From Lella's blog, this APCOM item, translated here:

VATICAN CITY, April 26 (APcom) - The VAtican confirms that Pope Benedict XVI has made himself 'available' an has infact accepted the invitation of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to visit United Nations headquarters in New York.

Fr.Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press Office, confirmed today the Holy Father's acceptance but said a date has yet to be set.

He added, "It is not foreseeable in 2007, because no other foreign trips are planned this year" [besides the trip to Brazil next month and the trip to Austria in September].

----------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. Thomas at American Papist says he saw the news first in an Australian paper, the Daily Telegraph, which used the following AFP story, datelined April 27, 2007, and attributed to "correspondents in the United Nations."

Pope to pay visit to the UN

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Pope Benedict XVI has accepted his invitation to visit UN headquarters "at a mutually convenient time".

Mr Ban said today he had extended the invitation to the pope during his recent visit to Rome.

"I'm very much happy that he accepted my invitation to visit the United Nations," said Mr Ban after returning from a tour of Italy, Switzerland, Qatar and Syria.

The pope's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, visited UN headquarters in 1979 and in 1995 for the 40th anniversary of the institution.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2007 23.17]

Here is a translation of the article in today's La Repubblica about a significant new opening by Benedict XVI, called a surprise, but is it really? For this Pope, it was only a matter of time!.


SYNOD: More power to the bishops -
Ratzinger's revolution
By MARCO POLITI


VATICAN CITY - Benedict XVI begins the third year of his reign with an important reform. At the next Synod, the Pope may concede to the representatives of the Church's worldwide episcopate a decisive power on specific questions, beyond the consultative function that the bishops' 'parliament', which has also been criticized for not being held often enough.

The news is contained in the latest issue of the official Vatican gazette, the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, which carries a new statute for the Synod, which will hold its 12th general assembly in October next year. The working agenda for that assembly was to be presented at a news conference today.

Likewise being awaited is the final release of the papal decree about the Pius V Mass which will be largely authorized throughout the Church with some important changes in the 1570 Missal. These changes would eliminate prayers referring to the Jews, heretics and schismatics.

Thus, Papa Ratzinger is showing himself to be a Pope of surprises, of both reform and counter-reform.

The change in the role of the Bishops Synod is significant enough to draw the attention of other Christian churches.

The new statute says, listing the powers of the Roman Pontiff in Article 1, that he shall decide on pronouncements expressed in the bishops' assemblies and to ratify the decisions they make "in cases where he has conferred the Synod with deliberative power."

To give the Synod powers to decide, as the Vatican Council did - even if Papal ratification is still needed for such decisions - is a decisive action to expand the role of the Church's worldwide episcopate.

Such an opening was contained in the Code of Canon Law promulgated in the 1990s, but under John Paul II, these potential powers were never actualized in the Synodal statute. According to the rules in use then (since 1971), the Pope had the power "to decide on the merits of opinions expressed" by the bishops.

Benedict XVI's reform indicates his intention to proceed - although in small, prudent steps - towards a greater participation of the worldwide episcopate in the governance of the Church. In ecclesial language, this is called 'collegiality.'

Before he became Pope, Ratzinger often said that "the Church is"not an absolute monarchy.' So he has been introducing changes to the system of governance.

This particular reform will help in the dialog with the Orthodox Churches towards eventual reunification of the Christian confessions, because in Orthodox tradition, the participation of bishops in the supreme government, through synodal organisms, is fundamental.

This was one of the points underscored recently by Metropolitan Ioannis Zizioulas, Metropolitan of Pergamum, when he came to Rome to represent the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at the Pope's 80th birthday observance.

And great expectation also marks the imminent publication of the Papal motu proprio which would liberalize the celebration of the pre-conciliar Mass of Pius V.

The Pope will explain the rules to be followed, but the text of the Missal is ready and in fact, the 'new' Missal for the old Mass is already on sale in many bookstores.

However, the new version differs from the Pius V original according to decisions taken in the Vatican as early as 1962 even before John XXIII.

Obviously gone are any reference to 'perfidious Jews', but also eliminated is the 'deprecationes' or anathemas against 'schismatics and heretics' [which ad meant the Orthodox and the Protestants], as well as any passages that might have sounded anti-Muslim.

What is striking about the old Mass is the total abolition of the active role of the faithful, who are once again relegated to a flock following the celebrant of the Mass. And curiously, for those who advocate the absolute necessity of keeping the traditional text and celebrating the Mass in Latin - the new Missals present the text first in Italian.

Repubblica, 27 aprile 2007
================================================================

I'd like to call attention to Politi's last paragraph. He was doing so well until then! What 'total abolition' is he talking about - the fact that there are no laymen going up to read 2 or 3 Biblical passages during the Mass? Big deal! I think those lay readings are nothing more than token participation, which is what they were meant to be, after all.

The priest facing the congregation then? Books have been written about this, but very simply, the Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered to God, not to the congregation, and yes, the congregation must and should join and follow the Mass celebrant, who is in persona Christi, in offering this sacrifice to God.

And as for the new Missals in Italy printing the Italian version first, Politi was certainly not born after 1969 and should know that any Missal always comes with the text in the language of the user, alongside the Latin, because people who do not know Latin - the overwhelmingly majority - follow the prayers in their own language but silently, as it should be.

I never really understood nor appreciated the Pharisaical mode of the Novus Ordo, in which praying aloud together is supposed to be more 'participatory' - to some people it's just distracting and annoying!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/04/2007 9.20]

Cardinal Martino:
Pope should talk climate change with Bush
By Philip Pullella


VATICAN CITY, April 26 (Reuters) - A senior adviser to Pope Benedict said on Thursday he believes the Pontiff should raise the dangers of climate change and global warming with U.S. President George W. Bush when the two meet in June.

Cardinal Renato Martino told reporters on the sidelines of a Vatican-sponsored scientific conference on climate change that religious leaders around the world should remind members of their flocks that willfully damaging the environment is sinful.

Bush is due to meet Benedict at the Vatican in June while the U.S. president is in Europe for a Group of Eight (G8) summit when Germany, the current G8 president, wants to forge an international agreement on combating climate change.

"It's not for me to say what the Pope and President Bush should discuss but certainly they will discuss current issues and therefore I imagine and I hope they will (discuss climate change)," Martino said.

"It certainly merits it," said Martino, who, as head of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, is the Pope's point man for social issues such as the environment.

The Bush administration, which did not sign up to the Kyoto Protocol on Climate change, has long been reluctant to curb the greenhouse gases blamed for swelling sea levels and causing droughts as well as floods.

Bush pulled out of the treaty, which Washington had signed under the previous, Democratic, administration, saying it would damage the economy and was unfair as it did not require rapidly developing nations like China and India to stem emissions.

In a message to conference participants, including British Environment Secretary David Miliband, the Pope said he hoped studies could lead to "lifestyles and production and consumer methods that aim to respect creation and (aim for) sustainable progress."

In recent years, the world's major religions have gone green in the race to save the planet.

Asked if willful damage of the environment is a sin, Martino said: "Yes, because not using the environment correctly is an offence not only against yourself but against all others who make use of the environment."

He said all religious groups should be involved in environmental causes and raise awareness about global warming.

"We have to start at the level of elementary schools, to make sure children are taught to respect nature and be aware of the problems of the world. We can't wait until they are older. This has to be done naturally in religion classes, in religious groups everywhere," Martino said.

Pope's new book addresses
key concerns for this pontificate:
Christ is key
All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.
Friday, Apr. 27, 2007



When people pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news, they generally aren't looking for a Sunday school lesson. This creates a challenge for journalists covering religious leaders, since most of their public utterances are devoted either to expounding their faith, or urging people to behave.

The way reporters solve the problem is by combing through those utterances to find statements presumed to have broad, non-sectarian significance, normally because they apply to matters of politics or culture.

The result is that the real concerns of religious leaders, and the priority they assign to those concerns, often don't come across terribly clearly - not because reporters aren't doing their jobs, but because of how the news business works in a secular world. Recent coverage of Benedict XVI's new book, Jesus of Nazareth, offers a good example.

The first wave of stories focused on comments in the book about Africa and capitalism, even though they amount to asides in a 448-page treatise on the Gospels. Other stories styled the book as a rebuke to The Da Vinci Code. (That red herring was encouraged by an indirect allusion to Dan Brown's potboiler from Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna in a Vatican news conference.) Still others seemed charmed by the fact that the pope wrote that because his book is not a magisterial act, "everyone is free to contradict me."

Beyond those angles, there was little interest in follow-up, in large part because a pope discussing Jesus strikes most people as the ultimate in "dog bites man" developments - that is, the most normal thing in the world.

By the time anyone had actually read all 448 pages of Jesus of Nazareth, the moment for further analysis had already passed. Passed, that is, everywhere but here, where papal analysis never goes out of fashion.

I'm in Rome this week, and, among other things, I set myself the task of studying Jesus of Nazareth. The key question is, "Why this subject, and why now?" Yes, a pope talking about Jesus is hardly a thunderclap - but a pope talking about prayer or morality would be equally par for the course.

Given Benedict's fascination with liturgy, one might have expected him to turn his pen to that theme if it were purely a matter of indulging his own interests, or settling old academic scores.

Yet the pope himself hinted that something more urgent is involved in Jesus of Nazareth, writing that he devoted "all his free moments" after his election to finishing the book. To be honest, that's a bit of misdirection; popes don't really have "free time," and in any event, how they fill the moments in their day which are not formally scheduled usually is a good indicator of their real priorities. Thus the choice to write on Jesus, striving to put the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith back together again, is hardly casual.

What seems clear is that the motive for the book is also emerging as the core doctrinal concern of this pontificate: Christology.

Put in a nutshell, Benedict's thesis in Jesus of Nazareth is that there can be no humane social order or true moral progress apart from a right relationship with God; try as it might, a world organized etsi Deus non daretur, "as if God does not exist," will be dysfunctional and ultimately inhumane. Jesus Christ, Benedict insists, is "the sign of God for human beings."

Presenting humanity with the proper teaching about Jesus is, therefore, according to Benedict, the highest form of public service the church has to offer.

The English edition of Jesus of Nazareth goes on sale from Doubleday May 15, and an excerpt will be carried in the May 11 edition of Newsweek. (That should make the pope, for at least a week, no longer "invisible," as Newsweek described him April 16.)

Jesus of Nazareth is the first installment of what Benedict has projected as a longer work; he decided to publish the first 10 chapters now, he wrote, "because I don't know how much time and how much strength will still be given to me."

Intellectually, the aim of Jesus of Nazareth is, in the first place, to defend the reliability of the gospel accounts; and secondly, to argue that that gospels present Christ as God Himself, not as a prophet or moral reformer.

Over and over, the pope uses phrases such as "implicit Christology," "hidden Christology," and "indirect Christology," to argue that even where the gospel accounts don't draw out the theological consequences of stories and sayings of Jesus, their message is nonetheless discernible.

On one level, Jesus of Nazareth reads like a running conversation with exegetes such as Adolf von Harnack, who argued that the Jesus of the gospels was not yet "the Christ," and that turning him into a deity was a work of later Christian theologizing. (Clearly, Benedict isn't buying it.)

The book is sprinkled with references to writers such as Rudolf Bultmann, Joachim Jeremias, Pierre Grelot, Romano Guardini and Hans-Peter Kolvenbach (the Superior General of the Jesuits, whom Benedict obviously admires.)

The book also contains some characteristic literary flashes of Joseph Ratzinger, such as his suggestion that we can see a model of redeemed creation in the beauty of Benedictine monasteries, while the horrors of a world enveloped by the "obscurity of God" can be glimpsed in Chernobyl.

On another level, the book offers detailed commentaries on the Scriptures. Benedict, for example, complains that modern translations of Matthew 7:28, which in Greek says that the crowds were "frightened" by Jesus' teaching, often uses "astonished" instead, which he believes obscures the awesome character of an encounter with divinity.

Likewise, Benedict doesn't like the way modern translations treat "Yahweh" as a proper name for God, when in fact the Hebrew means "I Am," which is almost a way of underlining the impossibility of naming God.

Benedict also says that he would prefer calling the "Parable of the Prodigal Son" the "Parable of the Two Brothers" instead, because the older brother who resents his father's graciousness offers an equally important lesson, especially for pious religious people.

Yet Jesus of Nazareth is not just an intellectual exercise, or an attempt to offer grist for homilies, though there's material for that aplenty. Ultimately, the motive for the book seems to be deep concern for what the pope sees as the toxic consequences of flawed Christology.

Over the course of the book, Benedict critiques a number of popular modern interpretations of Jesus: Jesus as a preacher of liberal morality, Jesus as a social revolutionary, Jesus as an inspired prophet or sage on the level of other founders of religious movements.

The pope is well aware that these interpretations usually arise from noble motives, which he also shares - to affirm the primacy of human beings over the law, to combat poverty and injustice, to express tolerance for other religions.

In the end, Benedict believes that all such exegesis puts the cart before the horse. Out of impatience to get to desired social outcomes, Benedict argues, revisionist Christologies subvert the only basis for real humanism, which is belief in God, and in an objective truth that comes from God and stands above the human will to power.

On page 56, reflecting on Christ's temptations in the desert, Benedict makes this argument. (The following is my translation from the Italian edition.)

"Whenever God is considered a secondary concern, which can temporarily or stably be set aside in the name of more important things, then it is precisely those things presumed to be more important which fail. It's not just the negative result of Marxism which makes the point.

"The aid given by the West to developing countries, based purely on technical-material principles, which has not only left God to the side but has also distanced people from God with the pride of its presumed superior wisdom, has made the Third World into the 'Third World' in the modern sense.

"That aid put aside existing religious, moral and social structures and introduced its technical mentality into the vacuum. Believing it could transform stones into bread, it has instead given stones in place of bread.

"What's at stake is the primacy of God. It's a matter of recognizing God as a reality, a reality without which nothing else can be good. History cannot be governed with merely material structures, prescinding from God.

"If the heart of the human person isn't good, then nothing else can be good. And goodness of heart can come only from He who is Himself goodness, who is the Good."

Benedict makes the same argument with regard to peace.

"Discord with God is the point of departure for all the poisonings of the human person; and overcoming that discord is the fundamental presupposition of peace in the world. . . .

'Standing in peace with God is an indispensable part of any commitment to 'peace in the world.' It's from the former that the criteria and the strength derive for this commitment.

'Where humanity loses sight of God, peace also falls away, and violence takes the upper hand with previously unimaginable forms of cruelty. We see this today all too clearly."

In that sense, Jesus of Nazareth expresses in an exegetical key the same concern with Christology that drove the interventions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger with regard to theologians such as Jesuit Frs. Jacques Dupuis and Roger Haight, as well as the most recent notification on Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino.

In each case, the concern was with what Joseph Ratzinger saw as a faulty Christology in the name of some presumed good - inter-religious tolerance in the case of Dupuis and Haight, social liberation for Sobrino.

Thus we come to what the pope wrote about Africa, in the context of the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

"The actuality of the parable is obvious. If we apply it to the dimensions of globalized society, we see how the population of Africa, which finds itself robbed and pillaged, concerns us closely.

"We see how much they are our 'neighbor;' we see also that our style of life, the history in which we too are involved, have despoiled them and continues to despoil them. In this regard, what's understood above all is the fact that we have wounded them spiritually.

"Instead of giving them God, the God who is close to us in Christ, and thereby gathering from their traditions all that is precious and grand and carrying it to fulfillment, we have instead brought them the cynicism of a world without God, in which only profit and power count; we've destroyed moral criteria so much that corruption and the will to power deprived of scruples become something obvious.

"This doesn't apply just to Africa. Yes, we must give material aid, and we must examine our kind of life. But we give too little if we give only material things."

To be clear, Benedict XVI is not minimizing the importance of both direct aid and structural justice with regard to the poor, above all in Africa. On April 23, Benedict wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, current president of the G-8, demanding the "the rapid, total and unconditional cancellation" of the external debt of poor countries, describing it as a "grave and unconditional moral responsibility, founded on the unity of the human race, and on the common dignity and shared destiny of rich and poor alike."

His argument is rather that any such act of justice, shorn of reference to God, is destined to be a partial remedy to the wounds afflicting the human family. Only a renewed focus on Christ, and on the plan for human life marked out in the example of Christ, he believes, offers hope of a lasting cure.

According to Benedict, efforts to cut corners, to recast Christ in ways that seemingly promote progress more directly, always end in ruin.

I had an unexpected confirmation of this analysis last week.

Last Thursday, I attended the annual Rector's Dinner at the North American College, the residence for American seminarians in Rome. While there, I was pulled aside by a Vatican official who wanted to comment on what I had written some time ago about the Sobrino notification, where I made the point that it wasn't really about liberation theology but about Christology.

"That piece was widely noticed here," the official said. "Christology is the key for this pope." The official then added: "And it's not over."

That comment suggests there may be additional investigations, additional notifications, additional teaching documents and papal messages, circling around the themes laid out in Jesus of Nazareth.

I'll add four vignettes from the book which don't necessarily illustrate larger themes, but which are nevertheless of interest.

First, Benedict tackles the question of calling God "mother." In a nutshell, he affirms that God is beyond gender, and that Scripture often uses the image of a mother's womb to express the intimacy of God's love for humanity. Yet, he says, "mother" is not a title of God in the Bible, and hence the church is disqualified from using it.

Benedict notes that there were a number of mother-gods in the religious traditions of the cultures surrounding the Israelites, and speculates that perhaps it was only by excluding that sort of language in the Bible that the sovereignty and the "otherness" of God could become clear. While the pope acknowledges that theory may not be completely satisfactory, he says we're nevertheless obliged to follow the Bible's lead.

"Even if we can't give absolutely cogent reasons, the language of the prayer of the entire Bible remains normative for us, in which, the great metaphors of maternal love notwithstanding, 'mother' is not a title of God, and is not an appellation with which one may address God. We must pray as Jesus, on the basis of the Holy Scripture, has taught us to pray, not as it might strike us or please us. Only thus do we pray in the right way."

Second, in light of recent controversies in Catholic-Jewish relations, including a dispute in Israel over the presentation of Pope Pius XII at Yad Vashem and concerns related to the renewed use of the older Tridentine Mass, it's interesting to note the way in which Benedict refers to Judaism in Jesus of Nazareth.

In keeping with classical Christian exegesis and theology, Benedict is unabashed in asserting that Christ was the fulfillment of the promises and longings expressed in the Hebrew Scriptures.

Yet he is deeply impatient with suggestions that Christ rebelled against, or transposed to a merely metaphorical plane, the demands of the Jewish law. Yes, Benedict says, Christ "universalized" the law, making it applicable not just to Israel but to all peoples, but he also insisted repeatedly that it was not his intention to cancel anything from the Law and the Prophets. Benedict rejects any attempt to minimize the importance of the Old Testament for Christianity.

It's interesting in this regard that the exegete whom Benedict quotes at greatest length, and with most evident fondness, is Jewish. The pope devotes pages 129-140 to reflections on the book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus by Jacob Neusner, whom Benedict calls a "great intellectual."

Benedict writes at one stage that he wants to insert himself into their conversation. He praises the "great love" with which Neusner writes of Jesus, and applauds him for seeing clearly what Benedict believes too many Christian exegetes, in their passion for dissection, fail to grasp: that the Jesus of the New Testament is precisely the Christ of Faith, one who claims for himself the authority that belongs only to God.

"Jesus was not simply another reforming rabbi," Neusner writes, in a passage Benedict cites with approval. "What's in discussion are the claims of authority on the part of Jesus." In that sense, Benedict claims, Neusner "liquidates" the image of Jesus as a preacher of liberal morality promoted by Harnack and others.

Benedict adds that he also wants to walk along the same path with Neusner in order to better understand "our Jewish brothers."

Another insight into Benedict's attitude towards Judaism comes in his discussion of the Parable of the Prodigal Son (or, as noted above, as the pope prefers, the "Parable of the Two Brothers."). Benedict notes that ancient Christians tended to see in the two brothers representations of the Pagans (the profligate brother who saw the light) and the Jews (the earnest older brother who stayed home and followed all the rules).

"This application to the Jews is not unjustified," the pope writes, "if we leave it as we've found it in the text; as a delicate effort of God to persuade Israel, an effort which is completely in the hands of God. We should certainly note, in fact, that the father of the parable not only does not contest the fidelity of the older brother, but expressly confirms his identity as a beloved son: 'My son, you are with me always, and everything I have is yours.' Such an interpretation would be wrong, however, if it were transformed into a condemnation of the Jews, which is not what the text is talking about."

Though Benedict is a gracious figure, sometimes in the thrust-and-parry of academic argument, one can feel the iron fist beneath his velvet gloves. There are passages in Jesus of Nazareth where his frustration with exegetes who cast doubt on the reliability of the gospels becomes especially clear.

Perhaps the best example is Benedict's discussion of the temptations of Christ. In the gospel accounts, Satan supports his offers by quoting the Psalms, and Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy.

Benedict says the conversation reads like a debate between two experts on the Scriptures, and notes approvingly a passage from Vladimir Solov'ëv, a 19th century Russian philosopher, in his book on the Anti-Christ. Solov'ëv wrote that the Anti-Christ "received a doctorate honoris causa in theology from the University of Tübingen; he's a great expert in the Bible."

"With this account," Benedict writes, "Solov'ëv wanted to express in drastic fashion his skepticism with regard to a certain kind of erudite exegesis of his time. It's not a matter of rejecting scientific study of the Bible as such, but rather a very healthy and necessary warning regarding erroneous paths that such study might take."

"Interpretation of the Bible can, in fact, become an instrument of the Anti-Christ. It's not only Solov'ëv who says so, it's implicitly affirmed in the account of the temptation itself. The most destructive books on the figure of Jesus, which dismantle the faith, are interwoven with the presumed results of exegesis."

Finally, anyone who knows the thought of Benedict realizes how strongly he recoils from charges that Catholicism went wrong by "Hellenizing" the faith of the Bible.

In fact, Benedict has argued that the encounter between Christianity and the thought world of Greco-Roman antiquity was providential, and that Christianity cannot simply shuck aside its Hellenistic inheritance, like a snake casting off an old layer of skin, without losing something essential. (That formed part of the argument in his now-famous address at the University of Regensburg, which few noticed because of controversies over his comments about Islam.)

In that light, it's interesting that the very last paragraph of Jesus of Nazareth aims to exonerate the church from the charge that by adopting Hellenistic philosophical concepts, it betrayed the message of Scripture. Instead, he argues, Greek concepts allowed the early church to explicate more clearly the claims implicit in the Bible about what it means for Jesus to be the "Son of God," and to save those claims from misinterpretation.

"It was necessary," he writes, "to clarify successfully this new significance through complex and difficult processes of differentiation and through pain-staking research, in order to protect it from mythico-polytheistic and political interpretations.

"This was the motive for which the First Council of Nicea (325) employed the adjective homoousios ('of the same substance'). This term did not Hellenize the faith, it did not burden the faith with an extraneous philosophy, but rather it fixed precisely the incomparably new and different element which appeared in [the Bible's] speech about Jesus with the Father. In the Credo of Nicea, the church once again says together with Peter, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' "

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/04/2007 0.00]

Bush, Pope to meet June 9
By John Allen
Rome
Posted on Apr 27, 2007

[NB: Of course, we already carried this when the Vatican confirmed the meeting last week, but John Allen gives us the US Embassy's announcement.]

President George W. Bush will meet Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican on Saturday, June 9, while in Europe for a meeting of G-8 nations, the United States Embassy to the Holy See announced today.

It will be the first official meeting between Benedict XVI and Bush. The president met Pope John Paul II three times during his first term, including a 2004 event in the Apostolic Palace in which Bush awarded the pope the Medal of Freedom, one of the country’s highest civilian honors.

Three presidential visits to a pope in one term set a new record. Beyond questions of protocol and personal respect, Bush also had a strong political motive for wrapping himself in the papal flag.

Bush made outreach to Catholics an important component of his 2004 re-election strategy, capturing 52 percent of the Catholic vote to 47 percent for John Kerry – despite the fact that Kerry is Roman Catholic and Bush is not. In key states such as Ohio and Florida, Bush’s share of the Catholic vote was even higher.

Yet the relationship between pope and president was not always stress-free. John Paul II was among the strongest moral critics of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Benedict XVI recently said in his Easter message that “nothing positive has come from Iraq,” suggesting that tensions regarding the Middle East, and broader questions about the use of force, could figure in his upcoming exchange with Bush.

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Francis Rooney said the June 9 visit “will be an important opportunity for the President to meet the Holy Father and to discuss with him the deep and shared commitment of the United States and the Holy See to promoting human dignity around the world.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/04/2007 20.51]

You would think that a philosopher would have it bred into his bones that one never argues from emotion, that reason must be dispassionate or else it becomes unreason. Well, Italian philosopher Paolo Flores d'Arcais once again lets his ego and his contempt for the Catholic Church get in the way of logos, to attack the Church and its Pope - as he did a couple of weeks back in a muddled, if not unhinged, editorial for Corriere della Sera about what natural law is - or is not.

I do not know if d'Arcais's anti-Ratzinger screed will be available online soon, but meanwhile, Philosophy-history professor Gian Maria Vian replies in Avvenire.


The prejudices of secularism:
In his magazine Micromega,
atheist philosopher Flores d'Arcais
attacks the Pope's book in
venomous but hardly reliable terms

From dubious bibliographical sources to gratuitous charges of 'religious obscurantism', the atheist unleashes the worst stereotypes and re-evokes old ghosts in the name of reason

By Gian Maria Vian


Papa Ratzinger set it out in black and white: his Jesus of Nazareth (Rizzoli) - which came out two weeks ago as the first part of work in progress and which is 'in no way an act of Magisterium" - can obviosuly be criticized, but he also asked for "an earnest of sympathy without which there can be no undertsanding."

And the first extensive criticism of the book which comes out today in the magazine Micromega under the signature of its editor Paolo Flores d'Arcais is, in fact, completely devoid of that attitude, but rather displays a prejudice - in the etymological sense of an a priori judgment - which ends up ignoring the book itself, let alone understand it.

The essay by philosopher d'Arcais, entitled "Jesus and Ratzinger between history and theology" is very long, and yet it claims to be only "a provisional and partial (or rather very fractional) aggregate of notes" which will be developed into a book to come out in the fall. [It's called riding on the coattails!]

In effect, the text presents itself as a collection of observations - extracted from a bibliography "predominantly Anglo-Saxon" (therefore full of gaps) - on the question of the historical Jesus and his relationship with Christian tradition.

Observations that are meant to criticize the Ratzinger of Introduction to Christianity (Ratzinger's commentary on the Apostles Creed that was a bestseller when it first came out in Germany in 1968) as well as the Ratzinger who wrote Jesus of Nazareth.

Actually, Flores d'Arcais's criticism does not "belie and demolish Papa Ratzinger's premises in a most detailed and analytical manner" - as the publicity blurb for the essay claims, but opposes Ratzinger's general affirmations by bundling up, with little order and rather approximatively, commonplace arguments, such as for instance, the plurality of Christian confessions - something well-known to everyone and is in no way a contradiction of Benedict XVI's arguments.

The Pope, of course, knows that only too well and shows a view that is far broader and more up-to-date than the authors cited by the Micromega publisher to buttress ihis 'criticism.'. One need only look at Ratzinger's focused and rigorously historical look at the importance of all of Hellenistic Judaism and the Qumran scrolls, or even the relationship between the Johannine tradition and the synoptic Gospels.

Hardly persuasive historically is Flores d'Arcais's indistinct consideration of the various currents of early Christianity - from the Judeo-Christian to the gnostic sects; and with respect to how the body of New Testament took shape, his complete omission of the canonical viewpoint - important to Ratzinger's Jesus - from his historical review.

And again, regarding the Jewish context of the book and Christian relations with Judaism today, Ratzinger's confrontation with Jacob Neusner is less anachronistic than Flores d'Arcais's use of Geza Vermes, another authoritative Jewish scholar.

To be truly stringent (and eventually convincing) D'Arcais's criticism of Ratzinger should have confronted the historical Jesus on the points raised by Ratzinger - all of which he ignores, however, except for a discussion on the term abba *(father) - bearing in mind the scientific discussion on the issue that has matured in the past two decades, if only by at least leafing through Raymond Brown, Jon Meyer, Klaus Berger and James Dunn.

Flores d'Arcais's prejudiced tone then becomes a venomous rap sheet gainst Ratzinger, well-synthesized in the conclusion of his long article in Micromega, which we will quote here to demonstrate the tone in which the author conducts his criticism:

"This book of his," writes Flores d'Arcais, "is therefore wtriten as part of that true crusade of 'Reconquest' by Ratzinger's Church hierarchy, which no longer limits itself to simply criticizing vehemently the conquests of modernity (extremely fragile, inconsistently developed and now more than ever at risk), namely, that 'etsi Deus non daretur' [as if God did not exist] which would put an end to wars of religion; the autonomy of man; the Kantian 'knowledge dares!'; the Darwinian lesson which sees any finalism as futile and which makes man 'sovereign' - and now (the Church) aims to colonize society anew, to realize a new "Constantinism' on the ruins of Vatican-II, to impose as 'natural law' its own moral dogmas, and to make criminal all that it considers 'mortal sin', after having overturned with obscurantist interpretations the critical values of the enlightenment in order to sequester and annex them."

What can one say? One can only hope that Flores d'Arcais will review his "collection of notes' and avoid in his book the unfailing and gratuitous accusation of 'religious obscurantism' that he has levelled against Ratzinger's JESUS OF NAZARETH in his magazine. Because the perspective of faith goes beyond the historical but certainly does not ignore it. In the same way that faith does not ignore reason.

Avvenire, 27 aprile 2007

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/04/2007 20.49]

The New Yorker spins the pope

by George Weigel
The Tidings Online
April 27, 2007

The New Yorker was once famous for the ferocity of its fact-checking and editing. No more.

Any magazine whose editors give a pass to falsehoods (e.g., Catholics believe that "heaven, and possibly earth, belongs exclusively to them"), grossly tendentious mis-readings of documents (e.g., Vatican II's Nostra Aetate taught "the dim possibility of Jewish salvation"), and factual errors (e.g., Karol Wojtyla was "one of the young theological advisers at Vatican II") is a magazine that is not seriously edited.

Jane Kramer's lengthy tantrum in the New Yorker's April 2 issue, "The Pope and Islam," is really several articles in one. It's a wailing wall for left-leaning Vaticanisti, disgruntled Curial bureaucrats, and Italian Catholic activists unhappy with Benedict XVI's challenge to Islam.

Anyone who hasn't come to grips with what John Paul II wrote about Islam isn't in a position to comment seriously on the differences in approach --- which certainly exist --- between the two popes.

It's an effort --- rather unsuccessful, I fear --- to come to grips with the substance of the Pope's Regensburg Lecture in September 2006. It's yet another attempt to drive a wedge between Benedict XVI and John Paul II, along the hoary "nice Wojtyla/nasty Ratzinger" axis of pseudo-analysis.

And it's a brusque dismissal, without serious examination, of Benedict XVI's suggestion that the first inculturation of Christianity in the world of classical rationality was providential, because it gave early Christians the intellectual tools to turn their evangelical confession of faith ("Jesus is Lord") into doctrine and creeds, such as the Nicene Creed universally prayed by the Church.

The Wojtyla-vs.-Ratzinger business is easily rebutted. In "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," John Paul II stated flatly that "not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity." That's a far more dramatic statement of the gap between Christianity and Islam than anything Benedict XVI said at Regensburg.

The "nice Wojtyla/nasty Ratzinger" trope is a cartoon, period. Anyone who hasn't come to grips with what John Paul II wrote about Islam isn't in a position to comment seriously on the differences in approach --- which certainly exist --- between the two popes.

A similar lack of research, or so one assumes, distorts Ms. Kramer's reading of Benedict's approach to Islam. Ms. Kramer makes no reference at all to the Pope's address to the Roman Curia last December, in which he suggested that the interreligious dialogue of the future focus on assisting Muslims who wish to assimilate the best of the Enlightenment (like the institutional separation of religious and political authority) by developing the resources of their own religious tradition.

She makes passing reference to the post-Regensburg "Open Letter to Pope Benedict XVI" from 38 senior Muslim leaders, but does not conjure with the fact that this Muslim condemnation of violence in the name of God followed a robust papal challenge, not the platitudes too frequently typical of "interreligious dialogue."

As for the issues put on the global table at Regensburg, does Ms. Kramer really think it a bad thing to challenge irrational forms of faith that command the murder of innocents in the name of God? Is it wrong to suggest that there is danger in the obverse of irrational faith: that trouble is afoot in the West's loss of faith in reason, which erodes our capacity to defend the universality of human rights and the superiority of the rule of law over the rule of coercion?

Then there's Ms. Kramer's bugbear about reason-and-faith. Classical ideas of reason have a privileged place in Christian theology, not because of xenophobia ("Ratzinger is Eurocentric. To him, Europe means Christianity.") but because the conviction that human beings can know that some things are true is essential in a Church whose Lord taught that the truth is liberating. Doctrine is not excess baggage on the journey of faith. It's the vehicle that makes the journey possible.

Finally, Jane Kramer really ought to find herself some new Roman sources. The men she cites remind me of nothing so much as those unfortunate Japanese soldiers found on remote Pacific islands in the 1970s --- men who never, somehow, got the word that Emperor Hirohito had packed it in 30-some years before. One of her-refugees-from-radicalisms-past sighs that Vatican II was "the 1968 of the Catholic Church." Memo to source: It's over. Get over it.

George Weigel is a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

VATICAN CITY, April 27 (ASCA) - Sales of Pope Benedict's JESUS OF NAZARETH have been tremendous. Radio Vatican reports that 10 days since it first came out, the book has already sold 510,000 in Italy, 480,000 in Germany and about 100,000 in Poland. These were the first three editions to come out on April 16, on the Pope's 80th birthday.

The Greek edition, coming out soon, carries a letter from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who expresses his "great and ardent interest" in this book, in the hope that it may facilitate the 'theological dialog' towards an eventual 'definitive resolution' of the split between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/04/2007 20.48]

The Pope today received the President of Lithuania and Mrs. Valdas Adamkus at the Vatican.





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On Saturday, the Holy Father also met with the Syrian Catholic bishops who were holding an extraodrinary synod in Rome and later lunched with them at Casa Santa Marta. Here is a delayed story from ZENIT.



Benedict XVI Greets Syro-Catholic Bishops


VATICAN CITY, APRIL 30, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI participated in the extraordinary synod of the Syro-Catholic bishops, asking them to be an example of unity in the situations of violence and division in which they live.

This Syro-Catholic Church, united with Rome since 1662, is principally present in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Turkey, though members are found all over the world, particularly in the United States.

After his address at the synod on Saturday, the Pope lunched with the participants, including Patriarch Ignace Pierre VIII Abdel-Ahad of Antioch. On hand were also 13 bishops who represent the 150,000 Syro-Catholic faithful around the world.

The synod, which took place in the Vatican last Thursday to Saturday, was presided over by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in the Holy Father's name.

In his remarks to the synod, the Holy Father said he wanted to gather them in Rome to "strengthen even more the bonds that have existed for centuries that unite your Church to the Apostolic See and, at the same time, to show you the esteem and solicitude that the Bishop of Rome has for each one of you, pastors of a part of God's people that is not numerous but is very ancient and meaningful."

Benedict XVI added: "In today's world, there are many challenges that Christian communities must face in every part of the world, while many dangers and traps risk clouding the values of the Gospel.

"In regard to your Church, the violence and conflicts that afflict a part of your flock are additional difficulties that endanger peaceful coexistence and peoples' lives."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/05/2007 1.15]

It's a slow Papal-news day today, but thank God I finally finished translating Peter Seewald's article for German Vanity Fair which came online April 11 and was passed on to me by Benefan last week. Be ready for the superlatives, because Seewald does not spare them, as you can see from the very title of his article. May his tribe increase and God bless!




POPE BENEDICT XVI:
OUR GIFT FROM HEAVEN
From 'transitional' Pope
to super-Pope

On April 16, Benedict turns 80.
How is he doing? How does he live? Who is he?

by Peter Seewald


No one thought it possible that the successor of a "once-in-a-millennium“ Pope like Karol Wojtyla could be anything more than a transitional Pope. Just as it was equally held unlikely that a former "Grand Inquisitor“ would become the Pope.

But when Joseph Ratzigner became Pope, then the questions came: Will he be able to communicate with people? Will he be able to deal with media? Does he not personify a reactionary counter-Revolution in the Vatican?

"Atheists should welcome the election of Benedict XVI,“ said the leftist British historian Timothy Garston Ash at the time, "because this old, scholarly, conservative and uncharismatic Bavarian theologian will surely push forward the de-Christianization of Europe even when he will try to do the opposite thing.“

Well, no one is a prophet. Two years after the start of the first Pontificate of the third millennium, so many things have changed.

Papal books are on the bestseller lists. Papal events draw millions. Never before has the word of a Pope been so present, never before have so many people around the globe been able to hear him at once and simultaneously. During his visit to Bavaria, the Pope-Podcast was downloaded 30,000 times.

Unprecedented for an encyclical to sell millions of copies. But Benedict’s first encyclical even set a record for a Latin document, when a second printing was needed after the first printing of 450,000 sold out.

In Italy, every papal event is broadcast live on television. In Bavaria, more TV cameras were fielded to provide full coverage of his visit than for the whole World Cup series [played in several German cities] a few months earlier.

In his first full year in office, the German Pope attracted almost four million people to St. Peter’s Square, double the annual numbers for his highly popular predecessor.

Since Ratzinger became Pope, the number of Catholics leaving the Church in Germany has dropped, as the number of new converts or returning Catholics is rising. German universities report that after years of decline, there has been a perceptible growth in all fields of theological study.

The social convention, that was still fashionable even under John Paul II, for most Germans to dismiss the Pope, is no longer the convention.

Even celebrities like Mario Adorf [leading German film and stage actor] now consider the onetime 'Grand Inquisitor’ of the media portraits as „very knowledgeable, very intelligent, humble, competent and friendly“.

Novelist Martin Walser [incidentally, the second most quoted intellectual in Germany in 2006, after the Pope] says that "Earlier, I only knew about him from short new items and without any direct experience,“ but since he first came to know his 'being’, then he has been "incredibly impressed."

Football’s 'Kaiser' Franz Beckenbauer considers the 48 seconds of his 'audience’ with Benedict [at a Wednesday post-GA walkthrough by the Pope before the World Cup in Germany] as the 'high point’ of his life.

"Mankind needs him now more than ever,“ he says of his countryman. "I read all the addresses he gave when he visited Bavaria, and in it, he tells everyone, in effect, 'Go to Church and know yourselves'.“

The Pope has inspired him, Beckenbauer says: "I have seldom seen anyone with this radiance, this goodness, this friendliness so visible in his face!“

Never before has a Pope developed overnight such completely unexpected drawing-power. And probably never have the Shoes of the Fisherman been filled by someone with such penetrating intellect.

"He is the Pope,“ says the liberal Munich theologian Eugen Biser, "who has put the idea of being the representative of Crhist in the center of his Pontificate. He does not see himself as the chief of the Church, nor as a cult object for the church. He represents that One who must alone be loved and believed in.“

With that, says Biser, he will have "a Church in which faith does not simply mean acceptance of dogma but is understood as an invitation to experience God...a Church in which Christ truly lives in the hearts of the faithful.“

Thereore, Biser is convinced that Benedict XVI already belongs "among the most important Popes in history.“

Being Pope is not just any job. It confers a powerful aura. One cannot underrate that aura any more than one can under-estimate Ratzinger’s ability to have grown rapidly into the job.

And yet, he has remained true to himself in his decisiveness, his simplicity of being, and the brilliance of someone who conveys sense in a senseless world.

The synthesis between faith and reason is a central theme of his message. But there is more. He has a lightness, a new power for poetry and prophecy. A new gleam in his eyes.

One might say melodramatically: Joseph Ratzinger is at the peak of his thinking, in the full bloom of his faith, and in the fullness of love. The transfiguration of a public persona has taken place. His decades-long 'defensive’ mode, as Prefect of the Congregation of the Faith, which shielded his real personality from public view, has given way to a charisma of goodness and gentleness.

In any case, Ratzinger was never the sinister hardliner that he was often portrayed to be. One of his former teachers in Traunstein said in a testimonial put together by Ratzinger’s former Gymnasium (high school) that Ratzinger was best characterized as a student by the word 'rebellious.'

Indeed, this element of protest, of critical questioning, of resisting whatever happens to be fashionable, has been constantly demonstrated throughout Ratzinger’s life.

It began at home, where resistance to an atheistic system was understood to be part of Christian existence. It carried on in the diocesan school he attended, where not one of the students willingly joined the Hitler Youth. Not even after their parish priest was arrested and a bomb exploded in front of his parsonage.

In a text by the anti-fascist theologian August Adam – which Ratzinger says was one of the key readings in his youth – he read that the sexual drive is not 'unclean’ but must be considered a 'gift’, which through caritas – love of one’s neighbor – leads to wholeness.

The work of his friend Joseph Pieper, "About Love“, with chapters like "The unity of caritas and erotic love“ contained pre-formulations of what would be Ratzingerian positions much later.

Ratzinger’s first text as a student was a translation from Latin of Thomas Aquinas’s "Revelation about love“.

Exactly 60 years later, this would be the theme of his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, which reads in some parts like a loud Yes, an acceptance, by man of his corporeality, and which liberates eros from its 'captivity' in the sex industry. Even the notoriously anti-clerical Der Spiegel celebrated this first encyclical by the German Pope as a "hymn to love.“

"What do you like most?“ I asked him once in an interview.
"I love the beauty of our land. I love wandering in it. I am a Bavarian patriot, I love Bavaria most specially, our history and of course, our art...“

"Music?“
"That is an area of life that I cannot live without.“ [He still has his old piano now in his apartment at the Vatican, on which he plays Mozart, Bach, Palestrina...]

"What else?“
"Friendship.“

"What books would you take to a desert island?"
"Naturally, the Bible...and Augustine’s Confessions.“

"What do you like best to read?“
"Mostly historical fiction, philosophy and politics. But I am a speed reader. I have always loved Theodor Storm. And even if it is almost naive to say so, Goethe of course."

"And what else?“
"Earlier I was an avid reader of novels and poetry. Hesse, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Annete Kolb. My favorite book by Hesse is 'Steppenwolf', then 'Peter Camenzind', and naturally 'The Glass Bead Game.’

After the crowded and somewhat hectic first months of his Pontificate, the most famous appartamento in the world has settled to a routine.

The Pope gets up at 6 a.m., then celebrates Mass in the private chapel, has breakfast then proceeds to his study, to work with his private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein. Wednesdays, there’s the General Audience. And Sundays, he is promptly at his study window at 12 noon to pray the Angelus and bestow his blessing.

Unlike his predecessor, Benedict seldom has guests for meals, and he goes to bed earlier. He had the rooms renovated, has a sitting room, as well as a stationary bicycle!

Since his old bookcases were re-installed along with his piano, he has felt very much at home. He bucked tradition by patronizing his own previous tailor instead of the Vatican’s ‚court tailor', but says it took him some time to get used to people addressing him as Holy Father or Holiness.

From the second floor of the Apostolic palace, where the audience halls and offices of the Vatican diplomatic departments are located, Benedict XVI ends a regular working day by going up one floor to his residence for yet another hour at least of conferring with his number-two man, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.

He does not go back to being a really private person until about 8:45 p.m. when his valet, Paolo Gabriele, ends his shift.

Behind the scenes, four Memores Domini lay sisters run the household. His two private secretaries, the young Mons. Miecyslaw Mocryzyski, from whom he is learning Polish, and Mons. Gaenswein, are by now upstairs in their apartments above the Papal appartamento, answering e-mail until late night.

At first, the enforced enclosure was his greatest 'torture.’ The thought of not being able to go home to Regensburg when he wants to. Not being able to play with the cats of Borgo Pio as he used to, on his daily walks through area, which were his passion.

But he has been able several times to leave the Vatican in a black cassock to go to his old apartment nearby. And once in a while, he manages to go and visit old friends.

He continues meeting once a year with his former students, enjoying himself when he can one again play the professor. He sits among them – most of them now bishops themselves or at least, experienced and distinguished priests – and discusses with them like before, with his glasses on.

Ratzinger is very conscientious, but not a bureaucrat. Mischievous departures from protocol come naturally to him. Just like the well-aimed irony he often expresses.

For example, on his Bavarian trip, he told the priests and seminarians in Freising that he had come prepared with a 'big speech’. Of course, he would never call one of his own texts that. But no one knew that of all the speeches for Bavaria, that had been the only one not prepared by him. [He ended up not using it and speaking to them extemporaneoulsly.]

He is a man of words, but he says a lot through gestures and signs. For instance, his decision to wear the now famous camauro as winter headgear, though it was last used by John XXIII, not only was to protect him from the cold, but was a symbol that he wants to carry on certain traditions of the Church that he thinks should be preserved and promoted. As for instance, the forthcoming rehabilitation of the old Mass.

Meanwhile, the new style of this Papacy is quite clear. First he discarded the obligatory hand-kissing that was a carryover of courtly practice, although people may and do kiss the Papal ring. He replaced the papal tiara on the Papal coat of arms with the bishop’s miter.

Wojtyla usually used the first-pronoun 'I’ when speaking, but Ratzinger has chosen to use the papal 'we’ in order to project not himself but the office and all the bishops supporting the office.

Vatican personnel note that things are more disciplined, efficient and transparent. Benedict shortened the first Bishops Synod under him from 4 weeks to 3, and made it more collegial, also introducing a daily hour of free discussion.

"His strength is amazing,“ says someone who works with him. "He does not seem to feel the burden of the office.“ They find it puzzling how he can still manage, despite all the work required even just by daily routine, to write.

At the start, what helped Benedict to deal with his predecessor’s legacy was a more effective use of time and the customary hard work in which he had trained himself since youth. But he has also reduced the number of audiences and public events by about 50 percent.

The Vatican apparatus, which is well able to prevent the Pope from leading the Church effectivly by filling up his calendar with events they recommend, had to yield to Benedict. He has chosen to intensify his meetings with bishops and priests in order to be better acquainted with the problems of the Church. Ratzinger studies previously available reports intensively before each of these meetings

Benedict generally works fast, but he allows matters which need clarification to reach an appropriate maturation before making a decision.

Critics point out that Ratzinger has been too slow in filling up important positions as they become free. But personnel matters are not his strong suit. Even in his immediate environment, he is more likely to let unresolved personnel problems drag on or ignores them completely.

That he can’t be brilliant in all things is also evident in his TV interviews so far. His answers are often involved and hardly original, too standard. [I disagree, of course! Anyone who can say that angels can fly because they don't take themselves too seriously, as he did in the German interview, is original enough for me. Besides, he has only done 2 interviews so far, and the 16-minute interview with Polish TV was necessarily very focused and concise because it was about JP-II.]

"Thank God that is over,“ he was heard to say in relief right after finishing the TV interview for German networks before his visit to Bavaria.

Benedict began his Pontificate very cautiously, but with his visit to Bavaria, he showed how much potential this Pontificate has – mainly through Ratzinger’s special gift to turn things around and win even seemingly lost battles.

He had wanted with his visit home to "gain new strength“, the Pope told me in Rome a few months earlier, by going back to his origins. In the same way, he thinks, only from the springs of tradition "can an oftentimes tired Christianity undergo a Pentecostal moment and gain new courage for a new breakthrough.“

Benedict came, saw, and was revived. The beauty of the Bavarian landscape, its cities and villages, shone in those bright summer days. And with it, the beauty of faith.

Upon arrival at the airport in Munich, he refered right away to the meaning of religion in a secularized society.

"We are suffering these days from a hardness of hearing with respect to God," he would say later.

He would tell Federal President Horst Koehler that Germany should learn to integrate its Muslims better. Lale Akguen, a Muslim representative of the SPD parliamentary faction, said later, "Even the Muslims in Germany can now say, 'Wir sind Papst.'“

Every step of that Bavarian trip was symbolic. As when he stayed longer for private prayers at the chapel in Altoetting than he had done elsehere.

The well-orchestrated sequnece of meetings and events also included a lecture at the University of Regensburg, where he had been a professor for several years. He spoke about the modern tendency to see faith and reason as separate things and declared, "Reason which is deaf to God and which pushes religion to the sidelines, is incapable of undertaking a dialog of cultures.“

No one took exception to the lecture. Spiegel Online commented with boredom, "The Pope was there – so what?“ He had advocated dialog with Islam but without any particular emphasis.

When four days later, an organized outcry in Muslim countries led to the burning of Chrisian churches, the tune changed. Iran’s spiritiaul leader, Ayatollah Ali Chameini, called the Pope’s lecture "the last link in a conspiracy towards a new Crusade.“

Suddenly, too, German commentators chimed in, outraged, why any man in Ratzinger’s position could not have chosen his words more carefully! All because of a quotation that was selectively lifted from the Pope’s lecture. Benedict had cited from a conversation that the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos carried on around 1400 with a 'learned' Persian Muslim.

Had the Pontiff played with fire unwittingly? Not at all! The quotation comes from a book that he had been reading the past weeks as a spiritual exercise, and which he always had at hand during that time.

That he took off from it to write his lecture shows Ratzinger’s preference for making clear statements. As a Professor, he was known to cite powerful quotations in order to drive home a point. No one had checked out his text beforehand.

Later, he would say: "The lecture was an invitation for serious dialog, with great mutual respect.“ [Which was what the dialog between the emperor and the Persian was, illustrating want inter-cultural, inter-religious dialog should be, and, I think, what the Pope meant to illustrate – frank and direct, but reasoned and respectful, even in the midst of mortal war between the interlocutors’ respective camps.]

Ratzinger is no activist who is setting out to execute long-range plans. He sees himself rather as an instrument of 'Providence’, who seeks the Creator’s signs in order to find his way. He watched how things developed with appropriate composure. Such a storm can sometimes be a blessing, he thought after the first blitz, noting the overcast sky, but thinking the thunder will come and go.

And so it was. Two months later, after his visit to Turkey, the tune changed again. "The Pope’s explanations have been more than adequate," said the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Hassoun. The supposed 'faux pas’ was now considered a directional milestone.

The moderate Islamic newspaper Zaman wrote about the Pope’s 'message of peace’ and that finally, the dialog between religions was under way. "Muslims celebrate Benedict,“ Spiegel proclaimed this time.

Ratzinger is developing his own voice as Pope. For him it means uncovering again the authenticity of Christianity. "Learn to think like Christ,“ he tells bishops, adding that "It is not thinking with the intellect but with the heart.“

It is the particularity of the time that the German Pope’s coming to office coincides with a process of re-thinking in society that the lever to move public consciousness must once again be those values that endure, as a reaction to the increasing depravity of a commerce- and ego-driven society.

Inside the Church, it is manifested as a new yearning for the old Mass rite, for worship and mystery; and outside the Church, as the return of religion to the stage of public discourse. It is possible that the decline of modernity announces a new time, a second 'new modernity'. Benedict XVI is working on a the melody for such a 'new modernity’.

How long will he last? I asked the old abbot at Weltenburg monastery, Thomas Niggl. Shortly sfter Benedict was elected, he had said that he could be the Pope referred to as 'de gloria ulivae’ in Malachias’s prophecy, who, according to that prophecy, is unfortunately, the penultimate of all Popes – before a Peter II who would herald the Last Judgment.

"One must not forget God’s help,“ says the old Benedictine monk. "Everything is possible – even a long Pontificate. Let us not forget Leo XIII who was elected as a transitional Pope and ended up reigning for 25 years until he died at age 93.“

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/04/2007 23.49]

Pope: 22 new priests,
images of the Good Shepherd


Vatican City, April 29 (AsiaNews) – Twenty two young men from Italy, the Philippines, Peru, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Slovakia were ordained today by Benedict XVI in an evocative ceremony in St Peters Basilica, concelebrated by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope’s Vicar for the diocese of Rome, along with various auxiliary bishops.

Some of the new priests come from Roman colleges and seminaries, others from seminaries run by the Neocathecumenal movement (Redemptoris Mater) or Legion of Christ.

Their initiation to the priesthood took place on the very day the universal Church celebrates “Good Shepherd Sunday” (IV Sunday of Easter) and the 44th world day of prayer for vocations.

In his homily Benedict XVI underlined first and foremost the profound unity between the priest and the Good Shepherd, “the Son of man who wanted to share the human condition in order to gift them new life and guide them to salvation”.

He described relationship with Christ as “a deep and personal relationship - a knowledge of the heart, by he who loves and is loved; he who is faithful and in turn has faith... (and) a source of constant consolation and indestructible hope” because “Christ never abandons us” and “no obstacle can ever impede his universal plan of salvation”.

[A translation of the full homily has been posted in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/04/2007 13.42]

I know it's a rather lame phrase, but it is emblematic of how the 1968 generation looked at religion, and, in the language of that same musical, "What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening, what's the buzz?" - the buzz these days in Italy appears to be Jesus, and in a positive sense.

To begin with, what do you say about a country which - long touted by the secularists as now only 'barely Catholic" - buys more than half a million copies of the Pope's book on Jesus in just 10 days? Here is an editorial in today's Avvenire that cites other indications of the current Jesus fervor. And may it all translate into positive actions!


What is happening?
Everyone's talking about Jesus,
not just the Pope!
By Davide Rondoni



Together with the Pope, they too have come to Him, to Jesus, in a manner of speaking. Roberto Benigni, Lucio Dalla, Lindo Ferretti, and others...

Strange and mysterious synchronicity. The Pope has just written a book on Jesus, and now diverse popular artists, with different stories and sensibilities, are talking publicly about Jesus. They do it as entertainers, whose faith may be faint or strange, but they are talking, and drawing the attention of their public to the presence and mystery of Christ.

It isn't a marketing ploy, but it is not by chance either. Because we always think we know everything there is to know about Jesus, but we find out we have to re-learn everything about Him. That it's not a story that ended in the past, that it continues today, and therefore, let us understand it in order to better enjoy it or avail of it.

The other night, Roberto Benigni graciously invited me to attend one of his performances in Rome about Dante [Benigni,who is a very literate self-taught intellectual, has been going around Italy publicizing the Divine Comedy by presenting readings of it in free performances on public squares. I have heard and seen him on French and Italian TV hold his own, in both languages, with reputed intellectuals on matters of literature and philosophy. And frankly, I cannot think of any Hollywood star with comparable fame who could do that!]

On the phone, he thanked me because he has been citing from my articles, among them my comment on the fact that marked the beginning of Christianity: the Yes that Mary gave freely to God for her part in His design to save mankind - He wanted to do it through a human being's free will, because forcing His love on anyone would not have made sense. And so, he chose this 16-year-old girl who freely said Yes...

It was this, and many other points about Jesus that punctuated Benigni's two-and-a-half-hour show, which ended with a standing ovation froma public that was clearly moved to silence except for their applause.

Benigni's performance is a loving hymn, daring and passionate, to the Italian spirit that is capable of greatness in every field and that has been forged by Christianity.

With continual references to the Gospel - necessarily related to what is going on today - between jokes and witty remarks, and moments of magic and thrill that only a star like him can produce, he invites his audience to be aware of how every person is unique and irrepeatable, of the fascination and risks of freedom, of the miracle of finding love.

It was a performance that at once could make you die laughing, or just be dumbfounded literally. A trip through the miseries of daily political and social life - never treated with acidity but always with sympathy - and within the context of Dante's masterpiece, a most human vision of life and the problem of man's ultimate destiny. [And what other entertainer in the world would dare go on tour and hold an audience, with nothing 'more' than two hours of commentary on a 14th-century poet's vision of Christianity in a poem that is as staggeringly beautiful as it is impossible to read or understand without historical, literary and theological annotations? I would love to see a videotape of these Benigni 'performances.']

That same day, another friend, the singer-composter Lucio Dalla, invited me to Parma for a reading by him of a text on the Passion of Christ by Alda Merini, and accompanied by music composed for the reading by Marco Alemanno and performed by the city's Orchestra Toscanini. Even there, it was a public that was stunned and moved by what they heard, Christ's story which is something old but always new.

A few weeks ago, Lindo Ferretti, icon of Italian punk rock, had read before an audience of hundreds a poem I had written as a Lament for the Dead Christ. [Ferretti's dramatic rediscovery of his Catholic faith after decades of leading a purely secular life in the world of entertainment, was big news in Italy months ago. If I remember right, he said he had bought and read all the books he could by Joseph Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI.]

So what is happening? Why are these artists - and with them, their public - now looking at Jesus Christ? Some might say - it's nothing new; artists have always looked to the church and to the faith, if only out of commitment, because they wre commissioned.

But that's the point - at present, there is no exterior motive for them, these are not things that these artists are 'obliged' to do. It has to do with the course of their own life. Because there is no law of the market that says 'Jesus is bankable'. On the contrary...

And yet it has occurred to these artists, as it did to the Pope, to propose their personal, passionate - and yes, disputable - ways of confronting Jesus, though they are not constrained to teach anything or demonstrate renewed or recovered faith.

And so these performers have 'arrived at' Jesus - in ways less boring than the the philosophers, historians and commentators,
in ways that are perhaps bizarre as well as strokes of genius, and perhaps even more open to criticism, perhaps eventually inconstant. But for now, they are talking of Jesus.

Avvenire, 29 aprile 2007

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2007 18.41]

Here is a translation of an unusual though brief appreciation of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH by one of Italy's leading philosophers, which came out in Avvenire on 4/23/07.

With his book on Jesus,
Benedict XVI affirms
"I believe, therefore I am"
By Paolo Viana

"Hands off this book if you do not have faith."

In commenting on JESUS OF NAZARETH, philosopher Giovanni Reale revisits the tidiness of German academic circles, where he studied in the 1960s, the same milieu that Joseph Ratzinger occupied for a quarter century.

Italy's most 'Augustinian' philosopher says unequivocally that he thinks "this is the most beautiful work by this author." His verdict signals his total involvement in the book.

"The Beatitudes related in the book are the perfect portrait of Christ. And how moving are the pages he writes about Peter. I am sure he wrote them after he became Pope, because whoever wrote those pages knows what it means to be the 264th Successor of Peter."

[Reale, born in 1931, is recognized as one of the world's leading scholars of ancient philosophy, and is known for his modern interpretations of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Plotinus and Augustine. The English translation of his book "A History of Ancient Philosophy" is used as a textbook even in the United States. John Paul II was said to have consulted him about the books he published as Pope. Reale founded and heads the Center for Metaphysical Research of the Catholic University of Milan.]

Ratzinger has said that he wants to "encourage in the reader the growth of a living relationship with Christ." Is it possible to read JESUS OF NAZARETH if one is a non-believer?
Actually, there is one necessary condition for reading and understanding it: to have faith, or to be in search of it. As Heidegger said, only a religious person can understand the religious life, because otherwise, he would not have any genuine data to judge from. And he added: Keep off, if you do not feel on home grounds.

Well, we can say that of this book: Hands off JESUS OF NAZARETH by Benedict XVI if this is not your thing. No one can explain Christ to someone who does not have faith,not even the Pope. Because someone who does not have an iota of faith will interpret this book through mythological, political, sociological criteria. To talk to people like these about Christ is like talking to a blind man about light and colors.

What is the motive drive behind the book?
We find it in Psalm 27: "Your face, Lord, do I seek; do not hide your face from me." I have the impression that it responds to a question Ratzinger must have heard addressed to him: "Joseph, who do you think I am?"

Many have written about Christ without believing in Him, but they have all fallen into the hermeneutic (interpretative) error of placing him among the great thinkers. Jaspers did that, placing him alongside Socrates, Buddha and Confucius.

But Ratzinger's answer is simple: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Peter's answer to Christ - and reading that, I was very moved.

What idea of faith does the book show?
That to believe in Christ is to believe in the Kingdon of God incarnate. And that is what it means to be Christian, today as it was 2000 years ago.

Let us re-read Ratzinger in Salt of the Earth: "The substance of this faith is that we recognize Christ as the Son of the living God, who was incarnated and became Man, and through hIm, we believe in the Trinity."

In Deus caritas est, he writes that faith is a decision which involves the entire structure of one's life and that it has to do with the most profound part in each of us: "If man starts to view everything starting from God, if he walks in the company of Jesus, then he will live with new criteria, and a little of what is to come becomes present here and now. With Jesus, joy comes even in tribulation."

If 'eschaton' [man's ultimate destiny] is also of this world, then it should be understandable even to reason and not just to faith.
It is the architrave of Ratzinger's work and is an Augustinian belief. I note that the Pope likes the evangelist John , and I am translating a commentary by Augustine on that Gospel. There are statements there that are in absolute accord with the Pope's thoughts.

Augustine writes: "The prophet Isaias said, 'If you do not believe, you will not understand. Through faith, we unite ourselves to Christ; through our intelligence, we become re-vivified." And further, "We have believed in order to know. If we had wanted to know before believing, then we would not have been able to believe or to understand." And finally, he says "Do you want to understand? Then believe." Augustine's words, Ratzinger's concepts.

Moreover, Benedict agrees with Barth in rejecting philosophhy as the basis for faith if it is independent of the latter.

The relationship between reason and faith has always been central in Ratzinger, as in Augustine. But what is the exact point at which one yields to the other?
For Ratzinger, we can use a Cartesian syllogism: I believe, therefore I am. He puts belief at the vertex, he does not dissociate it from reason, but he subordinates reason to faith. You will understand, if you believe.

That is what the Pope says: Faith is a decision that involves the totality of one's life, and therefore it does not only have axiomatic value but ontologic weight: If you really believe, then your entire life as a man, will change and be shaped differently. You relate to what you believe according to the strength of your belief.

It is said that this book reconciles the historico-critical method with Biblical exegesis. Is that so?
The Pope's method often cites the historico-critical, which he acknowledges to be important, but insufficient: if you apply the historico-critical method impeccaly but you do not believe, then you will get a historically reconstructed Jesus which is out of focus. Instead, the book considers the historical Jesus starting with His communion with the Father, and so interprets Him not only through historico-critical criteria but also through the criteria of faith.

Looking to the future, which is really already present, the Pope is writing the second part of the book. Where will that lead us?
This book already contains the kernel of Benedict XVI's dream: the attempt to restore Christian unity. The most common denominator is there: the belief that Christ is God made man, that He allowed Himself to be cruficied, and then resurrected in order to redeem us. All the Christian confessions can start from there. If all Christians believe that, then we can start from there.

Was it simply the beautiful spring day that brought them out? Or fascination
with a youthful 80-year-old who communicates to them the message of Christ
so calmly and joyously? Here's the translation of an item from the Italian
news agency NOI:




Record crowd today for the Regina Caeli prayer with Pope Benedict XVI.

As the hour neared for the Pope to appear at his study window for the noonday prayer,
more and more people were streaming into St. Peter's Square. To the more than 50,000
faithful already gathered in St. Peter's Square earlier, 10,000-15,000 more came.

And by the time the Pope appeared, even nearby Pius XII Square was filled up, as it is
during the most popular celebrations.

[Too bad Yahoo's newsphoto service does not have crowd pictures.]

I just realized that I failed to translate one other excerpt from JESUS OF NAZARETH that came out in the Italian papers , this one taken from the chapter on The Sermon on the Mount, which Avvenire published the day after the presentation of the book.


The revolution of the Beatitudes
By Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI

The Beatitudes are often presented as the New Testament antithesis of the Decalog, as if they were the more elevated Christian ethic compared to the Commandments in the Old Testament.

This interpretation completely misunderstands the sense of Jesus's words. Jesus always took the validity of the Decalog as a given (cfr for example, Mk 10,19; Lk 16,17).

The Sermon on the Mount takes up the Commandments and gets deeper into them but does not abolish them (cf Mt 5,21-48), which would diametrically oppose the fundamental principle in His discourse on the Decalog: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place" (mt 5, 17f).

It is enough to note that Jesus did not think to abolish the Decalog, but on the contrary, to reinforce it.

So then, what are the Beatitudes? Above all, they come within a long tradition of Old Testament messages such as we find, for example, in Psalm 1 and in the parallel text of Jeremiah 17,7f: "Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.." They are words of promise, which at the same time, contribute to the discernment of the spirit and therefore become words of guidance.

The context given by Luke to the Sermon on the Mount clarifies the particular destination of the Beatitudes: "With His eyes raised towards His disciples..." Each single affirmation in teh Beatitudes proceeds from that look towards His disciples; they describe, so to speak, the effective condition of the disciples of Jesus: they are poor, hungry, weeping, hated and persecuted (cfr Lk 6,20ff).

They are to be understood as practical, but also theological, descriptions of the disciples - of those who had followed Jesus and had become His family.

And yet the empirical situation of imminent danger in which Jesus sees His followers becomes a promise, when viewed in the light of the Father. Applied to the community of Jesus's disciples, the Beatitudes are paradoxxes: worldly criteria are overturned as soon as reality is viewed in the right perspective, that is, from the viewpoint of God's scale of values, which is different from the world's scale of values.

It is precisely those who are considered according to worldy criteria as poor and lost who are the truly fortunate, the blessed, who can rejoice and celebrate despite their sufferings.

The Beatitudes are promises in which shines the new image of the world and of man that Jesus is inaugurating, 'a reversal of values.'

They are eschatological promises. But this epxression should not be understood in the sense that the joy they announce is postponed to a future that is infinitely remote or excluisvely in the hereafter.

If man starts to look towards God and live using God as a point of departure, if he walks in the company of Jesus, then he will live according to new criteria, and therefore, a bit of eschaton, of that which is to come, becomes present here and now. Through Jesus, joy enters even in tribulation....

But now comes the fundamental question: Is the direction right which the Lord indicates to us in the Beatitudes and in the warnings that are opposed to them? Is it really bad to be rich, to be sated, to laugh, to be appreciated?

In his angry criticism of Christianity, Friedrich Nietsche availed of this point, precisely, saying it should not be Christian doctrine that must be criiticized but rather Christian morality that must be attacked as a 'capital crime against life." And by Christian morality he meant exactly the direction which the Sermon on the Mount indicates to us.

"What has been up to now the greatest sin on earth? Is it not perhaps the word of those who say: "Woe to those who laugh!"?
And of the promises of Christ, he says: We absoluitely do not want the kingdom of heaven. "We are men - we want the kingdom of the earth."

The vision of the Sermon on the Mount may appear like a religion of resentment, as the envy of the cowardly and incompetent, who are not up to the challenge of life and therefore want to avenge themselves by exalting their failure and insulting the strong, the successful, the fortunate.

To Jesus's broad perspective is opposed a narrow concentration on the realities down here: the wish to take advantage of the world now, and all that life can offer, to find heaven on earth, and in doing so, not to be inhibited by scruples whatsoever.

Much of this has passed into modern consciousness and determines in large part how life is perceived these days.
Thus, the Sermon on the Mount poses a question about the fundamental option of Christianity, and as children of our time, we are aware of the interior resistance to this option - even if we are not insensitive to the praise of the meek, the merciful, the peacemakers, the sincere.

After the experiences with totalitarian regimes, after the brutal way in which they trampled on men, mocked them, enslaved them, and beat up the weak, then we understand anew those who hunger and thirst for justice, we rediscover the spirit of the afflicted and their right to be comforted.

In the face of abuse of economic power, the cruelty of capitalism which degrades men to merchandise, we have begun to see more clearly the dangers of wealth, and we understand in a new way what Jesus meant by putting us on guard against wealth, against the god Mammon who destroys man, by taking into its ruthless hands a large part of mankind by the throat.

Yes, the Beatitudes are opposed to our spontaneous taste for life, to our hunger and thirst for life. They demand 'conversion' - a reversal of our interior march with respect to the direction that we would take spontaneously. But this conversion will bring to light that which is pure, that which is more elevated - and our existence disposes itself in the correct way.

The Greek world, whose joie de vivre is marvelously revealed in the Homeric epics, was nevertheless aware of the fact that the true sin of man, his most intimate threat, is hubris - a presumptuous self-sufficiency, in which man elevates himself to a divinity: He wants to be his own god, in order to be completely the master of his own life and avail to the very end of everything that it can offer.

This awareness that the true danger for man lies in this vaunted self-sufficiency, which is at first glance so convincing, is developed to its full depth by the Sermon on the Mount, starting with the figure of Jesus Himself.

We have seen that the Sermon on the mount is a hidden Christology. Behind it is the figure of Christ, of that man who is God, but precisely because He is, came down to us and stripped Hismelf, right up to His death on the Cross.

The saints, from Paul to Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa, lived this option and have shown us the true image of man and his happiness. In one word, the true 'moral' of Christianity is love.

Love obviously is opposed to selfishness - it is an exodus out of oneself, but it is repcisely in this way that man finds himself. In comparison with the alluring splendor of Nietsche's man, this way, at first glance, seems miserable, downright unproposable.

But it is the true 'high road' of life: only the way of love, whose course is described in the Sermon on the Mount, uncovers to us the richness of life, the greatness of man's calling. ,

Avvenire, 14 aprile 2007

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

Remembering what Pope Benedict XVI said that there is never just one way to read Scriptures, he himself gives us an example. Here is what Joseph Ratzinger said in his book, “Looking at Christ: Exercises in faith, hope and charity”, first published in 1989, translated hre from the Italian.

This comes from a much earlier post in IN HIS OWN WORDS,in which Cardinal Martini's interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, in a 2005 homily, was compared with Cardinal Ratzinger's interpretation in the 1989 book.

Inasmuch as Prof. Reale said in the preceding post that he found the Beatitudes explained in JESUS OF NAZARETH as 'the perfect portrait of Jesus' - which is what the 1989 interpretation clearly is - I somehow think there is more to the actual chapter than the exerpt in Avvenire.



In order to grasp the true profundity of the Beatitudes, we should bring to light an aspect of modern exegesis that is rarely considered, but in my opinion, it is decisive for a realistic interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount in its entirety. I am referring to the Christological dimension of this text…

The secret subject of the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus. The Sermon is not exaggerated or unreal moralism, which would mean it has no relationship to our life and would seem to be unpracticable in totality.

Nor is it, as an opposite hypothesis would have it, simply a mirror in which we can see that each of us is a sinner, and will all remain sinners, therefore we can only reach salvation through the unconditional grace of God.

With such an opposition between moralism and the theory of salvation-by-grace-alone, one is getting away from the text rather than going into it.

But Christ is the center that brings those two extremes together, and only discovering Christ in the text will open it to us and make it into words of hope.

If we look at the Sermon on the Mount essentially, then Jesus appears as the secret subject all over. It is He in whom one sees what is meant by “being poor in spirit.” He is the afflicted, the meek, the one who hungers, and thirsts for justice, the merciful. It is He with the pure heart, He who brings peace, He who is persecuted in the cause of justice. All the words in the Sermon on the Mount are flesh and blood in Him.

The Sermon on the Mount is a call to an imitation of Christ: Only He is perfect, as Our Father in heaven (Mt 5, 48). We cannot be ‘perfect like Our Father who is in heaven,' but we should be, in order to fulfill the mission of our human nature. We cannot be perfect, but we can follow Jesus, adhere to Him, ‘become His.”

If we belong to Him like His own limbs, then we can become, by participation, what He is – His goodness becomes ours. The words of the father in the parable of the prodigal son then become realized in us: “Everything that is mine is yours” (Lk 15,31).

Then the moralism of the Sermon, too arduous for us, is taken up and transformed into communion with Jesus, in being a disciple of Christ, friends with Him, trusting Him.

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

I found that then, and I find it now, a wholly convincing , most unusual and refreshing view of the Beautitudes, certainly not inconsistent with the excerpt published in Avvenire, but the ultimate extension of it. Beyond referring to the plight and destiny of His disciples, Jesus was also speaking of Himself.

The Holy Father today received the Head of Government of the Principality of Andorra, H.E. Alberto Pintat,at the Vatican.

A brief communique from the Vatican Press Office said they discussed education and youth problems, as well as the European situation. Andorra is located iwthin Spanish territory (the nearest large city is Barcelona).

[URL=http://imageshack.us

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2007 17.43]

When Pope John Paul II confronted Commuism on the world stage in the late 1970s and the 1980s, he had the advantage of having two other influential leaders - Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher - who shared his determination that Communism must be defeated because it was a totalitarian system that enslaved its subjects totally, materially as well as spiritually. Together, their unplanned partnership - his towering moral leadership, their focused political and economic strategies - led to the almost-incredible collapse overnight of the Communist empire and its Marxist illusions.

Two decades since that collapse, post-Communist Europe - including Wojtyla's beloved Poland - is in the grip of a secularism that is as godless and as soulless as the official atheism of Communism.

This is the Europe Benedict XVI is trying to call back to its senses. But alas, unlike his predecessor, he has no Reagan or Thatcher beside him. That is the context of this article in the bimonthly journal LIBERAL, put out by the Italian think tank Fondazione Liberal, which calls itself the point of encounter betwen secularism and Catholicism.

Its-May June issue is dedicated to Benedict XVI on his 80th birthday, and editor Ferdinando Adornato leads off with this editorial, translated here. I am unable to find a more elegant translation for the title of the issue, IL PAPA DELLA SVOLTA - 'svolta' means a turn or a turning-point, but the Italian word gives a very dynamic image that is not conveyed by the English translation.





Benedict XVI at 80:
The only European statesman
(and the last one?)
By Ferdinando Adornato



In the summer of 2001, in this magazine, we called Karol Wojtla "the only great moral philosopher (and the last?)". The Polish Pope was pleased with that, perhaps even because of that question mark which signaled alarm over the banishment of moral philosophy from the public stage in the West. Six years later, unfortunately, nothing has changed.

In Europe, only the Christian world, it seems, is taking on the responsibility of carrying on with the ethical foundations on which the Western democracies were based. Certainly, thanks even to our work (and that of other authoritative opinion-makers), the so-called secular world is divided, and there are increasingly more secularists who are taking their distance from radical secularist positions.

But there is no doubt that the most widespread philosophy of our time is cultural relativism. And there is no doubt that Europe is a continent in historical, cultural and religious decline.

And then there is Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. As cardinal, he had written with altmost mathematical precision: "I see a paradoxical synchrony. With the victory of the post-European technico-secular world, with the universalization of its lifestyle and its mindset, the impression has been disseminated in the countries of Asia and Africa, especially, that Europe's system of values has been discarded and is now out of the picture; that it is now the time for value systems from other worlds, from pre-Columbian America, from Islam, from mystical Asia.

"Europe, at the moment of its greatest sucess, appears to have been emptied out from within, paralyzed by a circulatory crisis with its very existence at risk, by placing itself at the mercy of transplants which are cancelling out its identity.

"Besides giving up its defining spiritual values, there is also its growing demographic deline. There is a strange lack of interest in the future. Children, who are the future, are seen as a threat to the present. It seems to be the thinking that they take away something away from the life of adults. They are not seen as a hope but as a restriction."

Well, can anyone deny the objective truth of this analysis? Anyone who speaks that way is a statesman. But we do not hear any such statements coming from the leaders of Europe, who do not have the breadth to analyze and denounce the factors that call into question the very bases of our future existence.

A decline that is cultural, spiritual, political and demographic defines the historical crossroads at which we find ourselves, and it cannot be under-estimated.

Of course, some warning comes now and then from some summit or other, some demographic statistic once in a while arouses some political reflection, but then eventually, laziness, inertia and indifference take over.

The truth is that Europe does not have statesmen today who are up to meeting the challenge that destiny has reserved for us.

Joseph Ratzinger came to Peter's Chair with an image as a theologian. Or rather, with the reputation of an intransigent conservative ideologue. But one who is capable, even more than Wojtyla was (and with more rigor) of arguing rationally about the value of faith and to seduce with his sophisticated expressiveness.

After the populist worker Pope, an intellectual aristocratic one. [Ratzinger, of course, has never claimed to be other than the son of petit-bourgeois Bavarians, a policeman and a cook, whose manner derives from his Catholic family-centered upbringing, an aristocracy of the spirit rather than one of blood.]

The brief time since he became Pope has already given the lie to the superficial image that was propagated about him. But perhaps something even more unexpected is taking place.

Wojtyla achieved an 'epistemological rupture' [I am not very happy with this term, as whatever breakthrough Wojtyla managed was not so much epistemological - which has to do with the nature of knowledge - as it was simply and directly 'humanistic'] in the Western culture of the 20th century. He called on contemporary man to rediscover the moral reasons for existence, he asked mankind to reopen its doors to hope, he worked to put back into the center of public life the human being as the image of God.

In short, he took down the barriers that the 20th century had put up against any kind of humanist moral philosophy, Christian, liberal, Jewish, whatever it may be.

It almost seems as though Ratzinger feels strongly - beyond prosecuting Wojtyla's philosophical work further with more sophisticated inellectual instruments - the necessity of converting Wojtyla's breakthrough into institutionalized civic values for Europe.

We are not talking here of a new era of 'political interference." Let us leave it to ignorant secularists to use words which do not belong in any mature democracy.

We are talking, rather, of the great task of showing Europe how to profitably place its own past in relation with its present and its future.

In other words, the way to avoid its own decline. Since every decline arises essentially from the inability of those who govern peoples and states to hold together the continuity of their own history. To understand the reasons for their evolution so they can guard against the risks of involution.

Let us say it again: No European leader appears capable of carrying out such an operation which is the unique and exclusive prerogative of what we used to call 'statesmen.'

In contrast, from the Reghensburg lecture up to his latest peroration against the dangers of demographic decline, Benedict XVI has assumed the responsibility of sounding both alarm and appeal to the peoples of Europe.

Let us try to read his discourses on this issue without thinking of him as Pope. Then we will find the the voice of a European, child of a dreadful century, who invites his brothers to act in order to turn around the course of history. The circumstance that he happens to be German makes his appeal even more sacred.

The fact is that Ratzinger has understood something that very few intellectuals and European politicians have understood: that the dark legacy of totalitarianism is still present among us. European culture, basically, has not yet left the 20th century and has not yet been liberated from the miasmas of the totalitarian ideologies.

Let us listen to him:
"The Communist sytems were wrecked by their fallacious economic dogmatism. But very often, there has been a too-willing tendency to overlook the part that was played by their contempt for human rights, the subordination of morality to the demands of the system and what it promised for the future. The greatest catastrophe they produced was not of an economic nature: it was the withering of the spirit, the destruction of moral conscience.

"The essential problem of our day, for Europe and for the world, is that, although the fallacy of communist economics is acknowleged - so that ex-communists unhesitatingly switched to liberal economies - the religious and moral question, which was really the problem, has been almost completely set aside.

"Thus the unresolved crux of Marxism continues to exist today: the dissolution of man's original certainties about God, himself and the universe. The decline of a moral conscience that was based on inviolable values is still our problem and can lead to the self-destruction of the European conscience, which we should start to consider - beyond the decline seen by Spengler - as the real danger."

Certainly, that is how a Pope should speak. But if the arguments he makes are authentic, which they are, then that is how a statesman should speak, every leader who truly has the ultimate destiny of his own land at heart. But in the face of Benedict XVI's clarity, we only have impotence, fear, calculated interests, mumbling and babbling.

As George Weigel has pointed out, Ratzinger is not a Eurocentric Pope, but in the choice of the name he now bears, Benedict has proclaimed to us that he wants to fight in order to regain for Europe her spiritual, cultural and political integrity, and he has been doing that with great tenacity and passion.

Therefore, in the context of an exhausted, impotent and superficial continent, he appears to us, in the fullness of his 80 years, as the only great European statesman. Let us hope he will not be the last.

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

Here are the rest of the articles and their authors
in LIBERAL's May-June issue. Unfortunately, other than the editorial, the rest of the articles are not online:

IL PAPA DELLA SVOLTA

• L’unico (l’ultimo?) statista europeo
di Ferdinando Adornato

• Verità e libertà (Truth and Liberty)
di José María Aznar

• Il ritorno dell’amore (The return of love)
di Sergio Belardinelli

• Il teologo oltre il Concilio
(The theologian beyond the Council)
di Gianni Baget Bozzo

• Benedetto XVI: Operazione Europa
(Benedict XVI: Operation Euorope)di Nikolaus Lobkowicz

• Custode del liberalismo (Custodian of liberalism)
di Robert A. Sirico

• Il Professore (The professor)
di Michael Novak

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/04/2007 23.16]

Angela Ambrogetti scored a scoop for PETRUS today with this report, which APCOM has re-reported.

Pope to Bagnasco:
'Just go ahead and do
what you have to do:
Christ will help you'
By Angela Ambrogetti


Mons. Bagnasco with the Pope(File Photo)

VATICAN CITY, April 30 (PETRUS) - "The Church of Christ will not be intimidated from announcing the Truth." Words of encouragement from Pope Benedict XVI to Mons. Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops conference (CEI), who has been the object of urban graffiti and now a bullet sent in the mail with a swastika sign.

The Pope called Bagnasco by telephone yesterday and today, it was learned.

"Nothing will change my mission," said Bagnasco, who assured the Pope that he is 'untroubled', having placed his mission "in the hands of the Lord."

Reliable sources told PETRUS that the Pope had said to Bagnasco, in effect: "Don't be afraid, just go ahead along your way. Without sacrifices it is difficult to obtain something positive, but you will, Christ will help you!"

Unfortunately, the Pope reportedly said, the climate in Italy over certain issues, especially those that have to do with morals, is still rather touchy, but that the church of Christ "as Christ Himself taught us, should not be intimidated or conditioned from announcing Truth."

Bagnasco, who has from the start tried to play down the significance of the graffiti and this new incident, said he was very touched by the Pope's telephone calls.

The Pope said they should pray for those who are behind the anti-Church actions and used the slogan for his Bavarian trip as his parting words to Bagnasco, "He who believes is never alone."

Bagnasco has been in constant touch with Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, Vatican Secretary of Satte, and with Mons. Gisuseppe Betori, secretary-general of the CEI, who runs CEI headquarters in Rome.

[Bagnasco was in Rome last Friday on his weekly visit to CEI headquarters when his office in Genoa received the letter with the bullet.]


APCOM reports that

Besides the Pope's telephone calls, Cardinal Bertone had earlier sent a telegram to Mons Bagnasco, saying:

"Profoundly affected and saddened by such serious and deprecable episodes which disturb the serene coexistence between the church and civilian communities, the Holy Father wishes, above all, to renew to you his spiritual nearness as well as in the name of the unviersal Church, assuring you of remembrance in his prayers, so that finding true peace and security in Christ, you may be able to continue fruitfully with your important service to the Italian Church."

"In the meantime, with divine help and the fratneral support of all the Christian people, continue to work for the common good, defending and promoting those human and religious values, without which ti is not possible to construct truly free and stable democracies."


President Napolitano:
Italy will stand by Bagnasco

In a message sent to Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, Italian president Giorgio Napolitano said today that "Italy will never let Mons. Angelo Bagnasco face alone the unacceptable vile threats of obscure origin that have been direted at him."

"I welcome the words you recently said," Napolitano wrote Bertone, "relating to recent serious episodes of intolerance against the Catholic Church."

"We must guarantee that the president of the Italian bishops conference is able to carry out his pastoral mission in the most tranquil way, as well as calm, responsible and constructive dialog between the Catholic Church, the political world and the civlian society, according to the excellent relations that exist between the Holy See and Italy."

Earlier stories about this may be found in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/05/2007 0.30]

Two years of Benedict XVI's pontificate

Sunday Catholic Weekly
Czestochowa, Poland
May 1, 2007

Wlodzimierz Redzioch talks to Cardinal Paul Poupard, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue.

WLODZIMIERZ REDZIOCH: - What tasks - in your opinion - did Benedict XVI set two years ago, at the beginning of his pontificate?

CARDINAL PAUL POUPARD: - I think that Benedict XVI wanted to return to the fundamentals, showing the essence of Christian life - friendship with Jesus. Recently the Pope has returned to this theme in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation 'Sacramentum caritatis', devoted to the Eucharist. Since the beginning of his pontificate Benedict XVI has showed us the task of the mission and message that we are fulfilling through our personal and communal testimonies of Jesus' disciples. He also encourages us to realise the regulations of Vaticanum Secundum, especially in such fields as the liturgy as well as the ecumenical, inter-religious and inter-cultural dialogue.

- Can we speak about a new 'style' of the pontificate?

- I would define the style of Benedict XVI as 'fundamental', as an invitation directed to every believer, to all people of good will to live a life that is worthy of human person, i.e. open to God the Father who made us his children. Openness to transcendental God and to neighbour constitutes two dimensions of Christian love, which Benedict XVI spoke about in his first encyclical 'Deus caritas est'. The 'fundamental' style can be also seen in the way he runs the Church: the Pope wants to decide about the 'fundamental' issues concerning the office of St Peter's Successor, leaving matters that he does not have to be involved in. For example, Benedict XVI pays much attention to his mission as the teacher of faith. It is evident in his speeches. One can see how well they have been prepared. The speeches of Benedict XVI, which reflect his personality and style, although their intellectual level is high, are understandable by all people. The Pope has the gift of explaining the mystery of God in a clear and simple way.

- Public opinion worldwide perceives Benedict XVI as the Pope of 'the affair' related to his lecture at the University of Regensburg. What lesson should be taken from this 'affair', which had serious religious and political consequences?

- We should explain that we talk about the 'affair', which the world media created on purpose. Many people wanted to have a scandal and to publicize it. It could have happened because this Pope does not remind us of the caricature that certain social communications have created for several years. On the contrary, Benedict XVI evokes people's sympathy and that was not so obvious after the pontificate of his Predecessor who drew multitudes. Even in secularised France, where only 8% of citizens attend Sunday services, as many as 65% of people have a good opinion of the present Pope. Naturally, not all people are satisfied with the actual state of affairs. However, coming back to the 'affair' of Regensburg I would like to stress that one should not demonise the Muslim world. Those who protested against the Pope, and whom we could see in the media, did not represent the whole Muslim community, which embraces over 1 billion people. The lesson we should take from this affair is called 'dialogue'. Benedict XVI showed 'a lesson of dialogue' when he welcomed the ambassadors of the Muslim countries and then during his travel to Turkey. He uses every occasion to teach us about dialogue.

- At the beginning of his pontificate Benedict XVI expressed a wish to intensify ecumenical dialogue. Has a considerable progress been made?

- I am not to analyse this issue. It is the task of the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. But I am glad to say that many prejudices, which hinder any form of collaboration, have disappeared. We know that the divisions between Churches are often based on historical and cultural issues and not dogmatic ones. That's why, once the surface problems are solved we need to analyse the arguments that stand on the way to full unity.

- Once Cardinal Ratzinger said that we should reform the Roman Curia that had expanded within the last 30 years. So far the changes in the Curia have been very small: Benedict XVI entrusted you with the task of presiding over two councils: the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue and the Pontifical Council for Culture; whereas Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council Justice and Peace, was nominated the chief of the Council for the Pastoral Care for Migrants and Itinerant People. Does it mean that the Pope has given up his wish to reorganise the Curia for the time being?

- Only the Holy Father himself knows it. However, I would say that we do not deal with some 'unrealised reform', but 'planned reform'. After Vatican Council II we dealt with two contrary tendencies: on the one hand, we wanted to make the Church closer to all environments, in which contemporary man lived, and thus various institutions of the Curia, the pontifical councils, were created; on the other hand, working in accordance with the regulations of the Council concerning local Churches and bishops, many matters, which the Apostolic See administered, were entrusted to diocesan bishops. Taking into account the present changes we should again take a stand as far as the activities of the Curia are concerned. However, we should remember that the Roman Curia is a very complex reality and every project to reorganise it, even a very limited one, must consider various consequences.

- You know the Curia as no one else does. Is its present structure effective to support the popes to fulfil their unique mission?

- Undoubtedly, the Curia helps the Pope. Without its workers the Holy Father could not fulfil his universal mission of the cause of catholic communion of all local churches. Naturally, like all human structures it can be improved but its imperfection cannot obscure the huge amount of work that is done every day in various offices by international personnel who, besides concrete competences, brings the richness of their cultures.

- I would like to mention the theme that directly concerns the activities of the Pontifical Council for Culture that you preside over. Benedict XVI keeps warning all people against the danger of relativism. How can one conduct a dialogue with people that spread contrary opinions, that the so-called relativism of values, life styles, etc. is something positive since it constitutes the foundation of democracy?

- Since the times of Vatican Council II dialogue with all people has become the constant duty of the universal Church and the local Churches. One should conduct dialogue with people of culture, with followers of other religions and with unbelievers, about important existential issues: the sense of life and death, people's problems that have religious dimension, and even about faith itself. Dialogue should also concern major problems of social life: upbringing, poverty, solidarity, foundations of co-existence in multicultural societies, values and human rights, cultural and religious pluralism, common good, ethics in economy and politics, beauty, ecology, biotechnology and bioethics, peace, etc. One can face relativism when we conduct intercultural dialogue with intellectual honesty and we care for the suffering and those who seek the sense of beauty of life. I can see that every time I have some meeting, usually a private one, an official one, an academic or a scientific one at a high level.

- What is the role of Benedict XVI in unmasking false benefits of relativism?

- Benedict XVI is a precious gift for the Church and the world. His knowledge of our world is wise and thorough. He keeps giving diagnoses, keeps discerning the most hidden diseases like a good and wise doctor, and keeps proposing suitable, although sometimes painful, 'medicines'. For example, the Pope has condemned relativism many times, defining it as a 'new religion'. We owe him the expression 'religione fai da te' (religion on your own). At the same time the Pope tries to enter into a dialogue with mankind, proposing 'ideas' and 'values' based on faith and reason - God's gifts. In the world that is threatened by chaos and loss of any points of reference, both in the sphere of faith and reason, we need a lamp, which can light, understand and often unmask the principles of dangerous ideologies. Claiming that relativism of values is the foundation of democracy we face the risk of anarchy and we negate the true nature of human family. We must call for deep reflection on human nature, which can help all people. However, in order to preserve the integrity of the Catholic faith the Church must conduct dialogue on the basis of her own teaching.

- What are the most important challenges for the contemporary Church?

- In the contemporary, increasingly dechristianised societies, practical atheism and religious indifference are spreading very quickly. In this situation the Church will be the real yeast of new society and effective sign of hope if she becomes a true house of holiness.

The inter-religious dialogue is an element of the mission of evangelisation of the Church and will be one of the challenges in the third millennium. For the Church the dialogue brings hope that one day all things and all people are reconciled in Christ, the Lord of history and bond of all hearts.

Papal trip to Brazil
turns spotlight on Latin America
By John Thavis
Catholic News Service


VATICAN CITY, May 1 (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI is making his first trip to the Western Hemisphere in mid-May, traveling to Brazil to open a strategizing session with Latin American bishops.

The May 9-13 visit begins with a string of pastoral events in Sao Paulo, where the pope will meet with young people and canonize the first Brazilian-born saint.


The two Popemobiles to be used during the Pope's visit (one in Sao Paolo,
the other in Aparecida) arrived at Sao Paulo airport Sunday, 4/29/07. (Photos from Nessuna)


Then he moves to the basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida, where he will inaugurate the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, celebrating Mass and delivering a major speech to participants of the May 13-31 meeting.

The trip turns a spotlight on Latin America, a geographical area that has had little attention from this pope to date, but where 43 percent of the world's Catholics live.

It also broadens the horizons of the pope's two-year pontificate, taking him outside Europe, where four of his previous five trips have occurred.

"I think we may have this idea of a pope who has spoken a lot about Europe and who has a 'bookish' culture in the tradition of European thought and reflection," said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.

"But although many people are not aware of it, this is a pope who traveled extensively as a cardinal and who has been able to acquaint himself with diverse realities of the church," Father Lombardi said.

"I think the messages, gestures and images of this trip will help people understand how the pope sees the 'universal' side of his ministry, in a more evident way than before," he said.

The issues on the Latin American bishops' agenda are not new, and the pope reviewed them in capsule form last February:

-- The need to revitalize the faith among the church's members in order to generate a new sense of mission in society.

-- The proselytism of religious sects, which require, in the pope's view, a new effort in Catholic education.

-- The "growing influence of postmodern hedonist secularism," which is seen as dramatically eroding the traditional values of the predominantly Catholic continent.

-- Marriage and the family, which the pope said show "signs of yielding under the pressure of lobbies" that push for legislative changes and which are threatened by the increase in divorce, cohabitation and adultery.

-- Economic injustice and the fight against poverty, along with the growing phenomenon of migration, which also impacts family unity.

The pope is well aware that many Latin American bishops believe the church stands at a turning point after losing ground in recent decades.

At the last Synod of Bishops in 2005, the pope listened as Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes told the assembly that in Brazil - the most populous Catholic country in the world - the number of Catholics was declining by about 1 percent each year, with many lost to Protestant sects.

"We have to wonder: How long will Brazil be a Catholic country?" Cardinal Hummes said.

According to the Vatican's statistics, the Catholic percentage of Latin American populations has dropped about 4 percent over the last 25 years, but many believe the official figures don't tell the real story.

In Brazil, for example, the Vatican says 85 percent of the population is Catholic, but experts who follow census figures say the real number may be closer to 70 percent.

The general conferences of Latin American bishops are considered milestone events, and some have produced important shifts in pastoral direction.

This year's edition will reflect the impact of globalization and the need for greater collaboration among churches of North and South America, especially on issues like economic migration.

To favor that kind of exchange, the more than 160 voting members of the conference will include four U.S. bishops as well as U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, head of the Vatican's doctrinal congregation. Two bishops and a cardinal from Canada also will attend.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city and one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world, the pope is likely to talk about persistent social issues like urban violence, homelessness, corruption and economic disparity.

Outside Aparecida, the pontiff will visit a Franciscan-run drug rehabilitation center, called Fazenda da Esperanca (Farm of Hope). In addition to illustrating Christian charity in action, the visit will give the pope an opportunity to highlight the deep human and social damage done by the drug trade throughout Latin America.

When the Vatican recently critiqued Jesuit Father Jon Sobrino, a pioneer in liberation theology, some saw it as a sign of things to come from the pope and the May bishops' conference.

But Father Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said he does not expect liberation theology to be a crucial issue during the papal visit. Instead, he said, the pope is likely to focus on concerns like secularization, the activity of the sects and urbanization, and their relationship to the fundamental question of how to announce Jesus Christ in an evolving culture.

The impact of papal visits, of course, does not depend solely on official events and papal speeches. Perhaps more than on previous trips, the world will be watching to see how Pope Benedict, an academic at heart, interacts with the more outwardly emotional culture of the region.

During his first trip to Brazil, Pope John Paul II walked through a slum neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, where he chatted with residents and, moved by what they told him, left his papal ring as a gift to local parishioners. No one is suggesting a repeat performance by Pope Benedict, but many are interested to see whether the pope uses gestures as well as words to communicate his concern for the poor.

With 14 major events, it's a relatively busy schedule for the 80-year-old pope. But almost from the beginning of his pontificate, he has made this trip a priority. According to Latin American bishops, it was the pope who chose the Marian sanctuary as the site for the conference and announced that he would be coming.

The pope also chose the theme, "Disciples and Missionaries of Jesus Christ, So That Our Peoples May Have Life in Him." The focus on the person of Jesus Christ is typical of the pope, who just published a book on the figure of Jesus.

In late April, sources said the pope had canceled or shortened some audiences at the Vatican in order to work on his speeches in Brazil. Many are looking for the two papal talks May 13 - his sermon and his inaugural address - to set the tone and the direction of the conference.

The bishops of Latin America have said they hope the conference will launch a new evangelizing mission across the continent, a type of spiritual mobilization throughout the church.

The pope knows this cannot be accomplished from the top down, however. That may be why, rather than announcing grand plans or programs, he has so far focused on more fundamental tasks.

As he told planners earlier this year, the Latin American conference must first of all "encourage every Christian to convert and become a true disciple of Jesus Christ, sent out by him as an apostle."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/05/2007 6.57]

I have posted a translation of the Holy Father's catechesis today in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.:






VATICN CITY, May 2 (AsiaNews) - The "favored way to know God is love" because "even among men, we know each other profoundly only when we open our hearts to each other."

The profound significance of prayer as 'a conversation with God' and 'our attention fixed on Jesus' was at the center of the Pope's catechesis today to an audience of 20,000 at St. Peter's Square.

The auience was held in driving rain,w hich made the Piazza blossom into thousands of multicolored umbrellas. The Pope remarked on the rain, saying, "Let us take the rain as a sign of benediction. There has been much talk lately of the drought, so the Lord is giving us a sign of grace."

The Pope resumed his catechesis on the 4th century master Origen of Alexandria, whom he introduced last week in his teaching cycle on the Fathers of the Church as "someone who was decisive for the entire development of Christian thought".

Today, he concentrated on Origen's 'more concrete' teachings on prayer and the church, particularly that about the 'universal priesthood' of the faithful.

"Purity and honesty of one's life, on the one hand, and faith and knowledge of the Scriptures on the other," he said, "are the indispensable conditions for universal priesthood, and therefore for more reason, the priestly ministry demands integral conduct in life and the study of the word of God."

Origen, according to the Pope, showed through his life how the intellectual commitment to know more about God cannot be separated from prayer: "He constantly wove his theological output with the exercise of prayer."

For Origen, he said, "Knowledge of the Scriptures required, even more than study, an intimacy with Christ and prayer" because "Scripture can be understood only through living contact with Christ." And so, the Pope pointed out, Origen shows that "to understand about God, prayer is absolutely necessary."

He recalled that John Paul II wrote in Nova millennio ineunte how "prayer can proceed as a true dialog of love."

"May the attention of our hearts," he concluded, "be fixed on Jesus, because that way, we are on the right road."

Later, when the Pope addressed the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking pilgrims, he asked for prayers for his forthcoming trip to Brazil.

"I hope," he said, "to preside at the canonization of the Blessed Antonio di Sant'Anna Galvao and to inaugurate in Aparecida the fifth general confrence of Latin American and Caribbean bishops."

He expressed the hope that 'abundant fruits' may come from the trip "so that all Christians may feel themselves to be true disciples of Christ, sent by Him to evangelize their own brothers with the Word of God and with the testimony of their own lives."





Previewing the trip to Latin America -
Brazilian flags and the Foreign Minister of Panama
and brilliant sun after the rain:

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/05/2007 17.57]

At first, I didn't want to refer to the incident at all, because I felt it was just another 'let-me-make-the headlines' ploy by some second-rate showbusiness wannabe. But then Osservatore Romano, which came out mid-afternoon Wednesday with its edition for tomorrow (dated 5/2-5/3), made it the object of an editorial and called it 'an act of terrorism' - which I definitely think is an overblown reaction, considering what the guy actually said - making it into a bigger 'cause celebre' than it ought to be (see Reuters article below).

So I am very glad Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office, has stepped in with more sensible words.
==============================================================


"The disrespectful comments about the Pope and the Church made during the May 1 concert [apparently, an annual Labor Day event in Rome] are evidently irrresponsible. It is right that this must be pointed out, and the labor union leaders [responsible for the event] were right to dissociate themselves from it," Fr. Lombardi said in a statement today.

"At the same time, as we have been reminded authoritatively these days by both President Napolitano and by Cardinal Bertone, we should all do what we can to defuse tensions and recreate conditions for peaceful dialog in our society."

Osservatore Romano certainly didn't defuse any tensions by its exaggerated reaction [repeating in more strident form its gratuitous editorial comment about 'has-been' TV host Pippo Baudo's equally headline-seeking comments about the Pope a few weeks ago], which in itself echoed the exaggerated reaction, to begin with, of most Italian politicians to that 'bullet-in-the-mail' for Archbishop Bagnasco.

I was personally appalled that Italian pols of every stripe, had all reacted with such 'outrage' to something fairly innocuous, but were - to a man - silent about the attempt by some Euro-Parliamentarians (including three Italian leftists) to discredit Mons. Bagnasco by citing him with mistakenly attributed statements in a formal EU resolution against homophobia. Nor even to object to the final resolution which called on 'certain religious leaders' to desist from making statements against homosexuals.

Naturally, the media are making the most of Osservatore Romano's 'indiscretion'. The international wire services might never have reported on the headline-hunter's lame statements if OR hadn't stepped into it!


Vatican calls verbal attack on Pope "terrorism"
By Robin Pomeroy


ROME, May 2 (Reuters) - The Vatican's official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of "terrorism" for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L'Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy's labor unions, had launched "vile attacks" on Pope Benedict in front of an "excitable crowd."

"This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church," it said. "It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man."

At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica - Rome's cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop - one of the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff's stand on a number of issues.

"The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved," he said.

He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.

"I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for (Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet or (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco," he said between musical acts at the open-air concert.

The latest salvo between the Vatican and its critics in Italy comes a few days after the head of Italy's bishops' conference, Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, received a bullet in the post after making comments that his critics say compared homosexuality with incest and pedophilia. [In fairness, the reporter should have said two lines about what Bagnasco actually said, as everyone learns in Journalism 101. But nobody follows rules anymore.]

The Osservatore said Rivera's monologue came amid growing anti-clericalism in Italy which included graffiti and Internet messages supporting the Red Brigades, the Marxist group involved in political violence particularly in the 1970s.

"Some people have even twisted (Bagnasco's words) to start an insidious 'war', a new season of tension, which is inspiring those who are looking for motives to return to taking up arms," the newspaper said.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a devout Catholic who is backing legislation to give legal rights to unmarried couples, including homosexuals - a bill opposed by the Church - called for calm.

"We have to have calm and good sense," he told reporters. "Unfortunately the rhetoric has continuously been getting harsher over recent months. This country doesn't need it."

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

Sure, the comedian spoke out of place, but he was, in effect, simply expressing a boilerplate reflex by anti-clericals. The Italian papers did not report him to have said any more than what is quoted in the Reuters story above. Surely if he had something more strong, does anyone really think they would have censored it?

His position is offensive to us, but his words were a simple expression of opinion, which he had a right to express, even if he was mis-using the occasion. But what is there that is 'terroristic' about it? That long-planned editorial change in Osservatore Romano can't come soon enough!

P.S. Just for the record, here was ZENIT's belated report on this episode:

Vatican: May Day Comment Irresponsible
Assails Verbal Attack on Pope

VATICAN CITY, MAY 3, 2007 (Zenit.org).- A Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, says a comment referring to Benedict XVI at a traditional May Day concert was an irresponsible act.

The traditional concert is sponsored by Italy's labor unions and held outside of the Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Andrea Rivera, one of the presenters on Tuesday, said, among other things, "The Pope does not believe in evolutionism," because "the Church has never evolved."

Father Lombardi said Wednesday, on the television news of the Italian state broadcaster, that "the irreverent comments directed at the Pope and the Church during the May Day concert were clearly an act of irresponsibility. It is right to say so, and the trade union representatives were right to dissociate themselves" from those comments.

Wednesday's edition of the semiofficial Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, criticized the comments by saying "it is a contemptible and terroristic act to throw stones, this time even against the Pope, while feeling protected by cries of approval from an easily excitable crowd."

Father Lombardi, agreeing with both Giorgio Napolitano, president of Italy, and Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, clarified: "It would be as well for all of us to seek to diffuse tensions and to re-create conditions for serene dialogue in our society.

"In this way, it is right that what was an evident act of foolishness should not become a tragedy and an opportunity to reignite huge conflicts."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/05/2007 17.19]

The attitude of so many citizens of Italy with regard to the Church and clericals upset me. I suppose it is not an entirely new phenomenon in a country where the RCC has traditionally played such a central role and where the Vatican and the Holy See are situated. But it seems rather vicious at present. Could anyone tell us if this poisonous and almost hatred-filled atituded against the Church had sometimes also been present in John Paul II's time? The fact that Prodi has to call for calm just doesn't seem normal.

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

Dear Crotchet,

According to the best-informed of the Italian commentators, the anti-clerical attitude in Italy has always been virulent, starting from the time of Italian national unification in the 19th century, when the emerging politicians considered the 'Papal states' and their Supremo, the Pope, as a temporal threat.

As I wasn't following Italian news at all during JohnPaul II's time - not even during the time I lived in Italy - I have no first-hand knowledge of how they treated him. But Emma and Lella in the main forum have been very good at resurrecting typical articles written against John Paul whenever he said most of the same things Benedict has been saying - about life and death issues, about abortion and contraception [he compared abortion once to the Holocaust! - and I agree], against artificial reproduction, against married priests and women priests, for celibate clergy, you name it - what we're reading today is just par for the course. Though of course, today, his most vicious critics then, now hold him up to have been the-Pope-who-could-do-no-wrong compared to Benedict-who-cannot-do-anything-right.

Italians are truly overly excitable in every way, so they have a talent for turning molehills into mountains and brewing tempests in a cup of espresso...Look at the way Osservatore Romano reacted to the rock-concert incident!...Then they'll move on to their next 'scandal du jour'...

TERESA

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/05/2007 14.30]

Here is a translation of an item from ZENIT's Italian service today. There was a brief mention about Bartholomew I welcoming the Pope's book when Vatican Radio last week reported sales figures for the first 10 days of the Italian, German adn Polish editions, but this is the full letter-statement:

Patriarch welcomes Pope's book
as 'new impulse for ecumenical dialog'


ISTANBUL, May 2 (ZENIT.org).- Expressing the hope that the book JESUS OF NAZARETH by Pope Benedict XVI may facilitate the ecumenical dialog among the Christian churches, the Patriarch of Constantinople has welcomed its publication.

In a latter dated Easter Sunday (which this year falls on the same date for both Roman Catholic adn Orthodox Churches), Bartholomew's letter to the executive director of Psicoghio publishing house accompanied the publication of the book in Greek.

"it is fully evident" that the center of Christianity is "the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ" and that "different perceptions about Him have caused much of the differences and divisions among Christians," Barholomew I underscored in the letter.

"However, Jesus cannot be known well enough, or rather, cannot be truly known, only through academic studies, but (to know Him) "requires a personal relationship that must be one of love, but love that is not limited only to mere sentiment," he writes.

The letter continues:

"Reason must enter the heart, in order to develop a harmony between man's sentiment and his reason. This will lead to a balanced development, with God's grace, even of the will, so that the man of God becomes complete and integral, and his worship of Christ becomes authentic, spiritually willed, certainly with sentiment, but not only with sentiment.

"Thus, we look forward with great and ardent interest to this new and much-awaited book JESUS OF NAZARETH by our most beloved brother in Christ, the Holy Fahter in Rome, Benedict XVI, Primate of the venerated Roman Catholic Church, who is well-known not only for his scientific competence, but for his love of Jesus Christ, to whom he has dedicated his whole life.

"We hope to see in this book concepts which coincide with those of the Orthodox Church, in order to facilitate the theological dialog between our Churches, from which may emerge hope that we may definitively overcome centuries of division which unfortunately persists, and that our two Churches and our faithful may be united not only in charity but also in faith and in the sacraments.

"With these expectations, we welcome from our Most Holy Church of Constantinople this present initiative and invoke on the editors and all who will read this book the grace and immense mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Risen One, our God and Savior."

Rome and Constantinople, which is the spiritual reference point for 300 Greek Orthodox Christians, have been separated since the Great Schism of 1054.

After more than 900 years of keeping well apart, the two churches began a rapprochement in 1965 when Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras annulled the reciprocal excommunication that accompanied the Great Schism.

Benedict XVI visited Bartholomew I in Istanbul last November, on which occasion they reaffirmed their mutual commitment to proceed on the road to re-establshing full communion between Catholics and Orthodox.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/05/2007 6.25]

5/3/07

In the Italian papers today, everyone has something to say on the tempest in an espresso cup provoked by Osservatore Romano when it blew up some headline-seeking Class C comedian's boilerplate anti-Church statements at a mega-rock concert in Rome on Sunday by calling it 'terrorism'...

Why the editor chose to react so disproportionately - rising to the bait of hardly original, not particularly clever nor particularly offensive remarks (in terms of the words he used) - is truly a 'puzzlement', as the King of Siam would say.

Did the OR editor really think he was doing the Pope and the Church a service? Does he know what counter-productive means? Thank God Fr. Lombardi came in afterwards to say the comedian's action was irresponsible, but that now is the time to defuse tensions rather than exacerbate them.

Clearly, it was Osservatore Romano that chose most unwisely and irresponsibly to exacerbate matters, and that's most likely what prompted Fr. Lombardi to issue a statement - despite the fact that it was the evening of a holiday!

There's a world of difference between saying something is 'irresponsible', as Fr. Lombardi did correctly if too charitably, and calling it an 'act of terrorism'. For shame, Mr. Agnes (OR editor) - because you too committed an irresponsible act, to say the least!...

Remember, no newspaper came out yesterday, but for some reason, OR chose to come out in mid-afternoon with its 5/2-5/3 issue which was not supposed to come out till today! So it 'reported' on the comedian ahead of every other newspaper, dignified him with an editorial, and inflated him and what he said gratuitously and most disproportionately.

How can you call someone's expression of opinion in public - as stupid and out of place as it may have been - 'terrorism'? This is what the wannabe was quoted as saying: "The Pope doesn't believe in evolution. Well, the Church has never evolved...I cannot take it that the Vatican refused a (Catholic) funeral for Welby but not for Pinochet and Franco."

It doesn't come anywhere near the virulence of what Italian leftist pols and so-called intellectuals said about the Pope and the Church at the peak of the DICO furor. There wasn't even any 'disrespectful' statement about the Pope, going by what was quoted. It was something to shrug off and ignore because it is so stupid it does not deserve an answer. More stupid he who answers it...The Pope deserves better from those who are supposed to be on his side.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/05/2007 16.54]

A short item from PETRUS, translated here:


VATICAN CITY - "We do not fear assassination plots as much as we do a madman's act," says Elmar Theodor Maeder, chief of the Pope's Swiss Guards, in an interview with the newspaper Il Messaggero. [Recent, I suppose; the item does not give a date].

Moreover, he adds, "Compared to John Paul II, Benedict XVI is in a way 'easier' to protect, because he does not like to improvise on a program. The worst risk is always when the Pope is in direct contact with the crowds as during the Wednesday audiences, or in big assemblies, or when he is travelling.

"But Pope Benedict tends to respect the program. We do not expect him to stop the Popemobile, for instance, so he can get out and greet the crowd. John Paul used to do that. With Benedict, it is easier. He speaks to the crowd but they stay behind the barricade, and this is confined to the area in front of St. Peter's.

"Our biggest problem is always the big celebrations, with the Urbi et Orbi messages - high-profile events broadcast worldwide that could be very tempting for some criminal or lunatic mind to do something truly attention-getting."

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

Benedict improvised well in Pavia, after his visit to St. Augustine's tomb. Emerging from the Basilica of S. Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, he took note of the large cropwd that had gathered outside the Cathedral, asked for a microphone so he could speak to them, and after that plunged into the crowd.

Some bishops in Italy, Germany and Switzerland have been presenting the Pope's book on JESUS OF NAZARETH in their respective cities, and I find that very heartening.

These book presentations - in general, not just for the Pope's book - are almost always accompanied by a round-table discussion that brings together prominent disussants with different points of view, such as there was at the Vatican for the main presentation of JON.

There is no comparable event to it in the United States, where generally, the author himself goes on a tour of the major cities to sign copies at a bookstore or bookstores and gets on as many TV and radio shows as he can in order to discuss his book.

Her is a brief item from Avvenire today:



Galli della Loggia and Caadinal Ratzinger at their public 'debate' in 2004.(Thanks to Lella for having it available).


In Milan, on Friday evening, May 18, the book presentation of JESUS OF NAZARETH will take place at the Cathedral of Milan.

The presentor-discussants will be Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan; Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity; and historian-writer Ernesto Galli della Loggia. Moderating will be Massimiliano Finazzer Flory, with Monsignor Luigi Manganini, archpriest of the Cathedral as the host.

The event is part of the cultural project "A passo d'uomo" (At human pace), directed by Finazzer Flory with the support of the Cultural Office for the Lombard ecclesiasticla region. It was Mons. Manganini's idea since 2004 to bring together Catholic and secular thinkers to discuss philosophical adn theological issues.


Avvenire, 3 maggio 2007

John Allen posted his weekly column one day early, and it's a fairly comprehensive preview of the Papal trip to Brazil, done in Allen's usual systematic and fact-filled fashion. I am only posting tHE main story here. Allen has four brief sidebars which have to do with Brazil and the bishops conference, but I am posting this main story and the sidebars in the ...BRAZIL thread.


A look ahead to Benedict in Brazil
All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.
Friday, May 4, 2007



Editor’s Note: May 9-13, Pope Benedict XVI will visit São Paolo and Aparecida, Brazil, in conjunction with the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM). John Allen will be travelling on the papal plane, and will be posting reports on the trip to his Daily News and Updates column on NCRcafe.org.


For a pope often styled as “Euro-centric,” the Brazil trip offers a vital opportunity for Benedict XVI to convince the people of the southern hemisphere, which includes two-thirds of the 1.1 billion Catholics in the world today, that they, too, stand at the center of his pastoral concern.

The purpose of the trip is for Benedict XVI to open the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM). Given that roughly half the Catholics in the world live in the region, the CELAM gathering, designed to craft strategy for the church for the next decade or so, amounts to a critically important crossroads for Roman Catholicism.

It’s also of direct importance for the United States, given the growing Hispanic presence in the U.S. church. Already, 39 percent of Catholics in the United States are Hispanic, many recent immigrants from Latin America.

Though CELAM organizers would not phrase it quite this way, the issues that are likely to loom largest in Aparecida can be expressed in terms of four “P’s”: Poverty, Pentecostals, Priests, and Politics.

Poverty: According to the United Nations Human Development Report, Latin America has the most dramatic gap between rich and poor in the world, and Brazil has the widest such gap in Latin America. In turn, these disparities generate crime, corruption, alcohol and drug addiction, and violence.

The northeastern city of Recife in Brazil, for example, has a murder rate twice that of the most violent cities in the United States, with roughly 80 homicides per year for every 100,000 people. Honduras has a murder rate five times the global average, mostly due to the growth of maras, or youth gangs linked to the drug trade. This situation is of obvious concern to the church, since poverty and its discontents shape its daily pastoral experience.

The Catholic church has long been on the front lines of efforts to promote justice. For the past 12 years, for example, the Brazilian bishops have sponsored an annual march called the Gritos dos Excluidos, or “Cry of the Excluded,” in major cities to draw attention to the plight of the poor.

Some priests, religious and pastoral workers have died to defend the poor. One prominent case in point is Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Dorothy Stang, an American missionary in Brazil, shot to death in 2005 by two armed men allegedly working on behalf of wealthy ranchers, who resented Stang’s defense of the Amazon and of poor farmers. Stang was executed at point-blank range; one of the killers later said that as she was shot, she was reading aloud to them from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Many Latin American Catholics will be looking to Benedict XVI for encouragement in these efforts. It’s an especially important hurdle for the pope to clear, given that as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he led the Vatican’s crackdown on the liberation theology movement. Though Ratzinger insisted that his concern was with faulty theology, not with the church’s commitment to the poor, those experiences nevertheless made him an ambiguous figure in some circles in Latin America. In that light, the Brazil trip affords Benedict a crucial opportunity to exhibit his social concern.

There’s certainly a track record to build on.

On April 23, for example, Benedict wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, current president of the G-8, demanding the “the rapid, total and unconditional cancellation” of the external debt of poor countries, describing it as a “grave and unconditional moral responsibility, founded on the unity of the human race, and on the common dignity and shared destiny of rich and poor alike.”

In a recent message to the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, Benedict highlighted three key challenges: 1) the environment and sustainable development, 2) respect for the rights and dignity of persons, and 3) the danger of losing spiritual values in a technical world. If he can weave these themes into his remarks in Brazil, observers believe he will go a long way towards winning hearts and minds.

Pentecostals: While Latin America is home to almost half the world’s Catholic population, in some sense the Catholic church is under siege. Belgian Passionist Fr. Franz Damen, a veteran staffer for the Bolivian bishops, found that the number of conversions from Catholicism to Protestantism in Latin America during the 20th century actually surpassed the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 16th century.

In 1930, Protestants amounted to one percent of the Latin American population; today it’s between 12 and 15 percent. A study commissioned in the late 1990s by CELAM found that 8,000 Latin Americans were deserting the Catholic church for Evangelical Protestantism every day. Some religious demographers believe that Guatemala has already become the first majority Protestant nation in Latin America.

Theories to explain the attrition abound. Some conservatives blame liberation theology for politicizing the church, while liberals fault the hierarchical and clerical nature of Catholicism. Conspiracy theorists point to heavy funding and logistical support from Pentecostal and Evangelical churches in the United States.

In the end, however, most observers seem to believe that the key factor is the failure of the Catholic church to deliver even rudimentary pastoral care to a large segment of the population, leaving millions of nominal Catholics without any real catechesis, spiritual formation or regular access to the sacraments. That created a vacuum which the Pentecostals have exploited. In turn, this failure is attributed to a severe priest shortage. (That point will be addressed below.)

One response to the Pentecostal challenge has been the growth of the Catholic charismatic movement, an enthusiastic and spontaneous form of spirituality focused on the gifts of the Holy Spirit: prophecy, speaking in tongues, miraculous healings, and inspired preaching.

A recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 62 percent of Guatemalan Catholics call themselves “charismatic,” the highest percentage in the world, followed closely by Brazil at 57 percent. Overall, charismatics now account for roughly half the entire Catholic population of Latin America.

Some observers believe the growth of the charismatic movement is helping to stem the Pentecostal tide, because it offers most of what Latin Americans find attractive about Pentecostalism within the Catholic church. Others, however, worry that it too closely mimics the Pentecostals, especially when it comes to the “prosperity gospel” and an emphasis on immediate emotional gratification.

In that light, two challenges await Benedict XVI.

First, can this notoriously cerebral pope, famous for generating more light than heat, wear enough of his heart on his sleeve to win over audiences steeped in the charismatic style? Second, can Benedict affirm the enthusiasm and deep faith of the charismatics, while at the same time ensuring that they remain rooted in the broader pastoral concerns of the church?

Priests: By universal consensus, the shortage of priests throughout most of Latin American has created enormous holes in the church’s network of pastoral care. While the priest-to-person ratio in the United States is 1 to 1,229, in Brazil it’s 1 to 8,604, and in Honduras it’s 1 to 14,462.

The experience of Fr. Ricardo Flores, pastor of San Jose Obrero parish in a residential neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is typical: he’s responsible for his large urban parish, as well as 14 other churches in the area that have no resident priest; he’s a professor at the seminary, teaching a full load of four courses each semester for around 60 students; and he’s the ecclesiastical moderator for two large national movements.

Though there are upticks in vocations in some countries, there’s no foreseeable future in which there will be a sufficient number of priests to staff all the parishes in Latin America, to say nothing of comforting the sick, teaching the young, and conducting the other ministries of the church. For many Latin American Catholic leaders, the answer is obvious: lay empowerment.

“Our current pastoral model is exhausted,” said Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Honduras. He favors an aggressive program of forming laity to fill the gaps, learning from the success of the Pentecostals in fielding small armies of lay preachers and evangelists.

Given that liberation theology also promoted lay empowerment, however, in a way that critics saw as forming a kind of “church from below” in opposition to the hierarchy, other Latin Americans remain wary. In that light, if Benedict XVI chooses to speak positively about lay collaboration, it could have decisive significance for which way CELAM chooses to move.

Politics: Across much of Latin America, leftist governments have risen to power. These governments, to be sure, are hardly homogenous. Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Eva Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador represent, to different degrees, classic leftist populism, while Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Michelle Bachelet of Chile are more akin to European Social Democrats.

In many cases, these governments came to power with support from the Catholic church, motivated by its concern for social justice. (Such was the case in Brazil, for example). In fact, the leftist candidate in Paraguay’s next presidential election may well be an ex-Catholic bishop: Fernando Lugo of the San Pedro diocese.

Yet the ascent of these leftist governments has also spelled trouble for the Catholic church. The Venezuelan bishops, for example, have repeatedly criticized what they see as an authoritarian crackdown under Chavez. In a television interview last July, Morales of Bolivia said the bishops had “historically damaged the country” by functioning as “an instrument of the oligarchs.”

Even when church/state relations are formally polite, the leftist tide poses challenges to what church leaders regard as the Catholic identity of Latin America, especially on issues of sexuality and the family. Governments in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador and Chile have already adopted legislation loosening legal restrictions on abortion, and a similar bill is making its way through the process in Brazil. In March, Mexico City legalized same-sex unions, following the lead of other Latin American cities such as Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paolo.

Some observers see these trends as the first stirrings of Western-style secularism in Latin America.

“For the first time, some in Latin America are turning away from religion altogether, which is new,” said Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the emeritus archbishop of Washington, D.C., in an April 21 interview. (See McCarrick: Pope will be a hit in Brazil.)

In that regard, Benedict XVI will no doubt want to bring his struggle against the “dictatorship of relativism” to Latin America. The question is how to rally his troops without inadvertently feeding a form of public expression which the pope has said he regrets in the West - a church that’s better at explaining what it’s against rather than what it’s for, better at saying “no” than “yes.” The tone Benedict sets in engaging these questions could help shape the approach the Latin American bishops adopt.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2007 5.48]

I was trolling tonight for a primer I am putting together on Sao Paolo, when I found an excellent backgrounder in something called the Economist Cities Guide, which pointed me to this item dated May 3 in the Economist itself.

One appreciates its 'calmer' tone with regard to the 'gains' of Pentecostalism in Latin America than we have been used to [the Economist did run a much-quoted lengthy article about the religious phenomena in Latin America last December, which we should have in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH], and for giving us other more encouraging facts about Catholicism in Brazil than the doom-and-gloom we have been reading. More importantly, he 'gets it' about the point of this apostolic trip!

P.S. I thought I was posting in the ..BRAZIL thread, but I'll leave this here, anyway, and post it in the other, too.


Lighting on new faiths or none
May 3rd 2007 | APARECIDA AND MEXICO CITY
From The Economist print edition

In his first Latin American visit,
pope Benedict XVI will find a less divided church
facing stronger rivals




EVEN on an ordinary Sunday, the vast basilica of Nossa Senhora Aparecida is barely big enough to contain the worshippers who gather for morning mass. Votive candles, in a separate room, produce the heat of a bonfire.

The “hall of promises” is stuffed with offerings to the Virgin, whose image was found nearby by three fishermen in 1717 and who has been performing miracles ever since: plastic limbs acknowledge healing, a model aeroplane a job gained with an airline.

Aparecida, in São Paulo state, is Brazil's version of Lourdes or Fátima. Pope Benedict XVI chose it as the site of the fifth conference of bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean, which is meant to set the course for 450 million or so of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics.

The inaugural mass on May 13th will crown Benedict's four-day trip to Brazil, his first long-haul journey since becoming pope two years ago. He will also canonise the country's first native-born saint and hold a stadium-sized “encounter with youth”.

Benedict's choice of Aparecida for the conference suggests a desire to guide Latin America's Catholics back to traditional spirituality after decades of strife between progressive and conservative wings of the church.

“Our great mission is to reach people who belong to the church but have lost a sense of living in accordance with the faith,” says Raymundo Damasceno Assis, the archbishop of Aparecida.

Belief in God is as widespread in Brazil as in the United States, says Antônio Flávio Pierucci, a sociologist at the University of São Paulo, but religious practice is close to Europe's wan levels. The numbers saying they are of no religion is small but growing.

Some in the Catholic church fear that it is losing its grip over public morality. Local governments in Buenos Aires and Mexico City have recently legalised gay unions; the latter legalised abortion last month. Brazil's health minister has called for a plebiscite on the issue.

The more familiar threat to Catholic hegemony in Latin America comes from Pentecostal Protestantism. Born in the United States, this began to spread south a century ago but it has taken off since the restoration of democracy in the 1980s. According to the World Christian Database, a statistical service based in Massachusetts, more than 80% of Latin Americans are still Catholic. But that figure has been falling swiftly.

In Brazil, the world's largest Catholic country, the church has lost adherents at a rate of 1% a year since 1991, mainly to Pentecostal churches. Fewer than three-quarters of Brazilians are now Catholics while 15% are Protestants (known locally as “evangelicals”). In Mexico, 7.3% were Protestants according to the 2000 census; the figure may be almost 20% today. In Guatemala, some 30% are Protestant.

Traditional varieties of Pentecostalism emphasise a strict moral code of personal behaviour, including teetotalism and marital fidelity. Newer groups have added a gospel of self-enrichment. They offer a customer-friendly faith, telling the poor and uprooted that Christ can improve their lives and that He can be approached through ecstasy rather than ritual.

The Pentecostals spread the word through television networks, CD releases and pastors who require only a pulpit and a Bible rather than an elaborate seminary education. In Brazil the ratio of Protestant pastors to worshippers is 18 times higher than that of priests to Catholics, according to a new study by the Fundação Getulio Vargas, a business school. The business model works: 44% of church donations in Brazil come from Pentecostals, and only 31% from far more numerous Catholics.

By all these methods, Pentecostal Protestantism has acquired a large presence among the poor and the lower-middle class. In Brazil Pentecostalism goes along with migration to both the agricultural frontier and the cities.

Cidade Tiradentes, a poor neighbourhood in São Paulo, is 30% Protestant and 40% Catholic (and 22% “without religion”, triple the national average), notes Cesar Romero Jacob of Rio de Janeiro's Catholic University. Rich Jardim Paulista, in the city's centre, remains 83% Catholic. Pentecostalism is now making similar inroads in the poorer fringes of cities in the Andean countries, such as Lima.

While the Catholic church sticks to Spanish, in Mexico Protestants use indigenous languages to spread the word and have converted half of the country's indigenous people, claims Arturo Farela, who heads an organisation of Protestant churches. Much the same goes for the highlands of Guatemala.

Paradoxically, these are the constituencies that not long ago the Catholic church in Latin American made most effort to represent. At their second regional conference, held at Medellín, Colombia, in 1968, the bishops declared a “preferential option for the poor” and embraced many of the tenets of “liberation theology” (a kind of Christian socialism).

This effort placed many priests in brave opposition to military dictatorships and spawned innumerable “base communities”, grassroots groups that tried to spread faith and social justice at the same time.

The influence of liberation theology proved to be greater in politics than in the pulpit. It contributed to the rise of Brazil's ruling Workers' Party, and ushered priests into Nicaragua's Sandinista government in the 1980s. The seeming marriage of Catholicism and Marxism alarmed Pope John Paul II, whose native Poland was rebelling against communism. He appointed more conservative bishops.

As the Vatican's chief theologist, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger—who became Pope Benedict in 2005—silenced liberation theologians such as Brazil's Leonardo Boff. Just as significantly, the base communities failed to win over the poor. “If your husband beats you, you can't wait for Brazil to become a Christian utopia,” points out Andrew Chesnut of the University of Houston.

Nowadays the Catholic response to the Pentecostal challenge is to imitate it. The “Charismatic” movement, also an American import, rouses the faithful with spirit-filled worship, Christian pop music and slick television.

Brazil's most famous churchman is no longer Mr Boff [Surely that is an exaggeration of who Boff was even at his 'peak'!]but Marcelo Rossi, a physical-education teacher turned priest who has been known to perform aerobics during his services.

“What we see today is the pentecostalisation of Latin American Christianity,” says Mr Chesnut. He estimates that 75-80% of Protestants in the region are Pentecostals and that in Brazil at least half of active Catholics have gravitated towards the Charismatic movement.

The Catholic church has strengths besides the ever-popular Virgin and saints. It remains the region's most respected institution, according to polls. Priestly vocations, after decades of decline, have been rising since the 1970s, although they lag population growth. Brazil is sending missionaries to the United States, Africa and Europe, a reversal of the historic flow.

That manpower is supplemented by more than 1m lay “catechists”, says Edward Cleary, a priest who teaches at Providence College in Rhode Island. Bishops are reviving parishes and the tradition of tithing. The Catholic church has not escaped paedophile scandals. But it has largely avoided the money scams that dog some Pentecostal churches. The Getulio Vargas study found that in Brazil defections from Catholic ranks have stopped. The number of Pentecostals continues to grow but at the expense of the irreligious.

The bishops' conference may be less disputatious than its predecessors. Democracy and the end of the cold war have drawn some of the sting from the arguments between conservatives and progressives.

Dom Raymundo says the bishops will reaffirm the church's preference for the poor, but he insists that social change begins with the transformation of the individual believer. In the coming fights against abortion and the use of embryonic stem cells, the Latin church is probably more united than its North American counterpart. According to a recent poll, just 16% of Brazilians want to change a law that makes abortion illegal unless the mother has been raped or her life is endangered.

That does not put to rest nagging questions about the shape of a church with too few priests to sustain its traditional structure. Benedict will arrive in Brazil fresh from having censured Jon Sobrino, a liberation theologian in El Salvador, for over-emphasising Christ's humanity. [That's some spin! The point is not that Christ's humanity is over-emphasized, but that his divinity is being questioned oer even denied!]

The original draft of the conference guidelines was modified after pressure from the many in Latin America who take a less hierarchical view of the church and want a greater role for the laity.

“For us, the pope is father and pastor” rather than an “authority figure”, says Carlos Francisco Signorelli, who heads the National Council of Brazilian Laity. In Aparecida, Benedict may reveal how he sees himself. [I wish the newspaper had given a byline to the article. It sounds like it might have been written by their on-site correspondent which would explain his ease with some facts and figures he gives which I have not seen in other pieces. But about Benedict himself, shouldn't the reporter have looked up at least what the Pope has been saying all these past two years? When did he ever set himself up as 'authority figure' rather than as father andpastor? The last line of the story is really lame!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 05/05/2007 0.39]

For what it is worth! They could as well have ignored the Pope, too, after all, as the magazine's shamelessly biased editors omitted the President of the United States from this list of the 100 'most influential' in the world! How, to take a random example, can some comedian who made his name and makes his millions now by lampooning the entire nation of Kazakahstan gratuitously be more influential than POTUS? Who, by his veto, as he just did, can still override his political opponents, darlings of TIME and its ilk? And...and...and...So many obvious questions of elementary logic one could raise about this dubious list, as most subjective lists in the media tend to be these days.

But let us keep to what they said about the Pope. Two things are obvious: 1) They asked Vittorio Messori to write the blurb - and what a testimonial it is! (God bless Mr. Messori). 2) and they used a rather 'cool' picture of the Pope for a change, rather than the stereotype stern visage they would ordinarily have used for him. Both together certainly project a very different picture of Benedict - it's the way we see him, for a change - than that which TIME's readers have and are used to seeing. So Deo gratias.

---

Pope Benedict XVI
By Vittorio Messori



It was never going to be easy to follow a man like Karol Wojtyla, a "Technicolor" Pope, with his unmatched skills as a preacher and an actor.

Everyone thought that when Joseph Ratzinger, 80, became Pope, the crowds in St. Peter's Square would greatly diminish and the mass interest in the papacy would disappear. But just the opposite has happened.

And therein lies the enigma of Pope Benedict XVI: Why are the faithful (and others) drawn to an intellectual who concedes nothing to the show, who says difficult things (like his September speech about faith and violence in Regensburg, which touched off anger among Muslims), who doesn't bargain with the Gospel?

What makes people rush to this fragile man who speaks softly and politely without moving his hands, without ever acting? Evidently, there is a sort of secret attraction, as if many can sense the fascination of the sacred through the witness of Benedict's thoughts and his modest and humble life.

After the Slavic sentiment arrives German seriousness - different charismas that confirm that the Catholic Church knows how to make room for every kind of temperament, letting the human qualities of such different men shine through.

Messori is the author of The Ratzinger Report

---

Oh, and further evidence of Time's editorial bias - look at who they chose to include in the cover montag - not the Pope, certainly! See all the other types they think are 'more influential' than the President of the United States! WHAT A HOOT!



Here's how AFP reports the mishmash - in which they choose to juxtapose the Pope and Osama Bin Laden right off the bat, to show the poles of good and evil, perhaps. I object vehemently, of course, to the headline they give - as though TIME had the divine power to determine who are the world's msot influential people. It could at least have said 'TIME unveils its list of..."


Time Magazine unveils world's
100 most influential people


NEW YORK (AFP) - Osama bin Laden, Pope Benedict XVI and Borat creator Sacha Baron Cohen are among a packed and varied field chosen by Time Magazine for this year's list of the world's 100 most influential people.

The fourth annual list, which is due to hit newsstands Friday, omits US President George W. Bush for the first time but includes Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama [NB: But omits both Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. How can anyone argue, for instance, that Barack Obama, at this point in his life, is more influential than Giuliani or McCain?]

The "artists and entertainers" category includes Hollywood heavyweights Martin Scorsese, Cate Blanchett and heart-throbs Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio, along with fashion model Kate Moss.

Pop sensation Justin Timberlake is named along with Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour, while former US vice president Al Gore's shift to environmental campaigner sees him nominated in the "scientists and thinkers" category.

The list, which is designed to recognize "the men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world," does not appear in any order or give the magazine's reasons why some people were chosen over others.

The "leaders and revolutionaries" category features Queen Elizabeth II, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni - in an entry penned by US counterpart Condoleezza Rice - and Rice herself, appearing for a fourth year running.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger makes a showing next to Raul Castro, the younger brother of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Indian Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Other politicians in the mix include German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi. and Liu Qi, head of the 2008 Beijing Olympics committee.

Besides Rice, US talk show host Oprah Winfrey is the only person to have appeared all four years, featuring in the "heroes and pioneers" section in an entry written by anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela.

Other "heroes" include billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett, rubbing shoulders with tennis champion Roger Federer, footballer Thierry Henry and Chinese online activist Zeng Jinyan.

Actor and director George Clooney, who has been campaigning to raise awareness about the situation in the Sudanese region of Darfur, is meanwhile named along with Parkinson's disease sufferer and fellow actor Michael J. Fox.

British entrepreneur Richard Branson makes a show in the "builders and titans" section along with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the co-founders of video sharing website YouTube, and luxury brand guru and LVMH boss Bernard Arnault.

Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the world's fifth richest man, also appears alongside Apple chief Steve Jobs.

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

Ah well, most worthy contribution indeed to that institution called Trivial Pursuit!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2007 14.07]