Benedict’s vintage vesture has been a topic of much blog-babble and tongue-wagging. No, not just the Prada shoes (knockoffs, actually). Vestments of greater import, including the news that the pope has commissioned a set of 30 new vestments modeled on those worn by the notorious Medici pope, Leo X, a corpulent, corrupt fellow who at his election famously declared, “Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us.”
What’s going on here? In today’s Star-Ledger (that’s Tony Soprano’s paper of choice, for those trying to orient themselves), I make my own contribution to the hubbub, hopefully with a reasonably-argued connection to the pope’s larger theme of changing our notions of change in a church that cannot change. Feedback welcome.