It’s amazing! First Amy Welbrorn announces her satisfaction with a conservative Novus Ordo liturgy at a parish that – gasp! – has also celebrated the TLM for many years now. Then William Oddie proclaims his agreement with the view that the best way of showing loyalty to the papacy nowadays is silence. Now George Weigel himself, the apostle of blind obedience to the Pope, has had enough of the dishonesty emanating from the Vatican these days – at least on one limited historical question. He says, countering a presentation by Cardinal Sodano praising the 1970’s Vatican Ostpolitik:
“The Ostpolitik of Paul VI (who worried that he was not conducting a “policy of glory”) was based on the premise that the Cold War division of Europe would be a feature of the international landscape for decades, if not centuries; that the Church had to “save what could be saved” while making whatever deals it could with communist governments; and that Catholic criticism of the human rights violations of communist regimes should be muted. The results of this strategy included the effective destruction of the Church in Hungary, whose leadership became a subsidiary of the Hungarian communist party; the thorough penetration of the Vatican by Warsaw Pact intelligence agencies (to the benefit of communist negotiators); and the undercutting of Catholic leaders in Poland and in what was then Czechoslovakia.”
He does not mention that the Sodano party is reckoned to be among the constituent blocs that elected Bergoglio. Still – that George actually takes issue with a Vatican publicity initiative is news in itself.
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