Lord, Spare Us From the Vatican's "Handlers"

Amy Welborn highlights some comments on the Regensburg controversy from a former Curial staffer for the late Pope John Paul II:

Jesuit Father Tom Michel, who served on the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue from 1981 to 1994 as the Vatican's top expert on Islam, writing in the Turkish political journal Yeni Asya this week said "the deeper question is, why did the pope say what he did in Regensburg?"

Father Michel, a member of the Indonesia Jesuit province, revealed that he was contacted in recent days by many Muslims, as well as Christian bishops, diplomats and journalists, who asked him: How could this have happened? Was there no one to urge the pope to change his text? How can it be prevented from happening again?

One of his "most useful tasks" while serving on the pontifical council, he said, "was to look over the late Pope John Paul II's speeches to Muslims to see if there was anything that might be considered offensive in them, and if there was something of that nature, to propose changes for the Pope."

He recalled that "Pope John Paul II was very conscientious lest he accidentally say something offensive or disrespectful to Muslims or to the followers of other religions."

On the small number of occasions that Father Michel detected problems in papal texts, "the Pope always corrected those questionable phrases before delivering the talk." As a result, "there was never a controversy like we are experiencing today."

While "every pope has his own style," John Paul II "was always ready to make good use of his Vatican staff," Father Michel said. "My feeling is that a mistake of the order we saw last week in Regensburg would not have been possible with that pope," he added.

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"Had the Pope's talk been reviewed and controlled by any competent staff person, they would immediately have told the Pope that the citation of Manuel II Paleologus, which was in fact marginal to the Pope's main point, should not be included in the speech," the Jesuit scholar stated.

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
What an arrogant and self-serving load of crap!