The Vatican and Wiki, the Global Village Well

January 10, 2012 By Max Lindenman 1 Comment

The Vatican has finally given Wikipedia its nihil obstat, imprimatur. To provide biographical material on the 22 cardinals to be elevated in Friday’s consistory, it cut and pasted information from the online encyclopedia. In some instances, reports the U.K. Guardian, Wiki’s entries took a tone “that does not match the Vatican’s style.” Of Willem Jacobus Eijik, archbishop of Utrecht, Wiki says that his “strong tendency to conservatism, specially regarding abortion and homosexuality…has made him one of the most talked about religious men in the country.”

Vatican spokesman Fr. Frederico Lombardi has pointed out that the biographies were meant to be “unofficial” — not, in other words, the last word on any of the new cardinals. If that’s true, then Vatican interns (or whoever gets stuck doing this kind of work) couldn’t have picked a better place than Wiki. One of the great things about it is its orientation toward the tastes and interests of the average reader, which, after all, is exactly where journalists aim their own articles. If the Vatican hadn’t told those reporters where Archbishop Eijik stood on homosexuality and abortion, you can bet that would be the first gap they’d have wanted to fill. To do so, they might well have hit Wikipedia. At worst, the Vatican cut out the middleman.

There’s no backhand in these compliments. Since Pius XI became the first pope to be broadcast over the radio, “that remarkable invention of Marconi,” the Vatican has been striving to reach the common person through the mass media. Indeed, in his encyclical Miranda Prorus, Pius XII spoke of broadcast technology as one who still had some hope of dominating it. “The mounting technological advances in communicating pictures, sounds, and ideas must be subjected to the sweet yoke of the law of Christ,” His Holiness wrote in 1957.

Fifty-four years later, when speaking of the Internet on the 45th World Communications Day, Pope Benedict offered a more realistic set of goals. “The clear distinction between the producer and consumer of information is relativized and communication appears not only as an exchange of data, but also as a form of sharing,” he proclaimed. “This dynamic has contributed to a new appreciation of communication itself, which is seen first of all as dialogue, exchange, solidarity and the creation of positive relations.” Rather than speak of yoking, he ordered the sheep to feed each other, to “witness consistently, in one’s own digital profile and in the way one communicates choices, preferences and judgements that are fully consistent with the Gospel, even when it is not spoken of specifically.”

Nothing online relativizes that distinction between information consumer and producer like Wikipedia. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, a lot of the information already produced is pretty good, by which I mean accurate, thorough and more often than not, flattering. Entries on papal encyclicals, for example, carry links to the documents themselves — in English and Latin — on the Vatican’s own website. Entries on popes are linked back to the official Vatican bios, and in some cases, to personal fan pages. (Did you know there’s a site called JohnXXIII@everything2.com? Neither did I.)

Cardinal Bertone’s entry includes an anecdote where the cardinal, having appeared on a Roman bus in full fig, flashes his “‘characteristic’ smile” at passengers, and engages the young ones “in a deep conversation on love, sex, virginity, and chastity.” (Source: Catholic News Agency, via Rocco Palmo’s Whispers in the Loggia.) In only one of the photos in his own entry does Pope Benedict wear that — that look. You know the one I mean. It could launch a thousand Chick Tracts. And it’s at the very bottom.

Judging by all that, it’s pretty clear that a number of Catholics are toiling in Wiki’s vineyards, producing information — per Benedict’s instructions — fit for Catholic consumption. Not that anyone’s been able to place Wiki under Christ’s sweet yoke; Wiki requires that articles be written from a Neutral Point of View (caps theirs), which means no “puffery,” “editorializing” or “contentious labels.” The statement “Not surprisingly, the syphilitic tyrant Henry VIII sent Thomas More to a glorious end,” for example, would not pass muster. But neither would anything about how the reactionary misogynist Pope John Paul II banned deserving women from the priesthood.

Wiki’s commitment to neutrality shows up best of all in its treatment of the Pius Wars. Visitors can slog through a Hardy Boys-length series of entries titled Pius XII and the Holocaust, Pius XII and Judaism, Pius XII and the Roman Razzia, and Vatican City During World War II. Taken together, the text and links add up to an admirably bipartisan mess. Me, I lack the intellectual and emotional energy. I’d rather check out the entry on the Cadaver Synod, which features Laurens’ painting of the living Pope Stephen VII cross-examining the dead Formosus, and wonder how the author could keep from calling it “cool.”

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Vatican to Main Street, U.S.A.: The (Tea) Party’s Over

October 24, 2011 By Max Lindenman 10 Comments


Poor Bill Donahue. The Catholic League president has made it his mission to rebut any prominent evangelical pastor who identifies the pope with the Antichrist — a tough job, even in the best of times. Today’s pronouncement from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace should make him want to clone himself. It’ll take at least two of him to handle all the incoming business.

Titled “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of Global Public Authority,” the document blames “liberalist,” or free-market, economic policies for the 2008 financial crisis and its disproportionately harsh effect on living conditions in developing countries. To amend those policies, it calls for a “global political authority” to be installed gradually, and conforming to the principle of subsidiarity.

Any authority thus constituted, the document predicts, should retain “democratic legitimacy,” and be immune to “bureaucratic isolation.” Nevertheless, the Vatican means for the body to serve as both cause and effect of what businesses like to call a paradigm shift. No more will societies operate according to utilitarian principles, which dignify the good of the individual as the key to the good of society. “In many cases,” the document states, “a spirit of solidarity is called for that transcends personal utility for the good of the community.”

Though none of these plans has been infallibly defined, the drafters took great care to present them as the culmination of a long chain of encyclicals, from John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris and Paul VI’s Populorum Progressio to Benedict XVI’s Caritas in Veritate. It would be hard, given any hermeneutic of continuity, to use Benedict’s own phrase, to see this as an abrupt shift in direction. It looks very much in concert with the Bishops’ Conference’s decision to re-issue its 2007 Guide to Faithful Citizenship, which offers Catholics leeway to vote for economically liberal (in the American sense) candidates who are also pro-choice.

Nevertheless, as Michael Sean Winters notes in his National Catholic Reporter blog: “there is no denying that the document’s economic vision is somewhere to the left of the most vigorously leftie politicians in this country.” It won’t play in Peoria, is another way of putting it. The American middle class may be stricken, but when it vents its frustrations on the Washigton elites — or even on Wall Street — it’s comparing its current condition to the relatively exalted state it enjoyed 20 or 30 years ago. I’m not sure whether it would see any advantage in having its quality of life measured against that of the man in the street in Kinshasa.

But then, as far as the Church is concerned, Kinshasa’s where it’s at. Two-thirds of Catholics now reside in the global South; by the middle of next century, that figure should reach three-quarters. If the Vatican were in the habit of playing to its base, it couldn’t have made a smarter move at a better time.

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Four Cool Things About Cardinal Scola

July 2, 2011 By Max Lindenman 3 Comments

An old Catholic axiom holds that whoever enters the conclave a papabile, leaves a cardinal. If that’s true, what happens to ranking churchmen who are touted as papabile before the current pope so much as comes down with the sniffles? Nothing too bad, I hope. A startling number of Catholic pundits are pinning the Church’s hopes on Cardinal Angelo Scola, recently elevated by Pope Benedict to the archbishopric of Milan. I must say, I like the cut of his jib. Among Scola’s more salient selling points:

Him sabbee lingo of white bushmen. At first, Scola’s mergence as a potential successor to Benedict looked like a retrograde move. In Scola’s native Europe, the Church is teetering, if not toppling; in Asia and Africa, she’s booming. Should’t she pick a pope from among the cardinals who are actually hitting their numbers? Not necessarily. Scola is said to have helped inspire Benedict to found the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. That is, he was bold enough in his thinking to re-envision Europe as mission territory. The global South and East ain’t broke, so there’s no need to fix them; a man who’se produced a workable plan for fixing Europe, on the other hand, might just deserve a promotion.

He’s closely associated with the Communion and Liberation. Called “Opus Dei for bad Catholics” by some, CL might be the only ecclesial movement in the Church without its own survivors’ network. CL’s membership is overwhelmingly lay, which suggests that Scola has very concrete and realistic ideas on how the Western Church can thrive despite the vocations crisis. It’s also built a reputation for respectful dialogue with other faiths.

The only bad thing I can say about CL is that its founder, the late Monsignor Luigi Giussani, is a painfully dull writer. Alas, the same appears to be true for Don Julian Carron, who succeeded Giussani to CL’s leadership. Ah, well. We can’t all be St. Therese.

Has some dirt under his fingernails. I confess — when it comes to popes, I’m as big a pushover for a log cabin story as any red-state Republican. Scola’s father, like the very young Elvis, drove a truck. This puts Scola in good company. Pope Pius X and John XXIII came from farming families. (One of Papa Roncalli’s relatives served time for poaching; when he shared that fact with the inmates of Regina Coeli prison, they cheered him like he was Johnny Cash.) Joseph Ratzinger, Sr. was a small-town cop, making his son, in effect, a Bavarian Opie Taylor. Of all the 20th-century popes, the only one to come from a truly la-di-da background was Pius XII, whose family, the Pacellis, was feeding people to lions back when the Sartos, Rattis, Montinis and Wojtylas were swinging from trees.

Is a fellow traveler, theology-wise, of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac. Okay, cards on the table. I have only the dimmest idea of who these people are. But judging by their names alone, they’d make great characters in a bodice-ripper. In a mighty coup of will, Balthasar tore his gaze from the ravished Lise’s milk-white limbs. Unsheathing his Korbschlager, he cried, “You’ll never get away with this, Henri de Lubac, coward, bully, cad and thief! I’ll avenge her if it’s the last thing I ever do!” “Flattery will get you everywhere, M’sieu Balthasar,” sniggered the Frenchman, twirling first his poignard, then his mustache.

Okay, enough. I could stretch the list out forever, I’m sure. But the bottom line is, I just happen to think convivial Lombards with pinchable cheeks make the best popes. Call me a sucker for the type.

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