Vatican Priest says 'Ne sutor supra crepidam!" To annoying Atheist Busy Body Journalist

One of the things I like about the Ratzinger Forum is the fact I can read translated Italian Press articles. I have to admit my understanding of the Church has been helped by this. There is a tension in the air in Italy with the Church, The State, and Society.

Every time I think we have it bad here I look to Europe. Now I am no expert on people from Europe. I believe that Americans think things get too emotional and out of hand too quick at times on issues. Of course that is following it from afar with my own American bias. Heck maybe things should get heated. Perhaps the American experience has cooled the Hot blood of Italians-Americans a tad over the generations. That might be a good or bad thing. I can tell you this with confidence. We are spoiled as to politics and wimps. If we had to endure an Italian like political year we would all be checking ourselves into the hospital

Now this is regard to the Controversy over the Pope not being allowed to speak at Rome's oldest University. As the world has seen that backfired in a huge magnificent way. Now below is a post that is the work of a writer, a priest who works in the Vatican, who uses the pen name Baronio. He is commenting on the absurdity of some Italian Press and to thers that proclaim the Church is not relevant but can't help to stick it's nose in its business. He is writing this too Eugenio Scalfari, founder of La Repubblica, who has used his newspaper actively to publicize his views and that of his fellow anti-Church intellectuals.

Now what is amusing and instructive is we see this here in the US. How many times have we picked up the paper or the US media and seen people that think religion is all poppycock very much giving opinions on such things as What the Pope thinks about unbaptized babies, to the Pope giving an indulgence if you go to Lourdes this year, to the religious practices of supporters of Mike Huckabee etc etc. Most of which are misinformed and factually off. Anyway from this thread on the Ratzinger Forum here it is:

VATICAN CITY - On Sunday, January 20, Eugenio Scalfari, patriarch of atheism and half-baked theology about Christianity, pontificated in the pages of La Repubblica on the La Sapienza episode with an article entitled "Devout atheists in the garden of the Pope".

Feeling himself to be exempt from criticism by his readers because of the infallibility he has vested in himself, Scalfari has long exercised his own Magisterium, continually attacking and admonishing Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic hierarchy.

It is not surprising that his claim to exercising personal power over public opinion takes the route of censoring the temporal power of the Pope, but dare we express our doubts on the granitic certainties promulgated by Scalfari in his latest lectio magistralis? That a champion of secularity should venture to pass judgment not only the teachings of the Church and its influence on the social and political life of Italy, but even its liturgy, proves once again the ideological commonality shared by liberal secularists with the most controversial protagonists of post-Conciliar liturgical reform.

About these protagonists, Cardinal Ferdinando Antonelli, the great liturgist, who was certainly far from reactionary, once expressed strong reservations: "The most remarkable gap in Fr. Bugnini is his lack of theological training and sensibility. A serious lack, because in the liturgy, every word and every gesture convey a theological concept" (Nicola Giampietro, Il Cardinale Ferninando Antonelli e gli sviluppi della riforma liturgica dal 1948 al 1970, Roma 1998, Studia Anselmiana 121, pag. 264).

Nonetheless, while acknowledging Scalfari's right to protest anything, including the rituals of the Catholic Church it is astounding that he should display his gross incompetence, in commenting on the Pope's January 13 Mass at the Sistine Chapel, writing this:

It made a lot of sense to me that, virtually on the eve of what was to have been the Pope's address at La Sapienza, he celebrated mass at the Sistine Chapel with the old liturgical rite reborn, to prove the U-turn [he has made] with respect to the Second Vatican Council: the Pope with his back turned to the faithful and the mass celebrated in Latin.

The Mass - which, Scalfari should be taught, requires a capital M, please - that Scalfari refers to was the form decreed by Paul VI, based on which the altar used by the celebrant is a single one, regardless of its orientation

And that then he judges it a 'retrograde and regressive' choice that the celebrant, his assistants and the faithful, all faced the Cross, is part of his own personal convictions which are illuminating for what they are by themselves, and which it is useless to dispute.

So what 'old rite' was he referring to? And certainly, the Pope had every right to say Mass as he did without first having to ask permission from the bearded would-be Pope of La Repubblica.

Scalfari's tendency to always and unfailingly have his say about questions internal to the Catholic Church - something he never does about the rituals practised in Tibetan Buddhism or in a Jewish synagogue or in a Muslim mosque - has shown him up worse than usual this time. "Grave and serious lack" of knowledge, indeed, to confuse two plainly different rites evident even to the most inexperienced seminarian.

Which leads us to say, not without subtle pleasure, the Latin saying 'Ne sutor supra crepidam!' - Cobbler, stick to your business! - with the hope that in the future, the infallible Scalfari limits himself to writing about the things he knows.