Two Reforms Dear To Francis Flunk the Test. Too Full of Errors

What difference does it make what the draughts say? Francis will simply impose his diktats in his usual dictatorial fashion.

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

Once upon a time there was the red and blue pencil, for pointing out little mistakes and big mistakes in school work. But that pencil is urgently needed at the Vatican again, seeing the bad writing of certain texts produced by Francis’s pontificate.

Full of blunders, for example, are the two documents that have prompted the most discussion this summer: the draft of the reform of the Vatican curia and the new statutes of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family.

For each of these, Settimo Cielo has already framed the elements of the discussion:

> Documents. The Two Key Chapters of the Draft On Curia Reform

> John Paul II Institute. The Hit, the Boss, the Button

But the documents must also be reexamined one by one in order to highlight their amazingly sloppy composition.

1. “PRAEDICATE EVANGELIUM”

This is the apostolic constitution on the new arrangement of the Vatican curia, which Francis is preparing to promulgate and the draft of which was previously sent - in a confidential manner - to a select list of cardinals, bishops, episcopal conferences, and ecclesiastical institutions all over the world, to collect their observations before the definitive publication.

This is, of course, a matter of a draft. But that does not justify the ineptitude of the errors with which it is stuffed.

If for example one takes the English version of the text, which is also the most widely distributed version, this presents a glaring mismatch between the general index of the various chapters - entitled “Index” in Latin - and the text itself.

In the index, after the first four chapters entitled in order: “Prologue,” “Criteria and principles for the Roman Curia,” “General norms,” and “Secretariat of State,” there in fact appears a fifth chapter that however is not present in the text.

This phantom chapter has the title “Council of Cardinals” and would concern that band of nine cardinals, in reality now reduced to six, called by Francis to accompany him from the beginning of his pontificate so that he can be precisely assisted by them in the reform of the curia and in the governance of the universal Church.

It is known that after long discussion it was agreed that this Council of Cardinals is not part of the Roman curia, just as the Synod of Bishops with its secretary general is not part of it.

But evidently, in sending the draft of the reform of the new curia, it was forgotten that the index should be updated, removing from it the Council of Cardinals.

Another discrepancy between the index and the text appears in the list of the “Dicasteries,” which will include under this single title the current congregations, the pontifical councils, and other comparable offices.

In the index, the last on the list is the “Dicastery for Papal Charities (Elemosineria Apostolica),” complete with a reference to art. 152 of the text.

But if one goes to look at the text, art. 152 talks about something else altogether, because the Elemosineria Apostolica, which became famous through the activism of Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, figures instead not as the last but as the third on the list of the fifteen future dicasteries, immediately after those for evangelization and for the doctrine of the faith.

Further on, the draft of “Praedicate Evangelium” groups together the “Structures of ‘Diakonia Iustitiae’,” which will be the following: “Apostolic Penitentiary,” “Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura,” “Tribunal of the Roman Rota,” and “Office for Legislative Texts.”

But here too the index does not correspond to the text, not only in the numbers of the articles to which it refers, which are completely off, but above all because it indicates as belonging to the judicial structures of the Holy See only the first three institutes, and not the fourth, which it associates instead with the subsequent section of the “Offices.”

Among which “Offices” there figure in the index - in addition to the “Council for the Economy,” “Secretariat for the Economy,” “Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church,” “Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See,” and “Office of the Auditor General” - these other three as well: “Prefecture of the Papal Household,” “Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff,” and “Advocates,” which however in the text are grouped together elsewhere: the first two in the section “Other Entities,” and the third in a section of its own entitled “Attorneys.”

And the last section too, “Institutions Connected to the Holy See,” is glaring in its lack of precision. In the index it includes these five realities: “Pontifical Commission for the Protections of Minors,” “Vatican Secret Archives,” “Vatican Apostolic Library,” “Academies,” and “Fabric of Saint Peter.”

While in the text, to these five realities, presented in a different order, are added: “The Holy See Agency for the Evaluation and Promotion of the Quality of University and Ecclesiastical Faculties,” and “The Financial Information Authority.”

If this is the calling card of the new curia, confusion reigns supreme there.

2. THE NEW STATUTES OF THE JOHN PAUL II INSTITUTE

Here the sloppiness of the writing is even more serious, because this is not a matter of a draft, but of a definitive text produced by a university-level pontifical institute, and which moreover has received the approval of the congregation for Catholic education.

The new statutes have been promulgated only in Italian, and - in this language - the grammatical errors appear already in art. 1 of the document, § 1 of which reads “presso alla Pontificia Università Lateranense” instead of “presso la Pontificia…” as is correctly written a few lines further on, and § 4 of which reads: “dipende amministrativamente Sezione Amministrativa” instead of “dipende amministrativamente dalla Sezione….”

In art. 43 there appears a strange use of the expression “assolvere tutte le materie” as if meaning to say “superare gli esami di tutte le materie.”

In art. 49 - as previously in art. 1 § 4 - a word is missing. There it reads: “corsi complementari ed obbligatori a quelli previsti,” instead of “corsi complementari ed obbligatori rispetto a quelli previsti.”

In art. 50 § 1 the verb “permettere” is used two times in the same line: “… che permettano di rafforzare i rapporti con le altre sedi dell’Istituto, permettendo a queste istituzioni….” But what comes a little later is even worse, where a whole sentence is repeated two times in a row, with few modifications.

This, in fact, is how the last two lines of art. 50 § 1 read: “Una parte dei corsi può essere svolta nella forma di insegnamento a distanza, secondo quanto permesso. L’ordinamento degli Studi determinerà le condizioni, in modo particolare circa gli esami (Norme applicative, art. 33 § 2).”

And here is what it says again in § 2 immediately afterward:  “Una parte dei corsi può essere svolta nella forma di insegnamento a distanza, se l’ordinamento degli studi, previamente approvato dalla Congregazione per l’Educazione Cattolica, lo prevede e ne determina le condizioni, in modo particolare circa gli esami (cfr. Cost. Ap. ‘Veritatis gaudium’, Norme applicative, art. 33 § 2).

In art. 51 there is an “accessibile” in the singular instead of in the plural: “Allo scopo di rendere accessibile agli studenti gli strumenti….”

In art. 53 a double consonant is missing: there it reads “accetazione” instead of “accettazione.”

In art. 88 it reads: “sotto l’approvazione della Congregazione,” instead of “con l’approvazione….”

In art. 90 the definite article is missing: it reads  “tutti Professori” instead of “tutti i Professori.”

And one could continue, pointing out other grammatical errors and inaccuracies.

It comes as no surprise that a text of this sort should have been produced and gripped as a blunt instrument by such a character as the Grand Chancellor of the John Paul II Institute, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia.

What is puzzling, instead, is that even a theologian of profound thought and elegant writing like the president of the Institute, PierAngelo Sequeri, should have endorsed so unpresentable a text.