A French Catholic site known for its unconventional viewpoints had a very persuasive analysis of how it could be easily proven that the demonstrations protesting the Pope's Regensburg lecture were clearly manipulated and orchestrated.

But then it came to the startling conclusion that among those who fomented all the trouble are elements of the Church who disapprove of rapprochement with the Orthodox Churches, and who saw in the Pope's theme of Greek culture as an integral part of Christian thought a positive signal to the Orthodox Church on the eve of his visit to Bartholomew I in Istanbul.

As far out as that may seem, it does call attention to the fact that much of the Pope's lecture was devoted to Greek thought - not only considering the Greek component of Christian thought integral but also decrying the efforts at dehellenizing Christianity in the Western Churches.

Here is a commentary, translated from the French, by a ranking Orthodox priest who read the Pope's lecture from the Orthodox point of view:
----------------------------------------------------------------


Rage, pride and the Pope
By Maxim Kozlov
Archpriest, Church of St. Tatiana
Professor, Spiritual Academy of Moscow
9/26/2006


On September 12 in Regensburg, in his native country, Pope Benedict XVI delivered, at the University, before a scientific community [Bavarian scientists, in fact, as well as professors and students of the University of Regensburg] a lecture dedicated to the relationship between faith and reason, between faith and violence, between Christianity and Hellenism.

The lecture was delivered in a Christian land, at the faculty of theology, and addressed to scientists and academics, but many have chosen to hear only a single citation taken from a dialog between the Bynzatine Emperor Manuel II Paleologue and a Muslim, a dialog which took place at the dawn of the 15th century, shortly before the tragic fall of Byzantium.

One cannot miss the tragic irony of the protests today. The Islamists who have risen up against the citation made by the Pope about Mohammed illustrate that very citation in the most eloquent way, in their effort to demand respect through violence.

As though it were possible to oblige anyone to love God or to impose respect for a religion under threats of death or terrorist attacks.

In the following part of his lecture, Benedict dwelt on the role of Greek heritage in the development of Christian thought, on the assimilation of Hellenism by Christianity, and evoked the tragic consequences for the Western religious tradition of the dehellenization which began in the era of late scholasticism and has continued to mark the theological tradition of the Western churches.

For us in the Orthodox Church, it was this part of Benedict's lecture that was, in my opinion, the most important. It is testimony that the Greek tradition precisely, which has been deliberately extinguished in the Western tradition, is a treasure of the faith that unites all Christians belonging to the historical churches.

But no one speaks of it, because it is theological, it requires thought, it requires a familiarity with Plato and with Phaidon.

In contrast, the mention of Mohammed's name in a citation has provoked a storm in the Muslim world. The storm has stirred up everything: diplomatic notes, recall of ambassadors, declarations by muftis (from Somalia and Morocco to the smallest district mosque in Eastern Europe), calls to kill, to destroy, to pulverize, to morally nullify the Pope, to force him to make an apology, in fact wanting him to say outright "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet."

In this eruption of hysteria in the Muslim world, we see the hidden face of liberal cowering that secular humanism has imposed in these last two decades. Watch out against raising certain subjects, certain names, certain tendencies unless with enthusiasm; do not dare to make the least criticism of homosexuals, Jews, national minorities, liberal atheists, free-thinking university professors.

Now, the new rule is: don't you dare talk about Muslims other than in glowing terms. And it is forbidden to cite a medieval text which reflects faithfully what was happening at that point in time, when Constantinople was under siege and would be pillaged a few decades later, and when Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque.

To read a historical citation has now become dangerous even for the head of the largest Christian church!

Benedict's refusal to make an apology - while the Vatican has issued clarifications - or to say he regrets making the citation is an event. And every man who feels in his heart that he is Christian should rejoice, because it gives us all the great hope that we are abandoning the false and hypocritical ecumenism that has gone on for decades for a new ecumenism - that which Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was exiled from his country by miserable villains, spoke about when he received the Templeton Prize.

Of course, Christianity is a religion of tolerance, as Benedict XVI has repeated in subsequent statements. A Christian cannot but be respectful of the profound devotion of someone from another religion. Egyptian peasant or Indonesian fisherman, Malaysian girl or Moroccan mother, can evoke in us far more affection and respect than fellow Russians who are, say, impenitent drug addicts in Moscow or Vladivostok.

But respect for the devotion of Muslims and our acknowledgment that Islam is a monotheistic religion (closer in this sense to Christianity than, say, paganism) are not synonyms for religious indifference or agreement with the stupid secular liberal thesis that alll religions are equivalent.

Yes, they are all equal under the law. But a Christian, who wishes to remain Christian, will never say that all religions are equal, that all prophets are authentic, and that every religion has its truth.

Truth is One, and we know Who this Truth is. He who said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."

Along these lines, there is hope that the new round of Catholic-Orthodox dialog which got under way in Belgrade bewteen the local Orthodox Chruches and the Roman Catholic Church is not just a simple gathering of learned theologians whose resolutions, as in the past, will only be deposited in archives, but will accomplish the words of Christ about unity - not through clever compromises and a surrender of truth - of men fully conscious of being together under the single arch of Christ's Church.

The Church finds itself today in the crossfire coming from all sides, from east and west, to force it to yield so that, on the one hand, it will not prevent women from being covered under a veil, and on the other, it will allow some to live as they please, even if they blaspheme the Cross.

In this sense, as paradoxical as it may sound, one sees on the same side of the barricade those who would shoot women who refuse to put on the veil as well as those who show off their nudity to outrage the religious. For the one as for the other, the religion of love and freedom brought by Christ is unacceptable because it will not permit them to live as they please, and as they - liberal atheists or religious fanatics - would force us to live. We don't have the right to accept
all that.

God forbid I speak too soon, but have you all noticed that the Regensburg ruckus appears to have died down?

The last news reported in the mainstream media - at least by Yahoo's count in both its English and Italian news services - was Al-Zawahiri's video message as 'far back' as Sept. 30 (not counting the later hijack story because it had absolutely nothing to do with it).

The last street demonstration reported was much earlier - from Sept. 22, I think, before the Pope met with Muslim ambassadors even. And I have just been going over the past month's file of Frankfuerter Allgemeine Zeitung and Sueedeutsche Zeitung with the same result.

All in all, it seems the big controversy raged 18 days at the most, from the day of the lecture, or 16 days, if we count from the first reported Muslim reaction (from the Turkish religious affairs officer) which only came out on September 14 in all the media I have been able to check so far. Even Muslims in Germany itself began reacting only after that first reaction from Turkey.

The 'acute phase' of the reaction to Regensburg is far shorter than the uproar over the Danish cartoons, in which not only media discussion but actual demonstrations were rampant.

And shorter than the Muslim mini-uprising in the suburbs of Paris and a few other cities in France last fall, when the burning orgies alone lasted at least three weeks. (In hindsight, that episode must have colored Chirac's fearful admonition to the Pope last month that he should be more careful with what he says - even if the Paris burnings were provoked by something other than words, a police arrest of some Muslim youths, if I remember right!)

So what can we conclude? That the instigators of the demonstrations, not to mention the participants themselves, have lost interest in the issue? Or at least, not enough to put any more effort into their 'protests'? That the governments of the Muslim nations addressed by the Pope have told the inflammatory imams and muftis to calm down? That the Pope's own words, God bless him, have registered in their true context?

Whatever the reason, thank God!

================================================================

Meanwhile from
www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idarticle=5980
here's news about a great initiative:

Pope's messages will be
available online in Arabic

The weekly papal address to the world concerning the Catholic faith will now be available in Arabic on a website sponsored by the International Center for Study and Research-Oasis.

Launched in 2004 by the Patriarch of Venice, Angelo Cardinal Sodano, the center features papal documents as well as theological texts in Arabic, and in the following language pairs: Italian-Arabic, English-Arabic, French-Arabic, and English-Urdu.

This project came as a response to a call issued by Pope John Paul II at the Great Omayyad Mosque in Damascus in 2001, who said that a place of prayer is an oasis where people can encounter a "Merciful God".

Camille Eid, a Lebanese journalist for Avennire, an Italian newspaper, will undertake the translation of the weekly papal messages.

Writings by authors such as Lewis, Guardini, de Lubac, Guitton, and others will also be featured in order to acquaint Arab-speaking readers with important works of spirituality and theology that had been available only in European languages. The website explains that this project is part of an effort at intercultural dialogue.

The website states, “Oasis, as a group and expressive tool, can in some way favour the birth of a communion group whose protagonists are Christians from the West, the Middle and Far East, and Africa. This will lead us to listen to each other, know each other and understand each other. An important consequence of this will be to help us confront the ‘Muslim’ phenomenon and more generally the phenomenon of the great religions.”

The Oasis Center publishes a magazine available throughout much of the world and at subsidized rates for subscribers in Indonesia, as well as parts of Africa and the Middle East. In Italy, books published in cooperation with Oasis will be available as well.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 1.20]

This is not news strictly, but it is apropos to what has been in the news lately and it deserves to be brought up and reviewed because it answers so many criticisms levelled at the Church and at the Pope after the Regensburg lecture.

I am once again indebted to Beatrice on whose site www.beatriceweb.eu she replies to critics of the Church who have been saying since Regensburg that the Church would do well to clean up its own act before it looks at the failings of other religions.

The Church has done so, of course, and it is all made clear in a document published in March 2000 by the International Theological Commission under its president, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [One cannot help suspect that the punctilious Prefect wanted to go on the record with the theological underpinnings for John Paul's series of 'mea culpas' in behalf of the Church.]

Called 'MEMORY AND RECONCILIATION: THE CHURCH AND THE FAULTS OF THE PAST', it is a 32-page document that can be found on the Vatican site at -
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20000307_memory-reconc-itc...

I have chosen some excerpts, for those who may not have the time to go through the whole document right away:
---------------------------------------------------------------


PRELIMINARY NOTE

The study of the topic “The Church and the Faults of the Past” was proposed to the International Theological Commission by its President, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in view of the celebration of the Jubilee Year 2000.

A sub-commission was established to prepare this study; it was composed of Rev. Christopher BEGG, Msgr. Bruno FORTE (President), Rev. Sebastian KAROTEMPREL, S.D.B., Msgr. Roland MINNERATH, Rev. Thomas NORRIS, Rev. Rafael SALAZAR CARDENAS, M.Sp.S., and Msgr. Anton STRUKELJ.

The general discussion of this theme took place in numerous meetings of the sub-commission and during the plenary sessions of the International Theological Commission held in Rome from 1998 to 1999. The present text was approved in forma specifica by the International Theological Commission, by written vote, and was then submitted to the President, Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who gave his approval for its publication.


From the Introduction

The Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, Incarnationis mysterium (November 29, 1998), includes the purification of memory among the signs “which may help people to live the exceptional grace of the Jubilee with greater fervor.”

This purification aims at liberating personal and communal conscience from all forms of resentment and violence that are the legacy of past faults, through a renewed historical and theological evaluation of such events.

This should lead - if done correctly - to a corresponding recognition of guilt and contribute to the path of reconciliation. Such a process can have a significant effect on the present, precisely because the consequences of past faults still make themselves felt and can persist as tensions in the present.

The purification of memory is thus “an act of courage and humility in recognizing the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian.”...

In reiterating that “Christians are invited to acknowledge, before God and before those offended by their actions, the faults which they have committed,” the Pope (John Paul II)concludes, “Let them do so without seeking anything in return, but strengthened only by ‘the love of God which has been poured into our hearts’ (Rom 5:5).”(2)

.......

Still quoting John Paul II:

“Hence it is appropriate that as the second millennium of Christianity draws to a close the Church should become ever more fully conscious of the sinfulness of her children, recalling all those times in history when they departed from the spirit of Christ and his Gospel and, instead of offering to the world the witness of a life inspired by the values of faith, indulged in ways of thinking and acting which were truly forms of counter-witness and scandal...".

.........

Purifying the memory means eliminating from personal and collective conscience all forms of resentment or violence left by the inheritance of the past, on the basis of a new and rigorous historical-theological judgement, which becomes the foundation for a renewed moral way of acting.

[This expresses] a new assessment of past history, which is capable of producing a different characterization of the relationships lived in the present. The memory of division and opposition is purified and substituted by a reconciled memory, to which everyone in the Church is invited to be open and to become educated.

The following is from a footnote:

For example, the Pope, addressing himself to the Moravians, asked “forgiveness, on behalf of all Catholics, for the wrongs caused to non-Catholics in the course of history” (cf. Canonization of Jan Sarkander in the Czech Republic, May 21, 1995).

The Holy Father also wanted to undertake “an act of expiation” and ask forgiveness of the Indians of Latin America and from the Africans deported as slaves (Message to the Indians of America, Santo Domingo, October 13, 1992, and General Audience Discourse of October 21, 1992).

Ten years earlier he had already asked forgiveness from the Africans for the way in which they had been treated (Discourse at Yaoundé, August 13, 1985).

..........

To the counter-witness of the division between Christians should be added that of the various occasions in the past millennium when doubtful means were employed in the pursuit of good ends, such as the proclamation of the Gospel or the defense of the unity of the faith.

“Another sad chapter of history to which the sons and daughters of the Church must return with a spirit of repentance is that of the acquiescence given, especially in certain centuries, to intolerance and even the use of force in the service of truth.”

This refers to forms of evangelization that employed improper means to announce the revealed truth or did not include an evangelical discernment suited to the cultural values of peoples or did not respect the consciences of the persons to whom the faith was presented, as well as all forms of force used in the repression and correction of errors.

Analogous attention should be paid to all the failures, for which the sons and daughters of the Church may have been responsible, to denounce injustice and violence in the great variety of historical situations:

“Then there is the lack of discernment by many Christians in situations where basic human rights were violated. The request for forgiveness applies to whatever should have been done or was passed over in silence because of weakness or bad judgement, to what was done or said hesitantly or inappropriately.”

.......

A special section is devoted to offenses against the Jews - and this should have been cited when the Pope was criticized for his speech at Auschwitz-Birkenau. How much more explicit could this admission of guilt be?

The relationship between Christians and Jews is one of the areas requiring a special examination of conscience. “...(T)he history of the relations between Jews and Christians is a tormented one... In effect, the balance of these relations over two thousand years has been quite negative.”

The hostility or diffidence of numerous Christians toward Jews in the course of time is a sad historical fact and is the cause of profound remorse for Christians aware of the fact that “Jesus was a descendent of David; that the Virgin Mary and the Apostles belonged to the Jewish people; that the Church draws sustenance from the root of that good olive tree onto which have been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles (cf. Rom 11:17-24); that the Jews are our dearly beloved brothers, indeed in a certain sense they are ‘our elder brothers.’”

The Shoah was certainly the result of the pagan ideology that was Nazism, animated by a merciless anti-Semitism that not only despised the faith of the Jewish people, but also denied their very human dignity.

Nevertheless, “it may be asked whether the Nazi persecution of the Jews was not made easier by the anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in some Christian minds and hearts... Did Christians give every possible assistance to those being persecuted, and in particular to the persecuted Jews?”

There is no doubt that there were many Christians who risked their lives to save and to help their Jewish neighbors. It seems, however, also true that “alongside such courageous men and women, the spiritual resistance and concrete action of other Christians was not that which might have been expected from Christ’s followers.”

This fact constitutes a call to the consciences of all Christians today, so as to require “an act of repentance (teshuva),”(87) and to be a stimulus to increase efforts to be “transformed by renewal of your mind” (Rom 12:2), as well as to keep a “moral and religious memory” of the injury inflicted on the Jews. In this area, much has already been done, but this should be confirmed and deepened.

................

The conclusion of the declaration particularly bears Joseph Ratzinger's characteristic imprint in its upholding of the truth as the guiding principle in the purification of memory:

At the conclusion of this reflection, it is appropriate to stress yet again that in every form of repentance for the wrongs of the past, and in each specific gesture connected with it, the Church addresses herself in the first place to God and seeks to give glory to him and to his mercy....

By such actions, the Church also gives witness to her trust in the power of the truth that makes us free (cf. Jn 8:32). Her request for pardon must not be understood as an expression of false humility or as a denial of her 2,000-year history, which is certainly rich in merit in the areas of charity, culture, and holiness.

Instead she responds to a necessary requirement of the truth, which, in addition to the positive aspects, recognizes the human limitations and weaknesses of the various generations of Christ’s disciples.”

Recognition of the Truth is a source of reconciliation and peace because, as the Holy Father also states, “Love of the truth, sought with humility, is one of the great values capable of reuniting the men of today through the various cultures.”

Because of her responsibility to Truth, the Church “cannot cross the threshold of the new millennium without encouraging her children to purify themselves, through repentance, of past errors and instances of infidelity, inconsistency and slowness to act.

Acknowledging the weaknesses of the past is an act of honesty and courage…” It opens a new tomorrow for everyone.

---------------------------------------------------------------

In the interest of thoroughness, insofar as this review is concerned, I am also excerpting from the statement read on the same occasion (presentation of the document) by Archbishop Piero Marini, who spoke to explain the Mass liturgy planned for the Day of Pardon that John Paul II had declared for the Sunday after this prrsentation, 3/12/00, at St. Peter's Basilica.

Marini enumerated the errors and sins covered by the Church's self-accusation (which were presumably to be enunciated at the Mass):
----------------------------------------------------------------

The reference to errors and sins in a liturgy must be frank and capable of specifying guilt; yet given the number of sins committed in the course of twenty centuries, it must necessarily be rather summary. It is also appropriate that it should take into account the admissions of sin already made both by Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II himself, on numerous occasions in the course of his Pontificate.

These include:

a) a general confession of sin: purification of memory and commitment to the path of true conversion
(cf. Paul VI, 4 January 1964 at Calvary in Jerusalem)

b) sins committed in the service of truth: sins of intolerance and violence against dissidents, wars of religion, acts of violence and oppression during the Crusades, methods of coercion employed in the Inquisition...
(cf. John Paul II, Pro Memoria for the Consistory of 13 June 1994, 7; "Tertio millennio adveniente", 35)

c) sins which have compromised the unity of the Body of Christ: excommunications, persecutions, divisions...
(cf. John Paul II, "Tertio millennio adveniente", 34; "Ut unum sint", 34 and 82; Paderborn, 22 June 1996)

d) sins regarding relations with the people of the first Covenant, Israel: contempt, hostility, failure to speak out...
(cf. John Paul II, Mainz, 17 November 1980; Vatican Basilica, 7 December 1991; Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, "We Remember", 16 March 1998, No. 4)

e) sins against love, peace, the rights of peoples and respect for cultures and other religions which took place during the work of evangelization...
(cf. John Paul II, Assisi, 27 October 1986; Santo Domingo, 13 October 1992; General Audience, 21 October 1992)

f) sins against human dignity and the unity of the human race: against women, races and ethnic groups...(cf. John Paul II, Angelus Message, 10 June 1995; Letter to Women, 29 June 1995)

g) sins against basic rights of the person and against social justice: the defenceless, the poor and the unborn, economic and social injustices, emargination...
(cf. John Paul II, Yaoundé, 13 August 1985; General Audience, 3 June 1992)

One thing must be forcefully stated: the confession of sins made by the Pope is addressed to God, who alone can forgive sins, but it is also made before men, from whom the responsibilities of Christians cannot be hidden.

...the confession clearly points to certain historical failings, but the parties responsible are neither judged nor named. The confession takes place within context of the solidarity of sinners: the baptized of the present are conscious of their link to the baptized of the past.

Judgment is not passed on Christians of earlier times, nor are extenuating circumstances overlooked, but regret is expressed and the evil done is confessed as we take upon ourselves the failings of those who have preceded us.

........

Confessing the historical sins of Christians is not however aimed solely at the purification of memory: it is also meant to be an occasion for a change of mentality and certain attitudes in the Church, as well as the source of a new teaching for the future, in the consciousness that the sins of the past remain as temptations in the present.

The confession of sins is a means of favouring dialogue, reconciliation and peace.
-------------------------------------------------------------


Human memory is short, alas, and it is good to remind everyone that the Church has done its homework and its part toward a proper purification for past offenses - the catalog enumerated above is quite exhaustive and breath-taking!

It remains for others to do the same.

In the thread IN HIS OWN WORDS, I have posted a translation of excerpts posted by Beatrice from a book by Cardinal Ratzinger called "Walking with God" (which does not have an English edition), in which he describes the questions confronted by the International Theological Commission in drawing up the document "Memory and Reconciliation."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/10/2006 7.48]

The Italian news agency Agr reported today from Tehran that the scheduled visit of ex-president Mohammad Khatami with Pope Benedict XVI on October 26 has been posponed 'for December of January," according to a diplomatic source, who said there was no particular reason for the postponement.

Other informed sources said, however, it had to do with 'internal questions' in Iran.

When the text of the Pope's Regensburg lecture was released on the day he delivered it, 9/12/06 - Two days before the first reported protest to it - there was a note at the end which read:

---

NOTE:
The Holy Father intends to supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes. The present text must therefore be considered provisional.

---

It was not particularly remarkable, because footnotes are expected to be part of an academic text.

The Vatican placed the complete lecture in its final version online today. [I have posted it in the VOYAGE TO BAVARIA thread, while retaining the original 9/12/06 post on Page 5 of the ...BAVARIA thread.]

Providentially, the addition of the footnotes and references, as required for an academic paper, has given the Holy Father a chance to put on the record - for posterity - his comments on the passage that drew a storm of Muslim protests all over the world. These are in Footnotes 3 and 5 of the complete text.

He also added a phrase to further qualify his original description of the manner in which the emperor Manuel II Paleologos phrases his question to his Persian interlocutor.

Where the original German had been translated in the English version as "he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely on the central question of...", the new translation is both closer to and more explicit than the German original*:

---

"... he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” [3]

Footnote [3] reads:
[3] Controversy VII, 2 c: Khoury, pp. 142-143; Förstel, vol. I, VII. Dialog 1.5, pp. 240-241. In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Qur’an, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion. In quoting the text of the Emperor Manuel II, I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic.

---

The other footnote addressing the controversy was to this statement:

---

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature.[5]

[5] It was purely for the sake of this statement that I quoted the dialogue between Manuel and his Persian interlocutor. In this statement the theme of my subsequent reflections emerges.

---

The second of two modifications has to do with a disputed point -- whether the 'peaceful' surah ["There is no compulsionm in religion"] came from Mohammed's Medina or Mecca years. One pro-Pope commentator, Khalid Fouad Allam, openly corrected the Pope and said it belonged to Mohammed's later years, as did the Libyan scholar who undertook to refute the entire lecture.

However, Fr. Samir noted in one of his early articles about this issue that there was disagreement among Koran scholars about dating the surah, but that the Saudi Arabian Koran - considered the 'most official' version, according to Samir - dates it to Mohammed's earlier years as the Pope did.

So, where the original text read "It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat." - it now reads qualifiedly: "According to some of the experts, this is probably one of the suras of the early period..."

----------------------------------------------------------------


*In a post on Page 54 of this thread about the inadequate English translation of the German text,I cited blogger Horace Hodges's analysis and translation of this introductory sentence.

The original German text read:
'in erstaunlich schroffer, uns überraschend schroffer Form ganz einfach', which Hodges translated as ;
[He addresses his interlocutor] with an astounding brusqueness, for us an astounding brusqueness, bluntly...' where the original English version simply said 'somewhat brusquely'.

Even without a knowledge of German, it is rather obvious that whoever translated it originally into English did a bad job of reducing both the actual phraseology and the sense of the Pope's description of the emperor's question - eliminating almost any distance between the Pope who is citing the quotation and the man who originally said it.

Thus, in the final German text, the revision in this sentence was much simpler - just replacing the word 'überraschend' (surprising) with 'unannehmbar' (unacceptable), so that the clause now reads: 'in erstaunlich schroffer, uns unannehmbar schroffer Form ganz einfach'...'

Imagine how much more critical it is for the Arabic version to get this right!


----------------------------------------------------------------

Now, the wire-service reports:


Pope says he understands
Muslim anger over comments
By Philip Pullella


VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict took another step on Monday toward mending relations with Muslims, saying he understood their indignation over his controversial comments and assuring them of his respect for their "great religion."

The Pope's latest attempt at clarification of his comments, made in a September 12 lecture at Regensburg University in his native Germany, were in footnotes to the original speech posted on the Vatican's website.

In the lecture, the Pope quoted 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

In the footnotes, the Pope again said that his comments had been misunderstood.

"In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation," he said in one footnote.

"I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Koran, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion," he wrote.

"I intended solely to draw out the essential relationship between faith and reason. On this point I am in agreement with Manuel II, but without endorsing his polemic," the Pope wrote.

When he first gave the speech in Germany, the Vatican said it would eventually publish a version with footnotes.

The footnotes were at least the fifth time the Pope has tried to make amends over the speech, which sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries and handed him the toughest international crisis since his election in April, 2005,.

The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech but he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims for the speech.

Some have accused him of undoing decades of bridge-building by his predecessor, Pope John Paul II. [I hope someone comes up with a factual story on just exactly what these 'bridges' are!]

Two weeks ago, he met with ambassadors from predominantly Muslim countries and assured them that he was committed to dialogue with Islam.

Church sources have said the Vatican's annual message to the Islamic world to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan due for late October, was being rewritten to address the tensions that arose after the Pope's lecture.

The Vatican has said the Pope's trip to predominantly Muslim Turkey at the end of November, which some Turks want to be called off, would go ahead as planned.


Pope makes additions
to text on Islam By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has taken another step to placate anger in the Islamic world over his remarks on holy war, making additions to his original text affirming that a quotation from a 14th century Byzantine emperor was not his personal opinion.

The Sept. 12 speech that set off protests around the Muslim world said the pope intended to "supply a subsequent version of this text, complete with footnotes." He has done that in recent days, with the English version released on the Vatican's Web site Monday.

The original speech, given at Germany's Regensburg University where he once taught, quoted the emperor as saying: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The original said the emperor's remark was made "somewhat brusquely." In the new version, it says it was made with "a brusqueness that we find unacceptable."

Benedict added in a footnote: "In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader of my text can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Quran, for which I have the respect due to the holy book of a great religion."

He said he cited the text as part of an examination of the "relationship between faith and reason."

Since the uproar over the speech — which has raised a cloud over his planned visit next month to Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country — Benedict has expressed his regrets for offending Muslims. He has met with diplomats from Muslim countries, saying the two faiths must overcome historic enmities and together reject violence.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/10/2006 23.25]

Thomas at www.americanpapist.com/blog.html
does not quite approve of the footnote commentary and other slight modifications in the text of the Regensburg lecture:

---

There are other annotations, but I think it's obvious that this clarification is the only reason the entire project was undertaken. Sadly, it appears to be nothing but more retreating to Muslim pressure.... (A)ctually, I don't believe that the Pope's comment even warrented "understandable indignation." You have no right to be indignant if it was your inability to understand a quotation that caused your reaction.

As for the Pope saying he has "the respect due to the holy book of a great religion," well, for all intents and purposes that is a practically meaningless sentiment. I can't see that kind of general statement swaying anyone. So why try to accomodate unreasonable individuals with language that won't appease them and will instead only serve to weaken the truths that you have tried to reveal about Islam and violence?

Half-apologies, after all, never help anything. Especially when you have nothing to apologize for in the first place.

---

First of all, it is not right, of course, that "this clarification is the only reason the entire project was undertaken.''

That is obvious from the Note that came at the end of the original version of the lecture, given out under embargo to the media before the event, and subsequently published on line once the lecture had been delivered. In which not only were the necessary academic footnotes implied as forthcoming, but text changes were not ruled out by saying that the original version was to be considered 'provisional.'

Of course, the quotation should not have aroused indignation at all, much less 'understandable indignation." But considering who the indignant parties are and their long record of manic touchiness about anything they perceive to be a slight against Muslims, it was 'undertandable' on their terms.

That being so, the Pope is right in having been, through all these, humble enough to say he is sorry for the misunderstanding and the offense it caused - even doing so on more than one occasion (which some staunch supporters of his have not been happy about either).

But just as he did not resort to euphemism - a false, hypocritical but 'politically correct' deference - in the original lecture, he has not had any false pride either in saying "I am sorry", not that he used the quotation at all but that his use of it caused offense.

Does anyone really think he cared a whit that some media analysts immediately gloated "this is the first time a Pope has ever had to say I'm sorry for a personal act"? He was doing the right thing, the Christian response, turning the other cheek, in public, instead of keeping what would have been unacceptable silence - wounded or defiant - on his part. And who better than he can set such an example?

As for his statement about the Koran, it is not meaningless sentiment. He has been consistent about respect for the Koran; and in the lecture, he sets it, as Manuel II does, alongside the Old and New Testaments as one of humanity's "three 'laws' or 'rules of life'" . His problem has been with the interpretation of it.

Others may choose to call the Pope's actions towards the Muslims post-Regensburg as 'appeasement,' with all the Chamberlain connotations that word has come to have. But there is no yielding of principle here, only a gentleman's gesture of courtesy, an overt signal to the other side that he is sincere about wanting dialog - civil dialog, reasoned dialog, productive dialog eventually.

Just because the other side is reacting 'true to form,' so to speak, that should not keep someone who wants to get a genuine dialog started from being courteous, civil, patient and even humble (which is quite other than being humiliated). Never mind if the literal diehards on the other side rebuff and mock his expressions of regret. Decent people of any faith will get his message, and that can only be salutary for everyone.

And so, I believe, Benedict is giving the world yet another lesson from Regensburg, a lesson in personal conduct, a lesson in character.

Thank you Teresa Benedetta for bringing us views on the Regensburg lecture from France and Germany as well as the Orthodox world. (And thanks to you for all the translating you do to keep us well-informed!) Apparently the talks with the Orthodox Church in Belgrade went well and will be resumed next year (instead of two years hence.) Let's hope this is the beginning of a more serious dialogue between the two churchs.

Here's a translation of a report by Deutches Tagespost/KNA from Rome today:

No state welcome
at airport for the Pope

The Turkish Embassy in Rome said today that no special welcome ceremony is planned when the Pope arrives in Ankara next month. There will be a red carpet, but no military honors.

And President Ahmet Necdet Sezer won't be there either. He will welcome the Pope later at the Presidential Palace.

This appears to be an unprecedented non-observance of international protocol for welcoming visiting heads of state. When John Paul II visited Turkey in 1979, he received the full honors including a military gun salute.

The embassy said that the airport did not have the approprtae space for military honors.

There are no plans for the pope to meet with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who will reportedly be attending a NATO summit in Riga at the time of the Pope's visit. Erdogan has said some harsh words against the Pope following the Regensburg lecture.

Turkish media have reported an unofficial program so far that has the Pope flying into Ankara to meet with the Turkish President, then leaving for Izmir the next day to visit Mary's house in Ephesus. He will then proceed to Istanbul where he will celebrate the feast of St. Andrew, patron of the Orthodox Church, on November 30 with Patriarch Bartholomew I.

In Istanbul, the Pope will meet with representatives of the Catholic, Chaldean, Armenian, Jewish and Muslim communities.

---------------------------------------------------------------

To Lily - Thanks for the thought! It's always my pleasure. I only wish I could do a more regular and systematic sampling of foreign media reporting about the Pope in the languages I can handle.

11 October, 2006
VATICAN
Option for dialogue
should not hide
Christian identity

At the general audience, Benedict XVI said upholding one’s identity entails the “strength, clarity and courage of provocation that belong to the faith”.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – Dialogue, yes, but without hiding one’s faith because, the pope recalled today, highlighting the “main and irrefutable lines” of faith is a Christian “duty”, to be undertaken with the same “firm constancy” applied to “the way of indulgence and dialogue” taken by the Council.

When one talks about Christian identity, this entails the “strength, clarity and courage of provocation that belong to the faith”.

The “duty” to manifest one’s identity and the pacific coexistence of people from diverse social categories who are united by the same faith, were the themes tackled by Benedict XVI during the general audience, as he addressed 35,000 people in St Peter’s Square.

Pressing ahead with his illustration of the personalities of the apostles, the pope today dealt with Simon the Canaanite and Jude Thaddeus.

Coming as they did from totally different social realities, they “are an evident sign that Jesus calls his disciples and collaborators from the most diverse social and religious strata, without any preclusion."

"He is interested in people, not social categories or labels! And the great thing is that within the group of his followers, all lived together although they were different, overcoming the imaginable difficulties.

"It was Jesus himself, in fact, who was the reason for their cohesion, in who all came together. This clearly is a lesson for us, who are often inclined to stress differences and perhaps contradictions, forgetting that in Jesus Christ is given to us the strength to calm our conflicts.”

The pope then turned to a letter, attributed to Jude Thaddeus, that harshly criticizes “those who use the grace of God as a pretext to excuse their debauchery and to lead their brothers astray with unacceptable teachings, introducing division within the Church”.

Benedict XVI said “such controversial” language is no longer used today to “state very clearly both what remains distinctive in Christianity as well as that which is incompatible with it.

The way of indulgence and dialogue, which the Second Vatican Council happily took up, should surely be followed with firm constancy. All the same, it should not make one forget the duty to hark back to, and to highlight with the same force, the main and irrefutable lines of our Christian identity.

On the other hand, we must bear in mind that this identity of ours is not only expressed on a merely cultural or superficial level. Rather it calls for the strength, clarity and courage of provocation that belong to the faith.”

The pope added: “It is clear that the author of these lines fully lives his faith, to which belong considerable realities like moral integrity and joy, faith and finally praise, all motivated solely by the goodness of our unique God and the mercy of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is why both Simon the Canaanite and Jude Thaddeus help us to rediscover anew and to live tirelessly the beauty of the Christian faith, capable of bearing strong and at the same time serene witness.


Pope says:
'No dilution
of Christian identity
in dialogue'


VATICAN CITY, 11 October 2006 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict said on Wednesday Christians could not allow their beliefs and identity to be diluted for the sake of dialogue with other religions.

"We have to remember that this identity of ours calls for strength, clarity, and courage in the world in which we live," he told pilgrims and tourists at his weekly general audience.

Since he made controversial comments on Islam a month ago, the question of how much dialogue Catholics should have with other religions has become a point of debate in the Church.

Some Catholics feel they have compromised too much of their Christian identity in the four decades since the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council called for increased dialogue with Muslims, Jews and members of other religions.

The Pope said the dialogue started after the Council "must continue."

"But this path of dialogue that is so necessary must not lead us to forget the duty to firmly underscore the tenets and identity of our Christian faith that cannot be renounced."

In an address at Regensburg University in his native Germany on September 12, the Pope quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who spoke of the Prophet Mohammad's "command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The speech sparked violent protests in several Muslim countries and handed him the toughest international crisis since his election in April 2005.

The leader of more than one billion Catholics has several times expressed regret for the reaction to the speech, saying his words were misunderstood. But he has stopped short of the unequivocal apology wanted by Muslims. [Typical and disgusting MSM device to flog an issue that is virtually dead to keep it alive, when even the Muslims themselves have stopped making the demand!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 15.32]

Francesca in the main forum shares with us this item from an Italian news agency also reported on Sky TV news in Italy:

A site usually used by Iraqi guerillas warns that a 'violent attack' will be launched at 8 p.m. today (Rome time - 2PM, EST) on the Vatican's official Internet site by hackers working for Al-Qaeda's network.

A concerted 'attack' will be launched, it says, by Muslim IT experts who generally tap into the Islamic terrorist sites at that time of day. They call this a demonstration to protest the Pope's words in Regensburg.

The initial appeal, called "New plan to attack the Vatican in defense of the prophet" - was disseminated in the past several days on the Web and has received massive support by users of the Al-Qaeda forums.

The message reads:
"Dear brothers who wish to defend the prophet and who belong to this site and others, dear friends who do not wish to stay silent in the face of vile attacks (and we are sure there are many of you), our prophet has been offended and has not yet been avenged.

"We cannot be satisfied until we have done so, and therefore, we invite you all to this next mission."

The plan is to attack the Vatican site continuously for a period of two days in a way that will keep the Vatican from being able to reopen the site.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Being a technical ignoramus, I ask if this is something feasible, and if so, what can the West's most sophisticated IT minds devise to counter a malefic intention that threatens not just the Vatican but the very democracy and openness that has characterized the worldwide web?

DANICH in the main forum has just added this kinda reassuring update from the online site of La Repubblica:

Roma, 18:01
Police comment
on planned hacker attack

It is more a 'netstrike', a kind of massive digital sit-in rather than a true hacker attack - this is how IT experts among the Italian police describe the Al Qaeda threat against the Vatican site.

They point out that a real hacker attack is characterized by surprise - no one announces it days before!

Investigators think that the extremist appeal launched on the Itnernet is more of a digital tam-tam with the primary objective - ahead of disabling the Vatican site - to call attention to the activities of a particular group.

The 'netstrike' is familiar to net habitues - in effect, it is the temporary paralysis of a a particular site resulting from an overload of simultaneous access requests to the same address.
The best analog is a huge demonstration that manages to block road traffic for a certain time.

Italian police agencies said their communications experts, working with Vatican IT security, will be on guard, but they believe that with available means of advanced net security, any 'damage' will be cirumscribed and may not even cause any temporary inaccessibility to the Vatican site.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 18.40]

GLITCH! It happened again - the item I knew I had posted about the Tridentine mass did not appear to register even if I checked the Forum out on another window, so I re-posted it below. Only to find out now that it did post after all, so I have eliminated this first post, and use this space to mention that the last post in the preceding page was about a planned atack on the Vatican site by Muslim Internet adherents of Al-Qaeda and like organizations, and the IT experts of the Italian police saying they think current safeguards on the Vatican site will lmit any possible 'damage.'

At 2 p.m. when the supposed 'attack' was supposed to start, I logged out of the Vatican site and logged back in to just to seewhat happens...So far, things look normal. Nothing like the temporary disability that closed down the Rtzinger Fan Club site right after the new Pope's name was revealed last year!
SPERIAMO!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 20.19]

This has been reported so many times over the past several months without the expected announcement following, that although I believe now that it will very likely happen this time, I won't hold my breath as yet.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Pope set to ease
Latin Mass restrictions
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer
Wed Oct 11



VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI has decided to loosen restrictions on use of the old Latin Mass, making a major concession to ultraconservatives who split with the Vatican to protest liberalizing reforms, a Vatican official said Wednesday.

The pope's intent is to "help overcome the schism and help bring (the ultraconservatives) back to the Church," said the official, who asked that his name not be used because the papal document has not yet been released.

It was not immediately clear when the pope will make his decision public, but the Vatican official said it was expected soon. The Times of London, in a report Wednesday, said the pope had already signed the order and it could be published in the next few weeks.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X in 1969 in opposition to the reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly allowing Mass to be celebrated in local languages instead of Latin. The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome's consent.

Benedict has indicated he wants relations with the St. Pius X group to be normalized. He met last year with the current head of the society, Bishop Bernard Fellay.

The Tridentine Mass, the name of the old Latin Mass, can now only be celebrated with permission of the local bishop. In addition to the use of Latin, the priest faces the altar — away from the worshippers — and there are no lay readers as in the modern Mass.

The issue of the Mass will only be one of the points in the papal document that will reach out to the ultraconservatives, the Vatican official said.

The pope already took a concrete step in that direction when in September he approved an institute for French priests who left the movement. The small group based in Bordeaux, made up of five priests and some seminarians, is allowed to celebrate the old-style Latin Mass in exchange for their recognition of the pope's authority.
----------------------------------------------------------------

As an adherent of the Latin Mass, I have only wished that the Pope would state unequivocally that the use of the Tridentine mass was never prohibited by Vatican-II, and that therefore, any priest who is able to celebrate the rite can do so, any time any place, without having to ask his local bishop!

And if this comes to pass, then I would also wish for all priests who in the past 40 years 'rejoiced' because they no longer have to 'learn' Latin go back now and learn the rite, at least. And that seminaries may bring back Latin as a required course for would-be priests. Laudamus Domine!

Here's the story that came out in the Times of London earlier today :

The Times
October 11, 2006
Pope set to bring back Latin Mass
that divided the Church
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent



THE Pope is taking steps to revive the ancient tradition of the Latin Tridentine Mass in Catholic churches worldwide, according to sources in Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI is understood to have signed a universal indult — or permission — for priests to celebrate again the Mass used throughout the Church for nearly 1,500 years. The indult could be published in the next few weeks, sources told The Times.

Use of the Tridentine Mass, parts of which date from the time of St Gregory in the 6th century and which takes its name from the 16th-century Council of Trent, was restricted by most bishops after the reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65).

This led to the introduction of the new Mass in the vernacular to make it more accessible to contemporary audiences. By bringing back Mass in Latin, Pope Benedict is signalling that his sympathies lie with conservatives in the Catholic Church.

One of the most celebrated rebels against its suppression was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who broke with Rome in 1988 over this and other reforms. He was excommunicated after he consecrated four bishops, one of them British, without permission from the Pope.

Some Lefebvrists, including those in Brazil, have already been readmitted. An indult permitting the celebration of the Tridentine Mass could help to bring remaining Lefebvrists and many other traditional Catholics back to the fold.

The priests of England and Wales are among those sometimes given permission to celebrate the Old Mass according to the 1962 Missal. Tridentine Masses are said regularly at the Oratory and St James’s Spanish Place in London, but are harder to find outside the capital.

The new indult would permit any priest to introduce the Tridentine Mass to his church, anywhere in the world, unless his bishop has explicitly forbidden it in writing. [No, that can't be! I hope this report is wrong about this. Why hould a bishop forbid it at all, to begin with?]

Catholic bloggers have been anticipating the indult for months. The Cornell Society blog says that Father Martin Edwards, a London priest, was told by Cardinal Joseph Zen, of Hong Kong, that the indult had been signed. Cardinal Zen is alleged to have had this information from the Pope himself in a private meeting.

“There have been false alarms before, not least because within the Curia there are those genuinely well-disposed to the Latin Mass, those who are against and those who like to move groups within the Church like pieces on a chessboard,” a source told The Times. “But hopes have been raised with the new pope. It would fit with what he has said and done on the subject. He celebrated in the old rite, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”

The 1962 Missal issued by Pope John XXIII was the last of several revisions of the 1570 Missal of Pius V. In a lecture in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger said that it would be “fatal” for the Missal to be “placed in a deep-freeze, left like a national park, a park protected for the sake of a certain kind of people, for whom one leaves available these relics of the past”.

Daphne McLeod, chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a UK umbrella group that campaigns for the restoration of traditional orthodoxy, said: “A lot of young priests are teaching themselves the Tridentine Mass because it is so beautiful and has prayers that go back to the Early Church.”

TRADITIONAL SERVICE

o The Tridentine Mass is celebrated entirely in Latin, except for a few words and phrases in Greek and Hebrew. There are long periods of silence and the priest has his back to the congregation.

o In 1570, Pope St Pius V said that priests could use the Tridentine rite forever, “without scruple of conscience or fear of penalty” .

o Since the Second Vatican Council, the Tridentine Mass has been almost entirely superseded by the Mass of Pope Paul VI.

o Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who took the lead in opposing the reforms, continued to celebrate the old Mass at his seminary in Ecône, Switzerland, and formed a dissident group. He was excommunicated in 1988 [for having ordained 4 bishops without the cosent of Rome].

o The advantages of the Mass, according to the faithful, are in its uniformity and the fact that movements and gestures are prescribed, so that there is no room for “personalisation.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 20.35]

An appendix to one of my catalogues dropped through my letter box a few weeks ago: on October 15th a new book of day by day meditations - thoughts of Papa Benedict - is to be published by Magnificat. This volume will be a wonderful vade mecum and has beautiful illustrations and a ribbon bookmark.
The title of this volume is "Benedictus". I wouldn't say it replaces "Co-Workers Of The Truth", which will always have a special place in our hearts, but it will be a worthy addition to it.
I'm going to check if Amazon will be having it in stock. I imagine they will.

Luff and Choy! Mary x

Thanks for the news, Mary. Great title for the book, too. We can never have too many of them...

In fact, I have an article to translate from Die Tagespost, about all the new books on Benedict - including several versions already out on his recent trip to Bavaria! - seen at the Frankfurt Book Fair (world's largest of its kind, ever) this year.

Noteworthy are two new biographies, one by Alfred Laepple, the priest who was Joseph Ratzinger's prefect in the seminary and who became a trusted colleague and friend (whose reminiscences formed Part-1 of 30 Giorni's ongoing biographical series on the Pope).

The second one is by the Irish priest and ex-Ratzinger student Fr. Vincent Twomey, published in German this year as "BENEDICT XVI: Conscience of Our Time - A Theological Portrait". It has a great review - apparently, not only does it survey Joseph Ratzinger's major lines of thought, but also provides many previously unpublished anecdotes about him.
(My question is - shouldn't there be an English edition? I would have thought Fr. Twomey wrote it in English originally.)

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 21.04]

Thanks to Josie in the main forum who posted this interview, published today in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, with the author of the 'thriller' subtitled "Who will kill Benedict XVI in Turkey?". Here is a translation:

"I fear for Ratzinger in Turkey -
We do not like him at all"
By Marta Ottaviani

He wrote the book dramatically titled "Papaya sukast" (Attempt on the Pope) with the disquieting subtitle "Who will kill Benedict VXI in Turkey?"

Yücel Kaya, author of pop thrillers and fantasy novels, has lately been in the news and on the local bestseller lists for his novel about an Italian journalist, Oriano Ciroella, linked to the Opus Dei, who becomes the Papal assassin. Behind him is an obscure cardinal, a member of the Masonic lodge P2, who wants to become Pope.

At the same time, the MIT, Turkey's secret service, historically linked to the Islamic right, sees in the Pope's visit an opportunity for the reintegration of the Orthodox Church into the Church of Rome - something it considers dangerous for Turkey.

This newspaper, which had been the first to report about the book in Italy, sought out the author to find out what could be the bounds between fiction and reality and whether the author thinks that there is a real danger for the Pope in Turkey.

Mr. Kaya, your book has made all Italy sit up and take notice. Were you expecting this?
I never did. The book first came out in January with what I might consider moderate success. Then in August, a Catholic priest talked about it with a French journalist, and that's how the attention started. Shortly afterwards, the Italian papers chimed in, and within two weeks, everyone was talking about the novel, and I got many requests for interviews.

Well, after all, you wrote a book with an explosive subject. How did you come to write a novel about assassinating the Pope?
It's not that surprising. In 1981, I followed with great interest Ali Aca's attempt to kill John Paul II. In Turkey there have been many legends and rumors about who could have been behind Agca. So I thought of writing a novel bringing those events to the present and updating the possible protagonists. Who, in actual reality, clearly do not have anything to do with each other.

Didn't you think it was inopportune to write something like it just when the Pope is about to visit Turkey?
As I said, the book came out in January. Before the press even talked about it, before Benedict XVI had even formally accepted the official invitation to Turkey. At the time he accepted formally, the book was already on sale.

Today, the man who killed don Andrea Santoro was sentenced. He appeared to be a fanatic. Aren't you afraid that your novel could instigate an actual attempt?
Fiction and reality are two different things. A man does not decide to kill somebody after reading a book. And also, during the Pope's visit, his security will be the primary concern of the Turkish state. No, I have other fears.

Namely?
That others may attempt to kill the Pope so that the fault will be laid on Turkey. [Mr. Kaya is being disingenuous. In a brief news item from Italy last week - which I ignored because it was a three-sentence report which was not properly placed in context - he was quoted as saying he thought that "elements within Italy itself" would try to kill the Pope in Turkey. Which basically is his novel's plot!]

That's a hypothesis worthy of a fantasy novel. Do you really think something could happen to the Pope?
I don't know. But I am not sure that everything will go smoothly. There are so many things that could happen, not necessarily only something tragic.

We've heard conflicting opinions here about the Pope's visit, often not positive. Don't you think that it would be a good opportunity for Christians and Muslims to revitalize the inter-religious dialog?
I will answer you with great frankness but also with great respect. The Turks don't like Ratzinger. And not because of what happened last month. We remember the judgments he expressed about Turkey when he was a cardinal. We loved Papa Roncalli and John Paul II. Maybe you don't know it but in many Turkish cities there is a street named after John XXIII.

Dou you favor Turkey's entry into the European Union?
I have my resevrvations. But I don't deny that it could be a very great opportunity for our country.

What are your reservations?
At times I have the impression that we are looked on differently, because we would be the only Muslim country in the Union."

Do you think Turkey is ready to join the Union?
I prefer not to answer that. But I do not share some of the criteria that Europe is requiring of my country.

--------------------------------------------------------------

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/10/2006 22.17]

An article in La Stampa today by Marco Tosatti brings up some background facts about the Tridentine Mass that answers many of my questions and reveals the extent of apparent opposition in the Curia to the Pope's intentions about the Mass. Here is a translation -

Papa Ratzinger's move:
The Latin Mass will return
By Marco Tosatti
11 October 2006

Benedict XVI is said to be preparing a «motu proprio» that will 'liberate' the Mass of St. Pius X, or the pre-Vatican-II Tridentine rite, from the bureaucratic restrictions that have made its celebration a complex problem.

It is a move that could be of great importance in resolving the Lefebvrian schism. The followers of the late Mons. Marcel Lefebvre, who died in 1991, have been waiting for a convincing gesture to show Rome's good will in welcoming them back to the Church. Re-authorization of the old Latin Mass - its replacement by teh vernacular New Mass was one of the original reasons for the schism - would be such a sign for them.

But the Vatican move, which has been under way for weeks, has met resistance within the Curia, where opponents of the old Mass are numerous, and those oposed to reintegrating the Lefebvrians equally numerous if not more.

After the Second Vatican Council, it was no longer possible to celebrate the old Mass publicly. It was considered absorbed into the 'Novus ordo missae' which came into Churchwide effect in 1969.

In 1984, John Paul II issued an 'indult' that formally opposed the desire of many faithful who were nostalgic for the Latin Mass. [Why was this necessary at all?]

In order to be able to celebrate the old Mass, it would be required to gather signatures and follow a bureaucratic procedure requesting permission from the bishop of the affected locality - who has the discretion to say yes or no. It is a system that is still in place and has aroused much criticism.

A «motu proprio» by Benedict XVI would expand the possibilities of celebrating the old Mass, which would be considered 'extraordinary' as opposed to the 'ordinary' Mass celebrated in the vast majority of Catholic Churches since 1969. In effect, under certain conditions, the Old Mass could henceforth be freely and automatically celebrated.

A total liberalization is not possible - in which any priest can celebrate it when he wants to - because every bishop is responsible within his diocese for the manner in which Mass is said. A bishop is considered a successor of the Apostles, on a par with the Pope in this respect. Therefore, celebration of the old rite would still hinge on the individual bishop's discretion..

[ Who am I to argue this, but I don't buy the above argument. Just from a standpoint of common sense, does it not matter that Vatican-II never prohibited the Latin Mass outright? If it was never prohibited, why should it now depend on the local bishops' discretion? The local bishops did not decide individually to do away with it completely and use the Novus Ordo instead; the Novus Ordo was imposed on them, churchwide. If Benedict lifts the indult John Paul II decreed - frankly, I did not know this indult came from him! - then the individual judgment of the bishops no longer comes into play, does it, because we would simply be back at the status-ante-indult.]

Benedict XVI is clear about his own views. As a cardinal, he had said: "Personally I maintain that (the Church) should be more generous in permitting those who want it to use the old rite. I really do not see what could be dangerous or inacceptable about that. A community places itself in question if, suddenly, something is prohibited which until the recent past was considered sacred, and now it is considered a reproach to want it. Because then, how can you trust it [such a community]? Will it not then prohibit tomorrow what it allows today?"

[Oh, dear Benedict, as usual, you hit the nail on the head! Some things are just so obvious it's hard to imagine they can't be seen by everyone. Frankly, I do not see how and why the advocates of the Novus Ordo, a 37-year-old practice, should be so against co-existing with a rite that has centuries behind it! No one is discarding the Novus Ordo, after all - for now at least - so what's their problem?!]

But to an outside observer, the intensity and acrimony that the competing 'schools' of liturgy put into their respective arguments are truly amazing.

When Benedict XVI first sent a draft of his 'motu proprio' to the Congregation for Sacred Rites and Worship some time ago, the anti-liberalization faction - with the tacit approval of the Prefect, Cardinal Arinze - labored to add restrictive modifications (for instance, raising the number of persons required for a request from 30 to 100) and sought to get around the new secretary, Mons. Ranjith, who was nevertheless able to add a long series of comments and riders to restore its original sense to the text before sending it back to the Pope!

The Pope has sent the 'motu proprio' to Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and president of the commission Ecclesia Dei, which has specialized in the Lefebvrian issue and which had made the first draft. The document will also be reviewed by the Congregations for Bishops and for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Pope has reportedly made it known that he wants the document finalized if not right away, then without much more delay. [What about Cardinal Zen's indisceet declaration in London that the Pope had told him the document was already signed?]

It is now thought the document may be released around Christmas, possibly as early as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.

Still, it must be considered how much resistance there still is and whether it will be able to derail the Pope.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2006 5.22]

Josie shares yet another bulletin from the Italian news agency agr:


Benedict XVI will receive the Dalai Lama in a private audience at the Vatican on Friday.

The world's most eminent Buddhist leader will be in Italy from Thursday to Saturday and will be meeting with Italian political leaders.

The Dalai Lama, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1989, will be receiving a doctorate in biology honors causa from the University of Rome-III.

The AP story later:

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI will meet with the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, on Friday, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The Dalai Lama met with Pope John Paul II at least nine times, including a 2003 visit that the Vatican kept low-key to avoid a further chill in its icy relations with China.

The Dalai Lama wants autonomy for Tibet, which China has occupied since 1951. He led about 80,000 Tibetans into exile in 1959, and heads a government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India.

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Oh, my! The index of spirituality and joy in the Apostolic Palace will rise exponentially when that meeting takes place!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2006 2.23]

This is a translation of a book review in the German Catholic newspaper, DIE TAGESPOST, which I am posting here first, instead of in the BOOKS ABOUT BENEDICT thread, for obvious reasons.
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“His real passion is the truth"
An ex-student of Ratzinger succeeds
with a theological portrait of the Pope
By Stephan Baier
Die Tagespost, 10/7/06

Vincent Twomey: Benedikt XVI. Das Gewissen unserer Zeit. Ein theologisches Portraet [Benedict XVI: The Conscience of our Time - A Theological Portrait]. Sankt Ulrich Verlag, Augsburg 2006, 168 pp., ISBN-13: 978-3-936484- 86-1, EUR 16.90

Truth is the “true passion of Joseph Ratzinger’s life,” writes Vincent Twomey, an Irish missionary, who obtained his doctorate in 1978 under Prof. Ratzinger at the University of Regensburg.

In Twomey’s slim but substantial book, the reader can learn more about the incessant theological search for truth, the scientific methodology, and even the personality of the present Pope than in a hundred interviews with Hans Kueng, who for so many years was considered the highest authoritative information source about Ratzinger by almost everyone.

“He is an exciting theologian and an original thinker who is still waiting to be discovered [as such],” Twwomey says about his mentor, to whose ‘Schuelerkreise’ he has belonged since 1971.

The value of this book is not primarily biographical, even if the author does bring to light many aspects of Ratzinger’s biography, and in particular, rebuts the widespread notion in the Anglophone media about Ratzinger’s ‘Nazi past.’

Nor does its value lie in the anecdotal, although the author has many to recount, and will surely make the reader chuckle about his comparison of seminars held under Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger.

“During a seminar presentation, Professor Rahner would walk back and forth on one side of the full auditorium while the student delivered his paper, evidently impatient until the student could finish up, and he could take over. Ratzinger had the ability to inspire debate and to encourage nervous students. He listened attentively and of course, sharply, but always with patience.”

Twomey’s book is highly recommended, because it illumines the core of Pope Benedict’s theological methodology from up close and with great authenticity. Thereby his self-understanding of the Petrine ministry also becomes clear:

“The Pope is bound to God’s will – and Word – and personally responsible to it. That makes of Peter’s Chair a Cross. Personal responsibility, which is at the core of Papal teaching, originates in the theology of the Cross and Christian humility.”

Here, the author touches on the secret of the fascination that Benedict exerts: As misunderstood as his humble service to upholding the purity of the doctrine of the faith was, the more his obvious exercise of the Papacy as service to the faith can now be appreciated and admired.

Twomey reminds the Pope’s critics that he has always said the Magisterium has the duty to defend the faith and its way of life, in behalf of ordinary people, against irresponsible theologiocal speculations.

Twomey sees in the question of conscience a key concept towards understanding the personality as well as the theology of Joseph Ratzinger. And it is very revealing that he presents this in terms of the dissent to Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae Vitae[issued in July 1968, long before Ratzinger became a bishop].

At that time, the German Bishops Conference in their Koenigstein Declaration had said: “The bishops of the Church in West Germany would have liked to come together over the fissures that have developed [protests aginst the encyclical’s clear stand on contraception and abortion], but the fissures are fractures in the rock on which the Church is built, and they reach down to the very foundations.”

[I think somehow, a paragraph, or at the very least, a sentence is missing here, to link the German bishops' stand to Ratzinger and his conscience.]

As though he anticipated the nuances and new accents in the Pope’s recent Regensburg lecture and how he dealt with the criticism that ensued, Twomey writes prophetically: “Ratzinger is highly sensitive to every change of opinion in the world around him and is therefore capable of registering, as on a seismograph, changes in moral and religious attitudes.”

But Ratzinger, he says, has always opted for "uncompromising truth, which is of divine origin and does not come out of man’s ability to construct it” - he has suffered for this, but has remained true to it.

What makes this book exceptional is that it is written by a student of Ratzinger who is primarily interested in his theological dimension, not church politics nor world events. But precisely through this specifically theologic interest, the author succeeds in a pointblank analysis of Pope Benedict’s political and inter-religious approach.

That this ex-student brings his own theological weight to the balance is shown in his profouund cultural criticism of the "poison that is the hermeneutics of suspicion” which European thinkers have diffused into the cultural environment – "a mistrust of all tradition and authority, which is the reason for Europe’s present crisis and with which we have already infected other continents.”

Twomey’s hope that the writings of the theologian Joseph Ratzinger “will sow the seeds of truth which will in time bear spiritual fruits in their fullness” is altogether well-grounded.

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The Holy Father's catechesis this morning was as good an illustration as any of his passion for truth. Just one day short of the first-month anniversary of his Regensburg lecture, he used the strong language employed by St.Jude Thaddeus in his Letter from the New Testament to observe the following:

"Today we are perhaps no longer used to such polemical language which nevertheless tells us something important. Amidst all the temptations around us, with all the currents of modern life, we should conserve the identity of our faith.

"Of course, we will certainly follow with firm constancy the path of understanding and dialog, which the Second Vatican Council happily undertook. But this path of dialog, so necessary, should not make us forget our duty to rethink and demonstrate in equally forceful manner the major irrenounceable features of our Christian identity.

"We must always bear in mind that our identity is not bound only to the simply cultural plane, nor is it something superficial, but it requires the strength, clarity, and the courage of provocation, which are integral to our faith."

It is noteworthy that he improvised the above sentence in place of his prepared text which read at that point:
"We must always bear in mind that our identity calls for strength, clarity and courage in the face of the contradictions of the world we live in." What a difference!

There is an expression in Spanish, "No tiene pelo en la lengua" (which means literally, "He has no hair on his tongue" (hair on the tongue being, as we know, an impediment to clear speech - I believe there is an equivalent expression in Italian) to describe someone who does not mince words. He certainly does not!

And if anyone still thinks the Pope did not deliberately decide to use the Paleologue emperor's quotation in Regensburg, think again. As I said early on, he is a true agent provocateur, in the literal sense, namely, that he actively seeks to provoke thought, and hopefully, right action based on right thought.

In Regensburg, he decided literally to call a sword a sword, for although he surely does not share the sweeping statement - no one could, except perhaps Ernst Renan who once wrote "Islam soils everything it touches" - that Mohammed brought nothing but terrible things to the world, he could not have used a more vivid take-off point to discuss violence committed in the name of God!

The fragile boy who could not abide sports, and who would write Greek poems to mock his Nazi superiors during his enforced Army service, grew up to cite a Greek text to challenge an entire militant religion of more than a billion strong to examine itself. But no less, it must be said, than he is constantly challenging his own flock to live up to their religion of love and reason. !

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2006 15.50]

Pope condemns use
of religion for hate

VATICAN CITY, OCt. 12, 2006 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI met Thursday with representatives of a Jewish group and said that religion should never be used to justify hatred and violence.


"May the Eternal One, our Father in heaven, bless every effort to eliminate from our world any misuse of religion as an excuse for hatred or violence," Benedict told a delegation of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. group that fights racism and anti-Semitism.

The comments came a month after Benedict's speech at a German university sparked anger in the Muslim world when he quoted a medieval text that characterized some of the Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman" and called Islam a religion spread by the sword.

Since the uproar over the speech — which has raised a cloud over his planned visit next month to predominantly Islamic Turkey — Benedict has expressed his regrets for offending Muslims.

He has stressed that the quote didn't reflect his own opinion, saying his address was intended as an invitation to frank dialogue between religions.

Benedict repeated such a call in Thursday's Vatican meeting with the ADL, saying that while Catholic-Jewish relations have greatly improved over recent years, initial steps "toward a more open conversation on religious themes" have so far been too tentative.

"It is precisely at this level of frank exchange and dialogue that we will find the basis and the motivation for a solid and fruitful relationship," he said.

The aim of such dialogue, he said earlier in the speech, is "to build relationships not just of tolerance but of authentic respect."

Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said his group supports Benedict's desire for honest interfaith dialogue, particularly when it comes to relations with Muslims.

"If we really feel our faith is the only one that is right, how can we still have dialogue? The answer is that we must believe we have a truth, not the truth. As long as we believe that we can respect other truths," Foxman told The Associated Press in a telephone interview after the meeting. "This is the dialogue we need to have, both Jews and Christians, with the Muslims."

In his speech Thursday, the pope also reiterated his condemnation of anti-Semitism, saying that "the church deplores all forms of hatred or persecution directed against the Jews and all displays of anti-Semitism at any time and from any source."

Foxman said he had asked Benedict to be "a strong, constant voice against anti-Semitism," adding that the pope responded privately: "I will always be available for you as a voice against anti-Semitism."

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As it was a very brief address, delivered in English, by the Holy Father to the ADL delegation (and posted earlier in the HOMILIES, MESSAGES, DISCOURSES thread), I am reproducing it here to mark the first-month anniversary of the Regensburg lecture, the aftermath of which, obviously, has not been far from his mind:


I am pleased to welcome to the Vatican the delegation of the Anti-Defamation League. On many occasions you visited my predecessor Pope John Paul II, and I am happy to continue to meet representative groups of the Jewish people.

In our world today, religious, political, academic and economic leaders are being seriously challenged to improve the level of dialogue between peoples and between cultures.

To do this effectively requires a deepening of our mutual understanding and a shared dedication to building a society of ever greater justice and peace.

We need to know each other better and, on the strength of that mutual discovery, to build relationships not just of tolerance but of authentic respect. Indeed, Jews, Christians and Muslims share many common convictions, and there are numerous areas of humanitarian and social engagement in which we can and must cooperate.

The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate reminds us that the Jewish roots of Christianity oblige us to overcome the conflicts of the past and to create new bonds of friendship and collaboration.

It affirms in particular that the Church deplores all forms of hatred or persecution directed against the Jews and all displays of anti-Semitism at any time and from any source (cf. No. 4).

The four decades since the Declaration have brought many positive advances, and they have also witnessed some early steps, perhaps still too tentative, towards a more open conversation on religious themes. It is precisely at this level of frank exchange and dialogue that we will find the basis and the motivation for a solid and fruitful relationship.

May the Eternal One, our Father in heaven, bless every effort to eliminate from our world any misuse of religion as an excuse for hatred or violence. May He bless all of you, your families and your communities.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/10/2006 21.23]

From Il Giornale today, Lella shares this news item about yesterday's general audience bylined 'By the editors' -

Record audiences
continue for the Pope
Yesterday some 50,000 at St. Peter's Square -
15,000 more than tickets issued - confirmed
a trend evident since Benedict became Pope

So many pilgrims are coming to Rome to see the Pope. Yesterday morning, for the traditional general audience on Wednesdays, police estimated more than 50,000 pilgrims present, confirming a trend established in the first year of Pope Benedict's Papacy.

The Pontifical Household Prefecture usually distributes a maximum of 35,000 tickets for the Wednesday audiences, but at least 15,000 more showed up yesterday....

[Access to St. Peter's Square for the general audience is actually open to anyone who can pass through the metal detectors required by security, so not having a ticket is not really a problem unless one tries to find a place close to where the action is.]

The rest of the item is about the Pope blessing a statue of St. Theresa Benedict of the Cross which has been installed in a niche on one of the external walls of St.Peter's Basilica. The blessing took place after the general audience yesterday.
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I will indulge in some reflections:

It has been sad - and very annoying, actually - that many Italian commentators have continued to say that the crowds for Benedict are large (larger than similar crowds for John Paul II in the first year of his Pontificate and in the last two years of it) - only because they are mostly people who have come to visit Pope John Paul II's grave.

As actual figures published last year by the Pontifical Household showed, as many as 80,000 have come to a single audience. While it is very likely that many of them - especially if they are first-time visitors to Rome - would also be visiting John Paul's grave, it is unlikely they would make up the bulk of these Wednesday audiences.

It is sheer pettiness not to grant that Pope Benedict XVI enjoys great popularity, just because the media had decided beforehand that no one could possibly be as popular as John Paul II.

The most obvious reason for the large crowds is that the faithful do want to see their Pope, any Pope.

Second, the worldwide media spotlight on the Vatican last year has made more people aware of what takes place in the Vatican, so more people visiting Rome are interested in being at the Vatican as well - and why not at a Papal audience if one can do it?

And third (which for any Benaddict would be Reason #1), the media must not and cannot discount all the pilgrims who come specifically for Benedict himself*. Why is that difficult to accept? Forget your preconceived notions - observe and report what is actually happening.

A few journalists have been honest enough to admit that after meeting Benedict (or Cardinal Ratzinger) one on one,they have come away with a completely different attitude toward someone they had only considered in negative terms before.

But it does not take a one-on-one meeting to register the qualities of this Pope that are so evident visually and audibly, as is the reaction of the faithful to him. But hardly anyone reports on this!

They prefer not to see the 'news' in the fact that, incredible as it may have seemed right after John Paul II died, the man who stepped into his shoes is as much a giant in his own right. Which is why his brother cardinals chose him to begin with. As John Allen rightly pointed out once, they knew that only another giant could succeed John Paul II, and Ratzinger was the only one who qualified.

It is a tribute to the Church that, at least in our living memory, the Holy Spirit has not lacked for men who have stepped up to become Pope as the right man at the right time.
===============================================================

*Sybella makes a very pertinent comment in the main forum. Namely, that one must go to a lot of trouble to be at the general audiences and be prepared to spend a few hours of inconvenience to be rewarded with the sight of the Pope himself.

Imagine this: Travel to Rome (which goes also for Italians who do not live in Rome, like she and the rest of our Italian consorelle except Eugenia); wait in line to get your ticket - the day before if possible; wake up early on the day to be there before the crowds, or to get your ticket if you have not done so yet; wait - through sun and heat, or rain and cold - till they start to allow people in; go through security controls; do all you can to find a good place to be; wait some more; maybe deal with food, water and bathroom needs...and then, of course, GLORY!

The point is: Those tens of thousands of people are not there by chance - they are there because they want to and are prepared to go through all the trouble it takes to be there.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/10/2006 4.36]

The Vatican bulletin on today's audiences does not carry the name of the Dalai Lama, who was supposed to have been received by the Pope after the call of Italian Prime Minister Prodi.

The Holy Father received the following in audience this morning:
S.E. il Signor Romano Prodi, Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri della Repubblica Italiana, con la Consorte, e Seguito;
Em.mo Card. Telesphore Placidus Toppo, Arcivescovo di Ranchi (India);
S.E. Mons. Emilio Patriarca, Vescovo di Monze (Zambia), in Visita "ad Limina Apostolorum";
Ecc.mi Presuli della Conferenza Episcopale di Zambia, in Visita "ad Limina Apostolorum".

This afternoon, the Pope will meet with:
Em.mo Card. William Joseph Levada, Prefetto della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede.
(This is the regular weekly meeting between the Pope and his CDF Prefect.)
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Meanwhile, an invitation to Fatima for 2007:


Pope to Get Invitation
to Fatima, Says Report


FATIMA, Portugal, OCT. 12, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Bishop Antonio Marto of Leiria-Fatima intends to invite Benedict XVI to visit the Fatima shrine in 2007, a report says.

The official invitation will be extended this month or next, according to the review Fatima Missionaria.

It said that the Pope's visit would likely take place in October 2007, for the closing of the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions to the little shepherds.

The bishop of Leiria-Fatima said he expects a positive reply from Benedict XVI, reported Fatima Missionaria.

Should the Pope be able to accept the invitation, he might preside at the inauguration of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity on Oct. 13, 2007.

Also in 2007, the centenary will be commemorated of the birth of Sister Lucia, the visionary who died in 2005 and who is buried in the shrine's basilica.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 14.49]

Dalai Lama sees Pope,
says few Muslims "mischievous"
By Stephen Brown


ROME, Oct.. 13, 2006 (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said after meeting Pope Benedict on Friday that "a few mischievous Muslims" should not be allowed to give the Islamic faith a bad name.

Muslims worldwide were offended by a speech by the Pope last month in which he quoted a Byzantine emperor who said the Prophet Mohammed spread Islam by the sword.

The backlash has been sometimes violent and hardliners declared war on the Pope.

The exiled spiritual leader of 6 million Tibetan Buddhists living under Chinese Communist rule said Benedict and his predecessor John Paul II, who died last year, shared with himself a vocation for "the promotion of religious harmony."

"Nowadays I often express that due to a few mischievous Muslims' acts we should not consider all Muslims as something bad. That is very unfair," the Dalai Lama told a news conference organized by a Rome university hosting him for a seminar.

"A few mischievous people you can find among fellows from all religions -- among Muslims and Christians and Jews and Buddhists. To generalize is not correct," he said.

The Vatican called the Dalai Lama's audience with the leader of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics "strictly private" and "strictly religious."

To keep the visit low profile*, his name did not appear on the list of people received by the Pope in the Vatican's daily bulletin, as those of most visitors, including religious leaders, usually do.

The Dalai Lama said he had not discussed with the Pope his quest for China to grant the homeland he has not seen since 1959 better human rights and more cultural and religious autonomy.

The Vatican already has difficult relations with China due to Beijing's refusal to let millions of Chinese Catholics belong to the Roman Catholic church under the authority of the Pope, obliging them to worship as part of a state-backed church.

Beijing has had no diplomatic relations with the Vatican since 1951, two years after the Communist Party took power.

The Vatican estimates that about 8 million Chinese Catholics worship in "underground churches" compared with some 5 million who belong to the state-controlled Church.

Beijing wants the Vatican to sever its ties with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing says is a breakaway province, before talks on re-establishing ties can start.

Asked why he had not been invited to pay a call on Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, who visited China last month to promote trade, the Dalai Lama said his visit "had no certain agenda for meeting with the Italian government."

"I always try to avoid causing people inconveniences," said the Dalai Lama, who has been based in India since 1959, after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella)
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So low-profile that there are no pictures even? I checked Foto Felici's posts and they already have the pictures of all the Pope's meetings today, including the one with Cardinal Levada, but not one with the Dalai Lama.

I feel deprived! I was so looking forward to seeing the Dalai Lama's irrepressible boyish good spirits encounter Papino's irrepressible childlike joy. They share a 'lightness of being', these two, that comes only to those whose souls are serene.
.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 19.12]

Pope tells Prodi
to defend life,
traditional family
By Philip Pullella
Fri Oct 13

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict reminded Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi that the Vatican strongly defends the traditional family and ethics in scientific research when they held their first official talks on Friday.

Prodi, whose centre-left government took office last May, spoke privately with the Pope for about 40 minutes and later held separate talks with the Vatican's new secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

A Vatican statement said that at both meetings, particular attention was paid to topics that included "bioethics (and) the defense of life and of the family."

The Pope, elected 18 months ago, has strongly backed Italy's powerful Roman Catholic Church in its opposition to gay marriage and any formal recognition of unwed heterosexual couples.

The government headed by Prodi, a practising Catholic, will probably have to confront both issues sooner or later.

The coalition has promised some form of recognition for unmarried couples but has so far stopped short of openly supporting gay marriage as part of its program.

But some leftist parties in the coalition, which ranges from Catholics to communists, back greater rights for homosexuals, including marriage.

Some in the center left support a legal recognition similar to that in France, which in 1999 granted all couples the right to form civil unions, which entitle them to joint social security, limited inheritance rights and other benefits.

Italy's Catholic Church opposes this.

The Prodi government is already at odds with the Church over bioethical issues.

Last May Research Minister Fabio Mussi drew fire from the Church when he withdrew Italy's signature from a "declaration of ethics" which Italy and other countries had made in 2005 under the previous government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

That declaration objected to using EU funds for embryonic stem cell research and created a "blocking minority" on the release of EU money for some research projects.

Mussi said he had removed Rome's signature from the declaration because he felt Italy should not take "a position of total closure to experimentation and research" in Europe.

Human stem cells can develop into any cell type. Scientists believe they could be used as a repair system for many parts of the body.

Their use is controversial because the most promising stem cells for treating human diseases are derived from very early human embryos left over from fertility treatments.
[Teresa's Note: That is a false statement. It is only the unproven assumption of advocates of embryonic stem-cell research, who have so far failed to even reach the stage of clinical trials on human beings which have already been seen to be successful using adult stem cells to effect cures in diseases of the heart and the spinal column. See our thread FAITH AND SCIENCE, Post #4246 on 10/1/06, at
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/viewmessaggi.aspx?f=65482&idd=525&t=1160765306953&p=4#...
for a very good round-up of the state of stem-cell research.]

The Roman Catholic Church opposes embryonic stem cell research because it involves the destruction of embryos.

In 2005, a referendum that had aimed to loosen up Italy's tight law on assisted procreation and embryo research failed after the Church campaigned against it.

The Vatican statement said Prodi and the Pope also discussed the Middle East, Italy's peacekeeping role in Lebanon, and dialogue among world religions.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 19.59]

www.totalcatholic.com/discuss/viewtopic.php?t=2114

The complete interview can be seen here. Scroll right down the page. It's printed in today's Universe.
It's probably of more interest to British members of the forum, but it IS about our cardinal's meeting with Pope Benedict earlier this week.
Love, Mary x

In the first of his ALL THINGS CATHOLIC columns devoted to a single topic, posted today, 10/13/06, John Allen gives us his latest take on Benedict and Islam.
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Benedict’s gamble with Islam


Pope Benedict XVI heads to Turkey next month, his first visit to a majority Muslim state. Of all the question marks surrounding the trip, perhaps the most consequential is this: Which Benedict will show up?

Will it be the Benedict of Regensburg, challenging his Muslim hosts to embrace rationality, hence to renounce violence and to respect religious freedom? Or will it be the post-Regensburg Benedict, seemingly determined to project a "kinder, gentler" face to Islam, missing no opportunity to send signals of reconciliation?

Can he, in some fashion, be both?

The picture may come quickly into focus on an island off Istanbul, where the storied Orthodox seminary of Halki sits shuttered for 35 years by order of the Turkish government.
Halki has become a global emblem of the "reciprocity" issue, meaning the tendency of Islamic states to deny their minorities the same freedoms that Muslims receive in the West.

What -- if anything -- the pope chooses to say about Halki will therefore reveal a great deal about the temper of his trip.

For 162 years, Halki is where future generations of clergy trained for the Patriarch of Constantinople, "first among equals" in the Orthodox world. Some 330 of the seminary's 950 graduates have become bishops, archbishops or patriarchs, and its renowned library contains 60,000 volumes, some dating to the 15th century.

In 1971, however, it was closed along with all university-level religious schools as part of a secularizing campaign. Recently Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was on the verge of allowing Halki to reopen, but he backtracked, despite a tough new European Union report citing the seminary's situation among key human rights problems in Turkey.

The official logic is that the government couldn't open the seminary without tolerating radical Islamist schools, but that's widely viewed as a smokescreen. The reality is that Turkish nationalists with deep anti-Greek resentments don't want Halki to reopen, seeing it as an unwanted reminder of the country's Byzantine Christian past.

Metropolitan Apostolos, abbot of the Halki monastery, recently put the situation this way: "We're not second-class citizens here, we're third-class. Minorities had more freedom to practice their religion in the Ottoman Empire."

Logically, there are three reasons why one would expect Benedict to issue a forceful challenge on the seminary.

First, the official reason for the trip is to visit the Patriarch of Constantinople, and it would be a welcome ecumenical gesture for Benedict to speak up on behalf of the beleaguered Orthodox community.

Second, it would also illustrate that the pope's defense of "reciprocity" is not just about protecting narrowly Catholic interests.

Third, Halki Seminary seems a perfect example of what Benedict's now-famous lecture in Regensburg was intended to critique, i.e., an irrational use of compulsion in a way that fails to respect human dignity.

Yet looking around Rome this week, the order of the day instead seems to be to send every possible signal of deference to Islamic sensibilities. Four examples:

Footnotes to Benedict's Sept. 12 speech at Regensburg were posted on the Vatican Web site. In his footnote to the quotation from a Byzantine emperor that sparked the crisis, Benedict writes: "In the Muslim world, this quotation has unfortunately been taken as an expression of my personal position, thus arousing understandable indignation. I hope that the reader can see immediately that this sentence does not express my personal view of the Quran …."

Wednesday's issue of L'Osservatore Romano carried a front page box with a message from Benedict XVI on peace and tolerance, addressed to an Istanbul conference. Notably, even though the conference is a three-way meeting of Jews, Muslims and Christians, the L'Osservatore headline was, "Sincere dialogue and reciprocal respect between Christians and Muslims."

Also on Wednesday, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, a Salesian, celebrated Mass at the Salesian University. He said that dialogue with Islam "helps to re-propose God as a point of reference, to avoid exiling him from human life and from society."

In a Thursday session with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, without any Muslims present, Benedict nevertheless made a point of saying: "Jews, Christians and Muslims share many common convictions, and there are numerous areas of humanitarian and social engagement in which we can and must cooperate."

Compounding this desire to restore calm is a strong undercurrent of anxiety about the possibility of terrorist retaliation for the pope's Regensburg remarks.

One senior Western diplomat told me this week that Western intelligence agencies are convinced that sooner or later there will be a strike in Rome, whether against St. Peter's or a secondary target such as one of the major basilicas. The diplomat said for now there are no specific threats, but Vatican officials are obviously aware of the risk.

The most ardent advocates of "reciprocity" hope that Benedict will not be muzzled or intimidated by all this. On the contrary, they would like to see Benedict fling down a gauntlet in Turkey, similar to Ronald Reagan's famous challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down that wall."

In their minds' eye, they dream of Benedict XVI facing the Turkish prime minister and insisting, "Mr. Erdogan, reopen that seminary!"

As with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the best-case scenario is that reopening Halki could set off a chain reaction of similar breakthroughs in other Muslim nations, collectively transforming the situation for Christians and other religious minorities.

Benedict has said he wants a frank and sincere dialogue with Islam, and such a historic challenge in Istanbul would certainly fit the bill.

In order to do that, however, the pope will have to set aside the Vatican's post-Regensburg, kid-gloves* etiquette -- a significant gamble, given all that's at stake, but one with a payoff that arguably justifies rolling the dice.

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I don't know about the kid gloves. The Pope has expressed his regrets, built it into the footnote of his lecture even, but the citation he chose from Judas Thaddeus and his own statement about the 'challenge of provocation that is integral to the faith' at the Wednesday catechesis wer far from being kid stuff!

No, he has not fallen into that trap where most of the pusillanimous liberals of the West are cowering in - treating the Muslims like rabid children who must not be roused at any cost.

In Regensburg, as in other statements of his about Islam, I think Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has chosen intead to challenge them to be worthy partners in a dialog of reason.

For those who follow Mr. Allen, here's his note on the new set-up at NCR where he is concerned -

NOTE: Beginning today, my weekly column has been retooled as a shorter and more analytical look at a single issue. Throughout the week, I'm posting news items as daily updates, which appear at johnallen.ncrcafe.org. My suggestion would be to bookmark johnallen.ncrcafe.org and to check regularly for the latest news and analysis.
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Further comments on the column above: Very persuasive and plausible as far as the 'reciprocity' issue.

But the 800-pound gorilla of the Turkish visit is really Cardinal Ratzinger's widely-publicized opposition to the entry of Turkey into the European Union. I wonder what Mr. Allen's thoughts are about this. I for one cannot wait to see how Benedict will deal with it during the trip.

He will have to say something about it when he meets the Turkish President, who appears to be the only Turkish official he will be meeting, and who is his official host. I believe there's also a meeting with Muslim representatives scheduled in Istanbul.

In every imaginable way, it's going to be a very tricky trip!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 20.50]

In an earlier post this week, Allen gives us the views of Fr. Bernardo Cervellera on the post-Regensburg brouhaha.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Missionary expert calls reaction
to pope speech 'manufactured'
and 'over-dramatized" in media
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

Many times over the last month, I’ve been asked what people in Rome are saying about the crisis unleashed by Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 12 comments on Islam.

One interesting perspective comes from Fr. Bernardo Cervellera, a high-profile member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions and a regular commentator in the Italian press on church issues in various parts of the world, including Islamic nations.

From 1997 to 2002, Cervellera directed the Fides news agency of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. Today he runs AsiaNews, a news agency of his order which has a similar scope.

Cervellera pulls no punches in insisting that the fallout from Benedict’s Regensburg address was largely manufactured by forces that have their own reasons for making the pope look bad.

“The speech of the pope was manipulated, in large part by forces in the Western world, including certain news agencies and massive newspapers such as the New York Times,” Cervellera said in an Oct. 9 interview at the Rome headquarters of his order.

“They want to put the pope and Islam in conflict … in order to corrode the possibility of a real dialogue between religions based on truth.”

Specifically, Cervellera said, “They’re afraid of what happened in Cairo in 1994,” referring to a United Nations-sponsored conference on population and development when the Holy See and Islamic nations resisted attempts to create liberal international standards on abortion and reproductive rights.

“The culture of the Enlightenment wants to divide the pope and the Islamic world in order to hide the skeletons in its own closet,” Cervellera said.

Cervellera argued that there was a similar tendency to instrumentalize the pope’s address among politicized currents in the Muslim world, especially forces such as Iranian conservatives, fundamentalist groups in Indonesia, the Hezbollah, Palestinian radicals, and Al-Qaeda.

“They lumped the pope in with Bush, Blair and the rest,” Cervellera said, arguing that the agenda was to justify violence to advance their political ends.

Cervellera insisted that the global press failed to give a clear picture of Islamic reaction, over-dramatizing protests and largely ignoring more measured perspectives.

He ticked off examples of authoritative Muslim leaders in Indonesia, Iran, Iraq and Morocco who called for calm, but whose voices were largely drowned out amid images of the pope burning in effigy and churches being assaulted.

Examples of creative initiatives on the part of the church were also under-reported, he argued.

For example, he said, in Pakistan the local bishops’ conference quickly translated the full text of Benedict’s speech into Urdu and took it to local Muslim authorities, thereby blunting some of the more extreme reactions.

In Iraq, the secretary of the Vatican embassy translated critical portions of the speech into Arabic and took it to representatives of Muslim groups.

In the wake of the gesture, representatives of Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani visited the embassy twice to express friendship and support, and one of the representatives actually suggested a meeting between Al-Sistani and Benedict. (How serious an idea that may be remains to be seen.)

Among other things, Cervellera said, this suggests the importance of being sure that whenever the pope says something that touches Islam, the full text must be immediately available in Arabic and other Islamic languages. Part of the problem with the reaction to Regensburg, he said, is that many Muslims were dependent upon Arabic summaries or paraphrases that were often misleading.

As an example of how the outcry was not as massive as much press coverage suggested, Cervellera cited Iran, where another grand ayatollah called for religious schools to be closed in protest of the pope’s remarks, and announced a rally in the holy city of Qom.

In the event, Cervellera said, only 200 people showed up – hardly evidence of massive popular outrage, he argued, and this in the so-called “Vatican” of Iranian Shi’ite Islam.

In the end, Cervellera argued, the global reaction to Benedict’s comments illustrates two “great impasses”:
• The difficulty of staging a real dialogue with Islam, which has to include a serious challenge to renounce violence and irrationality in the pursuit of spiritual and political ends;
• The difficulty of real dialogue with elite Western culture, which does not want to acknowledge that its concept of reason needs to embrace faith.

In reality, Cervellera argued, Benedict wants to help Islam maintain its values while making its way in a pluralistic world. He said that serious Muslim thinkers recognize the need for such assistance. In Iran, for example, he said there is a growing problem with young people embracing atheism because of what he called their “disgust” with political Islam.

Finally, Cervellera said he hopes Pope Benedict will continue to press for reciprocity, meaning the insistence that religious minorities in Islamic nations receive the same rights and freedoms as Muslims in the West.

Benedict, he said, should insist that Western governments make this a condition of negotiating work contracts with Islamic nations, pointing to Saudi Arabia, where hundreds of thousands of Filipino, Vietnamese and Korean “guest workers” are deprived of pastoral care because non-Muslims cannot minister to them openly.

Whatever one makes of Cervellera’s analysis, he represents a circle of opinion in and around the Vatican that will have an important role in drawing conclusions from the recent crisis – and in shaping policy in light of those conclusions.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 21.04]

And today, Mr. Allen also brings us the views of a prominent American Jew on recent events.

Jewish leader sees 'new realism'
on Islam at the Vatican
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome

In the wake of Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 12 comments on Islam in Regensburg, Germany, a prominent American Jewish leader says he senses a “new realism” in the Vatican’s appraisal of the Islamic world.

“There’s a new understanding that it’s one thing to talk about love, friendship, understanding and dialogue, but you have to look at what’s actually out there,” said Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish body dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism.

“There’s a war within Islam itself for the heart and soul of Islam, and the Vatican has made the decision to align itself with the moderates, and to encourage other allies to come forward,” Foxman said, saying he based his analysis upon his impression of the pope and conversations with figures in and around the Vatican.

Foxman led an Anti-Defamation League delegation in an audience with Benedict XVI on Oct. 12. He spoke to NCR at his Rome hotel Oct. 13.

Foxman argued that the Vatican is reconsidering its sympathies in a way not dissimilar from some Muslim governments, who he said are awakening with new urgency to the threat posed by Islamic radicalism.

“What’s happening in the Vatican is also happening in Saudi Arabia, which actually condemned the Hezbollah for their invasion of Lebanon,” Foxman said.

Foxman described a recent meeting between the Saudi Foreign Minister and a Jewish delegation in New York. As Foxman tells the story, the Saudi Foreign Minister told the Jewish group, “Your people and our people are in the same harm’s way.”

Foxman believes many church leaders are drawing the same conclusion.

“There’s a similar awareness at the Vatican that when Israel fights Hamas or Hezbollah, it’s fighting religious extremists within Islam, the jihadists,” he said.

Such a shift, Foxman said, has the potential for generating a historic realignment in the Vatican’s diplomatic and political sensibilities, which most observers have traditionally seen as broadly pro-Arab.

“They’ve recognized in a more practical way the value of an alliance with Jewish culture and civilization,” Foxman said.

As evidence, Foxman said that Italy’s new center-left government has not backed away from the more pro-Israel foreign policy instituted under the previous regime of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Foxman held a series of meetings with Italian politicians in Rome this week, and said he’s convinced their more hawkish line on Islam, and thereby more sympathetic stance on Israel, is related in part to cues coming from the Vatican.

Foxman also pointed to the warmth of his reception by Benedict XVI. After Foxman finished his brief remarks to the pope on behalf of his delegation, Foxman said, the pope motioned to him to approach, marking a departure in protocol. Benedict took his hands and said, “Thank you, you have touched my heart,” Foxman said.

Later, as pictures were being taken with the pope, Benedict made a point of saying, “I will always be with you on anti-Semitism,” Foxman said.

It’s not that the substance of the pope’s remarks, or those of other Vatican officials, is new, Foxman said, but rather that the warmth and emphasis was of a different order.

At the same time, Foxman predicted, this warming towards global Judaism will not automatically translate into greater Vatican support for Israel, and in fact could have the opposite effect in the short term.

“If the Vatican gets too close [to Israel], it will antagonize even the moderate elements of Islam,” he said.

Foxman said he believes the Vatican is shifting away from a theological engagement with Islam, towards an emphasis upon a dialogue between cultures focusing on concrete social and political cooperation.

In his remarks to Benedict, Foxman told the story of how his life was saved by a Polish Catholic woman and a Polish priest, who conspired to hide him while his parents were taken away during the Holocaust. His parents survived and later returned for him.

He recounted efforts made since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) to improve Jewish-Catholic relations, and called upon Benedict to speak up on anti-Semitism.

In an indirect but pointed reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Foxman told the pope: “Also in this generation arises a country’s leader who not only denies the Holocaust – the attempted genocide of the Jewish people – but again threatens to wipe out the state of the Jewish people.”

Foxman said he believes opinion in the United States is swinging in favor of Benedict’s approach on the question of Islam.

“In the first days [after Regensburg], people said, ‘He may have been right, but was it politically correct to say it?’” Foxman said. “Now people are willing to say publicly, ‘He’s right.’”

In part, Foxman argued, that’s because “the reaction in the Arab and Muslim world proved him right.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/10/2006 21.14]

Benefan would not have missed this story from yesterday - I did, but thanks to Amy Welborn for pointing to it.

Papal minibooks:
Portable, affordable
and rapidly disappearing
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The Vatican is preparing to publish Pope Benedict XVI's biggest book to date: "Complete Teachings, Vol. I."

At 1,376 pages, it's the kind of tome designed for libraries and specialists, covering the pontiff's output of speeches, messages, sermons and documents during his first nine months in office.

But the pope's writings are also finding their way into more bite-sized volumes that are enjoying unusual popular success, according to the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

The pope's talks to families, diplomats, cardinals and young people have been issued in minibooks that sell for one euro each -- about $1.25. To its delight, the Vatican has found these smaller books rapidly disappearing; some of the more popular titles have sold tens of thousands of copies.

"The world is discovering that Pope Benedict is a pope who should be read," said Salesian Father Claudio Rossini, director of the Vatican publishing house.

"The reader who sits down with the works of this pope finds deep ideas presented in a simple and linear manner. There are many nuances and beautiful passages that open horizons, enlightening the present with ideas from history and culture," Father Rossini said.

"The pope captures readers with the force of intelligence, inviting them gently to follow his arguments, step by step," he said.

One of the more recent of the popular papal minibooks was titled, "The Beauty of Being Christian and the Joy of Communicating It." It is composed of two talks Pope Benedict gave to members of lay movements earlier this year.

Publishing speeches or sermons in individual volumes is something new for the Vatican. Some might ask, "Why bother?" After all, papal texts are already available at the Vatican's Web site.

But Father Rossini said the papal minibooks are appealing to people who want to give more sustained attention to the pope's thoughts. In addition, he said, they are portable, affordable and "fit in the pocket."

The papal book boom was apparent at the recent session of the Frankfurt Book Fair, in Germany, where the Vatican reported great interest in the smaller volumes -- such as those presenting the pope's talk at the Auschwitz death camp in Poland last May, or a brief collection of his spiritual thoughts.

For three or four days, Father Rossini said, people lined up at the Vatican's booth to see the latest offerings from the pope.

The Vatican brought along a preview copy of "Complete Teachings, Vol. I," but that's the kind of book that has a limited audience, with typical sales totaling 1,000-2,000.

"These specialist volumes which we produce rarely go beyond 1,000 copies," Father Rossini said.

By contrast, the Vatican publishers to date have distributed more than 900,000 copies of the pope's encyclical, "God Is Love."

Even the Latin-language edition of the papal encyclical quickly sold out, forcing a second printing in that language -- the first time anyone remembers that happening, Father Rossini said.

The election of Pope Benedict produced an immediate explosion in sales of his more than 100 previously published works, under the name Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The massive interest led the Vatican to take new steps to protect the copyright on the pope's writings, before and after his election.

The idea was not to profit on papal writings but to give the Vatican some control over the integrity of the texts and to prevent publishers from making money off these writings without the Vatican's knowledge and consent.

Father Rossini said that, where appropriate, the Vatican asks book publishers to pay a small percentage of sales for their use of papal material. Newspapers, magazines and bishops' conferences can still publish papal texts without paying royalties, as long as the text is complete and the Vatican's copyright is noted.

Proceeds from sales of the pope's personal works, including those he wrote as cardinal, go directly to him for use in various papal charities, Father Rossini said.

Profits from other widely selling books, such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, go to the Vatican's main financial administrative office, which has used catechism earnings to fund church projects in developing countries.

Father Rossini said the new interest in texts has generated a noticeable increase in work at the Vatican publishing house, which employs about 30 people.

"We've had to take it up a gear," he said.

Although the publishing house is located behind the Vatican walls, its recently enlarged bookstore in St. Peter's Square is open to the public. Last year, more than 450,000 people stopped in to buy or browse.
---------------------------------------------------------------

I posted this item in the main forum with the comment that I find it difficult to see how the media continue to play blind to the Benedict phenomenon - more or less the same comments i made on this thread earlier, when I posted the story on the crowd number for the 10/11/06 audience.

He is attracting record crowds and he is inspiring the faithful to read his discourses, not just listen to them. Could it be that his approach of going back to the essentials of the faith is just what most of the faithful needed?

We have not taken into account what the effect is on priests worldwide of his constant exhortations to them - not to abandon praying as a daily discipline; to to do their best at their assigned tasks but without expecting they will be able to do everything, that they can well trust God to look after the rest if they have already done the best they can; and to live lives that bear worthy witness to Christ.

And he has taken the lead in challenging Islam to a more reasonable course in the world, throwing down the gauntlet in Regensburg. Some in the media have already made the analogy that militant Islam may be to Benedict what Communism was to John Paul II - that, at least, credits him with taking on the greatest cultural, political and religious challenge of this new century. A task he defined in the days before he was Pope as a defense of the entire Christian heritage and the civilization it produced. Only now, he has taken the lead as Pope.

God bless our Benedict in all his intentions and actions!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/10/2006 4.54]

Muslim scholars accept
pope's statement
By SHAFIKA MATTAR


AMMAN, Jordan, Oct. 13, 2006 (AP) - Dozens of Muslim scholars and chief muftis from numerous countries have accepted Pope Benedict XVI's statement of regret for his remarks on Islam and violence, the editor of a Muslim journal said Friday.

The scholars have signed an open letter that will be delivered to a Vatican envoy in the hopes of engaging the pope in a dialogue to counter prejudice against Islam, said the Jordanian-based editor of Islamica Magazine, Sohail Nakhooda.

Nakhooda said the leading clerics behind the letter were Sheik Habib Ali of the Taba Institute in the United Arab Emirates and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, the special adviser to Jordan's King Abdullah II.

In a speech last month in his native Germany, the pontiff quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

The citation provoked protests from Muslims across the world. The pope said the quotation did not reflect his personal view of Islam, and he expressed deep regret that Muslims had been offended by it. Some Muslim leaders had demanded a fuller apology.

Nakhooda said the 38 signatories to the letter accepted the pope's "personal expression of sorrow and assurance that the controversial quote did not reflect his personal opinion."

Nakhooda added the letter, which will be published on Islamica Magazine's Web site on Saturday, is "an attempt to engage with the papacy on theological grounds in order to tackle wide-ranging misconceptions about Islam in the Western world."

Nakhooda said signatories include the grand muftis of Egypt, Russia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Oman, as well as the Iranian Shiite cleric Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri, and Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of Georgetown University.

Islamica Magazine is a quarterly whose headquarters are in Los Angeles.

It seems what was reported above is not all that the scholars had to say! Here is the Reuters story on the same subject:

Muslims find errors
in Pope's presentation of Islam
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Sat Oct 14


PARIS (Reuters) - Senior Muslim scholars, taking up Pope Benedict's call for a frank dialogue, have written him an open letter listing factual errors in his recent speech on Islam that sparked protest across the Muslim world.

The 38 experts, including grand muftis from the Muslim world and scholars based in Britain and the United States, said they accepted the Pope's stated regrets over the uproar and his expressions of respect for all Muslims.

The politely worded letter challenged the former theology professor on his own area of expertise and gave him poor marks for misreading the Koran, failing to use terms correctly and citing obscure and possibly biased sources.

"The letter represents an attempt to engage with the papacy on theological grounds in order to tackle wide-ranging misconceptions about Islam in the Western world," said Islamica Magazine, an international quarterly on Muslim affairs that posted the open letter on its website on Saturday.

Managing editor Mohammad Khan told Reuters a copy of the letter would be handed to the Vatican nuncio (ambassador) on Sunday in Amman, where Islamica has an editorial office.

Speaking in Regensburg in early September, Benedict quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying Islam was evil and irrational and had been spread by the sword.

The speech sparked protests across the Muslim world, several churches were attacked in the Middle East and an Italian nun was murdered in Somalia. Benedict has said he did not agree with the emperor he quoted.

The scholars included grand muftis of Egypt, Oman, Uzbekistan, Istanbul, Russia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo as well as a Shi'ite ayatollah, Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad bin Talal and Western-based academics.

They faulted Benedict for arguing that a Koran verse advocating religious freedom was written while the Prophet Mohammad was politically weak and "instructions ... concerning holy war" written when he was strong.

The verse was written when Mohammad ruled in Medina and wanted to keep converts from forcing their children to abandon their Christian or Jewish faith for Islam, they wrote.

The letter also faulted him for translating "jihad" as "holy war," saying "jihad" means a "struggle in the way of God" and did not necessarily have to include force.

Benedict used a "very marginal source," the scholars wrote, when he quoted an obscure 11th century thinker, Ibn Hazm, to say Muslims thought God was so transcendent that he was not even bound by his own word.

They also disputed passages where he said or implied that Islam was irrational, violent and based on forced conversion.

"Had Muslims desired to convert all others by force, there would not be a single church or synagogue left anywhere in the Islamic world," they wrote.

They asked how Benedict could argue that violence was against God's nature when Jesus Christ used it to drive the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem.

It would be better to say cruelty, brutality and aggression were against God's will, they argued, adding that the Islamic concept of jihad also condemned these scourges.

The letter acknowledged that some Muslims used violence "in favor of utopian dreams," but said this went against Islamic teaching and specifically condemned the murder of the Italian nun in Somalia.

The scholars also chided Benedict for basing his view of Islam on books by two Catholic writers, saying Christians and Muslims should "consider the actual voices of those we are dialoguing with, and not merely those of our own persuasion."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/10/2006 4.24]

Here is the Washington Post's delayed story about the possible resuscitation soon of the old Mass.

It's the first article I've seen so far that distinguishes between the Low Mass (the usual way the old Mass was celebrated - with the 'speaking' limited to the priest and his acolyte) as opposed to the High Mass (the sung Mass, with all the 'bells and whistles', so to speak).

In my family, we usually went to High Mass on Sundays and of course, on all major Church holidays, so it was always a treat, but that didn't make the Low Mass any less preferable or solemn, because, regardless, you still followed everything closely on your Missal.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Pope Poised To Revive
Latin Mass, Official Says
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 13,2006

Pope Benedict XVI has drafted a document allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass, the Latin rite that was largely replaced in the 1960s by Masses in English and other modern languages, a church official said yesterday.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the pope told colleagues in September that he was writing the document "motu proprio," a Latin phrase for on his own initiative, and that it was in its third draft.

"There will be a document, it will come out soon, and it will be significant," the official said. Benedict "will not let this be sidetracked," he added.

Wider use of the Tridentine Mass is a cause dear to the hearts of many Catholics, for both esthetic and ideological reasons. It was codified in 1570 and remained the standard Roman Catholic liturgy for nearly four centuries, until the gathering of church leaders known as the Second Vatican Council ushered in major reforms from 1962 to 1965.

To some Catholics, the return of the old Latin Mass is symbolic of a conservative turn away from what they view as the "excesses" that followed the Second Vatican Council, said the Rev. Thomas J. Scirghi, who teaches liturgical theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif.

He said many churchgoers associate the Tridentine Mass with beautiful Gregorian chants and a dignified service, while they associate the new Mass -- formalized in 1969 -- with guitars, drums and short-lived experiments such as "Pizza Masses" in which pizzas, rather than wafers, were consecrated in a bid to attract young people.

In fact, the new Mass can be celebrated with great solemnity, either in vernacular languages or in Latin, said Nathan D. Mitchell, professor of liturgical studies at the University of Notre Dame. And the Tridentine Mass, he added, "wasn't always celebrated with care, beauty, aplomb and musical finesse."

"There's a lot of romanticizing of the old liturgy. Most parishes celebrated it as what they called Low Masses, with no singing, no preaching, the priest just mumbling something that was inaudible," Mitchell said.

Nonetheless, he acknowledged, the Tridentine Mass has become "an icon for all the things that people thought had been forfeited and lost at, and after, the Second Vatican Council. That includes not only the liturgy but also a church of visible discipline and hierarchical structure, the ancient discipline of the priesthood, the moral authority of bishops and the pope, a way of looking at the human relationship to God."

The old Latin Mass was never formally prohibited, but it virtually disappeared from the 1960s until the mid-1980s, when Pope John Paul II allowed it back into limited usage, permitting parish priests to celebrate it if they obtained permission from their bishops. Some bishops have freely granted such requests, and some have not.

In Washington, new Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl has continued the policy of his predecessor, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, by making the Tridentine Mass easily available. It is celebrated each Sunday at three local churches -- St. Mary Mother of God in Chinatown, St. John the Evangelist-Forest Glen in Silver Spring, and St. Francis de Sales in Benedict, Md., according to Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese.

In the Arlington Diocese, Bishop Paul S. Loverde earlier this year allowed two churches, St. Lawrence in Franconia and St. John the Baptist in Front Royal, to begin celebrating the Tridentine liturgy each Sunday.

Traditionalist Catholics rejoiced yesterday over the pope's forthcoming decision, which was first reported Wednesday by the Times of London. But some were cautious, noting that rumors have circulated for months that Benedict was about to grant a "universal indult," or general permission, for priests to use the Tridentine Mass.

"I'll believe it when I see it, because I can't tell you how many times there have been exact days when this universal indult was supposed to be issued," said Kenneth J. Wolfe, 33, a choir member at St. Mary Mother of God.

Experts predicted that the papal document would allow more Catholics to experience the old liturgy but would not supplant the new Mass, which is likely to remain the standard in most dioceses.

"Here in the diocese of Galveston, [the Tridentine Mass] is permitted in one church, and not very many people go. So even if the indult is granted, I don't think it will lead to a big division in the church," said the Rev. Michael Barrett, an Opus Dei priest who runs the Holy Cross Chapel and Catholic Resource Center in Houston.

The change might, however, help to heal a rift between the Vatican and followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, a French prelate who bitterly opposed the Second Vatican Council's decisions. Benedict has reached out to Lefebvre's followers, signaling that he would allow them to use the old Mass in return for their recognition of his authority.

"This is an attentiveness to a very, very small faction that he wants to bring back on board," said Monsignor Kevin W. Irwin, dean of the school of theology at Catholic University.

In addition, allowing wider use of the Tridentine Mass might appeal to some older Catholics who miss it and some younger ones who are curious about it. Most important, according to the Rev. Robert Gahl, a professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, it would rectify what Benedict has described as a "breach" in Catholic tradition because the old Mass was effectively suppressed.

The Second Vatican Council called for the "full, conscious, active participation" of the laity in the Mass. As a result, the new Sunday Mass has three readings from Scripture, instead of two, and some may be done by lay people. The priest usually faces the congregation and must give a homily each Sunday; in the Tridentine Mass, the priest faces the altar, with his back to the congregation, and a sermon is optional.

While the Tridentine Mass contains only one version of the Eucharistic prayer -- the moment when Catholics believe the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ -- the new Mass offers nine additional versions.

"People are tired of not knowing what they're going to find" when they go to Mass, said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, the pope's English-language publisher and a leading conservative in the U.S. church. "Benedict is saying, 'The people have a right to the immemorial spiritual customs of the church.' "

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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/10/2006 14.24]