BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

On the Berlusconi scandal:
Cardinal Bagnasco to articulate
the Italian bishops' position
at executive meeting tomorrow
by Salvatore Izzo


ANCONA, January 23 (Translated from AGI) - The hall where the 'little Parliament' of the Italian bishops' conference meets tomorrow at the start of their semi-annual meeting faces the port of Ancona, chosen for this meeting because it will host the XXV National Eucharistic Congress in September.

But it won't be the blue of the sea that will dominate the session of the CEI's Permanent Council, nor will it make news for whatever initiatives they decide for the important quinquennial Church assembly which will be closed by the Pope himself in the fall.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and CEI president, is expected instead to open the meeting with a new warning on the moral conduct of politicians, giving voice to the concerns and distaste that many Italian Catholics feel about investigations into the private doings of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi - sentiments that are independent of whether the investigation will end up formally charging Berlusconi with paying for the services of a 17-year-old young woman, or even of the penal consequences for the alleged offenses that the media have been reporting in great detail.

[A law passed under Berlusconi's first premiership makes it criminal to pay women younger than 18 for sexual favors. Both Berlusconi and the Moroccan teenager involved deny they had sex; the girl says Berlusconi gave her money to pay for some of her expences; and the premier says he has never paid for sexual favors because 'paying for sex deprives a man of the pleasure of conquest'. Berlusconi may be an arrogant, even despicable, narcissist, but he would have to be exceedingly stupid to knowingly violate a law his own government passed. And no one gets to be worth $9-billion and Prime Minister of Italy twice by being stupid. But who knows? Regardless of how it all turns out, Berlusconi must be more discreet about his private activities, and he must apologize to the Pope, at least in private, for the embarrassments he has caused the Church, and publicly to the Italian people for a failure in moral leadership.]

In the past few days, Cardinal Bagnasco himself has said that the 'institutional place' for the bishops to discuss Berlusconi's affairs - and how it impacts the Church and the nation - would be the winter meeting of the CEI Permanent Council.

At the last Council meeting in September, Bagnasco expressed the 'anguish' of the Italian bishops over the general situation in Italy, which has been severely struck by the worldwide economic crisis.

But the recent saturation coverage of alleged 'interceptions' tending to inculpate Berlusconi, as well as protests against the investigative methods used by the police, has aggravated the situation, and the Italian bishops are expected to express themselves strongly.

Thus, there is great anticipation of what he will actually say when he opens the Council meeting tomorrow. It is of course foreseeable that he will be very careful not to lend his words to possible political exploitation of whatever he says.

He has indicated that the Church has not and will not substitute for Parliament and the President of Italy in indicating a way out of the present political crisis.

Nonetheless, writes the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire in an editorial today, "all of a sudden, a chorus has arisen urging the Church to intervene strongly in the current political situation."

[When politicians and the media can use anything the Church has to say to support or advance their positions - in this case, to oust Berlusconi from power - then, with unabashed hypocrisy, they not only find the Church 'useful' but even urge her to speak out. But whenever she speaks out to articulate teachings she has expressed for millennia that happen to contradict the dominant political mentality, then she is immediately accused of 'interference' and told to shut up and have nothing to do with the public sphere.]

Without anticipating what Cardinal Bagnasco may say tomorrow about the Berlusconi case, Avvenire points out that any call by the Church and the bishops for moral consistency in what politicians say and do is simply an expression of "the Church's friendship for Italy" and of "a wisdom that cannot be reduced to a partisan slogan but one that can help discern good from evil".

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "the reconciliation of Christians who have committed particularly grave sins, as for instance, idolatry, homicide, or adultery, was linked to a very rigorous discipline, according to which the sinners should make public penitence, often for long years, before being granted reconciliation" .

1,620 years have passed since that was the practice, but the thankless task of admonishing men in public office to follow consistent moral behavior that is respectful of justice continues to be obligatory for bishops. Likewise, the letter written by St. Ambrose as Bishop of Milan to the Emperor Theodosius humiliating him publicly for a bloody repression undertaken by his men, remains quite relevant today.

"If the day after such an atrocious massacre, you had continued to remain within the communion of the Church," wrote Ambrose to one who had been called 'a most Christian emperor', "this would in no way mean absolution of your crime. On the other hand, the public resentment that is already mounting against me would be even more violent if no one had proclaimed that it is absolutely indispensable after sinning to reconcile with God. The Lord forgives our sins only if we repent first".

On Thursday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, asked to comment on the Berlusconi case, said: "The Church urges and invites everyone, especially those who have a public responsibility in any administrative, political or judicial sector, to have and to be committed to a more robust morality, a sense of justice and of legality."

Carefully chosen words which must certainly have been agreed upon with Benedict XVI, whith whom Bagnasco met yesterday, as he does on the eve of these CEI meetings. [The Pope is both Bishop of Rome and Primate of Italy, and acts in Italy through the CEI. Two Italian newspapers today, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica, led off their Bagnasco-CEI stories by directly linking Bagnasco's opening speech tomorrow to hypothetical 'instructions' from the Pope.]

He will most certainly quote from the Pope's address to the police force of Rome Thursday, when he spoke of the risk that in Italy, "the structures that are the bases for living together can no longer function fully" because of a decline in the 'moral consensus' even as "a sense of insecurity, due primarily to social and economic uncertainty, but sharpened by a certain weakening in the perception of ethical principles on which law and personal moral attitudes rest - principles that have always strengthened the social order".

Six weeks ago, when Cardinal Bagnasco opened the full assembly of the Italian bishops' conference in Assisi, he spoke of a "the collapse of standards of quality on the political scene that must be weighed objectively... without making excuses and without exploitation, by all those who have the good of the naion at heart and not only their own partisan or political interests".

If the people lose confidence in the political class, he said, then they will retreat into themselves, fail to have any desire to participate in society, but above all, "reduce the dynamic social compactness that is absolutely necessary in order to deal with problems together and work for a better future for the country".

For his part, the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, issued a statement saying that "The bishops of Italy are more than ever cohesive on doctrinal and moral questions, on which they are prepared to make clear statements".

The Church in Italy, he continued, "recognizing its tasks and without intending any interference, chooses from time to time when and how she can communicate its judgments on questions that we feel to be substantial and fundamental for orienting the faithful and to make our contribution to the good fo society", he added.

According to the weekly magazine Famiglia Cristiana, since this new scandal over Berlusconi erupted, the apparent division among Italian Catholics since Berlusconi's second ascendancy to power in 2009, appears to have cleared up for now.

Reactions have mostly held the same line, from Avvenire which has conveyed the disconcertment of its readers, to L'Osservatore Romano [which kept clear of Berlusconi's scandals in 2009), which has published the Italian President's statements expressing his 'perturbation' over the Prime Minister's alleged misdeeds, and his subsequent call on the appropriate institutions to carry out the necessary investigations in order to clear up the case promptly and properly.

In the NOTABLES thread, I have posted an excellent analysis by a non-Western journalist, of the Berlusconi scandal and how Italians are reacting; as well as an editorial from today's Il Foglio by Giuliano Ferrara who has a balanced view of Berlusconi and does not paint him as purely villainous.