Calling the release of the above photo to illustrate the pope's supposed-to-be dead-serious meeting with USCCB officials a blunder is a terrible understatement.
It's hard to believe that anyone dealing with communications in any way could possibly have thought there was any upside to this photo in the context of the
PRESENT CRISIS. What it does say is that Bergoglio and his bishop guests did find a moment of levity in their meeting, and of course, they have a right to such
a moment or more than one, even. But what larger purpose did the photo serve other than to underscore that for all the noble-sounding talk coming from Bergoglio
and his Vatican these past five years and a half, they really think that this PRESENT CRISIS is "just another bump in the road that we can all yuk our way through...
we can work it out with a little bit of luck". The rank unseriousness of it all - in short, all pro forma song and dance... And by the way, Mr. Altieri, the 'blunder' has
nothing to do at all with 'media reform'. It has to do with extremely thick numbskulls who are unfit for the work they are supposed to do. Not a good sign from
the 'new improved consolidated' Vatican media juggernaut, the bright guys who also gave us Lettergate. (Don't forget the other Vigano is still behind the scenes there.)
The Vatican’s photo blunder shows
media reform is still a work in progress
Some Vatican staff shared the public's dismay
at the image - but by then it was too late
by Christopher Altieri
September 15, 2018
A pair of photographs released by the Vatican – one in particular – caused quite a stir on Thursday. The offending image showed members of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops Executive Committee sharing a jocular moment during a meeting with Pope Francis. That in itself is nothing too terribly newsworthy.
But the meeting was to discuss the ongoing crisis in the US Church, precipitated by the spectacular fall from grace of one of the hierarchy’s best-known and most influential members: the disgraced former Archbishop of Washington, DC, Theodore Edgar “Uncle Ted” McCarrick. Given that context, people asked how such an image could have been chosen to convey the spirit of the bishops’ response to the crisis.
Officials at the Press Office had not responded to queries from the Catholic Herald as of press time, and responsible figures in the Dicastery for Communication declined to comment on the incident. However, there does appear to have been discussion of the images within the Vatican communications apparatus and an attempt to keep them from being used.
Some Vatican staff only saw the photo once it had been released, and were dismayed. “[We] knew it would horrify people and embarrass the Holy Father and the US bishops,” said one source, who spoke with the Catholic Herald on condition of anonymity. “It’s our job to help get out the message of the Holy Father, and that photograph compromised the message the Holy Father is trying to convey.” By then, however, it was too late.
A series of factors likely contributed to the PR contretemps.
The ongoing reform of the Vatican’s media organs is stalled. The new prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, the experienced layman, Paolo Ruffini, has only been in the job since the beginning of September. Sources say he is not yet fully involved in day-to-day operational decision making.
Then there is the incomplete folding of the once-autonomous outfits – including the newspaper,
L’Osservatore Romano, which has effective control over the photography of papal events – into the new umbrella Dicastery. Lines of communication between the Press Office and the other offices of the Vatican’s media outfit are not always straightforward, and questions regarding who gets to make which editorial decisions remain imperfectly resolved on the operational level.
The photo became controversial partly because the meeting provided little else that was newsworthy. USCCB President Cardinal Daniel DiNardo issued a statement following the meeting, in which he described the proceedings as “a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange,” and said, “[Pope Francis] listened very deeply from the heart.”
But this followed weeks of waiting – Cardinal DiNardo first announced that he was seeking an audience on August 16 – and there was no mention of any concrete resolution. Cardinal DiNardo is hoping for the Pope to authorise an apostolic visitation, with authority to look into the McCormick disaster.
We still don’t know if DiNardo will get his wish.
Here is Also Maria Valli's commentary on the occasion - clearly a missed opportunity to advance the Vatican's side of the controversy.
A time for words (not now!)
and a time for action (when?)
Translated from
by Aldo Maria Valli
“Lengthy, fruitful and good” is how the officers of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) described their meeting with Pope Francis on Thursday on the clerical sex abuse crisis. No details were given, and the statement was limited to speaking about an ‘exchange’ with the pope and thanking him for having received them.
The full statement reads:
"We are grateful to the Holy Father for receiving us in audience. We shared with Pope Francis our situation in the United States -- how the Body of Christ is lacerated by the evil of sexual abuse. He listened very deeply from the heart. It was a lengthy, fruitful, and good exchange.
As we departed the audience, we prayed the Angelus together for God's mercy and strength as we work to heal the wounds. We look forward to actively continuing our discernment together identifying the most effective next steps."
Present at the meeting were Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, USCCB president; Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, vice president; Cardinal Sean O’Malley who heads the pope’s Commission for the Protection of Minors; and the USCCB secretary general, Mons. Brian Bransfield.
The meeting must have been very cordial, at least judging from the photograph that the Vatican chose to release of the meeting, in which the participants appear to be amused and all smiles. (Perhaps the Vatican ought to have sent out another photo in view of the gravity of the subject under discussion.)
Meanwhile, the pope has convoked all the presidents of national episcopal conferences around the world – more than 100 bishops – for a summit at the Vatican on February 21-24, 2019 The move is exceptional, in the same way that the current crisis facing the Church is exceptionally grave.
[I believe it is the first time since the bishops’ conferences were established after Vatican II that the presidents of the bishops’ conferences have been convoked at the Vatican. Though they have no theological standing as such (each president only has his individual standing as a consecrated bishop who heads a diocese and is a legitimate successor to the apostles), they coordinate the activities of their member bishops, each of whom represents a diocese. Bergoglio has said he wants to give the bishops’ conferences a juridical personality – as if this would confer them with a theological standing.]
With this decision, Bergoglio apparently intends to avoid repeating the errors committed in Chile, where the problem was left for a long time for the local churches to handle, with disastrous inactions, so that the pope recently had to intervene, but very late in the game
[after insisting for years that reported abuses and cover-ups involving some Chilean bishops were nothing but calumny].
The turnaround Bergoglio wants is clear: to pass from a situation in which he, as pope, appears part of the problem, to one in which he can demonstrate strong authoritative leadership.
He is playing for high stakes. At risk are his personal charisma and his credibility. But no one can say if this meeting with the bishops
[who, in effect, will be representing their national churches] can guarantee the desired results.
The risk is that the meeting will produce the usual document with good intentions. But words are no longer enough. Moreover, February seems rather far off.
[Everything about the Bergoglio Vatican’s handling of this CRISIS has been appallingly cavalier – as though they can’t be bothered to take it seriously. First, there was the statement that the pope’s four-days-delayed reaction to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, a relatively brief and very generic statement pompously called ‘Letter to the People of God’ was his ‘exhaustive’ response on the matter, and that no further statement or action would be forth-coming from him. Shortly after which, of course, the Vigano Testimony was published, about which, as with the DUBIA, Bergoglio chose not to reply to any of the questions it raised.
What pope – or other church authority, for that matter – would insist on not replying directly to questions regarding essential points of the faith from four individually eminent cardinals, and to a devastating denunciation of his own indifference to sex-offending prelates and priests if they happen to be his friends? Only Jorge Bergoglio.
Then he has the meeting with the USCCB officers who had been requesting it for almost a month – since the Grand Jury report was published – although he had met earlier with two of his pet US cardinals, Cupich and Wuerl. So the meeting takes place, and it is just incredible that all the supposed brains in the Vatican’s new superdiscastery for communications agreed to release the photo that they did.
And now, this meeting to be held in February! Why does it have to be five months off? Bishops can be mobilized in a hurry – it happens every time within two weeks they must be called to Rome to elect a new pope. What’s with the five-month wait till February? Are they hoping that by then, all the furor would have died down, and they can merrily do clerical/curial business as usual?]
Of course, the bishops cannot all be called in at the snap of a finger, but why not a date much closer to now???
And until then? Everything remains as it has been?
- No further action on the McCarrick case?
-
No response to the US bishops who, after the Grand Jury report, said the time for words is over and that concrete interventions are needed now to deal with all the rot and discover and disclose all the pernicious links and cover-ups?
As to the three-day duration,
does anyone really think that more than 100 bishops coming from dozens of diverse situations and cultures could seriously arrive at anything but the usual document full of good intentions? [To do that, they don’t even have to meet. The word-counterfeiters at Cardinal Baldisseri’s office, aided by the likes of Spadaro and Tornielli (and long-distance by Archbishop Fernandez in Argentina), can very well churn it out now. If they have not already started to do so!]
After the Vigano Testimony, nothing can ever be as it used to be. He has made specific accusations that need to be answered.
The initial maneuver of the Bergoglio camp, which was focused on discrediting the ex-nuncio, appears not to have given the desired results. When as many as 29 US bishops have made statements to the effect that Vigano’s charges should be investigated thoroughly to come up with answers, they are simply expressing what other bishops [and a great many faithful] feel.
In this intricate framework, the thread represented by the case of Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC, has raised new questions. Many have called for his resignation, and one of the Pittsburgh schools named for him has taken out his name from the institution.
Now he says he will be going back to Rome to ask Pope Francis to accept the resignation he submitted pro forma three years ago when he turned 75.
[Wasn’t he just in Rome less than 2 weeks ago to talk to the pope? Why didn’t he do that then? Obviously he thought he could ride off his personal crisis!]
The question, of course, is why his resignation was never accepted by the pope.
[Because he had uses for him obviously – the first having been to name him as Cardinal Burke’s replacement on the all-important Congregation for Bishops after Burke’s banishment from the Vatican.][Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/09/2018 05:33]