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Vatican Radio reaches agreement
Private talks end public dispute
The heated public controversy over electromagnetic emissions from the Vatican Radio broadcast facility, which had flared up during the campaign leading up to Italian national elections, was quietly resolved just days after the ballots were cast.
A bilateral commission, including representatives of the Holy See and the Italian government issued a statement announcing “positive results” of negotiations. The Vatican has agreed to broadcast the most powerful radio signals from an antenna isolated from Italian population centers. In turn, the Italian government has provided assurances that there will be no sudden curtailment of electrical power to the Vatican broadcasting station.
The controversy—which had strong political overtones, with leftist parties clearly delighted to have a reason for attacks on the Holy See—involved the level of electromagnetic emissions from the Vatican Radio facility in Santa Maria di Galeria. That neighborhood, which was isolated at the time when the broadcast facility was built, now has a number of homes located around the antenna.
The electromagnetic emissions from the facility exceeded the limits set by a new Italian statute, although they were well within the limits under the broader European law. The radio facility itself is the property of the Vatican city-state, and thus—as the Holy See argued—exempt from the provisions of Italian law.
Vatican Radio has now agreed to change its broadcasting pattern, so that the emissions that exceed Italian standards will come from remote transmission facilities. That change is to be completed by August 31 under the terms of the new agreement.
The bilateral commission, announcing its agreement less than a week after the conclusion of Italy’s national election campaign, also officially took note of the fact—frequently repeated by Vatican representatives in this controversy—that there is no scientific evidence that electromagnetic signals are harmful to human health.
Freedom fighter arrested
Archbishop under pressure to suspend priest
Father Thaddeus Nguyên Van Ly, a Catholic priest who in 2000 started a campaign for religious freedom in Vietnam, was arrested on May 17 in An Truyen parish church, in the Hue archdiocese of central Vietnam.
Father Van Ly, a Salesian, was preparing to say Mass when, according to the Eglise d’Asie news agency, 600 security agents surrounded the church. Some of the faithful, already gathered for Mass, tried to defend the priest; they were beaten and threatened and Father Van Ly was taken away in a police van. The news of the priest’s arrest was confirmed in a statement by Dang Cong Dieu, chairman of the People’s Committee in Phy An village where the church is located.
In February, Father Van Ly had traveled to the United States to urge Congress to delay ratification of a bilateral trade agreement because of serious violations of human rights, religious freedom in particular, in Vietnam. Following this, the provincial government placed him under administrative detention and barred him from leaving his commune. Later the government also banned him from religious activity. But the priest, the chairman of the Peoples’ Committee continued, “defied the order and continued to slander the Party and government policies of religious freedom.”
Eglise d’Asie reports that the vicar general of Hue archdiocese said government officials had pressured Archbishop Etienne Nguyên Nhu Thê to suspend Father Van Ly from his priestly ministry, but the archbishop refused to do so.
In March, the Vietnamese military daily newspaper Quan Doi Nhan labeled the priest a “traitor to the fatherland.” In his fight for religious freedom for his people, Father Van Ly spent 10 years in prison between 1970 and 1990; since his release in 1992 he had been kept under steady police surveillance.
Talks stalled?
Lefebvrist group sharply critical of Holy See
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy, visited Germany and Switzerland in May to pursue negotiations with the schismatic Society of St. Pius X. The trip came at a time when traditionalist Catholics seemed optimistic that a settlement could be reached to end the split; the rumor mill in Rome suggested that a tentative agreement was already in place. But as days and then weeks passed, it became clear that the negotiations had stalled.
The cardinal left Rome immediately after a meeting in which the heads of different arms of the Roman Curia came together to discuss the status of the traditionalist group, which was formed by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 to serve Catholics devoted to the Tridentine-rite Mass. Archbishop Lefebvre was later excommunicated when he ordained bishops for the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) in defiance of a direct prohibition by the Holy See.
For several months Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos had been working to establish an agreement that could allow the “regularizaton” of the SSPX. Such an agreement might have lifted the ban of excommunication on the group, and allowed the group to continue celebrating the Mass according to the old rite. In exchange the Lefebvrist group would have been required to acknowledge the validity of the post-Vatican II liturgy, and the authenticity of other conciliar statements on issues such as religious freedom.
The negotiations foundered when SSPX leaders balked at these terms. Bishop Bernard Fellay, the superior general of the traditionalist group, wrote to supporters reporting that the talks had broken down. He explained that “we have been marginalized by the authorities in Rome, not to say rejected, because of our refusal of Vatican II and the post-conciliar reforms, for reasons of doctrine.”
Was the Lefebvrist leader rejecting the teachings of Vatican II, then? Bishop Fellay’s letter to supporters did not go that far. He wrote:
When we say that we reject the Council, we do not thereby mean that we totally reject the letter of all the conciliar documents, consisting as they do in large part of simple repetitions of what has already been said in the past. What we are attacking is a new language, introduced in the name of the “pastoral” Council.
Nevertheless, the traditionalist leader made it abundantly clear that he was at odds with the Vatican’s efforts to promote ecumenical unity. “One bold, shocking, scandalous act follows another,” he complained, “in their attempt to draw together Christians.” Indeed, Bishop Fellay expressed the opinion that the Vatican’s apparent willingness to overlook doctrinal differences among Christians might have contributed to the effort for reconciliation with the SSPX:
One cannot help thinking they wish to give secondary importance to questions of truth in order to get on with living. However that may be, there is an explicit desire to overcome doctrinal differences by joint action. Here is probably to be seen the motive for the Vatican’s approach to us last autumn.
The statement by Bishop Fellay left some room, however small, for further negotiations with the Holy See. But another letter to the traditionalist faithful, by the American superior of the SSPX, underlined the depth of the anti-Vatican sentiment that would have to be overcome. Father Peter Scott wrote:
We all know that there is presently in the Catholic Church a division between eternal Rome and modernist Rome, between the Catholic religion and the ecumenical religion, between the Catholic Church and the conciliar church. . . . . The modernist, ecumenical, conciliar church, like all evil, cannot exist in itself, but as a parasite it must depend upon something else to exist, namely the Catholic Church.
Father Scott insisted that the SSPX must steadfastly resist current Vatican policies, since “it is only by excising or curing the evil within this structure that the crisis can come to an end.”
New ecumenical impetus
Papal apology seen as catalyst
The dramatic gesture made by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Greece—a request for pardon for Catholic offenses against the Orthodox—has given major impetus to the cause of ecumenism, according to the theologian of the papal household.
Father Georges Cottier, OP, told the Roman news agency I Media that the papal expression of regret for “past and present controversies,” and in particular for the sack of Constantinople in 1204, opened the way for dialogue between the Holy See and the Greek Orthodox Church. The Greek Church had previously been cool, if not actively hostile, to Vatican ecumenical efforts.
The Pope’s gesture, Father Cottier said, has already had the desired effect of allowing a “purification of memory.” The apology, he explained, helped to break down psychological barriers that kept the Orthodox leadership from engaging in ecumenical dialogue. The Dominican theologian said that theological discussions were now “on the right track.” He hastened to add, however, that “one cannot put a timetable” on the process.
Father Cottier added that the Pope’s scheduled trips to Ukraine and Armenia would also have a crucial bearing on the ecumenical situation. He noted that by asking pardon for the faults committed by Catholics, the Pope was making it easier for Orthodox leaders to begin opening doors to the Church. The new open attitude toward the Catholic Church will also make for a warmer welcome when the Pope visits predominantly Orthodox lands such as Ukraine, he said.
The Swiss-born theologian rejected complaints that such apologies weaken the position of the Catholic Church. “The Pope knows what he wants to do; he has no fears,” Father Cottier remarked. He suggested that much of the discomfort felt by certain Catholics about such apologies could be attributed to the way in which the media have portrayed the Pope’s statements.
Father Cottier, in his position as theologian of the papal household, was instrumental in preparing the November 1998 statement entitled Memory and Repentance. That document explained the sense in which the Church can ask for pardon on behalf of her children. While the Church herself is the spotless bride of Christ, free of faults, the people who make up the Catholic community are sinners, prone to weakness and error, the document explained.
“For the most part, these requests for pardon have been very well received,” Father Cottier observed. He saw especially positive results from the Pope’s remarks on the Holocaust, and the act of repentance he made in Jerusalem during his Jubilee pilgrimage there.
The solemn ceremony in which the Pope and members of the Roman Curia asked pardon for the offenses of the Catholic community, on March 12, 2000, was the “most complete” fulfillment of the Pope’s desire to acknowledge past faults, Father Cottier said. “Even if it was not explicit in naming particular cases,” he explained, that ceremony “made allusion to divisions and injustices on the part of Christians during the history of the Church.” The ceremony included a special request for God’s pardon for the divisions among the Christian faithful—a topic that the Pope raised once again during his stay in Greece.