Not a few voices in the Italian media have been writing lately that the Vatileaks ploy - ostensibly directed against Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, whether it was the Vigano letters, the IOR document leaks and the assassination plot memo - has boomeranged against the moles and their masterminds, because it has reportedly only served to strengthen Bertone's position with the Pope. One of these voices is Luigi Accattoli in this analysis for Corriere della Sera, but he makes one point that any objective Vatican news junkie - let alone a Benaddict - must dispute to high heavens!
The battles of the longest
living Pope in the past 100 years
by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from
February 20, 2012
In April, Benedict XVI will turn 85 and by then [
as of February 29 this year, in fact], he will have become the longest living Pope in the past 100 years. Which means that the Catholic Church faces a season of objective trepidation which historical circumstances may make quite dramatic.
However, during the three days connected with the last consistory, the theologian Pope made it clear that he is not thinking of retiring, and that he will carry on his ministry.
We shall therefore have a second case of sacrificial witness by a Pope after that of John Paul II - and this will probability be a strong advantage for the Church, as achievements matured in suffering generally are, where faith is concerned.
The kind face and the occasionally sad eyes Joseph Ratzinger showed during the consistory celebrations indicate the spirit in which he is facing his battles.
He may be old but he has big objectives in mind to meet what he calls bluntly 'the crisis of faith' which weighs most heavily on Europe.
Next month, he will be travelling to Mexico and Cuba; in the autumn, he will probably be going to Lebanon in the midst of the 'Arab spring'
[that has since turned quite inclement]. In October, he has called a General Assembly of the Bishops' Synod to discuss the New Evangelization, at which time he will launch the Year of Faith to mark the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.
It is against this background of important events that one must consider the recent consistory as an occasion to confront the great challenge of the abandonment of the faith in so many sectors of Europe's traditional Christianity. This is what ought to be the primary concern.
But in the corridors, during the breaks, over meals, the cardinals also chatted about current events and apparent curial troubles.
The Pope seems very remote from any interest in these rather base levels of discussion about internal battles within the Vatican. Nor is he really interested in Curial 'reforms' that are trotted out and re-proposed every so often.
What he thinks about structural reforms is clear, and he said so to the Roman Curia last December: "If we do not find an answer to the crisis of faith, all other reforms will remain ineffective".
[He has, of course, formulated this positively many times in the past: "First we must convert, transform ourselves - then all else will follow." And yet, the leading 'reform movements' in Austria and Germany, for 3xample, advocate radical reforms in Church practices with hardly ever a mention of God in their manifestos!
As for the Curia, it seems clear that the Pope does not intend to do without the consolidated collaboration of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, though there is no doubt that the orchestrated document leaks in the past four weeks were intended to force him out.
But now, Bertone seems to be a support for him in the same way that he himself had been the support for John Paul II.*** {Excuse me! Let's not get carried away here! This is no time to be delusional. I will interpose my full objection below.]
Obviously, after such a tempest, the first task for any Secretary of State is to restore order to the Curia.
[No, he must restore order to the Secretariat of State, first and foremost. No one has so far faulted the other dicasteries of the Curia for dereliction of duty nor outright treachery, so leave them alone, OK? And I am disappointed that Accattoli like other Vaticanistas is so loose with language. Clearly, the hijinks of the past four weeks were all from SecState and within SecState, so why tar the entire Curia with the same contempt? It's not fair and it is wrong, to begin with. It unnecessarily reinforces the overall bad impression that the public has of the 'Roman Curia' collectively, and it is a gross offense to the Curial heads who have been above reproach so far and their hard-working fairly minuscule staffs (compared to the elephantine bureaucracy at SecState). After the Williamson fiasco - a co-production of ineotitude by SecState and the Congregation for Bishops under Cardinal Re, the only exception one might mention in recent memory is Cardinal Turkson's Note proposing recommendations for global financial reform, in which he was in far over his head.]
For the Popes, relationships with the 'court' and the Curia have always been a fount of trouble. A non-Italian Pope has the advantage of keeping a strategic distance from the personalities involved, but this advantage becomes an obstacle if the Italians who work in the Vatican - and who constitute the great majority - fail to find a suitable counterweight.
***Now to my hot and heavy rejoinder to Accattoli's startling assertion that Bertone is fulfilling for Benedict XVI what Cardinal Ratzinger did for John Paul II, an assertion that makes me see red and furious as a raging bull:
There is absolutely no comparison, nor any basis for one. Cardinal Ratzinger - in addition to whatever advice he may have given John Paul II in over two decades of meeting twice a week [There's a reason one Vatican observer recently described Papa Ratzinger's Pontificate thus far as the 30-year Pontificate] - was also the indispensable lightning rod who deflected much if not all the ideological opposition to the Catholic orthodoxy of Papa Wojtyla's Pontificate.
One cannot see any similar contribution by Bertone - it is clear Benedict XVI's doctrinal and pastoral initiatives have all been positions he has developed over the past decades of his career (obviously, becoming Pope gave him the chance to finally carry out all the intentions he has been maturing for years and that he probably thought would simply remain on paper). Surely, Bertone had nothing to contribute to that.
Even worse, Bertone has not been a lightning rod in any way for the attacks against Papa Ratzinger - in fact, the greatest reproach one might make against him is that he has always been missing in action in the initial stages of any assault on the Pope, surfacing only after the shrapnel has all fallen out and it's safe to show himself!
This has been consistent, from the Wielgus fiasco onwards. He was only a few days in office when the Regensburg affair exploded, so whatever he did then was superficial and ministerial, not substantive in any way. He was lucky the Turkish visit a few weeks after Regensburg gave Benedict XVI the sterling chance to] turn the situation around in a most dramatic and unexpected way! I doubt that any behind-the-scenes remedial action by the diplomats of the Secretariat of State could have done as much and so soon.
So, let us concede that Bertone provides the Pope with unquestioned friendship and loyalty - he owes him that in any case; that he's a literal warm body who happens to live in the Apostolic Palace himself, and is therefore available to be on hand when necessary; that he has an engaging bonhomie that can easily help keep the Pope's spirits up on his off days, if he has any; that he may even do valuable administrative work unknown and unperceived to the outside world, including Vaticanistas. None of that makes him 'Ratzinger's Ratzinger'. Only Ratzinger's Bertone at best.]
The following interview didn't turn out to be so good at all after I had translated it, but here it is anyway...
Vatileaks and power plays:
The media operate on worldly logic,
the Church and Christians should not
Interview by Leone Grotti
Translated from
20 Feb 2012
The supposedly difficult relationship between Benedict XVI and his Secretary of State. The Pope's supposed ailment which could lead to his resignation shortly. The supposed internecine wars within the Vatican which has spurred bishops to leak out classified documents to the public.
Amid such a background Pope Benedict XVI held the fourth consistory of his Pontificate, and delivered new and powerful re-statements of his basic message to the faithful, and still, the media "talked about everything except the faith", as the Pope himself noted to the seminarians of Rome at midweek last week.
The media have insisted on framing the Consistory within the context of recent controversies
[trivial and petty power games, after all is said and done] that have been grossly blown up to create scandal.
"Fortunately, the Pope does not act in the light of such disputes so dear to secular culture, which is increasingly on the decline
[One hopes so, but is it really????]. Rather, he considers everything from the perspective of God's action in human history", so says Pippo Corigliano, former spokesman for Opus Dei, who writes the column 'Cartolina dal Paradiso' (Postcard from Paradise) for
Tempi. He also gave us this interview :
Of the 22 new cardinals, 16 are European, and of them, seven are Italian. Then there are three North Americans, one Brazilian, and two Asians. Does that mean, as Il Fatto Quotidiano says [specifically, Marco Politi, in his latest obsessively rabid attack to discredit and denigrate Benedict XVI],
'the triumph of the Church of the past - Eurocentric, with her North American outliers'? [What did I say two posts above about this media monomania of looking for 'proportional representation' in the College of Cardinals? The MSM are so wrapped up in their self-imposed mental straitjacket that their brains have become incapable of thinking anything else]
No. It confirms the unity of the Church. It is universal but Roman at the same time. [That's evasive and does not answer the question!]
Has this Consistory succeeded, as Corriere della Sera says, in shelving the silent war between the Italian bishops conference and the Secretariat of State"?
The newspapers have described this Consistory with the old exhausted logic of the world, but the logic of Christ is not that of the world, as the Pope explained so well in his allocution and homily to the new cardinals. {Again, the interviewee does not address the question. The reference is to the fact that in the meantime, Mario Monti's government has moved to remove long-standing tax exemptions form the Church in Italy for commercial activities undertaken in Church-owned buildings. Presumably this gives common cause to the Italian bishops as well as the Secretariat of State. I must get it straight, and I will post a good wrap-up when I see one that's not confusing to non-Italians.]
Which is?
'Logic' was the key word. The Pope warns us against the temptation that has always eaten away at man's soul. The same temptation to power and glory that Jesus faced in the desert. The temptation of the worldly mind that seeks ephemeral glory and inconstant human power.
We are all tempted, as was the the mother of Zebedee's sons asking Jesus to reserve the place to his right and left for James and John. Jesus took advantage of the impertinent request to give a fundamental lesson: "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all" (Mk 10,42-44).
To serve to the point of shedding your blood - Benedict XVI reminded cardinals of the symbolism of their red garments. He went back to the Old Testament prophets. For Daniel, the Son of Man is he who would receive dominion, splendor and kingship from God (cfr Dn 7, 13n). And how will he exercise this power? According to the figure of the suffering servant, described in Isaiah (cfr Is 52,1-12).
"He receives power and the glory only inasmuch as he is 'servant", the Holy Father said, "but he is servant inasmuch as he welcomes within himself the fate of the suffering and the sin of all humanity. His service is realized in total faithfulness and complete responsibility towards mankind. In this way the free acceptance of his violent death becomes the price of freedom for many, it becomes the beginning and the foundation of the redemption of each person and of the entire human race."
Why then did the mass media apply the Pope's discourse to recent events?
Because they are in disarray. They represent to us even more clearly the agony of secular culture: A culture that slavishly follows a contrary 'logic' - that of power and fleeting glory. A culture that has reached the end of the line. [I don't know what makes this man so sure of this. If secular culture is really in decline, that decline is probably a barely germinating tip, whereas the main force pf secularism is going full speed ahead because by definition, it follows the path of least resistance. ("Whatever is possible is allowable")]
None of the earthly Paradises promised in the past two centuries has materialized. Rather, they have turned out to be hell. And the last act of self-sufficient capitalism is playing out.
But when the Pope asks the faithful to pray for him "that I may continually offer to the People of God the witness of sound doctrine and guide holy Church with a firm and humble hand", was he not perhaps alluding to the serious leaks of confidential documents that have occupied the media?
No, because I do not think the Pope follows all this silliness. [He may not follow it the way he follows, say, the situation in Syria, but he would be made aware of it from the mainstream newspapers he does read every day and the primetime newscasts and whatever is passed on to him by GG or Cardinal Bertone as something it would be useful for him to know.]
That expression "gentle firmness' is beautiful because it is almoet a self-portrait: 'Gentle' because he is good. And 'firm' because he is the shepherd who must be firm.
The only alternative to the earthly logic used by the media is the perspective proposed to us by the Pope: that of faith and eternal life.
As for the social situation, the Holy Father urges us to look at the Social Doctrine of the Church that has been so ignored or even mocked all these years. Now it seems like the only reference point upon which one can construct a new civilization, one that avails of the positive conquests of modernity but also places man at the center of all development.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/02/2012 10:04]