Here's another article from the Formiche special section on why an 'inconvenient' Pope is in the crosshairs of his enemies:
Benedict's calm response
to the attacks against him
by Massimo Introvigne
Translated from the December 2010 issue of
Benedict XVI is a Pope who is much loved by many Catholics. But he has been under harsh attack by various international media as well as by a small but active minority within the Church. I wish to reflect on these attacks in dialog with an important book,
Attacco a Ratzinger - about accusations, 'scandals', prophecies and conspiracies against Benedict XVI.
The first offensive against the Pope began with the Regensburg lecture on September 12, 2006, in which he used a quotation from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologue (1350-1425), which many thought offensive to Islam and Muslims.
It sparked a huge campaign against Benedict XVI, stoked by both the Western media and by Islamic fundamentalism, and which degenerated into some violent episodes. In Mogadishu, Somalia, it caused the death of an Italian nun.
Paradoxically, the deep motivations for the quotation about Islam in the Regensburg lecture were understood by many Muslim intellectuals, but continue to be ignored or not understood at all by the Western media.
What emerges about the anti-Benedict attacks is a three-stage process: a communications error by the Vatican, aggression by the secular media, and an essential role played by Catholics who are against Benedict XVI in supporting such aggression. We find this in all the other anti-Benedict episodes, with few variations.
Nonetheless, a new phase began in March 2009, with the Pope's first visit to Africa. On the flight bringing him to Cameroon, Benedict XVI answered a few questions from the newsmen on board. To a French TV journalist who asked him about AIDS, the Pope replied that the massive distribution of condoms does not resolve the problem but aggravates it.
The Pope was technically right
[scientifically as well as pragmatically right], and in succeeding days, this would be confirmed by many leading epidemiological experts: By promoting sexual promiscuity and creating a false sense of security, anti-AIDS policies based on condom use alone have regularly aggravated the problem in many countries that have been the beneficiaries of widespread condom dumps.
But the Pope's response occupied international reporting during the entire trip, so that Europe and the United States were largely uninformed of what he said about the crisis in the African continent - his denunciation of the misdeeds committed against the Africans by the neo-colonial policies and practices of international institutions and many multi-national corporations. Could this have been the real reason [ for all the condom furor]?
[If it was, then it was purely opportunistic, not planned. No one could have foretold that the Pope would make the statements he did about condoms!]
By now, it was not surprising to see the usual progressive theologians go to battle against the Pope. The new element was the intervention of governments: Spain, France and Germany asked the pope to apologize, and in the European Parliament, a resolution to censure the Pope did not pass but got 199 votes.
However, a similar measure in Belgium was voted by Parliament, eliciting a severe response from the Vatican, thus causing an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the two states. In turn, this led to the hostile raids against Church premises in Brussels by the Belgian police in connection with investigation of sex abuses by priests.
But all the other crises pale compared to the 'pedophile priest scandal'. Forgive me for referring to my text, but the authors of
Attacco a Ratzinger amply cited material from my book
Prete Pedofili (San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo, 2010), substantially sharing its premises.
The book by Rodari and Tornielli reiterates, despite the absurd criticisms that have come from, unfortunately, even cardinals and bishops, what I had underscored: the one prelate in the Church who was most severe in his attitude against pedophile priests - to the point of being accused of violating the priests' right to self-defense and to have confronted many bishops about this matter - was Cardinal Ratzinger when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
To present him as having been tolerant at all on this issue is simply ridiculous, and yet this misinformation finds credence with the less informed
[and the gullible] among newspaper readers or TV viewers.
On the other hand, we can ask whether the obstacles that Cardinal Ratzinger met in the final years of John Paul II's Pontificate - when his requests for even greater severity against priest offenders were not always welcomed, much less accepted - could cast a shadow on the great Polish Pope and even risk compsomising his cause for beatification.
However, the issue was confronted in the Vatican phase of the pre-beatification investigations. And it was rightly concluded that any such brakes on Cardinal Ratzinger's intentions were limited to the last years of John Paul II's Pontificate, when, due to failing health, he no longer followed most Vatican affairs personally and delegated them to various co-workers, against whom any criticisms should be directed.
Finally, Rodari and Tornielli examine whether one can properly speak of a conspiracy against the Pope, citing various opinions including mine, who am one of those they interviewed for the book.
The first is the galazy composed of secular lobbyists, homosexuals, Masons, feminists, pharmaceutical companies who sell contraceptives, and lawyers who hope to claim mega-million damages suing the Church on behalf of the victims of sex-offender priests.
However, this galaxy, too complex for it to respond to a single leadership, has the advantage of the new information technologies that give them a power possessed by no other enemy of the Church throughout history, and whose components all see the Pope as the one single obstruction to their dictatorship of relativism, in which God and the values of life and the family do not count at all. They see the Pope as an obstacle who must be swept away at all costs and by any means.
This lobby has been successful because they have enlisted a second circle of enemies made up of Catholic progressivists and those Catholics, theologians and not a few bishops, who see their authority and power in the Church threatened by Benedict XVI dismantling the interpretation of Vatican II as discontinuity and rupture with tradition - an interpretation upon which they have built their careers and fortunes for decades.
Interviews with Catholic progresivists allow the secular media to present their propaganda not as anti-Catholic but as being in support of Catholics who oppose a reactionary Pope who wants to 'abolish the Council' - by which they mean, one who disputes their claim to represent the 'spirit of Vatican II', since after all, anti-Catholic journalists have no knowledge of the texts of Vatican II, and the progressives themselves think the Vatican II documents are irrelevant.
Then, Benedict XVI has a third enemy - unwitting and involuntary but no less dangerous. The authors refer to "attacks that are involuntarily self-generated by the numerous imprudences and frequent errors of the Pope's own co-workers".
There are, of course, various opinions regarding the communications problems of the Vatican in this age of the Internet, Facebook, and mobile phones directly linked to the Web - resulting in hundreds of millions receiving instant information round the clock seconds after anything is posted online (and becoming archiva material after only a few hours).
If a false report is not denied within a couple of hours, or if an attack is not answered at least within 24 horus from when it is launched, the chances of making any effective response are down to practically zero.
If all this is true, then the opinions of those who lament that the present Vatican spokesman, Fr. Federico Lombardi, has been much less sharp and alert than his predecessor, layman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, can be debated ad infinitum but do not go to the heart of the problem.
The means of communication itself that have changed radically, a change that came after the death of John Paul II, because of the increasing number of people - 500 million Facebook users alone - and not just a small elite, who have access 24/7 to information on the Web, and have a reaciton time of minutes not hours. On this point, the book by Italian journalist Marco Niada,
Il breve tempo (Garzanti, 2010) shoudl be read by all those involved in Vatican communications.
Benedict XVI is certainly not unaware of all these attacks. He is very interested in the new information technologies and in the need to improve the communications strategies of the Holy See.
But he is also very calm. He is willing to consider all the problems presented to the Church by the communications revolution - a revolution that is perhaps no less important that the 19060s revolution in morals and authority - but not to be taken over by them.
He insists that the salvation of a persecuted Church will not come from strategizing or diplomacy or technology - although these are all important and must not be neglected - but in fidelity to prayer, to meditation, to the Crucified Christ.
It is probable that he is right not only on the spiritual level, obviously, but even in cultural and sociological terms, in that the Church is not supposed to imitate dominant models but to be herself.
Yet not everyone, including many Catholics, seem to understand this.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/12/2010 09:49]