Figs and dates, the news, and Msgr. Burrill
The Tuesday Pillar Post
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Hey everybody,
Blessed Holy Week.
Today is called in some Christian traditions “Fig Tuesday,” because it recalls that after Palm Sunday, when he was hungry, Jesus cursed a figless fig tree, withered it down to the roots, and then talked with St. Pater and other apostles about it.
He cursed the fig tree on Monday, as it happens, but he taught the lesson about it on Tuesday, at least according to St. Mark.
It’s a kind of a weird story: Jesus is hungry, sees a fig tree, observes that it has no figs, and then tells the tree: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.”
The next day the tree was withered to the roots, and when the apostles see that, Jesus talks with them about faith — “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”
“Whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”
Most surprising about the story is that the Gospel specifies that it wasn’t the season for figs.
In other words, the fig tree just did what fig trees do — bear fruit in season, and not bear fruit otherwise — and Jesus turned it into a withered stump.
Why?
Well, according to some scripture scholars, Jesus is using the fig tree to evoke Jeremiah 8 — mostly to convey, along with the cleansing of the temple account notched between the two ends of the fig story, that the temple will be destroyed, and that Israel itself is not bearing fruit, and at the same time, that God is doing something new to bear fruit into the world. He starts teaching about faith, right there in the presence of the withered tree, to convey that God is doing a new thing, through him, beyond his covenant with Israel, and to satisfy the desire of the hungry.
Fig Tuesday is the promise of what’s coming — Jesus’ own passion and resurrection. It’s the promise of salvation available to each of us, everywhere, in every nation and time.
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I was talking with my kids about Holy Week this morning, and of course, they’re most interested in the day they call “Monday-Thursday,” but they were also intrigued by the idea that we could have figs at dinner tonight, since it’s Fig Tuesday and all.
They’ve tried figs before, and they don’t like them. This morning, my son Daniel insisted that he did, no matter what I told him.
So we looked at pictures of figs, and then he remembered that yes, he doesn’t like ‘em.
What he thought were figs are actually dates, which he does like. Everybody likes those; dates are fantastic.
And since Jesus himself didn’t actually get any figs on Fig Monday, or Fig Tuesday, maybe the Lord ate dates instead. So that’s what we’ll have tonight.
It’ll be date dinner for Fig Tuesday.
But here’s the really important Fig Tuesday reminder from the Lord, as we get ready for the Triduum:
“Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
That’s a tall order. But our salvation depends on it.
Before the news, let me remind you that Ed and I are going to Rome for a pilgrimage in December, during the Jubilee Year. We want you to come with us. We’ll be on pilgrimage for a week, we’ll visit cardinatial churches together, sacred and beautiful sites, and we’ll eat, drink, and talk together.
(We’ll eat and drink at good places, because Ed and I are insisting on input on the restaurants.)
We’ll pray together.
We’ll walk through the Jubilee doors together, and receive a plenary indulgence.
The pilgrimage will be small, because we want it to be an experience of friendship among us all. But — whoever you are — if you’re a Pillar reader in a good way, we want you to come with. Pillar friends of all ages and states of life are welcome.
And I firmly believe that it could be a historic time to be in Rome. I’m reminding you, because the pilgrimage could be a fun present for the Easter Bunny to drop into a Pillar reader’s basket. So you should sign up. Really.
The news
The Vatican announced on Monday that Antoni Gaudí, the famed Spanish architect who built Sagrada Familía basilica — is now declared a “venerable,” and can be beatified with a miracle attributed to his intercession.
At this stage of the process, in other words, an investigation into his life demonstrates holiness and probity of life, and the next steps toward canonization are in the hands of Providence.
As it happens, The Pillar published on Friday, just a few days earlier, a profile of Gaudí, from English journalist Fionn Shiner, which recounts the power of the architect’s deep conversion coming through his work on Barcelona’s extraordinary basilica.
Gaudí was moved to Christ by his work, becoming an ascetic, and spending his free time designing schools for poor neighborhoods.
When he died — hit by a streetcar — he was dressed so simply that he was taken to be a pauper. Soon, he could be a “blessed.”
For most Filipinos, the elections merely pit against each other the Philippines’ most dominant political families in recent years — the Marcoses under President Marcos Jr. and the Dutertes under the still popular former President Rodrigo Duterte.
But for practicing Filipino Catholics and other critics of the Filipino democratic experiment, there are no quick ways to determine which candidates to choose.
And the country’s bishops are aiming to find their own voice in the process.
Read all about that, with analysis from Jason Baguia.
Why? What’s happening? What does this mean for Christians in India?
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In The Pillar’s columns section, theologian Larry Chapp breaks down what happens after an ecumenical council — and what that should tell us about Vatican Council II.
This is a column worth reading.
But with a gigantic set of lawsuits pending in the Archdiocese of New York, it could be a while before Dolan’s resignation is accepted. And when he does go, who will influence the choice of his replacement: the cardinal himself, or the American cardinals most influential at the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops? That question could significantly impact who gets the nod.
There’s analysis here from me, and a lot of discussion going on the comments. Check it out.
Part of the goal seemed to be addressing issues which seem to have arisen in other parts of the world — priests accepting Mass stipends, but including the stated intention only as a prayer intention, not the formal Mass intention; priests aggregating numerous intentions into the same Mass "indiscriminately;" and priests keeping more than one Mass stipend per day.
To canonists and clerics, these make sense as issues to address. But a lot of readers likely have questions about what Mass stipends are in the first place.
And when you have questions, we have answers.
Here’s a Pillar Explainer, just for you.
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Bishop Oscar Zanchetta was in 2022 convicted of abusing seminarians, and sentenced to a four- and-a-half year prison sentence, which after four months was commuted to house arrest.
Last November, Zanchetta was permitted by a court to go to Rome for a few months to receive medical treatment, which apparently couldn’t be obtained in Argentina. After getting court approval for an extension on his stay, Zanchetta was supposed to be back in Argentina by April 1.
But it’s April 15, and it’s not clear that Zanchetta has actually returned home.
And given his long-standing relationship with Pope Francis — the pontiff created a job in the Vatican for Zanchetta after he had to resign his diocese over grave allegations — the entire case continues to raise serious questions.
‘Upward trajectory’
In 2021, Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill resigned his position as general secretary of the USCCB, and then found himself at the center of a global media firestorm, after reporting from The Pillar revealed that the priest had been using Grindr, a location-based hookup app, on his phone for several years, and that days after the Theodore McCarrick scandal broke in 2018, Burrill traveled to Las Vegas to spend time at a place which bills itself as a “gay bathhouse,” with the motto: “where the hot guys go.”
The Pillar’s reporting flagged concern that a top-ranking USCCB official — essentially the highest ranking U.S. cleric who is not a bishop — would be living a double life in proximity to sexual immorality, especially given the USCCB’s role in a coordinating a response to a serious sexual abuse and cover-up scandal which was (and is) absolutely roiling the Church.
The Pillar’s reporting also flagged the issue that given the hookup app’s connections to Beijing companies, and the federal government’s stated concerns about data security, the app posed a security problem for both the USCCB and the Holy See, where the app has also been used extensively in secure areas.
Burrill was out of ministry for a little less than a year, on a period of “extended leave,” his bishop said, before he was appointed a parish administrator in Wisconsin, and then a few months later named pastor.
His bishop said in June 2022 that all was well with the Burrill appointment: that the priest had “engaged in a sincere and prayerful effort to strengthen his priestly vows,” and that the bishop himself “every confidence in returning Monsignor Burrill to active ministry and in his ability to accompany the people of God of this great parish as together you journey toward a deeper, more meaningful relationship with the Person of Jesus Christ.”
For himself, Burrill did not publicly express contrition for the appearance of living a double life, nor did he defend himself.
And in many ecclesiastical and secular conversations, the issues flagged with Burrill became a referendum on the morality of The Pillar’s reporting, not on the morality, prudence, or safety of a man with an apparent pattern of serially secret behavior acting in a position of serious responsibility, let alone on the impact for the Church’s prophetic witness of the situation itself.
Indeed — and I think I’ve written about this before — in the months after the Burrill reporting, there were calls from bishops to see The Pillar disaccredited at the USCCB, and I was told directly by a prelate that if Burrill had engaged in any kind of self-harm, I’d be responsible, and I’d have to account for that at my judgment.
I disagreed with that assessment.
But now, almost four years later, it’s Burrill himself who’s shed more light on the situation of his Grindr usage.
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