The American Game of Thrones

The American Game of Thrones June 2, 2012

The other day I mentioned the “thrones” of the U.S. Catholic bishops. That was not a figure of speech.

They have cathedra — big fancy chairs that serve as the thrones of bishops. What are these thrones for? Well, they’re only symbols, some might say. But all thrones are only symbols. They are symbols that the people who sit on them believe that they reign over others.

The picture here to the right makes me feel fiercely Baptist. This is a picture of an American throne. This particular American throne is in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.

Yes — there is a throne in New York City.

This particular throne, in a photo by the New York Post’s Robert Miller, is being redecorated for Archbishop Timothy Dolan.

Set aside all the arguments about church polity and all the dubious theological implications of a “Christian” throne, of a throne decorated with its opposite symbol, the cross. This post isn’t about ecclesiology or Constantinian blasphemies. This post is about democracy.

There should be no such thing as an American throne. Yet here is a picture of one. An actual throne. In America.

In New York City, of all places.  Less than 5 miles uptown from Fraunces Tavern there’s a throne.

I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that. I look at the picture and see this icon of the Old World in a place where it just doesn’t belong. It’s like those photos of London Bridge in Lake Havasu, Arizona.

Sure, I realize there are plenty of throne-like things here in America. We do theater. We make movies. We have Renaissance Faires and medieval-themed restaurants.

But this picture is of a throne that is sat on by a man who actually imagines it to be a throne with all the throney throne-ness that entails.

A throne. In America. In New York City.

And about the man who reigns from the particular throne in that picture: “Cardinal Authorized Paying Abusers.”

The big news there isn’t that Cardinal Timothy Dolan approved payments to abusive priests to get them quickly and quietly defrocked. The big news there is that the cardinal/archbishop/prince of the church lied about it at the time. He lied about it enthusiastically and theatrically:

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.

Questioned at the time about the news that one particularly notorious pedophile cleric had been given a “payoff” to leave the priesthood, Cardinal Dolan, then the archbishop, responded that such an inference was “false, preposterous and unjust.”

As Charlie Pierce says, what Dolan called “false, preposterous and unjust” was “Also, apparently, true.”

The cardinal lied. Is this shocking?

No, it is not. As William K. Wolfrum says, “It just happens. And we all accept it.”

This is what comes from having thrones.

Now I try hard not to become hysterical
But I’m not sure if I am laughing or crying …


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