Showing posts with label little known Catholic facts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label little known Catholic facts. Show all posts

Thursday, March 1, 2012

The crumbling of the institutional Church prejudice against women

The following is taken from:  http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/crumble.asp

The crumbling of
the institutional Church prejudice
against women


Cultural prejudice against women had been building up in the Catholic communities during the first millennium. In the early Middle Ages this became the Church’s institutional prejudice when it was enshrined in Church Law. The beginnings of this we can see in Gratian’s first collection of Church Law (1140 AD).
In our own time, spurred on by the emancipation of women in secular society, the institutional prejudice of the Church has begun to crumble. But we are still far from its total collapse. Women are still excluded from the ordained ministries in the Catholic Church.
Compare the shift in official Church laws:
 
Code of Canon Law 1917

Other examples showing the crumbling of the institutional bias against women:
These are, of course, relaxations of ridiculous prohibitions. They do not address the real issue of women’s equality in Christ that should open the way to women’s admission to all ministries. But the momentum cannot be stopped. In time to come it will be seen that it was as ridiculous to keep women from presiding at the Eucharist, as it was to keep them from singing in Church or serving at the altar!
Positions now open to women
Present Church law forbids women to be clerics and so deprives all women of clerical offices which require the power of order or the power of jurisdiction [=church governance] (can. 219, §1 & 274 § 1).
On the other hand, Church law allows women to be appointed to many new tasks and responsibilities that were closed to them in the past. It demonstrates again how the institutional prejudice is crumbling.
Church law allows women:
  • To be a member of the pastoral council of the diocese (can. 512 § 1) and of the parish (can. 536 § 1).
  • To be full members of provincial councils of bishops (can. 443 § 4), diocesan synods (can. 463 § 2 & 1.5), the finance committee of the diocese (can. 492 § 1) and of the parish (can. 537).
  • To be a financial administrator of the diocese (can. 494).
  • To be consultors on the appointment of parish priests (can. 524) and the appointment of bishops (can. 377 § 3).
  • To preach in a church or oratory though not the homily (can. 766).
  • To be catechists (can. 785) and to give assistance to the parish priest in the catechetical formation of adults, young people and children (can. 776).
  • To assist at marriages under certain conditions (c.1112).
  • To assist the parish priest in exercising the pastoral care of the community, as parish assistants, or as chaplains in hospitals, colleges, youth centres and social institutions (can. 519).
  • To be to be entrusted with a parish because of a shortage of priests (can. 517 § 2).
  • To administer certain sacramentals (can. 1168).
  • To hold offices in an ecclesiastical tribunal, such as being judges (can. 1421 § 2), assessors (can. 1424), auditors (can 1428 § 2), promotors of justice and defenders of the marriage bond (can. 1435).
  • To hold the diocesan offices of a chancellor or a notary (can. 483 § 2).
The parallel in other Churches
It is instructive to study the dates from which Churches opened up to women as ministers:
1852 United Church of Christ
1863 Universalist denomination, now Unitarian Universalist Association
1865 Salvation Army
1911 Mennonite
1914 Assemblies of God
1920s Some Baptist denominations
1939 United Methodist Church. (African Methodists had ordained women for decades.)
1956 Presbyterian Church (USA)
1972 Reform Judaism.
1970s Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
1976 Episcopal Church
1994 Church of England
Conclusion
Cultural prejudice is slowly breaking down, also in the Catholic Church. The prejudice is still kept in place by Church authorities clinging to flimsy arguments that have no real foundation. The official Church will not be able to shore up its untenable opposition to the ordination of women for much longer.
John Wijngaards
Here is a further article by the same organization.  See:  http://www.womenpriests.org/traditio/servers.asp
image

Women or Girls serving at Mass?!


From its formulation in the the Middle Ages, Church Law forbade women to serve at the Eucharist. The reasons for this were (a) women’s presumed inferiority that precluded them from leadership functions, and (b) women’s impurity because of menstruation.

In 1917, the prohibition was still firmly entrenched in the ecclesiastical legal code.
‘A female person may not minister. An exception is permitted only when no male person is available and if a just cause is present. The female person may not, however, approach the altar under any circumstances, and may only respond from afar’. (Canon 813/2).
[Imagine such an impure creature defiling the pure altar!]
Celebration of Holy Mass with a nun as mass server was permitted in a convent chapel, but there were restrictions as moral theologians pointed out.
‘If a male server is readily available, the celebrating priest would commit a venial sin. It is, however, forbidden on pain of grave sin for the female server to approach the altar’. (Heribert Jone, ‘Katholische Moraltheologie’, Westminster, MD: Newman Bookshop, 1946, p. 444).
[Note: the priest and sister commit a grave sin if she approaches the altar!]
Many Catholic women felt the ignominy of being excluded from serving at Mass deeply and personally.
When we were children, a woman tells me, “girls were told they could only go on the altar [past the Communion rails to the front of the church] the day they got married. It made me angry, because my little brother was an altar boy and he could go up there any day he served Mass.” She obviously means during Mass or some other Church service, because women have been cleaning and preparing the altar since the Last Supper! Another woman relates how, as a child, she learned all the Latin responses by heart and would get to Mass early each Lenten morning in the hopes that the altar boy wouldn’t show up and the priest would let her say the responses to his Mass prayers. She had to kneel in the pew, of course, because girls weren’t allowed up there with the priest. “I can remember being told by a priest in the early 1960s that it was a mortal sin (!!) for a woman to be present in the sanctuary [altar area] of Church during Mass," Ruth Wallace writes.
From: The Catholic Woman. Difficult Choices in a Modern World, by Jeanne Pieper, Lowell House, Los Angeles 1993.
Changes since 1963
1963 The Second Vatican Council launched a far-reaching liturgical reform through its document Sacrosanctum Concilium. Women were not mentioned in detail.
March 1970 The General Instruction on the Roman Missal provided for lay persons of either sex and without canonical limitation on age (although clearly they must be old enough to do the service appropriately) to supply some of the same services as installed rectors and acolytes. These additional roles had been classified in the pre-Code documents as liturgical ministries.
“All the ministries below those proper to the deacon may be perfomed by laymen whether they have been commissioned for any office or not. Those ministries which are performed outside the sanctuary may be entrusted to women if this be judged prudent by the priest in charge of the church.” (Gen. Instr. § 70)
September 1970 The instruction Liturgiae Instaurationes outlined which ‘ministries’ were permitted to women and which were not. Serving at the altar was still forbidden!
“The traditional liturgical norms of the Church prohibit women (young girls, married women, religious) from serving the priest at the altar, even in women’s chapels, houses, convents, schools and institutes.”
“In accordance with rules governing this matter, women may:
  • (a) Proclaim the scripture readings, with the exception of the gospel. Modern technical means should be used so that everyone can easily hear. Episcopal conferences may determine more concretely a suitable place from which women may read the word of God.
  • (b) Offer the intentions for the Prayer of the faithful.
  • (c) Lead the congregation’s singing; play the organ and other approved instruments.
  • (d) Give the explanatory comments to help people’s understanding of the service.
  • (e) Fulfil certain offices of service to the faithful which in some places are usually entrusted to women, such as receiving the faithful at the doors of the church and directing them to their places, guiding them in processions and collecting their offerings in church.” (§ 7).
1980 Pope John Paul II stipulated in an instruction entitled ‘The Inestimable Gift’ that ‘women are not permitted the functions of an altar server’.
1983 Canon 906 of the revised Code of Church Law came into force in 1983 called for ‘the participation of a believer’ whenever a priest celebrates Mass and thus seemed to remove the ban on women servers implicitly. Canon 230/1 made it clear, however, that the office of acolyte - which covers that of altar servers - may be entrusted to men alone.
“Lay men who possess the age and qualifications determined by decree of the conference of bishops can be installed on a stable basis in the ministries of lector and acolyte in accord with the prescribed liturgical rite; the conferral of these ministries, however, does not confer on these lay men a right to obtain support or remuneration from the Church.” (Canon 230, §1.)
The Law recognised the need of exceptions, however, in special circumstances. Here women too were included.
Canon 230, § 3. “When the necessity of the Church warrants it and when ministers are lacking, lay persons, even if they are not lectors or acolytes, can also supply for certain of their offices, namely, to exercise the ministry of the word, to preside over liturgical prayers, to confer baptism, and to distribute Holy Communion in accord with the prescriptions of law.”
The present situation
Many local Churches throughout the world have begun to allow girls to function as altar servers. This in spite of repeated attempts by the Roman Congregation for Worship to discourage the practice.
In 1994 the Congregation for Worship capitulated. In a Circular Letter to the Presidents of Episcopal Conferences it stated that the local Bishop may give permission for women and girls to serve at the altar.
“The Diocesan Bishop, in his role as moderator of the liturgical life in the diocese entrusted to his care, has the authority, within the boundaries of the territory entrusted to his care, to permit women to serve at the altar.”
In 2001 the same Congregation, in its instruction ‘Regarding Female Altar Servers’, reiterated that decision but declared at the same time that the local Bishop may also refuse to allow women to serve.
“The authorization [by a local bishop] to allow women servers may not, in any way, exclude men or, in particular, boys from service at the altar, nor require that priests of the diocese must make use of female altar servers, since it will always be very appropriate to follow the noble tradition of having boys serve at the altar.”
In other words: the battle is not over!

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Reposting: The Cathedral that never was

Friday, July 15, 2011

The Cathedral that never was

The following was the proposed 14 story cathedral for the Rockford Catholic Diocese. Designed in New York by Brother Cajetan Bauman, O.F.M. The plans were debuted in October 1965 by Bishop Lane. After the bishop’s death, in 1968 Bishop O’Neil makes St. Peter’s the diocese’s cathedral. Before that declaration St. James (Rockford) was the Pro-Cathedral.

image

Monday, November 28, 2011

With Mrs. Maggie Daley’s funeral at old St. Pat’s, it is interesting to take a look at this wonderful old church

The following is taken from WIKIPEDIA:  https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=L11_1128_Rinfo/en/US&utm_source=B11_1128_branGbr&utm_medium=sitenotice&utm_campaign=C11_1128_whyshortvlong_US&language=en&uselang=en&country=US&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FOld_St._Patrick%2527s_Church_%28Chicago%2C_Illinois%29

 

Old St. Patrick's Church, also known as St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church and commonly known as Old St. Pat's, is a Roman Catholic parish in Chicago, Illinois. Located at 700 West Adams Street, it has been described as the "cornerstone of Irish culture" in Chicago.[2] The main church building is one of a handful of structures remaining in the city that predate the 1871 Great Chicago Fire.

Old St. Patrick's Church was founded on Easter Sunday, April 12, 1846. The parish was originally housed in a wooden building at Randolph Street and DesPlaines Street. In the 1850s, the present church building was constructed out of brick.[2] Two octagonal spires, said to represent the Eastern Church and the Western Church, were added in 1885. By the 1880s, most of the parish was composed of Irish-Americans, and in the 1910s, the interior was redecorated by Thomas A. O'Shaughnessy and others in the Celtic Revival style. O'Shaugnessy modeled some of the ornamentation after the illuminations found in the Book of Kells.[3] The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Rites and Liturgy

The following is taken from Wikipedia: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_rites_and_churches

 

Rite

The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches defines "rite" as follows: "Rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage, distinguished according to peoples' culture and historical circumstances, that finds expression in each autonomous church's way of living the faith."[11]

As thus defined, "rite" concerns not only a people's liturgy (manner of worship), but also its theology (understanding of doctrine), spirituality (prayer and devotion), discipline (canon law).

In this sense of the word "rite", the list of rites within the Catholic Church is identical with that of the autonomous churches, each of which has its own heritage, which distinguishes that church from others, and membership of a church involves participation in its liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage. However, "church" refers to the people, and "rite" to their heritage.[12]

The Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches states that the rites with which it is concerned (but which it does not list) spring from the following five traditions: Alexandrian, Antiochian, Armenian, Chaldean, and Constantinopolitan.[13] Since it covers only Eastern Catholic churches and rites, it does not mention those of Western (Latin) tradition.

The word "rite" is sometimes used with reference only to liturgy, ignoring the theological, spiritual and disciplinary elements in the heritage of the churches. In this sense, "rite" has been defined as "the whole complex of the (liturgical) services of any Church or group of Churches".[14]

Between "rites" in this exclusively liturgical sense and the autonomous churches there is no strict correspondence, such as there is when "rite" is understood as in the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. The 14 autonomous churches of Byzantine tradition have a single liturgical rite, while on the contrary the single Latin Church has several distinct liturgical rites.

[edit] List of Catholic liturgical rites

Alexandrian liturgical tradition; 2 liturgical rites

Antiochian (Antiochene or West-Syrian) liturgical tradition; 3 liturgical rites

Armenian Rite; 1 liturgical rite

Chaldean or East Syrian liturgical tradition; 2 liturgical rites

Byzantine (Constantinopolitan) liturgical tradition; 1 liturgical rite

Latin (Western) liturgical rites

Actively celebrated:

Defunct or rarely celebrated:

The following is taken from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches

Clerical celibacy

Eastern and Western Christian churches have different traditions concerning clerical celibacy and the resulting controversies have played a role in the relationship between the two groups in some Western countries.

Most Eastern Churches distinguish between "monastic" and "non-monastic" clergy. Monastics do not necessarily live as monks or in monasteries, but have spent at least part of their period of training in such a context. Their monastic vows include a vow of celibate chastity.

Bishops are normally selected from the monastic clergy, and in most Eastern Catholic Churches a large percentage of priests and deacons also are celibate, while a portion of the clergy (typically, parish priests) may be married. If someone preparing for the diaconate or priesthood wishes to marry, this must happen before ordination.

In countries where Eastern traditions prevail, a married clergy caused little controversy; but it aroused opposition in other countries to which Eastern Catholics migrated; this was particularly so in the United States. In response to requests from the Latin bishops of those countries, the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith set out rules in a letter of 2 May 1890 to François-Marie-Benjamin Richard, the Archbishop of Paris,[69] which the Congregation applied on 1 May 1897 to the United States,[70] stating that only celibates or widowed priests coming without their children should be permitted in the United States. This rule was restated with special reference to Catholics of Ruthenian Rite by the 1 March 1929 decree Cum data fuerit, which was renewed for a further ten years in 1939. Dissatisfaction by many Ruthenian Catholics in the United States gave rise to the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. This rule was abolished with the promulgation of the Decree on the Catholic churches of the Eastern Rite; since then, married men have been ordained to the priesthood in the United States, and numerous married priests have come from eastern countries to serve parishes in the Americas.[71]

Three Eastern Catholic Churches have decided to adopt mandatory clerical celibacy, as in the Latin Church: the India-based Syro-Malankara Catholic Church and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, and the Ethiopian Catholic Church, which has a long widespread tradition of monasticism

Bishop Doran and the “traditionalist”

The following is taken from WIKIPEDIA:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_G._Doran

Views

Bishop Doran was one of the earliest proponents of the Tridentine Mass. Before Summorum Pontificum, Bishop Doran was singled out in an article in The Wanderer as one of the few U.S. bishops "...who have been generous in the Ecclesia Dei indult application, as requested and emphasized repeatedly by the late Pope John Paul II."[3][4] The others being Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, Bishop Álvaro Corrada del Rio of Tyler, Texas; and Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska.

In August 2006, Bishop Doran denounced the rate of abortions in the United States, saying, "We shall soon outstrip the Nazis in doing human beings to death."[5]

In late March 2009, Doran expressed his "dismay and outrage" at the decision of the University of Notre Dame to have President Barack Obama deliver its commencement speech and receive an honorary degree.[6] He even suggested that Notre Dame change its name to "The Fighting Irish College" or "Northwestern Indiana Humanist University."[6]

 

Indult Catholic  See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indult_Catholic

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Indult Catholic was a term used to denote a traditionalist Catholic who preferred to attend the older Tridentine form of Mass instead of the ordinary present-day form of the Roman-rite liturgy, the Mass of Paul VI, but who attended only those celebrations that had the explicit approval of the Church authorities. The term was pejorative, typically being used by traditionalists who saw no legal necessity for an indult for the Tridentine rite.

"Indult" is a term in Catholic canon law referring to a permission to do something that would otherwise be unlawful. While more than one indult was issued by the Holy See in respect of the Tridentine Mass, the particular "indult" referred to in this phrase was the general permission granted to the world's bishops by Pope John Paul II in 1984 to authorise celebrations of the Tridentine Mass in their dioceses. In 2007, this permission was superseded with Benedict XVI's promulgation of a papal motu proprio entitled Summorum Pontificum.

The indult

When the Mass of Paul VI replaced the Tridentine Mass in 1969-1970, some priests continued to be granted permission by the Holy See to celebrate the old liturgy. For example, elderly priests were not required to adopt the new form when it was introduced, and in 1971 Pope Paul VI granted the "Agatha Christie indult" that allowed occasional celebrations of the older form in England and Wales.

Under Pope John Paul II, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in 1984, sent the circular letter Quattuor abhinc annos[1] to the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences, granting diocesan bishops an "indult" (permission) to authorize, under certain conditions, celebrations of the Tridentine Mass as contained in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal by priests and laypeople who requested it.

Following the canonically illegal consecration of four bishops by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Pope John Paul II issued on 2 July 1988 a motu proprio entitled Ecclesia Dei recommending a "wide and generous application of the directives of the 1984 indult.

Application of the indult

The main condition on which diocesan bishops could grant authorization under the Quattuor abhinc annos indult was: "That it be made publicly clear beyond all ambiguity that such priests and their respective faithful in no way share the positions of those who call in question the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970."

Many diocesan bishops decided not to grant certain priests or laypeople permission to use the older form of the Roman Rite. In many cases this was because, in the opinion of the bishops in question, they did not meet this condition. Other refusals of permission were arguably more difficult to explain or justify.

Traditionalist Catholics who, like the supporters of the Society of St. Pius X, questioned the legitimacy and doctrinal exactitude of the revised liturgy, and were thus in a state of separation from the Holy See, claimed that no authorization was required for celebrating Mass in the older form. They decried those who accepted the conditions attached to the Quattuor abhinc annos indult, applying to them the term "Indult Catholics", and frequently did not recognise them as fellow traditionalists.

End of the indult

On 7 July 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.[2] By this document he replaced the conditions laid down in Quattuor abhinc annos and Ecclesia Dei for use of the 1962 Missal,[3] and decreed that, under conditions indicated in the document, recourse need no longer be had to the bishop of the diocese for permission to use that edition of the Roman Missal, even for public celebrations of Mass.

Summorum Pontificum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  See:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summorum_Pontificum

Summorum Pontificum (English: Of the Supreme Pontiffs) is an Apostolic Letter of Pope Benedict XVI, issued "motu proprio" (i.e. on his own initiative). The document specified the rules, for the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, for celebrating Mass according to the "Missal promulgated by John XXIII in 1962" (the form known as the Tridentine Mass), and for administering most of the sacraments in the form they had before the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council.

The document,[1] dated 7 July 2007 and in force since 14 September 2007, was released along with a letter in which Pope Benedict explained his reasons for issuing it.[2]

The document replaced the motu proprio Ecclesia Dei of 1988, which allowed individual bishops to establish places where Mass could be said using the 1962 Missal. It granted greater freedom to use the Tridentine liturgy in its 1962 form, stating that all priests may freely celebrate Mass with the 1962 Missal privately, without having to ask for permission from anyone. It also provided that pastors (parish priests) and rectors of churches should willingly accept requests from stable groups who adhere to the preceding liturgical tradition ("ubi coetus fidelium traditioni liturgicae antecedenti adhaerentium continenter exsistit" - Article 5) for permission for a qualified priest to celebrate Mass for them using the 1962 Missal, and should "ensure that the welfare of these faithful harmonises with the ordinary pastoral care of the parish, under the guidance of the bishop".

In his accompanying letter, Pope Benedict explained that his action was aimed at broadly and generously providing for the rituals which nourished the faithful for centuries and at "coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church" with Traditionalist Catholics in disagreement with the Holy See, such as the members of the Society of St. Pius X. He stated that, while it had first been thought that interest in the Tridentine Mass would disappear with the older generation that had grown up with it, some young persons too have "felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the mystery of the Eucharist particularly suited to them." In view of fears expressed while the document was in preparation, he took pains to emphasize that his decision in no way detracts from the authority of the Second Vatican Council and that, not only for juridical reasons, but also because the requisite "degree of liturgical formation and some knowledge of the Latin language" are not found very often, the Mass of Paul VI remains the "normal" or "ordinary" form of the Roman Rite Eucharistic liturgy.[3]

Saturday, November 5, 2011

The other Pope John XXIII

Antipope John XXIII

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Antipope John XXIII

Papacy began
1410

Papacy ended
1415

Predecessor
Alexander V (Pisa claimant)

Successor
Martin V

Opposed to
Gregory XII (Rome claimant)
Benedict XIII (Avignon claimant)

Personal details

Born
1370
Procida (or Ischia), Kingdom of Naples

Died
22 December 1419 (aged 48–49)
Florence, Republic of Florence

Baldassarre Cossa (c. 1370 – 22 December 1419) was Pope John XXIII (1410–1415) during the Western Schism. The Catholic Church regards him as an antipope.

Contents

[hide]

[edit] Biography

Baldassarre Cossa was born on the island of Procida or Ischia in the Kingdom of Naples into a noble but impoverished family. Initially he followed a military career, taking part in the Angevin-Neapolitan war. His two brothers were sentenced to death for piracy by Ladislaus of Naples.[1]

He studied law at the University of Bologna and obtained a doctorate. In 1392 he entered the service of Pope Boniface IX, first working in Bologna and then in Rome. (The Western Schism had begun in 1378 and there were two competing popes at the time, one in Avignon supported by France and Spain, and one in Rome supported by most of Italy, Germany and England.) Still a member of the laity, he became Cardinal deacon in 1402 and Papal legate in Forlì in 1403.

He was one of the seven cardinals who, in May 1408, deserted Pope Gregory XII, and, with those following Antipope Benedict XIII from Avignon, convened the Council of Pisa, of which Cossa became the leader. The aim of the council was to end the schism; to this end they deposed Gregory XII and Benedict XIII and elected the new pope Alexander V in 1409. Gregory and Benedict ignored this decision however, so that there were now three simultaneous popes.

Alexander V died soon after, and on 25 May 1410 Cossa was consecrated pope, taking the name John XXIII. He had been ordained priest only one day earlier. John XXIII was acknowledged as pope by France, England, Bohemia, Prussia, Portugal, parts of the Holy Roman Empire, and numerous Northern Italian city states, including Florence and Venice; however, the Avignon Pope Benedict XIII was regarded as pope by the Kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, and Scotland and Gregory XII was still favored by Ladislaus of Naples, Carlo I Malatesta, the princes of Bavaria, Louis III, Elector Palatine, and parts of Germany and Poland.[2]

The Medicis had supported Cossa in his campaign to become cardinal and pope. Once in office, John XXIII made the Medici Bank the bank of the papacy, contributing considerably to the family's wealth and prestige.

John had his officials sell indulgences, a controversial practice that was protested in various parts of Europe, for instance by the followers of Jan Hus in Prague.

The main enemy of John was Ladislaus of Naples, who protected Gregory XII in Rome. Following his election as pope, John spent a year in Bologna and then joined forces with Louis II of Anjou to march against Ladislaus. An initial victory proved short-lived and Ladislaus retook Rome in 1413, forcing John to flee to Florence.

Tomb of Antipope John XXIII.

In Florence he met Sigismund, who had just been crowned King of Germany and who had ambitions to become emperor. Sigismund wanted to end the schism and urged John to call a general council. John did so with hesitation, afraid that he might be deposed at the council. The Council of Constance was convened on 30 October 1413. During the third session, rival Pope Gregory XII authorized the council as well. The council resolved that all three popes should abdicate and a new pope be elected. Gregory agreed and John initially did as well, but then he fled the council, hoping that without him it would lose its authority. Instead, the council deposed him and tried him for heresy, simony, schism and immorality, finding him guilty on all counts. The last remaining claimant in Avignon, Benedict XIII, refused to resign and was excommunicated. Martin V was elected as new pope in 1417.

Cossa, as he was again, was imprisoned in Germany. He was freed in 1418 after a heavy ransom had been paid by the Medicis. In Rome he submitted to Martin V who made him cardinal bishop of Tusculum. He went to Florence and died only a few months later.

The Medicis oversaw the construction of his magnificent tomb by Donatello and Michelozzo in the Battistero di San Giovanni in Florence. Pope Martin V protested in vain against the inscription on the sarcophagus: "John the former pope".

The 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia remarks that "Undeniably secular and ambitious, his moral life was not above reproach, and his unscrupulous methods in no wise accorded with the requirements of his high office ... the heinous crimes of which his opponents in the council accused him were certainly gravely exaggerated."[3] One of his secretaries concluded that John was "a great man in temporal things, but a complete failure and worthless in spiritual things."[1]

[edit] Numbering issues

Main article: Pope John (numbering)

He should not be confused with Pope John XXIII of the twentieth century. When Angelo Cardinal Roncalli was elected and became Pope John, there was some confusion as to whether he would be John XXIII or John XXIV; he then declared that he was John XXIII to put this question to rest. There was no John XX; for example, Gibbon refers to the antipope John as John XXII.