
My intensive coverage of the
Maciel situation put all other stories on the back burner in the past 48 hours.
But there is something else important happening: the ongoing controversy surrounding Pope Benedict, the SSPX, and Bishop Richard Williamson.
It's another complicated situation, so I'll try to summarize and shed some lights on where things stand now:
Liberal Catholic theologian Hermann Haering's call for the pope to step down, I think, is preposterous.
Things got more serious when German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuked Pope Benedict and asked him to "clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial and that there must be positive relations with the Jewish community overall."
The pope's brother, Fr. Georg Ratzinger, shot back: "[the pope] doesn’t need me to defend him. But it angers me how unjust and badly informed the people who are attacking him are."
I'd of course, agree with Fr. Ratzinger.
Of course Pope Benedict supports positive relations with the Jews. He's been working for that his entire ecclesiastical and papal career!
So how did we get here? Two things: a) bias against the Church and b) admittedly poor handling by the Vatican. This is not the first time the Vatican has badly bungled the handling of a delicate situation, and it is frustrating - to say the least - that this still regularly happens.
Vatican expert Sandro Magister explains:
A few days after the events, the lifting of excommunication from the four Lefebvrist bishops is increasingly manifesting itself at the Vatican as a double disaster, of governance and of communication. In the disaster, Pope Benedict XVI found himself to be the one most exposed, and practically alone.
{Magister reviews Pope Benedict's deep theological understanding and teaching about the issue of SSPX reconciliation, etc.} But little or nothing of this {papal explanation} was stated in the decree issued on January 24 by the Holy See. In the "vulgata" diffused by the media, with this decree the Church of Rome was simply clasping the Lefebvrists to its bosom.
{Now the twist:} Then, to make the misunderstanding worse, there came the uproar over an interview with one of the four bishops granted clemency, Richard Williamson of England, in which he supported ideas denying the Holocaust.
In the media all over the world, the news read as follows: the pope clears a Holocaust denier bishop from excommunication, and welcomes him into the Church.
Magister's hypothesis (underlining mine):
The question comes naturally: was all of this really inevitable, once the pope had decided to lift the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops? Or was the disaster produced by the errors and omissions of the men who are supposed to implement the pope's decisions? The facts point to the second hypothesis.
The decree revoking the excommunication bears the signature of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the congregation for bishops. Another cardinal, Darío Castrillón Hoyos, is the president of the pontifical commission "Ecclesia Dei," which, ever since its creation in 1988, has dealt with the followers of Lefebvre. Both of these cardinals have said that they were taken by surprise, after the fact, by the interview with Bishop Williamson, and that they were never aware that he was a Holocaust denier.
At this point Magister goes on to describe one failing after another. Two main points:
- "The media release of the decision also seems to have been entirely negligent. The Vatican press office limited itself, on Saturday, January 24, to distributing the text of the decree, in spite of the fact that the news had already leaked out a few days earlier, and a fiery controversy was already growing around the statements denying the Holocaust made by Williamson.... And yet, if nothing of this was done, it was not the fault of the Vatican press office and its director, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, but of the offices of the curia from which they receive their orders. These offices of the curia converge in the secretariat of state."
- "So then, throughout the entire affair of the lifting of the excommunications for the Lefebvrist bishops, the secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, despite his highly active and outspoken nature, distinguished himself by his absence. His first public comment on the question came on January 28, during a conference in Rome at which he was speaking. But more than words, what were lacking from him were actions equal to the gravity of the situation. Before, during, and after the issuing of the decree. Benedict XVI was left practically alone, and the curia was abandoned to disorder. The fact that Benedict XVI has given up on reforming the curia is now before the eyes of all. But it is conjectured that he compensated for this non-decision by entrusting the leadership of the offices to a tough, dynamic secretary of state, Bertone. Now this conjecture has also been shown to be lacking. "
Magister's final point:
"Bertone's personal devotion to Benedict XVI is beyond all doubt. Not so that of the other curia officials, who continue to have free rein. It is possible that some of them deliberately oppose this pontificate. It is certain that most of them simply do not understand it, do not measure up to it."
Wow, that's alot to take in. Given this state of affairs, it should not surprise us that there has been no official Vatican reaction to other current controversies -
notably the Maciel meltdown. Quite simply: they have their hands more than full.
Magister's analysis jives with John Allen's Jan. 30th column: "
The Lefebvrite case: What was the Vatican thinking?":
On the lecture circuit, I'm sometimes asked for my opinion about the Vatican's communications strategy. My glib answer generally is, "As soon as they have one, I'll be glad to tell you what I think of it."
The line usually draws a few chuckles. However, this week's furor over the lifting of the excommunication of four traditionalist bishops, including one who's a Holocaust denier, offers a reminder that the lack of PR savvy in Rome is actually no laughing matter. {Read his entire column.}
While the Vatican Information Service released a
brief communique on the subject today, they are also taking more drastic measures, including, apparently,
demanding that Bishop Williams recant.
It's pretty evident that Vatican officials from top to bottom really dropped the ball on this one, and gave the detractors of the Church a clear opportunity of working against her in the court of common opinion. I say this because it's nothing new for people to attack the Church in public, it is something out of the ordinary for Vatican officials to be
so pell-mell in their response, up to and including pointing the figure at one another.
(I think it's worth noting, as
Whispers does
here, that the release of Bp. Williamson's Swedish TV interview might have been timed to embarrass the pope. Nonetheless, Williamson's record is far older than this interview and the situation could have been avoided altogether.)
I hope this is a serious reality check. And maybe it's time to hire a couple research assistants. I know how to use Google pretty well.
And because Pope Benedict is so very alone on this - and unjustly being attacked - I would ask readers to sign
this petition to publicly support him.
Labels: anti-catholicism, anti-papism, breaking news, catholic controversy, hot topics, sspx, vatican diplomacy