doesn’t mean they understand “optics”…
Damian Thompson reports on the existence of one non-idiot in the curia!
Cardinal Schönborn said in a radio interview: “Obviously a mistake has been made here. Someone who denies the Holocaust, Shoah deniers, cannot be restored to an office in the Church. Here there must be also a certain criticism of the Vatican’s staff practice, which obviously did not examine the matter carefully or did not examine sufficiently the case in the information that they had.”
Agreed. While I think the Pope did the right thing in lifting the excommunications, and indeed is making historic progress in healing the Lefebvrist rift, this PR problem should have been anticipated.
Everyone recognises the uselessness of most English bishops’ press officers, but the Vatican isn’t much better. Visiting the press office in the Sala Stampa is like stepping back into the 1950s; maybe I’m doing it an injustice, but my memories are mostly of grumpy monoglot nuns.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Williamson’s views came to light at such a late stage. They were on the internet for years, but it wasn’t until the Catholic Herald splashed on them that anyone in the Church took notice. Even then, I bet his comments, in English, weren’t translated for the benefit of the army of non-English speakers who run the Vatican.
Hey, here’s a thought: maybe a bunch of old Eurotrash guys who take three hour Italian lunches and presume to tell the rest of us how to conduct our lives should get their facts straight before they go around “forgiving” all the wrong people — and alienating everyone else! Dudes, your “baffling” lack of credible moral authority over the faithful MAY have something to do with **** like this. But what do I know — I don’t have a doctorite in Mystical Theology…
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