Washington D.C., May 21, 2009 / 09:40 am
Two Catholic commentators are lamenting the “sorry ignorance of recent American history” displayed by L'Osservatore Romano—the newspaper published by the Vatican—in its favorable reaction to President Obama's recent commencement speech at Notre Dame. However, they caution, readers should not make the mistake of thinking that the newspaper speaks for the Catholic Church.
Pope John Paul II's official biographer, George Weigel, wrote in an article for National Review Online that the pieces published by L'Osservatore Romano have caused pro-administration American journalists and activists to leap with “barely concealed glee” on the chance to trumpet the claim that “the Vatican” believes the U.S. Catholic bishops overreacted to Notre Dame’s award of an honorary doctorate of laws to President Obama.
Furthermore, Weigel says, journalists are writing that “the Vatican” is “taking a wait-and-see, so-far-so-good attitude toward Obama after the horrors of the arch-demon Bush.”
Perhaps this argument might hold water if one was ignorant of the way the Holy See operates, but the fact is that there is no such thing as “the Vatican,” which is “as complex and confused a bureaucracy as one finds in national governments,” the Catholic commentator writes.
The truth of the matter is that the Vatican-published newspaper is seldom used as the forum for delivering the Church's position in matters “of faith, morals, or public-policy judgment.”