Psalm 145: I Will Own Your Ass
The proud Catholic tradition of publicly humiliating someone for fucking up real bad
There's a famous story about Pope/Saint John XXIII that I really like. After several years of work as Pope to improve Christian-Jewish relations globally, John XXIII was presiding over the 1963 Good Friday liturgy at St. Peter's. One of the prayers in that liturgy, in its old pre-Vatican-II formulation, was for the “perfidious Jews", which never really hit right, wasn't a great addition to the liturgy focused on Christ's crucifixion, and which came right after the reading of John's Passion narrative, which contains so many instances of the word “Jews" that you start to wonder what exactly the evangelist's deal was. John XXIII had worked hard to remove any theological justification for anti-Semitism from the Catholic church, and he was not going to have some guy talking about “the perfidious Jews” at his liturgy.
So, as the deacon was reading this petition, John XXIII stopped the liturgy mid-sentence and told the deacon that he had to read the prayer again, without the “perfidious". In front of everyone. At a papal liturgy at Saint Peter's Basilica during the Triduum, which you have to assume was…well-attended. Think about how uncomfortable and humiliated you would be if your boss called you out in front of everybody and said, in so many words, “hey maybe try that again without FUCKING UP THIS TIME?” Now imagine that, but your boss is the Supreme Pontiff, the unitary sovereign of Vatican City, a spiritual leader to Catholics in every nation on earth, the Servant of the Servants of God, a man who became a literal saint, and he's saying “hey if you want to take that again, that's great, or we could just keep moving on with the Mass and pretend you didn't just SHIT THE BED and with your spirit".
John XXIII is nicknamed “The Good Pope", which is very funny if you imagine how the other Popes would have felt about that. He had many great qualities: he convened the Second Vatican Council which brought needed reforms to the church, and he smoked a lot, which means he looked really cool. And he fought hard against literal millennia of entrenched anti-Semitism and prejudice in the church, and as the above story illustrates, he did not care much for propriety or procedure if it stopped him from getting the job done. He was the Pope, and the job was going to get done. And you know what? We don't fucking say “perfidious Jews" on Good Friday anymore - the current English wording is “The Jewish people, to whom the Lord our God spoke first" - so I'm a fan of John XXIII's methods.
With that in mind, take a look at what happened in Lexington, KY this weekend:
Here’s what happened: John Stowe, the bishop of Lexington, was saying Mass with the pastor and vicar at the local cathedral. Stowe is one of Pope Francis’ more vocal allies in the states, and he does not appear to have a lot of patience for anti-vaccine bullshit. He was one of the first bishops in the country to formally instruct the priests in his diocese that nobody would be giving out religious exemptions for COVID vaccine requirements, and then one of the first to mandate that all employees of his diocese get vaccinated as a condition of employment. Stowe’s actions are in line with Catholic moral theology, as both Pope Francis and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith have said, in very unambigious terms, that Catholics who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated in order to protect others and end the pandemic, and that there is no moral reason why Catholics should avoid getting vaccinated against COVID.
But, as we all know, that’s not enough for some people, especially if they spend all of their free time looking at right-wing memes on Facebook. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those people, and some of them are Catholic clergy. But Stowe isn’t having it, and if you’re a priest in the Diocese of Lexington and you refuse to get vaccinated, Stowe is going to make you stand up in front of your congregation and sheepishly tell everyone what your deal is, and then your congregation gets to decide if they want to keep receiving the sacraments from you.
And guess what! This is what should happen if you don't get vaccinated! Because it’s a Catholic priest’s job to be physically present to his flock - that’s what the sacraments are, that’s what we do in Catholicism, we better understand the unknowable reality of God through the things we can see and hear and taste and smell and touch. We pour water on people and anoint them with oil and feed them bread and care for the sick and visit the imprisoned, and for the last year and a half, those activities were all really risky because of a virus that’s going to kill at least seven hundred thousand people in this country. Many Catholics deprived themselves of the sacraments as a collective sacrifice to keep others healthy, and that was a hard sacrifice of something that we really value. And now there’s a good way to make all of those sacramental acts less risky, a good way to safely return to critical parts of our Catholic lives, and these priests think they’re too good for it? Then make them tell everyone that, and then bar them from ministering to the sick and elderly until they change their minds (Stowe also did that).
There is probably a more tactful and charitable way to handle this. But there was probably a more tactful way to handle the Good Friday petitions in 1963, too. And instead, the guy at the top decided he needed to get things done and get things done quickly. John XXIII wasn’t going to tolerate any more anti-Semitism, and John Stowe wasn’t going to tolerate deliberately prolonging the pandemic in order to feed someone’s self-righteousness. So both of those men decided to publicly own someone’s ass, because it’s past the time for gentle persuasion.
Both of those stories are also, of course, funny. It’s funny to watch the pastor in Lexington awkwardly admit that he’s willingly avoiding something that would help him do his job without endangering the lives of others. I thought it would be the funniest thing that would happen in Catholicism this week. Then, Pope Francis flew from Slovakia back to the Vatican with his press pool, and got asked about vaccine skeptics and how to communicate with them. “Humanity has a history of friendship with vaccines” was how he started his response, as he talked about all of the vaccines we rely on in the world today. And then he added this:
“In the Vatican, everyone is vaccinated, except for a small group that we are trying to help…Even in the College of Cardinals, there are some anti-vaxers, and one of them, poor man, is in hospital with the virus. But life is ironic.”
Oh, what’s that? Are we talking about Cardinal Raymond Burke? Because he’s in the hospital right now with COVID, and in fact he was in critical condition and on a ventilator very recently, and - this is the funny part - he’s somebody Pope Francis really doesn’t like. This is probably because Burke is a white nationalist who spent a large part of the last five years hanging out with Steve Bannon talking about white nationalist stuff, and trying to plan a now-scrapped theology school in Italy.
Burke (center in the photo above, not wearing mask) has always been one of Francis’ more outspoken critics, but Francis is his boss, and early in his papacy, Francis felt that the best move for Burke, professionally, would be to leave his fancy job in the Vatican Curia and take an obscure ceremonial role with the Knights of Malta. This was a very public and severe demotion where everyone involved knew it was meant as a demotion, and I, personally, found it hilarious.
With the extra time on his hands, Burke started writing more, which is always a mistake. He is a reliable source of “Francis is wrong, actually” statements whenever the Pope says or does literally anything (like affirming the teachings of Vatican II, or encouraging people to stay inside so they don’t spread a deadly virus, or just generally being a person who gives a shit about the human suffering in the world). And, since Pope Francis is urging everyone to get vaccinated to bring an end to the pandemic, Burke is also publicly skeptical of the moral acceptability of the COVID vaccines, a question which the teaching authority of the church has definitively settled. He’s made public statements like “the thought of the introduction of such a vaccine into one's body is rightly abhorrent” and “vaccination itself cannot be imposed, in a totalitarian manner, on citizens,” and conservative Catholics who trust his leadership over someone like Pope Francis use that as a justification to avoid the vaccine for themselves. So Burke refused to get vaccinated, possibly out of professional spite since that’s the reason he does everything else, and then he got COVID, and then he couldn’t breathe, and now he still might die from the virus. And Burke’s boss, the Supreme Pontiff, the unitary sovereign of Vatican City, a spiritual leader to Catholics in every nation on earth, the Servant of the Servants of God, went in front of a group of reporters and said “lol that guy fucked up so bad.” It’s incredible. It’s so funny. I will be thinking about this for years.
Now, I haven't heard audio of this exchange. I don't know exactly how the Pope delivered the line “but life is ironic”. But oh boy, it's hard to imagine any delivery that wouldn't just be an all-time personal own of a man that this Pope has already professionally owned into oblivion, while that man is potentially on his deathbed. Shit, just imagine if Francis sang that line like Alanis Morissette. It is a truly incredible Papal Bull, with “Bull” here meant not in the Catholic sense of a formal communication, but the fetish sense of a guy who fucks your wife in front of you because you have a humilation kink.
Is this the most charitable thing Francis could have done? Eh, probably not. But is it the one that’s going to actually get people to shut up and get vaccinated, in the shortest amount of time? Well, it could be. It sends a message to everyone who thinks Burke has a better handle on the morality of vaccination than Francis. And this approach worked when John XXIII did it. It looks like it’s going to work for the Diocese of Lexington. Persuasion wasn’t enough for people like Burke and other right-wing Catholics, the authority of the magisterium wasn’t enough, moral reasoning wasn’t enough, standing under the cloud of death suffocating our planet for the last eighteen months wasn’t enough. So I’m on board with Pope Francis trying out public humiliation next. Let the fucking hammers fall and let’s finally end the pandemic.
Grift of the Holy Spirit is a series by Tony Ginocchio detailing stories of the weirdest, dumbest, and saddest members of the Catholic church. You can subscribe via Substack to get notified of new installments.