CruxMag has the official line on Vatican Press Office’s Fr. Thomas Rosica’s capitulation on his legal threats against a Canadian blogger. First we must be clear that Father neither works for nor represents the Vatican.
Despite a frenzy in the conservative Catholic blogosphere, a high-profile priest who volunteers as an English-language assistant to the Vatican press office says he’s not planning to take legal action against a Canadian blogger who had criticized him, and considers the matter closed.
The Rev. Thomas Rosica, also a Canadian, said Wednesday he never planned to sue the blogger, and also insisted that he’s not a “high-ranking Vatican official” and hence there was never any prospect of the Vatican taking action.
Crux’s Ines San Martin writes:
On Wednesday, Rosica released a statement saying he had only responded “as an individual and in no institutional capacity to the Vatican or to my place of work, to the continuous false, [and] slanderous statements of the blogger.”
“It was never my intention to sue, but rather to issue a letter to ‘cease and desist’ the frivolous calumny,” the statement said.
That frightening letter sure sounded like it was his intention to sue. To her credit San Martin gives a good recap of beseiged blogger Vox Cantoris’ line on Fr. Rosica:
Through Vox Cantoris, Domet also has questioned the legitimacy of Francis’ papacy and described last October’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family as a “New-age laity psycho-babble.”
In the wake of the synod, Domet accused Rosica, who helped the Vatican’s press office as a spokesman and translator for English- and French-speaking journalists, of “manipulating” the synod and the press coverage.
Donet wrote that Rosica was lobbying for changing Church teaching through “stealth, by the change of practice under the guise that which is considered pastoral.”
One gets the impression that the writer may not think those assertions ring true. After covering Cardinal Burke’s helpful indirect defense of the Vox Cantoris last week, she closes with the not-high-level Rosica’s high-handed condemnation of bloggers who won’t tow their establishment line. You know, those jerks.
Popes Benedict XVI and Francis have taught clearly that the Internet and blogs can be of tremendous service to the building up of the Church and of humanity,” Rosica’s statement said. “They have never taught that blogs and social media should be used, in the name of fidelity, to engender slander, hatred, reviling and destroying.”
Rosica also said that those in the Catholic blogsphere who have contributed to spreading the faith and defending all that is good and beautiful about it and the Church should be congratulated and encouraged.
“Others have chosen to turn the blogosphere into a black hole of vitriol, anger and profound sadness,” he said. “As Catholics, the great privilege and freedom of expression and access to social media also has certain obligations of decency, integrity, honest and charity that reveal who we really are.”
Talk about a ‘black hole of vitriol!’ How many ways can one insult the free Catholic press, Fr. Rosica? It’s a privilege to speak is it? Who grants it? It’s an obligation to say what you permit? This all still sounds threatening.
Intimidating, smearing, and attacking honest faithful Catholics won’t make you one of them. How long will you pretend?