Over at Chiesa, Vaticanista Sandro Magister has walked way back his scoop that Vatican Secretary of State Tarciso Bertone was so appalled by last month’s statement on financial reform from the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace that he ordered that “any new Vatican text will have to be authorized in advance” by himself. Not:

With respect what www.chiesa originally reported, it should be noted
that the requirement of advance review by the secretariat of state
applies exclusively to texts that bear the signature of the pope, and
not to those simply signed by the heads of one of the offices of the
Roman curia.

The memo therefore cannot refer, strictly speaking,
to the document from the pontifical council for justice and peace
presented at the Vatican press office on October 24, entitled “Towards
reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the
context of global public authority.” A document not signed  by Benedict
XVI, but only by the heads of that dicastery.

Loosely speaking too. Because it looks like Pope Benedict himself is down with that document and its dim view of the wages of the current international financial system. Getting off the plane in Benin a week ago, he warned against “unconditional surrender to the law of the market or that of finance” and, in a prepared document, asked all members of the church to “work and speak out in favor of an economy that cares for the poor and
is resolutely opposed to an unjust order which, under the pretext of
reducing poverty, has often helped to aggravate it.”

I think that’s a request that includes George Weigel, Donald McClarey, and the rest of the conservative Catholic crowd that expends so much energy trying to prove that Rome does not mean what Rome says when the subject is Capitalism. It’s time for them either to get with the program or admit that they disagree with the Magisterium on this subject. Finita la commedia!