In the wake of the controversy over the lifting of the excommunication on holocaust denying SSPX Bishop Richard Williamson, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi has said the Vatican needs to improve its communications. "We didn't control the communications," said Fr Lombardi, whose office originally announced the pope's decision in a simple statement accompanied by the Vatican legal document that readmitted the four back into the Roman Catholic Church, Reuters reports.
"I think we still have to create a communications culture inside the Curia, where each dicastery communicates by itself, not necessarily thinking of going through the press room or issuing an explanatory note when the issue is complex."
Fr Lombardi, whose comments were distributed by French Catholic newspaper La Croix before publication on Friday, said the Vatican could have avoided several hectic days if it had issued the order for Williamson to recant along with the announcement of the bans lifting.
"Especially when it's about hot topics, it's better to prepare the explanations," he said.
Fr Lombardi said the Vatican officials who dealt with the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), the breakaway group the four bishops lead, focused on the views of the group's leader Bishop Bernard Fellay and not those of Williamson or the others.
"They didn't take the views of the other bishops enough into account," he said. "One thing that's certain is that the pope didn't know. If someone should have known, it was Cardinal (Dario) Castrillon Hoyos."
Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos heads the Vatican department that deals with traditionalist Catholics.
Lombardi said modern communications made it difficult for the Vatican to issue some statements.
"Certain documents are meant for specialists of canon law, others for theologians, others for all Catholics or all people," he said. "But today, whatever the type of document, it all ends up directly in the public sphere. It gets difficult to manage."
Elsewhere, Father Eberhard von Gemmingen, the head of Vatican Radio's German service, said in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that a new "wave of exits" had already set in after the lifting of the excommunications, Deutsche Welle says.In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Catholics have the option of formally quitting the Church by registering their exit with local authorities. They are then no longer considered Catholic.
"In other countries this is not possible, as baptism cannot be revoked," Gemmingen said.
The relationship of trust between the German born pope and German Catholics has been "shaken," Gemmingen said, but believed Benedict XVI's planned visit to his home country next year could repair some of the damage.
"It hurts if you see that many people do not understand Rome and the pope any longer," the Vatican expert said and also voiced scepticism whether the head of the Catholic Church would go ahead with his planned visit to Israel this year.
But Reuters says that Israel's chief Rabbinate is resuming dialogue with the Vatican after freezing ties over a Holocaust denying bishop and the pope will meet major Jewish groups to try to make amends, a Church source said on Saturday.The Rabbinate pulled out of a meeting with Vatican officials scheduled for March 1-4 in the midst of an international outcry over the Pope Benedict's lifting of the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including Richard Williamson, who denies the full extent of the Holocaust.
The meeting will now take place in late February or mid-March and will most likely include a papal audience.
Next Thursday, the pope will hold a meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations (CPMAJO) and make an address about the Holocaust and the dangers of Holocaust denial, the source said.
It will be the first between the pope and Jewish leaders since the start of the controversy, which many have said has undermined nearly half a century of Catholic-Jewish dialogue.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce
(Source: CTHN)