Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
September 5, 2018
Will Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, who brought to light the existence
of corruption in the Vatican, singling out those guilty, beginning with the highest
ecclesiastical authorities, be punished for telling the truth? Pope Francis is
examining this possibility - if it is true, as several sources confirm - that he has consulted Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmiero,
and some other canon-lawyer, to study the possibility of canonical sanctions to
inflict on the Archbishop, commencing with sospensione
a divinis. If this news is confirmed it would be of extreme gravity, and somewhat
surreal, seeing as the “expert” summoned to sanction Monsignor Viganò would be precisely
Cardinal Coccopalmiero, who is being accused by the former-Nuncio of the United
States, of being part of the “homosexual lobby” lording over the Vatican. It
cannot be forgotten in any case, that the Cardinal’s Secretary, Monsignor Luigi
Capozzi, is involved in a case of homosexual orgy, in which the position of
his superior has still to be clarified.
But the underlying problem is another. The Catholic Church, inasmuch as
it is a visible community, is endowed with a penal law, which is the law It possesses,
to sanction the faithful who have committed violations of the law. It is
necessary to distinguish, with regard to this, between sin and crime. Sin
concerns a violation of the moral order; a crime concerns the transgression of the
Church’s Canon Law, which is of course different from the laws of States. All
crimes are sins, but not all sins are crimes.
There are
crimes common to civil legislation and that of Canon Law, like the crime of pedophilia,
but other offences are such only for Canon Law and not the penal Laws of States.
Homosexuality and cohabitation, for example, are not considered crimes for most
contemporary States, but remain grave crimes for the clergy that fall into them
and as such are sanctioned by Canon Law. A crime, in fact is not every exterior
action that violates a law, but only the kind of violation where a sanction is
foreseen for non-compliance, according to the principle of nullum crimen, nulla pena sine lege.
The Code of Canon Law, as Padre Giovanni Scalese recently stated in his
blog Antiquo Robore, considers not
only the abuse of minors a crime, but also other sins against the Sixth Commandment:
cohabitation and its scandalous situation, which includes homosexuality (Canon
395 of the New Code). These distinctions don’t appear clear to Pope Francis,
who proclaims “zero tolerance” against civil offences, like pedophilia, but
invokes “forgiveness” and mercy for the “sins of youth”, such as homosexuality,
forgetting the presence of this crime in the laws of the Church.
But then, here is the contradiction: the laws of the Church are being invoked
to strike, not immoral clergy, but the one who is denouncing the immorality of
the clergy - Monsignor Carlo Maria Viganò, who in his Testimony did nothing
other than follow the lines of the Church reformers, from St. Peter Damian to St.
Bernardino of Siena, the great scourgers of sodomy.
What is the reason for the canonical punishment that would be applied to
the courageous Archbishop? Pope Francis might respond, as in the fable of
Phaedrus: I am not required to give reasons, I punish Quia nominor leo, because I’m the strongest. But when authority is
not exercised in the service of truth, it becomes abuse of power and the victim
of the abuse of power acquires a force that nobody can take away from them: the
force of the Truth. In this tragic time for the Church, the first thing that,
not only Catholics, but the public opinion of the entire world are asking the
men of the Church is “to live without falsehood” to use a famous expression by Solzhenitsyn.
The time for social dictatorships is over - the truth is destined to impose
itself.
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
