Restoration of Papal Tiara?

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TK421 said:
He could but it is highly unlikely.

Popes these days identify more strongly with the “Servant of Servants” description given by Pope St Gregory the Great. Modern populations don’t resonate with the allegory to monarchy as much as past generations would have, and I am not speaking about select people already within the Church. I am talking about the far more important demographic: secular people outside of the Church.
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midori said:
The Paul VI tiara is kept in Washington, DC. I enjoyed being able to see it on display at the Basilica.

I remember how people would make fun of Benedict’s [papal red shoes]. I remember John Paul II usually wore brown shoes, so a lot of people forgot that it was traditional for Popes to wear red shoes “walking in the [blood of the martyrs].”

If people could spill that much ink over Benedict’s shoes (“Oh my goodness! Is that Prada?! Such decadence!”) (no, it wasn’t), I can’t imagine the conniptions the media would have if someone dusted off a [tiara]
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While I agree with both of you, I could still imagine some future pope might design a papal tiara that retains the symbolism while not being ostentatious. I am imagining something like the hybrid miter-tiara on the coat of arms of HH Benedict XVI.

It need not be made of gold and jewels, but instead silk or some other embroidered cloth. I think it’s possible to do this without over-doing it.
 
Why do they call it a tiara? Seems sort of a girly name for it. I think of little delicate crowns that are either worn by little girls playing Cinderella or are delicate crowns that are more jewelry than symbol of authority, almost like an elaborate hair clip.
 
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In answer to the point about how no one minds what the Orthodox do, I think the answer is because v t the the media will attack Catholics any time they can, and because the Orthodox aren’t on the radar to the same extent.
 
on_the_hill said:
Why do they call it a tiara? Seems sort of a girly name for it. I think of little delicate crowns that are either worn by little girls playing Cinderella or are delicate crowns that are more jewelry than symbol of authority, almost like an elaborate hair clip.
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I looked it up.

It seems to me the main difference is that a crown is a full circle, while a tiara is a semi-circle. The papal tiara is obviously the exception, but I can’t find why that word is used.
 
This is correct. You don’t (hardly) hear about the Orthodox on CNN, BBC, etc. You would have to go to regional media within a specific country to hear about Orthodox or Oriental Churches in a respective country. They don’t attract the same amount attention, nor do they have the same missionary presence that Catholics do in Africa & Asia. i.e the Serbian Orthodox Church has relatively little presence outside of… Serbia of course.

On the other hand, the Holy Father receives roughly as much media attention as a major world leader such as Merkel.

When the average person thinks “Catholic” they don’t think about Eastern Catholicism as it consists of ~1% of the Church. This forum is a statistical outlier because it has its own Eastern section that also includes non-Catholic Eastern Christianity.
 
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I read/skimmed somewhere at some point that “crown” is specific to an actual monarch, and the Pope of course isn’t literally a monarch. Other than being a physical object, such as “a crown” you could also refer to it in the abstract, i.e. “Loyalty to the Crown”.

I don’t know why Sailor Moon “tiara” is used as the back-up word. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe English doesn’t provide a good word or something, or tiara had a broader meaning back in the good old days when Catholics were reverent 25 hours a day, 8 days a week.
 
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Yes, it can be done. Currently, it’s up to the pope at the time whether he wants it done or not.
 
There’s an article about the history of the Papal tiara.
Popes since ancient times had worn some sort of head covering. By the 9th century it would appear that this took the form of a helmet-shaped white head-cap. Pope Gregory the Great (r. 590-604) is shown in contemporary artwork wearing such a headpiece. When exactly it developed its first lower tiara is unclear, though the Catholic Encyclopaedia speculates that it was in or around the 10th century, perhaps to distinguish the ceremonial papal head covering from the ecclesiastical one, the Mitre, which appeared around this era. The first explicit mention of the word tiara associated with the papacy appears in the account of the life of Pope Paschal II (r1099-1118) in the Liber Pontificalis.
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A decorated circlet or ornamental band which may be the origins of the first tier of the tiara, is shown on coins of Pope Sergius III (r. 904-911) and Pope Benedict VII (r. 974-983)
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So-- it looks like it started off, perhaps, in a tiara-shape-- a circlet or an ornamental band-- around a tall helmet –



before it evolved into a more complicated shape, like when you think of the Renaissance Popes, but which extended into the 20th c.
 
Actually the Pope IS a monarch.

The Pope is the absolute Monarch of Vatican City.
 
Yes… I don’t know if he owned one, but all the popes after him have been given one that they just don’t use
 
Pope John Paul I did not own a Papal tiara…
 
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I’ve pondered this before and concluded he isn’t being a worldly king right now in that sense.
 
deprofundis89 said:
Pope John Paul I did not own a Papal tiara…
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He never wore one in public.

Whether or not he ever “owned” one is a matter of perspective. One could say that any tiara owned by the Vatican is de facto “owned” by the pope.
 
I mean unlike the other pope’s he did not have any made or gifted specially for him. Being a pope he does have all existing tiaras at his disposal 🙂
 
on_the_hill said:
Why do they call it a tiara? Seems sort of a girly name for it. I think of little delicate crowns that are either worn by little girls playing Cinderella or are delicate crowns that are more jewelry than symbol of authority, almost like an elaborate hair clip.
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My guess is because a crown is usually considered to be kingly authority.

The Church is historically very big on symbolism, even to the littlest details.

While we are all called to be priests, profits and kings, in the Church, Jesus Christ is the true King. If they called the Papal Tiara a “crown” that would imply far more kingly symbolism, and symbolically interfere with Christ’s Kingship.

So, my guess is that it was done deliberately for symbolic reasons.
 
he was presented with one by some Eastern Europeans… Hungarians or Poles?
 
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