See preceding page for earlier posts today, 11/8/10.
Of the unprecedented occurrences in Benedict XVI's Pontificate, one of the most welcome is the number of books coming out in defense of him, particularly with regard to the 'sex abuse scandal'. Not only that such books are being written - and by Vatican specialists - but that they are being written now, quite close and contemporaneous to the attacks on him. Which means that future historians will at least have the benefit of material from both sides - pro and con - to draw on. That is, if they are interested in fairness. The latest one is by the Vatican correspondent of RAI's TG-1, the premier newscast on Italian state TV.
The Pope's truth
A book review translated from
Nov. 8, 2010
Benedict XVI's recent apostolic trip to the United Kingdom was a success that caught the mass media on the wrong foot. They had been ready to intone the 'De profundis' [liturgy for the dead] after the
[revival of] the scandal over pedophile priests. Instead, they had to deal with the affection and participation with which the Pope was received, which was not limited to British Catholics.
Of course, the subject of sex abuses by priests was an obsessive refrain, and some even interpreted one of his statements to say he was suggesting an analogy between the martyrs of the Church and the victims of sex abuses by priests - an error that a theologian like Joseph Ratzinger would never formulate.
One cannot reconcile the refinement of his thought with the hastiness of journalistic judgments. Since the start of his Pontificate, this gentle but firm person has aroused the killer instinct in the mass media.
In fact, some veterans of Vatican reporting like Valli himself have called him 'a dangerous man'. But Valli, the Vatican correspondent of TG-1, says in a new book, kust publised by Lindau, that he means it as a compliment:
Pope Benedict does noting but to continually underscore and reaffirm the basic principles of the Christian faith with the lucidity of a scholar and the incisiveness of a pastor. And this is what makes him dangerous for those who do not really want man to be free but to be subjugated, not fully responsible but acting in a daze, unaware of beauty and the possibilities of human reason but trapped and incapable of thinking big.
For believers to 'think big' - to expand the horizons of reason - has been the program of Benedict XVI since he became Pope, and it could not be otherwise for a theologian who has been called on to be a pastor.
In a new book, Valli goes back over the most significant episodes of the past five years of this Pontificate which has always been attended by fierce controversy:
- The Regensburg lecture which unleashed anger in the Muslim world
[But not 'sustained' anger, it must be noted, compared to that of MSM - there have been no anti-Church initiatives from Islamic leaders since Regensburg, although anti-Christian attacks by Islamic extremists continue to occur, but those have nothing to do with what the Pope has said.]
- Lifting the excommunication of four Lefebvrian bishops, including a Holocaust 'negationist', inciting harsh criticism from Jews and progressive Catholics.
- Benedict's 'heresy' in saying condoms are not the solution to the AIDS pandemic, which some European governments formally protested.
- The 'perfect storm' represented by the priest pedophile issue
which has scandalized everyone. [One must take exception to that statement as being exaggerated and sanctimonious. The 'scandal' professed by MSM and their likeminded cohort is very much like that of Claude Rains in the movie Casablanca ('I am shocked! - shocked to find that gambling goes on here"). The terrible crime of priest pedophilia had already been ventilated, scrutinized, analyzed to death, and denounced to high heavens for almost two years when the first issue first became public fodder in 2000-2002. All the fresh indignation in 2010 in the wake of public disclosures in some European countries was more grandstand play to demonize the Catholic Church rather than genuine sentiment!]
Not to mention other emblematic episodes such as the cancelled visit to Rome's La Sapienza University in 2009 resulting from militant ostracism by a very tiny group of professors and students
[67 professors and a few hundred leftist students, in a university with a faculty of more than 2,000, and a student population of at least 40,000.]
In this brilliant work of popular apologetics, Valli explains that there are two main reasons, in effect, for this systematic aggressiveness against Papa Ratzinger:
"Because he says that truth exists, and because he calls for social justice" thus obstructing "the maneuvers of those who tout moral relativism and social injustice".
He does not believe there is a conspiracy
[Only conspiracy-obsessed extremists even think that!] - it's futile, he says, to imagine some 'grand old man' orchestrating denigratory campaigns; rather there are certain converging interests.
He prefers to think that this Pope irritates progressivist Catholics - especially those "paladins of the 'Church from below' who are working zealously to make people believe that underneath the dome of St. Peter's, there is nothing but rottenness" in the name of spirituality.
Valli, who certainly cannot be considered a traditionalist, strikes hard at that Catholic constituency which is more willing to tolerate the world than to bear witness to their faith before it:
At times, one has the impression that there exists a Stockholm syndrome relationship between these Catholics and the world. Instead of using reason to unmask the enemy and neutralize them/him/it with the truth, these Catholics in fact show admiration if not outright love for 'the world' and what it thinks and does [as opposed to what the Church teaches].
This is due in large part to a mixture of ignorance and bare awareness of their own Catholic patrimony, which they express in a lethal inferiority complex.
Benedict XVI does not stand for nor tolerate any such complex. That is why he is their target.
First, I am surprised - and thankful - that Valli has come out with this 'defense' of Benedict. His commentaries for RAI have not always been friendly to the Pope, and perhaps his background explains it. He was a follower of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini when the latter was Archbishop of Milan. Valli (born 1958) is a facile writer who has authored as many as 19 books of reportage, including 5 on John Paul II, and this year, besides this book, he has also published an interview-book with Hans Kueng entitled Ribelle d'amore. Last year, he came out with a book about the Milan episcopal work of Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, who succeeded not just to Martini's post in Milan but also inherited his liberal mantle.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/11/2010 20:44]