What is it with these old churchmen?
‘It seems the Vatican- China deal is not proceeding . That’s good !’ This is not a statement from some battle-scarred old Stalinist commissar, veteran of the Long March you will be interested to know , but from Cardinal Zen. This belligerent 85 year old has intervened, and not for the first time, into the infinitely delicate and complex negotiations which may yet help to bring the Eucharist to the millions in China seeking spiritual sustenance. That is his contribution. It is difficult to follow exactly what his problem is , a constant difficulty with the older person .
Sometimes, if we understand him correctly, he seems to be against any kind of agreement with the Chinese Government seeing this as a betrayal in some way of those who were and still are being persecuted ,.The fact that they put themselves in this situation in the hope of ultimately bringing about the kind of agreement , and China back into the Church, he is moaning about seems to be too difficult for him to grasp. The ‘Catholic Herald’ however suggests another solution, and we quote: ‘What seems to rile the Cardinal most about the proposed deal is that he and other bishops from China have been left out of the discussion. ‘ We haven’t space , but a look in his Wikipedia might be instructive.
Interestingly, he was made a Cardinal by who else-no not him- but Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. And he has emerged once more from retirement, like the celebrated cuckoo from the clocks in his native Black Forest, to suggest with as much sense as the cuckoo , that we all stand by Cardinal Sarah, he who is so keen about which direction one looks when saying Mass. Our Latin is rusty, but it would have been nice to tell him that if the heat was so bad, why does he not stay permanently out of the kitchen. He would have understood the Latin , naturally. But why can’t he understand that he could simply be confusing people, and that nobody in 2017 really cares what he thinks ?
What happened to all the finger-wagging about humility, and accepting God’s will to which we have often been subjected so unnecessarily ? Do these not apply to these bothersome and infinitely tedious old men ? Retire them? Can we not sack them?