The Vatican blasts the ruling class

Elisabetta Povoledo has an article in The New York Times about the Church:

Over the last several years, the Roman Catholic Church in Italy has largely looked the other way as reports emerged of sex and corruption scandals among the country’s political elite, many of them centered on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But a recent published account of a party at Berlusconi’s home, where one female guest was said to have performed a striptease dressed as a nun, might have been more than the church could stand. This week the church lashed out, issuing its strongest reprimands yet of Italy’s ruling class, deploring “behavior that not only goes counter to public decorum but is intrinsically sad and hollow”.
Italians “look on their public leaders with consternation, and the image of the country abroad has been dangerously weakened,” Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco (photo), the head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, told his fellow bishops, calling for an “upright lifestyle”, saying that the country needed a “correction of habits and lifestyles” to help it emerge from a “culture of nothingness”.
Though Cardinal Bagnasco did not single out Berlusconi— who is in court fighting several corruption charges, and accusations of having sex with a minor, and has lately become embroiled in a scandal involving prostitutes paid to attend parties at his villas— the cardinal spoke of “licentious conduct and improper relationships that damage society”. And he blasted a governing class preoccupied with itself while Italian citizens struggled to make ends meet.
The lower house of Parliament has rejected an opposition no-confidence vote against Agriculture Minister Saverio Romano, who is under investigation in Sicily over reported ties to the Mafia.
The public reproaches are perhaps the inevitable response to a Catholic audience “that is increasingly intolerant of the ostentation of lifestyles that are shamelessly immoral,” said the Reverend Antonio Sciortino, editor in chief of the Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana.
Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, a liberal Catholic group, broadened the critique, arguing that Italy’s political elite does not seem to be seriously interested in tackling the nation’s deep economic problems. “The church is observing the gradual impoverishment of Italians alongside a growing abyss between people and politics,” he said. “The church is asking for something new. It fears for Italy’s future.”
Italians are beginning to understand the fallout from the euro zone debt crisis, with the government having passed a series of austerity measures in the past two months that will trim public services and pensions, as well as result in higher taxes. However, additional pledges to cut government costs and reduce the number of elective positions in Parliament and elsewhere have yet to be enacted, further fueling public disaffection with the ruling class.
“If the government is going to ask for sacrifices, they should be the first to give an example,” said Francesco Zanotti, the president of the Italian Federation of Catholic Weeklies, an association of nearly two hundred diocesan publications. He added that editorials urging greater moral rectitude on the part of the political class had been surfacing “for some time now.”
The situation is so serious— on economic and moral levels— that the church could not help but speak out, said Marco Politi, a papal biographer and commentator for the left-leaning daily Il Fatto Quotidiano. And he noted that Cardinal Bagnasco spoke out just days after Emma Marcegaglia, the head of Italy’s business lobby, Confindustria, slammed the government for not doing enough to help shore up Italy’s faltering economy.
“These two great powers in Italian society are finally making their move,” Politi said.
Last week, Marcegaglia said that time was running out for the government. Unless it comes up with a “number of serious, weighty and unpopular measures”, she said, the government should resign. Italy is a serious country, with serious businesspeople, “but we are fed up with being an international laughingstock,” she said.
The pedophile sex scandals that have so stained the church in recent years have been largely absent in Italy, and no one has accused the church of withholding criticism because of embarrassment over the behavior of its priests. Critics like Mario Staderini, a member of the Radical Party who has been fighting to eliminate fiscal privileges for the church, say that the church has treaded lightly in past years to avoid alienating a center-right government that has continued to offer tax breaks for church-owned properties and commercial activities, while supporting Catholic schools and Vatican positions on questions like common-law marriage, living wills, and some forms of assisted fertility. All of those practices are illegal in Italy.
But Father Sciortino of Famiglia Cristiana said that the church had become disenchanted with the government more recently over its inability to deliver on a number of promises to support programs that help families.“These things haven’t happened,” he said, chiding Catholic politicians for allowing allegiance to political parties to take precedence over their religious beliefs. “They remained quiet, or worse, they justified the prime minister’s indefensible behavior,” he said.
Officially, the government has not responded to the church’s criticisms. But Umberto Bossi, the leader of the Northern League and a crucial Berlusconi ally, said that instead of faulting the government, “bishops should say more Masses”.

Rico says a 'female guest performing a striptease dressed as a nun' is probably over the top. But "corruption charges, accusations of having sex with a minor, and a scandal involving prostitutes paid to attend parties" and "an investigation in Sicily over reported ties to the Mafia"? Worse than Nixon... And "tax breaks for church-owned properties and commercial activities"? Rico says he'd love for churches to lose their property tax exemptions; we could balance the budget immediately. (Yeah, like that'll happen.)