Over at Chiesa, Vaticanista Sandro Magister has walked way back his scoop that Vatican Secretary of State Tarciso Bertone was so appalled by last month's statement on financial reform from the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace that he ordered that "any new Vatican text will have to be authorized in advance" by himself. Not:
I think that's a request that includes George Weigel, Donald McClarey, and the rest of the conservative Catholic crowd that expends so much energy trying to prove that Rome does not mean what Rome says when the subject is Capitalism. It's time for them either to get with the program or admit that they disagree with the Magisterium on this subject. Finita la commedia!
With respect what www.chiesa originally reported, it should be noted that the requirement of advance review by the secretariat of state applies exclusively to texts that bear the signature of the pope, and not to those simply signed by the heads of one of the offices of the Roman curia.Loosely speaking too. Because it looks like Pope Benedict himself is down with that document and its dim view of the wages of the current international financial system. Getting off the plane in Benin a week ago, he warned against "unconditional surrender to the law of the market or that of finance" and, in a prepared document, asked all members of the church to "work and speak out in favor of an economy that cares for the poor and is resolutely opposed to an unjust order which, under the pretext of reducing poverty, has often helped to aggravate it."
The memo therefore cannot refer, strictly speaking, to the document from the pontifical council for justice and peace presented at the Vatican press office on October 24, entitled "Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority." A document not signed by Benedict XVI, but only by the heads of that dicastery.
I think that's a request that includes George Weigel, Donald McClarey, and the rest of the conservative Catholic crowd that expends so much energy trying to prove that Rome does not mean what Rome says when the subject is Capitalism. It's time for them either to get with the program or admit that they disagree with the Magisterium on this subject. Finita la commedia!

Over the past several of weeks, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue has pulled out all the stops on behalf of Kansas City Bishop Robert Finn, who was indicted in Jackson County last month for failing to report suspicion of child abuse by one of his priests. Donohue has attacked the prosecutor who brought the case, the newspaper that reported on it, the abuse victims' organization that has emphasized its importance, and
On a more serious note, Gibson
It's true that Boston Catholics did not mount protests when Cardinal Law stole off to his gilded Roman cage. But the Boston Globe was in fact very concerned that there would be such. Previously, the Globe had caught considerable flak for what were considered assaults on the archdiocese, and the newspaper girded its loins for demonstrations outside its Dorchester home as it prepared to launch its investigative series in 2002.
Back in the days when the Catholic Church first started growing academic theologians, some episcopal powers-that-be grew concerned about some novel ideas about God being advanced by nascent scholasticism's enfant terrible, Master Peter Abelard. In 1121, Master Peter was summoned before a church council at Soissons and made to defend himself. But the proceeding was stacked against him. Though he had a chance to speak, he didn't get the free hearing that the distinguished bishop of Chartres, Geoffrey, thought he deserved. The same held true 20 years later, when the most powerful figure in Latin Christendom, Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, got Abelard hailed before a tribunal in Sens. In both cases,
What brings Abelard's predicament to mind is the situation in which
Market is great
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