North Korea Agrees
to Stop Nuclear Weapons Pursuit
By Heejin Koo and Allen T. Cheng

BEIJING, Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) - North Korea agreed to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for energy assistance and promises from the U.S. and Japan for steps to normalize relations.

Under the agreement, North Korea will shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor within 60 days, at which time it will receive the equivalent of 50,000 tons of oil in energy aid. Implementation of the agreement would begin ''a month from now,'' said Christopher Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator.

''We have a lot of work to do,'' Hill said at a briefing after the announcement was made in Beijing. ''It's not the end of the process, it's the beginning.''

The deal, if it holds, will defuse a global crisis touched off by North Korea's Oct. 9 test of a nuclear device. At the same time, its terms - exchanging tangible aid to the communist state for promises of good behavior - mirror a 1994 agreement that failed to keep North Korea from continuing to develop nuclear weapons in secret.

The deal is ''a sea-change in policy from Washington,'' said Paul French, the Shanghai-based author of ''North Korea: Paranoid Peninsula.''

President George W. Bush's administration had argued that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il needed to shut down his program before it was willing to deal.

''Up until now the line has been, 'Get rid of your nuclear program or we'll do nasty things to you, like freeze your bank accounts,'' French said. ''Unless you're going to do some kind of engagement, you're going nowhere.''

The agreement is a ''very bad deal'' because it contradicts the policy the Bush administration has followed for the past two years and is a repetition of the 1994 accord, John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Cable News Network's ''The Situation Room'' yesterday.

''It makes the administration look very weak at a time in Iraq, and dealing with Iran, it needs to look strong,'' Bolton said, according to a transcript.

Envoys from the U.S., North Korea, Japan, South Korea, China and Russia spent five days in Beijing hammering out a schedule to revive a September 2005 declaration that promised energy assistance and security guarantees to a non-nuclear North Korea.

The agreement signed today calls for North Korea to shut down and seal the Yongbyon plant for the purpose of ''eventual abandonment.'' This includes a reprocessing facility from which the country made enough fuel for several atomic weapons, according to the CIA. The agreement makes no mention of the fate of the weapons Kim may already possess.

Hill said the issue of North Korea's existing stockpiles will be dealt with at future meetings of ''working groups'' established under the agreement. He said North Korea would be required to make a full declaration of its fissile materials.

North Korea also agreed to allow officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect and monitor the Yongbyon facility.

''I am skeptical because North Korea has entered into many international deals in the past and never kept any,'' said Martin McCauley, international relations expert at the University of London.

''All I think they will try to do is take all the international aid they can get, while attempting to progress their nuclear ambitions,'' he said. ''Their main goal is to take over the whole of the peninsula, and they will want to strengthen their position, and the only way they can do that is to progress with their device.''

''At least the Americans are serious about reaching a real deal that works,'' said John Swenson-Wright, university lecturer in Japanese politics and international relations at Cambridge University. ''It's a shame that the Bush administration didn't get here three years ago because North Korea has had the chance to develop its weapons capability.''

The six-nation talks gained new gravity because of North Korea's detonation in October of its first nuclear device, prompting the UN Security Council to ban sales of military equipment and luxury goods to the country.

News of the accord today won praise from New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Democratic presidential candidate. Richardson, a former U.S. energy secretary and ambassador to the UN who has held discussions with North Korean officials, said the agreement ''takes the right path.''

''Although the devil is in the details, this is a first important step that might lead to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,'' Richardson said in an e-mailed statement.

Robert Einhorn, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies' International Security Program in Washington, said the extent of proposed North Korean actions was crucial.

''Have they agreed to suspend temporarily? Have they agreed to disable parts of the facility in a way that made it difficult to resume activity quickly?'' said Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. ''The U.S. would want whatever steps to be irreversible. And the North Koreans will want it to be quickly reversible.''

Einhorn said the North Korean 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon makes enough plutonium to produce one nuclear bomb a year and operates alongside a reprocessing plant that separates plutonium from spent fuel.

''Any deal is better than no deal,'' said Aidan Foster- Carter, honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University. ''You can't bomb them, there is no other way. The real question is whether North Korea wants to come in from the cold.''

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

I apologize for posting this item here, but I can't see it placed in ODDS & ENDS! The placement here is merely to insure visibility. I think it is important enough, Lord knows, and we should all pray that this time, North Korea is acting in good faith.

I have refrained from posting much of the polemic that has been going on these days in the Italian media about the Prodi government's draft legislation claled DICO that would in effect create 'Class-B marriages', as some of its opponents have called it.

Because it is early days yet. And because, of course, all of it is predictable. The liberals think it's the most brilliant legislative idea ever, as confused and confusing as the hasty draft stands; and the Catholic Church is standing firm that 1) it is unnecessary (because many of the so-called 'rights' being granted to co-habiting couples are obtainable under existing law or with amendments to existing law; and 2) it's the first step in trampling on the traditional institutions of marriage and the family.

This editorial commentary in Libero today, shared by Lella, captures the current state of the polemic, with the writer affirming that the Prodi government has made a potentially suicidal msitake. Here is a translation:

Setting himself aginst the Vatican
is Prodi's political suicide
By SANDRO FONTANA


It is amazing to note how secular commentators of every color expect the Pope not to defend and promote Catholic doctrine but to say Yes to abortion, divorce, euthanasia, destruction of embryos, and homosexual marriage!

Consequently, they accuse the Pope of obscurantism, of neo-temporalism [i.e., regaining temporal power for the Vatican] and of Berlusconian paganism [referring to the former centeri-right Prime Minister].

The well-known theologian Eugenio Scalfari [an ironic reference to the editor-founder of Italy's liberal mouthpiece La Repubblica] in his sermon last Sunday even accused the Pope of having lost the meaning of the word 'Ecclesia' and did not hesitate to teach him that this refers to "the Christian community, to a participatory communion in which everyone may partake of the Body of Christ, everyone in the same manner and at the same table."

In short, the real vocation of the secularists and the Prodi followers is both Caesaristic and sacerdotal, looking to reduce the Church to nothing more than an instrumentum regni - an instrument of governance - to be used to help patch up the shaky government coalition.

Repubblica publisher Ezio Mauro, joining the fray, says he cannot understand how Catholics, "being in the minority", do not simply resign themselves to following current modes and widespread tendencies!

But Christians, from the early days, have always been a minority. And precisely because they felt "in the world but not of the world," they were also aware, as Christ said, that they are 'the salt of the earth' and a permanent 'sign of contradiction'. Therefore, they have learned to anchor their way of being and thinking to certain transcendent values which are not negotiable nor exchangeable for political gain.

Mauro forgets that even in the time of De Gasperi [Italian prime minister in the immediate postwar era], Catholics felt themselves so much in the minority that De Gasperi himself, the day after the great Christian Democrat election victory of 1948, wrote Pope Pius XII (who was being asked by various quarters to pressure the Christian Democrats into dissociating themselves from secularists and reformists) a letter in which he asked: "What would happen if all non-Catholics got together under the common denominator of anti-clericalism?"

In fact ,he knew that the State was not made up of Guelphs but Ghibellines [reference to the centuries-long medieval conflict in which Ghibellines supported the supremacy of the emperor over the Pope, supported by the Guelphs], and that it still was in the hands of "men who are basically anti-clerical, re-energized now by fear of Communism, but always ready to assume a tempered attitude about anti-clerical distrust that was always the attitude of political moderates since the Risorgimento"[Italian unification in the mid-19th century].

De Gasperi also knew that the Church's presence in Italian society had given life to a populist Christian humanism which even today constitutes a sort of 'national element' that pre-exists every political or ideological option.

It is a humanism that cannot be traced back only to Church preaching, as the most idealistic might maintain, nor, as the Marxist culture still insists, the product of economic and social conditions among subordinate classes. It is a populist humanism which, availing of the convergent contribution and the dialectical encounter between religious tradition and aspiration for social emancipation, acquired a universe of values, attitudes and expectations endowed with its own autonomy and widespread at the popular level throughout all of Italy.

It has to do with what Baget Bozzo calls 'Christianhood', which takes precedence over partisan choice - like what happened in last year's referendum on assisted reproduction, when the left failed to mobilize enough voters even in those 'red' regions where Marxist politicians have kept a majority since 1945.

Maybe the Bindis and the Scoppolas [Prodi ministers who have been prominent in pushing forward the PACS/DICO agenda] are not aware of it, but their pathetic intention to attribute even a possibly fleeting semblance of matrimony to persons of the same sex, is destined to be swept away, not only and not so much by the religious conscience of the nation or by appeal to natural law, but by a colossal wave of popular sarcasm of the type that has been rooted in the Italian DNA for centuries.

If to all this, we add the fact that the secularists - or better, our local Caesarists - still have not taken account of the historic significance of this papacy, I don't think there is much hope left for the political and electoral fortunes of the Prodi governmwent and the parties that make up its shaky coalition.

We have a Pope who has decided to finally break the siege laid for centuries against the Church by the a rationalistic and scientistic culture, and who has brought the battle in partibus infidelium [i.e., even to non-believers] when he proclaimed in Regensburg that "whoever is against human reason is also against God," maintaining that meanwhile, neither reason nor science alone are able today to give satisfying and persuasive answers to the most anguishing problems of contemporary man.

That is why Prodi's move against the Church is not so much an error but outright political suicide.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/02/2007 16.24]

Vatican Information Services has come out with the English translation of the Pope's Lenten message and I have posted it in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES...

It's really a very beautiful, powerful and moving 'supplement', an addendum, really, to Deus caritas est - brief and compact as major Papal messages go, and therefore lending itself to re-reading more than just once!

The Vatican has also published the message as something one can slip into one's printed copy of Deus caritas est:


Photo from korazym.org

2/14/07
P.S. When I made this post yesterday, it escaped me completely that it was the eve of St. Valentine's Day. So as I tag it in a 2/14 post below, this most unusual - and yet most logical - Lenten message was also a Valentine message from the Pope to all of us. BENEDETTO, COME SEMPRE, SEI GRANDISSIMO!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2007 15.02]

Official Says Pope's Lenten Message Is Unique

Focuses More on God Than on Charitable Works

VATICAN CITY, FEB. 13, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's Lenten message seeks to show how faith leads to charity's deepest dimensions, a Vatican official explained.

Archbishop Paul Josef Cordes, president of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum," presented the papal message today in the Vatican press office.

The message is centered around the mystery of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

The prelate began his address by explaining how the command of charity is culturally accepted.

He said: "Worldwide entrepreneurs, for example, Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, establish social foundations; film stars and politicians invite to charity dinners; governments create friends for themselves in public opinion thanks to international cooperation; and great fund-raising endeavors -- at times for catastrophes -- in some cases reach considerable quantities.

"As Christians we can observe, not without satisfaction, that in social life the biblical commandment of love of neighbor seems universally accepted."

Theocentric

Archbishop Cordes pointed out that the Pope's message for Lent "is considerably different" than previous ones, written by him or by Pope John Paul II.

Previous messages have focused on "works of charity in the sense of Christians' social commitment," the prelate said. This time, the Pontiff "forcefully places God the Father of Jesus Christ at the center." Therefore, the focus is not anthropocentric but theocentric.

"The Holy Father is less concerned with the horizontal dimension, in order to bring into clearer light the vertical dimension of Christian living," he added.

"This change of thought can be observed in general in Benedict XVI's preaching," Achbishop Cordes stated.

He added that in the Pope's encyclical or in other discourses, the central theme is always the love of the Father in heaven becoming man in the Son Jesus Christ.

Spiritual poverty

Archbishop Cordes speculated on the Pope's reasons for changing the focus of the Lenten message.

For the Holy Father, the prelate explained, "the absence of God is worse than material poverty, because it kills every firm hope and leaves man alone with his pain and lament."

In the Lenten message, the archbishop said, "the Pope is bound to the pain that weighs on our lives because of our own or others' faults, and invites us to look up from down here toward the heights."

The prelate said that is why he chose the theme: "They Shall Look Upon Him Whom They Have Pierced."

The Vatican official clarified that Benedict XVI does not forget to invite the faithful to concrete works of charity.

According to Archbishop Cordes, the Holy Father says that the pierced side of Christ "will impel us, in particular, to combat every form of contempt of life or of exploitation of the person and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people."

Pope implores Lebanese
to reject violence and rediscover unity


Vatican City, Feb. 14 (AsiaNews) – Benedict XVI has “implored” the Lebanese people to reject violence and to seek national unity and the common good.

In a telegram of condolence for victims of yesterday’s attack, addressed to the Maronite Patriarch, Nasrallah Sfeir, the pope once again expressed his concern for and closeness with the Country of the Cedars.

In the message signed by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and made public today, Benedict XVI said he was “deeply saddened by the serious attack” and expressed “his spiritual nearness and prayer” for families of the victims.

“Entrusting to divine mercy those who were tragically lost, the Holy Father invokes the maternal protection of the Virgin Mary over the entire Lebanese nation. He implores the Lebanese people and their leaders to unanimously reject violence and to rediscover in this tragic moment, the motivation for a leap towards national unity and the common good.”

Already yesterday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone urged “prayers for Lebanon where today there was a serious anti-Christian attack.” He said: “Let us pray for this martyred land for which the Pope has already made several appeals.”

I just saw the text of the Holy Father's words and catechesis this morning on the Vatican bulletin - and he says in the first part of the two-part audience, to the bishops and pilgrims from the Italian region of the Marche, at St. Peter's Basilica, that he will be joining them next September in Loreto for a youth assembly during the celebration of the feast of Our Lady. (As Cardinal, he visited to the shrine known as Mary's House in Loreto at least seven times.)

I have now posted a translation of the Holy Father's words today at the General audience in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS. For a change, it is AsiaNews today that has not yet reported on the audience, wheeras VIS has an early (for them) story:


WOMEN DID NOT ABANDON JESUS

VATICAN CITY, FEB 14, 2007 (VIS) - The role of women in the history of the Church was the theme chosen by Benedict XVI for his catechesis at today's general audience, which was held in the Paul VI Hall in the presence of 20,000 people.

"Jesus chose 12 men as fathers of the new Israel, 'to be with Him and to be sent out to proclaim the message'," said the Holy Father, "but ... among the disciples many women were also chosen. ... They played an active role within the context of Jesus mission. In the first place ... the Virgin Mary, who with her faith and her maternal care worked in a unique way for our redemption. ... Having become a disciple of her Son, ... she followed Him even to the foot of the cross where she received a maternal mission for all his disciples in all times."

After mentioning other women who appear in various parts of the Gospel - such as Susanna, and Lazarus' sisters Martha and Mary - the Pope pointed out that "the women, unlike the Twelve, did not abandon Jesus at the hour of His Passion. Outstanding among them was Mary Magdalene ... who was the first witness of the Resurrection and announced it to the others." Pope Benedict also recalled how St. Thomas Aquinas referred to Mary Magdalene as "the apostle of the apostles."

In the first Christian communities, Benedict XVI went on, "the female presence was anything but secondary." St. Paul "starts from the fundamental principle according to which among the baptized 'there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female'." Furthermore, "the Apostle admits that in the Christian community it is quite normal that there should be women who prophesy, in other words who pronounce openly under the influence of Holy Spirit for the edification of the community."

Therefore St. Paul's subsequent assertion that "women should be silent in the churches" must "be relativized," said the Pope, and he explained that "the problem ... of the relationship between these two apparently contradictory indications should be left to the exegetes."

"The history of Christianity would have developed quite differently without the generous contribution of many women," said the Pope and he recalled how John Paul II had written: "The Church gives thanks for each and every woman ... for all the manifestations of the feminine 'genius'."

"We share this appreciation, giving thanks to the Lord because He leads His Church, generation after generation, indiscriminately using men and women who know how to bring their faith to fruition ... for the good of the entire body of the Church.

After the audience, relatives of three Israeli soldiers - Ehud Goldwaser and Eldad Regev, held by the Lebanese group Hezbollah since July 2006, and Gilad Shalit, in the hands of the Palestinian group Hamas since June 25 - handed the Pope the copy of a letter in which they request the immediate and unconditional liberation of their loved ones.

Prior to the audience in the Paul VI Hall, the Pope had met in the Vatican Basilica with bishops from the Italian region of the Marches, who are currently undertaking their "ad limina" visit. The prelates were accompanied by civil authorities and faithful from their various dioceses.

The Holy Father also recalled that on September 1 and 2, he will participate in a national meeting of Italian youth at the shrine of Loreto, Italy, and he invited young people to attend in large numbers.

In closing, he read a prayer to the Virgin Mary asking, among other things, that she watch over this pastoral initiative so that it may be "fertile soil for the Italian Church."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/02/2007 17.47]

Pope meets relatives of Israeli soldiers



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 14 (AP) - Relatives seeking information on two Israeli soldiers who were seized by Hezbollah militants in northern Israel at the start of last year's Lebanon war met Wednesday with Pope Benedict XVI.

Benedict listened to the appeal by relatives of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who are making a two-day visit to Italy and the Vatican as part of a campaign to enlist foreign help to obtain information on the soldiers and secure their release, said Oded Ben-Hur, Israel's ambassador to the Holy See.

Hezbollah has not released any details on the condition of the soldiers or provided any sign they are still alive since they seized the pair in the July 12 cross-border raid that sparked the conflict.

The group of relatives, including Regev's brother and Goldwasser's parents and wife, spoke briefly with Benedict during his weekly public audience and gave him a booklet with paintings from the Bible and photos of the captive soldiers, Ben-Hur said.

"You could see he was very touched," Ben-Hur said.

The relatives were also scheduled to meet with top Italian officials later Wednesday, including Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema.

Meanwhile, Benedict also condemned Tuesday's bombings on commuter buses in Lebanon that killed three people.

In a telegram to Lebanese Cardinal Nasrallah Pierre Sfeir, the pope said he was "deeply pained by the serious attack" and was praying for the victims and their families.

He also urged "the Lebanese people and its leaders to unanimously reject violence" and work for "national unity and common good."

The explosions on a busy mountain highway in a Christian area northeast of Beirut stoked fears of turmoil a day before pro-government supporters marked the anniversary of the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Here is the AsiaNews advanCe story on the Beirut rally today:


Beirut, Feb. 14 (AsiaNews) – Tens of thousands of Lebanese are gathering in the central Martyrs’ Square of Beirut to take part in a rally for the second anniversary of the killing of the ex-prime minister Rafic Hariri, which is being promoted by government parties.

A river of people carrying Lebanese flags and with blue – the colour of the parliamentary majority – kerchiefs tied around their necks is flowing through the streets to take part in the meeting set to start at 11am local time.

Yesterday’s bombs struck two buses in a prevalently Christian area north of Beirut, prompting the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, to talk about an “anti-Christian attack”.

Organizers of the rally were worried that the turnout would be low because of the blasts so they arranged to have security forces beefed up. The army is visibly present with tanks and it has put up a razor wire fence between Martyrs’ Square, where the tomb of the ex-prime minister is, and the neighbouring Riad al-Solh Square where around 100 loyal opposition supporters have been pressing ahead with a sit-in since 1 December.

Leaders of the majority are expected to address the rally: Saad Hariri, Walid Joumblatt, Amin Gemayel and Samir Geagea.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2007 15.26]

Bulgaria's Youngest Bishop: The Pope is a Heretic

The Sofia Weekly
Politics: 14 February 2007, Wednesday.

Bulgaria's youngest bishop Nikolay called the Pope a heretic on TV, bringing upon himself the wrath of fellow clerics just days after he was elected the bishop of the country's second city of Plovdiv.

Nikolay, who is one of the heads of the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria, claims that the fact that the Pope is Catholic makes him a heretic. "If he professes a different belief than the Orthodox than the church canons make him a heretic," Nikolay said for private bTV channel.

"Plovdiv will see scandals on a monthly basis with this newly-hatched bishop," Hristo Matanov, a former chief of the state's Department of Ecclesiastical Matters said. "If he wants to play Jesus, than he should throw his silk cassock and give up all contemporary commodities and roam the Earth barefoot preaching."

Nikolay has always been the favourite of Bulgaria's Patriarch Maxim and his patron was the first to congratulate him on his unanimous election on Sunday.

Born in 1969, he is the youngest metropolitan bishop in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

Bulgaria consists of 13 dioceses, that of Plovdiv being the biggest one.

A metropolitan bishop is a high-ranking administrative position in Bulgaria's Orthodox Church. He belongs to the secular clergy and keeps the vow of virginity and the vow not to marry.

Whoa! Not that this silly bishop should be answered, but maybe the Bulgarian Orthodox Church should also require that their non-ordained metropolitans be educated? It's the Orthodox Church that broke away from the the 'unam, sanctam, cattolicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam'. How can the adherent of the original faith be the heretic?

Anyway, here is the translation of the first of two nice Valentine's Day article about Pope Benedict XVI and his apostolate of love, shared by Lella from La Repubblica today (which took time out from its relentless anti-Benedict offensive of the past few days over DICO to publish two positive articles about him):


Ratzinger shows he is more man than theologian:
One does not love only the body
but also the spiritual beauty of the beloved
By Luciana Sica

Papa Ratzinger has cast asside the robes of abstract intellectual and sophisticated theologian to show himself as a man totally involved in the essence of man, which is his capacity to love and be loved.

This is according to Giovanni Reale, professor of the history of ancient philosophy at San Raffaele University in Milan, author of many important essays on the subject, among this a famous best-seller, History of Western Philosophy, co-written with Dario Antiseri, that has been translated into many languages, including Russian. (Among his many honors, Reale is quite proud that he is an honorary professor at the University of Moscow.)

Is it OK if you are described as a Catholic liberal?
I am a Christian who is open, very open, and certainly liberal...

How do you evaluate the Pope's message (from the 2007 Lenten message released yesterday) where he speaks about God's eros towards man?
In referring to man's fundamental problem which is love, the Pope wants to point out that religion is not philosophy, it is not an abstraction. You know what Augustine used to say, "If you do not love, you are nothing." You can have everything, but it can all mean nothing, because it is only love that allows you to be - you are, because you love.

But the idea of eros implies sensuality, something very physical, isn't that so?
Eros is doubtless the passion of love. It is an acquisitive force that acts in order to take possession - it arises from the lack of something we need, but which can lift us, through beauty, to a higher plane. The physical aspect is simply the point of departure. Plato tells us in the Symposium and in Phaedrus that when we love someone else's body, we always love what is beautiful in that body.

But that's not usually said or thought.
When you really love someone physically, you always love the beauty of his spirit, or something beautiful in his spirit - that's the amazing thing. Love grows 'upward' even more when one loves the workings of that spirit. There's a philosophical knowledge that can reach the level of mystical union when one learns to grasp beauty in itself, as an absolute.

So it is not surprising that the Pope speaks about God's eros towards man?
Ratzinger says that God'n eros is at the same time total agape, a purely giving love, and that eros and agape conjoin. I find it a statement of great importance. It shows he is a man first - not an intellectuial - who has profoundly understood love in all its many facets, as a single reality with multiple dimensions that are not contradictory.

The Pope has also spoken of an impossible self-sufficiency in man, who can be seduced by the lies of Evil. Do you find such language convincing?
Yes. Think how much man has been damaged by the illusory promises of science and technology which purport to solve all of men's problems. It is clear that is not so, and that there are certain fundamental problems that can only be resolved through love.


Here's the second article, which in a way, comments on the Pope's Lenten message, released yesterday, as though it were - as well and rightfully - a Valentine from Benedict to the faithful:

A GOD OF EROS:
The Pope says God loves us with passion
and awaits our Yes like a young bridegroom

God, said Papa Luciani (John Paul I), is also a mother.

God, Papa Ratzinger writes in his first encyclical, is Love.

Now, the Pope-theologian goes even farther. God, he says in his Lenten, message, is also Eros. Because 'Eros is part of God's very heart."

It is a daring image, which shows how much Joseph Ratzinger is attracted and fascinated by the mystery of divine love and how much he is enchanted by the pulsating heart of Divinity, that which he tries to approach as a theologian.

"God's love is also 'eros,' he points out. "In the Old Testament, the Creator of the universe manifests toward the people whom He has chosen as His own a predilection that transcends every human motivation."

Agape and eros, two terms from Greek culture, were at the center of Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus caritas est. The pope-theologian wrote that human existence revolves around eros, the love that seeks happiness 'in the other,' and agape, the love that epxresses itself in loving concern 'for the other.'

In this way, Ratzinger wanted to make it clear that faith does not scorn eros nor sexuality in search of a partner that one seeks to possess in all intimacy, but it must be complemented by reciprocal giving between a couple, thereby completing the luminous trajectory from the eros-inebriation that unites man and woman to a loving concern for all others (caritas). From the couple to society.

This time, Benedict XVI picks up the Ariadne's thread of the concept and points it upward. It is the God-man relationship that interests him. Or better said, God's attitude towards man.

The mystics know that one can be caught up in such burning love for God as to totally lose oneself in it. And they also know that the love of God can literally burn the human creature, as the great mystics have shown in their ecstasies which result in stigmata that some may well consider to be near-erotic. [Very apropos, see the entry yesterday on St. Catherine dei Ricci in the SAINTS thread.]

In his message, Papa Ratzinger is careful to underline that divine love is not limited to paternal, protective love, but also manifests itself as an authentic 'passionate love.'

And he goes back to Biblical sources in which the relations between God and Israel were always preferentially described as that beween bride and bridegroom.

Agape, writes the Pope in his Lenten message, is the "sacrificial love of someone who only wants the good of the other." This certainly has been God's attitude since the Creation. But, the Pope adds, "eros is the love of someone who wishes to possess what he lacks and yearns for union with the beloved."

It is the God who yearns for union with man that Ratzinger powerfully evokes in this message. God is not content unless he enters into this communication with man, the Pope seems to say.

And so he states clearly: "The love with which God surrounds us is without a doubt, agape...But there is also a divine passion." And this passionate urge is described in the Bible "with audacious images, like the love of a man for an adulterous woman."

It is true. The Old Testament describes the relationship between God and His chosen people with all the physicality, carnality, desire and rage of a relationship between a lover and his beloved.

Ratzinger states: "The Biblical texts show that eros is part of the very heart of God. The Almighty awaits the 'yes' of His creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride."

What comes to mind here - and certainly, to the Pope as he wrote his message - are the enthralling images from the Song of Songs, which Hebrew tradition, and later the Christian, have always seen as a vertical relationship: between God, lover and bridegroom, and Israel, beloved and bride.

The lover says, in an almost Mozartean context: "Let us go early to the vineyards, and there, I will shower you with caresses." She replies: "Set me as a seal on your heart, because love is as strong as death, and passion is as relentless as hell."

But it can happen that believers (Israel) do not know how to reciprocate God's love. Then God can rage at his adulterous bride and there can be scenes as violent as in Cavalleria Rusticana: "Take off the signs of your prostitution," says God through the prophet Hosea, "or I will strip you naked...and expose your shame to all your lovers..."

For the Jews, the great sin that disrupted the God-man relation was idolatry. For Ratzinger, it is radical selfishness, philosophical self-centeredness.

"Unfortunately," he writes, "from the very beginning, mankind, seduced by the lies of the Evil One, rejected God's love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency that is impossible."

But God, as Hosea had proclaimed, awaits anxiously the moment of re-pacification with His bride: "I will draw her to me and speak to her heart."

To re-establish the pact, Ratzinger says, speaking of the Christian way, God paid the price by shedding the blood of His own Son, the Christ: "On the Cross, God's 'eros' for us is made manifest. 'Eros' is indeed - as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it - that force 'that does not allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the beloved'".

And he adds poetically: "Is there an eros more 'mad' than that which led the Son of God to make Himself one with us even to the point of suffering as His own the consequences of our offences?"

On the Cross, the circle closes. With love.

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

The byline for this article was omitted in the original post. I will add it as soon as I find out.

Let me add a third article now, from Angela Ambrogetti, who, I've found out today, now works for Vatican Radio (after having lost her job when the TV channel Telepace dissolved its Vatican news service overnight).

Like the piece she wrote about Benedict, which I posted in POPE-POURRI the other day, she wrote this for PETRUS, 'the first online newspaper dedicated to the Apostolate of Benedict XVI', in the words of its editor, Gianluca Barile, who is the president of the Papa Benedetto Fan Club. (If you have not already seen it, the address is www.papanews.it. It's a very admirable initiative, and I wish there were some way they could add an English section.)

In this, Angela comments about the Pope's Lenten message.

Only someone 'in love'
can write certain things
By Angela Ambrogetti


Only someone in love can write such things! That was the comment of another Christ lover like my friend Orazio Petrosillo, Vaticanista of Il Messaggero (whose absence we all feel so much - may he recover soon!) when he wrote about the Pope's first encyclical, Deus caritas est. [Petrosillo had a stroke while covering the Pope's vacation in Les Combes last summer, and has been hospitalized since; his standing as a Vaticanista may be judged from the fact that he was being mentioned at the time for the editorship of Osservatore Romano]

But this encyclical was not programmatic! It's a theologian's outburst, said the 'secularists' among us, the Vaticanisti who only 'look for the news' and do not know that the NEWS has been there for 2000 years but they do not know how to tell it, perhaps becuase they do not understand it.

Yesterday morning, the Press Room of the Holy See was only half-full - precisely because there was no 'news' of the kind the secularists expect - when don Oreste Benzi, presiddent of the John XXIII Foundation [along with Archbishop Josef Cordes of Cor Unum] presented the Pope's Lenten message for 2007.

God's love is also eros, an exclusive love, a love that thirsts for love, as it did on the Cross, the Pope said in his message. Is this not the 'news' that we should learn every day? About a love that unites both giving freely and the passionate desire for reciprocity that gives rise to an inebriation which makes the heaviest sacrifices seem light?

But what about a political, a social component in this message?

"...(R)ecognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person;...to fight every form of contempt for life and human exploitation and to alleviate the tragedies of loneliness and abandonment of so many people," the Pope's message says.

Not enough? It's a clearcut program of work. Definitely demanding. It is a program for those who love, not for 'charity employees', as don Benzi calls them.

And yesteray, in that half-full room, don Benzi made us see Love. He spoke of children who were adopted even if they are gravely disabled, he spoke of prostitutes who have been 'set free,' he spoke of the volunteers who try to bring peace between Israelis and Lebanese, of prison convicts who have found a new life, of sick people who have discovered how beautiful it is to live despite their suffering.

And he spoke of Piergiorgio Welby: "I wrote him - allow us to join you and you will see that life is beautiful. Suffering allows man to find himself. And it is not sickness that truly afflicts us, but rather being abandoned. I would have wanted to tell his wife that one does not overcome suffering by ending life but by allowing it room. This would have given the story a beautiful turn." (Later, speaking to me, he said: "Unfortunately, that case interested the politicians too much.")

But to get back to the news. What news are we talking about here? Is it the draft law on DICO? But this also gives me another example to cite -

Yesterday afternoon, Professor Mario Agnes, editor of Osservatore Romano, presented a small anthology of Benedict XVI's addresses about the family. [And did we see this in the news? Not in the Vatican bulletin! Which reminds me I really should make it a habit to check out Vatican Radio online daily. They're more efficient than the Press Office.]

This time the Press Room of Vatican Radio was full because the media was expecting an attack on DICO.

What did the jackals expect the presentors to say? That Christians are happy and content that the concept of the family itself is being shot to pieces? And over the fact that this follows divorce, abortion and assisted reproduction?

But Dr. Agnes said something which struck me: "With this book, the Church wants to be the Good Samaritan for the family - we take the time to attend to it while everyone else just goes ahead."

Well, dear colleagues in the media, there's the news. All you need to know is how to communicate it.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2007 3.41]

Communion and Liberation to Meet With Pope


ROME, FEB. 14, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The Communion and Liberation Movement invited its members to participate in an audience with Benedict XVI on March 24.

The meeting was announced in a letter written last month by Father Julián Carrón, superior of this ecclesial movement, founded in 1954 by Father Luigi Giussani.

"We are all well aware of the importance of the figure of the Successor of St. Peter for the Church's life. In him we have the unfailing point of reference for our faith, without which it would decay into one of the many different ideologies that dominate the world," explained Father Carrón in his letter.

He added: "The power of the Spirit, linked to [the Pope's] ministry, is the guarantee of the presence of Christ in history. It is this awareness that must bring us all before the Holy Father with that filial devotion in which we have been educated.

"Moreover, Pope Benedict has been tied to our history in such a singular way that we feel particularly close. He knows us well, just as he knew Father Giussani well."

The audience will take place on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the pontifical recognition of the Communion and Liberation Movement.

In a post above, I highlighted a line about a new booklet issued by Osservatore Romano on the Pope's statements regarding the family that I had not seen reported anywhere. Petrus, the online newspaper dedicated to the Pope, from which that article was taken, has an article about the booklet itself, written for it by a Vatican reporter for Globalpress. Here is a translation.


The truth about the family:
What Benedict XVI thinks
By Elisabetta Mancini


Addresses,messages, Angelus words. These are contained in an Osservatore Romano monograph entitled "La verità sulla famiglia - Matrimonio e unioni di fatto nelle parole di Benedetto XVI" (The truth about the family -Matrimony and de facto unions in the speeches of Benedict XVI).

The booklet has been issued as part of the newspaper's series called 'Quaderni dell'Osservatore Romano', with a first printing of 5,000 copies [why so few?] sold at 5 euro.

Thew newspaper chose 18 speeches or messages showing the crescendo of concern by Pope Benedict XVI over the future of the family as a social institution.

It starts with a letter from the Pope to Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of teh Pontifical Council for the Family, stressing that family and matrimony are irreplaceable and do not allow alternatives.

There too many grave menaces currently undermining the family, according to the Pope, and at the start of 2006, at an audience with the administrators of Lazio region and Rome, the Pope said "society does not have any exigent need to recognize juridically other forms of union" [besides traditional marriage between a man and a woman].

"It is a grave error," the Pope said, "to obscure the value and the functions of a family legitimately based on matrimony by attributing to other forms of union juridical recognition for which there is no effect social need."

The collection includes the Pope's address to a delegation of th Partido Popolare Europeo [Catholic politicians who are meembers of the European Parliament] when he met them last March.

"(These are) non-negotiable values: life, from conception to its natural end; the family founded on matrimony - because other forms would destabilize these institutions and obscure their value; and the education of children," he spelled out.

The Pope spoke on these 'non-negotiable issues' at the V World Encounter of Families in Valencia inJuly 2006 and at the national Conference of the Italian Church in Verona last October.

In his Christmas address to the Roman Curia, the Pope had the Prodi government's proposed PACS (pacts of civil solidarity) in mind when he once again said that new juridical forms of union other than traditional marriage would dliute the significance of the latter. And he closed the year with similar statements at the last Angelus.

The Pope's words clearly show his great concern for families forced to rsist "the disintegrating impulses of a contemporary culture which undermines the very bases of the institutional family."

When he met the Lazio administrators again earlier this year, the Pope called dangerous "plans which aim to attribute to other forms of union improper juridical recognition, inevitably ending in the weakening and destabilization of the legitimate family founded on matrimony."

The Pope discussed the juridical aspects of marriage at a meeting in January with the Rota Romana [which decides on marriage annulments] for the start of the juridical year. He also spoke about rediscovering the beauty of truth in matrimony.

And at the Angelus of February 4, to celebrate the Day for Life, he spoke about the defense, assistance, protection and cherishing of the institution of marriage "in its irrepeatable uniqueness."

The crescendo of statements by the Pope on the concept of family is evident in the booklet just published, and it is hoped it may echo in the chambers of Parliament.

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

The good news is that some Italian bishops - among those who are not usually reported in the media - not have started speaking up publicly about their objections to the Prodi government's DICO initiative granting quasi-marital rights to de facto unions, hetero- or homosexual

Cardinal Ruini and his supporters in the Italian bishops conference have consistently been the most vocal and articulate in supporting teh Pope and the Magisterium on these matters.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2007 14.38]

AP - Thu Feb 15, Pope Benedict XVI with the president of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun, during a meeting at the Vatican, Thursday Feb. 15, 2007. The pontiff urged restraint by all to avoid endangering negotiations aimed at shutting down North Korea's nuclear program. Warning of the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region, Benedict said in a letter he gave to the president that 'all interested parties' should seek to resolve present tensions through peaceful means and 'to refrain from any gesture or initiative that might endanger the negotiations.' (AP Photo/Danilo Schiavella, Pool)





The Osservatore Romano has released this photograph of Pope Benedict XVI
greeting a leper from Japan at the general audience yesterday.
Tony Gentile of Reuters shot picture on the right.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2007 15.09]

ASH WEDNESDAY: POPE TO PRESIDE AT MASS IN SANTA SABINA

VATICAN CITY, FEB 15, 2007 (VIS) - At 4.30 p.m. on February 21, Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, Benedict XVI will preside at a moment of prayer in the church of St. Anselm on Rome's Aventine Hill. There will follow a penitential procession to the basilica of Santa Sabina attended by cardinals, archbishops, bishops, the Benedictine monks of St. Anselm, the Dominican Fathers of Santa Sabina and lay faithful.

Following the procession, the Pope will preside at a Eucharistic celebration in the basilica of Santa Sabina, with the traditional rite of blessing and the imposition of the ashes.

Pope tells South Korean president of concern over nukes in region

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI told South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun that he shares that nation's concerns about a nuclear arms race in the region.

With the aid of interpreters, the pope and president spoke privately for 25 minutes Feb. 15 before Pope Benedict handed the president a letter expressing his concerns about North Korea's nuclear program and about the continued separation of families on either side of the border.

Roh's visit to the Vatican came just two days after North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, Russia and the United States reached a tentative agreement to put a stop to the development of new nuclear weapons by North Korea.

The agreement requires North Korea to close its main nuclear reactor, allow international inspectors into the country and begin reporting on its nuclear-related activities.

The nations involved in the talks promised to give major aid, particularly fuel oil, to North Korea in return for its compliance.

In his letter to Roh, the pope said, "the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region" is "a source of concern fully shared by the Holy See."

He urged the countries involved in the so-called Six-Party Talks "to make every effort to resolve the present tensions through peaceful means and to refrain from any gesture or initiative that might endanger the negotiations."

The pope also repeated a point he had made several times in the past: Countries must not withhold or threaten to withhold humanitarian aid to North Korea's poorest citizens as part of the negotiating process.

Pope Benedict told the president that he understood the pain people on both sides of the border have experienced over the past 50 years because of the political division of the two Koreas.

"Families have been split, close relatives have been separated from one another," he said. "Please let them know that I am spiritually close to them in their suffering.

"On compassionate grounds, I pray for a speedy solution to the problem, which impedes so many from communicating with one another," he said.

In a statement issued Feb. 15, officials from North Korea and South Korea announced their two governments would resume talks on trade and humanitarian aid in late February.

By Ryu Jin
Korea Times Correspondent

VATICAN CITY _ President Roh Moo-hyun Thursday asked Pope Benedict XVI to play a bigger role in peace on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.

In a meeting with the pontiff, Roh invited the pope to visit South Korea as early as possible, and, if possible, North Korea.

Roh, who arrived in Rome Wednesday, made a one-day visit to the Vatican, the landlocked city-state in the Italian capital, to discuss bilateral relations with South Korea.

''Your Excellency Pope Benedict XVI, you have so far shown deep interest and love for Korea, praying for peace on the Korean Peninsula and calling for the resolution of the North Korean nuclear problem through dialogue,’’ Roh said.

''Here I ask you to give more advice and play a bigger role for peace on the peninsula and in Northeast Asia,’’ he added, delivering the Korean people’s love and respect for the pope.

On several occasions, Korean Catholic and political leaders, including former President Kim Dae-jung and Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, have asked the Vatican to consider a simultaneous visit by the pope to both Koreas.

A breakthrough, which was made in the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program in Beijing on Tuesday, has heightened the possibility of the pope visiting the two Koreas simultaneously, North Korea watchers say.

Pope Benedict XVI, who was elected in a papal conclave in April 2005, has responded positively to the proposal.

South Korea has two cardinals _ Stephen Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan and Nicholas Cardinal Cheong Jin-suk _ and some 5.1 million Catholic believers, while North Korea claims to have about 3,000 Catholics

The late Pope John Paul II visited South Korea in 1984 to mark the 200th anniversary of Catholicism in the country and then in 1989 to attend the 44th foreign pastoral visit. Pope Benedict XVI has yet to make a visit to either of the two Koreas.

After the meeting with the pope, Roh met Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, to discuss ways to improve ties between the two states.

Here's a translation of Sandro Magister's blog today, reacting to the kind of unthinking reflex comments that Prodi government leaders and their liberal allies in the media have been saying about the Pope and the Catholic Church lately.

Ratzinger neglecting Jesus
to concern himself with DICO?
Since when and how?

In New Delhi, Rosy Bindi, Italy's minister for the family and a past president of Catholic Action in Italy, responded to statements made earlier in the week by Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Camillo Ruini referring to DICO, the draft legislation she co-authored that would give quasi-marital rights to de facto unions, by saying: "I would prefer that the Church just concerned itself with matters about God."

These words are pretty close to what Pietro Scoppola said in a harsh article against the Church hierarchy published earlier in La Repubblica [mouthpiece of Italian liberals] entitled "A Church that speaks more of PACS than of the mystery of Christ who died and resurrected".

If that were so, then they are saying that there has been a radical change in what the chief accused, Benedict XVI, has been preaching day after day!

One example among thousands: the Pope's message for Lent 2007, which was released the day before Bindy's wisecrack.

The message is entitled "They will look on Him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19,37). And it is an impressive synthesis of the heart of Papa Ratzinger's theolgical and Christological preaching.

Who often also speaks about life and the family. And he does so, even in the final lines of his Lenten message, when he says:

"Contemplating 'Him whom they have pierced' will move us in this way to open our hearts to others, recognizing the wounds inflicted upon the dignity of the human person; it will move us, in particular, to fight every form of contempt for life..."

It is precisely the extreme consistency between what Benedict XVI preaches about God and what he says about life, about the family, and about the human being that is a distinctive characteristic of his Pontificate.

To take away the first element makes it impossible to understand the second, much less to raise any well-founded criticism of it.

The Pope's message for Lent is easily available on the Vatican site. Let them [the Pope's critics] read it first. Then let them dispute it. Without taking shortcuts.


Magister's blog yesterday dealt with DICO also, from a different perspective:

2 Catholic Action intellectuals part ways;
DICO drafter cites Cardinal Martini wrongly


In the mare magnum of Catholic comments about the government's draft legislation on DICO, some interesting curiosities emerge:

1. For instance, among the bishops who registered an opinion first, the Bishop of Oristano, Ignazio Sanna, did so in cutting terms.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera on February 8, he said, among other thigns: "I hope that Italy, among all of Europe, can show itself a model of resisting this slippery slope down which we are all in danger of skidding."

As for homosexual couples, he cut to the quick: "The union of two men is just addition, it doesn't make a couple."

Before becoming bishop in 2006, Sanna thought Christian anthropology at the Pontifical Lateran University, whose Grand Chancellor is Cardinal Camillo Ruini. Sanna's last book is also very 'Ruinian' - entitled "The open identity: The Christian and teh anthropological question," published by Queriniana in its most prestigious theological series.

And yet Sanna always was reputed to be a progressivist. Until last eyar, he was the assistant national chaplain for MEIC (ecclesiastical movement for cultural commitment), the intellectual branch of Catholic Action, and whose president is Renato Balduzzi, professor of constitutional law at the University of Genoa, both named to their MEIC positions by the Italian bishops conference.

Well, Balduzzi is one of the effective authors of the DICO draft, along with another constitutionalist, Stefano Ceccanti, ex-president of FUCI (federation of CAtholic universities of Italy), and Rosy Bindi, who was once national vice-president of Catholic Action in Italy. [Balduzzi is her principal legal consultant, while Ceccanti is legislative chief for Barbara Pollastrini, minister for equal opportunities, and nominal co-author with Bindi of the DICO frat.]

Evidently Sanna and Balduzzi have gone their separate ways on the matter of de facto unions.

2. The aforementioned Ceccanti offered another curious sidelight. The day after the approval of the DICO draft by the Prodi cabinet, comments by Ceccanti published in all the newspapers had him citing as someone who supported its principles...no less than Cardinal Carlo Martini.

Who has not said anything on this subject lately. In fact, the words of Martini cited by Ceccanti come from a year 2000 address in Milan on the eve of the feast of St. Ambrose, when he said: "Public authorities can adopt a pragmatic approach and surely should show a fraternal sensibility" during a long speech on "Family and politics".

Indeed, Martini devoted a part of the speech to de facto unions. But as often happens with most of Martini's statements, it is easy to draw from it arguments for and against any specific issue.

In any case, if one re-reads it dispassionately at this time, the cardinal does insist on one thing - on the obligation not to make the family equivalent to any other form of cohabitation.

"The new forms," he said, "cannot lay claim to the legitimacy and protection that are given to families, as the natural unit of society that is based on matrimony."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/02/2007 19.15]

Pope's Family Handbook:
Volume Compiles Papal Texts on Marriage
By Catherine Smibert

ROME, FEB. 15, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has been an eloquent defender of the institution of marriage and the family since the beginning of his pontificate. And now, thanks to L'Osservatore Romano, his most poignant texts on these issues have been gathered in one place.

The Vatican daily has published a booklet comprised of choice excerpts from the Pontiff's work entitled: "The Truth About the Family: Marriage and De Facto Unions in the Words of Benedict XVI."

The director of the Vatican press office, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, presented the publication this week. He said that "the correct compilation of the works helps us to more adequately understand the Pope's concerns and motivations behind them. … Presented in abundance, they are in stark juxtaposition to the more superficial and improvised way these considerations are often portrayed."

Mario Agnes, director of L'Osservatore Romano, said his team was motivated by the Holy Father's call for Christians not to be silent on these issues.

"On Dec. 22," said Agnes, "Benedict XVI pronounced to the Roman Curia that he couldn't silence his concern for civil union legislations around the world. We want to help him to be heard and we saw this as an opportune moment to offer a collection of the Pope's works as an instrument for reflection for all."

Francesco D'Agostino, president of the Union of Catholic Judges, reminded those of us attending the launch that "even before being made Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke extensively about our collective task to protect and promote the family and its traditional makeup."

The professor added though that Christians shouldn't merely reduce the faith to a private experience. He said these works help them be prepared to express their convictions more publicly to make a difference in society.

"Let's face it," said D'Agostino, "the family wasn't invented over the course of history like technologies. … It's at the heart of a human's identity, and we have proof of the devastating effects its breakdown has on different cultures from varying epochs."

A copy of the booklet, currently only available in Italian, can be obtained by writing a request directly via e-mail: info@ossrom.va or via fax: +39 06 69 88 28 18.

Papal transformation - Benedict uses softer touch to dialogue with Islam

By Russell Shaw
2/16/2007
Our Sunday Visitor

HUNTINGTON, Ind. (Our Sunday Visitor) – Call it a change of substance, call it a change of tone, or call it simply a change – Pope Benedict XVI’s publicly stated view of Islam has undergone a remarkable transformation in less than five months.

This is the pope who last September quoted without disagreement a 14th-century Christian emperor’s complaint that Mohammed had accomplished nothing but “things evil and inhuman.” Now Pope Benedict calls for Christians and Muslims to work together in the cause of peace.

This also is the churchman who before becoming pope opposed Muslim Turkey’s admission to the European Union. Now he looks favorably on having Turkey a part of that grouping of 27 European nations joined for political and economic cooperation. What accounts for the change? Pope Benedict went a long way toward answering that question in his pre-Christmas address to the Roman Curia reviewing the events of 2006.

Speaking of the potential for conflict between “cultures and religion” – the much-discussed clash of civilizations between Islam and the West – Pope Benedict called it “still threateningly present at this moment in history.” Finding the way that leads to peace is “a challenge of vital importance,” he declared.

His preferred way of meeting the challenge is dialogue leading to a convergence of faith and reason. According to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state, the pope’s September address at the University of Regensburg in Germany, which included the controversial quote about Mohammed, should be read in that light.

Cardinal Bertone also spoke in glowing terms of Turkish admission to the European Union, thus undercutting the resistance of diehard papal defenders who’d kept insisting that Pope Benedict meant nothing of the kind. One even accused the Turkish prime minister and compliant media of spreading “disinformation” by suggesting the pope had taken a different view during his late-November trip to Turkey.

But Pope Benedict’s hand-picked secretary of state laid that view to rest. “Without Turkey, Europe would no longer benefit from that bridge between East and West that Turkey has always been throughout history,” he said in an interview.

‘In God’s name’

The papal turnaround began in reaction to the furious Muslim response to his Regensburg talk, continued via fence-mending remarks and gestures that included praying in a historic mosque during his trip to Turkey, and has kept up since then.

That doesn’t mean Pope Benedict has simply thrown in the towel as a critic of Islam. Rather, as he has done often before, so also he has made it clear that Islamic terrorism is beyond the pale of civilized behavior. “War in God’s name is never acceptable,” he said in his 2007 World Day of Peace message.

The picture now emerging of where Pope Benedict stands looks something like this: Fearful of a cataclysmic clash between extremes – a hollowed-out, secularized West and jihadist Islamic fundamentalism – the pope hopes to promote entente between reasonable, responsible Christians and Muslims as an alternative.

Evidently, too, he thinks Catholicism can be a model to Islam, showing how a traditional faith can adapt to the modern world while remaining true to itself.

Pope Benedict told the curia that Islam today faces “a task very similar” to the one that Christians have faced since the 18th-century Enlightenment – and to which Catholics found “concrete solutions” at the Second Vatican Council.

The pope defined what needs doing in these words: “On the one hand, it is important to avoid a dictatorship of positivist reason that excludes God from community life and public legislation. … On the other hand, it is necessary to welcome the true achievements of the enlightenment: human rights and especially the freedom of faith and of its expression,” he said. “The Muslim world … is facing the great task of finding appropriate solutions to these questions.”

Pope Benedict apparently hopes to encourage Muslims in doing that. And however he may have seen it in the past, he now evidently believes he will achieve more with carrots than sticks.

Need for respect

The visit to Turkey was a turning point, with his November address to Islamic leaders at the Religious Affairs Directorate in Istanbul a key moment. There he cited “the sacred character and dignity of the person” as the central value linking Christians and Muslims.

“This is the basis of our mutual respect and esteem … the basis for cooperation in the service of peace,” he said. And, he noted, this personalist emphasis is the basis of religious freedom – a policy inimical to some Islamic nations today.

As if to illustrate the new thinking, a one-day conference of Catholic and Muslim scholars, held Jan. 16 in Washington, D.C., focused on the relationship between God and the human person. The ranking Catholic at the event, held at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center, was Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice, a confidant of the pope.

The conference’s printed program recalled that a drafter of the 1948 United Nations Charter on Human Rights said the people responsible for that document were “unanimous … on condition that no one asks us why.” Through dialogue, it added, Catholics and Muslims “may find ways to articulate for our contemporaries a shared way of grounding the dignity of the human person.”

It can hardly come too soon. The same day Muslims and Catholics were dialoguing in Washington, three bombs, apparently set by sectarian extremists, exploded at a Baghdad university, killing scores of people, students among them, and injuring many more.

Lella shares this item from the Italian news agency APCOM - CTV will very likely broadcast the event:

VATICAN CITY, Feb. 16 (Apcom) - Benedict XVI will respond to questions from six seminarians tomorrow afternoon [today] at the Major Seminary of Rome and will stay for dinner with the entire seminary community.

This was announced by Mons. Giovanni Tani, rector of the seminary, which is being visited for the second time by this Pope.

Tani said, "At 11:30 a.m., Cardinal Camillo Ruini will preside at Holy Mass in the seminary chapel. The Pope will arrive at 6 p.m. and after a private visit to the chapel of Our Lady of Trust, he will have the Q&A with the seminarians."

"It's a great occasion," Tani said, "because the Pope's visit coincides with the feast of Our Lady of Trust, patron saint of the seminary, and so we will be celebrating this important day with him."

Lella shares another short item, this one from L'Independente of 2/13/07:

It has now become a status symbol in the variegated tribe that makes up the media circus to give unsolicited advice to the Vatican, to the Italian bishops conference, to cardinals and to the Pope himself. From comics, TV hosts and starlets with prtensions of being 'engagee' (committed).

Not a week passes without someone on TV bringing up the supposed defects of this Pope - he is too conservative; he is too severe with PACS, abortion, assisted reproduction; he is too closed and bristly in defense of the traditional family.

Thus, the antics of a Crozza who hysterically parodies the Pope [not that he is hyserically funny, just hysterical]. Or a Pippo Baudo, speaking from a Sunday football game on the Italian Riviera, lamenting that the Pope was not mourning with the family of a policeman slain in a football brawl in his hometown of Catania, Sicily. [So why was he himself not there?]

And here, starlet Luciana Littizetto, who every week sets her sights on Cardinal Ruini, whom she derides for defending Catholic morals and practices "when there is war in the world."

Someone explain to these people that the Church is simply doing its job. That what the CEI says is not law. That there are millions of faithful who think exactly like the CEI, Ruini and the Pope about abortion, PACS, homosexual marriage and the traditional family. And not because they are sleeping under a dogmatic spell but because they have a sensibility and an orientation that the buffoons of mass media will probably never understand but should at least respect.

The Reuters story below does not mention the occasion, but it was the address given at noon today by the Holy Father to Pontifical Representatives in Latin America who are meeting in Rome to prepare for the V General Conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops (CELAM) which the Pope will open on May 13 in Aparecida, Brazil. The text just came online so I have not translated it yet.

The Holy Father mentioned the family in an overview of the problems facing Latin America and the Church in Latin America. The five lines he devoted to it were as follows:


"...The family remains 'a primordial characteristic of Latin-American culture,' as my venerated predecessor John Paul II said, at the 1979 CELAM conference in Puebla (Mexico).

"The family deserves priority attention, because it shows signs of yielding to the pressure of lobbies [he used the English term] capable of impacting negatively on the legislative process.

"Divorce and free unions are on the rise, while adultery is regarded with unjustifiable tolerance.

"We must stress that matrimony and the family have their basis in the most intimate nucleus of the truth about man and his destiny.

"A community worthy of the human being can only be founded on the solid rock of faithful and stable conjugal love between a man and a woman."


Here's the Reuters story:

Pope attacks legislative
"lobbies" hurting family


VATICAN CITY, Feb. 17 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Saturday attacked "lobbies" he blamed for unraveling the traditional family, as he escalated a war of words against Italian draft legislation that would recognize unwed and gay couples.

The Pontiff said in a Vatican speech the family "shows signs of ceding to lobbies capable of negatively eroding the legislative processes."

"Divorce and free unions are on the rise, meanwhile adultery is viewed with an unjustifiable tolerance," he said.

The draft legislation approved by Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government last week would recognize relations between unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples, granting rights in areas like inheritance and health care.

Prodi defended his measure earlier on Saturday, saying "there is not a single comma that puts the family at risk."

But Italy's most senior cardinal, Camillo Ruini, has said he would issue an "official note" to Catholics, asking them to make a personal commitment to defend marriage and oppose de facto couples.

The bill now faces a tortuous path in parliament of the predominantly Roman Catholic nation.

Justice Minister Clemente Mastella boycotted the special cabinet meeting that approved it. He and Catholics in Prodi's coalition control some seven seats in the Senate, where the government clings to power with a majority of just one seat.

The center-right opposition, which has branded the package a "Trojan horse" to eventually allow gay marriage, has promised to fight it.

Not being able to see the Pope's visit to the Major Seminary of Rome today, let me bring Stupor-Mundi's brief summary of what she saw on TV. Remember, the context was a Q&A session with questions from at least six of the seminarians.


What an extraordinary encounter! The Pope spoke to the heart and mind of everyone, with words that were simple but profound. He often cited his master, St. Augustine, but also St. Ignatius. He reminisced on his days as a seminarian, showing here his sense of humor...And then, a great act of humility, telling them of the letter he had received from Cardinal Martini to thank him for the greetings he sent on the latter's 80th birthday.,.What a truly wonderful Pope we have!

VIVA BENEDETTO...SEI IMMENSO!!!

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

As the Q&A session was extemporaneous, I don't think we will get a transcript online till tomorrow at the earliest, especially since the session began after 6 p.m. today. I don't think anyone in the Vatican Press Office would have gone back to work at, say, 8:00 on a Saturday night to transcribe any audio tapes!... Oh no, I just relaized tomorrow is Sunday - probably no one will work on the transcription, either!

Our Italian sisters are already betting that if this event is reported at all in Italian MSM tomorrow, it will simply be because the Pope mentioned Cardinal Martini. Otherwise, a Q&A devoted to the concerns of Catholic seminarians will hardly interest them.

A small PS from Lella today, 2/18:

Benedict XVI had dinner last night with the 121 seminarians of teh Major Seminary of Rome and their faculty, led by the rector, Mons. Giovanni Tani. The menu was cappelleti in brodo (a soup with some form of stuffed pasta, I think), roast (beef?) with peas, green salad and cheese, and strudel for dessert. Instead of wine for the Pope, there was orange juice and lemonade.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 14.42]

I have posted a translation of the Pope's angelus mesage in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.
Here is the story from AsiaNews.




Pope explains Christian nonviolence
and sends New Year greetings to Chinese


Vatican City, Feb. 18 (AsiaNews) – “Turning the other cheek” does not mean giving in to evil but reacting to evil with good, just as “loving one’s enemies” means putting “more” love in a world marked by too much violence and too much injustice.

The foundation of Christian nonviolence, which is not a strategy but a personal way of being, was the theme tackled by Benedict XVI today to 50,000 people in St Peter’s Square for the recital of the Angelus despite the morning cold and occasional outbursts of rain.

In his greeting to the faithful, the pope also had something to say about China, confirming the country to be one of the matters occupying his mind.

After reciting the Marian prayer, as he recalled that “in various countries of the East the Lunar New Year is being celebrated with joy and in the intimacy of the family”, Benedict XVI sent “to all those great peoples” best wishes of “serenity and prosperity”.

China and its neighbouring countries celebrating the New Year – the biggest feast of the whole year – were not the only places far from Rome that the Pope referred to.

Benedict XVI said he was close to the hardships facing the people of Guinea and also mentioned the Polish clergy.

Talking about Guinea, he said: “The bishops of that nation expressed to me their apprehension about the situation of social paralysis with general strikes and violent reactions, which has claimed many victims. In calling for respect for human and civil rights, I assure of my prayers so that the common good and recourse to the way of dialogue may lead to overcoming of the crisis.”

As for Poland, the pope greeted believers from that country and implicitly referred to difficulties facing some members of the clergy due to accusations of collaboration with the Communist regime.

The pope said that “as per an initiative of the bishops, this coming Ash Wednesday in Poland will be a day of ‘prayer and penitence for all the Polish clergy’. May the prayer for the holiness of priests fill all the faithful with a spirit of forgiveness, reconciliation and mutual trust.”

Before the Marian prayer, Benedict XVI talked about “one of the most typical and strongest excerpts of the preaching of Jesus. ‘Love your enemies’ (Lk 6:27).”

He asked: “But what is the meaning of these words of his? Why does Jesus ask us to love our enemies, that is, a love that surpasses human capacity? In reality, the suggestion of Christ is realistic because it takes into account that there is too much violence, too much injustice in the world and therefore the situation cannot be overcome unless it is countered by more love and more goodness. This ‘more’ comes from God: it is his mercy, which became flesh in Jesus and alone can ‘turn the balance’ of the world away from evil towards good, starting from that small and decisive ‘world’ that is the heart of man.”

Benedict XVI ended by recalling that Lent will start on Wednesday with the ritual of the Ashes, which he himself will go to celebrate in the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina. He said that Lent “is the opportune time in which all Christians are invited to convert ever more deeply to the love of Christ.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/02/2007 4.56]

From Petrus, here is an account of the Pope's dialog with Roman seminarians yesterday, in translation:

Pope to seminarians:
'Prayer and Mass everyday
helps us to be good priests'


Benedict XVI visited the Major Roman Seminary next to the Pontifical Lateran Unviersity yesterday evening to greet and meet with the seminarians and all the community of the institute.

Welcomed by his Vicar in Rome, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, and by Mons. Giovanni Tani, seminary rector, long applause from the seminarians greeted his appearance.





The Pope spent a brief moment of private prayer at the Chapel of Our Lady of Trust, patron saint of the seminary which celebrated her feast day yesterday.

He then proceeded to the Large Chapel, where he answered questions from six seminarians. After this session, he joined them in the refectory for dinner.

It was his second visit to the Seminary as Pope. Last year, he exhorted them 'to spread everywhere the perfume of trust in Mary, which is trust in the providential and faithful love fo God."

Responding to one of the questions last night, the Pope said: "The Lord knows that in the Church there is sin as well, and we should humbly acknowledge that it is important to recognize this - in others, in the structures of the church, in the hierarchy and in ourselves."

The Pope said that "before God, our position does not count. What matters is to stay in the love of God and make His love shine forth....(because) if we remain with the Lord, then we can free ourselves of all-too-human temptations."

How does God speak to men concretely, he was aksed. "He speaks in many different ways with us - through our friends, our parents, the parish priest. He speaks through the events in our life in which we can disceren an act of God. He speaks through nature and creation. Above all, He speaks with His words (in the Gospel)."

The Pope was by turns theologian and teacher, but speaking very spontaneously and familiarly, in responding to the questions, once in a while reminiscing about his own days as a seminarian, or making remarks that made his audience laugh.

He told them, "On the one hand, it is important for priests to stay within the 'us' of the Church. But we should personalize this 'us' in our own self, be attentive to the voice of the Lord and allow ourselves to be guided by those who can help us along the way. Thus our discernment and personal friendship with God can grow, and thus we can perceive the voice of God who is always present and always speaks to us."

The Pope suggested "reading the Sacred Scriptures in a very personal way, not as the word of one man or as a document of the past - not like reading Homer or Virgil - but as the word of God which is always topical and timely."

It is important to 'enter into prayer as a personal conversation with God," he added.

Of his years as a seminarian in Freising, he recalled the necessity of 'discipline, day after day' to be followed not only during the period of formation but even when one is already a priest.

He recalled the seminary routine: "The day started at 6:30 with a half-hour meditation, where each one 'ocnversed' with the Lord. Then there was the time devoted to study. At the end, there was a common prayer and the evening meditation with a spiritual guide. This was the day-to-day routine but there were also the great feasts with special liturgy and songs."

He told them what interested him at that time: "I loved philosophy, but above all, the stories of St. Augustine and St. Francis. For me, exegesis was very important also. We had two exegetes who were rather liberal but also very smart, and they fascinated us. It was obligatory to read Dotoyevsky, Manzoni in German, and the French authors. Finally, we were taught to appreciate music and the beauty of our land....In this way, I came to say Yes to priesthood, the Yes that has since accompanied me every day of my life."

It was a smiling, spontaneous and famliar Pope who sat with the seminarians. "It is good to recognize one's weakness," he said, "because that way we know that we need the grace of God. None of us is really up to the full stature of this great Yes that we have made to priesthood... We must accept our fragility, but we need to move ahead. We always need forgiveness, we need to continue converting ourselves, to grow and mature. The important thing also is not to isolate oneself, not to think that one can walk alone.

To another question, he said, "We should do what we can to help overcome human suffering and be liberated from sitations that man himself helps to cause, like hunger and some epidemics [AIDS?]...but we should also understand that suffering is an essential part of our maturation."

He urged them to be close to those who are afflicted, "we should help them in their pain and in their suffering, by opening our hearts to them."

He advised them to keep a definite schedule for the day, never to miss daily Mass, and take time to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. This is important even in the life of a priest and a pastor, he said.

"Never miss daily Mass. A day without the Eucharist is incomplete. Let this not be an occupational obligation but an obligation that one feels from the inside... Another important point is to take the time needed to pray the Liturgy of the Hours and not lose any occasion to have personal contact with the word of God."

How to do it? "I have a rather simple formula. I combine preparing for the Sunday homily with my personal meditation. I start doing that on Monday, and every day get back to it."



Addendum from Vatican Radio:

During the Q&A with the Roman seminarians, Pope Benedict XVI once again held up don Andrea Santoro, who was assassinated by a Muslim teenager in Turkey last year, as a model of saintliness for priests. Santoro was shot from teh back as he knelt saying evening prayers at the church of St. Mary in Trabzon.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 19.27]

Still from Petrus, in translation:

"today I received a beautiful letter from Cardinal [Carlo Maria] Martini," the Pope told the seminarians. I had written him to greet him on his 80th birthday - we are the same age. In his reply, he thanked me and said he thanks the Lord for the grace of perseverance, and hopes that I too will have this gift in this last stage of my earthly life. We should ask for perseverance, and we should pray to the Lord with tenacity, humility and patience so that He may help us with His grace, day by day, yup to the very end."

Benedict XVI's birthday telegram to Cardinal Martini, who celebrated his 80th birthday on February 15, was read by the Bishp of Albano, Mons Marcello Semerari, at a Mass celebrated by the cardinal in the Church of santa Maria di Galloro in Ariccia, a town near Rome where Martini lives when he is not in Jerusalem.

"I wish to ecpress to you, venerated brother," the letter reads, "my spiritual closeness and my affection. On this occasion, it is particularly gratifying to express to you my sincere gratitude for all the good that you have done and which only God can properly ackonwledge."

The Pope goes on to praise the work that the Jesuit cardinal has accomplished in the various tasks he took on since he became a priest: 'your exemplary witness to the religious life,' his contributions to Biblical study, his episcopal activities as Archbishop of Milan and in European organizations, and his collaborative activities with the Papacy and the Roman Curia.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 19.31]

Sihaya shares with us this brief item from La Stampa today, but unfortunately, it does not mention when and where Cardinal Tettamanzi said this.

The important thing, of course, is that he said it, because he has been considered the standard-bearer of progressivists in the Italian bishops conference after the retirement of his repdecessor as Archbishop of Mailan, Cardinal Martini.

The headline given by the newspaper to the story is telling. It is actually news that a cardinal agreees with the Pope! Here is a translation:


The Archbsihop of Milan
aligns himself with the Pope


The Archbishop of Milan, Dionigio Tettamanzi, has expressed his thoughts on the current debate over DICO which are substnatially in line with what Benedict XVI and Cardinal Camillo ruini have been saying.

"The first aspect of policy about thefamily is to recognize its specificity, which derives precisely from its uniqueness in being founded on matrimony," the cardinal said, saying that "the personal dignity of man and woman" is in play here.

Tettamanzi referred to "an emergency, ' for the family today, "given the present situation of delay, scarcity of resources and serious difficulties' in the way of concrete family assistance.

Because of this, he said, "a policy on thefamily should have priority over everything, a priority even during a time of (political) intervention, as a criterion to evaluate or measure any such intervention."

Therefore, he says, it is "only in the context of a true and authentic policy on the family" can there be 'considerations of prrsonal and social problems with respect to de facto unions."

The cardinal lamented the 'politicization' of the issue and the 'deformation' operated by "the strong cultural impulse of radical subjectivism and individualism, which, on the one hand, considers a desire to be a right and demands rights without responsibilities, and on the other, negates the personal and social difference of sexual complementarity."

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


Pretty strong words, actually, to restate Church teaching about the family and matrimony, even if given in the cardinal's pedantic style. I hope his fellow progressivists among the Italian bishops and priests take note.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 17.19]

As the Vatican still has to post the transcript of the Pope's Q&A with Rome seminarians yesterday, I am using everything I can see to report on it. Still from Petrus, Angela Ambroggetti tells us more about the Pope's answer when he spoke about how to make a good homily.


Some time ago, Cardinal Francis Arinze, the Prefect for the Congregation of Divine Worship, speaking to journalists, lamented the poor preparation of many parish priests to deliver the Sunday homily. [The homily is part of the liturgy, he said, in a recent lecture to a French liturgical institute].

In fact, the problem of 'preaching' is one of those that laymen often have to live with at Sunday Mass. Homilies that are careless, untidy, improvised, too long or too contorted, too insignificant can keep away many parishioners from coming to Mass.



Yesterday, the Pope himself gave his own formula for a good homily. Visiting the Major Seminary in Rome, Benedict XVI responded to six general questions asked by the seminarians - how to discern the voice of God in today's world, what are the cardinal points in the formation of a priest, the rhythm of priestly life, how to persevere in the Yes one gives to God about one's priesthood, and how to minister to the suffering. An hour of extemporaneous teaching!

The last question was how one should live as a new priest in a parish. Papa Ratzinger offered his own personal practice of profound personal meditation every day as well as enabling a priest to carry out a more engaging ministry.

First, he said, start to prepare the homily for next Sunday on the preceding Monday; don't wait till Saturday - it will be too late and you will never have time.

On Monday, he said, the Scripture for next Sunday's Mass seems like a rock before which, like Moses, one thinks, how can I ever draw water from this? But then, every day, the Pope says, reading and rereading the text, allowing the words to act on our subconscious, even reading other references, "the words themselves 'speak' to us so that we can speak about them to others. That is why we need a permanent and silent encounter with God, a meditation which can bear fruit and make liturgy really beautiful, the place where God's love shines."

A 'simple formula' that shows the humility of a great theologian.

THEN DINNER WITH THE POPE


Ratzigirl posted this photo taken at the refectory after the Q&A, which took place in the Big Chapel, according to the report and the earlier pictures. This seminarian was probably reading a message for the Pope before the dinner. [The first picture in this box was not taken at yesterday's event, by the way. Ratzigirl simply used it to illustrate the story before the first pictures were available.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 20.04]

Eugenia in the main forum shares with us this little item
from Osservatore Romano about the coming Lenten spiritual
retreat for the Pope and the Curia:

On February 25, first Sunday of Lent, spiritual exercises
with the participation of the Holy Father will begin at
the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Apostolic Palace.

This year, the Pope chose Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, emeritus
Archbishop of Bologna, to lead the meditations
(and write them) on the theme "Le cose di lassu"
[literally, 'Things above']*


Here is the schedule:

Sunday, Feb, 15, 18:00
Eucharistic Exposition
Celebration of Vespers
ntroductory Meditation
Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction

In the following days, the schedule will be:
09:00 Lauds and meditation
10:15 Tierce and Meditation
16:00 Meditation
17:45 Vespers, then Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction

Saturday, March 3
09:00 Lauds and Concluding meditation

During the week of the Spiritual Exercises, there will be
no Papal audiences, including the one that falls on
Wednesday, Feb. 28.

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

* Translation note: I have been meeting up daily in
the news and commentary with the Italian word cosa
(plural cose) for thing(s) or matter(s), finding it
difficult to translate it into something less generic
according to the context it is used. In this context,
I can't find a suitable idiomatic translation for
'Le cose di lassu'. Heavenly matters? Heavenly concerns?....

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2007 21.42]

This is a 2/26/07 edit to rectify a gross oversight on my part.

A BLESSED 22-MONTH ANNIVERSARY TO OUR BELOVED BENEDICT XVI!
WITH ALL OUR PRAYERS AND INFINITE LOVE!

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

IDENTIFYING THE ANTI-FAMILY/ANTI-CHURCH LOBBIES

PETRUS, the online newspaper about the Pope's activities and apostolate, gives us this snippet from an interview given by Vittorio Messori to La Stampa in today's issue [haven't checked it out yet, but if the whole interview deserves to be seen, then I will replace this snippet later on):

In the interview, Messori identifies the powerful legislative lobbies referred to by the Pope in his speech last Saturday to the Apostolic Nuncios to Latin American countries.

In an overview of the problems facing Latin America today, and the Church with it, the Pope said, "The family deserves priority attention, because it shows signs of yielding to the pressure of lobbies [he used the English term] capable of impacting negatively on the legislative process. "

Messori's list starts with the World Health Organization of the United Nations, which actively promotes abortion programs and contraception; some sectors of Masonry, multinational drug companies, the powerful international environmental movements 'who hate Christianity out of a nostalgia for paganism'; and the liberal-radical circles of the politically correct.

Messori points out that the multinational drug companies have a big stake in countering the Church's teachings because of the formidable profits they make from the manufacture and sale of birth control pills and condoms.

Messori is often called the world's best-known religious journalist because he has the unique distinction of having 'co-authored' two best-sellers with two Popes - first with the milestone-setting interview book he had with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger which came out in 1994 under the Italian title 'Rapporto sulla Fede' (Report on the faith), which was published in English as 'The Ratzinger Report.' It became an international best-seller, the first of its kind. It was followed later by two similar interview books by Cardinal Ratzinger and German journalist Peter Seewald ('Salt of the Earth' and "God and the World'.

The success of Messori's book with Ratzinger led Pope John Paul II years later to ask Messori to do a similar project with him, resulting in the best-selling 'On the Threshold of Hope'.


Cardinal Ratzinger and Messori
in Bressanone where the then
Prefect of the CDF gave Messori
the interviews reported in the
'Ratzinger Report'.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/02/2007 17.46]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/02/2007 14.19]

Here's how Avvenire presented its news about the Church in its Sunday edition yesterday, 2/18:


The page on the right is devoted to the Pope's address to the Apostolic Nuncios in the countries of
Latin America. The headline quotes the Pope "Only matrimony is a union worthy of man". The other page
features a pastoral address by Cardinal Dionigio Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan, fully backing the Pope
and Church teaching on the inviolable nature of the family based on matrimony. Three other Italian bishops
representing large dioceses are quoted on the subject: Archbishop Bagnasco of Genova, Archbishop
Poletto of Turin, and Archbishop Caffarra of Naples.


The page on the left is devoted to the Pope's visit to the Major Seminary of Rome,
"Dear seminarians, this his how I prepared myself for priesthood".


On the right is the back page of the newspaper, in which the Vatican publishing house advertises its Lenten book
offerings. Four of them are by the Pope - on the upper right hand corner, the famous meditations and prayers
he prepared as Cardinal Ratzinger for the Via Crucis of 2005 at the Roman Colosseum; and on the lower row,
Itinerario Quaresimale (Lenten Itinerary), a book about the Risen Christ (I can't make out the title except
it contains the word RISORTO) with the well-loved Fra Angelico 'Noli me tangere' painting on the cover;
and the Pope's Lenten message for 2007, "They shall look at Him whom they have pierced."

The book in the center of the top row is the collection of meditations written by the emeritus Patriarch of Venice,
Marco Ce, for last year's spiritual exercises for the Pope and the Roman Curia, I cannot figure out the title of
the book on the upper lefthand corner