The Vatican’s chief comms officer on Friday defended his department’s use of an accused serial rapist’s art.
“We’re not talking about abuse of minors,” said Dr. Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See, on Friday, 21st June 2024, in response to questions from journalists gathered in the Heritage Ballroom of the Atlanta Marriott Buckhead and Conference Center.
Ruffini was there to deliver the keynote address on the last day of the annual Catholic Media Conference and had opened the floor to queries, two of which came from Colleen Dulle of America Magazine and Paulina Guzik of OSVNews.
The Vatican has continued to use digital reproductions of pieces by a disgraced former celebrity Slovenian artist-priest, Fr. Marko Rupnik, even after he began to face allegations he spiritually, psychologically, and sexually abused dozens of victims, most of whom were women religious.
The Vatican originally declined to prosecute Rupnik, and Pope Francis only reversed course after facing close scrutiny and sustained criticism.
“We did not put any new photos,” Ruffini told the room full of journalists and other media professionals, “we just left what [images] there were.”
The head of the Vatican comms dicastery’s theological-pastoral department, Natasa Govekar, was in the Vatican delegation to the week-long conference. Govekar’s department is directly responsible for the digital liturgical calendar that frequently features Rupnik images. A close associate of Rupnik, a member of the Centro Aletti art institute Rupnik founded, and a native Slovenian like Rupnik, Govekar did not headline official sessions or answer questions.
“Do you think that if I put away a photo of an art (away) from my—from our—website, I will be more close to the victims?” Ruffini asked Guzik, who had posed question to him regarding the message his dicastery is sending to victims of abuse and coverup.
“Do you think so?” Ruffini asked
“I think you’re wrong,” Ruffini said.
“I think you’re wrong,” Ruffini repeated.
“I really think you’re wrong”, Ruffini said again.
Ruffini noted that the Jesuits have not removed the Rupnik art that adorns the chapel in their general curia building, and called their decision, “inspiring.”
Even staunch papal defenders have expressed consternation at the Vatican’s continued use of Rupnik images.
“This is crazy,” wrote papal biographer Austen Ivereigh on X. “Of course, the Vatican should not be using the [Rupnik] images in websites, etc.,” Ivereigh also wrote, “especially given that Rupnik is being investigated by the Vatican.”
Ivereigh’s remark was noteworthy not only because it from a fellow close to Francis, but also because Ivereigh has sharply criticized people who have called for works by Rupnik to be destroyed or removed from sacred spaces.
“Many disgraced and dubious religious artists have created works that over the centuries have raised minds and hearts to God,” Ivereigh wrote in response to a call—in April of this year—for the removal of Rupnik’s art. “This is pure iconoclasm,” Ivereigh wrote, “Puritan not Catholic, and heretical, because it does not allow for grace to supplement sinful nature.”
Anatomy of a scandal
Ruffini, however, is in good company.
In June of 2023, when the Rupnik scandal had been before the public for nearly six months, Pope Francis recorded a video message to the participants in a Marian Congress in Aparecide, Brazil, in which he used a mosaic depiction of the Madonna and Child by Rupnik as a prop in a spiritual reflection.
“We are talking [about] a story that we don’t know,” Ruffini also said. “Who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?”
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is currently conducting a review of the Rupnik matter.
“We think—the dicastery—and I personally think that [removing images of Rupnik’s works from official Vatican media] is not a good way to anticipate,” the outcome of the review process, which may or may not end in trial. “As Christians,” Ruffini said, “we are asked not to judge.”
Rupnik escaped prosecution—at least for a while—after the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now styled the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) found there was a case to answer but declared the charges against Rupnik statute barred.
That decision did more than raise eyebrows, since it also emerged around the same time that a secret Vatican court had in fact found Rupnik guilty of absolving an “accomplice” in a sexual sin, and secretly declared him excommunicated. After Rupnik’s secret trial and secret excommunication, the Vatican secretly and very swiftly lifted the secret penalty.
Not only.
There was mountainous evidence against Rupnik already collected, and there would be ample opportunity for Rupnik and his lawyers to confront witnesses. There was, in short, no plausible reason for not waiving the statute of limitations.
Statutes of limitations exist to ensure accused persons get fair trials, in other words, and, in Rupnik’s case, he could have received one.
The Society of Jesus—the Jesuits—expelled Rupnik last year, for disobedience, after he flouted restrictions his Jesuit superiors had placed on him in the wake of investigations that produced mountainous evidence but failed to secure a prosecution.
Pope Francis has never confirmed that he ordered the CDF/DDF not to lift the statute of limitations and bring Rupnik to trial, but he did explain—in an interview with the Associated Press—that he tends to leave such legal safeguards in place when cases of abuse involve victims who were not minors.
In any case, it is certain that Francis did not waive the statute of limitations against Rupnik at first, and in fact only did so in the wake of incandescent global outrage over news Rupnik had been received as a priest of Koper diocese in his native Slovenia.
“Rupnik had not been sentenced to any judicial sentence,” Koper’s vicar general told The Pillar, meaning Rupnik had not been convicted of any crime and was therefore to enjoy good standing and to keep the full exercise of his ministry as a priest of the diocese.
Ars gratia abusus
When it comes to Rupnik’s art itself—the actual works, not the digital images of them—the problem isn’t only or primarily that it is creepy, though lots of people find it to be so and did even before the first news of his abusive depravity (long known to his Jesuit superiors in Rome and in his native Slovenia)—began to reach the public a few weeks before Christmas, 2022.
The main problem with Rupnik’s art is that he is accused of using his art to forward his perverse designs on the vulnerable women in his spiritual care. They allege that his depraved and indeed diabolical abuse was part of his “creative” process.
“Father Marko [Rupnik] asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community,” one victim-accuser, Gloria Branciani, told Italy’s Domani, “because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, [Fr Marko Rupnik] said, ‘the third person would welcome the relationship between the two’.”
Branciani recounted her story in gruesome detail to Domani in 2023, originally under a pseudonym—Anna—but she later decided to reveal herself.
Even if there really is no accounting for taste, there is accounting for modus operandi in crime.
The continued use of Rupnik images compounds victims’ hurt and causes scandal in the strict, technical sense of the term.
“Mr. Ruffini’s comments are the type of dismissive, abuse-minimizing responses which compound the pain and trauma of survivors of abuse and further erode trust in the institutional Church,” abuse survivor and advocate Antonia Sobocki told CWR.
Sobocki founded the LOUDFence group in the UK to raise awareness and support victims of clerical sexual abuse and coverup, and recently brought her advocacy organization to the United States.
“Failing to take decisions which actively support and care for those who have been so gravely injured by abuse is not a neutral act,” Sobocki said, “it is an act of support for the abuser.”
Noting Ruffini’s “position of grave responsibility in the Church,” Sobocki called for his resignation.
“If he cannot bring himself to be part of the solution to one of the greatest challenges facing the Church in modern times,” Sobocki said, “then he should step down and permit someone else to undertake this role with the compassion and responsibility it absolutely requires.”
What, now?
In late May, in Italy—Conelgiano Veneto, in the parish church of Our Lady of the Graces—a series of mosaics designed and installed by Rupnik’s Centro Aletti were officially unveiled. It wasn’t the only such official unveiling in recent times, either.
Official Vatican media have been using images of Rupnik art as the Rupnik scandal has unfolded, despite increasingly intense criticism from across the spectrum of opinion in the Church.
Vatican Media just this month used the same Rupnik image to illustrate the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart as they did last year.
Another Rupnik is scheduled to be used later this month, to mark the feast of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, illustrated with an image from a Rupnik studio mosaic in the chapel of the apostolic nunciature in Paris.
It may take time and will cost money to take down all the hundreds of Rupnik pieces and installations in shrines and chapels and even cathedrals throughout the world, but there is broad agreement that no one—certainly not the Vatican—should be using digital images or other reproductions of any of them for any purpose.
Dr. Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See, disagrees. Vehemently.
Apparently, so does Pope Francis.
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“As Christians,” Ruffini said, “we are asked not to judge.”
Oh, right, Vatican man. You Bergoglians never judge.
No, not ever.
Except, of course, for (…checks notes…) Raymond Cardinal Burke.
And Bishop James E. Strickland.
And Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano.
And Gerhard Cardinal Müller.
And Bishop Daniel Fernandez Torres.
And Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle.
And Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
And Bishop Martin Holley.
And a host of others.
You must think that all of us Catholics in the pews out here are absolute idiots.
You don’t move on the monster Rupnik and his empty-eyed, emptier-souled visuals simply because he’s a friend of your boss’.
Period.
Whenever you Vatican types speak, toads hop out of your mouths and scorpions dangle from your nostrils.
If you bristle at the uncharitable tone of my comment above, then I apologize.
But I am revolted by the kid-glove treatment that the monster Rupnik has received from his enablers in the Dark Vatican.
I’m afraid I am not as skilled at courteous, straightfaced — but absolutely deadly — witticism as I would like to be.
Brineyman, no need to apologize, given that you speak the truth. I replied to Steve Dawson elsewhere about the dirt on the outfit worn by the Church being a huge barrier to evangelization. After reading about the Church defending Rupnik I decided I will donate zero to the Church untill they apologize and throw Rupnik’s work in the trashcan. Let us all write to Ruffini and say that we will all donate nothing every Sunday until that happens. I bet the talk of money will get his attention.
Sure, it’s a great idea to stop giving to the Church! And since you are (presumably), a part of the Church, you should stop spending any money on yourself. No money for food, no money for clothes, no money for shelter. That’ll teach a distant Dicastery in Italy! At least as much as taking it out on your parish will, at any rate. The Church is the Body of Christ, and you propose to cut off the nose of Christ to spite the face of Christ. You might want to rethink that.
It’s one thing to say, “I will give to EWTN or” (here’s a crazy idea) “Catholic World Report rather than to Peter’s Pence.” Throwing your own parish under the bus is something else entirely.
There is a clear distinction to giving money to an anti-Catholic organization and the evil work they do, like today’s Vatican, and Catholic organizations. Not everyone desires to aid and abet evil.
You might want to rethink your tendency to justify the church hierarchy sins repeatedly in your posts. Francis, your hero, has a moral and spiritual responsibility to address this issue firmly and decisively, and he has failed once again. It’s not rocket science.
Brineyman, you have nothing to apoligize for. You spoke the truth. The pope says “Who am I to judge”, let us all say “who am I to donate” and give nothing every Sunday until they drop Rupnik.
I find your admonition is a spiritual work of mercy, but in this case perhaps administered too kindly. Ruffini’s remarks are scandalous, and I would say of a magnitude that is repugnant. This is the caliber of the “Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See”? Personnel is policy. Along with the Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith and a couple of others the profile of the current pontificate is cast in stone.
But there is one way we can change Ruffini’s mind. Let him go and spend some time with Rupnik. Maybe Rupnik will do to him what he did to the nuns. Then Ruffini will know what it is like, and will sue Rupnik himself.
Right on target. Depending on whose boss goes first, Ruffini can find a job in the “cheap fakes” Biden press office or KJP in the Dicastery for (Orwellian) Communications.
Right on target. Depending on who goes first, Ruffini can find a job in the “cheap fakes” Biden press office or KJP in the Dicastery for (Orwellian) Communications.
In a Gospel context Ruffini and his crowd remind one of Matthew 3:7. Ruffini would have made a good spokesman for the Pharisees in that context. Matthew 3:7 says it: But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
We now know insanity is the first job requirement to work in this pontificate. One either has to be insanely dumb to not be capable of distinguishing between judging souls, which Our Lord condemned, and judging right and wrong behavior, which Our Lord commands us to do, and which everybody does all the time but where the phony among us, lacking self-awareness, call upon their reserves of insanity to pretend that they do not.
Fully agree. Depravity is now apparently tolerated and cannot be “judged”. This guy needs to go away for good and any reference to him removed, in much the same way bishops and priests accused of such behavior are canceled, often without due process. He is a known criminal. We should not be splitting hairs here between adults and minors. Depravity is what it is, regardless of the victims’ ages.
I am quite comfortable judging a work of art separately from the personal sins or works of an artist. However, there is a significant difference between a work of art that one might hang in a home or a museum and the hanging of a piece of artwork in a sacred space.
Jesus instructed his disciples to be both “wise as serpents” and “innocent as doves”. We should judge wisely, yet that judgement should always be done with charity. It seems prudent to stop using this artist’s work given the gravity of the accusations from reputable accusers. Until the review is complete and facts are revealed, cease promoting his work.
One other significant difference: contemporaneity. Maybe, in 500 years, if Rupnik’s works survive the test of time, we can use them, just as we value Caravaggio’s sacred art even though he was a murderer and most likely a sodomist. But the story behind Rupnik is not his overwhelmingly new, unusual, and compelling art but his perverted sexcapades with sisters in the guise of “discerning” spirituality. A Vatican now entering year VI of the Uncle Teddy scandals should not be so tone deaf, esp. a so-called “Communications” expert. I wrote a three year series for the National Catholic Register on “the Gospels and Art,” identifying a piece of religious art to match every Sunday Gospel in order to show how religion has inspired our culture. Most of it was classical religious art, but I did include several pieces by contemporary, living Catholic artists that I found interesting modern interpretations. Why not try some of them, Signor Ruffini? Do you really want me to believe that, among modern sacred artists, Marko Rupnik stands in a category SOOOO unique that he is the repeated “go-to_guy” for contemporary religious art? That the Holy See’s office can find NO other such artists, even with Eastern inspiration? (Hint: try the students at the Catholic University of Lublin, where they’ve blended Western art and Eastern iconography — visit the Academic Church — WITHOUT, unlike Marko, borrowing ET’s eyes). If you believe that he’s the sole source, I’ve got a great deal on Tiber Bridges for you this week …. because with this kind of Vatican, non-Catholics won’t be swimming the Tiber as much as jumping into it.
Exactly. The swastika is likewise a geometric design that practically every culture stumbles across, not long after the circle and the square. It has been used to mean many things as well as nothing at all. We are, however, much too close to a certain context to use it without connotation.
With that in mind, check out the logo of the Frankfurt Galaxy, and consider what it would look like — and how well it would go over — if the galaxy depicted had 4 arms.
Rupnik! Always with Rupnik! A few little sins below the belt. Whatever! How dare you question me!
What about the grave evil of environmental sins? What about integral human development? (?) What about immigrants (except those Rupnik abused). What about our pact with China? How dare you reporters question the almighty pontificate, our eco-hero! Time is greater than space. Space time is a continuum.
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! I am Dr. PR — the Great and Powerful. Who are you?
Who are we collectively? The little boy who says the Emperor has no clothes, having stripped his mind naked to usurp the power of God in judging the infinite consequences of evil and will of God in how to curb our vanity. After all, the Emperor hasn’t even the wit to figure out that sins “below the belt” have a connection to the sins “below the reach of the abortionist’s suction machine.”
Well, there is that…
Brineyman, no need to apologize, given that you speak the truth. I replied to Steve Dawson elsewhere about the dirt on the outfit worn by the Church being a huge barrier to evangelization. After reading about the Church defending Rupnik I decided I will donate zero to the Church untill they apologize and throw Rupnik’s work in the trashcan. Let us all write to Ruffini and say that we will all donate nothing every Sunday until that happens. I bet the talk of money will get his attention.
Brineyman, no need to apologize at all, given that you speak the truth. I replied to Steve Dawson elsewhere about the dirt on the outfit worn by the Church being a huge barrier to evangelization. After reading about the Church defending Rupnik I decided I will donate zero to the Church untill they apologize and throw Rupnik’s work in the trashcan. Let us all write to Ruffini and say that we will all donate nothing every Sunday until that happens. I bet the talk of money will get his attention.
Look, the art the Rupnick and his studio produced is JUNK art – unworthy of any place devoted to the worship of God. Put it in MOMA if you insist on displaying it iñ public. This is not only a morally, fraternally,ecclesially and politically bankrupt pontificate but it is also a culturally bankrupt one as well.
How long, Lord? How long?
“We’re not talking about abuse of minors,” said Dr. Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See,”
This one statement has upset me more than I expected. I had to pray before I could start sorting it through. What Paolo Ruffini said is such an insult to the women who came forward to testify about Marko Rupnik, as well as to everyone else who has been deeply troubled by this long-running story. It is as though NOTHING has been learned about the abuse crisis. The reported victims of Rupnik’s abuse aren’t minors, so they are what? Adults, and therefore considered to be “consenting” to some degree? Is that a sign of how Rupnik will be exonerated, or if not exonerated, how any penalty will be mitigated?
Then, the OSV article gives Ruffini’s next remark, ““We are talking (about) a story that we don’t know.” There have been so many reports, so much news, about the Rupnik situation unfolding over recent years, including testimony that was deemed “credible,” that this is a complete cop-out. And it came from the head of the Vatican dicastery responsible for official communications for the Holy See. Shocking and shameful.
In an even adequately functioning organization, these remarks at a press conference by a top-level official would lead to a resignation or an announcement that he would soon be leaving to pursue “other opportunities.” Someone like Natasa Govekar of the Aletti Center, who appears to have a substantial conflict of interest in regards to Rupnik, would also be announcing an exit from the Dicastery of Communications where she has direct oversight over what is published. But Vatican operations do not even seem to reach the level of “barely adequate” these days.
I have said a prayer of reparation for these remarks, and if you feel moved, I hope you will consider doing so too..
“We’re not talking about abuse of minors. ”
******
Which implies that nuns are expendable?
The more you think about the gist of that comment the more it disturbs you.
So use them for your purposes then throw them to the wolves, or in the woods like happens to other rape victims?
As a woman I feel like he’s thrown me under the bus. What a ghastly thing for anyone associated with the Vatican to say.
Enough is enough. I wish I was in the room. It is time for an international incident of another sort. I don’t care about what jail time that might have ensued. There are different ways to apply Christian charity. If I was there after a remark like that, I would have approached his podium, grabbed him by his lapels, and told him he had three seconds to apologize to Rupnik’s victims and to the entire world victimized by the destruction of Catholic witness by this coldblooded pontificate to avoid having his face permanently reconfigured. I’m a senior, but I still bench press more than double that of the average 25 year old, so I can handle the job.
As a church, we are very discerning on what we put on the walls or near the altar, or should be.
Doctor of Vatican Communications asks: “No we are not removing Rupnik’s art. Why shouldn’t we continue using Rupnik’s art?”
Artist Daniel Mitsui answers: “First of all, because his victims are still alive, and using Rupnik’s art anywhere excludes his victims from Lourdes, or anywhere else it is used, without being traumatized.”
Child, 7 years old: “Mom, I think that man Mr. Mitsui is right, why doesn’t that man in charge of Vatican Communication know that?”
Mom: “Well darling, some grownups just don’t think deeply about what the important things are.”
Mitsui’s interview, and his answer, in link, at minute 43:00, here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tWuixihypm8&t=497s
“We’re not talking about abuse of minors” (Dr Paolo Ruffini). I guess desecrating nuns doesn’t meet a sufficient level of gravity.
Well, it does fit the pontiff’s envisioned plan for the Church as a field hospital. As evident at the Vatican, now a care facility for the morally disturbed.
Touché Fr. M.
Jesus on using Judgment: “Be wise as a serpent, yet gentle as a dove.”
Vatican on Judgment: “Be wise as a pidgeon, and act like a serpent.”
Ruffini says “We’re not talking about abuse of minors…” No, sir, we are observing a perverted priest given to the desecration of the Most Holy Eucharist — the Body and Blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ as well as the bodies of tens of women religious, their souls, their psyches…their vocations, their lives. I wonder how many other victims of this dangerous individual there are. How many wounded by his words?
How clueless is the Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See? What is going on in this pontificate? With each passing day it asserts its disorientation while applying the lash to faithful laity and clergy. Silence is complicity.
Any professional in the arts, whether of a representational or abstract school, when honest will say Rupnik’s product is pedestrian, derivative and — for lack of a better word — gimmicky. It is a ripoff by a ripoff artist. Undoubtedly he received his commissions due to a dearth of artists given to any sort of religious imagery which might be intelligible to the faithful and also because he is a priest. His character and grotesque behavior are evident in the fraudulence he produces.
Ruffini just explained why we lack vocations. If the Bergoglio Ted Mack Amateur Hour in the Vatican pardons itself by claiming “these are not minors,” then I can understand why people are not answering the Lord’s call. The Holy See should be protecting religious, esp. religious women, not exposing them to predatory wolves because they happen to be papal Jesuit pets. Ruffini’s remarks tell you everything you need to know about Bergoglio “no tolerance” gaslighting. “Thou shalt obey!” (or we’ll schedule an expedited canonical process at 4:45 pm on a Friday — after we wake up from sancta Siesta — to eliminate you) but WE’LL do nothing to protect you. Would I urge a girl to consider a vocation to a female religious order? I’m divided, but probably not until the current Vatican crowd is gone. As if Ruffini lacked other sacred art to replace caro Marko!
NuChurch is neo modernist. A power cult which detests beauty, refinement, the aesthetic, the numinous, the sacred and is bent on destruction.
It befouls everything it detests. The coterie surrounding the Bergoglio pontificate has the scent of the augean stable.
“ Do you think so?” Ruffini asked
“I think you’re wrong,” God’s Fool said.
“I think you’re wrong,” God’s Fool repeated.
“I really think you’re wrong”, God’s Fool said again. 💋
Ruffini’s comment is shocking because it is totally devoid of empathy. However, there is something else there worthy of consideration. I call that “an oddity” i.e. something that is sticking out, at odds with a normal humanity. His “it is not children who were abused but women” as an excuse is absurd because if one cares about the abused children one will also care about the abused women.
One can say then “I do not care about the abuse of women just as I do not care about the abuse of children”
or:
“I care about the abuse of women just as I care about the abuse of children”. Both statements are logical and represent the opposite of human capacity for empathy.
But one cannot say “I do not care about the abuse of women because I care about the abuse of children” that is the essence of Ruffini’s “it is not children who were abused but women”.
It is the logic of an automaton which simply glues together “useful” words to excuse itself. I propose that this automatism is the scariest and most revealing phenomenon in this situation.
Sorry, there was a mistake in my earlier comment which made it difficult to understand. Here is the edited comment:
Ruffini’s comment is shocking because it is totally devoid of empathy. However, there is something else there worthy of consideration. I call that “an oddity” i.e. something that is sticking out, at odds with a normal humanity. His “it is not children who were abused but women” as an excuse is absurd because if one cares about the abused children one will also care about the abused women.
One can say then “I do not care about the abuse of women just as I do not care about the abuse of children”
or:
“I care about the abuse of women just as I care about the abuse of children”. Both statements are logical and represent either 1) no empathy or 2) normal empathy. They are opposing each other.
But one cannot say “I do not care about the abuse of women because I care about the abuse of children” that is the essence of Ruffini’s “it is not children who were abused but women”.
It is the logic of an automaton which simply glues together “useful” words to excuse itself. I propose that this automatism is the scariest and most revealing phenomenon in this situation.
Anna, this has been thought-provoking. We could extend this to include sexual abuse of men as well, because someone who does not care about the abuse of children and women will not care about the abuse of men either. Right now, we are thinking about the sisters of the Loyola Community founded by Marko Rupnik. But I immediately remembered that Theodore McCarrick abused young men who were seminarians, in addition to adolescent boys, and more recently there is the case of Gustavo Zanchetta who was finally convicted in an Argentinian court of sexually harrassing seminarians, but before that, was being moved back and forth between Rome and Argentina in a way that seemed designed to protect him.
Reading the accounts of the remarks by Paolo Ruffini, who is an official spokesman for the Vatican, my impression was that the effects of the abuse don’t really matter, the impact on victims doesn’t matter, nor does it matter how committing acts of abuse affects the abuser (because committing abuse is also an act of self-damage). All that appears to matter is determining the question of legal liability, whether enough of an offense occurred to incur a penalty that some kind of action must be taken. So that if the sisters of the Loyola Community were legal minors, then that might be taken seriously but if they were legal adults, not so much.
But for a Christian, being primarily concerned about the consequences of abuse from a legal perspective, whether that involves criminal, civil or canonical law, is not enough. Or it should not be enough. What has been disturbing me, on top of the absence of basic human empathy, is also the apparent absence of awareness of the consequences of Sin – how sinful acts of abuse can affect one’s immortal soul and damage the relationship to God, for both the abused and the abuser. That perspective was not reflected anywhere in Ruffini’s remarks, when it should be uppermost in the mind of the Church. No expressed concern at all for the wounds that may have been inflicted on the Body of Christ by all of this.
Mary, we can extend this to everyone abused – women and men – including adults in the parishes. I witnessed such abuse (emotional) and harassment; the bishop siding with an abuser and prosecuting a victim. I was told by a sympathetic priest that bishops are very likely to side with priests because most of them think themselves far above the laity. I do not mean above by a position; it is given that a bishop is the guarantor of faith and the head of the local church. However, any parishioner is equal to a bishop or priest in his/her dignity and must not be abused; if abused then protected and an abuser punished.
Ruffini’s remarks betray not just a lack of empathy, they show contempt for anyone below including those women. To me Ruffini exhibits symptoms of narcissism, such as entitlement, lack of empathy, zero moral principles and so on. However, I argue that the Church’s system in which clergy is above all meanings of those words is the real root of abuse. This system attracts a certain kind of people, with an unhealthy psyche (personality disorders).
“What has been disturbing me, on top of the absence of basic human empathy, is also the apparent absence of awareness of the consequences of Sin – how sinful acts of abuse can affect one’s immortal soul and damage the relationship to God, for both the abused and the abuser.”
I think empathy animates the theoretical knowledge of what sin is and of its consequences. Without empathy the knowledge is either dead or easily twisted to excuse oneself. A narcissist may have an idea of a sin but he sees everything through a prism of his enormous fake self (his true self being undeveloped). He is a centre of the world and above others hence he sees a sin only when he thinks someone hurts HIM, someone else’s sin, not his. For example, being confronted by a victim of his abuse he may respond “how can you hurt me like that”. This is the essence of so-called narcissistic defense “[victim] you hurt me” – “[narcissist] no, it is you who hurt me, how could you think of me that way!”
Such a person is very well defended against a perception of his own sin. I speculate that Ruffini identifies himself with a “brother-priest”, Rupnik and feels contempt for the victims who “dare” to speak up. A narcissist cares only about those who are close to him, one way or another. This fact may explain why the Church is in crisis – we have too many people with a fake self at the top and as priests and too many enablers among the laity.
To know how the mind of such people works is very useful for self-preservation. What to do with the Church full of such people is another matter.
We understood what you were driving at the first time. And, yes, Ruffini gives the appearance of a sociopath. What is disturbing is that there is no evidence that this is disturbing to Francis anymore than his having Fernandez, a man who wrote about Jesus raping a girl with His mother looking on approvingly, the second highest position in the Church.
It is disturbing yet it is entirely logical. Those people belong to the same narcissistic spectrum and have a similar modus operandi. They do not know what true love is.
I have just commented on another article on this website saying that those people have an adolescent understanding of human sexuality. Because of their emotional underdevelopment, they think it is all about sexual acts. They do not understand that a grown sexuality of a normal person includes attachment, care, affection (love of a man and a woman which is typified in a marriage).
And so, St John of the Cross used the figures of the Bride and the Bridegroom to convey a fiery love between Christ and soul. His poetry thus is erotic but is pure, it is about love and erotic desire but not about sex.
Fernandez takes a book of St John of the Cross and sees only “sex” there because he has no understanding of what a true love is. So, he writes his “mystical” treatise which pulls Christ down into… sex. You mentioned “Virgin Mary” overlooking it – it is a typical dream of a person with an unresolved Oedipus complex = a sexual desire for his mother. This is how a perverse psyche perverts the mystical theology of the Church.
Rupnik did mosaics of the Holy Trinity; the love between the Three divine Persons becomes in Rupnik’s interpretation sex which he uses to force Sisters to engage in threesomes with him. There is nothing sacred for that man yet some say his mosaics must remain.
Ruffini honestly cannot understand why it is a problem that Rupnik raped Sisters. They are not children, they had sex, it is all that counts. Sex is love, that is it.
From there follows that we have an anti-church with its peculiar understanding of love and union with God. It is all about sex and those who are above get more of it via raping those who are below. In a word, it is a perfect diabolical mockery of the Church of Our Lord Who is Love.
I commend this to all concerned by the cult of «modernism» and its coven of global influencers in all spheres of human culture.
Everything sacred and beautiful must be dragged through the mud…
https://thecritic.co.uk/modernism-at-the-opera-house/
Relieving Ruffini and Rupnik of their ‘work’ is to recognize their rejection of VCII’s pastoral precept.
Sacrosanctum Concilium, paragraph 122:
~”Very rightly the fine arts are considered to rank among the noblest activities of man’s genius, and this applies especially to religious art and to its highest achievement, which is sacred art.
~”These arts, by their very nature, are oriented toward the infinite beauty of God which they attempt in some way to portray by the work of human hands;
~”they achieve their purpose of redounding to God’s praise and glory in proportion as they are directed the more exclusively to the single aim of turning men’s minds devoutly toward God.”
Does Rupnik’s ‘art’ or Ruffini’s ‘communication’ redound to the greater glory and praise of God?? Just asking…
I often think that if a group of Scientology recruiters were to enter the hallways of today’s Vatican, with free vouchers to lifetime accomodations to their Gold Base, all of our problems would be over.
On second thought, not much conversion to Scientology would be necessary. The synodal Church is virtually there already.
Rupnik’s paintings remind me of this artist & there are some similarities in the back stories:
The big-eyed children: the extraordinary story of an epic art fraud
This article is more than 9 years old
In the 1960s, Walter Keane was feted for his sentimental portraits that sold by the million. But in fact, his wife Margaret was the artist, working in virtual slavery to maintain his success…”
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/26/art-fraud-margaret-walter-keane-tim-burton-biopic
Very interesting! The paintings made me feel sick. Children are painted as dolls, “sad” but soulless objects – I mean those works with totally black eyes.