Call me short-sighted and opinionated, or even worse, ill-informed - too ill-informed to even have an opinion on Vatileaks and its consequences - but I refuse to see the entire episode as a genuine 'crisis' for the Church, as many in the best-informed Church circles write about it. In particular, I dispute the fact that this is a crisis not just for Benedict XVI, but for the Church and the institution of the Papacy itself.
Indeed the tendency has been to trumpet every single foible or stumble that the Vatican has made during this Pontificate as a crisis for the Church, if not 'the crisis', that will so undermine Benedict XVI that he will be unable to function as Pope and thereby bring calamity and ruin to the Church from which it will never recover. I wonder if the chroniclers in Alexander Borgia's time said this about the Pope and the Church then.
But in this Pontificate, those who have no fondness for Joseph Ratzinger at all have said it of Regensburg, of Wielgus, of the Williamson case, of the ad-hominem assault on the him in 2009 when MSM did all they could to show he, too, had something shameful to hide about dealing with sex-offender priests, and its second installment in 2010 after the Cloyne Report and the Irish government's unprecedented and totally unfounded attack against him and the Church. Meanwhile, he is doing unprecedented things in governing (various laws and norms on dealing with grave offenses committed by the clergy, on the liturgy and on financial transparency, not to mention a meticulous attention to the bishops he is naming) as well as in 'confirming his brothers in the faith' (his unfailingly brilliant Magisterium, his travels and interaction with the faithful, and his own shining example of personal holiness), but they are all wiped out from media memory - as if they had never happened at all - at the first whiff of anything negative they can exploit against him and the Church.
It is not helped at all by Catholic newsmen and commentators who buy into the secular media narrative that a 'crisis is crippling the Pope and the Church he leads'. This is the context in which I object to the 'crisis mode' invoked and evoked by traditionalist Church historian Roberto Di Mattei in this essay - which certainly does argue very well for the lingering and perennial tendency in the Church for reformists who question the primacy of the Pope and the very structure of the Church itself... My thanks to Beatrice for leading me to the article from an online service called Correspondence Europeene, which also links to Italian sites such as Corrispondenze Italiane, in which this article apparently first appeared. I cannot find the Italian original, so the following is a translation from the French site. And let me be on record that I dispute the word 'crisis' everytime it is used in this article...
Vatileaks: What's really at stake
is the primacy of the Pope
by Roberto Di Mattei
Translated from
June 29, 2012
To the many crosses that have already marked the Pontificate of Benedict XVI have recently been added the unauthorized disclosure of private documents from his desk and the loose talk of newsmen about perceived power struggles in the heart of the Vatican, the attempt to alienate the Holy Father from some who have been among his most faithful co-workers, and the 'scandals' which are damaging to Peter's Chair itself.
It is inevitable that this situation arises when within an 'unnatural' [an institution that is both divine and human] society like the Church, the spirit of the world could prevail over the desire for transcendence among those who live in that society.
And while it is true that the current atmosphere is artificially maintained by secular circles, it is equally true that other sectors are seeking to profit from this
[perception of] grave crisis within the Church. And I mean those who desire a radical reform of the Church with the object of transforming, if they can, her divine constitution.
Thus, on June 17,
Corriere della Sera devoted an entire page under the banner "The Council of Trent is finally over after five centuries'.
[WISHFUL THINKING! The Council that produced the great reformer saints of the 16th century who were also supreme examples of holiness, spirituality and intellect, enabled the Church to grow beyond and despite the Reformation, by defending and strenghtening her sempiternal articles of faith and Tradition that were valid then, today and for always. So Vatican II added the pastoral concepts of religious freedom, ecumenism and inter-religious dialog - fine, but these are not doctrinal innovations at all (much less do they 'replace' any Catholic doctrine) and can, in fact, be reconciled with doctrine, even if the FSSPX doesn't think so.
We come then to 'collegiality' but those who push 'collegiality' to mean the Church should become a democratic and therefore, totally human institution - democratic means 'of the people, for the people and by the people' - seem to overlook the fact that the Church was constituted by Christ himself, it is and has always been an institution in which humans advance the cause of God, not their own, and so it is primarily "of God, for God and by God', its principal criterion and not the other. As the Baltimore Catechism put it, man was created "to know God, to love God and to serve God", because in dping so, he advances his own humanity to come ever closer to God. Furthermore, the collegial-democratic advocates constantly ignore that Vatican II always stressed 'communion with the Successor of Peter' every time it brought up the idea of 'collegiality'.]
The writers, Marco Rizzi and Alberto Melloni, claim that the crisis we are witnessing is that of "the Church model elaborated by the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, and which the Second Vatican Council sought to bring up to date and to adapt to profound changes that had taken place during the centuries that followed".
According to Rizzi and Melloni, the center of the Tridentine model was an authoritarian and bureaucratic organism - the Roman Curia; that this model is in crisis today and that the Church should change 'the form of ecclesiastical government' by following the high road of 'collegiality' advocated by Vatican II.
"Since 1964, we have been awaiting a permanent collegial organism that can play this role," Melloni wrote for the same newspaper last June 4, "which is different from the Bishops' Synod, which has to be called [by the Pope] to meet,and which does not have anything but consultative functions. This expectation and this questioning over how to institute this aspect of 'communion' has transformed the Pope into a target for those who are supposed to help him, and to make Church the scapegoat for the media".
[The fact that after 40 years, not one of the reformist-progressivists has managed to spell out a practical way in which they envision 'collegial rule' - as opposed to the Pope's central rule - goes to prove the obvious irrevocable reality that they cannot possibly think for the Church better than Christ himself did when he instituted it. The collegiality they dream about is an illusion - whatever structural form it assumed, it would be as perpetually litiginous as any of the existing secular 'Parliaments', democratic or otherwise, and stalemated in a way no strong and conscientious Pope could be. What's worse - and this would be its most objectionable feature - it will inevitably be subject to prevailing opinion and therefore lend itself easily to modifying Church doctrine and practices as the wind blows. No faith can be a democracy. You live by its rules, or you don't profess the faith at all - go be a happy Episcopalian. Otherwise, you will live the rest of your life trying to change the Church Christ instituted, while growing increasingly embittered and corrupted by the original sin, pride, and the diobedience that is its inevitable consequence.]
In fact, the attacks today against the Roman Curia were already heard during the sessions of Vatican II, re-echoing now, fifty years later. The Roman Curia is made up of all the dicasteries and offices which support the Pope directly in his government of the Church. They have no authority other than that which they receive from the Pope, and the Curia is, so to speak, his instrument.
Therefore to weaken or undermine the Curia is to weaken or undermine the power of the Pope. Therefore what's at issue here is the sovereignty of the Pope, the fullness of his powers in all the domains that have to do with strengthening the power of the Faith and the governance of the Church.
That is why Hans Kueng, the heretic of Tuebingen, says that
"The Vatican at its core still remains a court [as in a royal court], at the top of which still seats an absolute master, with rites and customs that are medieval and baroque, sometimes even modern, but with traditions that have crystallized. The more one gets closer to the reigning sovereign as one climbs the ecclesiastical career ladder, the less competence counts, as long as one has an obedient nature and a great ability to adapt to the wishes of he who reigns" (La Repubblica”, 28 mai 2012).
[As usual, hyperbolic Hans gets carried away by his relentless hostility to Rome, to the point of a patently false and insulting characterization of the people who are close to the Pope (the heads of Curial offices and his closest aides). In fact, outside of Cardinal Bertone with his less than stellar record as Secretary of State, even the Italian media have not been able to criticize any of the men Benedict XVI has chosen to head the Curial offices as incompetent or unqualified - indeed, they often are the best men he could have possibly named. The criticism for some of the recent Curial appointees, who also happen to be proteges of Bertone, was not that they are not the best qualified for their particular positions, but only that they are proteges of Bertone, and therefore, it is implied, likely to do his bidding rather than acting autonomously. But Benedict XVI would never have named them if he had any doubts of their competence or suitability for the position, just as he has not named a number of candidates Bertone has had for the Italian episcopate, choosing instead Angelo Bagnasco as CEI president, Angelo Scola for Milan, Cesare Nosiglia for Turin, and Francesco Moraglia for Venice, to name just the most prominent examples. Nor did Benedict's friendship for Bertone make him buy into the latter's ambitious schemes to control San Raffaele and the Toniolo Institute, for instance. Nor IOR, it would now seem.]
The Primacy of the Pope's government, along with the infallibility of his Magisterium, represent the foundation on which Jesus Christ instituted the Church, a foundation to which she will stay firmly anchored to the end of time.
This Primacy was conferred on Peter, Prince of Apostles, after the Resurrection (Jn 21,15-17), and it was recognized by the primitive Church not as a personal and transitory privilege but as a permanent and essential element of the Church's divine constitution, to which Jesus gave a monarchical form, precisely to assure its indefectibility [the belief that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Church to err in its belief or teaching].
It was necessary that someone on earth speaks in his place in order to confirm the faithful in their faith and guide them to their supernatural goal. That is why St. John Chrysostom said of St. Peter that he was
'os Christi'- the mouth of Christ - and at another time, that he was the
'os et vertice apostolorum' (mouth and leader of the apostles).
The roots of the rejection of the Pope's Primacy go back to the heresies of the first centuries, like gnosticism and montanism. It would resurface towards the end of the Middle Ages, in the theories that a permanent Synod like an ecumenical Council takes its powers directly from Christ, and is therefore superior - or at the very least, equal - to the Pope.
Conciliarism was condemned by Pope Eugene IV at the Council of Florence (1439) and by Blessed Pius IX at the First Vatican Council (1870) but it has never been extirpated from the Church, and in our time, it has flourished again in neo-modernist theology, which is, alas, quite widespread, even in Rome's pontifical universities, in seminaries, in Catholic books and in Catholic newspapers .
In the post-Vatican II era, 'collegiality' has been the order of the day for those who have an egalitarian democratic idea of the Church, who would oppose the 'centralism' of the Pope with a government based on the decisions of one or more Synods.
Their idea is a sort of Church 'Parliament' made up of currents and parties that would fight it out, as has been happening anyway precisely because of existing polycentric tendencies.
In fact, the universality of the Church demands the exercise of a central authoritative power, and if today, there is fragmentation and apparent anarchy, it is certainly not because of an excess of central power, but sooner or later, by the eventual weakening of the Pope's government in favor of bishops' conferences and other peripheral and local entities.
The crisis in which we find ourselves is also the consequence of this erosion of pontifical centrality.
[Di Mattei is assuming that it has been eroded! The rats are out there gnawing away diligently, but when did rats ever wear down rock?] The great Church reformers like St Gregory the Great in the sixth century and St. Gregory VII in the 11th century accompanied their practical reforms with a spiritual and moral renewal while clearly affirming the Pontifical Primacy .
Those who now wish to reform the Papacy undermine the very foundation of the Church, just as those who love the Church can only defend the pontifical Primacy against conciliarist and local tendencies.
Today as in the past, the litmus test for true Catholics is the Pope. But attachment to the Pope is not so much the natural and sensitive affection for a man, but rather a profound love of the faith which is expressed towards an institution founded by Christ and represented by his Vicar on earth.
It is he, the Pope, and no one else, who is the supreme court of last resort for the faithful, and today more than ever, Catholics need the firm and definitive word of the Supreme Pastor to fight back against the aggressions - from within and from the outside - that the Church is experiencing.
P.S. Sorry, I must sound off more about this 'crisis' talk.
To all those who insist on reading Vatileaks as part of a general attack on Benedict XVI, how about thinking that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar! - i.e., the obvious target is Cardinal Bertone, so he must be the target. In what way would Benedict XVI be weakened by having someone more competent and efficient in Bertone's place? By showing that he was wrong to choose him to begin with? So what? Popes have been wrong before. Papal appointments are not within the purview of papal infallibility!
Considering how many times this Pope has ignored Bertone's recommendations for key episcopal appointments and vetoed his major empire-building initiatives, is it not conceivable that in a corner of his mind, the rational Joseph Ratzinger is nagged by a question like "How could I have been so wrong about this man's judgment?"
Vatileaks is an attack on the Pope in the most literal criminal sense since it blatantly violates his privacy rights - and that is reprehensible and unpardonable anyway you look at it. It is more painful for the Pope that the immediate traitor happens to be someone who was (as I always maintained long before this whole mess) the most privileged person in terms of serving the Pope's most direct personal needs. But these affronts are personal to him and do not involve the Church at all, except to those (too many, unfortunately) who equate the Vatican bureaucracy (mainly that of the Secretariat of State) with the Church.
Of course, all the anti-Catholic elements are naturally gloating over this mother of all embarassments for the Vatican and touting it as 'another major crisis for this Pope'. But commentators sympathetic to Benedict XVI, who also think this is 'a crisis for Benedict XVI', have not presented any credible argument to show that it is. And their 'crisis mode' is a reflex they have developed from years of being within the media echo chamber, reverberating with the herd mentality that beat reporters, not excluding those covering the Vatican, tend to develop: "If everyone says so, it must be so! I can't stand apart from them by saying something different!"
The argument might be that every new embarrassment for the Vatican further undermines the authority of Benedict XVI. Perhaps in the minds of those who say so! How about considering the direct unadulterated reaction of the faithful when he is in their presence?
Is his mind any less acute or his teaching any less effective and enlightening because of all these distractions? Has any of it distracted him at all from his singleminded mission as the Successor of Peter? Has his demeanor changed through all the various 'crises' that have been touted as 'the one' that will crush his Papacy and bring down the Church? Has any of those media-generated and media-driven crises diminished him or his Pontificate at all?
As we approach the Year of Faith he has so rightly convoked, are not many of his supposed sympathizers in the media professing their lack of faith in him? Don't the alarmist media realize that they have been crying 'Wolf!' far too many times in the past seven years, and yet 'the humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord' has not been scared off but has stood his ground fearlessly and firmly against all comers? Or to use the secular wolf metaphor, you can only cry 'Wolf' twice because the third time no one will believe you.
Is this any way to treat someone whom the Lord has probably destined to be a saint and Doctor of the Church? On second thought, why not? Joseph Ratzinger, priest, in persona Christi, would see these unfair personal affronts against him as more nails on the Cross he has to bear like the Lord did, and welcomes them in this spirit.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/07/2012 04:16]