Putting the Vatileaks Affair in Perspective

Putting the Vatileaks Affair in Perspective | Alan L. Anderson | Catholic World Report

The media’s furor over the leaks says more about their ignorance than about the Church itself.

It is a bit fun—and maybe a little saddening—to watch our secularist press work itself up into a lather over the so-called “Vatileaks” scandal.  Just when the American bishops seem to be making headway with the faithful on the dangers posed by the HHS mandate, our elite journalists seem almost giddy to be handed what they believe is a story hinting at deep and dark intrigue in the Vatican. Along with the response to the Vatican’s critical assessment of segments of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s notification concerning a book by Sister Margaret A. Farley, RSM, the Vatileaks affair helps establish for our secular press their preferred narrative of a Church drowning in its own medieval incompetence.

Alas for them, the Vatileaks story as developed thus far will come as no surprise to the faithful and serves only as a sharp reminder of just how little our faith is understood by so many of the major actors in the media, highlighting, yet again, just why they so often fail to get it right when reporting on the Church.

To set the background: at issue in this seeming scandal are a series of leaked Vatican documents which form the basis of a new book titled Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI, by Italian investigative reporter Gianluigi Nuzzi. In a June 3 New York Times article with the overwrought title, “As Vatican Manages Crisis, Book Details Infighting,” journalist Rachel Donadio breathlessly stated that “Vatileaks looks poised to become one of the most destructive, if one of the most hermetic, crises of Benedict’s troubled papacy.” Really? Because if the entirety of the scandal is accurately described in her article—and this truly is “one of the most destructive” crises His Holiness has or will face in his pontificate—then our current Holy Father has and will enjoy one of the more serene papacies of the Church’s 2,000-year history.

According to Donadio, the scandal amounts to “three shadowy Vatican machinations…a campaign to undermine the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone; controversy over the management of the Vatican bank; and intense infighting between Italian cardinals vying for position in the Conclave that will one day elect Benedict’s successor.”

Seriously? That’s it? That’s the “scandal” which threatens to live as “the most destructive” episode in Pope Benedict’s pontificate? One suspects while His Holiness undoubtedly may be personally irked by such actions and feels compelled by duty to try to right the Church’s ship of state—feelings and compulsions undoubtedly also experienced by the faithful. One can be fairly certain His Holiness fully recognizes there’s nothing terribly new here. The whole thing has sort of a “dog bites man” feeling to it, hence the bemused chagrin when watching the media’s reaction to it.

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