For a change, someone has come out these days to say explicitly the obvious fact that the problems of the Curia did not start under Benedict XVI. All the reproaches and criticisms so far against the Pontificate of Benedict XVI have focused on the Curia whose apparent or presumed dysfunction, if not corruption, is thought to have led to Vatileaks.
The critics have spoken of this as having 'hindered the Petrine ministry', even without any objective facts presented to substantiate that charge. In what way was Benedict XVI hindered from doing what he thought was best for the Church because of an inefficient or uncooperative Curia? The only specific charge that a diocesan bishop has made so far against the Curia is that too much time is taken to decide on marriage annulments. (In this specific case, the organism involved is the Roman Rota, not one usually thought of as part of the Curia). As if that issue - which affects such an infinitesimal fraction of Catholics - were enough to 'hinder evangelization' as Cardinal George of Chicago presented it.
The fact is that the entire burden of 'what's wrong with the Roman Curia' as all the critics have been bandying about, is based on an accretion of bad impressions that go back for decades and have been heard for decades, exacerbated by perceived missteps made in the name of John Paul II by those he trusted to govern the Church in the final years of his illness.
A situation Benedict XVI inherited - and even If for some time, he had to work with the same Curial heads named by John Paul II, there was not really much they could do to oppose his agenda, other than carp against him anonymously and making use of the media to make their disapproval known. Middle-level career bureaucrats could also throw sand on the machine, and probably did, to slow down any initiatives they may not have liked, which seems to have been the case at the Secretariat of State, where the overriding problem, however, was their disapproval of Cardinal Bertone and perhaps, a dislike of Benedict XVI.
[BTW, Sandro Magister who runs the site www.chiesa has often taken to posting unsigned articles like this attributed to '***', but I see no reason why they should not be signed.... I am using the English version provided on the site.]
Vatican Diary:
Future curia, old project
The document is from 1931, possibly written by a Dutch cardinal.
The reforms awaited now were already anticipated, because criticisms
of the Curia then were the same as today, if not tougher
by ***
VATICAN CITY, April 25, 2013 – A curia with "more representation and a more collegial government." A curia with "dialogue and bi-directional communications in a modern and efficient organization." A curia with a full "re-evaluation of the episcopal office". A curia with "above all: fewer Italians."
These would seem to be the lines of action of that reform of the curia which Pope Francis has set in motion - including through the constitution of a group of eight cardinal advisors - to apply the indications of the cardinals who elected him, formulated in the general congregations that preceded the conclave.
In reality, this program is not a response to
the curial dysfunction that manifested itself in a dramatic way during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. ['Dramatic' only because the media blew up Vatileaks and its major documents as representative of widespread Curial dysfunction, even if the embarassments these documents showed had been previously known and reported (Bertone's misplaced attempts to consolidate power, all of them fortunately foiled by Benedict XVI - a capital fact that is hardly ever pointed out) or quickly and appropriately rebutted by the Vatican (the Vigano letters, which were the only genuine revelations in Vatileaks, but critical because they began the media blow-up of the whole episode). In short, 'the Roman Curia' was made the convenient catch-all scapegoat for the specific problems raised by the Vatileaks documents.]
It is an older program. Much older. From thirty years before even Vatican Council II.
To understand better
how the problems and criticisms of the Roman curia did not emerge with Pope Benedict XVI, it is enough to leaf through a recently published book, a miscellany in honor of the Jesuit historian Marcel Chappin for his 70th birthday, edited by the professors Paul van Geest, Dutch, and Roberto Regoli, Italian.
The work in question, in fact, published by the Vatican Secret Archive, of which Chappin was vice-prefect in recent years, hosts a curious and interesting contribution from Hans de Valk that analyzes an anonymous document compiled in 1931 and entitled “De quibusdam rebus in ecclesiastico regimine emendandis” (Some matters that should be improved in the government of the Church).
It is a text of around twenty pages that scholars found in certain ecclesiastical archives (including the Vatican Secret Archive) in Latin and German versions, bearing the signature of “Paulus Bernardus a S. Catharina," a pseudonym believed to conceal - although the proofs are not definitive - the Dutch Willem Marinus van Rossum (1854-1932), a Redemptorist, made a cardina by Pius X in 1911 and prefect of “Propaganda Fide" (Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) under Benedict XV and Pius XI.
"Proposals for a reform of the curia, however" – de Valk writes in his essay – “are as old as the seven hills" of Rome. And in effect, before analyzing the document from 1931, he recalls how already at the beginning of the twentieth century there had blossomed programs for the reform of the curia. And he emphasizes how they came from both progressive and traditional circles.
The depiction of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that emerges from the document of 1931 is merciless. Here is how de Valk summarizes it:
Most of the bishops, instead of being the strong characters presently needed, dynamic and active personalities, even if indeed pious and religious men are in effect at the same time mediocre, or even below mediocrity. Some are apathetic, timid, indolent or vain; others are conformists, bureaucrats or introverts; many are ignorant and clumsy administrators. […]. Sometimes the whole episcopate of a country looks like a bunch of cripples.
[Obviously, the criticism was not limited to bishops of the Curia but to all bishops including those who head the dioceses. Which was one of my great objections to all the sanctimony expressed by the chattering cardinals who came to the 2013 Conclaves, who all spoke, and continue to speak, as if they themselves bore no responsibility at all in the governance of the Church - when in fact, the governance of the universal Church is to a large part determined by and is the sum of their governance of their local Churches. Nothing laid down by the Vatican gets done unless the individual bishops cooperate and do their part.
I must once again cite the example of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whom they upheld as a paragon and elected Pope after four ballotings. Whatever his specific criticisms may have been of 'the Roman Curia' (which I have not seen articulated anywhere) did not seem to keep him at all from running his diocese as he thought best to advance the mission of the Church. What do all the grandly critical cardinals have to say for themselves? To blame the Curia in Rome for 'hindering' their work is an abdication of responsibility. The Curia does not run the dioceses! They do, with full autonomy.]
De Valk reproduces in a footnote the original Latin, which is even more colorful:
Aliquando autem totus episcopatus alicuius nationis ita est compositus, veluti si coecorum, claudorum et infirmorum omne genus esset refugium. (Sometimes, however, the whole of the episcopate of a country is composed as though it was a place of refuge for the blind, the lame, and the sick of all kinds).
And he adds that “the problem is aggravated by the Holy See’s tendency to appoint only obedient and complacent prelates."
[Much has obviously improved since the 1930s in the selection of bishops, even if it still remains a papal prerogative (one contested by progressivists who believe the community itself should choose their bishops). Benedict XVI's careful examination of the dossiers for candidate bishops was intended to make sure that the bishops he did name were above all, morally upright and personally qualified, but also persons whose doctrine and practice were orthodox, as the Pope (any Pope, not just because he was Joseph Ratzinger) necessarily is.]
Just as merciless is the depiction that the document makes of the college of cardinals. De Valk reports:
As for the cardinals, the senate of the Church and the electors of the pope, here the situation is even worse, particularly in the case of those attached to the Roman curia. The sacred college contains too many non-entities who have reached their rank by never asking awkward questions. The merit of many eminences is not their excellent pastoral experience or learning, but that of having staffed a Vatican desk for a very long time. Without any real knowledge of the world or the life of the universal Church, they are nevertheless automatically promoted and placed in executive jobs far above their modest talents.
[A review of their biodata alone would show that this description obviously does not apply to any of the cardinals named by Benedict XVI (nor for most, I daresay, of those named by the Popes before him starting with Pius XII). Since they are the only ones whose nomination I have been able to follow, none of the cardinals named by Benedict XVI has been criticized by the media for being unqualified or incompetent. The criticism has been for those who are Italian (as if that were a disqualification, per se) or were Curial heads instead of being diocesan bishops.]
Particularly ferocious is the criticism of the excessive Italian composition of the curia. De Valk reports:
Almost half of the cardinals and the great majority of the curial ones are Italians, as if the Holy Ghost had a distinct preference for the Italian nation ("veluti si solos Italos Spiritus Sanctus dignos invenerit ut eos tamquam S. Pontificis et proximos consultores et electores illustraret"). This only aggravates the matter, for even if Italians may have many talents, they are certainly not noted for their organizational skills. For the universal Church, this is at the same time both an insult and an injustice. The few excellent foreign prelates present in the curia are examples of what the alternative might look like.
[For context, the writer of this article ought to have mentioned the composition of the College of Cardinals in 1931. The college did not begin to be truly international until the 1950s with Pius XII, and the process had to be gradual as the Catholic countries of the Third World started to develop a 'bench' of potential cardinals, compared to Europe which, because of history, had been for centuries the nursery for leaders of the Church.]
The document of 1931 does not spare even the pontiffs, seeing that
“since the nineteenth century the papal throne has been graced by a series of mediocre popes with the possible exception of Leo XIII." ][I am surprised Magister allows this without comment at all, since the historical consensus so far is that the Popes since Blessed Pius IX have been remarkably remarkable, each one with his corpus of achievements as Pope. In 1931, the Dutch critic would have been referring to Pius IX, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI - none of them could be described in any way as mediocre.]
But in the face of this picture, what are the proposals for reform delineated by “Paulus Bernardus," that is (perhaps) Cardinal van Rossum?
Here is how de Valk presents them, for the bishops: "Radical changes are needed in the system of recruitment or election [of the bishops and cardinals]. The appointment of bishops should not be left exclusively to the Holy See, where generally the candidates are little known, while the information provided is often biased or unreliable."
[The selection process now involves the apostolic nuncio in each country taking the consensus of the national bishops and on that basis, preparing a short list of candidates for the Vatican to consider, while providing the Congregation for Bishops all the information relevant to each of the candidates. The Congregation reviews the information, asks for more when necessary, and then the dossiers are forwarded to the Pope for his decision.
The risk of relevant information being withheld has been greatly reduced with the possibility of checking out any information available online - although this failed most notoriously in the case of Bishop Williamson, who was not however being nominated. The other notorious case of incomplete (or withheld) information leading to an unfortunate nomination (that was subsequently withdrawn) was that of Mons. Wielgus, who turned out to have been an active collaborator of the Communist secret police in Poland. Both cases took place under Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re - one of John Paul II's most influential associates and apparently never a friend to Cardinal Ratzinger - as Prefect of Bishops. His retirement enabled Benedict XVI to name Cardinal Marc Ouellet in his place. Not that the Congregation for Bishops was the sole culprit here. The Secretariat of State also was - in the Williamson case, because it prepared the announcement for the Vatican; and in the Wielgus case, because it failed to check the competence of the Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, who either ignored or glossed over the issue of Wielgus's collaboration in furnishing his dossier.]
And for the cardinals:"To emphasize the universal character of the Church, the sacred college should be internationalized by spreading its membership more evenly, while the number of Italian cardinals needs to be reduced drastically.
[An idea that openly prejudices Italian prelates who are deserving and competent, just because they are Italian.] The international character of the Roman curia as a whole should be promoted. Next, the so-called 'loca cardinalitia' must be abolished.
[This refers to dioceses which are traditionally led by a cardinal, but it could refer as well to Curial positions. In other words, being named bishop of such a diocese or head of a 'cardinalatial' Curia will not become an automatic ticket for the red hat. While this may sound good in theory, it may not work out so well in practice, because a cardinal's clout may often be necessary to be able to impose governance in these major dioceses, and certainly, as a Curial head.] Only real princes of the Church, known for their outstanding qualities, should be raised to the scarlet: that is, learned, pious and zealous men, who know the world, are experienced, well-informed and therefore able to act as real counsel to the pope."
[These criteria have certainly been followed in all of the cardinal choices Benedict XVI made - and in general by those of his postwar predecessors, whose cardinal choices made it possible for John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis to become Pope in their turn.]
As for the governance of the universal Church, the anonymous drafter of the document complains that “the pope, the secretary of state or his substitute decide everything, thus providing them with a workload humanly impossible to finish. Combined with the ever-growing amount of business and the exaggerated propensity for secrecy, this can only result in delaying even the most urgent affairs."
[Whatever reforms are to be carried out, the Pope will still have the final say on all the matters for which he alone has the competency. No one else will decide for hi,]
Among the remedies, the document of 1931 expresses the hope that “more space, therefore, should be given to the
time-honoured [????Since when?] system of the collegial government."
Moreover, the curial staff "should be increased by adding internationally selected experts, so that they can act and react quickly; new channels of communication will be opened up as well, to prevent that only one-sided and biased information reaches the Holy See. In this way, the state of affairs in the universal Church can be monitored more closely and it will be easier to communicate with the bishops, leading and admonishing them if necessary."
[The document was written in 1931, before the age of communications technology we now have, when information flow is instantaneous and comprehensive. Of course, it still depends on whether and how the bureaucracy at all levels makes use of all the information tools available.]
This is a matter of proposals for reform that now date back to more than eighty years ago. Vatican Council II made some of them its own.
For his part, de Valk writes that Paul VI in 1967 and John Paul II in 1988 with their restructurings of the Roman curia “have indeed carried out several of these reforms" called for in the document of 1931.
Many, but not all. Will it be Pope Francis who realizes those which are lacking?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/04/2013 13:10]