Confusion Concerning The Title of "cardinal"
It is perhaps commonplace to think that the title of "cardinal" is the next order after "bishop" to which a man may be ordained, as "bishop" comes after "priest" and "priest" after "deacon". In fact, however, the position of cardinal is not an order to which one can be ordained, but simply a honorific office in the Church.
The original "cardinals" in the first Christian centuries were friends and counsellors of the Bishop of Rome. Some were ordained deacons or priests and some were not. In those days of persecution these men took on the duty of standing at the door of the house where the agapē feast, as the Mass was then called, was being celebrated. They admitted or rejected people hoping to attend the Sacred Liturgy. They also kept watch for soldiers or informers who might interrupt the gathering. Since the word for "hinge" in Latin is cardo they became known as 'hingemen" - cardinals. Soon many bishops called their advisors "cardinals" but, in time, the Pope decreed that only the advisors of the Bishop of Rome could be known by the title "cardinal".
Read more about this topic: Lay Cardinal
Famous quotes containing the words confusion, title and/or cardinal:
“The mystic purchases a moment of exhilaration with a lifetime of confusion; and the confusion is infectious and destructive. It is confusing and destructive to try and explain anything in terms of anything else, poetry in terms of psychology.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“There is no luck in literary reputation. They who make up the final verdict upon every book are not the partial and noisy readers of the hour when it appears; but a court as of angels, a public not to be bribed, not to be entreated, and not to be overawed, decides upon every man’s title to fame. Only those books come down which deserve to last.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The Cardinal is at his wit’s end—it is true that he had not far to go.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)