Vatican missteps on Warsaw
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 10, 2007
Over on the excellent First Things blog, Robert Miller analyzes the Wielgus debacle, giving special attention to the role of Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re and the Congregation for Bishops, which vetted the Warsaw appointment. He reaches this conclusion-- which, when you follow his argument, seems inescapable:
Now, either the Vatican knew about Wielgus’ past when it appointed him, as Wielgus says and as the Vatican’s statement in December strongly suggests, or else it did not, as Re now maintains. If the former, then the Vatican’s investigation of Wielgus prior to the appointment was grossly negligent, failing to discover information that was readily available in Poland. If the latter, as seems much more likely, then the Holy See exercised very poor judgment in making the appointment in the first place and even worse judgment in attempting to ram it through even after the truth about Wielgus became public.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.
All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a current donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!
-
Posted by: Gil125 -
Jul. 01, 2010 5:00 PM ET USA
Most Vatican documents contain footnotes with references to Scripture passages, or the Catechism or writings of Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Did you omit them from the quote? Or.... (Actually, after writing that, I clicked on the link and found the original, nasty brown Vatican Website background and all. And you did not omit the footnotes. As I suspected, there aren't any.)
