It was an operatic week in the Vatican. Well, maybe soap-operatic.
The week opened with an Italian animal rights group complaining about the literal circus Cardinal Konrad Krajewski – the papal almoner – put on for poor and needy people in Rome.
An outfit called the Organizzazione Internazionale Protezione Animali issued a press release the day after the circus event, in which OIPA’s president complained that the pope “isn’t on the side of the animals” and called the whole circus trade “contrary to the pope’s ‘ecological magisterium’.”
Oh, bother.
Among the 2,000-odd people Pope Francis and his charity czar treated were orphaned boys and girls, those who have fled war and hunger in their native lands, folks without a roof over their heads, those who are out of work or underemployed, and lots of others variously down-and-out or on the skids or just plain stuck with hardscrabble existence. Some reports said there were more than a hundred prostitutes among the invités.
“The circus offers a different look at life,” Italian papers quoted Krajewski as saying of the show. “What is impossible in human terms, is possible in the circus,” he also said. That’s it – and – that’s pretty much all of it. I mean, no one will accuse this scribbler of shilling for Francis, but if giving homeless people and working poor folk and orphans and refugees and even hookers an afternoon of wholesome fun is wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
About the complaint, one gets the feeling it was a case of carpe diem – a chance for OIPA to get itself in the papers – and it looks like it paid off.
The week closed with another red hat – the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, Cardinal Arthur Roche – getting hot under the collar over a Pillar analysis that wondered whether Roche wasn’t out of his lane in issuing rules for the implementation of Traditionis custodes that were more restrictive than the law itself, which already severely curtailed permissions to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass and other older rites.
“In recent months,” wrote JD Flynn – himself a trained canon lawyer – in a Feb 9th piece, “Roche has [told] at least some U.S. bishops that they do not have the authority to dispense from certain provisions of Traditionis custodes, even while – to the mind of many canonists – the papal text itself does not support that claim.”
“It is an absurdity,” the Where Peter Is blog quoted Roche as saying in response to request for comment, “to think that the prefect of a dicastery would do anything other than exercise the wishes of the Holy Father as clearly outlined in their mandate and the General Norms of [the Apostolic Constitution] Praedicate Evangelium [laying out the Vatican bureaucracy’s new organizational chart].”
“The article in the Pillar,” Roche went on to say, “is not really an attack on me but on the pope’s authority which for Catholics is an astonishing act full of hubris.”
Well, give me garlic and call me smelly.
For one thing, it is anything but absurd. Surely, Roche remembers as far back as 2017, when Pope Francis very publicly told Roche’s predecessor in the Vatican’s liturgy office, Cardinal Robert Sarah, to get back in his lane and stay there after Sarah presumed to interpret some just-issued rules regarding the approval of liturgical texts in translation. Roche should recall the contretemps, as he was secretary under Sarah at the time.
For another, Roche has done the thing Flynn said he’s done, and canonists have wondered whether Roche hasn’t overstepped. It may be a moot point, given that Francis does not seem displeased – for now – with Roche’s management of the Traditionis custodes business. Francis is the pope, and the pope holds all the cards. Nevertheless, it is an open question.
Ink-on-ink is far-and-away this Vatican watcher’s least favorite journalistic sub-genre, and Cardinals-on-ink isn’t far behind, but Roche’s solicited rejoinder is an object lesson in how not to do it. It’s just too good an object lesson to pass up. One is tempted to say that Roche almost illustrates the biblical wisdom: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding” (Prov. 17:28).
It’s not quite John Mitchell telling Carl Bernstein, “Katie Graham’s gonna get her [redacted] caught in a big, fat wringer,” if The Washington Post published their story linking him to the secret campaign fund that paid for the Watergate burglary. Still, it’s not a great look.
The WaPo published Mitchell’s remarks, and the rest is history. Watergate blew up, Nixon resigned, and several of his erstwhile henchmen — including Mitchell — got prison sentences. Ben Bradlee, at least, knew what he was doing. Roche’s remarks will not likely lead to more than eye rolls. All the same, it goes to show you: Ask. The worst you’ll get by way of response is crickets.
• Related at CWR: “Liturgical double standards and the hermeneutic of rupture” (Feb 13, 2023) by James Baresel
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