ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

As expected, it did not take long for Sandro Magister to react - and at great length - to the Secretariat of State communique on the Boffo case which has now become more the Bertone-Vian case. However, the haste tells in some basic omissions - in regard to facts about the events, which I have supplemented in parentheses where necessary; and his failure to cite the sources of some quotations attributed to Bertone and Vian.

He is more belligerent than I expected, but he marshals his arguments fairly well, as he usually does on other issues, and of course, to defend his point of view tendentiously. But although I see where his argument leads, I do think his title is definitely overblown.



Italy, the United States, Brazil:
From the Vatican to the conquest of the world

The ambitious captain is the cardinal Secretary of State, with the help of L'Osservatore Romano.
The objective is to subject the national Churches to itself, on the terrain of politics.
But the bishops are resisting and reacting. A lesson from the experience of the Italian bishops.




ROME, February 11, 2010 – After more than two weeks of silence since the new explosion of controversy over the case of Dino Boffo, the Vatican secretariat of state, with a statement issued two days ago, flatly denied the accusations raised against the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, Giovanni Maria Vian, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone himself.

The statement
- Denies that either of them had released or approved the anti-Boffo fliers that had defamed Boffo and forced him to resign as editor of the newspaper of the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire;
- Rejects what it calls "a defamatory campaign that involves the Roman pontiff himself"; and
- States that Benedict XVI "reaffirms his full trust in his collaborators."

Rome has spoken; is the question closed? Not quite.

The Boffo case has opened eyes to inter-ecclesial conflicts that go beyond the 'mechanics' behind the Boffo case. Conflicts and disorders that have not been addressed or removed by the Vatican statement. Of which the Boffo case is only one chapter, very Italian but ultimately global.

But the key to readings these events was evident from the start.

On August 28, 2009, Vittorio Feltri, editor of the newspaper Il Giornale, wrote a front-page broadaside against Boffo that proved to be immediately fatal for the latter's career.

On the basis of an authentic legal document [showing that Boffo had been fined by a local Italian court in 2004 for 'telephone molestation'] and an anonymous flier [which Feltri claimed to be a police informative document when it was one sent in the past to Italian bishops and media alike but previously ignored by all], Feltri branded Boffo a 'notorious practising homosexual', citing the flier, and also claimed that the molestation was for "harassing the wife of a man with whom he had had a relationship."

On the same day, in La Repubblica, the leading progressive Italian newspaper, lay theologian Vito Mancuso accused Cardinal Bertone of sitting at table with Herod, meaning Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with whom the Secretary of State had in fact planned a dinner meeting. [The dinner was cancelled that day.]

That same afternoon, L'Osservatore Romano [which is administratively under the Secretary of State], defended Cardinal Bertone in a front-page editorial in the next day's issue by its leading commentator, Lucetta Scaraffia - whereas it consigned the bishops' defense of Boffo to three lines from a news agency report carried in one of the inside pages.

Asked why the uneven treatment, Vian answered that the Church's real enemy is whoever attacks Bertone, "and therefore the Pope", not the one who goes after Boffo. According to Vian, Il Giornale was even too kind toward Boffo, writing about him with "exemplary moderation" and "Anglo-Saxon" cool. [Magister should have cited his source for these quotes. Not doing so, which is standrd journalistic practice, puts them on the level of gossip, not journalism.]

Three days later, when the attack on Boffo was at its height, Vian became even less evenhanded. He not only did not defend Boffo and Avvenire - he criticized them for, in his opinion, compounding the damage to the Vatican hierarchy. He said so to Corriere della Sera, in an interview that, as he later made known, had "the approval" of Cardinal Bertone.

Was it because Boffo and Avvenire represented, among other things, the Cultural Project of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI)now headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who was president of the Italian bishops' conference from 1991 to 2007? In the Corriere interview Vian mocked the "cultural project of Christian orientation" likening it to a phoenix.

Within a few days of the Giornale broadside, Boffo resigned [all his positions in the CEI - editor of Avvenire, and director of the CEI's radio and TV networks] .

At which time, Cardinal Bertone [reportedly] confided to a very talkative politician friend, "My biggest mistake was making Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco head of the CEI, in Ruini's place." [Again, the quotation is not sourced.]

[Subsequently, in early December] Feltri admiited that the flier he uses as a basis for his story was false [although the court order on the fine was authentic] and retracted his accusations against Boffo. But he pointed out that he had taken the word of "a reliable informant, I would say, someone beyond suspicion" who had provided him with the documents.

Last January 23, Feltri said [in an interview with Il Foglio] that his informant was "a figure of the Church who should be trusted institutionally," making other statements that seemed to indicate the source of the information was Vian [and implying it was done with Bertone's approval].

[What Magister does not mention is that on the day the Foglio interview came out, Feltri dined openly with Boffo at a Milan restaurant where presumably they made their peace. But according to the Foglio account of the dinner, Feltri greeted Boffo by asking "But what is it that Cardinal Bertone has against you? And what does Vian have against you?" In a statement, Feltri did not deny making asking those questions, but did state carefully, "I do not know either Bertone or Vian and have not met any of them at any time".]

The antagonism between the Secretariat of State and the national bishops' conferences is a classic in the Church's recent history.

As soon as Bertone was appointed Secretary of State, in September of 2006, he made no secret of the fact that he wanted to subject the CEI to his leadership. He tried to have Cardinal Ruini replaced by a second-tier bishop, whom he could easily control [but the Pope instead chose Mons. Angelo Bagnasco, Bertone's successor as Archbishop of Genoa].

As soon as Bagnasco was installed at the CEI, Bertone wrote him a letter, immediately made public, that he himself would personally handle all "relations with political institutions" in Italy [something the Italian bishops had always done, particularly since the Lateran Pacts were updated in 1984].

The CEI, beginning with its new president, rebelled [An exaggeration by Magister since Bagnasco never deigned to answer Bertone's 'usurpation' but simply went ahead doing the CEI's business autonomously but in keeping with Benedict XVI's line, as Ruini had done before him], and from that point on, looked at Bertone's actions for signs of his presumption of command.

The current Secretary of State is also isolated in the Vatican. [Is there objective proof of that, apart from the hostility of some within his own department?]

Veteran diplomats won't forgive him for not being one of them. And in fact, Bertone's Curial experience was not with the Secretariat of State but with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where Cardinal Ratzinger entrusted him with some sensitive cases, like the Third Secret of Fatima and the Milingo case....

Bertone compensates for his internal isolation with a profusion of external activities of every kind: celebrations, appearances, anniversaries, addresses, inaugurations, interviews.

One of his predecessors, Agostino Casaroli, a great career diplomat who served from 1979 to 1990, gave a total of 40 speeches during that time. In a little more than three years, Bertone has given 365.

And then, there's his travelling. He has gone to Argentina, Croatia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Poland, Mexico - and in each place, he has met with heads of states and bishops, ambassadors and professors, with an agenda constructed like a papal trip.

[Until he left for Poland Tuesday afternoon to receive an honorary degree from Wroclaw], he did not travel in the past year, dedicating himself to governing the Curia, which reports to him by statute. But the past year was also the most harrowing, since it saw him eventually involved in the Williamson case and the Boffo case.

Bertone's only secure fortress is L'Osservatore Romano, with Vian as editor. The bond between the two is very close, marked by the telephone call that they share each day, late in the evening.

And the latter's responsibilities are not limited to the Vatican newspaper. Bertone has also entrusted Vian with the role that, at the time of John Paul II, was filled by Joaquin Navarro Valls: that of orchestrating the Italian and global media from behind the scenes.

Vian does this with some success here and there. He is the Vatican pundit most consulted by Corriere della Sera [considered Italy's leading newspaper]. The proximity between Vian and Corriere derives from his friendship with Corriere editorialist Ernesto Galli della Loggia, husband of Lucetta Scaraffia, an editorial writer for L'Osservatore, and with Paolo Mieli, Corriere editor, who, in 2005, was one of the most tenacious secular adversaries of Cardinal Ruini in the battle over the referendum on assisted reproduction. [Mieli, who is also a historian and of Jewish descent, has since written a couple of articles for OR about Pius XII, whom he defends against the standard Jewish accusations.]

And yet, there was a previous clash between Vian's newspaper and Avvenire, before the Boffo case - over the coverage of Eluana Englaro in 2008 and 2009.

Avvenire committed itself to leading the campaign to keep Englaro alive. By contrast, Vian hardly ever reported on the case, and was known to have expressed himself about the 'unconvincing arguments' and 'hysterical' defense mounted by Avvenire. [Again, Magister does not source this quote! Bad journalism!]

In the Englaro case, as well, Vian was apparently opposing the idea of a Church that is very visible and active in culture and politics - a position Cardinal Ruini once defined as "better to be contested than to be irrelevant".

The Vatican's failed attempt to dominate the newspaper of the CEI [I wouldn't call it 'the Vatican's attempt' since it appears to have been Vian's own personal bias, nor would I say that his bias was "an attempt to dominate the newspaper of the CEI" - as you cannot do that just by letting loose with a few barbs, no matter how sharp] is therefore one chapter in a struggle between much more than two newspapers: it is between two visions of Church governance, on a worldwide scale.

In addition to the Italian Church, in fact, the Vatican Secretariat of State has put itself at odds with other national Churches, including some of the most vigorous.

The actors and the script are almost always the same: Cardinal Bertone, L'Osservatore Romano, a very lively national episcopate, battles in defense of the life and the family.

On a war footing with Rome today, among others, are the two largest episcopates in the world, that of the United States and that of Brazil.

In the United States, the newly assertive wing of the bishops, headed by Chicago archbishop Cardinal Francis George, was first stirred up when an editorial in L'Osservatore Romano evaluating the first hundred days of Barack Obama's presidency, not only gave him a positive assessment, but credited the new President for a "rebalancing in favor of motherhood" which according to the American bishops, was far from the truth, because the exact opposite had happened. [And as anyone who reads the US newspapers would have known full well!]

A second conflict arose from the decision of the University of Notre Dame, the most renowned Catholic university in the United States, to give Obama an honorary degree. About eighty US bishops (including the most prominent ones) rebelled against the honor being given to a political leader whose positions on bioethics are contrary to Church teaching. Before and after the event, they manifested their opposition in vigrous dicussions and statements almost completely ignored by Vian in L'Osservatore Romano. [As I recall, Vian posted exactly one report on the bishops' objections, and featured the Notre Dame event on Page 1 with a report and a photograph.]

The other issue between the United States and the Vatican newspaper is over withholding communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. Many of the American bishops refuse to compromise on this, and see the silence of the Secretariat of State and of the Vatican newspaper on the issue [even around the time of Edward Kennedy's death, when this issue occupied the Catholic debate in the US] - as a judgment on them, not to mention a moral surrender.

The desire to have peaceful institutional relations with the establishment, regardless of their ideology, seems to be typical of Bertone. In this, he is applying a classic canon of Vatican diplomacy, which is traditionally "realist," even at the cost of clashing with the national episcopates that are often critical of their respective governments.

But the effects often seem contradictory. Last March, an article in L'Osservatore Romano denounced the Brazilian bishop of Recife [for 'lack of compassion'] because he excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl who conceived twins after being raped by her stepfather.

The Brazilian bishops saw this as a betrayal by Rome as a time when they were fighting a tough battle with the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over his full liberalization of abortion.

The author of the article, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, apparently wrote it at Bertone's request. The protest of the Brazilian bishops was joined by a rebellion within the Pontifical Academy for Life, of which Fisichella is president.

A good number of academy members called for his dismissal, and some of them appealed to the Pope, who ordered the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a note of "clarification," in defense of the bishop of Recife.

But Fisichella will remain in his place, as will Vian, and Bertone, who has just been reconfirmed.

In the Boffo case, Pope Benedict "knows". And he personally sees things more the way Cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini do, rather than like his Secretary of State.

[Not that the Pope has articulated this, but one may reasonably conclude so, by his continuing rapport with Cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini. The directives he has given the Church in Italy - notably his quite detailed address to the decennial Church convention in Verona in 2006 - certainly urge the continued activism of the Church in the public defense of non-negotiable values.

Each of his addresses to bishops on ad limina visit likewise always includes an exhortation for them - and for Catholic politicians - to play an active role in the public debate on issues that have to do with their own pastoral care of the faithful.]

But the Pope's pace is that of the perennial Church. Long and patient.
{What does that mean? A cop-out statement? Magister obviously does not want to criticize the Pope for not 'punishing' Bertone, Vian and Fisichella, but that is what he implies.

We cannot second-guess the Pope. He has information that neither the public nor the most 'wired-in' Vaticanista is likely to know, and he also has practical considerations that he must balance against off-message incursions by his closest collaborators. He will know, as he did with dissenting bishops last March, when to do what he must do, and how.]