BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Sandro Magister's 'J'accuse':
The authoritative Vaticanista says
Bertone's Realpolitik is
not in tune with the Pope
by Nicoletta Tiliacos
Translated from

Sept. 28, 2009


There seems to be great confusion within the Church in Italy - if one goes by the news reports in the last few weeks, and the circumstances that led to the resignation of Dino Boffo as editor of the Italian bishops' newspaper, Avvenire.

More than just an impression, one has the 'certainty' of an intra-ecclesial conflict with few precedents in recent history. It is a conflict whose precise outlines are vague to most people but which actually exists. And longtime Vatican expert Sandro Magister confirms it in an interview with Il Foglio.

With his four-language site www.chiesa.espressonline.it, Magister represents one of the most important voices in the religious media, and not only in Italy, about what is taking place in the Catholic Church.

"More than confusion, I would call it a great disorder," he says. "The overall impression is that at the higher levels of the Church there are conflicting visions of reality, in Italy and in the world, which cannot easily be resolved. Indeed, the sides are often at daggers drawn, with an aggravating factor.

"Those, within the Church hierarchy, who set themselves up as critics of previous solutions which they would now consider not up to present circumstances, or not practical, are not convincing with their own vision, nor capable of delineating a new course to the hierarchy itself".

Would he be referring, where the Church in Italy is concerned, to the desire by part of the hierarchy to declare the so called 'Ruini era' over and done with for always? And who are the protagonists and plans that are in opposition during this far from painless process?
The battle being fought within the hierarchy of the Italian Church is only part of a wider battle which involves the entire Church."

Let me explain. When it is said, with reason, that there is a different view of things by the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Italian bishops, one must not ignore the fact that the same divergence of views exists between the Secretariat of State and many national bishops' conferences, which are not just of secondary importance.

Examples?
One of the most glaring examples is with the United States. There is no doubt that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has, in the last few years, changed its manner of dealing with the last two administrations, Bush then Obama.

Within one of the biggest bishops' conferences in the world, a strong nucleus has formed composed of bishops and cardinals who have been very critical of the administration, as we see now with Obama. The leader of this opposition is not a secondary figure but the most authoritative US cardinal today. That's the president of the USCCB, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, who has always been one of the American cardinals most esteemed by Papa Ratzinger.

And in opposition to some of Obama's policies, at least 80 out of 250 have done so publicly. The points of conflict are well-known and all concern bioethics directly, especially abortion.

And yet, these far-from-secondary elements of the American episcopate have never been supported, but rather opposed, by the Secretariat of State and by its mouthpiece, L'Osservatore Romano.

Just consider that some of these bishops raised impassioned protests to the Secretariat of State to denounce some editorial positions taken by L'Osservatore Romano....These are facts that are well-known and were substantially publicized.

One element, for example, which angered many American bishops was the very positive editorial - even on matters of family and bioethical issues, that the OR published to mark the first 100 days of Obama in the White House.

Then there was the honorary doctorate to the new {resident from the University of Notre Dame - which was the subject of strong controversy, because an important Catholic institution of higher learning was conferring the honor [on someone who has one of the most extreme and radical records in favor of abortion on demand, even during advanced pregnancy].

In both cases, the critical mobilization of many American bishops against Obama was seen with disfavor by the Secretariat of state and by L'Osservatore Romano.


And is this conflict still going on?
Yes, it has not been healed in any way. The other example that we must not forget is the case of China. Here, too, it's a conflict of visions.

On the one hand, the extreme caution with regard to the Chinese government, by the Secretariat of State and Vatican diplomacy. On the other, the leader of a more combative vision, Cardinal Zen. yet another figure of great weight and great stature, who has never hidden his opposition to the Vatican diplomatic line.

Zen has written more than once, especially in the newspaper of the Hongkong diocese, where he is the emeritus bishop, that Cardinal Bertone has been a brake to pursuing the line inaugurated by Benedict XVI in his famous letter to the Catholics of China two years ago.

[What I fail to understand is this: Bertone was appointed by the Pope to run the administration of the Church for him. As the Pope's man, is Bertone not dutybound to carry out Benedict XVI's specific vision and intentions with regard to the Church? How can he act with apparent autonomy from the Pope?

Even if Benedict is an enlightened modern boss who gives his people maximum leeway and respects their freedom, how can he not be aware that his Secretary of State and the newspaper he controls have made a number of questionable judgments in the past months?

In February 2007, when Cardinal Bertone wrote that now-infamous letter to the then newly-elected president of the Italian bishops, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco - in which Bertone states clearly that from then on, the Secretariat of State would handle any political dealings with the Italian government - it seemed to me that the Pope may have given him a talking-to behind the scenes, because, until the Boffo case, he never again sought to assert himself over Bagnasco in matters affecting the Italian Church alone.

Especially since the Vatican Concordat with Italy governing relations between the State and the Church in Italy clearly recognizes the Italian bishops conference as the representatives of that local Church, not the Vatican Secretariat of State which cannot represent any local Church!

As for Obama, the Pope firmly made clear he wasn't giving the US President a pass on his abortion positions by ostentatiously giving him a copy of Dignitatis Personae at the Vatican, and having his own personal secretary, Mons. Gaenswein, inform the media on hand about it.

Normally, it would have been something for the Vatican Press Office to announce or disclose, but the Press Office is administratively under the Secretariat of State. So maybe the Holy Father wasn't taking any chances it would go unreported.]

Then, there's Vietnam, where for months, there has been a large-scale battle with hundreds of thousands of Catholics turning up in public squares and public vigils in the face of repressive measures taken by the government against them.

Yet, the Vietnamese Catholics have never received any substantial support from the Secretariat of State. On the contrary, Cardinal Bertone sent a letter to the bishops of Vietnam in which he counsels them, in effect, to just 'be good'. In fact, L'Osservatore Romano has never even dedicated a single line to these happenings.

[Thank you, Mr. Magister, for pointing that out. It is a glaring lack that I failed to note. If it were not for AsiaNews and UCAN, people following Church affairs would have been ignorant of what's happening to the Vietnam Catholics. I think it is morally indefensible for the Vatican newspaper to fail to report events that do not fit into the strategy - whatever it is - of the Secretariat of State.

The OR is falling into the same see-hear-speak-no-evil policy of the liberal media in the United States who only report what fits into their liberal world-view, unless something takes on hugely scandalous proportions they can no longer ignore it. Example: the massive corruption and blatant lawbreaking by Barack Obama's handpicked 'army to transform the United States', the now infamous Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).]

Magister sees in all this what he calls a 'linea concordataria' {I can't think of an appropriate and precise English equivalent, but in effect, a 'conciliatory line', one that seeks not to ruffle any feathers] -

It consists of being 'good neighbors', courteous institutional relationships, which are used especially in those places where is no existing concordat to guide bilateral relations. And I don't think it is a line that comes up to the level of the master lines drawn out by the two great Pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.


Could it simply be a matter of Realpolitik, which would not be new in the life of the Church?
Certainly, realism has always characterized Vatican diplomacy. It is a realism based on calculations of what is possible, which reached its apogee, one might say - perhaps excessively celebrated -in the Vatican Ostpolitik carried out in the 1960s and 1970s by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli as Secretary of State, but which continues to be practised today.

And is that realism being applied in Italy as well?
Yesterday with Prodi, today with Berlusconi. With rather paradoxical results. Everyone can remember that during the Prodi years, Cardinal Bertone was the champion of the leftist media that opposes the Italian hierarchy whom they pictured as regressive, intransigent and fanatic.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot, in the very same newspapers. Cardinal Bertone has become the Church leader who insists that the Vatican has friendly relations with the Berlusconi government, whereas the CEI is praised for being critical of the Prime Minister.

The last 15 years before 2007 was marked by the leadership of Cardinal Camillo Ruini at the CEI. [Magister is a diehard Ruiniani and does not hide it.) The line embodied by Ruini struggled to establish itself, then to grow and impose itself in the life of the Church in Italy, having its peak in the years between 2004-2007, distinguished by the extraordinary feat in 2005 when the Church managed to 'defeat' a referendum initiative that would have liberalized Italy's law on assisted reproduction.

It was really a new thing that the Church in Italy had taken a clear political stand on its own. This culminated a process in which the Church in Italy declared its independence of any single political party [the Christian Democrats had been the party of the Church right after the Second World War up to the 1980s when it collapsed because of massive corruption disclosed about its leaders]. That put an end to the era of a 'Catholic party' or at least, one whose nucleus was formed by Catholic politicians who claimed to represent Catholic interests.

Ruini thought and acted in terms of the entire Italian nation, not just the Catholic world. With him, the positions of the Church in Italy on political and social issues were motivated not only by doctrine and faith, but were also aimed to be acceptable to the widest possible audience, including non-believers.


Could one see in that a harmony with the Ratzingerian idea of the use of reason that coud lead, on certain issues, to conclusions that are acceptable to the faith as well as to non-believers?
Without a doubt. Because it also had to dp with an extraordinary agreement, which continues to this day, between the Pope and Cardinal Ruini. The CEI Cultural Project which Ruini initiated is in itself something that acknowldges the singularity of Italy and Italian Catholicism, seen as an expression of a people's church.


And what vision is opposed to that?
There is an elitist reading, that has dominated Italian media in the past few decades, which looks at Italian Catholicism as rather crude and behind the times in general, balanced by the presence of a more educated layer that is also 'more truly Christian'. Somewhat like the older brother and the prodigal son.

But then, remember that someone like ARturo Parisi, who is above suspicion, has pointed out that it is the 'irregular' Catholics who are most affected by the phenomenon of Berlusconism.


In what sense?
In the sense that among the things he has managed to do, Berlusconi put an end to the Catholic question - which had been held to be the invincible or near-invincible separation of the Catholic world from the Italian political arena. The apparent absence of high-profile Catholics in his government and among politicans in training does not mean the Catholics are not there. On the contrary - Berlusconi has grasped the fact that 'normal' Catholics are widespread throughout Italy and that they have generally been ignored, because politicians always thought in terms of assiduous, observant Catholics, educated in certain schools, and who are to be found in movements like Catholic Action for the association of Italian labor unions.

In reality, there is an endless mass of Italian Catholics to whom that profile does not apply - and they are the backbone of Italian Catholicism.

And that explains the impressive figure of the 0.008 percent tax revenue for the Church (which comes from 90 percent of Italians who expressly declare themselves to be Catholic for purposes of determining which church their tax will support), as well as religious isntruction in Italian public schools [favored by 90 percent of Italian parents]. These are choices made even by non-observant Catholics.


But there is also continual talk about the 'insubordination' of many Catholics with respect to the teachings of the Church.
It has never been the case that the Cahtolic Church is necessaily listened to and followed in its precepts. But at the same time, this kind of Catholicism recognizes that it is the duty of the Church - more than just a right - to speak openly and proclaim its doctrine.

Cardinal Ruini's cultural project fully acknowledges this Italian peculiarity - which is looked upon with envy by other European bishops. Now the Spanish bishops have commited themselves to following the way shown by Cardinal Ruini when he was at CEI.

The cardinal undersood very well the great identification of the Italian people with the Catholic Church as well as its incipient sensibility to the issue of emerging human life. That is why they defeated the referendum on assisted reproduction [mostly by abstaining from voting, so that there were not enough voters to validate any refrendum result].

It was a victory for Catholics that was born from courageous steps - for example, the vote abstention campaign started as soon as Corriere della Sera made known it was leading the campaign for the amendment to liberalzie the assisted reproduction law.


The end of Cardinal Ruini's leadership has led to unprecedented conflicts within the Church and among its hierarchy, with media initatives and conjectures that rival the worst of Dan Brown, as this newspaper has commented. How do you see this ending?
I wish to say, first of all that the Cultural Project, which is alive and active, is not being carried forward with the same conviction by the CEI. The present leadership is visibly weak, despite the formal continuity with the previous one. It is weak from the point of view of authoritativeness and of the exercise of its jurisdiction.

Dissident voices from within surface regularly, and there was discocnerting evidence of this during the attack against Dino Boffo. The solidarity expressed for him was calibrated, both in the hierarchy and among the clergy. There are even obvious proofs that the case was used to underscore the end of the Ruini era.


And did they achieve that end?
The jury is still out. The Report on Education carried out by the Cultural Project revives the notion of a Church proposal addressed to the entire nation, not only to Catholics, by the Italian bishops.

Then there is the conference on God, which has a Ratzingerian imprint, scheduled in December. So the Cultural Project is alive and well. But at the same time, there has been an inexplicable coolness on the part of some in the CEI hierarchy.

In Cardinal Bagnasco's opening remarks to the session of the CEI Permanent Council last week, he never once referred to the Cultural Project, even if it was one of the principal targets in the tumultuous campaign to force out Boffo. Nor did he refer at all to the conference on God, which the CEI is sponsoring.


What does it mean?
That the CEI pesident, knowing the diversity of opinions within the Permanent Council, chose to hold to the least common denominator that would not touch on any controversial issue.


Can one say that the CEI is going through a phase of uncertainty which is reflected even on burning issues like the biological will?
There is an official line on this which is favorable towards the proposed law. But there are dissonant voicees like Cardinal Martini or Don Luigi Verze [head of Milan's San Raffaele University]. And some like, the president of the Catholic Physicians of Milan, also dissociate themselves from the CEI's choice. [All three named are representatives of the problematic Archdiocese of Milan which often acts as if the Ambrosian Church were separate and independent from the Church of Rome.]


But there were dissonant voices from Milan even at the time of the 2005 referendum, principally on research using embryonic stem cells...
Yes, but now, many things are much clearer. For example, in the Eluana Englaro case. Enzo Bianchi, the prior of Bose, wrote stinging words against those who defended her right to live, saying they were fanatics. Not to mention that the case was also the subject of a dispute between Avvenire [which spearheaded the save-Eluana campaign] and L'Osservatore Romano [which never reported on the various battles that surrounded the end of her life].


What will be the next steps in this intra-Church war, evidence for which it has become difficult to deny?
Much will depend on the decisions that will be taken about who is taking over the newspaper, radio and television enterprises of the CEI. Avvenire, with Boffo, was truly the instrument for translating the Christian message into populat culture, as stated by Lorenzo Ornaghi, the rector of Milan's Catholic University.

The attack on Boffo by Vittorio Feltri in Il Giornale accomplished what some groups hostile to Boffo, Ornaghi and what they represent - namely, the Cultural Project - sought to obtain by circulating anonymous defamatory leaflets.

There was also a lack of clear leadership on the part of the CEI on the matter of dealing with the private life of Berlusconi. Even in Avvenire, which did not join the fray until fairly late. It was prudent, and of the four commentaries which it published on the issue, only one was in favor of a public denunciation of Berlusconi's private iniquities.

Then there was the sudden change, on July 6, with the homily on St. Maria Goretti by the CEI secretary-general, Mons. Crociata. It was universally interpreted, with reason, as an attack on Berlusconi's private life. Crociata himself wanted it broadcast live on Sat 2000.

It was a premedeitated event, and given great play by the leftist [anti-Berlusconi] media. That was followed by a flood of letters and pressures on Avvenire which was accused of not having spoken enough against the Prime Minister's conduct.

Boffo did his best to hold the fort, but the readers of Avvenire had turned systematically against Berlusconi. It was rather unreal, but if Ruini were still in charge, it would not have happened.


So how will it end?
The battle to change the master lines of the Italian Church - and thus, to bury the Runini era once and for all - is still in progress. It will be expressed in forms other than thoser anonymous flyers, certainly but it will not have clear and persuasive alternatives.


I remember that a few months after Bertone became Secretary of State, Magister wrote an article entitled something like "The cardinal who is supposed to serve the Pope's interests' - but is not, being the rest of the hypothesis. And that he was the very first to report on Bertone's "I'm in charge here' letter to Bagnasco in 2007.

Magister's entire position begs the question - which the interviewer should have asked him, especially in view of the title to the article: Why then does Benedict XVI allow Bertone and the Secretariat of State to pursue their own agenda apart from his? Surely there is no question who has the upper hand in the relationship between the Pope and his Secretary of State. Why then is Bertone able to get away with his apparent 'autonomy'?

The implication is that the Pope does not mind, and that perhaps he does not see Bertone's actions and decisions [directly or as reflected in L'Osservatore Romano's editorial line] as in any way counter-productive to his, the Pope's agenda. And yet, the obvious errors of omission on the part of the Secretariat of State in the Wielgus and Williamson cases were certainly a disservice to the Pope and yes, counter-productive if not downright condemnatory of Church administration.

Yet by going to Romano Canavese last July, the Pope gave Bertone a resounding vote of confidence.

This is the one aspect of this Pontificate that troubles me deeply, and I was hoping Magister might have an answer. Too bad he was not asked, and he did not volunteer.