John Allen has a review of a good book from Italy that is reviewing the PR problems of Pope Benedict's Papacy. See 'Attack on Ratzinger': Italian book assesses Benedict's papacy.
Like him I am very much hoping this comes out in English.
I disagree a tad with Allen on somethings. It is not apparent to me that things would be a whole lot better even 21st Century PR and media safeguards were put into place. In the end we have seen how the media and what Allen in a very interesting discussion calls the "crisis capitalists"do to people in all walks of life even with the best PR.
Before I get to the sex abuse case I note the authors of the book talk about one of these as a crisis.
That is the "Criticism from the Catholic right of Benedict's social encyclical Caritas in Veritate".
Was there really a lot of criticism from the Catholic right on Caritas in Veritate? It seems to me that places such as the Action Institute were in fill fledged promotion and defense of it.
Now it is true that Novak and Weigel had some criticisms of it but those seemed rather fleeting and they did not appear to me to do sustained criticism. While I recognize their importance in the Catholic "right" they are not the sole people on it.
Moving on to the sex abuse case regarding the priest in Oakland and Pope Benedict's involvement in it. Allen mentions this as one of the PR DISASTER revelations he list that are found in the book:
One more nugget: Tornielli and Rodari cite Fr. Marco Valerio Fabbri of Rome's Opus Dei-run University of Santa Croce on the case of Stephen Kiesle, a former Oakland priest and convicted abuser. A 1985 letter from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the bishop in Oakland at the time, saying that Kiesle's case should go slow "for the good of the universal church," has been widely touted as proof of the pope's ambivalent record on the sexual abuse crisis.
Fabbri, however, says that interpretation rests on a misreading of Ratzinger's 1985 letter, which was issued in Latin. The letter speaks of "dispensation," Fabbri says, not expulsion from the clerical state. The issue in the letter was not, therefore, whether Kiesle should be defrocked, but whether he should be released from his obligation of celibacy.
Under canon law, the two things don't automatically go together. Canon 291 states: "Loss of the clerical state does not entail a dispensation from the obligation of celibacy, which only the Roman Pontiff grants." The logic, according to Fabbri, is clear. If a priest's obligation of celibacy automatically ended with laicization, then being laicized under penal law would ipso facto mean freedom to marry in the church. In other words, it would amount to a reward for committing a crime.
The bottom line, Fabbri says, is that by refusing to grant such a dispensation right away in the Kiesle case, Ratzinger was actually being tough with an abuser, not lax.
The obvious question this begs: If that's true -- and it certainly seems a compelling explanation -- why didn't we hear about it right out of the gate from somebody authoritative? Why does this sort of thing always seem to be a day late and a dollar short?.
I am not sure if Allen does not recall this but this explanation of the Pope's thinking and those words "for the good of the Universal Church" came out pretty quick. It came from priests and observers from various political theological branches of the Catholic Church who had the expertise to know what was really go on here.
But Allen is correct no one at the Vatican was that blunt talking on it. Instead you had spokespeople talk a sort of Canon Law Legalese that while correct the media could not understand.
While I cannot know what Benedict was thinking at the time it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that he had no idea why he should approach John Paul the II to move a child abuser of all people to the front of the line so he could get married!!
Media reports was lauding the local Bishop at the time who was demanding this happen because since he had not been technically moved to the LAY STATE under Canon law the media would still call him a Catholic Priest.
Well perhaps the Bishop was correct but the irony of this is that might making the right PR move you are actually perhaps making the wrong moral move.
Regardless if such an explanation had come out RIGHT away FROM THE TOP well Pope Benedict would have looked pretty good. That is a rather misleading press attack on Benedict would have backfired. Instead it was up to the locals that knew of these matters to depend on the media to give them a voice to clear this up. That did not happen.
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