No hysterics please:
The healing is under way
Translated from
February 14, 2012
I confess I have no idea who could be the crows, the moles and the wild boars inhabiting the Apostolic Palace. But I feel nauseous going through the cataract of interpretations, hypotheses, lamentations and scandalized expressions of the past several days. It pains me all, but on the other hand, has this not been part of the Church's history in the past twenty centuries?
It is a fact that for some time now, there are people within the Vatican have been occupied with the old and dirty job of feeding confidential files to the media not to shed light on anything but to generate confusion and to paint a depressing image of the Church from within.
Their final objective could be trivial or of great consequence. Settling personal accounts. demolishing the image of Cardinal Bertone, opposition to the clean-up and transparency measures inspired by Pope Benedict, preventive war against some cardinals looking to the next Conclave...
But let us not be deceived. The Vatican offices have not always been a model of holiness, nor was the Far West.
And if there is anyone who knows the light and shadows of that world, it is Joseph Ratzinger, who this month marks 30 years of service at the Vatican.
Once, when he was Prefect for the Faith, he was asked about the Roman Curia, with the expectation that, considering his spiritual nature and his reformist impulses, he would fulminate against the structure so demonized by fiction writers, and which had not always made his life easy at the Vatican.
With his usual suavity and intelligence, and that special instinct for not allowing himself to be borne by any current, Cardinal Ratzinger replied that many honorable and exemplary men also work in that much reviled 'machine', men who have dedicated their lives to the service of the Church with enthusiastic diligence despite scarce resources, besides whom their counterparts in the corporate world and government would pale.
But it is obvious Benedict XVI also knows the risks the Lord runs in having his will translated to practical measures by men of flesh and blood and all their weaknesses. There's good and bad in families, among priests, among intellectuals, in any human society. Why should the Curia be different?
I am reminded of what he said to newsmen enroute to Portugal in May 2010 about the persecutions the Church has to suffer, when he was asked about the 'prophecy' of Fatima:
The attacks against the Pope and the Church do not just come from outside the Church. The sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sin which there is within the Church. This has always been the case, but today we see it in a really big way: that the larger persecution of the Church does not come from her external enemies but it is born from the sin inside the Church, and that is why the Church has a profound need to relearn penitence, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness, on the one hand, but also the need for justice [he was referring to the sexual abuse of minors by priests]
We are realists, knowing that evil will always be on the attack, from within and from the outside, but we also know that the forces for good are present, and that in the end, the Lord triumphs over evil.
And he was not just talking the talk.
Contemplating what is happening at the Vatican today, one also remembers the priest of Tarcy, in George Bernanos's
Diary of a country priest, who tells his colleague Ambricourt, that in the Church, asses, mules and billygoats coexist, some so savage that one wishes to kill them, but you can't do that "because the Master wants to receive them all at the Last Judgment in good condition".
I have been writing that there is a silent opposition to the fundamental line of Benedict XVI's Magisterium and governance, which is composed of persons one cannot necessarily classify into the usual categories of left-right or conservative-progressive. If that is happening in so many Catholic sectors (the media, intellectuals, some bishops),
how can it not happen in the Curia itself - within the machinery that is intended to help the Pope govern, and therefore, where it is also easiest to trip him up? [Worse than just tripping him up, I'd call it outright sabotage and treachery!]
I repeat: It is natural to feel profound sadness at all this, but let us not pull out our hair and rend our garments! Those who engage in these strategies of confusion play on emotions, in trying to paint a grotesque image on the basis of small truths or half truths.
The image of a Pope who is isolated and powerless, devoted only to his writings and catecheses, while the world is collapsing around him is clearly targeted to discredit him, but it is also a great lie.
First of all because Benedict XVI has given more than enough proof of his idea of governing the Church: To preach with wisdom, to indicate the urgent priorities of the Church's mission, to establish the channels of purification, to call for a Year of Faith, to dialog with the secular world... As well as placing qualified and competent men of proven loyalty in essential positions, even if this is not always easy.
It would be stupid to think that in a team that counts with eminences like Bertone, Ouellet, Levada, Amato, Canizares, Piacenza, etc., the Pope is alone!
[Stupid and a deliberate denial of reality! That is why it angers me when the term Curia is used to stand for everything that's wrong in the Secretariat of State, not to mention in the Vatican, ignoring the fact that all the heads of the Curia are now Benedict's own men (with the exception of Cardinal Rylko at Laity) and that all of them are highly qualified and competent (though a big question mark right now on Cardinal Bertone for administrative competence), loyal to the Pope, who share his vision of the Church, and are personally beyond reproach!]
What's also true is that Benedict XVI has not sought to put together a team of clones
[If only there were at least one person who exists that could approximate being a clone to him!] or of servile collaborators.
Each of his 'ministers' has their own strength and style, they may be deficient in something or other, and we may not even like all of them. But it is simply ridiculous to sell the idea of a Pope sequestered in his apartment and unable to cope with events. That pus is now coming out from the wound within the Church only means that healing has begun.
I am really looking forward to what Benedict XVI will have to say later this week before and during the Consistory for new cardinals - it will be a message to all of us.
Meanwhile, I believe that this wave of negative publicity has to do with the Holy Father's most insistent concern: the weakness of the faith, the fatigue with faith, the risk that the light of faith could be extinguished.
It would be stupid to think that the problem of faith is only external and not within our own home. In one of his last discourses in Germany last September, Benedict XVI left us these words of wisdom and guidance:
It is not a question here of finding a new strategy to relaunch the Church. Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency, not bracketing or ignoring anything from the truth of our present situation, but living the faith fully here and now in the utterly sober light of day, appropriating it completely, and stripping away from it anything that only seems to belong to faith, but in truth is mere convention or habit.
Thank God for a voice of reason amid all the hysterical reaction in some circles, even among admirers and devotees of Benedict XVI, to the current media fixation on so-called exposes regarding the Vatican. In the grand scheme, the 'exposes' are all trivial, petty. and even laughable because much of it is feigned, especially what amounts to the most 'serious' accusation made so far - Mons. Vigano's frustrated flailings. (If you read his letters, he claims he found cronyism, overpricing and other financial irregularities at the Governatorate, but he also claims to have corrected these wrongs, and he never says anyone stopped him from doing so, only that the persons he may have moved against took their revenge by destroying his chance to be named President of Vatican City-State!)
And yet, everyone in the media is so eager to find fault with the Vatican that their narrative through all this has focused wrongly on 'corruption and power struggles in the Vatican'. What's more, substantive issues raised in the more serious accusations have been answered unequivocally by the Note from the Governatorate (which tacitly admitted, by not addressing the question in the Note, paying too much for the Nativity Scene in 2009, a cost substantially reduced in 2010 thanks to Mons. Vigano, and kept down even in 2011, after he had left), and other notes from the Vatican Press Office.
A French journalist has written the following piece, labelled an analysis, which is spoiled, however, by the inexplicable and completely wrong assertion that the memorandum sent by Cardinal Castirllon to the Vatican was written by him (!) It is very clear in all accounts that the memorandum was sent to Castrillon by a German friend of his, and that's the reason it is written in German, one of the several languages that Castrillon himself speaks:
Revelations, leaks and plots:
Who wants to end
Benedict XVI's 'glasnost'?
by Antoine M. Izoard
Translated from
February 14, 2011
Cui prodest? (Who profits?)
As the Italian press continues to publish 'revelations' o n alleged death plots or seemingly plausible examples of corruption at the heart of the smallest sate on earth, a Curial cardinal cites Seneca to ask, Who gains from all this?
Because if the confidential documents published seem real, if the media have found in these a new vein to mine in this time of crises, many would like to know
who is really interested in showing a Vatican in the grip of confusion.
[DUH! The media themselves, to begin with, only too happy to lend a hand to the petty interests within the Vatican who are stoking the fires of discord and ambition in those who are leaking these files! Frankly, I would have thought that by now, Cardinal Sodano ought to have issued a statement to deny that he has anything to do with these treacheries nor do other persons that have been named publicly as anti-Benedict or anti-Bertone. If he continues to keep silent, 'everyone' will simply presume he is guilty, the same way he is presumed of having been among the 'enablers' of Father Maciel, as he has declined to make any public comment at all about it.]
After the Vigano case with its accusations of corruption and financial malversation in the Vatican state government, after the open suspicions that the 'Vatican bank' IOR has been involved in money-laundering all these years, the supposed conspiracy to assassinate Benedict XVI revealed by an Italian newspaper has all the novelesque characteristics of a Dan Brown plot.
Thus one learns that a retired Colombian cardinal wrote, in German, a secret report in which he maintains that an Italian cardinal had confided to some Chinese officials about this plot to kill the Pope. [What's with Izoard? I am sure he reads and understands Italian well enough, but why is he misrepresenting what the newspaper wrote? As tendentious as the FQ headline-article-minispecial was, it was clear from its account that 1) Castrillon simply forwarded a memo he received from a German friend; 2) the memo, not Castrillon, alleges that Chinese officials to whom Cardinal Romeo had spoken to in China last November, deduced the existence of a plot from his alleged statement that 'The Pope only has 12 months to live'.]
The same confidential document indicates that the Pope is secretly preparing for his succession and states that he has a very conflictual relationship with his Secretary of State. [Again, a misrepresentation. The memo attributes those statements as having been made by Cardinal Romeo to Chinese officials. Neither the anonymous German memo-writer nor Castrillon are alleging them at all!]
As fantastical as the statements are, the document does exist. Who them is organizing these leaks to the press? In many Vatican offices, perplexity reigns. "Who could want the skin of Cardinal Bertone?", they murmur, or "Who has an interest in launching here and now what would appear to be preparations for the next Conclave?"
[Come now, surely those questions would hardly be asked by the hardened and blase denizens of the Vatican bureaucracy! They're valid rhetorical questions that do not have to be attributed to Vatican employees, of all people!]
The Vatican spokesman refuses to see in all this any internal 'settling of accounts'. But German Cardinal Walter Kasper, from his retirement, deplores the 'mean streak' that has led to these disclosures and says that "if anyone wants to criticize the Secretary of State or someone else, let him to do it he has good reasons"
[More importantly, Kasper also said, "...but do it openly," not through underhand methods.]
As head of the Vatican communications effort, Fr. Lombardi cannot ignore the increasingly strong attacks against the Pope and the Church, even as he deplores that the recent dismissal in the United States of a major court action filed against the Pope and two Vatican cardinals, has been largely ignored by the media.
Meanwhile, rumors continue to circulate. Thus, a Sicilian newspaper states that if the Pope only has '12 months more to live', it's because he has stomach cancer
[NB: the disease that caused the death of John XXIII].
An Italian archbishop meanwhile says he is sure the Pope is about to resign.
[The ridiculous canard I posted a few posts above .]
"The fact that the attacks are getting stronger is a sign that something important is at stake," noted Fr. Lombardi, who says that all the attacks are intended to discredit the efforts of the Vatican to establish true transparency in the operations of all its offices.
But is it not, in fact, the Ratzingerian 'glasnost' that's upsetting his opponents? ['Glasnost' is the Russian term for openness and transparency in all the activities of an institution, that Mikhail Gorbachov sought to introduce in the 1980s.]
Seven years into his Pontificate, the man whom many said would simply be a transitional Pope has managed, without making too much noise, to shake up many things: from the Maciel case to hands-on leadership in managing pedophile scandal that has besmirched the Church; from his efforts towards a correct 'reception' of Vatican-II to his friendly reach-out to the traditionalists; from his 'iron hand in a velvet glove' towards Beijing to the dialog with Islam... [These initiatives represent far more than 'glasnost' because they encompass, in fact, the second term of the Gorbachov reformist binomial, 'perestroika', a restructuring, which in the case of Benedict XVI, has been a policy perestroika rather than organizational.]
Fr. Lombardi says the Pope will never allow himself to be intimidated by these 'revelations'. Joseph Ratzinger, who came to the Roman Curia 30 years ago, knew what he would have to deal with as Pope.
"Pray for me," he asked the faithful On April 24,2005, "that I may not flee from the wolves". These words, pronounced at the Mass that inaugurated his Petrine ministry, resounds in all its significance today, along with the motto he had chosen for his episcopal coat-of arms, "cooperators in the truth'.
Last month, he said to the Roman Curia: "Be witnesses. Be transparent in everything, and work as pastors ready to give your life for others".
[And all they have to do is look at how he has lived his life before he became Pope and now that he is Pope. He does not ask of his bishops and priests anything more, or less, than what he himself has been giving and doing.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2012 15:40]