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Pope's friend and one-man brain trust says Mons. Vigano
is only 'a retired prelate who just wants some fame'
[Is this then what Bergoglio thinks of the ex-nuncio? The friend does not deny any of Vigano's
factual claims which he calls attacks. Instead, we get a systematic denial of reality]
Translated from
Oct. 2, 2018
What does Pope Francis think of Mons. Viganò? And how has he reacted personally to the testimonies published by the former Nuncio to the USA?
We know that the pope has said nothing so far directly on the matter. He first asked the media to judge for themselves, and then went on to launch a series of [continuing] oblique references to the case, especially during his [so-called] morning homilies at Casa Santa Marta.
[One needs to write a serious analysis of this uniquely Bergoglian institution – a pope’s personal daily Masses shared openly with selected members of the community (John Paul II did this too but strictly in private), and in which the celebrant’s ‘homilies’ are immediately shared with the whole world in all possible multimedia forms and channels by the official Vatican media…. Yet he has habitually used these 'homilies' as a platform to inveigh against all Catholics - and only Catholics - whom he dislikes or disapproves of for strictly ideological reasons (they are 'conservative' where he is ultra-progressive) and/or because they criticize him openly. He is thereby using liturgy for his personal purposes, injecting his persona into what should be purely an act of worship to God. If that is not blasphemy, what is? But even his fiercest Catholic critics seem to overlook this blasphemy!]
But to have an idea of what this pope probably thinks about Viganò, it could be useful to listen to the man who is perhaps his number one adviser and a friend of long-standing, Mons. Víctor Manuel Fernández, whom he recently named Bishop of La Plata, one who is often in Rome and is certainly among those closest to Bergoglio.
Interviewed by [ultra-Bergogliac] José Manuel Vidal of the Spanish website Religion Digital
https://www.periodistadigital.com/religion/america/2018/09/17/alguien-necesitado-de-un-minuto-de-falsa-gloria-iglesia-religion-dios-jesus-papa-francisco-argentina-plata-victor-fernandez.shtml
Fernández claims the the pope is ‘strong and wants to work' but he does not think that disciplinary actions should be taken against Viganò, whom he sees as a man who is only after the limelight, “someone who needs a minute of false glory and is not resigned to have a low profile in retirement”.
Commenting himself on Viganò, the pope’s friend said: “I was always taught to place the People of God in the first place. [Not God himself???] In this case, I see a consecrated person who gives priority to his well-known ideological interests above the good of the people who end up being confused and hopeless”. [One can write a book about everything that's wrong with this statement. People have been confused since Day 1 of this pontificate, Vigano or no Vigano. And if some now feel 'hopeless' about the Church, the entire blame lies with another man with an Italianate three-syllable surname, Bergoglio.]
The interviewer asks: Are we back to the intrigues of Vatileaks or is the plague of sexual abuse being used to undermine papal authority?
Fernandez: “I think this man has two objectives: to discredit Pope Francis using a problem that has high visibility in the media, and to seek to show that he had no resposibility at all for the slowness of response to sexual abuse cases in the country where he was Nuncio.”
[And what responsibility can a Nuncio take for local sex abuses? Only 2 cases come to mind:
1) if abuses and cover-ups are caused by bishops whose appointments he recommended (none of which applies to Vigano, who was Nuncio only from 2012-2016, and whose espicopal recommendations were clearly ignored by Bergoglio in favor of McCarrick's recommendations in at least 2 cases - Cupich and Tobin; and
2) if he failed to report credible and plausible accusations sent to him about erring priests and bishops (as accusations were sent to his predecessors about McCarrick). Moreover, a nuncio has no powers to compel local bishops (especially not if they are cardinals who do rank aboe him) to do anything - as Vigano's predecessors were unable to compel McCarrick to observe Benedict XVI's santions. So how can Fernandez blame Vigano for the slow response of US bishops - a record of decades - during the four short years he was nuncio?]
Q: So is Viganò just a pawn in the hands of others?
Fernandez: Some persons forget the law of God and fall into the same moral relativism which they criticize. They think that their supposed defense of traaditional doctrine authorizes them to give false witness and tell lies. For them, calumny and defamation are licit.
According to Fernández, this is the entire problem: Vigano is a retired prelate who, unable to resign himself [to being out of office], needed some notoriety [i.e., public attention], and who, with the aid of ‘supposedly Catholic’ blogs, "succeeded to be on the front pages for a few days as ‘a martyr for truth’, but "he will suffer much when he finally manages to see the danger he has caused in the ‘simple hearts’ of many". [Shouldn't Fernandez be saying this of Bergoglio as pope and as Archbishop of Buenos Aires?] Finally, according to Fernandez, Vigano’s decision was not the result of power struggles in the Curia. [ DIM=8pt][Whoever said it was?]
“I have been in Rome these past days,” Fernandez continues, “and I perceived above all a lot of sorrow. No one understands how it is possible who was a Nuncio to an important country, could behave this way, like an adolescent”. [And I cannot understand, despite the many stupidities in the Fernandez-Bergoglio papal documents, how the pope's one-man brain trust can speak so stupidly!]
As for the bishops of the United States, Fernandez says it is ‘surprising’ that no one has sought to distance himself from Viganò [and his accusations, more importantly]. One can see that there are ideological obsessions stronger than mental sanity”. [Oh yes, we can certainly say that of Bergoglio and all his followers, starting with Fernandez, who is probably more mentor and not just follower.]
He says he does not think the pope will take disciplinary measures against Viganò. “In recent years [i.e., since he became pope], he has done it on rare occasions. [WHEN????] He did it about Vatileaks because the target was Benedict XVI, but it would be strange if he did it now hat the attacks are against him”.
[1) What exactly did he do about Vatileaks for offenses against Benedict XVI????
2) Recalling certain events as Vigano did, starting with his June 13, 2013 conversation with Bergoglio and all that followed it, is NOT AN ATTACK AT ALL. If Viganò was lying, all Bergoglio had to do was to say, “NO – we never even spoke about McCarrick at that June meeting” .If he can't, it is because Vigano was not lying, and Bergoglio may blaspheme Jesus as often as he misquotes him but he will not willingly perjure nor self-incriminate himself... Which leaves the question of his subsequent use of McCarrick to go to China on his behalf and to heed his advice on episcopal, cardinal and curial appointments involving US bishops, because he did actually elevate McCarrick’s proteges to bishops, cardinals and one Curial prefecture – none of which he can deny. For most people, 2+2 is still 4, whatever Bergogliac Spadaro may say.]
On the sexual abuse scandals, he says all it needs is “to have present norms respected”. [He can't even try to show more concern about it! But then, didn't the Vatican say that Bergoglio's 4-page 'Letter to the People of God" was 'exhaustive', saying all he had to say on the matter, and that we should expect nothing more?]
Let us say it again: The words of Fernandez are not those of just any bishop, but of a prelate very close to the pope, his intimate work associate for decades, and his theologian of reference.
To better place Fernandez in context, it will not be useless to recall that precisely as the pope’s theologian of confidence, he was among the principal ideators [if not actually the principal ghostwriter] of Amoris laetitia, Laudato si and Evangelii gaudium. Entire sections of AL, especially in the controversial Chapter 8, which opens the way for remarried divorcees to receive communion [despite remaining in adultery] were virtually lifted from articles written in 2005 and 2006 by Fernandez, who had long been the one-man brain trust of the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires.
In those years, Fernandez was a theology professor at the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, and in his pubished articles, opposed John Paul II’s Veritatis splendor on the fundamental questions of the Church’s moral teaching, and advocated situation ethics which is the guiding principle of AL Chapter 8.
Mostly because of those articles, the Congregation for Catholic Education blocked Fernandez’s candidature at the time to be rector of the Catholic University of Buneos Aires, only to yield in 2009 to the insistent requests of Cardinal Bergoglio who did manage to impose the promotion of his friend.
In 2013, shortly after he became pope, Bergoglio consecrated Fernandez as a bishop, assigning him an extinct titular see, whereas the career of Dominican theologian Jean-Louis Brugues, who had opposed Fernandez’s nomination when he was secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education, has stalled. [Benedict XVI named Brugues Vatican Archivist and Chief Librarian in 2012 but last June, Bergoglio named a controversial Portuguese theologian to replace him although Brugues is not yet 75.]
“Since then,” Sandro Magister wrote, “Fernandez has spent more time in Rome than in Buenos Aires, fully occupied as his friend’s ghostwriter, without improving his credentials as a theologian, which had been anything but brilliant since the start”.
http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1351303.html
Indeed, Fernandez’s merits as a theologian are not immediately appreciable. A book of his entitled Guariscimi con la tua bocca. L’arte di baciare (Heal me with your mouth: The art of kissing), published in Argentina in 1995, is rather ‘singular’, being presented by the author himself in these words:
“In these pages, I wish to summarize the popular sentiment, that is, what people experience when they think of a kiss, what mortals feel when they kiss. For this, I talked at length with so many people who have much experience on the matter, and also with many young people who learn to kiss in their own way. Moreover, I have consulted so many books and I wish to show how poets speak of the kiss. Thus, with the intention of synhesizing the immense richness of life [sic - 'l’immenza ricchezza della vita’], I have come to write this book in support of kissing, which I hope will help you to kiss better, and will impel you to liberate in each kiss what is best about your being”.
[I never paid attention to this Foreword before, but does it not give you the creeps? I wonder whether he explains in the book how a priest, who vows chastity, manages to do without this ‘immense richness of life’???]
As the pope’s friend, Fernandez ought to have at heart that parrhesia and synodality which his friend often speaks of. Instead, on the contrary, he has taken positions that are dismissive of the Roman Curia, believing, he says, that Christ has assured “special guidance and illumination for the pope and all the bishops, but not to a prefect or other structure”. [As if Curial heads and officials were not also bishops.]
“This, then,” Magister wrote, “is the person Francis holds close as his ‘thinker of reference’.”
Who now explains that Mons. Vigano, with his ‘testimonies’, is nothing but a miserable retired prelate who, unable to accept his condition, set off in search of notoriety [and his 15 minutes of glory.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/10/2018 04:14] |