An article from the Andrew Klavan, which I here reprint in full:
When Benedict XVI was pope, the New York Times ran a scurrilous, distortion-infested campaign intended to link the former Joseph Ratzinger with the awful abuse scandals that have so harmed the Catholic Church. These pieces were manifestly dishonest and substance-free when you read them through. But the Times editors know most people don’t read the articles — they read the headlines and the first paragraph.
So this morning, the pseudo-journalists at the Times began their campaign of lies against the new pope, Francis, under the damning (and damnable) headline: “Starting a Papacy, Amid Echoes of a ‘Dirty War:’
One Argentine priest is on trial in Tucumán Province on charges of working closely with torturers in a secret jail during the so-called Dirty War, urging prisoners to hand over information. Another priest was accused of taking a newborn from his mother…
Another clergy member offered biblical justification for the military’s death flights, according to an account by one of the pilots anguished about dumping drugged prisoners out of aircraft and into the sea.As he starts his papacy, Francis, until this month Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, faces his own entanglement with the Dirty War, which unfolded from 1976 to 1983. As the leader of Argentina’s Jesuits for part of that time, he has repeatedly had to dispute claims that he allowed the kidnapping of two priests in his order in 1976, accusations the Vatican is calling a defamation campaign.
This is just despicable, isn’t it? Lead with examples of some priests who were wicked then segue into a paragraph about the pope to make it sound like he was one of them. Really – for shame.
Reading more deeply into the story — which I did so you don’t have to — we learn that the pope’s “entanglement,” involved hiding fugitives from the government bad guys, pleading for the release of two priests and helping one guy who looked like him escape by lending him his papers and a priest get-up. Which last is actually pretty cool. Go, Pope.
To get behind the motivation of the Times propagandists one has to turn to today’s excellent column by the Wall Street Journal’s South America columnist, Mary Anastasia O’Grady, or as I always call her, the lady with the name like a nun. Here’s Sister O’Grady explaining it all to you in her column entitled “Behind the Campaign to Smear the Pope:”
One might have expected a swell of pride from Argentine officialdom when the news broke that the nation has produced a man so highly esteemed around the world. Instead the Kirchner government’s pit bulls in journalism—men such as Horacio Verbitsky, a former member of the guerrilla group known as the Montoneros and now an editor at the pro-government newspaper Pagina 12—immediately began a campaign to smear the new pontiff’s character and reputation at home and in the international news media.
The calumny is not new. Former members of terrorist groups like Mr. Verbitsky, and their modern-day fellow travelers in the Argentine government, have used the same tactics for years to try to destroy their enemies—anyone who doesn’t endorse their brand of [leftist] authoritarianism.
Miss O’Grady goes on to quote Graciela Fernandez Meijide, who served on the national commission that investigated the Dirty War atrocities: ”Of all the testimony I received, never did I receive any testimony that Bergoglio was connected to the dictatorship.” And later: ”I have the impression that what bothers the current president is that Bergoglio would not get in line, that he denounces the continuation of extreme poverty.”
In other words, the New York Times has signed on to a smear campaign engineered by a left-wing wannabe dictatorship. I know: backward reels the mind in shock!
Listen, no one can blame the Times editors for holding a pre-emptive grudge against the God who will one day consign them to Malebolge, the eighth circle of hell where the liars go. It’s an unpleasant place and involves a lot of demons with big claws and so forth. But they might consider that a path yet lies open to their salvation. It’s called journalism. They might want to try it before it’s too late.
My only comment: I do not have many Leftwing friends. Perhaps they find my personality abrasive. One that I do have expressed the idea that Pope Benedict retired because of his involvement in the homosexuality scandal in the Church. He seemed to think the Pope should have been lead away in handcuffs because of his involvement, which my friend seemed to think consisted of covering up the scandal rather than cleaning house.
I assumed his comment was typical Leftwing insanity. The Left so often says things that are not merely wrong but insanely, uproariously wrong, wrong-headed and wrong-hearted, that after a while one simply comes to expect a stream of perfect slander and a chunky vomit of lies and wickedness to come from their mouths without cease, and one does not look for a reason.
Now I realize there was a reason: my friend had been parroting the slanders he suckled in at the teat of the New York Times, that Pravda of the West. All is explained.
Another good commentary is on Ed Peters’ blog:
If all else fails, accuse a prelate of “not speaking out”. Oh, he did? Then he obviously did not speak out ENOUGH, or They would have instantly folded.
One of my alleged co-religionists villified John Paul II for allegedly not denouncing the civil war in Bosnia. It is not necessary, as one might think, to have made a thorough tabulation of everything John Paul ever said or wrote; it was not on the eleven o’clock sound bites, so it didn’t happen.
Meanwhile there are plenty of people walking about who actively aided and abetted the Communist take-over of Vietnam and who brag of thus helping, in their own little way, in murdering over a million people and driving others to take to the high seas in anything that could float to escape.
Dear Mr. Wright:
Amen! Absolute agreement! Hatred of the Catholic Church by the fascist Left is the last “respectable” bigotry among Western intellectuals or better, pseudo intellectuals.
Your comments also ties in with recent irritating examples I’ve seen of “cultural” anti Catholicism. A sneer by a character in a recent “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” episode about how the evil Catholic Church opposes IVF procedures because it’s a sin. NOT a word was given about WHY the Church says IVF procedures are unethical. And I actually have a copy of the Vatican’s long, patient explanation of why IVF is wrong.
And of course there’s the current campaign by the left to make so called homosexual “marriage” acceptable and opposition to it somehow wicked.
Sincerely, Sean M. Brooks
No, I don’t think Benedict resigned because of scandals.
I have a somewhat different view.
In the last years of Pope John Paul II’s reign, his ill and frail health meant that the curia, for the most part, had a huge influence on his decisions and actions. Cardinal Ratzinger, foremost amongst them given his former position, was, in many ways, THE power player and eminence griese within the curia.
I think he realized that, at his age and eventually declining health, he could soon wind up in a very similar position–with someone *else* running the show in many ways. Or worse, we’d get a factional dispute, and the Church’s effectiveness even more diluted as no one gets anything done.
So why *not* retire, give away, and let someone else have the reins, for the good of Mother Church? It was a brave and smart act on his part.
There are at least two decent arguments against papal resignations but, as you point out, there’s at least one good argument in favor. So reasonable people can differ.
Benedict XIV, we may be sure, gave it more thought than any of us before deciding — no later than 2010, when he said as much in print — that it could be appropriate for a Pope to resign when his powers were failing, as long as the situation was no more than ordinarily dangerous. I’m inclined to agree with him, for what little that’s worth.
Cardinal Ratzinger several times formally petitioned JPII to resign as his health failed. A couple of different folks basically looked at the resignation, slapped themselves in the head and said “Oh, duh, why didn’t I see that?!?!?”
Is that confirmed? I’ve heard stories about informal requests, but not of formal petitions.
Personally, I think John Paul was right not to resign — even though I agree with Benedict about papal resignations in general. In addition to the usual reasons, JP2 was such a huge figure he would inevitably have overshadowed his successor as long as he was alive.
I heard it from a guy who I trust not to mention such a thing unless it was formally done; over at The American Catholic, immediately after the news came out.
I think both of the Popes chose the right thing– very nice yin/yang balance thing going on to keep folks from going too far to either side of the path. And, frankly, JPII’s condition was the one that needed the “I am still a person” defense, and with him being so outgoing– well, reversing them just wouldn’t have worked nearly as well.
“But they might consider that a path yet lies open to their salvation. It’s called journalism. They might want to try it before it’s too late.”
Beautiful. Last night, read this passage from Lumen Gentium, speaking of how the Church is the Body of Christ:
“This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.”
And that’s the ticket: if journalists practiced journalism as a form of truth-seeking, there is grace in that. The truth, as a reflection of the Truth, sanctifies. And all sanctification impels towards unity.
Chesterton says somewhere that once one stops hating the Church, one starts loving it. I don’t suppose that would be OK with the NYT.
Of course the NYT hates the pope. It’s the house organ of a rival sect.
Amen to that. The devils know who the angels are.
Indeed, the NYT’s brand of American Leftism is only the most protestant form of Protestantism.
Luther rejected the papacy and portions of the canonical Scriptures; Calvin rejected most of the sacraments (and the idea of free will); the Quakers rejected all outward sacraments and clergy; the Unitarians rejected the Trinity; the Deists rejected the Bible. Your modern atheist rejects all these things and adds God to the list; but he does not reject the one thing that would set him free from the sectarian bounds of Protestantism. He does not reject anti-Catholicism. Sometimes his religion consists of nothing else.
I doubt the New York Times hates THE pope so much as they hate THIS pope. If his views were along the lines of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, we would hear economiums to faith and tradition that would make your priest blush.
Just as big technology companies can get away with an appalling lack of federal EEOC scrutiny for kissing Obama’s ring, so too will the media howlings cease and the praise of religious obedience begin when one of their gay seminarian friends makes it into power.
Do not be deceived: They have no problems with authority…that’s on their side. Which might be a good thing to remember if you have to conduct ecumenical worship services with the various fleeing dissidents this superstructure will undoubtedly start flinging away as it crashes. All human institutions not possessing an actual soul are subject to capture by the demons of human ambition and temporal corruption. They need not even control them completely: Their favorite sport is to create mayhem, confusion, and obscenity in various extreme members of the body they nominally control, then disappear from view or throw responsibility to an unsuspecting higher authority when justifiably angry avengers come looking for blood.
(And whether this is done to Catholics or Boy Scouts, as an American in the Puritan tradition from John Winthrop to John Quincy Adams, I must disagree with the Catholic church’s opposition to capital punishment and recommend public execution for those found responsible for such heinous crimes.)
As well as any of the ruling underclass on the Cathedral’s payroll.
I have heard a similar rule about human institutions: any institution not deliberately and forthrightly conservative it its constitution and by-laws will sooner or later end up leftist.
I doubt the New York Times hates THE pope so much as they hate THIS pope. If his views were along the lines of the current Archbishop of Canterbury, we would hear economiums to faith and tradition that would make your priest blush.
Yes, and ‘if wishes were horses’. . . .
If a man’s views were along those lines, he would not and could not be Pope. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, and as such, must be Catholic and adhere to Catholic doctrine; and it is the doctrine that the Times hates. In fact, the Times is still in the state of fatuous hope regarding Francis: it has heard that he is an advocate for the poor, and therefore imagines him to be a reliable American Leftist. If you want to see hatred of a Pope, look at the Times’ attitude towards Benedict XVI — or John Paul II — or Paul VI — or, indeed, any Pope whatever, once the editorial board made the shocking discovery that this Pope, too, was Catholic despite their most desperate wishes to the contrary.
I am as happy to hear that the pope is at least nominally Catholic as I am to hear that Donald Trump is still willing to act the part of an American patriot, especially when Matt Drudge isn’t.
But neither Trump nor the pope can work within the current setup of their existing institutions to restore good governance or doctrinal purity.
When a business or institution gets big enough, there is simply too much motivation at the top to see men and women of a particular time, place, and tradition as but replaceable worker units…or worship units…or voter units.
And a corresponding lack of desire to say something like why should we support the Mexicans who are not part of our nation while denigrating those Americans we have already degraded?
Or what have the rich and powerful ‘champions of the poor’ done but used the poor as clubs against the less-rich and middle class, many of whom actually have worked hard and lived righteously all their lives?
But neither Trump nor the pope can work within the current setup of their existing institutions to restore good governance or doctrinal purity.
In the case of the Church, it has been done before, not once but several times. You can find a good short summary in G. K. Chesterton’s book The Everlasting Man, in the chapter called The Five Deaths of the Faith. One of the ‘deaths’ was answered, in part, by the great monastic reform of St. Dominic and St. Francis — by the begging friars preaching Christ in the fields and streets and villages, preaching even and especially to those bishops and abbots who had grown cold in the faith and treated Christians, as you say, as ‘replaceable worship units’.
The specific example of St. Francis is why the present Pope chose Francis as his regnal name — and why he has refused all the material trappings of the Papacy, right down to the traditional red shoes. Pope Francis is not only a devout Christian (‘nominally Catholic’ indeed!) but an expert showman; he has developed, over a lifetime spent ministering to the barrio-dwellers of Buenos Aires, a remarkable knack for combining practical action with the sort of theatrical gesture that inspires others to act. It is no accident that he wears shabby black shoes and will wash the feet of inmates in a youth prison this Holy Thursday: these are the theatrical gestures. And it is no accident that he has only conditionally confirmed the Curial staff in their posts, and explicitly reserves the right to dismiss them without notice: that is a preparation for the practical action.
I believe we will see remarkable things from this Pope, unless he is struck down by an assassin’s bullet (which, alas, seems likely, given his disregard for security); and if he is struck down, he will be remembered as a martyr, and a thousand Francises will spring up to take his place and carry on his work.