On her excellent site, Beatrice calls attention to a couple more French commentaries by writers well-disposed towards the Pope. I've translated first this one by La Croix's fairly new correspondent in Rome, who has since given us quite a few good reports.
I am puzzled by his title, 'Le Pape sans passion?' [which translates either as 'The Pope without passion?' or 'The dispassionate Pope?', but I think the latter carries the sense better and is more idiomatic], since the blog turns out to be about something else - he starts out disputing a black-or-white view of Benedict XVI but ends up scrutinizing how Italian media report on the Pope and the Vatican, without getting back to his premise!
P.S. Flo has since called my attention to the correct sense of Mounier's title, in which case
my comment above does not apply. I am revising my translation of the title accordingly.
Discussing the Pope dispassionately
by Frederic Mounier
Translated from his blog
January 9, 2010
I am struck, from Rome, by the cutting and definitive – even passionate – judgments taken by those in France about Benedict XVI. Our Cartesian minds are conveniently incapable of nuancing – and so the Pope is seen either as an almost-fundamentalist, or as a near-saint.
In both cases, the complexity of history, culture, politics, theology and sociology is not taken into account. And whoever is talking to someone who has such a judgment – often a priori and unappealable – is often compelled to share his view. And that is what I find concerning as much for the quality of our intelligence as for that of our faith.
In order to get out of such territory, obviously full of snares, I would like you to take a brief look at the Italian media.
In religious matters, they are very different from us. They consider the Vatican as a stage – a theatrical stage, for political theater, and a subject to analyze like any place that calls forth all sorts of analyses – with respect, certainly
[NOT ALWAYS - and the 'exceptions' are often absolutely disgraceful if not disgusting]], but also without taboos, using criteria that are often unknown to us.
For instance, at the moment, the speculation is focused on a coming consistory – the meeting of cardinals from around the world at which the Pope formally announces the names of those who have been chosen to be raised top this supreme honor of the Church. And who will also elect his successor. Let us see how important the stakes are.
There are two thoughts at the moment on the date for such a consistory: June 28 or October 17 (to coincide with the beatification of John Paul II). Many Italian names are being circulated. Among them, those whose current positions in the Roman Curia usually come with the cardinal’s red hat, and those who have been chosen to head important dioceses. Then, the main unknown: those that the Pope chooses personally. And so the corridors are humming in the Vatican…
The Italian media also love to scrutinize – sometimes with scalpel-like cuts – the nominations and decisions emanating from the Vatican. They all recall the ‘Polish clique’ that , in their view, had ‘corrupted’ the administration of the Church in John Paul II’s time,
Today, the same observers are focusing on the ‘Salesian clan’. The sons of Don Bosco are among the most represented today in the higher ranks of the Roman Curia, starting with the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. To the point that some malicious souls (yes, they have them too!)
[of course they do!] have said the Salesian suffix SDB (for Salesians of Don Bosco) has come to mean ‘siamo di Bertone’ (We’re Bertone’s boys).
The Salesians are also called ‘the most important lobby in the Church today – much more than Opus Dei’.
But these observers also underscore more generally that the presence of the religious orders (Jesuits, Dominicans, Franciscans, Lazarists, Scalabrians, etc) has grown in the Vatican to the detriment of diocesan clergy.
[Why should it be? Diocesan clergy are meant to be direct pastors in local parishes, while the religious orders are trained for other purposes, from missionary work in remote lands to special apostolates in education, cultural promotion or various aspects of active charity. Assignment to the Roman Curia is one such apostolate - whtether the assignee is diocesan or religious - and it should be considered as such, starting with the prelates themselves.]
“The Roman Curia is a perpetually evolving court”, says one of my Italian colleagues...
[And there's an analogy often favored by Varican reporters - of looking at the Papacy as an ancien regime royal court, with the Curia as courtiers and jokers fawning and plotting before the Pope!]
In any case, on this side of the Alps, the words are often harsh. A weekly evoked the situation in the Vatican with these words: “The Pope writes, Bertone improvises, and the Church is leaderless”, while citing this rising star, that falling one, or some decision strongly disputed in the very heart of the Apostolic Palace.
[In which such writers treat the Vatican like a secular state and its leaders like secular politicians – an attitude that actively politicizes the Church by identifying her and the Catholic hierarchy with their administrative structures, thus constantly ignoring and undermining their primarily spiritual mission and nature.]
The atmosphere is certainly not Florentine in the Medici sense, but as St. Francis of Sales (patron of journalists) said, “Where man is, there will be human acts!” And everyone knows that at the Vatican, there are men whose task it is to guide the boat that is the Church.
And so, we, being human, analyze what they do as humans.
The second item from Beatrice is something she picked up from an online exchange between
and Guillaume de Thieulloy, who writes a blog cleverly entitled.
De Thieulloy. 36, holds a doctorate in political science and a master's degree
in thelogy, is the editor of Les 4 Verites hebdo, a weekly magazine
described as 'the journal of the liberal right'.
Beatrice spares us the trouble of going through the exchange with a brief introduction:
This is what I take from it (the exchange):
A reader asked de Thieulloy: In your opinion, do recent actions by Benedict XVI (lifting the Lefebvrian bishops' excommunication, dialogue with the FSSPX, greater attention to liturgical matters, providing a framework for inter-religious dialog) have an influence on society and on the world in general? Will our societies recover to the degree that the Church itself recovers?
And here is his superb response. In fact, he has grasped that Benedict XVI has restored to us, by his own person - and without taking anything from Catholicism's claim to unversality as its very name means - the pride of being European.
I am not a prophet and therefore, have no competence to answer your question. But I think that the actions of Benedict XVI - and even more simply, his very way of being - have a great cultural importance.
And this is true on several levels:
1) First, Benedict XVI is one of the last Europeans, to the degree that he - unlike our so-called elites - feels the vibrance, if I can say so, when he looks at the Sixtine Chapel, when he listens to Mozart or Palestrina, when he reads Dante, Boetius or Bernanos.
2) If he succeeds in managing his projects for unity (within the Church, first, and also with the Anglo-Catholics and the Orthodox Christians], he will give the Church a new strength for evangelization. Of course, the Catholic Church as it now is has all the necessary powers for evangelization, but humanly speaking, those powers would be vastly enriched.
3) As a journalist, I am most struck by what I think to be a decisive attitude in Benedict XVI: his perfect indifference to the mediatic hubbub.
And I think that, sooner or later, the true political elites, whom we need in order to remake Europe, will learn his lesson: that so-called public opinion is nothing but a veneer that one need only ignore in order to deprive it of any power.
But how long will it take for them to learn? I must say I cannot say.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/01/2010 16:02]