“Grave, immoral, brutal, a criminal act, a brutal personal attack, their consciences violated.”
These are the words used to describe the theft of personal letters, both written to, and by Pope Benedict. The accused, Benedict’s personal butler Paolo Gabriele, is alleged to have taken the letters and leaked them to an Italian journalist who is quickly publishing the letters.
It’s pretty vanilla stuff: no bloodshed, no rape, no molestation, no murder. No illuminati, no acknowledgement of the children’s lives destroyed by abuse at the hands of the church, not even a hint that maybe the Inquisition or Crusades were more about power and control than they were about witchcraft, the devil and Muslim hordes. All that was leaked was a collection of letters exposing some of the internal politics and power struggles that make up daily life in the Vatican city. Mostly, it’s the bad PR they’re worried about.
The reason for the three pronged investigation, which includes a commission of high ranking Cardinals charged with investigating the theft, a criminal investigation by the Vatican police and an internal administrative probe, is that these letters “didn’t just concern matters of internal church governance but represented the thoughts of people who in writing to the Pope believed they were essentially speaking before God.”
Are they really telling us this potential violation of confidentiality which might be suffered by a few higher ranking Vatican officials as a result of the butler’s actions, are worthy of this Vatican induced media circus we’re witnessing today? Its not that we should take this lightly, we shouldn’t have to take it at all! This isn’t news, its Vatican spin and crisis management, it’s pre-emptive steps to maintain a control that has slowly but surely slipped through their fingers as people wake up.
We live in a world where people suffer everyday. They starve to death, die from a lack of fresh water, are sold into physical and sexual bondage and murdered without cause save for their religious beliefs, sex or heritage. Everyday people are violated, exploited and extinguished, simply because they represent an obstacle standing in the way of someone else’s desires.
Is it too much to ask those who’ve taken up the mantle of Christ and believe themselves worthy of being God’s proxies on this Earth to have the common sense and compassion to exercise a little perspective? If only they took their priest’s transgressions as seriously as they do their public image, residential schools might have been a place of learning rather than a place of pain.
-Billy
