NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

OK, here it comes. Another analysis of the Vatican's recent media pratfalls. I am hoping for new information and/or new insight we have not seen before....



Chain of command:
Miscues highlight need
for curial consultation
By John Thavis



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 20 (CNS) -- A pair of recent miscues at the Vatican has prompted questions about how papal decisions are made and criticism of the apparent lack of consultation inside the Roman Curia.

In late January, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four ultra traditionalist bishops, including Bishop Richard Williamson, who has said the Holocaust was exaggerated and that no Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers.

Then the pope chose as an auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria, Father Gerhard Wagner, who once linked the destruction of Hurricane Katrina to the "spiritual pollution" of New Orleans.

Two weeks later, after an embarrassing no-confidence vote by senior clergy in the Linz Diocese, Bishop-designate Wagner asked the pope to withdraw his nomination.

An overwhelmingly negative reaction greeted both of these papal decisions, and many wondered why the Vatican failed to see it coming. The concern voiced by some of the church's own officials was that the episodes illustrated a dysfunctional system of internal communications at the Vatican.

"We hope inadequate channels of communication in the Vatican can be improved so the Pope's service to humanity is not impaired," Austrian bishops said after meeting to discuss the situation of Bishop-designate Wagner Feb. 16. [Oooh! Too bad Thavis chose that highly questionable, self-serving and ultimately distasteful Austrian bishops' statement as his first citation!]

In the case of Bishop Williamson, Vatican officials themselves were among the critics. Cardinal Walter Kasper, who coordinates Vatican dialogue with the Jews, told Vatican Radio that the controversy was the result of "management errors in the Curia" and might have been avoided by wider consultation. His office had not been consulted, he said.

[How is it Thavis doesn't ask the obvious common-sense question - Why did Kasper, who is on first-name terms with the Pope - no t asl him about it at all all these months, at least, since Cardinal Castrillon's June 2008 note of conditions to Mons. Fellay/ Better yet, if he knew about Williamson's statements - especially since he is the president of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism - why didn't he volunteer anything to the Pope, directly or thru Mons. Gaenswein? Are the Curial heads so proud that it must always be the mountain coming to Mohammed? Subordinates have duties of loyalty to their superiors. Warning them about possible traps - without waiting to be asked, obviously - is one such duty.]

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, made clear that Pope Benedict had not known in advance about Bishop Williamson's views on the Holocaust.

"If someone should have known, it was Cardinal (Dario) Castrillon Hoyos," Father Lombardi said. The implication was that Cardinal Castrillon, head of the commission in charge of reconciliation with the traditionalists, should have also made sure the Pope was informed.

[So far, Cardinal Castrillon has not spoken much, except to say he was not aware of Williamson's anti-Holocaust statements, but in the entire episode, his position is the weakest, because, as Fr. Lombardi so indiscreetly - but correctly - pointed out in public, his office should have known, though not his office alone, but also the Secretariat of State and the Congregation for Bishops.]

Traditionally, the Vatican's Secretariat of State has acted as the coordinating agency for some of the important decisions that involve more than one Roman Curia agency or have global implications. [But it never surface till Feb. 4 in this story.]

The plain fact, however, is that the Vatican has no central communications clearinghouse, and no "chain of command" responsible for raising red flags on potentially explosive moves.

[Now, that, if true is a serious organizational defect indeed. But isn't that supposed to be the raison d'etre of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, a full-fledged Curial organism?

It has baffled me that the very media-savvy Cardinal from Pennsylvania, John Foley, who was the President of that Council for more than 20 years, obviously failed to establish the coordination structure. Perhaps because Joaquin Navarro Valls was too strong, too visible, and too singular as Vatican spokesman that it was easy to let him carry all the responsibility. And obviously his successor, Archbishop Celli, has not done that either.]

The Vatican's communications agencies, including its press office, are generally not involved in the gestation stage of important decisions. [But they are not supposed to be, unless it is something that affects them directly.] Their task is to deliver the end product -- and sometimes to help clean up the mess.

[Well, a communications mess inevitably involves them. Anyone with common sense and a strong instinct to 'save the institution and save the boss', if only from embarrassment, would and should call attention to anything he sees or senses amiss before announcing anything.

Once again, in the FSSPX case, they had months to prepare - since Cardinal Castrillon's June 2008 note - their briefing files on the four people involved.

Fr. Lombardi is a very experienced, sophisticated priest - and a Jesuit, too (Jesuits are generally considered very sharp and savvy, especially in media matters). Surely he was aware of the shadows that have always hovered over the FSSPX.

Yet he apparently missed an initiative that even smalltime newsdesks, or even the individual conscientious journalist, always prepare for - know what there is to know about who and what you will be reporting or announcing.]

That doesn't mean internal consultation never occurs; many important papal documents, for example, undergo revisions based on critical in-house commentary. But it's inconsistent, and so is the way such documents are released.

Some papal decisions are rolled out with a press conference and endless explanation, while others drop from the sky unannounced. [That's not exactly right. The announcements that get press conferences and full presentations are generally documents or books, not papal decisions (even if some decisions are necessarily accompanied by documents), which by their nature, cannot be pre-announced.]

Vatican officials say that under Pope Benedict, the decision-making process in general has been streamlined and consultation is more on a need-to-know basis.

On the issue of lifting the excommunications of four bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, the Pope appears to have conferred primarily with Cardinal Castrillon's Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei," which has conducted talks with the society, and with the Congregation for Bishops.

It's interesting to recall that before making an earlier gesture to the traditionalist society -- a decree that widened the use of the Tridentine Mass -- the Pope consulted at length with the world's cardinals and bishops and received some negative feedback. Some at the Vatican felt that only slowed down the Pope's ultimate decision.

[But there's a great and fundamental difference between Summmorum Pontificum and the excom recall. Execution of SP requires the understanding, cooperation and collaboration of all the diocesan bishops around the world. The Pope did them the unusual courtesy of consultation over a few years. Lifting a papal excommunication, which teh four bishops incurred, only concerns the Pope as an individual prerogative, not collegial.]

Nothing excites reporters more than a "storm of controversy," especially when it allows the journalistic commentariat to preach to the Vatican about how to improve its public relations operation.

The fact that a simple Google search might have helped avoid these missteps was, in the eyes of many, a sign of how hopelessly out of touch the Vatican really is.

[NOOOOO! AS I've recounted int eh NOTABLES thread, I did the exercise on this facile but fallacious assumption - three weeks after the excom recalls were announced. A simple Google search would not have shown anything of what Williamson said about the Holocaust before the Swedish TV interview aired on January 21.

You'd have to have known either that the Catholic Herald ran a story about in May 2008, and/or that he made his Holocaust statement for the first time in 1989 in Canada to have unearthed a link - and if you already knew that, then you did not need Google at all because your researchers must have done their 'due diligence' earlier.

By the way, that seems to be the single precedent to the Swedish TV statement that the most diligent souls have found or posted online so far. Even the Herald story referred to the 1989 statement.]

Yet amid all the outcry, has anyone noticed that Pope Benedict has shown himself responsive to the reaction and willing to change course?

In the case of Austrian Bishop-designate Wagner, it is rare for a bishop to step aside so quickly after nomination, and the assumption is that Pope Benedict either made it happen or happily agreed. He could have defended the principle that a Pope must be free to name bishops, but appears to have chosen the more conciliatory route of dialogue with Austrian church leaders. (A spokesman for the Linz Diocese said Feb. 19 that the Vatican had accepted Bishop-designate Wagner's withdrawal, although the Vatican had not officially announced that.)

[Too many assumptions, there, Mr. Thavis. Wait until there is final resolution on the matter. There's an apparently authoritative explanation on the canon law complications involved by a church jurist in one of the German-language Catholic news agencies. Just compare it to the unequivocal announcement from the Vatican when Mons. Wielgus stepped back in Poland.]

As for Bishop Williamson, the Vatican began by saying the removal of his excommunication was a totally separate issue from his personal opinions on the Holocaust. But two weeks later, the Vatican said Bishop Williamson could not function as a bishop until he disavowed his previous opinions.

That statement, issued by the Secretariat of State, raised some eyebrows inside the Vatican. Some felt it subjected the episcopal mission to a litmus test that was more political than doctrinal.

[There's a good point, but it assumes the Pope would decide to name Williamson a diocesan bishop if the FSSPX were back in full communion. Since episcopal ordination is irrevocable [that's why Milingo remains an Archbishop even if excommunicated], the Pope could give him some research position somewhere and simply give him an ancient titular see like other non-diocesan bishops. But that's a bridge too far to even glimpse right now.

And one cannot rule out that in an access of humility - or for some devious reason - Williamson may decide to say, "Yes, I retract", and for his penance, he would be assigned to the team that has to go through the Vatican archives for everything in support of the cause of Pius XII. Now, that would be poetic justice.]

In addition, the Vatican initially said nothing about the need for Bishop Williamson and the rest of his society to agree to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. But when the bishop's statements appeared to call into question Vatican II teachings on the Jews, the Vatican declared bluntly that full communion would require acceptance of the council.

[Mmmm, again an over-simplification of the situation. 'Acceptance of the Council' is too vague a term, especially since Mons. Fellay has made clear the FSSPX is not rejecting the Council in toto - only the ambiguities which it wants cleared up. I would tend to see it as Mons. Fellay describes it in the interviews he has given since the Note from the Secretariat of State. And I have no doubt Benedict XVI would be able to clear up any questions concerning religious freedom, human rights, adn Nostra Aetate, which seem to be the major 'ambiguities'.]

The Pope has responded creatively in the past to public relations crises. In 2006, he recovered from a communications disaster provoked by his remarks about Islam in Regensburg, Germany, by reaching out to Muslims and praying next to an imam in a mosque in Turkey. [I object. It seems to imply he prayed at teh Blue Mosque as a PR ploy. I think everyone who watched that coverage saw how spontaneously it came about. I think the Pope's creativity is in not being Machiavellian, therefore what he does comes off as genuine.]

Some believe the recent controversy over Bishop Williamson's remarks sets the stage for a similar recovery in Catholic-Jewish relations when Pope Benedict visits Israel in May. Already, it has led the pope and countless other church leaders to emphasize that negating the Holocaust goes against Catholic teaching.

[I think we would all be deluding ourselves if we think that relations with the Jews will not always be 'one step forward, two step back' by their choice. Because they (that is to say, their most militant representatives who are also, for the most part, the most paranoid and hypersensitive) are forever subjecting the Pope and the Church to microscopic scrutiny, the better not to miss a chance to pounce - GOTCHA!- because everytime they can do this, they get massive publicity, not just for them but for the Holocaust.

As a supporter of the Holocaust memorial in Washington, DC, since it opened in 1993, I know that the most important objective is to keep the memory alive in every way possible so that 'NEVER AGAIN' may something similar happen.

Paradoxically, that is why I can afford to dismiss Holocaust deniers as crackpots: Against the overwhelming documentation, and the resolve shown by people of all cultures and religions who support Holocaust memorials all over the world, it is hard to see what effect the deniers can have.]