The Popeular History Podcast

֎The First Judgment: Consistory of September 2023 (w/Bry from Pontifacts)

Consistory announcement episode
Cardinals:
PREVOST
GUGEROTTI 
FERNÁNDEZ 
TSCHERRIG 
PIERRE 
BRISLIN 
ROSSI
RUEDA APARICIO 
RYŚ
AMEYU
COBO CANO
RUGAMBWA
FRANCIS
CHOW
BUSTILLO
AGUIAR 
ARTIME
MARCHETTO
PADRÓN 
DRI
Consistory commentary episode
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the massive time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com 
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!

֎Daniel Fernando Cardinal STURLA BERHOUT ”Daniel Sturla”, S.D.B.

LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal STURLA BERHOUET: https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_sturla-berhouet_df.html
Cardinal STURLA BERHOUET on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda): https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2015.htm#Sturla
Cardinal STURLA BERHOUET on Gcatholic.org: http://www.gcatholic.org/p/47571 
Cardinal STURLA BERHOUET on Catholic-Hierarchy.org: https://catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bstbe.html 
2015 Salt and Light Media write-up of the then-Cardinal-elect: https://slmedia.org/blog/meet-the-cardinals-daniel-fernando-sturla-berhouet 
Archdiocese of Montevideo on Gcatholic.org: http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/mont1.htm?tab=info 
Archdiocese of Montevideo on Catholic-Hierarchy.org: https://catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dmovi.html
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the massive time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com 
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights brought to you daily.
To help make this library as useful as possible, this episode includes show notes with links and a transcript. You might notice that some of those words in the transcript are in capital letters. Those are either flags for me to make sure that I link back to them when I have my audio glossary set up to help you with terms, or they might be my weird phonetic way to help myself with pronunciation as best I can if I forgot to delete those. Either way, enjoy that!
Today *isn't* a Saturday, but as we missed our normal Saturday modern cardinal coverage last week due to the consistory, I thought I'd go ahead and bring you the next episode in that ongoing series today, so we don't fall behind our originally planned pacing, because I know a slippery slope when I see one and I am determined to get these cardinals discussed before the next Conclave, whenever that may be.
Daniel Fernando Sturla Berhouet was born on July 4th, 1959 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Located on the southern coast, Montevideo is Uruguay's capital and largest city.
When Daniel was still a fetus, Uruguay had the news of its first Cardinal, but this isn't a Rugambwa situation, they have totally different names. I just wanted you to have a sense of some of Uruguay's Catholic history. By all accounts, Catholicism is the largest religion in Uruguay today, though it's not as dominant as you might think– I've seen it noted that Uruguay is actually the least Catholic Latin American country, with Catholics representing between 75 and 45 percent of the population today, depending on who you ask. Uruguay is a smaller country, about half the size of Germany and covered under one archdiocese, that of Montevideo, which we'll be seeing again.
Getting back to young Daniel, he was the youngest of five children, and by sixteen he was an orphan. I didn't see a note on who took care of him at that point, my money is on his siblings, some combination of his three sisters named Maria and the oldest, his brother Héctor, who was 22 by that point and would later become a prominent politician.
His brother's political involvement would have to wait though, because from 1973 to 1985 Uruguay was ruled by a military Junta of the sort that were common in Latin America during the latter stages of the Cold War.
That situation impacted Daniel quite personally when in 1975, he was among the five Jesuits and 33 lay Catholics abducted by soldiers in Montevideo on Good Friday. That's coming from an article by Salt and Light media I have linked in the show notes which is itself based on a book by Italian journalist Nello Scavo. According to Scavo, the situation was resolved with the assistance of an Argentinean Jesuit priest named Jorge Bergoglio, yes, as in the future Pope Francis.
As for Daniel, he signed up with the Salesians, joining the order in 1979 and after some theology training- and a bachelor's in civil law- he was ordained a PRIEST on November 21st, 1987. I don't usually check back in with family members after the first few sentences of these episodes, but it's worth noting that in 1990, his brother Héctor reached the peak of his political career with his one-year term as the President of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the Lower House of the General Assembly of Uruguay. Héctor would pass away within a couple of months of the end of his term.
Getting back to Fr. Sturla, he carried out a number of roles within the Salesians, many of which were connected to education and new members, including directing the school where he had studied when he joined the order. He also served as a professor of Church history and earned a licentiate in theology from the Soler Theological Institute in 2006.
On May 27, 2009, he was elected president of the Conference of Religious of Uruguay (CONFRU), and on December 10th, 2011 he was elected as an AUXILIARY BISHOP for the Archdiocese of Montevideo.
In 2014, the previous ARCHBISHOP of Montevideo retired and bishop Sturla became Archbishop Sturla.
In 2015, he became the Second Cardinal in Uruguayan history, when Pope Francis elevated him to the rank of Cardinal-Priest and assigned the TITULAR CHURCH of Saint Galla to him.
Later that year, he was named member of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life; and of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.
On March 18, 2020, Pope Francis named him member of the Cardinalitial Commission of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which definitely has its own backstory I'll be getting into at some point here, and on June 1, 2022, the holy father also named him member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Cardinal Sturla is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2039.
That's enough for today. I'm sure tomorrow will be a banger as we finally, at long last, return to the main narrative and learn more traditions surrounding Deacon Phillip and the Ethiopian Eunuch for us to analyze further.
Thank you for listening, God bless you all.

✝✡Deacon Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch II: Jew-ish

Conversion of Ethiopian Eunuch
Acts 8:26-40
LINKS
Deacon Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch Part I: The Living Water
Acts Timeline
https://www.2belikechrist.com/articles/timeline-of-the-book-of-acts 
Ethiopian Eunuch queer interpretation
https://qspirit.net/ethiopian-eunuch-church-queers/ 
Secret Third Thing Memes and Jokes
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/a-secret-third-thing 
Some Ethopian Eunuch commentary
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/good-word/acts-apostles-online-commentary-25 
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the massive time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com 
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights brought to you daily. My name is Gregg; there's transcripts in the show notes now; and in today's episode we're picking our main narrative back up after several weeks of special content dedicated to the fresh batch of new Cardinals Pope Francis created last month.
I probably could have cut things off in a more natural place than between Parts I and II of our discussion of Deacon Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, but hey, what's done is done.
In the first part of this discussion, which came out on September 8th and is linked in those show notes I mentioned for your convenience, we got deep into Philip's baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch, talking about its implications as a candidate for the first baptism of a Gentile and ultimately- I hope successfully- showing how following received tradition can lead one to boldly do new things without fear when that's what you know you're supposed to do.
Today I tear all that apart, or at least half apart, because though this event was significant, I don't think it's actually a good candidate for the first baptism of a gentile, as much as I like the secret third thing theory.
What's the secret third thing?
Well, very often when you're given two choices, the actual most correct answer is a secret third thing. Like how historians love to say well it's complicated when asked if the answer is A or B, and then they proceed to explain how it's a little bit A and a little bit B. Was the French Revolution caused by the incompetence of the monarchs or the ambition of the lawyers? A secret third thing! Was Churchill a hero or a racist? A secret third thing! Did FDR know about Pearl Harbor? …you get the idea.
So naturally, was it Peter or the men from Cyprus and Cyrene that we talked about who really baptized the first Gentiles? Now of course my money is still on the secret third thing option here, as in it was probably neither of those events in actuality. But before we go any further I should explain why I also don't think it was the Ethiopian Eunuch, either.
First and foremost, the dude was travelling from friggin' Ethiopia to Jerusalem to worship, and second, he was studying a scroll of Isaiah along the way. Just, quick first impression, do these things that *sound* like the behavior of a full-on Gentile to you?
If he wasn't a Jew, my guess is it's because there was something preventing him. Perhaps his race, sure, but such conversions did happen, after all an ethiopian was just as much a non-Israelite as a moabite, and King David's great-grandmother Ruth was a moabite who had converted to Judaism.
No, it's not the Ethiopian part that would have kept him out of being fully integrated into Judaism, rather it's the Eunuch part. Without going too far down a path I am a laughably inadequate guide for, it seems Deuteronomy 23:1, quote, "No one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of the Lord" End quote would most likely have been standing in The Eunuch's way. If my understanding of how that bit of Torah was applied in 1st Century Judea is correct, and to be clear it may well not be, so call me out if I'm wrong, but if my guess is correct this wasn't the baptism of a gentile, but it also wasn't exactly the baptism of another garden-variety Jew, either. It was a baptism that occurred within a secret third category, a liminal space. In modern parlance, which lets me be extra evocative but let's not get too carried away with anachronistic interpretations here, it was the baptism of a gender minority.
Of course, when there's a secret third thing made visible, it's very likely that there's another secret option available, and indeed there is. Earlier in the chapter, we hear about how Philip has been baptizing Samaritans.
Now, I was hoping to cover that section and its nuances today, much like how I was hoping to originally have all of this be, you know, a single episode on Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch. But it looks like we've managed to hit another spot where I need to once again swallow my pride and refuse to exceed my hard word count limit for these core episodes lest they get to be too long.
I promise next time will indeed be the end of the surprisingly extensive "first gentile Christian" discussion, because I already have the rest written so it can't run over a third time. See you tomorrow! Thank you for listening; God bless you all!

✝✡Deacon Philip and the Samaritans

Conversion of Ethiopian Eunuch:
Acts 8:12
Samaritan Newsletter Online
http://www.thesamaritanupdate.com/ 
Samaritan Museum
https://samaritanmuseum.com/ 
Some Ethopian Eunuch commentary
https://www.americamagazine.org/content/good-word/acts-apostles-online-commentary-25 
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights brought to you daily. My name is Gregg, yes there are more transcripts in the show notes again, that's going to be an ongoing thing, and last episode we concluded our discussion of Philip's baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch, making the case that it should almost certainly not be considered the first baptism of a gentile, though it very likely did represent the baptism of someone very much on the fringe of the Jewish world. Today we look at a group on that fringe that Philip had actually baptized earlier: the Samaritans. If being on the fringe counts, they should get credit over Simeon Bachos, the Ethiopian Eunuch. What, did you think the guy had no name? Of course he had a name, it just wasn't recorded in Acts, more on that later. But enough about him, he got two whole episodes and now this aside to boot. Let's get on to the Samaritans Philip baptized in Acts 8:12.
 
Samaritans have always had a complicated relationship with Jews. You see, the Samaritans claim to be the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, returned to the land after they were exiled by the Assyrians. The fact that they're best known as the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel and not the Ten Found Tribes of Israel gives some hint as to what the Jews thought of such claims.
 
In the First Century, there were a pretty good number of Samaritans around, and like our friend the Eunuch they appeared to operate on the edge of Jewish society. Even today that's still the case, and yes it turns out there are still Samaritans around today- 874 of them as of 2022 be precise. That number is actually up from around 100 as of 1700. Anyways, while both these Samaritan converts and the Ethiopian Eunuch are decent enough candidates for secret third and Fourth thing options, I am actually going to argue neither of them makes the cut for being the first Gentiles brought into the Church. After all, the Rabbis of modern Israel consider the Samaritans Jews, though with some caveats, and I already made my arguments about the Ethiopian Eunuch.
 
So what's our secret fifth thing that's the real, real, *real* answer then? Well, keep in mind there definitely seemed to be a lot of gentiles kicking around when the Holy Spirit got everyone in the splash zone speaking in Tongues at Pentecost, but I'd say that's a bit of an exception itself since no baptism was involved and it's hard to argue someone is suddenly a Christian when they really have no idea what's going on and are likely very confused. Not exactly a recipe for a vibrant spiritual life in the absence of further faith formation, in any event. If we look back even further, before there technically was a Church at all, it seems highly likely that John the Baptist would have baptized a few gentiles, or at least some liminal characters like eunuchs and Samaritans. But when we've reached John we've really gone too far back. Fundamentally the question is who was the first gentile to be baptized in the name of the father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit, which I expect was not the exact recipe John was using though who knows, maybe it was. Either way John was just too early, I'm definitely keeping the start date for Church History as Pentecost.
 
So who was the first gentile baptized?
 
Look, in the end, it was probably someone completely lost to history. Jesus told the Apostles to Baptize all the nations, and then the Apostles ran off to the four corners of the Earth to fulfill the Great Commission. They weren't as worried about keeping good records as they were about winning souls for Christ before the world ended, and Christ had already told them the present generation would not pass away before that time came, so the clock, as they understood it, was ticking. There have now been tens of billions of Christians throughout history, most of them gentiles, and those gentile Christians had to come from somewhere. Somewhere along the way the first gentile was baptized, and I'm willing to pick the year 100 as a guess for when gentile Christians started to outnumber Jewish Christians. Once the ball got rolling, despite various tensions, it wasn't going to stop.
We'll revisit both Jewish Christians and Judaism in future episodes, but I promise this is the last time you'll hear me give my thoughts and theories on the first gentile convert. Let's put that milestone in Church history behind us. We're gonna take a break for the weekend, with our Saturday modern cardinal and our encyclopedia Sunday, but then, tune in on Monday as we turn to look at Simon Magus. Thank you for listening; God bless you all!

֎Isaac Cardinal THOTTUMKAL ”Baselios Cardinal Cleemis” (elevated Nov 2012)

LINKS
His diocese's bio of Basios Cleemis
https://malankaratvm.com/welcome/majorarchbishopcatholicos 
Christianity in India: The Anti-Colonial Turn (Google Books Preview)
https://books.google.com/books?id=xEmMDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&pg=PT83&dq=Pakalomattam&hl=en&source=gb_mobile_entity&ovdme=1#v=onepage&q=Pakalomattam&f=false 
Pakalomattam Family Traditions (apply grains of salt as appropriate):
http://pakalomattamfamily.org/history/ 
The St Thomas Christian Encyclopedia of India (full access free w/login via Internet Archive)
https://archive.org/details/stthomaschristia0000unse/mode/1up 
Baselios Cleemis on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2012-ii.htm#Thottunkal 
Baselios Cleemis on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/3363  
Baselios Cleemis on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bthoi.html 
Archeparchy of Trivandrum (Syro-Malankara) on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/mont1.htm?tab=info 
Archeparchy of Trivandrum (Syro-Malankara) on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dtrml.html 
Code of canons of Oriental Churchs:
https://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG1199/_INDEX.HTM  
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the massive time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com 
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
IMAGE CRED:
By Prathyush Thomas - Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47706671 
This episode's image is from Wikipedia since they're pretty chill about image-sharing as long as I credit them and I don't have time to go creating a new image-permission request every day, I've got stuff to talk about. Also, yes, I, a degreed librarian, consult Wikipedia during my research as they are generally a solid aggregator of resources. You have my permission to consult Wikipedia as well, just remember they are not a source in their own right or else citogenesis may occur (P.S. Randall Munroe is a treasure).
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights brought to you daily.
To help make this library as useful as possible, this episode includes show notes with links and a transcript.
Also, despite my insistence that I'm trying to make my episodes shorter, today needs more groundwork than usual so it will be longer than usual. It wouldn't be very good of me to just say things that are true about today's cardinal without explaining them- this is meant to be a handy introduction, after all, and a lot of what comes up today needs a bit more introduction than usual, because today's cardinal has gotten up to a lot and we've got a lot of new titles and concepts to discuss to help you get your bearings. You'll see what I mean here in a minute.
Isaac Thottumkal was born on June 15th, 1959, and I know that a certain percentage of you are already confused as you go to double-check the episode title. We'll get to that. Isaac is part of the overall Pakalomattam family, which is more relevant than you might think because for centuries the Archdeacons [pronounced Arkdiyakons] of India came either exclusively or almost exclusively from this family.
And no, I haven't forgotten how to pronounce Archdeacon, it just so happens that in this cultural context that title is pronounced as Arkdiyakon, and it's not the worst thing that it has a different pronunciation, because we're not talking about a deacon as we know it in contemporary western Catholicism, or even an archdeacon.
You see, back in the day, the Christians of India were part of the Church of the East, that is, the form of Christianity that came about from the Persian Empire. The Catholicos, that is, the head of the Church of the East, would appoint the Arkdiyakons who would head then the Church in India. Though from what I can tell the Arkdiyakons were not bishops- they were, in the end, deacons- they did have such baller titles as "Lord of the Christians".
Now I mentioned Arkdiyakon basically being a family matter, specifically a Pakalomattam family matter, and I mean it. It was apparently straight-up patrilineal succession like you might expect from a traditional monarch, which is weird if you're used to clerical celibacy but as a rule the further east you go tradition-wise the less clerical celibacy applies, and also even in the west keep in mind there's less of an emphasis on that for deacons anyways.
I should note that all of this is poorly sourced and there are some discrepancies with the traditions we have, so apply caution especially if you decide to go to the Pakalomattam family website I've linked in the show notes since that is functionally propaganda but it explains the general received tradition pretty well, from what I can tell.
Breaking the Pakalomattam monopoly on control of the Church in India was a big priority for the Portuguese when they came onto the scene during colonial times and they were eventually mostly successful despite strong resistance. Obviously there's still a family tradition, but it's no longer the only way to go.
Now, as a refresher, the global Catholic Church is made up of 24 sui iuris- that is, self-governing- churches. The Latin Church is the one you're probably most familiar with, and it's active in India, to be sure, thanks to the Portuguese and the Jesuits generally. But we'll set the Latins aside for a minute here.
These days there are two indigenous sui iuris churches that serve the needs of Saint Thomas Christians, as India's native Christian community is known: the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church. Isaac, and I think this is the longest I've gone without mentioning the cardinal of the day, but Isaac is from the Syro-Malankara tradition, which (unlike the Syro-Malabar) rejected Catholicism outright for many years but eventually signed up with the Pope through a reunion movement in the 1930s. If you know the Oxford Movement, it was sort of like that.
Now that we're halfway through our target runtime, let's get to what's usually the second half of the first sentence. Isaac was born in Mukkoor, a village in the south Indian state of Kerala. Kerala has long been the heartland of the Thomas Christians, to the extent that I'm surprised when I see a Thomas Christian was born anywhere else in India.
Isaac's initial priestly education was a normal mix of theology and philosophy, though I have to note that the seal of the Papal Seminary, where he did his theology training, appears to not only have the papal tiara and Peter's keys, but also in a wonderful touch in what appears to be a lion holding a sword. I mean sure, he'd go on to get a doctorate in ecumenical theology from the Angelicum in Rome, but that doesn't beat a lion holding a sword in my books.
Anyways, in 1986 at the age of 26 he was ordained a priest for the recently-established Eparchy of Battery, an Eparchy being the Eastern equivalent of a Diocese, with Archeparchies also corresponding to Archdioceses. You get the idea.
Isaac–now Fr. Thottumkal– was made Auxiliary Bishop of Trivandrum in 2001, Trivandrum being the mother see for the Syro Malankara Catholic Church. At that point he took the name Isaac Mar Cleemis, Mar or you may also see Mor being the normal honorific for a bishop in the Church of the East. He chose Cleemis in honor of the Church father Clement of Alexandria, who I'll get to at some point next year.
His first spot as a full-on bishop–Eparch, really–came a couple years later, when in 2003 he was made Eparch of Tiruvalla. In 2006, the Eparchy was elevated to an archeparchy, and Thottumkal rose along with it, becoming an Archeparch. At that point, he added the honorific Baselios to his titles, bringing us to the the most common shorthand for him today: Baselios Cleemis.
But his greatest promotion came the next year, and it's not actually him being made Cardinal. You see, in January 2007, the Bishop of Trivandrum passed away, and Mar Cleemis was unanimously elected as his replacement by the Episcopal Synod of Syro-Malankar Catholic Church.
Back when Mar Cleemis had done his stint as an auxiliary for Trivandrum at the start of the new millenium, it was an archeparchy- nothing to scoff at. But I mentioned this was a greater promotion than being made a Cardinal. In the time since we last checked in, Trivandrum had been promoted the status of a Major Archdiocese– Major Archeparchy, rather, since we're in eparchy territory rather than diocese territory. According to canon 154 for the 1990 Code of canons of Oriental Churches which governs such things and which uses eparch and diocese interchangeably, quote: "Major archbishops hold the precedence of honor immediately after patriarchs" end quote, which does place them above Cardinals in precedence, given that patriarchs are the only ones above Cardinals, and we're putting them immediately below patriarchs.
I know all these titles and terms are, well, a lot, and I am working on getting glossary episodes to link in the show notes. For now, at least you'll have the transcript to give you the spelling.
Beyond the titles, Cleemis has gotten up to a lot, from building AIDS hospitals to founding the center of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church in North America, to his roles in the Curia as a Cardinal and in India's Bishops conference.
Baselios Cleemis was made a cardinal by Pope Benedict in his last consistory in 2012. Cleemis was the youngest Cardinal in the world at that time, and as the first Syro-Malankara Cardinal was one of four Eastern Catholic Cardinals to participate in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.
Baselios Cardinal Cleemis is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2039.
That's enough for today. I'm sure tomorrow will be a banger as we begin our Encyclopedia Catholica project with an introduction to Catholic cosmology..
Thank you for listening, God bless you all.

HIATUS--back to monthly for a while

Oh hey though remember Samuels Library from First Judgment II: Electric Boogaloo? They're fully funded now!

֎Introducing the Major Penitentiary (Cardinal Numbers wildcard)

No transcript this time, but a Halloween Surprise!
W/Bry from Pontifacts, so listen to Pontifacts already!

UPDATE: What to Expect Moving Forward

Hey everyone,
Welcome back! First, thank you all for the 417 downloads in the month of November. Not bad, considering my complete absence!Now, as much as I like reassuring folks that I haven't died, I do hate cluttering my feed with episodes whose purpose is mainly to apologize for delay, so I’ve decided not to do that. I'd rather just focus on all the Catholic history this show is here for. Plus, I went on official hiatus in order to not stress out about scheduling and deadlines, so my revised plan for this hiatus is instead of giving a firm something-every-month commitment, I'm going to just do my best with a monthly target as a loose framework.
Feel free to reach out to me at Popeularhistory@gmail.com or whatever social if you ever do want to check in–I absolutely love hearing from listeners! If I do actually die, my obituary will be published in the Newark Advocate and I've made arrangements to have it read on this feed, that way you're not left hanging. This pod will not fade, one way or another we will have an official final episode.
But that's not expected for many decades, as I'm in my mid-30s, and I'm obviously obsessed with history through Pope-colored glasses, and as we have seen I'm not going to be running out of material anytime soon. In fact, the biggest issue at the moment is *too much* material. And really, I've done the podcaster equivalent of having too many tabs open at once.
Let's do a quick roundup of what all I've got going on, and how we're going to do this transition from a daily show to monthly-ish.
First up, my next episode will be a handy romp through well over 100 of your favorite administrative terms from all over the org chart of the Catholic Church, especially the Roman Catholic Church. That sort of glossary is going to be helpful background for Cardinal Numbers moving forward, as I know the terms come hot and heavy there.
We're doing that as our next step because as I've mentioned I'd like to cover all the current Cardinal-Electors before the next conclave. I wish him well and don't think his latest bout of illness is anything catastrophic, but no one is expecting Francis to be Pope 20 years from now, least of all himself, and if I don't prioritize Cardinal Numbers it could easily take that long to get there.
So, Cardinal Numbers first, and I've actually got a fresh batch of 12 episodes of that written. Electors are always aging out, and of course Pope Francis could always add more, but roughly seven more batches of 12 should get us there. If we aim to do a nice round of Cardinal Numbers every other month, we'll get there in early 2025.
Of course if we're aiming for Cardinal Numbers every other month and content every month, that leaves us a space every other, uh, other month for stuff that *isn't* Cardinal Numbers.
And like I mentioned, we've got a lot of open projects to choose from. The most awkwardly dangling is our big timeline of the administrative history of the Catholic Church, with poor Deacon Philip left hanging once again. I've already got the rest of his episodes written, actually they're even recorded and maybe even edited, so we'll do those, and then we'll let that big project sit for a while while we tie up other loose ends. Remember, the plan with that project–Project VERITAS if you're looking it up on Popeularhistory.com–is to cover the whole administrative history of the Catholic Church from start to finish in moderate detail, plus going into more thorough detail on all the Cardinals so we've got more Cardinal Numbers coming up when we get our first named Cardinal in 112AD. So obviously, though I'm going to be backburnering Project Veritas for a few years once we have Deacon Philip settled, don't worry, that'll be the main show in due course.
Of course, there's also classic Popeular History, now the Solemn High Pod, where we've been building Pope Colored glasses for years now. I'm on family leave here, so I'm not going to commit back to a new episode of that every solemnity, but it'll be the principal every-other-month partner for Cardinal Numbers until our rosary themed tour of the New Testament is done and we can call it a wrap on the overall Catholic Worldbuilding series. Then, we'll have some summarizing and reflecting to do–believe it or not, that's going to be fitting in well with the Encyclopedia Catholica concept I announced right before hiatus so that's where Encyclopedia Catholica will be fitting if if you were wondering about that. After that, believe it or not, yes, there will still be the main show that those worldbuilding episodes were building up to, an 87 episode walk through the history of the Papacy itself. And knowing me, probably all of of those 87 episodes will be multiparters. We'll be weaving that into the long-term schedule along with project VERITAS and Cardinal Numbers, not to mention other things like interviews and Habemus Pointsam and I guess my solemnity specials being slotted in. And whatever else popes up along the way. We've got decades of beefy content to go here, there's a reason the last planned episode is my obituary.
So, let's get to it. I'll be posting the Holy Org Chart with all those definitions I mentioned once enough time has passed that I'm confident these will show up in the right order in the feed.
Thank you for listening, God bless you all!

The Holy Org Chart

NOTE: Though I mentioned timestamping, I've decided to forego that for now to allow me to go ahead and get this episode out without additional delay. I may well add it in retroactively at some point but for now you'll just have to survive with the free full transcript, below.https://columbuscatholic.org/chancery
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/253959/cardinal-hollerich-there-s-space-to-expand-church-teaching-on-all-male-priesthood 
Hello everyone, welcome back to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights and I'm going to be skipping the brought to you daily part because I've switched, at least for the time being, back to a model that basically can best be described as brought to you as I am able: something every month, probably. Which, I admit, doesn't roll off the tongue quite so well, but it's the right move.
Anyways, it's good to be back talking with you again, I've been using the time away wisely, taking care of family and household stuff that needed my attention. Thank you for understanding.
This is going to be something of a glossary of various roles within the Catholic Church that are gonna keep popping up, so consider this your cheat sheets to consult as needed.
Oh and good news, I learned how to timestamp show notes, at least on some catchers, so see if it works for you. Let me know if it doesn't. See the show notes. 
Without further ado, let's get into these church roles, starting with church roles you may recognize from the Bible but which are no longer a thing unless you're like a Mormon or something.
First, APOSTLE. The most familiar use of this term is referring to one of the 12 Apostles, Jesus' closest followers: Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, the other James, Judas (not *that* Judas), Simon, and Judas (yes *that* Judas). At least, that's the listing of the 12 as given in the book of Acts, my favorite reference point as this podcast talks about Church history and Church history actually happens in Acts, unlike the Gospels where it's pre-Pentecost so it's not really Church history yet, per se.
And really, *that* Judas, Judas Iscariot, is replaced by Matthias for most purposes when you're talking about the apostles because since Judas betrayed Jesus he's a bit of an embarrassment to the group, which, fair enough. In the end, Apostle is the only one of these titles where I'm going to name the main holders individually in this episode, though of course through future episodes of the podcast I'll name all the Popes and Cardinals I have documentation of any kind for and we should also recognize that the term Apostle is used outside the Twelve as well at various points, including most prominently Saint Paul and even the almost certainly female Junia in his Letter to the Romans.
The broader term for one of the earlier followers of Jesus is a DISCIPLE, and while this one does have some use in contemporary Catholicism, for example my parish has a slogan of "making disciples and disciple makers", the title of disciple as a specific identifier is something you're going to encounter in the Bible rather than in the day-to-day, where it's more of a general goal as a follower of Jesus.
Meanwhile, an EVANGELIST is one who wrote one of the Gospels. Earlier I committed to the Apostles being the only one of these titles where I'd name all 12 of the main holders and I'm going to stick to that, but yeah, it's that simple. Note that this is actually more restrictive than being one of the writers of Scripture in general, for instance even though he wrote a good chunk of the New Testament, Saint Paul doesn't get described as an Evangelist. That isn't to say there isn't a bit of a tradition of using even this term someone analogously for anyone who spreads the message of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, for example the decidedly non-Catholic phenomenon of Televangelists get their name as a play on this word.
Our last Bible-times Church role is that of PROPHET.
Simply put, a prophet is someone inspired by the Holy Spirit to deliver a message, John the Baptist being the most famous New Testament example though especially if you look closely at the Book of Acts you can find other examples. There have been a number of folks who have made claims to be prophets in some form or another, generally the Church has frowned on such pronouncements. Officially, all new *public* revelation closed with the death of John the last Apostle around the year 100. However, the door to being a legitimate prophet is not completely closed, since *private* revelation is still possible, for example the various Marian apparitions like Lourdes and Fatima. What makes revelation considered "private" is not so much its actual privacy as its non-binding nature. All Catholics are obliged to accept public revelation, namely the Bible; no one is obliged to accept any private revelation like latter-day Prophets, though such individuals can gain the basic endorsement of the Church, which is what made Fatima, for example, so influential.
That bit of a gray area bringing a Biblical role to the present is a good transition to the category of Church roles we'll talk about next, namely the basic roles in and structure of the Catholic Church today.
As a periodic reminder, the default perspective and focus of this show is Catholic Christianity. I say that because there are plenty of Christian groups that follow models different than what I'll be describing here, though in broad terms what we'll be talking about is the dominant structure of Christianity and has been for centuries if not millennia.
The fundamental concept to understand for this part–and really, to understand much of Catholicism–is APOSTOLIC SUCCESSION. Apostolic succession is the notion that the Apostles were the first BISHOPS and picked folks to succeed them in their ministry as bishops. I'm not here to convince you that that's what happened, but since this show runs with Pope-colored glasses, it's what we're rolling with. In this framework, not just anyone can have authority in the Church, only those who have this apostolic succession. You can still get wrinkles, like MYSTICS that influence the bishops, but ultimately, whether a mystic has lasting influence is going to depend on whether any bishops- that is anyone who has apostolic succession- listens to her. And I say her because such mystics are typically female. And actually, I wasn't planning on covering mystics in this overview, but I guess I really should give them their own timestamp in the summary here since I've gone off on a tangent. I talked about them earlier in the context of modern day prophets. Basically, a mystic is someone who has some sort of special connection to revelation, whether God or the Blessed Virgin Mary or whoever. But anyways, back to bishops, because while stuff like mystics are fun, the majority of church admin is done in much more mundane fashion by the regular clergy like the Bishops.
Catholic Bishops are always male, because in Catholicism ordination is what makes someone a bishop, and Catholic teaching holds that women cannot be ordained.
Another particularity of ordination is that someone who is ordained can't get married, though put a pin in that because it's going to get more complicated when we talk about priests and especially deacons.
Only bishops can carry out ordinations, and it involves physical touch so they cannot be done remotely. To minimize concerns about who has apostolic succession and who does not, for many years the standard has been that at least three bishops should participate in the ordination of a bishop, though this is not strictly speaking a requirement.
With all of this apostolic succession and ordination business, the Catholic world is divided in two: the CLERGY, that is, those who are ordained, and the LAITY, that is, those who are not ordained. There's also sort of a third category but shush I'm keeping it simple and don't worry we'll get into that before we're done today.
LAY, the shortened form of Laity, can also be used as an adjective in Church terminology, for instance in the phrase LAY EUCHARISTIC MINISTERS, or LAY CARDINALS, in both cases emphasizing that the individual being described is not as ordained as one might expect. Meanwhile, CLERG is not a word, pleaae don't try to make it a thing.
Anyways, once ordained, bishops are typically assigned a specific geographic area called a DIOCESE. Their main base of operations will tend to be in what's called a CATHEDRAL that's generally in the most prominent city in that diocese, and the Diocese is generally named after the city, for instance my home diocese of Columbus is named after the city of Columbus in Ohio.
In some ways bishops are equals, for instance all bishops can ordain successors. But in other ways they aren't, for instance Catholicism is somewhat famously centered around the Bishop of Rome, aka the POPE, who is prominent because the Diocese of Rome was where Saint Peter, the foremost disciple, settled down, never mind that by all accounts he also ran the Church in Antioch for a while.
Collectively, all the Catholic Bishops in the world are called the COLLEGE OF BISHOPS, and according to the very handy and highly recommended Gcatholic.org there are well over 5000 such Catholic bishops alive today. Of course, there are also a good number of bishops who aren't Catholic, meaning they aren't in communion with the Pope, especially the Eastern Orthodox. And forgive me if I explain being in communion as like the Church version of being facebook friends. It's obviously more solemn than that, but basically yes, it's a mutual public acknowledgement that you're on good terms with someone else. Bishops who aren't in communion with Rome are still bishops- meaning they still have apostolic succession and can still create their own successors, which has lead to a fair amount of drama, historically.
When I mentioned not all bishops are created equally, I wasn't just talking about the Pope. There are several different kinds of bishops to consider, so let's hit the highlights.
In addition to a regular bishop who heads a diocese, there's a higher level bishop called an ARCHBISHOP who runs what's called an ARCHDIOCESE or you might see the term PROVINCE. Technically I believe a province is the combination of an Archdiocese and any regular diocese that are under its jurisdiction, which are called SUFFRAGAN diocese in that context while the Archdiocese is called the METROPOLITAN, which is also a shorthand way of referring to the archbishop in that arrangement, or you might more fully call him the METROPOLITAN ARCHBISHOP. To return to my home diocese as an example, the Metropolitan for the Diocese of Columbus is the Archbishop of Cincinnati.
Not every Archbishop is a Metropolitan Archbishop, because not every Archdiocese has a suffragan diocese. You can also find cases where a person is personally made an Archbishop but is not put in charge of an Archdiocese, those cases are called "PRO HAC VICE", which is basically Latin for "for this occasion”, meaning while the person is being made an archbishop their diocese is not being made an archdiocese. There are weirder scenarios that can pop up as well, but I'm trying to focus on the highlights to keep this manageable and will point out the more unusual stuff when and if it pops up.
In terms of territory, the next step above a province would typically be a REGION, which is generally just an administrative subdivision of a national bishops' Conference. Columbus is in a region with all the dioceses–it's hard to pluralize that–in Ohio and Michigan, called Region VI. This particular layer of admin is completely unremarkable and has no special titles or roles associated with it.
At the top of the national level there's generally what's called a BISHOP'S CONFERENCE, an organization made up of the bishops and perhaps their equivalents across a given nation. Depending on the scale of things you might also see bishop's conferences that cover multiple countries or I think I've even seen some sub-national bishops' conferences here and there, it just depends on what makes sense given the geopolitics and the nature of the Catholic Community. Though there isn't a special churchy title for the leadership of a Bishops' Conference- they're just called President or whatever- I will tend to note when someone I'm going over holds a leadership post here since it's at the national level.
Getting back to church titles rather than standard admin structure, it's worth noting that, in a nutshell, the older a diocese is the more prestige and gravitas it has. Historically, the oldest diocese in a given country had special importance and was something a bit above a regular archdiocese called a PRIMATIAL SEE held by a PRIMATE- not the monkey though sure joke away– oh and see by the way is just another word for a diocese, that's S-E-E. It's specifically referring to the bishop's "seat", which is the same concept that makes the head church of a Diocese called a Cathedral, cathedra being a Latin word for Chair. And yeah, it's a bit weird to have so much focus on what someone is sitting on but keep in mind thrones for kings kind of fill the same concept, it's basically the idea that it's the office that has its own importance that accumulates with each officeholder.
Some diocese are dignified at an even higher level and are called Patriarchates, with bishops of those diocese being called Patriarchs. Historically the core group of patriarchates was Rome, Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Others have been added through the years, notably Moscow in the East. Generally Patriarchates are more associated with Eastern Orthodoxy since the highest ranking churchmen there are the Patriarchs, though the Popes would also flaunt their Papal powers over the church generally by setting up some new Western Patriarchates as well, like Lisbon and Venice. I'll definitely be spending a lot of time talking about all the various patriarchates in the main narrative, so stay tuned.
Recently a new role has been developed, and of course I mean recently in church terms so, you know, in living memory, and that's the role of what's termed a "MAJOR ARCHBISHOP", just half a hair down from a Patriarch in dignity, and of course overseeing a "MAJOR ARCHBISHOPRIC". Check out my episode on Sviatoslav Shevchuk for more on that, basically the Vatican wanted to grant the Ukranians higher honor but could not fully commit to a new Patriarchate because of pressure from Moscow, so the position was developed as a compromise. There are now a total of four Major Archbishops, all Eastern Catholics.
To explain very briefly, now that I'm mentioning Eastern Catholics, the Catholic Church is actually made up of a total of 24 sui iuris- that is, "self governing" Churches, called Particular churches. The one you're probably most familiar with is the biggest, what's called the Latin Church, but the other 23 are equally important at least in theory even though in practice they often get sidelined or overlooked. A single city may have multiple bishops because of these different rites, and also because of non-Catholic bishops, for example there are currently five people claiming the role of Patriarch of Antioch, three Catholic bishops from different sui iuris particular churches in union with Rome, and two Orthodox bishops not in union with Rome. None of these Patriarchs of Antioch are based in Antioch, modern Antakya. It's complicated. Collectively members of these non-Latin Sui Iuris churches are called Eastern Catholics and In most cases these are the results of various splits and reunions throughout Church history, resulting in a variety of local traditions maintained because 1 tradition is beautiful and 2 union with the Pope is more important to the Pope then making everyone do exactly the same thing, though there have certainly been pushes for that, and I hope that somewhat tongue-in-cheek brief overview isn't too insulting but long story short the variety resulting from these different traditions could easily double the length of this episode, but given the main purpose of this was to allow Cardinal-Watchers to follow Cardinal Numbers without getting too lost I'm going to let the Latin rite examples I've given form the core and I'll explain Eastern titles- such as calling most bishops EPARCHS and most Dioceses EPARCHIES- as they appear in individual episodes.
Now, believe it or not, there's still a few more bishop-tier titles to go. First, a TITULAR BISHOP is a bishop who has been assigned a non-functional diocese, which sounds like a bit of a raw deal- and to be clear, it is- but it generally allows them to focus on other stuff they need to be doing while officially giving them the status and dignity of being a bishop. There are also titular archbishops and even titular patriarchs, basically the next few terms function as adjectives.
Another modifier you might see before someone's bishop title is "Auxiliary". An AUXILIARY BISHOP is a bishop who assists in the administration of a see- typically an archdiocese or a patriarchate- while being titular bishop of another see. This keeps one person as the overall pastor but allows for easing the burden when there's a lot of bishopping to be done.
There's another kind of bishop called a COADJUTOR. As the co- part might suggest, a coadjutor bishop acts alongside the regular bishop. Generally speaking a coadjutorship is a short term arrangement, designed to ease the transition when the regular bishop retires, with the coadjutor having automatic succession. Unlike Auxiliary bishops, coadjutor bishops are not typically given a separate titular see reflecting this even closer association with the diocese. Normally the goal is one bishop per diocese and one diocese per bishop, coadjustorships are treated as an exception to that ideal for the sake of smooth transition.
Another adjective you'll see applied to someone's title as bishop is emeritus, and this one I think is more familiar to folks. A BISHOP EMERITUS is the former bishop of a diocese. In modern practice most Bishops are required to submit their resignation to the Pope once they turn 75, so that's the typical retirement age, but early retirements due to health reasons or air quotes "health reasons" are not unheard of, and sometimes folks are left in their posts for a bit longer.
When a diocese has no serving bishop, that period is called a SEDE VACANTE, or "vacant seat". Most folks hear that in connection with the Pope, though the term can be used for all diocese, not just Rome. If the vacancy is a longer one, you'll often see what's called an APOSTOLIC ADMINISTRATOR appointed for the interim, someone to keep things running who may or may not already be a bishop of another diocese, often the metropolitan.
Finally, there's a broader term that includes but is not limited to bishops that I've been studiously avoiding: an ORDINARY. Most often the ordinary is a bishop, but there are some special jurisdictions outside the normal diocesan structure that are served by a non-episcopal-AKA non-bishop- ordinary. Such jurisdictions are called ORDINARIATES. And yeah, don't let the wording fool you, ordinariates headed by an ordinary are not, you know, the ordinary arrangement, those are for special circumstances.
The most common type of ordinariate is a MILITARY ORDINARIATE. Given the special needs of armed forces and the families serving in them, many nations have a specific ordinariate dedicated to military families. There is also something called a PERSONAL ORDINARIATE, which in modern times is best understood as a bridge between Anglicanism and Catholicism, something Anglican leaders aren't particularly thrilled about but that didn't stop Pope Benedict XVI from setting up the structure a few years back.
This is also as good a time as any to note that a CHAPLIN is like the priest-level edition of an ordinary, in the sense that they're dedicated to a specific group of people that isn't a geographic thing, and also in the sense that it's often something you'll see in a military or other institutional context, and *also* in the sense that a chaplain might not actually be a priest even though they carry out many similar functions, much like an ordinary may not actually be a bishop.
Alright, next up, let's start looking at what's going on within a typical diocese, especially at Mass, that most Catholic of ceremonies.
As you might have guessed, we're going to be talking a fair bit about PRIESTS today, so let's dive in there. Priests, like bishops, receive Holy Orders through ordination. They effectively function as a stand-in for the bishop, serving as his delegates in the local churches called PARISHES. They have apostolic succession only in a secondary sense- their holy orders are valid because of their bishop's valid apostolic succession, and they cannot ordain successors themselves. Unless of course they also happen to be a bishop, which, yes, Mr Offscreen Pedant, bishops are also priests, but I'm speaking specifically about priests who are not also bishops. All bishops are priests and deacons to boot, holy orders is a three-part deal that stacks up like that. Of course, not all deacons are priests, and not all priests are bishops. It's a squares and rectangles kind of thing.
The primary function of a priest is to administer sacraments, especially saying Mass and hearing confessions. I actually have my sacraments series done for the Solemn High Pod, so check out the three part Popeular History episode 0.20 if you want to know more about Mass and the sacraments. If 0.23 and dare I hope 0.31 are done by the time you're listening to this you can check out those as well for more on the Mass.
Like Bishops, priests are generally expected to practice clerical celibacy, especially in the Latin church but also in the East in the sense that they cannot get married after ordination. So if they want to join the ranks of the married clergy, they better already have the married part done before they do the clergy part.
A priest is the most essential person when it comes to Mass, because priests are the ones who either celebrate or say Mass–either of those verbs will work, by the way, and I'm not actually aware of a difference in meaning. Anyways, this is brought home by the fact that priests can literally say Mass by themselves, with no one else present. And I don't want to go too far into theology in this org chart overview, but I really should note that ultimately, on a theological level, it's not so much the priests themselves saying Mass or hearing confessions, rather it's Christ acting through them.
What about deacons? Well, first off, there are two kinds of deacons in current practice: TRANSITIONAL DEACONS and PERMANENT DEACONS. The transitional deaconate is a step towards priesthood, and typically lasts a year. It’s the first rung of Holy Orders, the first ordination the future priest will receive. In the case of permanent deacons, rather than a stepping stone the diaconate is its own vocation, with the recruiting focus being on men ages 35-55 or so depending on the diocese. Even in the west married permanent deacons are normal, though still with the same caveat that I mentioned for eastern priests earlier: once you're ordained no more new marriages for you.
Deacons have an assisting role at Mass and administering other rites and sacraments but historically their main role has been more in the realm of what's called works of mercy, aka helping the poor, as that was the original idea behind setting up the diaconate as outlined in the biblical Book of Acts.
It was only in recent times–recent times in the scale of Catholicism of course meaning in you know, living memory, it's a big timeline–anyways it was only in recent times that the permanent diaconate was revived after a millenium of suppression. Technically, to be sure, there were some deacons in the middle ages–Pope Gregory VII gained his reputation as Deacon Hildebrand- but outside of the Papal court, where titles tend to carry on regardless, DROPDROP they were scarcely more than a step to the priesthood, DROPDROP that transitional model I mentioned earlier.
Before that decline, deacons were actually generally more impactful than priests, often serving as the bishop's right hand, especially in the form of ARCHDEACONS. This model is still largely present in the Eastern Churches, especially if you recall that Arkdiyakon role I mentioned in the context of the Thomas Christians I mentioned last month.
Finally, I should note that there is strong historical evidence for a female diaconate in the early Church, for example in Romans 16 Saint Paul refers to a certain Phoebe as a deaconess, and unlike in the historical argument over female priests and bishops, the Church accepts a form of female diaconate as a historical reality. However, it is argued that women deacons were not ordained, that their role was fundamentally different from that of male deacons. Whether to revive an unordained form of female diaconate is an active topic of discussion in Rome.
Of course, we're well into the weeds now. Things have changed. But before we make our way back to the modern Church, let's take a quick look at how Holy Orders worked prior to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
Before Vatican II, Holy Orders didn't start with the diaconate, the priesthood was actually the culmination of a seven-step process that began with what's called the minor orders. The lowest rung of this ladder was the PORTER, being basically the church doorman. After that, the LECTOR, in charge of some of the Bible reading at Mass, and a role which largely survived the council but was taken out of the context of a step on the path to priesthood, to the extent that even shock of shocks women can be Lectors.
Next up was the ever crowd-pleasing role of EXORCIST, one trained to cast out demons, and perhaps surprisingly that's another role that's still with us, now taking the form of a special category of priests. As I understand it, to this day each Diocese has at least one exorcist, though their identities are typically kept secret because, ya know, kooks who won't stop bugging him because, I mean, real-life-exorcist. Cool.
Finally, up at the top of the minor orders there was the role of ACOLYTE. Think alter server but one of the more active ones, not just a candle-holder. And yes, a role that was once higher than an exorcist is now generally occupied by a middle schooler.
Right above the minor orders was the first rank that required ordination- no, not the deacon, the SUB-DEACON. Like all the other minor orders suppressed in the West, this role has been preserved in the East. Take this how you will, but the East has tended to more scrupulously preserve tradition than the Latin Church. It probably helps that they have no one with sufficient authority to come close to mucking around with tradition. I honestly don't think we'll be talking about sub-deacons much, but just know they're, well, right below a standard-issue deacon in the medieval pecking order, as you might have guessed, assisting at mass in similar but different roles. This office went away in the West with the abolition of the minor orders in Vatican II. After the sub-deacon the medieval and early modern seven stages of Holy Orders culminated with the familiar roles of Deacon- full on deacon this time- and then priest. Note that Bishop was not really considered a part of this progression in this model.
Now, let's take a moment to chat through a couple other church roles largely or totally left to history while we're in the neighborhood. First, who can forget the fact that there's a whole Canterbury tale dedicated to the PARDONER. This wasn't someone who specialized in hearing confessions and absolving sins as you might expect after that episode we did on the newly elevated Cardinal Dri, the elderly Argintinian Capuchin with that focus. Instead, the focus of the Pardoner was on selling indulgences, those get-out-of-Purgatory-free cards that brought enough scandal to destroy the unity of western Christendom. And yes, I'm kind of acting like you already know about the Protestant Reformation in the same episode where I explain at a basic level what a priest is.
Anyways, speaking of Protestants–or quasi-Protestants, or whatever you want to call them, perhaps just Anglicans– speaking of Anglicans, in many ways they're an even better time capsule for preserving some things lost to modern Catholicism than the East. Obviously not in all stripes of Anglicanism, as that wide tent contains a lot of innovations, but, well, on the traditionalist Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum you can still find things like CANONS and PREBENDS. Canons with one N of course, the church kind, though of course the martial Pope Julius II was fond of two-N cannons as well.
Anyways, even ruling out the military cannons I need to specify, as there are not one not two but three distinct meanings of a one-N canon in medieval Catholicism and actually in contemporary Catholicism as well, though the role of canon- by definition our focus on this episode on roles in the Catholic Church- the role is much less common than it once was.
But first, the most common meaning of the term Canon in contemporary Catholicism is in the context of Canon law, because that's the term for way the Church governs itself and specific sections of the overall governing document are called canons. Similarly, church councils, that is, gatherings of church leaders, also tend to produce canons, especially the great ecumenical–that is, universal–councils of old that we'll start discussing when we get to the fourth century. So for example someone might cite the first canon of the Council of Nicea, where the Church of old ruled on the pressing question of how being castrated would or would not impact one's ability to serve as a priest.
There's also something called the Canon of the Mass, and really the root word helps to understand the meaning of both this and the law slash council thing, because a canon in Latin is something like a fixed measuring stick. The fixed part of Mass is the section of prayers that are always the same, or at least that were always the same until our old friend Vatican II made other options available (again, as I understand it). Nowadays the Canon of the Mass, also called the Roman Canon, is additionally referred to as Eucharistic Prayer 1, implying the existence of Eucharistic Prayer 2, which isn't just a theoretical thing but a real life shorter form that liturgical traditionalists like myself tend to hate. There's also Eucharistic Prayers 3 and 4, which are less egregious, but still, stick with Eucharistic Prayer 1, aka the Roman Canon, if you would be so kind.
The third kind of Canon is, at last, the role, and interestingly the etymology here is the same root as the others, giving the sense of something standardized or fixed in place. In this case, the standardization is because the "Canons" of a cathedral or other significant church were a group of priests who had decided to live communally and establish their spiritual and physical lives around a set of rules, you know, standardizing them. Canonizing their lives, if you will. They were basically members of a religious order, though not one centrally governed.
Oh, and I suppose I should also note that the term canonization fits into this overall picture in a similar way: it's called canonization because what canonization does is standardize the cult of a particular saint across the universal church. Oh and stop saying cult like it's a bad thing, in this case that's just the word used. It's not a wink and a nod to kool-aid.
Also, a canon in the sense of a cathedral canon or other role in a religious order is different from a canon*ist* or a canon lawyer, which is one who studies and explains or practices Church law, respectively. Clear as mud? Fair.
Oh, and the PREBEND I mentioned, well, that's basically just a fancier kind of Cathedral canon. Let's move on though.
The last historical Church role I want to talk about today is the KING. Or the EMPEROR. Or, you know, whoever the relevant feudal LORD would be. Because such secular leaders were nevertheless seen as having a critical role within the Church, with the civil government and the Church not then tending to have the separation we're used to these days. Really, nobility in general was a big deal for the church until the last century or so.
Ok, so we've talked about the various forms of bishops and their territories, and about who you might see at Mass. What about those between?
Well, one of the most important functions in Church organization is training up the next generation of leadership, and that training of new priests tends to take place at special institutes called SEMINARIES. You can basically think of seminaries as universities for future priests, and there's also a junior league of sorts for younger students that's basically a kind of boarding school called a MINOR SEMINARY. Those who study at seminaries are called SEMINARIANS, and those who teach there are nowadays generally titled PROFESSORS having the same basic sense as in the secular world but with Catholicism baked in. Kind of like this show verses a generic non-Popeular podcast. The head of a seminary is generally called a RECTOR, though I'm sure there's some variety in that. As you may know depending on what's common in your neck of the woods, rector can also have the same basic sense in secular institutes of higher learning as well, which makes sense when you take a look at the root word there: basically, "ruler". Etymology is our friend here, there, and everywhere.
Outside of seminary education, there's also the topic of the general administrative structure of a given diocese. Obviously the bishop is on top, and as you probably already guessed the priests of the diocese typically have admin roles in addition to saying Mass. As an American Catholic, I'm mostly used to hearing the term PASTOR for a priest who's tasked with running a local church community called a PARISH, though I gather canonically the Anglican sounding term VICAR is more precise. You'll also hear the term PARISH PRIEST used in the same sense.
A single parish may have more than one priest assigned to it by the diocesan powers that be. A secondary priest is called a PAROCHIAL VICAR in more  official stuff but ASSOCIATE PASTOR is the term you'll hear in common parlance, at least in American use. You might also see someone described as a CURATE, which in modern use designates a priest who assists the principal Vicar or Pastor or Rector of whatever, but historically would refer to the pastor themselves, and yes, it's complicated.
There are higher levels to consider as well, both administratively and in terms of honorary titles. For example, MONSIGNOR is a special honorary title given to seasoned priests at the discretion of the Pope. It's not really a role, since it's purely a title and has no special function, but I figured I'd include it here. There are three levels within being titled a Monsignor, first a "CHAPLAIN OF HIS HOLINESS", second an "HONORARY PRELATE", and finally a "PROTONOTARY APOSTOLIC". These sorts of honorifics are currently out of favor in Rome given Pope Francis' strong preference for simple aesthetics and not seeking honor and titles, but he's pushing against a very long tradition of honors and titles in Roman culture, long enough that it goes back to the Cursus Honorum of ancient Pagan Rome, and I expect with the back-and-forth way the Papacy and the Curia operate, we haven't seen the last of ecclesiastical honorifics. After a fat Pope, the saying goes, a skinny Pope.
Oh, there's even a kind of honorific for church buildings that functions in kind of the same way as making a priest a Monsignor, namely the status of BASILICA, which is basically just a way for the powers that be to say "hey check out this church it's extra nifty".
Of course, not all higher titles within a Diocese are honorifics, there are functional roles as well. The overall day-to-day admin of the diocese is typically not run by the Bishop personally but by an office called the CHANCERY run by a CHANCELLOR, another term you may have heard in higher education because there's historical overlap between higher education and the admin of the Catholic Church or, you know, medieval courts in general. VICE-CHANCELLORS are also a thing, being second in command, behind the Chancellor.
If you want a little more insight into what a Diocesan Chancery does, my home Diocese of Columbus has a write-up on their website that explains it better than I would so allow me to just quote them:
"The Chancery includes those offices and persons who directly assist the Bishop in the pastoral and administrative governance of the Diocese of Columbus. The Chancery, on behalf of the Bishop, expedites canonical matters; collects and preserves diocesan and parish records; assists parishes and priests with civil matters; maintains files on priests and parishes; collects statistical information for the Diocese; facilitates communications with other dioceses and the Vatican; provides information on the Church or directs inquirers to appropriate sources; facilitates pre-Marriage dispensations and permissions and transmits to other dioceses pre-marriage files; and oversees diocesan offices."
The rough Papal equivalent to the diocesan Chancery is the Roman CURIA. In Rome, the Church bureaucracy is sprawling. It's no secret that bureaucracies tend to grow over time when left unchecked, and historically Rome was just about the last place to look for a check on a bureaucracy. Even the ancient pre-Christian Romans exalted bureaucracy, with their skills as administrators being credited as a major unifying force for the Empire. Of course, administrative skills and bureaucracy can almost be contradictory concepts– after all, getting things done requires moving beyond committee after committee. But ultimately the purpose of the Curia is to spread the faith handed down from the Apostles throughout the world, and with that emphasis on handing down, tradition is a huge part of things. When you combine an emphasis on tradition with a massive scale- there are well over a billion Catholics in the world today- and a global scope–well, the Curia is absolutely massive and, despite repeated efforts at overhauling things, it's complicated as well. It would be deeply ironic but not inaccurate to call it Byzantine, a term for “really really complicated” drawn from another institution derived from ancient Rome, though the Byzantine empire is no more and the papacy is more globalized than ever. Pope Francis has been toying with the formula more than any other Pope in recent history, time will tell if the changes stick.
One of the most apparent changes Pope Francis has made to the Curia, certainly in the context of our rundown of specific terms, is rebranding the various PONTIFICAL COUNCILS and CONGREGATIONS to DICASTERIES. The practical effect of this is minor but it's helpful to recognize these terms as referring to high level Curial departments–often but not always headed by Cardinals, indeed Pope Francis has structured things so there is no longer any official bar to Dicasteries headed by, say, a woman, though that hasn't actually happened yet. In any event, the heads of Dicasteries or Congregations or Pontifical Councils or whatever you want to call them are called PREFECTS, with the second in command being listed as SECRETARIES, and then things like UNDERSECRETARIES appearing further down the chain of command but still fairly high on the overall curial org chart.
The CARDINALS I mentioned there are a special role connected to the Diocese of Rome. As a group they are called the COLLEGE OF CARDINALS, in much the same way that the bishops throughout the world collectively make up the COLLEGE OF BISHOPS. Most famously, it is the eligible Cardinals under the age of 80 who pick the next pope in a closed voting contest called a CONCLAVE during a Papal Sede Vacante, in a period of “vacant see”, you know, “empty chair”. Meetings of Cardinals more broadly speaking are called CONSISTORIES, because yeah, pretty much everything has a special term here, that's why you're listening to this episode. The office of Cardinal has historical connections to the clergy of Rome but it is not by definition an ordained role, meaning there could conceivably be women as Cardinals in the future as I discussed in my September 28th episode this year.
There are three fundamental orders of Cardinals, the names of which are rooted in the origins of the college but which are no longer tied to their respective levels of Holy Orders in any particular way as all modern Cardinals are at least priests and most are bishops. Nevertheless, Cardinals are Categorized as either CARDINAL-BISHOPS, the highest level, or CARDINAL-PRIESTS, in the middle, or CARDINAL DEACONS, the lowest category, though really if you're a Cardinal even at the lowest level you're still pretty high up in the Church's pecking order.
Special roles within the College of Cardinals include the PROTOPRIEST and the PROTODEACON, the longest serving of those respective orders. Historically, it was the Protodeacon's job to crown the Pope, though Popes haven't opted for crowns in decades. It's also the job of the most senior cardinal deacon participating in the Conclave to announce the new Pope through what's called the HABEMUS PAPAM, Latin for "we have a Pope". A specific name for a specific speech.
Speaking of Conclaves and Papal Sede Vacantes and such, the CAMERLENGO OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH is the one who runs the show when there's no Pope around, assisted, of course, by a VICE CAMERLENGO. And to give you an idea of *just* *how* *wonky* the Curia can be, though the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church is generally a Cardinal, he should not be confused with the CAMERLENGO OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS, a role dedicated to administering the financial affairs of the Cardinals which has, mercifully, recently been allowed to lapse.
So, yeah. There are a huge number of special roles and titles connected to the Curia. We'll be seeing them in action repeatedly as we go, but I don't want to get too hung up on them in this overview. Needless to say, Rome is a special case, full of special cases. Before we go, I do want to point out the NUNCIOS are effectively Papal Ambassadors, and the offices they head are called NUNCIATURES. A small step down the latter of diplomatic precedence there are PRO-NUNCIOS who have PRO-NUNCIATURES and who perhaps aspire to be full-on Nuncios one day–yes, oddly, in this case the "pro" prefix actually signifies as a *lower* rank.
Finally, it would be just plain wrong of me to skip the fact that there is an important role called the LIBRARIAN OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like, and which was historically also known as the BIBLIOTHECARIUS. Don't worry, we'll be following them especially closely.
Anyways, any more standard diocese, including Columbus, may not have something as deep and extensive as the Curia, but they still have their own complexities not only within but also beyond the walls of the Chancery, often being subdivided into units called DEANERIES, which are groups of parishes. These multi-parish groups are headed, as you might have guessed, by someone called a DEAN, though you might have also guessed that a more official and less intuitive name exists in canon law: a deanery can also be listed as a FORANE VICARIATE, headed by a VICAR FORANE.
There are other roles that aren't geographically based but are still critical to the functioning of the diocese, such as NOTARIES, who are permitted to draw up official documents on behalf of the local Church, and CONSULTORS, who, well, are there for the bishop to consult with on specific topics where he may need their advice.
Ok, we're getting there. Now, you might think you know what RELIGIOUS means, but in a Catholic context it has a narrower definition. Being *a* religious means you have taken RELIGIOUS VOWS, specifically THE EVANGELICAL COUNSELS of Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. Obedience, in this case, meaning obedience to a religious superior. Welcome to the world of RELIGIOUS ORDERS, which you might also know variously as RELIGIOUS INSTITUTES, INSTITUTES OF CONSECRATED LIFE, SOCIETIES OF APOSTOLIC LIFE, or even CONGREGATIONS, depending on a variety of factors and generally distinguished at a deeper level than I want to get into today. A fair amount of the variety comes from the various religious orders having their own distinct rules, called, well, RULES, and particular focuses, called CHARISMS. They also traditionally have distinct uniforms, called HABITS. You can typically recognize members of different religious orders by their habits, for example white and black robes will most often be a Dominican, brown or sometimes gray will trend to signify a Franciscan of some sort, though there are a lot more religious orders than there are basic colors so brown is also the dominant color in the unrelated Carmelite order.
Anyways, the most classic form of a religious order is a MONASTERY with the members of the order being known as MONKS in the case of males or NUNS in the case of females– and monasteries have always been segregated by gender though there were historically sometimes what was called DOUBLE MONASTERIES with male and female wings. Given everyone involved had taken a vow of chastity, such a separation was seen as a practical step.
Now, you might be surprised to hear me mentioning nuns in the context of a monastery, rather a CONVENT, a similar institution, which in contemporary English is where you'd expect to find nuns, with monasteries being reserved for monks. But I want to give you some historical understanding as well, and historically the distinction between a convent and a monastery was not one of gender but of specific type. Monasteries tended to be more rural and therefore removed from worldly concerns but could be communities of either gender, while convents tended to be more urban and therefore a bit more integrated into secular society. But that historical sense has faded sufficiently in English that you'll get weird looks if you say there are nuns in a monastery or monks in a convent. You may be technically correct, which is indeed the best kind of correct, but just be aware that the non-gendered sense of the terms is now not as common as it once was. Either way, members of religious communities are generally called BROTHER or SISTER as the default form of address unless another title supersedes.
The head of a monastery is typically called an ABBOT in the case of a male CONGREGATION or an ABBESS in the case of a female congregation- the congregation being the community itself. Second in command in the case of a larger community or perhaps in overall command of a smaller community that is itself subordinated to a mother house is a PRIOR or PRIORESS, the former for a male community and the latter for a female community. In terms of the overall building, if the person in charge is an Abbott or Abbess then it's an ABBEY, if it's run by a Prior or a Prioress it's called a PRIORY, though it's not unusual for folks to simply fall back on the simplified and gendered newer meanings of monastery and convent I described earlier. A generic term for those in charge of a religious community is a SUPERIOR, or perhaps MOTHER SUPERIOR, with the leadership of the overall global order being typically called a SUPERIOR GENERAL. There's also a middle range of governance called a PROVINCE, giving that word a similar meaning to what we saw on the Diocesan side of things.
All of these communities vary in a number of ways. Some are more removed from worldly affairs, with few to no outside visiters, those communities are called CLOISTERED. These communities go back to the origins of Christian monasticism, where an individual would often feel inspired to withdraw from the world and live a life of severe ASCETICISM, that is, renouncing pleasure and embracing prayer and PENANCE-reparations for sins-  in the hope of spiritual rewards. In the common narrative, folks would come out to such HERMITS, who might be called DESERT FATHERS or DESERT MOTHERS, and seek to follow their example, forming a community. The term for the individual ascetic who vows to follow the evangelical counsels is a hermit like I mentioned or you might also call them an ANCHORITE, and that form of monasticism is EREMITIC, from same root word as "hermit". Once you're talking about living in community, that particular form of monasticism is called CENOBITIC monasticism, combining the greek words for "common" and "life".
Not all monasticism is that degree of renunciation of the world, though certainly that form was most established in the early Church. But over time other orders with various special charisms- special focuses- emerged, with the rise of the MENDICANT orders- those that essentially live by begging- occurring in the 13th century, with the Franciscans and the Dominicans being classic examples. Male mendicants are called FRIARS. In time there would also be MISSIONARY orders such as the Jesuits or the Salesians, as you might guess those being dedicated to spreading Christianity to areas where Christianity was a minority. Members of missionary orders are simply called brothers or sisters, leaving the monk and nun labels to those living in more traditional communities.
In a number of cases the communally living religious orders have established affiliated entities designed to allow those who live outside their actual communal life to nevertheless observe some form of their rule and wear some form of their habit. These are called THIRD ORDERS, the first and second orders being by implication the monks and the nuns in their communities. Members of third orders are also called TERTIARIES. Historically similar to third orders were things like BEGUINES and their male equivalents, BEGHARDS, though those were as much defined by their lack of official status in the Church as anything else, which makes them an awkward addition to this episode. So I'll leave it at that.
Anyways, with the permission of their superior- keep in mind obedience is one of the monastic vows–the others being poverty and chastity if you need a refresher–anyway with the permission of their superior male religious are able to receive ordination and become clergy. Religious who become priests are called RELIGIOUS PRIESTS, which is fair enough as a title but does have an amusing effect in that priests who are not members of a religious order are called SECULAR PRIESTS, a term that made me laugh when I first saw it and which still makes me chuckle from time to time. They can also be called DIOCESAN PRIESTS, but what's the fun in that?
Believe it or not, this overview has left a lot out. Like, I never told you about how CATHOLICOS was originally a title for a bishop whose territory was more devoted to a region than a specific city, but that it evolved to be the highest title in the Church of the East. But that's in part because while I intend to cover all 23 SUI IURIS–that is, self governing– churches that make up the overall Catholic church, nevertheless the ROMAN or LATIN CHURCH is the dominant stream of Catholic history, making up over 98% of Catholics today.
In case I haven't made it clear enough yet, let me emphasize again that this stuff does get complicated and you don't need to feel bad about not knowing it all offhand. I've thought about this stuff for hours daily and I don't meet that bar, this episode required research like every other. But I hope this guide helps bring some clarity and can serve as a useful reference as you go. If I didn't explain it here, and possibly even if I did, I promise I'll explain it when it comes up as we go. Thank you for listening, God bless you all!

Blessings, ֎, Calendars and Christmas

LINKSDeclaration “Fiducia Supplicans” on the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2023/12/18/231218b.html 
Vatican News write-up on Calendar Change For UGCC
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2023-02/ukrainian-greek-catholics-to-celebrate-christmas-on-december-25.html
"CardiNEWS" Background music by David Fesliyan. www.fesliyanstudios.com
Tsar Power:
https://tsarpowerpod.weebly.com/
The History of Saqartvelo Georgia:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-history-of-saqartvelo-georgia/id1567806651 
TRANSCRIPT
Hello everyone,
First, some CardiNEWS! A few days ago, Cardinal Fernández, who, I should note, already made it into the next round of Cardinal Numbers so he's just running up his score at this point, issued a high level document in his capacity as the head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith–aka the Vatican’s Head Theology Guy–that explicitly allows for the informal blessing of homosexual couples with certain conditions.
The document was at pains to stress that it does not represent a change in church teaching. I'll defer to the theologians on that, but in the end I've seen takeaways ranging from “this is definitely a change in church teaching” in an excited tone from the more liberally inclined both inside and outside the Church and the same takeaway in a despairing tone from those more conservatively inclined. Then there are those who say “this is definitely NOT a change in Church teaching”, a take that comes mainly from more centrist folks and but also from the hard left who think allowing informal blessings of gay couples while being at pains to distinguish them from marriage isn't even close to the kind of change they want to see.
Basically, whether you think this document represents Pope Francis changing doctrine seems to boil down to whether you were already expecting Pope Francis to change doctrine. Folks seem to be seeing what they expected to see. For my part, I was actually genuinely surprised, mainly because there had been none of the usual rumors preceding the release of the document. Usually you get more smoke before the fire.
In the end, I am perfectly willing to say that blessings are good, get them if you can and are inclined to seek them. They're more readily available now than they were last week.
The second topic tonight is something I meant to cover in my what to expect update but, well, forgot. I've started labeling my Cardinal Numbers posts with a special symbol, and I do mean special. Roberto from Tsar Power help me out *** thanks Roberto who is also from The History of Saqartvelo Georgia. So yes, the Arevakhach (֎) is an Armenian symbol symbolizing eternity, used in contexts from the Christian to the Neo-Pagan to the secular, always tied to Armenia, so it's kind of a national symbol for them.
I admit I'm borrowing it for pretty much entirely unrelated purposes, namely that it's a distinctive looking symbol that also works in UNICODE and should therefore be able to render properly for ya'll pretty much regardless of device, plus outside Armenia it doesn't really have an established meaning that might confuse folks, so all in all those things add up to make it a useful symbol to use to make my Cardinals episodes stand out from the rest at a quick glance. So, with thanks to Armenian culture and my Armenian and quasi-Armenian contacts who assured me it would not be offensive to use the Arevakhach for that purpose as long as I took a moment to explain its place in Armenian culture and as a national symbol, I'll be using it to flag Cardinal Numbers content moving forward, starting with, well, starting with the back catalog stuff I've already started flagging, but then after that starting with the next batch of 12 cardinals which I am hoping but not guaranteeing will begin releasing tomorrow, as I present to you the 12 Cardinals of Christmas!
Oh, and mentioning Christmas brings me to one other milestone I wanted to note. One consequence of Putin's invasion of Ukraine is the fact that the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has decided to partially adopt the Gregorian Calendar, 441 years after its introduction under Pope Gregory XIII. Orthodox Churches under the Moscow Patriarchate are among the few institutions still using the Julian Calendar, which Pope Gregory revised to reflect solar reality as Easter had begun to drift out of its springtime home. The move is not complete, as the present adoption of the new calendar actually doesn't apply to the dating of Easter in this case, but there is hope that the dating of Easter will be resolved a couple years from now, in 2025, for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, the first great council of the Christian Church. I'm not going to hold my breath on the Easter controversy being fully resolved in my lifetime since it's one of the longest-running points of contention in the history of Christianity, but for now if you know any Ukrainian Greek Catholics, be sure to welcome them to Christmas in the Gregorian Calendar. З Різдвом (Христовим), or, Merry Christmas!