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The pope's comments on those
who wrote the Open Letter
I get the impression from the relative lack of stories and commentary about the pope's recent interview with Valentina Alazraki of Mexico's Televisa - after the understandable flurry of reactions to his too-late-too-little and embarassingly incoherent and self-contradicting statements about Vigano and McCarrick - that few n the media and the blogosphere have bothered to go through the entire transcript which is available on the Vatican site in Spanish and Italian (I have not checked the other languages).
While I can understand that after six years of enduring and haing to report on self-indulgent papal logorrhea, Bergoglio-blather fatigue may have set in among Vatican observers, professional and otherwise, and Vatican news junkies, I realize more and more that it would be useful not to ignore what he says, not only for its inherent content, which runs the gamut, but as an ongoing record of his thought processes, almost a stream of consciousness, in which oftentimes, he does not even mask open expressions of negativity, hostility and even contempt for those who oppose him in any way.
For example, only a couple of sites have reported Bergoglio's comments on the recent Open Letter to Bishops - or better, on those who wrote the Open Letter. Brief but telling comments on a subject he voluntarily introduced into the interview, taking advantage of Alazraki's remarks about polarization in the Church. I translated the ff from the Spanish transcript:
Pope Francis, there is much polarization, though not something sudden, in the world in general, and also in the Church, right here, for instance – not in this room - but inside the Vatican. Everywhere. It is not a prerogative of the Vatican.
A: To polarize is a destructive temptation.
But in the Church itself, these groups are felt to be very strong...
A: Yes, well… Now that you mention it, some have accused me of heresy, and…
How did you take that?
A: With a sense of humor, my child.
You don’t give it much importance...
A. No, not at all! Besides, I pray for them because they are wrong - poor people, some of them have been manipulated. I saw who were those who signed… No, seriously, [I took it] with a sense of humor, and I would say, tenderness, paternal tenderness. Which is to say, I don’t feel wounded at all, not at all.
What wounds me is hypocrisy, lying – that wounds me. But a mistake like that, which involves some whose heads were inflated, no, please! One has to take care of them, too. They must be taken care of...
The contempt and condescension - and 'incidental' insult - he packs into those few words chill the marrow. What paternal tenderness is there in calling the signatories "poor people, some of them manipulated... and whose heads were inflated"? When has he ever been even minimally charitable -m uch less paternal! - to all the various 'categories' of Catholics he dislikes and continuously insults?
"I don't feel wounded at all, not at all" sounds to me like whistling in the dark.
And what hypocrisy and lying is he talking about? The signatories came out in the open with what they had to say, no hypocrisy there - risking the head-shaking, finger-wagging disapproval and disparagement of many leading 'orthodox Catholic' voices one would have expected to add their signatures to the letter - among them those who in the past three years at least have been the most outspoken in denouncing the doctrinal errors advocated by this pope, errors the writers consider heresies and have ask the bishops of the world to at least 'investigate', given the super-abundant documentation that exists to support the charges. Documentation that rules out any possibility of lying on the part of the Open Letter authors.
Yet their detractors berate them for having 'gone too far'. These detractors are really saying that "Yes, Bergoglio has been trampling roughshod on many essential teachings of the faith, but that's not heresy! And not a matter for the bishops to look into!" Then what is it? When it's the pope himself who openly teaches doctrinal error, as the Open Letter detractors daily denounce? I have been calling it apostasy - informal yes, but very much de facto - because every anti-Catholic thing Bergoglio says and does is an act of apostasy.
Of course, Bergoglio is using the familiar psychological mechanism of projecting one's own besetting faults - certainly hypocrisy and lying are for Bergoglio - on one's opponents, which makes his words even more pathetic.
Mainly, he wants it made known that he scoffs at the Open Letter and everything it alleges. As he scoffed at the DUBIA - and at Mons. Vigano's testimony, originally - though never directly, as he does here at the Open Letter.
For the first time in living memory, serious Catholic theologians draw up a charge sheet of heretical words and acts against a pope - and it is nothing but 'humorous', and therefore, un-serious, to the man concerned. He is really also telling all Catholics who share the message of the Open Letter that he truly does not care what they think; he is the pope, afteralll, and his word will prevail over those he considers as nothing but insignificant 'poor people' who together represent only a minuscule minority in the Church, an infinitesimal fraction he can afford to ignore and ridicule because might is always right.
And how does he intend to 'take care' of these 'poor people'? In Spanish, "hay que cuidarlos" does not have the ominous connotation that "We must take care of them" can have in English. Is he going to assign 19 of his chief lieutenants to 'mentor' each of the authors of the Open Letter and get them to see the error of their ways? Not that any of them can even rise to the intellectual level and Catholic credentials of the authors! It would be like sending gnats to do battle with an elephant.
Or maybe he will host an Enemies' Day at Casa Santa Marta, inviting the surviving Dubia Cardinals, Mons Vigano and the Open Letter authors, maybe even Marco Tosatti, Aldo Maria Valli, Antonio Socci and Sandro Magister, along with Matteo Salvini, so that each may confront him, one on one, with the most important question each would like him to answer, framed like the Dubia so that he can answer simply with a Yes, No or Maybe, while looking at each interlocutor directly in the eye.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/06/2019 08:12] |