Because of the Viterbo-Bagnoregio visit yesterday, I did not find the time to translate this article, whose final thesis I find rather puzzling to be applied to the Italian bishops' conference (CEI).
With Boffo's resignation,
the Vatican takes control
of the Church's political
dealings in Italy
by VITTORIO MESSORI
Translated from
Sept. 6, 2009
There is no doubt that the input about Dino Boffo leaving the Catholic media galaxy - or, at least, the acceptance of his resignation
[from his high profile job as head of the newspaper, radio and TV enterprises of the Italian bishops' conference] - came from him who, one must not forget, is also Primate of Italy as well as Bishop of Rome.
A national daily newspaper, a nationwide TV channel, 200 radio stations in every region of Italy, constitute a concentration of abnormal power in one man, and the Church of Italy ignored the cardinal virtue of prudence (St Thomas called it the auriga virtutum) in leaving a man widely perceived to be its image exposed to every risk of blackmail after a minor judicial verdict that its leaders may have thought irrelevant and destined to be buried forever in the archives of a provincial court.
But the Church in Italy also forgot another principle practised by her hierarchy in another era - the principle of 'divide and conquer'. The Catholic Church is the last 'absolute monarchy', where the limitless power at the top regulates the dialectic equilibrium, always muffled but not always idyllic, of its subordinate levels.
Instead, all the information resources of the Italian Church came to be managed and controlled by one man, who in turn, was responsible to only one man: the president of the CEI.
And that is yet another imprudence which resulted in the current situation - where the cruel and unexpected professional ruin of an individual has cast a shadow of suspicion and discredit on an entire media system for which the Italian Church must now render full accounting.
But if there is no doubt, as mentioned earlier, that the suggestion for Boffo's resignation - or the acceptance of it - had come from the Pope himself, there is equally no doubt that the exit was welcomed by the person concerned if only to avoid worse troubles.
He said so in his letter of resignation to the CEI president, Cardinal Bagnasco: "The media storm is far from attenuating itself", rather, that those against him "are mobilizing men and means for a battle they mean to fight to the very end". And therefore, in order to "placate hostilities", it was necessary that their target "make the sacrifice' of stepping down.
More than a 'sacrifice', the resignation gives this tormented man - who has my fraternal understanding - the possibility of finding some sleep again after a week of hell.
It also gives him the possibility of avoiding what he did not do and which, as he makes known in his resignation letter, did not intend to do, namely, to authorise the Terni tribunal to release the entire dossier on his case. His lawyer has requested that the file remain sealed. (It is known that a member of the tribunal had wanted to comply with the law that allows such documentation to be made public, but another colleague opposed it 'to protect the reputation' of the persons concerned.)
So, all we know are the two concluding pages of the decision, without knowing how the magistrate reached his conclusion. This is the reason, they say, that Boffo has yet to press charges, at least so far, against
Il Giornale, because when this happens, then the newspaper's lawyers will have the right to see the sealed file. Which would obviously lead to a fresh round of front-page headlines.
Until the whole file is disclosed, this dispute over formal elements does not answer the real question: What really happened?
Actually, Boffo's resignation letter refers to this issue: "They [his enemies] would want me, at all costs, to confess something, and I would tell them, if I made a mistake... it was not to have given the proper weight to a trivial offense ['reato bagatellare']."
That is a juridical term, but it could also be a curious reference to [Louis-Ferdinand] Celine, the controversial French writer [1894-1961] who wrote the anti-Semitic tract
Bagatelles pour un massacre(Trivia for a massacre)
[in which the massacre he refers to is is that of the Gentiles whom he feared were being led to another war; after World War II, he was condemned as a collaborator and imprisoned, but later pardoned.]
[Frankly, I don't follow the analogy, especially as I have not read Celine's tract. It would certainly not be in Boffo's interest to compare his personal 'trivia' to any 'trivia' Celine might have mustered to make his anti-Semitic points!]
Are there then small things to be taken lightly, imprudent whims, careless language, that can be tolerated in others but which could embarrass a man at the very top of a the media system of a Church that is intransigent about the rightness of certain things
[i.e., morality]? It would seem so.
In any case, being reduced from a one-man institution to a mere private individual has allowed Boffo to loosen the grip of the mastiffs who, would otherwise, never have stopped demanding that he authorize the release of his entire judicial file.
The imprudence in this case was not only on the part of Boffo as the aggrieved party [in the media war]. It is possible that the editor of
Il Giornale thought he would gain an immediate 'victory', given that there was an actual verdict [and a fine accordingly paid], with the resignation of Boffo accepted by a highly embarrassed and chastened CEI.
It is possible he did not expect the immediate 'castling' and compactness in the reaction of a significant part of the Catholic world.
And it could well result in a political boomerang. A CEI which had a moderate attitude, not hostile, to the current government, now speaks (like Boffo in his resignation letter) of "an obscure block of secularist politicians" which, from within Berlusconi's coalition majority, is seeking to attack the Church. The quite brutal disclosure of Boffo's possible 'peccadillos' is thus seen as an anti-Christian operation.
The next editor of
Avvenire will be obliged to carry on a less conciliatory policy with regard to the government
[Why? The newspaper should neither be conciliatory nor hostile to any government - it should simply be objective, praising what is good and right, and denouncing what is against Catholic doctrine and/or the interests of the Church] compared to that of his unfortunate predecessor, who was well-known for his moderation, but also thought by some to lean towards the center-right.
As to all that has been written, in the wake of the Boffo case, on disagreements and antagonisms between the Secretary of State and the president of the CEI: Beyond their differences in temperament and perspectives (which is nonetheless much less than has been claimed), the problem goes far beyond personalities.
Many years ago, in
Rapporto sulla fede {The Ratzinger Report, 1994), Joseph Ratzinger stated that the more than 100 episcopal conferences around the world had no theological basis, they are not part of the divine structure of the Church.
He noted that the Catholic Church is not a federation of national Churches which agree only on the major principles of the Creed. He thought that the power of the many 'small Vaticans' spread in all the five continents should be cut to measure - that there is only one Peter, And he is in Rome.
{And this has been one of the worst misinterpretations of Vatican-II - that in creating the bishops' conferences, it thereby authorized bishops to be in complete autonomy of the Pope, despite explicit re-statements in various Vatican-II documents of the Pope's supreme authority and the bishops' duty to be in communion with the Pope.
I continue to find it difficult to explain, other than by sheer egoism and ideological obstinacy, why intelligent bishops, as for instance, Cardinals Lehmann and Archbishop Zollitsch in Germany, can be so openly hostile and defiant of the Pope's instructions.
Or why so many bishops have been setting their own rules to 'interpret' Summorum Pontificum, which is a clear and obvious directive to the universal Church and therefore, to all local Churches, without need for their 'interpretation'.]
When he became Pope, the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith started to attend to that concern expressed in 1994. Thus, the courteous but firm reminder by Bertone, his 'prime minister', to Bagnasco, representing the Church of Italy. Respect and trust, yes, for the national Churches, but the Head of the Church reserves the major lines of governance to himself.
[It is not as if whatever Cardinals Ruini and Bagnasco have done in dealing with a succession of Italian governments were done independent of, much less without the consent and authority, of the Bishop of Rome, be he John Paul II or Benedict XVI! That is why Vatican observers like Sandro Magister ] saw Bertone's letter to Bagnasco upon the latter's nomination to head the CEI as not only unseemly but unwarranted.
Not that there is now a settling of accounts with the Italian cardinals (despite the resulting difficulties for Bagnasco arising from the one-man media institution that he inherited from Cardinal Ruini), but rather a long-range strategy by Benedict XVI to oppose what he considers to be an unacceptable 'clerical federalism'.
With all due respect to Messori, neither Cardinal Ratzinger nor Benedict XVI could possibly have meant the CEI (whether in 1994 or at present) as an example of 'clerical federalism'!
Cardinal Ruini was for 14 years John Paul II's widely-accepted 'political deputy' with respect to dealing with the Italian government, and continued to be so for two years under Benedict XVI. His successor, Cardinal Bagnasco, is widely considered to be very much in Ruini's mold - an intelligent authoritative theologian in his own right, who agrees with Benedict XVI's thinking and is absolutely loyal to him.
(This does not mean that both cardinals were not indeed imprudent or short-sighted in concentrating so much power and therefore high visibility on someone who may have been intrinsically vulnerable. As for why the CEI needed to finance an extensive media operation of its own, why not? The Church in Italy has been under secular attack for decades - it does need efficient communications outlets under its own control to disseminate its message to the public, otherwise it is completely at the mercy of its opponents.)
It is not the CEI that is guilty of 'clerical federalism' in any way, since its leadership for the past 18 years has been extremely supportive of the Vatican and the Pope.The intransigent federalists are some Italian bishops who do consider themselves completely autonomous of the Pope - but even if one summed up all the presumptuous opponents of Summorum Pontificum among them, they are not a significant percentage of Italy's 200+ bishops.
Perhaps the CEI leadership should be able to ride herd over the dissidents? Show me a bishops' conference anywhere in the world that has been able to do this! Could anyone, for instance, have been able to ride herd over the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Martini, in the John Paul II years?
The Church may not be a democracy in doctrinal matters, but it certainly has been a democracy in following the rule of the majority at papal Conclaves, in its ecumenical councils, and in the post Vatican II Bishops' Synod. And in day-to-day administrative matters in modern times.
It has also been 'democratic' in allowing ideological dissent - otherwise how can all the anti-Pope, anti-Vatican propaganda be so much in the news? But the Church is also ever vigilant to curb doctrinal dissent (that is why the CDF is there, and why there are the current visitations to the Legionaries of Christ and to the religious sisterhoods in the United States).
From all accounts, the CEI leadership in the past 18 years (under Ruini and Bagnasco) has always been able to gain consensus from its Permanent Council members - in support of the Vatican and the Pope - as well as getting majority votes in its general membership.
What it cannot do - and what no other bishops' conference has done -is impose on any individual bishop who considers himself equal to the Pope, as many of the petty, close-minded opponents to SP do. Because this is primarily a question of individual character, not a matter of disciplinary action. Unless the bishop violates canon law or deviates from Catholic dogma - and the dissidents are shrewd enough to stay just within the limits of canonical or dogmatic violation.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/09/2009 17:37]