BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

[I do not have to post the rest of the story...]


This is exactly the kind of counter-productive, outright damaging and deeply insidious mess that has been caused by Cardinal Schoenborn's ill-advised 'private briefing' for Austrian newspaper editors last week. He's not stupid - he knew the media would have a field day with all the things he said. And still he chose to play the hero - against whom? Ostensibly against Cardinal Sodano. And for all the wrong reasons!

But it doesn't take more than average common sense to know that everything he told those editors - from his frontal attack on Sodano to his open espousal of more liberal practices by the Church would become live ammunition for the detractors of the Church and the Pope - on the eve of an apostolic visit that would otherwise have been fairly free of the 'sex-scandal' smut that the media insist on tagging onto every news report about the Pope at the slightest pretext.

And now, the Archbishop of Vienna has given them the pretext to open the floodgates of media speculation once again.... I have never felt so outraged over a self-serving headline-courting stunt by any prelate since I started following Benedict XVI.

May God give Benedict XVI many many more years and slay the ill-concealed ambitions of those who are already fixated on the next conclave and appear to have forgotten elementary decency. Being born into the nobility does not confer that, it seems.


As usual, the Times of London, has absolutely no scruples about printing a factually-wrong headline. Since when was Sodano one of the Pope's closest aides? He was not considered that, even when he was holdover Secretary of State.