Cardinal Bertone may be right to block the head of Caritas: but the way he has done it is a massive own goal

The Holy Father does not, we are told, meet regularly with Fr Lombardi, the closest thing to his press secretary. This pontificate might indeed be one of those great and good in the history of the Church, but its communications are dire.

Indeed, since the late Pope’s PR man (whose name I forget) stepped down, the Church’s public relations have, in general, been pretty abysmal. One gets the impression that the Pope doesn’t take the press seriously, which would be a serious error.

God’s ways are not man’s ways.

A point of order – Dr Knight is not “being fired”. Her four year term has come to an end. HE Tarcisio Card. Bertone has decided he will not provide the nihil obstat to allow her a further four year term. Crudely put, her contract has ended and it’s not being renewed.

Now that we must all bow down and worship the great secular god Transparency this silly spat is likely to simmer for some time.

The nihil obstat is a guarantee that there nothing contrary to faith and morals. The refusal of HE to grant this to Dr Knight speaks volumes.

Now for CAFOD….

Again you seem determined to miss the point of the article. Because it is obvious to you and those like you why this lady should go, you miss the point of the article was that she should have been heard by the Vatican. It is ordinary employment law, ordinary justice, ordinary basic decent behaviour that requires compliance with the duty to hear the person concerned.

“from a PR point of view, it’s yet another example of Rome’s utter inability to communicate with the modern world: it’s simply asking for accusations of unfairness and authoritarianism, and it’s already getting them, big time”.
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I disagree with Dr. Oddie on a number of issues, but on this point I have to agree with him. If the quote is reflective of a wider problem in the Church with respect to all issues it is having to confront, not simply the reasons or lack of them for firing Dr. Knight, and I think it is, then Cardinal Bertone and others around this pope need to go and go quickly.

We are made privy to anoter sign of the times which ALL bishops throughout the world must give serious attention to:putting as much distance between their authority and the governing of their dioceses from the House of Nonsense in Rome, or find themselves increasingly placed at a distance by the laity—the presbyerate of the laity– and their pastors. The new and growing replacement for a decadent, self-serving, and totally irrelevant structure which must be supplanted by a completely autocephalous ,self-governing Church. Built from the ground up by laity and priests alike.

“One gets the impression that the Pope doesn’t take the press seriously, which would be a serious error. ”

Horace, One also gets the impression this pope is abysmally ignorant of what is going on around him, or doesn’t care and has delegated much of his office to clowns such as cardinals Bertone and Sodano. In any event, the pope is demonstrating he’s growing in irrelevancy. Just as his advisors and the hierarchy themselves are becoming.

If that is the way that part of the church works then it is indeed disgraceful; the sooner the Pope cleans out the stables the better. Clearly not everything in the Vatican is of God.

X is guilty because everyone knows she is; that is not the way of justice.

If you think that everyone KNOWS, you are wrong VERY WRONG. This poor soul hasn’t a clue. And, what’s more, no one is explaining!
ERGO, the author of the article is correct, the Vatican has scored an own goal or two, because they’ve convinced me by their secrecy that they have something to hide.

Rubbish!!!
This is the general Church procedure – a miscreant cleric isn’t generally cast to the wolves – they are usually put out to pasture or moved sideways or their membership of certain committees is allowed to lapse. Only those in the loop will be aware that a certain phenomena or incident indicates something much greater has occurred behind the scenes.

Dr Knight was being politely removed for being involving in anti-Catholic activities and expressing anti-Church positions.

The only reason it’s now being portrayed as some nefarious underhand Vatican activity is because the Church’s enemies within WANT IT to look like that.
The Church HAS responded via Mgr Dal Toso – secretary of Cor Unum; but only those bodies loyal to the Vatican have even bothered to report it – Ivereigh and Allen are flagrantly abusing their alleged objectivity by their silence.

Cardinal Bertone is simply adopting general praxis – we don’t resort to public denunciations or slanging matches.

Now yes this is a double-edged sword – occasionally it’s been a procedure used by other bodies within the Church [usually conference quangoes or religious communities] to oust opposing forces; giving no reasons other than a highly incongruous cover story – the most prominent recent story being that of the Birmingham Three.

But frankly we don’t wash our dirty linen in public – some of us know about a few embarrassing shenanigans within the Church where those involved have been quietly dealt with in a charitable way rather than being cast to the wolves.

Quantock – if you or anyone else wants to know about what Dr Knight has said and done most of it is readily available – only a few google clicks away – within seconds it will become blatantly obvious why the Vatican would most certainly not want her to be re-appointed. Only the media-hacks with ulterior motives and sympathetic anti-Church agenda would make any attempt to turn this into some ‘Vatican cull’.

Yes, the larger Church does not need an inner sanctum of secrecy and walls of silence everywhere, with the likes of Bertone, Sodano and Company operating in some Star Chamber -like proceedings. The medieval Church has to go, or be brought tumbling down by those in the pews.

This disgraceful way of managing the Church from the central office, or should I say “mismanaging” the Faith, has to be dumped into the trash bin of history. Where it belongs.

I just humbly accept that what the legal system of the world regards as justice (necessary for charity to be shown) audi alteram partem is not at the heart of your conception of the church. To me a tragedy but obviously not to you. I do not think there is any point in continuing a discussion where we are on different planets – like discussing justice with an African despot.

…and yet again you simply do not get this – Dr Knight has not been silenced or been judged without a trial or been a victim of injustice via some secret vatican starchamber…she took the ‘dialogue’ into the public arena claiming victimhood, together with a bunch of opportunistic bandwagon-jumping media hacks taking-up her cause; when the only victims are those unborn who were murdered by organisations with whom she collaborated – all in the name of the Church!!!

She has been a public miscreant – making anti-Catholic, anti-papal and anti-Church statements and colluding/conspiring with bodies with which the regulations of Cor Unum as well as Magisterial techings and Vatican directives prohibit – all in the public arena…

She has not been fired or expelled
She has instead been informed that she need not apply for re-appointment because she will not be chosen
Hardly the actions of despots
The only tragedy is that she was ever appointed in the first place and Caritas was placed in such disrepute….

Different planets?
I’m sorry but the only planet on which you reside is the one which adamantly refuses to recognise what’s before you – instead you persist with ridiculous appeals to justice where there has been no injustice!!! Rather the opposite.

the church however, is NOT an ordinary employer, nor should it be held to ‘the standards of the modern age’. It is kind of like expecting your mother to make an appointment to visit you. It is a insault at least and a sin of refusing to ‘honor your father and mother’ in a deeper sense.

Really? which is more ‘just’ that we drag all the dirty laundry out in public, humiliate X and and embarrass all the people that support her and be responsible for causing upheaval and division? Damaging hundreds or thousands of people. OR should every effort be taken to make this a ‘non’ issue. Instead of destroying this womans chances to get hired by making a public spectacle of what she did wrong, she was simply told, we don’t need your services anymore. The fact she feels she did not have sufficient communications with the people who made this decision is really telling. It was HER responsibility to know she was doing the right thing and following the wishes of the Vatican. If there was any doubt in her mind she wasn’t she should have been asking questions? I mean I have never talked to the CEO , or the vice present of nearly any company I worked for, but if I am responsible for knowing my job duties from those people who represent him to me directly. So if the CEO were to decide my department wasn’t doing things ‘the company way’ and I needed to be replaced, is should come as no shock to me , unless I have been derelict in finding out what ‘the company way’ was.

Dear paulpriest,

You are quite right. ‘It’s perfectly obvious to anyone why Dr Knight is utterly unsuitable to remain in her role’ You are quite right, as long as we recognise that we must know the past or that ‘anyone’ must be bothered to look at past events and statements. Too many fail to even want to do so – condemn first is the order of their day, it seems.

My reading of this story is, inter alia, that the lady (is this a term I am allowed to use?) is very adept at calling upon her chums to plead her case and to slap the Vatican about a bit, casting it in the role of Great Mysogynist or some such.

The reality – or so it seems to me – is that she appears to have reaped the whirlwind, having sown the breeze wih her own mouth.

I do not always like the way the Church does things. Truth is too often sacrificed on the altar of expediency but the Church is not any common or garden employer and may not be judged by common or garden standards, however much we may wish it were possible to tweak the odd ecclesiastical nose.

You are right. The stables are in need of continuous cleaning but they always have been. If you seriously believed that everything in the Vatican is of God then your sense of disillusion must be painful, indeed, but do not have too much sympathy for Dr Knight – she has earned her stripes and was lucky, in a way. If the Vatican were a secular company she would have been fired long ago.

I find it very hard to believe she does not know. It is true that it has not been ‘said’ but I am very sure she knows.
If the Vatican is hiding anything it likely due to a desire – and a duty in Charity – not to pillory the woman for various matters that are all too much matters of sad public record.

Ordinary principles of rationality and justice should apply but the modus operandi of those who run the Church sometimes obviates the application of justice, strict or not. I do not imagine that Dr knight would have relished being (in strict justice) pilloried for some of her more notable transgressions, objective or subjective. Of
course the church is not above morality and, I agree, Cardinal Bertone has no right to
disregard rationality and morality but he has not, as far as I can see. If a ‘trial’ were made of the matter – in the manner of some sort of employment tribunal – then Dr Knight would possibly be all the more embarassed. Trials are funny things because all manner of uncomfortable things can come to light. The expression ‘massive own goal’ was not of Dr Oddie’s invention. It predates Dr Oddie’s present eminence by many a year but I do agree it is a most appealing expression and may be one that Dr Knight ought to have called to mind some time ago.

I think people miss the point who keep banging on about justice and transparency.Remember when Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isiah ch 6. 9-10 ! likewise it is the same for us in the sense of deduction. The Vatican does not have to tell the world nothing of its own internal affairs but the fact that the Nihil Obstat has not been given is a starting point for what I have just mentioned, deduction. When reading about Dr Lesley Anne-Knight, and then comparing her statements with scripture, Magisterial teaching, infallible and Church Father commentary, I think then we as a whole can then come to a conclusion as to why she has been given due notice.
This is just a method I recommend because a minority seems to be of the thought that the Church is 1, a democracy and 2 should be open when it is none of these in their ‘modernist’ and ‘western’ sense. However, if you wish to understand judgments from the Holy Mother Church use your eyes and ears and then go and understand why she is now not the head.

I wonder how you know that ‘secrecy, misdirection and obfuscation are typical of (Cardinal) Bertone’s modus operandi.’? I don’t have such knowledge and, as far as all but a few of the people I know are concerned, many others do not, either, so I wonder if you possibly have the ear of someone ‘up top’?? What are ‘neocons’, as far as the Church is concerned. I should not like to be a ‘neocon’, I am sure even if I do not know what the word means.

The matter of the scandals over child abuse on the part of presbyters, Priests and other Religious of both genders is not Cardinal Bertone’s fault. He, if anything, has had to ‘handle’ the crap, spread liberally about the Church by sinful individuals. We may criticise his manner of handling the events but we cannot say how well we would have done had it been out task and not His Eminence’s.

Make no mistake, I am happy to be a staunch critic of the Vatican and all its works whenever censure seems merited but I am not at all happy or willing to lay one on Cardinal Bertone if, as seems to be the case here, it is all in support of an indefensible woman who has not deserved everything she appears to have received because she, herself, would be hiding away had the Cardinal spelled out – item for item – the reasons for her unacceptability.

My understanding is that Dr Knight espoused and propagated causes during her term of office that were in conflict with Catholic Doctrine and Catholic Social Teaching. Are you suggesting she should be allowed to take the Vatican’s shilling while remaining free to militate against the clear teaching of the Church? If so, I think you are being way too airy-fairy and unrealistic.

This is most certainly not the occasion to wave liberal credentials about in order to exculpate a woman who, had she worked for any other world-wide body, would have been ‘let go’ and told to keep her mouth shut or no moolah.

Gfred, if you look a bit more closely you will see that the hyphenated part of Dr Lesley-Anne Knight is her Christian name given by her parents at baptism. Your thin-veiled effort to traduce the good lady’s reputation as a feminist and non-commitment to marriage is despicable and your comment unworthy of consideration. From your seemingly ignorant stance, at least try to view the 8th commandment.

Dear Lee,

Whereas your posting finds a warm echo in my heart I do have to say that people ‘banging on about justice and transparency’ are vital to our remaining vigilant for the need in our world to protect and to advance both justice and transparency. The mighty all too readily ride roughshod over the weak when justice and transparency are ignored, as they too often are. ‘Jusice’ means many things to many men. Prima facie, the Church has not always seemed to all men to be a fountain of justice and this is because (a) the Church may not always be transparent and (b) it is a human institution as far as its adminsitration is concerned. We should, I think, be aware of the possible agenda of others. Those who criticise are not always honest or thoughtful critics. Who knows if Dr Knight and her vociferous supporters have their own undisclosed agenda when it comes to her ‘case’? Certainly Dr Knight is a woman of decided opinions and they do not always agree with the Church of which she says she is a member.

So All Popes have been good Popes? Is that what you’re saying?

Mirabile dictu!