22 cardinals join "club" to elect pope's successor

[7_Sorrows]

I believe it’s 130-something. I don’t know the exact number. It’s definitely over 100, though.

thanks for answering my question.

 

[barb_finnegan]

Irritating, but not surprising. They don’t even bother to find out about things they don’t understand.

I also find it irritating when the secular media has no clue when it comes to things Catholic.

Don’t these media types have someone on their staffs who KNOWS anything about Catholic belief and practice?

They are absolutely clueless!

And I hate it when they put a political spin on things spiritual, like this occasion of the elevation of the new Cardinals.

Another thing I get ticked off about is when the press ‘vultures’ do their circling about just because the Holy Father happens to be a man in his eighties and may be ‘feeling his age’.

 

[ByzCathCantor]

Don’t these media types have someone on their staffs who KNOWS anything about Catholic belief and practice?

They are absolutely clueless!

They are far from clueless, and do know better, yet the choose to “spin” in a manner that suits them and their agenda, which is typically anti-Catholic (with some exceptions, of course).

 

[Borealis]

I’m with you. He’s from the St. Louis area, so for all of us here, he’s the local boy. A very down to earth man, I think he’s a good addition to the college of cardinals. Although, I’m not sure how his little joke about Cardinal Red played in Vatican city – I don’t think most of them saw a connection between the St. Louis Cardinals and the College of Cardinals. No harm was meant, though.

So would that make him the church equivalent of Yogi Berra? St. Louis boy goes to the Big Apple and becomes the most quotable of them all?

 

[Digitonomy]

As an Eastern Catholic, I was also pleased to see George Cardinal Alencherry, Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church in India, and Lucian Cardinal Muresan, Major Archbishop and head of the Romanian Greek-Catholic Church be so honored.

Since the Eastern cardinals generally wear their church’s appropriate vestments and such, how does the biretta fit into their wardrobe, and do they change from one hat to another more than the typical cardinal would?

i forgot how many cardinals are in the room to elect a new Pope.

The rules for conclaves specify that the number of cardinal electors is limited to 120. Benedict is counting on 5 of the current group dying or passing 80 years of age prior to the conclave. If not, well the pontiff effectively dispensed with the rule when he made the appointments, so if a conclave is held in a few months and there are 122 cardinal electors, so be it.

It’s irritating the media refers to it in purely human and/ or political terms.

The fact that there is a political element, and one that may be very consequential for the future of the Church, is what makes it news. I didn’t check the list to see which new cardinals were young enough to be electors, but if all the new cardinals were over 80, I don’t think this would get much coverage, because it wouldn’t be consequential. The cardinals’ role at their periodic consistories is AFAIK pretty trivial, and so other than selection of the next pope, naming a bishop to the cardinalate is kind of like making a priest a monsignor - good enough to make the diocesan paper, but not particularly newsworthy for the general public.

KCT:

One comment was that the Pope chooses people who “agree” with him on the issues. They forget that these men should agree with 2000 years of teaching, not one human person.

If it’s as simple as that, why so few cardinals? Did all the other bishops disagree with the 2000 years of teaching? No, the fact is that the pope used other criteria, and one key factor is probably their political approach to the issues the church faces - most of the new cardinals are probably closer to Timothy Dolan than to Roger Mahoney on that spectrum.

 

[ByzCathCantor]

Since the Eastern cardinals generally wear their church’s appropriate vestments and such, how does the biretta fit into their wardrobe, and do they change from one hat to another more than the typical cardinal would?

The Eastern Catholic Cardinals are generally quite noticeable, given variations in their vestiture. George Cardinal Alencherry received a rather distinctive biretta with a gold Syro Malabar cross atop. Lucian Cardinal Muresan wore a black Rason over the traditional red cassock of a Cardinal.