Reportiam authenticam

Before we proceed, Babel Fish-Latin speakers, make sure you get the pronunciation of the second word right: "OW`tent-EE-kahm."

Thank you, Alfie. It's today's Loggia Word of the Day and should come in handy for purposes of this exercise.

In a (customary) triumph of journalistic integrity, Dom Bettinelli -- who, for some strange reason, cannot lower himself to mention my name (as if I were some Great Being or something) -- assails the Whispers report on the formulaic revamping for the UGCC.

But just in case you didn't already know how he really feels (which is, of course, so important in objective journalism), Betti proceeds to call your humble narrator the "hyper-ventilating self-proclaimed successor to the dean of the American Vaticanisti."

Um, the Editor of Catholic World Report sure did his homework, as it was not my humble self, but another blogger who referred in November to:

Rocco Palmo, dean-in-training of American vaticanisti

Now, how would that make it "self-proclaimed," again?

Let's brainstorm this, because rational minds want to know. And, of course, we can only hope that its editor's ethical lapse (read: Big NO-NO) doesn't reflect poorly on CWR when Pulitzer Prize time (or, for that matter, Judgment Day) comes around.

Speaking of Sini of Jusiper -- to whom I've obviously outsourced my "self-proclaimed" statements (because, you know, one blog just isn't enough to capture it all) -- he has been so kind in recent days to call this outlet

[B]y far the sharpest, most entertaining window onto Roman Catholicism... available in the English language.

Wow. I'm humbled -- which I can be as I didn't make that one up, either. I don't even know this guy.

But I'm also grateful that the Right (yet again) saw fit to extend its highest compliment and foam at the mouth in my direction, (yet again) ignored facts for defamatory purposes and (yet again) gave me a great excuse to discover and air my latest "self-proclaimed" statement (that somebody else just happened to say about me) on my own pages and for my own audience, at long last. Thank you so much!

Good God, I'm speechless... Father Basil, give me something to self-proclaim while I breathe into my trusty paper bag:

Our reaction? To go down on our knees and acknowledge our weakness, our frailty, our sinfulness. Not for us to stand before [God] and boast of our achievements, not for us to compare ourselves with others, and to our own advantage. Rather we pray "Lord be merciful to me a sinner", and then, wonderfully to discover his peace....

Perfect. Thank you, Eminence. And that I pray, always and yet again.

Continuing along with our Crusade For Accuracy here in the Loggia, one of the comfortably anonymous types over at Freeper has accused this writer of "calling" conservative starlet Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez "Cardinal Pinochet."

Sorry, sweetheart -- (yet again) no dice.

You've got to love it when the train-lovers (and I'm not talkin' the trains that go "Choo-choo!" either) get so apoplectic that reality just flies out their window and they start Warp Foaming. It does wonders for their credibility -- and what a treat to watch! Happy Double-Shot Thursday!

Back in the Fact-Based World, the nickname's reference was drawn from a report by Gabe Huck, head of Liturgy Training Publications in Chicago, who wrote in February 2000 that:

I've been told that the Chilean who now has charge of the Congregation for Worship in Rome is called, even by others in the Curia, Cardinal Pinochet. He's not popular, they say; he doesn't have the old "romanitá" - the kindly smile and polite words to cloak the bad things that have to be done. Last year he was one of those who asked that England just let his old friend the General go back to Chile in peace.

And let's be gently reminded that Medina's "old friend the General" is alleged to have presided over the murders of 3,000 of his political opponents, give or take a couple... hundred.

So (yet again), the real self-proclaimeds have to play their favorite game -- "Magisterial Trade-Off" -- and decide what's more important: Standing Up For Life or Scoring Ideological Points?

Well, by the way the allegedly "pro-life" people love, love, LOVE Medina for his liturgical crackdowns, I regret to say that (yet again) it seems they have their answer for the rest of us....

My reading of Catholicism always told me that the cafeteria was closed, no exceptions. If its self-exalted arbiters are to be believed, though, it seems that yet again I've been horribly wrong.

Pity.

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