From Vogue, Has The Pope Changed The Face Of Italian Fashion?

POPE FRANCIS, who was appointed head of the Catholic church in March, has inadvertently been causing waves on the Italian fashion scene. His humility and sobriety have apparently wooed some of the country’s most notable designers – from Fendi to Dolce & Gabbana – away from the country’s ostentatious signature fashion aesthetic.

“It’s a whole new spirit in Rome,” said Fendi co-designer Silvia Venturini Fendi. “This is evident when we have a new pope going back to real Christianity, which lately was far from the church. People are looking for meaning, and the real meaning of fashion is as a tool to express yourself. Sometimes fashion hides your language, but we look for meaning in materials and fabrics to allow true personality to come out.”

This continues the growing fascination the secular world had for Pope Francis. For example Sir Elton John calling him ‘a miracle of humility in an era of vanity.’

This is not going to be another “our last popes have been humble” too posts. Just a look at the attitudes of the secular world that find Pope Francis actions as what constitutes real humility. In a world of such materialistic consumption the Pope’s frugal use of resources provides a stark contrast. There is a natural attractiveness to this when people in relative materialist riches find that this is not enough. The Pope’s simplicity demonstrates that happiness is not tied to the quantity and quality of possessions.

He radiates a joy that people see as purely a result of this simplicity. As the fashion designer perceives as “back to real Christianity.” Aestheticism instead of the love of Jesus is conflated with what Christianity is all about. We know in our hearts we place too much faith in the passing things of the world. Still we can make the materialist scale tip the other way. To think that just a simplicity of less possessions is what would finally make us happy if only we embraced this. An aestheticism without love of God and neighbor and certainly not Christianity. Although often it is an attachement to things that is blocking our growing in love of God and neighbor.

Many of the Pope’s actions are rather striking. A love of “Lady Poverty” as a spiritual discipline and a path for sanctity is a path we would rather not tread. It can seem almost an indictment on our own worldliness. Yet as a spiritual discipline it can also both be a means of learning detachment while also providing an example to others as a secondary effect. It can seem confusing when the Pope chooses to use an older popemobile over a much newer one that was also a gift. You can wonder is this really a simplicity or something else? I come down on the side that it is both a desire for simplicity and secondarily as an example.

“When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock, to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind, you draw large and startling figures.” – Flannery O’Connor

How pertinent this quote is I can only guess, but the Pope’s simplicity is drawn large in context to today’s world. Yet most miss that his simplicity is way beyond the material in that he seeks and desires a simplicity in all things. He has had harsh words for clerics in regards to a lack of simplicity in a clericalism that concentrates itself in desiring a promising career. He sees structures that get in the way of the Gospel and the new evangelization. His desire to reform the Curia is not to have a more efficient bureaucracy, but to remove roadblocks from preaching Jesus Christ and his Church.

Back to this article that of course has a gratuitous swipe at Pope Benedict XVI.

The previous Pope had, in religious terms at least, a more flashy approach to dressing – reportedly a keen lover of Prada shoes and historic robes, headwear and capes. Italy’s new pontiff has actively discouraged his priests from being materialistic, urging them to drive “humble”, rather than “fancy” cars.

I guess we will never be rid of the Prada meme when in reality he shoes were made by Adriano Stefanelli, a cobbler in Novara, Italy.

From the beauty of all these liturgical things, which is not so much about trappings and fine fabrics than about the glory of our God resplendent in his people, alive and strengthened, we turn now to a consideration of activity, action.

A typical view from Pope Benedict XVI, oops I mean from Pope Francis’s Holy Thursday Mass. A view certainly shared by his regnal namesake St. Francis

I have been waiting to see the post Brandon Vogt was planning to publish regarding the current copyright situation. Now that it has been published and I have read it I find it to be an even better and a more effective response than even his normally high standards.

He aptly states the current situation and then proposes solutions to the problem to both protect copyright and to grant access. Provides a history of how the currently policy has stifled inovation regarding evangelization. Links to what others have written about this along with legal and canon law considerations. I also really like how he goes through an array of anticipated questions and answers them.

Previously I along with others had suggested that the solution might involve using a Creative Commons license instead. Brandon has specifically recommended using a Creative Commons-Attribution-NoDerivs license.

In his well formulated post he suggests:

What you can do:

1. Share this post with all of your friends [tweet it or use the social media icons above]
2. Charitably contact the Holy See and USCCB and ask them to read this [contact info]
3. Sign this petition by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post (e.g. “Free The Word!”)

If you are so inclined I would urge you to go to his blog and if possible do all of the above. It is one thing to complain about the current policy and its effects, another to urge looking at this issue and working to resolve it.

Brandon Vogt does not pretend to have all the answers or that the Creative Commons license is the best solution. Certainly as a Church we should be able to come up with a solution to this problem. This is not the most pressing problem facing the Church, but it is not unimportant either.

On a side note I did know some of the history involving the heavy-handed approach the USCCB has taken in the past. Still how they treated Matthew Warner is indeed shameful and such an embarrassment.

I am also reminded of Jerry Pournelle’s “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”:

In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

WASHINGTON — Days after the U.S. bishops indicated the HHS contraception mandate remains unacceptable, the Catholic Health Association has approved the government’s accommodation. (source)

In other news apparently the sun rose today and is expected to set tonight.

Really did anybody expect any other outcome? The Obama administration barks and the CHA replies “Thank you sir can I have another.”

“CHA had two principal concerns. The first was the four-part definition of what constituted a ‘religious employer.’ That concern has been eliminated,” Sister Carol Keehan, president of CHA, announced in a July 8 memo to members of the organization.

So a religious exemption that does not apply to for example EWTN or the Little Sister of the Poor is one where all concerns are eliminated.

All concerns are eliminated a position apparently no U.S. Bishops hold and is still deemed a threat to religious liberty across a swath of religious leaders here.

Acknowledging they don’t all agree on religious teachings about contraception, they are united against government requiring any faith or its followers to violate those teachings.

More than 100 national religious leaders and scholars released their letter last Tuesday titled “Standing Together for Religious Freedom,” calling on the Obama administration and Congress to respect conscience rights and religious freedom. (source)

This letter in part said:

Through its contraceptive coverage mandate, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) continues to breach universal principles affirmed and protected by the U.S. Constitution and other federal laws. While the mandate is a specific offense, it represents a greater fundamental breach of conscience by the federal government. Very simply, HHS is forcing Citizen A, against his or her moral convictions, to purchase a product for Citizen B. The HHS policy is coercive and puts the administration in the position of defining–or casting aside–religious doctrine. This should trouble every American. (source)

In the meantime as of last week:

Sister Carol Keehan is a member of the Finance Council for the Archdiocese of Washington. Look at the 6th page of this pdf. Why, oh why, was she not unceremoniously ejected from that post after she wrecked so much havoc on this nation? By the way – the directory was updated last week so this list is not obsolete.

This is an update to an earlier post concerning copyrights and Vatican documents and how it concerns me along with a decision I have made.

First off there has continued to be discussion regarding this on Catholic blogs.

I found a paragraph on Jeff Geerling’s blog that puts succinctly one aspect of my own thoughts.

To be clear, I have no issue with the Vatican’s and USCCB’s rights to the texts of the faith (encyclicals, scripture, catechisms, teachings). I have issue with the fact that, any time someone demonstrates evangelical initiative, the first (and usually only) official Church response is: “stop that, you’re stealing a copyrighted work.” It should be more along the lines of: “you’re trying to do something awesome—we’d like to help you, here’s how you can do it without violating our copyright.”

Simcha Fisher also offers her own take starting in a humorous way:

This is how the conversation should have gone:

Brandon Vogt:  Hi, this is Brandon Vogt. I am super excited about the new encyclical, so I’d like to make it even easier for lots of people to read it.  Okay if I convert the Vatican’s PDF to a bunch of different formats?
Vatican:  Of course!  Good job, Brandon. What’s your address?  I’ll send you a basket of oranges from the Pope’s garden.

Vogt:  Thanks.

This is how the conversation actually went:

Brandon Vogt:  Hi, this is Brandon Vogt.  I’m super excited about the new encyclical, so I’ve made it even easier for lots of people to read it.  I’ve converted the Vatican’s PDF to a bunch of different downloadable formats so everybody can read what the Pope has to say!

The Vatican:  What?  How dare you?  Stop stealing from the Pope!  Take it down right now!  Shame on you.

Vogt:  What?  What?  Okay.  I didn’t ask first, and it’s your call, so I’m taking it down.  But … what is the matter with you people?

The Vatican:; What?  I can’t hear you.  Our fax machine is making too much noise.

In counterpoint Dawn Eden offers several legitimate reasons for restricting access to such encyclicals to outlets that are officially licensed to share them.

I can see the validity in much that she says, but in part they do not answer the main criticism. The USCCB and the Vatican certainly have a right to their copyright and to defend it. Now I have no legal knowledge of copyright law, but I am a blogger and so am use to talking about what I don’t know of. Still my question would be that just because something is copyrighted, does that prevent the copyright owner from granting access? I would think not. As Jeff Geerling noted and what I have seen is that in every case the USCCB does not work with anybody to grant copyright without payment. Now I don’t think the USCCB’s only consideration is monetary. But in my opinion they have been jerks about it shutting down evangelical projects done for love of the faith. No compromise is ever made. They can still defend their copyright while also having a policy of granting copyright in cases such as this. That control of the texts seem to have become more important than actually having people read them.

• By the same token, the Pope has every reason to want people who are interested in Lumen Fidei to track it down on the Vatican website (not that it’s all that difficult to find, given the site’s current pop-up ad for it). The Holy Father knows that if a reader finds the encyclical on the Vatican website, he or she may go on to explore other writings on the site. And isn’t that what all of us, as Catholics, should want people to do—to go from reading about “The Light of Faith” to delve more deeply into what Catholics believe?

I don’t really think the Pope cares all that much whether the document is read on that Vatican’s site. After all there are printed editions. I would guess the Pope’s highest priority would be that people read his encyclical and other documents. Responsive design is where a website adjusts to the device that is accessing it. Reformatting for mobile devices. The Vatican is currently using “Unresponsive design”. It does not send you to a mobile page, although there is a semi-mobile link. I looked at the encyclical on my iPhone and it just was not reformatted at all. The same is true for other documents on Vatican.va. As somebody whose day job involves a lot of web programming, it is rather embarrassing to see how documents are handled on Vatican.va.

Still with this all being said I have decided to take down “The Weekly Francis” ebook and to no longer maintain the ebook aspect of this project. Previous links to these ebooks are now broken.

Back in November of 2011 I started what was then “The Weekly Benedict” after seeing Jimmy Akin’s weekly list of links. I wanted to be able to easily read of Pope Benedict XVI’s writings and so decided I would make an ebook from these links for my own personal use. Having an ebook version meant that I was much more likely to keep up with these documents and that was indeed the case. It also meant that I could now easily highlight and note passages. As an afterthought I though I might as well offer this ebook for others since I was already going to make it for myself. It certainly turned out that many people found this ebook to be quite valuable and to help them actually read what the Pope had to say on a consistent basis. Later on I took on the job of maintaining the weekly list of links on Jimmy Akin’s site and to also reference my ebook there. I will continue to do so in regards to maintaining this weekly list of links to Papal documents, speeches, etc.

The truth was I knew there could be a copyright problem doing this. In the ebook I took care that each document displayed the copyright information and that this was also spelled out at the start of the ebook. From the start my intention was that if I did get a complaint from the Vatican I would certainly comply. Although truth be told it was more along the line “it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission” considering how I had seen this handled in the past.

When the kerfuffle Brandon Vogt started when the USCCB and the Vatican contacted him and I saw his post I started to evaluate what I was doing. When I put out last weeks edition of “The Weekly Francis” I was conflicted about doing so. My thought then was if asked to take this down I would. I now realize how stupid the justification was. Really I know knew for sure what the USCCB and Vatican response was to ebook reformatting and really my immediate response should have been to do what I have done today.

Just because I dislike the heavy-handed way the copyright issues is being handled, it does not entitle me to violate copyright “to do good.” Just because I think they are being shortsighted jerks on this doesn’t mean that I get to be a jerk in disregarding them. In other areas of my life I have been very careful regarding copyright. In my early stages of conversion I had trashed hundreds of cassettes I had pirated along with software I had also pirated. Wouldn’t you know it that was when Napster first appeared on the scene to tempt me (but not successfully).

I know Brandon Vogt is working on a fuller reaction to this situation. He had asked me permission to reference my publication of “The Weekly Francis” ebook as an example. He did not want to “out” me. This aspect really triggered my rethinking about this. If I can’t be above board about doing something, then I shouldn’t be doing it at all. I’m hoping that with Brandon’s much higher profile that the whole situation will be getting more attention triggering an approach more concerned about evangelization than seemingly tight-fisted control. That copyright can be protected and individuals involved in the new evangelization can seek permission regarding worthy projects.

Maybe in the future I will be able to continue “The Weekly Francis” ebook or better yet that the Vatican have a similar project offered in multiple languages. In the meantime I will be still making this ebook for my own consumption, but will not be offering it to others via any channel.

For those disappointed at no longer having this resource I will be working on creating some instructions and ideas how people can use the weekly list of links to Papal documents and to be able to read them formatted for their devices. Instructions will include how you can make your own ebooks or how to use services like Instapaper, Readibility, and Pocket to easily view these documents.

On Wednesday, June 27, the United States Supreme Court handed down two decisions—on Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Amendment –that eviscerated legal marriage in the United States. The following Sunday thus offered Catholic priests a matchless opportunity to articulate the Church’s definition of what marriage is, and what it is not. Indeed, since the decisions had such civilizational import, such articulation was less an opportunity than an absolute obligation.

One priest did choose to address the issue. At San Francisco’s St. Ignatius Church, the 9:30 AM Mass on Sunday, June 30 was celebrated by the church’s pastor, Fr. Gregory R. Bonfiglio, SJ. But rather than presenting Church teaching to his audience, rather than, for instance, stating the simple truth that properly ordered sexuality leads to the creation of new life, while sodomitical relations lead, as San Franciscans know all too well, to physical death and to spiritual death, Fr. Bonfiglio chose to read a letter written by Fr. John D. Whitney, SJ, of St. Joseph’s Church in Seattle. In the letter, which is titled “Why Am I In The Parade?” and which runs to 1,098 words, Fr. Whitney justified his presence in Seattle’s “Gay Pride” parade. The letter was published in St. Joseph’s June 23, 2013 parish bulletin. Given the content of the letter (Fr. Whitney absurdly equated Church teaching on homosexuality with Old Testament dietary restrictions, and ignorantly repeats the long-debunked assertion that the word “faggot” derives from “faggots” of wood), and the timing of Fr. Bonfiglio’s homily, the Sunday immediately after the legalization of counterfeit “marriage,” the homily can be seen as nothing less than support of homosexual “marriage.”

During Fr. Bonfiglio’s reading of the letter, the Church was eerily quiet. At least one parishioner was seen leaving the church in tears. When queried she said “It’s not his church! It’s the Catholic church! I should be able to just go to Church! I want to go to a Catholic Church!”

Via the California Catholic Daily and A Shepherd’s Voice

This is a such a sad lament. Unfortunately not that rare of a lament.

That it is in support of so-called “gay pride” also reflects that such a homily is also driven totally by pride. The arrogance of pride where the revisionist decides what is Church teaching and takes it on themselves to correct the Church.

A rejection of the teaching authority of the Church the Magisterium. Instead we get the “Me-gisterium” and the effect common in Protestantism to decide on your own apart from any authority. You would think that those who exercise the office of the “Me-gisterium” would realize the individualist relativism this implies. That is you might think this if you had not observed reality and that those who dissent from the Church are very upset if you dissent from them. The vanity of the “Me-gisterium” is that they are prophetic and are correcting the Church. They consider themselves brave to be going with the secular flow, despite the fact that the true prophets always went against it. <insert mandatory quote from Chesterton “A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” > For the members of the “Me-gisterium” repentance is not really required, but it is the hierarchy of the Church that needs to repent. Sola Scriptura the error of Protestants has been one-upped by the revisionists and reduced to just “Sola” – oneself. When appeals to Sacred Tradition or Sacred Scripture are made they are not to explain, but to explain away. Whether the topic is homosexual acts, abortion, contraception, women’s ordination – it all has the common root of an arrogance filled pride.

Want to learn what the Church teaches? Well don’t pick up a Catechism but instead listen to a self-appointed member of the “Me-gisterium.” Yeah that’s the ticket – or at least a toll pass on that infamous highway to warmer climes.

Still the lament of this women tears at me:

“It’s not his church! It’s the Catholic church! I should be able to just go to Church! I want to go to a Catholic Church!”

May the revisionists and members of the “Me-gisterium” hear her cry and the call to repentance.

On Friday when Lumen Fidei was released it was nice to see early on that morning that Brandon Vogt had converted that encyclical for use in multiple e-readers along with PDF. I was just about to do the same thing myself.

In the last couple hours, I’ve received a litany of emails from both the USCCB and the Vatican accusing me of “[violating] both civil and moral law” and “stealing from the pope” (actual words used) by making the encyclical available in other formats. They’ve ordered me to remove the documents with full knowledge that this would prevent hundreds of people from reading it who otherwise wouldn’t read the encyclical online or in print.

In my view, this is tragic and unjust. It’s valuing profit over catechesis, and I have to believe Pope Francis (and Pope Benedict) would be extremely perturbed. Their goal and the goal of the Church is to evangelize—to spread the message of Jesus Christ, especially through papal encyclicals—not to make a dime off each copy printed.

This annoys me on so many levels.

First my vanity took a bit of a hit (although being such a large target it is easily hit). I have been converting Vatican documents for quite awhile plus I put out first “The Weekly Benedict” and now “The Weekly Francis.” I have never had a complaint from any official sources.

The tone of the reaction to Brandon Vogt reminds me of St. Teresa’s humorous lament to God “If this is the way you treat your friends, it’s no wonder you have so few!” To accuse him a stealing is just so unjust.

The Vatican and other Church structures are usually rather slow to adapt to a changing situation. So-called new media and the internet requires a revisit of the paradigms of the past. I can certainly understand a protection of copyright and in a world where this was just about printed materials it made sense. There is a need to some extent to control documents to ensure that a document printed contained the original source with no alterations.

When it comes to making documents available, the Vatican does a fairly good job in that they are made available to read on their site at no cost. In a world where phones, tablets, and dedicated electronic text readers there is a serious downside to reading their documents on these devices, especially longer documents.

Unfortunately the Vatican instead of using CSS to format their documents they use Table formatting. Putting all the text in a single row/column at a specified width. Thus the text does not flow correctly at smaller screen resolutions. The Vatican in the case of this new encyclical also offered a PDF version, which is also very difficult to read on any mobile device smaller than a 10″ tablet.

The solution of course is to offer the document in a known e-book format such as ePub which can be read on a multitude of devices along with a mobi (Kindle) version. Thus making documents available to a large segment in a format where chances are good they will actually read it. These ebook version allow text to flow correctly regardless of screen size.

So Brandon Vogt steps in to fill an obvious hole and gets slapped down and accused of stealing. Somehow I get the feeling that if Pope Francis was told about this specific case he would not concur and in fact this would only reenforce his attitude towards the Curia and other forms of Church bureaucracies.

The [New Liturgical Movement] blog has been talking about problems with the Church’s heavy-handed use of copyright for years in regards to hymns and they discuss this specific case here.

The Church has made some movements in reaching out towards some bloggers and trying to put the so-called “new media” to use. It would be nice if the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization looked at this situation specifically. What I think needs to happen is that the Vatican should use some form of a Creative Commons license. Certainly a situation where Catholics in good faith and at no cost are helping the distribute information and documents should be encouraged. Trying to control this has no real upside and mostly downside.

The other thing I would like to see happen is for the Vatican to release these documents in e-book formats themselves. Really what I would like to see is more cooperation in regards to these documents with the laity. Certainly those in charge of making these documents available have enough work to do, but I am guessing there are a lot of Catholics who would love to be able to help out in converting documents to e-book versions. They definitely need some help with quality control since the English version had some formatting problems with the footnotes. In fact it would be nice to have some contact information to be able to point out problems or for example to be able to ask why the General Audience of 5 June 2013 still has not been translated?

I consider the way Brandon Vogt was treated to be rather Pharisaic. Although I totally agree with how he responded in taking down the content. I am thinking about my own situation with The Weekly Francis ebook. If I was told by the Vatican to cease and desist I would since if you are only obedient when you want to you are not obedient at all. Maybe I have been going too much with the “It is easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

Still something like The Weekly Francis e-book is a project that the Vatican should be doing in multiple languages. It certainly takes me considerable time each week to track recently translated documents, provide indexes, and collate into the various e-book formats. If I had to stop it would certainly free up my time, but I do this because I know so many people are thus enabled to read the words of the Holy Father without having to spend a good deal of time in document tracking and subsequent conversion.

It will be interesting to see the fallout over this and if common sense will prevail in the end.

Note: The blog title I used is taken from the “New Litugical Movement” posts on the same subject. It expresses the subject better than anything I could come up with.