CONSORTIUM NEWSLETTER (December 22, 2017)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CONSORTIUM NEWSLETTER (December 22, 2017) A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! May God grant each and all of us a Christmas filled with grace, joy, faith, holiness, love, mercy, compassion, and understanding. Amen! 1 POPE FRANCIS (Continued) As we consider now what is happening in today’s Church by focusing on the Pope, there is more good literature that deals with this than I had previously thought. And there certainly are more angles to this question than I had thought previously. The following angle was quite unknown to me and it really threw me for a loop; you will see why shortly. I must say that I was tempted to skip the following comments because they present a situation I do not like and because they cause us to raise many questions we would prefer not to. I also had to think very hard why I was doing the project of sharing comments with you about where Francis is today and then skipping some comments I do not like. Overall, I decided to share these comments with you as they are because as a Catholic/Christian believer you have a right to hear them. It is up to you as an adult Catholic to decide what you will do with them and so here they are. Please say a little prayer to the Holy Spirit before you proceed much farther. Thank you! The two articles I am using here are one from The Catholic Thing and one from the Catholic Herald. (Robert Royal, “The Dictator Pope,” The Catholic Thing, December 6, 2017, at https://www.thecatholicthing.org) (Dan Hitchens, “‘The Dictator Pope’” a mixture of hearsay and insight,” Catholic Herald, December 12, 2017) A different and remarkable new book on the pope has just come out which is really causing waves. The theme is “when the pope does not much feel bound by the tradition or impartial laws he has inherited, what then?” (Royal). The book appeared on December 4, 2017 (after an earlier publication in Italian); the author assumed a pseudonym Marcantonio Colonna (an admiral at the historical Lepanto). The book is titled The Dictator Pope. The author “evidently could not publish under his real name, for fear of reprisals. But the case he lays out is largely convincing that Pope Francis has carefully cultivated an image in public as the apostle of mercy, kindness, and openness; in private, he is authoritarian, given to profanity-laced outbursts of anger, and manipulative in pursuing his agenda.” (Royal) The author “addresses the old puzzle of how does the Pope sound at one moment like a theological ‘liberal,’ at the next like a ‘conservative’? Colonna’s answer is cynical but not implausible: the Pope belongs to a uniquely Argentine tradition, exemplified by the three-time president Juan Perón. There is an apocryphal story about Perón inducting his nephew into politics: ‘He first brought the young man with him when he received a deputation of communists; after hearing their views, he told them, ‘You are quite right.’ The next day he received a deputation of fascists and replied again to their arguments, ‘You are quite right.’ Then he asked his nephew what he thought and the young man said, ‘You have spoken with two groups with diametrically opposite opinions and you told them both that you agreed with them. This is completely unacceptable.’ Perón replied, ‘You are quite right too.’” (Hitchens) As the above suggests, the book is very political. Colonna speaks about a group of cardinals who had tried to prevent Ratzinger’s election in 2005. The group was originally led by Cardinal Martini who once claimed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae repeated the Church’s teaching on contraception and did serious damage. This group of cardinals adopted Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio as their papal candidate in 2013 and campaigned for him. This group wanted a more pastoral church, i.e., “get away from the firm upholding of Catholic moral teaching that had characterized 2 Pope John Paul II and move towards the approach that has since been seen in the synod on the family” (Hitchens). Four paragraphs ago, there was given an unflattering picture of Pope Francis. Royal tells us that this was known within Rome. The book, however, “is far more probing and detailed than anything that has previously appeared. It sometimes stretches evidence, but the amount of evidence it provides is stunning.” (Royal) Those of us who are “easily scandalized should avoid The Dictator Pope, the new eBook by the pseudonymous ‘Marcantonio Colonna’s which has risen to 4th place on Amazon Kindle’s Religion and Spirituality bestseller list … [It is] a mixture of hearsay and insight.” (Hitchens) And “the book does make unproven claims. But some of its analysis is uncomfortably plausible.” (ibid.) It can also be said that “the book is also judiciously written and genuinely insightful” (ibid.). “About 95 percent of it is simply incontrovertible, and cannot help but clarify who Francis is and what he is about” (Royal). However, many “should approach its more sensational claims with caution. Everyone who writes about the Vatican hears credible things from good sources, which we nevertheless cannot publish, because they do not quite pass the evidence threshold, or because we would rather not bring the papal office into disrepute. Colonna just goes right ahead.” (Hitchens) “The parts [of the book] I know best – the Synods on the family – are absolutely reliable. We know, for example, that Pope Francis was quite willing to openly rig the Synods by personally appointing supporters of the Cardinal Kasper proposal and that he even intervened personally at key points, changing procedures and instructing the bishops about where their deliberations should start – and end.” (Royal) “When Francis cares about something – Colonna shows – he makes it happen, whatever the opposition (at the Synods, it was considerable).” (Royal) If we look at Hitchens’ take on this matter, the following is what we see. “Colonna describes the family synod of 2014-2015 as a series of tactical moves to undermine Church teaching on Communion for the remarried. He quotes Cardinal Wilfred Napier, who said he had been told by a Vatican insider that the organizers’ plan was ‘manipulating the synod, engineering it in a certain direction. I asked: ‘But why?’ He said: ‘Because they want a certain result.’” Pope Francis especially appointed several prelates to the synod who opposed the traditional teaching. Even then, some ambiguous words about Communion did not receive enough votes from the synod fathers. But they were included in the final report nevertheless. This material has been presented before, but rarely with such lucidity. Similarly, Colonna’s chapters on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate and the Knights of Malta make it clearer than ever that, if the conflicts began within those orders, it was Vatican intervention which turned them into catastrophes.” (Hitchens) Whenever Pope Francis wants something, there is a clear designated pattern of behavior, whatever uncertainties may remain. ‘On the divorced and remarried, the environment, immigrants, ‘Islamophobia,’ the poor, the pope is relentless. But he was not elected to change marital doctrine or ‘discipline.’ Nor was he chosen to be a player 3 in international politics. He was elected to be a ‘reformer’ who would mainly clean up Vatican finances and deal with the gay lobby, two things that played a role in Benedict’s resignation.” (Royal) “On the financial front, there was a strong start. The council of cardinals, Cardinal Pell’s effort to inject Anglo-Saxon transparency, a new special section on the economy, hiring PriceWaterhouseCoopers to do an external audit. The momentum evaporated as the old guard slowly regained control over Vatican finances – and oversight. A series of Vatican Bank presidents, officials, accountants, etc. – probably getting too close to the truth – have been fired without good explanations. (Something similar played out in the Knights of Malta controversy.) Pell had to return to Australia to deal with sexual abuse charges from forty years ago that, suspiciously, resurfaced after being earlier examined and dismissed.” (ibid.) And where was Francis in all of this? He appeared not to be very interested!” (ibid.) Colonna claims fear is the dominant “note” in the Roman Curia. Three officials have been fired from the Curia and it seems for no given reason. According to the book, Cardinal Müller, one of the three asked Francis to discuss the matter but getting an appointment took 2-3 months by which time it was too late. As Colonna relates the matter, earnest churchmen flounder while canny politicians devote time to opposing reforms. “Colonna also makes some unsettling claims about what it is like to work for the Pope, both in today’s Vatican and formerly in Buenos Aires archdiocese” (Hitchens). “To repeat, The Dictator Pope is not for the easily scandalized. But then it is meant to counterbalancing the image presented in the media,” e.g., “Who am I to judge?”, the leader of the global left, or a conscience for the world. (Hitchens) Colonna questions some of Francis’ much-praised gestures of simplicity, such as his moving into the Vatican guesthouse, instead of the more splendid papal palace. His book claims the move has cost 2 million euros, while the palace still has to be maintained. Colonna “also suggests that, despite Pope Francis’s immense popularity with the secular media, he has not won over the Catholic faithful in the same way Colonna cites official statistic for average attendance at the Pope’s weekly audience in Saint Peter’s Square: [year] 2013: 51,617 2014: 27,883 2015: 14,818 No figures for 2016 have been published, but Colonna says ‘they are understood to be under 10,000.’” (Hitchens) Through Royal’s article, you can access more information regarding this topic if you would like to do so (see above and also see by accessing the website for The Catholic Thing and clicking on 2017 Archives and Royal’s article December 6, 2017 The Dictator Pope).