Fr. Lombardi on the OR fiasco:
'We weren't at our best last Saturday!'
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from
Nov. 23, 2010
With the irony and finess that characterizes him, Fr. Federico Lombardi, VaitcAN press director - often called on to repair errors, miscalculations and assorted SLIPS made by others in thr Vatican - admitted at the beginning as well as at the end of the news conference this morning to present
Light of the World, that the Vatican newspaper's misguided 'preview' of the book on Saturday (the very day of the Consistory which ended up being totally overshadowed in the news) -
"wasn't managed well at all". ]We can all appreciate irony at the right occasion, but not for this blunderbuss of a blunder, which dserved at least something on the order of "We sure made a helluva mistake! - and we apologize to everyone, especially to the Pope."]
Besides obscuring the Consistory and the new cardinals, and rendering all pre-publication preparations in vain (the Vatican publishing house was the object of unprecedentprotests from all the newspaper editors and even distinguished ecclesiastics), the decision to reproduce only part of the Pope's answers about condoms - without the question and the first part of his answer - resulted in the media around the world reporting that the words represented a change in Catholic moral doctrine.
Lombardi said that the note he released on Sunday in an effort to repair the damage was seen and approved by the Pope.
For his part, during his presentation of the book, Mons. Rino Fisichella said,
"To reduce the entire book to an isolated statement extrapolated from the thought of Benedict XVI is an offense to the intelligence of the Pope and a gratuitous expolitation of his words".
Dear bishop, tell that to Mr.Vian. I wish you had said (or would sasy) that to the face of the OR editor who is the primary culprit of this entire misadventure!
Sandro Magister's reaction to the OR's 'lese-Papaute' is rather sputtering... I hope he tackles the greater 'OR problem' in another article soon...
The Pope on the Pope:
The OR spoils the build-up
to the book release
ROME, November 22, 2010 – The anticipated book-length interview of Benedict XVI,
Light of the World, will be in bookstores on the five continents, in various languages, beginning on Tuesday, November 23.
On Sunday the 21st, various newspapers previewed some passages from it, provided for them by Libreria Editrice Vaticana, owner of the publishing rights.
But already on the afternoon of Saturday the 20th, a different preview of the book – with much more provocative passages – had been published by
L'Osservatore Romano. Which created an instant splash in the global media.
Saturday and Sunday were the days of the consistory, with the creation of 24 new cardinals and with
the Pope's homiliesdedicated to explaining that authority in the Church is modeled on the kingdom of Christ: a kingdom of which an ancient liturgical hymn chants with the words: "Regnavit a ligno Deus," a kingdom exercised by the crucified God who says to the good thief: "Today you will be with me in paradise."
[I share the enthusiasm for the Pope's homilies on those days, especially the one on Sunday! - which I considered a very appropriate companion piece to Light of the World since he spells out the theological and pastoral functions of the Successor of Peter and his collaborator cardinals.]
But the consistory was swept aside from the news reports - invaded and vanquished by the passages of the book previewed by L'Osservatore Romano. [One passage, in particular, that I have benn referring to as the 'excerpt of an excerpt'.]
One of them above all: the one in which Benedict XVI justifies the use of a condom by a prostitute (in the masculine form in the original German of the book: "ein Prostituierter").
A use that Catholic moral doctrine already acknowledges – on a par with recourse to condoms by spouses when one of them is infected with HIV [Isn't this supposed to be unsettled, and that is why the Pontifical Council that has to do with health care undertook a study in 2006, which has remained unacted upon!] – but is publicly approved by a Pope for the first time here.
The OR's excerpts also included passages on sexual abuse by the clergy, on the encyclical
Humanae Vitae, on Pius XII and the Jews, on women priests, on the burqa
{none of which were controversial].
[Magister then reproduces the OR sampler.]
It makes me angrier that denouncing the OR - which one must do while the iron is hot - is also taking up some of the room that should all have been for the book alone, in its entirety, not for condoms, and certainly not to waste on a totally needless but costly exercise in idiocy by the editor of OR. One might almost say Mr. Vian has been deliberately courting all such attention on the wrongheaded theory that any publicity is good publicity!
P.S.
I won't be able to translate the Fisichella and Accattoli presentations till later today - they're both excellent!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/11/2010 23:52]