Having been away from the Forum for a couple of days, I am reserving the space for all the subsequent developments on what is now called Lettergate. In which with great relief, I find that the blatantly
hamhanded manipulation by Mons. Vigano to misuse Benedict XVI's letter, and the Emeritus Pope himself - in effect, making propaganda out of what truly meets the definition of fake news - has rightly
become the focus of the outrage.
Fr Hunwicke's commentary on March 15 appears to be a good and terse appropriate general overview so far of Lettergate:
Don't miss ...
... the story all over the internet about how PF's spin-doctors gave the waiting world a deliberately mutilated and falsified letter of Benedict XVI. Just don't miss it!
This episode provides a hilarious, immensely funny insight into the minds of the dodgy operators who surround PF, and how far they are prepared to go to manufacture their Fake News. You couldn't .... as we say .... make it up!
It epitomises the superbly corrupt and [in]deliciously sleazy atmosphere of the Renaissance Court which sprawls at the luxurious top of the Casa Santa Marta.
Happily, the full text did emerge. GOTCHA! And it provides agreeable evidence that Ratzinger's old, deft, feline wit has not deserted the dear old man. Briefly summarised by me, his Letter says (and I've put into square brackets the section the spin-doctors didn't want you to see):
"Thank you for inviting me to write a page about the little books you sent me. I think they are splendid little books about my splendid successor. [Sadly, however, I haven't read them and I don't intend to do so. And I never comment on books I haven't read, so I won't be sending you a page.]"
This pontificate simply gets better and better! Keep engaged and make sure you never miss a laugh!
[Seeing as the current Laugh, however cathartic, is nonetheless at the expense of 'the dear old man', the basic appropriate reaction is still OUTRAGE, in keeping with the basic general reaction to this entire pontificate.]
But who even suspected there is even more to that letter than we thought there was? Reuters reports the update briefly:
Vatican 'Lettergate' scandal comes
to a head with the full text released
by Philip Pullella
REUTERS
VATICAN CITY, March 17, 2018 (Reuters) - The Vatican “Lettergate” scandal came to a head on Saturday when the Holy See, under pressure from the media and conservatives, released a full text by former Pope Benedict that before was cited only selectively.
The Vatican Secretariat for Communication, which had come under sharp criticism all week for blurring part of a photograph of the letter and for withholding another section, said in a statement there had been “no intent of censorship”.
It said the letter,
written for the presentation of a Vatican-published 11-booklet series on the theology of Pope Francis, was private and therefore officials had cited only the “opportune and relative” parts.
[Having been written as a private letter, there is no justification whatsoever for Vigano's decision to read any of it in public, no matter how 'opportune a relevant', without the Emeritus Pope's consent - and I doubt anyone bothered to ask him. Even worse, Pullella makes the terrible mistake of claiming that the letter was written for the presentation blah-blah-blah - when it was written more than a month before the presentation and intended precisely for the emeritus to politely decline to write anything about the 'little books' sent to him to review, in effect. Someone somewhere took the bother to list the names of the 11 little-known persons who authored each of the 11 'little books' on Bergoglian theology, with the observation that it was an insult for Vigano to even ask Benedict XVI - indisputably the greatest living contemporary Catholic theologian - to review the work of such 'inferior' theologians! What does it say about the Bergoglio Vatican and Bergoglio's theology, whatever it might be, that it can only get third-rate theologians to write about that theology! They should never have attempted the project to begin with. They only ended up, so to speak, by putting clown's rags on the naked pope!]
But the episode, which has cast a shadow over the Vatican for a week, has proven to be a public relations fiasco, particularly for its communications chief, Monsignor Dario Vigano.
At the book presentation on Monday, Vigano read out the parts of the letter in which Benedict [seemingly] rejects the “stupid prejudice” of those who say Francis’ theology is lacking.
Benedict also [seemed to] dispute suggestions that Francis’s academic qualities were lacking, praising his successor as a “man of deep philosophical and theological formation” and finding an “interior continuity between the two pontificates”.
But a press release handed out at the event omitted a paragraph in which Benedict apologized for not having had the time to read all 11 volumes and thus declining a request to write a “short and dense theological” introduction for the series.
The final paragraph, released for the first time on Saturday, went further, showing that Benedict was irritated by the fact German theologian Peter Hunermann had been chosen by the Vatican publishing house LEV to write one of the volumes.
Hunermann, Benedict noted had “led anti-papal initiatives” during Benedict’s 2005-2013 papacy and had also attacked some of the writings of Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005.
“I am certain that you will understand my denial (of the request to write an introduction),” Benedict tells Vigano.
Luis Badilla, who writes for the Vatican-affiliated website Il Sismografo, issued a thinly veiled call for Vigano’s head, calling the whole episode “a gigantic mess”. In an editorial on Saturday, Badilla said Vigano and the head of the Vatican’s publishing house, Father Bruno Cesareo, “have some explaining to do” and that “consequences must be drawn”.
Conservative critics of Francis saw the blurring and the selective citings from the letter as part of a plot to censor the thoughts of the former pope.
Many conservative Catholics still look up to Benedict as a bulwark against liberals, and have lambasted Francis for being too lenient on divorced Catholics and homosexuals.
Sandro Magister understandably preens about the fact that the Vatican released the full text and photograph of the entire letter four hours after he wrote on his blog about the heretofore unsuspected missing paragraph.
More on the letter of Benedict XVI -
which has yet another paragraph!
March 17, 2018
The end has not quite been written on the story of the “personal” and “confidential” letter written February 7 by Benedict XVI to the prefect of the secretariat for communications, Dario Edoardo Viganò, and partially made public by him on March 12.
Not only was there a key passage in it that was purposefully omitted in the press release sent out by Viganò himself:
> The Double "Foolish Prejudice." The Complete Text of the Letter by Benedict XVI
Not only had the beginning of this paragraph been manipulated to make it illegible in the photo of the letter released by Viganò’s secretariat:
> Vatican doctors photo of Benedict’s praise for Francis
There’s more. The letter by Benedict XVI that Settimo Cielo published on March 13 in its complete form was in reality not complete. Between the paragraph omitted in the press release and the valediction there were, in fact, other lines.
And this much could be guessed just by observing the photo of the letter initially released by the Vatican
[which was not too subtly camouflaged to hide the texts Vigano rightly thought counterproductive to his opportunistic exploitation of Benedict VXI's letter.]
In fact, between the first two lines that were made illegible in the photo, at the bottom of the first page of the letter, and the valediction and signature of Benedict XVI on the second half of the second page, there is a space too big to be occupied only by the last part of the paragraph omitted in the press release.
And what else was written there, that Viganò was careful not to read in public and took such pains to cover up in the photo with the eleven booklets on the theology of Pope Francis?
There was the explanation of the reason why Benedict XVI had not read those eleven booklets nor intended to read them in the future, and therefore why he had declined to write “a brief and dense theological page” of presentation and appreciation for the same, as Viganò had requested of him.
The reason adopted by Benedict XVI in the final lines of his letter - we are told by an incontrovertible source - is the presence among the authors of those eleven booklets of the German theologian Peter Hünermann, who was an implacable critic both of John Paul II and of Joseph Ratzinger himself as theologian and as pope.
About Hünermann, a professor at the university of Tübingen, it may be recalled that he is the author of, among other things, a commentary on Vatican Council II that is the polar opposite of the Ratzingerian interpretation.
It is therefore clear that, given what Benedict XVI writes in the second half of his letter, the first half also takes on a new significance, entirely different from the one that Viganò wanted to attribute to it in his mangled and biased press release.
And even more could be understood about what Benedict XVI writes there on himself and on Pope Francis, if this could be compared with the letter from Viganò to which he replied.
[Unless Vigano himself releases the text of his own letter, we will never get to know exactly how he tried to inveigle the Emeritus Pope into openly shilling for Bergoglio - as a theologian, no less! How totally clueless Vigano was about the men corralled by God-knows-which-sycophant to take part in the Bergogloyalist project to dress up the otherwise theologically naked pope! ... BTW, it just occurred to me that Bergoglio himself would be best placed to show the world that behind his many masks, he is also a first-class theologian, if he would somehow complete his dissertation on Romano Guardini (after all, if Benedict XVI managed to finish his JESUS OF NAZARETH trilogy during his brief pontificate, how is it possible that SuperMario Bergoglio can't do the same for his magnum opus on Guardini?]
Here’s the English rendering of what Benedict wrote in the last part of The Letter™:
[…] all the more so in that I am under other obligations to which I have already agreed. [That’s where it seemed to end, before this new part came out.]
Just as a side note, I would like to mention my surprise at the fact that the authors also include Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives.
He participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the “Kölner Erklärung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology.
The Europäische Theologengesellschaft, which he founded, also was initially designed by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Afterward, the ecclesial sentiment of many theologians blocked this tendency, making that organization a normal instrument of encounter among theologians.
I am certain that you will have understanding for my declination, and I cordially greet you.
Yours,
Benedict XVI
Fr Z comments:
This certainly sheds more light on why Benedict declined the 'honor' of writing a preface to the series.
It’s like: “Thanks for insulting me by asking me to praise this series, when it is in part penned by someone who stood diametrically opposed to the Magisterium… at least my Magisterium and that of John Paul before me. I can’t square this circle now and I have better things to do in the future. Thanks but no thanks. Have a nice day.”
This monumental goat rodeo just gets worse and worse. Doesn’t this remind you of the seemingly inevitable truth that while a crime is bad, it’s the cover-up that really brings you down.
IMHO, it was the fact that the AP, no less, stepped in earlier this week to unmask the shoddy trick of the doctored photograph from the Vatican, that defeated Vigano's hopes of containing the damage from Lettergate. The Vatican's top communications panjandrum must have thought, "Oh, oh, if we've lost the AP, we'll lose the rest of the secular media in short order!" So better to grit his teeth now and own up to the extent of his attempt to deceive than to lose the support of the major media!
Again, Fr H - on the new paragraph disclosed:
Like getting blood out of a stone
18 March 2018
Who would have thought that there would be yet another complete paragraph in that letter of Pope emeritus Benedict which Mgr Vigano tried to conceal! A paragraph revealing that Ratzinger, happily, has not become mentally soft and helpless in old age; that he doesn't quite see why he should be kicked around by sniggering enemies, even though he is no longer pope.
He is astonished that he was expected to provide a polite puff for (among others) a theologian who was a noisy and persistent anti-papal nuisance during the last two pontificates.
As well he might be.
I know little about other countries and their political and cultural standards and how they operate. I do know that my own country is far from perfect and that its public life is frequently degraded by people who will get away with whatever they can until they are found out. Sexually, financially ... you name it. But ...
But in my country, an episode like this would, beyond any possibility of doubt, have ended up with a resignation or sacking in a context of public disgrace. Will any of my fellow-countrymen contradict me in my assertion?
Perhaps that will indeed be how this episode will end up. We shall see.
If this man Vigano were to be kept in office, it would be the final detail in the unfolding public demonstration of the moral corruption right at the heart of this failed pontificate. In politics, it is often not the big issues that bring a crisis to its head, but something that starts off as insignificant to the point of pettiness.
During this Bergoglian era, the two major disasters have been the shiftiness, accompanied by unbecoming bluster, in the area of paedophilia and coverups and cronyism; and attempts to get away with perverting the Church's moral teaching by stealth. Those things matter infinitely more than the current silly and minor episode.
But 'Lettergate' provides such a vivid snapshot of dirty little men involved in dirty little plots for thoroughly dirty purposes. Even anti-Ratzinger veterans among the Commentariat like Robert Mickens can see this.
If PF cannot be made to understand the need to clean out his own Augean Stables, surely he [Vigano] should be made to go. Not next week, but this week...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/03/2018 18:52]