Cardinal McElroy and the God of Surprises

The Catholic Thing

By Robert Royal.
But first a note: Be sure to tune in tomorrow - Thursday, January 9th at 8 PM Eastern - to EWTN for a new episode of the Papal Posse on 'The World Over.' TCT Editor-in-Chief Robert Royal and contributor Fr. Gerald E. Murray will join host Raymond Arroyo to discuss the appointment of Cardinal Robert McElroy to head the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., the appointment of the first woman to head a Vatican dicastery, and other issues in the global Church. Check your local listings for the channel in your area. Shows are usually available shortly after first airing on the EWTN YouTube channel.
Now for today's column...
I don't make any great claim to virtue, but one vice that I've (mostly) avoided is the itch to predict the future. Especially around the New Year, when people - even Catholics - despite warnings from Scripture and Jesus Himself ("sufficient to the day"), often offer themselves as prophets, sometimes even something closer to soothsayers. Not only do we make predictions for the next twelve months, lament or exult over what we think is coming, but we recommend new books or diets or exercise programs or spiritual practices. As if human life is - or should be - a rationally manageable, wholly predictable thing.
Life's a pilgrimage. An adventure. And often, under God, deeply and happily unpredictable.
Item: Practitioners of the dismal science, which is to say economists, often hedge their bets by saying such and such will happen to the economy "all things remaining equal." Which of course, they never are.
Item: Lately, "The Science" does things like predict that even small amounts of alcohol may give you cancer in some far-off future, unless a meta-analysis this year or the next questions those findings and may even recommend a drink or two.
Uncertainties are a good thing because otherwise we would be even more addicted to our own horizons, to very small, all-too-human goals. God has bigger plans. For all of us. And these uncertainties are among the many sly avenues he uses ("subtle is the Lord") to wake us up to greater vistas.
In the ancient and medieval worlds, the unpredictable nature of the world was properly recognized, even personified as Dame Fortuna. A fickle lady, but one entrusted by God with the crucial task of changing things around, beyond human ken, so that no person or group or nation can go long without realizing they're not in control, which is to say, not God. Though the human race being what it is, it's a lesson that we forget or fail to learn over and over.
Which brings me, as you may have been waiting for, to the Vatican's appointment this week of San Diego's Cardinal Robert McElroy as cardinal archbishop of Washington D.C. There are rumors that previous occupants of that post - including Cardinals Wuerl and Gregory along with the papal nuncio to the United States and several figures in Rome - opposed that appointment.
Except for the very exceptional Theodore McCarrick, the archbishop of Washington has usually been expected to be a calming figure, someone who can manage the Church in a city where Democrats and Republicans, liberals, conservatives, leftists, libertarians, and even further-out political oddities all exist both inside and outside the Church. For the most part, they've succeeded in that task.
McElroy's appointment is an oddity. He is a native of California, has spent almost all of his priestly life there (none in Washington), and has no great claim to being the best - or even a good - choice for the new post, other than he's long been a progressive social justice advocate. And, in some readings, "in line" with Pope Francis.
If one were given to speculation, it might be thought that Pope Francis was persuaded to appoint him as a counterweight to the return of Donald Trump. McElroy has been a vocal opponent of deportations. And as an intelligent man (degrees from Stanford and Harvard) he's a more articulate spokesman for that and other progressive positions than any othe...