Hmmm. In the same week in which Father Lombardi, Vatican Press Flack, has warned us that in the current Scalfari interview we must not assume that the Pope is being correctly quoted, the first Scalfari interview from last fall is back up on the Vatican website. Go here to view it. It had been taken down last fall when questions arose as to its accuracy. Since it is back up, Popewatch assumes that it must therefore have accurately reflected what the Pope said at the time, or it is truly bizarre for the Vatican to be re-posting it, especially when the veracity of the second interview is being questioned. If the readers of PopeWatch are confused by all of this, PopeWatch welcomes their company.
Update: The interview is back down again. In regard to the current administration at the Vatican these words of Casey Stengel do seem apropos: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
Judges sometimes talk of admitting evidence “quantum valeat” – for what it’s worth (usually, not much). Perhaps, the thinking here is the same?
I don’t think so MPS. The official Vatican web site dedicated to what the current Pope actually says is a poor forum for material that may be inaccurate. Of course the essential silliness of all this is that the Pope must certainly know what he said. He could clear up immediately any mistakes. That he does not is a clear indication that the statement is accurate. It is rather like what a party in a civil lawsuit allegedly said being testified to by the other party, and the statement coming into evidence under the hearsay exception of an admission against interest. The party against whom the statement comes into evidence thereafter fails to testify, with the legal conclusion being that what was testified to by the other party must be an accurate reflection what was said by the party who refuses to testify.
“Silence implies consent”.
if they let it stand they are tacitly endorsing it?
Now it seems to be down again: “pagina non trovata.” Odd? Comical? Dismaying? All of the above?
In the realm of administrative law where the standard is preponderance of the evidence, silence is most definitely consent. If u don’t answer an accusation or leave something that is wrong uncorrected, what WAS said will be considered to be correct.
Barbara Gordon wrote, “silence is most definitely consent. If u don’t answer an accusation or leave something that is wrong uncorrected, what WAS said will be considered to be correct.”
That is certainly true, so far as it goes, but one need not challenge the account in detail, hence the stock phrase, in which a document is “referred to for its terms and incorporated herein brevitatis causa, beyond which no admission is made.”
Perhaps, the Vatican website should take to using a similar disclaimer in reporting “a newspaper article, bearing to contain an interview &c”