BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Schoenborn's statements
and its implications
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from

May 9, 2010


One has the impression that a public settling of accounts is coming, and that media pressure is causing an acute attack of nerves among some in the upper levels of the Church hierarchy.

The words used by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, to criticize, openly and harshly, the dean of the College of Cardinals, John Paul II's Secretary of State for 15 years, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, are absolutely unprecedented.

In fact, Schoenborn also said other things to Austrian editors last week: he said a reform of the Roman Curia was 'urgent'; he said that Catholic homosexuals who are in a well-established relationship deserve better consideration from the Church; he said the Church ought to review its position on denying Communion to Catholic divorcees who remarry.

But the real point of no return was Schoenborn's direct attack on Sodano, whom he blamed by name [for apparently protecting the late Austrian Cardinal Groer despite credible accusations of sexual offenses made by priests who had been his victims when they were seminarians].

His accusations appear to reflect equally on the statements made recently by the former Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, after the disclosure of a letter written by him in 2001 congratulating a French bishop for not having reported one of his priests to the police for serial sexual offenses [the bishop received a suspended sentence for refusing to testify about the priest, saying he learned of the offense in Confession].

Castrillon said he had the support of John Paul II: "After consulting the Pope and showing him the letter, I sent it to the bishop, congratulating him for having been a model father in not having turned over a son to the police."

The statements by Castrillon adn the recent ones by Cardinal Schoenborn demonstrate yet again an unresolved problem about the last ten years of John Paul II's Pontificate and how the Roman Curia, starting with its highest officials, confronted the issue of priestly sexual abuse of minors.

Worse than the Groer case and new disquieting disclosures about it is the case of Father Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, who thanks to the cover that he had at high levels in the Vatican, succeeded for more than six years to dismiss as calumnies the detailed accusations made against him by former seminarians he had abused and then absolved in the confessional, despite canonical denunciations promptly presented to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Direct attacks by name, such as that made by Schoenborn, and in general, reprimands of fellow prelates from the mouths of Princes of the Church who no longer bother to be diplomatic - a rarity especially in the Vatican - are eloquent indications of a very heated situation and how deluded it is to think that the crisis situation is easing. [I don't think anyone is deluded about that - it's just that the crisis the media describe, i.e., a general worldwide loss of trust in the Church because of the sexual abuses, which is such a pat and rashly presumptuous deduction, is not exactly the more fundamental and wide-ranging crisis that Benedict XVI perceives and has been working so hard to address, i.e., a lack of grounding in the faith.]

This seems to be the underlying message in the statements made by the Archbishop of Vienna and his growing pro-activism, especially in the media: that zero tolerance and transparency - words of the day that sometimes seem to have replaced the Christian concepts of sin and mercy - should apply to everyone, even in the Vatican.

Meanwhile, the insistence with which Schoenborn has pointed out how different was the attitude of Cardinal Ratzinger - who was certainly hardly inclined to be indulgent in any way about these cases and determined to pursue them appropriately - has for one of its unintended and unwanted consequences that of casting a shadow over a good part of the Wojtylian Curia, and in the end, even the Polish Pope himself.


I am frankly disappointed that Tornielli's major concern appears to be the backlash on John Paul II's Curia - I don't for a moment believe anyone will really think John Paul II himself was knowingly at fault - almost all of whom are no longer in office or will be soon. It is not as if they had been above suspicion before now!

Besides, it now appears that Schoenborn only used his earlier unsolicited disclosures about Cardinal Ratzinger's disappointment at 'losing out' to the 'diplomatic side' (did he mean the Secretariat of State?] on the Groer case, as a wedge to prepare for his covering-all-the-liberal-causes news interview last week.

Tornielli also failed to rebut Schoenborn's unfounded and sanctimonious criticism of Sodano's use of the word 'chiaccheriacci' which I find a troubling sign of Schoenborn's intellectual dishonesty.

Here is what another Vaticanista had to say about that particular comment:

Schoenborn gets personal
against the dean of cardinals
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from

May 9, 2010

VATICAN CITY - The Archbishop of Vienna has accused the dean of the Sacred College, Angelo Sodano, of having sidelined investigations into sexual offenses by priests and of having 'offended' the victims of sex abuse by a statement he made in his tribute of support for Benedict XVI on Easter Sunday.

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn claims it was the former Secretary of State who covered 'the pedophile acts' of his predecessor as Archbishop of Vienna, the late Cardinal hans Hermann Groer.

The accusations by Schoenborn, reported last week by the Austrian news agency Kathpress, are not new. Already last Palm Sunday, Schoenborn, who is very close to Benedict XVI* already indicated that some high Curial officials had blocked attempts by then Cardinal Ratzinger to investigate the accusations against Groer.

And now he is accusing Sodano of causing 'serious harm' to the victims of priestly abuses by "describing the denunciation of their abuses as 'mere gossip'".

In fact, Vatican sources say, "the Easter tribute by Cardinal Sodano expressing solidarity and support for the Pope in the current crisis was decided with the Secretariat of State, and its contents were known beforehand". [And Cardinal Bertone, or his deputy for general affairs, Mons. Filoni, would have been well aware that the term 'chiacchieracci' was used in the same context by the Pope himself in his Palm Sunday homily!]

They also point out that from the time Schoenborn was named to succeed Groer in Vienna, he has been relentless against him, "making public condemnations that were out of place and that should have been avoided" [After all, the cardinal was dismissed from office. Not that such playing to the grandstands gained Schoenborn any points at all with anyone, because the hemorrhaging of Church membership in Austria has gone on undiminished under him!].

And now, Schoenborn's direct personalization of his 'J'accuse' is seen as 'over the top' by these sources, although they also say that "a person in Schoenborn's position would not use the Dean's name if what he's saying is unfounded".

But they do dismiss speculation that Schoenborn could have had Vatican approval for what he said last week, "not the least because they were statements he made to the media, not in a homily or at an official Church event". [And who in the Vatican would he consult anyway, when he apparently feels superior to all of them? And can anyone imagine Benedict XVI agreeing to a knockout, dragdown fight between cardinals carried out in public at all, much less at a time like this?]

[The rest of the story recycles the Groer case.]


*[I wish newsmen would stop automatically describing Schoenborn as 'very close to the Pope' or 'an intimate of the Pope'. It makes me cringe in embarrassment and distaste, just recalling all of Schoenborn's questionable actions and statements in the past 2-3 years that have certainly not helped Benedict XVI in any way!

Leaving aside his taking part in clown Masses and allowing blasphemous paintings to be exhibited in Vienna's cathedral museum, there was his cowardly desertion of Mons. Gerhard Wagner, giving in to public opinion against an orthodox-thinking bishop, after having first praised him warmly in a newspaper column when Benedict XVI named him auxiliary bishop for Linz, and then leading his Austrian bishops' conference in a disgraceful statement laying the blame on the Vatican system for appointing bishops - it amounted to a direct criticism of Benedict XVI for not consulting local bishops when he makes an appointment! (All the while, he has apparently done nothing about Austrian priests having mistresses, including one who boasted about it during the Linz case!)

That was followed by disparaging statements against the lifting of the ecommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops - even as he failed to say a single statement of public support for the Pope's statement on condoms and AIDS [And he purports to be the 'science-minded' cardinal, with his idiosyncratic statements about evolution!] Then Medjugorje! And now this very media-tailored hue and cry urging reform in the Curia - by which I suppose he means, head-rolling, but of whom? - as though Benedict XVI had never thought about Curial reform and has to be publicly pushed into it, suggesting that Benedict's 'style' makes it difficult for 'anyone from the outside to advise him'! Are those friendly actions at all? It's all arrogant and self-serving.

As for his personal attack on Sodano - is that not what St. Paul, and Benedict XVI, called 'biting and devouring each other', except that in this case, all the biting so far has come fron Schoenborn?

Something good could come from this if it causes Cardinal Sodano to issue a statement once and for all about what he did and/or failed to do in all this, and his reasons for such action or inaction. That should include the accusations against him over questionable interference in the Vatican bank IOR and his footdragging about vacating the Secretary of State's apartments after he retired in 2006.