Of course you know the Fables of Aesop. Perhaps Nanny used to read them to you at bed-time. Probably, as an adolescent, you dined off them on those rare and grand evenings when the Butler had murmured to your Grandfather "And I'll put out the Meissen Service tonight, my lord?" So you will not need me to remind you of the man who bought an ass [in English English, this means donkey] 'on approval' and tested its character by putting it into a stable already full of asses [ditto]. It revealed its flawed personality by immediately settling down beside the laziest and greediest.
The Moral?
"A MAN IS KNOWN BY THE COMPANY HE KEEPS."
We don't really need Aesop any more, now that we have PF. With resolute consistency, he proves Aesop's maxim up to the hilt. And he does it with crony after crony. Just one example. Courtesy of Mr Henry Sire, Knight of Malta, author of the ground-breaking The Dictator Pope, hear now the Fable of Bishop Juan Carlos Maccarone:
"Bergoglio made [Maccarone] an auxiliary bishop at the beginning of his tenure, in 1995. In 2005, Maccarone was dismissed from the episcopate by Pope Benedict after he was filmed having sexual relations with a homosexual prostitute in the sacristy of the cathedral. Yet Cardinal Bergoglio publicly defended him, asserting that the filming was a set-up to bring the bishop down because of his left-wing political commitment. Maccarone, it is worth noting, declared that everyone was aware of his homosexual activities and he had been appointed bishop regardless of them."
A biographer might assemble into a stable pattern various recurrent features of PF's relationships: his appalling selection of cronies; his tendency to keep them in his service even when their failings have attracted public notioriety; and, when this is not possible, how he either gives them a different sinecure or rewards them with hyperbolic marks of his favour and esteem.
The other side of the Bergoglian coin is that when the favour of cronydom is offered to someone, as it was to Cardinal O'Malley, and he fails to measure up, the world suddenly becomes a much colder place.
Thank goodness Cronyism and Corruption are not identical.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Dear Father. Man o man, your courage is a wonder to behold and especially that is so because us Catholics reached peak courage in the 1950s.
ABS would love to be able to take you to your favorite restaurant and pay for your meal and a few bottles of quality wine.
May God Bountifully Bless you, Father.
Because you who bear courage, erudition, and humor along with Holy Orders, one prays you become an example to all other clergy.
The funny humourless man who didn't have a nanny, with whom I had a contretemps a few weeks ago, seems to have pushed off! One had expected unpleasantness under such direct provocation.
I've been trying for years to be somebody's crony, but noone seems to want me! Must be doing it wrong.
In what sense does Sire hold that Bergoglio made Maccarone an auxiliary bishop in 1995? According to Catholic Hierarchy (http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bmacc.html), Maccarone was consecrated in 1993, as auxiliary of Lomas de Zamora (which is suffragan to Buenos Aires). Bergoglio is not listed as one of his consecrators. At that time, Bergoglio was auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires. He became coadjutor in 1997, and succeeded the following year. Not having read The Dictator Pope, there might be a lengthier discussion than what I am privy to here at Father's Mutual Enrichment, but the data I see don't add up.
Post a Comment