The cardinal of Penzance, and camp commandments

Hey everybody,

Today’s the feast of St. Katherine Drexel, the second Tuesday of Lent, and a good day — like so many right now — to pray for just, true, and lasting peace in our world.

When he was elected, Pope Leo greeted the world with “the peace of the risen Christ.”

That is, he said, “a peace that is unarmed and disarming, humble and persevering. A peace that comes from God, the God who loves us all, unconditionally.”

Let’s pray for that peace, through the name, and mercy, and victory of the risen Jesus Christ.

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And before we get to the news, let’s talk for a minute about the Cardinal of Penzance.

Fifty years ago this week, a 44-year-old James Francis Stafford was consecrated a bishop at the primatial American cathedral in Baltimore, setting off a remarkable episcopal career, which tracks alongside the entire trajectory of American Catholicism.

Stafford was then running Baltimore’s Catholic Charities; he had a reputation as both a competent administrator and a consummate pastor, with a special interest in supporting family life.

He was eventually Bishop of Memphis, and then in 1986 the Archbishop of Denver.

He is most famous there for bringing World Youth Day to Denver, and with it, the launching of 1,000 apostolic ships — an event which sowed the seeds of vocations and apostolates and religious orders and projects and movements. Just three years later, he was in Rome, heading the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and then the apostolic penitentiary.

Stafford’s episcopal career saw him play a role in the major shift of American seminary formation, it saw him encourage the presence of new movements in the Church in the U.S., and it saw him urge on a vision for the Church’s universal call to holiness which sees lay people and families taking up a sense of co-responsibility for the Gospel, and a sense of apostolic purpose in their own vocations.

The cardinal is a big part of the development of American Catholic culture in the past half century. He’s been called, for that reason, a model for the modern major cardinal.

But in Denver, “old Colorado” families don’t remember Stafford as a figure. People tell me stories about the cardinal sitting in their living rooms — asking them what they think about Scripture, and praying with their children. They tell me about an erudite and well-read man ...