RBWords - Volume 25 - Number 5: May 2012
Something to Think About
“The butler did it!” Or at least that’s what the Vatican law enforcement authorities think! They found him with “incriminating” documents in his apartment! And a Vatican bank executive has been implicated as well! Of course, the content of the documents is sleazy and titillating – all about misconduct in granting favors to this or that company doing business with the Vatican, etc., the kind of stuff that we’re accustomed to in our own public officials! Should we be surprised that this kind of conduct takes place at the highest levels in as big an organization as the Vatican? Well, if the butler happens to be the POPE’s butler, maybe we should at least say, “Tsk, tsk! It’s so hard to get good help nowadays!” And, “No man’s a hero to his own valet!” However, this guy did betray his “master.” Confidentiality is confidentiality and the butler violated that trust. That’s a bad no-no, even if all he reveals is the brand of toothpaste used by the Pope! I suppose we should also ask how the butler gained access to confidential documents! As prior of my Dominican community, even though I trust the brothers, I don’t leave confidential material where it can be easily accessed!
Our church bureaucracy is all too human. The Holy Spirit guarantees the truth, not the bidding process for this or that project in the Vatican! When Cardinal So-and-So writes a nasty letter to the Pope about Cardinal Whosis, it’s nobody else’s business but the people involved in the personality conflict. However, when it is a matter of financial misconduct which results in a reassignment of the “whistle-blower” to get him out of the picture, which is what seems to be the case in the current “scandal,” maybe we Catholics ought to ask our local bishop if Vatican City is modeling itself on one of our major cities – knock on any door! Grace builds on nature, and sometimes the nature involved is resistant to grace. This is as true in the Vatican as much as anywhere else. IT’S SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT!
It Has Been Said
“The Church is founded on Peter who denied Christ three times and couldn’t walk on the water by himself. You are expecting his successors to walk on the water. All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist as well as others. To have the Church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affairs, whereas it is our dignity that we are allowed more or less to get on with those graces that come through faith and the sacraments and which work through our human nature. God has chosen to operate in this matter. We can’t understand this but we can’t reject it without rejecting life.
From a letter of Flannery O’Connor to Cecil Dawkins, December 9, 1958, as quoted in FLANNERY O’CONNOR – SPIRITUAL WRITINGS, ed. By R. Ellsberg