EDITORIAL Church with room for these knights must have room for nearly
everyone
Knights may seem unlikely movers and shakers in a church whose
founder advised his followers to put the sword aside. In a pontificate marked
by a wide-ranging debate about multiculturalism, this weeks cover story
(page 3) raises questions about the curious culture of the Knights of Malta.
And in a defiantly monolithic institution, which rigorously insists on naming
who is and isnt Catholic, the knights, to say the least, deserve the same
scrutiny as, for example, liberation theologians and the idea of women
priests.
In light of the knights cozy relationship with the Holy See,
it might be useful to make this a teaching moment.
No longer bloody warriors as in days of old, the Knights of Malta,
who keep a notoriously low profile, are now best known for their individual
wealth, works of charity and perhaps for their elaborate garb. But their
history, though shrouded in myth, casts in bold relief the muscular
Christianity that assumed worldly rather than spiritual ascendancy after the
church emerged from the Dark Ages.
When the Turks, late in the 11th century, captured the Holy Land,
Pope Urban II instigated what became the First Crusade. Faith was at that time
a lively force in society, so Europe answered with fierce enthusiasm. But it
soon became clear that the most effective fighters against the so-called Moslem
hordes would be the knights, those who could afford a good horse, a coat of
mail and a stout sword. Fighters in need of a cause, Urban supplied them with a
religious mission and the ideal of chivalry was born.
The crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099. They found there the
Hospital of St. John, run by one Br. Gerard, whose work impressed them greatly.
So, in addition to fighting and praying, many knights decided they would look
after the sick and the pilgrim. Everyone concerned seized the moment.
Writes H.J.A. Sire in The Knights of Malta (Yale University
Press, 1994), The resourceful Gerard was busy with vast schemes, not
merely sheltering the pilgrim ... but setting up a great network of spiritual
travel. He became a glorified travel agent. Soon he had seven hospices
around Europe. Out of this venture the Hospitallers, forebears of the Knights
of Malta, were born.
Dipping into history at this point merely shows how one thing
leads to another. War as a religious service had now been established amid the
vast euphoria of knights returning from the crusades with mixed tales of
devotion and heroism. This led to the founding of religious orders devoted to
fighting.
The three greatest military orders were the Templars, the
Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights. But the ideal of holy soldiers quickly
swept across the Christian World. Archbishop H.E. Cardinales Orders of
Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See (Van Duren, 1983) lists dozens of such
religious orders, including five that were pontifical, an
indication the church at the highest level once strongly recommended violence
so long as it was for a good cause.
Perhaps the fiercest champion of chivalry was the Cistercian St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who wrote: Rejoice, brave warrior, if you live and
conquer in the Lord, but rejoice still more and give thanks if you die and go
to join the Lord.
By todays standards this fighting and praying were an odd
combination and a hint that even in such timeless institutions as the church,
the culture does change. Earlier popes had declared that warriors pure in heart
who died fighting for the church would go to heaven: a sentiment similar to
todays Islamic suicide bombers whose leaders promise them paradise.
Thousands freely gave their lives. And the old soldiers who
didnt die didnt fade away either. Writes Sire: Only when a
knights soldierly vigor was declining would he be sent to a priory or
Grand Commandery in Europe where his task was to gather and pass on the
revenues that kept his brethren in the field.
One crusade followed another, amid great slaughter. The knights
acquired immense power, which for the most part they placed at the service of
the pope. They also acquired wealth, which for the most part they kept for
themselves. Ancient Christendom is littered with fabulous fortresses,
monasteries and similar relics of the heyday of chivalry.
Writes Desmond Seward in The Monks of War (Penguin, 1972):
These military orders were almost a church within a church. When
the patriarch of Jerusalem tried to bring them to heel, the hospitallers
interrupted his sermons and shot arrows at his congregation.
As their immensely convoluted history ebbed and flowed, the
knights, variously known as the Order of the Hospital and the Order of St.
John, found themselves, in the 16th century, in possession of Malta and
eventually were called the Knights of Malta.
Since 1206, writes Sire, the order had been divided into three
classes: knights, chaplains and sergeants at arms. But the more successful they
became, the more they were beset by the problem of the rich young man who came
to Jesus. Although they took vows, each knight had his own set of rooms and was
waited on by a servant. Life became a tug between personal austerity and public
splendor. The knights always had a marked hankering for pomp and circumstance,
with a particular weakness for nobility.
Since the mid-14th century, a knight had to have nobility on both
fathers and mothers side, and a century later this had to extend
back four generations, called four quarters of nobility. Writes
Sire: The Knights applied to the breeding of valiant warriors the same
principles as to the breeding of a good hunting hound or warhorse.
This at times assumed titanic proportions. By the middle of the
17th century the Germans were insisting on territorial nobility, as much as 16
quarters of it, in order to squeeze out the urban and academic
patricians -- or gentry -- who had begun to slip into the organization by the
back door.
But history rolled relentlessly over the old ideals and practices
of chivalry. While most military orders fell by the wayside, the Knights of
Malta, though frequently buffeted by modern times, survived. In 1798 the order
was forced to give up the island of Malta.
The members retired to Rome and set up international headquarters
there. They fought fiercely to retain their sovereign status. The leaders
consider their Rome palazzo a sovereign state and exchange ambassadors with
approximately 60 countries. Writes Seward, another of the reasons for
their survival also explains why they have acquired so many enemies: the fact
that they provide the last defendable bastions of hereditary nobility. They
alone preserve the mystique of rank and birth in a world which finds
aristocracy not merely alien but incomprehensible. For the military orders are
the final refuge of the ancien régime.
The paradox of these nobles flourishing in a church founded by the
homeless Jesus, a church whose primary mission has always been identified with
the poor, must frequently have made Rome uncomfortable. The books cited here,
all positive accounts, offer page after page of this centurys crowned
heads and minor aristocrats receiving one or another of the myriad honors the
knights love to bestow. But as nobles dwindle in number, the knights have begun
to settle for ordinary heads of state.
The New World presented a new challenge. The American Association
of the Order of Malta was founded in 1926. New Yorks Cardinal Francis
Spellman used the knights to maximum advantage. Spellmans rather worldly
approach to religion made them natural allies. On becoming archbishop of New
York, he had himself named grand protector of the American
Association. In this way he placed himself ahead of all Catholic crowned heads
who historically were merely called protectors. Throughout much of
the reign of Pope Pius XII a fierce battle raged to determine who or what the
knights would be and who would control them. It is not always edifying reading,
though perhaps a worthy echo of the rambunctious knights of previous
centuries.
The order has cultivated a more sedate image late in the century.
In America, as Seward writes, it consists almost entirely ... of Knights
of Magisterial Grace [one of a wide variety of subgroups], who are not asked
for proofs of nobility. Mainly of Irish-American descent, they are frequently
men of great wealth and influence.
The U.S. knights have given a great deal of money to the church,
which in turn rewards them with Old World honors. Their charities are
traditional: hospitals and pilgrimages. But, despite some high-profile
hospitals and such well-publicized charities as AmeriCares, it must be said
that the orders charitable legacy does not begin to compare with the
heritage of devoted lives, institutions and sacrifices of dozens of humbler
orders of nuns, brothers and priests in recent centuries.
Sires account of todays pilgrim knights puts the
orders current relevance in perspective: The [annual] Lourdes
pilgrimage is the principal meeting of the most aristocratic association in the
world, and it would be impossible to imagine greater simplicity. Chivalry is
apparent in the custom which fits out the ladies in a beautiful red and white
nurses uniform, with the eight-pointed cross resplendent on a black cape;
the uniform of the knights, by contrast, is a sort of superior boiler suit,
that of the senior dignitaries distinguished, if at all, only by its hoary
antiquity.
Whether viewed as romantic or sinister, there ought to be room for
the Knights of Malta in a multicultural church. But a church that has room for
their often silly shenanigans ought to have space for wider religious
expression than this pontiff is prepared to tolerate. Sincere though the
knights may be, its not likely they represent where the church is headed.
National Catholic Reporter, November 14,
1997
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