Thanks to Sihaya in the main forum for this item from today's La Repubblica, here in translation -
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Benedict XVI wants to “open up” new spaces and roles for women inside the Church even if they cannot be granted priesthood, which is “a sacrament, not a power which the Church can exercise at its pleasure.”


Montage by Sylvie. Photos: www.catholicpressphoto.com/servizi/2006-03-02-udienza-clero/def...


The Pope said this in a spontaneous dialog with parish priests of Rome which characterized the traditional audience at the start of Lent held this morning with the Roman clergy.

A parish priest presented himself as spokesman for women who request to be recognized “with full entitlement” into the ecclesiastical community, with an implicit reference to the “No” given by Pope John Paul II to prieesthood for women.

And the new Pope responded with making a distinction between “the full dignity of women within the Church” and the theological fact about the sacrament (of holy orders) instituted by Christ. “But, “ he added, “new spaces and roles can be opened up for women within the Church.”

The Pope’s meeting with the Roman clergy, the second since his election to the Papacy on April 19, was conducted in question and answer form, during which topics of major importance were discussed, including the crisis of the family in contemporary society.

The Pope addressed words of encouragement to them, urging them to exercise a ministry of “nearness and of sharing.”

According to some participants, the Pope also answered some theological questions.

During the meeting, the memory of Don Andrea Santoro, martyred in Turkey last month, was evoked by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who thanked the Pope for having “expressed our common grief as well as our prayers and faith that Don Andrea’s sacrifice be a source of grace for all.”

During the funeral Mass for Don Andrea at St. John Lateran, Cardinal Ruini had expressed the intention of the diocese of Rome to open a process for the beatification of the martyred priest.
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I can't wait for the Vatican's transcript of this meeting with the Roman clergy. Recall that his meeting with the clergy of Val D'Aosta last July, carried out as a Q-and-A session, provided us with a most enlightening transcript of how a Pope, this Pope, confronts the practical issues that local priests must deal with every day. Later, I will post that transcript in IN HIS OWN WORDS.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/03/2006 3.58]

This is an article written back in May and printed in the National Catholic Register. I don't recall seeing it posted before and since it makes several very enlightening points about how Papa got elected, I am posting it now.
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How Benedict Came To Be


by FR. RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA
National Catholic Register
May 1-7, 2005

VATICAN CITY — The quick election of Pope Benedict XVI took many Catholics — even many cardinals — by surprise.

However, in speaking with various Roman sources, a picture emerges of how Benedict arrived at the papacy after 23 years as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

One Roman cardinal, a prefect of another congregation, confidently told some of his staff 18 months ago that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would be elected Pope.

That may have been a wish, but it was clear that more than a year ago, there were senior cardinals — contrary to most media speculation — thinking that Cardinal Ratzinger was a plausible candidate.

By Christmas 2004, there was already strong talk by some cardinal-electors about how to persuade others of the desirability of a Ratzinger papacy.

The attraction of the German cardinal was clear: He was without peer in the college as an intellectual force. At the same time, he was known for his humility and genuine holiness. He would represent continuity with Pope John Paul II. The cardinals, who had met Cardinal Ratzinger personally, knew that the Panzerkardinal moniker bestowed on him by the press was groundless.

Here was a man who spent 23 years at John Paul II’s side. The cardinals knew Joseph Ratzinger was not the type of man who would seek to clone his predecessor’s papacy.

After all, the chief collaborator often goes into retirement with his pope, as was Ratzinger’s oft-stated wish. Moreover, a negative reaction would be sure to come.

As one cardinal put it in a conversation I had with him in the days after Pope John Paul’s funeral: “Would Ratzinger be able to do enough that it would be worth the firestorm of reaction against him?”

Over the course of the last weeks before the conclave, those fears were overcome, paving the way for Benedict’s fourth-ballot election, less than 24 hours after the conclave began.

Look at Cardinal Ratzinger’s activities in those weeks, and you’ll see why.

Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Ratzinger to compose the meditations for the annual Good Friday Via Crucis at the Colosseum. Contrary to speculation, this was not an “anointing” of Cardinal Ratzinger, but it did focus attention on him. The cardinal produced a set of meditations that were devastatingly frank about the how the sins of Christians contribute to the suffering of Christ.

“Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote. “How often is the holy sacrament of his presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! … How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!”

It was a strikingly different tone than that of John Paul, who rarely employed such language. Observers took note — a Ratzinger papacy would not be just more of the same. Perhaps he would be a man of more active governance, cleaning out the rot in the Church.

Subiaco

The night before John Paul died, Cardinal Ratzinger went to the Benedictine shrine of Subiaco, to the Monastery of St. Scholastica (St. Benedict’s sister) to receive the St. Benedict Prize, awarded “for the promotion of life and the family in Europe.”

On that occasion, Cardinal Ratzinger delivered a tour d’horizon of the European scene, arguing at substantial length that without a renewal of its Christian roots, the culture and nations of Europe were slowly going to die.

“Europe has developed a culture, in a way hitherto unknown in history, which excludes God from public conscience, and which totally negates all that cannot be judged [scientifically] demonstrable as uncertain, and therefore assigns it to the sphere of subjective choices, which are therefore irrelevant to public life,” he said.

Again, it seemed that Cardinal Ratzinger offered something different, but which built upon the foundation of John Paul. Even though Poland and Germany border each other, the focus of Cardinal Ratzinger on the cultural renewal of Europe made many electors think of him carrying the Gospel to the West in ways that echoed what John Paul did in the East.

“Twenty-six years ago, when Karol Wojtyla was chosen to be the successor of Peter, some of the most difficult challenges to the Church’s mission came from the East,” said Francis Cardinal George of Chicago, a day after Benedict’s election. “Twenty-six years later, the most difficult challenges to the Church’s mission come from the West. There is a man now very well prepared who understands Western society.”

The Funeral

As Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Ratzinger had the honor of celebrating the funeral Mass for John Paul II, and to preach the homily. The previous dean had been Cardinal Bernard Gantin of Benin, who asked special permission to relinquish the office when he turned 80 a few years ago.

A dean can serve until death, but must live in Rome. Cardinal Gantin wished to return to Benin, so he asked permission to step down. Cardinal Ratzinger, the next in seniority, replaced him. In retrospect, it was a providential moment.

John Paul II’s funeral turned out to be decisive in two respects. First, Cardinal Ratzinger’s masterful homily and dignified celebration of the Mass answered a lingering question: Could he handle the public dimension of the papacy?

His homily in particular was a powerful mix of meditation on the call of the Christian disciple and a tribute to the holiness of John Paul II, culminating in the emotional climax of the image of John Paul at the “window of the Father’s house,” blessing us once more.

All the while, the cardinal managed not to indicate one way or the other what the cardinals should do, or who they should consider as John Paul’s successor. It was a masterful balancing act. Within hours of the funeral Mass, Cardinal Ratzinger’s stock soared, as the cardinals realized that no one else could likely have done what he managed to do.

The funeral week was decisive in another way. The enormous crowds of young people made a deep impression on many cardinal electors, leading one to tell me that “whatever we do, we must not disappoint the ones who came this week to Rome, to stand for hours to say goodbye to John Paul.”

Quite suddenly, the problem of being “too long” at John Paul’s side became an advantage for Cardinal Ratzinger. There was no other possibility that would affirm the program of John Paul as much as the choice of Ratzinger would. And that is, after the funeral week, precisely what an increasing number of cardinals wanted to do.

Pro Eligendo

Cardinal Ratzinger’s final address came at the Missa pro eligendo Romano Pontifice (Mass on the morning of the opening of the conclave). By now it was clear that he had the support of some key cardinals who had been discussed as plausible candidates in their own right.

It was not a sure thing that Cardinal Ratzinger would be elected, but it was clear that the conditions were in place for him to be elected.

For his pro eligendo homily, Ratzinger didn’t preach about the nature of the Petrine office itself. He devoted himself fully to a reprise of his Subiaco address, abbreviated and adapted to the readings of the Mass. It hit several points of continuity with John Paul (Divine Mercy) and the Second Vatican Council (Christian humanism), and delivered a broadside against the “dictatorship of relativism.”

His homily accomplished two things.

First, it was not a campaign speech. Far from trying to attract votes by moderating his tone, he sharpened it. Cardinal-electors who are suspicious of those who lust after the papal office had nothing to worry about in Cardinal Ratzinger.

Second, the homily was a declaration of where he stood, a not-so-subtle indication that if the cardinals wanted to elect him, they should know who they were getting. It was an important clarifying moment.

The pro eligendo made what happened afterwards somewhat predictable. Either the cardinals would elect Cardinal Ratzinger quickly, or not at all. When the white smoke appeared the next day, there was no doubt about what they had done.

The cardinals already knew that many wanted to make him pope. In fact, as he told German pilgrims in Rome on April 25, he was praying that he wouldn’t be elected.

“At a certain point, I prayed to God, ‘Please don’t do this to me,’” he recalled. “Evidently,” he added with a smile, “this time he didn’t listen to me.”

[Modificato da benefan 02/03/2006 18.33]

In the wake of Benefan's posting of an early article from the Register, I'd like to post this. At the time it appeared on-line, I thought it so beautifully expressed that I copied and pasted it into a Word document, which is why I still have it. The wave of hysterical opposition from the Church liberals has not (yet, anyway) materialised, as the real Ratzinger has revealed himself not as a rottweiler but a gentle man of God. However, he is said to have wanted to give himself a year before doing anything decisive, so we shall see....
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Two Popes, One Leader
National Catholic Register
May 1-7, 2005

Now we know.

Now we can better understand what God had in mind when he gave us Pope John Paul II. He had Pope Benedict XVI in mind.

First of all, make no mistake about it: The election of Pope Benedict XVI is first and foremost an indication of what God wants for the Catholic Church. Don’t let the public reaction fool you — or even the reaction of some in the Church.

As critics pile on Pope Benedict in the days to come — and they will, like we’ve never seen — we need to remember that the papacy was established by Christ for a Church guided by the Holy Spirit. Since God is the one guiding the Church, we can look at these two popes he has given us as signs of his will.

The difference between the characters of these two men is striking. To see it, you only have to look at their names.
John Paul chose a new name. It had made its debut in the previous Pope’s 34-day pontificate, but it was still a novelty, and novelties are exciting in a 2,000-year-old Church. Benedict took an ancient name, citing a pope from a century ago and a saint from two millenniums ago.

The new name fit John Paul’s larger-than-life presence. He was, in one iconic description, the "spark that flew forth from Poland to set fire to the whole world." He rallied huge crowds of people as a bishop in Poland, and as Pope. In the images we remember, he is often driving through a sea of people in his popemobile, or standing in front of an ocean of faces with his arms raised.

Pope Benedict XVI’s name also fits his very different presence. He’s attentive and friendly, insistent but gentle, almost to the point of being shy. He is described as a bello spirito, a beautiful spirit. He will get used to the crowds, and they will love him, but it will be a new experience for them both.

The images that we might remember of Benedict’s first days as pope are the photos of him walking through the streets of Rome. He was visiting his old apartment while an appreciative cluster of people looked on, but the pictures make you realize that you can’t remember ever seeing John Paul walk along the streets of Rome.

And yet when humble, gentle Benedict appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s for the first time, young nuns in habits shrieked with glee. Young American seminarians pumped their arms in victory.

How is it possible that a reserved classical pianist who loves cats gets that kind of reception? How is it possible that young people in the 21st century were delirious with excitement to find out that the new Pope had taken the name of a fifth-century monk?
Pope John Paul II made it possible.

If he hadn’t rallied the crowds, set fires in their hearts and anchored them firmly to Peter, then Benedict would be facing a far more difficult task than he faces now.

But if the successes of John Paul’s pontificate made Benedict’s pontificate possible, it may also be the case that Pope Benedict made John Paul possible. John Paul’s pontificate may find its fulfillment and completion in Benedict.

To see how their approaches to the papacy differ, it might help to remember that the two men were formed by the same World War II experiences — only from across enemy lines from each other.

Pope John Paul II was formed by his past as the victim of the German conquerors of his native Poland. He labored for years to free Poland in the aftermath of the invasion. Then God put him at the head of a Church beset by exterior enemies: communist persecutors, materialist ideologies, the sexual revolution. The Pope faced them fearlessly.

Now God has given us, as John Paul’s successor, another victim of Nazi aggression. Only, in this case, Benedict’s homeland was the aggressor.

Growing up, Pope Benedict’s anti-Nazi family had to move several times because of harassment.

Cardinal Ratzinger described how his family watched in horror as powers inimical to Christianity took over their beloved Germany, spreading lies about the Jewish people and distorting the German character. Young Joseph was forced to join the German army, but deserted as soon as he had the chance, only narrowly evading punishment.

God may well want to use his experiences, too. Cardinal Ratzinger’s career was spent in the unpleasant task of facing those in the Church itself who propounded views inimical to Christianity.

If John Paul’s background made him eminently suited to fight foes outside the Church, Pope Benedict’s background has prepared him to defend the authentic character of his new homeland, the Church, from enemies within.

We pray that he’ll succeed, and we have confidence that he will.
God is in charge, after all.

[Modificato da Wulfrune 02/03/2006 21.11]

What wonderful articles, Benefan and Wulfrune! Thank you - I had not seen them before. I didn't even know there was a National Catholic Register, excuse my ignorance. Wulfrune, do you by any chance have the author's name for the article you posted?

The analysis in both articles is right on, and more admirable in that they were written soon after the Conclave - the kind of objective, clear-sighted, hard-nosed, no-illusions analysis one would love to throw down as a challenge to the likes of a Paul Elie who huffed and puffed for months to come up with the twisted view he peddles in "The Year or Two Popes."

I had been starting to sift through the various accounts, commentaries and analyses published in the heady days that followed April 19 , with a view to posting in this forum those that I thought best and most interesting on the occasion of the first anniversary. These two articles are a great head start!

Indeed, I would ask of everyone to post their own choices or favorites, please!!!!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/03/2006 0.29]

Friday, March 3, 2006
The Tidings Online

Anxiety about the pope --- on the right
By Rev. Richard P. McBrien


When the name of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger rang out from the balcony overlooking St. Peter's Square last April, nowhere was the jubilation stronger than among conservative-to-ultra-conservative Catholics.

Catholics who were less enthusiastic about the results (an understatement, to be sure) were taunted with gleeful, in-your-face e-mails, some complete with an electronic photo of the newly elected pope waving and smiling from the basilica balcony.

In the weeks and months since last April, however, this column has noticed a distinctly reassuring pattern in the papal style adopted by Benedict XVI. Contrary to his pre-election image as the hard-line enforcer of orthodoxy and discipline, the new pope has shown himself to be modest, self-effacing, non-combative, inclusive, and pastorally sensitive.

No gesture manifested these qualities more dramatically or more compellingly than his four-hour-long meeting, including a private dinner, with Father Hans Küng at Castel Gandolfo in late September.

In recent weeks this column has given voice to a growing suspicion that many of the same Catholics who were once so jubilant about Cardinal Ratzinger's election are beginning to experience feelings of doubt and even some measure of anxiety. He has not taken in hand the papal hammer they had expected him to wield against everyone on their long "enemies" list.

New evidence in support of this suspicion has surfaced recently in the February issue of First Things, a conservative monthly edited by Father Richard John Neuhaus, one of the late pope's strongest supporters and one who, to his credit, correctly predicted the election of Joseph Ratzinger when most other commentators, including the present writer, thought him too old and too polarizing a figure to be elected.

In his regular back-of-the-magazine feature, "The Public Square," Father Neuhaus acknowledges that "[a]mong those who greatly admired Cardinal Ratzinger and were elated by his election as pope, there is a palpable uneasiness."

"Palpable uneasiness." That's a delicate way of putting it.

"As of this writing," Father Neuhaus continues, the pope "has not made what are perceived to be needed personnel changes at the top levels of the Curia."

Neuhaus and others, including Father Joseph Fessio, one of Joseph Ratzinger's former students, were not happy with the pope's appointment of Archbishop William Levada to succeed himself as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In fact, Neuhaus writes, the appointment has "occasioned widespread puzzlement"-presumably among the same Catholics who were most enthusiastic about the results of last April's conclave.

Father Neuhaus's criticism of Archbishop Levada is based on what he perceives as a certain softness in his approach to the issue of homosexuality while heading a diocese centered in a city "commonly called the gay capital of the world."

To compound the new pope's "puzzling" appointment of Archbishop Levada to the CDF was his subsequent appointment of George Niederauer as Levada's successor in San Francisco. According to Neuhaus, Niederauer, while bishop of Salt Lake City, "had a reputation of being... gay-friendly," and was "somewhat ambivalent," in Neuhaus's opinion, regarding the recent Vatican instruction on gays in seminaries and the priesthood. Father Neuhaus was particularly "astonished" by Bishop Niederauer's publicly stated rejection of sexual orientation as the cause of the sexual-abuse scandal in the priesthood.

In light of these two appointments, Father Neuhaus suggests that "we" (meaning, one assumes, those who were initially "elated" by Cardinal Ratzinger's election) are faced now "with what may be a defining test of the pontificate of Benedict XVI."

"As all who know him can attest" (a group which, by clear implication, includes Neuhaus himself), "he is in personal relations a gentle man and averse to unpleasantness." He is a person, in other words, who "cannot relish the prospect of a direct confrontation with major institutions such as the Society of Jesus" --- a group apparently high on that "enemies" list referred to above.

What many others would regard as virtues, Father Neuhaus seems to view as weaknesses: gentleness, aversion to unpleasantness, lack of a confrontational spirit. He apparently wants the pope to stiffen his backbone and to do something about "theologians and priests, backed by bishops and religious orders" who, he says, have "thrown down the gauntlet" of opposition to church teaching and authority with respect to human sexuality.

Father Neuhaus does not want a repeat of 1968 when, as his colleague George Weigel has claimed, Pope Paul VI allowed the opponents of his birth-control encyclical to get away with their dissidence. There can be no Truce of 2005, Neuhaus insists.

Benedict XVI, however, seems to be following a different path, one marked out before him by Benedict XV, who was a gentle peace-maker, not a confrontational divider.

Father Richard P. McBrien is the Crowley-O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

Getting Back To Roots

March 2, 2006
(National Review Online) This column was written by Maximilian Pakaluk.


Pope Benedict XVI writes in a book co-authored with Italian politician and philosopher Marcello Pera, how problems currently plaguing Europe may find solutions in European history.

For Europe, there need be no contradiction between acknowledging a dependence on Christianity and recognizing the freedom and tolerance the state must show in questions of religion.

It's a complicated thing, identifying the source of a society's ills. But in Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, a short book, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera (a philosopher and president — not, unfortunately, king — of the Italian senate) succeed in presenting a sweeping analysis of the fundamental problem facing Europe, and an equally sweeping outline of the solution.

There's obviously something the matter with Europe. Most of the manifestations of this problem somehow involve Islam; but it would be a mistake to suppose that the problem's source is solely something external, a confrontation with a hostile and foreign culture. After all, Europe cannot bring itself even to admit, never mind do anything about, the fact that its own culture has been rejected by, and is incompatible with, that of radical Islamism.

European society stands for nothing if not for acceptance and tolerance. Unfortunately, it is confronted with an enemy that seeks to destroy it for that very reason; so it would be wise to look to the foundations of this tolerance. Ratzinger and Pera agree that Europe is crippled by relativism, and that its inability to respond to attacks from radical Islam is only a symptom of this widespread disease. If relativism is the justification for tolerance, then Europe is in quite a predicament — for cultural relativism, posing as multiculturalism, does not permit criticism of a militant Islamic culture, which is a culture that Europe simply cannot uncritically accept.

Why would European society embrace a relativism that seems sure to entail its downfall? Because it does not see how truth and tolerance can be compatible. As Pera writes, "[The West] is paralyzed because it does not believe that there are good reasons to say it is better than Islam. And it is paralyzed because it believes that, if such reasons do indeed exist, then the West would have to fight Islam." While Pera points out the fallacies of this complex of attitudes, Ratzinger argues that Europe can rid itself of these misconceptions only through an acknowledgment of its Christian roots.

Disentangling the church and the state — or, to put it more abstractly, distinguishing between the realm of faith and the realm of reason — has long been a central concern of Western civilization. (As Ratzinger points out, it was in the fifth century that Pope Gelasius I made the distinction to the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius I.) And it is rightly seen as essential to the political freedom that has allowed the West to flourish. Nevertheless, although the separation of church and state is a given in modern Europe, the intellectual underpinnings of the separation remain open for discussion.

The state is but one element of society, and it cannot survive on its own. While the state must protect certain rights, it neither grants nor creates them. The state's work depends on the belief of its citizens in the dignity of the human person, a belief that finds its roots in faith and religion. The destructive tendency of the last century has been for the state to establish itself as society's highest authority, and to reject this prior belief. The result has, often, been a dictatorship — most recently, what Pope Benedict calls the dictatorship of relativism.

So is the solution to Europe's woes an established civil religion? Yes, thinks Pera. Nothing manufactured, though, Ratzinger says: "Such a religion can obviously not be built by experts, since no committee or council, whoever its members, can possibly generate a global ethos. Something living cannot be born except from another living thing." He goes on to emphasize the importance of "creative minorities" — citizens whose sincere religious beliefs animate the entire society.

Over the centuries, the West has grown in its understanding that the state must respect and protect the freedom of conscience of its citizens. It now seems to believe that this freedom can be guaranteed only if Christianity is renounced, and relativism embraced. But there is no reason why this must be so — on the contrary, few institutions are as forthright in defense of the freedom of conscience as the Catholic Church. For Europe, there need be no contradiction between acknowledging a dependence on Christianity and recognizing the freedom and tolerance the state must show in questions of religion. The roots of Western belief are Christian: It is this specific faith that has informed Western society's belief in the transcendent value of the human person. Cut off from these roots, the West will find it hard to avoid sinking deeper into a nihilistic, and deadly, relativism.

John Allen on his lecture about Benedict with Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec
From the National Catholic Reporter
March 3, 2006

In the run-up to the 2005 conclave, some people (myself included) saw Ouellet as a candidate for the papacy. Just 61, he may well have another bite at the apple before his career is over.

Ouellet is multi-lingual and multi-cultural; he lived and taught in Bogotá, Colombia, wrote his dissertation in German on Hans Urs von Balthasar, and speaks Italian and English in addition to French, German and Spanish. A Sulpician priest, he's a former secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. He drew high marks during his tenure in the Curia and is well regarded in Rome. He is associated with the Communio school, and is a devotee of von Balthasar, whom he knew personally. He's strong on Catholic identity, including passions for Eucharistic adoration and Gregorian chant. He has also been critical of the 1960s "Quiet Revolution" in Quebec, which he believes promoted a kind of cultural relativism. People who have worked with Ouellet describe him as friendly, humble, and flexible.

Ouellet's association with Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, goes way back. Among other connections, the two men were involved in sponsoring a Roman house for the formation of future priests called the Casa Balthasar, founded in 1989. Ouellet also told the audience that he joined a group of Montreal priests at roughly the same time, in 1989 and 1990, that had an annual tradition of a trip to Rome. The visit included a meeting in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"Many came with big prejudices," he said. "They changed, almost visibly, after just a few minutes."

In his lecture, Ouellet said he entered the April conclave "not knowing what to expect in terms of its length or outcome." In the back of his mind, however, was the thought that "if it was to be Ratzinger, it must be quick and clear-cut. Otherwise," he said, "the reception would be disastrous."

The initial reaction to the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said, "confirmed my prognostication."

Yet, Ouellet argued, the balance of the pope's first year has been positive, suggesting early fears about how people would react were largely unfounded.

"My assessment undervalued Benedict's capacity to adapt to his new ministry, and the media's capacity to revise its assumptions," he said. "Everything has gone better than expected."

The main factor, Ouellet contended, has been the performance of Benedict XVI himself.

"What strikes me is not so much his theological achievement, which is impressive," he said, "but his faith, his intelligence, and his courage to be a witness to the truth."

As one example, Ouellet acknowledged that he was worried that the pope's first encyclical might deal with moral issues, reinforcing perceptions of Ratzinger as authoritarian and controlling.

"The contemporary world does not receive norms well," he conceded.

Instead, he said, the pope's positive language on love in Deus Caritas Est went over unexpectedly well, testifying to his capacity to grasp the kind of language that will reach secular modernity.

Ouellet was unabashed in accenting what he sees as the providence of Ratzinger's election. Speaking of its significance for Germany, for example, he said, "It meant the redemption of the country. It was the end of the sad era of World War II, looking to a new horizon of hope and spiritual renewal."

Pointing to the pope's Sept. 24 meeting with rebel Swiss theologian Hans Küng as an unexpectedly positive feature of Benedict's early months, Ouellet said that it created the possibility of "a new dialogue, possibly paving the way for a serious, sincere reconciliation."

Ouellet argued that Benedict is "open to modernity," but at the same time deeply rooted in figures such as Augustine and Bonaventure. The pope, Ouellet said, is deeply influenced by Catholic luminaries such as John Henry Newman, Henri De Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, blending a deep sense of historical development with an underlying set of metaphysical convictions.

Ouellet said he once heard Ratzinger, when he was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981, preach and was struck by the fact that he "never hid behind sophisticated language and political correctness," but was instead willing to tackle difficult questions head-on. In that sense, Ouellet said, Ratzinger had a strong sense of the need for theology to speak to concrete pastoral problems.

Ratzinger was one of the co-founders in 1972 of the international theological journal Communio, inspired by von Balthasar and widely seen as a more conservative alternative to the progressive journal Concilium. Ouellet, who has served on the North American editorial board of Communio, said that at one meeting at Rome's Gregorian University Ratzinger chided the editorial team for the "low relevance" of the journal, complaining that they were too preoccupied with theological speculation rather than "issues relevant to contemporary faith and culture."

One area where this concern shines through, Ouellet argued, is Benedict's approach to Biblical scholarship. Ouellet praised Ratzinger's famous appearance at a conference on Scripture in New York in 1988, where Ratzinger challenged scripture scholars to frame their work within the teaching tradition of the church.

"He put his finger on the wound, and allowed people to recover from an excessively rational interpretation of scripture," Ouellet said.

Ouellet said that Ratzinger asked him to organize a 1989 symposium on Biblical scholarship, which was repeated in 2002.

"This dialogue is still going on at the highest levels," Ouellet said. "It's a great work of Ratzinger as a man of dialogue, a learned man open to all contributions to truth," he said.

When Ouellet arrived at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity in 2001, a theological dispute between Ratzinger and Cardinal Walter Kasper, a fellow German and head of the ecumenical office, was at its zenith. The subject was the relationship between the local and universal church, with Ratzinger defending the priority of the universal church and Kasper arguing that the two are co-equal.

"I found myself squeezed between two theologians for whom I have the highest admiration and great respect," Ouellet said.

Not long afterwards, Ouellet said, he chaired a plenary assembly of the council where Ratzinger and Kasper hashed out the significance of Vatican II's famous formula that the church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic church.

"It was a moment of authentic dialogue within the Roman Curia itself, which led to better collaboration between the council and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. There had been significant tensions before," he said.

As a consultor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ouellet also had the chance to watch Ratzinger work there.

"I was impressed by his prudence in drawing a conclusion when he felt that a question was not mature enough," Ouellet said. He said the congregation had a "strong structure of collaboration," so that by the time a decision reached the pope, it had gone through 30 theologians and a panel of bishops and cardinals. In that sense, he said, Benedict XVI is accustomed to working in collaborative fashion.

Ouellet also revealed that it was Ratzinger's decision to remove any disciplinary elements from John Paul's 2003 encyclical on the Eucharist, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, and consign them to a separate document from the Congregation for Divine Worship, Redemptionis Sacramentum.

"This allowed for a better reception" of the encyclical, Ouellet said.

While conceding that Benedict is a "more discrete and reserved" figure than John Paul II, Ouellet said the new pope has "a straightforward way of relating to people" that comes across as sincere.

"He avoids the temptation of self-glorification," Ouellet said.

"He is not just a cold intellectual, and never was such a person," Ouellet said. "He is a humble man of the church, which is now clearly exposed to the people."

"I thank God every day for the gift of Pope Benedict XVI," he said.

The Vatican Press Office has released a 14-page account of the Pope's meeting yesterday with the Roman clergy, which means I have some translating to do! (I just got home, it's after midnight....) and so I will use this brief VIS news item about that meeting as a place-marker meanwhile.




Photos, Osservatore Romano
TRADITIONAL LENTEN MEETING WITH THE CLERGY OF ROME

VATICAN CITY, MAR 3, 2006 (VIS) - Yesterday, in the Hall of Blessings in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Benedict XVI celebrated the traditional Lenten meeting between the Pope and the clergy of the diocese of Rome. Participating in the event were Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's vicar general for Rome, the auxiliary bishops, and more than 800 priests who work in the city's 337 parishes.

The Holy Father chose not to pronounce an address, and instead dedicated the meeting to answering questions from the assembled pastors. The event, which lasted around two hours, began with a remembrance of Fr. Andrea Santoro, the Roman priest murdered recently in Trabzon, Turkey.

The Pope called on the priests of Rome to pay "particular attention" to the position of families in the capital. He also dwelt on the subject of the defense of life, recalling how "above all during Lent, we must reaffirm our vocation, which is a fundamental choice in favor of life." In this context he also recalled John Paul II's Encyclical "Evangelium Vitae."

Benedict XVI also spoke on the question of opening reflection of the role - including the institutional role - of women in the Church, and he quoted the examples of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Bridgit and St. Hildegard, who all made such extraordinary contributions to Church life.

Throughout the meeting, the Holy Father made various references to his recent meetings with bishops from Africa, affirming how we are debtors of the people of that continent and must transmit them a living and joyful faith.

The Pope also quoted from his own recent Encyclical "Deus caritas est," expressing his thanks to all those who, as witnesses of Christian love, dedicate themselves to the service of others, especially the poor and the sick. The "ultimate significance of the Cross," he stressed, is the offer of one's life for others.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/03/2006 6.27]

I've decided to post the account of the Pope's encounter with the clergy of Val D'Aosta last July, as reported by Sandro Magister. It was stunning when L'Osservatore Romano published the transcript of the encounter! But surprisingly, Sandro Magister appeared to have been the only Vaticanista to have appreciated the utter novelty of small-town priests having an opportunity to ask the Pope directly about the issues that they must deal with daily in their pastoral work. It will be itneresting to compare this with Benedict's Q&A qith the Roman clergy on Wednesday.
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The Pope Opens Up to the Priests of a Small Mountain Diocese
Benedict XVI's surprising question and answer session with the priests of Aosta.
On the West‘s weariness of God, Christianity in Africa, parishes without priests,
communion for divorced and remarried persons...

by Sandro Magister

ROMA, July 29, 2005 – Of the addresses delivered until now by Benedict XVI, one stands out as entirely special. The pope did not write it, but improvised it, speaking off the cuff. He made his remarks behind closed doors during his vacation in the Alps, at the little church of Introd, in the presence of the bishop and priests of the diocese of Aosta. It was not released by the Vatican press office, but appeared two days later, on July 27, in "L'Osservatore Romano" and on the website of the Holy See, exclusively in Italian, in a transcript from the tape recording.

It is an address of great interest, because it permits getting a live reading on some of the questions closest to the heart of Joseph Ratzinger. They are the questions on which his reflections emerge spontaneously, on which his vision is clear, with startling features. And there are questions for which he admits to not having definitive answers.

Here are some selections.

On the many vocations to the priesthood in Africa, not all of which are good:

"During the past weeks I had the 'ad limina' visits of the bishops of Sri Lanka and of the southern part of Africa. Here vocations are on the rise, and are even so abundant that they cannot build enough seminaries to receive these young men who want to become priests.

"Naturally, this joy brings with it a certain bitterness, because at least some of them are coming out of hope for social advancement. By becoming priests they practically become the chief of the tribe, they naturally receive special treatment, they live a different kind of life, etcetera. So the weeds and the wheat go together in this marvelous growth in vocations, and the bishops must be very attentive to discernment and not simply be content to have many future priests. They must look for which are really the true vocations, discerning between the weeds and the wheat."

Again on Africa, on the expansion of Christianity but also of Islam and the sects:

"There is a certain enthusiastic response of faith, because they are at a particular moment in their history, a time when the traditional religions are being revealed as obviously insufficient. And it can be seen and understood that these traditional religions carry a promise within themselves, but that they are waiting for something. They are awaiting a new response capable of purifying them, of integrating everything that is good within them and eliminating their insufficient and negative aspects. In this moment of transition in which their culture really is reaching out toward a new hour in their history, Christianity and Islam are the two viable responses.

"So in these countries there is in a certain sense a springtime of the faith, but this is of course within the context of the competition between these two responses, and above all in the context of the difficulty posed by the sects, which present themselves as the best, the simplest, and the most accommodating form of Christianity. So even at this promising moment in history, a moment of springtime, there remains the difficult task of those who must sow the Word together with Christ and build up the Church."

On the "dying" Churches of the Western world:

"The mainline Churches appear to be dying. This is true above all in Australia and also in Europe, but not so much in the United States. What are growing, on the other hand, are the sects which offer the certainty of a rock-bottom faith, and man is looking for certitude. And thus the mainline Churches, especially the traditional mainline Protestant Churches, really are facing an extremely serious crisis. The sects have the upper hand because they appear with a few simple certainties and say: this is enough. The Catholic Church is not in such bad shape as the historical mainline Protestant Churches, but it also faces the problems of this moment in history."

On how to react to the blurring of the Christian faith in the West:

"The first response is patience, in the certainty that the world cannot live without God. I do not mean any God – we know how dangerous a cruel or false God can be – but the God of revelation, the God who has shown us his face in Jesus Christ. It is a face that has suffered for us, a face of love that transforms the world in the manner of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground."

On how to revive vocations to the priesthood in the West:

"The certainty that Christ really is the face of God […] requires the personalization of our faith and our friendship with the Lord, and this is also how new vocations emerge. We see this in the new generation that came after the great crisis of the cultural struggle unleashed in 1968, where it really seemed that the historical era of Christianity had been surpassed. But we see that '68 did not keep its promises, and there is a rebirth of the awareness that there is another way, one that is more complex because it demands these transformations of our heart, but one that is also more genuine. And this is also how new vocations come about. We ourselves must exert our imaginations to help young people find this way for the future. This matter was also evident in my dialogue with the African bishops. In spite of the number of priests, many of them are condemned to a terrible solitude, and many do not survive psychologically.

"It is therefore important to have around oneself the reality of the presbyterate, the community of priests who help one another, who stand together on a common journey, in solidarity in their common faith. This also seems very important to me, because if young men see priests who are extremely isolated, sad, and tired, they think: if this is my future, I'll never make it. There really needs to be the creation of this communion of life that shows young people: yes, this could be a future for me, I could live this way."

On the many people who distance themselves from the Church:

"It is true: to the people, especially those who have responsibility in the world, the Church seems to be outdated, our proposals unnecessary. They behave as though they could, as if they wished to live without our message, and they always think that they do not need us. They do not seek out our message. This is true and it brings us suffering, but it is also part of this historical situation, of a certain anthropological vision, according to which man should act as Karl Marx said: the Church has had 1800 years to show that it could change the world and has done nothing, so now we'll do it ourselves."

On how to bring those who are far away back to the Church, like the birds on the mustard tree:

"Only moral values and strong convictions, together with sacrifice, offer the possibility to live and build up the world. […] It is only love that permits us to live, and love is also suffering. […] Here too, naturally, we need to have patience, but this is also an active patience in the sense that it shows people: you need this. And even if they do not convert immediately, at least they draw near to the circle of those in the Church who have this interior strength. The Church has always recognized this group of persons who are strong inside, who really carry the strength of the faith, and the persons who almost latch onto these others and let themselves be carried along and participate in that way. I think of the Lord's parable about the tiny mustard seed, which then becomes a tree large enough for the birds of the sky to nest in it. And I would say that these birds could be interpreted as the persons who have not yet converted, but have at least perched upon the tree that is the Church.”

On the proposal that nonbelievers should live "as if God exists":

"I made this reflection: during the period of the Enlightenment, when the faith was divided between Catholics and Protestants, it was thought that common moral values must be preserved by providing a sufficient foundation for them. The idea was: we must make moral values independent of the religious confessions, so that they would endure 'etsi Deus non daretur' [even if there were no God].

"Now we are in the opposite situation, things have been turned the other way around. There is no longer any proof for moral values. They become evident only if God exists. So I suggested that the secularists, the so-called secularists, should reflect upon whether the opposite is not true today: we must live 'quasi Deus daretur' [as if God exists]. Even if we do not have the strength to believe, we must live by this hypothesis, because otherwise the world does not work. And it seems to me that this would be a first step toward the faith. And through many forms of contact I see that, thanks to God, there is a growth of dialogue with at least a part of secularism."

On the parishes without priests in Germany and France, and on the risks of "Protestantization":

"When I was the archbishop of Munich, they had created a model for celebrating the Liturgy of the Word when there was no priest available, in order to keep the presence of the community at its own church. They said: each community will remain, and where there is no priest we will have this Liturgy of the Word.

"For these Sunday gatherings, the French used the phrase 'en absence du prêtre' [in the absence of the priest], but after a while they realized that this could have negative consequences. One loses the sense of the sacrament, a sort of Protestantization takes place, and in the end, if it's just the Word I can celebrate it myself at home. I recall that when I was a professor at Tübingen, there was the great exegete Käsemann – you may have heard of him; he was the student of Bultmann, who was a great theologian. Although he was a fully committed Protestant, he had never gone to church. He said: I can meditate on the Sacred Scriptures myself at home.

"The French made a slight change to their formula for Sunday assemblies 'en absence du prêtre,' calling them instead Sunday gatherings 'en attente du prêtre' [awaiting the priest]. That is, there must be this expectation for the priest, and I would say: under normal circumstances the Liturgy of the Word should be an exception on Sundays, because the Lord wants to come bodily. So this must not be the solution."

On the importance of going to Sunday Mass, even if it is many miles away:

"Sunday was created because the Lord rose from the dead and came amid the community of the apostles to be with them. And so they understood that Saturday was no longer the liturgical day, but Sunday was, the day on which the Lord always wants to be physically present among us again to nourish us with his body, that we ourselves may become his body in the world.

"Finding a way to offer this possibility to many persons of good will: I do not dare to give prescriptions right now. I'm sure the situation is a bit different here, and I'm not familiar with it, but in Munich I always noted how incredibly mobile and flexible the population was. The young people would travel thirty miles or more to go to a dance club, so why couldn't they go three miles to attend a shared church? But this is a very concrete and practical matter, and I don't intend to give prescriptions. But we must seek to impart to the people this sentiment: I need to be together with the Church, to be together with the living Church and with the Lord!"

After finishing his address, Benedict XVI responded to the questions of the priests who were there. Here are some of the passages from his replies:

On Catholic schooling and the catechism:

"What seems important to me is the totality of intellectual formation, which should make it clear that even today Christianity is not separated from reality. In the wake of the Enlightenment and the 'second Enlightenment' of '68, many thought that the historical time of the Church and the faith had ended, and that we had entered into a new era, in which these things could be studied like classical mythology. On the contrary, it must be made clear that the faith is always relevant and that it is supremely reasonable. What is needed, therefore, is an intellectual affirmation by which one understands the beauty and the organic structure of the faith.

"This is one of the fundamental intentions of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which has now been condensed into the Compendium. We must not think of this as a bundle of rules that we load onto our shoulders like a heavy knapsack on the journey of life. […] It must be made clear that, in reality, Christianity is very simple and therefore very rich. […] It must be understood that the faith essentially creates an assembly, it unites.

"It is precisely this essence of the faith that liberates us from the isolation of the ego and unites us within a great community, a community that is very complete – in the parish, in the Sunday assembly – and universal, in which I am related to everyone else in the world. We must understand this catholic dimension of the community that gathers in the parish each Sunday. So if one of our goals is an understanding of the faith, another must be socialization within the Church, or 'ecclesialization,' which means becoming a part of the great community of the Church as a place to live in, where I know that even in the greatest moments of my life – especially in suffering and death – I am not alone."

On communion for members of the faithful who have divorced and remarried:

"None of us has a ready-made prescription, in part because the situations are always different. I would say that a particularly painful situation is that of persons who had a Church wedding for the sake of tradition, even though they did not truly believe, and then having entered a new and invalid marriage they convert, find the faith, and feel excluded from the sacrament. This really is a great suffering, and when I was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith I invited various episcopal conferences and specialists to study this problem: a sacrament celebrated without faith. I dare not say whether it is really possible to find here an instance of invalidity because a fundamental dimension was lacking in the sacrament. This was how I thought personally, but I understood from the discussions I had that the problem is very difficult and must be studied in greater detail. But given the situation of suffering for these persons, it needs to be studied more deeply."

On permission to divorce in the Orthodox Churches:

"We are aware of the problem […] of the Orthodox Churches, which are frequently presented as a model in which remarriage is possible. But only the first marriage is sacramental: they also recognize that the others are not a sacrament, they are a reduced or lesser form of marriage, and they take place in a penitential context. In a certain sense they may go to communion, but it is with the knowledge that this is granted to them 'in economia' – as they say – by an act of mercy which nevertheless does not change the fact that their marriage is not a sacrament. The other point in the Eastern Churches is that for these marriages the possibility of divorce is granted with great ease, and thus the principle of the indissolubility and real sacramental nature of marriage is seriously harmed."

And again on the Compendium of the Catechism:

"The Holy Father John Paul II charged a commission with creating this Compendium, a synthesis of the main Catechism to which this refers, extracting from it the essentials. At first when we were creating the Compendium we wanted to make it even shorter, but in the end we understood that in order to really communicate the essentials in our time, the necessary material that all catechists would need was what we decided upon. We also added some prayers. And I think that it really is a very useful book, in which one has the 'summa' of what is contained in the main Catechism, and in this sense seems to me that it can be compared to the Catechism of Pius X."

From ZENIT today on
www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=85354-
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The Benedict Factor
by Catherine Smibert

The seeds sown by Pope John Paul II for ecumenism with the Russian Orthodox seem to be sprouting.

Russia-Rome ties are warming. And the reason now might be Benedict XVI.

That is according to Jean-François Thierry, the French-Russian director of Moscow's ecumenical cultural center called the Library of the Spirit.

I contacted Thierry after recent dealings with the Russian Ecumenical Center, near the Vatican in Borgo Pio.

"Some years ago, dialogue between the Russian Orthodox and Catholics was a lot more complicated," Thierry told me. "Now, after the election of Pope Benedict, we have seen a notably diverse approach and a new desire for the two to work together."

"From the Orthodox side, we've observed a different openness and interest and they are continually trying to come up with ideas for common projects. ... I feel the wind has changed and has brought new possibilities with it."

Among the activities the Catholic and Orthodox Churches in Russia are establishing is a series of publications of the Holy Father's more famous works in the Russian language.

"We are now preparing the edition of Cardinal Ratzinger's book called 'Introduction to Christianity,'" explained Thierry. "The introduction is being written by an Orthodox bishop, something that wouldn't have been possible as recently as some months ago."

He added: "The Holy Father's book … brings us back to our common roots, our common faith in Christ Jesus, and thus recognition of the goal that he gave us: to evangelize."

But might there be something more about this Pope that inspires the rapport between the Churches?

Thierry confided: "They like him precisely because he is not necessarily saying what they want to hear. … Russian Orthodox highly value the one who stands by his convictions, and have therefore followed this Pope with respect since early on ... since the release of his work 'Dominus Iesus.'"

Indeed, as this ecumenical expert explains, support for this Pope has been witnessed even among the most fundamentalist of Orthodox groups in Russia.

"After his election, people expressed a deep satisfaction that he, who is so 'upright,' was chosen to head the Church. It seems that which was disconcerting to the Western world, was what won over the Eastern and is now opening portals to important dialogue."

[G][/G] Great news in the above post. Let's pray that things keep moving!

thanks Teresa for translating above texts

Pope's goal nothing less than saving Europe

Philadelphia Inquirer
March 5, 2006

As we enter the first Lent of Benedict XVI's young papacy, much has been made of American obsessions - the church's stance on homosexuality, birth control, the ordination of women - that amount to little more than parochial concerns.

But in so doing, Americans may miss the historic significance of the current pontificate: Pope Benedict is fighting for the future of Europe.

To understand Benedict, there is no better place to start than God's Choice, George Weigel's brilliant and important book about Benedict's election. As Weigel writes, Benedict "is likely to be the last European pope for a long time."

The demographic makeup of the Catholic Church has changed in the blink of an eye. In 1978, according to Weigel, Africa had 55 million Catholics; by 2003, the number had grown to 144 million. By 2025, there may be 230 million. The church is similarly flourishing in Latin America. Of the 115 electors at last year's conclave, only 58 were European. Forty percent of the electing cardinals were from less-developed countries. These numbers were not lost on the church hierarchy.

Benedict's brother cardinals, Weigel explains, "elected him in part because of their profound concern for the state of Europe and the condition of the Catholic Church in its historic heartland."

Their concern is well-founded.

As Phillip Longman describes it in his book The Empty Cradle, Europe is in a demographic death spiral, with fertility rates far below the replacement level. By 2050, Longman writes, Spain will lose 25 percent of its population; in Italy, the working-age population will decrease by 41 percent. Russia may be the canary in the Western coal mine. It is already losing 750,000 people per year; prospects there are so black that 70 percent - 70 percent - of pregnancies end in abortion.

While Europe is shrinking, the average age of the remaining population is increasing. This creates an economic trap as the welfare state is pushed to support more people, for longer periods of time, using a tax base funded by fewer and fewer workers.

This economic crisis leads to a security crisis, as the immigration of Muslims hostile to European culture leads to incidents such as the Danish cartoon uproar, the French car-burning riots, and assaults on public figures such as Theo Van Gogh and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The European Catholic Church has also fallen on hard times as the secular elites attempt to smother what was once their culture's animating force. The Italian intellectual Rocco Buttiglione was prevented from taking office on the European Commission because his Catholicism was deemed too radical. The drafters of the EU constitution fought a bloody battle to airbrush any reference to Christianity from the mammoth document.

If there is any good news, it's that, as Joseph Bottum writes, "Europe is about as deChristianized as it's likely to get; everyone who's going to leave the church already has."

In the face of all this, how can Benedict stop a civilization from committing suicide?

To begin, Benedict is confronting Europe's grim prospects - a task the continent's leaders have abdicated. Europe, the Pope writes in his forthcoming book, Without Roots, is not a geographic entity, but "rather a cultural and historical concept."

The term Europe, he continues, "did not become popular currency... until the modern era... as a means of self-identification, in response to the Turkish threat." Historically speaking, the "advance of Islam in the seventh and early eighth centuries" divided "what had been a single continent into three: Asia, Africa, and Europe."

The "advance of Islam" is once again a threat to the European concept. Addressing the Vatican diplomatic corps, Benedict said that "attention has rightly been drawn to the danger of a clash of civilizations... . Its causes are many and complex, not least to do with political ideology, combined with aberrant religious ideas." Unlike many in the West, the Pope has not been afraid to point out the troubling incompatibilities of Islam and Western liberalism.

The population decline is even more worrisome; as the Pope laments, "Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future."

Benedict believes these two problems share a cause: the abandonment of rationalism for relativism. He writes: "The decline of moral conscience grounded in absolute values is still our problem, and left untreated, it can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience."

In his 2003 collection of essays, Truth and Tolerance, Benedict proclaimed that "Europe must defend reason" because "rationality has been the postulate and the condition of Christianity."

If he is to be rationality's champion, two paths lie before Benedict. The first leads toward a smaller, purer church that could preserve the jewels of Western culture while Europe disintegrates. After all, the Pope's namesake, St. Benedict, founded the system of monasteries that performed that function during the Dark Ages. As he once observed when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, "the traditional church can be very lovely, but this is not something necessary."

Yet it seems more likely that Benedict XVI will instead attempt to reinvigorate Europe - to argue it out of dystopia. Paraphrasing Arnold Toynbee, he reminds us that "the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Christian believers should look upon themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage."

The Pope has been preparing for this argument for a long time. A year before the Berlin Wall fell, he was already constructing the battlements from which a defense of rationalism could be fought:

"We must again learn to understand that the great ethical insights of mankind are just as rational and just as true as - indeed, more true than - the experimental knowledge of the realm of the natural sciences and technology. They are more true, because they touch more deeply the essential character of Being and have a more decisive significance for the humanity of man."

Talking an entire continent away from the abyss is an impossible task, particularly since the leading lights of Europe want no part in the conversation. But converse they will. Benedict's intellectual stature - he is a member of the Académie Française, the Rhineland-Westphalia Academy of Sciences, and even the European Academy of Sciences and Arts - cannot be ignored, even by those who wish to most.

Like his predecessor at St. Peter's, he may be the one man on Earth capable of the impossible.

[G][/G] for another interesting post!
The European death wish (no matter how they deny this)is one of the most worrisome and potentially tragic phenomena in the history of the West. And it will have consequences for the entire globe. If Benedict can put this process in reverse....let's pray it's not already too late. I can't help thinking about Spengler's book [C]Die Untergang des Abendlandes[/C]- if early predictions couldn't change the European mind, only a massive, profound return to Christianity could accomplish that.

About Benefan's last post: Such a perceptive article intrigued me, so I went into the Philly Inquirer online to check out who wrote it, as it does not have a byline. But right after the last paragraph, there's a line that says "Contact Jonathan V. Last at jlast@phillynews.com" ...

So I did a Google search to find out more about Mr. Last, who turns out the be the Online Editor of the Weekly Standard, and whose CV shows he has written for other major MSM outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post.

He also did a comprehensive article about religion on the Internet in the December 2005 issue of the journal First Things - www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0512/articles/last.html
which gives a lot of useful links of general interest, in addition to a legion of links for the curious-only.

But back to his Philadelphia Inquirer article.

Mr. Last has pinned the label on Benedict's political intentions (and I mean political here in its sense as "public affairs", not partisan, and not as opposed to "ecclesiastical"): "to save Europe," as he puts it bluntly, just as Benedict of Norcia set out to do that in the Middle Ages, though in a different context.

Joseph Ratzinger spoke and wrote a lot about the subject, but as theologian and author, he did not have a fraction of the influence and weight he has as Pope. John Allen recently spoke of Benedict XVI's epic ambitions for his papacy without specifying what those ambitions were. Saving Europe from itself - for itself and for the future - is about as epic as it can get.

I hope that in this task, he will be aided by more and more writers and thinkers who value Western civilization enough to fear for it NOW! And that Mr. Last - and the few like him in MSM who have thought seriously about the current 'decline of the West' - will diligently and constantly spread around their warnings of "bad tidings" for the West, until governments which are in a position to do something that can be immediately meaningful about the problem start doing something!

Early this year, on the first page of our ODDS AND ENDS thread, I posted significant excerpts from an article that came out in the Wall Street Journal online. It was entitled "It's the Demography, Stupid - The real reason the West is in danger of extinction" by Mark Steyn, who started with this premise: "Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries..." and I introduced it this way:

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THE BELL TOLLS FOR THE WEST

On not a few occasions, Pope Benedict XVI has reminded the world that God commanded, "Go forth and multiply," and that Italy, like the rest of the Western world, must do something now about alarmingly low and still falling birthrates. But are the concerned nations taking note at all?

The governments of Europe appear blind to and paralyzed by the stupefying fact that - between their falling birthrates and their rising immigrant Muslim populations - the Muslim tide, which the Europeans managed to stop at the Battle of Lepanto back in 1571, has now, within just a few decades, virtually overtaken Western Europe in the guise of large defiantly unassimilated Muslim populations.

A death knell is sounded in an article by Mark Steyn, a syndicated columnist and theater critic for The New Criterion, in whose January issue this article appears. It was posted online on January 4 in the Wall Street Journal's editorial-page Opinion Journal.
www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007760
Excerpts from the article follow...

---

It deserves to be read again...Also on Page 2 of ODDS AND ENDS, I posted an article from Zenit with some current statistics about the falling birth rates in the industrialized world, including Japan and South Korea.

Thanks to Nessuna for this article from Il Tempo today, which is very apropos to the last two posts. Something concrete, at least, in the form of a political movement for the defense of Western civilization. Here is a translation -
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By Paolo Luigi Rodari

Italian Senate President Marcello Pera met Pope Benedict XVI yesterday in private audience, and according to Vatican sources, he wished to present and explain to the Pope a manifesto issued on February 23 which announced the birth of a new organization called «Movimento per l’occidente forza di civiltà» (Movement for the West: Force of Civilization).

It is an organization which intends to anticipate publicly the politico-cultural challenge to the State in the middle of the campaign for the April 9 general elections in Italy. The first words of its manifesto are unequivocal:

“The West is in crisis. Assailed externally by Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism, it is not capable of responding to the challenge. Undermined internally by a moral and spiritual crisis, it does not find the courage to react. We feel guilty of our well-being, we feel ashamed of our traditions, we consider terorism as a reaction to our errors. But terrorism, on the contrary, is a direct aggression against our civilization and against humanity. (But) Europe is closed...”

Even if the brief announcement yesterday by Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro Valls simply said that the meeting between the Pope and Pera was to discuss “some topics of present-day culture in the context of the actual international situation,” Il Tempo’s sources at the Vatican said that the conversation between them dwelt on the challenges that Christianity must face today in the West, in Europe, and particularly in Italy, with the imminence of new elections (that could bring a change of government).

They reportedly also discussed the escalation of violence in predominantly Muslim nations protesting the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammed.

The Pope is well aware of the violence against Christians in Iraq and Nigeria, and it is said that one of the reasons he wanted this meeting with Pera was to discuss what practical moves were possible to deal with the situation.

In general, Benedict XVI has always been concerned with the crisis of identity which has gripped the Western world, particularly Europe, which now appears unable to acknowledge the Christian roots of its civilization and therefore unable to defend the values that its great culture has proposed and defended for centuries.

Marcello Pera is the Italian politician whose views, perhaps more than any other, are most in accord with the Pope in this matter. The position often expressed by Pera about the urgency of re-educating society in those Christian values which it finds so difficult to appreciate today is the same position that the Vatican has been urging on political institutions and society in general.

In the past months, Benedict XVI has met with other Italian visitors on the same theme but only Pera seems able to give some guarantees to the Pope in the name of the center-right coalition.


Cardinal Ratzinger and Senator Pera at the presentation of their book "Senza Radici" in Rome in December 2004.

The association between Ratzinger and Pera has been progressing over time, reflecting their common concern over Europe’s identity crisis, which has already resulted in the publication of a book, “Senza Radici” [whose English translation Without Roots has just come out in the USA],in which they both write about the topic.

Their continuing dialog dates back to when the Pope was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and has not been cut off despite the Pope’s new responsibilities and commitments.

Although Pera is a nonbeliever, he shares Benedict XVI's concern for cultural relativism, which denies the value of objective truths.

According to Pera, relativism explains the loss or rejection of Christian roots which have been decisive in the development of European and Western civilization.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/03/2006 16.30]

Vita Nueva – Pope and great poet join in truly ‘catholic’ encyclical

By Robert P. Imbelli
3/6/2006

NEW YORK (America Magazine) – The two most prominent authors we are reading in my Boston College course this semester for advanced undergraduates on the classics of spirituality are Augustine of Hippo and Dante Alighieri.

I see by his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that Benedict XVI has been reading them as well. It will come as no surprise that St. Augustine figures prominently in the pope’s reflection. Joseph Ratzinger is by his scholarship and, perhaps, by his temperament, an avowed Augustinian. Indeed, aside from the Bible itself, Augustine is cited more than any other writer in the encyclical. But Dante? The greatest Catholic poet is not even mentioned in the text of the encyclical.

But two days prior to the release of the letter, the pope himself gave as forthright a statement of authorial intent as one could wish for. In an address to a symposium organized by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum (the Vatican office that oversees Catholic charitable organizations), Benedict declared the remarkable ambition: “I wish to express for our time and our existence something of what Dante summed up in his daring vision.”

The vision to which the pope refers is the one at the culmination of the entire journey of the Divine Comedy. Dante achieves the full satisfaction of his spiritual quest in an ecstatic contemplation of the triune God in the form of three radiant circles of diversely colored light. But this achievement is not Dante’s doing. It is the gift of God’s condescension. Dante’s loving desire, eros, is subsumed and transformed in God’s self-giving love, agape. And what enables and undergirds this consummated union is the appearance of a human form within one of the circles of the trinitarian mystery. Jesus Christ himself is the union of the two: God and humanity, agape and eros, eternity and time.

Benedict’s encyclical is a profound meditation upon what constitutes the newness of the new covenant and, hence, upon what is radically constitutive of Christian identity and discipleship. His response is: Incarnation and Trinity are the novum of Christian faith and existence. This theme of “newness” sounds as a leitmotif throughout. What is distinctive about the encyclical is not the pope’s notional assertion of this truth, but his profoundly Christocentric evocation and exposition of the revelation it affirms: God is love. He writes in No. 12, “The real novelty of the New Testament lies not so much in new ideas as in the figure of Christ himself, who gives flesh and blood to those concepts – an unprecedented realism.” Were we to ask, how does the Christian know that God is love, as the First Letter of John proclaims? The answer can only be the one given in that same letter: “In this is agape, not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins” (1 Jn 4:10).

If Dante is the great Catholic poet, the unsurpassed poet of the both-and, so Benedict develops this core vision in a manner that is comprehensively catholic. In a nonpolemical way, Benedict takes a stand against the dualisms that over the course of the centuries have sometimes bedeviled Catholic thinking. He resolutely appropriates the deeper biblical and patristic streams of the Catholic tradition. Thus human eros is not repressed, but fulfilled, in divine agape. Indeed, in a radical move to which commentators have given little attention, Benedict attributes eros to God. God shows himself, in Christ, to be passionate for humankind. Christ’s free self-gift reveals God’s passion for communion with us – a passion that renders God vulnerable, even to death on a cross.

Further, in Catholic understanding, reason and faith are not set in opposition to each other. They offer reciprocal illumination, as both Virgil and Beatrice were necessary for Dante’s journey. Faith leaves no place for irrationalism, though it transcends and transforms human reason. At the same time, faith should not seek to pre-empt those matters that are the proper domain of reason. The pope’s integral vision does not preclude, but is enriched by a nuanced recognition of complexity and distinctive competencies.

Thus, an area that will doubtless engage commentators in the future is his views regarding the proper competencies of church and state, the ecclesial order and the political order. Once again, one can hear echoes of Dante’s concern to affirm the complementary responsibilities of church and empire, of love and justice. Both Benedict and Dante advocate differentiation rather than dichotomy. To recognize distinctive concerns is not to deny concrete interaction. It is to preclude hegemony on the part of either church or state.

Another dualism that both poet and pope strive to lay to rest is that between the present life and the life of the world to come. The love of the eternal God does not inhibit devotion to earthly justice, it promotes and sustains it in the face of discouragement and even defeat. Nonetheless, it recognizes that no earthly joy can satisfy its infinite desire. In Augustine’s classic formulation, which both poet and pope take to heart, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

A final dualism rejected by Pope Benedict is that between soul and body. So much is this the case that the nuptial love between man and woman is sacramental, “the icon of the relationship between God and his people, and vice versa” (No. 11). Not by accident has the Song of Songs of the biblical tradition become the canonical expression of both human and divine love, of eros purified and sanctified even to total self-gift for the sake of the other. The pope even calls the Song of Songs “a source of mystical knowledge and experience” (No. 10).

Yet, however potentially blessed and life giving the sexual component of erotic love is, eros embraces far more than merely sexual love. It is desire that is the wellspring of all human striving and achievement, intellectual, artistic and relational. But whatever its form, it must be redeemed from self-seeking, from turning in on itself at the expense of the other – what Augustine called cupiditas and Dante cupidagine. This is that original self-seeking that, since Adam and Eve, has corrupted relationships and perverted eros into violence.

In the face of this deeply rooted predicament, the cure must be radical, not superficial.

This is not Augustinian pessimism, but Christian realism. And the heart of the good news is that God has provided such salvation in Christ. The entire treasure of the church is the reality of Jesus Christ, who through his death and resurrection has become the savior of the world.

For all his intellectual acumen, Benedict has a keen visual sense (in this too he resembles Dante). The image which governs the entire encyclical is the Johannine one of the pierced side of Jesus on the cross from which flow water and blood (see Jn 19:33-37). The pope refers to it three times in the course of his exposition. Here is his most telling statement: “By contemplating the pierced side of Christ (Jn 19:37), we can understand the starting point of this encyclical letter: ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:8). It is there that this truth can be contemplated. It is from there that our definition of love must begin. In this contemplation the Christian discovers the path along which his life and love must move” (No. 12).

As a patristic scholar, the pope knows full well that the fathers of the church saw in the water and blood flowing from the pierced side of Christ the life giving sacraments of baptism and Eucharist. From the baptismal waters the Christian is born anew; and this new life, this vita nuova, is continually nourished by the encounter with Christ in the Eucharist.

Personal encounter with Jesus Christ is key to the pope’s vision and proclamation. He states at t! he very opening of the encyclical, “The beginning of Christian existence is not an ethical decision or a sublime idea, but rather the encounter with an event, with a person, who gives life a new goal and, at the same time, a sure growth” (No. 1, translation modified; here, as elsewhere, the published English version does not convey some of the nuance of the pope’s thought). Moreover, without an ever-renewed encounter with the living Christ, Christianity risks becoming lifeless ritual or well-intentioned moralism.

Benedict is acutely conscious that being Christian is an endless adventure, a growth to maturity of faith and love. The encounter with Jesus Christ summons the disciple to newness of life. For the transformation of eros in agape entails the transformation of the subject, the lover. Encounter with the living Christ, especially in the Eucharist, if it takes place in spirit and in truth, transforms the disciple so that she or he becomes a new self, a eucharistic self. “The Eucharist draws us into Jesus’ act of self-oblation. More than a merely static reception of the incarnate logos, we enter into the very movement of his self-giving” (No. 13, translation modified). This is the moto spiritale, the spiritual maturation that moves Dante from the base of Mount Purgatory, through the heavenly spheres, to the ultimate vision of the communion of saints and of all creation transformed in the love of the triune God.

For the pope, the Eucharist inspires not only the growth of what I have called a “eucharistic self,” one who experiences deeply that he or she is a living member of the body of Christ. It also founds and promotes a eucharistic ethic. The great judgment scene in Matthew 25 makes clear the intimate connection between loving service of the needy other and loving devotion to Christ himself. There is no opposition in the pope’s thought between orthodoxy and orthopraxis, authentic worship and authentic action, love of God and love of neighbor. Once more it is! a question of the Catholic both-and, neither separating nor reducing one to the other.

One concern of the second part of the encyclical seems to be a perceived tendency to such reductionism, to the possible compromising of distinctive Catholic identity and understanding. Gospel proclamation (kerygma), liturgical celebration (leiturgia), and committed service (diakonia) are constitutive elements of church and must be integrally present in all ecclesial endeavors. This does not mean, of course, that they must all be explicitly to the fore in every instance. But it does mean that unless they are intentionally acknowledged, there may be a drift toward a less than fully Catholic expression and witness. In keeping with his pastoral and mystagogical sensitivity, the pope therefore urges that all who labor in the church’s charitable organizations receive, in addition to indispensable professional preparation, “a formation of the heart: that they might be led to the encounter with God in Christ which awakens love and opens hearts to others” (No. 31).

For one committed to teaching in a Catholic Jesuit university, the words of the pope strike a theme reminiscent of a declaration by the late superior general of the Society of Jesus, Pedro Arrupe. In an oft-cited address to alumni of Jesuit schools, Father Arrupe said, “Today our prime educational objective must be to form men and women for others; men and women who will live not for themselves but for God and his Christ – for the God-man who lived and died for all the world.” Father Arrupe’s statement is too often invoked in the abbreviated and less adequate version: “to form men and women for others.” Perhaps Benedict’s encyclical will serve as a challenge to reappropriate Father Arrupe’s words with their full trinitarian and Christological weight and inspiration, and to draw from them relevant implications for mission and ministry.

From the first words of the encyclical to the last, the pope underscores the newness of! the Christian image of God and correlates it with a new image of the human. As a biblical theologian, the pope knows well that the created image of the triune God is irreducibly communal: man and woman. But, as a patristic theologian, Benedict appreciates that many of the fathers of the church suggestively distinguished between image and likeness. We are made in God’s image; we are called to grow into God’s likeness in Christ. Hence the pope’s dynamic and processive vision of human existence and Christian life permeates the encyclical.

In the very first paragraph of the encyclical, he speaks of “the image of the human and of its journey” (itineris: not correctly translated in the English version). Like Dante, the pope understands the human as journey, as movement, as exodus from self into the promised land of communion with others in Christ. And the very last words of the letter sound a final Dante-like note, a lovely invocation of the Virgin, which weds human yearning and divine grace, recapitulating eros and agape:

Show us Jesus. Lead us to him.

Teach us to know and love him,

so that we too can become

capable of true love

and be fountains of living water

in the midst of a thirsting world.

- - -

Rev. Robert P. Imbelli, a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, teaches systematic theology at Boston College.

'Deus Caritas Est' and C.S. Lewis 'Four Loves'
3/7/2006


Interview With Andrea Monda

ROME, MARCH 7, 2006 (Zenit) - In Benedict XVI's first encyclical it is possible to find affinities with "The Four Loves" of C.S. Lewis, says journalist Andrea Monda.

St. Paul's has published two of Monda's works on the British author: "Invito alla lettera di C.S. Lewis" (2000) and, with Paolo Gulisano, "Il Mondo di Narnia" (2005).

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on Nov. 29, 1898. He was educated at Oxford, where he was a tutor and member of the governing council of Magdalen Collage from 1925 to 1954, the year in which he was appointed professor of medieval and Renaissance literature in Cambridge. He died on Nov. 22, 1963.

An atheist for many years, Lewis described his conversion to Christianity in "Surprised by Joy." His works of fiction include "The Chronicles of Narnia" series.

Monda spoke to us about the similarities of Lewis' "Four Loves" with Benedict XVI's encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est."

Q: What are the affinities between Pope Benedict XVI and the British writer?

Monda: It is known that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger read and appreciated several works of the writer C.S. Lewis … and every now and then traces of that experience also appear in the texts of Pope Benedict XVI, including in the encyclical "Deus Caritas Est."

Q: In what passages in particular?

Monda: Above all in the decision to place love at the center of his reflection, essence of Christian doctrine and, especially, in having dedicated the first part of the encyclical to the comparison and distinction between "eros" and "agape," with a brief allusion to "philia."

It is quite likely that the Supreme Pontiff recalled Lewis' splendid 1960 essay on "The Four Loves," in which the writer analyzes four kinds of love: affection; friendship -- "philia"; and, specifically, eros and charity -- "agape."

But it is not just in structure where a harmony is perceived, but also in the contents: Lewis' sharp intelligence goes to the core of the Christian faith with the same capacity of penetration of the German Pontiff, and with the same ability to illuminate, explain and give to the reader's attention.

Q: Can you give an example?

Monda: Lewis writes, for example, speaking of charity, that "natural love-gift is always directed to objects that the one in love considers in a certain sense intrinsically worthy of love. … But divine love-gift in man enables him also to love what is not naturally worthy of love: lepers, criminals, enemies, the mentally retarded, the embittered, the proud and the scornful."

Further on, he continues to affirm: "We want to be loved for our intelligence, beauty, generosity, honesty, efficiency. In noticing, however, that someone is not offering supreme love -- charity --this makes a terrible impact on us. … In a similar way, receiving is harder and perhaps more meritorious than giving. … All those who have good parents, wives, husbands or children can be sure that sometimes -- and perhaps always, in regard to some specific feature or habit -- they are receiving charity, that they are not loved because they are lovable, but because Love itself is in those who love them."

It is quite likely that the Holy Father remembered this page of Lewis when, in point 17 of the encyclical, he wrote that "He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has 'loved us first,' love can also blossom as a response within us."

And in the following point, he continues affirming that "Love of neighbor is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ. His friend is my friend. Going beyond exterior appearances, I perceive in others an interior desire for a sign of love, of concern. This I can offer them not only through the organizations intended for such purposes, accepting it perhaps as a political necessity. Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave."

Q: How can love, literature and spirituality coexist?

Monda: It is true that the Spirit blows where it will: A philologist-writer of fantasies, layman and Anglican -- even if he was very close to Catholicism -- and a German Catholic theologian, today Universal Shepherd of the Catholic Church, meet, are reunited in thought and word, united by the Spirit of Love.

What comes to mind is that English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton, read and loved by Lewis and Ratzinger, was right when he wrote that the Church is the place where all truths meet.

What a lovely essay by Father Imbelli. Thanks, Benefan! I had been waiting for a classics scholar to go into the Dante allusions that the Pope so eloquently made about his encyclical just before it came out. As I commented at the time, I found the Pope's statements on Dante mind-blowing! Others besides Fr. Monda have cited the possible links to C.S. Lewis, but as admirable as the Chronicles of Narnia writer is in his own field, Dante's vision was truly epic and could only have been divinely inspired. I almost envy the students who are taking Fr. Imbelli's literature courses!...

And once again, I am awe-struck by our Pope for thereby casting new light on Dante (who deserves to be discovered and savoured by every generation), but above all, for writing in simple, beautiful and very accessible language a distillation of the Faith that is in itself a master work of theological, philosophical, literary and social significance.

Here is a translation of a great ironic commentary written for the journal Libero by the Vaticanist Antonio Socci on 3/7/06, for a perspective on the media storm over an audience - not even private - that some European Catholic polticians will be having with the Pope at the end of March, 8-9 days before the Italian national elections. It gives us outsiders an idea of the anti-Catholic hostility in the Italian mainstream media.
---------------------------------------------------------------

POOR RATZINGER WHO THOUGHT HE WAS THE ONLY POPE!
By Antonio Socci

The great Chesterton once said: “I like liberalism but I don’t like liberals at all.” Well, let’s take the Italian liberals who pontificate in the newspaper columns and discourse on liberal demcoracy from their university chairs. Where are they? What are they saying today? Is there not one of them who will object to the muzzle that their liberal newspapers want to place on the Church and on the Pope in person?

Yes, this is what they want to do. A year ago, some self-styled “libertarians” theorized and repeatedly said that the Pope and the Church cannot speak freely (for example about life), otherwise 20 thousaind Italian parish priests could be arrested. And not one intellectual or liberal opinion-peddler spoke up – not in defense of the Church, but of the fundamentals itself of liberal democracy.

And now, it seems, Benedict XVI cannot even receive whom he wants to at the Vatican. What on earth! We cannot even take seriously the slogan “a free Church in a free state”? Well, someone should tell the Pope.

That before receiving anyone in audience, he should ask the permission of [center-left politicians] Paolo Mieli, Marco Pannella, Eugenio Scalfari, Pietro Citati, Fassino, Bertinotti, etc… and he should even ask the so-called “super-Catholic” Paola Binetti, who yesterday sais she was “very surprised” that the Pope should have filled his appointment book without asking her permission!

The Pontiff already had a warning. Last August, he had a private meeting with Oriana Fallacci, and as soon as the notice leaked, Pietro Citati in Page 1 of La Repubblica fulminated and called the Pope to order in a furious editorial. That literary worthy wrote: “The Pope is not, as we all try hard to be, a ‘respectable’ person [persona per bene]. The Catholic Church is not an association of virtuous people, nor does faith have much to do with common morals and political civility.” All that- for having spoken to Fallacci. That was a first warning.

Now, it sppears that the Holy Father, besides having to ask “their” permission for the audiences he gives, should also ask it for accepting a book given to him. A few days ago, he met with (Senate President) Marcello Pera, whom he has known for years. They exchanged books, and yesterday, Eugenio Scalfari thundered in La Repubblica , urging the Pope to return the book because the book (by Pera) dared to criticize some of his (Scalfari’s) positions. Therefore, if the Pope does not wish to be party to such a misdeed, he should not have hazarded to accept Pera’s book.

But already, at around that time, an even more furious storm was about to engulf the Pope. The triple alliance of Corriere della Sera, Repubblica, Stampa – temples of laicistic ideological hegemony and high finance of every tendency – luanched the most recent attack against the Pope.

Corriere della Sera’s headline on Page 1:
“Berlusconi meets the Pope before the vote”.
Subtitles: Ratzinger will receive the Prime Minister, Casini and Mastella at the end of March with the leadres of the PPE [Partiti Popolare Europeo]. Protest from the center-left.
Binetti: “Unprecedented”
Turco: “Religion as a tool”
Occhiello: “Even Catholics are firmly against this audience”

Obviously, the Corriere – even in this case – is not reporting news but playing politics. Openly and partisanly. It is the vanguard of a party and has been conducting a heavy-handed anti-Catholic battle (politically in favor of the cetner-left). In fact, their Page 1 yesterday [which was full of the above stories] was supplemented by a mega-interview with the ever-present Marco Pannella in a discussion over what the Holy See is free to do.

The same “operation” was carried out by Repubblica and Stampa who both interviewed Emma Bonino. [head of a feminist party called Rose in Fist, Rosa in Pugno]. Italians (who according to surveys do not wish to vote for her) certainly do not have this rose in their fist, but the high-powered newspapers do and have given her free rein. These are the newspapers of the salons and the elite. Who have all mounted a “case” [against the Pope] which is even non-existent.

These are the facts. On March 30-31, Rome will host the congress of the European People’s Parties, born from the Crhstian Democratic parties of the ‘old” Europe. At a customary audience with the Pope at that time, the 300 parliamentarians who organized that group in Strasbourg will be present. Among them – the Italians Berlusconi, Casini and Mastella. What can such a mass audience change with respect to the Italian elections on April 9? Obviously nothing!

Casini has always been a Catholic politician and heads a party that is Christian democratic in orientation. And the Prime Minister [who had a recent private audience with the Pope} announced yesterday that he will not be joining the audience at the end of March. And Mastella is, of course, a center-left politician. So where is the scandal? The Pope has every right to receive the parlimaentary group, who requested the audience, on the anniversary of the foundation of PPE.

But the anti-Catholic forces chose to raise a “scandal.” Which, mark well, does not really target Italian politics as much as it does the Pope’s freedom.

The wish to censure and gag the Pope on the part of the center-left and the radicals is not surprising, because they have Jacobin intolerance and anti-clericalism imbedded in their DNA. But the participation of the “Catholic” Binetti is (to tell the truth, she is not known by Catholics and was never distinguished as such), but since she is running with the Margherita [a leftist party], has already been infected with the furor of beating up on the Pope.

But even more strikingly paradoxical is the operation itself mounted by the triad of newspapers mentioned above. It is striking because they are generally the liberal pulpits who dispense lessons of tolerance and liberal democracy. So it is surprising that now they would presume to decide whom the Pope should or should not receive.

And suppose, as we may anticipate, the Pope on that occasion reminds these parliamentarians of the need for a rebirth of Europe, of tis moral energies and spiritual roots? The Pope should not be free to be Pope? Does he deserve to be the target of a gratuitous media bombardment?

Intolerance of Catholics is already dominant in the European Union. Indeed today, a united Europe – which was initiated by three outstanding Catholic statesmen (Adenauer et al), at the time opposed vigorously by the entire left – is wasting away miserably at the hands of a spendthrift and secular technocracy which has produced a bizarre Constitution which, in 70,000 words (10 times longer than the American Constitution), notably omitted that one word out of which Europe was born: Christianity.

The “Christophobia” of the European elite, in the words of the Jewish American itnellectual Joseph Weiler, is accompanied by a restriction of freedom. A great liberal thinker, Wilhelm Ropke, once wrote: “Liberalism is the legitimate spiritual child of Christianity.” But the illiberal Christophobia of the European elite is clearly reflected in the Italian mass media and the Italian left.

It is surreal that yesterday Romano Prodi (ex-president of the European Union and the center-left candidate to “replace’ Berlusconi) had to intervene to say that the Pope can “legitimately” receive anyone he wishes to receive. How good of him!

It is extraordinary that no one among the liberals registers any unease whatsoever and no one asks what Italy would be if the Pope, in order to speak up, had to ask Prodi’s permission! The big-name signatories of the liberal media stables have not questioned it. Neither have the Italian bishops!

Because, in the end, the Catholic world and its hierarchy must also be questioned about this whole affair. Would it not be suicide for the Church to have the center-left coalition voted into power, a coalition in which the anti-Catholic impulses are so virulent and menacing? If the Church cannot support Berlusconi (for understandable reasons), it can reinforce the other end of the center-right coalition, Casini’s demo-Christians.

Are the bishops not aware of the weight of hostility against the Church? And finally, what does it say of Italian Catholics today if it is the Pope and Cardinal Ruini who have to speak up for them on everything?

And what kind of “Catholic financing” would be represented by, for instance, Giovanni Bazoli, who is among the shareholders of the so anti-Catholic Corriere della Sera? The newspaper itself published a photograph of Bazoli with the Pope, but without the usual denunciation of Vatican “interference” in the current Italian bank wars!

Since Bazoli seems “at home” in the Vatican and has given challenging lectures on some passages of the Gospel, it would be interesting – since he is not a theologian but a “Catholic banker” – to find out what he thinks of the ideological line followed by the Corriere.

Here is a translation of an item from the Italian newspaper Il Tempo (apparently not a liberal or leftist paper) today posted by Ratzigirl:
---------------------------------------------------------------

The Pope is surprised but hardly cowed by the uproar created by center-left politicians over the audience which he will have with a delegation of the PPE at the end of the month, according to the newspaper Il Tempo, citing “authoritative sources” in the Vatican.

The Pope reportedly said with a smile that to agree to meet a Christian group of politicians was not only his right but his obligation. And to the objection about the date being close to the Italian elections on April 9, he merely replied that the whole decision was made long before a date had been set for the elections.

In past years, John Paul II also received delegations of the PPI, which celebrates its 30th anniversary during its annual congress held in Rome this year.

The article continues:

Europe is living in an age of galloping secularization, the Christian faith is finding it hard to find its space in this secularizing society, few are willing to remember that Christianity contributed to making the old Europe great and free, so why should the Pope renounce an occasion to meet 267 parliamentarians from all over Europe who define themselves as Christian-inspired? (The PPE is comprised of parties which used to be known as Christian Democrats). How can the Pope renounce speaking of his vision of Europe to like-minded politicians from the continent who are in a position to contribute to bringing back Christian values as the foundation for Europe’s development? Can anyone really ask the Pope not to carry out one of the principal tasks of his Magisterium, namely, to illuminate consciences and guide Christianity?

The PPE is an association of politicians who, perhaps more than any other, are in a position to receive the Pope’s words positively and act on questions relating to social justice, defense of life from conception to its natural end, defese of the sacrament of marriage as the founding nucleus of civil society, and the need for Europe to rediscover the values of Christian faith and therefore find its true identity again. The Pope must speak of the things that he considers priorities in Europe and it is his obligation to do so, despite the fact that in Italy, the church is accused of interfering in politics every time it gives voice to concepts that could be listened to and accepted by the public.

Meanwhile, both Prime Minister Berlusconi and the demo-Christian leader Casini have announced they will not join the PPE delegation at the audience with the Pope. But to show that the Pope’s schedule proceeds independently of Italian events, he will be “meeting” the Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, a party leader himself, at the Marian vigil on March 11. Both Fini and the Mayor of Rome, Waltr Veltroni, will take part in the Marian vigil.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/03/2006 2.48]

Pope targets relativism


By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Montreal

Vatican correspondent and author John Allen jokes that many North Americans expected a "great flushing sound of dissidents" being washed out of the Catholic Church when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became pope.

Instead, the new pope's first year has been full of surprises.

Author of The Rise of Benedict XVI: the Inside Story of How the Pope Was Elected and Where He Will Take the Catholic Church, Allen told a seminar at McGill University's Newman Centre March 2 the pope has no specific reflections on the Canadian Church, but lumps it in with the West and the developed world.

The agenda
"For the developed world, the pope does have an agenda," he said, one he described as an "attempt to reverse the dominant views that shaped the last five centuries."

First on his agenda is to "challenge the dictatorship of relativism" and bring people back to an appreciation of objective truth. Allen said the pope recognizes people have a great fear of those who proclaim absolute truth. The Nazis claimed to have it, and brought about the Second World War and the Holocaust. The Soviet Union proclaimed it, and millions died as a consequence.

"Now young Muslim men will strap dynamite on and blow up supermarkets in the name of absolute truth," he said.

This enshrining of diversity, however, has led to the abandonment of the idea of objective truth and the inviolability of human dignity, he said, placing the most vulnerable in society at risk.

Second on his agenda will be to challenge the libertarian idea of freedom, which the pope sees as a "tremendously impoverished view."

Allen says in Benedict's view, true freedom comes in finding one's "whole human potential" and becoming "who God wants you to be."

The pope's view is not about limiting behaviour, "it's about opening a door to walk through to open up full human potential."

Benedict's first encyclical Deus Caritas Est - God is Love - is meant to combat the notion that the Church is "about control, about a power-hungry Church afraid of the modern world." Instead, the encyclical is about a "love affair with Christ.

"At least he seems to have people's attention," Allen said. "Church insiders have been absolutely dazzled by what they've seen from this pope."

"He is simply the most intellectually profound global leader on the stage today."

"Whether he is able to change hearts and minds, at least he has engaged the conversation."

Allen said Benedict recognizes the adult generation in today's Church is "stuck in the ideological battles of Vatican II" in categories of left vs. right, traditional vs. avant-garde.

The pope is "going to appeal over our heads to the next generation" that is "not socialized into the same wasteland," who do not see the Church as a "terrain where ideological battles are fought."

While he will not have the same "razzle dazzle" as Pope John Paul II, he will continue to be preoccupied with youth, he said.

Allen said the growing evangelical movements in the United States and Latin America pose different sets of advantages and problems for the Church.

Benedict welcomes the fact that there is a public religiosity in the U.S. that does not exist in Europe, he said.

In America, however, there has been an alignment of conservative and liberal believers that transcends denominations, he said. A liberal Catholic and a liberal Protestant now seem to have more in common than they do with conservatives of their respective denominations, and vice versa.

Yeah/nay with Bush
The pope would probably say he doesn't know much about Canada, Allen said, but he has an "odd symbiosis" with the political leadership in Washington.

On one hand, the pope appreciates the leadership of the Bush government on cultural matters, such as stem cell research or euthanasia, but remains critical of its approach to foreign affairs, especially the war in Iraq.

The Church will continue to actively oppose euthanasia, protect human life from conception to natural death, and oppose genetic screening of embryos and finds the Bush administrations opposition "a great source of consolation."

The pope, he said, is a realist, who recognizes the Church is not likely to represent the majority in the West, but instead will become an "influential minority."

Allen said the developed world's priest shortage is also on the pope's radar screen, but countries like Canada should not expect to be able to poach priests from Third World countries. While seminaries are attracting new priests there, the growth of the Church is exponential and they need the priests far more than the developed world does.

Predictions are Benedict will take a hawkish approach to Islam

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Montreal

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to take a "more hawkish" approach to Islam than his predecessor, says Vatican analyst John Allen.

Speaking at a March 2 seminar at McGill University's Newman Centre, the correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter said the pope is more likely to demand reciprocity on religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities within Muslim countries.

Allen explained, however, there have been two schools in the Vatican on how to deal with Islam.

One approach has been dovish, and featured attempts to reach out to Muslims and address the social justice issues at the root of any grievances, he said. That view believes the Muslim world "needed patience."

Pope John Paul II's reaching out to both Jews and Muslims revolutionized the Church's relationships with these faiths, but Allen pointed out the "go easy, be patient" approach has always been the subject of "dissent and resentment."

The big issue is that of reciprocity on religious freedom. Allen said that Saudi Arabia financed the building of the largest mosque in Europe in the shadow of the Vatican, yet Saudi Arabia allows no churches at all. It doesn't even allow Bibles.

The one million Catholics on the Arabian Peninsula risk arrest by the religious police if they worship even privately off the foreigner compounds, he said.

One major signal of Benedict's shift in approach came during a meeting with Muslim leaders in Cologne during World Youth Day in August, Allen said.

In remarks described as "blunt" by Associate Press, the pope denounced violence and urged Muslims to join Christians in halting the spread of "cruel fanaticism."

"The defence of religious freedom . . . is a permanent imperative and respect for minorities is a clear sign of true civilization," the pope said.

Allen said in effect, the pope told the Muslim leaders in Cologne "Any culture not protecting religious minorities is not worthy of being called civilized."

Another signal of the pope's shift is his recent removal in mid-February of the Vatican's chief expert on Islam. Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, chief architect of the dovish approach, has been sent to Cairo as the papal nuncio.

Allen said the last 26 years under John Paul II established a dialogue and built a relationship with Muslims, but Benedict XVI's attitude is now we know each other well enough to "tell the truth to each other.

That means a more aggressive, outspoken approach, Allen said.

One major concern for Rome is the "very real danger Arab Christianity will disappear," he said. There are now more Palestinian Christians in Australia than in Palestine. Christians have been leaving in droves because of economic stagnation, persecution and terrorism.

Not only is the symbolism of seeing the land of Christ emptied of Christians troublesome to the Vatican, Arab Christianity represents one of the best possible bridges to communication with the Muslim world in the Middle East, he said.

Thanks to Ratzi-Lella in the main forum for sharing with us the unusual reflections of the Archbishop Emeritus of Florence, Cardinal Silvano Piovanelli, on the Pope's encyclical Deus caritas est.The cardinal looks at the encyclical from the perspective of what Joseph Ratzinger and Benedict XVI have said about love and the true mission of the Church in this respect.
Herewith, a translation -
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When the barefoot Carmelites of the Monastery of St. Teresa in Florence learned the title and the subject of Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, they exclaimed almost in chorus, “It’s him!”

Yes, it is him! Pope Benedict loves to capture the essential in all clarity. And capture it not in an academic, authoritative manner and with difficult language, but with profundity and simplicity at the same time, in order to be understood by all.

Even the way he announced the publication of his encyclical was unusual. He spoke about it extemporaneously to some 10,000 in his general audience on a Wednesday, making it clear that the preparation of the text, its elaboration and the translations had required more time than expected, saying “Finally, my first encyclical will be published on January 25!”. He also pointed out that the delay was providential because the publication would coincide with the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul and the end of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

It is him! In a lecture at the “Meeting for friendship among peoples” in 1999, he courageously said:

“Today the idea is widespread, even in high ecclesiastical circles, that a person is more Christian the more he is involved in church activities. Persons are urged into a sort of therapy by ecclesiastical activity, giving them something to do, trying to assign everyone to a committee, or at least, to some assignment within the Church. Somehow, goes the thinking, there should always be come church activity, one should speak about the church, one should always be doing something for the church or in the church.

"But a mirror which only reflects itself is no longer a mirror. A window which acts as a screen between the oberver and the world, instead of allowing an open view towards the distant horizon, has lost its meaning.

"It may be that someone may uninterruptedly exercise organization work in the Church but not be Christian in the true sense. It may be that someone else lives simply, by the Word and the Sacraments, practices love which is born out of faith, without ever having been part of a church committee, without ever being involved in church politics, without taking part in a synod nor having voted in one, but still be a true Christian.

"It is not a more human church that we need, but rather, a more divine one, because only then can it truly be human… The more apparatus we build, even the most modern ones, the less space there is for the Spirit, the less space for the Lord, the less liberty there is. I think that, from this point of view, we should all start, at all levels of the Church, an examination of conscience without reservations.”

So, the most important thing for the Church is not do but to be; to choose, like Mary of Bethany, the better part, which is to sit at the foot of the beloved and drink his words with joy. Certainly not to live in solitary intimacy, folded up within oneself, but to give strong witness of that love which through us wants to reach everyone.

It is him! Him who recognizes his teacher in St. Augustine, who, commenting on the letter of the apostle John, wrote: “’God is love’ – a short sentence, just one clause, but howwww much significance it carries!” (In Ep In, 1). “What more can I say, brothers? Even if there were nothing more in all this Epistle and in all the pages of Scripture, no other praise of charity outside of this short sentence that we have heard from the mouth of the Spirit, namely, that God is love, we should not ask for more.” (In Ep Io 7, 4).

“Look for how man can love God: you will absolutely not find it if not in the fact that God loved us first. He gave us himself as an object of love, he gave us the means to love him. What he gave us so that we may love him, we can listen to in a more explicit way from the apostle Paul who says: 'The love of God is diffused in our hearts.” But how? By our own effort? No. Then how? “Through the action of the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” (Sermo 34.2). “If everyone makes the sign of the Cross, if all say Amen and sing Alleluia, if all receive baptism and enter the church, if they have basilicas constructed, the fact remains that only charity distinguishes the son of God from the son of the devil. Those who have charity are born of God, those who don’t are not. This is the great criterion. If you have everythign but lack this, whatever you have counts for nothing; if you don’t have anything else but this, you have fulfilled the law. (In Ep Io, 5.7).

In a most beautiful passage, Augustine makes clear how charity does not consist principally and simply in “doing” , which could also be an expression of a proud and egoistic love, one that desires to be praised by men: “Look at the great works that pride accomplishes; pay careful attention to how these could be very similar and almost like true works of charity. Charity offers food to the hungry, but pride also does that – charity does it so that the Lord may be praised; pride does it to earn praise for itself. Charity clothes a naked being and so does pride; chairty fasts, but so does pride; charity buries the dead, and so does pride… Divine Scripture invites us to turn from this ostentation into ourselves, to our intimate self, from this superficiality which shows itself off in front of others. Return to the intimacy of your conscience, examine it. Do not look at that which flowers outside, but into the roots that are hidden in the earth….God does not prohibit you from loving his creatures, but he prohibits you from loving them in order to earn happiness by doing that.” (In Ep. Io, 2,11)

It is him! How many times has the word love or something corresponding to it passed his lips! In the homily at the mass which began his Petrine ministry, he exclaimed: “To pasture means to love, and to love also means being ready to suffer. To love means to give to the sheep what is truly good… Pray for me that I may not flee out of fear of the wolves….Each of us is wamted, each of us is loved, each one is needed... Nothing is more beautiful than being surprised by the Gospel of Christ. Nothing is more beautiful than to know him and to communicate to others this friendship with him.”

To the children of the First Communion, whom he received in St. Peter’s Square on October 15, he explained: “To adore is to say, ‘Jesus, I am yours and I will follow you in life, I never want to lose this friendship, this communion with you. It can be said that adoration, in its essence, is an embrace of Christ, in which I tell him, ‘I am yours and I pray that you may always be with me.’”

At the opening of the conference of the Diocese of Rome on the family, he underscored: “The vocation to love is what makes man the authentic image of God; he becomes similar to God in the measure in which he becomes someone who loves.”

In Bari, to conclude the national Eucharistic Congress, the Pope recalled that Augustine initially had difficulty accepting the “eucharistic meal”, which seemed to him unworthy of God: in fact, in common meals, man becomes stronger insofar as he assimilates the food, making it an element of his own corporal reality. But later Augustine understood that in the Eucharist, the opposite happens: it is centered in Christ who attracts us to him, makes us one with him, and in this manner brings us within the community of brothers… We cannot communicate with the Lord unless we communicate among ourselves.”

To the young pilgrims in Cologne, he said forcefully: “It is not the ideologies which will save the world, but only turning to the living God, who is our Creator, the guarantor of our freedom, the guarantee of all that is really good and true. The true revolution consists only in turning ourselves without reservation towards God who is the measure of all that is right and is at the same time eternal love. And what else could save us but love?”

Evil and suffering, above all the suffering of the innocent, but also the hatred and gratuitous cruelty of so many persons, continue to be a scandal that makes hope difficult. Today life makes no sense for many people. To know that God loves us without limits – all of us, men and women, all creation – and that he sent us his only Son to save the world, gives meaning to life.

It is him! I have the encyclical in my hands, but I have not yet cut the pages. What I have said so far was suggested to me by the right-on reaction of a community of barefoot Carmelites. I will carefully rad this first encyclical of Benedict XVI, not forgetting, as the wolf told the Little Prince in St. Exupery’s tale, “One does not see well except with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes. Men have forgotten this truth. You should not forget it.”

I have confidence that all the persons to whom this letter is addressed – bishops, priests, deacons, consectrated persons and all the lay faithful – reading the words of Pope Benedict with the heart, may make the program for their lives what the new Pope solemnly declared at the start of his Petrine servce: “My true program of governing is not to do my own will, not to follow my ideas, but to listen to the words and the will of the Lord and let me be guided by him, so that he himself will guide the Church at this hour of its history.”

Navigating difficult waters: Vatican and Islam

Pope Benedict tasked with promoting Christianity and religious tolerance

Stephen Weeke
Rome bureau chief
Newsweek

ROME — The long reign of Pope John Paul II was marked by the dominant conflict of the age, the “Cold War,” a 40-year nuclear standoff between the West and the Soviet Bloc.

But that conflict ended in John Paul’s own lifetime, and the world that Pope Benedict XVI inherited is engulfed in a different, and in some ways more frightening, vortex of unpredictable violence, one that is sometimes characterized as showdown between Christianity and Islam.

Benedict, the former hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger, now has the formidable task of promoting religious tolerance in an volatile time of violence fueled by Islamic extremism.

Path set by John Paul
Pope John Paul was well aware of the increasing extremism in Islamic fundamentalism, and despite his well-publicized efforts to improve ties with the Jewish people by seeking forgiveness for their historical mistreatment at Christian hands, he also put a lot of effort and emphasis on the importance of Islamic relations.

During his year 2000 “Holy Year” pilgrimages to biblical places, John Paul was the first pope to ever enter a mosque, in Damascus, Syria.

John Paul reached out several times to religious and political leaders in the Arab and Muslim world to open and maintain dialogue, especially in places where Christian minorities were being discriminated or persecuted.

Because of these efforts he wasn’t caught flat-footed by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. He was shocked to be sure, like everyone else was, but he knew the dangerous playing field that spawned that aberration.

Pope Benedict coming from a different place
Benedict comes to this confrontation from a much different place.

Just like Karol Wojtyla’s views were colored by his Polish nationalism, so are Joseph Ratzinger’s. As an elderly German, he has lived long enough to have experienced a lot of European history first hand.

Benedict is renowned for his intelligence, and he presents his ideas in such clear and logical steps that his brilliance becomes obvious to anyone paying attention to his speeches. But his greatest strength is also a weakness because it colors his physical presence and demeanor as well.

He comes across as a man whose every gesture and mannerism is carefully thought out ahead of time, and strictly controlled.

In the cultural stereotyping that is part of life in modern Europe, he’s viewed by other nationalities as being “very Germanic,” with the expected traits of being highly ordered, disciplined, rigid and authoritative.

In his former role as Cardinal Ratzinger, he made a statement about Turkey that still haunts him now that he has taken over his new role as pope.

When asked about Turkey's effort to join the European Union by the French newspaper Le Figaro, he answered, "Turkey always represented another continent during history, always in contrast with Europe." In the widely reported interview, he went on to say that he was opposed to Turkey entering the EU “on the grounds that it is a Muslim nation.”

The former Cardinal Ratzinger seemed to see the entry of Turkey into the EU as a threat to the Christian tradition inherent in Western Europe.

The Turks were very angered by the comments and carried that resentment over with an initial objection to a papal visit to the country last fall. Private talks have smoothed things over and now the trip is back on again.

Different structure
But Muslim activists have taken advantage of his Turkish misstep to claim anti-Islamic feelings at the Vatican. And though that’s hardly the case here, it shows how hard it is to prove the absence of something, and the difficulties in dealing with a religion that lacks a hierarchical organization.

Islam is not a worldwide organization like the Roman Catholic Church, with a clearly defined local, regional, national and global chain of command topped by a general headquarters like the Vatican, whose top man is the pope.

Islam’s Mecca is a focal point for the prayers of millions of believers throughout the world who are themselves divided along various branches of interpretation and social custom. Though imams may be similar to priests or bishops, there is no “pope,” no elected “grand imam,” to whom they all report.

The very horizontal nature of organized Islam makes it hard for the pope and his deputies to know who and how to talk to them. Private communications and relationships have circumscribed value.

A positive negotiation on issues with the Muslim leadership in Cairo for example, won’t carry over to Iran or Saudi Arabia in any way, so the Vatican has to rely on its system of embassies and diplomatic channels, rather than a panel of Catholic experts on Islam sitting face to face with their counterparts.

Cartoon controversy
Public statements on the other hand, from the pulpit or the papal apartment window, risk coming across as incitements of the faithful. But, Pope Benedict chose a clever way to weigh in on the escalating violence over the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed that angered so many Muslims across the world.

Dozens of times a year new ambassadors to the Vatican begin their terms by the official “presentation of credentials” to the pope. Normally a brief 20-minute ceremony that garners little media interest, it is a still a part of the official public record of the pope’s statements and activities.

So without prior fanfare, on a Monday morning in February, the new ambassador of Morocco to the Holy See presented his credentials and got quite an earful in return.

His country hadn’t even had any violent demonstrations regarding the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, but his visit merely provided a pretext and venue for Benedict's first public remarks on the cartoon controversy.

Speaking in French he conceded that the cartoons were offensive and provocative.

"In the current international context, the Catholic Church remains convinced that to encourage peace and understanding between peoples and individuals it is necessary and urgent that religions and their symbols be respected, and that the faithful not be subjected to provocations injuring their outlook and religious feelings."

But he also made it clear that the violent reaction was not just wrong, but actually “unreligious.”

Benedict added that, "intolerance and violence are never justifiable responses to the offense (to religion), since they are not compatible with the sacred principles of religion."

Strong words for a pope, yet hardly strong enough to capture the attention of a jaded West, or soothe the burning emotions of a troubled Muslim world.

Moderates may be the answer
What may be a reflection of Ratzinger’s concern about the gravity of the situation is his very recent appointment of a new Vatican envoy to Egypt, and to the most comprehensive organization of Islamic countries, the 22-nation Arab League, based in Cairo.

The man is Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, an Englishman who served for many years as Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze’s deputy at the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue.

He’s one of the top Islamist experts in the Catholic Church and made an interesting observation during a recent Reuters interview. "We have to persuade moderate Muslims to speak with those with more extremist views,” said Fitzgerald, adding “and similarly on the other side, people with more moderate views in the Western world have to speak with those who are more radically inclined, let's say, to (defend) the freedom of expression at all costs.”

That the moderates in each society should each take responsibility for trying to calm down their “own extremists” could actually be life-saving advice.

But it will always be a challenge in a media age where violence can be televised while it’s still happening, and anyone with a computer and a modem can insult millions with a keystroke.

[Modificato da benefan 09/03/2006 23.35]

Pope Benedict right man at right time, cardinal, Vatican watcher say

By Deacon Bill Kokesch
3/9/2006
The Catholic Register

MONTREAL, Canada (The Catholic Register) – Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec City, P.Q., recalls standing near Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Square at the time of the Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist last October along with 100,000 young Italian children who had recently celebrated their First Communion.

Pope Benedict XVI was taking questions from the enthusiastic children and answering them in a plain, simple and down-to-earth fashion. Standing next to Cardinal Ouellet was another cardinal who hadn't voted for Benedict in the conclave last April. This cardinal was so moved by Benedict's many answers to the children that he confided in Ouellet: “This is the right man in the right place at this time in the life of the church.”

Cardinal Ouellet, the archbishop of Quebec City and primate of the Catholic Church in Canada, made the remarks at a joint lecture on Benedict XVI at Montreal's McGill University on March 2, along with Vatican columnist John Allen Jr. of the U.S.-based weekly newspaper, National Catholic Reporter.

”And he truly is the right man in the right place,” said Cardinal Ouellet. “What really impresses me about Joseph Ratzinger's long journey to become pope is not his impressive theological achievements but his faith, his intelligence and his courage to be a witness to the truth.”

The cardinal said that contrary to the speculation in the media at the time of the pope's election, Benedict XVI is showing himself to be someone who listens and someone who is willing to dialogue no matter what the issue.

”One only has to remember his meeting with controversial theologian Hans Kung at Castel Gandolfo, early in his papacy,” he said. “Benedict showed that he was open to serious reconciliation and it was a sign of the man as a listener who can sit with opponents.”

Cardinal Ouellet, who has known the pope for more than 20 years, said that throughout then-Cardinal Ratzinger's tenure as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, he never rushed to decision, always took his time exploring all aspects of a question, discussing the facts with colleagues and experts from other curia offices.

”He was the one who would listen to what you had to say, summarize it to ensure he got it right, and usually in better words than it was said to him, and then suggest steps to take,” he said.

Allen said, despite the public perception of Ratzinger as a hard-nosed disciplinarian and watchdog in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had earned a reputation among visiting bishops in Rome as a very warm, sincere and authentic man.

”When bishops would come to Rome on their five-year ad limina visits and they would be making the rounds of the dicasteries (curial offices),” said Allen, “as reporters, we would ask them which was the best meeting they had?”

”They would always answer: Ratzinger, whether their meetings lasted 10 minutes or an hour. They were always impressed by his authentic ability to listen to what they were saying,” he said.

Allen said Pope Benedict comes across as someone who is truly happy with his life. “But he is also a realist who differs from John Paul II in his approach.”

“John Paul had the audacious capacity to dream,” the correspondent said, “while Benedict grasps and acknowledges things the way they are. His fight is against the dictatorship of relativism and he refuses to be judged successful by secular terms.”

However, Benedict understands modernity, Allen added.

”He is a thoroughly modern pope with a deep understanding of where modernity came from. For him the modern world and the church are at a crossroads and he is there ready to listen and to dialogue as part of a deep intellectual and spiritual adventure.

”Those who thought this pope would bring in radical change are bound to be disappointed,” he said. “The changes will be less sweeping than some might have desired. When he intervenes in a matter, it will not be by the force of his authority, but by reasoned intervention. He still believes that people can be persuaded by argument and logic.

Allen said Benedict is not a pope who wants to be in the limelight but instead “he wants to be seen as a member of a working community and not as a lone hero.”

The cardinal summed up his appreciation of Pope Benedict at the end of the lecture with these words: “He is not just a cold intellectual, and never was such a person. He is a humble man of the church, now clearly exposed to the people. I thank God every day for the gift of Pope Benedict XVI.”

- - -

Deacon Bill Kokesch, a freelance writer in Montreal, wrote this report for The Catholic Register in Toronto, Canada.

[G][/G] thanks the Lord every day for the gift of this Pope. And so do we.

Thanks to Ratzi.lella in the main forum for this item from the Italian press today commenting on the Vatican Press Office's March 11 bulletin on "Resignations and Nominations". Here is a translation -
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Benedict XVI has decided to unite “for the moment” the presidency of the Pontifical Council for Migrants with that of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and the presidency of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Unity with that of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

This appears to be a prelude to an incorporation of the minor councils into the larger umbrella council under which they logically belong, and thus, a prelude to Benedict XVI’s anticipated reform of the Roman Curia.

Cardinal Raffaele Martino now presides over both the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and the Pontifical Council for Migrants, while Cardinal Paul Poupard now heads both the Pontifical Council on Culture and the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog.

At the same time, the Pope finally accepted the resignation, for reasons of age, of Japanese Cardinal Stephen Hamao,76, who had been head of the council for migrants.

Last month, the Pope reassigned the last president of the council for inter-religious dialogue, Mons. Michael Fitzgerald, to become Apostolic Nuncio to Egypt and the Holy See’s permanent delegate to the Arab league. This demotion of a dicastery head was unprecedented.

The Vatican’s press bulletin today said the Pope was naming Cardinal Poupard to head the council for inter-religious dialog as well, “in order to favor a more intense dialog between men of culture and the exponents of other religions.”

The Pope is expected to discuss his proposed Curial reforms overall with the College of Cardinals whom he has convoked to a meeting on March 23 at the Vatican, preceding the consistory on Marh 24-25.

Vatican experts noted that the phrase “for the moment” in the announcement from the Vatican Press office was unprecedented. The announcement itself was unexpected. It was thought that any announcements on Curial changes would come after the Pope meets with the College of Cardinals.

The reforms would streamline and simplify a structure designed by Pope Paul VI after the Second Vatican Council, in the specific cases mentioned above. Paul VI also instituted the pontifical councils for dialog with other Christian churches, with non-Christians and with non-believers (to whom the council for inter-religious dialog is addressed). John Paul II confirmed these in his “Pastor Bonus” decree of 1986.

In his address today to the participants of a conference on 40 years of the conciliar document "Ad Gentes”, Pope Benedict appeared to allude to his latest Curial nominations.

"The Church today,” he told them, "is called on to confront new challenges and is ready to dialog with diverse cultures and religions, in seeking to construct together with every man of good will the peaceful coexistence of peoples.”

”It is the Church’s task,” he added, “to communicate God’s love incessantly” and to address “not only non-Christians and peoole who live in remote places,” but rather “the socio-cultural environment and above all, the hearts (of men)” who are the “true objects of (the Church’s) missionary activity.”

He said that Vatican-II “has given renewed impetus to the mission of the Church … (by )encapsulating the theological foundations of missionary commitment, its value and its relevance in the face of world transformations and the challenges imposed by modernity on the preaching of the Gospel.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/03/2006 19.22]

The Captains-Regent of San Marino, Claudio Muccioli and Antonello Caciocchi,
have invited the Pope to visit the tiny Republic of San Marino in 2007, to mark the
25th anniversry of Pope John Paul II’s visit there.


Our first photo of the Pope after the Lenten retreat,from mexicosiemprefiel.com.

The Captains-Regent were received by the Pope in private audience today and
presented him with a silver chest stamped with the coat of arms of San Marino and
a prayer from 1628 offered in the Basilica of San Marino on the themes of civil,
social and religious liberty.

[San Marino calls itself “the oldest republic in the world,” having been founded
in 301 A.D. It is the third smallest state in the world after the Vatican and Monaco,
comprised of an enclave one-third the size of Washington, D.C. in the Appenine foothills
between the Emilia-Romagna and Marche regions of Italy. It can be reached easily from
Rimini, the Italian resort town on the Adriatic coast, due east of Florence.]

This item actually came out March 9, from API, the Italian news agency, but I missed posting it. Here is a translation-
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Pope Benedict XVI will receive Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in private audience on Monday, March 13.

Mubarak arrived in Rome Thursday, where he met with Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. His audience with the Pope had to be scheduled for Monday because the Pope was in retreat earlier this week.

Mubarak has proceeded to Berlin and will be in Vienna Sunday. He will be back in Rome Monday for the audience with the Pope, enroute back to Cairo.

He is the second head of a Muslim Arab state to meet with Pope Benedict, after King Abdullah of Jordan who was received by the Pope last September in Castel Gandolfo.