John Allen's after-thoughts on what the Pope showed the world during the Polish visit are on his Word from Rome for 6/2/06
www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/word/
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One thing about Benedict XVI which, by now, ought to be abundantly clear is that he is very much his own man. As I have written before, this is not a "PC" pope. He does not feel constrained by other people's expectations.

It's not that Benedict is an innovator. In fact, his exercise of the papal office is in many ways far more traditional than that of his predecessor, John Paul II, who made a career out of shattering antique norms. (Being pope, for example, used to mean never having to say you're sorry, while John Paul apologized repeatedly for all manner of past failings of the church).

Yet at 79, with nothing left to prove, never facing reelection, and carrying an enormous burden he never sought, Benedict exhibits a remarkable interior freedom by the standards of major world leaders.

Cultural norms of the Vatican, for example, dictated that an American could not become prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, yet Cardinal William Levada is there anyway.

Vatican diplomatic logic held that Joseph Zen of Hong Kong should not be made a cardinal in order to avoid irritating the Chinese, since Zen is the biggest thorn in their side on the religious freedom issue, yet Zen is now wearing the scarlet.

Powerful political pressures suggested delay or inaction on the case of Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, yet Benedict nevertheless imposed sanctions.

As if it were needed, further proof of the point came during Benedict's Sunday visit to Auschwitz.

When a prominent German Catholic visits Auschwitz, there's a certain script that person is expected to follow. One should acknowledge German complicity in the Holocaust, and in some sense ask forgiveness; pledge to fight modern anti-Semitism; and avoid opening old wounds, such as controversies over Edith Stein or the presence of a Carmelite convent near Auschwitz.

On Sunday, Benedict utterly disregarded the script -- he defended virtuous Germans who resisted the Nazis, ignored the issue of anti-Semitism, and praised both Stein and the Carmelites.

Benedict did so, at least in his own mind, because he had a deeper point to make. He came to say that Auschwitz represents the most terrifying example of a more general tendency in human psychology, which is the desire to slay God as the final limit on human power.

Either we see the world as a gift from God, Benedict suggested, with a moral law that regulates what we can do to one another, or the only reality is human power. If that's the world, Benedict argued, sooner or later it ends in Auschwitz -- as well as Rwanda, Bosnia, and all the other monuments to arrogance and hatred that mar human history.

That's the message Benedict wanted to deliver, and both his greatest strength and his Achille's heel are that nothing on earth was going to stop him from doing so.

From a communications point of view, the pope's Achille's heel is that by refusing to satisfy prevailing expectations, Benedict can sometimes send the wrong signal to people who, quite naturally, interpret his words and deeds through the prism of those expectations.

Thus by neglecting to say anything about anti-Semitism, and by avoiding the complicity of ordinary Germans, Benedict seemed to some observers to be "rolling back" post-Second Vatican Council gains in the Catholic church on relations with Judaism and the church's capacity for self-criticism.

"It's symbolically important that Pope Benedict went to Auschwitz, but I was expecting a different speech," said Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, noting that the pope did not expressly condemn anti-Semitism.

"At Auschwitz, of all places, Benedict might have referred to the biblical and Catholic roots of European anti-Semitism," Oliver Kamm wrote in The Times of London. "He preferred to concentrate on the heroism of Catholic witnesses against Nazism. The picture he gave was thereby highly misleading."

Perhaps the most intemperate comment came from Sever Plocker in Ynetnews.

"Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Auschwitz was a historical, human and moral failure," Plocker wrote afterwards. "He arrived in a black, armored, German car, gave an objectionable speech filled with smooth words like 'reconciliation' and 'understanding,' prayed to Jesus, failed to ask forgiveness for the crimes committed by his people, and got back in his black, armored, German car and drove back to Rome."

"The visit was extraneous, annoying and infuriating. The German pope failed to do the most basic thing he should have done at Auschwitz: He failed to kneel next to the ovens, look to the blue skies of the Auschwitz afternoon and ask forgiveness for the murder of six million Jews, in the name of German or the German Catholic church."

Privately, Israeli sources made it clear on Monday that they were disappointed in several aspects of Benedict's Auschwitz visit.

Vatican sources strenuously rejected suggestions that Benedict's "silence" on anti-Semitism should be read as a step backwards in papal leadership on the issue.

In his Wednesday General Audience, Benedict spelled out what he left unsaid on Sunday:

"Auschwitz must not be forgotten, and the other 'factories of death' in which the Nazi regime tried to eliminate God in order to take his place!" the pope said. "We must not cede to the temptation of racial hatred, which is at the origins of the worst forms of anti-Semitism!"

With respect to Plocker's comments, it's true that a black car dropped the pope off outside the famous Arbeit Macht Frei, but he walked on foot through the gate and down the main lane of the camp in order to arrive at the Wall of Death, keeping his entourage at a healthy distance behind. After praying before the wall, he moved slowly down a line of survivors, hearing their stories and, in the case of one Jewish survivor, exchanging kisses on the cheek.

Perhaps a bit like Kennedy's famous debate with Nixon, people who saw Benedict's visit on television probably had a more positive impression that those who simply read the text -- because in the context of his body language, facial gestures, and the time he took with each person he met, it seemed clear Benedict was moved by the experience.

* * *

I had the honor on Wednesday of having lunch with Jerzy and Irene Kluger. I met Jerzy Kluger at Auschwitz on Sunday during the visit of Benedict XVI. Now 84, Kluger is famous as the Jewish boyhood friend of Karol Wojtyla in Wadowice, Poland, and the two renewed their friendship when "Lolek," as friends called Wojtyla, became archbishop of Krakow and later Pope John Paul II.

On the subject of Benedict XVI's speech at Auschwitz, Kluger expressed the view that the pope had said virtually everything he could, and that it's important to understand the Polish context of the visit. Poles, he said, are sensitive that the undeniable decimation of Jews under the Nazis not obscure their own suffering. At Auschwitz, for example, 150,000 Poles perished along with one million Jews.

In that setting, he said, it would be difficult for the pope to discuss anti-Semitism without also commemorating Polish losses, and this perhaps would have distracted from the focus of his speech. Moreover, Kluger said, the mere fact of Benedict's presence in Auschwitz spoke volumes.

At the same time, Kluger, who lost his mother and sister in Auschwitz, said it would have been better had Benedict's reference to anti-Semitism during the Wednesday General Audience been included in the Sunday text.

Most of our lunch, however, had little to do with contemporary papal politics. Instead, the Klugers regaled me with anecdotes involving their good friend Karol Wojtyla....

The rest of this item on Kluger I will post in the John Paul section. Allen then goes on to discuss the 'success'' of the Polish trip and the Pope's next big event- his Pentecost encounter with church movements on June 3.
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THE POLISH TRIP

Pressed for immediate assessments, many observers initially judge the success or failure of papal trips by crowd size. Applying that standard, one would have to say Benedict did well in Poland. He drew 300,000 on a cold and rainy day in Warsaw, a half-million at Czestochowa, and more than a million for his final Mass at Blonia Park in Krakow.

While these were not quite the throngs that flocked to John Paul II, the crowds were nevertheless large and enthusiastic, and seemed to genuinely like the new pope.

Yet from a certain point of view, a pope drawing a big crowd in Poland is a bit like "dog bites man" … it would only be news if the opposite were the case.

Benedict's aim wasn't to demonstrate through crowd size that Catholicism is still alive in Poland, something that even five minutes in the country is enough to make clear. His deeper aspiration was to convince Poles to carry their Catholic heritage into the construction of the new Europe, to assume a leadership role in forging a Europe respectful of its Christian roots.

Whether the trip succeeded on that level cannot be assessed in any immediate fashion, and if the record of similar appeals from John Paul is any indication, the jury may be out for quite some time.


THE PENTECOST ENCOUNTER

Tomorrow, the first massive gathering in St. Peter's Square since Benedict XVI's inaugural Mass one year ago will bring together an estimated 300,000 members of the "new movements," groups of Catholic laity such as the Focolare, the Neocatechumenate, L'Arche, Sant'Egidio, Communion and Liberation, Schönstatt, the Charismatic Renewal and Regnum Christi, which have largely developed in the 20th century.

Some 300 representatives of more than 100 movements and new communities are taking part in a congress outside Rome May 31-June 2, leading to the June 3 encounter in the square with the pope.

The event is an echo of the gathering of the new movements with John Paul II in 1998, also held on the Feast of Pentecost.

At a Vatican press conference on Tuesday, Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, suggested that the movements are a perfect illustration of Benedict's suggestion, borrowed from the historian Arnold Toynbee, that in a relativistic world convinced Christians represent a "creative minority."

Bishop Josef Clemens, secretary of the Council for the Laity and erstwhile private secretary of Benedict XVI, said that roughly 1,400 of the expected crowd of 300,000 would be from North America, principally the United States. Guzmán Carriquiry, under-secretary of the council, said that most of those 1,400 Americans will be drawn from the world of the Charismatic Renewal and Cursillo, with small pockets from other movements.

Over the years, some bishops and diocesan personnel have complained that the movements tend to pursue their own agendas rather than the common good of the church.

Benedict XVI's general support does not mean he is indifferent to such concerns. In his message to the congress, which was released June 1, Benedict said, "The church thanks you for the openness you demonstrate in welcoming the operative indications not only of the Successor of Peter, but also of the bishops in the different local churches, who, together with the pope, are the custodians of the truth and of charity in unity."

"Every problem has to be confronted by the movements with sentiments of profound communion, in a spirit of adhesion to the legitimate pastors," he said.

Asked at the press conference about these tensions, Rylko said that he "wouldn't be pessimistic."

"We see a notable increase in the number of bishops who come to us during their ad limina visits, from all continents, convinced that the new movements are a gift to be received with gratitude and responsibility," he said.

"Both pastors and the movements must allow themselves to be purified and educated by the Holy Spirit," Rylko said.

One footnote to Rylko's reference to the movements as an example of what Benedict XVI means by a "creative minority": While Rylko's point is valid, there's a risk in circumscribing Benedict's now-famous invocation of Toynbee a bit too narrowly.

In making this reference, the pope had in mind not so much specific groups such as Communion and Liberation or the Focolare, which meet the classic sociological profile of a minority. He really meant a certain kind of Christian psychology, which doesn't rely on the broader culture or on any of the normal social subgroups (family, school, neighborhood) to foster Christian living.

Instead, a "creative minority" Christian sees the faith as an intentional, deeply personal choice that has to be preserved and deepened every day in the midst of a culture either indifferent or hostile to religious belief. Christianity has to be chosen and has to be confirmed every day, on purpose, and support systems (what Benedict calls "islands of spiritual composure") likewise have to be intentionally chosen and constructed.

It is precisely from the passion that such a deeply personal commitment requires, Benedict believes, that this "minority" becomes "creative." Despite the small numbers willing to make such a choice, the pope believes, they will have a disproportionate impact on the culture because people will look on and think, "The future belongs to them."

In this sense, it would be a mistake to think that Benedict believes the movements are the only, or even the primary, way for Christians to function as a "creative minority." Quite the contrary; it's a disposition to which all Christians are called, with the movements as only one, and perhaps not the best, example.

Pope Benedict's July trip to Spain short but busy, says archbishop

By Lynn Wehnes
6/1/2006
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)

MADRID, Spain – Pope Benedict XVI's upcoming visit to Spain will be short but busy, said a Spanish archbishop.

In a May 30 press conference, Archbishop Agustin Garcia-Gasco of Valencia said the city is in the final stages of preparations for the papal visit.

The pope plans to visit Spain as part of the Fifth World Meeting of Families, a meeting convened by the pope every three years. Families from six continents will meet to discuss the challenges they face in the 21st century.

On July 8-9, in little more than 24 hours, the pope will meet with the Spanish royal family and with President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

He also will celebrate Mass and visit Valencia's cathedral and pray at both the Basilica of the Virgin and in the Plaza of the Virgin.

The pope is scheduled to travel by car through Valencia's main streets in order to maximize his visibility.

More than 1.5 million people are expected to be in Valencia for the families meeting, set for July 1-9. In addition to events for adults and children, the meeting will include a theological pastoral congress attended by cardinals from more than 25 countries.

Meeting fuels rumours Blair set to invite Pope Benedict to visit Britain

NICK PISA
Scotsman.com

TONY Blair will hold a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican today as speculation mounts that he will invite the Pope to visit Britain.

The pair are expected to discuss reconciliation between Christian and Muslim faiths. It will be the first meeting with Benedict for Mr Blair, who is widely tipped to convert to his wife Cherie's Roman Catholic faith once he stands down as Prime Minister.

Mrs Blair met Benedict in a private audience in April.

Pope Benedict's trip would mark the first papal visit to the UK since Pope John Paul II visited in 1982.

The Prime Minister also tacked an official meeting with Romano Prodi, the new prime minister of Italy, onto the end of a week-long holiday in Tuscany with his family.

Mr Blair sidestepped a row over the use of the Queen's Flight yesterday by driving three hours from his Tuscan holiday home to attend his meeting with Mr Prodi.

He had been under pressure to reveal if he was using the BAE146 to take him to the meeting in Rome as his holiday ended and he returned to work.

He arrived in Tuscany last Saturday and spent six days staying with Prince Girolamo Strozzi at his luxury villa at Cusona near San Gimignano, along with Mrs Blair and their two youngest children.

However, it is still expected that Mr Blair and his party will return to Britain later today with the Queen's Flight.

VATICAN CITY(AP) Pope Benedict XVI and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, holding their first private talks Saturday, discussed the role religion could play in politics and society, including the battle against terrorism.

Blair, his wife and their children were received in a private audience in a visit to the Vatican that lasted about an hour.

It was Blair's first private meeting with Benedict, elected last year, although Cherie Blair had met the pope in April when she participated in a Vatican conference on children.

Smiling broadly, Blair shook hands with the pope and sat in the papal study for what the Vatican described as "cordial" talks.

The two explored "the contribution which common values between religions can give to dialogue, in particular with moderate Islam, above all on the themes of solidarity and peace," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.

A British government spokesman said Blair and the pope discussed the need for moderate religious leaders around the world to work against extremism and terrorism.


Also discussed was the need to help Africa with development and peace efforts, as well as Northern Ireland's peace process, Navarro-Valls said.

Italian state TV said Blair encouraged the pope to visit Britain, although there was no mention of that in the Vatican statement.

On Friday, Blair held talks in Rome with Italy's new premier Romano Prodi about the Italian troop withdrawal from Iraq, which Prodi has said will be completed this year.

Blair also prayed at the tomb of Pope John Paul II, according to Britain's Press Association. When Blair met privately with John Paul in 2003, the pontiff had stressed that everything possible must be done to avoid a war in Iraq.

VATICAN CITY, June 3, 2006(AP) Pope Benedict XVI joined a cheering crowd of 350,000 people overflowing from St. Peter's Square for a Saturday evening rally aimed at boosting faith and encouraging efforts to spread the Roman Catholic Church's message throughout the world.

Participants, many of them young people, began arriving in early morning to gain a place in the square. Some of them strummed guitars and sang to pass the hours while waiting for the pope to appear.

Benedict, wearing a fur-trimmed crimson cape against a chilly breeze, waved to the faithful from the popemobile, as he was driven toward the steps of St. Peter's Basilica.

More than 100 religious groups were represented. The Rome prefect's office, which coordinates security in Rome, estimated the crowd at 350,000 people at the start of the rally.

The crowd stretched down the boulevard leading to the Tiber River.

Thanks to Ratzi-lella in the main forum for this article from La Stampa of 6/3/05 which may well be a scoop by their Vatican correspondent, and if it is, we will probably hear from the other papers today.
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Pope Benedict to pray at Ground Zero:
Pan-American trip in 2007 takes shape
By Marco Tosatti

Benedict XVI wishes to go to New York, to Ground Zero, to pray for the victims of terrorism and to launch from that symbolic place an appeal for planetary reconciliation.

At the Vatican, they are studying the possibility of having the Pope complete a major pan-American journey in early 1977 to end in New York, with a speech by Papa Ratzinger before the General Assembly of the United Nations and the prayer at the site where once stood the Twin Towers.

The take-off point for the project, which is expected to take final shape this summer, is Benedict’s promise to open, in May 2007, the fifth General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops in the Marian sanctuary of Aparecida, Brazil (South America’s second most visited and famous Marian shrine, after that of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico).

This is an appointment of great significance for the Church in that continent, which will be deciding its strategy for the years to come.

It will be a tiring trip. The Pope is 79; he will be 80 in April 2007. It is obvious that he should marshal his energies as best as he can. Therefore, it means optimizing this trip to avoid having to repeat a similar trajectory in the near future.

He will be in Brazil 2-3 days, after which he will head north to Caracas. Why Venezuela? Because, beyond its geopolitical importance, it is the nation that is carrying out political leadership activity aimed at all of Latin America; because the Church, which has a watchful attitude, if not open opposition, towards President Hugo Chavez, is in need of support in that country (it was not by chance that Benedict XVI made the Archbishop of Caracas a cardinal, to give him power and prestige with respect to the government); and because from Veneuela, the Pope wishes to address himself to all of Central America and Cuba.

From Caracas, Benedict will travel to Mexico City and the Sanctuary of Guadalupe, very famous and much visited (millions of pilgrims every year), the place where the native Juan Diego had a vision of the Virgin, whose image was imprinted on his cloak, according to tradition – the first image of a native Indian Madonna.

It simply is not conceivable that a Pope whould travel across the Atlantic – for perhaps the only time in this case – and not visit Mexico, semper fidelis (always faithful), a nation which lives with an intense popular devotion as well as an equally strong secularism. The tensions between Church and state are permanent. On his first trip there in 1979, John Paul II could have been arrested for wearing a cassock in public, something that was prohibited by law.

Finally, the last stop - New York, with two very important moments. He will address the United Nations General Assembly, where Paul VI in 1965 and John Paul II in 1995 both delivered historic speeches.

Above all, however, he will be there to pray at Ground Zero, for the victims of terrorism. This is a mission that his predecessor had wanted to do in July 2002 on his way to World Youth Day in Toronto.

But two things decided against it: The first was the Pope’s health which had already started to decline. But the bigger reason was the political climate. It was the peak of polemics over the “clash of civilizations.” A few months earlier, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Pope’s Secretary of State, had said: “They cannot ask us to place ourselves behind cannons,” and the image of the Pope praying at the still-smoldering ruins of the Twin Towers would have immediately become the icon of an anti-Taliban crusade.

Now it is different. The context in which Benedict XVI will find himself will be very different: “Freedom Tower”, a crystal needle that will project a ray of light heavenwards, will be under construction, along with its surrounding urban amenities, its gardens, the memorial pools containing the names of all the dead, and other buildings in the complex.

The Pope’s presence will be a gesture of remembrance and homage to the victims of the attack, but also a sign of hope for the future. From New York, the Pope will return to Rome.

The travels (except the trans-oceanic flights) should all take place along a narrow longitude that allows for the minimum difference in time zones (just 1-2 hours from one country to the next). They are also studying how to alternate days of activity with a rest period in order to minimize travel fatigue on a trip that is expected to last about two weeks.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/06/2006 10.38]

3 June, 2006
VATICAN
Pope: life, freedom and unity-
gifts of the Spirit and
rallying cries for movements

A joyous crowd of 400,000 people attended a meeting with Benedict XVI. The Pope called all to mission and recommended defence of life and of creation.


Vatican City, June 3, 2006 (AsiaNews) – True life, freedom and unity, which bring mission, defence of the weak, of justice and of nature: these are gifts of the Spirit and what springs from them. Benedict XVI evoked them and recommended them to movements and new ecclesial communities.

The vespers of the vigil of Pentecost saw around 400,000 members of ecclesial movements from around the world in St. Peter’s Square: there were psalms, hymns and meditations, but also joy, shouting and arms raised to heaven, scarves, hats and flags waving.

Benedict XVI, who desired to have this second global meeting after the “foundation” one on 30 May 1998 with John Paul II, passed not only through St Peter’s Square, but also through Via Conciliazione in an open vehicle; everywhere was packed with youth, families and children.

Few people probably noticed, but for the first time, the pope was not flanked by Camillo Cibin, the mythical head of Vatican Security, the commendatore, the white-haired man whose image besides four popes had become a common sight. He retired today, aged 80.

On the vigil of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit and his actions were at the heart of reflections by representatives of the movements of the Focolare, of St Egidio, of Neocatechumens, of Communion and Liberation. Their reflections before the pope’s speech were interspersed with psalms.

All recalled John Paul II, as Benedict XVI also did; he repeated the invitation to “open the doors to Christ”, with which the former pope launched his long pontificate.

But “who or what is the Holy Spirit? How can we recognize him? In what way do we approach Him and how does He approach us? What are his works?” asked Benedict XVI, who developed his meditation along these themes.

Here, then, is the Spirit creator: “The world does not exist of itself; it comes from the creative spirit of God, from the creative Word of God. And thus it reflects also the wisdom of God.”

And so “we cannot use and abuse the world and of matter as simple material of our making and volition; we must consider creation to be a gift entrusted to us, not for destructive ends, but that it may become the garden of God and thus a garden of man. In the face of multiple forms of abuse of the earth that we witness today, let us listen to the wailing of creation mentioned by St Paul”.

A “first answer”, then, to the question about what the Holy Spirit is, how he functions, and how we can recognize him, is “He comes to meet us through creation. However, the good creation of God, throughout the history of mankind, was covered by a massive layer of dirt that makes it, if not impossible, certainly difficult to recognize the reflection of the Creator in it – although when seeing the sun setting into the sea, during an excursion to the mountains, or seeing a flower that has blossomed, the awareness of the existence of the Creator is reawakened in us almost spontaneously.”

In Pentecost, then, “Jesus, and through Him God Himself, comes to us and draws us to him. ‘He sends his Holy Spirit’ – this is what the Scripture says. What is the effect?”

Benedict XVI highlighted two aspects: “The Holy Spirit, through which God comes to us, brings us life and freedom”. Already in the parable of the prodigal son, said the pope, there are the themes of life and freedom.

The prodigal son “wants life and what he wants is to be completely free. Being free means, from this perspective, being able to do exactly as one pleases, not having to accept any criteria other than and above myself. Following only my desires and my will. Who lives thus will soon meet another who wants to live in the same way. The obvious consequence of this egotistical concept of freedom is violence, mutual destruction of freedom and life."

"When one wants only to take control of life, one makes it ever more empty, poorer, easily ending up by taking refuge in drugs, in big illusions. And then the doubt emerges whether to live, at the end of the day, is really any good. No, in this way, we will not find life.

"Life is found through giving it; it is not found in desiring to possess it. And this is what we must learn from Christ and this is what the Holy Spirit teaches us, who is also a gift, that is, the self-giving of God. The more one gives his life for others, for good itself, the more abundantly will the river of life flow.

“In this world, so full of fictitious freedoms that destroy the environment and man, let us, with the strength of the Holy Spirit, learn true freedom together; to build schools of freedom; to show others with our life that we are free and how beautiful it is to be really free with the true freedom of children of God.”

And “the principle always holds: freedom and responsibility go together. True freedom is revealed in responsibility, in a way of acting that takes upon itself co-responsibility for the world, for oneself and for others.”

“The son who is free is he who owns something and who thus does not allow it to be destroyed. All mundane responsibilities that we have talked about are however partial responsibilities, for a fixed time and state, and so on. The Holy Spirit, however, makes us sons and daughters of God. He involves us in the responsibility that God himself has for this world, for all mankind.

"We do good not as slaves who are not free to do otherwise, we do it because we personally bear responsibility for the whole, because we love truth and good, because we love God himself and therefore also his creatures. And this is true freedom, to which the Holy Spirit wants to lead us. Ecclesial movements want and must be schools of freedom, of this true freedom.”

“The Holy Spirit, giving life and freedom, gives also unity. They are three gifts that are inseparable one from the other.” “In the Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul tells us that this Body of Christ, that is the Church, has ligaments (cfr 4:16) and he names them: they are apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers (cfr 4:12).

"If we look at history, if we look at this assembly here in St. Peter’s Square, we realize how He always draws out new gifts. We see how different the organs He creates are, and how, always anew, He works as a body. But in Him, multiplicity and unity go together. He blows where he wants. He does so in an unexpected way, in unexpected places and in ways previously unimagined. And he does it in many forms and as one body!

"And it is precisely here that multiplicity and unity are inseparable one from the other. He wants our diversity and he wants us to be one body, in union with lasting orders – the ligaments – of the Church, with the successors of the Apostles and with the successor of St Peter. He does not absolve us from the task of learning to relate one with the other; but he shows us also that He works in the perspective of one body in the unity of one body. And it is only thus that unity gains its strength and its beauty. Taking part in the edification of the one body! Pastors will be careful not to snuff out the Spirit (cfr 1 Ts 5:19) and you should not cease to bring your gifts to the entire community. Once again: the Holy Spirit blows where he wishes. But his desire is unity. He leads us towards Christ, to his Body.”

“The Holy Spirit wants unity, he wants totality. And so his presence is revealed above all in a missionary slant. Whoever has met something real, beautiful and good in his life – the one true treasure, the precious pearl! – rushes to share it with everyone, with his family and at work, in all the environments of his life.

"He does so without fear, because he knows he has received adoption as a son, without any presumptions, because everything is gift; without discouragement, because the Spirit of God precedes his action in the “heart” of men and as a seed in the most diverse cultures and faiths. He does so without borders, because he is the bearer of good news that is for all mankind, for all peoples.”

Here is a translation of an item posted today by Ratzigirl from a northern Italian newspaper:
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Bertone in pole position
to succeed Sodano at State

In the following days and weeks, the changes being undertaken by Papa Ratzinger in the Roman Curia will continue. Expectation is particularly focused on the Secretary of State, but further merger of dicasteries and other nominations are expected.

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State, is expected to leave his position soon. He has turned 78, whereas after 75, bishops are required to retire. He is 3 years over the limit and will turn 79 in November. A little over a year ago, Benedict XVI confirmed him in his office as he did the other heads of dicasteries from John Paul II’s time.

After a year of consideration and study, the Pope is expected to name his choices soon. A few names stand out as being potential successors to Sodano. From Archbishop Tarciso Bertone of Genova to Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congreagation for Bishops, and the Patriarch of Venice, Angelo Scola.

Bertone, 72, who now leads the archdiocese of Genoa, was for several years Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. His nomination would re-establish the Ratzinger-Bertone partnership that guided the ex-Holy Office successfully in Papa Wojtyla’s time. It would be an understandable choice and would reinforce the strictest line of Ratzingerian observance at the top of the Roman Curia. obse

Bertone combines both theological and diplomatic experience, and since he was named by John Paul II to head the archdiocese of Genova in 2002, pastoral as well. His departure would leave a very important bishopric available.

Another rumored replacement for Sodano is Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, also 72, currently Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. For a long time, Re was considered an ideal candidate for the position because of his long epxerience in the Curia and his great knowledge of diplomacy as well as Church affairs. He has served in the Secretariat of State before as deputy in charge of General Affairs.

Also listed as a probable candidate is the Patriarch of Venice, Cardinal Angelo Scola, who played a prominent role as secretary of the Bishops Synod last October and is a respected theologian. Finally, Cardinal Attilio Nicora, president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, the man to whom the Pope had entrusted the preliminary studies for the reform and reorganization of the Curia.

However, one must also consider the ranks of Vatican diplomats. The Pope could well choose someone with a strong diplomatic profile. Two men are mentioned in this respect: the current ‘foreign minister’ Mons. Giovanni Lajolo, and Mons. Fortunato Badelli, currently the Apostolic Nuncio to Paris.

New names may be named to the other dicasteries and a new phase in the Curial reorganization may begin. In the next few weeks, the Pope may proceed to mergers of existing dicasteries, which will affect mostly thje Pontifical Councils, four of which have already been collapsed into two.

VATICAN CITY, June 4, 2006 (AP) Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Sunday Mass for tens of thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square to mark the Catholic feast day of Pentecost.

Less than 14 hours earlier, Benedict had joined a cheering crowd of some 350,000 people overflowing from the square for a vigil rally aimed at boosting the Roman Catholic faith throughout the world.

Sunday's Mass drew a smaller crowd, but by the time the ceremony began, close to 100,000 people had flocked to the square. Pentecost commemorates the coming of the Holy Spirit to Jesus' apostles and the establishment of the Church on St. Peter.


"The day of Pentecost the Holy Spirit came down with power on the Apostles," Benedict said, beginning his homily. "So began the mission of the church in the world."

Benedict, as well as his predecessor, John Paul II, have made it a priority of the papacy to shore up flagging faith and spread the church's message throughout the world.

"The church has been universal and missionary from its birth," Benedict said. He described the faithful, "the people of God," as "not knowing any frontier of race, culture, nor of space nor time."

"Man's pride and selfishness always create divisions, erect walls of indifference, of hate and of violence," the pope said.

Benedict's voice sounded a bit hoarse, as it did at the end of Saturday evening's three-hour appearance.

John Paul, energized by crowds, enjoyed riding through huge crowds in his popemobile so he could greet them. Benedict's style Sunday was more reserved.

Instead of being driven to the altar, which was erected on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, the 79-year-old Benedict walked in a brief procession at the start of the Mass. When the ceremony was over, he left by walking a few steps to the entrance of the basilica.

Renato Farina, an Italian writer whose perceptive pieces about Benedict XVI we have posted in translation here a number of times, wrote one about the Saturday Pentecost Vigil encounter of at least 400,000 Catholics with their Pope at St. Peter's Square.

The theme of the encounter was THE BEAUTY OF BEING CHRISTIAN AND THE JOY OF COMMUNICATING IT. Anyone who watched the TV coverage or has seen photographs of the assembly could vouch that the participants certainly lived up to it!

Farina reflects about why such an event was not considered news by most of mainstream media in this article of 6/4/06 from the online journal Libero. He is at his ironic best. Here is a translation:
----------------------------------------------------------------

How many divisions
has the Pope, 2006
By RENATO FARINA

Yesterday (6/3/06) the movements and new communities were in St. Peter’s Square. The crowds stretched, under a blue sky and gusts of wind, all the way to the banks of the Tiber. But where was the news?

No one was killed, no one burned flags, there were no anti-American slogans.

The crowds were asked to come by the Pope. They prayed.

Confidentially, I can tell you I was very proud. Among the 37,000 ciellini present [representatives of Comunione e Liberazione] was my 16-year-old son. An overnight trip by bus, and the whole day under a beautiful sun, and then back to the bus and home to Brianza – two sleepless days, and to go to Rome, he spent his allowance.

I asked him why. “Dad,I am looking for happiness. I am going with my friends.”

Looking for happiness? Without breaking or bashing anything? Logical! There is no news.

The Reuters corespondent, the legendary Phil Pullella, who is always the first to be wherever the Pope sets foot, whether in Africa or Garbatella, is not pleased. “But there’s little to write about!”

There were 350,000, no - make that 400,000, but the only news to say was: there were a lot.

So there would be a few lines in the papers. This crowd deserved more, but no one would buy them!

Then, Ratzinger’s discourse was too religious to enter into the big international news circuits.

More important to those was the morning ”cordial encounter” between Benedict XVI and Tony Blair, here “positive dialog with moderate Islam” was stressed (the phrase in quotes is from the Vatican Press Office).

And yet. And yet. What injustice! It was the New York Times which in 2003 described public opinion manifested in the public squares as “the new superpower.” But only if the crowds are dominated by red banners or rainbow flags? Then the 400,000 gathered here today would have been counted as a million to a million and a half by the labor unions and the nightly TV news programs!

But these 400,000 came here for the Pope, to pray even! Therefore, where’s the news?

There was news? Well, what?...

The largest demonstration on the planet yesterday took place in St. Peter’s to announce “that the only treasure, the precious pearl” has been recovered. It belongs even to you who is reading this and to any man who accepts it to the very ends of the earth. That in life, “there is something true, good and beautiful,” one can meet Him personally, it is “the person of Jesus Christ, and he is not a ghost.”

Impossible to just keep it to yourselves, boys and girls. (I write boys and girls but among the 120 movements present yesterday, there were as many white-haired persons as youths).

But I realize: This is an old story. Also: It’s a question of grace. But if one writes - the Pope said so, the quotations above become official Papal statements. It’s easy, so easy, to raise an eyebrow, and say, So what if the Pope said so?

But for once, whatever we believe or don’t believe, let’s pause awhile. Yesterday deserved news coverage. Someone like me is telling you, and I understand if you want to place a hand on my shoulder and say, Sorry pal, maybe next time, I have other things to do.

But here we have someone like Papa Ratzinger with the lightpower of some stars in the heavens! How he speaks of God, this Bavarian man, how he makes God present and living – it is a spectacle that is like the snows of Kilimanjaro or a sunset behind Mont Blanc.

It is truly a crime against reason and against the pleasure of living not to take seriously what he is saying. He does not limit himself to arguing the existence of God. He offers the possibility of another life, another freedom. The only way out of despair.

He is not prophesying the Apocalypse. This man is showing us a beautiful road towards “joy.” He says simply ”God is love.” And it overwhelms me, I am ashamed to say. The rules of journalism would dictate that one gloss over such statements.

Nevertheless! How virile is this love of God. It buiilds monasteries that withstand the onslaught of barbarians. Those were the Middle Ages, when men like Benedict and Francis lived.

But there is today. The Christian challenge continues. It had been given up for dead, Christianity. Stalin ridiculed it, and before him, Nietzsche.

Yesterday, the Soviet satellites launched to spy on us, still in orbit even if the USSR is long dead, were forced to see from on high the Pope’s divisions assembled in St. Peter’s Square.

On the giant screens, one could see images of the first encounter. May 31, 1998. The aging Wotyla listening to an aging Giussani (founder of CL), who described the heart of man beseeching Christ, and the heart of God. Both are now gone, but no one here believes that...

Papa Ratzinger, in his red cloak, had earlier passed through these multicolored and festive crowds.

Then followed the testimonies, the songs. The recitation of Vespers, with the Psalms commented on by movement leaders.

Then it was his turn. The Pope. He described the heart of our times. But he also spoke – and here, there was but one page - of the “intimnacy of God”, of “the heart of God.”

Here I summarize: Quoting Wojtyla, he used the word ‘providential’ to describe “your associations and communities…above all because the sanctifying Spirit uses these to reawaken the faith in the hearts of so many Christians.”

He tackles the difficult questions: “Now we ask ourselves. Who or what is the Holy Spirit? How can we recognize Him?…The world in which we live is the work of this Creative Spirit. Pentecost is also a feast of creation. The world does not exist of itself; it comes from the Creative Spirit of God, from God’s creative Word. And because of this, it also mirrors the wisdom of God.”

In short: The beauty of creation reveals God. But what has man done with this creation? “God’s good creation, in the course of human, history, has been covered over with a massive layer of filth…But the Creative Spirit comes to our aid. He entered history and therefore speaks to in a new way. In Jesus Christ, God himself became man and has allowed us, so to speak, to take a look at the intimacy of God himself.”

Here Ratzinger opens a mysterious page: He describes God. “We see something completely unexpected: In God, there exists an I and a You. The mysterious and remote God is not an infinite solitude, he is an event of love. If by looking at Creation we think we are able to glimpse something of the Creative Spirit, God himself, almost like creative mathematics, a power who makes the laws of the world and imposes order, but also, as beauty, then we come to know: the Creative Spirit has a heart. And that is Love.”

These sentences are not easy to chew, but they are good for our teeth.

God sent Jesus. “Jesus did not just allow us to look at the intimacy of God. With Him, God himself emerged from His intimacy to come to us…Jesus, and through Him, God Himself, comes to us and draws us within Him.”

In short…you get what I mean. This is catechism. It won’t play in the papers. They’d rather have the catechism according to Dan Brown.

Ratzinger describes life today: “The greater majority of men today have the same concept of life as the prodigal son in the Gospels… To get from life all that it can offer. To enjoy life to the full – to live, simply to live. At the end he found himself a mere swineherd, envying those animals outright, so empty had his existence become, so in vain. Even his freedom proved to be in vain.

"Is this not perhaps also happening today? When one only wants to take mastery of life, it becomes emptier, pooerer. It is easy to end up taking refuge in drugs, in grand illusions. And the doubt arises whether living, after all is said and done, is really any good at all. No, this is not the way to find life.”

There is another possibility. I will let Don Julian Carron, Don Gius’s successor, who spoke after the Pope, synthesize it: “It is up to Christians today to give the reasons for living, for our faith. Without imposing anything. We may be listened to or not, but no one can stop us from spreading the news that the Pope spoke of… Maybe it will take centuries to reverse the actual situation. It is a bit like Christianity was at its very beginning.”

Maybe I have bored you. But I would like you to know that in order to serve you and do my job yesterday, I gained a plenary indulgence. That, and a decided wish to live!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/06/2006 0.19]

Every so often, Osservatore Romano has brief editorial commentary about the Pope. Here is a translation of the commentary published in the issue of 5-6 June 2006 under the issue's banner headline "LIFE, LIBERTY, UNITY, CO-RESPONSIBILITY':

The Magisterium that Benedict XVI, with rigor and vigor, has been carying out since the day he was elected to the Chair of Peter, reached one of its highest moments on the Vigil of Pentecost.

The homily at the Vespers celebration, in the presence of hudnreds of thousands of representatives of church movements and new communities, will enter into the history of Pontifical teaching as one of those fundamental discourses which can never be set aside.

There are many key words which could synthesize the sense of this true and proper treatment of lay ecclesiality - (which was) a great hymn to the animating beauty of the Spirit, and at the same time, an exigent guidebook for the vocation of church movements and communities in the Church and in the world.

One of these key words certainly is the expression which the Pope used in referring to the 'feast of creation' at Pentecost: 'the garden of God.' In the variety of its colors, of its forms, of its sounds, even the extraordinary celebration on Saturday evening was, in a certain sense, an image of the ‘garden of God.’

But 4 words seem to us particularly expressive of the main passages of the Pope’s reflections: life, liberty, unity, co-responsibility.

It is truly from the Holy Spirit, “creative fountain of life,” that the impetuous river of the movements and communities flows from. In His school, they learn daily what “true freedom” is. In His powerful Breath, they experience that ‘unity’ which orients individual charisms to edify the one Body which the Church.

Only men and women who are alive, free and united can feel authentic ‘co-responsbility”, that is, be involved in “the same responsibility that God has for the world and for all humanity.”

It is a sublime and demanding mission. A mission for ‘sons” not “slaves”. A mission for souls kindled with the fire of Pentecost.

Pope says youth need to know church does not stifle a couple's love

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

ROME (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said young people should understand that the church does not want to "suffocate" the joy of love between a man and a woman.

The pope made the remarks at a June 5 Rome diocesan conference dedicated to the theme of religious education for younger Catholics.

After praying with participants in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the pope told them that love must be at the heart of every generation's education in the faith.

"Adolescents and young people, who feel inside themselves an urgent call to love, need to be liberated from the widespread prejudice that Christianity, with its commandments and prohibitions, places too many barriers to the joy of love," he said.

He said the church does not seek to prevent couples from "tasting fully that happiness that a man and a woman find in mutual love."

"On the contrary, Christian faith and ethics do not want to suffocate love but rather make it healthy, strong and truly free. This is the sense of the Ten Commandments, which are not a series of 'noes' but a great 'yes' to love and life," he said.

By teaching that marriage is the place where love is fully realized, the church affirms that human love can and should transcend individual satisfaction, he said.

The pope encouraged the pastoral workers to try to reach young people through what he called a pastoral "strategy of intelligence," an approach that takes their questions seriously and uses them to teach the faith.

Thanks to Emma in the main forum for the following excerpt from an article by R. Beccaria in this week's issue of the Italian weekly magazine OGGI, based on an interview with Cardinal Julian Herranz, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, in charge of the correct interpretation of the laws of the Holy See.

The first part of the excerpt has to do with how John Paul II faced his impending death, while the second part sheds clear and unequivocal light on how Joseph Ratzinger was the obvious
choice to succeed John Paul II.

Here is a translation.
--------------------------------------------------------------

"...John Paul II wrote a note on February 26, 2005, the day after he underwent tracheostomy at the Gemelli Clinic. The pope, silenced and suffering, wrote just one word: Gethsemane. It was not made known to the media to avoid alarmism, but it was clear that for him, he had begun his intimate identification with the Passion of Christ. He knew it. And accepted it.

"He knew he was nearing the end. His secretary sent the note to me, asking counsel. I answered clearly. I said it was necessary to distinguish between a canonical mission and a divine mission. Bishops receive their assignments from a man, the Pope, to govern a diocese. But the mission of the Holy Father is divine – it comes directly from God.

"The cardinals choose the person, but they do not confer the mission. When the elected Pope accepts, in that moment, he receives from the Lord the mission to be the universal shepherd of the Church. Therefore he cannot resign.

"Even in suffering, John Paul II was a witness for Christ, which is the first task of a Pope. He said: “The Lord called me. The Lord will call me.” But I am convinced that, like Paul VI, he too wrote a letter saying that if the time came when he lost his mental faculties, the cardinals should consider that equivalent to him submitting his resignation.

"But God called him before he could lose his lucidity. He had now identified himself with Christ and he could not do other than what Christ had done. Up to the Cross. John Paul II taught us the dignity and value of suffering, of sickness, of death. That which would have been, for others, the gallows, was for him, as it was for Christ, the throne of glory."

Regarding the choice of John Paul II's successor, Cardinal Herranz said:

“We came to agreement quickly. It was curious to read the speculations in the papers. Like, they will chose a Latin American Pope because most Catholics today live in South America. Or, it will be a colored Pope because Asia and Africa are the continents of the future. Seemingly plausible reasons, but exceeded by our reasons, which went to the heart of the problems that the Church needs to confront.

“There is Islamic fundamentalism in Asia and Africa, but also the dictatorship of relativism in the West, where most people now live as though God did not exist. We took account of these, much more than any geopolitical analysis.

“The choice of Ratzinger was easy.
He had intellectual legitimacy: He is the Church’s best theologian.
He had institutional legitimacy: For more than 20 years, he headed the most important of the Roman congregations.
He had Roman legitimacy: He has fit perfectly into the context of this city.
He had Wojtylian legitimacy: We wanted to insure continuity.
And finally, mystical legitimacy: Ratzinger is a lover of Christ, as was Wojtyla.

I always say this- Of all the records set by John Paul II, they forget the most important. The hours of prayer spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament – no one has recorded more hours of personal dialog with Jesus!...

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This item is also posted in REMEMBERING JOHN PAUL II.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/06/2006 1.03]

Altoetting Makes Benedict XVI One of Its Own
Bavarian Town Awards an Honorary Citizenship

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 7, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI received the title of honorary citizen of Altoetting, Germany, a town known as the Marian heart of his native Bavaria.

The shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary, visited every years by a million pilgrims, is located in a town close to Marktl am Inn, the village where Joseph Ratzinger was born.

Meeting today with a German delegation in a brief ceremony in Paul VI Hall, the Pope recalled an episode of his youth, which occurred when he and his brother returned "safe and sound" from World War II.

Benedict XVI said that his father "went on foot on the long way that separates Traunstein from Altoetting, to thank the Mother of God" for the safe return of his two sons.

The Holy Father added that Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to the shrine, when Cardinal Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich, was also unforgettable, as the Polish Pontiff perceived in the shrine "the Catholic heart of Bavaria."

"A few years ago, I was able to accompany a pilgrimage on foot from Regensburg and on that occasion I understood profoundly what a pilgrimage of this type means," said Benedict XVI.

Interior journey

"It's not only 'walking with the feet,' but 'walking with the heart'; it is not an exterior but an interior journey," he pointed out. "In the midst of the efforts and exhaustion of this journey, at the end one really has the great joy of reaching the Mother of Graces, of meeting with her in the silence of the shrine."

"Altoetting guards this patrimony of centuries, which in this way remains always alive," Benedict XVI said, adding that it is "an old and new place of meeting with the Mother of the Lord and, therefore, of renewal of our lives."

"With this title of honorary citizen, I now form part of Altoetting in an altogether particular way," the Pope said. "The grand Bavarian dukes willed that, after their deaths, their hearts be kept in that shrine. I know that, in this way, my heart is now taken even more definitively by the Mother of God and that she will look after me from on high and will guide me in my pilgrimage."

[A very interesting view of Deus Caritas Est.]


Benedict Contra Nietzsche: A Reflection on Deus Caritas Est
By Benjamin D. Wiker
Crisis Magazine

When Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical came out, the media were a bit confused. They, along with eager conservatives, were expecting the new pope to line up the ecclesiastical howitzers and mow down dissenters in crisp, staccato prose.

Instead, they got Deus Caritas Est, “God Is Love.” Had the pope gone soft? Even daft? Too old to fight? What gives?

Given the press deadlines, the demand for immediate comment left all too many journalists just time enough to concoct a newsy-cutesy headline, tear a few soundbite-sized morsels out of the text (and out of context) during lunch, and quick-cook an article for immediate release.

Judged by the results, it was hard to get an angle on an encyclical that appeared to have no edges, a mere round and happy affirmation of love. Even worse, it seemed to some on the left that he’d actually joined their side. Liberal Bishop Francis Deniau, the prelate of Nevers in eastern France, soon piped to the press that Benedict’s affirmation of sexual love might just be a surprise papal wink to nudge a reversal of the Church’s ban on contraception.

Well, they didn’t call him the “Panzer-Kardinal” for nothing. Deus Caritas Est is a declaration of war, and it is loaded with ammunition—much of it stealth in design, and of such power that the Church under Benedict XVI will certainly be the Church Militant. For while on the surface Benedict only seems to be offering a theological platitude, that “God is love,” hidden to the hasty eyes of the press, buried in the intricacies of his philosophical and theological analysis, obscured from all but those initiated into Benedict’s inner circle, he really is declaring that God is love.

It will become clear—as we dig into the encyclical—that a more dangerous and constructive idea for our culture could not be imagined. It’s a brilliant strategy on Benedict’s part to hide so explosive a truth under a simple truism.

Nietzsche Contra Benedict

It was quite surprising to have Benedict open with philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s charge against Christianity. “Christianity gave Eros poison to drink,” Nietzsche quipped; “he did not die of it but degenerated—into vice.”

It was not surprising that, soon after the encyclical’s release, all too many prominent Catholics joined Nietzsche in the chorus. “The Church, with all its rules and prohibitions, has poisoned eros, natural and carefree sexual desire,” they chanted, “and the most potent toxin in its doctrinal brew is the ban on contraception.”

Included in the choir was Bishop Deniau, who took Benedict’s qualified affirmation of sexual eros in the encyclical to be an opening of the door for an unqualified celebration of sexual desire. Time to revisit the whole Pope Paul VI Humanae Vitae thing, he intoned, and embrace the good sense of the papal commission that recommended that the Church throw in its lot with the contraceptive culture. “The analyses made by the first commission in 1966, which did not condemn contraception, are worth being reviewed and debated,” Deniau said.

That a bishop would so cheerfully chime in on the side of Nietzsche gives us some notion of the thicket of troubles facing Benedict. Indeed a case could be made—and apparently Benedict is making it—that at the heart of the Church’s troubles, fomenting rebellion even among bishops, priests, religious, and laity, is a fundamental disagreement about eros, and who or what is poisoning it.

In his first encyclical—one which in a strong sense defines and declares what his pontificate means for the Church and the world—our pope has wisely chosen to answer
Nietzsche’s charge.

Benedict Contra Nietzsche

Benedict’s counterattack is disarmingly simple and charmingly direct. It is not Christianity but modern culture that has poisoned eros by exalting personal, sensual pleasure. The unhappy result is that eros is “Deiectus merum ad ‘sexum.’”

The English translation of the encyclical renders Deiectus merum ad “sexum” as “reduced to pure ‘sex,’” a most unfortunate mistake, since in its current debased condition sex is anything but pure. Benedict is far more subtle and exact in the Church’s native tongue. The Latin adjective merus comes from the noun merum, wine that is unmixed with water, and hence (in antiquity) only drunk by the intemperate—drinking for the sake of drunkenness. Deiectus comes from the verb meaning “to hurl down,” “to throw down,” even “to kill.” Our contemporary focus on sexual pleasure as pleasure hurls eros down, nearly kills it, and makes us into sexual drunkards.

In regard to sexuality, we might say that our culture is merely erotic because it sees nothing more to eros than eros. Such a brutish flattening of sexuality brings not gain but a “slipping down and diminishing of human dignity.” In exalting eros it makes eros “ebrius et immoderatus,” “drunk and immoderate.”

If eros by itself is unmixed wine, Benedict reminds us that it is still wine, and wine is good. He therefore affirms eros in the strongest terms. Love between man and woman, “where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness,” presents “the very epitome of love,” such that “all other kinds of love immediately seem to fade in comparison.”

Ahh, sighed the chorus, now the pope’s got it! And what could be more baneful than throwing water upon such unmixed erotic bliss?

The problem, the pope replies, is that “eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.” The entire argument of Deus Caritas Est is packed into this single reply.

Against the notion that eros unbound is eros free and natural, Benedict makes the countercharge that eros unbound binds us to self-destruction. Eros needs to be disciplined and purified because it represents only a half-truth.

The half-truth, embraced by our culture as the whole truth, is that we are bodily creatures. For a host of reasons (and it is not an angelic host), the West over the last 400 years has ever more passionately thrown itself into the arms of materialism, the belief that bodily reality is the only reality. Following upon the belief that there is nothing more to the human being than the body—that, indeed, “souls” are a fiction of unenlightened, unscientific primitives—comes the belief that there is nothing more to eros than the unmixed wine of bodily pleasure.

Contra Nietzsche, the West is dying in a drunken bacchanalia of this materialist reading of eros. It represents, for Benedict, a woeful loss of our true humanity precisely because it denies that we are bodily creatures with souls: Animals, yes, but animals made in the image of God.

And nothing could more aptly describe the West’s bleary, weary, and frantic divinization of sex than this: It is soulless. Empty-eyed, because the eyes are the windows of the soul; aimless, because it aims at everything, having nothing more to hit than bodily pleasure; lifeless and mechanical, because it denies that the soul gives life to the body, and hence to eros; all-consuming, because consuming is all it knows.

To cure this spiritless malaise, Benedict offers the truth: Bodily pleasure is an essential aspect of the body-soul union that truly and properly defines our sexuality and our entire being, but if it is made the essence of eros, it becomes the nemesis of eros. Eros, to be eros, must be ensouled, otherwise it contains only a half-truth that destroys even what truth it has. The whole truth is contained in the union of body and soul, and there is no escape from the whole truth by taking either half.

Should he [man] aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness.

The restoration of eros demands that we reject both the gnostic denial of the reality and goodness of the flesh and the materialist, Epicurean denial of the reality and goodness of the spirit. Each age, it seems, is marked by its own characteristic lapse into one extreme, one error or the other. We live in a hidebound age, an age bound to the pleasures of its hide, an age of Epicurean hedonism if ever there was one—and it is against the drag of this Charybdis that Benedict must steer the Church.

The point of steering away from hedonism isn’t to escape the body but to return to the truth that humanity is essentially defined by this strange union of animality and something like divinity.

It is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves; it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both grow together [coalescent] does man become fully his own self. By this one way alone, love—eros—has the strength to grow to the maturity [maturescere] of its own true greatness.

But then the pope adds something very odd and very ancient: “Man truly becomes his own particular self when his body and soul are united most intimately.” Only this union can love. Yet this attempted union is not achieved without struggle. Eros is not docile, but ornery. The “dispute [concertatio] of eros” must be overcome, and eros is “truly conquered” only when “this union [of body and soul] is achieved.”

The dispute of eros? The English translation of concertatio as “challenge” no doubt confused more than it clarified, because it loses the aspect of antagonism within eros that Benedict assumes must be conquered. The verb concertare means to strive eagerly, often in verbal disputes; hence the noun concertatio means a contest in words, a wrangling, a dispute. It is as if the body is arguing against the soul, dividing each “self” into factions, eagerly striving to make the case to the self that the self is, after all, only a body, and that bodily pleasure is the highest satisfaction and perfection.

As wonderful, natural, and good as eros is, then, it contains a spirit of rebellion, an aftershock of original sin that brings eros to assert itself against the true, human union of body and soul. Nietzsche attempted to rarify this spirit of rebelliousness of the flesh into a spirit of rebellion itself—a Promethean “against-ness” set against the spirit. He therefore represents the greatest corruption of eros, a divinization of intoxification.

But for all that, Benedict makes clear that eros must not be denied. Eros needs discipline and purification, so that unmixed wine doesn’t lead us into the Bowery gutter of history along with other lost, decrepit, and enervated civilizations.

The Elixir for Eros

What, then, must be mixed with eros? In a word (a very strange word for most of us) eros needs agape. “Theos agape estin,” declares the Greek of 1 John 4:16—“God is love.” In Latin, “Deus caritas est,” the name of the encyclical. The first words of Benedict’s first encyclical quote the First Letter of John: “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

God is love, agape. Not eros? Eros needs agape? Eros needs God? No wonder Nietzsche was gnashing his teeth at Christianity. It was Nietzsche who famously declared that God was dead. If St. John and Benedict are right, then it was Nietzsche’s atheism that poisoned eros, not Christianity, and this atheism was rooted in the modern West’s denial of any reality beyond brute matter. No amount of Dionysian celebration of eros by itself in a godless cosmos could save Nietzsche from lapsing into madness and spending the last decade of his life in an asylum.

Perhaps, then, Benedict begins with Nietzsche as a prophecy. “I am a disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,” declared Nietzsche in Ecce Homo, “I should prefer to be even a satyr to being a saint.” That is, he would prefer to be less than human than to submit to the reality of a spiritual realm, for that would entail the submission of his will to God.

“Ecce Homo,” declares Benedict, bringing Nietzsche onto the encyclical’s stage. “Behold the Man. Behold what you are becoming. Behold the West lapsing into erotic Dionysian madness.” And—pity the pope; feel his cross—he must deliver this message in the midst of the West’s bedlam culture, preaching sainthood to a society of satyrs.

Satyr or saint? The complete extremity of opposition, and hence the starkness of the choice, might give us some sympathy with Nietzsche. With eros, there is no happy and comfy medium, no fence-sitting. It is either-or, not both-and. Benedict makes this painfully clear in his antidote to poisoned eros. “By contemplating the pierced side of Christ,” the pope maintains, “we can understand the starting-point of this encyclical letter: ‘God is love.’”

Not exactly good news for the eros intoxicated. But what does it mean?

It means, oddly enough, that Nietzsche was, in a sense, right to fear God, to fear agape. Against many of his contemporaries, who had embraced a rather tepid Christianity where “God Is Love” meant “God Is Nice,” Nietzsche smelled death in the gospel. More properly, he recognized that Christianity demanded the crucifixion of eros, but it only promised its resurrection. That is the reason why Benedict repeatedly intones that the dehumanizing of eros can only be cured by discipline, purification, renunciation, and, finally, sacrifice.

Sacrifice. Crucifixion. Whoever seeks to gain eros will lose it, but whoever loses eros will preserve it. “Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33).

In these words, Jesus portrays his own path, which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection, the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies, and in this way bears much fruit. Starting from the depths of his own sacrifice and of the love that reaches fulfillment therein, he also portrays in these words the essence of love and indeed of human life itself.

We can have some human sympathy with Nietzsche’s attempt to make a garden out of Gethsemane, to build a castle in the dark night of the soul. Anything, rather than the cross. To trust eros, life itself, to a God one cannot see or feel; to fall into death, hoping for a miracle of life—a more than human trial for an all-too-human soul. Here, remarks Benedict, with the greatest possible understatement, we are on “the threshold of biblical faith.”

Eros Across the Threshold of Faith

The truth about eros is that, even as worldly love, it always strives to ascend to the eternal. That inherent desire for the eternal, in perverted form, results in the attempt to divinize eros itself, when the real goal of eros is to bring us—human beings made in the image of God, a union of matter and spirit—to the Divine. As the world was made by God out of love, so also the world is made to love God. Eros perverted loves the world, the flesh, as God; eros purified loves the world as a gift from God, and hence God above all as the giver.

That is why eros, worldly love, is “ascending love.” Agape is, by contrast, “descending love.” God as the Creator is not indifferent; creation itself is a great act of His love, of agape, of giving to the beloved. Nietzsche embraced the materialist notion of a cold, indifferent cosmos, belched out by chance, a godless and giftless giver of the burden of existence. He could not see agape in this cosmos, and so all that was left for him was eros without an object, the desire for divinity without the divine.

If creation is a great act of agape, then an even greater act of descending love is the descent of the incarnation. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (Jn 3:16). Eros and agape meet in the crucifixion, because in a strange sense—the strangest possible—agape, the God who is love, has become eros in the incarnation.

The Great Wedding Feast of Eros and Agape

We recall that Benedict said that the love between man and woman, “where body and soul are inseparably joined and human beings glimpse an apparently irresistible promise of happiness,” presents “the very epitome of love.” The epitome of love is marriage, where each desires the other with eros, and both desire to give themselves to and for the other with agape. The great joy of this union in marriage demands a wedding feast.

Even more, the union of eros and agape in the sacrifice of Christ demands a feast. And so, Jesus gives His act of self-sacrificial love “an enduring presence through his institution of the Eucharist,” and in this great feast, “we enter into the very dynamic of his self-giving.” This fulfillment of all human desire is also the fulfillment of the Old Testament. “The imagery of marriage between God and Israel is now realized in a way previously inconceivable: it had meant standing in God’s presence, but now it becomes union with God through sharing in Jesus’ self-gift, sharing in his body and blood.” That is “how agape also became a term for the Eucharist: there God’s own agape comes to us bodily, in order to continue his work in us and through us.”

Far from poisoning eros, Christianity not only affirms it, but elevates it beyond its wildest dreams. Nothing is lost; all is divinized.

If only the satyrs had ears to hear.


Benjamin D. Wiker is a senior fellow with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and the Discovery Institute. His latest book (out this spring) is A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature (InterVarsity Press).

[QUOTE][DIM]7pt[=DIM]Scritto da: Maklara 08/06/2006 13.15
Altoetting Makes Benedict XVI One of Its Own
Bavarian Town Awards an Honorary Citizenship

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@Maklara, thanks for interesting news.
I'm afraid I don't understand how come the Holy Father who is already a Bavarian/German, can be bestowed a Bavarian 'honorary citizenship'?
Does that mean he, being Pope, is no longer considered a German citizen?




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[QUOTE][DIM]7pt[=DIM]Scritto da: benefan 09/06/2006 5.16

[A very interesting view of Deus Caritas Est.]


Benedict Contra Nietzsche: A Reflection on Deus Caritas Est
By Benjamin D. Wiker
Crisis Magazine

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That is a high-quality article written by someone highly intellectual and intelligent. Thanks.<p><font class='xsmall'>[<i>Modificato da crossroads 09/06/2006&nbsp;11.32</i>]</font></p>

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Scritto da: benefan 09/06/2006 5.16
[A very interesting view of Deus Caritas Est.]

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Thanks Benefan! A very good article. I find the liguistic parts (about the Latin original contra translation) very interesting, it's almost an exegesis.

From National Catholic Reporter, comments on Benedict and the papacy.


By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Journalists have a rather peculiar way of evaluating public figures. Like athletes, we want to be in the game, and that means covering someone who consistently makes news. That way our copy makes the front page, or our TV packages become the lead item on the nightly news.

Even reporters who didn't share his faith convictions, therefore, generally enjoyed covering Pope John Paul II, because he dominated the world's attention for more than a quarter-century. Some journalists made their careers as chroniclers of his life and papacy. Biographer Jonathan Kwitny once dubbed John Paul "the man of the century;" I suspect many in the Vatican press corps would add that he was "the story of the century" as well.

What became clear during Benedict XVI's May 25-28 trip to Poland, if it wasn't already, is that things are different under this pope.

Had it not been for the Auschwitz visit on Sunday, or Benedict's off-hand comment about the beatification of John Paul on Saturday, the visit might as well have taken place on the dark side of the moon as far as the interest level of most media agencies. The fact that Benedict attracts large and enthusiastic crowds both in Rome and on the road suggests he strikes a chord with his base. Yet he does not play to the press gallery, and he doesn't engage in sweeping gestures or sound-bite formulae, so he doesn't galvanize global attention.

Benedict XVI, in the language of the guild, is largely a pope for the inside pages.

In Poland, I found myself wondering if this "less is more" style could have ecclesiological consequences -- if Benedict's way of exercising the papacy, quite apart from any explicit teaching, could change the way we think about the pope.

To explore that question, I turned to Richard R. Gaillardetz, who holds the Margaret and Thomas Murray and James J. Bacik Endowed Chair in Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo in Toledo, Ohio. Gaillardetz has written widely on ecclesiological topics, and is a popular speaker on these subjects.

While recognizing that John Paul's visibility was an enormous asset in terms of his capacity to shape history, Gaillardetz argued that his superstar status was also, to some extent, "ecclesiologically problematic."

"It gave a prominence to the papacy that is in some ways 'extra-ecclesial,'" Gaillardetz said.

"The dogmatic constitution Pastor Aeternus of Vatican I (1869-70) said the papacy exists to serve the unity of faith and communion," he said. "Being a rock star is just not part of the job description. It adds a dimension that makes one uneasy; it's hard to know what the theological value of it is," he said.

"It attributes so much visibility to the papacy that it's difficult at the same time to accent collegiality and the legitimate authority of the bishop's office," Gaillardetz said. Under John Paul, he said, "periodic assertions of episcopal collegiality were overwhelmed in a sea of papal events."

Gaillardetz argued that the emergence of what some have called an "imperial papacy" in the late 19th and 20th centuries distorted the balance among various levels of authority. He cited Pastor Aeternus , which devoted four long chapters to the authority of the pope and just one brief paragraph to the bishops, as a classic example.

Gaillardetz said John Paul's commitment to evangelization helped explain his astonishing drive, as well as his reliance upon the tools of pop culture. Benedict, Gaillardetz said, comes off as more of a catechist, explicating the basics of the faith in more calm fashion.

"Benedict has no interest in spectacle, and for the most part that's positive," he said. "It may help restore a more healthy proportion."

"Benedict knows his theology, so he knows what the theology says about the papacy, how it must be rooted in the college of bishops," he said. "The papacy is not a fourth order in the sacrament of Holy Orders. He's a bishop, and with Benedict I think it will be easier to teach that."

On the other hand, Gaillardetz said, it is too early to say if this is merely a shift in style or also a matter of substance.

He said the four instruments of the activist papacy of the 20th century have been dramatic symbolic gestures (think John Paul II at the Western Wall in Jerusalem), encyclicals, bishops' appointments, and what he called the "aggressively interventionist practice of the Roman Curia."

Gaillardetz said there will obviously be fewer grand gestures under Benedict XVI, and to judge by the evidence of Deus caritas est , his encyclicals will be more catechetical rather than sweeping and speculative. To date, he said, Benedict has not made many significant appointments, but generally they have been "non-divisive personalities."

Yet Gaillardetz argued that what he termed the "interventionist practice on the part of the curia" continues apace. He offered three examples:

The November document on gay seminarians

A letter from Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, cracking down on liturgical practices in Chiapas in southern Mexico

Another letter from Arinze to Bishop William Skylstad, president of the U.S. bishops' conference, warning that liturgical translations not in accord with Roman rules cannot be approved
"I think this still adds up to a fairly aggressive exercise of papal authority," Gaillardetz said.

Gaillardetz also expressed reservations about the recent decision by Benedict XVI to drop the title "Patriarch of the West," which, he said, if anything amounts to a more sweeping assertion of papal authority over the entire church, East as well as West.

At the same time, Gaillardetz said, there are inklings that Benedict's stated commitment to collegiality is real. He pointed to rule changes at last October's Synod of Bishops that allowed free exchange, as well as openness to theological discussion on difficult subjects such as the use of condoms in the context of marriage to prevent HIV/AIDS.

Yet, Gaillardetz said, as long as the "refashioning" of the papacy unfolds largely on the level of style, its impact will be greatest in the wider world rather than inside the Catholic church, where he believes the mechanisms of strong papal governance remain largely intact.

Obviously, not every ecclesiologist would add things up this way. A number of theologians today defend a strong papacy, not least as a bulwark against hostile governments (such as China, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea) as well as from relativistic secular societies, especially in Western Europe and North America.

Moreover, there is a natural tendency to complain about papal authority only when decisions are not going one's way. Few center-left theologians objected to an "imperial papacy" when John XXIII called the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), or when Paul VI imposed progressive liturgical and disciplinary reforms in the post-conciliar years.

Most would at least agree, however, that how a pope exercises his office can influence the way Catholics, as well as the rest of the world, think about the papacy. Style and substance are not the same thing, but neither are they unrelated.

Recently Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the emeritus archbishop of Paris, argued during a Rome conference that the life of John Paul II constitutes a theological trope, a source of theological insight in its own right. In the same way, Benedict's papal style may well come to represent an ecclesiological trope, and one that could reconfigure the debate in unpredictable fashion.

Speaking of ecclesiology, Benedict has chosen this spring to devote his catechesis during the Wednesday General Audience to reflections on the church. This Wednesday, he spoke about the role of Peter, and by extension the role of the pope.

Benedict pointed to three metaphors employed by Jesus to characterize the special role of Peter within the body of apostles: first, Peter is the "solid foundation" upon which the church is to be built; second, Peter will have the keys of the kingdom of Heaven; third, Peter has the power to bind or loosen, "in the sense that he will be able to establish or prohibit that which he retains necessary for the life of the church, which is Christ's and remains Christ's."

"It is always Christ's church, and not Peter's," Benedict emphasized.

Nonetheless, Benedict said that with these three metaphors, scripture presents with "great clarity" an understanding of the papacy "which later reflection will refer to as 'primary of jurisdiction.' "

Ecclesiologically speaking, "jurisdiction" is the magic word in this formula.

What it means is that the papacy is not merely a primus inter pares , a kind of honorary primacy within the College of Bishops. The pope is not the Patriarch of Constantinople. The papacy is, to use the language of the street, a "primacy with teeth," which possesses what the Code of Canon Law terms "supreme, full, immediate and universal ordinary power in the church."

As various Catholic theologians have put the point, traditional Catholic ecclesiology sees the pope as not merely primus inter pares , but primus super pares et partes , that is, "the first above equals and all parties."

Benedict goes on to say that this primacy is entrusted to Peter so that he may guide Christians to "universal communion" and to "charity in everyday life," rather than enjoying any sort of pomp and circumstance.

Yet Benedict's words on Wednesday indicate he remains fully committed to a robust, jurisdictional view of the papal role.

As is well known, the nature and extent of papal power remains the single most divisive issue in ecumenical dialogue, perhaps especially with the Orthodox, since Catholics and Orthodox otherwise share largely the same ministries, sacraments, and faith. As Fr. Adriano Garuti has shown in his 2000 book Primacy of the Bishop of Rome and the Ecumenical Dialogue , despite reams of documentation from official ecumenical exchanges, there's little indication of fundamental shifts on either side; the Orthodox still hold a conciliar or synodal ecclesiology, in which there's really no room for a primacy of jurisdiction, while Catholics have a more "pontifical" ecclesiology in which the pope enjoys direct powers of governance.

In his 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, John Paul II invited other Christian denominations into a "patient and fraternal dialogue" about new ways in which the Petrine office might be exercised, yet "without renouncing anything essential to its mission."

What Benedict's Wednesday reflection helps clarify is that, from his point of view, while the mode of exercising papal primacy can be discussed, the nature of that primacy is founded upon Christ's design for the church and cannot be altered. In the short run, at least, that probably makes ecumenical détente with the Orthodox even less likely.

Perhaps recognizing the point, Benedict closed his Wednesday reflection with a prayer that papal primacy "will be ever more recognized in its true meaning by the brothers still not in full communion with us."

When I was translating the Pope's catechesis on Wednesday, I wondered when I came to the last part what the reaction would be to what seemed to me to be a bare statement of the Primacy of Peter in Christ's one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.

I expected an analysis by the Vaticanistas and some flak perhaps from the orthodox churches. That was Wednesday morning. Unless I have missed anything that came between then and John Allen's article, no one appears to have taken notice. Perhaps yet another confirmation of Allen's statement in the above post that except for those who are the Pope's direct audience, no one is really taking note and reporting what the Pope is saying, at least among the media.

This week, the 'flap' that arose in the Italian media was about a document issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family on "The Family and Human Procreation", which some have seen as an unduly harsh statement that does disservice to the Pope and to the Church in many ways. (I am translating an excellent commentary made by veteran Vatican journalist Antonio Socci about the document).

Unlike the practice with important Vatican documents, this was neither presented at a press conference nor released through the Vatican Press Office nor published in Osservatore Romano. Does this mean it was released without the Pope's knowledge or say-so?

And of course, except for the perfunctory stories about the part where Benedict XVI reiterates the idea that the Church is not at all against the full and proper expression of love between man and woman, the Pope's wide-ranging speech to open the annual Diocesan Conference of the Roman clergy on Monday was given short shrift in the Italian media and hardly any mention in the international press.

The latter could be due to the Vatican press office's questionable practice of not providing simultaneous translations of the Pope's texts when he is not travelling or when it is not a major message meant for everyone, not just Catholics.

As someone who has been translating these texts for this forum as soon as the original is available, I cannot explain their practice. Depending on the length of the original text, it usually takes me 30 minutes to an hour to translate the usual Angelus/Regina Caeli message or short addresses at private audiences, and an hour to 3 hours to translate longer homilies, maybe 5-6 hours to translate long transcripts like the Pope's last dialog with the Roman clergy. I find no excuse why the Vatican Press Office cannot get its translators (in each of the Vatican official languages) to do the same thing!

The news agencies, in general, will not go out of their way to do their own translation, because they can always use the lack of an 'official' translation of a Papal text as an excuse for not reporting a story!


P.S. I also would like to comment on this statement in John Allen's article:

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Even reporters who didn't share his faith convictions, therefore, generally enjoyed covering Pope John Paul II, because he dominated the world's attention for more than a quarter-century

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.

When, exactly, in those 26 years did it become apparent to the press and to the world that JP-II was the "man of the century" or the "story of the century"? Surely not in the first 14 months of his Papacy and probably not even in the first 14 years of his Papacy! Even the media cannot be that prescient! The conclusions reached in the latter part of his Papacy, particularly when he manifested signs of serious illness, were and could only be retrospective, obviously.

So maybe, to draw such categorical conclusions about Benedict's consequence or inconsequence to the media before he has even completed 14 months in Peter's Chair is really premature.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/06/2006 18.13]

Family tensions hang over pope trip

Benedict to meet Zapatero during Catholic event in Valencia

(ANSA) - Vatican City, June 12 - Pope Benedict XVI will meet Spanish Premier José Luis Zapatero next month amid persistent tension over the Madrid government's policy on the family and gay issues.

The pope will see Zapatero during his July 8-9 trip to Valencia to take part in an international event organised by the Vatican to promote and strengthen the Catholic Church's conception of the family.

According to the official timetable for the papal visit published by the Vatican on Monday, the German pontiff will receive the Socialist premier in the headquarters of the Valencia archdiocese.

The location of the meeting appears to reflect the pope's unwillingness to travel - even symbolically - to meet Zapatero. His scheduled meeting with the Spanish royals will take place at City Hall. Details of the two meetings came a few days after the Spanish press reported that the Zapatero government has provided funding for a conference on the family in the same city.

A Spanish association of gays, lesbians and bisexuals has organised this event to discuss alternative family models two weeks before the pope's visit. The conference will also be in Valencia, near the city's cathedral.

Local diocesan officials have reportedly branded the meeting a "provocation", pointing out that it comes just before the start of the Catholic World Meeting of the Families.

Benedict, 79, is known to set great store by the event and has urged Catholics all over the world to attend.

He will be present on the last two days and will give a closing speech on the Saturday evening and then preside over a public mass at the cathedral the following morning These two appointments will offer him ample opportunity - if he wishes - to comment on recent political innovations, including so-called 'gay marriage'.

The Catholic Church is extremely hostile to such innovations, seeing them as a threat to the traditional family based on marriage between heterosexuals.

Spain's ambassador to the Holy See Francisco Vazquez admitted recently that Zapatero's government had "stuck a finger in the Church's eye" by approving the law on same-sex marriages two days before Benedict's inauguration.

Another development which has alarmed the Vatican regards the teaching of religion in Spanish schools. Hundreds of thousands of Spanish Catholics protested in November after Zapatero's Socialist government presented a bill to make religion classes optional.

[QUOTE][DIM]7pt[=DIM]Scritto da: benefan 12/06/2006 18.55

Family tensions hang over pope trip

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Well, I'm not so afraid of that. I'm more afraid of unexpected demonstrations and protests from gays and liberals during papal visit and which, I'm sure the govt. and the police will simply pretend and ignore. Hope they won't end up in clashes with the faithfuls...

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Crossroads: "Well, I'm not so afraid of that. I'm more afraid of unexpected demonstrations and protests from gays and liberals during papal visit. I'm sure the govt. and the police will simply pretend and ignore these. Hope they won't end up in clashes... "

Benefan: I'm worried about that too. Back in 1989, Papa came to New York to give a talk on the Bible and was shouted down twice by groups of gay demonstrators. The police had to be called in. Now that he is pope and the church has been so vocal against civil unions and gay adoption, he is an even bigger target. I'm sure the majority of Spaniards will welcome him warmly but there are sure to be some nasty protests. I hope they are kept at a great distance from him. Unfortunately, I think the government wouldn't mind at all to see him embarrassed.

Synod Secretariat will soon
give Pope an outline


VATICAN CITY, JUNE 12, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops will soon hand Benedict XVI an outline which he will use to write an apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist.

The Vatican press office announced the news Saturday, in the wake of a June 1-2 meeting of the Ordinary Council of the synod's General Secretariat. The council comprises 12 members elected by the synodal assembly, and three appointed by the Pope.

The synod gathered bishops from all over the world in Rome, who met last Oct. 2-23 to address the theme: "The Eucharist, Source and Summit of the Life and Mission of the Church."

According to the Vatican press statement, the objective of the ordinary meeting of the General Secretariat was to examine "an outline for the elaboration of the proposals" presented by the bishops in that synod, which will serve as the basis for the Pope's writing of the postsynodal apostolic exhortation.

On meeting with the participants in the gathering, Benedict XVI said on June 1 that he was eager to publish this document.

John Allen's wordy article is too much for my brain, but I'd just like to tell him that our Papa's pilgrimage to Poland was a HUGE SUCCESS. He won over all the Polish faithful, young and old. He was greeted with enormous enthusiam and respect everywhere he went. He showed them how much he loved and still loves John Paul, but he also made a great impression HIMSELF. They now love Benedict XVI and have "moved on", though they will always love their own son, John Paul. NO, our Papa is NOT a pope of the inside pages - he is a pope of headlines a foot high on the front pages!!!!!
All the reasons given for Joseph Ratzinger's suitability as the next successor to Peter [see one of the articles above] were correct and are correct. Some of Europe, sadly, needs to be re-evangelised, not least Spain, where "gay" [yuck!] marriages are now legal. I wish Papa would accept the invitation to come to Britain. Our police force would make sure that there were no demonstrations against him - or if any seemed likely, they would be stopped and kept away from his sight. Come to England, dearest Papa....PLEASE!!!!!
Love and Peace - Mary x

[Last year, a woman reporter from Scotland wrote a very moving and sometimes humorous article about her accidental participation in the event described below. It's quite a big deal in Rome.]


Pope to lead Corpus Christi procession through Rome

Jun. 12 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI will lead the traditional Eucharistic procession through the streets of Rome on the feast of Corpus Christi, which is celebrated in Italy on Thursday, June 15.

The Holy Father will celebrate Mass in the basilica of St. John Lateran at 7 in the evening. Immediately following the Mass he will board a vehicle on which a monstrance will be displayed for the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament. This vehicle will lead the way down the Via Merulana to the basilica of St. Mary Major, with hundreds of pilgrims following, praying and singing hymns. At St. Mary Major the Pope will offer Benediction, concluding the Corpus Christi observance. During his Angelus audience on Sunday, June 11, the Pope invited all the faithful to join in the traditional ceremony. Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the vicar for Rome, issued an open letter to the people of the diocese, asking them to participate. The cardinal also asked residents to display candles in their windows and doors if they live along the route that the procession will pass.

The solemnity of Corpus Christi, dedicated to the mystery of the Eucharist, concludes the cycle of feasts following Easter. The date is fixed by the Vatican as the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, which is turn is the Sunday after Pentecost.

The feast day was first officially celebrated at Liege in 1246, and extended to the universal Church by Pope Urban IV in 1264. In Italy the traditional feast dates back to the 15th century, and the route of the annual procession was set in the 16th century.

The procession through Rome was abandoned in 1870, after Italian forces took Rome from the papacy. Pope John Paul II (bio - news) revived the tradition in 1979.

Thanks to Ratzi-lella in the main forum for this article from this week's issue of the Italian weekly magazine Panorama. Here is a translation -

Setting the stage
for a Moscow visit
By Ignacio Ingrao

After the visit to Poland and the scheduled trip to Istanbul, Papa Ratzinger now hopes to enter St. Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square in Moscow.

To do this, he has an ace up his sleeve: the proposal of a joint declaration with Alexei II, Patriarch of all the Russias, in defense of the Christian roots of Europe.

Benedict XVI’s road to Moscow goes through Poland. One development in the Pope’s recent trip there which passed almost unnoticed was his encouner with Archbishop Jeremiasz, head of some 500,000 Orthodox Christians who live in Poland.

Karol Wojtyla’s nationality had been one of the principal obstacles to making a historic trip to Russia, and the German Pope has apparently decided to start from Poland to realize what had seemed to be an impossible dream till the present: a meeting in Moscow with Alexei II.

Joseph Ratzinger wanted Cardinal Walter Kasper with him in Poland – Kasper being the principal actor so far in the Church’s dialog with the Orthodox churches.

The Orthodox community has not remained indifferent to Benedict XVI’s attentions. At the end of the ecumenical prayer in the Luterhan cathedral of Warsaw, Archbishop Jeremiasz did something outside protocol which indicated his state of mind: he gave his own personal rosary to the Pope as a token of reconciliation.

In the following months, new stages are foreseen in Benedict’s efforts at rapprocchement with Moscow.

The first one will take place in Moscow on July 2-4. A vanguard of six cardinals – among them Kasper himself; Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical councils for culture and inter-religious dialog; Roger Etchegaray and Theodore McCarrick – will be attending a summti of religious leaders promoted by the Moscow Patriarchate on the occasion of Russia’s turn to take the presidency of the G8, the council of the world’s 8 top industrialized nations. The cardinals will be meeting with Alexei II.

“The summit will allow religious authorities to insist once again on the need to work together against pseudo-religious ideas which only serve to divide mankind, against terrorism and violence, in favor of consolidating the ethical principles about and the family,” the Patriarch said in a statement that indicated the topics for discussion.

The next stage will be in Belgrade, Serbia, from September 18-25, for the resumption of meetings by the official commission for theological dialog between Catholics and Orthodox churches. It has been six years since the commission met last, paralyzed by major differences encountered.

Papa Ratzinger has reconstituted the Catholic panel and the commission is now under the joint chairmanship of Cardinal Kasper and the Orthodox Metropolitan of Pergamon (Greece), Johannis Zizioulas.

At first glance, the theme of the Belgrade meeting is workmanlike: “Ecclesiological and canonical consequences of the sacramental structure of the Church: Conciliarity and authority”.

Actually, it covers the most divisive questions which have kept the Catholic and Orthodox churches apart for 10 centuries: the authority and primacy of the Pope; the problem of Uniatism (the orthodox churches who have reunified with Rome); and the reciprocal recognition of sacraments [performed in each other’s churches].

The success of the Belgrade talks will determine the future of the Catholic-Orthodox reunification which Ratzinger identified as one of his priorities from the very start of his Pontificate.

The two sides of the commission have been at work since November 2005 preparing the documents that will be discussed in Belgrade, hoping they will be able to come out with joint declarations.

The third stage of the road to Moscow will take place on November 30, when the Pope visits the ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Istanbul. Constantinople (as the Orthodox still refer to it) could be the door through which Benedict will enter Moscow.

Howeever, Cardinal Kasper told Panorama recently, with a smile: “This trip to Russia is a fixation with you journalists….First, there are so many other items to discuss with the Patriachate of Moscow. Only afterwards can we start to talk about an eventual meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch.”

Kasper was referring to the preconditions stated by the Patriarchate of Moscow for such a meeting. Among these, above all, the question of what Moscow calls ‘proselytism’: it accuses the Catholic Church of being too active in Russia in seeking conversions through the promise of material aid or psychological pressures. In turn, however, Russian Catholics complain that they are being marginalized and ‘crushed’ by the national Orthodox church.

The second concern of the Moscow Patriarchate is Uniatism, in particular as it refers to the restitution of church assets seized by the Communists. [In other words, would assets seized from churches which were Russian Orthodox at the time be returned to them now that they are reunited with the Catholic Church, or to the Russian Orthodox Church?]

Rather intricate problems, obviously.

But Ratzinger has the ace that may cause the Moscow Patriarchate to let down its defenses: the proposal of a holy alliance in defense of the Christian roots of the continent.

“To give back a soul to Europe” – this was the theme of the encounter directly inspired by the Pope which took place in Vienna on May 3-5 recently. Meeting as guests of the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, one of the Pope’s most influential advisers, were representatives of the Pontifical council for culture and the department of external relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, headed by the Number-2 man in the Russian Orthodox hierarchy, Metropolitan Kiril of Smolensk.

The theme was discussed between Metropolitan Kiril and the Pope when they met at the Vatican on May 18.

The thaw is under way and it is giving rise to unprecedented hopes.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/06/2006 2.18]

The (secular) media can't understand it. I'm sure this is simplifying things way too much, but the secular can never understand the sacred. So I suppose it's no surprise that they have a hard time covering a sacred event. A prime example was the way the reporters covered the election of Pope Benedict.

They could only discuss it in secular terms, like any other election. So we heard about 'power', 'politics', 'liberals' and 'conservatives'. They even speculated on some cardinals 'running', 'accumulating votes', etc. and a whole host of other nonsense that has nothing to do with the election of a pope. We even heard the first homily compared to an acceptance speech!

Only when we got to hear the Cardinals themselves speak about it, we heard the truth. They said they 'discerned', they sought to listen to the Holy Spirit. They prayed. And God, of course, worked through them.

Pope Benedict is doing his job. Brilliantly. He was hired and promoted by God to the Top Job, and no-one can argue with that. Whether they consider it newsworthy, or not.

Luigi Accatoli is the lead Vatican correspondent of Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper.

Last month, he started a blog which our Italian sisters took note of because he has been writing little pieces in praise of Benedict - things which do not find their way into his reporting about the Pope. Their wish, of course, is that he could be as laudatory of the Pope in his reports as he is on the blog.

I have had occasion to mention previously that I have found his reporting on Benedict consistently objective and fair, even if his newspaper is reputed to be anti-clerical if not anti-Pope, and that whenever he is invited to address public groups about the Vatican or Benedict, he has proven to be quite a Benedict supporter.

Here is a recent blog inspired by the Pope's brief message at Angelus last Sunday:
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“God is not infinite solitude, but communion of light and love, life given and received in an eternal dialog between Father and Son in the Holy Spirit: Lover, Beloved and Love.” So spoke the theologian Pope at Angelus on Sunday.

Warm inventive words. It is not the first time that Benedict XVI wagers on the force of his words, and a I believe that one day everyone will realize it. I promise those who visit this blog that I will alert them whenever this force is manifested.

Here I recall five cases that had struck me most before Sunday.

“The desert of God’s obscurity,” he said on April 24, 2005, in the homily that formally launched his Pontificate, and went on to list all the ‘deserts’ in which mankind today, like the lost sheep of the Gospel, has lost its way.

“In the Church we only have free brothers and sisters of Christ. The wind and fire of the Holy Spirit should unceasingly open those barriers which we men copntinue to raise against each other.” Pentecost, May 15, 2005.

In Cologne, on August 21, 2005, he proposed a daring analogy between the eucharistic mystery and nuclear fission: “It is, to use an image that is well-known to us today, nuclear fission brought into the most intimate of our being – the victory of love over hate, the victory of love over death. Only this intimate explosion of good which trumphs over evil can trigger the chain reaction that can change the world gradually.”

With the same intuition, on Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s, he spoke of the “great mutation” in referring to the Resurrection: “The resurrection of Christ…is – if we can use the language of evolutionary theory – the greatest “mutation,” the most decisive leap towards a totally new dimension which had never been reached in the long story of life and its development: a leap towards a completely new order which concerns us and all of history.”

In Czestochowa, on May 26, he said that in the faith, we are able to “touch” God.: “Through faith, we can open a way through concepts, even theological concepts, to be able to touch the living God. And God, once touched, immediately transmits his strength to us.”

To speak of mystery, Benedict “pushes” the language. The fact that he is not Italian gives him greater liberty, at least as far as the translation of his texts into our language. In his language, we hear extraordinary things. The force of words befits Ratzinger, in the same way that Wojtyla availed of gestures.

IN SUPPORT OF THE POPE

Prayer vigil to support Benedict XVI

Jun. 13 (CWNews.com) - The Movement for Family Love has organized an evening of prayer for Pope Benedict XVI, to be held in St. Peter's Square on June 16. Archbishop Angelo Comastri, the vicar general for Vatican City, will preside.

The Movement for Family Love explained that the effort was a response to the Holy Father's request for prayers on behalf of his ministry. The evening will include recitation of the Rosary and a candlelight procession under the window of the papal apartment in the apostolic palace.

Since the start of his pontificate, Benedict XVI has made a point of asking frequently for prayers. On April 19, 2006, as he marked the anniversary of his election to the papacy, he remarked: "I always knew that I would not be able to carry out this job-- this mission-- alone." He offered "my heartfelt thanks to all those who, in various ways, remain with me in spirit, and follow me from afar, with their affection and their prayers."