Responding to my post on How To Make Amends, a reader writes:
Once again, you’ve accepted the claims of Frs. DiNoia and Cole where they contradict Mr. Balestrieri, and not addressed the conflicts between the statements of Fr. DiNoia and Fr. Cole regarding the delegation to reply to Mr. Balestrieri, nor the harm done to the reputation of Mr. Balestrieri by unnamed sources within in the Vatican according to CNS, nor how the CDF decided to help this American student with his homework with a carefully crafted letter in less than 10 days of his visit there.
It would appear that you do not understand the nature of the post on which you are commenting.
This post recommends a fundamental change in strategy on Mr. Balestrieri’s part. Following his receipt of Fr. Cole’s letter, he engaged in a pattern of behavior guaranteed to tick off the Vatican and severely damage his canonical complaint’s prospects of success. Following this turn of events, I decided to
(1) point out this fact in a vivid manner so that it would have the twin effects of
(a) forcefully making the point for Mr. Balestrieri’s benefit and
(b) forcefully warning the public of the problems just created for Mr. Balestrieri’s case and then to
(2) recommend a course of action that stood the best chance of getting his case back on track.
(1) was the point of How To Tick Off the Vatican and (2) was the purpose of How To Make Amends. That is the nature of the post on which you are commenting: It is not meant to provide continuing analysis of the debacle. It is meant to point to the most promising way out of the debacle.
The approach I recommended means not continuing the tit-for-tat, “he said/she said” game that Mr. Balestrieri was playing. There comes a point that, no matter how strongly one believes that one has been wronged, prudence dictates that one turn the other cheek and not continue to alienate those who you need not to alienate. Mr. Balestieri has done incalculable damage to his canonical case and to his career by the approach he took. I tried to point to a way he could staunch the bleeding and try to salvage both of these.
The approach I was recommending meant precisely not continuing to analyze who said what when and thus the post does not include the kind of analysis that you seem to expect it to.
The “application” of the letter as you put it to the case of not a libelous leap by Mr. Balestrieri as you suggest here.
I have not suggested that Mr. Balestrieri has committed libel. What I have said is that in his News Release No. 2 he grossly misrepresented what the Vatican did. That is unquestionable, as can be demonstrated by looking only at material he has placed on his own web site, not relying on anything Fr.s DiNoia and Cole have said elsewhere. See How To Tick Off The Vatican and Tunc et Nunc.
Rather, the substance of letter itself makes it clear it applies to the case of John Kerry and any Catholic politician who advocates an abortion right in defiance of Church teaching. The letter speaks for itself without any “spin”.
No, this is precisely the problem. The letter does not make it clear that it applies to the case of John Kerry. No matter how much I want it to do so, it does not. No matter how much you want it to do so, it does not. No matter how much Mr. Balestrieri wants it to do so, it does not. Kerry is not mentioned in the letter, and Fr. Cole appears to be addressing two situations that are not clearly and unambiguously a match for Sen. Kerry’s horrendous and ambiguous statements regarding abortion.
“Well by all means use it, no restrictions whatsoever.” Permission was given to make Fr. Cole’s 9/11 letter public. The “confusion” as you put it in your mock apology commenced with the CNS interview of Fr. DiNoia.
Two points:
1) “No restrictions whatsoever” doesn’t mean that one is free to represent the reply as something it is not. Permission to publish an informal reply from an individual theologian at the Dominican House of Studies does not entail permission to represent this reply as “formal,” “official,” “binding,” “decisive,” and from “the Vatican.”
2) Your above remark also appears to involve the same misunderstanding of the post How To Make Amends. What I wrote was not a “mock apology” but a serious proposal for the kind of things Mr. Balestrieri could say to try to get out of the mess he got himself into.
Finally, Jimmy, where do you stand?
I want to see pro-abort Catholic politicians slapped with severe canonical sanctions.
Do you dispute the Fr. Cole’s letter communicates the teaching of the Church?
No, I don’t dispute it. I would say that the final brief treatment of the civil right to abortion that the letter provides that does not make it fully clear what kind of support for this right Fr. Cole has in mind. He appears to be thinking of supporting such a right simpliciter–i.e., thinking that the existence of a civil right to abortion is of itself a good thing as opposed to something required by extrinsic circumstances per Evangelium Vitae 73.
Do you dispute that “if I obstinately deny by teaching and preaching, or doubt that abortion is not intrinsically evil, I commit the mortal sin of heresy”?
I don’t deny that the obstinate post-baptismal doubt or denial of the truth that abortion is intrinsically evil is a heresy.
I don’t think Mr. Balestrieri was “unfair” to Frs. DiNoia or Cole.
I have confidence that this is your opinion.
However, the facts say otherwise. He grossly misrepresented the letter from Fr. Cole.
I think somewhere Frances Kissling must be delighted that Catholics see fit to mock Marc Balestrieri in this week before the election.
I suspect that she doesn’t even know my blog exists.
I’m also not going to write off the use of irony as a way of making a point. Jesus was rather big on it.
Sometimes irony is even the kinder way to explain what a person has done compared to offering a blunt and flatly analytical dissection of it.
