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Unfortunate debut for the new president
of the Pontifical Council for the Family
I've been skirting this story in the past few days, since I believed it was a tempest in a teapot, provoked deliberately by media who wanted quick and cheap headlines, based on deliberate misreporting of what a Vatican official said. From all the information I have read about it so far, that's just what it is.
But equally important, the episode should serve as a lesson to prelates occupying senior positions in the Roman Curia to think long and hard about what they say, especially at a news conference, to make sure that there is no possibility their statements could be misrepresented. Yet another lesson, that is, after quite a few in recent memory, from which no one seems to have learned, It's all very well to speak out your mind, but not when doing so becomes counter-productive, and almost a disservice, not only to yourself but to the Church. As this episode shows...
The story first came to my attention because of a headline in the PewSitter headline summary on February 4 that said in bold red letters (their headlines are usually in black): "Head of Pontifical Council for the Family endorses gay civil unions", which was truly alarming, so I naturally followed the link, which was to the following story with the headline that it carries. After reading the story itself, I found the headline truly misleading, since 1) that is not at all what it quotes the Vatican official to have said, and 2) as usual, a statement by a Curial official is attributed to 'the Vatican', even if it clear from the story that he was expressing his personal position.
In any case, I did not post about it at the time because I had not even done a comprehensive post on the news conference which was called first of all to present the book anthologizing the proceedings of the VII World Meeting of Families in Milan last year, and secondly, to present the activities of the Pontifical Council for the Family for what remains of the Year of Faith.
Anyway, here's the story, as first reported in the Anglophone media by an Italian reporter who is the Rome correspondent for Religion News Service.
Vatican signals options
for protecting gay couples
by Alessandro Speciale
VATICAN CITY, Feb 4, 2013 (RNS) - A high-ranking Vatican official on Monday (Feb. 4) voiced support for giving unmarried couples some kind of legal protection even as he reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s opposition to same-sex marriage.
Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, also said the Church should do more to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination in countries where homosexuality is illegal. [But the Church can't do anything against any sovereign country's laws, no matter how barbaric, other than moral support for the victims of discrimination.]
In his first Vatican press conference since his appointment as the Catholic Church’s “minister” for family, Paglia conceded that there are several kinds of “cohabitation forms that do not constitute a family,” and that their number is growing.
Paglia suggested that nations could find “private law solutions” to help individuals who live in non-matrimonial relations, “to prevent injustice and make their life easier.”
Nevertheless, Paglia was adamant in reaffirming society’s duty to preserve the unique value of marriage.
“The Church must defend the truth, and the truth is that a marriage is only between a man and a woman,” he said. Other kinds of “affections” cannot be the foundation for a “public structure” such as marriage.
“We cannot surrender to a sick egalitarianism that abolishes every difference,” he warned, and run the risk of society becoming a new “Babel.”
France is in the process of legalizing same-sex marriage despite fierce opposition from the Catholic Church; a similar fight is brewing in Britain with the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches sharply opposed to the move.
In a September 2012 document on gay marriage, French bishops recognized the value of France’s current civil unions law, which grants heterosexual and homosexual couples some benefits, such as tax breaks.
In November, voters approved gay marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington state, and the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments this spring over federal and state bans on gay marriage.
Responding to journalists’ questions, Paglia also strongly condemned discrimination against gay people, who he said “have the same dignity as all of God’s children.”
“In the world there are 20 or 25 countries where homosexuality is a crime,” he said. “I would like the Church to fight against all this.”
Now, where in Speciale's story is anything that supports the headline given to it? His lead paragraph quotes Paglia as speaking of 'unmarried couples', which in the usage of Catholics and even of secular persons, means unmarried heterosexual couples, not homosexual couples.
Anyway, since it was unlikely that I would find a transcript of Mons. Paglia's complete statements, I googled to see if there was any other Anglophone story out there about it, and sure there was, from AFP, although it based its story on what had been reported by an Italian newspaper. Here is AFP's story, which at least, did not attribute Mons. Paglia's statement to 'the Vatican' but still got it wrong in that he was not advocating 'gay union rights'. The story itself makes it clear that the bishop was suggesting that lawmakers consider granting some individual rights (regarding property, principally), not 'marriage-like' joint rights, for co-habitating partners, both heterosexual (so-called common-law marriages) and homosexual (unions which are not considered 'marriage' even under common law). Here's the AFP story...
Vatican official opens
to gay union rights
VATICAN CITY, Feb. 5, 2013 (AFP) = The Vatican's top official on family policy has opened slightly to the possibility of rights for gay civil unions, although he also stressed that marriage should remain between a man and a woman.
The remarks from Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, were made at a Vatican press conference on Monday and were quoted in Italian press on Tuesday.
"Marriage is a clear legal dimension. There are then multiple other types of non-family cohabitation for which solutions should be found in terms of individual law and in my view also in terms of property law," Paglia said.
His comments were widely seen as a reference to gay couples. [Which is a misleading conclusion since he was apparently speaking about de facto heterosexual unions, and was only asked about gay couples later.]
"I think this is a terrain that politicians should begin to approach," said the archbishop, adding that legal rights for non-traditional families would "prevent injustice against the weakest".
The Italian prelate also spoke out against homophobia in the Middle East and Africa, saying that in countries where being gay is considered a crime "this should be fought against".
Gay rights activists gave mixed reactions to his comments.
"For the first time a senior prelate recognises that there should be rights also for gay couples and that there are many countries in the world where being gay is a crime," said Franco Grillini, the head of Gaynet. [Except, of course, that 1) Paglia did not say there should be rights for 'gay couples', and 2) Catholic prelates starting with the Pope have always spoken out against discrimination because of sexual oprientation and the criminalization of homosexuality.]
But Aurelio Mancuso, head of Equality Italia, said the type of legal protection that Paglia was talking about would mean "keeping the status quo, in other words, an absence of rights".
"The only chance is a clear law that recognises the rights and duties of gay couples, in terms of property and inheritance, medical assistance, social welfare," he said. [Mancuso clearly understood what Paglia was saying and therefore opposes it!]
Paglia has been in charge of his Vatican ministry for a year and is considered more open and modern than his predecessors, particularly on accepting the reality of the daily lives of many Catholics.
The British and French parliaments are currently examining draft laws to legalise gay marriage.
The Catholic Church considers homosexuality sinful but is opposed to any discrimination against gays. [No, the Church does not consider homosexuality 'sinful' but 'disordered' - what it considers 'sinful' is the sexual practice of homosexuality which is clearly unnatural (in the sense that Nature/Providence/God did not evolve/provide/create two complementary sexes for the purpose of physical indulgence. but for procreation - to perpetuate the human species, in this case. The Church expects that homosexual Catholics should and can be celibate, in the same way that priests and other consecrated persons should and can be celibate. And that is a standard that a hedonistic, pleasure-driven society finds preposterous and unacceptable.]
It seems clear to me from both the RNS and AFP reports that Mons. Paglia was saying lawmakers should start considering how to give some rights to the individual members of a co-habitating partnership, as individuals, not joint rights as partners.
And yet, an ultra-trad site like Rorate caeli, whose posts about traditional liturgy I have used occasionally on this Forum, and when they have some advance news about the FSSPX that has not yet been reported in the Anglophone media, I follow their link to their original source. Their first reaction to the Paglia story was a post entitled: "In Dire Need of Clarification - Abp. President of Family Council calls for recognition of same-sex civil unions and adulterous unions", basing this statement on a tendentious but unfounded story in the relentlessly anti-Church Italian newspaper La Repubblica, entitled "First opening in the Church: Rights for gay couples", - whose lead paragraph by its veteran Vaticanista, Orazio La Rocca (he should wash out his brain with truth serum), was downright false and dishonest:
"No to gay marriage, but yes to the recognition of rights for de facto couples and homosexuals according to the (Italian) Code of Civil Law and, to the admission of remarried divorces to Communion". In the Catholic Church there is an atmosphere of revolution regarding the family and gay rights. And surprisingly, it is Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the new president of the Pontifical Council for the Family who has made himself the spokesman for it, at the presentation of the acts of the latest international meeting of families that took place in Milan last year....
So reads the lead paragraph of a despicably dishonest piece of journalism. First, the writer, and his editors, shamelessly put quotation marks to their summation of what Mons. Paglia supposedly said. Quotation marks can only be used for direct quotations attributed to someone, not to a wishful statement of what you would have wanted him to say, much less to things he never said. #2 - Mons. Paglia certainly did not 'make himself the spokesman' for the Vatican on this supposed 'revolution'. #3- The story goes on to quote what Mons. Paglia said about remarried divorcees, which is that the Pope himself has said this is a difficult problem that requires further study. He did not say - and the body of the story does not quote him as saying so, as the lead sentence purports - that he thinks they should be readmitted to Communion.
Be that as it may, Rorati Caeli's reaction (in a post written by the blogger New Catholic) to the story as reported by La Repubblica) was to pontificate =that "the division in the very top of the Catholic hierarchy, the clear disobedience in the heart of the Roman Curia, is becoming untenable", citing a statement by Benedict XVI in 2006 that
It is a serious error to obscure the value and roles of the legitimate family founded on marriage by attributing legal recognition to other improper forms of union for which there is really no effective social need.
But Mons. Paglia was never quoted as saying he was for legal recognition of other improper forms of union, only to consider what individual rights could justly be given to partners of such unions.
The more appropriate rejoinder to Paglia is to remind him that during the debate accompanying the failed initiative by the Prodi government 4-5 years ago to legislate rights for such couples analogous to rights that married couples have, Cardinal Camillo Ruini said that the individuals in these non-marriage partnerships already have individual rights guaranteed under Italian law, and that no new laws were needed, existing laws simply had to be applied. That's a discussion I leave to those who are familiar with Italian law, but Cardinal Ruini is not someone who speaks falsely.
I had only a vague awareness about Mons. Paglia before now - only that he was one of those Italian bishops generally in line with the thinking of Benedict XVI - and his nomination by the Holy Father to succeed Cardinal Antonelli at the Pontifical Council for the Family was definitely our of the blue. (Strangely, there were no advance stories in the Italian media about Cardinal Antonelli's retirement, and no speculation on who would succeed him.)
It turns out Mons. Paglia has been the spiritual adviser to the Sant'Egidio Community all along, as well as a Biblical scholar who has been president of the International Federation of Catholic Biblicists since 2002, and the author of many books on religion and pastoral work. Now, Sant'Egidio has a reputation for taking liberal positions on social issues, but I don't know where they stand on same-sex unions or remarried divorcees, nor that they take their cue for these social positions from Mons. Paglia.
Whatever it is, surely the Holy Father was well aware of Mons. Paglia's biodata when he appointed him, and it is absurd to even think, as some Italian commentators have done, that he was influenced by Sant'Egidio to name Paglia to the Curia even if Paglia might be unsuitable for the position because he holds views on the family and marriage that are not what the Church advocates! (Even if, I must note personally, he apparently has been behind Sant'Egidio's annual international inter-religious meetings for peace promoting the kumbaya 'spirit of Assisi'. Rather pointless, IMHO, except symbolically, and innocuous, but what have these annual meetings really done to improve inter-religious dialog beyond personal relations that may have developed among the delegates who are veterans of this yearly exercise?)
All in all, the Paglia story is utter drivel, especially as reported by La Repubblica, and one must judge how unfounded it is by the fact that no one else in Italian MSM appears to have bothered to report about this part of the news conference (and few picked it up later), concentrating instead on the more pertinent news that Mons. Paglia's Council has planned a two-day pilgrimage of families from around the world to Rome next October to mark the Year of Faith with the Holy Father.
And the latest development on this comes today in this report from Avvenire, which quotes Mons. Paglia speaking to the Italian service of Vatican Radio (a story I cannot find online, so I am using the Avvenire account):
"First of all," Mons. Paglia said, "I am totally with the bishops of the United Kingdom for the position they took in opposing the legislative proposal [legalizing same-sex 'marriage'], just as I was with the French bishops who were unanimous, and joined by Jews, Muslims, and secular humanists, in opposing what has been called 'gay marriage'."
Asked about his reported statements regarding rights for homosexual couples, Mons. Paglia replied: "Obviously I was much surprised by what was reported in some media outlets. It is not just that they did not understand my words, but that, in fact, and probably with deliberation, they chose to derail them. Allow me this railway imagery: they ran my words off the tracks. When a trail is derailed, it does not reach its station and it could even fall off a precipice. The fact is that it can be verified if existing laws and regulations contain elements that protect the individual rights of the partners in non-marriage unions. That is not to say that one approves such unions".
One must say Mons. Paglia does not exactly have a way with words! The above was hardly the most effective response to the misleading reports. He sounded far more cogent in what the reports quoted him to have said at the news conference. And why did he not rebut their falsehoods right away? How could he have missed absorbing the fundamentals of PR during all his years with Sant'Egidio, a community that, of all the post-Vatican-II ecclesial movements, is the master of PR!
So that's my latest tale of malicious media mayhem, and even if it is not directed at the Pope, it was meant to reflect on him unfairly somehow because he named Paglia to the Curia to begin with.
Unfortunately, as is almost always the case, the few commentaries that have popped up in the Anglophone blogosphere so far have all been based on the misleading headlines, which is an integral element of the mechanism that generates widespread perpetration of original lies sown by irresponsible and/or malevolent newsmen.
2/8/13
CNS has come out with this story to help clean up the mess:
Mons. Paglia says his defense
of gay rights was misunderstood
By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY, February 8 (CNS) -- The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family said his defense of the dignity of homosexual persons and their individual rights was misinterpreted, perhaps intentionally.
"It is one thing to verify whether in existing laws one can find norms that would safeguard individual rights. It's another thing to approve certain expectations," Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, council president, told Vatican Radio Feb. 6.
At a Vatican news conference Feb. 4, Archbishop Paglia had insisted that only a lifelong union of a man and a woman could be termed a marriage.
The archbishop also said the Church's affirmation of the full dignity of all human beings lead him to oppose laws that outlaw homosexuality. In addition, he said that "to promote justice and to protect the weak," greater efforts were needed to ensure legal protection and inheritance rights for people living together, though not married. "But do not call it marriage," he said.
His remarks from the news conference were reported around the world under headlines such as "Vatican recognizes the rights of gay couples."
"Obviously, I was very surprised by how some media reported" those comments, he told Vatican Radio. "Not only were my words not understood," he said, "they were derailed, perhaps even knowingly."
While reaffirming his opposition to so-called "gay marriage" and his full support of the British and French bishops currently fighting proposed legal recognition of homosexual unions, in the interview he also reiterated Church teaching against unjust discrimination toward homosexual persons.
Archbishop Paglia quoted from a 1986 document on the pastoral care of homosexual persons signed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger: "It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action."
"Such treatment deserves condemnation from the church's pastors wherever it occurs," the document said. "It reveals a kind of disregard for others which endangers the most fundamental principles of a healthy society. The intrinsic dignity of each person must always be respected in word, in action and in law."
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/02/2013 23:33] |