Comments on: A suggestion for CWnews.com

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:41:00 +0000

I’m sorry, that quotation is also from this http://www.chiesa story.

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:40:00 +0000

For lack of a better place, I'll put this quotation here; fascinating stuff. Notice that some of the cardinals arrayed in opposition to Sodano's depature are some of the main bad guys from Windswept House.

In the case of the secretariat of state, the announcement was moved forward at the order of Benedict XVI, who by doing this wanted to cut short the resistance posed by part of the curia against his decision to appoint Bertone.

Pope Joseph Ratzinger had opted for Bertone – his main collaborator in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1995 to 2003 – for a number of months. And he had decided a number of months earlier, at least since last February, on dismissing Sodano during the summer.

But Sodano did not willingly accept his exit from the stage. Formally, he said he was ready “to hand over to others my office whenever the Holy Father wishes”: a willingness he restated one last time in a June 18 interview. But in the meantime, he put into motion a campaign of support for his remaining in office until his 80th birthday, November 23, 2007. For his part cardinal Szoka, who is the same age as Sodano, entrenched himself behind the slogan: “As long as he stays, I’m staying, too.”

The campaign was carried out by some of the cardinals formerly of the curia who had been career diplomats: Achille Silvestrini, Pio Laghi, Giovanni Cheli. Their argument against Bertone’s appointment as secretary of state was his lack of diplomatic experience: an indispensable prerogative, in their view, for a prime minister of the Holy See, especially with a pope who does not have a diplomatic background either.

And I'm disappointed that Cardinal Szoka, a native of Grand Rapids, MI, and former Archbishop of Detroit, is such a jerk.

With tigers like these fellows prowling around him, it's no wonder the pope can't get anything done - or everything he does must be done as though walking on egg shells.

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 15:33:00 +0000

Indeed, I can appreciate such a thing. So another option here might have been to say: “CWNews, back in May, predicted….”

It sounded silly to me, when I have the impression that Phil Lawler is running the whole thing, to say “CWNew’s Phil Lawler predicted….” as though some other guy within this vast media organization was giving credit to one of its reporters. And since I figured it was very likely that he had written the article himself, and so was referring to himself in the third person. It all becomes a little overmuch, I mean, if one’s aiming to be classy.

Hey, if I had predicted something back in May, you’d see it all over this blog for a month: there’d be no end to my boasting. But we’re not a “news service” and we’re certainly not a classy operation. ; )

By: Kevin Jones

Kevin Jones — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:05:00 +0000

I think his actions are simply good marketing. He reinforces readers’ confidence by noting his organization’s accuracy, and he cross-references older stories to get people to stick around his site longer.