The Italian website La Bussola Nuova Quotidiana continues to pose uncomfortable questions about ex-Jesuit Marko Rupnik, accused of sexual abuse; his seeming Cardinal Protector, Angelo De Donatis, former Vicar General (the Pope’s Administrator) of the Archdiocese of Rome and now the Church’s Major Penitentiary; and a convent in Montefiola, northeast of Rome (article linked here). According to La Bussola, the older nuns who lived there are being moved out to make way for Rupnik and his Centro Aletti artistic entourage. It’s claimed that is happening because De Donatis as “protector” has canonical control of the older nuns’ community’s assets. His Eminence has not yet deigned to share his side of the story with the world.

The Italian cardinal may not feel the need to account for what looks suspicious because the mentality of the current Vatican is that until something is absolutely and irrevocably “proven,” there is no obligation to explain what might be afoot. In that worldview, you are the morally dubious person for asking questions. You are doing “injustice” to the reputations of these stellar clerics and hierarchs. You should get thee to a confessional (just maybe not one manned by Marko Rupnik).

For this Vatican, the adage “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” is not wisdom. It is “gossip” and “rumor” spreading, maybe “detraction” or even “calumny.” And, while Francesco often equivocates about sexual morality, his preaching about “gossip” is often so firm and constant one might even think it “rigid.”

It’s clear this Vatican does not get — despite Boston 2002, despite the McCarrick affair, despite the criminal prosecutions of priest sex abusers in multiple countries — that the Church’s credibility on these types of cases is zero. It is shot. Thoroughly. Nobody outside of a Roman curial office (or a sycophant that wants to move into one) believes the hierarchy on this — and nobody will, no matter how many clerics line up to read us their most cramped interpretations of Prümmer, Noldin, Génicot, and Tanquerey about “good name.” Apparently, that chapter of moral theology is not subject to “doctrinal evolution.”

This approach seems, in fact, to isolate the notions of “detraction” and “calumny” from the rest of moral theology. There is also a sin called “scandal,” which usually means the average person recognizes some situation as deeply morally skewed, e.g., like clerics committing sexual abuse and other clerics shielding them. But under the thinking currently running the Vatican, how can a person claim to be “scandalized” about some situation involving clerical sexual abuse prior to the latter’s final and definite canonical adjudication? In other words, can a “scandal” exist prior to its clerical certification? And, if not, then prior to such clerical certification, is the claim of scandal itself “scandalous detraction or calumny?” How does one guard against a vicious circle that appears designed to insulate abusers from accountability? Isn’t that a scandal?

In the Vatican’s fantasy world, appeal to “good name” and “reputation” seems to be the scurrilous new way of insulating the Church against proactive accountability for the high-pressure hydrant of sexual abuse sewage that continues to pollute her. Low-level Vatican bank employees who marry pose “conflicts-of-interest,” even where other mechanisms can be put into place to ensure probity. But no external accountability mechanisms are needed whenever anybody in the order of bishop — especially bishops with red hats — becomes “protector” of extremely valuable and lucrative assets. Clearly, in the Vatican’s sacramental theology, ordination to the episcopate must confer a spiritual charism of probity that removes any temptations arising from canon law’s entrusting such great wealth into their hands. Such bishops can even commission artists to include them in Last Judgment paintings… on the right side, of course (see here).

Meanwhile, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which continues to putter along on the case against Rupnik, seemingly can’t decide where the potential “crime” of which the ex-Jesuit might be guilty is found. Bussola reports (here) there is a “study group” that is examining where and how such a crime might be found in canon law. It is led by Bishop Filippo Iannone, who, as I recently noted, just felt the need to publish a six-month-old letter about the “injustice” of reporting accusations about priests prior to their final adjudication.

Rupnik’s current problems stem from his alleged sexual manipulation of nuns as part of “spiritual direction.” If Bussola is to be believed, a new group of nuns is being sacrificed to accommodate Rupnik and his ex-SJ illuminati. 

Shall we also assume it untoward to ask how it is that this Vatican manages to protect nuns who want to be deaconesses, maybe even priestesses, can’t wait to make them synodal directors or territorial administrators, but seems to have little concern about more traditional, semi-contemplative sisters who pray, embroider, and sell honey? After all, who’s worried about honey when one seems to have one’s hands in the cookie jar?