The Advent season begins this Sunday, and that means The Sound of Music will soon be on television in the United States. The ABC network airs the film classic starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer each year before Christmas, a broadcasting tradition that began in 2002. (It would air before Easter when I was a child, which shows my age.)
As I considered the latest contretemps involving the prefect of the Dicastery of for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), Argentine Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, a song from the film came to mind.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” sing the sisters of the convent in which the heroine of the story is an unlikely novice at the beginning of the picture.
Though they are reasonably unlikely to be breaking out in song anytime soon, Vatican types may be looking at Fernandez’s troubled tenure as DDF head and wondering: “How do you solve a problem like Fernández?”
A longtime friend of Pope Francis who often helped the late pontiff draft statements and documents even before coming to the Vatican, Fernandez was appointed by Francis to his present position in 2023 (around the same time Bishop Robert Prevost – the future Pope Leo XIV – was made the head of the Dicastery for Bishops, and both Prevost and Fernandez got their red hats in the consistory of September 30, 2023).
Fernandez’s appointment raised some eyebrows, especially when some of his early theological-pastoral titles surfaced, including Heal Me with Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing and The Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality.
Youthful indiscretions may be overlooked or even forgiven, if one has proven a steady pair of hands. Fernandez, however, has been stirring the pot almost since Day 1 of his turn in the corner office of the Palazzo del Sant’Uffizio.
Shortly after Fernández’s appointment, the DDF issued the declaration, Fiducia supplicans, which allowed priests to bless people in irregular marriages and relationships, including homosexuals.
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