How could I have missed this article from July 15? If even John Allen now appears to step back and take a more critical view of the relentless image-building and celebration of perceived perfection that has characterized papal reporting (including Allen's) since March 13, 2013, then it is not just Benaddicts like me who take exception to an execrable phenomenon that in four months has gone far beyond its immediate point of comparison - the Obamamania that began in 2008, in which he was literally hailed as 'the second coming' of Jesus. Allen calls the Francis-frenzy by its right name - hype, which comes from 'hyperbole', an exaggeration of fact.
A season of hype swirls in Rome
by John L. Allen Jr.
July 15, 2013
ROME - By now it's conventional wisdom that
Francis is launching a sweeping reform of the Vatican. [How sweeping remains to be seen!]
So settled has that conviction become that the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso
published a cover story this week with a picture of the pope under the headline, "Will he pull it off?' [The]Apparently, there was no perceived need to explain what the "it" refers to -- everybody, it seems, knows that this pope is trying to clean house.
[The article was written by Sandro Magister and has been posted on www.chiesa, but the super-head above the title Allen cites is, "A Pope the likes of whom we have never seen before", Magister's own contribution to the hype, which far outdoes anything Andrea Tornielli has written about Francis so far.]
One difficulty with grand narratives, however, is they become the prism through which absolutely everything is seen, making it difficult to distinguish real indices of reform from casual gestures or from decisions that actually express continuity rather than change.
These days, if Francis simply opens his mail, somebody's likely to tout it as an awesome hallmark of innovation.
On the Vatican beat, in other words, we're in the grip of a season of hype.
Three recent storylines illustrate the dynamic.
First, on Thursday, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio, meaning a writ under his own authority, implementing a new legal code for the Vatican City State. The code includes sanctions for a range of crimes not previously mentioned specifically, such as the sexual abuse of minors, money laundering, and the theft and publication of confidential documents.
The changes take effect Sept. 1 and apply not just to residents of the 108-acre City State but also papal personnel around the world, such as the Vatican's diplomatic staff.
In some quarters, the overhaul was styled as a dramatic bid to get control of the scandals that have plagued the Church in recent years. The difficulty with this way of seeing things, however, is that it overstates the new Pope's imprint.
In truth, the vast majority of the changes simply ratify ad hoc laws already promulgated in response to specific situations or incorporate obligations the Vatican had already undertaken by signing on to international conventions. The underlying policy decisions were taken some time back -- in every case that counts, including the provisions on sexual abuse and money laundering, the decisions actually came under Benedict XVI. [Which, of course, only a rare handful pointed out in their reporting. Even of Mons. Mamberti, in presenting the new laws to the media, was very clear that they had long been in the making. But until Allen, who, in the worldwide chorus incessantly raising hosannas to the new Pope while remembering there was ever a Benedict XVI only to use him as the execrable contrast to the gloriously reigning Pope, was going to leave the herd mentality even if momentarily, to say the truth? No matter how obvious that truth is, as in this case.]
As journalist and Vatican-watcher Gian Guido Vecchi observed in
Corriere della Sera, had this code been issued by Benedict rather than Francis, it's highly probable its content would have been identical. [
DIM=8pt][What 'highly probable'? It would have been 100% identical, because the content simply codifies what was already being done in practice in Benedict's Pontificate!]
The new code is evidence of reform, in other words, just not one that began life March 13.
On a more symbolic level, a visit by the Pontiff to the Vatican garage on Thursday generated a good deal of buzz, particularly since he'd told a group of seminarians and religious a few days before that it "hurts my heart when I see a priest with the latest model car."
In some quarters the visit was trumpeted as the prelude to a fire sale, with the new Pope determined to get rid of all vestiges of papal privilege. More than one Italian commentator hauled out the old saw that the license plate on Vatican limos, which reads "SCV" for 'Stato della Citta del Vaticano", actually stands for "se Cristo vedesse," meaning "if only Christ could see!"
(For the record, the Vatican car park actually has two sections. One, the "Noble Garage," contains the 10 vehicles reserved for the Pope, including two or three Mercedes S-class sedans with the "SCV-1" license plate that Francis has never used. On those occasions when he's moved by car, he's taken a simpler Ford Focus. The other section is the "Garage of State," containing roughly 50 vehicles used by other Vatican personnel.)
In truth, there was less to the visit than met the eye.
First, new Popes routinely make the rounds of Vatican facilities and personnel to introduce themselves and to formally take the reins
[exactly like his much-delayed first official visit to Castel Gandolfo]. The visit by Francis to the garage had already been planned, and officials say it was not designed to herald the beginning of the end of the papal fleet. While there, Francis did not designate any vehicles for liquidation.
Second, as veteran Vatican writer Luigi Accattoli observed, even getting rid of every vehicle in the collection wouldn't really generate any savings, since these cars are donated to the Holy See by their manufacturers obviously hoping for the PR benefits of seeing the pope tool around in one of their products.
If anything, junking the papal fleet might inflict more belt-tightening on the Mercedes corporation than on the Vatican.
No doubt, Francis prefers modest means of transportation, and it's tough to imagine that cardinals and other princes of the Church will be so brazen as to take elegant limousines in contrast to the pope's example.
[Not that the papal Mercedes looked like 'elegant limousines' at all - they seem rather staid and discreet, compared to say the flashier American models like Ford's Continental limousines, of Cadillacs; they are distinguished to the average eye only by a small papal seal embossed in metal on the right rear door.] A certain simplification is therefore underway, but just dropping by the garage isn't in itself the stuff of high drama.
Third, bloggers recently went to town with the "scoop" that there will be no bed for Pope Francis aboard the papal plane carrying him to Rio de Janeiro next week for World Youth Day, spinning it as another act of self-denial. One report suggested that Francis had ordered the Secretariat of State to make sure there wasn't a bed. [COLO9E=#0026FF]
[It was the report that set off the firestorm, and it wasn't a blog. It was a 'scoop' by Andrea Tornielli, except that Fr. Lombardi promptly denied its allegations in toto,, and Tornielli withdrew the story online.] That narrative metastasized for a day or so until Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, felt obliged to respond.
"There was never any letter from the Secretariat of State to Alitalia about the preparation of the plane," Lombardi said.
"The question of having a bed on board never came up, because today the seats are very comfortable and allow for a good rest, so there's no reason to think about another set-up."
"Pope Benedict also never had any bed in recent years, for example on his flights to and from Africa," Lombardi added.
For the record, there is no such thing as the "papal plane" in the sense of a jet belonging to the pope and in exclusive use by the Vatican, like Air Force One in the United States. Instead, when the pope travels, he normally takes Alitalia on the outbound leg and the national carrier of whatever country he's visiting coming back, in both cases using a normal passenger jet assigned by the company for that day.
The only real perk for the pope is that he gets to sit in the first row of
business class [???? Surely it's first c;ass. not business class!], usually by himself, but other than that it's pretty much the same experience as anyone else making an intercontinental flight. Francis seems content with that arrangement, but it hardly started with him.
For sure, there are real indications of change under Francis -- the appointment of eight cardinals from around the world to make Church governance more collegial, for instance, and the creation of a commission to investigate the Vatican bank along with the resignations of its senior leadership. No doubt, there's more to come.
In the meantime, however, these three examples suggest a dose of caution:
Just because there's a revolution going on [Is there objective support for that, so far, or is it merely a projection of media's wishful thinking?] doesn't mean absolutely everything that happens is revolutionary.
[Which is what results because the herd thinking in media is not just devoid of objective criteria to apply to all Popes - at least to Benedict and Francis - equally, but also entirely without a sense of perspective, in which they do not distinguish between the trivial and incidental, and that which is truly significant and purposeful.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/08/2013 18:16]