Benedict skips Martini's funeral

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Speculation and bias are so delicious and I am not above playing one of the Internet's favorite games. But I will stipulate that my speculations are just that and the story line of what follows is more demonstrably mine in perfect accord with all the facts ... and yet... as a small reportorial wet dream ....

Martini

MILAN -- Pope Benedict XVI did not travel the 358 miles from Rome to Milan on Monday to attend the funeral of his "dear friend," Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a man who had defied and perhaps double-crossed Benedict's rock-solid sense of defending the church and all its doings.

Hours after Martini's death on Aug 31,  Corriere della Sera printed the cardinal's final interview in which he described the 'Church' as being "200 years out of date. ... Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up. The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops. The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation." And it wasn't the first time had failed in a lock-step obeisance.

The reason Benedict failed to make the trip may be surmised from the lead paragraph of the Vatican Insider's reporting of the funeral.

Benedict XVI’s final farewell to his friend Carlo Maria Martini. The controversies orchestrated around the late cardinal’s position on artificial feeding and his “distance” from Rome did not manage to transform Martini’s funeral into the celebration of an “anti-Pope”. The Pope’s intense message of sorrow and participation and the 200 thousand people who paid their respects to the Jesuit cardinal over the past two days are a genuine expression of faith: there are not two Churches. True religion means “listening to God in order to act according to his will.”

The controversies were "orchestrated."
The "distance" from Rome did not transform the funeral into an anti-pope jamboree.
There are not two churches.

Benedict XVI

What reporter or even agitation-and-propaganda minister in his right mind would assert from the get-go of a story what was NOT true unless... unless... unless it plainly were in some measure true?

As noted earlier in true speculative fashion in this blog, the pope was between a rock and a hard place when it came to Martini's funeral: If he showed up, it might seem to signal some weakening of his unbending defense of the church in the face of critics like Martini who pointed out church inflexibilities on homosexuality, AIDS, and sacraments for the divorced; and if he didn't show up, he might provide his critics with more ammunition. Lawsy! Lawsy! What to do! What to do!

The pope chose the CEO's supple and ostensibly-caring compromise ... send a message in his name, but don't show your face. The pope's message was read out by Cardinal Comastri.

The cunningness of the pope's move was somewhat deflated by Martini's stature and brains. Martini was both a cardinal and a Jesuit. Cardinals are undeniable power players in the Roman Catholic Church and the Jesuits, historically, I believe, were the intellectual gestapo for the Vatican. Don't mess with a Jesuit. In the face of these facts it would be hard for the Vatican to play its usual dismissive card ... oh well, s/he's just a malcontent with no understanding of the church and its holy mission. Martini had Benedict by the balls.

Day after day after day after day, Roman Catholic Church corruptions come to light. Day after day after day, Internet sites like Abuse Tracker cite little and large and miscues -- the kind of miscues which, were they to occur with such frequency in business, would occasion some down-home corrective measures ... or perhaps a better-organized and more credibly-orchestrated cover-up. Day after day after day, the flesh-and-blood individuals over whose discarded bodies the Holy Mother Church has plotted its course gain a greater voice.

Cardinal Martini may be gone, but we are fortunate to live in a time, however painful, when there are others to harmonize with the voice beyond the grave.

It's all speculation, of course ... but maybe, just maybe .....
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