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Benedict XVI, a pope impossible to falsify
Faith and reason, human ecology, natural law, ‘quaerere Deum’ and liturgy –
were the features of an inconvenient pontificate that continues to be opposed
by Stefano Fontana
Translated from
March 23, 2018
In the Vigano episode, there was much more than just Vigano. In his editorial yesterday, Riccardo Cascioli maintained that behind this episode is an attack on Benedict VXI, not just by instrumentalizing his person – already a very serious offense in itself – but by an attack on his thinking and his magisterium, in the attempt to ‘yank his chain’, so to speak, and make him say what he did not say, attributing to him positions he never took.
In which such mediatic counterfeiting would then facilitate a theological and magisterial counterfeiting of his thought, in the attempt to change the perceptions about his Magisterium and lead to false conclusions about it.
During his Pontificate, La Civilta Cattolica [now the house organ of Casa Santa Marta and its Supreme Tenant] called Benedict XVI ‘an inconvenient pope’. As Pope Emeritus, he obviously continues to be ‘inconvenient’ if, by misrepresenting him, his opponents think they are thereby ‘normalizing’ him. But how can that be done properly, seeing that his teachings are and have been prominent before the eyes and ears of everyone in all their clarity? What then are the ‘inconvenient’ aspects of Benedict XVI that the Vigano episode sought to make convenient [for the purposes of this pontificate]?
In the first place, the very impostation (i.e., presentation) of his theology and his teaching on the Truth of Chist-Logos, on the providential encounter between early Christianity and Greek thought, therefore affirming the importance of metaphysics and its ‘rebirth’ in contemporary theology as expressed in John Paul II’s seminal encyclical Fides et ratio.
Benedict XVI’s teachings exclude much of progressivist theology yesterday and today which have for a long time now abandoned metaphysics [philosophical thought that deals with the first principles of things, including abstract concepts such as being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space] in favor of the paradigm of interpretation. In short, they have replaced knowledge about being with an interpretation of existence.
Banedict XVI’s classical attention to metaphysics is very inconvenient because it also meant the recovery of the idea of Creative Wisdom, therefore, the defense of Creation in a non-ideological way, through the full assumption of natural moral law and natural rights. Which horrifies those cardinals, bishops and theologians who are indentured to ‘the signs of the times'.
On the first of the two points, Benedict XVI committed the Church to the defense of Creation not only in the reductionist version of the UN and the ‘popular’ ecological movements, but in the full sense of human and social ecology. Because man and society are fruits of Creative Wisdom, and as such, have an inherent order. Which is why life at every stage, marriage and the family must be defended at all costs.
Others do that, some might say. But it is only the Church that has the capacity to fully safeguard natural law, recognizing its autonomy, as Benedict XVI explained to the German Parliament in 2012, but at the same time, the Church is also the the first protector of Creation because only she is capable of linking Creation to the Creator, thus keeping it secure. But the theology of creation is very much passe in theological schools today, since it is considered too fixed and too metaphysical, and therefore, not at all a convenient topic of discussion.
As for natural moral law, Benedict XVI’s teachings on the subject are numerous – this being the basis for Paul VI’s teachings in Humanae Vitae, and of John Paul II’s teachings in Familiaris consortio, Evangelium vitae and Veritatis splendor.
It is difficult to propose any ‘novelties’ in moral teaching in the Church without making an issue of natural moral law and its consequent moral theology. Obviously, this, too, is a most inconvenient teaching. Especially since it leads to that most inconvenient doctrine about the Church’s non-negotiable principles taught by Benedict XVI, fiercely opposed by progressivist theology and definitively set aside in the current pontificate.
The correct impostation of the purifying relationship between reason and faith – which is doubtless one of the central arguments in Benedict XVI’s teaching – had been intended as well to overcome the many errors of the postConciliar era and to reconsider Vatican II in its authentic reality, to restitute this to the Church after many theologians had allowed it to be exploited by the world.
It re-established the right relationship between doctrine and pastoral ministry, implicitly required a reconsideration of the so-called ‘pastoral revolution’, and started to teach again that truth precedes praxis. Not to forget that the correct relationship between reason and faith is of fundamental importance so that biblical exegesis could go beyond the historico-critical method which Benedict XVI put in its right place.
Perhaps the most acute point of Benedict XVI’s ‘inconvenience’ was the publication of his motu prorpio Summorum Pontificum with which he restored the vetus ordo in the celebration of Holy Mass, considering it an extraordinary form of the one rite of the Roman Catholic Church. Cardinal Ratzinger’s many criticisms of the origin and [instant] development of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform ,and his profound theological reflections on the liturgy were, of course, well-known. With Summorum Pontificum, he wished to make liturgy once more a point of general renewal for a Church faithful to her tradition. It was indisputably the most opposed decision of his pontificate.
Benedict XVI set forth a relationship between the Church and the world that did not yield to secularism nor confuse the sacred and the profane. He worked to restore the centrality of God even in the construction of human society: [as the monks of medieval Europe showed] quaerare Deum – to seek God – was the most important thing from which all human benefits would come, and the Last Things would illumine everything that went before.
He taught clearly the impossibility of being neutral with respect to God, and that a world without God was a world against God. Thus he helped in the correct understanding of secularization and of laicity. These teachings opposed the many interpretations of Vatican II as preaching a parity between the Church and the world, and many contemporary theological currents of thought that essentially reduced the Church to the world.
Benedict XVI’s pontificate was ‘unfinished’ but it does not mean that it was not clear and coherent in combatting the gnosis within the Church herself. And certainly, it is a pontificate that is impossible to represent otherwise, without resorting to fakery.
In contrast, consider this:
A pontificate of fake
[When image is all that matters -
and who cares about truth?]
Translated from
March 23, 2018
Dear everyone – Super-Ex (ex-Movimento per la Vita, ex-Avvenire, ex-others but fortunately not ex-Catholic) has awakened from his periodic lethargy to send us this reflection which seems to me right on, a photograph of persons and facts in the Church today. Unfortunately.
In the beginning, he was the good shepherd. After the theologian pope, who was rather reserved and bashful, finally an affable pope able to speak to everyone, including the simplest folk. [But wait, was that not always the admiring line about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, who for all his brilliance and erudition, could and did reduce the most complex ideas to words everyone could understand, without in any way dumbing them down?]
That was the first great fake news of this pontificate: transforming Bergoglio – a man whom everyone in his previous world had always known to be dodgy, severe and hard - into the pope of smiles.
At all costs! Journalists, artists, TV hosts, singers, dancers, clowns and dwarfs, even comedians like Roberto Benigni, were mobilized for the cause. [Self-mobilized for the most part, though, in a frenzy of instant idolatry for an image – the sentimental but foolish ‘ideal’ of someone elevated to a great and unique office who remains admirably very much like ‘one of us’ in every respect.]
And voila! The pastor pope – fabricated, totally packaged and sold. A pastor pope who, God be thanked, had no use for doctrine and boring theology! It was even sought shamelessly to find him similar to a man who was his polar opposite in everything: the true and original pope of smiles, Albino Luciani, John Paul I. Who was a pastor of great doctrine, a rigorous moralist, a man who was genuinely alien to every form of worldliness, to the point that he never had any interest whatsoever in ‘building up’ for the world a reputation of anti-worldliness.
This rhetoric of Bergoglio the pastor pope went on for years, sustained greatly by gestures, as in a cinema set. “Bergoglio does not speak with encyclicals – he speaks with gestures, embraces, his cellphone, spontaneity..” etc, with an artificious series of well-publicized ‘spontaneous’ actions: spontaneous telephone calls, spontaneous encouners, spontaneous itnerviews, open doors to everyone… Well, not to the FFI, the dubia cardinals, the Order of Malta when it was still sovereign. But to everyone else, yes.
But in time, the media over-exposure became tiresome, the cinematographic strategy started to fail, because films can only go on being ‘real’ for a time until one realizes it is all fiction. So then, enter a new PR squad [or strategy]. “Listen up, the new order is this: Bergoglio is not just the pastor pope, he is also an erudite theologian!” Which is like saying that Eugenio Scalfari is not just a journalist, he is also a profound philosopher!
But now, how to show off this new Bergoglio? How to bring people on board? It’s one thing to keep giving interviews as often as he pleases – the one genre at which Bergoglio excels, by the way [excels as in A for effort, F for content]. It’s another thing altogether to transform a 20th century Latin American Jesuit – formed by a Communist lady professor, mired in the tired, many times warmed-over commonplaces of the 1970s – into a man of doctrine. Ah, doctrine! Was it not supposed to be terrible? So terrible as to be almost evil?
No, it appears from the order of the day - even Bergoglio is ‘a man of doctrine’. Thus, one Massimo Borghesi writes a book looking back to the persons who were the teachers of Bergoglio and constructing what he calls ‘an intellectual biography’! People must know about the philosophical and theological stature of Bergoglio! What there is of it, that is.
And finally, a great idea: why not a theological book series [The Italian term for a book series is collana] – or rather, a collanina – for this pope, a pastor but also a theologian, if you didn’t already know!
But how to affirm the unaffirmable (what cannot truly be affirmed) and say the unsayable (what cannot truly be said) unless to ask the true theologian pope for a seal of approval, a confirmation, even if just a couple of lines to be amplified as necessary through the usual media strategy?
And that is how Mons. Vigano’s triply fake news was born – in the effort to construct on paper, after the pastor pope, also the doctor pope [as in Doctor of the Church]. And these two constructions in themselves, these two fake news phenomena, are the parents of everything else fake deriving from them.
But time is fair [and greater than space!, as our also-philosopher pope likes to say], and everything will gradually come to light….
And then there's this unexpected reaction from a Corriere della Sera editorialist, who has had nothing before but unqualified praise and admiration for Bergoglio and his pontificate...
The first open dualism between the 2 popes -
And so, the spell is broken
Francis defends Vigano who does not admit error, and now
we see a rift in the presumed ‘harmonious’ cohabitation
by Massimo Franco
Translated from
March 22, 2018
The week that was supposed to mark the apotheosis of Pope Francis’s first five years as pope ended up instead as one of the most acute crises of his pontificate. Exploding right in the heart of Casa Santa, Marta, the Vatican four-star hotel where he lives, in that very closed circle of associates who have shaped his public profile and his great popularity. [That is, of course, wrong. Bergoglio’s phenomenal popularity was established overnight, no thanks to them, but only to the image he presented to the world at his first appearance as pope – “I’m humble, simple, just one of you, and will be unlike any other pope before me!” What could be more captivating to a society that lives on its a-critical idolatry of image, the more saccharine the better!]
In just a few days, a major rift surfaced in the harmonious cohabitation that the pope and his predecessor appeared to have established between them – and precisely on the topic of doctrine, which is one of the most sensitive areas in which popes may differ. Without either Jorge Bergoglio or Joseph Ratzinger intending to, they found themselves at the center of a mess that shows the distance between them in terms of differences that had not before been public [Properly speaking, ‘not publicly discussed before’, or indeed, ‘publicly avoided’ – especially by the Emeritus Pope himself. ]
But worse than that, the hamhanded manner with which Benedict XVI’s letter of support for Francis about a small series of theological writings [Franco is doubly disingenuous here: the letter was not one of support, given the major objection Benedict had to the series; and in implying the writings were Bergoglio’s when they are in fact, commentaries on Bergoglio’s theology by 11 no-name theologians] risks crumpling up the credibility of the Vatican’s entire communications system. [By the very man chosen by Bergoglio to supposedly strengthen it and rid it of past incompetencies.]
For quite a while, it did not seem that there were ‘two popes’. Miraculously, one could say, no dualism nor differences were even hinted at. [It wasn’t necessary to hint at their abysmal differences, so obvious are they, but it was also impolitic and futile to harp on these differences publicly, because to all intents and purposes, there is only one pope – the one who lives in Casa Santa Marta. The pope who lives at Mater Ecclesiae is an ex-pope, and there is no getting around that unfortunate fact. This is a reality the world did not find hard to accept, and did so from Day 1, much as erudite commentators sought to bewail and continue to do – the supposed anomaly that the former pope is still called 'pope'.]
It was if each of them knew how important it was to project the image of a united Church, especially after Ratzinger’s traumatic resignation in February 2013, the first such papal resignation in 700 years. And although, after the past week's events, it is now no longer taken for granted, the idea of ‘continuity’ between the two pontificates was purveyed as a kind of ‘Vatican truth’ to be protected and disseminated in order to reassure the Catholic world. [What’s to reassure, if the prevailing assumption – even Franco’s – is that not just the world but ‘the Catholic world’ itself far prefers Bergoglio’s ecclesiastical upheavals to anything that went on before him???]
And even when importuned, in effect, by the most conservative Catholic circles most hostile to Bergoglio, Benedict XVI confined himself to affirming his loyalty and obedience to his successor. [Which implies he explicitly reaffirmed it, which he has not. He said it in his last address to the College of Cardinals before he left the Vatican on February 28, 2013, very likely said so directly to Bergoglio right after the latter was elected, but I do not recall he has said so again. Not that he needs to do it, because he is a man of his word.
Fortunately, he obviously does not think that ‘obedience’ also means allowing himself to be used fraudulently, as to praise, for example, or endorse in any way, a series published by the Vatican itself, in which at least three of the authors have built their careers on opposing the teaching of the Church, specifically of the last two popes, on the anti-Catholic issues most dear to the secular world.
An egregious fact which few have pursued to its logical implication: What does it say of Bergoglio that he would have consented to using such theologians in order to ‘present’ his theology to the world? It obviously means he shares their viewpoints, because he has already attended to the first item on their agenda – communion for remarried divorcees, and he has indicated abundantly that he is well on the way to attending to the others as well, namely, extending his ‘no longer sin’ absolution to homosexual practice and commonlaw cohabitation, likewise eventually allowing abortion, contaception and euthanasia in ‘selected cases and on discernment’, to fully allowing married priests and women priests.]
But this narrative of a harmonious cohabitation beyween the two popes now needs to be recalibrated. Benedict XVI wrote in his letter of the ‘foolish prejudice’ of those who attack Bergoglio’s theological preparation, and of the ‘internal continuity’, an expression so subtle as to be almost cryptic, between him and Bergoglio. [That’s easy, and others have pointed it out promptly: he had to say ‘internal continuity’ because very obviously, there is no external continuity! I daresay ‘internal continuity’ merely refers to the fact that they have both been elected pope, which is something only 264 other persons can claim.]
But the disconcerting initial omissions from Benedict XVI’s letter as a deliberate media operation, the subsequent revelation in stages of the rest of the letter – only under growing pressure from al sides – have resulted in suspicions of manipulation if not of censorship. [‘Suspicions’? Let’s not pretend here. Vigano’s manipulations were even more obvious and shameful than Cardinal Baldisseri’s during the two ‘family synods!]
The attempt to crown the praises of 11 theologians commenting on Bergoglio’s theology with the imprimatur of the #1 theologian Benedict XVI simply turned into a sad ‘own goal’ error – especially when it was also revealed that among the praisers of Bergoglio were two Germans well-known to Ratzinger as obstinate detractors of John Paul II’s ontificate and his own.
[Franco commits the facile mistake of others who have reduced Benedict XVI’s refusal to cooperate in Vigano’s scheme to his personal pique against the two detractors. I don’t think he ever once called them out for their hostility towards him, because he never did so against his detractors – he bore all such hostility as his personal cross – only choosing to answer them directly if they raised issues of Church doctrine. This time,he was obviously objecting to the fact that this pontificate would provide a platform for persons who have made a career out of their major objections to Church teaching. Not to see that is to continue with the three-monkeys syndrome about Bergoglio and his pontificate. Yet even the fact that they were asked to participate in the 'exaltamus Bergoglio' project is tacit papal approval in itself of their pet secular views!]
BTW, a comment on Franco's assertion that Benedict XVI's resignation was 'traumatic'. If someone more normal and Catholic than Bergoglio had been elected his successor, it might not have been traumatic at all. The trauma arises entirely from the cardinals' choice of Bergoglio, even if, of course, this would not have happened if Benedict had not resigned. But say Scola, or Ouellet, or Erdo, or even Scherer of Brazil, had been elected, does anyone really think any of them would have shown himself anti-Catholic from the outset as Bergoglio is, or would have sought to wreck the one true Church of Christ as Bergoglio has done?
Finally for this post, Fr. Scalese's belated commentary on Lettergate...
Institutional decorum and Lettergate
Translated from
March 23, 2018
It might seem that Lettergate has ended with the not-altogether-convincing resignation of Mons. Dario Vigano [i.e., While the episode was developing, I could only look on, half amused and half disconsolate. Now that the episode appaers to have reached its epilog, and without reviewing it all over (which many others have already done and with great competence), I would like to make a couple of marginal observations:
1. If this was an example of the great reform of the Curia begun five years ago, then give us back Ottaviani! [Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani (1890-1979) was the leader of the Curial conservatives at Vatican-II, and was subsequently the Prefect of the Holy Office after it was re-named Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]. Jesting aside, what has happened should lead to reflection on the appropriateness of the current centralization of power in the Vatican. [For all the talk of decentralization and collegiality, it appears Bergoglio is prepared to decentralize doctrine and liturgy, but not administrative power and authority.]
That it was necessary to to have better coordination was obvious. But to think that the problems of the Curia could be solved by creating massive new dicasteries and the dissolving legitimate autonomies was, shall we say, gross naivete.[Does it not stand to reason when the pope’s chosen advisers in his work of governance and reform are all diocesan bishops who, for all the outstanding individual personalities that they may be, have been cursed with the same problems in their own diocesan curias – and if they could not manage to make things right in their own dioceses, why should they be able to manage it better for the Roman Curia that has to deal with more than 5,000 dioceses with a total personnel roster that is half that number? That was Bergoglio’s first naivete about this much-heralded advisory council, which as hunky-dory as it might have seemed on paper, was always a dubious proposition because of faulty assumptions.]
The concentration of all Vatican media resources into the hands of one person – which was Vigano – has been shown to be a rather imprudent move because now, the error of one man has ended up putting the entire system in crisis.
2. What has happened should teach us that, however much times may have changed, there are some values that should remain immutable. We live in an era where what counts appears to be image, efficiency, and success, to be achieved at any cost, without indulging in too many scruples. And in the exercise of power, recklessness, cockiness and cynicism appear to have become the rule. Personally, I have always been of the opinion that in order to govern, a bit of recklessness is indispensable, but it is important not to forget that there is a limit to recklessness, beyond which it becomes abuse and arbitrariness.
Unfortunately, one has the impression that the tendency [to operate without traditional values], now common in society, has reached into the Church, whose present ruling class, which includes young monsignors on the career ladder, seem to be walking in the footsteps of their contemporaries in public office. But it must also be said that if they are doing so, it is because they are allowed to do so.
The present pope, in this sense, has not just shown himself to be tolerant of such conduct, but often fails to give a good example himself.
- In the interview he gave to La Civilta Cattolica that was published in September 2013, he said: “I can say that I am a sly person. I know how to operate”. If to his natural cunning, one adds the ‘mental restrictions’ learned by Jesuits, one understands how it can result in behavior that is not always edifying.
- Thus, we have that stunning revelation made by Mons Bruno Forte – one the Vatican never denied – of what the pope told him on how the family synods should be handled, to wit:
“If we speak directly about communion for remarried divorcees, you don’t know what a mess they [opponents of his cause] can create. So let us not speak of it directly, but make sure that the premises are laid down, and let me draw my conclusions”.
With those premises, it is obvious that everyone thus enjoined sought to do the best they could.
Yet the lesson of Lettergate should precisely be that there is a limit to everything, a limit beyond which our contemporaries, even those wisest in the ways of the world, will rise up instinctively, and at certain point, will force the errant official to take a step back. It happened recently in Italy with the former Prime Minister Renzi; it has happened now in the Vatican with Vigano.
Perhaps it is time to rediscover certain ‘human values’, at one time so encouraged (and now ignored): correctness, seriousness, honesty, sincerity, loyalty, fidelity to one’s word, respect of others, the humility to make an apology, the willingness to pay the price personally for one’s mistake, honor, courtesy, modesty, good manners [all of which obviously Vigano failed to observe].
Many think that such virtues have become obsolete, when actually, they continue to be indispensable virtues for living with one another. Vatican-II affirms in this regard that without these values, “one cannot even be a true Christian”. (Apostolicam actuositatem, n. 4). [Obviously, one of the countless orthodoxies of Vatican II that progressivists have completely ignored.]
When Berlusconi was in power in Italy, they came up with the expression ‘institutional decorum’ – which has, of course, been shelved after his disgraceful fall from power. It is time to dust it off and re-circulate it, even in Church circles.
[Decorum simply means appropriate behavior, which, institutional or personal, is obviously not of great concern to the Supreme Tenant of Casa Santa Marta, since he himself violated one rule of papal decorum before he even made his first appearance as pope. He chose not to wear the mozzetta that other popes before him dutifully wore as the ecclesiastical symbol of the pope’s authority – and has gone on to violate more rules of decorum as he pleases. And so, he prefers to receive bishops and priests in their street clothes, and not in cassocks, as if wearing a cassock were somehow offensive.
I bet - and forgive me for being ad hominem here - that if he didn’t have the disgraceful paunch he now has, he too would eschew the cassock in favor of street clothes! Except, he might look ridiculous in a white suit – because, surely, he would not insist on black pants without the white cassock to dissimulate it. Yet he has to wear papal white to distinguish him as pope, so he would not be mistakenly looked on as just another priest or bishop in street clothes.]
P.S. Another Lettergate commentary to add:
Pope Francis’s pontificate takes
another hit with Lettergate mess
ANALYSIS by
Father Raymond J. de Souza, SJ
March 22, 2018
Not even a resignation is just a resignation. Pope Francis March 21 accepted the resignation of Msgr. Dario Viganò, the prefect of the Secretariat for Communication, after he intentionally deceived the Vatican press corps about a letter from Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
At the same time, Msgr. Vigano was appointed to the new role of “assessor” in the same department, which in Vatican parlance means the No. 3 position. It is a very fine, even Jesuitical, calibration: Msgr. Viganò’s deception made it untenable for him to continue as head of the department, but it is acceptable for a senior deputy? If the whole scandal had been the work of the deputy in the first place, would it have been okay for him to continue in that place?
Why did Pope Francis not simply let Msgr. Viganò go? Perhaps it is because what he did, while unacceptable in its deceit, was in other ways in keeping with the culture of this pontificate. In that sense, it became an unusual but fitting way to mark the Holy Father’s fifth anniversary week.
[I am disappointed Fr De Souza does not point out the most glaring omission from that one-two PR ploy of the 'resignation': the lack of any apology at all to Benedict XVI for first publicizing a letter he marked 'Private and confidential'all and for all the subsequent manipulations made thereof.]
The scandal: Neither virtue nor candor
The late Cardinal John Foley, the longtime president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, advised that there were two pillars of a good Church media strategy: first, virtue; second, where virtue fails, candor.
Cardinal Foley died in 2011, and, apparently, his memory has been entirely forgotten in his old department, for Msgr. Viganò attempted a spectacular deception and, when caught in the act, dissembled. It was a towering fiasco that shredded his personal credibility and earned him fierce denunciations from both conservatives and liberals alike.
My Register colleague Edward Pentin dubbed it “Lettergate,” and it centered on an initiative to burnish the theological bona fides of Pope Francis.
The Vatican publishing house — also under the direction of Msgr. Viganò — marked the fifth anniversary of Pope Francis’s election by putting out 11 booklets on The Theology of Pope Francis. Msgr. Viganò wrote to Benedict XVI, asking him to write a page or two for the launch of the books, in effect giving a seal of approval to Francis’s theology and orthodoxy.
Benedict declined. He wrote some kind words about the “interior continuity” of the pontificates and said it was a “stupid prejudice” to oppose Francis and Benedict, as if the former is only a simple-minded pastor and the latter an out-of-touch scholar. But then he went on to write that, for reasons of both health and other commitments, he hadn’t read the books and did not intend to do so.
The letter was gracious, but it stung. As the liberal Robert Mickens, a longtime critic of Benedict, wrote: “In plain English, he said: ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I have more pressing things to do, now and in the future, than read these little pamphlets.’”
Fake news at the Vatican
Instead of leaving the letter — marked “confidential” — aside, Msgr. Viganò sought to turn Benedict’s silken prose into a sow’s ear of crude boosterism. So the monsignor read the letter at the book launch March 12, the day before the Holy Father’s anniversary, stressing the “interior continuity” bit. He released a photo of the letter that blurred out the lines about Benedict having no time or interest in reading the little books about Francis’ theological vision.
That created a media uproar, as releasing doctored photos to create a false impression is a violation of basic journalistic ethics. Given that just a few weeks ago Pope Francis devoted his annual World Day of Communications message to inveighing against “fake news,” it was painfully embarrassing that his communications head was doing, precisely to the letter, what the Holy Father decried.
Then the unfathomable became truly scandalous, when March 17 it was revealed that another entire paragraph of the letter had been hidden, one in which Benedict makes clear that he is refusing the request to support the book launch because the series included a specific German theologian.
“Professor Hünermann, during my pontificate, had distinguished himself by leading anti-papal initiatives,” Benedict wrote, expressing his dismay. “In relation to the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, [he] virulently attacked the magisterial authority of the Pope, especially on questions of moral theology.”
Benedict wrote, with gracious understatement, of his “surprise” that he had been asked to endorse a project that included those who openly dissented from his own teaching and that of St. John Paul II.
It is understandable why Msgr. Viganò would not want that bombshell condemnation of his project to come to light. He set out to show the continuity between Benedict XVI and Francis, but Benedict’s letter pointed out that, among the favored voices under Francis, there was a significant discontinuity in doctrine.
Should Msgr. Viganò’s deception be decried as a one-off, if massive, lapse in judgment from the Vatican’s communications chief? Perhaps it was, but it captured perfectly four key aspects of the pontificate of Pope Francis.
1. Theological insecurity
It is not required — and is usually not the case — that the Roman pontiff be a skilled theologian. He has no shortage of advisors to assist him. But it is understandable that any pope following Benedict might feel inadequate in comparison.
No one pretends that Francis is Benedict’s intellectual, theological or literary equal. It is enough to compare the (unedited) transcripts of their Q&A sessions to see that they operate on entirely different planes, to say nothing of their homiletics and writing. That ought not be a cause of embarrassment — no one alive today is on the level of Ratzinger/Benedict. And it is partly the style of Pope Francis, unadorned by theological refinement, that makes him so popular, especially with the secular media and those distant from the Church.
Yet, from the beginning, there has been an odd theological insecurity about this pontificate, an insecurity that motivated Msgr. Viganò to write to Benedict in the first place. From his first Angelus address, Francis has sought to associate himself with the theological credibility of others, beginning with Cardinal Walter Kasper. On multiple occasions, he has expressed — half-jokingly, half-seriously — his reluctance to speak theologically in the presence of those more learned than he.
Most striking, Pope Francis was unsure of the orthodoxy of his 2016 apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love). After its publication, he asked Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna whether his own apostolic exhortation was orthodox and pronounced himself “comforted” when the cardinal indicated that it was.
A pope must be confident of his theological depth and orthodoxy. He need not — and wisely does not — rely simply on his own lights for this confidence, but seeks it in the many capable collaborators at his disposal, beginning with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. St. John Paul II — himself a world-class scholar — never had to ask anyone about the orthodoxy of his documents. He had ensured that they were exactly that beforehand, not least with the assistance of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
The Viganò deception was driven by a desire to show that the theology of Francis was both profound and orthodox. Hence the desire to enlist Benedict in that effort. And when he declined in stark terms to do anything more than to offer a routine assessment — “Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation,” something that could be said of any Jesuit of a similar age — Msgr. Viganò’s desire to shine some of Benedict’s borrowed light on Francis led him to manipulate and deceive. In that he served Pope Francis very badly.
Msgr. Viganò’s desperate spin only highlighted the very insecurity that has been present from the beginning. And it emphasizes an issue that should not be an issue, namely whether Francis is comparable as a theologian to Benedict.
2. Manipulation of Texts
The Francis pontificate has shown a certain looseness with written texts. The most notorious example was when the Holy Father clearly said in 2016 that a “great majority” of Catholic marriages were invalid. Pope Francis did not say that he was wrong, or offer another explanation for what he said. The official transcript simply replaced “a great majority” with “a portion of,” which was neither what he said nor what he meant.
That 2016 audience followed a few months after Amoris Laetitia was published. In several places, Amoris Laetitia employs footnotes that are deliberately truncated to give the impression of meaning something different from they actually mean. St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican II and St. John Paul II are all partially quoted in a manner that arguably betrays their original meaning, a practice that fails basic academic standards, let alone what should be expected in a magisterial document.
Amoris Laetitia itself followed the two synods on the family, where senior cardinals and bishops protested that the information flow out of the synod was manipulated to give a false impression of the synod discussion. At the time, Edward Pentin chronicled that manipulation in great detail. Papal biographer George Weigel alluded to those maneuverings Wednesday, March 21.
3. Veritatis Splendor, the encyclical ignored
Despite the nearly 400 footnotes in Amoris Laetitia, nary a one can be found from Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), the Church’s recent and most complete teaching on the moral act, the role of conscience and the call to heroic witness.
Like Msgr. Viganò just ignoring the parts of Benedict’s letter that he did not like, the principal interpreters of this pontificate simply pretend that Veritatis Splendor was never written, because it is very difficult to square the teaching of the 25-year-old encyclical with Amoris Laetitia.
That Benedict XVI would specifically refer to Veritatis Splendor in his letter to Msgr. Viganò was not accidental. By noting the inclusion of a prominent dissenter from the encyclical in celebrating the theology of Pope Francis, Benedict was clearly pointing out a trend toward setting St. John Paul II’s 1993 encyclical aside. And precisely because Msgr. Viganò knows that Veritatis Splendor is being set aside, he suppressed that portion of the letter.
4. Making a mess
Hagan lio! (“Make a mess!”) has been a hallmark phrase of Pope Francis. By that he does not mean to do things badly, but to risk bold ventures for the Gospel, even if they might be disruptive.
However, his five years have also brought a series of “messes” that have no particular evangelical value.
Hardly a fortnight goes by without some controversy or another about a secondary or tertiary matter. Presenting some flattering booklets about the Holy Father is about the easiest thing for a Vatican communications official to do. Yet it became a scandal that completely overwhelmed the Holy Father’s fifth anniversary — and his March 17 visit to the relics of Padre Pio, which was chosen to commemorate it.
A certain weariness is setting in around the Catholic world, with the cataract of unforced errors that emanate from those close to the Holy Father. [And the cataracts blinding much of the media, secular and Catholic, from acknowledging these errors and the central source of it all, Jorge Bergoglio himself.]
We saw that weariness most prominently in the comments earlier this year from Cardinal Sean O’Malley after the Holy Father’s trip to Chile. Is it no longer possible for the Vatican simply to do simple things without making a mess?
Msgr. Viganò’s resignation was (partially) accepted because of his deception. But no doubt there was frustration too that an otherwise straightforward project should have gone so horribly wrong.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2018 03:40] |