Father Neuhaus promises us:

In a forthcoming issue of First Things, there will be a full commentary on the remarkable apostolic exhortation issued this week by Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis.

News reports got the document off to a rough start, with headlines declaring that the pope was clamping down on Catholic politicians who reject church teaching, bashing homosexuality, etc., etc. All the usual blather and quite unrelated to the document.

In its story, the New York Times did not even manage to say what the exhortation is about, namely, the Eucharist....

So, let's put the 'newspaper of record' on record for its latest boo-boo. If a vetaran reporter like Ian Fisher can be so biased as to miss mentioning what the document was really all about, it just goes to show how that paper has been selectively and tendentiously reporting news according to its own agenda.

Pope Reaffirms View
Opposing Gay Marriage and Abortion
By IAN FISHER
Published: March 14, 2007

BOLOGNA, Italy, March 13 — Pope Benedict XVI strongly reasserted on Tuesday the church’s opposition to abortion, euthanasia and gay marriage, saying that Roman Catholic politicians were “especially” obligated to defend the church’s beliefs in their public duties.

“These values are non-negotiable,” the pope wrote in a 130-page “apostolic exhortation,” a distillation of opinion from a worldwide meeting of bishops at the Vatican in 2005.

“Consequently, Catholic politicians and legislators, conscious of their grave responsibility before society, must feel particularly bound, on the basis of a properly formed conscience, to introduce laws inspired by values grounded in human nature.”

In the meantime on Tuesday, the pope met at the Vatican with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, in their first encounter since Benedict became pope in April 2005.

A Vatican statement said the men discussed improving relations between Catholics and Orthodox — an issue that Benedict has put near the center of his papacy. They spoke in the papal residence, mostly in German, the pope’s native language.

Relations have been tense over the 1,000 years since the two churches divided, in recent years most hotly over Orthodox allegations that Catholics actively seek converts among the Orthodox. The issue was one major block to a visit to Russia by John Paul II, a Pole who often expressed his desire to travel there.

Despite invitations from Russian leaders, the Orthodox hierarchy has opposed any papal visit, and on Tuesday, an aide to Mr. Putin said he would not negotiate church issues.

“There are no middlemen in the dialogue between the churches,” the aide, Sergei Prikhodko, told reporters in Moscow, according to Reuters.

Mr. Putin met with John Paul twice, in 2000 and 2003.

The document released Tuesday contained no surprises, repeating in a more comprehensive form positions that the church has long held and that Benedict frequently addresses. An apostolic exhortation is the second highest form of papal teaching after the encyclical.

Still, the document’s timing resonated in Europe, where an increasing number of countries permit forms of both euthanasia and same-sex marriage. Debate on these issues has been especially potent in Italy, where the Vatican remains influential even as church attendance drops.

Over the last few weeks, Vatican leaders, including the pope himself, have spoken out against a law proposed by the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, which would expand rights to nonmarried couples, including same-sex couples. The proposal has been a major source of tension in Mr. Prodi’s fragile coalition, as top church officials asserted that Catholic politicians were obligated to oppose it.

The document suggested that the church would continue to speak out strongly on political issues it saw as fundamental, even at risk of accusations, as has been the case in Italy, that it is interfering in politics.

Those issues, Benedict wrote, include “respect for human life, its defense from conception to natural death, the family built on marriage between a man and a woman, the freedom to educate one’s children and the promotion of the common good in all its forms.”

In the document, the pope also repeated that celibacy remained “obligatory” for priests. In the 2005 meeting, numerous bishops lamented the shortage of priests in many parts of the world, opening a rare public debate about possible limited changes, such as allowing married deacons to ascend to the priesthood.

But Benedict ruled out any such changes. “I reaffirm the beauty and importance of a priestly life lived in celibacy as a sign expressing total and exclusive devotion to Christ, to the Church and to the Kingdom of God,” he wrote.

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

NOPE! Not a single mention of the Eucharist... But let's dispel all that secular blather with a proper appreciation - a first one, admittedly - by blogger Gashwin Gomes who writes from India.

Sacramentum Caritatis:
Initial thoughts

Well I've finished my initial read, as well as a second glance at the document. The image that came to mind was that of a soaring eagle, something that lifts our minds, our thoughts and our hearts to a higher level, upwards, heavenwards.

I was struck by just how Christ-centered everything is and just how much Scripture is quoted along with magisterial statements and the Synod propositions. There's a wealth of quotations from the Fathers as well (St. Augustine kept cropping up a lot).

The sense I got was: everything leads (ought to lead) to Christ, everything flows from him - this is what this sacrament of love is about, it's at the center if you will of God's cosmic plan of salvation, of the re-creation of the whole world, the whole cosmos in Christ-- it's the new worship in Christ, the logike latria, the "rational worship" that St. Paul mentions.

And like the rays moving outwards from a monstrance, the document covers pretty much every aspect of the Christian life and links it to the Eucharist - the Trinity, the Church's life, the paschal mystery, the liturgical celebration itself (including Eucharistic adoration, the concept of active participation, music, chant, Latin, incluturation, architecture, the placement of the tabernacle), the other sacraments (including a discussion of priestly celibacy), catechesis, evangelization and mission, prayer, the role of Catholic legislators and politicians, the social teaching of the church, concerns about secularization and globalization, environment and the ecology, and how the Blessed Mother embodies the eucharistic life of the one who is transformed in Christ.

This is not really a "how-to" manual for the liturgy (that's the GIRM), nor is it just simply saying, "Hey, do liturgy this way!" It's scope is much wider, and loftier.

There's a sense in which we are being asked to think about these things at a different level, to focus on the central doctrines, and most especially on the Person at the center of it all.

A broad cosmic and biblical vision dovetails easily with an attention to detail; theory and its practical applications are closely tied, and one doesn't really get the sense that all this is somehow divorced from reality, even as one wonders and realizes that no one place will conform in every aspect to the ideals laid down here.

The document reads relatively easily (especially compared to the previous Pontiff!), and though the language tends to the academic, and is a bit repetitive, I never found it to be dry.

The other phrase that came to mind was also from St. Paul, and also from his Letter to the Romans, a phrase that is quoted in the text itself: "do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed in your minds."

In the face of all kinds of proposals for "change" from the world, the Church will remain firm: for instance, priestly celibacy in the Latin rite is confirmed and encouraged, while the entire church is urged to redouble its efforts to promote vocations.

Finally it should be clear that while there is no new teaching, certainly no new doctrine in the strict sense of that word, what this document does is cement an interpretation of the Second Vatican Council that is by now almost settled in the upper echelons of the hierarchy and in some segments of the church: one that wants to move away from the time of ongoing experimentation, that emphasizes continuity with the past rather than a radical break, and, especially in the area of the liturgy, slowly but surely redirects our attention away from an inflated preoccupation with ourselves to the Triune God, and the sacrifice of Christ, which is the hinge of history.

I haven't really gotten into the various practical things this document says and suggests. Those might show up on here as I reread and then share some stray thoughts here and there....

And absolutely, do read it yourself!

Of course, not everyone will be pleased, and certainly, not everyone will be pleased with everything. I, for one, am truly grateful for this extended eucharistic catechesis presented by our Holy Father.

Grazie, Papa Bene! :-)

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I like that - PAPA BENE - Bene both as short for BenEdetto, and as the Italian word for GOOD (even if it is in adverb form rather than the adjective BUONO).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/03/2007 19.58]

Well, at least from the Austrian bishops conference...Even as the Vatican failed to come through with the Brazil program today "Sara pubblicato in seguito" it said this morning, which I thought to mean, it will follow next.

This report is translated from KATHNET, which quotes the bishops news release:

With great joy we learned today from the Apostolic Nuncio during our Plenary Session that the Holy Father has accepted the prporgram proposed by the Austrain Bishops Conference for his Pastoral Visit to Austria.

This will take place September 7-9 on the occasion of the 850th anniversary of the Marian shrine at Mariazell. This is the Pope's only scheduled trip so far this year in Europe, and is therfore a great honor for Austria and a sign of Austria's close ties to the Church.

Here is the program:

Friday, September 7

- Ankunft und Begrüßung in Wien-Schwechat am späten Vormittag
- Arrival and Welcome ceremonies at Vienna-Schwechat airport, late morning
- Prayer meeting withh the faith fin Vienna (around 12:45, probably at the park near the Hofburg)
- Meeting with givernment officials and the diplomatic corps at the Hofburg

Saturday, September 8

- Pilgrimage to Mariazell
- Holy Mass with the faithful of Austria and Central Europe in the Plaza of the Basilica (10:30)
- Vespers with priests, religious orders, deacons adn seminarians at the Basilica (around 4:45 p.m.)

The Holy Father will fly back to Vienna for the night.

Sunday, September 9

- Holy Mass at Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral (10 a.m.)
- Angelus prayer at the St. Stephen's Square (12 noon)
- Visit to Heiligenkreuz monastery in the Vienna Woods
- Meeting with Church officials and laity in Vienna
- Departure ceremonies at Vienna-Schwechat airport

Lella notes in her blog - which has the best daily summary of relevant news items and commentary in the Italian media about the Pope [providing enough 'negative' items to give us a sense of what the anti-Church elements are doing and thinking, but discriminating against those that are outright insults and invectives] - that today 's Italian papers conspicuously restrained from making too much of Cardinal Martini's anti-Magisterium from the Holy Land.

However, Corriere della Sera runs three commentaries on it - by Luigi Accatoli, Alberto Melloni and Vittorio Messori. And of course, the irrepressible Antonio Socci minces no words in Libero. Here is a translation of Accatoli's article first:


Martini and 'the church from on high':
Some Curia members think
his statements are 'inopportune'
By Luigi Accattoli


VATICAN CITY - Official silence, but clear disapproval was the reaction of Vatican circles to Cardinal Martini's most recent media sally.

Few approve, and even those who are close to him say they would have wished for 'more prudence'. The majority think Martini's public statements have been 'very inopportune.'

In Bethlehem the other day, the ex Archbishop of Milan caled on the Church in Italy to 'listen to the people' and to address them in a 'dialog' rather than with words that appear like a 'command fromon high.'

A cardinal in the Curia remarked, "The media have reported his words to make it appear that he is pro-DICO and against the 'note' which the Italian bishops conference is preparing about this issue, and that's a stretch! Even if it is true that his words lend themselves to being exploited [by the pro-DICO elements.]"

[But that has been the pattern of Martini's statements in the past two years. He's no dummy - he knows full well how easily media can exploit ambiguous or indirect formulations" But he persists in making them, obivously with deliberation, because he has not once made a statement to say, "You've got me all wrong. That's not what I meant at all!"

No, he leaves it all out there - what he says about re-thinking condoms, artificial reproduction for single women, allowing people to die if they want to - not to mention the implied and sometime almost direct censures of the Pope, as in this case. As if the Pope and the Church do not listen to people. They do, and stand by the Magisterium nevertheless, as they should!

According to the cardinal, who did not want to be named, Martini, a Jesuit, should be 'more careful' what he says when he occasionally 'comes out' of his retirement.

Martini made the remarks in a homily and in a talk with newsmen after a Mass for some 1800 pilgrims from Milan brought to the Holy Land by Cardinal Dionigio Tettamanzi to celebrate both Martini's recent 80th birthday and Tettamanzi's 50th anniversary as a priest. Since he retired in 2003, Martini lives in Jerusalem at least 6 months a year to pursue his Biblical studies.

It's not the first occasion that Martini has stirred up the waters for the Italian Church [only for the Italian Church???] with his sallies: from the dialog with the surgeon Marino [advocate of reproductive technologies] published in L'espresso to the article he wrote recently commenting on the Welby case.

The Pope continues to express his high regard for Martini, citing him in his speeches and meeting with him at the Vatican at least twice a year. He sent Martini a telegram of warm wishes for his 80th birthday full of 'gratitude' to his 'venerated brother.'

They are both the same age - Martini turned 80 on Feb. 15, the Pope's birthday is on April 16 - and they have always dealt with each other with the magnanimity of two university professors who are working for the same cause.

But Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, is not as generous as the Pope. He has refrained from this topic in his present position, but last May, he told a meeting of Italian bishops that Martini's statements [in the L'Espresso dialog] had been 'inopportune' because they gave the impression of a 'split in the Magisterium.'

That impression has been so widespread that two Catholic intellectuals have labelled Martin the 'anti-Pope'. Sandro Magister in L'Espresso called Martini's dialog with Marino 'the manifesto of an anti-Pope'. Massimo Introvigne in Il Giornale said "It's the leftist media who need an anti-Pope."

In the Vatican, no one is saying that Martini wants to set himself up as an 'opponent,' but many think that his 'openings' make the task 'more difficult' for those 'who have to defend Catholic values.'

Regarding the headlines yesterday which emphasized Martini's seeming sympathy with DICO advocates, Fr,. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office and a Jesuit like Martini, said: "In the conflict that has arisen in Italy over the issue of the family, it is hard to react to something said by someone like Cardinal Martini without artificially categorizing it for or against."

He said Martini "certainly did not intend to pour gasoline on flames but to seek to find a way out of the conflict - from which he is geographically apart, from the point of view of someone who has no actual responsibility in Church governance."

The spokesman of the Archdiocese of Milan, Fr. Gianni Zappa said, "Both Cardinal Martini and CArdinal Tettamanzi advocate a pastoral style of confronting the question of cohabitation," but claims that their position on the issue "is not to yield."

Proof of this, Zappa said, is the address made by Tettamanzi on February 17, 2007 to the Pastoral Council of Milan, and Cardinal Martini's 2000 address entitled "Family and Politics."
============================================================

What I don't understand is why the newsmen who were in Bethlehem did not simply challenge Martini to make himself more clear. Are you for or against DICO? Yes or No.

Martini said that everything he had to say about the family and de-facto unions could be found in a speech he gave in Milan in 2000 - I have found a text of that speech, where, in effect, he says the traditional family should be upheld, but that politicians should find a 'pragmatic' solution for de-facto unions. So does he think DICO is one such pragmatic solution?
Yesterday, Stefano Ceccanti, legislative chief of staff for Minister of equal opportunities Barbara Pollastrini (one of two principal co-authors of the DICO draft), said Martini's 2000 address was one of 'our key references in drafting DICO'. [The same way the medical board of Cremona that exonerated Welby's anesthesiologist from ay offense - not even against the Hippocratic oath - cited Martini's articlea bout the case as their 'Catholic authority' for arriving at their decision.]

Vittorio Messori is inclined to attribute Martini's statements to a 'difference in character' with the Pope. I should say so!


Martini's not competing with the Pope:
It's all a difference in character
By VITTORIO MESSORI


To judge from some newspaper headlines yesterday, Cardinal Martini has spoken about DICO. But if one reads what the articles really said, the ex Archbishop of Milan never spoke, at least not explicitly, about DICO, and his statements came as a commentary on a Biblical passage in the Mass he celebrated for pilgrims from Milan in Bethlehem.

If the headlines were to be the basis for opinion, a reader might have thought Martini's statement had something to do with the "laws against nature" [in quotation marks] that Benedict XVI supposedly asked Catholic politicians to vote against, in his recent post-synodal Aporstolic Exhortation on the Eucharist.

In the past few days, we have been assailed by serious editorials as well as humorous comments about that supposed papal statement. By those who have apparently not read the 138-page Sacramentum caritatis in which he expression "laws against nature" does not even appear. And where a Papal reference to DICO can be claimed only by those who think that the Pontiff of the universal Church, summarizing the conclusions of a bishops synod two years ago on the Eucharist, would address himself specifically to Italian politicians alone!

But to get back to yesterday's headlines, one can say that for some time now, the news has been reported in terms of a horse race - like the rivalry between Milan and Inter, Roma and Lazio, Prodi and Berlusconi - transposed to Ratzinger and Martini.

For over two decades, media has found it necessary to employ the 'friend-enemy' scheme of reporting, through which, therefore, the ex-Archbishop of Milan has been seen as the bellicose champion of the 'progressivists' against a phalange of dogmatic 'papists.'

It's an approach that continues even after John Paul II has passed on and the emeritus cardinal, himself stricken with Parkinson's, is in retirement, waiting, as he said the other day, for the final call.

One is perplexed to read about Martinian challenges to the papal Magisterium when it was John Paul II himself who had pried him from his academic niche almost 25 years ago to put him at the head of Europe's largest diocese - and kept him there till he retired.

Once, the cardinal said to me, with an amused smile, "Since I have been in Milan, there have been dozens of books issued in my name, when in fact, I have not written any book. They are all spin-offs of things I have said on various occasions."

But then, turning serious, he says: "I challenge anyone who thinks I oppose Papa Wojtyla to find any phrase in those books that is in discord with the papal magisterium."

Certainly, Martini has a personal style and distinctive temperament, but nothing that has ever called to question his obedience and orthodoxy. [Really ????]

With respect to Ratzinger: some accounts of the 2005 Conclave say that Martini, rejecting the votes that had initially gone to him, asked his supporters to give their votes to the CDF prefect instead. [And if he did, how many of them would have listened?]

There has always been a current of mutual respect between these two scholars and fraternal colleagues, both 'workers in the vineyard of the Lord." Each one has accepted their differences in character and has understood the necessities imposed on them by their respective roles.

Ratzinger, named to be the guardian of orthodoxy - first as CDF Prefect and now as Pope - is duty-bound to speak with firmness on dogma and ethical principles.

Martini, who had to minister to a flock of 5 million in Milan, is more concerned with pastoral work, encounters, dialog, in order to be able to proclaim the Gospel in a post-modern metropolis. Clarity as to the principles of the Magisterium sure, but also flexibility, realism, the patience oof a pastor.

That is the significance of his words [in Bethlehem] which were intended to call for strategies to make ethical pronouncements so demanding that they would seem harsh to those who do not understand it.

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

I don't know, but what flexibility and realism are Martini and Messori advocating that the Church has not already articulated? The rights proposed by DICO can very well be granted through appropriate amendments in the existing Civil Code, not through a special law that would pave the way for juridical recognition of de-facto unions - that's what Italy's non-progressivist bishops have been saying! Is that difficult to understand?

And have the words of the Pope been difficult and unclear to explain why alternative forms of matrimony and family risk the very stability of matrimony and the family as social institutions?

If we are to talk about clarity here, it is Cardinal Martini who has been very adept at doublespeak - at least in what I have read of his words in the past two years [and from the 2000 speech, which is 9 printed pages on WORD, and I don't know if I have time to translate it all. But I'll probably choose some excerpts to translate]

And I sure hope that the Cardinal's 'lectio divina' books, so warmly recommended by Pope Benedict XVI to the youth in Cologne, are easier to follow than the way he wrote that post-Welby piece and the 2000 speech in Milan! Judging from these last 2, he's not at all an "A to B and therefore C to D" linear presentor like Ratzinger is - he's often too elliptical, he leaves gaps that can be frustrating for someone not familiar with his thought at all.

[I forgot - check out his homily on the Sermon on the Mount, too - I think I posted a translation in IN HIS OWN WORDS because it was contrasted with what Joseph Ratzinger had to say about the same thing.]

But then again, if you read through the Corriere della Sera report of what he said in Bethlehem, he also chooses to be elliptical when he talks - that way, he leaves himself ambiguous or specious or just plain Jesuitically casuistic -'doublespeak' as I call it. He's learned over the years, apparently, how to stop just short of being definitively 'anti', that's why he can challenge anyone to look at his books to find any phrase that is anti-Magisterium!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 0.03]

The ever-reliable and eminently sensible Marcello Pera, philosopher and ex Senate President, articulates the obvious question. So the Pope and the Church listen to those who advocate, say, DICO - as Cardinal Martini advises - and as the Pope and the Church have done. Then what? DICO is still against Church teaching!

When liberals and progressivists say 'one must listen", they mean "listen and then follow us". Even if they had the majority opinion, that still does not mean the Church should follow what is not compatible with the Magisterium - which does not depend on opinion polls and changing cultures, but on certain concepts that have been there and remained constant for 2000 years.

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

Pera has an answer
for Cardinal Martini

ROME, Mar. 16 (APCOM) - "According to Cardinal Martini, on value issues, one must proceed so that 'our words do not come from on high, from a theory, but rather from listening to people, their needs, their suffering, their difficulties," Marcello Pera says.

In a statement reacting to the Cardinal's pronouncements made in Bethlehem, Pera said: "To pay attention, to understand, to dialog - that's a healthy democratic principle besides being a good intellectual habit. But let us suppose that - having heard out the other - he is proposing 'Barabbas!' or 'Mammon!', or to bring the lexicon up to date: abortion, eugenics, euthanasia, experiments with embryos, homosexual marriage, and all the other things that people today are advocating, what then?

"If all one has to do is listen and 'be understanding,' then one ends up accepting everything the people want - it's all the same - exactly as relativism and anti-Christian secularism say it is.

"If on the other hand, after having listened and understood and dialogued, and at the end, one is still opposed to public opinion, then one needs to defend this opposition from 'on high' and with reasoning, with a theory. Which, for a Christian like Cardinal Martini, should not cause any particular surprise or resistance, considering that, for public use and consumption, 'on high' means the Pope, Successor to Peter, and the theory is Christianity, which professes Him who said 'I am the Way, the Truth and the Life'.

"Christ listened to the people, but at the cost of His Crucifixion, He did not stop proclaiming and giving witness to what people must do in order to be saved."

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

I commented yesterday - in one of the posts that was lost during the FFZ change-over and before the site became completely unavailable - that it's easy for people who have no actual positions of responsibility, like a retired cardinal, to say airy-fairy things because they do not have to take practical responsibility for what they say.

That's what Cardinal Martini has been doing with all his 'inopportune' statements. It's the Pope and the Church who have to do some damage control of the negative fallout from his statements. More than just 'inopportune,' they're counter-productive. Meanwhile he's 'above' it all, a hero in the media for defying the Pope!

I am sorry. I will not say he is being malicious in what he's been doing, but more than just a bit selfish and arrogant, perhaps.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 0.07]

And now, here's Socci's Piece for Libero today. As usual, Socci does not mince his words, taking an extreme view of Martini's behavior.

Martini once again
plays the anti-Pope
By ANTONIO SOCCI


Cardinal Martini's public disobedience of the Pope is not just sad but disquieting. It is even something of a scandal for us simple faithful.

I could appreciate best the effect of his discord with the Vicar of Christ from an e-mail sent to me by a Catho-progressivist. Forgetting that to oppose the Pope in the name of the 'true Church' is a terrible argument to use (it has been used by heretics and schismatics for centureis), he wrote:

"Dear Socci, fortunately there exists a true Church which does not think like you or Ratzinger or Ruini. Cardinal Martini - symbol of what is best in the Church but who was defeated in the Conclave by its most regrograde and consevrative elements, represented by Ratzinger and Ruini - is now doing battle with the reactionary Vatican trend..."

What was he referring to? Simple. On March 13, Benedict XVI made public his Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist - fruit of the Bishops Synod - in which he invites Catholics to bear witness for 'non-negotiable values' such as life and the family based on matrimony between a man and a woman.

The Pope also calls on Catholic politicians to observe 'Eucharistic consistency', therefore not to vote for laws that are contrary to human nature. Now, even if this document is meant fir the universal Church, it is obvious that for Italian 'Catholic' politicians like Prodi and Bindi, these words are an authoritative "Stop' sign.

They had been awaiting the promised 'note' by the Italian bishops conference, fearing that it it could be a binding appeal to vote against DICO, as Cardinal Ruini had announced. Instead what they got much earlier is something even weightier.

Far more authoritative than a CEI note can be, the Pope himself, without having to be specific, has in effect called on Catholic legislators to vote against the juridical recognition of homosexual unions.

For the Catholics of the center-left coalition, it was a KO blow. And then, within 48 hours, caoe a lifeline thrown to them from Bethlehem. Cardinal Martini told La Repubblica, in effect: "The Church should not give orders. It is more useful to have a dialog between Catholics and secular laymen."

Let us place this in the precise context of what the Pope wrote:
"Bishops must call attention to these values constantly. It is part of their responsibility to their flock."

He is thus telling bishops the obligation they have to teach the truth of Christ, indicating to Italian priests the importance of the CEI note.

So, Martini, much like an anti-Pope, declares two days later: "I think the church in Italy should say things that the people understand, not so much like a command from on high that must be obeyed because it is so ordered." It is clear that Martini wishes to deprive the CEI note of any binding character on Catholic politicians. [Well...not necessrily!]

And of course, the Italian bishops will be faithful to the duty pointed out to them by the Pope. Otherwise they would be in disobedience, which would be an open rebellion against the Vicar of Christ.

But what could have led Martini to say what he said? Certainly the urgent alarm felt by the Catholics of Prodi's coalition, who now feel completely delegitimized by the Church. But there are also Church reasons, of course. In any case, Martini's attack appears too abstract and prejudiced.

For months, Ruini, the CEI and the Pope have reasoned and explained the Church position re DICO and on Europe's nihilist drift, earning a consensus from many laymen (and the majority of Italians). So, this is not at all an incomprehensible order that has suddenly dropped down from on high.

On the other hand, it is sad that a prelate like Martini who belongs to the Society of Jesus - whose fourth vow is absolute obedience to the Pope ('perinde ac cadaver' - like a corpse in the hands of the Pope) - now indicates to the public a disdain for any command 'received from on high which must be obeyed because it is so ordered.'

Has the cardinal forgotten his fourth vow? Or maybe he, a Biblical scholar, has forgotten that the Law of God was precisely a 'command from on high', received by Moses on Sinai. Or that the very nature of Christianity is the Revelation of God?

In the interview with Repubblica, Martini compares 'our words" (he means the words of the Church), which seem to him to come from 'on high', to the Gospel "which does not carry strange incomprehensible words but speaks in a way that everyone can understand it".

What's he saying! Jesus's words are far more demanding and decisive than the words generally used by our bishops today. Jesus never conceded anything to prevailing opinion. His words often seemed so 'harsh' and countercurrent, that once He asked His disciples; "And would you also wish to leave?"

Finally, it is strange that Martini should call for a dialog with 'those who have another religion." Has he asked the Muslims in Italy what they think of DICO?

His fellow Jesuit, Father Samir, wrote recently in AsiaNews [see story POSTED in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH two days ago ]: "Islam has always been merciless about homosexual relations. But in Italy, the Muslims have kept silent about the DICO issue. Curiously, the Muslim community - so coddled by the liberals and progressivists - has not said a word."

Why don't they? And why isn't the left taking the Muslims into account on this matter? "How is it," Fr. Samir asks, "that when there was a question of taking away visible signs of Christianity (the Crucifix, the Nativity creche), so many voices argued that these offend Muslims, but when it concerns a matter so fundamentally offensive to Muslims as homosexual relations, they don't bring up the Muslims at all? Could it be that the liberal world is simply exploiting them, using them to buttress their own opinions only when it is convenient? This not respect, but manipulation."

As far as Martini, his arguments are unfounded. And there's the enormous problem of his opposition to the Pope. Of course, he has every right to think that the Church could use a different vocabulary and have other options.

But he is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church (in retirement, moreover), who has sworn obedience to the Pope. He could have presented his ideas to the Pope in private, not broadcast his disagreement in public this way.

Because such public opposition creates scandal, it can have devastating effect on the faithful, it rips the Body of Christ. And ultimately, it discredits the authority of the Church because it makes it appear that what the Pope says [in the Magisterium] is just another opinion like any other, that every bishop is free to go his own way, and that any Catholic can think as he pleases on fundamental questions.

And it's not the first time Martini does this. Just recall that 'sensational' interview Martini gave last year to L'Espresso, the so-called 'philosophical dialog' with Senator-Dr. Ignazio Marino.

Espresso's Vatican correspondent Sandro Magister noted that this 'dialog' was launched to great publicity precisely during the days when the media of the whole world were in the midst of assessing the first year of Benedict's Pontificate.

Magister explained: "During the Pontificate of John Paul II, Martini was universally considered as the most authoritative exponent of the 'progressivist' opposition. And the same judgment is now made about him with regard to the present Pope." Magister goes on to list all the issues on which Martini questions the teachings of the Pope and the Church, concluding that the Espresso interview was 'the first great act of opposition to this Pontificate at the highest level of the hierarchy."

How much longer will this go on?

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I think Vittorio Messori partly answered for Martini in his piece earlier. But however the Cardinal and Messori may spin it, Martini's written and spoken words in the past two years sure look like 'dissing' the Pope.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 1.22]

Vatican Radio's Italian service decided to ask this question of two journalists - one identified with the Church, the other a prominent secular intellectual - after the agency's own fresh experience with distorted reporting.

The Bishop of San Marino-Montefeltro, Luigi Negri, gave an interview to Vatican Radio yesterday and found himself being quoted in the newspaper headlines today, thus: "NO Communion for inconsistent politicians" or "Deny the Eucharist to anyone who votes for DICO".

What Bishop Nervi told Vatican Radio was that the 'eucharistic consistency' hoped for by the Pope in his Apostolic Exhortation "means saying No to laws which would subvert the family". C;est tout!

Luca Collodi first asked Paolo Bustaffa, editor in chief of SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops conference.

BUSTAFFA: I think the problem here is primarily a question of professionalism. A profession has certain rules. In the news profession these rules are dictated by the search for facts. And each journalist must keep this in mind, despite competing rules of the market, of public relations, of sales, of an audience to be reached, all of which are often on collision course with the respect for facts and for truth.

That is why I think this concerns how seriously and strictly the journalist regards professionalism. And each journalist - and his stories - should be judged according to how professional he is. I'm not trying to sit in judgment of my colleagues, but we should all examine ourselves to understand why, when reporting certain key words or ideas - which are obvious and transparent - the tendency is to choose to deform and distort when reporting to the public.

But I trust the judgment of the people. They thnk, they reason out, they reflect. And in the end, they can see through the distortions and it makes them question the quality of the information they are getting to the point that they can even stop believing in what they read - and we've had many indications of this lately.

Collodi asked Ernesto Galli della Loggia, historian and editorial writer for Corriere della Sera.

Why do you think anything the Pope says, or anyone in the Church hierarchy, is automatically interpreted as political statements in the Italian media?

GALLI DELLA LOGGIA: First of all, because they have a tradition of non-interest in religious matters. And then, Italy - as a nation and as a state - has had dramatic confrontations in the past with the Church, with the Vatican. These two things - the lack of interest in religious news and the historic confrontation with the Popes - have resulted in the Church being considered as a political entity. And therefore, the Pope, the bishops, are perceived as representatives of an essentially political organization.

And it certainly is a fact that leads to a permanent deviation - to the near-impossibility of grasping the idea that when the Church speaks, it is not out of political interest, it is not out to extend its power, to interfere in the Italian state, but that it is simply carrying out its mission to evangelize, or to make doctrinal clarifications, and the like.
Most of the time, this perennial 'misunderstanding' has been malicious, and it has been growing more vociferous and more difficult to tolerate - even by those who are only interested in an objective knowledge of what the Church position is.

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

Well, all this confirms what is obvious when one reads most of the reporting in the Italian media - and thr rest of Western media, for that matter. Most journalists have tossed out all concern for objective facts and reporting, i.e., for professionalism, in favor of an agenda-driven 'advocacy journalism' that deliberately, relentlessly and constantly twists (or 'spins') facts and words to fit their agenda and world-view.

At least, the Internet now allows contrary opinion to expose these lies and distortions, if only for the record - something which was not possible before, when all one could hope for was that the offending newspaper might publish your protest letter if you did write, and a fat chance you had!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 1.04]

Here's the story from La Stampa today.

Papa Ratzinger has listened
to the French bishops;
he has waited - now he's ready
By MARCO TOSATTI


VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI is about to 'liberate' the Tridentine mass, the so-claled Latin mass so loved by the Lefebvrians - but not only them - and equally abhorred by the 'progressivists' in the Catholic Church.

It is now being said the Pope's motu proprio on the subject will be issued between the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25 and Easter Sunday. [Then I hope Benedict himself will celebrate the 'old Mass' in St. Peter's Square for his 80th birthday! - even if he will have to face towards the Basilica rather than towards Via della Conciliazione. What better way to re-introduce this Mass to Mondovisione. Or maybe, Easter Vigli Mass might be an appropriate 'debut'.]

The text has been kept under tight secrecy. But indiscretions from the best sources say it will turn the present situation upside down. Right now, bishops have the power - even if only through excruciating red tape - to make it as difficult as possible to get authorization for the pre-Conciliar Mass.

With the motu proprio, their role will change from being arbiters of whether the Mass should be celebrated, to being controllers. Somone in the curia pointed out that the Greek word for bishop, episkopos, actually means just that - controller, supervisor.

Which means that any 30 people or more who want to hear the Old Mass would now have the right to ask for it, in any Church, with some exceptions to be specified.

The liberalization is expected to have a significant effect on the Lefebvrians [whose leaders insist that the Mass is a minor concession compared to their demand that the Catholic Church reject all of Vatican-II!] because it could take away their base. The reasoning is that a traditionalist who was really only interested in sticking to the Old Mass will no longer have a reason to stay with a schismatic sect if they can now hear Mass celebrated by a priest who is in full communion with Rome.

At the end of February, Chilean Cardinal iorge Medina Estevez - member of the Ecclesia Dei pontifical commission in charge of relations with traditionalist sects - told friends at a farewell party upon his retirement at age 80 that the publication of the Pope's motu proprio was 'imminent', a matter of weeks.

Even if very militant opponents of the Old Mass are ever on the alert to prevent or at leasy delay things! When the motu proprio started taking shape last autumn, there was an urgent dinner meeting at a monastery on the Aventine Hill presided by the abbot and a member of the Papal entourage who is notoriously against the Old Mass. [Who might that be? Archbishop Marini, protege of the notorious Cardinal Bugnini who reputedly engineered the Protestantization of the Mass into the current Novus Ordo??]

They spoke about how it was necessary to 'help' the Pope understand that to restore the Old Mass would be an error. They referred to harsh statements made by the Bishop of Toulouse, Le Gall, in this regard. And in fact, shortly thereafter, a high-powered French delegation that included Cardinal Lustiger, Archbishop Ving-Trois of Paris, and Cardinal Ricard of Bordeaux came to the Vatican to campaign against the proposed liberalization. "The descent of the Gauls," in the words of a Vatican wag.

The logic - or illogic - behind the Fench objection is difficult to appreciate. In any case, the 'descent of the Gauls' effectively froze the situation a bit, as the Aventine schemers had figured. They counted on Benedict's known prudence and almost timid recoil, when faced with open opposition.

But Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, president of Ecclesia Dei, recently confided to a friend that the Pope has made up his mind. Which seems borne out by a recent statement to Inside the Vatican magazine by Mons. Albert Ranjith, secretary-general of the Congregation for Divine Worship, who said, "There is a growing demand for the restoration of the Tridentine Mass, and even intellectuals in many countries have been lobbying in its favor."

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OREMUS!

I have posted a translation of the Pope's Angelus message in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS. The Vatican has not yet come online with the text of extemporaneous homily given by the Holy Father earlier, in a mass he celebrated for the wards of Rome's Penal Institute for Minors. Meanwhile, here is the AsiaNews story on the Pope's pbulic activities today:


Pope: the true sense of life
is being part of God’s love


Left, The Pope arrives at Casal del Marmo with Cardinal Ruini;
right, the Pope in pink for Laetare Sunday Mass.


Vatican City,Mar. 18 (AsiaNews) – Benedict XVI was met this Sunday with greetings for his Saint's Day which falls tomorrow, both from the thousands of faithful who filled St Peter’s square for the Angelus prayer and from the young teenage boys of the Casal del Marmo minors prison, where the Pope paid a visit early this morning, on both occasions speaking of the sense of the relationship between man and God.

At the Angelus he underlined how in the Eucharist Jesus love for the disciples “is passed on to us all” becoming the foundation of Christian joy.

In the minors prison, he highlighted how by choosing to follow God, one finds the true sense of life and thus happiness.

“The Eucharist." he told the crowds of over 30 thousand pilgrims and visitors present in St Peter's Square today,"feeds the profound joy of every generation of believers which unites love and peace and finds its origin in God’s communion with his brothers”.



The Pope also spoke of the publication of his first post-synodal exhortation Sacramentum caritatis. “It was elaborated ," he explained, "by gathering the fruits of the XI General Assembly of Bishops, held here at the Vatican in October 2005. I am sure," he added, "that I will return to that important text, but from the very outset I wish to state that it is an expression of the Universal Church’s faith in the Mystery of the Eucharist, and is posed in continuity with the second Vatican Council and the Magisterium of my venerated predecessors, Paul VI and John Paul II.

“In the Eucharist God wanted to donate us His love, which pushed him to offer His life for us on the cross. In the last supper, by washing the feet of his disciples, Jesus left us his commandment of love: ‘As I have loved you, so you also should love one another” (Jn 13,34).

But for this to be possible we must remain united in him as branches on a vine (Jn 15,1-8), just as He himself chose to remain with us in the Eucharist so that we con remain in Him. Thus when we eat of His body and drink of His blood in faith, His love passes to us and makes us capable in turn of giving our lives for our brothers. (Jn 3,16). This is where Christian joy, Christian love is born”.

Benedict XVI also spoke of love for live and the sense of life with young detainees at the Casal del Marmo, in his first visit to a prison. The institution - which hosts around fifty teenage boys and girls of various nationalities – was visited by John Paul II in 1980, on the invitation of the then Cardinal Secretary of State Agostino Casaroli who for over 30 years spent as much time as possible at the prison, as Benedict XVI recalled.

During the mass Benedict XVI spoke openly and extemporaneously to the young prisoners, commenting on the evangelical episode of the prodigal son. He noted how behind the figures of the two sons were two “distinct life projects different one from the other”, with the younger son finding the life of a wealthy landowner dissatisfactory. “He wants freedom from discipline, rules and commandments”, “freedom with all its beauty”. For his part the fater is “respectful” of the son’s decision to make his own way.

Thus the young man takes what is his. “Now his freedom is to do what he wishes to do, no longer in the prison of his home discipline”. And “in the first movements he feels happy, but slowly a worrying emptiness settles upon him”: the “slavery of a freedom that is consumed by terrestrial pleasures” was not living, “in fact life began to distance itself from him”. So the young man begins to reflect, “To ask himself if it is not better to live ones live for others”. Thus he begins “an interior journey of maturation towards a new life project which also becomes an outward journey”.

The feast prepared for the return of the prodigal son shows that “the work, humility, discipline of every day life creates the feast”; the young man knows that “certainly even in the future his life will not be easy, that temptation will return”, but he will also know that “life without God doesn’t work, it is missing the essential”.

“The Commandments are not obstacles to freedom, rather indicators on the road to life” and “the Gospel helps us to understand who really is God: our most merciful father, merciful beyond measure”.

In the words of Benedict XVI, it is a matter of “what freedom is and what papers to be freedom”; in short “freedom is a launching pad towards the infinity of God’s love or the abyss of sin and evil”.

And meeting with the young teenagers after the celebration of mass, who he greeted one by one along with the present authorities, the Pope once again asked the question “how can you be happy if you suffer, when you are deprived of freedom, when you feel abandoned”, true joy and happiness he answered, “is knowing that God loves you”: “You could even be deprived of everything – he concluded – of freedom and of health but yet be peaceful and serene : the secret is putting God in first place”.

Following the Angelus, the Pope had a special greeting for members of the Committee of Catholics for a society of love who, on the occasion of the feast day of St Joseph, are re- launching the campaign “adopt a Dad” in conjunction with the missionary instructions to benefit poor families in developing countries. “Thank you – he concluded – for this initiative”.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 16.54]

Here are bits and pieces about the Pope's visit to the Penal Institute for Minors at Casal del Marmo this morning, from various Italian sources:





ROME , Mar. 18 - Speaking in behalf of 53 minors detained at the Penal Institute for Minors in Casal del Marmo, one of them told the Holy Father:

"Dear Holy Father, you have given us such pleasure with your visit. We were dumbfounded when we first heard you were coming to see us. We never imagined that someone as important as you would come to visit us.

"We are very sorry that we did wrong, even if often, it was not us but someone else who pushed us into doing wrong. But we know we have to pay for it, at a high price, because in detention we suffer much.

"We hope you can understand us and that when we get out of here, we will be able to make a positive change in our lives. We would be very happy also to see you with us again, and maybe we, too may also get to visit you later."

Much moved, the Pope rose and approached the boy to thank him for his words.

The Pope gave the young wards two large baskets full of chocolate, cookies and candied fruit. Most of the detainees are Eastern European immigrants.

In turn, they gave him soe things tjeu jad made themsevles, like a wood carving, a wooden puzzle, some objects made from fabric and a copy of their prison journal.

"Thank you for the joy you have shown,"the Pope told the young wards. "And so our encounter comes to a close. I would love to be able to stay longer. But please know that the Pope will zalways think of you with affection."

"One can be deprived of everything, even freedom and health, but be at peace and begin anew, if we have God inside. May He always occupy the first place in our lives. I will continue to pray for all of you. You will always be in my prayers."


Minister Mastella:
'I reaffirm my ethical and
Christian values in serving
the secular State'


Minister Mastella welcomes the Pope and Cardinal Ruini .

Earlier, the Pope was greeted by the Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella, the only cabinet member in the Prodi government who has said from the beginning that he is against the proposed DICO law for de-facto couples.

"Your presence, Holy Father, reminds us of the respect that Church and state have in common for the human being, whoever he is and wherever he is.

"My own presence on this special occasion has to do, of course, with my institutional function, which I am carrying out with full awareness of the secularity of the State, but equally strong in the choices I make as a Catholic.

"It would never occur to me that the secularity intended by the Italian Constitution means the absence of values and ethical perspectives.

"The cardinal principles - I would even say, Biblical - of our Constitution place, at the foundation of civil cohabitation, values which are shared by the Christian faith and the Church Magisterium.

"Among these are the uniqueness of each individual and his moral autonomy with respect to any civil authority; the right placement of the human being in all his social relations; the rejection of any discrimination; reciprocal respect, solidarity and tolerance.

"Italy needs a great alliance for education among the Church, the schools and the family, and this is the way to fight the phenomenon of juvenile delinquency, not lowering the punishable age (now at 14) further.

"The best way to make prisons a place of re-education is to treat it as another place of social formation which recognizes and develops the personality of each individual, in the same way that home, school and work serve to do this.

Lastly, Mastella recalled John Paul II's appeal to politicians to "run the risk of doing good."

"Inspired by those words, our Parliament passed a laww that has much improved the conditions in Italian prisons.

As the pope was saying Mass earlier, word reached Mastella about the possible liberation of Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo who had been abducted by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Mastella told reporters later that he informed the Pope about this after Mass.



"The Pope said that he would be very happy indeed if this came true. He had earlier expressed some concern about the journalist," Massella said. "Mastrogiacomo's release and the Pope;s visit here would indeed make this a very special day."

Mastella and the Pope had many occasions to converse during the visit, and both appeared to be on very good terms.

During the ritual picture-taking, Massella remarked jestingly,"They are 'croce e delizia' ['a cross and a delight" - the phrase is from a Verdi aria], appropriate for this Lenten season," as the photographers asked them to look their way or look into their cameras.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 16.17]

I'm translating Luigi Accatoli's story from Corriere della Sera - one of 3 in the Italian press today that echoes what Marco Tosatti of La Stampa reported yesterday (posted here) about the much-awaited 'motu proprio' on the pre-Novus Ordo Mass - except that all 3 appear to think D-Day could be Maundy Thursday, April 5.


Return of the Latin Mass:
The Pope's text is ready
By Luigi Accattoli

VATICAN CITY - The Papal 'motu proprio' that will liberalize the use of the old Missal - that is, the Latin Mass in use before the Vatican-II reform - could be published by Easter. At the Vatican, they say, "The time is near" but no date has been given.

Some think it could be as early as March 25,( Feast of the Annunciation); otehrs think it will be Maundy Thursday, April 5, a date which does not seem appropriate for a normative text because it is a big feast day. [For more reason then, no?]

At present, celebration of the Old Mass must be authorized by the local bishop who would decide whether it was 'appropriate,". After Papa Ratzinger's 'reform of the reform,' no bishop wkuld be able to refuse if 30 or more faithful request it.

The use of the Old Missal was prohibited [is this a fact?] by Paul VI from the time the current Mss was introduced in 1969, but ehe traditionalist wing of the Church has always professed loyalty to it, particularly the Fraternity of St. Pius X founded by the late French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre.

After the excommuication of Lefebvre and 4 bishops ordained by him without Vatican approval in 1988, John Paul II issued an 'indult' authorizing the old Mass upon request and if authorized by the local bishop.

Benedict XVI now wants to extend access to the old rite, whether as a way to bring back the Lefebvrians to 'full communion' or because of his personal conviction that the old and the new rites can co-exist, favoring both pluralism as well as tradition.

[The fact is the Catholic Church has many other coexisting rites, especially among the Eastern churches; and even the Archdiocese of Milan uses the so-called Ambrosian rite. So it remains a big question why the Tridentine Mass was ever 'outlawed' if in fact it was; Cardinal Ratzinger has always pointed out it was not so provided nor intended by Vatican-II].


Here's how Il Tempo reports it today:

By Easter, the Latin Mass will be back;
French bishops continue to have 'doubts'


VATICAN CITY - The Pope's 'motu proprio' on the restortiton of the Latin Mass may be published on Maundy Thursday, April 5, the day on which the Church celebrates both the institution of the Eucharist and of the priesthood by Jesus Christ Himself.

The pre-Novus Ordo Mass is the only one accepted by the followers of the late Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, and Pope Benedict's document could open the way for a repair of the Lefebvrian's breakway in the 1908s. [This is the commonplace and fallacious explanation by the secular press for the Pope's long contemplated action, even though the successors of Lefebvre have made it increasingly clear that they will not be satisfied with anything less than a complete rejection of Vatican-II by the Church.]

The 'motu proprio' - which refers to something personally decided by the Pope and decreed in his own words - has been ready for publication for some time now, and all Vatican sources now say this is "imminent."

A Maundy Thursday release of the document would give it a particular emphasis and significance. Perhaps too much, according to those who share the doubts of some national bishops' conferences [the only one that has been mentioned all these months is France's- so who are the others?], especially the French, about the rightness of the Pope's decision.

It's not that the Old Mass is currently prohibited [See Accatoli's statement in the story above!] - but the red tape and hassle of requesting a local bishop's authorization for this celebration in their diocese, have been very frustrating for traditionalists.

According to all sources, Pope Benedict would make celebration of the Old Mass almost automatic provided 30 or more faithful request it.

The French bishops have been against such liberalization because they fear they will lose control over the liturgy in France, where there are many traditionalists, not just the Lefebvrians.

The delay in this much-awaited move by Pope Benedict has been attributed to his desire to smooth out such objections first.
But his Pontificate has emphasized from the beginning a return to the spirtuality linked to the church's bimillennial tradition.

Even the Apostolic Exhortation he issued last week calls for wider use of Latin and Gregorian chant, two key elements of the Old Mass [the chant is used in High Masses - the 'sung' Masses].

Some ask how the Pope's move would affect the Mass that Pope Pauil VI authorized into general use in 1969, which is characterized by praying the Mass in the local language,with the priest-celebrant facing the people instead of what used to be the altar, and a supposedly greater participation of the faithful in the Mass.

Cardinal Anelo Scola, Patriarch of Venice, answered this at the news conference last Tuesday to present the Apostolic Exhortation: "It is not a question of eclipsing any post-VAtican II reforms," he said. "But how can it be divisive to make certain indications on the use of Latin, of Gregorian chant, of introducing more spaces and silences within the Mass according to the Church's most ancient traditions?"

"Pope Benedict wishes to establish a better balance between the horizontal dimensi0n(the congregation) of the Eucharistic celebration, with its vertical dimension which comes from the most profound divine significance of the Mass," Scola said.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/03/2007 20.25]

As mentioned in previous days, much of the Italian press could not really rush to capitalize on the statements Cardinal Martini made in Bethlehem last week criticizing the Church, in effect, for its firm rejection of the proposed DICO law and standing firm for the defense of traditional marriage and family in today's world.

Their restraint was the inevitable logic of their own agenda, which accuses the Pope and the Church of 'interfering' in affairs of State whenever the Pope and the Church speak on public issues regarding life, marriage and the family. How could they exploit Martini's statements without being seen as hypocrites who would consider 'interference' only that which is against their own views and positions?

However, Gianluca Barile, editor of the online journal PETRUS dedicated to reporting on the Pope's apostolate, has come out today with an open letter to Martini about how damaging his anti-Pope attitude is to the Church and what it is trying to do. Here is a translation.




AN APPEAL TO CARDINAL MARTINI:
Take off the robes of the anti-Pope
and get back to being a Cardinal
By Gianluca Barile


With all due respect for a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has seemed to be overstepping his bounds.

As grown-up Catholics, before being journalists, we have the obligation, the right and the duty, to publicly denounce the attitude of such an authoritative member of the Sacred College who, for the nth time, directed himself last week against Benedict XVI in a manner totally uncalled for and quite against a cardinal's obligation of obedience and loyalty to the Vicar of Christ on earth.

From Jerusalem, where he now lives most of the year 'waiting to be called to the heavenly Jerusalem' - first before some 1,300 pilgrims from his former Archdiocese of Milan, who had come to celebrate his 80th birthday, and then speaking to journalists from Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica - the Jesuit cardinal, referring to the Pope's firm NO to de-facto unions and his defense of the traditional family in recent statements (as in the Apostolic Exhortation last week) - called such positions 'inopportune' insofar as the Church should not 'command from on high' but listen and, presumably, meet opponents halfway, including non-believers. [That's a rather harsh way of presenting it, but in effect, that's what it was!]

It's hard to believe this! Once again, since that April 19 when the Conclave elected Jose[h Ratzinger to the Chair of Peter, Cardinal Martini has distanced himself from the Pope - against the communion that is supposed to link each cardinal to the Supreme Head of the Church - with harsh words, and I think, giving instructions which the Holy Father is certainly not in need of.

The Code of Canon Law provides that every Cardinal should work with the Pope in the pastoral care of the faithful. 'Working with' does not mean suggesting - least of all, not through the media or other public means - what the Pope should or should not do.

A Cardinal wears red as a sign that he is held to follow his Pastor, the Supreme Pontiff and Vicar of Christ, even up to the point of martyrdom. Instead, what sorrow and what bitterness Cardinal Martini is causing a lot of us Catholics because of his statements to the media! What dismay because a Cardinal, not behind closed doors with the Pope, but through the media and public opinion, repeatedly criticizes the Holy Father (or the Church).

And what satisfaction on the part of those who - being non-believers or diehard secularists - are seeing the Pope being attacked from his own side on the most sensitive issues of the day, precisely by someone who is bound to defend him to the death.

We might understand the disappointment of Cardinal Martini - whom some claim to have been aiming for the Papacy even when John Paul II was still in good health - but if two years ago, the Holy Spirit led the cardinals to choose Joseph Ratzinger instead, there must have been a reason!

We respect Benedict XVI just as we would have respected Martini or any other cardinal who was elected to succeed John Paul II. We Roman Catholics are taught that: to be obedient and faithful to the Holy Father because through Him, we hear the Word of God.

Cardinal Martini, most respected Eminence, please listen. We respect your person, your immense culture, the office you represent. But we beg you not to yield again - voluntarily or otherwise - to the temptation of being the 'anti-Pope' and thus lending yourself to be exploited by the enemies of the Church.

More than ever, in our time which is distinguished by strong and growing de-Christianization, Christians need unity and concord to help the Holy Father save the Church which he defined, before he became Pope, as a boat which is foundering, not the least because of the 'filth' within it.

We know and we can perceive that Benedict XVI has given the right turn of the wheel to this boat, that the filth is much less today, that we should all work so that the tempestuous waves of disobedience and disloyalty do not take the better of Christ's Church.

This should be a reason, dear Cardinal, for you to disdain the robes of the anti-Pope.

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

I must point out that Cardinal Martini is very good at making statements that can be interpreted both ways depending on your point of view, and that he always measures what he says so that he goes to the very edge but does not cross over exactly into actual disobedience or disloyalty.

But Barile is expressing the sense in which ordinary Catholics, reading about the cardinal's words and the commentary they are always bound to raise, would not see Martini's intended nuances, and will just interpret his words for what they seem to be, at first glance - censorious, disapproving, somewhat sanctimonious, although couched in seemingly reasonable language, that most Jesuits are so good at doing (why 'Jesuitic' has come to mean casuistic!).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/03/2007 22.27]

Actually, I've since found out there's another commentary on Martini today in the Italian newspaper Il Giornale, by the Emeritus Archbishop of Como, Mons. Alessandro Maggiolini, a theologian who often writes for Osservatore Romano and was the only Italian member of the committee that prepared and edited the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Thanks to Lella, as usual, for her efficient press round-up. Here is a translation.


'To question the Pope's authority
strikes at the very heart of the Church"
By Archbishop Alessandro Maggiolini


In recent days, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has spoken from the Holy Land to declare, among other things, that the Pope's words on de-facto couples have been 'inopportune." One might have thought that the Pope had done awaqy with one of tehe sacraments, with marriage, in fact.

And yet the Pope continues to express his esteem for him, citing him in his speeches and meeting him at the Vatican twice a year since 2005.

Martini also said, in addressing his former parishioners from Milan, that he "would always speak clearly tpoto the very end." An expression that could be applied to whatever Papa Ratzinger says, which carries with it, moreover, the supreme authority of the Church. In the name of Jesus Christ.

In the matters that Martini was presumably referring to [DICO and the provision of the Apostolic Exhortation that denies Communion to divorcees who remarry], there isn't even a question of excommunication, as there would be for abortion.

But one cannot deny that DICO itnends to attribute civil rights to de facto couples without requiring corresponding responsibilities, as married couples are called on. Nor that receiving Communion when one is in serious dissonance with Church teaching on certain fundamental principles, does imply a profanation of the Body and Blood of Christ present during the Mass. In the not too distant past, this would have been called outright sacrilege and listed as among the most mortal of sins.

A cardinal - lesser prelates necessarily weigh less in terms of public opinion - is given the red robes and the red beret to signify readiness to obey the Pope even up to giving one's life. One's lifeblood.

On this point, it is superfluous to distinguish whether the violation is serious or light. Because when one questions the authority of the Holy Father, then one strkes at the very heart of the Church, for which the Roman Pontiff has the supreme responsibility, for which he is answerable to the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

The simple folk - the faithful who say their daily prayers, go to Sunday Mass, receive Communion at least at Easter and work and live without feeling the need to consult theology books - know that the higher the Church authority is that one disobeys, then the greater one is culpable. And they know instinctively that cardinals are supposed to be one with the Pope to whom they owe the duty of obedience.

Then why would a cardinal who is among the most eminent in the Church feel it his right to pass judgment on any disciplinary indications that the Pope might prescribe? Would the faithful who listen to him, even if he already retired, feel they can detach themselves from the teaching of the Church with impunity, following him?

How relevant it is to read St. Paul who calls on the faithful to be united in the faith and in the sacraments, not to mention canonical discipline! What about St. John's oft-repeated phrases exhorting the unity of the Church?

Someone appears not to recall that station of the Cross in which Cardinal Ratzinger asked that the Church has almost become a filthy sty that must be cleaned out. Was he wrong?

Il Giornale, 19 marzo 2007

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I am glad that Mons. Maggiolini made the last point. The tendency was for most people, myself included, to think right away, and only, of the sex scandals involving priests, when Cardinal Ratzinger referred to the 'filth' in the Church.

It is just as filthy to commit a 'white-collar crime', to use a secular analogy, such as habitually questioning the Magisterium and the Pope himself, because one sets a bad example. Exactly as the sex-offender priests do - but from a much higher level.

At the same time, these high-level dissenters weaken the fabric of the Church, again much like the sex offenders do, in further confusing or turning off outright the very Catholics whose faith needs reassurance and reinforcement all the time. These are the ultimate victims, and the effects on them can be just as traumatic as the effects on the victims of the sex offenders.

Not to mention that openly undermining the Magisterium this way simply gives ammunition to the enemies of the Church, who are only too willing to rip away at any perceived rift.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/03/2007 22.58]

Cardinal Dziwisz denies urging immediate canonization for John Paul II

Krakow, Mar. 19, 2007 (CWNews.com) - The Archdiocese of Krakow has denied reports that Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz asked Pope Benedict XVI to cut short normal Vatican procedures and declare Pope John Paul II a saint immediately.

The first phase of the case for beatification of the late Pope will conclude on April 2, when the Rome diocese formally ends its investigation of Pope John Paul’s life, and forwards the results of that inquiry to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. That Vatican office will then begin its own investigation, which is likely to take two years.

According to Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican correspondent for the Italian daily Il Giornale, Cardinal Dziwisz urged Pope Benedict to step in at the conclusion of the Rome diocesan inquiry, and declare Pope John Paul a saint without waiting for further studies.

However, a spokesman for the Krakow archdiocese, Father Robert Necek, denied the report. “Neither Krakow’s metropolitan nor the Archdiocese has ever approached Benedict XVI about hurrying the process of a delicate matter that is the beatification,” he said.

Other Italian media outlets had aired stories suggesting that Cardinal Dziwisz-- the longtime personal secretary to the late Pontiff, as well as his successor as head of the Krakow archdiocese-- was lobbying for a speedy canonization. The article in Il Giornale was the first to draw an explicit denial.

The Sentence Against Theologian Sobrino
Is Aimed at an Entire Continent

In pointing out the errors in two books,
the Vatican wanted above all to warn their readers:
the bishops, priests, and lay people of Latin America.
It is the prelude to Benedict XVI’s upcoming visit to Brazil.
At the center of it all is the question on who is the real Jesus.
by Sandro Magister



ROMA, March 20, 2007 – Last Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, a diminutive friar from Peru in the black and white habit of the Dominicans came before Benedict XVI, who was officiating over the rite in the Roman basilica of Santa Sabina. The pope applied the ashes to his head.

The friar was Gustavo Gutierrez, author of the 1971 book “A Theology of Liberation,” which gave rise to the theological current of the same name.

In 1984, and again in 1986, this theology was severely criticized by two documents from the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, signed by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. But it still influences large sectors of the Latin American Church, in their mentality and language.

Not all of its major exponents have taken the same path. Gutierrez has corrected some of its initial positions, has entered the Dominican order, and at the beginning of this Lent he was called to give a theology course at an illustrious pontifical university in Rome, the Angelicum, where Karol Wojtyla studied.

But another famous liberation theologian, the Jesuit Jon Sobrino, a Basque émigré to El Salvador, where he co-founded the University of Central America, UCA, has held firm on his positions even after the congregation for the doctrine of the faith placed two of his books under examination.

And he says that he doesn’t want to fold even today, now that two of his texts have been judged “erroneous and dangerous.”

The sentence was presented to Benedict XVI – who approved it – by his successor at the head of the congregation, cardinal William Levada, on October 13, 2006. It was signed and put into effect the following November 26. And it was made public last March 14.

But already on December 13, 2006, in a letter to the Jesuit superior general, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, who had acted as a mediator between him and the congregation, Sobrino wrote that he could not accept the sentence.

In the letter, Sobrino counters the hostile judgment expressed by the Holy See on his books with the favorable judgments that accompanied their publication: the imprimatur of cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, who at the time was archbishop of Sao Paolo, Brazil, and the positive reviews of authoritative theologians, including European ones.

One of these, the French Jesuit Bernard Sesboué, a consultant for the pontifical council for Christian unity and a former member of the international theological commission, even criticized – according to Sobrino – the “deliberately suspicious” method with which the Vatican conducts its investigations: a method by which “one would find heresies even in the encyclicals of John Paul II.”

Two of Sobrino’s boks were under scrutiny: “Jesucristo liberador. Lectura histórico-teológica de Jesús de Nazaret," published in 1991, and "La fe en Jesucristo. Ensayo desde las víctimas,” published in 1999, both translated into various languages.

In July of 2004, the congregation for the doctrine of the faith sent to Sobrino a list of the “erroneous and dangerous” theses found in the two books.

In March of 2005, Sobrino sent his responses to the congregation. These were held to be “unsatisfactory.”

But in his December 13, 2006 letter to the Jesuit superior general, Sobrino traces back much further, to 1975, the beginning of the Vatican’s hostilities toward him and toward other theologians and bishops supportive of liberation theology.

He points out as one of his most tenacious adversaries the cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, and complains that the continual delay, in the Vatican, of the beatification of the archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, martyred in 1980, is partly due to the friendship between Romero and him, Sobrino.

It should be recalled that in 1989, on November 16, another famous liberation theologian, Ignacio Ellacuria, the rector at the University of Central America, was assassinated in San Salvador, together with five of his Jesuit confreres – Segundo Montes, Ignacio Martín Baró, Amando López, Juan Ramón Moreno, and Joaquín López-López – plus the cook, Julia Elba Ramos, and her daughter Celina. Sobrino escaped the massacre only because he was out of the country at a conference.

In the letter, Sobrino doesn’t hold back from criticizing even then-cardinal Ratzinger. He accuses him of having misrepresented his thought, in an article against liberation theology published in 1984 in the weekly magazine from Communion and Liberation, “30 Days.” ['30 days' is not a C&L publication and it is monthly, not weekly!]

Among the bishops antagonized by Rome because of their sympathy with liberation theologians Sobrino recalls, apart from Romero, Helder Camara of Brazil, Mexico’s Samuel Ruiz, and Leonidas Proaño, from Ecuador.

Sobrino concludes that submitting himself now to the sentence issued against him by the congregation “would be of little help to the poor of Jesus and to the Church of the poor.” It would amount to surrendering to thirty years of defamation and persecution against liberation theology. It would mean conceding victory to Vatican methods that “are not always honest and evangelical.”

“Extra pauperes nulla salus,” Sobrino writes in the letter, putting the poor in the place of the Church in the ancient saying according to which “outside the Church there is no salvation.”

And this is exactly one of the theses that the congregation for the doctrine of the faith attributes to Sobrino as erroneous: that of having elected the poor to a “fundamental theological place” – that is, as the principal source of knowledge – in the place of the “apostolic faith transmitted through the Church to all the generations.”

The Vatican sentence acknowledges that Sobrino justly takes care of the poor and the oppressed – which is imperative for all Christians – but accuses him of diminishing, in the name of the liberation of the poor, the essential traits of Jesus: his divinity, the salvific value of his death.

“One cannot impoverish Jesus under the illusion of advancing the poor,” wrote the bishop and theologian Ignazio Sanna, a member of the international theological commission, in a commentary on the sentence published on March 15 in the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, “Avvenire.”

And “impoverishing” Jesus means failing to recognize his divinity, considering him simply as a man, even if the exemplary liberator.

The congregation’s sentence ends without inflicting any punishment on Sobrino. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise, because in effect, more than for the theologian under scrutiny, it is intended for his many readers and admirers: bishops, priests, laypeople.

It’s these that the Vatican document wants to put on their guard.

In mid-May, at the Brazilian sanctuary of the Aparecida, the episcopal conferences of Latin America will hold their fifth general assembly. It will be inaugurated by Benedict XVI in person.

The publication of the sentence against Sobrino thus gives a preview of one of the guidelines that the pope will hand down to the Latin American Church, many of whose leading cadres are influenced by the spirit of liberation theology.

A question that Benedict XVI sees as being of capital importance – as proved by his new book about to be published – is strictly connected to the preceding one. And it is the question of Jesus, true God and true man.

Distorting the truth of Jesus – as occurs, in the judgment of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, in the books of the major author on Christology in Latin America, Sobrino – is the same as distorting the truth of the Church, the meaning of its mission in the world.

This is precisely what’s said in the title Benedict XVI has given to the general assembly scheduled at the Aparecida: “Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ, that our people may have life in Him.” Together with these words of Jesus in the Gospel of John: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

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

Somewhere I read an article about Sobrino's reaction to the Notification handed down about his works. He is clearly unrepentant and believes passionately that he alone is right and the Magisterium is wrong about liberation theology and about his own theological deviations. Beyond that, the paranoia which pervades the letter he wrote to the Jesuit superior-general Fr. Kolvenbach in December is even more marked. And humble he ain't!

He claims that the Church is out to eradicate liberation theology, or something to that effect. Well, why shouldn't it, if it can? I had the impression from some recent overviews of the state of religion in Latin America today that that movement is more or less marginal now, but I may be wrong.I don't know if it is worth going back to find that article at all - it wasn't in English, so I'm not exactly all that enthusiastic about translating that sort of stuff.

We'll surely get a more precise overview when Benedict goes to Brazil, as he won't fudge figures, favorable or otherwise.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/03/2007 20.38]

How to understand Pope Benedict
beyond the media stereotypes


MILAN, Mar. 20 (ASCA) - Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, made an unusual speech tonight to an elite audience of bankers, economists, entrepreneurs and news editors by choosing to speak of Pope Benedict XVI as a person - far from "the false stereotype of someone intransigent, cantankerous, obscurantist and interfering that waspeddled about him when he as a cardinal and even now that he is Pope."

As guest of honor of the Ethics and Finance Association, here in Italy's busienss capital, Bertone told his audience that Pope Benedict XVI's true personality has been both obscured and falsified by the media who paint him 'as an unyielding foe of modernity."

Those who know him, Bertone said, consider him "a gentle person, a man of dialog even with secularists, one who is capable of presenting his magisterium with gentleness and without falseness, clearly, precisely, but gently and convincingly."

He reminded them that Benedict became Pope at 78. "He was voted in from both the right and the left, if one can say that." And he has held out his hand to both right (the Lefebvrians) and left (Hans Kueng).

Of Hans Kueng he said, "These two old friends may still disagree over the continuity or discontinuity that Vatican-II represented, but both are equally aware and concerned about the serious problems that face all of mankind today."

Pope Benedict, he said, "has a very Nordic - almost REformed (i.e., Lutheran) - sense of the distinction between the spheres of politics and religion, but that does not silence his decisive disagreement with public policies that affect the morally irrenounceable core principle of the defense of human life."

"The primacy of life is becoming the most frequent concern expressed in the Pope's interventions," he pointed out, "from an absolute NO to war and violence, to genetic manipulation and to euthanasia, but above all, in presenting the Christian concept of the family."

In a society where, Bertone said, "a book about the imagined love life of Mary Magdalene sells more copies than the Bible", or where an apocryphal gospel has more appeal than the Song of Songs, "Benedict's reaction has been calm and serene. His first encyclical, Deus caritas est, belies the maliciously obsolete image of a male-chauvinist Church phobic about sex, as contemporary culture persists in portraying it."

Bertone said the encyclical is central for understanding the Pope's orientation.

He identified three key elements of the first two years of this papacy: the battle against relativism, a vision of a Christian Europe, and guardianship of the Christian identity - elements which, he said, should be considered part of a wider vision by a Pope who is far from narrow-minded.

He added that Benedict is never derailed from a religious and theological reading of any problem. even those that appear to be purely political. Because, he said, Papa Ratzinger thinks in terms of a Church which represents genuine Christian witness, not a Church that represents any politics.

Bertone explained the position of the Church - and the Pope - on how Catholic politicians should act: Faith is a gift that is so important and transformative that if one lives it consistently, it inspires man's total behavior, and therefore, even his politics, to be consistent with what the Gospels teach.

As for relativism, Bertone said the Pope was particularly concerned about how it threatens the very validity of Jesus himself. But, he pointed out, even while the Pope constantly reminds Europe of its Christian roots, "he does not want to commit the error of formulating Catholic politics, neither for Europe nor in the rest of the world, (because) faith does not call for political formulas."

There is a fear that is expressed in all of Ratzinger's writings, Bertone said, and that's "fear for the identity of Catholicism" which seems to be surrounded by "a cloud of uncertainty without parallel in the history of the faith."

"So it seems to me," he added, "that the central objective of the magisterium and ministry of Pope Benedict is to recover the Christian identity in all its authenticity, and to explain and confirm the intelligibility of the faith in a climate of widespread secularization."

Ratzinger's faith, he said, "is trust in a living God who loved us to the death...not an anonymous and cruel God."

Bertone said the most difficult moments of 2006 were the misunderstanding with Islam following the Regensburg lecture, which came right before a trip to Turkey that could have been cancelled; and the issue over quasi-marital rights for de-facto unions, including that of homosexuals.

Referring to the latter issue, Bertone said the Church is concerned because "it is concerned about man, who was created in the image of God, God who remains central to the preaching of Pope Benedict."

Finally, Bertone said, Pope Benedict should be undeRstood as "someone who wants to present Christianity as a religion of joy and friendship, with God and with our fellowmen. "

That is why, he said, "in his approach to individuals, to groups, to crowds, he is always so serene and luminous...and the people seem to understand this, because they crowd to him for his Wednesday catecheses and Sunday Angelus prayers."

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

BRAVO, CARDINAL BERTONE! GOD BLESS YOU!

I have posted a translation of the Pope's catechesis today in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS. Here is the AsiaNews report:


Alliance between faith and reason
needed in this age of relativism, says Pope



Vatican City, Mar. 21 (AsiaNews) – In an age “like ours marked by relativism in the debate over values and religion as well as in interfaith dialogue,” Benedict XVI reiterated in today’s general audience the alliance between faith and reason with its necessary support in prayer and the link between early Christianity and Greek philosophy against false pagan myths.

In a cold morning with few sunny breaks the Pope spoke to 40,000 people who had gathered in St Peter’s Square.

He presented again a “great figure of the early Church,” i.e. St Justin from Nablus, philosopher, martyr and the greatest apologist of the 2nd century, “one of those ancient Christian writers who defended Christianity from the heavy accusations levelled by pagans and Jews;” someone who at the same time had “the missionary vision to propose and present the contents of the faith using a language and mental categories that were understandable to his contemporaries.”

Born in the Holy Land around 100 AD, he was a philosopher “who at the end of his long journey in search for the truth found the Christian faith.”

In Rome he founded a school where he taught the Christian religion for free. Denounced for this, he was beheaded around 165 under the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

Justin, the Pope said, “led an implacable critique of the pagan religion and its myths, seen as diabolic tricks on the path of truth.”

In his Apologies Justin illustrated “the divine project of creation and salvation which is realised in Jesus Christ who is the Logos, the creative Reason,” to which each man is participant. It is the same Logos that manifested itself in the Jews and that was present as ‘seeds of truth’ in Greek philosophy.”

Justin, in other words, “marks the decisive option of the ancient Church for Reason rather than the religion of the pagans which Christians viewed as idolatry.”

For this reason, John Paul II in his encyclical Fides et ratio called him a “pioneer of positive engagement with philosophical thinking—albeit with cautious discernment [. . .]. Although he continued to hold Greek philosophy in high esteem after his conversion, Justin claimed with power and clarity that he had found in Christianity ‘the only sure and profitable philosophy.’”

Christianity is therefore “the historical manifestation of Logos in its totality. From that follows [the idea] that all that is beautiful that anyone expressed belongs to us Christians,” said the Pope.

Benedict XVI then cited Tertullian who, inspired by Justin, said that Jesus Christ offered “truth, not custom,” i.e. custom in the modern sense of “cultural” or “contemporary practices” in relation to the pagan religion.

In the debate about the values over religion as in interfaith dialogue,” the Pope said, “we should not forget this lesson, and for this reason I propose again the last words of the mysterious elder that Justin mentions: “Pray above all that the doors of light may be open, because no one can see or understand whether God and His Christ will let him understand or not.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/03/2007 21.52]

Any author would be thrilled to death to have such numbers.

According to the Vatican publishing house, one week since the Holy Father's Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation was released, 220,000 copies have been sold so far in its Italian version.

Who would have thought that encyclicals and apostolic exhortations could have such a boom market? And in an Italy yet that appears to be increasingly secularized?

Did not Cardinal Martini imply recently that the Church's pronouncements were incomprehensible to people? Then why are they buying up Papa Ratzinger's Encyclical and Exhortation - as if they had never before seen or read an Encyclical or an Exhortation?

Joseph Ratzinger was not nicknamed GOLDMUND early, even as a young priest, in jest or in irony. And someone does not end up writing 61 books - so far, based on his bibliography in German - if no one's out there reading him. I wish I had researched it, but I would like to find out, for instance, how many books Hans Kueng has written, all told. Or if there is a living theologian who has written more books than Joseph Ratzinger.

My point here is that the man's communicative genius has been so obvious all his life, and yet the media continue to ignore the fact that he is an exceptional communicator, preferring to find other reasons for the crowds that come to listen to him. [Perhaps nothing can be more outrageous - and mean and petty - than the hypothesis advanced that most of the people present are really visitors to John Paul's tomb, i.e., Ratzinger is simply continuing to ride on his predecessor's coattails.]

And, of course, the media also prefer to read politics into everything he says that they could remotely tie up to topical issues, while ignoring everything else that have to do only with his spiritual ministry.

In traditional cultures - at least that in which I was raised - the very fact of age alone merits consideration. That is what offended me most about the insults and jeers that the gay-rights crowd directed at the Pope two weekends ago.

Even if Benedict were not the supreme head of the Catholic Church or Cardinal Ruini not his Vicar for Rome, it was the worst demonstration of bad breeding to subject two men older than 70, one of them nearing 80, to merciless insult and ridicule.

One can express the strongest dissent with their positions and criticize them without being insulting, the way Italian journalists who have dissented with Cardinal Martini's implied criticisms of the Pope have done so without mocking or insulting him - but engaging him on his own arguments, and on the insidious effect his implied opposition has on the simple faithful.

All of the prelates of the Church deserve a minimum of respect, if not for their age, then for their position and for the office they represent, 'in persona Christi.'

Traditional families, who observe traditions in which they were raised, would not produce the ill-bred boors of the gay-rights crowd. And that alone is a great argument for the traditional family.

So let's see what the pro-family movements of Italy come up with when they stage their rally for "PIU FAMIGLIA' (more of the family!) in Rome on May 11.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/03/2007 20.45]

Here is the story from Vatican Radio about the Pope's meeting today with the theological faculty of the University of Tuebingen where he taught from 1965-1969. Translated from the Italian service.

I have posted a translation of the Pope's extemporaneous remarks in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.


21/03/2007 14.07.44
By Tiziana Campisi

"All I wanted was to be a theologian but they elected me Pope." That summarizes, in effect, Pope Benedict's banter with the members of the theological faculty from the University of Tuebingen, whom he met with after the General Audience.

It was a warm meeting today between Pope Benedict and the professors of theology from Tuebingen, the Pope telling them that they made him feel young again, as in the days when he taight at Tuebingen.

He told them he had always considered teaching to be his vocation. "But God willed something else!" he added.

Speaking about theology, he reminded them that it should always be in the service of the Church and the People of God.

It's not a science for the few, he said. It is important to everyone, because it answers the questions man has always asked and helps to clarify the content of truth. And that it why it is a great task. It is a science that should not limit itself to methodical analyses but should be able to propose answers for the fundamental questions man has.

He said his meeting with them was a sign of the interior unity that exists between teaching theology and his own pastoral service as Pope. There should be a unity between such teaching and one's own pastoral service to the church, for the good of the world, for man and his future.

The theologian should always asks himself if what he writes corresponds to the truth and how important it could be for the contemporary world. He should also have the courage to ask questions, but must listen attentively to the answers of the Christian faith, so that his work does not remain limited to university discussions but helps others to live a Christian life.

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

I hope Fr. Sobrino is listening, and has the humility to ask himself if he has listened to 'the answers of the Christian faith' in re-proposing Christ as an exemplary militant revolutionary for the cause of the poor - what a limited way of looking at Christ! - rather than the Son of God. But I doubt that he thinks he has anything to learn from anyone at this point!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/03/2007 23.28]

I am, of course, using the term the Pope introduced to the General Audience today - from the Greek word apologhia, meaning a defense. I hope the full text of Cardinal Bertone's speech becomes available soon! Meanwhile, here is the report in Corriere della Sera today, 3/21/07:

Cardinal Bertone tells big business
what this Papacy's all about
By Paola Pica

MILAN - A few days ago, Pope Benedict wrote a letter to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Catholic [Now how could the editors of Italy's most prestigious paper allow this howler to come through? Merkel is Protestant, the daughter of a Protestant minister, even!], that she may appeal to Europe "not to forget Africa and do more to help that continent emerge from its poverty."

This was disclosed last night by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, addressing some 200 leading members of Italy's business community at an Ethics and Finance Association meeting in Milan last night.

And Chancellor Merkel has replied, telling the Pope that his appeal will be made public shortly. Bertone said this in the course of a 90-minute talk about the basic orientations of Benedict XVI's Papacy.

He regaled his audience with various anecdotes about the life and the 'battles' of Ratzinger, such as the time Cardinal Ratzinger, along with Bertone, 'retreated to a forest for a week' to talk it out with liberation theology advocates.

Or how Ratzinger never lacked the courage to stand up for his positions 'directly in the lions' den' (as when he went to the office of Micromega to debate the existence of God, with that magazine's editor, the atheist Paolo Flores d'Arcais.

And "if he was elected with votes from both the right and the left, he has held out his hand to both the right and the left as Pope" and has gained increasing attention that could possibly be even greater than Wojtyla did.

"The crowds have increased," Bertone said, repeating what has now become cliche- "If they came to see John Paul II, now they come to listen to Benedict XVI. An intellectual who was elected Pope."

"There are common characteristics between the two Popes," Bertone pointed out, "although they come from different countries and were educated diffrently. Both experienced living through totalitarianism, getting to know profoundly the problems of oppression and of the suppression of freedom. Two men of God passionately devoted to truth of freedom, both lovers of mankind, and therefore, friend to every man. And I have been very honored and privileged with the friendship of both."

For Ratzinger, Bertone said, the Church is and will always be 'a spiritual entity." He does not want 'to fall into the error of constructing Catholic politics, neither in Europe nor anywhere else."

"Faith does not need political formulas; it only wants to contribute to the purification of reason. The church is not simply a great structure - one of so many 'multinationals' that exist - nor is it a structure of power or a social agency - even if it carries out social work globally. It is a spiritual agency."

In this context, Bertone said, "the central objective of the Magisterium and the Ministry of Pope Benedict XVI is to recover the authentic Christian identity and to explain and confirm the intelligibility of the Faith in the context of widespread secularization."

For Benedict VI, he said, "relativism has become the fundamental problem for the faith in our day." And relativism is not expressed only "as some sort of resignation to the impossibility of arriving at truth, but also defines itself by invoking the ideas of tolerance, mutual acquaintance through dialog and freedom - as though these concepts were incompatible with universally valid truths."

Jesus of Nazareth, he concluded, "cannot be relativized as just one of many religious geniuses that the world has known. And that is why the Pope is a passionate advocate of Christ as the unique universal Savior."

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

Here is the account in La Stampa.

Bertone speaks to bankers
about the Pope and the Church
By Francesco Spini


MILAN - In that secular temple of power and money, that Ca' de Sass [the name of the building] which for the past 130 years has represented for Milan the very idea of banking, the dialog between the Church of Papa Ratzinger and the world of big business begins through Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

And it takes off from themes dear to this Pontificate: a clear NO to secularism and relativism, how church and state to relate to each other, and the strong stand in favor of the traditional family.

Welcoming the Vatican secretary of state to his first 'mission' in Milan - a dinner organized by the Ethics and Finance association - were the president and the managing director of the firm Intesa-Sao Paolo, Giovanni Vasoli and Corrado Passera, two heavyweights in Catholic banking.

There was great curiosity among the 200 bankers and economists who assembled in the great hall of the building which is a few steps away from La Scala opera house.

Cardinal Bertone obliged, by explaining, clarifying, illustrating the Church under Benedict XVI. He recounts the traits in common with John Paul II. And underscores the 'central objective' of his successor, which is "to recover authentic christian identity and to explain and confirm the intelligibility of the faith in the context of widespread secularization."

The problem is something else: "For Benedict XVI, relativism has become the fundamental problem for the fiath in our days." Especially since relativisim "presents itslf as the philosophical basis for democracy, which is supposedly built on the fact that no one can presume to know the right way."

But that, Bertone said, is imposible to apply to Christianity "whose tradition is identified with one precise historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth."

On the question of Europe, Bertone says that of course, Ratzinger is convinced that beyond economic and cultural realities, it should avail of its spiritual foundations. "But the Pope does not want to fall into the error of constructing Catholic politics, neither in Europe nor anywhere else. Faith does not need political formulas....because the Church is not a great multinational nor an aspiring power, but a spiritual body."

The Pope is concerned about the primacy of life, hence an absolute NO to war and violence, to genetic manipulation and euthanasia. But above all, Bertone says, "the Pope is offering the Christian vision of the family" and affirming, as he did in Valencia, that believers "have the right to speak up in defense of man".

Later, Bertone responded to questions about relativism, the risk of Catholic integralism, and the social function of the Church. He explained the Church's relations with China. He talked about how the Pope had asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel to advocate that Europe incrase its commitment to help Africa emerge from poverty.

And he recalled the time he accompanied Cardinal Ratzinger to a forest in Latin America, where they spent a week talking to priests advocating liberation theology.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/03/2007 1.40]

The Pope will meet with the Communion and Liberation Movement

The audience in occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Fraternity of CL. 70 thousand people await. Benedict XVI shows appreciation for all ecclesiastical movements.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) – At least 70 to 80 thousand people of the Communion and Liberation Movement will be in Saint Peter’s Square on the 24th of March for an encounter with Benedict XVI. The pontefice granted an audience to the ecclesiastical group in occassion of the 25th anniversary of the papal recognition of the Fraternity of CL, which took place on the 11th of February 1982 with John Paul II. The gathering will begin at 11.00 and will conclude at 13.00.

This is the first time that the CL Movement, together with its leadership, is officially meeting with the Pope after the death of its founder don Luigi Giussani on 22 February 2005. As a cardinal, Pope Ratzinger never camouflaged his esteem for don Giussani and his movement. And he himself, as papal legate, presided the liturgy for the funeral of the founder, defined by him as a “beloved friend. Before thousands of people in Milan’s Duomo, the then Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke of don Giussani as a man of “imperturbable faith,” who had “earned many hearts to Christ” not testifying Christianity as a “package of dogmas,” but as a “love story” and as “falling in love with Christ.” Some of these themes recur in Benedict XVI’s speeches and in his encyclical letter, seen by him as an important instrument for the evangilisation in Europe and in the world. In the wake of Pentecost last 3 June, which was celebrated with all the ecclesiastical movements, Benedict XVI remembered a definition by John Paul II: “The entire Church is one big movement animated by the Holy Spirit.”

In occasion of the audience in Rome, the priest that succeeded don Giussani to guide the movement, don Julian Carron diffused a letter to all the members of the CL which remembers that “Pope Benedict has been tied to our history in such a singular way that we feel him particularly close.”

They are at least 100 thousand members of the movement spread out in 75 countries in the world. In Asia, there are CL communities in Lebanon, Israel, Siberia, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and China.

Here is how ZENIT reported papal news today:

Benedict XVI to Hear Youths' Confessions

ROME, MARCH 22, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Next Thursday, Benedict XVI will hear the confessions of young people from the Diocese of Rome during a penitential service for youth.

Monsignor Mauro Parmeggiani, the director of youth ministry for the Vicariate of Rome, announced that the Pope will hear confessions in St. Peter's Basilica on March 29, beginning at 5:30 p.m., Rome time.

The penitential service will prepare for the diocesan-level World Youth Day, to be held April 1, Palm Sunday.

In a letter, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, Benedict XVI's vicar general for the Diocese of Rome, invited "all the young people of the city to participate in this important ecclesial moment of prayer with the Pope."



To Be Credible, Respect Life,
Pope Tells Doctors


VATICAN CITY, MARCH 22, 2007 (ZENIT.org).- Benedict XVI told doctors, nurses and other health care workers that their credibility depends on their respect of and love for life.

The Pope gave them this message today when receiving in audience participants of the plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry.

The Holy Father stated: "Esteem for and confidence in health care workers are proportional to the certainty that these professional defenders of life will never lack respect for a human life, even that of the disabled, and that they will always know how to encourage every attempt at healing."

He said that the commitment to offering care should be extended "to every human being, with the intention of covering their whole existence."

The Pontiff recalled: "The modern concept of health care is, in fact, human promotion: It includes everything from caring for the sick to preventive care, searching for greater human development, favoring an adequate family and social atmosphere.

"This ethical perspective, based on human dignity and on the fundamental rights and duties connected to this, is confirmed and strengthened by the commandment of love, the center of the Christian message."


And on the same event, the following:

Caregivers Should Be God's Caress, Says Pope

VATICAN CITY, MARCH 22, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Christian health care workers should be God's caress for their ailing brothers and sisters, Benedict XVI says.

The Pope made this comment today during an audience with the participants in the plenary session of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry.

"Christian health care workers know very well that there is a very tight and indissoluble bond between the quality of their professional work and the virtue of charity to which Christ calls them: It is in doing this job well that they bring the witness of the love of God to persons," the Holy Father said.

The Pontiff offered the audience a symbolic gift of his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est," explaining that the document's theme -- the love of God -- "finds a particularly significant manifestation in the care of the sick."

He specifically mentioned the second part of the encyclical that presents "pastoral orientations for the charitable service of the Church as a 'community of love.'"

"The health of the human being, of the whole human being, was the sign Christ chose to manifest the closeness of God, his merciful love that heals the spirit, the soul and the body," Benedict XVI said.

Christian initiatives in the area of suffering and illness should have "the following of Christ, whom the Gospels present as 'the divine doctor,'" as their point of reference, the Pope said.

He added: "The ministry of health care is in fact an exquisitely evangelical field, which calls to mind the work of Jesus, the Good Samaritan of humanity.

"While passing through the villages of Palestine proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God, he always accompanied his preaching with signs on the sick, healing all those who were prisoners of any type of illness and infirmity."

The Holy Father also offered a symbolic gift of his latest document, the apostolic exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis."

"The ministry of health care can continually draw strength from the Eucharist to efficiently assist and promote the human being, according to his inherent dignity," Benedict XVI said. "In hospitals and clinics, the chapel is the beating heart in which Jesus intensely offers himself to the heavenly Father for the life of humanity.

"The Eucharist, distributed to the sick with dignity and with a spirit of prayer, is the vital sap that comforts them and fills their spirit with interior light so that they can live with faith and hope their condition as sick and suffering persons."


But as usual, the ever 'eyebrow-raising" Vatican Information Services wins today's medal for news reporting:

POPE TO MAKE A PASTORAL VISIT TO VIGEVANO AND PAVIA

VATICAN CITY, MAR 22, 2007 (VIS) - Pope Benedict XVI is due to make a pastoral visit to the Italian towns of Vigevano and Pavia on April 21 and 22.


That's it. One sentence. Punto e basta, as the Italians would say. You'd think they would at least explain what's special about Vigevano and Pavia that the Pope should be visiting, or even just where they are !

Here's a more professional news report from APCOM which also provides known details so far about the trip:


VATICAN CITY, Mar. 22 (APCOM) - The Pope will be making an Apostolic visit to Vigevano and Pavia on April 21 and 22. This was confirmed today by the Vatican Press Office.

According to previous announcements by the two dioceses of Lombardy [the region of which Milan is the capital], Benedict XVI will arrive in Vigevano on Saturday afternoon, April 21, around 4:45 p.m, where he will be welcomed at the communal stadium. [Is he arriving by helicopter then?] He will proceed to celebrate Mass at the Piazza Ducale.

He will leave for Pavia around 8 p.m. where he will be welcomed at the Piazza Duomo (Cathedral Square) by religious and civil authorities as well as by youth and volutneer groups.

The following day, Sunday, April 22, the Pope will visit the Policlinico San Matteo at 9 a.m. At 10:30, he will celebrate Mass in the gardens of the Almo Colleggio Borromeo. At 4 p.m., he will visit the University of Pavia, and at 5:30 p.m., he will lead Vespers at the Basilica of St. Peter in Ciel d'Oro, where the tomb of St. Augustine is located.

The Pope will return to Rome after this last event.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/03/2007 1.31]

Pope Benedict Invites Bardakoglu to Vatican



Turkish Weekly
3/21/07

In a high-profile move, Pope Benedict XVI has invited Professor Ali Bardakoglu, who heads the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate, to the Vatican.

In a written invitation sent to the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate it was stated that the Vatican would be honored to host Bardakoglu in the Vatican. Upon the directorate's acceptance of the pope's invitation, a papal representative will come to Turkey to finalize details of the visit.

Invited by Turkish President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, the pope paid a four-day visit to Turkey starting on Nov. 28 of last year. A harsh opponent of the Turkish EU bid before his ascent to the papacy and wreathed in controversy after a speech -- quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor who described Islam as a religion of violence -- he delivered in Regensburg University in Germany sparked worldwide protests from Muslims, the pope managed to use the visit to Turkey to send the right signals to the Muslim world.

Bardakoglu has confirmed his receipt of the invitation, saying: "This is possible. We will decide depending on the circumstances." With respect to the fact that the Vatican has considered their invitation to be a "continuation of the talks in Turkey," Bardakoglu said: "We are open to dialogue. We will meet in an atmosphere of dialogue as long as we remain as we are and the other side remains as they are. This is how we see dialogue."

A deputy head of the directorate will meet the cardinal sent by the Vatican to finalize the details of Bardakoglu's visit. The cardinal, effectively an aide in charge of foreign affairs, and the deputy head will reportedly meet in Ankara to finalize the timetable of Bardakoglu's visit and meeting. The senior bureaucrat expected to conduct the talks has also commented on the matter: "Yes, it is true. The Vatican has invited our head (Bardakoglu). They are inviting him as a continuation of the talks here. As we have accepted the invitation, a papal aide will come here to discuss the details of the visit."

Bardakoglu had previously spoken to Today's Zaman, giving his assessment of the pope's visit to Turkey, saying: "These visits are neither the first nor the last. Every week, we receive new guests. What we attempt to do is express ourselves fully."

Noting that the Religious Affairs Directorate was the focus of increased interest, Bardakoglu maintained that such interest stemmed from a desire "to make sense of the Turkish case." He added: "What is the meaning of such a religious institution within the secular structure? How does this system operate? They are seeking answers to these questions. We tell them what they want to know, with self-confidence and an easy conscience. We make our contribution when necessary. We express our opinions about other people or institutions. In our opinion, meeting with other people will help us to better express ourselves and to get to know other people."

He explained: "Naturally we are not against dialogue. We will meet in an atmosphere of dialogue as long as we remain as we are, and the other side remains as they are. This is how we see dialogue."

Pope Benedict's visit to Turley was his first to a Muslim country and the first meeting with Bardakoglu was conducted in a rather tense atmosphere due to the then-recent Regensburg speech.

The pope listened attentively to the criticisms Bardakoglu directed against him, but did not respond.

Bardakoglu had said: “We seriously need self-sacrificial efforts from clerics. Religious leaders must not attempt to spread their respective faiths and deny other faiths using the media. Instead they should try to find solutions to common problems of humanity. Our faith condemns all kinds of terror and violence and equates killing an individual to the killing of humanity entirely. We feel sadness at the statements which have nourished Islamophobia, arguing that Islam has spread through war or that Islam has been stoking violence. We must save ourselves from historic fears and concerns.”

One of the enduring images of the pope’s visit was that of him waving a Turkish flag handed to him on a visit to the Church of Mary in Ephesus. Pope Benedict also stated that his visit to sites in Istanbul had greatly affected him.

Historic meeting

There have been three papal visits to Turkey in the past, but the Religious Affairs Directorate has yet to visit the Vatican. In this respect Bardakoglu’s visit has a symbolic significance for both Turkey and the Muslim word. The directorate has also taken the papal invitation as an indication of the fact that the pope was influenced by Bardakoglu’s ideas. It is said that the pope was happy to visit Turkey and he invited Bardakoglu as a consequence of his satisfaction with this visit. Bardakoglu was commended by many groups for the attitude he adopted during the pope’s visit. Even Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal paid a visit to Bardakoglu’s office to express his commendation of the visit.


21.03.2007
Zaman

[Modificato da benefan 23/03/2007 4.39]

Bardakoglu's acceptance of the Pope's invitation was made known the same day the rector of Egypt's Al-Azhar University, Sheky Mohammed al-Tantawi, failed to keep his appointment with the Pope yesterday.

Here first, was the brief account from ANSA yesterday, translated here:

CAIRO, Mar. 22 (ANSA)- The scheduled audience today with Pope Benedict XVI with Imam Al-Tantawi was cancelled by the latter due to pressure from ulemas [Muslim 'priests'], the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian media, according to sources at the Al-Akhtar University.

The Egyptian newspaper Al Akhbar said the Pope's invitation to the Imam had stirred up new 'anger' in the Islamic world, at least from those elements who have not forgotten about Regensburg.

[Al-Tantawi, as head of Al-Azhar, is considered the supreme authority on Sunni Islam.]

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

Corriere della Sera today reports an explanation by the director of the Vatican Press Office:

Fr. Lombardi says
it's merely been postponed
By Bruno Bartoloni

VATICAN CITY - The Regensburg crisis appears not to have been totally overcome, with the missed visit of Sheikh Mohammed al-Tantawi, Sunni Islam's highest authority, who was supposed to meet the Pope yesterday at the Vatican.

According to Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office, it was not a surprise, adding that "the visit has not been cancelled definitely but simply postponed - a new date will be discussed after May."

But the story from Cairo tells of continuing ill will and pressure exerted against Al-Tantawi by Muslim ulemas and the
Muslim Brotherhood [radical Islamist group based in Cairo] not to make the visit.

Cardinal Paul Poupard, president of the Pontifical Councils for culture and for Inter-Religious Dialog, commented, "I cannot add more to what has been said. The situation will clear up." Poupard extended the Pope's invitation to Al-Tantawi when they met in Cairo in February to mark the anniversary of John Paul II's visit to Al-Azhar.

Even then, there were questions raised, when two days after Poupard and the Vatican announced that the Sheik had accepted, the latter issued a statement saying he had not even received a written invitation yet. [Subsequently, he said he would be meeting the Pope at the Vatican on or around March 22.]

After that, an Arabic news agency quoted a professor at Al-Azhar University, Ahmad Mahmoud, as saying: "The offensive remarks made by the Pope against Islam some months ago have made this visit 'not a positive thing.'"

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/03/2007 23.29]

On her blog, Lella carries an article that came out yesterday in the newspaper "Il Resto del Carlino", Bologna's historic and emblematic newspaper. [The name of the newwspaper is apparently an expression that means 'giving everyone a say'.] Here is a translation.


Will the Pope come to Bologna
for Patriarch Alexei's
doctorate conferment?


A definite answer from the Patriarch himself has not come from Moscow yet. But the last letter sent to Patriarch Alexei II of Moscow by Pier Ugo Calzolari, rector of the historic University of Bologna [ one of Europe's oldest], was rather urgent.

The facts. Some three weeks ago, Alexei responded favorably to the University's letter proposing to give him an honorary doctorate in Canon Law. But he indicated that since Italy was the canonical territory of the Bishop of Rome (i.e., the Pope), if His Holiness the Patriarch of all the Russias did come to Italy, then by right of 'parity of rank,' the Pope himself should welcome him personally. [I don't know about you, but I find this ecclesiastical vanity very disturbing. Then again, this is at the heart of Alexei's problem with any eventual unity with the Catholic Church - a refusal to concede the primacy of the Pope, not even as 'first among equals' .]

So the crux is: will Alexei II come to Bologna for the coferment? And if the condition is that the Pope should be there to meet him, how can the University of Bolgona make sure the Pope will be there? [What about asking him, directly? I don't think he will stand on pride as others seem to do!]]

An honorary doctorate has never before been 'wedded' so pofoundly to one of the big issues of our time: at stake is the dialog between the two faces of Christianity that resulted from the Great Schism of 1054, but also a rapprochement between two cultural traditions.

"The youth of eastern Europe," said Calzolari,"have to work their way through a very concernng climate of neo-paganism."

Calzolari's letter to the patriarch is a long dense text, in which, with all due respect, the rector of Bologna appeals to Alexei to exercise both prudence and generosity by evaluating the positive consequences that could arise from his visit to Bologna.

Calzolari will be going to Moscow for Easter to attend Easter rites but also to press his case in a meeting with Alexei, along with Andrea Zanotti, the professor of Canon Law who had originally proposed the doctorate for Alexei.

These steps are being done with the agreement of Cardinal CArlo Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna. Fr. Tommaso Toschi, the archbishop's delegate to the Eastern Churches, said the relationship between the Archdiocese of Bologna and the patriarchate of Moscow have been very active since the Archdiocese contributed some 10 years ago to the construction of the Orthodox Cathedral in Moscow. It also sent a copy of the Madonna of St. Luke for one of its chapels.

A favorable factor for a meeting in Bologna would be the fact that Alexei, who became patriarch of Moscow in 1990, is steeped in German culture. ...

However, there has been talk lately that the first meeting between the Pope and the patriarch is contemplated to take place on neutral ground, such as Austrai or Hungary, which Bologna would not be [The Pope is also Primate of Italy].

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

Is it possible that Alexei might have brought up the idea of the Pope welcoming him to Bologna as one way to get out of the corner that he has painted himself into? His representative in Europe, the Vienna-based Bishop Ilarion, keeps saying, in effect, that a meeting cannot take place until the question of the Pope's primacy is resolved. But Alexei has seemed unwilling to concede that. Is he now trying to wiggle himself out of his intransigence?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/03/2007 1.36]

Here is an Italian news service report carried by Lella in her roundup:


Roma, Marc. 23 (Apcom) - The president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering met with the Pope for half an hour this morning and said later he had invited the Pope to visit the Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

He later handed the formal invitation to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State. A member of Poettering's entourage said that although the Pope did not give a definite answer, "he reacted positively" to the invitation.

Poettering later spoke at the current meeting of European bishops in Rome on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community, first of many steps towards the present European Union.

The Pontiff and Poetering discussed the Judeo-Christian roots of Europe, the future of the Old Continent and the inter-religious, inter-cultural dialog, which is a theme dear to Poettering.

When asked whether they discussed trying to incorporate an acknowledgment of Europe's Christian roots in the European Constitution, Poettering said he could not discuss any specifics of their discussion. He himself is in favor of openly acknowledging Europe's Christian heritage.

Poettering said the conversation with the Pope was "very significant and went very well."

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

From most accounts, Strasbourg, like Brussels (seat of the European Union), teems with hardline secularists who are hostile to Christianity - but apparently eager to bend over backwards to accommodate whatever Muslims in Europe want - and it could certainly do with more leaders like Poettering.

And Benedict XVI might just want to bring his decades-long fight for Europe to assert and defend its Christian-derived identity, right into its political and secular heartland.

The Pope's new book, JESUS OF NAZARETH, will come out shortly after Easter, according to Don Claudio Rossini, the editor of the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Rossini said more than 20 contratcs have already been signed for translations of the book in other languages, including Russian, Greek, Korean, Japanese and Serbian. The German, Italian and English editions will be coming out simultaneously after Easter. Rizzoli is publishing it in italy, Herder in Germany and Doubleday in the United States.

Vatican Radio's Alessandro Gisotti interviewed Rossini on the boom in the sale of the Pope's Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortaition on the Eucharist, which sold more than 220,000 copies within a week of its publication.

First, Rossini comments on its success:

ROSSINI: There was such an excessive curtailment and reduction of the contents of the entire 160-page Exhortation in the press and in the media that it ended up being flattened out. And we at the publishing house thought this would not be good for sales, that it would be a handicap. When in fact, maybe the very way the media tended to present what the Pope is saying probably made a lot of people think, "Well, why don't we find out for ourselves?" And so, we are witnessing this boom in sales, which is making us work the presses overtime.

So can one say that especially at a time when one often sees widespread distortion in the media of what the Pope says, the faithful find they would much rather go straight to the source?
I think we are seeing that now, at least from our point of view at LEV, this great demand to read what the Pope has actually written, what he has actually said - beyond all the various reductions and adaptations applied to specific aspects of his words - whether it be poiltical, social, economic.

We get requests from publishing houses all over the world, asking us to make available in various languages the texts of Benedict XVI's whole Magisterium, from his very first words as Pope.

All this tells us that despite the distortions, or depsite failure by the mass media to report what the Pope says faithfully and completely, there is word of mouth, a strong public undercurrent that creates a demand to read the Pope's teaching, to study it and to consider it in depth.

Well, in a few weeks, the book JESUS OF NAZARETH will be coming out. Do you foresee a boom for this?
I think we can be more than sure of that, because Rizzoli, which is in charge of publishing the Italian version and of negotiating worlwide publication, has already signed contracts for all the major languages, and has receeived requests from Serbia, Greece, Korea, Japan and Russia.

By the end of February, we already had 20-22 contracts for various language translations which will disseminate the words, the reflections, the portrait that this theologian Pope wants to share about the figure of Christ - fruit of more than 50 years of his own study, research, teaching and personal meditations.

So I think we are all in a way preparing ourselves to read and welcome this text, as a key for us tounderstand how we should view and relate to Christ today.

Has anybody read: "Di Martini ce n’è tre: il vero, il falso, il dubbio" in Sandro Magister's blog, posted March 19?
Looks interesting, unfortunately my Italian is too poor to understand it totally.

I did - and I commmented on it extensively in the Italian section of the forum ["Questa sporcizia..." sub-thread in the LA CONGREGAZIONE thread]. Because for once, I think Magister did something rather unusual for him - a failure to check all his facts. He claims in that blog that the two reporters who wrote about Martini's Bethlehem comments in Corriere della Sera and Repubblica had misquoted and misrepresented Martini's statements, and to prove this, he cites two excerpts from a video of Martini's news conference in Bethlehem.

But the story of the two reporters [I translated the Corriere story for this section and did not translate the Repubbblica story because it adds nothing to what Corriere had] was not only based on that general news conference and the homily Martini made at the Mass, but on an interview that Martini gave them separately, in which he makes other statements that go far beyond what he said at the the general news conference, and which are in his usual vein of censoriousness against certain things he disapproves of that the Church is doing under this Pope.

It is unusual also for Magister to come to the defense of Martini, as it were, in this case, because Magister has been critical of Martini's anti-Magisterium attitude on some questions of bioethics and euthanasia.

Cardinal Martini is no dummy, and I have said many times that, he, being a brilliant Jesuit, is very good at 'doublespeak'. He knows how this doublespeak can easily be misrepresented and exploited ['strumentalizzato', to use the Italian word, which is much stronger, because it says directly that the person and statement being exploited are being used as 'instruments' for whatever ulterior motive the press has] to be used against the Church and the Pope - and sure enough, they promptly blow up every thing he says as though, in fact, he were an alternate Pope, not to say the anti-Pope.

But has he ever called them [or sent out a subsequent statement] to say, "No, that is not what I meant at all - you have totally misrepresented me"? NEVER! But why not?

Better still, why does he not say things more directly next time? Or why didn't any of those who were at his news conference or the two given the interview simply ask him, then are you for DICO, yes or no? As I asked in a previous commentary I made about Martini's 2000 speech in Milan about "Family and Politics", does he think that DICO is the 'pragmatic approach' he urged politicians to take at the time about irregular forms of union?

The obvious failure - not just reluctance, but I think deliberate avoidance - of the anti-Church media to confront Martini directly on the issues he raises simply indicates that they want to be able to continue using him as a club against the Church and the Pope.

The thinking is that many Catholics (those who are lukewarm or whose faith is already shaky to begin with) will take notice of what Martini says, and have new grounds for confusion or wavering since, after all, this man could have been Pope himself. And this, I think, is the worst consequence of Martini's doublespeak.

Let me cite the other major consequence: anti-Church elements use Martini's statements, rightly or wrongly, to support concrete actions: 1) The medical board of Cremona, in exonerating Welby's anesthesiologist of any questionable behavior at all, said they used Martini's article about euthanasia in Il Sole 24 Ore as their 'Catholic authority' for the exoneration; and 2) the Catholic lawyer who put together the DICO draft law for the Prodi government said triumphantly right after Martini's Bethlehem interview, "In fact, Martini's 2000 speech was one of the key documents that guided us in drafting DICO" [which is flagrantly dishonest 'strumentalizzazzione', because after all the verbiage, Martini concludes in that address, that other forms of union cannot be equated to the traditional family - just that he asks for a 'pragmatic approach' to the question of regularizing irregular unions].

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/03/2007 11.46]

First reports about the Pope's 2 major statements today. First, from PETRUS, a report on the Pope's address to the representatives of the European bishops conferences meeting in Rome this week. The English wire services should be reporting on it shortly. [The other event is the Pope's address to the Communione e Liberazione assembly in St. Peter's Square today.]

P.S. I have now posted a full translation of the Pope's address of the COMECE bishops today. It must be read in its entirety - it's not a very long one - to appreciate the full force of the Pope's admonitions as he expressed them today. After the AP story below, I am posting excerpts from the concluding part of his address which, for some reason, was ignored by all three reports below.

Pope warns against
Europe's apostasy of itself
by Gianluca Barile


VATICAN CITY,Mar. 24 - Europe risks apostasy of itself if it forgets the 'universal values' which 'Christianity has helped to forge," Pope Benedict XVI told represetnatives of the European bishops conferences at the Vatican, just a few hours before the opening of a European Union summit in Berlin.

"If, on the occasion of this 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome [which created the Common Market, first institution of what is now the European Union], the governments of the Union wish to get close to their own citizens, how could they exclude an essential element of the European identity like Christianity, with which a great majority of Europeans continue to identify themselves?" the Pope asked.

"Is it not cause for surprise that today's Europe, while it aims to project itself as a community of values, seems to increasingly dispute that there are absolute universal values? Does not this singular form of apostasy to itself, if not to God, lead Europe into doubting its own identity?"

However, the Pope did not directly ask this time - as he did often when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - for an explicit mention of Europe's Judeo-Christian roots in the European Constitution.

He did say, "One cannot think of building an authentic common home for Europeans while ignoring the identity of the peoples on our Continent. It is a historical, cultural and moral identity, which precedes geogrpahic, economic and political identity - an identity made up of common universal values which Christianity helped forge, thereby acquiring not simply a historical but a foundational role in the formation of Europe."

The Pope then voiced his other concern about Europe today.
"Demographically, one must unfortunately observe that Europe appears headed along a direction that may lead it to writing itself out of history."

Besides "placing economic growth at risk", the Pope explained, "this [widespread disintrerest in having children, therefore, falling birth rates, in most places negative] can cause enormous problems for social cohesion and favor a dangerous individualism that has no concern at all for the future."

"One can almost say," he remarked, "that Europe is in fact losing faith in its own future."

The Pope then stressed the obligation and right of Christians to say NO when confronted with ethical and moral propositions that are against the faith.

"The right to conscientious objection should be safeguarded every time fundamental human rights are violated."

"In the present historical moment, and the many challenges that distinguish it," the Pope said, "The European Union - in order to be a valid guarantor of human rights and an effective promoter of universal human values - cannot but recognize clearly the existence of a stable and permanent human nature, source of the rights that are common to all individuals including those who would deny them."


Here is the first of the English news agency reports about the Pope's statement:

Pope criticises EU
for not mentioning God


VATICAN CITY, Mar. 24 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict strongly criticised the European Union on Saturday for excluding a mention of God and Europe's Christian roots in declarations marking the 50th anniversary of its founding.

In a toughly-worded speech to European bishops, Benedict said Europe was committing a form of "apostasy of itself" by forgetting God and its Christian roots and was thus doubting its own identity.

The Pope, who like his predecessor John Paul has often called for a mention of God and Christianity in the European Constitution, said leaders could not exclude values that helped forge the "very soul" of the continent.

"If on the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome the governments of the Union want to get closer to their citizens, how can they exclude an element as essential to the identity of Europe as Christianity, in which the vast majority of its people continue to identify," he said.

"It is no surprise that today's Europe, while it purports to be a community of values, seems to increasingly contest the existence of absolute and universal values," he said.

"Does not this unique form of apostasy of itself, even before God, lead it (Europe) to doubt its very identity?"


Here's the AP story:


Pope: Europe losing faith in its future
By FRANCES D'EMILIO


VATICAN CITY, Mar. 24 (AP) - Europe seems to be losing faith in its future, Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday, citing the continent's population trends, which include generally low birth rates.

"One must unfortunately note that Europe seems to be going down a road which could lead it to take its leave from history," the pontiff told a gathering of the continent's bishops.

The bishops were in Rome for ceremonies to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which marked the start of the Common Market, forerunner of today's European Union.

Benedict did not elaborate on the population trends, but the continent's demographics have been under intense scrutiny for decades.

In countries like Italy, where many married couples have one or no children, the population is expected to shrink dramatically in a generation or two unless the birth rate increases rapidly. Immigrant populations have generally kept the birth rates from decreasing even more.

Benedict said Europe's population trends, "besides putting economic growth at risk, can also cause enormous difficulties for social cohesion, and, above all, favor dangerous individualism, careless about the consequences for the future."

"You could almost think that the European continent is in fact losing faith in its own future," Benedict said.

The pontiff noted differences across the continent about Europe's unification process, which, he said, gives the impression that "various chapters of the European project have been written without taking into adequate consideration the expectations of the citizens."

Continuing a campaign by his predecessor, John Paul II, Benedict has been urging Europeans to keep alive Christian roots. The Vatican had campaigned vigorously to have those roots cited in the EU constitution, but drafters of the text rejected the idea. The constitution itself was voted down by referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005.

"You cannot think of constructing a common European 'house,' neglecting the very identity of the peoples of our continent," said the German-born pontiff.

Benedict said Europe should be on guard against "that practical attitude, widely diffused today, which systematically justifies compromises on essential human values."

Such an attitude could wind up "denying Christians the very right to intervene as such (Christians) in the public debate," Benedict said. He urged Europe to safeguard rights of conscientious objectors, "whenever fundamental human rights are violated."

Italian church leaders recently urged Catholics to declare themselves conscientious objectors if necessary to avoid any role in policies which contradict the Vatican, including abortion and proposed legislation to give many legal rights to unmarried couples, including same-sex ones.


FURTHER ON WHAT THE POPE SAID

Here are excerpts from the latter half of the Pope's address to the COMECE bishops which were surprisingly ignored by the reports above:

---

...A 'consideration of benefits' is (not) the only criterion for moral discernment and the common good is (not) synonymous to compromise.

Although compromise may represent a legitimate balance among conflicting interests, it becomes a common evil every time it means sanctioning agreements that offend human nature.

A community that builds itself without due respect for the authentic dignity of man - forgetting that every person is created in the image of God - ends up by doing good to no one.

...it becomes even more indispensable that Europe guards against a purely pragnatic attitude, widespread today, that systematically justifies compromise on essential human values as an inevitable acceptance of a presumed lesser evil.

Such pragmatism, presented as balanced annd realistic, is really not, essentially, precisely because it denies that ideal dimension of values which is inherent in human nature.

When such pragmatism is exercised in the context of secularistic and relativistic tendencies, it ends up by denying Christians their very right to engage in public discourse as Christians...

...I know how difficult it is for Christians to defend the truth about man strenuously. But do not tire of doing so, and do not be discouraged!

You know you have the task to contribute to build, with the help of God, a new Europe which is realistic but not cynical, rich with ideals and free from ingenuous illusions, inspired by the perennial and life-giving truth of the Gospel.

Therefore, be actively present in the public debate at the European level, knowing that it is also part of national debates, and couple such mission with effective cultural action. Never yield to the logic of power for its own ends.

Let Christ's own advice be your constant stimulus and support when He said: "If salt loses its taste...it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot" (Mt 5,13).

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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/03/2007 6.23]

From Lella's blog, here is the first news agency report on the Pope's address to the Communione e Liberazione assembly at St. Peter's Square today, translated here.

[I have, of course, since posted a translation of the Pope's full address to the C&L assembly in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.]



"For me he was a friend. So many memories link us," Pope Benedict XVI said today in recalling Don Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communione e Liberazione movement, who died two years ago.

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger was designated by Pope John Paul II to represent him at the funeral services for Don Giussani at the Cathedral of Milan.

"That was our last encounter," the Pope said, not hiding his emotion before more than 100,000 members of the C&L who gathered for their first meeting with Benedict XVI. [An attendance of 70,000 had been widely expected.]

"This courageous priest - who grew up in a house that was materially poor but rich in music, as he liked to say himself," the Pope continued, "was moved from the very beginning - one might even say, 'wounded' - by the desire for beauty, but not just any beauty, rather Beauty itself, the infinite beauty one finds in Christ."

[These words echoed the beginning of the much-applauded extemporaneous eulogy he delivered in Milan in February 2005 at that funeral Mass, a eulogy many Church historians have singled out as one of the major indications in early 2005 that Joseph Ratzinger was bound for greater things. This was shortly followed by his meditations and prayers for the Way of the Cross in April, and then by his funeral homily for John Paul II and the unforgettable homily at the Mass pro eligendo Pontefice that preceded the Conclave.]


Lady Ratzinger in the main forum posts a later Italian news agency report synthesizing the Pope's address to the C&L members.


C&L: THE BEAUTY OF BEING CHRISTIAN


VATICAN CITY, March 24 - "Go forth into the world and bring the message of truth, beauty and peace which are found in Christ the Redeemer." John Paul II's successor repeated the late Pope's words today at his first meeting with a large assembly of the Communione e Liberazione movement.

A record 130,000 persons - almost twice the anticipated number - showed up in St. Peter's Square today, in driving rain, for the assembly which marked the 25th anniversary of Pontifical recognition for C&L, the ecclesiastical movement founded by Don Luigi Giussani.

Besides Italian 'ciellini' [the Italian term for C&L members, formed from its initials 'ci' and 'el', which together in Italian, form 'ciel', the root for the word heaven], members from 52 other countries were represented.

Although it was Pope Benedict's first formal meeting with C&L, the ties that bind him to the movement go back to his friendship with Don Giussani himself. [See preceding story]

The audience with the Pope was preceded at 11 a.m. by the recital of Lauds, a projection on the maxi-screens of some of Don Giussani's speeches, and songs by C&L choirs and the assembly.



The Pope arrived at noon, when the weather had cleared enough for him to make his way through the assembly in the Popemobile.

The Pope, in his address, paid tribute to and expressed gratitude for the work of C&L, a movement born in 1970 to give witness to the world about "the beauty of being Christian, in an era when the prevailing view is that Christianity is something tedious and too oppressive as a way of life."

Inevitably, the Pope turned his thoughts to Don Giussani and his search for beauty "which he found in Christ."

Therefore, the Pope said, "he committed himself to awakening among the youth a love for Christ - the Way, the Truth and the Life - reminding them that He alone is the way towards realizing the desires in man's heart, and that Christ does not save us by ignoring our humanity but through it."

The Pope said C&L, in carrying out Giussani's teaching, has become "a community experience of faith" that is present in the Church "not by hierarchical decree and organization" but by "renewed encounter with the faith" motivated by the faithful themselves.

Today, the Pope said, "C&L offers a possibility for living the Christian faith profoundly and concretely - on the one hand, in total loyalty and communion with the Successor of Peter and the bishops who assure the governance of the Church; and on the other, with the spontaneity and freedom that allow new and prophetic realizations of apostolic and missionary work."

All this, while considering the Church as central, because, the Pope said, "if the movements are truly a gift of the Holy Spirit, then they should position themselves within the ecclesiastical community and serve the Church in such a way that, through patient dialog with its Pastors, they can truly constitute edifying elements for the Church today and in the future."

At this point, Benedict XVI repeated John Paul II's admonition to C&L to 'go forth into the world'.

"Continue along the path you have taken, " he said, "with a profound faith that is personalized and firmly rooted in the living Body of Christ, the Church, which guarantees the presence of Jesus among us."

Earlier, don Julian Carron, who succeeded Giussani as head of C&L, greeted Benedict and reiterated the movement's commitment to "live up fully to the novelty that has happened to each of us in all the situations and conditions within which our lives take place, confident that, each in our own small way, can bear witness to all the beauty that has filled our lives, in any way that we can encounter it."

The Assembly ended with the recitation of the Angelus and the Pope's Apostolic Blessing.

PETRUS has this interesting sidebar to the C&L story:

During the C&L assembly today, former President Francesco Cossiga, senator for life, set aside his crutches to kneel before Pope Benedict XVI to signify his obedience and loyalty to the Pope.

When he rose, the Pope embraced him, and they exchanged a few words. The incident took place towards the end of the audience, when some VIPs were presented to the Pope.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/03/2007 23.36]