Here is a translation of the communqiue issued by the Vatican Press Office after the meeting this morning between Pope Benedict XVI and ex-President Khatami of Iran.



COMMUNIQUE FROM THE HOLY SEE
4 May 2007

This morning, H.E. Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, paid a viist to His Holiness Benedict XVI. Afterwards, he met with the Vatican Secretary of Satte, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and Mons. Dominqiue Mamberti, Sectrteary for Relations with Other States.

The conversations dwelt on the importance of a peaceful dialog among cultures as a way to overcome the serious tensions which mark our time and to promote a fruitful collaboration in the service of peace and the development of all peoples.

Conditions and problems of the Christian communities in Iran were also discussed.

With respect to the Middle East, emphasis was laid on the need for strong initiatives from the international community - like the current conference in Sharm-el-Sheikh - that can lead to serious negotiations that take into account the rights and interests of all concerned, according to itnernational law, and with the awareness that reciprocal trust must be re-established.


Here's the AP sotry:

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami
meets with pope at Vatican



VATICAN CITY, May 4 (AP): Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami met with Pope Benedict XVI on Friday for talks the Vatican hoped would further heal tensions with Muslims following the pope's remarks on Islam and violence last year.

Khatami, a reformist in power from 1997 to 2005, had been scheduled to meet with Benedict in October but the meeting was canceled. No reason was given, but it was weeks after Benedict's speech in Germany about Islam touched off protests across the Muslim world.

On Friday, they spoke about the importance of a "a serene dialogue between cultures intended to overcome the grave tensions that mark our times," the Vatican said in a statement after Khatami's 30-minute meeting with Benedict.

They also spoke about the conditions of the Christian community in the region and, regarding the Middle East, the need for "strong initiatives by the international community" to set up serious negotiations, the Vatican statement said, citing as an example the summit meeting on Iraq now taking place in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt.

Relations between Muslims and Christians were strained after Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith."

Benedict expressed regret that the citation offended Muslims. As a sign of improved relations, Benedict made a successful visit to predominantly Muslim Turkey in November.

It was Khatami's second meeting with a pope, following an audience with Pope John Paul II in 1999, two years after the Iranian had taken office.

While in Rome, he also addressed an academic gathering at the Pontifical Gregorian University. [Before he met the Pope today, he delivered that address at a conference on "Intercultural Dialog: a challenge for peae".]


Here is Reuters's earlier story that led off with statements made by Kahtami befoe he met the Pope:

Christian-Muslim wounds
still "very deep": Khatami
By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY, May 4 (Reuters) - Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami met Pope Benedict on Friday and said the wounds between Christians and Muslims were still "very deep," including those caused by a controversial papal speech last September.

Khatami became one of the most prominent Muslim clerics to visit the Vatican since the Pope's controversial Regensburg speech which angered Muslims by appearing to link Islam and violence.

"These wounds are very deep. There are many wounds and they cannot heal that easily," Khatami told a conference in Rome just before the papal meeting, when asked if the wounds that followed the Pontiff's speech in his native Germany had been healed.

"For sure, a meeting with the Holy Father cannot be enough to heal all these wounds but at least we are making a joint effort in order to start healing these wounds," Khatami said.

In his September speech, the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying Islam had only brought evil to the world and that it was spread by the sword, a method that was unreasonable and contrary to God's nature.

He used the quote to launch into a much longer discussion of the key influence of ancient Greek philosophical reasoning on the early Christian faith and invited Muslim scholars to enter into a dialogue about faith and reason with Christians.

The Pope later said he regretted any misunderstanding it caused among Muslims, after protests including attacks on churches in the Middle East and the killing of a nun in Somalia.

The Vatican said Khatami and the Pope met for about 30 minutes and spoke through interpreters about the "dialogue among cultures" to overcome current tensions and promote peace.

In talks that a spokesman called cordial, they also discussed the problems of minority Christians in Iran and the Middle East and encouraged peace efforts such as the conference on Iraq's future taking place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.

At Friday morning's conference, Khatami, speaking through a translator, said that Christianity and Islam needed to rediscover their common roots as monotheistic religions in order to improve relations.

"If Christian and Islamic societies could only rely on love and justice and get back to these founding principles and if together we fought against violence and extremism ... then we can lay the foundations to heal any wound," he said.

The conference on religious dialogue Khatami attended was to have been held in October but was postponed following the fallout in the Muslim world over Benedict's Regensburg speech.

At the conference before meeting the Pope, Khatami said no one could use God's name to "instigate war or hate or speak ignorantly of crusades."

He said both religions must enter a "sincere and practical dialogue and commitment to achieve peace and eliminate terrorism and war."


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

I thought in this case, it's particularly important to know something of the man in the news with the Pope. this is from Wikipedia's entry on Khatami.




Mohammad Khatami, born on September 29, 1943, in Ardakan city of Yazd province, is an Iranian intellectual, philosopher and political figure. He served as the fifth President of Iran from August 2, 1997 to August 2, 2005, and was succeeded by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Khatami was elected president on May 23, 1997, and was re-elected on June 8, 2001, for a second term. Khatami won largely due to the female and youth vote, who voted for him because he promised to improve the status of women and respond to the demands of the young generation in Iran.

Khatami has a bachelor's degree in Western philosophy from Isfahan University, but he left academia while studying for a master's degree in Educational Sciences at Tehran University, and instead went to Qom to complete his previous studies in Islamic sciences. He studied there for seven years and completed the courses to the highest level, Ijtihad. After that, he went to Germany to chair the Islamic Centre in Hamburg, where he stayed until the Iranian revolution.

Before serving as president, Khatami had been a representative in the parliament from 1980 to 1982, supervisor of the Kayhan Institute, Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance (1982-1986, and then for a second term from 1989 to 24 May 1992 (when he resigned), the head of the National Library of Iran from 1992 to 1997, and a member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution.

He is also a member and chairman of the Central Council of the Militant Clerics League.

Khatami is regarded as Iran's first reformist president, since the focus of his campaign was on the rule of law, democracy and the inclusion of all Iranians in the political decision-making process.

However, his policies of reform led to repeated clashes with the hardline and conservative Islamists in the Iranian government, who control powerful governmental organizations like the Guardian Council, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Leader.

Khatami lost most of those clashes, and by the end of his presidency many of his followers had grown disillusioned with him.

As President, according to the Iranian political system, Khatami was outranked by the Supreme Leader, and had no legal authority over many key state institutions such as the armed forces (the police, the army, the revolutionary guards, etc.), the state radio and television, the judiciary, the prisons, etc.
================================================================

Strange, if he lived in Germany for some time, that he chose to use an interpreter to speak to the Pope instead of conversing in German as Putin did.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2007 23.18]

The Fathers of the Church: A new series,
every Wednesday from the Vatican

It is the new series of weekly catecheses from Benedict XVI, dedicated to the great personalities of the ancient Church.
The first seven were on Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.

by Sandro Magister



ROMA, May 4, 2007 – Speaking each Wednesday to the thirty to forty thousand faithful who flock to listen to him (twice as many as went to the audiences of his predecessor) Benedict XVI has been holding, since March, a new series of his weekly catecheses.

He dedicated the previous series to the twelve Apostles and to the disciples of whom the New Testament speaks. The pope illustrated these one by one.

Now he is tracing each time the profile of a “Father of the Church,” one of the great personalities of the ancient Church.

He began on March 7 with Saint Clement, the third bishop of Rome after Saint Peter. And he continued on the following Wednesdays with Ignatius of Antioch, Justin, Irenaeus.

After the Easter break, he resumed on April 18 with Clement of Alexandria, and on the two following Wednesdays with Origen, whom he describes as a person “so innovative as to give an irreversible new direction to the development of Christian thought.”

In this way, Benedict XVI is explaining to the faithful not so much the “what” of the Church, but the “who,” beginning with those who guided it during the first centuries, building up the great Tradition from which the Church of today draws.

The pope is careful, in fact, to bring to light each time not only the originality but also the perennial relevance of the work of each Father of the Church.

For example, with Saint Clement, Benedict XVI emphasizes his theses on the primacy of the bishop of Rome, on the relationship between laity and hierarchy, on the distinction between the sovereignty of Caesar and that of God.

With Saint Ignatius of Antioch, the pope brings to light his intuition of the catholicity of the Church, its universality.

In Justin, he admires the synthesis between evangelical truth and Greek philosophy, and the primacy he accords to the truth against the “custom” of the time.

With Saint Irenaeus, he exalts his defense of the apostolic tradition against the intellectualist deviations of the Gnostics.

With Clement of Alexandria, he emphasizes his further support for dialogue between the Christian faith and Greek philosophy.

With Origen, the pope praises his genius as an interpreter of the Sacred Scriptures – “as I tried to do somewhat in my book ‘Jesus of Nazareth’” – and his profound spirituality.

But like his previous series on the twelve Apostles, Benedict XVI’s preaching on the Fathers of the Church has a limitation: it reaches the general public only minimally. Almost all the Catholics around the world do not know what the pope says every Wednesday.

Even those who have the fortune to hear him in person in Rome are almost never the same from week to week. They listen to one catechesis, but they aren’t familiar with the ones before and after it.

For this reason, too, it is indispensable to take a look at an entire span of audiences, in order to understand the teaching of Benedict XVI more deeply.

He then presents the first seven catecheses of the new series inaugurated by the Pope on March 7, 2006 in the English translations from the Vatican site, except the last 2, which his own translator prepared. These can be accessed on
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/dettaglio.jsp?id=137741&eng=y

The Holy Father began his catechetical cycle on the Catholic Church - through the figures of those who were its most outstanding leaders and representatives immediately following the death and Resurrection of Christ - on March 15, 2006. Before that, he completed the catechetical cycle on the Psalms that had been started by John Paul II.

The texts of all his catecheses may be found through this link
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20060315...
[Replace the date on the link, as in 20060315, according to the audience date you are looking for]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2007 23.36]

VATICAN - IRAN
Benedict XVI and Khatami:
In the good wake of Regensburg
by Bernardo Cervellera



VATICAN CITY, May 4 (AsiaNews) - Today's meeting at the Vatican between Mohammad Khatami and Benedict XVI was a "dialogue between civilizations."

Iran's former president has for years been working for such dialogue which involves a clear expression of identity, profound respect for the religious element, and a critique of mathematical and materialistic reason.

From this point of view, today's encounter is very much in line with the speech that the Pope made at Regensburg University last September.

Pope Benedict XVI's lectio magistralis aocated a widening of reason beyond anti-religion Enlightenment thinking ("irrational") to allow for rich and fraternal dialogue with extra-European and non-Western cultures.

At the same time, the Pope showed that violence is "irrational" and is therefore worthy neither of God, nor of man, nor of any religion, Islam included.

The trouble that arose from the Regensburg speech was fuelled by liberalist Westerners and islamist Easterners, who trivialized the profoundness of Benedict XVI's proposal so as to make it appear a simple dispute between Islam and Christianity, with the latter "obviously" unable to understand Islam, and accusing the Pope of having fomented a "war of religions."

At that time, Khatami was among the few Muslims leaders – the first – to distance himself from the protest rallies and attacks of the Islamic world, asking everyone "to read the Pope's entire speech, before criticizing it."

But, because of the tensions created by malevolent interpretations of the Regensburg address, his visit to the Vatican, initially planned for last November, did not take place. Today's meeting heals a wound and sends the message that "dialogue between civilizations" is stronger than the "clash of civilizations."

But it is only a partial healing. Where in fact healing is slow is in the liberalist Western world where, to avoid questioning its blind closure to the problem of Godless reason, continues to rail against the Catholic Church and the Pope, and justifies the many forms of violence committed in the name of Islam.

In their ideological blindness, a good part of the so-called "progressive" intellectuals says that the causes of terrorism are American imperialism, colonialism, the state of Israel, globalization.

But in this way they do not realize that Islamist terrorism strikes well beyond the West: Buddhists in Thailand, Hindus in India, Muslims themselves, both Sunni and Shia. Even violence against Palestinians does not only come with an Israeli stamp, but also derives from a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah.

Because of this ideological blindness in Europe – and in Italy – we are witnessing a veritable alliance between progressivism and violent Islamism. In the name of anti-Americanism and multiculturalism, people are calling for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, from Afghanistan, and are justifying the violence of males against Islamic women and polygamy.

Again yesterday, the Pope was ridiculed in the European Parliament, while great caution was exercised about the anti-Mohammad caricatures. And while a benevolent attitude is being preached with regard to a violent Islam, an intransigent and intolerant attitude is spreading against the Catholic Church, "guilty" of displaying crosses and nativity scenes and of expressing its view on life and family in the ("liberal"?) society.

The encounter between Benedict XVI and Khatami shows that dialogue is possible if parties do not hide their identity and work for the good of men and women. To do this, it is necessary that, from East to West, we condemn violence, always and regardless, while guaranteeing religious freedom.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/05/2007 22.46]

Avvenire has chosen to sample its readers' 'reviews' of the Holy Father's book on Jesus, reminding me, alas, that I have not found the time to translate samples from their forum on the book, which has drawn such tremendous participation.

Let me at least translate their choices, which except for a couple, appear to favor, unfortunately, the more high-flown, almost 'pretentious' reactions, instead of the simpler, more direct and therefore infinitely more forceful ones!



The first 'scholarly work' presented by Papa Ratzinger as Pope is an invaluable help for getting to know the figure of Christ, historically and through the eyes of faith, as well as to rationalize that faith. Here are some of the contributions from readers of the book who have written in to Avvenire's forum on JESUS OF NAZARETH.

It helps make us 'not conform'
The Magdalene's lover, the revilutionary who sought in vain to overthrow the Roman yoke, the generous liberal - it isn't only the potboilers in the Da Vinci Code mode that have been painting Jesus in this way.

Even serious writers - including the recent 'Why we cannot be Christians' by Odifreddi [Italian mathematician, atheist and activist writer who is considiered to be the 'Richard Dawkins of Italy'] - aim to erode every historical foundation there might be for Jesus and leave him in a mythical realm where he becomes evanescent.

So to us who have to live in this context, the book of Benedict XVI is a gift. The Pope is well aware of the anonymous atmosphere we breathe that inspires a herd mentality in which faith is considered ridiculous...

The way to life, the Pope tells us, opening the oages of teh Gospel, is that of the Man from Nazareth and all those who acepted His proposition, summarized in that phrase, "Follow me". The newness of Christian life passes through His footsteps, the true 'high road', followed by the simple, the humble, those who tirelessly "believe in God and seek His face."
Ivan Maffeis


A passion for St. Augustine
This is a text that inscribes itself in the context of Joseph Ratzinger's theological thought, derived from his intellectual passion for St. Augustine: to search for truth in the Bible and in the human spirit and to realize the theses of philosphical thought in Scriptural citaions. [How's that for pompousness, though?]

What is striking is the honesty and clarity of thought of this Pope who becomes a pilgrim before the Scriptures, fully aware that philosophical questing, with that yearning for the eternal in metaphysics, can only be quenched with the installation of the Kingdom of God inaugurated by Jewish tradition but brought to fulfillment by the Resurrection of Jesus. We ask ourselves then: how can we not adhere to the spirit and reason that is evident in the Christian message?

With his limpid exposition, the Pope confirms his stand against the nonsense of ethical and philosophical relativism in order to give way to the ample breadth of reason illuminated by the Spirit of the Gospel.
Omar Giacinto


Beyond relativism
Once again, the Holy Father proposes to the heart and to the mind the reason why our life has a sense: Jesus Christ. Reading this book is am intellectual 'adventure' and at the same time, a rediscovery of the immense gift of faith. It makes us feel the joy of a Presence: Jesus is not remote, He is not an abstraction nor a philosophical consolation.

He is an event, a hundredfold that! It is Christ who fascinates us, who shakes us up. And Benedict XVI, with his gentleness and wisdom, has achieved another miracle himself, and for this we are grateful to him.
Maurizio Rizzolo


A 'gift' for Albania
I have just come back from 5 days in Albania. In Scutari, where I visited, the people are poor but they have faith. In the cathedral, I saw images showing 19 priests and a Pope who were killed during persecutions.

Before leaving the church, the faithful - many of them young -
come to that wall with the images, touch it reverently, and some of them kiss it, make the sign of the Cross, and kneel for a moment of prayer. Jesus of Nazareth lives here, He who died and was resurrected.

To be Christian means above all to believe in that Passion, death ndn resurrection, in eternal life, in joy and loyalty, in the flesh, and in hope despite the trials of daily life.

That's the way it is in Albania, with so many children and scant resources for them, except the love that they get from close-knit families.

I visited Muslims in their homes - one of them in quest of "the reason for faith." I found a Christian boy of 10 who knew the Gospel by heart - obviously, it was a topic he grew up with. I gave his father a copy of the Pope's book which I had with me.

Jesus is indeed the center of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict's lifelong lectures to the faithful.
Ruggero Sangalli


Words united to actions
I think the Pope is a Prince of words, but words which are linked to concrete actions, in the way he presents himself, in the way he carries on a dialog - never abstract words which are
useless if they were only that...
Annamaria Nobile


A dialog with Jesus present
What strikes me most and moves me is the Pope's personal involvement with Jesus. It is immediately obvious that Benedict XVI, although he is presenting an elevated anlysis - theological, Biblical, historical and cultural - goes beyond that, because Jesus is not just an object of reflection, but an ever-present friend with whom the Pope has gone through life.

It is therefore obvious that the book he wrote is not a treatise on Jesus but a dialog with Jesus present. That is why I find it fascinating.
Gianni Mereghetti


A healthy secularity
This reading experience has made me rediscover a taste for giving rational foundations to my faith. And in reminding us of the essence of faith in Christ, the book is also a text for healthy secularity.

I call attention to page 146, where the Pope writes: "Concrete juridical and social forms and political institutions are no longer literally 'fixed' as sacred rights for all time nor for all peoples."
Alberto Tomat


Lover of Christ
Thank you, Benedict XVI, for this, 'your' Jesus, who is ours too. To read the pages on the Baptism of Jesus and to find in it all the links in Jesus's life up to His Passion and Resurrection was truly beautiful moment.

I have found a deep spiritual spring. This is a book written by a teacher who is also a lover of Christ. Ratzinger does not speak only to the mind but to the heart. I hope that many persons will read it, especially those who need to discover the beauty of the story of Salvation.

Let us all read it and make it known to others so they too may read it.
Teresa Belgiojoso


But are we thinking, in Italy?
It is a praiseworthy effort to render plausible a complicated religion like ours and to offer a way out of the presumptuous auto-sufficiency that suffocates man today. I note that almost all the modern authors cited by the Pope are German, some French, some Anglophone, but only a couple of Italians...

It seems that religion has become for most of us a political question cut off from any discussion about its purpose, perhaps that is why it does not interest us. In Germany, the Pope is now considered the leading intellectual, and there are no other religious figures ranking close after him.

I hope the success of this book will help make us Italians less factious and petty.
[The name was left out]

Reuters - Fri May 4: Pope Benedict XVI with Wolfgang Huber,
President of the Council of the Evangelical Church in Germany,
during a private meeting at the Vatican May 4, 2007.
REUTERS/Osservatore Romano/Pool

Christ Wants a Universal Church, Pope Says;
Greets Bishops From a 'Multiconfessional Environment'




VATICAN CITY, MAY 4, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI met with prelates from a bishops' conference based in Belgrade and reminded them that Christ wanted his Church to be open to everyone.

The Pope said that today during an audience with prelates from the International Episcopal Conference of Sts. Cyril and Methodius. The bishops were in Rome for their five-yearly visit. The conference includes Catholics of Latin and Byzantine rite from Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo.

The Holy Father said: "The various countries and the various social and religious environments in which your faithful live bring no small number of repercussions to their Christian life."

The Pontiff mentioned specifically questions such as "marriages between people of different confessions or religions which require ... particular spiritual attention and a more harmonious cooperation with other Christian Churches, ... the religious education of the new generations," and "the formation of sacred ministers and their spiritual accompaniment in a multiconfessional environment."

He said: "It is important to help seminarians" and for priests "to cultivate an intimate relationship with Jesus if they wish to accomplish their mission to the full and not just see themselves as simple 'employees' of an ecclesiastical organization. The priest is at the complete service of the Church, a living and spiritual organism that draws her energy not from nationalistic, ethnic or political factors, but from the action of Christ present in her ministers."

Benedict XVI recalled that Christ founded a universal Church: "Over the course of the centuries, tradition maintained [the Church's] universalistic character unaltered as she slowly spread and came into contact with different languages, races, nationalities and cultures."

The Pope thus encouraged the bishops "to be an evangelical 'leavening' that ferments society" and to seek to involve "all members of the People of God, using all available tools of Christian formation, translated into the various languages of the people."

"Today, a poorly understood modernity tends to give exaggerated emphasis to the requirements of the individual, to the detriment of the duties that all people have towards God and towards the community to which they belong," he said.

It is important "to highlight a correct conception of civil and public responsibility, because from such a vision arises the commitment to respect the rights of each, and the real integration of one's own culture with that of others," the Holy Father added.

"Providence placed your peoples on a European continent that, over these years, has been undergoing a process of reconstruction," Benedict XVI said. "Your Churches also consider themselves as part of this historical process, well knowing that they have their own specific contribution to make.

"Unfortunately there is no lack of obstacles: the scarcity of means because of the economic situation, and the paucity of Catholic forces. Nor is it easy to forget the difficult heritage of 40 years of" communism "that gave rise to forms of social behavior not conducive to freedom and personal responsibility. At the same time, it is difficult to resist the temptation of Western materialism."

"Do not lose heart!" the Pope urged the bishops.

He told the prelates that the Lord "has put you in close contact with our Orthodox brethren. As limbs of the one Body, seek all possible forms of collaboration in the service of the one Kingdom of God.

"Do not be unwilling to collaborate with other Christian confessions and with all people of good will in order to promote everything that may help propagate the values of the Gospel."

Emma posted this article in the main forum today, without mentioning where it came from, but I do know Giulio Meotti is the New York correspondent for one of the Italian newspapers, and as he says in the article that Weigel made the statements to TEMPI (a weekly journal of ideas founded in 1995 to promote a 'healthy secularism'), I went to TEMPI online, and sure enough, it's in the May 3 issue.

George Weigel:
'From Regensburg to Jesus of Nazareth,
Benedict XVI will save Western reason
with the faith'
by Giulio Meotti


He was born in Baltimore, cradle of American Catholicism. But at heart, and judging above all from his writings and reflections, George Weigel is an intellectual of Slavic vocation.

His vision of history is Oriental, ongoing, prophetic, beleaguered. The vital centers are bleeding, and culture should become pentencostal almost.

It is not surprising he is a passionate admirer of that Russian genius Vladmir Soloviev and an admirer of the providential anti-communism of Eastern Europe's Christians.

A leading lay Catholic conservative theologian in the USA, Weigel's book, "God's Choice: The Papacy moves from Karol Wojtyla to Joseph Ratzinger" came out in Italy recently (preceded by 'The Cathedral and the Cube' - his reflections on the Muslim challenge to Christianity).

Weigel also wrote the best-selling 'Witness to Hope', his biography of John Paul II, considered by many to be the definitive work so far about the Polish Pope.

We interviewed him about Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's book 'Jesus of Nazareth' and about the two years of the neo-Benedictine papacy.

"Benedict XVI is one of the greatest theologians in the world," Weigel said, "and each book by him draws from decades preceding study and reflection," in this case (the book on Jesus), 60 years.

"The significance of the book will certainly be magnified by some just because it is the first book written by him as Pope. But Ratzinger made clear from the start that these are his personal reflections. As with John Paul II, the interesting thing is that the head of the Roman Catholic Church remains a tireless intellectual, who continues his research even while bearing the weight of his office."

Weigel goes back to the days immediately following the Conclave of 2005.

"After Vatican-II, many Catholics and almost everyone in the media expected that even the Roman Catholic Church would follow the path taken by other Christian churches in the West, that of indulgence towards modern secularism and the conviction that religious faith is only a lifestyle, a personal choice.

"These expectations had doctrinal consequences, such as the question of whether Jesus is indeed the only way to salvation. In choosing this Pope, the College of Cardinals intended to send an unmistakable signal to the whole Church.

"John Paul's \theology of the body' and Benedict XVI's reflections on eros and agape in Deus caritas estare the instruments we need to fight the new gnosticism, which is really aiming for a totalitarian nihilism. "

In the book on Jesus, according to Weigel, the Pope has renewed his entire methodology: "The text has something very refreshing and unprecedented. Benedict affirms some results of the historico-critical method and also that he trusts the Gospels which have transmitted to us a historically credible portrait of Jesus of Nazareth. This approach of 'either/or' has always been characteristic of Ratzinger's Christology for decades. His homilies are like 'miniatures' of the Christian faith.

"This book combines a rigorous thought and a profound passion. Benedict teaches us that the relationship of God with the world is a love story, not a power relationship expressed in terms of a battle of wills. God enters the history of man, He comes into the world through a woman in the communion of love. So Benedict says the image that culture has of man is deeply influenced by his image of God."

Before the Conclave, Ratzinger and his brother had looked forward to retirement together in Bavaria. "But the Conclave had other plans for the Cardinal, obviously. And now he has just turned 80 here in Rome. When he first appeared on the loggia of St. Peter's on April 19, 2005, to bless the world Urbi et Orbi, I couldn't help feeling some sadness that the cardinal's plans had been upset, because I have always considered him with much gratitude, affection and respect.

"I also thought that on that day, Ratzinger wasn't showing his joy at being elected but rather the joy of being liberated - he would no longer be in the gigantic shadow cast by John Paul II, nor would his role be confined to imposing discipline."

But this has not kept him from being the theologian Pope. "He has an encyclopedic knowledge of two millennia of theology and the cultural history of the West. He is a shy monastic scholar without the gigantic public personality of his predecessor. But he has demonstrated an impressive public presence of a different kind - just think back on the funeral of John Paul II and Benedict's first public appearance as Pope.

"This is a man who knew firsthand the totalitarianism of Nazism. He has been betrayed by ex-students like Leonardo Boff and by ex-colleagues like Hans Kueng. If Wojtyla was an intellectual who had a profound respect for popular piety, a mystic who was also a sportsman, a celibate who wrote about human sexuality, an orphan who incarnated fatherhood for a world in need of fathers, and was the most visible man in history, Ratzinger is a Christian gentleman, someone unostentatious but with an unequalled intelligence, genuine modesty and profound spirituality. And above all, irony. Such irony.

"Ratzinger is a great catechist. He can distill the most difficult aspects of Christian doctrine into language which anyone can grasp. This new Benedict is a man convinced that ideas do have consequences in this world, and that society cannot build its foundations on false gods.

"Europe started the 20th century with unprecedented confidence in scientific and cultural progress. Within 50 years, it had instead mountains of corpses, oceans of blood, Auschwitz and the gulag. What happened? The self-cannibalism of freedom. Desperate ideas about the human being, wedded to technology, made the 20th century a chamber of death.

"And now the irrationality of this new 21st century is not just the irrationality of killing in the name of God. It is also the irrationality of radical skepticism, that corrosive skepticism that is eating away at Europe's vitality. That is why Benedict is inviting us to make room for reason."

The Pope's most controversial speech - his lecture in Regensburg last September, says Weigel, placed two critical problems on the world's agenda: The danger of irrational faith and the danger of losing faith in reason.

"All Popes are 'conservative'- one becomes Peter's successor to preserve the truths of the Catholic faith. The church does not reinvent itself with every new Pope.

"Benedict's No to the idea of matrimony as an agreement between 'consenting adults', for instance, is based on a 5,000-year-old Yes: the stable union of a man and a woman for their mutual good and for the good of their children. And his No to reproductive technologiesis is based on a Yes to human dignity. Man and woman, mother and father, are icons.

"Catholicism tells us not only that we are capable of greatness, but that greatness is asked of us.

"Ratzinger has used all the tools of mdern research to fulfill this task of conservation. But 'conservative", 'traditionalist' and 'doctrinaire' are all labels that say little about him and obscure his true personality."

Benedict, says Weigel, has been closely observing humanity threaten itself on so many fronts. "There is a potential for a ne Daerk Age in a world conquered by jihadism, a world in which the light of religious freedom and other basic rights will be extinguished. Can Islam be autocritical? Can the West rediscover its devotion to reason and help Islamic reformers? These are the questions Benedict has posed. If the West limits its concept of 'reason' only to purely instrumental rationality, in a self-indulgent post-modern mode, it negates human ability to grasp the truth and it will not be able to defend itself.

"Then there's the danger of a new Dark Ages, when men are produced as by assembly line through the new biotechnologies. I read Aldous Huxley's Brave New World when I was at school. I reread it two summers ago. It is incredible how frighteningly actual it is. When manufacture replaces generation, the temptation is great to 'create' human beings. It is now possible to 'produce' so-called 'designer babies', but this will never be an independent human being but will always be the copy of an ego.

"Benedict XVI teaches that man and woman are radically equal before God, but they are not interchangeable in His design for man. In the grammar of Benedict XVI, eros is an exodus. Deus caritas est is his effort to introduce 'God with a human face'"

The Pope is about to leave for Brazil, where the Catholic church has been losing ground to Protestant evangelism.
"I am hoping for three things out of this trip: a challenge to Latin America that it may be the protagonist of its own history instead of being the object of North American history; an acknowledgment that the ground conquered by Protestantism is partly an outcome of the Church's own failings; and a recognition that in the challenges of secularization, the evangelicals are allies of Catholics."

When the guardian of the Christian faith was elected Pope, Weigel wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal saying that a light had been lit on the rim of this dark crater of reason.

"It is not ingratitude to the Enlightenment to say that a secularism which desertifies the human spirit, an exclusivist humanism, threatens the West, which does not allow us to pass on a sense of life to our children and grandchildren.

"Regensburg was a courageous attempt to create a new public
grammar that is able to discipline and direct the public discourse to the most serious problems facing us. The victory of reason is an antidote to secularist smog. Today, emotions have replaced reason as the arbiter of judgment.

"Chesterton wrote that if the circle suggests infinity and pefection, the Cross has at its center 'collision and contradiction'. That is why Benedict XVI underscores the 'scandal' of the Crucifixion. Since St. Paul addressed the Corinthians, this scandal is not against reason but beyond reason.

"The mysteries of the faith are not a puzzle to be resolved - they are truths beyond reason, like the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. We know that the world is round, but we often live as though it were flat. 'The anger of self-mutilation', Solzhenitsyn called it.

"In the 17 years that I have known him and conversed with him, I was always struck by the fact that Ratzinger is a man who likes to laugh. Benedict XVI is convinced that the human comedy is not anything, in the end, but the divine comedy."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/05/2007 6.36]

'Everyone is a missionary'
says the Pope to Fidei donum



Vatican City, May 6 (AsiaNews) – Benedict XVI strongly urged participants to have trust and hope, speaking yesterday to the Supreme Council of the Pontifical Missionary Works and the World Mission Congress Fidei donum, which recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of Pius XII’s encyclical Fidei donum (April 21, 1957).

Certain that the “master of the mass will never fail to provide workmen for his mass,” the Church looks [with hope] at the challenges of today’s society, he said.

There may be problems like the low number of vocations, but there are also “signs of hope that in every part of the world show the encouraging missionary vitality of the Christian people.”

“Awareness that we are all ‘missionaries’— that we are involved albeit in different ways in announcing and bearing witness to the Gospel—is growing.”

“Fifty years have passed,” he told those present led by Card Ivan Dias, prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, “since my venerable predecessor, aware of the changing times and the arrival of new peoples and nations on the world stage, understood with far-sighted pastoral wisdom that new and providential horizons and missionary paths were opening for the announcement of the Gospel in Africa."

"With prophetic intuition, Pius XII looked especially at Africa when he thought about a new missionary ‘entity,’ which took the name of Fidei donum from the first words of that encyclical. With it, in addition to traditional forms of missionary cooperation, he wanted to encourage new ones that would allow so-called ‘old’ Christian communities to work with new or nascent ones in the lands of recent evangelisation.

"The former would be urged to send some priests to the ‘young’ and promising Churches in order to work with local ordinaries for a given period of time.

“The venerable Pontiff had two goals in mind. On the one hand, [this approach] would rekindle the missionary ‘flame’ in each component of the Christian people; on the other, it would promote a more conscious cooperation between the dioceses in the old tradition and those [emerging] in the new, recently evangelised regions.

"In the past five decades, Pius XII’s invitation was reiterated several times by all of my predecessors and, thanks to the impulse of the Second Vatican Council, the number of fidei donum priests has multiplied. Like many men and women religious and lay volunteers, they left for Africa and other regions of the world, sometimes at a high cost for their diocese of origin.

"I want here to extend my special thank you to these brothers and sisters, some of whom gave their blood to spread the Gospel. As you very well know, the missionary life marks those who experience it forever whilst at the same time nurturing the ecclesial communion that makes all those who are baptised feel as members of a one Church, the mystical Body of Christ."

In a letter to Cardinal Ivan Dias, the prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, dated April 21, the 50th anniversary of the 1957 papal brief, the Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone also urged Fidei donum priests to renew the “missionary effort promoted 50 years ago by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Fidei donum.”

In his letter, Cardinal Bertone expressed his appreciation for the upcoming congress in Rome organised by the Pontifical Mission Union. As requested by the national directors of the Pontifical Mission Works, the prelate insisted on the need “to rethink the communion and the Churches’ shared responsibility for the mission as well as the methodological issues that that implies like shared planning, the integration of Fidei donum missionaries through specific tasks and functions, their reintegration in their Church of origin, the exchange of people, means and apostolic methodologies, as well as [the development of] training profiles for missionaries.”

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/05/2007 15.36]

A full translation of the Pope's messages at Regina caeli today as been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.





Pope: May, the month of Mary,
allows us to rediscover
key task of announcing Gospel


Vatican City, May 6(AsiaNews) – May, the Marian month, is an opportunity to rediscover, with the early Church, the fundamental task of the Christian: courageously announcing and bearing witness to the Gospel.

Benedict XVI suggested this to Catholics on the eve of a journey he will undertake this month to Latin America, from May 9-14.

In Brazil, he will preside at the canonization of that countryu's first antive-born saint, Frei Antnio di Sant'anna Galvao, and at the opening of the Fifth genral Conference of latin American and Caribbeanbishops.

After the recital of the Regina Caeli, the pope greeted around 40,000 people gathered in St Peter’s Square on a beautiful spring morning. In different languages, he also asked for prayers that the upcoming trip may turn out well.

Among the crowd in the square were participants of the “Spring Marathon”, “the peak of the School Feast organized in collaboration with the Vicariate of Rome, an occasion for the Catholic school communities of Rome and Lazio to meet.”

Benedict XVI addressed the children who filled the square with yellow balloons and festive cries, wishing them a “happy Marathon and especially a good end to the scholastic year.

[The rest of the story quotes from the Pope's text].

Kiev, May 4, Interfax ­- Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko’s audience with Pope Benedict XVI planned for May 7 has been postponed till another day to be agreed upon soon.

Ukrainian president’s official visit to Italy formerly scheduled on 6 to 8 has also been postponed, Yuschenko’s press service reports.

It has been agreed through diplomatic channels that the visit will be retimed as soon as possible.

Brazilian president has extraordinary words
for the role of the church in Brazil


VATICAN CITY, May 7 (PETRUS) - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva says that he will discuss the social problems facing Brazil when he meets with Pope Benedict XVI on May 10.

Lula said in a radio interview that "the Church plays an important role" in Brazil's social policies.

"I spent a great deal of my life working directly or indirectly with movements linked to the Church in the task of creating a society that is more just in Brazil," said Lula, a leading labor leader before he entered politics.

"Some of the social policies that I have been pursuing as President," he continued, "were the results of what I learned during my work with the church-linked movements. We have very good relations (with the Church). We respect the autonomy of the Church, and tthe Church respects the autonomy of the State."

Lula praised his friend, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, who was Archbishop of Sao Paulo until he was named to head the Cognregation of the Clergy a few months ago. He said he was his 'companion and associate' in efforts to carry out themission of the Church to aid "the poorest, the most oprresed in this country and in the rest of the world" and had led "the active participation of the Brazilian church in the war against poverty."

Lula concluded; "The Church has an extraordinary role in Latin America - not only to evangelize, but more important, to raise the consciousness and conscience of every person."


Commemorative stamp for Benedict


The Brazilian Post Office will issue a commemorative stamp of the Pope's visit on May 10, with the launching ceremony to be held at the Palacio dos Bandeirantes when the Pope meets Brazilian President Lula on May 10.

The stamp has a face value of 0.90 riais (about 45 US cents) and will have a first printing of 2.04 million.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2007 16.09]

The Pope will speak out strongly
on the problems of Latin America,
Bertone says

VATICAN CITY, May 7 (PETRUS) - Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, told journalists today that Pope Benedict XVI in his various messages will directly address the major problems of Latin America when he visits Brazil later this week.

Cardinal Bertone spoke after inaugurating a course at the Pontifical Gregorian Univeristy attended by some 20 diplomats from the embassies of various Muslim states to the Holy See,
to inform them about the structures of the Vatican as a state and of the Catholic Church itself.

The course is one of the outcomes of the controversy that followed the Pope's Regensburg lecture.

Bertone told newsmen afterwards the Church has always followed "with great concern" the problems of Latin America, particularly "poverty, unequal distribution of wealth, and violence" as well as the "exodus of Catholics to Protestant sects".

At the same time, he said, there have been recent "signs of hope, the recovery of missionary initiative and of lay commmitment among Catholics."

During the Holy Father's visit this week, he said, the Pope will issue 'strong messages' on these issues, as well as on the question of right to life and the defense of life.

He expressed the hope that the Pope's messages would be welcomed not only by Catholics but also by politicians.

"The Pope will make an appeal for an equitable distribution of wealth as well as respect for the rights of everyone, especially those who are weakest and most defenseless."

He declined to say whether the Pope would make a specific appeal to the leaders of Latin American against the decriminalization of abortion.

"The Pope is fine-tuning his speeches. Of course, he will have discussions of a 'political' nature with Brazil's leaders and his messages will be meant for everyone, not just Catholics. In general, the Pope will address the bishops and priests of the local churches and the Catholic communities therein, and finally, all men of goodwill who are sincerely interested in the good of Latin America."

On the question of the rise of Protestant sects in Brazil, Bertone said: "Probably the emergency that the Church faces internally in Brazil is how to carry out a more solid effort at evangelization and a stronger, more effective catechesis in order to counteract the effect of Protestant sects on the Church."

He cited "hopeful signs" such as the "return of vocations to trhe relgiious and consecrated life" among Catholics not only in Brazil but throughout Latin America.

Bertone said that Church diplomacy at present is also focused on the problems of war and peace in the Middle East, and of poverty and civil conflicts in Africa.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/05/2007 15.28]

Political tightrope looms
in EU/Vatican relations
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
Posted on May 7, 2007


Arguments currently swirling in Brussels over an invite to Pope Benedict XVI to address the European Parliament illustrate both the depth of current tensions between the EU and the Vatican, as well as the tightrope diplomats on both sides are walking in an effort to keep lines of communication open.

The President of the European Parliament, German Hans-Gert Pöttering, extended the invitation to Benedict XVI in a March 23 meeting with the pope in Rome.

In mid-April, a group of leftist parliamentarians and allied non-governmental organizations wrote to Pöttering to object. In his April 26 response, Pöttering denied that the invitation constitutes “special treatment” for the Catholic Church. Moreover, Pöttering said, he made the invitation only after consultation with the leadership of the various political groupings in the parliament.

Pope John Paul II addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1988.

Criticism of the invitation to Benedict XVI came from the Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics, a group of 19 members of the European Parliament from various leftist parties. Staffing for the group is supplied by Catholics for a Free Choice, an organization which advocates for change in Catholic teachings on sexuality and reproduction.

Also objecting to Pöttering’s invitation was the European Humanist Federation, a Belgium-based group that promotes secularism and the religious neutrality of public institutions, and which claims to represent the “not much under fifty percent of Europeans” who say they have no religious beliefs.

“A monologue by the head of one specific religion, who also happens to be the head of a foreign state, hardly qualifies as an open, regular and transparent dialogue,” wrote Dutch parliamentarian Sophie in’t Veld, chair of the Working Group on Separation of Religion and Politics, in an April 10 letter to Pöttering.

The letter from the Humanist Federation – ironically dated April 16, the pope’s birthday – is more barbed, charging that the invitation to Benedict XVI “threatens to undermine trust in the European Parliament.”

“People will not accept that a religion or belief they do not hold should be picked out to be honored and be given influence in the institutions of secular government,” it says.

The letter concludes, “If it is too late to withdraw your unnecessary invitation, then may we ask you at least to make arrangements for [the pope] to answer questions from Members of the Parliament, who can then ask him to defend himself and his policies in a far freer discussion than he normally encounters?”

The exchange over the invitation caps a particularly rocky two months in the relationship between the EU and the Vatican, which began in March with a conference in Rome sponsored by the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Union.

Both the Catholic organizers of the conference, as well as Pöttering, had hoped that the event might mark a positive turning point in EU/Vatican relations after bruising battles over the Vatican’s call for references to God and the Christian roots of Europe in the new European constitution.

Pöttering, a member of the Christian Democrats in Germany and a practicing Catholic, had supported the Vatican’s position. At the Rome conference, he argued that the EU and religious bodies such as the Catholic Church should cooperate.

Hopes for a new era of good feelings were dimmed, however, when Benedict XVI received the members of the conference on March 24 and pointedly accused Europe of “apostasy,” a remark that in context struck some as ill-tempered. One Catholic who works for the EU said the remark had become “the Regensburg of Europe.”

Tensions deepened further on March 30, when Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, President of the Italian bishops’ conference, spoke to a meeting of diocesan communications personnel in Italy.

Addressing proposals to grant legal recognition to same-sex unions, Bagnasco warned of the social consequences of abandoning objective standards of morality. He used language that some interpreted as comparing homosexuality to incest and pedophilia, which produced angry protests and even death threats against Bagnasco in Italy.

In Brussels, three leftist Italian members of the European Parliament proposed that Bagnasco’s remarks be condemned as part of a broader EU declaration on homophobia. That suggestion triggered an avalanche of criticism from Catholic officials. SIR, the official news agency of the Italian bishops, editorialized that “it’s time to say ‘enough,’” and condemned what it called “propagandistic and violently anti-clerical arguments from a handful of malcontents.”

In the end, the April 26 declaration did not mention Bagnasco by name, but denounced “inflammatory or threatening language or hate speech” from political and religious leaders. The text criticized “discriminatory remarks by political and religious leaders targeting homosexuals, since they fuel hate and violence even if later withdrawn,” and asked “the respective organizations’ hierarchies to condemn them.”

Analysts say that Pöttering faces skepticism on both sides in his attempt to keep EU/Vatican relations on an even keel. He’s caught between leftist members of parliament who aren’t necessarily interested in constructive dialogue with the Catholic Church, and senior Vatican officials who are increasingly dubious about the EU as a conversation partner. Some have come to see the EU as aggressively secular and hostile to the church, and would prefer to avoid direct dealings with European institutions.

In his April 26 response to in’t Veld, Pöttering said that one of his priorities as president of the European Parliament is “intercultural dialogue,” including exchanges with religious leaders. Referring to Article 52 of the draft European constitution, which deals with relations with churches and religions, Pöttering says “there is clear support in the parliament for engaging in such dialogue.”

“Like yourself, I favor a clear separation of church and state,” Pöttering writes. “But I also share your view that churches can contribute greatly to public debate and to shaping a European Union of values.”

He says that on May 15 in Brussels, the EU will hold a conference for “high-level leaders” from the Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Sunni, Shi’ite and Jewish traditions, on the theme of “Building a Europe Based on Human Dignity.”

Pöttering says he hopes that background “will serve to demonstrate that your accusation of special treatment for the Catholic Church, and your consequent objection to the invitation to Pope Benedict XVI, are totally unfounded.”

Pöttering adds that he consulted all the political groups in parliament before making the invitation, and briefed them afterwards. Though Pöttering does not say so in his letter, EU sources told NCR this includes the leadership of the liberal coalition to which in’t Veld belongs.

A previous invitation for Benedict XVI to address the European Parliament was extended in April 2006 by then-President René van der Linden. A Vatican spokesperson at the time said the pope had “willingly accepted” the invitation, but so far no date has been set.

The Holy See has observer status at the European Parliament. The Holy See’s representative to the EU is currently French Archbishop André Dupuy.

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

I am almost tempted to open a separate thread just to document this dogged militant Cathophobia in the European Union and its institutions because we certainly have posted a number of stories about it on the Forum.

A few months ago, the Italian Vice-President of the European Parliament, said that the Parliament alone has passed censured or criticized the Catholic church on at least 30 occasions - and that was months before the current Cathophobic wave.

However, there are some well-known truths in there:



Pope visits Brazil, church loses ground

By ALAN CLENDENNING, Associated Press Writer

SAO PAULO, Brazil - Pope Benedict XVI is heading to the world's most populous Roman Catholic country at time when evangelical Christians are packing converted storefronts and cavernous churches every Sunday, thrusting their Bibles in the air.

Benedict will try to halt that wave of Protestant fervor during his first trip to Brazil. Aiming to energize its more than 120 million Catholics, Benedict will canonize the country's first native saint, hold Masses that could attract millions and open a conference of Latin American bishops in the holy shrine of Aparecida.

Few believe the five-day papal visit, which begins Wednesday, will reverse the flight of Catholics who have abandoned the church to become Protestants — or who simply stopped attending Mass amid profound societal change.

Nearly half the world's 1 billion Catholics live in Latin America, but Pentecostal churches are enjoying explosive growth, promising divine intervention to lift parishioners from lives of misery in a region where the divide between rich and poor is among the worst on the planet.

Brazil's census shows the percentage of citizens characterizing themselves as Catholics plunged from 89 percent in 1980 to 74 percent in 2000, while those calling themselves evangelical Protestants rose from 7 percent to 15 percent.

A study released last week by Brazil's respected Getulio Vargas Foundation indicated the Catholic decline stabilized from 2000 to 2003, but also showed the percentage of Protestants continued to rise.

Sao Paulo's former Catholic archbishop, Claudio Hummes, told reporters the losses are "a hemorrhage, and it's not over."

"It is due to the expansionism of Protestant sects that attract an ever-larger number of baptized Catholics, but also to moral relativism, imported from Europe and introduced on the continent above all by the local ruling classes, the mass media and the intellectuals," said Hummes, now prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Bishops.

The Vatican's Latin American leaders also struggle with a host of secular issues, including Brazil's free distribution of condoms to combat AIDS, a rise in second marriages not recognized by the church and Mexico City's move to legalize abortion.

"The Catholic Church faces not only competition but losses in Latin America," said Fernando Segovia, professor of theology at Vanderbilt University's Divinity School. "This has to be foremost in Benedict's mind, combined with a severe shortage of clergy. You put those two things together and you have a rather difficult situation for Rome to handle."

Many wonder whether Benedict will be able to make a difference, especially since the church's situation worsened in Latin America despite frequent visits by his beloved predecessor, John Paul II.

"He was the pilgrim pope, who went to Latin America as a conquering hero, but for all John Paul's popularity, things grew worse over his tenure," said former Vatican radio reporter David Gibson. The new pope "is 80 years old, and he's not John Paul in his early days. Benedict is an older man, a theologian, a man of words rather than presence and action."

Some also see the German-born Benedict as out of touch with the developing world, an image Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi has tried to counter by emphasizing the pope's concern for problems ranging from poverty and debt to the fight against arms trafficking. "It's not true that he's 'Eurocentric' as some claim," Lombardi said.

But many Brazilians still follow the liberation theology movement Benedict moved to crush when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and they remember well that he labeled their work a Marxist heresy.

While the church's hierarchy in Rome has pressured Catholic priests around the world to stay out of politics, these Brazilians have remained defiant: more than 60,000 ecclesiastic base communities have been instrumental in educating poor people, union organizers and most of the leaders of the Landless Rural Workers' Movement, Brazil's most radical squatter group.

In the lawless Amazon rainforest, Catholic priests, nuns and lay people work tirelessly to organize poor settlers to stand up for their rights. The most prominent was Dorothy Stang, an American nun killed in 2005 while trying to settle poor farmers on an area ranchers wanted for development.

Brazil's bishops have tried recently to promote a middle ground — lobbying the government for better working conditions for sugarcane cutters and to eliminate the virtual slavery of workers in the Amazon. But many Brazilian Catholics remain bitter over the Vatican's treatment of the movement's leaders.

The conservative Protestant churches don't engage in social activism, but religious experts say they do better than the traditional Catholic church at meeting the basic needs of poor Brazilians.

The Protestant congregations "tend to generate a very strong sense of community with a much higher percentage of Pentecostals who participate in small activities like Bible study, outreach, providing financial help, finding jobs," said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

At a Sunday service in the massive God and Love Pentecostal Church that looms over several elevated Sao Paulo highways, thousands of blue-collar workers and their children waved their hands, shouting "Hallelujah!" and spontaneously speaking in tongues as pastors promised Jesus would solve their earthly problems and guarantee them passage to heaven.

Hundreds stuffed money into small envelopes, checking boxes requesting prayers to give them jobs, prosperity or health.

Less than a mile away, several hundred mostly middle-aged and elderly Catholics sat in the Our Lady of Consolation church amid ornate stained glass windows and pews hewn decades ago from Brazilian hardwood.

They dutifully rose to recite the rosary and sing hymns, then sat in silence as a priest urged them to seek salvation by being obedient sheep in God's flock.

AP writer Victor Simpson contributed to this report from Vatican City.

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

Let me add the Reuters story here - the second one ysterday, after the report from their correspodnent in Aparecida, equally negative. Cassandra is what the MSM have chosen to be for this trip. With 500 million adherents [no other faith comes close] - despite obvious problems -that's a shaky future? The Church has been alive there for five centuries. Let us see how long the sects will last!


Pope to face shaky Church future
in Latin America
By Philip Pullella


VATICAN CITY, May 7 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Wednesday starts his first trip to Latin America, where a Church that is home to nearly half of the world's Catholics faces an uncertain future and falling numbers.

The May 9-14 trip to Brazil, the most populous Catholic country, will also be a personal challenge to the Pope, who is still associated with crackdowns on Liberation Theology in the 1980s when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

The trip's main purpose is to make a keynote address in the city of Aparecida to open a major conference of Latin American bishops, who will discuss strategy for the Church.

As the Latin American Church looks at its future, one main question will be why it is losing tens of millions of members to protestant sects such as Evangelicals and Pentecostalists.

"The sects continue to spread in Latin America," said Professor Guzman Carriquiry, undersecretary at the Pontifical Council for Lay People and one of the few non-clerics in the Vatican to hold a senior position.

"We have already lost 30-40 million members to them. We have to ask ourselves questions about how we are announcing the gospel, how we are teaching, why are people looking for something different?" he told Reuters in an interview.

A study in the 1990s showed that as many as 8,000 Roman Catholics were leaving the Church in Latin America every day to join sects they see as more charismatic and which give them more personal attention than the highly structured Catholic Church.

"This erosion calls for a radical re-thinking of how the faith is being transmitted and received today in Latin America," said Carriquiry, who is Uruguayan.

"If we lose the Catholic tradition in Latin America, our people will lose, and all of Catholicism will lose out. The very future is at stake," he said.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the Church realized "it should also have the capacity of self-criticism" and the Pope will likely discuss the defections in speeches.

Benedict is best known in Latin America for what he did as Cardinal Ratzinger, when, as head of the Vatican's doctrinal body, he disciplined a string of Latin America's Liberation Theologians.

The late Pope John Paul was convinced that, in their defense of social justice, Liberation Theologians were inspired by Marxist political analysis. He and other critics accused them of promoting a violent class struggle. [And weren't/aren't they? Maxists and advocates of class struggle, as they remain to this day? As though God only created the poor and everybody else does not count.]

Although many in the Vatican think Liberation Theology is yesterday's problem and say the Pope will not likely dwell on the issue, it still divides the Church in Latin America and many there still see the interventions of the 1980s as open wounds.

Other issues will likely to be the Church's role in helping the poor, the crippling shortage of priests, and how it will deal with growing secularization in a globalizes world.

The Pope will also visit Sao Paolo, South America's largest city, canonize Brazil's first native-born saint, and visit a drug rehabilitation centre.

Vatican officials expect inevitable comparisons with the late Pope John Paul, who visited Latin America 18 times during his papacy of nearly 27 years and had an easy relationship with the more expressive outward culture of its people.

"In Latin America there is a devotion to the Pope as head of the Church, regardless of who he is," said Carriquiry. "There will be a great and festive welcome. We'll see how he reacts."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/05/2007 15.27]

Aparecida to launch new bid
for evangelization, solidarity
and justice in Latin America

In three days, Benedict XVI will be leaving for Brazil to inaugurate the fifth general conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops, in what will be his first pastoral visit to Latin America.

It is the sixth foreign voyage for the Pope in two years. On this occasion, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, gave a long interview to the principal newspaper of Sao Paulo, Folha de Sao Paulo, and to Vatican Radio. Giovanni Peduto reported for Vatican Radio.

Carinal Bertone: Everyone knows that the visit first came about because of the fifth general Conference of CELAM. Although it is his first trip to Latin America as Pope, he knows Latin America quite well, from meeting with all the bishops of Latin America regularly at the Vatican dutring their ad-limina visits in the past quarter century.

He has also taken part in meetings held in Latin America. For example, a meeting in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1996 with the president and bishops representing the various dctrinal commissions on the Continent. [As Cardinal, he has also been to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and twice to Brazil before, in 1985 and 1990].

So for him, this is a return, and to the great nation of Brazil which is the most populous Catholic country in the world. Now, as Pope, he must face the challenges and the problems of this great Christian continent, profoundly Christian, at the start of the third millennium - a continent John Paul II called 'the continent of hope.'

It has its peculiarities, precisely because it was evangelized early [from the 16th century], and Christianity has permeated its history, all its structures and activities - even if, unfortunately, that has not helped resolve the more burning problems of the continent - inequality, poverty and even oppression.

Therefore it is a providential occasion to launch a message to all pastoral workers, to local communities, to the local Churches, to all Christians and to men of goodwill, for a great movement of solidarity and promotion of justice in that Continent.

How does the Holy See view the road that the Church should take in Latin America?
As we had occasion to discuss at the meeting here last February of all the Apostolic Nuncios in the 22 countries of Latin America, it is a continent that has been greatly wounded by too many tragic situations. Let us j,ust think of the violence that afflicts its cities, of drug trafficking which is becoming more powerful and aggressive, of social inequalities, of unemployment, migration, deteriorating education which affects young people most who make up the great majority of citizens, but also the shortcomings of representative democracy.

Of course, the Church is present in all this to consolidate the 'good news' of the Gospel, but also to promote a 'human revolution' for equality and justice and peace which is in the very DNA of the Church, and which is brought about and carried forward by all the elements that make up the Church: the bishops, the hierarchy, laymen, the great religious congregations, old and new, the lay movements.

And so the Church sees positive signs in the local communities there and a new growth in vocations to the priesthood and the consecrated life, as well as increased awareness among the laity which must be supported and made to grow.

The preparatory document for the fifth conference in Aparecida stresses in several places the situations of injustice and inequality found in Latin America. What kind of response may we expect from the Conference?
The Church has a matrix, a program of social action spelled out in the social doctrine of the Church, which has been distributed throughout the world, which has been taken on and assimilated, I would say, by laymen engaged in social and poltiical work, but also by the religious, the priests and the bishops. This social doctrine illumines us and inspires our actions.

The fifth Conference - with the capacity of its participants to make objective observations of actual situations - will identify the specific lines that should be followed - as they did Medellin, Puebla and Santo Domingo [previous sites of CELAM conferences].

There is no doubt that all the ecclesial components are engaged in a double task - in true evangelization, and therefore, consolidation of the Christian faith, of Christian knowledge and experience of life; and in social action and human promotion.

There are thousands of initiatives, for instance, from Europe and the other continents to aid Latin America. For instance, I will be going to Peru soon to accompany an Italian assocaition called Operation Mato Grosso, which does social action work in Latin America.

The church in Latin America must consolidate, ratify, verify, maybe correct defects and deficiencies in all these various efforts, in order to amplify this immense activity, a river of social charity which runs through all of Latin America.

What are your expectations out of this conference in Aparecida?
Above all, a reinforcement of ecclesial unity in the mission entrusted to the Catholic church in Latin America - unity of the bishops and local churches among themselves, their unity and communion with the Pope and therefore with the supreme pastor of the universal achurch, who comes to bring his word, his solidarity with his messages which - as we have seen in the past two years - are very incisive and touch people intimately and goes to the heart of their real problems.

Of course, the Pope places great importance, first of all, in instilling in people's hearts a passionate love for Christ, and expects that the bishops and priests of the Church likewise give first place to this love of Christ as the unique and universal Savior.

So with eyes fixed on Christ, unity among themselves and with Christ the Savior. Then, to emphasize the encounter with Jesus in the Eucharist, through Massgoing, especially on Sundays, as a source for all the energies and resources that lead one to charity and love for our neighbor, as the Pope has explained so well in his encyclical Deus caritas est.

I think these two lines - the attraction to Christ and unity with Him, and the operative line of charitable, social and even political action by members of the Church in the societies they inhabit, as yeast for society - will be the two master lines which will be assumed and launched into action by the conference in Aparecida.


PREPARING FOR THE POPE:


Portuguese stylist Maria Laura Correia
with outfits she created for Pope Benedict
for his liturgies in Sao Paulo.



Stage for the Pope is all set
at Pacaembu stadium, Sao Paulo,
where he will meet the youth
on May 10.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/05/2007 13.07]

For the record, Vatican Information Services reports about papal activities on Saturday and Monday:

POPE TO FEMALE RELIGIOUS:
TOUR PRIORITY MUST BE
INTIMACY WITH CHRIST



VATICAN CITY, MAY 7, 2007 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received participants in the plenary assembly of the International Union of Superiors General, a body that represents 794 families of female religious on five continents.

The plenary is being held over these days and has as its theme: "Challenged to weave a new spirituality which generates hope and life for all."

The Holy Father indicated how all superiors general must "animate and promote ... a mystical and prophetic form of consecrated life, one strongly committed to realizing the Kingdom of God. These are the 'strings' with which the Lord moves you to 'weave' today the living fabric of a productive service to the Church and an eloquent evangelical testimony that is 'ever old and ever new' because it remains faithful to the radical nature of the Gospel and is courageously incarnated in contemporary life, especially where the greatest human and spiritual poverty exists."

"Only from this union with God," the Holy Father said, "does the 'prophetic' role of your mission arise and find nourishment," a mission "that consists in announcing the kingdom of heaven, so indispensable for all times and all societies."

Benedict XVI encouraged the religious not to give in "to the temptation to abandon your intimacy with your celestial Spouse, letting yourselves be excessively drawn by the interests and problems of daily life. The Founders of your institutes managed to become 'prophetic pioneers' in the Church because, ... following Jesus' example, they strove to communicate with concrete words and gestures the love of God through total giving of self, always maintaining their gaze and hearts fixed upon Him."

"May your primary concern be to help your fellow sisters to seek ... Christ and to put themselves generously at the service of the Gospel. Do not lose heart and dedicate every possible effort to the human, cultural and spiritual formation of the people entrusted to your care, that they may be capable of responding to modern cultural and social challenges. Be the first to set the example in shunning comforts, luxuries and convenience to accomplish your mission."

The Holy Father also called upon the religious "to share the wealth of your charisms with those who are committed to the one mission of the Church, which is to build the Kingdom. To this end, establish serene and cordial collaboration with priests, the lay faithful and especially families, in order to meet the suffering, needs, material poverty, and above all the spiritual poverty of so many of our contemporaries. Cultivate, moreover, sincere communion and close collaboration with bishops, who are primarily responsible for evangelization in the particular Churches."

HOLY FATHER THANKS
'FIDEI DONUM' MISSIONARIES

VATICAN CITY, MAY 5, 2007 (VIS) - At midday today, the Pope received participants in the meeting of the senior council of the Pontifical Missionary Works and in the world congress of "fidei donum" missionaries. Both events were held this week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Servant of God Pius XII's Encyclical "Fidei donum," which was published on April 21, 1957.

Benedict XVI pointed out how Pius XII, in conceiving of a new kind of missionary known as "fidei donum," sought "to encourage, alongside traditional forms, another kind of missionary cooperation between so-called 'ancient' Christian communities and those just born or taking their first steps in recently evangelized territories."

Pope Pius' aim was, "on the one hand, to awaken a renewed missionary 'flame' in all Christian people and, on the other, to promote more conscious collaboration between dioceses of ancient tradition and regions of primary evangelization." Over the last fifty years, Pope Benedict went on, the number of "fidei donum" priest's has grown. They, "together with religious and lay volunteers, have departed on mission for Africa and other regions of the world, sometimes at the cost of no small sacrifice for their dioceses of origin.

"I would like," he added, "to express my special thanks to these our brothers and sisters, some of whom spilt their blood to spread the Gospel."

Going on to consider the difficulties faced by the missions, Benedict XVI referred to the "diminution and aging of the clergy in dioceses that once used to send missionaries to distant lands. Within the context of a widespread vocational crisis, this clearly represents a challenge that has to be faced," he said.

Despite such problems, however, "we must look with trust to the future" because "all over the world signs of hope bear witness to the encouraging missionary vitality of Christian people. ... The Lord, before leaving His disciples for heaven, in sending them out to announce His Gospel in all corners of the earth, said: 'Remember I am with you always, to the end of the age'."

"The Lord of the harvest," the Holy Father concluded, "will ensure that there is no lack of workers in His harvest if we, trustingly and insistently, ask this of Him in prayer and in the docile acceptance of His Word and His teachings."

SWISS GUARD:
A TRUE MISSION SERVING CHRIST
AND THE CHURCH

VATICAN CITY, MAY 5, 2007 (VIS) - Today in the Vatican, the Holy Father received 38 new recruits to the Pontifical Swiss Guard who tomorrow will take the oath as members of that corps. Family members and friends of the new recruits accompanied them in their meeting with the Pope.

Speaking in German, French and Italian, Benedict XVI pointed out how the Pontifical Swiss Guard has "a long history of loyalty and of generous and dedicated service, sometimes performed even unto the heroic sacrifice of life." In this context, he expressed his gratitude for "your silent but effective presence at the Pope's side. Thank you for the professionalism and for the love with which you undertake your mission.

"Indeed, yours is not just a professional service," he added, "it is also a true mission in the service of Christ and of His Church. ... The Lord calls you to sanctity, in other words to be His disciples, always ready to listen to His voice, to undertake His will and to accomplish it in your daily duties. This will help to make you 'good Christians' and at the same time 'exemplary soldiers,' animated by that evangelical spirit that makes of all the baptized a 'leavening' to ferment the dough and a 'light' to illuminate and warm the workplace and the home."

"May the Lord," the Pope told the guards, "help you to accomplish your mission ... with courage and loyalty. To this end, never cease to nourish your spirit with prayer and with listening to the Word of God. Participate devotedly in Mass and cultivate a filial devotion towards Mary. Invoke and seek to imitate your patron saints - Martin, Sebastian and Niklaus von Flue 'defensor pacis et pater patriae' - that they may assist you from above and that you may 'serve the Supreme Pontiff and his legitimate successors faithfully, loyally and honorably' as each of you says in the words of your oath."


PONTIFICAL LEGATE FOR ANNIVERSARY
OF FATIMA APPARITIONS

VATICAN CITY, MAY 5, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a Letter, written in Latin and dated April 13, in which the Pope appoints Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, as pontifical legate to solemn opening celebrations marking the 90th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, Portugal. The event is due to be held in Fatima on May 12 and 13.

The cardinal will be accompanied on his mission by Msgr. Piero Pioppo, nunciature counsellor at the Secretariat of State, and by Luigi Roberto Cona, secretary of the apostolic nunciature to Portugal.

The same issue of the journal TEMPI, which carried the interview with George Weigel posted in translation here last weekend, also had this editorial, which is very appropriate for these days of hysterical Pope- and Catholic-bashing by viciously anti-religious elements. Here is a translation.

But why on earth do people
still flock to the Pope
despite all the preaching
by the 'masters' of opinion?
Editorial by Tempi
Issue of May 3, 2007

What is this 'evil atmosphere', as the Pope once termed it, this totalitarian darkness which is common to the daily massacres in Baghdad, the nihilism of the Virginia Tech amok, and the anger that self-described 'pacifists' bring to the public squares as well as the media and Internet?

It is nothing new, of course. The Gospel of John reminds us that "The world lies under the power of evil." And yet, from one season to the next of this daily witches' sabbath, the heart of man has not given up.

Because the heart knows, even if confusedly at times, what good is. It is not something that comes automatically out of a tangle of rules. It is more like a sunlit day, something present and actual, which corresponds humanly to the reasonable, affectionate nature of the human heart.

That is why with people like Giuliano Ferrara [our readers should know him well by now!], we can proceed gladly. Whereas with others - though may be moralists, priests, family members, one wouldn't even think of sharing a coffee with them. That's how repulsive people are who purport to be the 'masters' of our thought, be they priest, journalist, intellectual, our own father, people who indulge in personalism.

It is not by chance that such personalism has alienated and continues to alienate many people from the Church or, alternatively, from reading the newspapers (what one philosopher called 'modern man's daily prayer').

Quite different is the attraction, and therefore the impulse, that awakens in the person with a healthy mind an intelligence that is enamored not by its own rules, desires and utopias. But by something beyond the self. By the real. Because the real is what is good.

The Jewish writer Hannah Arendt used to say that the only possibility for an ethical principle to be verified and validated is when itis manifested in the form of experience.

Now, why is is it that authentic Christian experience has shed so much blood without ever returning the hate which has been directed to it? Why is it that authentic persons admire the Holy Father? Why is it that a book by the Pope on Jesus virtually sells out the day it hits the stores? Can one explain all this without at least hypothesizing that the Great Object of Defamation has something that interests the people?

And what could interest people more than the good? Jesus, who is the power of good.

That is the reason why the abovementioned 'masters' cannot stand the reality of the Pope and the Church. They want at all costs to keep the Good News from becoming reflection and experience, and thus a judgment on and interference in their affairs. And the power they wield over others.

In order that, not knowing anything else but the power of evil, their subjects may continue to seek protection from their fears under the master's wing, whether it concerns ethical, religious or social questions.

An editorial writer for Avvenire draws some conclusions about the Pope's book. Here is a translation:




On the headiness
of being 'shipwrecked'
for Christ - or
falling in love with Christ
By Marina Corradi


After reading the Pope's book on JESUS OF NAZARETH, one is left above all with the challenge that is contained in the lines and between the lines of the book.

Extremely synthesized, I would call it the profound beauty of a demanding God. At a time when we have been educated to be content with short-term satisfactions, with love at predetermined times, with small promises, this book speaks of a God who alone can respond to man's demand for happiness, but who, at the same time, demands all from us.

Not just to be 'good' or 'honest', or to observe rules, as in that moralist reduction that has flawed the Christian education of so many among us. Benedict's God demands much more.

"Without dying to ourselves, without the shipwreck of that which is simply and only 'ours', there is no communion with God, there is no redemption," he writes.

It is true. The Gospel speaks of the seed that must perish in order to bring new life and bear fruit. But arriving at modern relativism - in which every choice is equivalent and therefore, a matter of indifference - brings to mind something written by Teresa of Calcutta: "Wherever Christ wants you to be, on a throne or on the road, you must forget yourself and move on."

"The shipwreck," as Ratzinger describes it, "of that which is simply and only 'ours'." The reader who confronts this proposition may feel terrified: what is 'ours', our ambitions, our expectations, even hope in our children - all of this should go?

In the 21st century, we are not accustomed to such challenges, nor to such elevated propositions. We are used, yes, to be asked to work, not to steal, not to kill, to behave ourselvEs civilly, to be resigned to the eventual deterioration of loves which never pretended to be for always, to begin with.

But Benedict's challenge is a renewal of the original Gospel: to search for Christ means to be willing to die to oneself - to be willing and ready for everything. But it is also a challenge to 'want everything' in a sense.

The model Benedict has in mind seems to be the vir desideriorum, the 'man of desires', in the Book of Daniel, "who is not satisfied with existing reality and does not stifle the heart's disquiet, that which always directs man to something greater."

This is a total passion which, the Pope assures us, will already give us here and now a taste of the Beatitudes: A bit of the escathon that is to come - the Kingdom of God - is already here and now.

Exigent challenge and extraordinary promise. Is this absurd in our day? Think how many teenagers risk their lives every Saturday night in their absurd challenges to the dark - from wild partying to reckless driving! What is it but an unrecognized, unexpressed angst which leads them to throw themselves with abandon into pleasures that leave them unsatisfied to the point of self-annihilation?

The Pope seems to be saying to this generation that the questioning by teenagers must be taken seriously, so they can be told to whom they should really address their questions.

One can read the Pope's book with detachment, with prudent good sense, and take from its lucid analyses the essence of Christianity.

Or one could go farther and be fascinated by the terms of his proposal - falling in love with Christ 2000 years after He lived on earth.

Avvenire, 8 maggio 2007

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

If I may make a little comment: To anyone who has at least 'dabbled' in the eastern religions, the idea of getting out of oneself, giving up the 'self' (ego), of dying to oneself, is fundamental. Except that, as in Buddhism for example, this surrender of self is impersonal, and ultimately, paradoxically, selfish. One dissolves into the cosmos, as it were, but the transcendence does not necessarily translate first into giving oneself for another, as Christ commands us to do.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/05/2007 17.58]

For the duration of the papal trip to Brazil, all Brazil-related stories about tHE Pope will be posted only in APOSTOLIC VOYAGE TO BRAZIL.

Rocco Palmo has this item on his blog yesterday:

A week from today, the English translation of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth hits store shelves in the US and UK.

The book has received an exceptional welcome in Italy, where it was released last month to coincide with the author's 80th birthday. First-day sales clocked in at over 50,000 copies of the initial run of 350,000. With well over 100,000 now sold, a second Italian printing of 70,000 has already been ordered. [Rocco's figures are not up-to-date. In the first 10 days of sales, the Italian edition sold 510,000 copies, the German 480,000, and teh Polish aboout 100,000.]

To commemorate the book's US debut, a formal presentation will be held at Washington's John Paul II Center on Release Night, to be co-hosted by Nazareth's US publisher, Doubleday, and the nuncio to Washington Archbishop Pietro Sambi.

A scheduled panel discussion will include contributions from Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, the columnist and author George Weigel, and John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter. (In a sign of the times, both Lori and Allen now have blogs of their own.)

The 7pm event will be open to the public. An English translation of the book's preface is already available, but whether Harry Potter-esque "midnight sales" will be keeping any Barnes & Nobles open late remains unclear as of press time.

Here's the dust-jacket - click on the thumbnail to see it in proper size:




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

GEORGE WEIGEL HAS A BLOG??? BETTER CHECK THAT ASAP!!!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2007 13.28]

The May 21 issue of Newsweek magazine devotes 3 'articles' to the Pope's book - one by a Newsweek staff writer, one by George Weigel, and the third, an excerpt from the chapter on Jesus's baptism, taken from the English edition which comes out in the United States on Tuesday, May 15.

Hrere's the staff article first:

Who Was Jesus?
Pope Benedict's Answer

With 'JESUS OF NAZARETH,' Pope Benedict XVI fights back against 'the dictatorship of relativism' by showing the world his vision of the definitive truth of Christ.




By Lisa Miller
Newsweek
May 21, 2007 issue

Who was Jesus, really? It has become acceptable, even fashionable, lately to speak of the Christian Lord in casual terms, as though he were an acquaintance with a mysterious past.

Pope Benedict's trip to Brazil last week revived an old retelling of the Christian story in which Jesus is cast as a social revolutionary determined to overthrow the established order.

The massive success of "The Da Vinci Code" reflected the hunger of millions to see Jesus as a regular person — a man with a wife and a child, a popular teacher whose true life story was subverted by the corporate self-interest of the early church. [Come on! That's a rather far-fetched and probably groundless conclusion - it's like saying Christians, which I still asuume were the majority of the book's readers, really do not like to think of Christ as God! The book was a success because it was an easy-to-read potboiiler with all the elements for a popular hit.]

A look at any best-seller list reveals a thriving subcategory of readable scholarly and pseudo-scholarly books about the "real" Jesus: he was, they claim, a sage, a mystic, a rabbi, a boyfriend. He was a father, a pacifist, an ascetic, a prophet. In some parts of the Christian world, the aspects of Jesus' story that most strain credibility — the virgin birth and the physical resurrection — have become optional to faith.

One can almost hear Pope Benedict XVI roaring with frustration at this multiplicity of interpretations. Benedict, a theologian by training with an expertise in dogma, has been fierce in his condemnation of the creep of Western secularism, and the promiscuity of recent Jesus scholarship must seem to him another symptom of the same disease, all ill-founded and subjective claims.

"We are building a dictatorship of relativism," he declared at the beginning of the 2005 enclave that elected him pope, "that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires."

Benedict's answer to secularism is Christ, and this week the American publisher Doubleday releases Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict's portrait of his Lord [and that of more than two billion human beings on earth today!].

It is an orthodox biography [An orthodox biography! — A biogrpahy of the 'orthodox' Jesus, yes, but orthodox as biography? Its form is clearly not your usual biographical form!] one that acknowledges the role of analytical scholarship while in fact leaving little room for a critical interpretation of Scripture. [What? The whole context is an interpretation of Scripture, both as bearer of historical fact, and in the light of the belief that Jesus is the Son of God.]

This approach is not surprising, given Benedict's job description, but in a world where Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and other proponents of secularism credit belief in Jesus as one of the sources of the world's ills, Benedict offers an unvarnished opposing view: belief in Jesus, he says, is the only thing that will save the world.

And so, in a way, in the big bookstores and Amazon.com rankings, the ancient war between believers and nonbelievers begins anew. Liberal Catholics worry that, in spite of assurances to the contrary, Benedict is writing an "official" biography, and they have cause for concern.

Benedict has been notoriously disapproving of unauthorized views of Jesus [What Christian wouldn't be disapproving, for God's sake! - in the literal and figurative sense?]; he helped John Paul II crush the liberation theologists in Central America in the 1980s and more recently suspended an American priest for writing a book about Jesus that he said did not give sufficient credence to the resurrection.

But for orthodox Christian believers, Benedict's book is a gift — a series of homilies on the New Testament by a masterful Scriptural exegete. In NEWSWEEK's exclusive excerpt, the pope explicates Jesus's baptism by John — a story that appears in all four Gospel accounts and that modern historians believe is at least partially grounded in fact.

Benedict starts by describing the social and historical backdrop of the time, and the common use of ritual ablutions among first-century Jews. His picture of John the Baptist reflects the scholarly consensus in most respects; the Baptist was an ascetic who likely spent time with the Essenes, a group of Jews who lived in the desert awaiting the imminent arrival of the Messiah.

(Benedict is notably silent, though, on the Baptist as an apocalyptic preacher and on the probability that Jesus also believed that the world was about to end in flames. In a discussion elsewhere in Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict goes to lengths to show that when Jesus said, "The Kingdom of God is at hand," he didn't mean the apocalypse.

What he meant, the pope writes, is that "God is acting now —this is the hour when God is showing himself in history as its Lord." This interpretation may be profound and in keeping with Benedict's Christ-centered message; it is not, many scholars would say, historically accurate. [How can any interpretation be called 'historically accurate' or 'inaccurate' for that matter - in this case, how can scholars presume to get into the mind of Jesus to find out what He meant, especially since He often spoke in parables or with references to the Old Testament.]

In one of the excerpt's most affecting scenes, Benedict describes the hordes of sinners he imagines standing on the banks of the Jordan River waiting for baptism. Jesus waits among them.

Morphing from historian to pastor, Benedict asks the question that so many Sunday-school teachers have asked before him: as the Son of God, why would Jesus need to be purified? "The real novelty is the fact that he — Jesus — wants to be baptized, that he blends into the gray mass of sinners waiting on the banks of the Jordan," writes Benedict.

"Baptism itself was a confession of sins and the attempt to put off an old, failed life and to receive a new one. Is that something Jesus could do?"

With that, the senior theologian steps in, the man whose job for two decades was to defend Catholic doctrine to the world. Jesus' descent into the water is a symbolic foreshadowing, Benedict explains, of his death and resurrection — and the resurrection he promises to all his followers.

In the ancient Middle East, water represents death; it also represents life. With his baptism, "Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind's guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan," Benedict writes.

"He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, 'Take me and throw me into the sea'."

What of the next part of the story? The part where Jesus rises from the water, the heavens part, the Spirit descends on his shoulders (in the shape of a dove) and God's voice says, "This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased."

Does Benedict believe, as the fundamentalists do, that this literally happened? George Weigel, the theologian and papal biographer, imagines that something very important happened that day — what, exactly, he does not know.

Benedict is asking readers to see Scripture as inspired but not dictated by God, Weigel explains, and to see the New Testament narrators as real people grappling with "the extreme limitations of the describable." For Benedict, the starting point is faith.

Jesus of Nazareth, then, will not bring unbelievers into the fold, but courting skeptics has never been Benedict's priority. Nor will his portrait join the lengthy list of Jesus biographies so eagerly consumed by the non-orthodox — the progressive Protestants and "cafeteria Catholics" who seek the truth about Jesus in noncanonical places like the Gnostic Gospels.

Moderates may take Jesus of Nazareth as something of a corrective to fundamentalism because it sees the Bible as "true" without insisting on its being factual. [I think the more appropriate word is 'literal' - because one of the points the Pope makes is that the Gospel accounts are factual!]

Mostly, though, Jesus of Nazareth will please a small group of Christians who are able simultaneously to hold post-Enlightenment ideas about the value of rationality and scientific inquiry together with the conviction that the events described in the Gospels are real.

"This is about things that happened," explains N. T. Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham who is perhaps the world's leading New Testament scholar. "It's not just about ideas, or people's imaginations. These are things that actually happened. If they didn't happen, you might still have interesting ideas, but it wouldn't be Christianity at the end of the day."

Faith may actually be the most productive approach to finding truth in Scripture; the historical method has so far gleaned very little in the way of facts. Jesus left no diaries, and he had no contemporary Boswell.

The best accounts of his life, the Gospel stories, were written at least 30 years after his death by men who believed he was God; other corroborating evidence of his life is scanty at best. For more than 1,500 years, no one even thought to seek the "truth" about Jesus. For Christians, Jesus was the truth.

The Enlightenment saw the revolutionary beginnings of the 300-year quest for the historical Jesus. For the first time, scholars began to look at the Bible critically, as a series of stories written by time-bound people with biases and agendas of their own.

Thomas Jefferson announced that the "true" sayings of Jesus were as easily distinguishable "as diamonds in a dunghill," and set to work in the evenings sorting them out. [Forgive my ignorance, but which of the sayings adn discourses and parables attributed to Jesus did Jefferson find to be dung instead of diamonds?]

Nineteenth- and 20th-century scholars tried to unearth the facts of Jesus' life by studying the first-century Roman-Jewish world.

New Testament stories were true, they decided, if they "fit" into the first-century context. Stories were also true, the scholars said, if they didn't fit at all — if they so strained credibility that no sane and pious narrator would include them unless he had to. [Of course, many things about Jesus of Nazareth would not 'fit' any preconceived molds at all because he is unique, sui generis.]

Using these and other more conventional methods of verification, scholars came up with a few spindly facts about the man so many people call Christ.

Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew, ministered in Judea sometime between 28 and 33. He was baptized; a member of his own band betrayed him. He was charged with a political crime: the Romans put king of the Jews on his cross. He was buried and followers said he appeared to them after his death. No one saw him rise again, though there are reports his tomb was empty.

"We learned from the search for the historical Jesus that the search for the historical Jesus is not going to take us very far," says Alan Segal, professor of religion at Barnard College.

Nevertheless, in the last 30 years the speed and intensity of that search has escalated — starting with the Jesus Seminar, a group of scholars who, like Jefferson, tried to weed the authentic sayings of Jesus from the inauthentic and ending most recently with the largely discredited "discovery" of Jesus' family tomb in a Jerusalem suburb.

Archeology is the new frontier — untold dollars are being spent digging in Israel, looking for evidence of Jesus and his times. Not all these efforts can be said to be futile: while the search for the historical Jesus has given us very little about Jesus, it has given us a rich picture of the world in which he lived, a multicultural world of elites and peasants, of tyranny and impulses for freedom, a world where people struggled to balance their instincts for assimilation against their own religious roots — a world, in other words, very much like our own.

Benedict's portrait may contribute little to our historical understanding of Jesus, but what he does give is a window into his own, passionate and uncompromising faith, a faith that faces constant challenge in the world of ideas. Let the battles begin.

With Julie Scelfo

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2007 16.42]

Pope's Book:
A Lifetime of Learning

Pope Benedict becomes the teacher he always wanted to be.

By George Weigel
Special to Newsweek
May 21, 2007 issue




At one poignant moment in Chaim Potok’s novel The Promise, Abraham Gordon, a distinguished Jewish scholar with a skeptical cast of mind, muses on one of modernity’s discontents while walking through Central Park with Reuven Malter, a brilliant, Orthodox rabbinical student: “Of course, that’s the problem … How can we teach others to regard the tradition critically and with love? I grew up loving it, and then learned to look at it critically. That’s everyone’s problem today. How to love and respect what you are being taught to dissect.”

In that elegiac passage, written almost forty years ago, Potok defined precisely the problem that Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, addresses in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth.

“Everything” in Christianity, the Pope writes, depends on building an “intimate friendship with Jesus.” That was true in first-century Galilee; it is just as true in the twenty-first century. But twenty-first century believers have a problem that their forebears didn’t face: the many issues posed by modern methods of reading ancient texts.

Now, after two centuries of reading the Bible according to the historical-critical method - “dissecting” the biblical text, as the fictional Abraham Gordon might put it - many Christians are “in danger of clutching at thin air” in seeking this friendship with their Lord. Or so the Pope worries.

And not without good reason. Caricatures notwithstanding, Benedict XVI is no reactive anti-modern. He readily and gratefully acknowledges that, thanks to historical-critical scholarship, we know much more, today, about the different literary genres of the Bible; about the ways in which a Gospel writer’s intent affected his portrait of Jesus; about the theological struggles within early Christianity that shaped a particular Christian community’s memory of its Lord.

The difficulty is that, amidst all the knowledge gained in the biblical dissecting room, the Jesus of the Gospels has tended to disappear, to be replaced by a given scholar’s reconstruction from the bits and pieces left on the dissecting room floor. And that makes “intimate friendship with Jesus” much more difficult, not just for scholars, but for everyone.

Joseph Ratzinger was a world-class theologian long before he became the Roman Curia’s official defender of Catholic doctrine, and then the pope. In Jesus of Nazareth, Ratzinger reveals the core of his personality as he invites his readers into the classroom of a master teacher - one who has absorbed the best that modern biblical scholarship has to offer and has yet emerged from that encounter with his faith intact and enriched.

At the outset, Ratzinger asks us to join him and to “trust the Gospels,” to read them both critically and with love. Both attitudes are necessary, he suggests, if twenty-first century readers are to understand how each Gospel writer (and the Christian community from which and to which he wrote) explains the Church’s Easter faith: the conviction that “Jesus really did explode all existing cate gories and [can] only be understood in the light of the mystery of God.”

Reading the New Testament through a lens ground by decades of study and reflection, Ratzinger shows us how texts that may have become dulled by familiarity can regain their edge. There are, for instance, the well-known stories of Jesus’s temptations in the desert, read throughout Christendom on the First Sunday of Lent, every year.

How many preachers explain these temptations as dramatic variations on the perennial human temptation to utopianism, to a self-sufficiency that “pushes God off the stage”? That utopianism, Pope Benedict writes, comes at a great spiritual cost, for the “arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him” renders us incapable of finding the God we seek.

The human costs of self-constructed self-sufficiency are also steep. The tempter asks Jesus to make himself superior to God; Jesus’s rejection of that temptation, Ratzinger suggests, reminds us that “to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself, too” - a suggestion confirmed by the murderous depredations of those twentieth-century totalitarians who made ultramundane gods out of themselves.

Then there are the Beatitudes: When was the last time you heard a sermon in which these eight familiar injunctions were described as “a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure” - and thus “a roadmap for the Church, a model of what she herself should be”?

Here, as throughout the book, Benedict XVI unpacks the New estament with the help of his profound knowledge of the Hebrew Bible.

Why is it the meek to whom the Beatitudes promise the inheritance of “the land”? Because, explains Ratzinger, drawing on the imagery of the Exodus, “the land was given [to the people of Israel] as a space for obedience, a realm of openness to God that was to be freed from the abomination of idolatry.”

Why is it the pure of heart who will see God? Because, as the Old Testament psalms teach, “the organ for seeing God is the heart. The intellect alone is not enough … ”

In Jesus of Nazareth, Benedict-the-theologian also shows himself to be a man of deep prayer, which has the interesting effect of making his book an invitation to Christians to pray more intelligently.

One of the book’s finest sections is a lengthy exposition of the Lord’s Prayer. There, the Pope asks us to consider why Jesus taught us to pray to “Our Father” rather than to “My Father.”

The answer, he suggests, touches both the uniqueness of Jesus and the indispensability of the Church for the Christian life: “Jesus alone was fully entitled to say ‘my Father’ because he alone is truly God’s only-begotten Son … Only within the ‘we’ of the disciples can we call God ‘Father,’ because only through communion with Jesus Christ do we truly become ‘children of God.’

"In that sense, the word our is really rather demanding: It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our ‘I’. It requires that we surrender ourselves to communion with the other children of God. It requires, then, that we strip ourselves of what is merely our own, of what divides. It requires that we accept the other, the others - that we open our ear and our heart to them. When we say the word our, we say ‘yes’ to the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather his new family.”

These are themes that Joseph Ratzinger has been developing for almost half a century. In that sense, Jesus of Nazareth (and its promised successor volume) is a great summing-up of a lifetime of learning, refined into insight and understanding by a lifetime of praying the New Testament as well as studying it.

If, amidst some familiar Ratzingerian themes, there is a new chord struck with particular force, it is Benedict XVI’s insistence, repeated several times, that a Christian Church faithful to its Lord cannot be a Church of power.

Benedict does not quite describe Christianity’s alliance with state power as a Babylonian captivity. Still, he comes very close when he writes that “the temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in various forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power."

"The struggle for the freedom of the Church, the struggle to avoid identifying Jesus’ Kingdom with any political structure, is one that has to be fought century after century. For the fusion of faith and political power always comes at a price: faith becomes the servant of power and must bend to its criteria.”

Those words are a sharp challenge to those Catholics who still seek a confessional state, either along the lines of the old regimes in Europe or according to a more contemporary, liberation theology model.

It is also, if subtly, a summons to a new dialogue with Islam on the necessity of separating religious and political authority, precisely for the sake of acts of faith freely offered to the God of Abraham.

For almost two thousand years, as Benedict XVI writes, Christianity has claimed that Jesus “explodes all the categories.” Yet that claim, as it emerges from the stories and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, has been obscured in recent centuries by an approach to biblical interpretation that so stressed dissection that an encounter with the category-exploding meaning embedded in the biblical text became more difficult.

Joseph Ratzinger tries to lift that veil of obscurity in this very personal search for what he terms “the face of the Lord.” He now shares that search with the world through a book in which he returns time and again to the theme of his first encyclical as pope, the plenitude of God’s love.

Scholars argue about the historicity of the miracle of the wedding feast at Cana; Benedict XVI puts the edge back on the story by proposing what the story means: through his action on behalf of an embarrassed host, Jesus is telling us that the sign of God’s presence in history is “overflowing generosity.”

The overflowing water-made-wine, this “superabundance of Cana,” is the first signal that “God’s feast with humanity, his self-giving for men, has begun.”

The extraordinary comes to us through the ordinary. The Gospels, read both critically and with love, show us “reality’s translucence to God.” That is the claim of Jesus of Nazareth, posed with conviction and compassion by a pope writing very much as the teacher he always wanted to be.

Weigel, a senior fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center and a NEWSWEEK contributor, is the author of God’s Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, as well as Witness to Hope, considered to be the definitive biography of John Paul II so far.


© 2007 Newsweek, Inc.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2007 16.44]

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM
John wonders why Jesus has come down to the river.
The answer is in the Cross and the salvation of the world.

By Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI



Conflicting movements, hopes, and expectations shaped the religious and political climate around the time of Jesus’ birth.

Judas the Galilean had called for an uprising, which was put down by the Romans with a great deal of bloodshed. Judas left behind a party, the Zealots, who were prepared to resort to terror and violence in order to restore Israel’s freedom. It is even possible that one or two of Jesus’ twelve Apostles — Simon the Zealot and perhaps Judas Iscariot as well — had been partisans of this movement.

The Pharisees, whom we are constantly meeting in the Gospels, endeavored to live with the greatest possible exactness according to the instructions of the Torah. They also refused conformity to the hegemony of Hellenistic-Roman culture, which naturally imposed itself throughout the Roman Empire, and was now threatening to force Israel’s assimilation to the pagan peoples’ way of life.

The Sadducees, most of whom belonged to the aristocracy and the priestly class, attempted to practice an enlightened Judaism, intellectually suited to the times, and so also to come to terms with Roman domination. The Sadducees disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), whereas the pattern of life practiced by the Pharisees found an enduring form in the sort of Judaism shaped by the Mishnah and the Talmud.

Although we observe sharp antagonism between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels, and although his death on the Cross was the very antithesis of the Zealot program, we must not forget that people came to Christ from every kind of background and that the early Christian community included more than a few priests and former Pharisees.

An accidental discovery after the Second World War led to excavations at Qumran, which brought to light texts that some scholars have associated with yet another movement known until then only from literary references: the so-called Essenes.

This group had turned its back on the Herodian temple and its worship to withdraw to the Judean desert. There it created monastic-style communities, but also a religiously motivated common life for families. It also established a productive literary center and instituted distinctive rituals, which included liturgical ablutions and common prayers.

The earnest religiosity of the Qumran writings is moving; it appears that not only John the Baptist, but possibly Jesus and his family as well, were close to the Qumran community. At any rate, there are numerous points of contact with the Christian message in the Qumran writings.

It is a reasonable hypothesis that John the Baptist lived for some time in this community and received part of his religious formation from it.

And yet the Baptist’s appearance on the scene was something completely new. The Baptism that he enjoined is different from the usual religious ablutions. It cannot be repeated, and it is meant to be the concrete enactment of a conversion that gives the whole of life a new direction forever.

It is connected with an ardent call to a new way of thinking and acting, but above all with the proclamation of God’s judgment and with the announcement that one greater than John is to come.

The Fourth Gospel tells us that the Baptist “did not know” (cf. Jn 1:30-33) this greater personage whose way he was to prepare. But he does know that his own role is to prepare a path for this mysterious Other, that his whole mission is directed toward him.

All four Gospels describe this mission using a passage from Isaiah: “A voice cries in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God’” (Is 40:3).

Mark adds a compilation of Malachi 3:1 and Exodus 23:20, which recurs at another point in Matthew (Mt 11:10) and Luke (Lk 1:76, 7:27) as well: “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way” (Mk 1:2).

All of these Old Testament texts envisage a saving intervention of God, who emerges from his hiddenness to judge and to save; it is for this God that the door is to be opened and the way made ready. These ancient words of hope were brought into the present with the Baptist’s preaching: Great things are about to unfold.

We can imagine the extraordinary impression that the figure and message of John the Baptist must have produced in the highly charged atmosphere of Jerusalem at that particular moment of history.

At last there was a prophet again, and his life marked him out as such. God’s hand was at last plainly acting in history again. John baptizes with water, but one even greater, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, is already at the door.

Given all this, there is absolutely no reason to suppose that Mark is exaggerating when he reports that “there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (Mk 1:5).

John’s baptism includes the confession of sins. The Judaism of the day was familiar both with more generally formulaic confessions of sin and with a highly personalized confessional practice in which an enumeration of individual sinful deeds was expected (Gnilka, Matthäusevangelium I, p. 68). The goal is truly to leave behind the sinful life one has led until now and to start out on the path to a new, changed life.

The actual ritual of Baptism symbolizes this. On one hand, immersion into the waters is a symbol of death, which recalls the death symbolism of the annihilating, destructive power of the ocean flood.

The ancient mind perceived the ocean as a permanent threat to the cosmos, to the earth; it was the primeval flood that might submerge all life. The river (Jordan) could also assume this symbolic value for those who were immersed in it. But the flowing waters of the river are above all a symbol of life.

The great rivers — the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris — are the great givers of life. The Jordan, too, is — even today — a source of life for the surrounding region.

Immersion in the water is about purification, about liberation from the filth of the past that burdens and distorts life — it is about beginning again, and that means it is about death and resurrection, about starting life over again anew. So we could say that it is about rebirth.

All of this will have to wait for Christian baptismal theology to be worked out explicitly, but the act of descending into the Jordan and coming up again out of the waters already implicitly contains this later development.

The whole of Judea and Jerusalem were making the pilgrimage to be baptized, as we just heard. But now something new happens: “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan” (Mk 1:9). So far, nothing has been said about pilgrims from Galilee; the action seemed limited to the region of Judea.

But the real novelty here is not the fact that Jesus comes from another geographical area, from a distant country, as it were. The real novelty is the fact that he — Jesus — wants to be baptized, that he blends into the gray mass of sinners waiting on the banks of the Jordan.

We have just heard that the confession of sins is a component of Baptism. Baptism itself was a confession of sins and the attempt to put off an old, failed life and to receive a new one.

Is that something Jesus could do? How could he confess sins? How could he separate himself from his previous life in order to start a new one? This is a question that Christians could not avoid asking.

The dispute between the Baptist and Jesus that Matthew recounts for us was also an expression of the early Christians’ own question to Jesus: “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Mt 3:14).

Matthew goes on to report for us that “Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.” (Mt 3:15).

It is not easy to decode the sense of this enigmatic-sounding answer. At any rate, the Greek word for “now” — árti — implies a certain reservation: This is a specific, temporary situation that calls for a specific way of acting.

The key to interpreting Jesus’ answer is how we understand the word righteousness: The whole of righteousness must be fulfilled. In Jesus’ world, righteousness is man’s answer to the Torah, acceptance of the whole of God’s will, the bearing of the “yoke of God’s kingdom,” as one formulation had it.

There is no provision for John’s baptism in the Torah, but this reply of Jesus is his way of acknowledging it as an expression of an unrestricted Yes to God’s will, as an obedient acceptance of his yoke.

The act of descending into the waters of this Baptism implies a confession of guilt and a plea for forgiveness in order to make a new beginning. In a world marked by sin, then, this Yes to the entire will of God also expresses solidarity with men, who have incurred guilt but yearn for righteousness. The significance of this event could not fully emerge until it was seen in light of the Cross and Resurrection.

Descending into the water, the candidates for Baptism confess their sin and seek to be rid of their burden of guilt. What did Jesus do in this same situation? Luke, who throughout his Gospel is keenly attentive to Jesus’ prayer, and portrays him again and again at prayer — in conversation with the Father —tells us that Jesus was praying while he received Baptism (cf. Lk 3:21).

Looking at the events in light of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian people realized what happened: Jesus loaded the burden of all mankind’s guilt upon his shoulders; he bore it down into the depths of the Jordan. He inaugurated his public activity by stepping into the place of sinners. His inaugural gesture is an anticipation of the Cross. He is, as it were, the true Jonah who said to the crew of the ship, “Take me and throw me into the sea” (Jon 1:12).

The whole significance of Jesus’ Baptism, the fact that he bears “all righteousness,” first comes to light on the Cross: The Baptism is an acceptance of death for the sins of humanity, and the voice that calls out “This is my beloved Son” over the baptismal waters is an anticipatory reference to the Resurrection. This also explains why, in his own discourses, Jesus uses the word baptism to refer to his death (cf. Mk 10:38; Lk 12:50).

Only from this starting point can we understand Christian Baptism. Jesus’S Baptism anticipated his death on the Cross, and the heavenly voice proclaimed an anticipation of the Resurrection. These anticipations have now become reality.

John’s baptism with water has received its full meaning through the Baptism of Jesus’S own life and death. To accept the invitation to be baptized now means to go to the place of Jesus’S Baptism. It is to go where he identifies himself with us and to receive there our identification with him. The point where he anticipates death has now become the point where we anticipate rising again with him. Paul develops this inner connection in his theology of Baptism (cf. Rom 6), though without explicitly mentioning Jesus’ Baptism in the Jordan.

The Eastern Church has further developed and deepened this understanding of Jesus’s Baptism in her liturgy and in her theology of icons. She sees a deep connection between the content of the feast of Epiphany (the heavenly voice proclaiming Jesus to be the Son of God: for the East the Epiphany is the day of the Baptism) and Easter.

She sees Jesus’s remark to John that “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (Mt 3:15) as the anticipation of his prayer to the Father in Gethsemane: “My Father ... not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Mt 26:39). The liturgical hymns for January 3 correspond to those for Wednesday in Holy Week; the hymns for January 4 to those for Holy Thursday; the hymns for January 5 to those for Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

These correspondences are picked up by the iconographic tradition. The icon of Jesus’s Baptism depicts the water as a liquid tomb having the form of a dark cavern, which is in turn the iconographic sign of Hades, the underworld, or hell.

Jesus’s descent into this watery tomb, into this inferno that envelops him from every side, is thus an anticipation of his act of descending into the underworld: “When he went down into the waters, he bound the strong man” (cf. Lk 11:22), says Cyril of Jerusalem.

John Chrysostom writes: “Going down into the water and emerging again are the image of the descent into hell and the Resurrection.”

The troparia of the Byzantine Liturgy add yet another symbolic connection: “The Jordan was turned back by Elisha’s coat, and the waters were divided leaving a dry path. This is a true image of Baptism by which we pass through life” (Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon, p. 296).

Jesus’s Baptism, then, is understood as a repetition of the whole of history, which both recapitulates the past and anticipates the future. His entering into the sin of others is a descent into the “inferno.” But he does not descend merely in the role of a spectator, as in Dante’s Inferno.

Rather, he goes down in the role of one whose suffering—with—others is a transforming suffering that turns the underworld around, knocking down and flinging open the gates of the abyss. His Baptism is a descent into the house of the evil one, combat with the “strong man” (cf. Lk 11:22) who holds men captive (and the truth is that we are all very much captive to powers that anonymously manipulate us!).

Throughout all its history, the world is powerless to defeat the “strong man”; he is overcome and bound by one yet stronger, who, because of his equality with God, can take upon himself all the sin of the world and then suffers it through to the end — omitting nothing on the downward path into identity with the fallen.

This struggle is the “conversion” of being that brings it into a new condition, that prepares a new heaven and a new earth. Looked at from this angle, the sacrament of Baptism appears as the gift of participation in Jesus’ world — transforming struggle in the conversion of life that took place in his descent and ascent.


From JESUS OF NAZARETH by His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, translated into English by Adrian J. Walker. To be published in English on May 15. English translation © 2007 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. © 2007 by Liberia Editrice Vaticana, Città del Vaticano. © 2007 by RCS Libri S.p.A., Milano.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/05/2007 16.38]

FATIMA, Portugal, Brazil, MAY 13, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has expressed his desire to visit the Marian shrine at Fatima, says Cardinal Angelo Sodano.

Cardinal Sodano, the papal delegate to the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of Mary's apparitions at Fatima, revealed the Pope's wish on Saturday.

The cardinal told the press about a brief conversation he had with Benedict XVI before the Pope's departure for Brazil.

"I hope one day, if God will give me the health, to travel there," the Pope said, according to Sodano, who is also dean of the College of Cardinals. The Portuguese news agency Ecclesia reported the cardinal's disclosure.

Cardinal Sodano said to the journalists in Fatima: "I am certain that one day you too will have him here."

The celebrations in Fatima end today.

[The Pope had been invited to come to Fatima for the 90th anniversary celerbation, but he had to decline because the dates for the CELAM conference and his visit to Brazil had already been arranged.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/05/2007 5.56]

A couple of Spanish theologians as well as Alessandra Borghese are among those I have read in print who have referred to Joseph Ratzinger, before he became Pope, as an Aquinas for our day - which struck me as odd only because Ratzinger has been a professed Augustinian rather than a Thomist.

Michael Dubruiel, Amy Welborn's husband who blogs at Annunciations, joins them after reading JESUS OF NAZARETH, as he explains below. He uses the term Great Book (with capital letters), as in 'Great Books' referring to books an educated man should not fail to read.

The book in its English edition is being formally presented tonight at the John Paul II Center in Washington, DC, and as reported earlier, George Weigel and John Allen will be two of the panelists at the roundtable discussion on the book. (Which means the industrious John Allen is going straight from his exemplary coverage - both in terms of scope and promptness - of the Pope's Brazil visit to this event. God bless him!)

First, though, here's Michael:
===============================================================

Tuesday, May 15, 2007
This is a 'Great Book'
By MICHAEL DUBRUIEL
michaeldubruiel.blogspot.com/



I think with the release of this book (which I got yesterday and read straight through) the pope is positioning himself to be the St. Thomas Aquinas of our age. How or why do I say this?

Because like St. Thomas who answered the objections to the Faith in his day, this pope is doing the same.

A few months ago someone asked me what book I would recommend that they give to their adult children who no longer practiced the faith, without hesitation I named this book as the one. At the time I had only read some excerpts available online from Germany and Italy. It was an act of faith then, now that I have the book I know that my recommendation was justified.

This is a great book, magisterial (even though the pope doesn't want it thought of in that way). It is not just another book about Jesus, it a revolutionary book about Jesus...in that it recaptures why people have had their lives changed by their belief in Jesus for over 2,000 years.

What makes this book so special? It is like a modern Summa (those who know St. Thomas Aquinas will understand me here) in that it answers modern questions of doubt, skepticism and even inquiry on not only who Jesus is, but why Jesus is the most important person anyone has ever or can ever know.

The pope's methodology is to take a scene from the Bible, like the Lord's baptism, and then to draw on that scene from the entire Bible, to show what modern scholarship has done to help us to understand the historical context of the scene, tell us how the early Church fathers interpreted the scene, how would it have been viewed in Judaism (he uses the reflections of a Rabbi when discussing the Sermon on the Mount), and then to give the reader the meaning of this event for them.

Along the way he answers questions to the many objections modern people bring to their encounter with Jesus.

As someone who has studied theology for a number of years and been exposed to every screwball theology out there, I found this book to be a corrective lens to refocus and correct my vision of who Jesus is and what following him means.

What impresses me (and I'm not easily impressed) is that the Pope takes on the "screwball (my term, not his)" theologies in such a way as to making them seem silly (although he is incredibly charitable in his approach).

This book will have a great effect on renewing the Church and centering it on an image of Christ that is Biblical and credible, erasing years of poor and faulty preaching and teaching.

If you are not Catholic, but a Christian you will love this book too. In fact I predict you will be come a big fan of Joseph Ratzinger and will want to read his many published works to encounter someone rooted in Scripture and conversant with modern attacks on it.

If you are a non-Christian I think you will find in the book an excellent introduction to what Christians believe about the God-man from Nazareth.

To all you parents out there who sent your kids to Catholic schools and now wish they would practice their faith, give them this book and reintroduce them to Jesus of Nazareth.

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

Those of you who follow ZENIT may have noticed that they have a three-part article by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa entitled "The True Jesus of the Gospels." ZENIT does not identify its source, but it is a book review of INCHIESTA SU GESU, the Italian bestseller debunking Jesus as God by Augias and Pesce, written by Fr. Cantalamessa for Avvenire last November. Two weeks later, Sandro Magister published an English translation in www.chiesa, which we promptly posted in READINGS and can be found on
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/viewmessaggi.aspx?f=65482&idd=3699&t=1179282799109&p=1#...
Post #4961 under the title "An inquest on Jesus that doesn't resolve his true mystery." ZENIT provides its own translation.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/05/2007 4.45]

Motu proprio alert:
Castrillon confirms ruling is coming
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York
Posted on May 16, 2007


The top Vatican official in charge of use of the Tridentine Mass has confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI “intends to extend to the entire church the possibility of celebrating the Mass and the sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by Pope John XXIII in 1962.”

Those books contain the last approved version of the older "Latin Mass" celebrated prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), as well as rites for sacraments such as baptism and holy orders.

The remarks from Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, came in an address to the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The older Tridentine liturgy, according to Castrillón, “was never abolished,” and is today the object of both “new and renewed interest.” For these reasons, Castrillón said, the pope believes the time has come to facilitate wider access to this rite, noting that such a request was made by a commission of cardinals in 1986.

For some months now, speculation has swirled that Pope Benedict XVI is planning to extend wider permission for use of the older Mass, in the form of a document called a motu proprio, meaning “under his own authority.”

Castrillón’s speech at the CELAM meeting marks the first time the cardinal has publicly confirmed that such a move is imminent. Castrillón said that under the terms of the pope’s decision, the older liturgies will become “an extraordinary form of the one Roman rite.”

Castrillón did not provide additional details, such as how sweeping authorization to use the older liturgical books will be, nor whether individual bishops will still be able to place limits on their use, as is the case under current church law. Nor did Castrillón provide a specific date for when the pope’s decision will be released.

“This is a generous offering by the Vicar of Christ, who, as an expression of his pastoral will, wants to make available to the church all the treasures of the Latin liturgy, which, through the centuries, have nourished the spiritual life of so many generations of the Catholic faithful,” Castrillón said.

Castrillón also said that Benedict XVI wants the Ecclesia Dei Commission to become a permanent agency of the Roman Curia, with the purpose of conserving and maintaining the value of the older Latin liturgies.

At the same time, Castrillón said, “it’s important to affirm with total clarity that this is not a matter of going backwards, of returning to a time before the reform of 1970,” referring to the introduction of the new rite of Mass following Vatican II.

“The Holy Father wants to conserve the immense spiritual, cultural and aesthetic treasures connected to the older liturgy,” Castrillón said. “The recuperation of this richness,” he said, is united to “the no less precious gift of the current liturgy of the church.”

Castrillón went to describe a series of communities already existing within the Catholic Church which celebrate Mass and the other sacraments according to the older rites, arguing that they illustrate the potential benefits to be gained from the pope’s decision.

The full text of Castrillón’s speech, in Spanish, can be found here: www.celam.info/content/view/277/332/

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

Once again, one must commend the conscientiousness of this journalist, who obviously has not stopped following the CELAM conference just because the Pope is no longer in Brazil. This is a 'scoop' of sorts because it is the first public statement on the motu proprio by the Curial official most directly concerned with the matter. I must check whether the MSM media have picked it up....

However, I do find the equally resourceful Father Z not only has the story but a translation of Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos's speech as well, the pertinent portions of which he posts in his
blog today wdtprs.com/blog/

Cardinal Castrillon (Ecclesia Dei) to CELAM:
the time has come
By Fr. John Zuhlsdorf @ 8:43 am
May 17, 2007


[Here is the quotation]


Dear and venerated brothers:

I afford to present a brief report on the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and on the state of the pastoral reality that the Holy Father has put under its competence.

...

Undoubtedly, the most important determination, which concerns the whole Church, is the search of putting an end to the schismatic action and reconstructing without ambiguities, full communion.

The Holy Father, who was for some years a member of this Commission, wants that it become an organism of the Holy See with the proper and distinct purpose of maintaining and preserving the value of the traditional Latin liturgy.

But it is necessary to affirm with all clarity that it is not an issue of turning back, of a return to the times previous to the reform of 1970. It is an issue, on the other hand, of a generous offer of the Christ’s Vicar who, as expression of his pastoral will, wants to put at the disposal of the Church all the treasures of the Latin liturgy that for centuries has nourished the spiritual life of so many generations of the catholic faithful.

The Holy Father wants to preserve the immense spiritual, cultural and aesthetic treasures tied to the ancient liturgy. The recovery of this wealth joins to the no less beautiful of the current liturgy of the Church.

For these reasons the Holy Father has the intention of extending to the whole Latin Church the possibility of celebrating the Holy Mass and the Sacraments according to the liturgical books promulgated by Blessed John XXIII in 1962.

For this liturgy, which was never abolished, and that, as we have said, is considered a treasure, a new and renewed interest exists today and also for this reason the Holy Father thinks that the time has come to facilitate, as the first Commission Cardenalicia had wanted it in 1986, the access to this liturgy, doing of her an extraordinary form of the only Roman rite.

There are some good experiences of communities of religious or apostolic life erected by the Holy See recently that celebrate in peace and serenity this liturgy. Around them there congregate assemblies of the faithful who frequent these celebrations with happiness and gratitude.

The most recent erections are the Institute of Saint Felipe Neri in Berlin, which works as an Oratory and has become present also, with good reception, in the Diocese of Treveris; the Institute of Good Shepherd in Burdeos who gather priests, seminarians and faithful, some of them that have gone out of the Fraternity of San Pío X. The steps are very advanced for the recognition of a contemplative community, the Oasis of Jesús Sacerdote, in Barcelona.

In Latin America, since it is well-known, we must be grateful to the Lord for the return of a whole Diocese, that of Campos, earlier a Lefebvrian one, that now after five years, presents good fruits.

It has been a pacific comeback and the faithful who have registered in the Apostolic Administration are glad to be able to live in peace in his parochial communities; even more, in fact some Brazilian dioceses have made contacts with the Apostolic Administration of Campos that has put at their disposal priests for the pastoral care of the traditionalist faithful in local churches.

The project of the Holy Father has been already partially proved in Campos, where the pacific cohabitation of two forms of the only Roman rite in the Church is a beautiful reality.

We have the hope that such a model produces good fruits, also in other places of the Church where both catholic faithful live with liturgical diverse sensibilities. And we hope, also, that such a way of living together should attract also those traditionalists who are still far.

The current members of the Commission are the Cardinals Julián Herranz, Jean-Pierre Ricard, William Joseph Levada, Antonio Cañizares, and Franc Rodé. The Undersecretaries of some Dicasterios are consultants.

Till now several dispersed communities in the world have been under Ecclesia Dei. 300 priests, 79 religious men, 300 religious women, 200 seminarians and several hundreds of thousands of faithful. Curiously, the interest of the young people in France, the United States, Brazil, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia and China are increasing. Since the moment of the return of Campos, 50 priests have passed, approximately fifty seminarians, 100 religious ones and 25.000 faithful.

Today the group of the Lefebvrists consists of 4 Bishops who were ordained by Mons. Lefebvre, of 500 priests and 600.000 faithful. Joined to the group are several contemplative monasteries and some religious masculine and feminine groups, they have parishes (they call them prioratos), seminars and affiliations. They are present in 26 countries.

Let’s ask the Lord that this project of the Holy Father could be realized soon for the unity of the Church.

[Father Z picked up the English translation from
www.creerenmexico.org/

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

Isn't it remarkable that not one journalist - at least among those I have seen online - found it opportune (or even remembered) to cite, much less look up, during the Pope's visit in Brazil, the Campos community, which is, after all, the most prominent of the 'reconciled Lefebvrians'?

By the way, those who may want to do a quick brush-up about the Tridentine Mass - all you need to know - will find it most useful to look at Amy Welborn's Motu Proprio Tip Sheet which she compiled last March when the 'imminence' of the MP began being insistently bruited about. The link is http://amywelborn.typepad.com/motuproprio/

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/05/2007 21.01]

Catholics keen to host pope

Pontiff may visit N.Y., and city archdiocese prays he stops here


By Liz F. Kay
The Baltimore Sun
May 13, 2007

Pope Benedict XVI could visit the United Nations as soon as next year and, if the pontiff's schedule allows, Baltimore's archbishop has laid down the welcome mat for him at the Basilica of the Assumption.

"There's always been that hope that he could come to Baltimore," said Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese Of Baltimore. "Up until now, it was more of a distant hope. Now that he's accepted an invitation to come to New York, people's interest has intensified a little bit. People feel like maybe they're one step closer."

Cardinal William H. Keeler said he has sent a written invitation asking the pope to make a Baltimore detour during his New York visit. Though dates and a specific itinerary have not been established, Catholic News Service has reported that a U.N. trip is likely to take place next year.

The trip would be the pope's first to North America since his election in 2005 and - if Baltimore is on his itinerary - his first opportunity to tour the Basilica of the Assumption, the first cathedral constructed within what became the United States.

Keeler also invited Pope Benedict to tour the new Our Daily Bread Employment Center, which will be dedicated this month.

"I have written to him, and I have asked that he stop by Baltimore and look at our rededicated basilica and also at Our Daily Bread, so that both of them fit into the story," Keeler said.

Created in 1789, the Archdiocese Of Baltimore is known as the premier see from which other major dioceses were formed. As a result, the basilica, which reopened in November after a two-year, $32 million restoration and renovation, was the site of many important events in American Catholic history, including critical meetings of American bishops during the 1800s.

"I think it's the perfect place to come," said the Rev. Joseph S. Rossi, professor of church history at Loyola College.

Although he said jokingly that no one was consulting him about the pope's schedule, Rossi sees a connection between support for human rights at the U.N. and religious freedom at the basilica.

He described the basilica as a physical representation of the uniquely American church envisioned by John Carroll, Baltimore's first bishop and archbishop, who supported the right of different faiths to worship freely. Likewise, Pope Benedict advocates reciprocity - the rights of Christians to practice in predominantly Muslim countries, as Muslims have been protected in the West.

While New York may be the most international of American cities, "there is no more symbolic city in America than Baltimore, as far as Catholic heritage," Rossi said. And the pope could round out a U.S. tour by acknowledging the growing Hispanic Catholic community with a stop in the South or West.

Rocco Palmo, an American correspondent for the London-based Catholic weekly The Tablet who runs the blog Whispers in the Loggia, gave Baltimore a better-than-even shot at landing a spot on the pope's American itinerary.

The pontiff has made fewer public appearances than his predecessor, which reflects a different personal style - not just a difference in age, Palmo said. According to the Vatican Web site, Pope Benedict has traveled to Turkey, Germany, Spain and Poland since his election in 2005. On Wednesday, he journeyed to Brazil for a meeting of bishops from Latin America and the Caribbean - an intensive trip for someone who turned 80 last month.

The pope might be waiting to see how the Latin American trip goes before deciding on a schedule for his U.N. trip, Keeler said.

"I think that's the key factor here," the cardinal said.

"When Pope Paul VI came to New York in 1965, he was on the continent for all of 11 hours," Palmo said. "You could get away with that in those days. After John Paul II, you can't get away with that.

"I don't think he'd fly nine hours to St. Patrick's Cathedral and get back on the plane and go back."

Another Vatican observer was less optimistic.

"I really have no idea, although the fact that John Paul II did both Washington and Baltimore might suggest that Benedict XVI would more likely go into papally unvisited territory," wrote George Weigel, author of God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, in an e-mail.

On April 26, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said the pope had agreed during a private audience to make his first trip to American soil.

Keeler first invited Pope Benedict to travel to Baltimore after his 2005 election and then followed up after hearing of the New York plan.

"Obviously, I think the basilica would welcome the opportunity if the pope came here," said Mark J. Potter, the executive director of the Basilica Historic Trust.

Pope John Paul II was the first pontiff to travel to Maryland, and he also visited while he was a cardinal. Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli came to the basilica in the 1930s before he was elected Pope Pius XII, Potter said.

Pope Benedict may have heard good things about the basilica from a native son. Cardinal J. Francis Stafford, who was born in Baltimore and served as an auxiliary bishop in the city, leads the Apostolic Penitentiary at the Vatican. He celebrated a Mass in the renovated basilica at the start of the fall meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in November.

Other Vatican dignitaries also have stopped in to see the basilica, such as Cardinal William J. Levada, the former archbishop of San Francisco, whom Pope Benedict appointed to fill his old post as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Levada celebrated Mass there last month while on his way to give a speech in Cleveland.

Since the basilica reopened, more than 60,000 people have attended services or taken tours of the restored facility, Potter said.

"Word has certainly spread throughout the world that this is the church to come and see," he said.

He pointed out that there may be competition for the pope's attention in 2008. Next year, four sees - New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Bardstown, Ky. - celebrate their bicentennial anniversaries. But it's also a milestone for Baltimore, which was elevated to an archdiocese in 1808 over those four dioceses.

Our Daily Bread has been a papal destination in the past. In 1995, Pope John Paul II had lunch with clients at Our Daily Bread's current site on Cathedral Street next to the basilica. Construction is complete on Catholic Charities' new facility on the Fallsway.

Keeler isn't making any firm plans yet.

"I think I would leave that up to the advance team," Keeler said. "I would speak with them, but they will make the decisions.

"What I think we've got to do is get him here first."

The final element of the basilica complex, a prayer garden dedicated to Pope John Paul II, is expected to be completed next year. "A papal visit would certainly affect the timing on that," Caine said.

Pope John Paul also visited St. Mary's Seminary & University in Roland Park, which could be another destination given Pope Benedict's emphasis on the importance of vocations.

But for most Maryland Catholics, the best opportunity to join the pope in prayer was during Pope John Paul's Mass at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Alison Asti, executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority, said the agency will be alert to a possible papal visit.

"That was a tremendous event for the city and state last time," she said. "It is definitely on our list of things we would like to have again."

Camden Yards was "filled to the brim" when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass there in 1995, Asti said. Now, M&T Bank Stadium would offer two benefits: larger capacity and a damage-resistant artificial turf field, she said.

Potter, a Baltimore Ravens season ticket holder, said the pope would be welcome to sit with him in his upper end zone seats during a game, especially if the trip occurred in December or on the last Sunday in November 2008.

"It would be a Sunday in Advent," Potter said. "He would be wearing purple vestments."

It's been a long three days waiting for the Holy Father to get back to routine after the Brazil visit!

Pope receives bishops of Mali
in Castel Gandolfo


VATICAN CITY, MAY 18, 2007 (VIS) - Today in the Apostolic Palace of Castelgandolfo, before his return to the Vatican scheduled for 5 p.m., the Pope received prelates of the Episcopal Conference of Mali who have just complete their "ad limina" visit.

The Pope called upon the bishops to be "zealous pastors who, as men of faith, guide the people of God with trust and courage, remaining close to everyone so as to engender hope, even in the most difficult situations."

After highlighting how priests "cooperate generously in the apostolic mission and often live in difficult human and spiritual situations," the Holy Father affirmed the need for them "to live out their priestly identity and commit themselves totally to the Lord in the disinterested service of their brothers and sisters, without losing heart before the difficulties they have to face."

Contemplative and sacramental life, said Benedict XVI, "is a real pastoral priority, which will help priests to respond decisively to the call to sanctity they received from the Lord and to their mission to guide the faithful on that same journey."

Referring to candidates to the priesthood, the Pope recalled the importance of human formation "which is the base of priestly formation," he said. In this context, he indicated how "particular attention to candidates' emotional maturity will help them to respond freely to a life of celibacy and chastity, a precious gift of God, and to maintain a firm and stable conscience throughout their lives."

"There is an urgent need for the lay faithful to commit to the service of reconciliation, justice and peace," he went on. "The laity must acquire a renewed awareness of their special mission within the one mission of the Church, and of the spiritual requirements this brings with it."

The Pope emphasized the need to form "competent lay men and women to serve the common good", making them capable "of facing the daily challenges of the political economic, social and cultural fields."

The Holy Father also recalled religious and lay communities and the service they provide to the Church "through their educational work in favor of the young generations, their care for those who suffer, and their charitable work in general."

Speaking of the bishops' own concern for the pastoral care of marriage, Benedict XVI said that "in responding to the fear often expressed about the definitive nature of marriage, solid preparation and the collaboration of lay people and experts will enable Christian couples to be faithful to their marriage vows."

Finally, the Pope expressed his satisfaction at the cordial relations that exist between the Catholic faithful of Mali and their Muslim compatriots.

"It is legitimate," he said, "for each community to express its identity visibly, while maintaining mutual respect, recognizing the religious diversity of the national community and favoring peaceful coexistence at all levels of society. In this way it is possible to advance together, jointly committed to justice, harmony and peace."

Liberating Christianity

By ROBERT A. SIRICO
The Wall Street Journal Online
May 18, 2007

For decades, Jospeh Ratzinger has been battling liberationist theology, the Catholic movement tragically associated with one of the greatest ideological errors in human history: the idea that socialism can provide the means of salvation for the poor. Now, as Pope Benedict XVI, that battle is far from over. During his trip last week to Brazil, "liberationist" priests preaching revolutionary socialist activism held a kind of counter-conference to the Latin American Episcopal Conference Benedict came to address.

The pope reiterated his long-held position that Socialism cannot and will not provide the means of salvation for the poor. Rather, he said, it produces "economic and ecological destruction." And there is the theological problem: Socialism embraces a materialist conception of human history that is at odds with the Gospel's focus on the human heart. To shift the Christian mission from its primary focus of individual and cultural transformation to a politicized and state-centered agenda is fatal to the faith.

Chesterton wrote that heresy is truth gone mad, and here is a case in point. The truth about the need for social justice is being emphasized at the expense of every other truth. The liberationists bury the Gospel's warnings about power, support for private property (see the "Parable of the Treasure in the Field"), entrepreneurial ethic ("Parable of the Talents"), and Jesus' clear declaration that his kingdom is not of this world. He is the king of heaven and not, as the people who greeted him in Jerusalem believed, the earthly king who came to displace secular government.

In the 1980s, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made these points precisely: "In his saying about rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's, Jesus separates the power of the emperor and the power of God....this saying sets limits to every earthly power, and proclaims the freedom of the person that transcends all political systems. For this limitation Jesus went to his death; he bore witness to the limitation of power in his suffering. Christianity begins not with a revolutionary but with a martyr. The growth of freedom that mankind owes to the martyrs is infinitely greater than that which it could be given by revolutionaries."

As an example of an appropriate form political action directed toward human freedom, Joseph Ratzinger also wrote in praise of Bartoleme de las Casas, the 16th-century Spanish priest who was instrumental in ending the conquistadors' oppression of native peoples in the Americas. De las Casas condemned slavery because it presumed that non-Christians had no rights and no souls worth saving. De las Casas was a critic of power and a genuine champion of liberation who never lost sight of the primary focus on the individual human person.

From Benedict's early writings, we find the means to distinguish true and false liberation at the critical nexus of power. True liberation cannot be found through the state but only through the exercise of conscience and the freedom to do so. Benedict sees that the driving force behind the socialist idea has deeper roots that take us to the theological heart of the relationship between the state and salvation. From the pope's point of view, there is a very serious problem with any theology that sees political transformation as a means of achieving salvation on earth. This is not a problem unique to Marxism or its liberationist variant. It is a heresy with a long history.

Joseph Ratzinger was a champion of the Second Vatican Council that declared the unequivocal human right to religious liberty and thus the wisdom of separating church and state. In his writings since, he has been steadfast in holding to the principle that church and state serve different purposes, and that an institutional mixing of the two poses a danger to both doctrine and political praxis.

This idea of religious liberty has deep roots within Christianity (as deep as the Gospel itself) but the Catholic Church gave up the temporal power only reluctantly and only when faced with the loss of the Papal states in the second half of the 19th century. Even to this day, there is a faction dedicated to restoring the idea of an ecclesiastically administered state. Should the Church wield the sword? No, says Benedict and for this he has been criticized from more conservative elements within the Church (such as the followers of the late prelate Marcel Lefebvre who believe that religious freedom is heretical).

What was new after the Second Vatican Council was the emergence of a faction that sought to break down the distinction between the sacred and secular in a different way. Instead of calling for the restoration of aristocratic Catholic monarchies, this new Constantinianism (a re-establishment of a Church State with liberationists in control) wanted to institutionalize socialist state policy in the name of Christianity. This leftist view is the mirror image of the rightist view: Both saw politics as having a decisive role to play in the spiritual salvation of humankind.

The pope's support for the politics of freedom, then, grows out of his ideal of a depoliticized faith. And whereas his critics on the right accuse him of following some form of political agnosticism, his critics on the left suggest that his unwillingness to endorse the liberationist political agenda proves his indifference to the plight of the poor. Part of his message in Brazil was to demonstrate that one can care about justice for the poor without constructing a hyperpoliticized theology that calls for ever more power to be given to the state.

The Pope is also rightly critical of any capitalist theory that adopts the materialist conception of history that is integral to Marxism. "What is real?" Benedict asked in a speech in Brazil. "Are only material goods, social and economic and political problems reality?" No. The conscience and soul are also real. There is a point to political activism to achieve freedom for all. Salvation itself, however, comes through different means. This has been his unwavering message for decades, restated in Brazil for new times.

Father Sirico, a Catholic priest, is president of the Acton Institute.

Here is a translation of an item from PETRUS today:

MILAN - Some 1,300 persons attended the presentation of the book JESUS OF NAZARETH at the Cathedral of Milan last night.

Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, Archbishop of Milan, opened the discussion that highlighted the presentation which featured Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, and historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia as principal panelists.

Cardinal Tettamanzi said the Pope's book expressed his desire to "bring the man of today in contact with Christ as a living real person who is also a credible and coherent historical figure."

"With this book," Tettamanzi said, "The Pope has given us a lucid and profound meditation on Jesus" starting from 'the place he inhabits', namely, 'his unity with the Father.'

"By re-establishing trust in the historical truth of the Gospels," he said, "he has made us perceive that incandescent center from which the reality of Jesus derives, that which has inspired passion and interest in men through the ages."

Cardinal Kasper said that the Pope's reflections on Jesus "have absolute topicality today", particularly for a society that questions whether Jesus is really 'the Son of God' with the success of books like "Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code."

"If we lose Jesus, then we (the Church) risk leaving the historical scene...(but) this book shows that the Jesus of the Gospels is the real Jesus, the historical Jesus."

Della Loggia, as a historian, raised the 'difficulty' of evaluating a text which speaks very specifically of "a culture and knowledge that is not very familiar to lay people."

He acknowledged that the Pope's book directly confronts "the liberal positions that have been expressed about Jesus in the culture of our time," which tend to separate the spiritual Jesus from the historical, or "vulgarizing the person himself, as Dan Brown does."

Ratzinger's book, he said, "goes directly towards settling the question on the divinity of Jesus, with force and philologic clarity."

During the subsequent discussion, the question of the political implications of the book was raised.

Cardinal Kasper said the book underlines that there are things far more important than politics, because salvation is not a matter for politics. But, he added, "its messages are an impulse and inspiration for good social policy."

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

And this was the CNS report on the launching of the English edition in the United States:


Jesus’s centrality to Catholicism
hallmark of papacy,
panelists say at pope’s book launch
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien


WASHINGTON, May 17 (CNS) – The emphasis on Jesus' centrality to the Catholic faith in Pope Benedict XVI's first book as pope is likely to permeate his papacy, panelists told a Washington audience during a book launch event for Jesus of Nazareth May 15.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., and Vatican analysts George Weigel and John Allen discussed the book at the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington. The event was hosted by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States, and Bill Barry, publisher in the Doubleday religious publishing division.

Jesus of Nazareth, published in April in Italian, German and Polish, was launched in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom May 15.

"It's not easy to present a book of your boss," said Archbishop Sambi with a laugh. "But I am happy to do so because the author is a very competent and learned teacher, and the subject is a fascinating one."

Allen, Vatican reporter for the National Catholic Reporter, CNN and other media, said Pope Benedict had demonstrated his commitment to the centrality of Jesus during his just-completed trip to Brazil.

The three "news flashes" from the trip – the pope's comments on abortion and Catholic politicians, his condemnation of drug dealers and his criticism of both capitalism and Marxism – were reported as distinct from one another but had a common thread in "the false promises of ideologies" that seek to replace Jesus in people's lives, Allen said.

In his talk to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, Pope Benedict made clear that "preaching Christ is not a distraction from the work of social justice; it is working for justice," he added.

The new book "is much more than an academic exercise," Allen said. "It is the Magna Carta of Benedict's pontificate."

Bishop Lori said the book arose from Pope Benedict's "pastoral concern over distorted and relativistic views of Jesus," such as those promoted by author Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, also published by Doubleday.

Much more than an academic exercise or an "exposition of theory," the pope's book "aims to open our hearts and minds to Jesus," he said.

Bishop Lori recalled riding in a small plane in rough weather years ago with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict. Despite feeling ill, the cardinal patiently answered questions from others in the plane.

"He was like a revered professor and a gentle pastor all rolled up in one," the bishop said. "And now that person is shared with a worldwide audience."

Weigel noted that Jesus of Nazareth was written by "a man who at the core of his person is a teacher ... who wants to invite everyone into the conversation about who Jesus is."

Pope Benedict, "a man of deep prayer," issues through his book "an invitation to think while we're praying," Weigel added.

Responding to a question from the audience, Weigel said the new book also demonstrates the pope's "deep appreciation of Judaism" and his "strong rejection" of the tendency in some Christian circles to regard the New Testament as divisible from the Old Testament.

The book "could be useful as a bridge for Christian-Jewish understanding," he added.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/05/2007 20.36]