[catholiccitizens.org]

U.S. journalist debunks myths about Vatican: Vatican correspondent says misperceptions are result of ‘lazy popular journalism’
4/27/2004 8:38:00 PM
By Candy Czernicki - Catholic Herald (Milwaukee, Wisconsin)

MILWAUKEE - Americans frequently misperceive the reality of Vatican life and politics, according to a well-known Rome-based American journalist.

John Allen, Jr., Vatican correspondent for National Catholic Reporter, an independent weekly, told an audience at Marquette University on April 14 that “most public conversation about the Vatican is unrealistic. It is much more driven by misperceptions ... that form a kind of mythology.”


Allen laid out five myths about the Vatican that he said “lazy popular journalism” recycles and perpetuates:


• The myth of singlemindedness. According to Allen, “people will write sentences that begin ‘the Vatican thinks - the Vatican hopes.’ The forms have a shorthand meaning, but (the Vatican actually) is a complex bureaucracy in which people have different ideas. Only from afar does the Vatican look like the Stepford Wives (dressing alike, thinking alike, acting alike). ... It’s not an organization, it’s a bureaucracy, rarely of one mind.”


Allen gave the example of the tensions between the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Office of Liturgical Celebration for the Supreme Pontiff regarding liturgical dance.


“ The Congregation of Divine Worship is much more conservative, sober, Romanesque,” Allen said. “The Office of Liturgical Celebration doesn’t buy that at all. Their liturgies are more modern, dynamic, expressive.” He joked that the liturgical office staff “try to set a record for how many liturgical rules they can break in one papal Mass. These things usually have dance numbers that rival ‘Cats.’”


“ The Vatican is full of smart, strong-willed people. It has a unique world view that workers tend to assume, yet there is a surprising degree of diversity,” Allen said.


• The myth of absolute control. Allen introduced the absolute control myth by telling a fable about a lion who intimidated a monkey and a serpent into telling him that he was the king of the jungle.


The lion then approached a bull elephant and asked the elephant who was in charge of the jungle. The elephant picked up the lion with his trunk, swung him around, and tossed him to the ground, then walked away. As the lion dusted himself off, he told the elephant, “Just because you don’t know the answer, you don’t have to have an attitude about it!”


“ (People see the pope as) an ecclesiastical lion,” Allen said. “They think the pope is standing behind a computer terminal in the apostolic palace, calling all the shots for the Roman Catholic Church. But there is no person or group who has absolute control inside the Vatican.”


Allen said that the various Vatican offices operate independently and arrive at individual results, so that often “Peter has no idea what Paul is doing.” He told the story of a planned February 2002 meeting between Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Russian Orthodox patriarch. Two days before the trip to Russia, four jurisdictions there were upgraded to full dioceses, angering the Russian Orthodox and increasing their fear of Catholic expansionism.


The trip was canceled because the Russian Orthodox patriarch “was convinced that Cardinal Kasper had lied,” said Allen. “Kasper read about it in the newspaper like everyone else.” Allen called the miscue “symptomatic of the lack of interdepartmental communication” in the Vatican.


• The myth of Vatican secrecy. Allen said that while “the Vatican does have secrets, like every place else, (and) it is more insulated than a secular democracy ... it’s no better at keeping secrets than anyone else. The problem at the Vatican is not secrecy, but that it’s unique, a culture outside the experience of most observers. The Holy See is a cultural preserve. What looks like secrecy is really singularity.”


• The myth of Vatican wealth. “At the Vatican, everything is for sale, in the popular mind,” Allen said. In reality, the Vatican’s annual operating budget is about $260 million. Allen contrasted that to Harvard University, which has an annual operating budget of $1.3 billion.


“ (Harvard) could run five Vaticans every year and still have pocket change left over for an endowed chair,” Allen said, equating the Vatican’s patrimony - all the assets it could sell - to that of a medium-sized Catholic university. Its total patrimony is $770 million. The University of Notre Dame’s endowment is four and a half times greater, he said.


Allen noted that while people often assume a significant monetary value attached to the artwork the Vatican holds, it is not for sale.


“ The Holy See’s point of view is that the artwork is part of the patrimony of humanity,” Allen said. It is listed as having a cash value of one euro.


• The myth of careerism. “There are some elements of truth” to the popular stereotype that Vatican bureaucrats are either “lazy or ambitious,” yet “the idea that everything is crafted to advance someone’s career is pushing an illegitimate insight too far.” He defined two senses of careerism, one being “the lust for material rewards or fame,” and immediately debunked that stereotype.


According to Allen, a senior white-collar worker in the Vatican, equivalent to a senior vice president of an American corporation, makes $18,000 to $20,000 a year. He also noted that “Vatican documents are never signed. You’re supposed to hear the institution speaking, not the person.”


“ These myths cloud perception,” Allen said. He said that when the U.S. bishops met in Dallas in June 2002 to draft what became the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, they were not expecting the Vatican to insist on due process for accused priests and make use of complex canon law.


“ Most journalists’ stories are derived from these myths,” Allen said. When the Vatican rejected the first draft of the child protection norms, journalists portrayed the Vatican as trying to squelch autonomy.


“ The Vatican got it right, but this was not the dominant public perception,” Allen said. “(Journalists) created the impression of chaos - they were more concerned with authority than anything else. The press got the story wrong (because) they are collectively in the grip of this mythology.” He suggested that “while I am under no illusion that these myths are going to pass anytime soon - they’re too embedded in consciousness,” they could more easily be debunked by people who are “informed, nonpolemical, and rooted in a profound sense of communion.”


Allen’s coverage of Vatican affairs has been praised by U.S. church leaders across the ideological spectrum, including Frs. Andrew Greeley and Richard John Neuhaus. His weekly Internet column, “The Word from Rome,” posted on the NCR Web site, can be read at .


Allen’s lecture was the second in a six-part series hosted by Marquette. The series continues on Sept. 29 with a talk by Franciscan Sr. Katarina Schuth (See page 8.) titled “Developing a Reconciling Spirit: The Challenge for Church Leaders, Lay and Ordained.”






Espero que tenham a mesma facilidade em acreditar em alguem quando este diz bem que mostram ter quando alguem diz mal.

Lembram dos mitos esp alhados na crise judaica-cristã da Igreja primitiva : os cristão comem carne e bebem sangue humano , são incestuosos , são estranhos e antisociais, etc.