Sorry for the three-day lapse. Thankfully, nothing earth-shaking has happened in the meantime... or did I miss anything? Maybe some coruscating gem of blistering reproof from Casa Santa Marta? A blog from Fr. Ray helps me gets back into the groove.
Avoiding stereotypes
Fr. Ray Blake's Blog
February 27, 2015
We should all avoid stereotypes. The Holy See was placed in such an embarrassing position earlier this week over a leaked private email from His Holiness in which he had used the phrase 'avoid the Mexification'.
[The remark was something about his not wanting the drug problem to lead to the 'Mexification' of Argentina. Were you listening, John Allen? That's one mighty serious gaffe', ain't it. If Benedict XVI had written it, you'd have told the world right away that "once again, he has put his foot into his mouth", or some such hyperbole! And what does it say that a Pope, no less, allows a 'national' slur to color his thinking and articulate it?]
Poor old Fr Lombardi had to again, 'clarify', the Vatican Information Service had to issue an explanation and an assurance that no-one on earth was more loved by the Holy Father more than Mexicans, which suggests the Secretary of State had to do a great deal to soothe ruffled feathers behind the scenes.
It is all very reminiscent of Vatileaks at the end of the last Pontificate. [Excuse me, Fr. Ray, but i fail to see any analogy at all. In Vatileaks, Benedict XVI was totally the 'aggressed' party, both on the part of his thieving valet and on the part of the media who turned the random assortment of documents pilfered by Gabriele - much of whose contents had previously been reported at the time the incidents happened - by e into major fiction about 'evil and corruption' in Benedict's Vatican. Benedict was never guilty of saying anything tactless about anyone!]
Just as one should avoid 'Mexification', so one should avoid 'Argentinianisation' or 'Latin-Americanisation' but this last week or so seems to have been a rather dramatic gear change,
rather unpleasant things seem to have hatched out of the mud. [What a good way to describe the slimy ooze squishing beneath feet of clay at the Vatican!]
The latest, Card. Baldisseri ordering the interception or theft and destruction of 'Remaining in the Truth', the book by five of his fellow Cardinals, which was sent Synod members. He had the rather limp excuse of protecting the Synod participants from 'confusion', yet as Matt Archbold reminds us the Pope had demanded 'parrhesia' open speech from Synod members.
[Fr Blake goes on to cite quite a few JMB/PF statements about parrhesia before and during the Oct. 2014 family synod. Yeah, right! Parrhesia for all, unless you do not share the Bergoglio-Kasper-Baldisseri 'communion for all' working postulate!]
Then there was the curious case of Fr Rosica, Fr Lombardi's assistant, someone close to the Pope, who has been threatening an obscure Canadian pensioner blogger for reporting his involvement in manipulating the Synod. Coupled with Fr Volpi's reneging on an arbitration agreement with the family of Fr Manelli the founder of the Franciscans of Immaculate, there seems to be a strong sense of bullying, of the total opposite of what His Holiness really wants: mercy.
[In a sycophantic follow-the-leader environment, perhaps they are merely taking lessons from the bully-in-chief's Casa Santa Marta tirades!]
All of this takes place against a background of accusations of 'dissident' leveled against those who are against changing the teaching of the Church. This, of course, gives rise to actions like the rather unpleasant twitter of Fr Scott, Fr Rosica's confrere. And in Rome, as Sandro Magister suggests there is open season on kangaroos, there are increasingly vicious attacks on Cardinal Pell.
Though one would want to avoid words like 'Argentinianisation' or 'Latin-Americanisation', that seems to be what we are steadily paddling towards. The methods of President Kirchner or the Perons seem to have an echo in the Vatican.
There is an unpleasant ruthlessness in those around the Pope and even his allies elsewhere. I was rather shocked by an article by Cardinal Wuerl, obviously directed against Cardinal Burke, but not engaging in theology or ideas but simply an attack on him personally, and calling those who did not agree with a change in Church teaching, "dissenters".
Pope Benedict left in place those who disagreed with him fundamentally - Abp Piero Marini and Cdl Kasper are the most obvious examples but under Francis we seem to have a one party state, opposition is dealt with ruthlessly.
The great problem with such a situation, as we have often seen in South America, Argentina in particular, in the recent past, is such a system breeds revolution and instability, it is useful for quick-fix solutions but ultimately leads to injustice, impoverishment and disaster. It creates a climate of fear, fear of 'el presidente' [El Caudillo] or at least a desire to be sycophantically subservient but fear of unknown henchmen, of denunciation.
Many of the Cardinal electors had hoped that the election of the 'new Pope' might be about clearing Rome of its cliques and anonymous accusations, its denunciation by innuendo and its bitter feuds and corruption. It it is simply not happening - on the contrary it is happening with renewed vigour.
And Father Z quotes from a post by Father H who just got back from a week in Ireland doing his apostolate for the Ordinariate:
Renaissance triumphalist crowing
both in bad taste and divisive
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf quoting
Fr. John Hunwicke
March 3, 2015
[I was surprised to get back home to my computer to discover that in Rome there is going to be a special Mass to commemorate fifty years since the first Mass entirely in the Italian Language.
Surely, this sort of rather Renaissance triumphalist crowing is both in bad taste, and sadly divisive? Will the Mass be a Requiem to pray for the souls of those whose faith was disastrously weakened by those of the post-Conciliar changes which were praeter Concilium seu contra Concilium [beside the Council or against the Council][?? I think), and which proliferated during this half-century?
If you are a no-longer-fertile Mexican grandmother possessing shares in the Ignatius Press, whose newly ordained narcissistic grandson possesses a semi-Pelagian biretta and works in the deeply flawed Roman Curia, you must be in sore need of something to cheer you up. This event may not be precisely what you’ve been waiting for.
[That's a really hilarious compendium of JMB/PF's 'pet peeves', to use an understatement!]
Then there's this item picking up from a recent interview given by Cardinal Burke to Rorate caeli - I haven't read it yet - which belongs on this post since it is about Fr. Rosica, whom I am finding more and more odious. (Surely, St. John Paul II never thought his press officer for Toronto WYD was so heterodox at heart!)...
Catholics shouldn’t sue one another:
Cardinal Burke comments on
Fr. Rosica’s lawsuit against blogger
by Hilary White
ROME, March 2, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Citing Scripture, Cardinal Raymond Burke told an interviewer this week that Catholics should not sue each other: “Our Lord in the Gospel and St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians instruct us not to take our disputes to the civil forum, that we should be able, as Catholics, to resolve these matters among ourselves.”
The cardinal’s comments to the Traditionalist Catholic website Rorate Caeli follow an uproar in the Catholic media world last week when it was revealed that Vatican spokesman Father Thomas Rosica has threatened to sue a Canadian blogger for defamation in the civil courts.
Cardinal Burke, who served under Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis as the head of the Vatican’s highest court, is a noted expert on canon law. He told Rorate Caeli, “Unless the blogger has committed a calumny on someone's good name unjustly, I certainly don't think that that's the way we as Catholics should deal with these matters.”
“I think contact should be made. I presume that the Catholic blogger is in good faith, and if there’s someone in the hierarchy who is upset with him, the way to deal with it would be first to approach the person directly and try to resolve the matter in that way,” Burke added.
Fr. Rosica, a Canadian Basilian, is the English language press officer for the Vatican and founder of the Toronto-based Salt and Light Television network.
He sent the legal letter to David Domet, a Toronto music composer and part-time Catholic blogger who has long criticized what he says are Fr. Rosica’s departures from Catholic orthodoxy. The priest’s lawyer told Domet to remove nine separate items from his blog and apologize, but added that this would not necessarily remove the threat of the civil action.
The conflict was covered in a feature by Michael Voris’ Church Militant TV, and the internet’s Catholic blogger world exploded with indignation. So furious was the backlash that it got coverage by the US conservative news site, Breitbart. This followed dozens of blog posts, nearly unanimously calling the threatened legal action of a well-placed priest against a lay pensioner a “PR disaster” for Rosica.
The uproar has launched Domet’s small blog, Vox Cantoris, into the international limelight, and has earned Fr. Rosica an avalanche of criticism. “Though Rosica publicly defends the right to freedom of speech and press, he is attempting to silence the blogger who has criticized him,” Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, wrote for Breitbart.
Among Domet’s criticisms of Fr. Rosica is his apparent support for the proposal by Cardinal Walter Kasper to allow divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, and others in “irregular” sexual unions, to receive Holy Communion.
Fr. Rosica has also recently come under fire for comments he made a year ago, in a lecture in Windsor, Ontario, in which he argued that Catholic doctrine could change.
“Will this Pope re-write controversial Church doctrines?” Fr. Rosica said in the lecture, which was posted to Youtube. “No. But that isn't how doctrine changes. Doctrine changes when pastoral contexts shift and new insights emerge such that particularly doctrinal formulations no longer mediate the saving message of God's transforming love.”
Fr. Rosica continued: “Doctrine changes when the Church has leaders and teachers who are not afraid to take note of new contexts and emerging insights. It changes when the Church has pastors who do what Francis has been insisting: leave the securities of your chanceries, of your rectories, of your safe places, of your episcopal residences go set aside the small-minded rules that often keep you locked up and shielded from the world.”
In the Rorate Caeli interview, Cardinal Burke refuted the idea that the Church can change its “pastoral practice” without changing doctrine.
“I think it’s very important to address a false dichotomy that's been drawn by some who say, ‘Oh no, we’re just changing disciplines. We’re not touching the Church's doctrine.’ But if you change the Church’s discipline with regard to access to Holy Communion by those who are living in adultery, then surely you are changing the Church's doctrine on adultery.”
“You’re saying that, in some circumstances, adultery is permissible and even good, if people can live in adultery and still receive the sacraments. That is a very serious matter, and Catholics have to insist that the Church’s discipline not be changed in some way which would, in fact, weaken our teaching on one of the most fundamental truths, the truth about marriage and the family,” Cardinal Burke said.
Fr. Rosica recently criticized Cardinal Burke on his Twitter account by posting an article by Washington, D.C.’s Cardinal Donald Wuerl on “dissent” in the hierarchy, saying, “Cardinal Wuerl’s response to Burke (and dissenters).”
The priest has also had a confrontational relationship with the pro-life movement for years.
In 1996, Fr. Rosica called the police on pro-life advocates who were leafletting in protest at a lecture by famous dissident Gregory Baum at the University of Toronto’s Newman Centre.
In 2009, Fr. Rosica wrote against objections to the lavish Catholic funeral for US Senator Ted Kennedy’s in Boston. He excoriated the pro-life movement for what he called their lack of “civility.”
“Civility, charity, mercy and politeness seem to have dropped out of the pro-life lexicon,” Fr. Rosica wrote. “To recognize and bring out the sin in others means also recognizing one’s self as a sinner and in need of God’s boundless mercy.
“Let us pray that we will become more and more a people, a church and a community overflowing with mercy.”
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/03/2015 21:46]