Jeg har de siste ukene flere ganger uttrykt min misnøye med medias unøyaktigheter og feiltolkninger av det som skjedde da Vatikanet opphevet ekskommunikasjonen av fire biskoper tilhørende Pius X broderskapet. Men i dag leste jeg en artikkel fra www.chiesa (fra sist uke), der Sandro Magister alltid skriver godt og informativt. Her har han som vanlig fakta på plass og full oversikt over det som har skjedd, samtidig som han ikke er nådig i sin kritikk; ikke av pave Benedikt, heller ikke av Vatikanets informasjonstjeneste (kanskje noe overraskende), men av Vatikanets ‘stasdirektorat’. Jeg er ikke sikker på om jeg er enig med ham om hvor skylden skal legges for dårlig PR-arbeid, men artikkelen er interessant og kan leses her i sin helhet.
A few days after the events, the lifting of excommunication from the four Lefebvrist bishops is increasingly manifesting itself at the Vatican as a double disaster, of governance and of communication. In the disaster, Pope Benedict XVI found himself to be the one most exposed, and practically alone.
… … to make the misunderstanding worse, there came the uproar over an interview with one of the four bishops granted clemency, Richard Williamson of England, in which he supported ideas denying the Holocaust.
The interview was recorded by a Swedish television station on November 1, 2008, but it was broadcast on January 21 – the same day on which, at the Vatican, the decree was signed revoking the excommunication of Williamson, and of the three other Lefebvrist bishops.
In the media all over the world, the news read as follows: the pope clears a Holocaust denier bishop from excommunication, and welcomes him into the Church.
The tempest that erupted was tremendous. The protests from the Jewish world – but not only from this – were too many to be counted. The Vatican went scrambling for cover, with statements and articles in «L’Osservatore Romano.» The controversy calmed down only after Benedict XVI intervened in person, with two clarifications read at the end of the general audience on Wednesday, January 28: one about the Lefebvrists and their duty of «recognition of the magisterium and authority of the pope and of Vatican Council II,» and the other about the Holocaust.
The question comes naturally: was all of this really inevitable,
once the pope had decided to lift the excommunication of the Lefebvrist bishops? Or was the disaster produced by the errors and omissions of the men who are supposed to implement the pope’s decisions? The facts point to the second hypothesis. …
… There is an illuminating comparison to be made. The previous day, on January 23, the same press office had organized, with great pomp, the launching of the Vatican channel on YouTube. And a few days later, on January 29, it announced, again with a great deployment of persons and resources, an international conference on Galileo Galilei, scheduled for the end of May. In each case, the objective was to transmit the authentic meaning of the initiative to the media.
But nothing of the sort was done for the decree concerning the Lefebvrist bishops. And yet all of the elements necessary for an appropriate announcement were there. Even the timing was right. The week of prayer for Christian unity was underway; Holocaust remembrance day was just around the corner; in Italy just a few days earlier, on January 17, there had been the day for dialogue between Catholics and Jews.
Cardinal Kasper, the leading curia official in both areas, would have been the ideal person to present the decree, situate it within the persistent situation of schism, explain the purpose of lifting the excommunication, and summarize the points on which the Lefebvrists were being asked to reconsider their positions, from full acceptance of Vatican Council II to the overcoming of their anti-Judaism. As for Williamson, it would not have been difficult to clearly delineate his situation: if he were to remain firm on his aberrant ideas denying the Holocaust, he would exclude himself from the pope’s gesture of «mercy.»
And yet, if nothing of this was done, it was not the fault of the Vatican press office and its director, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, but of the offices of the curia from which they receive their orders. These offices of the curia converge in the secretariat of state.