Well, I finally came across someone online who has the common sense to challenge the most unfair and least examined but universal stereotype about Benedict XVI's Pontificate and the pre-Conclave reporting and commentary so far by practically everyone who has written about the Vatican in the past several weeks = from veteran Vatican commentators like Sandro Magister and George Weigel who have worn haloes for years, to the news agency correspondents with their built-in biases who can only see what is 'bad' in the Church, to the run-of-the-mill news reports and the torrent of commentary in the press and on the Internet... Mark Moorehead is an American who is a theology graduate. former catechist and religion teacher to middle-graders, who now lives in Luxembourg. This is the first time I have come across his blog.
All the world against the Roman Curia:
A prejudice that defies common sense
by Mark Moorehead
March 8, 2013
Much is being made of the internal politics supposedly involved in the General Congregations leading up to the conclave to elect the next Pope. My own guess is that most of the cardinals are honestly there in a deep posture of prayer. As for the Curia, well... I think people need to look a little more closely.
A friend of mine recently wrote that the problems associated with the Curia most likely do not involve offices such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Apostolic Signatura, the Congregation for Clergy, the Congregation for Bishops, or various others. These make up a significant portion of what constitutes the Curia.
The problems (and problematic figures) seem to be more closely associated with the Vatican itself, such as the Secretary of State's office, the Pontifical Household, etc.
[The writer appears to have a mistaken idea of the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, as it is formally called. It is Curial office that is different from what is usually called 'the pontifical family' referring to the privileged few who live and work in the papal apartment itself, and who, under Benedict XVI, attended his daily Mass and ate all their meals with him.
Of the members of the 'pontifical family', only the Pope's valet was directly employed by the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, until Mons. Gaenswein, the Pope's private secretary and member of the 'pontifical family' was also named its Prefect. Therefore, the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household had no known major problems at all until Paolo Gabriele's treasonous act.
Its main job is to schedule the Pope's appointments at the Vatican and on his trips outside the Vatican (in coordination with the Pope's travel coordinator for foreign trips), but it also supervises the assignments and shifts of various unpaid personnel who hold honorary positions (usually handed down from generation to generation) serving as ushers or Gentlemen of His Holiness.]
Furthermore, one often hears terms such as "the Italians" used interchangeably with "the Curia." This is far from the case, as only about half of the cardinals in the Curia are Italian. Upon deeper reflection, what might this mean in the face of reports that credit the "Curia" as such an influential group in this process to elect a new Pope?
[It's sheer bias against the Curia, with no attempt at all by the MSM to see 'the Curia' as other than an amorphous corrupt and dysfunctional bloc instead of the 20-plus different offices that comprise it. Also, not all the Curial heads under Benedict XVI are cardinals, which means that less than 20 Curial cardinals are taking part in the Conclave. The idea that they could control the Conclave in any way is an insult to all the other cardinals.]
Although there are probably some instigators within the Curia, common sense dictates that their numbers are small and that no bloc of influence large enough to matter much in the end can be found within the Curia. Sure, some of the Italians may form a bloc. Some loyal figures of the "Old Guard" in various dicasteries, such as those who have spent a career within the Curia, may have a certain allegiance to people they've come to know (and trust?). However, there is enough diversity within the Curia to cause us to doubt a few things:
1. The idea that the whole Curia is one monolithic bloc with the same interests. Can you really imagine Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Bertone, hand in hand, singing Kumbaya? (Burke would be singing the Ave Regina Caelorum this time of year anyway).
2. The idea that the Curia (or former Curia - in sedevacante) is pulling all the strings. Since there is division within the "Curia" itself, how could they?
3. The idea that the Italians within the Curia are one bloc. I suspect they have as hard a time trusting one another as it is.
We can also make some good assumptions that aren't really being made in the press (that I've seen, anyway):
1. Those who are not part of the problem in the Curia are certainly talking to all the other cardinals about the problems they see within. This casts further doubt on any attempt by a group in the Curia, however small, to command the influence they desire.
2. The cardinals by and large really are there to handle this as a group, tiny political alliances be damned.
[Not so! A conclave is an election, and that means various alignments behind certain candidates before the cardinals enter the Conclave. In the 20th century, only two Conclaves had a definite front-runner before the Conclave who went on to be elected - Pius XII and Paul VI (and yet it still took six ballots to elect the latter). I did not include Cardinal Ratzinger because most of MSM still pooh-poohed bhis chances, especially after the homily he delivered at the Missa pro eligendo Pontifice, which they said would never have been delivered by anyone who wanted to be Pope. Well, he didn't want to be Pope - all he wanted was to speak the truth, and he did. And he was elected anyway, faster than Paul VI was. ]
More could be said, and I suspect others will do so in a better way than I have... Let's just relax a bit and not worry so much.
The "Curia" imagined by the press does not exist, though the idea makes for dramatic stories. In reality, God is in control of this process, most of the cardinals are in tune to that, and we'll have the Pope of the Holy Spirit's choosing soon enough. For our part, all we need do is pray and wait.
Because I am so frustrated by the universal denunciation of 'the Roman Curia' in the absence of any specific charges made against its many offices (other than the Secretariat of State, IOR and the Governatorate, which have been the favorite whipping dog of the media for various irregularities - none of them major or not chronic to bureaucracy), I wrote the following as part of my commentary to Cardinal George Pell's outrageous criticism of Benedict XVI = I will not call it disloyal, because obviously, his apparent friendship for the Pope was all a sham, or he would not have chosen to give at least two interviews on Benedict XVI's last day in office criticizing him in a way that was almost as bad as Marco Politi on his most perversely cantankerous day.
Since blogger Moorehead has expressed similar common=sense observations as I did, I'd like to add that comment block to this post, so I have a convenient reference point in the future. !
[I have always wondered whether the heads of the Roman Curia are so spineless or unimaginative as not to have taken the simple initiative of writing an annual open letter telling the public in simple terms what it is they do exactly, how many people they have working for them, challenging the media to come up with any specific wrongdoing that can be attributed to their particular office, and ending with pledging their loyalty to the Pope and to the Church. There are 22 such organisms at the Vatican, and if even just 18 of them could write such a letter, how different the perception might be!
I say this because other than the perceived problems at IOR (reporting of which ignores the scrutiny that IOR has undergone under the eyes of Moneyval, with mostly passing marks), the Governatorate (which Vigano claims he cleaned up, anyway), and SecState which has really been the presumptive main culprit and center of factional rivalries and power plays (it's the only one of the Vatican offices large enough to harbor such shenanigans), has anyone read of any complaint or scandal attributed to any of the other Curial offices:
CDF, Saints, Worship, Bishops, Clergy, Family, Christian Unity, Inter-Religious Dialog, New Evangelization, Culture, Propaganda Fide (there was an investigation into questionable business deals undertaken by the Curial officials in the previous Pontificate), Christian Unity, Justice and Peace (there was that flap about Cardinal Turkson's position paper on a world economic authority, but that was a tempest in a teapot that mostly embarrassed Turkson himself - who is now a papabile), Ministry to Healthcare Workers, Migrants and Refugees (they had a former president, holdout from the Wojtyla years, who issued 'ten commandments for drivers' or something equally silly), the Apostolic Segnatura, the Apostolic Penitentiary, and so on, down the line.
Has anyone read or heard stories in the past eight years that cited any one particular Curial office and named names in any of these offices for improper conduct, much less nefarious or criminal? NOPE, ZIP, ZILCH, ZERO! But maybe Cardinal Pell read something in Australia that has been kept secret from even the Italian media! Even the infamous Panorama expose claiming to document the activities of three homosexual priests who claimed to work in the Curia never identified which office(s) exactly they worked for. If the writer had truly been serious, he ought to have telephoned their office head(s) and challenged them with his expose. But no, just let the magic words 'Roman Curia' say it all, and the world will believe the worst of everyone in the Curia, even if you do not name names or identify which offices these names work in.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/03/2013 02:20]