneumonia continues. According to reports from his doctors, as of today Francis is in critical but stable condition after a respiratory crisis suffered over the weekend. On Monday evening, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin led hundreds of the faithful in praying the rosary in St. Peter’s Square. According to the Catholic News Agency, several other cardinals were in attendance, as well, including the American-born Cardinal Robert Prevost, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Luis Tagle, the former Archbishop of Manila and currently Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization, and, interestingly, Cardinals Raymond Burke and Gerhard Müller, both of whom have clashed with the pope in the past.
Also present was Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who recently had his term as Dean of the College of Cardinals extended by Pope Francis. This extension, which delayed the election of a new dean, was unusual because Pope Francis had mandated in 2019 that the dean be elected to a five-year term rather than holding the position as a lifetime appointment, as had previously been the case. Cardinal Re, who is 91 years old, was the first cardinal elected to the position, in 2020. As those who have seen the film Conclave know, the Dean of the College of Cardinals is responsible for managing the papal conclave on the occasion of the death of the pope.
Given everything going on in the world, I thought that in today’s edition of Window Light I would offer a grab bag of commentary on stories I’ve been sitting on or that are worth sharing but that don’t merit a full-length article.
Synod Study Group Leaders Meet
In February of last year, Pope Francis created ten study groups that would tackle theological and canonical issues that had been discussed at the first session of the Synod on Synodality the prior October. The creation of these study groups was intended to allow the Synod itself, which re-convened this past October, to focus on some of the more fundamental ecclesiological questions related to strengthening synodality in the Church. This did not mean that the issues taken up by the study groups were being de-prioritized; the groups set to work before last October’s gathering of the Synod and then presented on their progress to the Synod participants near the beginning of the session. The presentation provided by Study Group 5, whose focus includes the issue of the ordination of women deacons, actually proved controversial, both for its brevity and the shroud of mystery that surrounded the study group’s membership. Dissatisfaction with the study group’s presentation led to a frustrating information session and eventually a conversation between Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the Synod delegates.
Last week, the coordinators and secretaries of the ten study groups again gathered in the Vatican to provide updates to each other on their progress. Cardinal Mario Grech, the Secretary General of the Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops—the Vatican body that manages the periodic Synods of Bishops—and Fr. Giacomo Costa, S.J., a consultor for the secretariat who also served as a special secretary for the recent Synod, were also present. The study group leaders presented on the topics being examined by their groups, the lingering questions they face, and the timeline for their remaining work. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been any reporting on the contents of these discussions. The study groups are expected to finish their work by June of this year, however, so perhaps over the summer we will learn more about their work. The one exception to this deadline is Study Group 5, which is being run out of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith; as I noted last month, according to Cardinal Fernández, the DDF is due to release a document on women’s leadership in the Church, although the timeline for the document is unclear.
Spyware Scandal Hits Migrant Rescue Organization, Catholic Church
In the weeks leading up to the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023, I wrote a series of articles highlighting many of the participants in the Synod. These included bishops and theologians but also lay people from very different walks of life. One of my very favorite participants was the Italian activist Luca Casarini, who was invited to the Synod by Pope Francis and whom I included in an article on Western European participants in the Synod. Casarini originally rose to prominence in Italy as a leader of the anti-globalization movement there in the early 2000s, but more recently he was a founding member of Mediterranea Saving Humans, an organization dedicated to rescuing migrants from Africa and the Middle East who become stranded at sea on the journey to Europe. Casarini has described how his experience on the rescue boats has renewed his Christian faith, abandoned as a young man, and in recent years he has developed a friendship with Francis.
Earlier this month, the instant messaging service WhatsApp, which is owned by the American social media conglomerate Meta, reported that ninety of its users in European countries had been targeted by spyware produced by the Israeli company Paragon. The Italian government later reported that it had been told by WhatsApp that seven of those victims were Italian, although the company did not reveal the names of the targets. The Paragon spyware, known as Graphite, when it is installed on a target’s phone allows its user to access all the information on the target’s phone, crucially including encrypted messages sent on apps like Signal and WhatsApp. The spyware had been spread to the current group of targets via WhatsApp. Casarini came forward and acknowledged that WhatsApp had informed him he was among the targets, and an analysis conducted by the Canadian cybersecurity research team Citizen Lab determined that the spyware had been installed on Casarini’s phone in February of 2024.
On Monday, a Catholic priest, Fr. Mattia Ferrari, admitted that he had also been informed by WhatsAspp that he had been a target of Paragon’s software, as well. Ferrari is the chaplain of Mediterranea Saving Humans, and, coincidentally, the priest who initially put Casarini in contact with Pope Francis. Ferrari’s closeness to Pope Francis, as well as other influential figures in the Italian Church, now means that the Catholic Church is also exposed to the fallout of this scandal, given the frightening capabilities of the Graphite software. Another co-founder of the organization, Beppe Caccia, has also been identified as a target of the attack.
The mystery, of course, is who is responsible for using the software to spy on these targets. Paragon works exclusively with government law enforcement agencies, limiting the possibilities, and the company is known to have contracted with an Italian intelligence agency and a law enforcement agency, both unnamed. Some reports suggest that Paragon has ended its contracts with those Italian agencies in the aftermath of the scandal, although the Italian government has disputed this. The Italian government has also denied involvement in the case and has opened both law enforcement and cybersecurity investigations of the incident. Still, all of the known targets of the attack—the members of Mediterranea Saving Humans, the journalist Francesco Cancellato and Husam El Gomati, an activist and critic of Italian foreign policy in Libya—are all critics of the right-wing government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Pope Francis and Prime Minister Meloni have developed something of a friendship since her election in 2022, despite her anti-immigrant views. Indeed, Meloni visited the pope in the hospital last week. It would be an odd twist if in fact Meloni’s government was spying on close allies of Francis for performing humanitarian work he has strongly supported.
In a similar case, since 2021, investigators in Poland have uncovered hundreds of instances in which the government led by the conservative Law and Justice Party, which was in power from 2017 to 2023, had used the Pegasus spyware, which is similar to Graphite and produced by the Israeli company NSO, to spy on critics of the government, including members of the opposition Civic Platform Party. The current government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a member of Civic Platform, has opened investigations into this surveillance, and last month the country’s former justice minister was arrested as part of the investigation. As far as I know, representatives of the Catholic Church have not been directly involved in this controversy, although the Catholic Church in Poland is closely allied with the Law and Justice Party responsible for the use of the spyware.
Interestingly, in September of last year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the United States signed a $2 million contract with Paragon (although it’s not clear if the contract involved the use of Graphite), but the contract was blocked the following month as a result of a 2023 executive order signed by then President Joe Biden restricting the use of spyware by US law enforcement.
Immigration in the United States
Speaking of immigration in the United States, last week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sued the Trump administration over the latter’s freezing of funding to organizations involved in refugee resettlement, including reimbursements for services already rendered before the administration’s funding freeze was put in place. The bishops sought a temporary restraining order, that is, a temporary pause in the freeze as the case is litigated, but the judge in the case denied this request. Brian Fraga at the National Catholic Reporter reports that, this week, the bishops and the administration entered into mediation, seeking a settlement on the unpaid reimbursements, even as the broader case continues in court.
In my view, the bishops’ lawsuit represents a welcome escalation in their efforts to oppose the Trump administration’s immigration and refugee policies, but also a clear matter of justice, particularly on the matter of the unpaid reimbursements. Interestingly, the USCCB did not join the lawsuit filed earlier this month by 27 religious groups challenging the Trump administration policy of allowing ICE to make arrests at houses of worship and other places that had previously been considered safe locations, like hospitals and schools. The plaintiffs are arguing on religious freedom grounds.
On a somewhat related note, in my commentary on the immigration-related executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, I noted that a handful of these executive orders that laid the groundwork for considering migration across the US-Mexico border an “invasion” had largely passed under the radar but had dramatic implications. Writing at Just Security, legal scholars Elizabeth Goitein and Katherine Yon Ebright outline some of those implications. For example, they point out that the executive orders seemingly claim to give the president the right to detain and deport foreigners lawfully present in the US, and they give the president sweeping authority to disregard the law regarding entry into the country, claims the authors argue are unjustified by the Constitution. I thought readers might be interested in this article, even if it isn’t directly related to theology.
Judging the Orthodoxy of Hymns?
Finally, a story I’ve been meaning to write about for months. Back in October, Bishop W. Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri prohibited a number of hymns from being used in liturgical celebrations in his diocese. The decision generated a lot of attention, some of it negative, and in November, Bishop McKnight backtracked, withdrawing the earlier prohibition and promising to undertake a more “synodal process” involving consultation with the faithful in the future.
Among the hymns that were prohibited were those composed by individuals credibly accused of sexual abuse, including David Haas, Cesáreo Gabarain, and Ed Conlin. This prohibition remains in place, which seems sensible to me. Continuing to use liturgical music associated with sexual abusers is an affront to, and potentially traumatizing for, those who are victims of abuse, and the riches of liturgical music available to the Church ensure that these hymns can easily be replaced.
Several other hymns originally prohibited by Bishop McKnight, however, were included because they are considered “doctrinally problematic” according to the standards outlined in a 2020 document by the USCCB’s Committee on Doctrine, titled Catholic Hymnody at the Service of the Church: An Aid for Evaluating Hymn Lyrics. According to the document, a hymn is “doctrinally suitable” if it is in conformity with the Church’s doctrine and its imagery and vocabulary resonate with the Scriptures and the Church’s liturgical prayers.
These seem like sensible guidelines, and the doctrinal committee provides several examples of hymns that clearly express “doctrinally problematic” expressions of the faith. For example, it cites two hymns that attribute responsibility for Jesus’ death to the Jewish people as a whole, and regarding the hymn “As a Fire is Meant for Burning,” which includes the line “[T]he Church is meant for mission, Giving glory to God’s name. Not to preach our creeds or customs, but to build a bridge of care . . .,” the committee correctly notes that proclaiming the Church’s teachings is of course part of its mission and in no way is in opposition to “building a bridge of care”!
The document also faults a number of hymns for referring to the Eucharist as bread and wine, even after the consecration, except in cases where biblical imagery like “the Bread of Life” are used. Such references appear to deny, or at the very least create confusion about, the Real Presence of Christ’s Body and Blood in the Eucharist. The Diocese of Jefferson City seems to have gone further than the doctrinal committee, however. For example, Fr. Daniel Merz, the chairman of the diocese’s liturgical commission, is cited as stating that “Part of the concern is that a lot of the songs that we sing overemphasize one dimension of the Eucharist,” for example by highlighting the communal aspects of the Eucharist without emphasizing Christ’s sacrifice or the Real Presence. This seems to have been the principle behind the diocese’s prohibition of certain hymns not mentioned in the USCCB document, such as “Bread of Life” by Bernadette Farrell and “Table of Plenty” by Dan Schutte. Both of these hymns seem perfectly orthodox, however, and “Bread of Life” even uses the biblical imagery recommended by the USCCB document and clearly identifies the Bread with Jesus Himself. The doctrinal committee’s concern is that a hymn’s emphasis on the social dimension of the Eucharist, such as the image of a banquet, is so emphasized that the Real Presence is apparently denied. The principle outlined by Merz is overly broad and would seemingly rule out certain of Jesus’ parables as “doctrinally problematic”!
Even if most of the prohibitions in Bishop McKnight’s original decree were sound, it’s good that he is seeking a more consultative process going forward. Although the bishop does have responsibility for the teaching of doctrine in a diocese, including the teaching of doctrine through the liturgy, it’s important for the faithful, including those with expertise in theology and liturgical music, to have input. On the other hand, it would be a shame if this more synodal process devolved into a debate over musical tastes rather than doctrine. It’s also worth noting that the process will tackle broader issues like which Mass settings to use and how to encourage greater participation in the liturgy.
Coming Soon…
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had an article coming out soon in the journal Franciscan Studies. I am happy to say that I received my print copy of the issue of the journal that includes my article, although it appears that the electronic version of the journal that some readers may be able to access through their university libraries is not yet available. I’ll write something up on the article very soon, as part of an ongoing, occasional series on “What I’ve Been Working On,” I’m just awaiting word from the editors on their policy on publicly sharing a pre-publication version of the article.
I’m also still hoping to write an article explaining what Catholic social teaching has to say about foreign aid to put the Trump administration’s recent attempts to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the context of the Church’s teaching.
And finally, as I mentioned in an earlier article, some time either right before or soon after Ash Wednesday, I’m planning to publish an article on some views on original sin that provide an alternative to the dominant Augustinian-Thomist view, proposed by three “rogue Dominicans”: Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (14th c.), Robert Holcot (14th c.), and Ambrogio Catarino Politi (16th c.). Both that and the article on foreign aid will require some background study, so hopefully I can stay on schedule!
Also, I do have some travel on the schedule for next week, so the publication schedule may be a bit irregular.