This blog entry by Fr. Filippo Di Giacomo in L'Unita - formerly the organ of the Italian Communist Party, but in recent years, simply a center-left newspaper - turns out to be extremely fiskable. It is a rather cavalier and cursory attempt to 'describe' the Church under Benedict XVI in comparison to the Church he inherited, but being cursory is no way to evaluate anything properly. Worse, the writer ends up making sweeping and questionable generalizations without bothering to substantiate them... He does one good service, though - recalling the famous 2005 Via Crucis meditation and prayer of Cardinal Ratzinger regarding the Church and the men who are supposed to serve Christ... Incidentally, Di Giacomo's blog has the same name as Sandro Magister's blog in L'Espresso (Settimo Cielo means 'seventh heaven'].
Taking account of the post-Wojtyla Church -
and what Benedict XVI has done with it
Translsted from
SETTIMO CIELO
Blog by Filippo Di Giacomo
April 12, 2012
The first line on Page 1 of a good Vaticanista's manual would contain a fundamental rule: A Pontificate must be judged by the quality and activity of the cardinals and the bishops named by the Pope in question.
As an application of that unwritten golden rule, some serene spirit, a few days after the election of Benedict XVI, rightly asked why a College of Cardinals named almost completely by John Paul II should have chosen as Pope the one cardinal, out of the 114 electors, who had been named by Paul VI.
Flashback earlier to the evening of March 25, 2005, Good Friday, several days before the end of the human and mortal story of Karol Wojtyla.
Some words by Joseph Ratzinger - leaping out from the Via Crucis meditations at the Roman Colosseum to Catholics around the world thanks to Mondovision and the mass media - were later to be recalled as an 'electoral manifesto' that the Catholic hierarch6y and the local Churches had expected to hear from a new Pope.
Let us remember what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote then:
[DiGiacomo only cites some lines from the Meditation on the Ninth Station , but I have chosen to quote the entire Meditation and Prayer. The words continue to be stunningly powerful.]
MEDITATION
What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?
How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!
How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!
All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8: 25).
PRAYER
Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion.
Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures.
Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.
For many months, many had looked forward to a positive fallout at the ecclesiastical level of Cardinal Ratzinger's election, that it would have caused at the diocesan level a positive shuffling of cards and a decided improvement in the choice of future bishops.
In short, it could have been an opportunity to bring up the question of the bulimia for power (often, almost to the point of simony) among Wojtylians of both the right and the left. One that would restore to the Congregation for Bishops the mechanisms for nominating bishops which, during the long Pontificate of John Paul II, had been improperly expropriated and monopolized by the enterprising presidents of some bishops' conferences.
With just such a 'sweep of the broom', Pope Benedict XVI would have certainly opened a new season of renewal and new presences in the Church. If and when someone will have the time and desire to speak of the Church that Papa Ratzinger inherited, perhaps he will be forced to start from an analysis of the clear watershed which, for over almost two decades divided the left and right wings of the Wojtylian episcopate - a factional war on a global scale which began between 1993 and 1995, at the start of the long decline of John Paul II's Pontificate and which has since extended throughout the Catholic world.
[Wait! Does not the 'left-right' division goes all the way back to Vatican II!]
Not forgetting that before the German, Austrian, Dutch, Belgian and Irish bishops, it had been the Polish episcopate that first 'tilted'
[Di Giacomo uses the English term 'tilt' but I do not quite grasp what he means since the case he cites was not in any way an expression of priestly dissidence in Poland] with the unfortunate incident of the succession to the See of Warsaw in January 2007.
[The Wielgus case, in which neither the Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, Polish himself nor the Polish bishops' conference, equally responsible for recommending a short list of appropriate and qualified nominees to the Pope for an episcopal vacancy, appeared to be aware at all of well-circulated rumors that their nominee for the Primate episcopal seat of Poland had a dossier of outright collaboration with the previous Communist regime to spy on his fellow priests and bishops. Nor did the Secretariat of State, to whom the Nuncios report, nor the Congregation for Bishops, then under Cardinal Giovnani Battista Re, himself former #2 man at SecState, have any clue at all about this history of collaboration.
This was much more egregious than the similar failure in 2010 of both SecState and the Congregation for Bishops, still under Cardinal Re at the time, to vet Mons. Richard Williamson of the FSSPX - whose flaky opinions about the Holocaust certainly do not rise to the objective level of 'offense' represented by the actual years of collaboration to which Mons. Wielgus admitted eventually.
In both cases, SecState and Bishops - not to mention Cardinal Castrillon of the Ecclesia Dei, he who prided himself before then of being very computer-savvy - seemed to be entirely ignorant of Williamson's published negationist statements (not widely known, but publicized at the time they were made in the early 1990s). I think they simply did not think it was necessary to do any background check on the four Lefebvrian bishops whose excommunications were lifted, beyond what they already had in their dossiers since 1988, so they probably did not do any checking at all before the Vatican announced that the Pope was lifting the excommmunications.
Not that Williamson's cuckoo opinions had anything to do with why he was excommunicated to begin with. But that not-so-simple oversight - or taking things for granted - was parlayed by the world media and all the Pope's detractors, not to mention the Jews, into a massive cause celebre that became the pretext for a general siege of the Church equalled only by the resurgence of the scandal over abusive priests the following year.]
In fact, starting from April 19, 2005, along with the fresh wind of a new Pontificate, the fog of the past Wojtylism has continued to hover over the Church, along with the impression that Benedict XVI - a Pope whom cynics in the Curia had dismissed as 'expired goods' from the day of his election because of his age -
has been systematically denied collaboration and loyalty on the part of some important organs of the Vatican system.
[That's a sweeping statement that cannot be made lightly without being substantiated and without naming names. It is possible that in the first six years, before Benedict XVI was able to make the Roman Curia - at least the #1 and #2 men in each dicastery - his own chosen men (he waited courteously until the Wojtyla-appointed Curial heads reached retirement age before putting in his own men), there may have been some obstructionism, and that there may still be this obstructionism and even outright disloyalty among lower-level Curial staff, such as made evident by the Vatileaks episode at SecState.
But can DiGiacomo mention a single instance of Curial omission or commission that resulted in any significant 'obstruction' of any important initiative that Benedict XVI has had? From recent reports, there seem to have been attempts to oppose Benedict XVI's initiatives for total financial transparency at the Vatican, but the Pope has promulgated and amended Vatican law as needed and named persons of his confidence to ensure such transparency.
No, the obvious obstruction in this Pontificate has been at the level of dissident bishops, not a few of whom are Italian bishops, unfortunately, and mostly with regard to liturgy, and perhaps to a lesser extent, how to deal with abusive priests in their respective churches. I am disappointed that Fr. DiGiacomo is not more circumspect in his statements.
And so,
even the nomination of bishops continues to be the usual competition among candidates who are spiritually poor but rich in means, especially profane (i.e., worldly) means. [Another highly loaded and sweeping statement from DiGiacomo which he ought to substantiate. It certainly is not borne out by the exceptional nominations made of US bishops - that being a situation I personally am more aware of than, say, appointments made in Brazil - under Benedict XVI. Dolan of New York, Chaput of Philadelphia, Gomez of Los Angeles, Wenski of Miami, Lori of Baltimore, to mention just six, off the top of my head: Would anyone say they were spiritually poor or that they gained their nomination because they deployed any material means at all? Or, in the case of some Italian bishops whose personal histories are more widely known, can DiGiacomo say that, for instance, of Mons. Moraglia, the new Patriarch of Venice; or Cardinal Scola who does command more personal and institutional resources than most bishops but whose ecclesial and personal qualifications no one has questioned; Cardinal Bagnasco, whom the Pope picked from being the usually unheralded Military Ordinary for Italy's armed forces, to be Archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops' conference; Mons. Cesare Nosiglia, a theologian like Moraglia, Scola, and Bagnasco, who was an auxiliary bishop of Rome for a long time and then bishop of Vicenza before Benedict XVI named him Archbishop of Turin; or Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, who for years, was secretary-general of the Italian bishops' conference, before the Pope named him Archbishop of Florence?
In fact, the so-called Ratzingerian bishops, named by Benedict not least because they think about the Church and with the Church as he does, have been the subject of more than a few excellent analytical pieces in both the Italian and Anglophone press. Moreover, the statement is an insult to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, hand-picked by Benedict XVI to head Bishops after Cardinal Re retired. Ouellet is yet another outstanding theologian and Ratzingerian, whose spiritual virtues have never been questioned, and whom most Vatican observers probably consider among the top five papabile today.]
Between old and new simonists
{Churchmen who use their position to gain wealth - in the past by 'selling' indulgences or sacraments), who could end up in criminal court (as will take place on April 17 in L'Aquila)
[I have no idea what the case is - I need to check it out], among the clergy who gravitate around the Roman system, the old always die out slowly, and the new is always being kept from being born.
[The situation among Roman priests is something else. I have not read enough of how it was during the 15 years that Cardinal Ruini was the Pope's Vicar in Rome (first of John Paul II, then of Benedict XVI) but a few 'scandal' stories have sprouted here and there under Cardinal Vallini as Vicar, which seem not to go anywhere at all. Apparently, nothing has been 'big' enough to merit more than fleeting attention from those who cover the religion beat for Italian newspapers. According to the latest figures I could find (dating back to 2004), Rome had 1219 diocesan priests of its own; 2331 priests from other dioceses; 5072 priests belonging to religious orders, and 140 Opus Dei priests. Obviously, no other territory in the world has so many priests, but this world is just as obviously severely under-reported.]
In his Maundy Thursday Chrismal homily, on April 5, Benedict XVI referred to 'the often tragic situation in the Church today'. Tragic, true, but one in which Catholics no longer wish to look on passively.
[And how, pray tell, are they manifesting that exactly???]
"Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era," the Pope went on, "can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit."
In other times, these words would have referred to the great religious orders
(that are on the way to extinction) [Really? Let's see - Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, to name the oldest ones - are they on the way to extinction? It may be news to them!], or some other ecclesial entity that can be evaluated through the number of 'vocations' it attracts.
This time, however the words are addressed to the very womb of the Church - all lay baptized Catholics. Are these words that are dictated by Vatican empiricism or the nth prophecy handed down by Benedict XVI to world and a Church of the foreseeable future?
If the Holy Spirit prevails, then we shall see beautiful things.
All in all, a rather limp and almost incoherent essay by Di Giacomo who certainly can do much better!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/04/2012 20:43]