Leave it to Phil Lawler to identify the major consequence of Mons. Vigano's incredible communications fiasco - pointing beyond just the bureaucratic catastrophe self-created
by the Vatican's supposed media expert of experts and head of a new consolidated communications dicastery that was supposed to rectify the unproductive and/or counter-
productive Vatican communications efforts.
Papal continuity or discontinuity?
The Vatican PR team's terrible 'own goal' error ends up
underscoring the discontinuity between Benedict XVI and Bergoglio
By Phil Lawler
March 19, 2017
Last week the Vatican published a series of short books on the theology of Pope Francis. You probably haven’t heard much about those books. But you’ve heard quite a bit about the controversy that erupted after they were unveiled.
If the Vatican had only announced the publication of the books, the story would have passed unnoticed. Only a few weeks earlier, the same Vatican publishing house had put out
The Pope Francis Lexicon, a series of essays explaining some of the terms that the Holy Father commonly uses. The book’s launch was barely noticed in the Catholic media; secular outlets ignored the story entirely.
Frankly
The Pope Francis Lexicon was a better bet for public attention than the series that made its debut last week. Pope Francis has captured attention by introducing new terms, new ideas, into discussions of Vatican affairs, and an exploration of his unique use of language makes sense. He is not, on the other hand, primarily known as a theologian. (And that’s perfectly OK; the Roman Pontiff need not be a leading theological scholar.) The new books were short; their authors were not household names. This launch, too, was destined to pass quietly.
But then someone at the Vatican had a bright idea. Why not solicit a statement from Pope-emeritus Benedict — who definitely is known as a world-class theologian — praising the new books? Msgr. Dario Vigano, who heads the new Secretariat for Communications, wrote to the former Pontiff in January to solicit a comment. Benedict politely declined. Without a comment from him, the introduction of the new books was again likely to pass unnoticed.
But Msgr. Vigano was evidently not ready to give up easily. He pulled a few sentences from Benedict’s letter, in which the unfailingly courteous retired Pope praised his successor’s theological training and spoke of the “interior continuity” between the pontificates, and Vigano highlighted them in the news conference announcing the new books. Now he had a story to tell the media!
Sure enough, the headline stories generated by the news conference last Monday were not about the books being published. The spotlight was fixed on the Pope-emeritus. His letter was cited not only as an homage to Pope Francis, but also, more importantly, as an implicit rebuke to the new Pope’s conservative critics.
“Pope Benedict Protects Pope Francis’ Right Flank”, read the headline in the
Wall Street Journal, in a fairly typical presentation of the story line.
As Pope Francis reached the 5-year anniversary of his election, the quotes from Benedict were cited as evidence that, while some critics saw sharp differences between the teachings of Francis and those of Benedict, the retired Pope himself did not.
Then, of course, the story fell apart.
- Reporters learned, first, that Pope Benedict had actually declined to read the new volumes, and that the Vatican PR team had deliberately doctored a photocopy of his letter to camouflage that fact.
- Still later it emerged that in the full letter — which the Vatican public-relations crew had held back — Benedict had complained that one author in the new series had been bitterly critical of the teachings put forward by himself and by Pope John Paul II. He objected to the inclusion of an author who had, in the past, “virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope,” specifically on questions of moral theology.
The Vatican had introduced the letter from Benedict in an effort to show continuity in papal teaching; in fact, when the dust settled, the former Pontiff’s letter pointed to the clear discontinuity.
The author who praised the theological approach of Pope Francis had decried the approach of his predecessors. To be even more specific, the point of contention was the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, by St. John Paul II, which set forth the clear moral principles that have been largely obscured by Amoris Laetitia.
This might have been a simple story, about the theology of Pope Francis. But the Vatican public-relations team wanted something more: they wanted headlines about how Pope-emeritus Benedict had endorsed the thought of his successor.
It was not the former Pope who created this story; he had marked his letter to Msgr. Vigano as “personal and confidential.”
It was the Vatican communications team, with its maladroit handling of the episode, that drew attention to the retired Pope, and eventually to the clear differences between him and Pope Francis.
['Maladroit' is a gross understatement; the better word is 'malicious'. Vigano was not just guilty of clumsiness, but of deliberate malice, no doubt with the good intention of doing something for Bergoglio's advantage, but doing so at the expense of Benedict XVI and the truth, and in the process, causing great embarrassment (if not humiliation) to the pope himself.
A pope now seen to be so 'desperate' for validation, after his first five years as pope, as to
1) require an instant 'book series' cooked up by his spinmeisters and the Vatican publishing house, to highlight his 'theology' - since there is not enough in his own published words and statements throughout his career to make up a decent volume on theology; and
2) agree that the 'book series' on his theology be written by 11 essentially 'no-name theologians', of whom two Germans (Huenemann and Werbick) have long been notorious for their dissent against the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and therefore, of the Church - so how could they even be invoked to show continuity between Bergoglio and his predecessors? (Or to give Bergoglio the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he simply trusted blindly in his spinmeisters not to do him any disservice, and did not even bother to vet the theologians who were asked to write on his theology.)
Even spin doctors ought to heed the Hippocratic warning, "First, do no harm" - and Vigano has ended up harming everyone starting with himself and Bergoglio.
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On his Facebook page, Antonio Socci comments on another kind of discontinuity so starkly obvious in Italy these days...
IMG]http://u.cubeupload.com/MARITER_7/LOGOSOCCIFACEBOOK.png[/IMG]
Today, Subasio and the hills around Perugia are covered in snow. It is March 20, the eve of the official day spring begins. It must be the famous 'global warming' which is the first article in the Bergoglian credo...
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Back to Lettergate...
A PR disaster for the Vatican
The letter from Benedict has become the focus of attention.
No one now cares about the books
by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith
Tuesday, 20 Mar 2018
What on earth are we to make of the affair that has now been dubbed “Lettergate”? I mean, of course, the letter that Pope Benedict wrote seemingly endorsing a series of works on Pope Francis’s theology, but which turned out to be no such thing.
Forgive me for not providing links, as
the matter has metastasised so much that there are too many links to provide. But here are a few observations.
First of all, it is standard practice in the publishing world to solicit opinions about new books about influential people; this enables the publisher to put some glowing opinion on the cover of the new book. These pre-publication endorsements are generally regarded as worthless by those in the know, because the celebrity endorser usually has not had the time or the inclination to read the book. Nevertheless, the publishing industry still does this, in the hope that such “puffs” increase sales, though everyone knows that what really counts are the reviews that come after publication.
So, trying to get a puff from Pope Benedict is not on the surface wrong. And selective quotation is pretty usual, for let us remember that all quotation is selective. Moreover, as Pope Benedict’s letter suggests, the quote released forms part of a reply to the original request. Therefore, when Pope Benedict says it is ridiculous to think of Pope Francis having no theological formation, he is saying this because, one assumes, the original letter (as yet unreleased) asked him whether he thought that the case. In other words, Pope Benedict would not, on his own, make such a statement.
Where things have really gone wrong is in this: the letter from Benedict has become the focus of attention, and no one cares about the books. This has happened largely because Mgr Viganò has made a dreadful beginner’s error. When found out about the selective quotation, he did not come clean immediately and fess up; rather he admitted to what had been found out, and when more emerged, he had to admit to that too. This gives an impression of deception and dishonesty. He should have come clean at once, immediately and fully, rather than letting the embarrassment leak out slowly and the story dragging on for days.
Protestants used to believe that Catholic priests were liars. (Consider Charles Kingsley’s attack on Cardinal Newman.) English people in general often used to believe that Italians were untrustworthy. These old prejudices have faded with time, but Lettergate will help to revive them.
As such it represents a disaster not just for Mgr Viganò and the Vatican department for communications over which he presides, but a disaster for us all. It makes the job of every Catholic in communicating the faith that little bit harder.
The other day I was interviewed for the Sunday programme on Radio 4. One sentence of what I said made it into the final programme, but
what didn’t make it was something along these lines:
Five years ago, when Pope Francis was elected, everyone agreed that the Roman Curia was not fit for purpose; and we all hoped that the age of scandals and incompetence was over. Alas, our hopes have been disappointed time and again. Lettergate is just the most recent of the many unforced errors that come out of the Vatican and that distract us and everyone else from what really matters: proclaiming the Gospel. As we approach Holy Week, we should be thinking of the Paschal Mystery. Instead we are talking about the amateurish and frankly cretinous behaviour of the Pope’s courtiers. What a terrible 'own goal'!
And early review of Ross Douthat's soon-to-be released book served to underscore the dishonest strategy of this pope and his associates to feign that they are not, in fact, consciously and deliberately altering the teaching of the one true Church of Christ in favor of the teaching of Bergoglio and the church he is seeking to establish in his own image and likeness...
Pope Francis's modus operandi
by Kenneth Wolfe
March 19, 2018
Five years into the Bergoglio pontificate, Rorate is (finally!) far from alone in our reporting and analysis of Pope Francis. Several books exposing the behavior and methods used by Jorge Bergoglio have been, or are in the process of being, published. Ross Douthat, the lone conservative columnist at the New York Times, has one such book in the works, which will be released next week.
Mr. Douthat had a column in the Sunday
New York Times (largely an excerpt from his forthcoming book)
exposing the myth that Francis would grow the Church (Mass attendance has been down under this pontificate), and examining how calling for a "truce" on hot-button issues has been part of a stealth agenda of incremental liberalization.
This paragraph is perhaps the most eloquent we have seen in a while, unmasking the tactics of Bergoglio:
The papal plan for a truce is either ingenious or deceptive, depending on your point of view. Instead of formally changing the church’s teaching on divorce and remarriage, same-sex marriage, euthanasia — changes that are officially impossible, beyond the powers of his office — the Vatican under Francis is making a twofold move.
First, a distinction is being drawn between doctrine and pastoral practice that claims that merely pastoral change can leave doctrinal truth untouched. So a remarried Catholic might take communion without having his first union declared null, a Catholic planning assisted suicide might still receive last rites beforehand, and perhaps eventually a gay Catholic can have her same-sex union blessed — and yet supposedly none of this changes the church’s teaching that marriage is indissoluble and suicide a mortal sin and same-sex wedlock an impossibility, so long as it’s always treated as an exception rather than a rule.
It is a healthy thing to see large media outlets expose the deception employed by this pope, amplified by blogs and social media, even if it has taken five years.
Had this sunshine been a fraction as bright in the 1960s and 70s, it is likely the Second Vatican Council and its implementation -- particularly concerning the liturgical revolution -- would not have slipped by quite so easily.
I am posting here a commentary by Mundabor that I find appropriate to describe the five years of the Bergoglio pontificate so far (we obviously share a vehement bias on Bergoglio) even if I strongly disavow him for his extremely bigoted opinions against Benedict XVI - he being among those who think that Joseph Ratzinger has never been anything but a Vatican II progressivist and therefore deserving of all calumny, not just for that but for deception and dishonesty in advocating a 'false' hermeneutic of continuity about Vatican II, and worse, for 'abandoning the Church' for purely personal and self-serving reasons. Opponents like him will forever be blind to facts as against their own dubious because predetermined and prejudiced conclusions.
Would a Vatican II progressivist ever have spoken so frankly and specifically about the widespread misdeeds committed in the name of Vatican II 20 years after the Council ended, as Cardinal Ratzinger did in that historic watershed interview with Vittorio Messori, 'Rapporto sulla Fede', back in 1984? A book that placed both his life and Messori's in danger for several months afterwards; a book that surely earned him the undying enmity of all Vatican II progressivists who did not already have it in for him; a book that caused so much internal furor in the Church that the notorious Cardinal Danneels of Holland infamously complained to the media at the start of the 1985 special synod (convened by John Paul II to assess the reception of Vatican II) that 'This synod is about a council, not about a book'!
Then there is the other obvious fact about both John Paul II's and Benedict XVI's defense of Vatican II without its widespread misinterpretations and misuse: no pope can by himself override the teachings of an ecumenical council, as Vatican-II was, and which by definition is a council of all the world's bishops led by the pope. It would take another council to do that.
But both popes certainly were very aware of all the misuse and abuse committed in the name of Vatican II, so they made it their concern to point out that the teachings of Vatican II were in continuity with what the Church has always taught - i.e., a hermeneutic of continuity - even in those documents in which some parts were deliberately left ambiguous.
Drowning in its own...(no, it's not 'tears')
MARCH 19, 2018
Five years later, there can be no doubt that Francis’s papacy is drowning in its own excrement.
- It is not only that the continued heresy has now reached the mainstream, in such a way that whatever new “innovation” Francis tries to introduce is now doomed to failure from the start. [Would that were not just wishful thinking!]
- It is not even the astonishing incompetence of the people Francis has around him – as the very recent “lettergate” abundantly shows.
- It is, finally, not necessarily the scandal of the 25 million USD (boy, this is a heck if a lot of black shoes…) Francis wanted to rob from the Papal Foundation in order to give them to a shady institution with a criminal past.
No. The best indication that Francis’s Papacy is drowning in its own excrement is the tacit admission of the fact from the Vatican press office. [Precisely what I meant when I referred to Bergoglio's seemingly desperate need for 'validation' at this oint in his pontificate.]
What kind of Pope needs external validation from other senior clergy? When has a Pope ever felt it necessary to support his reputation on the (true or assumed) integrity and prestige of other members of the Church hierarchy? Who does he think he is, the Prime Minister of TinPotLandia?
Certainly, the head of government of a small European State will draw prestige from being received at the White House, because the receiving institution is so much more prestigious and powerful than the received one. But a Pope has no earthly equivalent. If his reputation is in tatters, he is completely screwed. Not even a former or emeritus Pontiff can save him, because when a Pope is drowning the vortex is so strong that it will swallow even a pontiff emeritus!
It must be so, because Popes don’t become as impresentable as Francis is merely because they lack sense of humour, or are not photogenic, or are not good at making little children smile. They can only become so hated because they are heretics, and at that point there is no emeritus on earth that can save their papacy.
Francis is exactly there: to the point where his papacy has become a pretty vulgar joke, and the panic is clearly – if, again, tacitly – admitted by the same Vatican office that should protect his reputation.
For those, like me, who have been observing the public perception of this Pontificate as a direct indication of the harm it can cause, the latest implosions of these multiple-catastrophe pontificate are a source of great satisfaction and a moderate source of hope for the future: then the more this pontificate drowns in its own excrement, the more probable it is that the Cardinals in the next conclave, cowardly and corrupt as they all are, gather all together and shout, as loud as they can: 'NEVER AGAIN!' [That's giving the cardinals too much credit! For some reason, as brilliant [and even saintly in some cases] as many of them are individually, they can all together fall into a state of collective cretinhood, as they did at the 2013 conclave, by the mere fact of believing unconditionally 1) what the media were saying about the state of the Church, and of the Roman Curia and Vatican finances, in general, thanks to the infinitely discreditable Vatileaks; and 2) the limited knowledge they had of Jorge Bergoglio at the time, about whom they were only aware that somehow, he was the 'runner-up' in the 2005 Conclave, and of what Bergoglio's campaign handlers sold to them about their guy's reputation. There is every likelihood of the same mistake at the next Conclave, especially if by then, more than two-thirds of the cardinal electors would have been Bergoglio appointees.]
And if Mons. Vigano thinks that this press release will help improve the Vatican's communications snafu, he is even more pathetic than one had imagined!
Bergoglio's pontificate 'by the numbers':
Vatican releases statistics of Francis’s pontificate
All of them, unfortunately, refer to the pope himself and all those activities which are normally part of a pope's duties-
but not a single one about how the Church has fared under him (e.g., more converts? more Mass attendance? more vocations?
MORE FAITH?, or just the opposite?)
by Carol Glatz
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE
March 19, 2018
ROME - In just five years as leader of the universal Church, Pope Francis has made 22 international trips, traveling 154,906 miles - the equivalent of six times around the world.
He also has declared 880 new saints, which includes the martyrdom of an estimated 800 Italian laymen killed by Ottoman soldiers in the 15th century.
Those numbers and more were released by the Vatican, detailing the many papal events, documents, travels and accomplishments of the past five years. The numbers, released March 17, cover the period from March 19, 2013 - the solemnity of St. Joseph, the day officially inaugurating the start of his pontificate - to March 19, 2018.
According to the Vatican statistics, the 81-year-old pope has:
- Created 61 new cardinals.
- Led 219 general audiences, with catechetical series that include reflections on the sacraments, the Church, the family, mercy and the Mass.
- Issued 41 major documents, including the encyclicals Lumen fidei and Laudato Si’ and the apostolic exhortations, Evangelii Gaudium and Amoris Laetitia.
- Prayed the Angelus and Regina Coeli with visitors 286 times.
- Completed 22 trips abroad, 18 pastoral visits within Italy and 16 visits to parishes in Rome - the diocese of the pope as bishop of Rome.
- Made nine other visits to churches for special events and places of worship in Rome, including the city’s synagogue and Rome’s German Evangelical Lutheran Church, Anglican church and the Ukrainian Catholic Basilica of Santa Sophia.
- Called four synods of bishops: Two on the family, this year’s synod on young people and a synod on the Amazon in 2019.
- Declared two special years: On consecrated life and the extraordinary Year of Mercy.
- Established or proclaimed seven special days, including World Day of the Poor, 24 Hours for the Lord and a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, South Sudan and Congo.
- Attended or announced three World Youth Days (Brazil, Poland and Panama for 2019).
BIG BIG DEAL, RIGHT???? But was there any merit or gain for the Church herself in all that Bergoglian huffing and puffing?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/03/2018 21:20]