Cardinal Sodano is a catastrophe waiting to happen
His sinister record would give the press a field day if he was left in charge of the conclave
By William Oddie on Friday, 9 July 2010
Dr William Oddie is a leading English Catholic writer and broadcaster. He edited The Catholic Herald from 1998 to 2004 and is the author of The Roman Option and Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy.
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Cardinal Sodano has blocked investigations of child abuse by senior Church figures (Photo: CNS)
Most accounts of Cardinal Schönborns recent wigging by the Pope for his criticism of Cardinal Angelo Sodano (for calling accusations of clerical child abuse petty gossip) tended to deflect attention from the fact that Sodano himself did not escape criticism. However wrong Cardinal Schönborn may have been to make his criticisms to journalists and not to the authorities in Rome, the fact is that he was dead right about Sodano. The wording of the Vaticans press release made his real mistake clear: when accusations are made against a cardinal, specified the statement, competency falls exclusively to the Pope. After Cardinal Schönborn clarified his own remarks, Cardinal Sodano was made to do the same: The word chiacchiericcio [gossip] was erroneously interpreted [hum, hum] as disrespectful to the victims of sexual abuse, towards whom Cardinal Angelo Sodano nourishes the same feelings of compassion
as
the Holy Father.
I think not. Cardinal Sodano appears to have an exceptionally sinister record of shielding abusers, particularly eminent ones, which goes back many years. He blocked a 1995 investigation into subsequently proven accusations of child abuse against Schönborns predecessor as Archbishop of Vienna, Hans Hermann Groër. The most shameful episode was his consistent defence over decades of Fr Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legion of Christ. And, according to reports in the National Catholic Reporter, he had his reasons: he stands accused of receiving a great deal of money and other benefits from the Legion of Christ. In 1998, according to reports, Sodano halted investigations into sexual abuse by Maciel then being carried out by the CDF. One of Pope Benedicts first actions was to depose Maciel and forbid him to function as a priest.
Cardinal Sodanos continuing danger to the Church comes from the fact that he is still Dean of the College of Cardinals. This means that if the Pope were to die before he can be removed, Sodano will be in charge of the obsequies (he will preach the panegyric) and of the conclave: and the international press will have a field day, with millions of column inches about his alleged support for child abusers, his corruption and his sheer incompetence. This is a disaster which must not be allowed to happen. Sodano must go, soon.
Pope Makers and Cardinal Sinsby Hilary White POSTED: 3/12/13
REMNANT COLUMNIST, Rome
www.remnantnewspaper.com/Archives/2013-rome-reports-hilary-white.htm
ROME, March 12, 2013 The waiting time is drawing to a close. This afternoon, the cardinals will have their first ballot. Starting last Wednesday, the cardinals agreed that their discussions will be continued under greater secrecy. This means that we are left to examine the evidence and facts we already know to piece together, if not the outcome of the conclave, then at least the issues looming in the minds of the cardinal electors.
On that day it was announced that the press conferences organised at the Pontifical North American College, up the hill from St. Peters, where US cardinals were giving politely evasive and non-specific non-information to US and British journalists, had been cancelled. It came out that the reason was that some Italian cardinals, whose interpretation of the oath of secrecy was a little more, shall we say, flexible, were giving Italian journalists what amounted to transcripts of the meetings.
And there we have in a nutshell a hint as to how the Vatican administration works at the highest levels: chaotically, with no very strong connections to reality.
As always, the official line about the substance of the cardinals discussions is slightly at odds with the quiet, unofficial but much more frank assessments coming off the record. Officially we are told that the most important issue for the cardinals is the New Evangelisation (always capitalised). This favourite buzzword among Catholic prelates and writers of press releases, means the attempt to reach out to the majority of Catholics in the dechristianised west who no longer practice their faith, or even know much about it.
Of course, what is not mentioned is that the reality is that the loss of faith has been largely a product of the failure of the men running the Church in the last 50 years to teach anyone anything about it. There is a line in the old Baltimore Catechism: our purpose in life is to know God, to love Him and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next. Take careful note of the order given. We cannot love what we do not know. Knowing comes first. Can it be surprising to the cardinals gathered here that, the Church on the whole having refused to teach the Faith in the last 40 years that Catholics dont know Him, arent interested in serving Him in this life, or have any hope of happiness in the next?
Another unpleasant piece of reality that wont get mentioned at the official press briefings, is that we know the origins of the corruption in the Vatican. One blessing of the Vatileaks affair is that at least officials are no longer trying to pretend that everything inside is just fine. But it is still being treated as a strange and inexplicable anomaly, unconnected to anything else. Officially we are still being asked to pretend that no one really understands where all the filth came from.
But it is perfectly clear, even to some in the mainstream secular media: the anti-Christian dogmas that have seeped into the Church, that Paul VI called the smoke of Satan, have created a moral corruption so entrenched in the upper management of the Catholic Church that it has created crippling administrative chaos. The Vatileaks affair has exposed the depth of the moral and organisational rot.
I find that I am not cheerful at the prospect of a new pope. It is difficult to be confident that the men of the conclave are capable of facing these awful truths. The truths of the crises of belief, of vocations to the clergy and religious life, of sexual continence among priests, of the abandonment of Catholicity in academia and schools, the ideological warping and collapse of the religious orders, the abandonment of religious purpose by Catholic charities, the financial and sexual corruption of the Vatican bureaucracy. Ultimately the whole catastrophe of the global collapse of Catholic order, discipline and culture, and the growth of a hostile and aggressive secularism and the dictatorship of relativism in the outside world, that Pope Benedict was warning about from his first day to his last, has been their own doing.
Our current calamity in the Church, and much of that of the secular world, was produced by a hierarchy and clergy who, starting about 1965, decided that it was more important to go with the flow of the world than to continue the uncomfortable and difficult work of directing it toward salvation. For decades, many of the men sitting in those plush chairs in the Paul VI Audience Hall last week have variously either failed to expunge the anti-Christian dogmas that infiltrated the Church or were themselves the ones pushing them. One can always hope in fact one is obliged to but, judging from their comments to the press, those men dont seem to me to be in a mood to face up to these uncomfortable realities.
In his column on Friday for the far-left National Catholic Reporter, the well-informed liberal commentator and Vatican watcher John Allen said, Privately, some cardinals feel that if Benedict XVI had better administrative support, he might not have felt compelled to resign.
Speaking on background, Allen continued, one cardinal told NCR on Tuesday that he had raised the question in the General Congregation meetings of whether the cardinals had done enough to help Benedict by which he meant, in part, pressuring the popes support team to get their act together.
This is something that the Catholic faithful have been asking for decades. Why do we all know what is wrong in the Church, and they still dont? We would also dearly love to see the hierarchy get their act together.
Can any Catholics be left, whether liberal or conservative or traditionalist who still trust that the men inside the walls have the will to do what is best, or even what they may think is best for the Church? How many of us now have any confidence that they know what the priorities must be, or that they remember that the first and last aim is the salvation of souls?
I read last night another of the daily letters by an American Vaticanista, Robert Moynihan, the editor of Inside the Vatican. He related a conversation he had with an anonymous cardinal who also seemed deeply troubled by Pope Benedicts abdication. I was relieved to see that this cardinal, whoever he was, also seemed to understand, and perhaps shares the terrible sense of foreboding that has filled me and many others since this whole thing began. Seeing the mans disquiet, Moynihan asked him what we could all do for them.
A look passed over his eyes which seemed filled with shadows and concerns. I was surprised at his intensity
He squeezed my hand.
Pray for us, he said. Pray for us.
He turned as if he needed to go. I have to go.
He took a step away from me, then turned again.
It is a dangerous time. Pray for us.