- Thavis, John.
The Vatican Diaries.
New York: Viking, 2013.
ISBN 978-0-670-02671-5.
-
Jerry Pournelle's
Iron
Law of Bureaucracy states that:
…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two
kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals
of the organization, and those who work for the organization
itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work
and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives
who work to protect any teacher including the most
incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the
second type of person will always gain control of the
organization, and will always write the rules under
which the organization functions.
Imagine a bureaucracy in which the Iron Law has been working
inexorably since the Roman Empire.
The author has covered the Vatican for the
Catholic News Service
for the last thirty years. He has travelled with popes and other
Vatican officials to more than sixty countries and, developing
his own sources within a Vatican which is simultaneously opaque
to an almost medieval level in its public face, yet leaks like a sieve
as factions try to enlist journalists in advancing their agendas.
In this book he uses his access to provide a candid look inside the
Vatican, at a time when the church is in transition and crisis.
He begins with a peek inside the mechanics of the conclave
which chose Pope Benedict XVI: from how the black or white
smoke is made to how the message indicating the selection of
a new pontiff is communicated (or not) to the person responsible
for ringing the bell to announce the event to the crowds
thronging St Peter's Square.
There is a great deal of description, bordering on gonzo, of the
reality of covering papal visits to various countries: in
summary, much of what you read from reporters accredited to the
Vatican comes from their watching events on television, just as
you can do yourself.
The author does not shy from controversy. He digs deeply into the
sexual abuse scandals and cover-up which rocked the church, the
revelations about the founder of the
Legion of Christ,
the struggle between then traditionalists of the
Society of St Pius X
and supporters of the Vatican II reforms in Rome, and the
battle over the beatification of
Pope Pius XII.
On the lighter side, we encounter the custodians of Latin,
including the Vatican Bank ATM which displays its instructions
in Latin: “Inserito scidulam
quaeso ut faciundum cognoscas rationem”.
This is an enlightening look inside one of the most influential,
yet least understood, institutions in what remains of Western
civilisation. On the event of the announcement of the selection
of Pope Francis,
James Lileks wrote:
…if you'd turned the sound down on the set and shown
the picture to Julius Cæsar, he would have smiled broadly.
For the wrong reasons, of course—his order did not survive
in its specific shape, but in another sense it did. The
architecture, the crowds, the unveiling would have been
unmistakable to someone from Cæsar's time. They
would have known exactly what was going on.
Indeed—the Vatican gets ceremony. What is clear
from this book is that it doesn't get public relations in
an age where the dissemination of information cannot be
controlled, and that words, once spoken, cannot be taken back,
even if a “revised and updated” transcript of
them is issued subsequently by the bureaucracy.
In the Kindle edition the index cites
page numbers in the hardcover print edition which are
completely useless since the Kindle edition does not
contain real page numbers.
March 2013 