Pillar-Read: USCCB Elections 2021

The Pillar has an interesting take on the upcoming USCCB committee elections.

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/a-day-at-the-races-predicting-the

A day at the races: Predicting the USCCB elections

https://www.usccb.org/

Analysis

JD Flynn and Ed. Condon

Race 2: Chairman-elect, Committee on Divine Worship 

Bishop Steven Lopes of the Anglican Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter vs. Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis

Ed’s prediction: Rozanski

JD’s prediction: Lopes

Ed says:

A race notable for the oddness of the matchup and handicaps on both runners, pitting a bishop who doesn’t usually say Mass according to the ordinary Roman Rite (Ahem... doesn't the USCCB also include Eastern Rite hierarchs?) against an archbishop whose most public sacramental intervention was ruled invalidating by Rome and the committee he’s now looking to lead.

Lopes will certainly come into this as a dark horse; right out of the gate, he has not spent much time in the conference as a bishop at all, and the fact that his Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, caring for former Anglicans, has its own liturgical patrimony to consider but without the physical church footprint of a diocese, won’t likely mark him out as a man well-versed in the daily liturgical concerns of the bishops. [Note to Ed - The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter is... all of North America! That's a fairly large footprint.]

On the other hand, his presence in the race at all might suggest how open the field is, and how little enthusiasm there is among bigger beasts in the conference for the job. If ever there was a lane for an outsider, this would be it.

Rozanski starts with odds lengthened by his controversial pandemic directive, allowing, effectively, for lay people, even non-Catholics, to administer the holy oil in the anointing of the sick. While the policy barely lasted 24 hours, the lapse in judgement could linger among the bishops when voting begins. 

That said, he’s a sitting metropolitan archbishop and has form at the conference level, previously leading the Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. I’m betting on Rozanski by a nose.

JD says:

My colleague has made much hay — get it? — out of the fact that Lopes, who leads the Anglican ordinariate for the U.S., doesn’t ordinarily celebrate the ordinary form of the Mass.

That’s true, enough, I suppose. But Lopes certainly learned a thing or two about liturgy during his years working at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, especially since a big part of his job had to do with developing the “Anglican Use” — a project that involved some fairly intense study of the Church’s liturgical norms and praxis. So I think that concern is a bit of a red herring.

On the other hand, Rozanski did indeed have to walk back a controversial liturgical decision early in the pandemic, which — for better or worse — does not make him entirely different from many of his brothers, who were scrambling to decide how sacramental ministry would work in the early stages of COVID-19.

Different about Rozanski is that the Vatican weighed in on a decision he made, and the bishop had to make a very public course correction.

How much will that be a factor in decision-making? I’m not sure it makes a major difference at all. But my gut tells me that Lopes picks up the win — and I tend to trust my gut. Lopes, but it could be close.