From the Vatican’s embrace of a socialist dictator to Cardinal Cupich’s scandalous invocation at the Democratic National Convention, we find ourselves without leaders to guide us.
Two events of recent days have scandalized me. Both were symbolic gestures and included the exchange of platitudes but also created an ambiguity about the Church’s teaching that is stretched to obfuscation.
The first symbolic event was when the pope sent a new nuncio of Venezuela. In case you don’t pay attention to Latin American dictators, there was a presidential election in Venezuela that almost everyone but the victors considers fraudulent.
The novelist and journalist Jaime Bayly commented on the new nuncio and said he was very disappointed in what the Vatican has done. When the whole world is concerned about the electoral fraud and the repression that has followed it, when there are people filling the streets with protest about the legitimacy of the government of a man who is undeniably a throwback to the military regimes of the past in Latin America, when Maduro has appeared to be isolated in the corrupt practices of a failed state, the pope decides to send his ambassador to shake hands with Maduro.
Bayly, who is a man who pulls no punches, as the cliché goes, emphasized the smiling archbishop who very submissively presented his credentials to a very happy Maduro. “Why now?” asked Bayly, “What was the haste to get the nuncio presented when Venezuela has been without a nuncio for three years.” When Maduro would most profit from a papal gesture of recognition, the Vatican came through for the dictator. The clip of the happy archbishop and Maduro is not just embarrassing, it is scandalous. What was the point, asked Bayly, except to say that Maduro has power and will apparently maintain it and we are his friend.
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