The Vatican needs real PR guys, not Kodak moment guys. It may be a good thing the Vatican doesn't realize that.

The following excerpt is taken from the blog site PaddyAnglican and deals with another of the new norms recently released by the Vatican. In it's own way it's as insulting to our Protestant brothers and sisters as coupling women's ordination with clerical sexual abuse. It is another in a long line of Vatican repudiations of ecumenism under the guise of issueing statements about Catholic doctrine and dogma. It seems there was something to tick off virtually everyone in the new Canonical norms.


The publication this week of the Vatican Canon law document, ‘NORMAE DE GRAVIORIBUS DELICTIS’ heaped further gratuitous insult on the Protestant churches when the offence of celebrating the Eucharist with members of ‘ecclesial communities’ (Protestants) was given an equivalence to “the taking or retaining for a sacrilegious purpose or the throwing away of the consecrated species.” In other words celebrating the Eucharist with Protestants is the same as chucking the consecrated host in the bin!

I protest! This cannot be defended as ‘ecumenical honesty’ or ‘speaking the truth in love’ – this is quite simply sectarian and hateful language and has no place in any document which claims Christian provenance.

But there is more – As if that were not enough, sharing equal status with the sacramental crime of celebrating the Eucharist with Protestants is the further sacramental crime of attempting to ordain women to the priesthood and the moral crime of Pedophilia! All of these are described as grave delicts.

I protest! I protest again, but this time not just for Protestants, but for all women who are told that their feelings of vocation are a sacramental crime and that those who would ordain them will like them be excommunicated.

I protest for the children whose horrendous suffering is put on a par with either a Eucharistic irregularity or a misguided sense of vocation.

I protest against the subversion of Love to the Law.
I protest against those who would seek to defend the indefensible.
I protest against those who would dress up prejudice in doctrine.
I protest against those who say that this is the will of God.
I protest against those who think that for God to Love them he must hate others.
I am a Protestant and I protest!

Another over looked Vatican message is the Papal appointment and response to the Legionaires of Christ which was also released last week. I've maintained for a long long time that the Legion would not be touched in any way which would denounce it's credibility because the Vatican's concern would be to keep it's credibility. At an estimated worth of 33 billion, a corps of some 800 priests, and a slavish adherence to traditional notions of obedience to papal authority, it was too valuable to hold to any meaningful accountability. Check this excerpt out from the Legion owned news outlet Zenit:

Archbishop Velasio De Paolis of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo has been asked by the Pope to govern the congregation in his name "during the time necessary to complete the path of renewal."

The 74-year-old Italian prelate is the president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See.

The Legion of Christ is being guided by the Church in a renewal, following the discovery that its founder, Father Marcial Maciel, fathered children and was guilty of other crimes. (Interesting how Zenit can't write: raped children including those he fathered.)

Last Saturday, Archbishop De Paolis visited the Legion's headquarters in Rome, entrusting its superiors with the papal letter naming him delegate, and a personal letter of that date in which he expressed his own thoughts and recommendations for the Legionaries.

In the Italian-language note, he affirmed Benedict XVI's intention that the papal delegate work as a "tangible witness of [his] closeness." And he noted the Pope's awareness of the "great number of members" of the congregation who show "sincere zeal" and a "fervent religious life."

Gift of a vocation

The archbishop said the Church, inspired not by human criteria but by those of the Spirit, "contemplates the beautiful reality that you are, that your congregation is." (Quite frankly this language is nausea inducing.)

"The Pope, through me," he said, "now wants to accompany you on this path, so that without allowing yourselves to be discouraged by the tragic events behind you, you can find joy in your current [reality], in the gift of the religious, priestly and missionary vocation that you have received."

Archbishop De Paolis affirmed that the Legionaries' vocation comes from the Heart of Christ and his love. And he invited the priests and seminarians to give thanks to God "for the work that he has accomplished in such a way" and "for his goodness, his mercy and his fidelity." (I guess it's better for the Vatican to claim God worked through a sociopathic predator than to admit it might have been the alternative 'spirit' working through a thoroughly perverted sociopathic predator.

***************************************

Here's what I take from the Vatican's busy last week. Sharing the Eucharist with protestants is worse than sharing the Eucharist with Catholic priestly pedophiles--much worse in fact. Ordaining women priests, for which a Catholic priest or bishop will be both laicised and excommunicated, is worse than ordaining known sexual deviants. Believe me, the irregularity of Maciel's ordination is pretty indicative that someone knew Maciel had serious issues--like the freaking bishop uncle who actually did ordain him after essentially seminary homeschooling him. Maybe we should have some sort of Canon law that prevents family members from ordaining family members who get tossed out of two seminaries.

In the meantime we now have a norm that allows bishops to essentially engage in their own inquisitions, and clerical abuse norms that once again don't apply to bishops as either perpetrators or colluders. Only the Pope has that jurisdiction through the CDF. And of course, pontifical secrecy still applies to the whole process in order to protect all concerned. How thoughtful. I'm sure that's really appreciated by prelates like Cardinal Sodano who can still gum up the works in secret--for 'donations' and the rights of the accused.

In the end we have some cosmetic tweaking of clerical abuse norms which sure look like their main function was to sugar coat another serious shot at both women's ordination and ecumenism. At the same time this also serves to sneak in the fact that bishops have had their individual autonomy and authority increased and their accountability to the Pope as their sole authority underscored. A sort of setting in stone of the 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back" kind of hierarchical accountability. It's the same mentality that kept Maciel going for so long and will apparently serve to save the Legion.

Oh and in case Regnum Christi members think the Pope is solicitous of them, forget it. It's really about the money you bring in, the priests the Legion has and the blind obedience the Legion formation program inculcates---because it's always about money and priests and blind obedience. These are the three corners on which the traditional Vatican stool has rested.

So what's the hidden lining in all of this? It's that true believers are starting to wonder. Right now the anger is directed at what they desperately need to see as the Vatican propensity for PR disasters. That will change. The fact is people will not re evaluate their view of emotionally important people or institutions because an outsider like me spews facts that intellectually contradict the person or institution. The only agent capable of causing a review of this kind is the behavior of the other half of the relationship. I suspect a number of True Believers are starting to undergo this process precisely because the object of their faith is forcing it. The PR issue is just the beginning.

Even a True believer is going to have difficulty getting their head around the fact they have committed a grave sacramental act if they share the Eucharist with their protestant friends at some occasion like a funeral. They would have to come to terms with the fact they committed a sacramental act determined to be canonically worse than active pedophiles saying Mass and giving Communion to their child victims. It will get worse for trads when they actually have to grapple with the fact that the theological logic behind the norms makes this view mandatory. Eventually some of them will come to the conclusion these norms aren't based in protecting any real form of Jesus, they are based in protecting the theology and the assumptions in the theology which underpin the clerical priesthood. None of these norms are about Christi, they are about the theology describing 'in persona christi', and that ultimately means the sacramental authority in the whole clerical system.

All of these recent Vatican moves are irritating and anger inducing to progressives, victims, and Christians of all sorts, but they are also potential sources of serious questioning for True Believers. It's this last consequence to which the Vatican seems blind. That ultimately may be a very good thing for the Universal Church.