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| A goodly apple rotten at the heart: O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath! |
No, we are not always right -- but we try our best to avoid any malice in reporting what we know and how we view things, with the help of the Sol Iustitiae.
In the article on the pope's June 10 meeting with a delegation of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, this was the last paragraph in the Vatican Insider piece:
At the end of the meeting, the Pope said goodbye to all participants individually. Two of them expressed their bafflement over the treatment of father Stefano Manelli. One of these two seminarists [sic] a few days later announced his decision to leave the noviciates [sic] as he said he was opposed to the II Vatican Council.[*]
This prompted this following extensive comment from us -- firm because it had to be:
The report includes a terrible accusation, that one of those present left the "noviciates" (sic) "as he said he was opposed to the II Vatican Council." This absurd statement alone is enough to prove that the report is coming directly from the office of Commissioner Volpi. What is the seminarian's name? Where is his explicit declaration stating this absurdity? What does it even mean to be "opposed to the II Vatican Council"? The Society of Saint Pius X itself, to whom the Friars were nonsensically compared by Commissioner Volpi when he called them "crypto-Lefebvrists", would never state this. If one is speaking of the actual letter of the conciliar documents, the "Progressives" are the ones truly "opposed to the II Vatican Council" when it does not suit them. The accusation would be as absurd as saying that, because a nun left the convent to marry, she is "opposed to Trent"... We can say for sure that this poor young man, no theologian he, simply decided to leave because, as many others, the meeting convinced him that the new, we might say Anti-Manellian, direction of the institute does not suit him anymore.
This of course led to the most absurd tirades against us from those moved by the spirit of Oedipus -- Laius is killed, Thebes is shaken to its core, even if they do not quite realize that they are doing it and understand why they do it.
Well, Corrispondenza Romana was able to notice a significant change in this last paragraph, in the Italian original text:
At the end of the meeting, the Pope said goodbye to all participants individually. Two of them expressed their bafflement over the treatment of father Stefano Manelli. One of these two seminarians a few days later announced his decision to leave the novitiate. [**]
Yes, that is right, "as he said he was opposed to the II Vatican Council," the pivotal sentence of the entire piece, was removed after our correction -- pivotal because it displays in the light of day the malice of those who made the report available, pivotal because it provides the basis of the entire false accusation against the Founder, former direction, and house of formation of the Franciscans of the Immaculate, that is, "crypto-Lefebvrism". This word is nothing, it means nothing, it has no theological meaning, it is a handle that allows some to say "it means whatever I think it means," and is as empty as the accusations of mental illness made by Soviet apparatchiks against those opposed to the regime. This unjustified heavy-handedness from above is the exact opposite of all that is in the documents of Vatican II, and can only be justified by what Marco Tosatti calls, "the cruelty that is typical of closed environments." Tosatti is right, cruelty is all that is left of those who, under disguise of goodness, appealed to have the Traditional Mass banned, seminary closed, and superior general placed under confinement: "A goodly apple rotten at the heart: o, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!"
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[*] Italian original text: "Alla fine dell'incontro il Papa ha salutato personalmente tutti i presenti. Due di loro gli hanno manifestato perplessità per il trattamento a cui è stato sottoposto il fondatore padre Stefano Manelli. Uno di questi due seminaristi alcuni giorni dopo l'incontro ha annunciato la sua decisione di lasciare il noviziato perché si è detto contrario al Concilio Vaticano II." [emphasis added]
[**] Italian original text on June 25: "Alla fine dell'incontro il Papa ha salutato personalmente tutti i presenti. Due di loro gli hanno manifestato perplessità per il trattamento a cui è stato sottoposto il fondatore padre Stefano Manelli. Uno di questi due seminaristi alcuni giorni dopo l'incontro ha annunciato la sua decisione di lasciare il noviziato."
