Friday, March 29, AD 2024 8:01am

PopeWatch: Lettergate

Father Z brings us the word that Lettergate just got a lot worse for the fools running the Vatican:

 

There is an Italian saying that the Devil makes great saucepans, but doesn’t provide lids for them.  Eventually, people will see what’s cooking: the truth will come out.

Just when you may have thought we had gotten to the bottom of The Letter™, or Lettergate, as Ed Pentin called it, more floats by, like a body face down in a slow moving river.

I have several updates about Lettergate – HERE – but this deserves a separate post.  It seems to me that this whole mess needs to be understood and remembered.  Hence, posts.

First it was revealed that the head of the Vatican’s office for communications (not the Holy See Press Office  – a separate but now subordinated entity) doctored a photo of alleged letter of Benedict XVI about a series of booklets about the theology of Pope Francis in order to avoid the embarrassing revelation that Benedict neither read them nor intended to read them.

I said “alleged” letter.  Now we learn that there was even more in Benedict’s original letter that was redacted out of the version that was read to the press during the presentation of the booklet series.  And again Sandro Magister has the story.  HERE

[…]

Between the paragraph omitted in the press release and the valediction there were, in fact, other lines.

And this much could be guessed just by observing the photo of the letter (see above).

In fact, between the first two lines that were made illegible in the photo, at the bottom of the first page of the letter, and the valediction and signature of Benedict XVI on the second half of the second page, there is a space too big to be occupied only by the last part of the paragraph omitted in the press release.

And what else was written there, that Viganò was careful not to read in public and took such pains to cover up in the photo with the eleven booklets on the theology of Pope Francis?

[NB] There was the explanation of the reason why Benedict XVI had not read those eleven booklets nor intended to read them in the future, and therefore why he had declined to write “a brief and dense theological page” of presentation and appreciation for the same, as Viganò had requested of him.

The reason adopted by Benedict XVI in the final lines of his letter – we are told by an incontrovertible source – is the presence among the authors of those eleven booklets of the German theologian Peter Hünermann, who was an implacable critic both of John Paul II and of Joseph Ratzinger himself as theologian and as pope.

About Hünermann, a professor at the university of Tubingen, it may be recalled that he is the author of, among other things, a commentary on Vatican Council II that is the polar opposite of the Ratzingerian interpretation.

It is therefore clear that, given what Benedict XVI writes in the second half of his letter, the first half also takes on a new significance, entirely different from the one that Viganò wanted to attribute to it in his mangled and biased press release.

[…]

Here’s the English rendering of what Benedict wrote in the last part of The Letter™:

Translated:

[…] all the more so in that I am under other obligations to which I have already agreed. [That’s where it seemed to end, before this new part came out.]

Just as a side note, I would like to mention my surprise at the fact that the authors also include Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives. He participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the “Kölner Erklärung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology. The Europäische Theologengesellschaft, which he founded, also was initially designed by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium. Afterward, the ecclesial sentiment of many theologians blocked this tendency, making that organization a normal instrument of encounter among theologians.

I am certain that you will have understanding for my declination, and I cordially greet you.

Yours,

Benedict XVI

Go here to read the rest.  Oh this is so rich.  The Vatican could simply have ignored the letter of the Pope Emeritus.  Instead they tried fraud, and now have to reveal that the Pope Emeritus points out that one of the pet theologians of Pope Francis is a virulent critic of the magisterial authority of popes on moral questions, at least popes prior to the present one.  Way to make a bad story into a complete disaster.  I doubt it was accidental that the Pope Emeritus signed as Benedict XVI, perhaps a reminder to the powers that be that he is reaching the breaking point of his silence?  Pass the popcorn!

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Don L
Don L
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 4:33am

Are we watching a pressure cooker, with a faulty safety valve, about to explode?

Bob Kurland, Ph.D.
Admin
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 6:16am

Where is that famed Italian talent for doing bad things with finesse? Oh, Cesare Borgia–where are you when we need you?

Jerome
Jerome
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 7:08am

It is probably wishful thinking to suggest B16 is close to “reaching the breaking point”. If one reads some of his works, he (B16) seems to think that moral evil is “God’s will.” Read his address at Auschwitz concentration camp in 2006. In the address B16 seems to suggest that the concentration camps were part of “God’s mysterious plan.” If he wrongly thinks that, then he very easily could wrongly think that The Dictator Pope is part of “God’s mysterious plan.”

Morenowthanever
Morenowthanever
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 7:19am

Oh my, what poetic justice. This shortly after PF speaks of the “crafty serpent” who is behind “fake news”. My oh my.

Art Deco
Art Deco
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 8:16am

It’s sort of grossly amusing that Andrew Greeley’s inflammatory and defamatory remarks about the Holy See are now merely descriptive. (During a pontificate it’s a reasonable wager Greeley would have favored).

pat
pat
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 9:59am

Did they not read his humility’s pronouncements on fake news, or did they think it only applied to Hillary bashing pieces?

Anyway – they’re so desperate to convince the world that Francis is Catholic, that they’re even willing to resort to deception. It shouldn’t be that hard.

GregB
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 10:05am

It looks like the new church is coming to take the form of a high pressure boiler room marketing operation. Say whatever needs to be said to close the sale. Make the sale and charge the credit card.

John the Mad
John the Mad
Monday, March 19, AD 2018 6:17pm

Pat:
Agreed. “They” have to convince the world that Francis is Catholic. He requires the cover. Francis must be accepted as Catholic in order to achieve his agenda for the Church. If the world understood that his ambiguous writing and speechifying is a smoke screen for his heterodox agenda and that his devolution of teaching authority to national bishops’ conferences is to allow his un-Catholic teaching to flourish in the most progressive national churches before imposition on the rest, the laity would awake and throw him in the Tiber. (What a diabolical mess.)

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