Marco Tosatti uses the word bestiary here not in its literal sense as a compendium on beasts or animals, but in its literary sense as a collection
of moralizing tales…
New tales in the Clerical Bestiary
Translated from
November 5, 2017
Here is another installment of my Clerical Bestiary. So many things have happened in recent days, so here is a bouquet of news and opinions.
THE ROSARY OF BRUSSELS
I cannot begin this Bestiary without first mentioning the group of courageous young people who went to pray the rosary in the cathedral of Brussels, while Cardinal De Kesel, the pupil of that 'image of the Church' which is Cardinal Danneels, friend, adviser and Grand Elector of Pope Francis, celebrated the 500th anniversary of Luther’s schism with the Protestants. Never mind that this event was one of the gravest and bloodiest of wounds ever inflicted on the Church.
As we know, the Rosary ‘annoys’
[as it did even the pope, it seems, who said not a word about the great ‘Rosary at the borders’ initiative carried out by hundreds of thousands of Poles to mark the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, commemorating the great Christian victory of Lepanto against the Turkish Muslims, resumably because one of the reasons was to pray against the Islamization of Europe. And you still think this pope is not anti-
Catholic???]… and in Brussels, they called in the police to take away the Rosary-praying group from the church.
If you have not yet seen it, here is the video:
twitter.com/kattolikamente/status/924995333767290886?s=03
THE EXILE OF FR SAMIR KHALIL SAMIR
A tale of two Jesuits. The first is probably one of the greatest Christian experts on Islam, the other is pope. When the latter said that
the Koran and the Gospel both inherently contain the idea of conquest [in order to spread their respective faiths], the first one corrected him and said:
“No. That is an inexact interpretation. The difference is this, in short: the Gospel proposes, Islam imposes with force – and that is not a small difference”.
He added: “
To give false information is not Christian. Some statements are made by those who obviously have not understood the Gospel or do not know the Koran well, or do not have good advisers. To speak about Islam, one must be serious and have special competence. And an interview is not the place to speak about it”.
Well, now, the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome has told Fr. Samir that his services are no longer needed. He has returned to his native Cairo. In a few months, he will turn 80. His CV is impressive:
- In Beirut, he gave life to the research institute known as CEDRAC (Centre de Documentation et de Recherches Arabes Chrétiennes) (Center for Arab-Christian Documentation and Research) to assemble the Arab-Christian literary heritage of the Near East.
- He has taught at the Centre Sevres, a Jesuit faculty of theology and philosophy in Paris, and at the Maqasid Institute of Beirut.
- He taught for 12 years at the PISAI (Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies) in Rome, for 5 years at the Istituto Ecumenico of Bari, for 3 years at the Universita Cattolica of Milan, as well as the University of Turin,, and in various other Italian universities as visiting professor.
But when he proposed the course program for the coming academic year at the Pontifical Oriental Institute, he was told someone had already done it, making it clear that, for whatever reason, they no longer had any use for him. So he has decided to dedicate himself to projects he has been planning for some time but which he always had to postpone because of more urgent matters.
Perhaps his clarity and realism about Islam ‘annoyed’ some in the Church? Perhaps. Let us not forget that the Pontifical Oriental Institute is run by Jesuits, and that the new dispensation – among the Jesuits and in the Church – does not tolerate positions other than the official dominant one.
Fr Samir’s first great commitment, in his ‘retirement’, is to assemble the results of his decades of specialist work – 64 books and more than 2000 articles, written in various languages. [His primary languages are French, Arabic, Italian and English.] He wishes to put together and classify all this mass of material on Christianity in the Near East and on Islam in a series of volumes, as well as to translate them into what will be the common language of their publication.
Originally, Fr. Samir thought he would go back to Beirut, where CEDRAC has its seat in the University of St. Joseph. [The Center now possesses 35,000 volumes regarding its fields of interest.] But there have been problems in Beirut, and so, Fr. Samir, with the agreement of the Egyptian Jesuits, has chosen to make Cairo the center of his activity at this time as a scholar and a protagonist in the life of the Church.
The other area to which Fr. Samir wishes to dedicate his energies in his new life is ecumenism. Egypt has nine million Coptic Christians who have always borne witness with blood, if necessary, to their faith in Christ. Fr. Samir wishes to create a Center for Ecumenical Research, involving not just the Coptic Orthodox Church, but also the Evangelical Faculty in Cairo, and other Christian and Catholic presences in Egypt. A project which could certainly prove valuable in a new and difficult stage of inter-religious relations with an Islam that is often aggressive and intolerant.
A ‘MONK’ AND LOVE
On a lighter note, here is a reflection on love by Enzo Bianchi, the lay Prior of the Bose Community: “When you experience love, do not make mephitic distinctions between
philia (affection),
eros (love), and
agape (preference, or dilection. True love is always a raging fire”. But why mephitic? Which means foul-smelling or poisonous???
MODENA: NO DISSENT, PLEASE!
In so many years of following Church affairs and that of other religions, this came as a surprise to me. The Bishop of Modena, Erio Castelluci, has published an invitation – in black and white - to his parishes, that sounds like
a pre-emptive censure of ideas that do not conform to what is now politically correct in the Church. Truth will set you free, but perhaps not in Modena. In his weekly diocesan newspaper, he wrote
an editorial calling on his priests not to invite to their parishes certain categories of persons: “Visionaries, charismatics, journalists and intellectuals who manifest dissent, subtle or open, to the official Church and above all, to Pope Francis”.
Now I understand that visionaries, because of their claims to supernatural contacts, could fall under a bishop’s oversight responsibility; and for the same reason, but stretching it, he could include charismatics in his ban.
But to ban journalists and intellectuals ‘dissenting’ from the Bergoglian line seems to me quite a fine advertisement for that much-touted dialog within the Church! If you wish to read more, here is a link to his editorial:
www.lanuovabq.it/it/giornalisti-banditi-e-leditto-soviet-d...
THE CASE OF CARDINAL MŪLLER
Many readers and friends have been asking me exactly what Cardinal Mueller thought he was doing by writing the Foreword to a book-length collection of articles by Rocco Buttiglione seeking to justify Amoris Laetitia on the points most protested by its critics. Obviously, I do not know for sure, but I can make some hypotheses and imagine some scenarios.
First, let us try to understand what kind of person the cardnal is. He is a scholar, and I think that he is very mild and accommodating in character. He tolerated repeated humiliations without protest, or without making decisive moves that others would have done - being interrupted at Mass by a peremptory telephone call from Pope Francis; that his role, and that of his congregation, was simply ignored or dissed in this pontificate; that his loyal and competent assistants would be fired by the pope without cause, and nonetheless, he himself did not feel called upon, as others might have, to protest such injustice by submitting his resignation. So finally, he endured the final affront of being dismissed by the pope, giving contradictory explanations for his dismissal (‘no cause’, and again, ‘because the pope wants to stick to the five-year tenure for Curial officials’)
[that was the most stupid reason Mueller could have thought of since other Curial officials are on their second and even third 5-year terms even without benefit of formal reappointment – a reason so patently untrue that saves neither his face nor the pope’s.] In short, he’s no lion. Though he certainly has a very strong sense of hierarchical loyalty.
The hypotheses: It is quite evident that
his Foreword for Buttiglione is contrary to the statements that Mueller had made before this on the specific issue of Communion for unqualified remarried divorcees. I was told by an authoritative source, long before the DUBIA were made public, that Mueller had been informed of the initiative, and that he was in favor of it, maybe more than that. But shortly after he was dismissed, he then proposed himself as a mediator between those who agree with the DUBIA cardinals and the defenders of AL. Nobody took him up on that. They say he may still be working at it, and that therefore, his foreword to Buttiglione is in the nature of a sop in the direction of the parties involved.
But there are those who say that he is not resigned to no longer having any role nor that he will gradually be completely shelved. And those who look a bit farther see his current stance as a move towards the center
[you can’t be more central than straddling the fence as he has been doing – in his way, being as equivocal and ambiguous as Bergoglio habitually is] that some like Secretary of State Parolin, for example, have been doing to position themselves for the next Conclave.
STRANGE STORY IN THE SUPERPOPE’S 'SISMOGRAPH'
On October 24, IL SISMOGRAFO, a para-Vatican site directed by Luis Badilla, who is ailing and whom he wish a fast recovery, (his site is currently ‘in suspension’)
[What, it’s a one-man effort???] published an item entitled:
“Papa Francesco ‘superman’ in vendita (per opera di carità). Qualcosa di molto importante non quadra in quest’operazione” [Pope Francis ‘superman’ on sale (for charitable works). Something important does not fit in this operation]. The operation being the sale of T-shirts illustrated with the ‘SuperPope’ image created by a street artist who specializes in ‘murals’.
The item begins:
In practice, there is not a day when Pope Francis does not remind Christians, the people of God, of the pitfalls from ‘the god, money’, his snares and their consequences. More than once, he has referred to the hypocrisy of wishing to accumulate money using the pretext that it is for ’good works’.
But these days, authoritative sources have reported that a T-shirt illustrating Francis as ‘Pope Superman’ will be sold (or is already being sold) in order to generate funds for charitable works. We have been waiting some time for the report to be denied but in vain. Instead, more people are not just confirming but also supporting and justifying the operation, even if the pope himself, some time ago, had harshly criticized the ‘mythology’ of a superman. It must be recalled that besides the T-shirt sale, there has been news in the past few weeks, also corroborated by inside sources, that other artistic-cutural operations are in the works with the same questionable purpose.
Now, since it is almost for certain that the new Secretariat for Communications, with its Prefect, Mons. Dario Vigano, would be involved in this (these) operati0n(s), one must ask whether the Sismografo item was a form of protest against the new communications management in the Holy See.
[I think we shall be seeing more rentals of the Sistine Chapel to rich multinationals (and even individuals) for vanity events, and has the Vatican now widened the jurisdiction of ‘Communications’ to include ‘Marketing’ as well? How secular, truly, has the Bergoglio Vatican become! But, of course, it only reflects the primarily and mainly secular focus of this pope and the faith (Bergoglianism) he is busy building and promoting on the back of Catholicism.]
EUROPEAN BISHOPS, MIGRANTS, IUS SOLI
“In the face of the great challenges of climate change, of the problems of eomployment and the migratory influxes, the perspective of the Church is not that of ‘populist currents turning backwards”, Cardinal Reinhard Marx said, in presenting to the Vatican ‘foreign minister’ Paul Richard Gallagher the program for “(Re)Thinking Europe”, a two-day meeting at the Vatican between politicians and bishops from all over the European Union to ‘re-think’ Europe at a time of crisis.
So: climate change, unemployment problems, migratory influxes? An absolutely spiritual agenda for the succesors of the Apostles today!
There are those who could say, and who do say, that perhaps the problem of Europe is that it is merrily reverting to paganism, or becoming other things
[becoming Muslim, surely!] – but are the bishops worried about this at all? We have seen that the secretary for Religious Affairs of Italy’s Partita Democrata (read CEI), Mons. Nunzio Galantino (a Bergoglio surrogate), launched another endorsement for
‘ius soli’ [Italians are considering to change their citizenship law from ius sanguinis (based on blood) to ius soli (based on where you are born) such that children born to foreign parents in Italy would automatically be Italian citizens, and extending the concept farther to ius culturae, in which foreign children can become citiens after five years of schooling in Italy. This is all, of course, for the benefit of the migrants who have been flooding Italy in recent years, and if this becomes law, native Italian citizens may soon find themselves outnumbered in their own land], and that the pontiff [who is in favor of ius soli] has returned to speaking about migrants.
[Has he ever stopped? He mentions them far more than he ever mentions persecuted Christians!] But are any of them really thinking about Europe itself, Italy, and the faithful therein (though increasingly less)?
CARDINAL NICHOLS AND THE HUGGING POPE
Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Westminster (London), said to the BBC: “There is no doubt there are tensions in the Catholic Church, but
one of her great strengths is that we have a pope who can say Yes or No, and then, give you a hug”. Hug? Maybe he meant a bear’s hug!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/11/2017 20:35]