August 4, 2002

The First Council of Lyons in 1245 decided that Cardinals would wear red hats. Lyons I, if we may call it that, is more important for other things. Pope Gregory had died at the age of 98, and was succeeded by Celestine IV whose health was very different: he reigned for only sixteen days. Like the times of John Paul II when he was elected after the sudden death of John Paul I, the world presented a tumultuous picture for Sinibaldo de Fieschi who took the name Innocent IV.

As our present Pope has done, Innocent IV promoted universities and addressed anti-Semitism, but these and other reforms were dogged by problems. Emperor Frederick II was threatening the Church as were the Marxists in 1978. Assassins menaced Innocent as they did John Paul, and in 1244 he went in disguise to Civitavecchia and from there by ship to his native Genoa from whence he traveled more freely to France where the great saint Louis IX reigned and where the Ecumenical Council was held. There, to the three hundred or so bishops, he preached a sermon on January 28 called “The Five Wounds of Christ.” Antonio Rosmini took up the theme again in the nineteenth century and writers in our day remark parallels to the current social climate.

First, he lamented the breakdown of orthodox faith and morals among the prelates and other clergy (who included most of the scholars of Europe). Second, he was alarmed by the political unrest in the Holy Land where the Saracens were threatening Jerusalem. Third, the division between the Latin and Eastern Orthodox Church frustrated him. Fourth, he warned of the growing threat from Asia and the march of the Tartars upon Europe. Fifth, he denounced the Holy Roman Emperor for trying to impose secular controls upon the Church.

The French like to say that the more things change, the more they seem the same. We might say that as we look back on 1245 in a moment when the Church is scandalized by corruption and heresy within, when the Middle East is a powder keg and the birthplace of our Lord has been desecrated, when the Pope’s efforts for reunion with the Eastern churches seem at a stalemate, when the Catholic Church is persecuted in China, and when the media amplify secular voices in the European Union and United Nations and local governments to intimidate the Catholic proclamation of Faith.

There were no easy answers in 1245. On TV, Bart Simpson recently pronounced: “My opponent says there are no easy answers. I say he has not been looking hard enough.” There are no easy answers to the challenges of any age, but there are simple answers. Thomas Aquinas, who was only twenty years old in 1245, was about to show the world in complex ways that the simple answers are the grace of Christ and the faith of his Church.

Fr. George W. Rutler