"Has His Gorgeousness turned?" is the cryptic question asked by a correspondent in response to my post, 'Two Popes Lock Horns and a PN Lay Person gets Uppity'.
"Cryptic", I say, only because of my limited acquaintance with the Catholic chattering classes and so, my ignorance of the Vaticanistas' nickname for Pope Benedict's personal secretary (and the secretary to the Papal Household, i.e. that of Pope Francis). It was - perhaps unintentionally - a very significant question: it goes right to the heart of the battle in the Vatican between conservative and liberal, orthodox and modernist. Many would say, between truth and prevarication, between good and evil.
Archbishop Georg Ganswein is the oh-so-cool German around whose suave person so much gossip has swirled since the furore surrounding publication of Des Profondeurs de Nos Coeurs (From the Depths of our Hearts), co-authored by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Cardinal Robert Sarah. To those in the know, Archbishop Ganswein is Gorgeous George.
He it was, according to Italian journalist Antonio Socci, who was pointed out very early in Benedict's papacy, by his predecessor as Prefect to the Papal Household, to none other than whistle-blower Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, as "Gestapo! Gestapo!"
To have acquired two such mutually-opposed epithets as 'Gorgeous' and 'Gestapo' in the course of his career as Benedict's secretary and more recently as Prefect of Francis' Pontifical Household would seem quite an achievement. Perhaps they reflect on his respective employers and his role in regard to them ...
On his promotion to prefect of the papal household - an appointment which entailed promotion from monsignor to archbishop - Italians hailed him as 'Bel Giorgo', which Time translated as 'Gorgeous George', and the nickname has stuck.
Such is his "elegance and austerity", according to fashion celeb Donatella Versace, that way back in 2007 he inspired her spring collection. He has adorned the cover of the Italian edition of Vanity Fair. Scurrilous reports loaded with vile connotations - to which I will not provide a link - label him as "The Pope's Live-In Partner".
But in his 'Gestapo' persona, Ganswein is said by Vigano to have "exercised abusive and systematic control towards the Supreme Pontiff ever since the beginning of his pontificate".
Vigano supplies convincing evidence to support his claim, including an allegation that Ganswein the Gatekeeper (there, I've just awarded him a third epithet) denied him an audience with Pope Benedict in 2012, with the words, "Monsignor Vigano is the last person who can approach Pope Benedict!"
Why should any of this matter? Is it all just a storm in a chalice? Should our NZ Bishops, for instance, take any notice of Gorgeous George? They would at least be well advised to reflect on the ramifications of 'Bookgate'.
I suppose it was Ganswein's denial of the now-proven fact that Des Profondeurs de nos Coeurs, written in defence of the age-old Catholic Tradition of priestly celibacy, was co-authored by his boss, Benedict, and the orthodox Cardinal Robert Sarah, which provoked my correspondent's question, "Has His Gorgeousness turned"? and which properly absorbs our attention.
Ganswein the Gatekeeper has been glued to Pope Benedict's side since his election to the papacy, pictured adjusting his cope, putting on his hat, helping him robe, holding up babies for bestowal of the papal kiss. GG's so photogenic, that should you wish you could browse more than 2000 photos:
https://www.gettyimages.co.nz/photos/georg-gaenswein?family=editorial&sort=mostpopular&phrase=georg%20gaenswein
To all intents and purposes, Ganswein has looked Benedict's ever-faithful retainer:
- In 2016 he announced the two popes as a single 'expanded' papal office (which didn't go down well with Francis);
- in 2017 he read a letter of Benedict's at the requiem of orthodox Cardinal Joachim Meisner which described the deceased as not losing faith, "even if the boat (of Peter) has taken on so much water as to be on the verge of capsizing" (which wouldn't have gone down well with Francis);
- in 2018 he helped launch Rod Dreher's The Benedict Option with a speech which haloed Benedict as the saviour of Christendom;
- in 2019, in a speech to high-ranking members of the German legal system, he proclaimed that the Church "seems often to have lost herself in a strife within the Church from which even many bishops do not anymore find a way out" and instead act "as if they were but politicians from different political parties who aim at winning the next election."
Such bishops, he said, do not act like "shepherds of the flock which Christ Himself has entrusted to them". - He concluded with, "The Omega and goal of the dignity of man however, is the sanctification of man - and his being with God in eternity. This is the final horizon, in front of which alone our life can succeed."
All good, vintage Benedictine. But, significantly, just about as many pix in the Ganswein Gallery show him with Francis as with Benedict. He's described by the Spectator as "a kind of jailer, shuttling back and forth between Benedict and Pope Francis. He is said to spend half the day with Benedict and the other half with Francis."
Ganswein's declaration, in 2018, that Benedict's 'confirmation' of Vigano's testimony calling for Pope Francis' resignation over the McCarrick scandal was 'fake news' gave a hint of a change in nature of his role, from gatekeeper to caregiver.
Because Edward Pentin of the National Catholic Register had reported that the Register had "independently confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to Benedict, and the pope emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal (Tarcisio) Bertone to impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature".
And now, in his 'Intervention' last week on the matter of Bookgate', Archbishop Vigano (who seems to have thrown all caution to the winds, and if only many more prelates would follow suit) states that Ganswein's statement was "in contradiction of what Pope Benedict himself wrote in the exchange of letters made with Cardinal Sarah. It is a sensational as well as slanderous insinuation towards the most eminent Cardinal Robert Sarah, promptly denied by same".
Ganswein was reported at first to have been ordered by a "furious" Pope Francis to repudiate Benedict's authorship. Two days later, Ganswein was in denial, saying that at no time during the week preceding the furore did Francis even mention The Book.
But, hello: in the American Spectator George Neumayr is saying Pope Francis did order Ganswein to pressure Pope Benedict - whom Neumayr describes as "a prisoner of the Vatican' - into denying his authorship of The Book.
Ganswein "freaked out", says Neumayr, because the media had gone all-out against the book as a polemic designed to embarrass Pope Francis. "He bullied Pope Benedict into taking his name off (The Book's cover)", says Neumayr. "Ganswein has been on the side of the bad guys from the beginning.
https://spectator.org/the-prisoner-of-the-vatican/
"Not long after assuming power, Jorge Bergoglio took a veiled swipe at his predecessor (Benedict). He told an interviewer that Vat II had encouraged openness to "modern culture" but that "very little was done in that direction," a shortcoming he promised to correct: "I have the humility and ambition to want to do something".
" Hah!" say I.
Contrast that comment with one of Pope Benedict XVI's not long before, in one of his last speeches before abdicating the papacy, lamenting the liberalism that snuck into the Church after Vatican II. To this liberalism, he traced “so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed, the liturgy was trivialized.” We see the two popes here in stark opposition.
It's been said that Pope Benedict has broken his promise to play shtum. (In this context of Teutonic warfare, Sergeant Schultz's rule of thumb seems particularly appropriate.) But truth be told, Pope Francis himself had urged his predecessor to continue to contribute to Church affairs. Pope Francis told Italy’s Corriere della Sera – in 2013 – that he’d spoken with Benedict about the matter of his “retirement”, and decided with him that he ought to be involved in Church life.
“We have spoken about it,” the Corriere quoted Francis as saying, “and we decided together that it would be better that he see people, get out, and participate in the life of the Church.”
Perhaps the events of the past week give us a glimpse of a chameleon-like change in Ganswein's political coloration, which bearing in mind Francis' 2018 verbal dismissal of Archbishop Charles J Chaput - "(Bishops) must not be right-wing, like the Archbishop of Philadelphia", which he implemented this week in his ready acceptance of the orthodox, right to life champion Chaput's resignation (forced, because he's turned 75) - is something which until now Ganswein might have been keeping under his elegant archbishopric's wraps.
We - and NZ's Bishops - could dwell on these words of Our Lord Jesus Christ: "No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one, and love the other: or he will sustain the one, and despise the other, You cannot serve God and mammon" (Mt 6, 24).
'Mammon' is not to be taken as meaning simply material wealth and possessions, but also worldly interests and advantage (Douay Rheims.) Pope Benedict, defender of the celibate priesthood, is 93, and flagging. Say no more.
'Mammon' is not to be taken as meaning simply material wealth and possessions, but also worldly interests and advantage (Douay Rheims.) Pope Benedict, defender of the celibate priesthood, is 93, and flagging. Say no more.
Meanwhile, Pope Francis is playing a waiting game. With the juggernaut of the German Church at the front line, liberals like Francis, who's not always good at hiding furiousness (think of the Asian lady who obviously had not only a hand, but an urgent message, to get across the barricades) have done their best to scupper Benedict and Sarah's book in favour of celibacy, but have only succeeded in promoting it.
Last week, in his waiting game Francis produced his Eugenio Scalfari card. He might have overplayed his hand. The atheistic journalist Scalfari, founder and editor of the left-wing magazine La Repubblica and friends forever with Francis, stated that:
"The Holy Father believes he has the task of bringing together everyone under God: not only Catholics and Protestants, but monotheists and polytheists."
"The Holy Father believes he has the task of bringing together everyone under God: not only Catholics and Protestants, but monotheists and polytheists."
There you are. There is his "humility - and ambition" for a World Church, headed by Himself.
Oh but, you say, Pope Francis is all for priestly celibacy. Yes, so he seems to say.
Oh but, you say, Pope Francis is all for priestly celibacy. Yes, so he seems to say.
"Pope Francis has taken a strong position in favour of the current discipline", reports the Catholic Herald.
"He even made Paul VI’s line on the subject his own: “For the Latin rite,” he offered in January of last year, “I am reminded of a phrase of St. Paul VI: ‘I prefer to give my life before changing the law of celibacy.’
This came to me and I want to say it because it is a courageous phrase,” he told journalists in response to a direct question asked in solicitation of his personal thoughts on the matter.
This came to me and I want to say it because it is a courageous phrase,” he told journalists in response to a direct question asked in solicitation of his personal thoughts on the matter.
"While the rest of Pope Francis’s answer left the possibility for some relaxation of the discipline open," (you can say that again) "he concluded his remarks by saying, “I do not say that it should be done — because I have not reflected, I have not prayed sufficiently on this — But the theology should be studied.”
https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2020/01/13/benedict-and-sarah-back-franciss-position-on-priestly-celibacy-media-storm-ensues/
https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2020/01/13/benedict-and-sarah-back-franciss-position-on-priestly-celibacy-media-storm-ensues/
Oh, the clerical casuistry, the Jesuitical Jezebelicity (okay, I'm getting carried away here).
The pope quotes Paul VI because "it is a courageous phrase". He doesn't say he agrees with it. He "leaves the possibility for some relaxation of the discipline open" - like in the Amazon, wouldn't you say, to be taken up a bit later in Germany, perhaps?
"But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil" (Mt 5, 37).
The pope quotes Paul VI because "it is a courageous phrase". He doesn't say he agrees with it. He "leaves the possibility for some relaxation of the discipline open" - like in the Amazon, wouldn't you say, to be taken up a bit later in Germany, perhaps?
"But let your speech be yea, yea: no, no: and that which is over and above these, is of evil" (Mt 5, 37).
I was privileged, last Sunday, to travel home from the monthly Latin Mass in Napier with Fr Francois Laisney SSPX. His sermon, as always, was "yes, yes: no, no" and so was his conversation in the car.
For more of the same, Father Laisney referred his hearers to The Case for Clerical Celibacy: Its Historical Development and Theological Foundations, by Alfons Maria Cardinal Stickler, an Austrian who died in 2007.
https://catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2019/10/29/a-vital-document-in-defence-of-clerical-celibacy/
The UK Catholic Herald says Stickler's short book (now in its second edition) "is a vital document for those who want to argue the case that such celibacy is of apostolic origin and has been the constant ruling of the Church, in Councils, canon law and magisterial documents ever since.
“This demanding commitment which involves a life of constant sacrifice, can only be lived out if it is nourished by a living faith…It is only through a faith that is constantly and consciously sustained that the supernatural reasons underlying the commitment can be truly understood.”
"This word “sacrifice” matters", says the Herald's Chad Pecknold. "I recall our late parish priest once commenting, “People think celibate priests are different from other men. Not a bit of it. It is a sign of the supernatural” – that is, the sacrifice can only be fruitfully sustained by divine grace; a serious and continually prayerful response to the initial invitation from Jesus.
Indeed, he links the demand for married clergy with “a loss of the sense of faith”.
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