FLASH! DIRECT FROM ROME
MacCrocodile, Erasmus
of a tradition. It is univexsal in character, allowing a continuity of the self ~-ough a sequence of particular identities when institutions and traditions change. But it remains a social...
...Named Cardinal immediately after his ordination, he turned his episcopal palace into an orphanage and officiated at a ritual demolition and burial of the episcopal limousine in the town square...
...Our society however, no longer needs a religious worldview as an ideology...
...Wrapped in their violet cassocks and wool capes, the Cardinals are now wrapped in the deep secrecy of the Conclave as well...
...Meanwhile, more and more Catholics have reached a post-conventional religious identity, many thrust into self-reflection by Vatican II and HumanaeVitae.He~:e thetensionbetweenactive, self-reflective Catholics, who wish to draw upon the resources of the Catholic tradition but by critical appropriationratherthanconformity,andanofficial Church that blocks free and open communication by unilateral action and appeals to obedience...
...The exercise of personal autonomy becomes restricted totheprivatesphere,andpeoplefeelthemselves prisoners in a social framework that does not allow them to function as free persons...
...Today's problem is the clash between the autonomous identity we admire and strive to achieve and the rigid particularism of our social and political institutions, demandingconformismandnon-reflectivebehavior...
...Could be a compromise candidate.ERASMUSMACCROCODILE 1 September 1978:562...
...Born on an airplane over New York when his Italian Marxist novelist father and Irish actress mother escaped from the Fascists at the beginning of World War II, Jimmy Bravo (pronounced Brahvo) has two Ph.D's, one in politicaleconomy fromtheLondon School of Economics and anotherin American Studies from Yale where he both played rugby and rowed on the crew...
...Thesame problem cripples the Catholic Church.Institutionally it continues to function at the conven.tional level, holding tight to traditions and rules and eupbemizing domineering authorityas divinely commissioned hierarchy...
...and he is quoted as saying privately that the denial of the priesthood to women, as well as obligatory celibacy and Humanae Vitae, are "scandals and crimes as great as the Crusades and the Inquisition...
...The temptation for Church leaders is to dismiss the more alert members as troublemakers and rely upon the passive loyalty of the "silent majority...
...Cardlmd Grando Gov~~ (64), head of the Sacred Congregatio~ for Order, Truth and Silence...
...But a week of intrigue inincense-filledbackroomshas focused the attention of veteran Vaticanologists on two men: Cardinal Ernesto Jaime (Jimmy) Bono Bravo (39) of Ben Salem Island...
...He has no hobbies, but likes to relax by sitting to have his portrait painted...
...Though little known outside his immediate circle, he is said by those who observe him to have a warm smile and a deep laugh...
...citizenship--was annulled in the Diocese of Brooklyn...
...A defender of human rightseverywhere, he has defied any dictator in the world to kill him...
...Progressives are expected to/all in behind him...
...He lives in a slum in a one-room dirtfloor grass hut with a goat, a dog, and an old white horse he rides for exercise...
...The son of a noble Italian munitions manufacturer and a Hapsburg countess, Malo (pronounced Moll-o)has never been outside Italy and leaves his Vatican desk only to tour his villas, vineyards and chemical factories, driven in his armored car with a motorcycle and helicopter escort...
...Enrolled in the seminary by his parents at the age of five, and rejecting secular learning--aswellas philosophy and theology--as distracting from his vocation, he made himself an expert of canon and property law...
...Science with technology has been promoted FLASH...
...His brief, pre-seminary marriage to a Vietnamese refugee--entered to help her obtain U.S...
...But it remains a social reality, because it is created and sustainedthroughintersubjective communication, insofar as that is free from domination and pursued on the basis of the autonomy and equality of the participants as persons...
...DIRECT Fm Ol I B OI IE VATICAN CITY, August 25.--Not even the imposing power of Michelangelo'sLastJudgment looming over the 113 Cardinals filing into the Sistine Chapel this evening couldhushthe rumors that flit like putti around the Renaissance precincts of the Sacred City...
...Here he used his skills to evict 100 orphans from a seaside mansion he desired as an episcopal palace...
...ProgressiveCatholicspokespersons like Tiny McMullin, American publisher of "Justice and Joy" holy cards and chief organizer of the Committee of Americans for aResponsible Papacy(CARP), are still chafing under this cloud of secrecy...
...Bravoenteredthepriesthood following two years in the Peace Corps in Pago Pago and two more in prison after refusing to tell an American court his sources for an article he wrote on Dan Berrigan's escape from the FBI...
...At liturgies he includes the names of Teihard de Chardin and Henry David Thoreau in the canon of the Mass...
Vol. 105 • September 1978 • No. 17
