Wisconsin bishop disappointed by Pope’s ‘no comment,’ praises Viganò’s ‘impeccable integrity’ (Diocese of Madison)
Editor's Note: “I must confess my disappointment that in his remarks on the
return flight from Dublin to Rome, the Holy Father chose a course of ‘ no comment,’ regarding any conclusions that might be drawn
from Archbishop Viganò’s allegations,” said Bishop Robert Morlino. “During his
tenure as our Apostolic Nuncio, I came to know Archbishop Viganò both
professionally and personally, and I remain deeply convinced of his honesty,
loyalty to and love for the Church, and impeccable integrity.”
San Diego bishop blasts Archbishop Viganò
for ‘hatred for Pope Francis and all that he has taught’ (Diocese of San Diego)
Editor's Note: Referring to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s recent statement, Bishop Robert McElroy said, “In its ideologically-driven selection of bishops who are attacked, in its clear efforts to settle old personal scores, in its omission of any reference to Archbishop Vigano’s own massive personal participation in the covering up of sexual abuse by bishops, and most profoundly in its hatred for Pope Francis and all that he has taught, Archbishop Viganò consistently subordinates the pursuit of comprehensive truth to partisanship, division and distortion.”
Editor's Note: Referring to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s recent statement, Bishop Robert McElroy said, “In its ideologically-driven selection of bishops who are attacked, in its clear efforts to settle old personal scores, in its omission of any reference to Archbishop Vigano’s own massive personal participation in the covering up of sexual abuse by bishops, and most profoundly in its hatred for Pope Francis and all that he has taught, Archbishop Viganò consistently subordinates the pursuit of comprehensive truth to partisanship, division and distortion.”
You are right, the contrast is humerous, and pretty predictable. But I agree about the fissures in church leadership. And a lot of us Catholics in the pews are thinking, "We don't care about left vs right, liberal vs conservative infighting. We just want you guys to get your act together, clean up and disinfect the place, open the curtains and let the sunlight in."
ReplyDeleteAbout Pope Francis declining to comment on Vigano's letter right now, I have no problem with that, since he indicated he would comment later. It needs to be something well thought out, and not just an off-the-cuff airplane interview of the type that has been known to stir an already boiling pot.
Katherine, I agree. But I also think that the prospect of a church whose leadership is this divided, is worthy of concern, or at least some sustained consideration. It scarcely seems an exaggeration to conclude that bishops Morlino and McElroy are living in different worlds. No doubt, they would both hasten to claim that there is much that unites them, from their love for the Holy Father to the Eucharist to their episcopal collegiality.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe it's not as stark and deep as I'm calling out. Maybe Vigano is just a person who elicits strong and contrasting reactions from people. Maybe it's just Vigano.
Oh, I definitely think divided leadership is worthy of concern. While they're busy channeling Athanasius and Arius the church is fraying apart at the seams.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Francis is onto something with synodality ... maybe we need much more of it, simply in the spirit of team-building.
DeleteIt certainly seems that bishops circling the wagons and presenting a united front is a thing of the past. Or at least is on hiatus.
"...came to know Archbishop Viganò both professionally and personally..." Ah, yes, in my own CAREER, I have known many gentlemen both professionally and personally, and some of them have furthered my CAREER until my CAREER has taken me to the prelature of this lovely diocese. From which my CAREER, alas, will take me no farther even if someone "impeccably" loses the record of my rant as those records were lost in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
ReplyDeleteI am actually in sympathy with Vigano over his being transferred out of his position in the Governatorate of the Vatican in about 2012. He was attempting to reform the Vatican bank mess and apparently stepped on some toes (I am getting this from NCR links). Maybe Benedict should have left him in place and let him do his job. He has an impressive resume in finance and administration. None of which requires one to be a priest. It is unclear if he ever served in a parish.
ReplyDeleteWhich brings up another question, does the Vatican really need a bank of its own?
ReplyDeleteKatherine,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote, "About Pope Francis declining to comment on Vigano's letter right now, I have no problem with that . . ."
Here's another point of view -- Tom Reese's:
". . . [W]hat about Viganò's claim that he told the pope about McCarrick?
"Since the pope is the only other witness to this encounter, only he can verify or deny what Viganò said, and refusing to answer that question does not enhance his credibility. The pope's media advisers should have told him so immediately after the press conference and responded to the reporters with a clarification before they filed their stories.
"The answer could have been, "No, he did not say that to the pope." Or, it could have been: "Yes, he did say that to the pope, but there is no record of the alleged sanctions by Benedict. The pope disregarded the accusations because Viganò had a history of unsubstantiated accusations. And remember, it was Francis who told McCarrick to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance and took away his red hat."
"Reporters, like most people, like the pope, but they also have a job to do. The Vatican should not make it difficult.
"Just as every diocese in the United States needs to do a full and transparent account of clerical sex abuse and each diocese’s response, so too the Vatican must disclose what it knew, when it knew and what it did or did not do. Nothing less will begin the restoration of credibility to the Catholic Church."
Yes, my point exactly. It's not that hard to say yes or no. If there are good reasons he doesn't want to be forthcoming, he should explain. Basically telling reporters to catch him if they can will keep the story boiling.
DeleteSome conservative commentators, who generally are hostile to Francis, have been making that point. I'm glad to see that a non-conservative like Reese is doing the same. This shouldn't be something the liberals and conservatives argue about.
DeleteSorry - forgot the link:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/accountability/signs-times/doubts-about-vigan-s-accusations-aside-pope-francis-needs-better
Pope Francis has yet to answer the dubia the Gang of Four sent him, or their follow-up double dubia. Letting the dogs bark and chase the mail truck seems to be a strategy with him. I know how irritating it is, and I know that Bishop Baron and Father Reese and a whole nave of honest people want him to stand and deliver. At the same time, I am reminded that there is no way to fight with skunks without ending up having a bad smell yourself.
ReplyDeleteI really think Francis's pontificate has changed now: he's not going to have nearly as much "space" to talk about climate change and immigration and the depredations of unfettered capitalism as long as these questions about McCarrick continue to hang over him. It's not clear whether Francis himself has realized this yet, but that's my take of the situation.
DeleteHere, from Austen Ivereigh, is another "take" on the controversy. Maybe it deserves its own thread. Ivereigh is the author of The Great Reformer, a biography of Francis. Excerpts:
ReplyDeleteIt was not the first time Bergoglio had stayed silent faced with a ferocious accusation of complicity with evil. Back in the 1970s, during Argentina’s dictatorship, he was accused by left-wing Catholics, including some Jesuits, of collaborating with the military killing and torture of those deemed subversives.
The allegations resurfaced with vigour in the 1980s, and continued to be thrown at him right up to his election as pope. Yet they had long before then fallen away under scrutiny. Over time, stories emerged that prove not just his innocence of the charges of complicity but highlight his heroic assistance to victims of the dictatorship. . . . . .
Bergoglio’s 1990 essay, ‘Silence and Word’, suggests a deeper spiritual purpose to his silence, one drawn from a meditation on the Passion in the Third Week of the Spiritual Exercises. There St Ignatius describes how in the Passion, God ‘goes into hiding’, concealing, as it were, his divinity.
This is a very different kind of silence from, say, the silence of complicity or the silence of inaction faced with evidence of evil, as we have seen too often in the case of sexual abuse of minors.
The purpose of Christ’s self-emptying silence — his meekness faced with ferocious hostility — is to create space for God to act. This kind of silence involves a deliberate choice not to respond with an intellectual or reasoned self-defence, which in a context of confusion, of claims and counter-claims and half-truths, simply fuels the cycle of hysterical accusation and counter-accusation. It is a spiritual strategy to force the spirits behind the attack to reveal themselves.
To ‘make space for God’ can only be done in the way that Jesus himself taught: through the kenosis (self-emptying) described in St Ignatius’s ‘third kind of humility’ (Spiritual Exercises §167). . . As Jesus is steadily weakened — the disciples flee, Peter denies him, and he is left alone on the Cross — the devil reveals himself, believing that he has won. Christ’s weakness is the bait he swallows. . . . Bergoglio writes: "In moments of darkness and great tribulation, when the knots and the tangles cannot be untangled or straightened out, nor things be clarified, then we have to be silent. The meekness of silence will show us to be even weaker, and so it will be the devil who, emboldened, comes into the light, and shows us his true intentions, no longer disguised as an angel but unmasked."
https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/time-keep-silence
Gene - that's a very interesting take on Francis's silences. I can see a bit of "Are you the king of the Jews?" "You say so." Or this: "Then you are a king?" "You say I am a king". By the end of Pilate's encounters with Jesus, in which Jesus tells him much but seemingly none of it to Pilate's point, Pilate has discovered the answer: has the inscription put on the cross "Jesus the Nazorean, the King of the Jews".
DeleteStill thinking about what Gene posted here.
DeleteI have admired Francis since he paid his own hotel bill, canceled his own newspaper delivery and moved into the guest house. I said then, and I still believe, that he has the heart of a deacon.
But there are aspects of Francis's spirituality that I just don't get. I don't mean that to be too negative. The Catholic church encompasses something like a sixth of the world's population and has existed for 2,000+ years. That covers a lot of cultures and a lot of spirituality. It's to be expected that there are spiritualities with which an individual like me isn't familiar.
For me, Francis is one of those people. For example: there are his four foundational principles:
* Time is greater than space
* Unity prevails over conflict
* Realities are more important than ideas
* The whole is greater than the parts
These principles are explained in Evangelii Gaudium (cf. nos. 217 ff). For now, I just note that, until Francis started referring to these principles, I had never heard of them before, and I have to admit that I wasn't immediately able to situate them in the biblical or Catholic social teaching that I've been formed in. Again, that is not to say that they're wrong - but they're a little strange.
In point of fact, it's entirely possible that Francis's rather uninformative answer to journalists who asked him about the Vigano charges - "I won't say a word about it" - can be understood by referring to those four principles. For example, his approach may be an exercise in unity over conflict. But to my way of thinking, kenosis for the Holy Father wouldn't be the silence that Ivereigh describes; rather, it would consist in his publicly admitting his faults and errors (if there are any) in the matter of McCarrick, begging McCarrick's victims for forgiveness, doing what he can to redress their hurts asnd anguish, and resolving to stand in solidarity with them and with all victims of abuse at the hands of church authorities and employees.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength."-- today's first reading from 1 Cor.
DeleteThe WaPo's religion reporter wrote a very interesting article about the role the "conservative" Catholic media played in promoting the Vigano letter. Also interesting was the collaboration between Vigano and conservative Italians in Rome in writing the letter together, and timing it to appear during Francis' visit to Ireland.
DeleteJust about as machiavellian as it could get. It really does seem to be an attempted coup - launched by the very same "cult" in the church who, a few years ago insisted that unquestioned obedience was ALWAYS due a pope and to every syllable that came from his mouth.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2018/08/29/a-vatican-diplomats-explosive-letter-reveals-influential-conservative-catholic-media-network/?utm_term=.50d6b92dcb5f
Thanks for the WaPo link, Anne. You're right about it being machiavellian to the max. It is puzzling to me that they say they are all about outing anyone who knew about the allegations and covered them up. However it seems pretty obvious to me that John Paul II was in denial about a lot of things, to put it charitably. Yet the uber-conservatives give him a pass and go after Francis, who actually did something about McCarrick, albeit tardily.
DeleteThis quote from the WaPo article stood out:
"...one commentator in the conservative Catholic media sphere, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there’s no question the journalists who published Viganò’s full letter without reporting on it had a mission:
“I think they would all look at it like: They’re not trying to be objective,” the person said. “They are trying to evangelize; they’re trying to spread the good news, spread the message as they understand it. They are activists.”
Michael Sean Winters had a good article on the NCR site today about an "EWTN schism".
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ReplyDelete(Darn spellcheck)
ReplyDeleteI think whatever takes the focus off the victims, whether it's using the scandal to try to get rid of the pope or the pope prevaricating about what he knew, is indefensible.
Vigano is clearly using a tragedy to further his "pure church/no sinners" agenda.
Ivereigh trying to find parallels with Jesus and Pilate in Francis's silence (and thereby implying that this is some godly strategy) likewise makes me impatient.
It is one thing to do all you can to shine light into darkness, and when you fail to ask God to let the truth unfold and set people free.
But nobody in the Vatican has, as yet,done that. Including Francis.