Here's a piece from the July issue of an Australian monthly magazine called Eureka Street, which describes itself as a magazine of 'public affairs, the arts and theology' - an unusual combination, until I checked who published it, and it's something called Jesunit Communications Australia with headquarters in Richmond, Victoria state....

It caught my eye because it's probably the first time any Anglophone headline has used the adjective 'gentle' for this Pope, never mind that it is his most obvious characteristic....And also because it seemed, at first reading, like it drew a positive balance. Well, even with the headline-writer's inspired phrase 'gentle Benedict', we still get the usual sins of omission and commission in reporting about this Pope.


Gentle Benedict concedes
papal roadshow must go on
By Paul Collins
Tuesday, 24 July 2007




When I was in Rome in February this year there was a fair amount of scepticism as to whether Benedict XVI would come to Sydney for World Youth Day in mid-July 2008. [Scepticism? It was never in doubt. It was always on program from the get-go!]

"He doesn’t like travelling and it’s too far to Australia", one well-informed journalist told me. [Hah! Shows you how little-informed 'well-informed' journalists are - and why doesn't Collins do his own quick archive research under BENEDICT XVI, TRIPS, AUSTRALIA?]

Well, last week Benedict publicly confirmed that he’s coming, but whether he’ll get a run on the track at Randwick remains to be seen given the attitude of the local trainers. [That's been settled, too, since this article was written!]

They want compensation for dislocation to the racing industry. That $20,000,000 the Howard government recently gave the Sydney Archdiocese might really come in handy to help calm the Australian Jockey Club.

Actually, there was a deeper reason as to why the Romans thought Benedict might not come: he’s made it clear that he thought tripping around the world wasn’t the Pope’s real ministry. He doesn’t see himself as “bishop of the world”. [Mr. Collins, just review the formal titles of the Successor of Peter, please!]

Instead, he has reasserted the traditional role of the Pope as bishop of Rome, the visible symbol of the church’s unity and the touchstone of its orthodoxy, but not the omnipresent figure who dominates Catholicism.

He would be deeply aware that it is precisely this kind of “ecclesiastical ruler of the world” syndrome that most annoys the Eastern Orthodox because they see it - correctly in my view - as heretical. [Heretical? How can a Church that is 1054 years older than its breakaway daughter be the heretical part of the equation? And it's been centuries since any Pope considered himself 'ecclesiastical ruler of the world'!]For Benedict XVI the views of the Orthodox are very important.

What we are watching is the transformation of Joseph Ratzinger, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith inquisitor, into Pope Benedict, pastoral leader. [No, what we're seeing is a transformation - dare we hope - of perception by the media!]

His apparent hesitancy to rush into things and make strong decisions [Hesitancy to make strong decisions? Think again!] may well be explained by his care to draw people together rather than alienate them. The predicted purge of dissenters and progressives has simply not occurred.

Even the CDF’s warning about the writings of liberation theologian, Jon Sobrino, was carefully and almost respectfully worded. No sanction was imposed. It was described by theologian William P. Loewe of the Catholic University in Washington as "more nuanced ... and certainly gentler" than the CDF treatment of Sobrino’s Jesuit colleague, Father Roger Haight, in the previous papacy. [Haight's offenses were also more grievous, to begin with.]

The only individuals dealt with severely during this papacy have been abusive priests such as the Mexican founder of the Legionaries of Christ, Marcial Maciel Degollado.

Another significant sign came a fortnight ago when Benedict quietly reversed the changes of John Paul II to the conclave rules for the election of a pope. In 1996 Pope Wojtyla suddenly, and for no apparent reason, changed the rule first established in 1179 requiring a two-thirds majority of cardinals to elect a pope. Pius XII made this two-thirds plus one. This rule ensured that there was reasonable unanimity among the cardinals about the person elected.

John Paul decreed that an absolute majority could decide on the next pope if, after 33 ballots, no one was elected. What this allowed was a small majority hanging out for the required ballots, and then forcing their candidate through over a large minority. It was a recipe for disaster.

Benedict has gone back to the traditional method because it eventually ensures the possibility of real consensus. While it may seem insignificant, it clearly indicates that he thinks of himself as a traditional pope, unlike his predecessor who was actually quite “revolutionary”.

One area where Benedict XVI has intervened decisively is in the appointment of bishops, which he personally supervises. He looks for men of some intellectual and spiritual quality although he doesn’t always succeed in finding them.

Benedict has personally taken charge of the appointment process and no longer leaves it up to Giovanni Battista Re, the cardinal prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops who, in the last years of the John Paul II papacy had carte blanche in the matter of episcopal appointments. This lead to a considerable number of mediocre appointments and a couple of disastrous ones.

Many were critical of Benedict after the Regensburg lecture on faith and reason. They accused him of insensitivity to Muslims after his arcane reference to the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus (1391-1425). But he quickly recovered from this over-reaction to a bit of academic showing-off and visited Turkey with religious sensitivity and diplomatic aplomb. He has now restored the independence of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which supervises relations with Muslims and appointed an experienced diplomat as its president, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran.

I am not suggesting Benedict is some type of “progressive”. He’s not. He is profoundly and deeply traditional. His restoration of the Tridentine liturgy for a tiny but vociferous group in the church reveals his sympathy with this form of traditionalism. [Same-old-same-old use of meaningless tags and stubbornly narrow view of the Mass MP!]

Meanwhile priestless parishes multiply and the Eucharist and sacraments (whether in Latin or Swahili) are denied to increasing numbers of the faithful. [As though the priest shortage were Benedict's fault, and it were something he - or anyone - could solve in 28 months as Pope!]

But it is easy to forget that being traditional has its advantages. It means he knows his place in the church and will not turn the papacy into an endless roadshow, while still understanding that in the modern world the pope has to travel to events like World Youth Day. [We could do without the implied dig at the previous Papacy, thank you!]

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

Well, at least it isn't horridly nasty and journalistically irresponsible as a Richard Owen or Peter Popham piece!

The ‘Timidity’ of Pope Benedict


By Russell Shaw
Catholic Herald (Arlington, Virginia)
(From the issue of 7/26/07)

Pope Benedict XVI's critics say he's timid, overly cautious, slow to make decisions. Against that background, and without suggesting the criticism has no basis in fact, it's enlightening to observe that, in recent days, Benedict has taken the following steps: reversed important policy decisions of two of his predecessors, taken a big gamble aimed at healing a dangerous schism, reminded the world's bishops that he's boss, risked offending ecumenical dialogue partners — and then headed off cheerfully on vacation.

If this is timidity, one might reasonably ask, what must boldness look like?

The matters involved in these recent papal moves are well known. First, on June 26 the Vatican released a document from Benedict that makes a potentially crucial change in the procedure for electing a pope.

Back in 1996, in a departure from long tradition, Pope John Paul II decreed that after a conclave had spent 13 days trying unsuccessfully to elect someone by a two-thirds majority vote, the cardinals could switch to election by a simple majority if they wished. Many people felt this was a bad idea, since potentially it allowed a determined group composed of just half the electors plus one to stand pat on its candidate and resist compromise until the time arrived when it could get what it wanted. That's no way to choose a pope, it was privately said.

Evidently, one of those who shared that view was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now, Pope Benedict XVI. His new rule for the conclave insists that, come what may, a pope must have the votes of two-thirds of the cardinals. That also involves potential difficulties, but at least it guarantees that whoever gets elected will be a true consensus choice.

Benedict followed up on July 7 with a second document in effect restoring the old form of the Mass to a position of virtual parity with the new form. In doing so, he was for practical purposes reversing Pope Paul VI's decision back in 1970 which virtually banned celebration of Mass in the old form.

Not only that — Paul VI had allowed for continued celebration of Mass the old way by elderly priests, but only if they got special permission. John Paul II expanded authorization of the old form in 1984 and 1988, while also insisting on the local bishop's permission. Not any more. Under Benedict XVI's regulations, starting Sept. 14 any priest who wants to celebrate Mass in the old form can do so, with no further permission required.

Pope Benedict's intention is clear. "Internal reconciliation" in the Church, he calls it — in other words, reconciliation with traditionalists who yearn for Mass in the old form and, especially, with the 600,000 members of the Society of St. Pius X, the schismatic group of followers of the late, breakaway Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Will it work? Hard to say. Unhappiness with the new form of Mass isn't the Lefebvrists' only complaint. They also have problems with things like ecumenism and religious liberty. Significantly, the Vatican on July 10 issued a statement from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reaffirming the salvific uniqueness of the Catholic Church — a principle traditionalists believe has been obscured by ecumenical excesses.

The point isn't that Pope Benedict has suddenly found the key to resolving all these difficulties. But — patient, methodical, fond of consultation as he is — he has the moxie to try. The critics need to let this man be pope his own way. He's going to do that anyway, after all, whether they like it or not.


Shaw is a freelance writer from Washington, D.C., and author of Catholic Laity in the Mission of the Church (Requiem Press).

July 25, 2007
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – Young people are being called to be missionaries burning with the love of God to proclaim the good news of Jesus to their contemporaries in an increasingly secularized world, said Pope Benedict XVI in his message for World Youth Day 2008.

In a message released in English July 24 "to the young people of the world" in anticipation of the XXIII World Youth Day, Pope Benedict urged "my dear young friends" to prepare over the next year to welcome the Holy Spirit into their lives "as the guide of our souls, as the teacher of the interior life who introduces us to the mystery of the trinity."

Pope Benedict will be present for the July 15-20 international celebration of World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney, Australia, which will focus on the theme of the Holy Sprit and mission.

Acknowledging the many questions about the future asked and the apprehension felt by youths, he urged them to see that "placing oneself at the service of the gospel is not an optional extra."

The pope said that young people must pick up the burden "of the urgency of transmitting this good news" to other youths to whom adults have not been able to reach.

"The spirit of Jesus today is inviting you young people to be bearers of the good news of Jesus to your contemporaries," the pope said. "The difficulty that adults undoubtedly find in approaching the sphere of youth in a comprehensible and convincing way could be a sign with which the spirit is urging you young people to take this task upon yourselves."

"You know," he added, "the ideals, the language, and also the wounds, the expectations, and at the same time the desire for goodness felt by your contemporaries."

The pope stressed that presenting Christ to those who don't know him is not to be "intolerant towards them" or "to impose him" on others.

"Throughout the centuries," he said, "the gospel has continued to spread by means of men and women inspired" by a missionary fervor.

"Today, too, there is a need for disciples of Christ who give unstintingly of their time and energy to serve the gospel. There is a need for young people who will allow God's love to burn within them and who will respond generously to his urgent call, just as many young blesseds and saints did in the past and also in more recent times," Pope Benedict said.

The call to mission, he reminded the young people, is directly connected to the call to holiness. "You must be holy and you must be missionaries since we can never separate holiness from mission," he said. "Be prepared to put your life on the line in order to enlighten the world with the truth of Christ, to respond with love to hatred and disregard for life, to proclaim the hope of the risen Christ in every corner of the earth."

He urged them to "explore during this year of preparation" their depth of faith in the Holy Spirit.

"Rediscover it if it is lost, strengthen it if it has become weak, savor it," Pope Benedict said. "Never forget that the church, in fact humanity itself, all the people around you now and those who await you in the future, expect much from you young people, because you have within you the supreme gift of the father, the spirit of Jesus."

Noting that the Holy Spirit "renewed the Apostles from within, filling them with a power that would give them courage to go out and boldly proclaim," the pope stressed that "missionary fruitfulness" is not founded on "programs and pastoral methods that are cleverly drawn up and efficient."

It is the result of "the community’s constant prayer," he said. "For the mission to be effective, communities must be united, that is, they must be of one heart and soul, and they must be ready to witness to the love and joy that the Holy Spirit instills in the hearts of the faithful."

"We carry within us the seal of the father's love in Jesus Christ which is the Holy Spirit," the pope told young people. "Let us never forget this, because the spirit of the Lord always remembers every individual, and wishes, particularly through you young people, to stir up the wind and fire of a new Pentecost in the world."

"Together," the pope said, "we shall invoke the Holy Spirit, confidently asking God for the gift of a new Pentecost for the church and for humanity in the third millennium."


http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=24811

LORENZAGO UPDATE - 7/26/07

THE POPE ON VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27




Vigo di Cadore is the town that the Pope sees when he looks out
his window at his vacation villa in Lorenzago.


Pope visits historic church
in Vigo - 7/25/07
By FRANCESCO DAL MAS


VIGO DI CADORE - The Pope will be ending his vacation in the Cadore tomorrow with a visit to the cemetery in Vajont, site of a dam which broke in 1963 and drowned a village of some 2000 people at the foot of the mountain.

It would be the only mountain excursion he would take of the many proposed to him for his visit. His predecessor, John Paul II, had spent much of the six vacations he spent at Lorenzago on trips to the various Dolomite peaks in the area.

The day he came to Lorenzago, the Pope had requested the helicopter pilot flying him from Treviso to fly over the Vajont area. He told Bishop Andrea Mazzocato that he remembered the tragedy quite well.

Last night, the Pope was among the people in Vigo and in Lorenzago.

Visiting the 14th century Church of Saint Ursula in Vigo, the Pope told its parish priest, Don Andrea Costantini: "I am glad this beautiful Church continues to be an active place of worship and not just a museum.

"See, we did not forget your invitation," said Mons. Georg Gaenswein to Don Andrea.

Saint Ursula is the main site in an itinerary among the art treasures of Belluno recommended by a former bishop, Vincenzo Savio. Vigo is the neighboring town from Lorenzago that the Pope sees from the balcony of his vacation villa in Mirabello.

He went to Saint Ursula after his customary evening walk along the Lavinai alpine road that goes through the woods of Vigo.

"Everything here is so beautiful. This Church is a real gem," he said. The parish priest assured him that Mass was said there not only on Sundays but also on Mondays, and that many celebrations were held there.

Leaving the Church, the Pope greeted and blessed dozens of children brought by parents and relatives who rushed there when they heard the Pope was visiting. Almost everyone was in tears from emotion.

Children from the local nursery school run by Salesian sisters improvised a little chorus for the Pope.

The Pope caressed a cat that a boy had brought with him.


7/28 - Thanks to Maklara who found this wonderful picture of the Vigo encounter!

Earlier, on his walk along the Lavinai, the Pope had his usual share of casual encounters.

Michela and her friend Chiara were walking with Michela's children in their prams when they met the Pope. "How old are they?," the Pope asked as he caressed the children.

Alviano from Calalzo offered him a basket of mushrooms he had just gathered in the woods.

Then Laura, Giulia, Maria and Dina, out for a stroll together.

In Lorenzago, on the way home, a crowd had gathered in the town square to wait for him. The Pope's car stopped three times. People offered him flowers- cyclamens, gentians, edelweiss. The Pope kissed children and blessed everyone.

Corriere delle Alpi, 26 luglio 2007


THE POPE'S VACATION
Andrea Tornielli interviews
Mons. Georg Gaenswein


To relax himself on this vacation, the Pope has been writing his book on Jesus, listens to music and plays the piano. Evenings, he takes a longer walk than the short walks he takes during the day in the garden surrounding his vacation house.

In this exclusive interview for Il Giornale, the Pope's private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, tells us about the Pope's vacation.


Is the Pope happy with his vacation here in the Cadore?

He is very happy indeed. It has been mostly a monastic vacation, Benedictine almost, with few public events. And on many occasions, particularly after the choral concert last Friday at the Castello Mirabello, the Pope has expressed his appreciation of the particular beauty he has found in the area. The house where we live, the mountains, the woods, the towns, the lakes, and the tranquillity offer an extraordinary harmony which is very good for both the spirit and the body. So many people, who work visibly as well as not so visibly, have guaranteed him these days of rest.

Last Sunday at the Angelus, he joked about it, when he said, "Today the first reading in the Gospel is about hospitality, and I remember some words of St. Benedict who said, 'Welcome each guest like Christ'. I think you are all Benedictines because I feel that is how you have welcomed me."


Can you tell us what his daily routine has been and how this differs from the Vatican?

The day is well structured and some elements coincide with his routine at the Vatican. Every day begins with Mass, then thanksgiving, the breviary and meditation. After breakfast, the Holy Father reads, writes, meditates. Lunch is at 1 p.m., and after that, the Pope takes a walk in the nearby park. They laid out beautiful paths through the woods, there is a small chapel with a statue of Our Lady that had been carved by one of the Forest Rangers. There are wooden benches, and beautiful pots and plots of geraniums everywhere.

The Pope takes a brief midday nap, then he goes back to his books. He listens to music on CDs and he plays the piano.

Around 6 p.m. is when we go out for a longer walk in the nearby woods or lakes. Dinner is at 7:30, then we watch the news. The Pope takes a last stroll around the gardens before going to bed.


The Pope has confirmed he is writing the second volume on Jesus. Is he doing that? What books is he reading?

The Holy Father himself already said he is working on the second book. He did bring with him a little case of books to read, mostly theological, but there are other titles as well.


Is he writing a new encyclical?

If I am not mistaken, the Holy Father also said Yes to that question.


We are told they provided a baby grand piano for the Pope's use here.

Yes, it's a beautiful instrument that they placed in his study. The Pope brought piano scores with him - Mozart, Schubert, Chopin...Well, it's no secret he loves Mozart particularly...


John Paul I came from this area. Last Sunday, the Pope called him 'my good friend.' Can you tell us what their relationship was?

Then-Cardinal Ratzinger spoke extensively about Papa Luciani in an interview several years ago. He got to know him personally in 1977, when during his first summer vacation as Archbishop of Munich, he received a surprise visit at the seminary of Bressanone, where he was staying, from Cardinal Luciani, who was Patriarch of Venice at the time.

Cardinal Ratzinger recalled that the Patriarch of Venice showed exquisite kindness and great simplicity, along with great culture, not only of the mind but of the spirit as well.

When he was elected Pope in 1978, Cardinal Ratzinger was very happy because the Church had a universal pastor of great goodness and luminous faith.


Tell us about these daily outings, at which the Pope has had all these his casual encounters with people.

As I said earlier, in the evening, the Pope drives out, usually going through the center of Lorenzago to a place which is good for walking, preferably plain and shaded. He always starts the walk with praying the rosary, after which we go around admiring the beauties of nature. Of course, we visit any small chapel or sanctuary which is in the vicinity.

And almost always, we have these casual encounters - usually parents with their children, or young people, persons of different types.

The children are always most responsive and spontaneous. The adults are generally too taken by surprise and end up being tongue-tied - they really don't know what to say! But there is never any uneasiness. The Holy Father always breaks the ice when he greets them. Immediately, there is contact. Often, it's the tears of emotion that speak far more than any words. Some find it hard to believe they have met the Pope in person. The children usually give him flowers which they have quickly picked from the meadow - even mushrooms, myrtles and wild raspberries.


Sometimes, looking at how the Pope reacts to popular affection, whether in Rome or while he is travelling, one has the impression that he is still surprised to be the center of such attention. Is that true?

You're not the only one who has said that. Yes, once in a while, it is obvious that the Pope appears surprised, even somewhat intimidated, by such attention. But I have observed that the Pope has now learned so well this warm language of affection, sympathy and love from the public that he is able to respond spontaneously in his own gentle and simple way, but very eloquently.

People also understand right away that the Pope is not seeking applause for himself, but that he is calling their attention so that he may guide them to Christ. This is the true aim of the Pope's responses. And people understand this in their hearts.


Has the Pope been bothered by some negative reactions to his Motu Proprio on the traditional Mass?

As someone who has been attentively following press and public reaction to the Motu Proprio, I must say I am surprised that there have been few truly negative reactions. Most of the criticism appears to be the usual dissent that is normal and acceptable in any chorus of reactions.

On the other hand, it seems to me that the Motu Proprio itself and the Pope's letter to the bishops have been received with great understanding and objectivity. Let us hope that this will all bear good fruit and that it achieves the objectives desired.


When he is on vacation, how does the Pope keep informed of the international situation?

Even during vacations, contacts with the Secretariat of State, with the Pope's closest co-workers there - the Secretary of State himself and his Deputy - are never interrupted. Last week, when Cardinal Bertone came here to Lorenzago, they had a long talk.

Here, at the villa, we have all the necessary means of communication. Obviously, the Pope is always informed about all important news developments, including the international situation. All the channels of information used by the Pope when he is at the Vatican are equally available when he is on vacation.

Il Giornale, 26 luglio 2007

LORENZAGO UPDATE - 7/26/07

THE POPE ON VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27




This map from the Lorenzago tourist brochure
shows the municipalities of the Cadore.


POPE MEETS MAYORS OF THE CADORE,
THANKS THEM FOR THEIR HOSPITALITY



LORENZAGO DI CADORE, July 26 (Apcom) - "Let us hope, God willing," Pope Benedict XVI answered today when the Mayor of Pieve di Cadore,
Maria Antonia Ciotti, invited him to return next year for his summer vacation.

The Pope met with the mayors of the 22 municipalities (comuni) that make up the 'mountain community' of Cadore at his vacation house within the grounds of Castello Mirabello.

He thanked them for their "competent but discreet and quiet presence" during his visit here.

"Dear friends, in this beautiful land of the Dolomites," he said, "I say thank you with all my heart to each and everyone for your competent, discreet and quiet presence which has made my visit unforgettable."

Besides the mayors, also present were representatives of police forces, fire services, forest services, health services and other community services mobilized in support of the Pope's visit and the influx of visitors for the few public events during his stay here, which began on July 9.

The Pope chose to have a monastic vacation, with few official meetings, although he went out almost every evening for an evening walk and prayers in the vicinity.

To his guests today, the Pope said "the goodness of God is seen in teh beauty of the mountains", then he cited a psalm that says "the goodness of the Lord surrounds believers like the mountains."

In Cadore, he said, "this goodness of God has been accompanied by human goodness with which I have felt myself surrounded."

"He thanked each of us," said Flaminio Da Deppo, president of the Cadore community, "and told us it had been a truly peaceful summer for him. Obviously, we each told him we want him to come back."

It has been confirmed that the Pope will visit the cemetery in Vajont tomorrow. He will leave Lorenzago by helicopter around 5 p.m. but the first stop will be the cemetery, where he will offer prayers for some 2000 villagers, mostly from Longarone, who drowned in October 1963 when a landslide caused the dam to burst.

The Pope will then fly to Treviso where he will take the plane to Rome. He will then proceed to the summer residence at Castel Gandolfo where he will spend the rest of the summer.


Osservatore Romano posted its 7/27/07 front page online before 6 p.m. Rome time today and provided the pictures above, as well as the following story, translated here. It carries the exact words of the Pope, where the Apcom story above used approximate quotations:



BENEDICT THANKS
THE COMMUNITY OF LORENZAGO*
[*The Pope, as the first story makes clear, addressed the mayors of all 22 towns of the Cadore mountain district, of which Lorenzago is one.]

"At the end of these two weeks spent in this beautiful land of the Dolomites, I can only say thank you with all my heart to each and everyone for your service and your commitment.

Benedict XVI addressed these words to civilian and military authorities of the Cadore region whom he met this morning to say farewell in the garden of his vacation residence at Lorenzago.

"Your silent, discreet and competent presence, night and day," he said, "made it possible for me to have an unforgettable holiday, rest for the body as well as the spirit."

"In the book of Psalms," he continued, we read, 'Your goodness, Lord, surrounds me like the eternal mountains.' And here, we are surrounded by divine goodness made visible in the beauty of the mountains. But during all this time here, I have also been surrounded by human goodness, your goodness, which has accompanied me everywhere. You have been for me true guardian angels - invisible, silent, but always present and ready to help. I will always remember your pre4sence through all these days."

He wished them all to have tranquil vacations and imparted his Apostolic Blessing to all those present and to their loved ones.

On Wednesday evening, July 25, the Pope visited Vigo di Cadore, where he prayed at the Church of Saint Ursula. He left Mirabello by car, then took a walk along the Lavinai path in the direction of Casera Razzo, until he reached the tiny church built in the 14th-17th centuries.



After praying, the Pope was shown the frescoes in the historic church dedicated to a saint who is also considered the patron saint of Cologne.

The Pope is expected to arrive in Castel Gandolfo tomorrow evening.

Osservatore Romano - 27 Luglio 2007


Videoclip showing both stories above:
www.skylife.it/videoTg24Single/45910
It shows the Pope's visit to the church described in the story below, from the 7/27 issue of Corriere delle Alpi.

The Pope's visit
to Sant'Orsola
7/25/07
By Francesco del Mas

VIGO DI CADORE. New details on the impormptu visit of the Pope to the historical artistic church of Saint Ursula in this town on Wednesday evening, where Don Andrea Constantini, the parish priest, celebrated a Mass of thanksgiving Thurswday evening for the 'extraordinary event.'

"Before entering the church," he said, "the Pope stopped to admire the exterior frescoes. Inside the church, the Pope first knelt a few minutes in prayer. Later, seated, he listened to a narration about the picture cycles found in the church."

Sant'Orsola is the first recommended stop in an artistic itinerary of the Belluno churches drawn up by the former Bishop, Mons. Vincenzo Savio.

Don Andrea said the Pope was very admiring of the frescoes. "They are wonderful," he commented. "I never thought to find such a precious work of art in a small mountain town, and so well preserved."

The Pope was happy to hear that Mass is said in the Church every Monday, and he expressed the hope that it would not be reduced to merely being a museum.

Of all the frescoes, said Don Andrea, "the Pope admired above all a precious Crucifixion scene with all its details, which he himself t=ghout was Giottesque. He also said that not even in Cologne [where St. Ursula is patron saint] were there frescoes of the saint as beautiful as these ones here."

The priest pointed out to the Pope that the altarpiece was the work of a German, Michael Parth.

The Pope also asked him about the town. "We have 1300 inhabitants," the parish priest told, him, "we are larger than Lorenzago. Our Church will be 800 years old next year. Up to the mid-19th century, it was the mother church of both Lorenzago and Lozzo."

The Pope asked him how many years he has been parish priest. "Eight years now, Holiness," he answered.

The Pope: "Since you're so young, in effect, you've always been a parish priest."

Don Andrea: "The first few years, I assisted the old priest who as sick. We brought him in a wheelchair to the meeting in Auronzo.

Mons. Gaenswein: "I remember. I noticed."

The Pope: "Do people go to Mass?"

Don Andrea: "Yes. Quite a good record, actually. More than in the other towns."

When the Pope finally came out of the church, he was warmly greeted by children from the local nursery school and altar boys who sang "Always with the Pope, to the death."

Saying farewell, Don Andrea asked the Pope for a blessing, "Pray for me, Holiness, and my community."

The Pope gave his blessing, and asked in turn, "Pray for me also."

Corriere delle Alpi, 27 luglio 2007

July 26, 2007
UCANews (www.ucanews.com)

HONG KONG (UCAN) – Mainland Chinese Catholics say they welcome the recent letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the church in China, but some say they worry it will not produce the desired effects.

"Underground" Bishop Paul Xie Tingzhe of Urumqi in Xinjiang, northwestern China, told UCA News on July 3 the pope's letter, published on June 30, could help promote reconciliation and "remove obstacles in the path of unity."

Another "underground" prelate, Bishop Emeritus Casmirus Wang Milu of Tianshui in Gansu province, northwestern China, told UCA News on July 15 the pope has clearly shown a way for the church to develop in China.

Bishop Wang said he will follow the pope's instructions by making every effort to work for reconciliation in his diocese and to dialogue with clergy belonging to the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association.

A nun surnamed Cheng from the "open" church community says the papal letter has prompted Chinese Catholics to reflect on the brutal reality of divisions in their local church, and this has greatly hindered its evangelization work.

To promote reconciliation and unity, Sister Cheng told UCA News, "We should respond to the pope's call and learn the spirit of forgiveness from Jesus so as to begin dialogue and reconcile our differences."

Likewise, a nun from an "underground" community in Hebei province, northern China, calls the letter "a wake-up call for us to examine whether our church has strayed from the Catholic faith." She told UCA News the letter encourages Catholics to develop an open attitude and start dialoguing with "state agencies" and others to enhance Church development and attain reconciliation.

However, an "underground priest" called Father Joseph told UCA News he was upset by the pope's call for reconciliation with the "open" Church community and by the pope authorizing "underground" bishops to receive recognition from the government. Nevertheless, he said, he is willing to obey the pope.

The letter says it is acceptable to concelebrate Mass with "open" church bishops and priests in communion with pope. It also says the faithful who have no access to clergy recognized by the pope may turn to clergy who are not in communion with the pope for Eucharistic celebrations and other sacraments.

Father Joseph said he worries that some conservative Catholics in the "underground" Catholic community will not welcome the new directives because they appear to contradict "truths" they have valued for many years.

An "underground" priest who serves at a remote parish in southeastern China told UCA News the letter provides "a guiding role" for clergy, but its effect on laypeople will be minimal. Due to his parishioners' minimal education and conservatism, he said, "any sudden change will not yield a good result." He added that his parish is unlikely to organize any study of the papal letter.

But an "underground" priest in another diocese thinks there is urgent need to organize laypeople to study the pope's letter. "They are directly affected when 'open' and 'underground' communities conflict with one other," he said. "This has confused their conscience and they do not know what course to take."

A bishop who was ordained validly but illegitimately and who asked not to be named told UCA News on July 11 that the most encouraging and hopeful message in the pope's letter is his call for reconciliation within the church.

He observed that most "open" church priests have cautiously welcomed the letter because they face pressure from the government. He also noted that even if the "underground" community seems to agree with the papal letter, "it is a challenge for them to accept the 'open' community." He said his main concern is that the letter may not have positive results but generate more conflict.


SOURCE: www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?...

I just finished translating the transcript of the Holy Father's dialog with the diocesan clergy of the Veneto on July 25. Needless to say, I hope you all read through it. [In HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES]

His advice to his fellow priests is, as usual, a thoughtful combination of spiritual and practical considerations, best expressed in his sentence, "We should have our feet on the ground, with our eyes raised to heaven."

In many ways, the parish priests who make up his audiences for this precedent-setting Q&A sessions all share the same basis concerns, and essentially, the Holy Father's responses have been consistent. But he is always able to present them in a fresh way, and more importantly, from the point of view of someone who knows what parish work is.

However, let me repeat here what I recorded deliberately in the section update for today, because I find it so typical of Benedict XVI that he is able to seize an opportunity to make his points about Vatican-II, and make them so eloquently even in the unexpected context of a spontaneous answer to a question posed to him inside a mountaintown church that is literally out in the boondocks of Italy:

I have to say, for the record, that the Holy Father's response to the last question about Vatican-II was a tour de force, whose amazing eloquence and concise wrap-up of the post-Conciliar years was not even hinted at by Fr. Lombardi's briefing yesterday and the stories that have come out about the Q&A.

And I wish to keep this citation here as a worthy epigraph and epilogue, not only to the Holy Father's summer vacation of 2007, but to the great initiatives he launched just before it, in order to assert once and for all that Vatican-II was a growth in continuity with Church tradition, and not a complete break with the 1965 years that had preceded it.

---

As the proverb goes, "If a tree falls, it makes a big noise, but if a forest grows, you don't hear anything
because it is a silent process". Therefore, during all those big noises of mistaken progressivism, of
anti-Conciliarity, the Church proceeded to grow silently, with much suffering and even with much loss,
in constructing a new cultural path.

It is very important that we should now see, with open eyes, the positive things that have been achieved
after the Council: the renewal of the liturgy, the Synods... parochial structures, the collaboration
and new responsibilities of laymen...a new experience of the catholicity of the Church, of that unanimity
which grows humbly but is the true hope of the world.

I think that is how we should rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a spirit
reconstructed beyond the texts, but is composed of the actual great Council texts re-read through
the experiences we have had and which have borne fruit in so many movements and new religious communities.

---

I don't believe anyone has ever described the hollow claims of the self-designated 'Spirits of Vatican-II' more accurately and cuttingly.

If you did not believe in the workings of the Holy Spirit and the 'Plan of God', as Patrice de Plunkett called it in his book, or 'God's Choice', as George Weigel has it, about the Conclave of 2005, then believe now.

The right man is in the right place at the right time, and may God continue to be with him!

I must confess I used the picture for the story above
because of the title that goes with it -'CHE TESORO DI PAPA'.
It means, literally "What a treasure of a Pope!",
and it is from the cover of the Italian weekly newsmagazine L'Espresso
which comes out today (7/27). Of course, I was surprised that
L'Espresso would even come out with a headline like that -
it hasn't been particularly friendly to the Pope,
except when it runs the occasional favorable article by Sandro Magister.

But it actually meant the title in a sardonic way,
as in "Oh! What a treasury this Pope is amassing!"
in a story all about how Vatican finances have flourished under Benedict XVI.

As sardonic as it is, however, the article cannot dispute objective facts
and indeed starts out being 'admiring'.
I will only translate the first part, because it is really all based
on the financial report issued by the Holy See two weeks ago.

As you can see, even its subtitle is sardonic:

BENEDETTO TESORETTO
[Blessed treasure!]
By Francesco Bonazzi

Ratzinger fills up the public squares and even the Vatican coffers.
Peter's Pence is at full sail.
And contributions from the USA increase,
despite the scandal of pedophile priests.

Contributions by the faithful increase 58%.
So do the contributions from the bishops' conferences.
The Ratzinger effect makes Vatican finances prosper.

Faith and charism certainly cannot be measured in dollars, but popularity can be, yes. And if we would entrust the measurement of the relationship of trust which links Catholics to Papa Ratzinger, to a base monetary standard, we have a thermometer with clearly positive figures.

It is called Peter's Pence, and for over 13 centuries, it has been the total of what faithful from around the world send directly to the Pope as a direct contribution to his mission. {He uses it for various charities and to help poor dioceses around the world.]

Well, Peter's pence increased by 58% in 2006 to reach $101.9 million. Not bad for a Pope who at the start of his Pontificate was often portrayed as an icy theologian far removed from his flock.

Certainly, at the Vatican, even the Swiss Guard and whoever follows the Wednesday general audiences or the Angelus have been aware of the Ratzinger effect. "A influx almost double" [from the time of John Paul II], they have been saying for months at St. Peter's.

And now, even the Vatican cashiers are starting to notice. It hasn't been held back by whatever pedophile scandal. Nor by any accusations of political interference. Nor by any gaffes in the Pope's reltitons with other religions. [A series of gratuitous statements, used only to introduce negatives into the picture!]
The reality is that Benedict XVI is leading a Church which is financially bursting with health. Where Peter's Pence is only a drop in a flood of money that is managed with shrewdness, reserve, and the most prudent division into airtight compartments....[That's the first in a series of veiled innuendoes about the 'wealth' of the Vatican.]

In 2006, the total of contributions from the episcopal conferences, dioceses, religious institutions and other entities increased 16.3% to 86-million Euros. One could define it as a discreet but unequivocal plebiscite on the governance of Benedict XVI.

The US, Germany and Italy have always been the top contributors, but this year, the Pope's native country has outdone the USA. [Not that the Americans have been less generous this year, only that the weak dollar has reduced their contribution in euro terms.]....

The article goes on to name some prelates entrusted by Benedict XVI with the economic affairs of the Vatican, better appreciated in this graphic:



The article ends with this comment:

It seems a whole century has passed from the days when Don Stanislaw, presonal secretary of papa Wojtyla, and Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, then Prefect for Evangelization, were considered the corsairs of Vatican finance.

[Whew! It sure spreads sarcasm in all directions! The last one is more than sarcasm. Corsairs? As in pirates?]

P.S In the same issue, L'Espresso has an article by Sandro Magister entitled 'HIS HOLINESS, THE BESTSELLER'
but it's all about how the Vatican Publishing House decided early on in Benedict's Pontificate, to assume the copyright
on all his writings past, present and future, and how this can be counter-productive to disseminating the Pope's words.
He cites that had the Vatican not retained exclusive rights to market the encyclical Deus caritas est,
it would have sold far more than the 1.5 million copies it sold in Italy if it had been given to a commercial
outlet, as the marketing rights for JESUS OF NAZARETH were.
[It's 2:30 in the morning, and I don't feel up to translating a financial-page report!
It will probably turn up in English on www.chiesa anyway.]

P.P.S. THE RATZINGER EFFECT - Even the Anglophone media has been using the phrase for some time now
in a positive sense. Who would have thought it?
Up to a year ago, some were still saying that the crowds drawn by Benedict were still part of 'the Wojtyla effect'-
that they were for the most part, pilgrims to the tomb of John Paul II who decide that "Heck, we might as well
stay and listen to the 'new' Pope!"

The hostility and obvious lack of any sympathy or charity for John Paul II's successor was appalling and outrageous,
but there it was. And now? Sometimes it's hard to argue with success, obviously.
The mistake of Ratzinger's critics is having under-estimated him, despite all his obvious virtues
and assets. All because of ideological blindness.

NOPE! FORGET THE TRACK SUIT....


Here is a translation of an interview with Mons. Georg Gaenswein by Peter Seewald published in the weekend magazine this week of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The six-page article is entitled "In the name of the Holy Father...."




The Pope always wears white,
even when watching TV...
and he's not using his exercise bike!


A good opportunity, I think, to use this enlargement by Nessuna!



When one has the rare opportunity to speak to the Pope's private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, then why not about worldly things as well? After all, he is part of the Papal household, in a sort of Wohngemeinschaft (commune, group housing).


How are things with the Pope?
Very well. He feels well, he works a lot and he's in high gear.


Does he use the exercise bike that his physician ordered for him?
He has it in his private rooms.


What does that mean?
It is always there, ready to be used.


As Cardinal, Joseph Ratzinger had wanted to retire - he felt exhausted.
His election as Pope was something he neither wanted nor worked for. But I am convinced that afterwards, having accepted the will of God, the grace of the office has left visible marks on his person and on his work.


How did he react to the election?
I was called in while the cardinals were approaching him one by one in the Sistine Chapel to kneel before him and pledge their loyalty and obedience. His face was almost as white as the new white cassock and the pileolus he was now wearing. He really looked quite overwhelmed.


What were you thinking of at that moment?
It was a whirlwind - it was entirely impossible to have a clear thought. Even the next day, it still felt like a tsunami.


When did you realize that your life had now changed fundamentally?
As I took my turn after the cardinals to give homage, I said: "Holy Father, I promise you my obedience, my loyalty, my commitment to anything that you may want me to do. I am at your disposal with everything I have, without any reservations."


His answer?
He looked me in the eye, nodded, and thanked me.


Have you had a pay raise?
No. I earn no more and no less than I did before. The only difference is the paycheck now goes to another address.


The son of a smith from a village of 450 souls in the Black Forest now rides beside the Holy Father in a helicopter and shares the concerns over the universal Church. Do you ever ask yourself, Why me? What does God want of me?
I have thought of that - more than once. It is an assignment that one cannot plan for. When I pledged my loyalty and obedience to the Holy Father, I tried to find an answer. Personally, I see the finger of God that has given me this assignment without warning.


You are obviously the first Pope's secretary in the history of the Church who is also in the spotlight of publicity. People magazine has raved about you being the "Sunshine Boy in a Cassock". According to the Schweizer Weltwoche, you are 'indisputably the best-looking person in a cassock that the Vatican has ever seen." And Donatella Versace dedicated a clothing line to you. Does this image as a female heartthrob bother you?
Not that it embarrassed me. It rather irritated me. But it doesn't do me harm, it is perhaps even flattering, so I don't see it as an offense. Just that I have never before been so directly confronted with my shell. Then I observed that a large part of it appears to be an expression of liking - so it's something good, not bad, and that is how I have been able to deal with it. I do hope that people don't just look at my exterior but also get to know the substance behind that exterior.


Do you get love letters?
Yes, that too, now and then.


Once you spoke of clerical envy.
I said that in connection with reports that some people had been saying about me, "He wants to gain power. He's going to push himself forward" and the like. There has been and there is a lot of
stupid negative chatter, that is sometimes straightaway belied. But I have stopped to worry about this kind of talk.


Even within the Vatican?
The Vatican is also like a royal court. And so there is always court gossip. But there are also arrows that are consciously and deliberately targeted. I had to learn how to get around all that.


You are supposedly in the running for the vacant Archbishop's seat in Munich.
That's an 'unlaid egg' [can't think of an equivalent English idiom just now!] Obviously made up. Quite far-fetched!


No one thought it possible that after a 'once-in-a-millennium' Pope like Karol Wojtyla, a successor could so quickly succeed. Now, everything is different. And it's not only that Benedict XVI draws twice the crowds. Or that his writings sell in the millions. Papa Ratzinger is also considered one of the most important thinkers of our time. And he has really not been all that criticized. What does he have that is different?
Being Pope also means, of course, that you have maximum reach, a greater effect, and even a greater penetrating power. One veteran observer of the Roman scene remarked during the Pope's trip to Bavaria last year: "John Paul II opened the hearts of the faithful, Benedict fills their hearts."

There is much truth there. The Pope reaches hearts, he speaks to the heart, but not of himself, he speaks of Jesus, of God, and he does that clearly, understandably and persuasively. I think that is what men are looking for. Benedict gives them spiritual nourishment.


Did John Paul II want Cardinal Ratzinger to be his successor?
I would not know. So much has been speculated about that.


But despite Ratzinger's request several times to be allowed to retire, he kept him on as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Do you see that as an unspoken argument? It could be. The Pope often told his closest associates: I would like Cardinal Ratzinger to stay on, I need him as my theological chief. Maybe one can make something out of that.


It has become rather quiet in the Apostolic Palace. Benedict has reduced the number of audiences and seldom has guests in for meals. Could it be that there is less work being done precisely under a German?
Not that less work is being done, it's just more concentrated. The Pope is a disciplined and fast worker. But he also needs time for other things - to read, to study, to pray, to meditate, to write. And he can do that only if one is strict about seeing to it that he attends only to the most important things.


Does that mean that his predecessor was a bit overstretched?
Not at all. With John Paul, everything rose to a superlative scale compared to previous pontificates. Just think of the number of audiences, trips, documents, liturgical celebrations and early morning Masses in his private chapel to which people were usually invited. But that takes up a lot of time every day. Such a pace would be unthinkable for Benedict. After all, John Paul II became Pope not at 78 but at at 58.


At the end of the Wojtyla era, it seems a lot was left to be done.
It's an open secret that John Paul did not worry very much about the Roman Curia. It's not a criticism, just a fact. On the other hand, the current Pope worked for the past 23 years in the most important of the Curial positions. He knows it better than virtually anybody else. For him as Pope, that is a unique experience and a great advantage.


A Pope can have problems with the Curia?
A look at history will easily show that yes, it can happen. One weak point is certainly indiscretion. Unfortunately, it's a fact that there are always leaks regarding nominations, documents being drafted, disciplinary measures drafted, etc. That's not only annoying. There's the risk that influence can be wielded from outside one way or the other which will certainly bring more irritations.

One other point, wherever there is an international staff as in the Curial offices, you will get a diversity of mindsets, of workstyles, of prejudices, work rhythms, and personalities who must interact. That can oftentimes lead to flashfires.


Is the Pope the master of this process?
Do you have any doubts of that? He meets his most important associates regularly. Day after day. Week after week. Each of the Curial authorities have regular appointments with hum. That way, not only the necessary personal contact is institutionalized, which can guarantee the necessary flow of information, but also an exchange of views which is indispensable to both sides. The Pope listens, he gets advice, he thinks over it, and then he decides.


Is Joseph Ratzinger fast in reviewing documents?
He is lightning fast, and he has an elephant's memory.


Some have criticized that the Pope finds himself in 'splendid isolation' [English term was used], in a golden cage, that no one can get near him.
That's nonsense. Every morning, he has private audiences. In the afternoons are the working meetings. And that's six days a week. On top of which, he has engagements and meetings within the Vatican and outside Vatican walls. What golden cage? It is possible that some of that may be a disguised criticism of what I do. I have been accused of shielding the Pope too much. That's exaggeration.


He is basically a shy person. At the same time, he always had an uneasiness, a rebelliousness against conformity and stupidity.
Everyone can see that the Holy Father is not an extrovert but a reserved person.


The Pope writes all of his own important texts. Including the Regensburg lecture with its controversial quotation from a history book over a dispute with a Muslim. Why did no one check out the text beforehand?
I consider the Regensburg lecture as it was delivered prophetic.


Was it a shock when the angry attacks from the Islamic world started coming in?
We first heard that there was a strong negative reaction when we arrived in Rome coming back from Munich. It certainly was a great surprise, even on the part of the Pope. The whole storm arose from the newspaper reports which had taken the citation out of context and presented it as the Pope's personal thinking.

In the Islamic world, wherever this religion rules over both state and society, human rights are trampled on. The persecution of Christians has increased dramatically. And the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran has just reiterated that the countdown for the destruction of Israel has begun. Isn't the proposal for a genuine dialog with Islam somewhat naive?
The attempt to Islamize the West should not be dismissed from the public discourse. And the danger for the identity of Europe that is bound up with that should not be ignored either, out of false consideration. The Catholics see that very clearly and say so. The Regensburg lecture itself is an antidote to any such naivete.

It's obvious there is not one Islam, and there is no voice in Islam that is binding for all Muslims. Under the name of Islam are so many different currents, often hostile to one another, who swear by the Koran about everything they do, including the use of weapons.

On institutional grounds, the Holy See is trying to develop appropriate contacts and promote conversations through the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog.


The papal family in the Apostolic Place is the most famous and most influential 'commune' in the world. You have four women- the Memores sisters of Comunione e Liberazione, two secretaries and the Pope. You pray togehter, you eat together, you watch TV together. What's the Pope like as a housemate?
The papal family is actually a happy international commune: two Germans, a Pole, and four Italians, who before this practically did not know one another. The first important step was to find a modus vivendi. The right word, the right give and take, when to keep silent, when not to. But a happy family atmosphere quickly developed. The common language is Italian. The Pope is after all Bishop of Rome.

A small correction about watching TV together. That's a bit of a fantasy. At night, yes, the pope and we two secretaries, watch the news together.

Our daily rhythm of course depends on the Pope's audience and work schedule. But we all try to make sure that we can each have our own personal 'highlights' [English word used].


Highlights?
Well, perhaps the word is a bit exaggerated. I mean those personal events - birthdays and other important anniversaries that we try not to miss.


When you watch TV, does the Pope change to regular clothes?
No. He is always in white.


Must the Pope wear shoes from Prada?
Must? Of course not. Newsmen can have such lively imaginations.


Then does he?
I owe you an answer.


Like the Pope, you come from a family with simple relations and both of you grew up in a village environment. What is it that they put in your cradle?
Definitely, a good portion of fresh and healthy naturalness, which is an incontaminable filter against unhealthiness in whatever form. An instinct that helps distinguish the genuine from the false.


[The rest of the interview is in the following post]

I miscalculated how much more I needed to translate this morning of the Gaenswein interview. Here's the rest of it.





You grew up in a household of five children, with a father who was a smith and your mother, a housewife.
My father carried on as the seventh generation of a family blacksmith shop. Later, a business with agricultural machinery was added, which did not necessarily bring more money in. Many times, we had to make do. Moreover, my father was also very active in local town politics, and in many organizations. He was rarely home at night. Therefore, the duty and burden of raising us was borne mostly by our mother. But we five children had an untroubled childhood, even if, of course, we also had fights.


Because not everything went the way the firstborn son wanted it?
As the oldest, I was supposed to be always the cleverest - "the clever one must give in" - but giving in is not really my strongest suit.


'Born to be wild' [English term used] - was that your thing?
As a phase, perhaps, between 15 and 18. I listened to Cat Stevens, Pink Floyd and a couple of other big names from that time, including the Beatles. At that time, I had long hair, which my father did not approve of, so we often argued about going to the barber and how long the hair should be. But that phase just ended rather unspectacularly.


Where did you stand politically?
I was never particularly interested. My extra-curricular interests where for sports, football, skiing...


With which you earned college money?
No, not as a ski teacher - I was only responsible for the school in my local ski club. I earned money as a postman. First by bicycle through a small village of the Black Forest, and later with a car, through the state.


You were once quoted as saying, "I have healthy senses, and whoever has healthy senses, uses them." Sounds like you had a lot of experience with girls.
I have two sisters and several girl cousins who helped me not to have any difficulties with the female sex. I grew up quite normally, without any repressions.


Did you have a steady relationship with anyone?
No. But I had a few youthful romantic interests.


First you wanted to be a stock broker.
Originally, as the oldest, I was supposed to take over my father's agri-business. But I was more interested in the stock market. I thought one could make a lot of money there if one was bright and quick. Later, with more maturity, I thought better about it. So, if I can do all that and become rich, what then? And what next? Suddenly, existential questions came to the foreground. So I started to search, and in this way, without meaning to, I came to philosophy and theology.


Must have been a long process.
And very difficult. At first, it was the world of theology that drew me very strongly, and priesthood was the next step to that. Of course, celibacy was a question. I felt at some point, "You can't travel on half-tank - either you go all the way, or leave it." Theology in bits and pieces, that doesn't work. And that's how, step by step, I came to priesthood.


In one of your homilies at an ordination, you said: "You must know that you have a dignity that distinguishes you from all other persons who are not priests. You must be conscious that you are doing something great, that you must do something great." It seems like a pretty steep formulation.
I would say the same things again without ifs or buts.


You take it seriously.
Yes, I do.


It sounds a bit romantic (idealistic).
I don't think so. They are words that came out of my life, and it wasn't romantic. The words you cited may perhaps look rather ceremonial on paper, but behind them is a lot of personal experience, and I did not want to hide from the new priest that he was facing something big, something that would have a price, and that he should be ready to pay the price.


You were ordained in 1984, then you spent two years as a curate [Kaplan] in the Black Forest. In 1993, you wrote your dissertation on "The Ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council" in Munich. Did you have any moments of great doubt?
After two years as curate, I was sent for further studies in Munich - in a specialty for which I was not necessarily born, canon law! After six months, I was so fed up that I said, Now I will ask the Archbishop to send me back to the diocese because I can't stand it anymore.


Was it that bad?
I always liked to study and found it easy, but studying canon law was as dry as working in a quarry where there is no beer to be had! One would die from drying up! Then I was saved by my doctoral adviser, Professor of Canon Law Winfried Aymans, who later made me his assistant. He helped a lot to get me out of my dilemma by showing me new perspectives. That really helped me a lot not to throw in the towel. I am very grateful to him for that.


The following judgments of you keep coming up: dutybound, pious, conservative - a man who follows form and who is strict.
In the sense of 'gentle in form but strict in content', that is true. When I believe something is right, then I stick to it. Patience, I must admit, is not my strength. Sometimes I can be very 'in your face' and that can be annoying.


What qualifications must one have as the private secretary to the head of a church with 1.1 billion members?
In a certain sense, he must be a generalist, but he must also acknowledge that he cannot do everything, nor should he demand it of himself. He must do what the Pope tells him to do, with all his strength, his heart, and his mind.


Did you have initially an introductory course, something like a school for papal etiquette?
None whatsoever. The only thing was a one-on-one meeting with my predecessor, Mons. Stanislaus Dsiwisz, who is now the Cardinal Archbishop of Cracow. It was about two weeks after the Conclave, and
before moving into the papal apartments. He gave me an envelop that contained some documents and a safe key. A very old safe, made in Germany. All he said was, "Now you have a very important, very beautiful, but also very very difficult task. The only thing I can tell you is you must never ever allow the Pope to be overwhelmed by anything. How to do that is something you must find out for yourself." Period. End of lesson. He didn't say anything more. And that was my entire course in papal etiquette.


What was in those papers?
I can't reveal that. These are things that are passed on from one Papal Secretary to the next.


Any beginner's errors?
I soon realized that the pace I had set for myself was too fast. It's one thing to start from the pole position, it's something else once you take the laps, and still another to get to the finish line. Going at full speed, so to speak. So I had to find out the right rhythm.

Another difficulty was dealing with the countless requests for a private audience and other meetings with the Pope, with everyone claiming noble motivations. Endless requests - Just one minute, Please make an exception, the Pope has known me a long time - he would be happy to see me - almost always with a lot of hyperbole. Here is where you need the right screening method. I had to set up a strong filter.


What do you keep away from the Pope?
Nothing that's important. At our daily briefing, I present to the Holy Father all important official letters and documents, everything that comes from the bishops and cardinals, from the world of politics and diplomacy. There is a huge pile of letters, requests. appeals, proposals, etc. that he does not get to see because he simply does not have the time for it. The Pope has given me much room for discretion on this.


Do people try to 'use' you?
It happens, but I can defend myself.


Doesn't one in your position sometimes find himself 'above it all'?
On the contrary, the greater risk is that one can be submerged in what needs to be done. Then the danger is 'isolation' [again, the English word is used]. At some point, my friends told me they were seeing too little of me and that I had withdrawn from their circle. That was an alarm for me. Right away I sought to make time to attend to personal relationships and take better care of existing friendships. That is important for psychological hygiene.


What do you think the impact of this Pontificate can be?
Strengthening the faith and encouraging it - and the consciousness that Catholic belief is something great, a gift of God, that is not imposed but must be freely taken on. That's where the challenges are for the Church.


For example?
The question of God. The confrontation with different forms of relativism. Dialog with Islam. Strengthening the Catholic identity. The fact that a continent like Europe cannot survive when one cuts off its Christian roots, because by doing so, you take away its soul.


The announcement of seeking 'full and visible unity' with the Orthodox Churches was the first 'sensation' of the Ratzinger Pontificate. Is that not a rather illusory proposal?
It's not a sensation, it was always the declared objective. And it is very understandable that it should be formulated and expressed by a Pope who has strongly influenced this field theologically in teh past several decades. We must not forget that the Orthodox churches are within the apostolic succession, with a valid priestly office, as well as the Eucharist and the other sacraments. What needs to be clarified is the Primacy and jurisdiction of the Pope. It is a scandal, as the Pope once said, that Christendom is still splintered. Therefore the restoration of full unity in the faith is certainly a great objective for this theologian Pope.


Would Pope Benedict restructure the Papacy for the sake of this unity?
It's a wrong way to put it. Ecumenism cannot be achieved at the expense of truth. A Pope cannot just restructure the Papacy in order to facilitate reaching certain goals. The Papacy must uphold the demands of truth with respect to unity.


A change in the relationship of the Catholic Church with Moscow, Constantinople and especially Beijing would dramatically change the religious-political world map.
The ecumenical dialog with the diffrent orthodox churches is underway, and considerable progress has been made. But ecumenism is an effort, it remains a kind of difficult wrestling. But that also has to do with existing tensions among the orthodox churches themselves.

Constantinople and Moscow are both tricky points. The whole world watched last November when Pope Benedict met with the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul. But a meeting with the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow still has to take place.


Do you see a meeting in Moscow happening soon?
I hope there will be a meeting, wherever.


The Roman Church in the West finds itself in a mighty upheaval. Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna has spoken of a 'church of decision' - which people belong to out of choice - as an alternative to what has been up to now a 'people's church'. Is the era of pseudo-Christianity coming to an end??

Pseudo-Christianity sounds unjust and derogatory and does not correspond to reality. We must take note that 'people's church' elements [traditional or folk Catholicism?] are disappearing, and that more 'core communities' are being built - this process has been going on for years. Cardinal Schoenborn brings all that under the idea of 'church of decision'. Whoever is Christian today is Christian because he wants to be, he decided for it, he is determined, perhaps more determined than Christians in earlier generations. And whoever is not a Christian simply isn't, without incurring any personal, social political or any other disadvantages
because of it.


It is remarkable that many priests of the new generation are discovering the spiritual, cultural and aesthetic treasures of the traditional liturgy. With the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, establishes that any priest can now celebrate the traditional Mass rite. Will that not bring new internal quarrels?
The purpose and goal is the opposite. It should end conflicts and overcome existing divisions and fractures. The Motu Proprio opens up a spiritual homeland for not a few Catholic faithful. I am convinced that the Holy Father's letter to the bishops which was released together with the Motu Proprio, and in which the Pope clearly explains the reasons for the document, offers the key to a correct understanding of the document.


The French philosopher Rene Girard. who is a member of the Academie Francaise, predicts a decisive Christian Renaissance, saying "We are on the eve of a revolution of cur culture," and that this upheaval will make the medieval Renaissance pale by comparison.
Right now, the idea of religion is enjoying attention as it has not had in a long time. After a phase of indifferentism, now we are once again concerned with religion, with the question of faith. I can see that many young people, who really already have everything or can have everything, are saying, "One can do anything, one can even destroy the world, but you cannot gain your soul if the essential is missing."

The Catholic Church has treasures to offer that no one else can - greater and more enduring than any political promises of salvation. But one does not gain these treasures automatically. Faith comes from listening, St. Paul says. It must be proclaimed.


Six weeks after it as first released, the Pope's book on Jesus sold 1.5 million copies. Ir's as if the Pope has reintroduced Jesus in a new form.
The Pope's Jesus book is the quintessence of a man who, as priest, theologian, bishop, cardinal, and now Pope, has occupied himself all his life with the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a great spiritual testament.


What do you treasure best about it?
I have just been reading it again. It is written to be profound and understandable at the same time. It is the life summary of an important personality. The book stands in the tradition of the great Fathers of the Church. I am convinced that the book will strengthen many in their faith, or will lead others to the faith, and not only within a certain intellectual stratum but people from any background or education.


The theologian Joseph Ratzinger conveys a persuasive logic: This Jesus is someone who is almighty, the lord of all creation, God himself, and yet he became Man. Such a man, Jesus of Nazareth, had to start a revolution.
Yes, but without bloodshed.

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

Dr. Georg Gaenswein, a man of refined intellect, was born on July 30, 1956, in Riedern, in the Black Forest, the eldest of a blacksmith's five children. He has been a ski instructor, a mailman, student of theology, priest, curate, with a doctorate from the University of Munich, then Cathedral Vicar in Freiburg. In 1995, he was called to a curial position in Rome. One year later, he transferred to the CFD under then Cardinal Jospeh Ratzinger. He became his private secretary when the cardinal's previous secretary, became an Archbishop. He stayed on as the Pope's private secretary. after the Conclave of 2005. His main duty is to organize the Pope's schedule so that he is not overwhelmed by correspondence and paperwork, appointments and audiences.

[NB: The bio-sketch does not mention Mons. Gaenswein's concurrent years as professor of canon law in the Opus Dei university in Rome.]

There's been a mid-'newsday' page change, so here is what's on the preceding page posted this morning, NY time (6 hours behind the clock time on our forum which is on Italian time):

God's choice - Comments on the Pope's tour-de-force summation of Vatican-II when asked about it
by a priest in Auronzo last Tuesday. It's a historic discourse. Read the full transcript in
HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.

'What a treasure of a Pope!' - is not exactly what L'Espresso means in its cover story this week
on the Ratzinger effect and the money it is bringing to the Vatican. Translated.

Georg Gaenswein has a long interview with Peter Seewald in this weekend's magazine of Sueddeutsche Zeitung -
his longest, most comprehensive and substantial interview so far. Lots of insights and new details about the Pope
and about himself. Translated. Posted in 2 parts.

Corriere della Sera has a brief article about the interview, and Marco Politi does a longer piece for Repubblica, in which he goes back to attacking
the Regensburg lecture, which Gaenswein describes in the interview as 'prophetic'. I don't know that I will waste my time translating Politi.

FYI only because I'm not translating: Politi also has the most perverse anti-Ratzinger editorial in La Repubblica today, in which, among other things,
he accuses what he calls 'the church of Ratzinger' (what happened to Christ?) as being 'afraid of modernity' and refusing to allow Italian Catholics
the 'freedom of secularity that other Europeans enjoy", railing against the Church's declaration of 'non-negotiable principles.' Only an emblematic
liberal newspaper like Repubblica would have such an ideological bigot as its principal Vatican correspondent!


In case you didn't notice yesterday:
HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES
The Pope's Q&A with the clergy of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso -
Translated in full.
---------------------------------------------------------------------


END OF VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27









P.S. on 7/28:
Photos above from Paparatzifan's selection.
Italian stories in translation, to be posted when done.

Sandro Magister is one of the few Italian MSM Vaticanistas to react to what I called the Pope's tour-de-force response on Vatican-II last Tuesday - but once again, he is really noncommittal [as he has been inexplicably on he major Papal issues these past few weeks], and limits his 'comment' to introducing the Pope's response. Corriere della Sera, for instance, never even reported it, if I am not mistaken. Marco Politi commented on it, but not based ion the entire response - only on Fr. Lombardi's account of it, which did not hint at how powerful and comprehensive the Pope's actual response was.

Here is Magister's 'commentary' on the whole Q&A and his translator's translation of the Pope's response.[Just as an exercise in translation 'styles', I invite a comparison to the translation I posted in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.]

BTW, none of the Anglophone writers have reacted so far, I think for the simple reason they did not have a translation - and John Allen is still on vacation.



All Against All:
The Postconciliar Period
Recounted by Ratzinger, Theologian and Pope

The period following Vatican II reminds Benedict XVI of the "total chaos" after the Council of Nicaea, the first in history.
But from that stormy Council emerged the "Credo."
And today? Here is the pope’s response to the priests of Belluno, Feltre, and Treviso

by Sandro Magister



ROMA, July 27, 2007 – Like two summers ago in Aosta, again this year Benedict XVI, during his vacation in the Alps, wanted to meet with the local priests and respond to their questions.

He did so on the morning of Tuesday, July 24, in Auronzo di Cadore, in the church of Santa Giustina Martire, against the backdrop of the Dolomite mountains.

The pope responded spontaneously to ten questions on a wide variety of issues.

For example, in relation to the growing presence of non-Christian immigrants in Italy and Europe, he explained how to reconcile the proclamation of the Gospel and dialogue with the other religions, beginning from “agreement on the fundamental values expressed in the ten commandments, summed up in love of neighbor and love of God.”

In regard to divorced and remarried Catholics, he urged first of all that couples be prepared for a “natural marriage, according to the Creator,” freeing them from the current idea according to which “it is normal to get married, divorce, and remarry, and no one thinks that this goes against human nature.” And in the case of a failed marriage, he encouraged that the divorced persons be made to feel that they are always “loved by Christ and members of the Church, even if they are in a difficult situation.”

On the clash between creationism and evolutionism, “as if these were mutually exclusive alternatives,” he explained that “this contrast is absurd, because on the one hand there is much scientific evidence in support of evolution,” but on the other hand “the doctrine of evolution does not respond to the great question: From where does everything come?” And he recommended a rereading of his lecture in Regensburg, so that “reason might be opened further.”

But the most interesting response was the last of the ten. To a priest who told him about his disappointment with the many dreams that were awakened in him by Vatican Council II but then vanished, Benedict XVI replied by recounting his own experience and his own views of the Council and the period after it: the initial enthusiasm, the tension between those who interpreted the true “spirit” of the Council as a sort of cultural revolution and those who instead reacted against the Council itself, the historic upheavals of 1968 and 1989, the Church’s ability to move forward, in spite of everything, along the right path, in silence and humility...

Here follows the complete transcript of Benedict XVI’s response on the Council and its aftermath:


"We had such great hopes,
but things proved to be more difficult..."

by Benedict XVI


I, too, lived through Vatican Council II, coming to Saint Peter’s Basilica with great enthusiasm and seeing how new doors were opening. It really seemed to be the new Pentecost, in which the Church would once again be able to convince humanity. After the Church’s withdrawal from the world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it seemed that the Church and the world were coming together again, and that there was a rebirth of a Christian world and of a Church of the world and truly open to the world.

We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a “magna carta” of the Church’s path, very essential and fundamental.

But why did this happen? I would like to begin with an historical observation. The periods following a council are almost always very difficult. After the great Council of Nicaea – which is, for us, truly the foundation of our faith, in fact we confess the faith as formulated at Nicaea – there was not the birth of a situation of reconciliation and unity, as hoped by Constantine, the promoter of the great Council, but a genuinely chaotic situation of a battle of all against all.

In his book on the Holy Spirit, saint Basil compares the Church’s situation after the Council of Nicaea to a nighttime naval battle, in which no one recognizes another, but everyone is pitted against everyone else. It really was a situation of total chaos: this is how saint Basil paints in vivid colors the drama of the period following the Council of Nicaea.

50 years later, for the first Council of Constantinople, the emperor invited saint Gregory Nazianzen to participate in the council, and saint Gregory responded: No, I will not come, because I understand these things, I know that all of the Councils give rise to nothing but confusion and fighting, so I will not come. And he didn’t go.

So it is not now, in retrospect, such a great surprise how difficult it was at first for all of us to digest the Council, this great message. To imbue this into the life of the Church, to receive it, such that it becomes the Church’s life, to assimilate it into the various realities of the Church is a form of suffering, and it is only in suffering that growth is realized. To grow is always to suffer as well, because it means leaving one condition and passing to another.

And we must note that there were two great historic upheavals in the concrete context of the postconciliar period.

The first is the convulsion of 1968, the beginning – or explosion, I dare say – of the great cultural crisis of the West. The postwar generation had ended, a generation that, after seeing all the destruction and horror of war, of combat, and witnessing the drama of the great ideologies that had actually led people toward the precipice of war, had discovered the Christian roots of Europe and had begun to rebuild Europe with these great inspirations. But with the end of this generation there were also seen all of the failures, the gaps in this reconstruction, the great misery in the world, and so began the explosion of the crisis of Western culture, what I would call a cultural revolution that wants to change everything radically. It says: In two thousand years of Christianity, we have not created a better world; we must begin again from nothing, in an absolutely new way. Marxism seems to be the scientific formula for creating, at last, the new world.

In this – let us say – serious, great clash between the new, healthy modernity desired by the Council and the crisis of modernity, everything becomes difficult, like after the first Council of Nicaea.

One side was of the opinion that this cultural revolution was what the Council had wanted. It identified this new Marxist cultural revolution with the will of the Council. It said: This is the Council; in the letter the texts are still a bit antiquated, but behind the written words is this “spirit,” this is the will of the Council, this is what we must do. And on the other side, naturally, was the reaction: you are destroying the Church. The – let us say – absolute reaction against the Council, anticonciliarity, and – let us say – the timid, humble search to realize the true spirit of the Council. And as a proverb says: “If a tree falls it makes a lot of noise, but if a forest grows no one hears a thing,” during these great noises of mistaken progressivism and absolute anticonciliarism, there grew very quietly, with much suffering and with many losses in its construction, a new cultural passageway, the way of the Church.

And then came the second upheaval in 1989, the fall of the communist regimes. But the response was not a return to the faith, as one perhaps might have expected; it was not the rediscovery that the Church, with the authentic Council, had provided the response. The response was, instead, total skepticism, so-called post-modernity. Nothing is true; everyone must decide on his own how to live. There was the affirmation of materialism, of a blind pseudo-rationalistic skepticism that ends in drugs, that ends in all these problems that we know, and the pathways to faith are again closed, because the faith is so simple, so evident: no, nothing is true; truth is intolerant, we cannot take that road.

So: in these contexts of two cultural ruptures, the first being the cultural revolution of 1968 and the second the fall into nihilism after 1989, the Church sets out with humility upon its path, between the passions of the world and the glory of the Lord.

Along this road, we must grow with patience and we must now, in a new way, learn what it means to renounce triumphalism.

The Council had said that triumphalism must be renounced – thinking of the Baroque, of all these great cultures of the Church. It was said: Let’s begin in a new, modern way. But another triumphalism had grown, that of thinking: We will do things now, we have found the way, and on it we find the new world.

But the humility of the Cross, of the Crucified One, excludes precisely this triumphalism as well. We must renounce the triumphalism according to which the great Church of the future is truly being born now. The Church of Christ is always humble, and for this very reason it is great and joyful.

It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods – Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods – in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church’s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world.

And thus it seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a “spirit” reconstructed behind the texts, but the great conciliar texts themselves, reread today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities. I arrived in Brazil knowing how the sects are expanding, and how the Catholic Church seems a bit sclerotic; but once I arrived, I saw that almost every day in Brazil a new religious community is born, a new movement is born, and it is not only the sects that are growing. The Church is growing with new realities full of vitality, which do not show up in the statistics – this is a false hope; statistics are not our divinity – but they grow within souls and create the joy of faith, they create the presence of the Gospel, and thus also create true development in the world and society.

Thus it seems to me that we must learn the great humility of the Crucified One, of a Church that is always humble and always opposed by the great economic powers, military powers, etc. But we must also learn, together with this humility, the true triumphalism of the Catholicism that grows in all ages. There also grows today the presence of the Crucified One raised from the dead, who has and preserves his wounds. He is wounded, but it is in just in this way that he renews the world, giving his breath which also renews the Church in spite of all of our poverty. In this combination of the humility of the Cross and the joy of the risen Lord, who in the Council has given us a great road marker, we can go forward joyously and full of hope.

GOODBYE, LORENZAGO!


END OF VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27




Pope Benedict leaves the villa at Castello Mirabello.


From various Italian news agency reports, translated here:


The Pope left Lorenzago in the late afternoon on schedule. The helicopter tkaing him to the airbase in Istrana-Treviso took off from the local tennis courts at 5 p.m.

Berfore leaving the grounds of Castello Mirabello, the Pope greeted dozens of faithful, including children on summer camp, who had gathered along the road leading from the castle.

Townspeople also gathered along Lorenzago's main street to bid him farewell, with streamers that said "Thank you, Holy Father" and "Come back - we will be expecting you".

The Pope left the little villa that was his residence for almost three weeks at 16:45.

"Arrivederci", he told the staff of the Castello Mirabello grounds before leaving.

But to the journalists who asked him what files he would be studying for the rest of the summer, he said, "It's not the time for interviews,only for greetings."

"It's been very beautiful," he volunteered about his vacation. Someone did ask if he itnended to return to the Belluno Dolomites next year, and he said, "Of course - it's very beautiful here."

The pope's helicopter wa scheduled to fly over the site of the Vajont Dam in the Dolomites and the cemetery for the victims of the dam collapse that drowned an entire village in 1963, before flying on to Istrana airbase in Treviso for the flight back to Rome.

Yesterday, it had been reported that he would visit the cemetery briefly, but apparently, that plan has been scrapped.



Meanwhile, the AP and Reuter wrap-up reports on the Pope's vacation were largely derivative, rehashing all the little reports from the Italian media that we have been able to report daily. Here, for the record, anyway:


Pope ends his mountain vacation
By DANIELA PETROFF

LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy, July 27 (AP) - When Pope Benedict XVI announced he was coming on vacation, this sleepy town in the Italian Alps awoke with a jolt.

Streets were repaved, buildings were whitewashed and once rusty balconies were decorated with cheerful flowers and yellow-and-white Vatican flags.

At his departure Friday, a huge sign along the route to the improvised heliport read, "Holy Father please come back." At the end of the almost three-week stay, the fear here is that things will go back to normal in this town of fewer than 600 residents, known more for its eyeglass industry than its tourism.

"Having the pope shook us into action," said Bruna Da Rin, who works in the local ice cream parlor.

According to Mayor Mario Tremonti, the town tripled its summer population from the same period last year — a clear sign that Benedict brings business to the village in the northeastern Dolomite mountains.

"After he leaves, we are back where we started from," said Silvano Ponti Scala, mayor of a neighboring town in the Cadore valley.

The comments reflected the feeling of many in the area, who want to update its mountain tourism to resemble that in nearby Austria or the adjacent Italian South Tirol.

Lorenzago's history with popes goes back 20 years, when the late Pope John Paul II, an avid hiker in his native Poland, became the first pontiff to vacation in the mountains, accepting the offer of a local bishop to use the church-owned chalet tucked in the pine forest above the town.

John Paul went to Lorenzago five more times — the last visit dates back to 1998 — alternating with holidays in the Alps of the Valle D'Aosta, close to the French border.

Benedict spent his first two summers as pope at that retreat before he announced that for this summer, he wanted to try Lorenzago.

The villa, which had fallen into disuse with weeds growing everywhere, was refurbished and a 10-foot-high fence was erected around it for privacy as well as protection.

The town's two general stores — the closest supermarket is 10 miles away — now sell T-shirts with Benedict's image along with other papal gadgets, from key chains to posters and even a commemorative stamp recalling the visit.

According to the Veneto region, which includes Lorenzago, $246,000 was spent on fixing up the villa and the surrounding area, while another $225,000 went to sprucing up the town and redoing incoming roads.

During his stay, the 80-year-old pontiff, unlike his predecessor, preferred the seclusion of the villa to long outings, usually taking a car ride in the late afternoon to a church or shrine in the area, often combined with a short walk in the woods while praying the rosary.

For these outings, he wore hiking shoes under his traditional white cassock and a white quilted jacket for cooler evenings.

At a meeting with 400 priests Monday, in the neighboring town of Aronzo, the Bavarian-born Benedict explained how he felt about the mountains.

"I'm not very sporty, but I liked to go to the mountains when I was young," he said. "Now I only take very easy walks, but I still find it very beautiful."

While some tourists grumbled at the pope's quest for privacy, the locals took it in stride.

"We're just happy he's here," said Laura Gerardini, who owns the town's main cafe.

On rare occasions, Benedict stopped to greet small groups of tourists and locals who gathered daily in the main square in the hope of getting a glimpse of the pope driving by on his way back from an outing.

The lucky ones got to shake his hand when he rolled down the shaded window of the SUV he was using in the mountains. Children brought him flowers and mothers passed their babies through the window for a papal kiss.

The pope had three public appearances scheduled during his stay, two Sunday Angelus prayers and Monday's meeting with the priests. Upon arrival July 9, Benedict told reporters he planned to spend most of his holiday working on the second volume of his book on the life of Jesus, and possibly a second encyclical, the most authoritative document a pope can issue.

According to his secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, Benedict also brought a lot of reading with him and sheets of music, mainly Mozart, to play on the piano the local church had brought to the villa specially for him.

Many here hope Benedict comes back next year.

"When the pope moves, business moves. He helps in difficult situations," said Maria Antonia Ciotti, one of 22 mayors from the area whom the pope met at the villa Thursday to thank them from their hospitality.

Their hopes are likely to be fulfilled.

"God willing, we will be back," Benedict told reporters before taking off for Rome, where he will continue his summer at the papal residence in nearby Castel Gandolfo. "It has been wonderful here."



On holidays, different strokes
for different popes
By Philip Pullella


LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy, July 27 (Reuters) - Pope John Paul used to climb every mountain, ford every stream and take afternoon naps in a small, white tent. Pope Benedict reads, writes, takes naps indoors and plays Mozart on a baby grand piano.

On holidays, it's different strokes for different popes.

Pope Benedict is wrapping up three weeks of a private mountain holiday in the same isolated church-owned house where 20 years ago his predecessor broke with centuries of tradition by taking a vacation outside papal residences.

This storybook area of jagged peaks, whispering pines and gurgling streams that set apart hamlets graced by tall church steeples has dubbed itself "The Vacation Place of Popes."

When Pope John Paul began coming to this northern Dolomite area near the Austrian border in 1987, he was 67. Benedict, who was elected in 2005, is now 80.

John Paul, an avid mountain climber and hiker even before his election to the papacy in 1978, would often spend entire days miles from the mountain residence.

His security detail would deftly deflect the media, blocking roads as the papal party sped off to a different secret location each day to be used as a base for exploration of trails, plateaus and abandoned villages at high altitude.

He shed his white cassock, donned hiking boots and took off.

Reporters often did not know where John Paul had gone for the day until he returned, often just before sunset. Much younger security men would recount how they were left breathless.

Benedict, by contrast, seems to enjoy much more cerebral - and regimented - holidays.

"This is a vacation with few public appearances, a vacation that is a bit monastic, Benedictine," the German Pope's private secretary, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale.

And by "Benedictine" he did not mean his boss but the order of monks founded by St. Benedict in the 5th century and whose guiding principle is "Ora et Labora" (Pray and Work).

Benedict, a theologian and former professor, did much of both during his vacation.

Ganswein characterized the Pope's routine as "a day that is well structured" - early morning Mass, prayer and meditation, breakfast followed by reading, writing and more meditation.

He has lunch in the house at 1 p.m. and after rest and a brief walk in its park his afternoon is a repeat of the morning except for playing on a baby grand piano and listening to a few CDs of classical music.

"The Pope has brought along sheet music of various composers: Mozart, Chopin, Schubert and others," Ganswein told Il Giornale. "It's not a pontifical secret that the Pope has a predilection for Mozart."

Only in the early evening, at about 6 p.m., does the tiny papal entourage leave the mountaintop compound - venturing only a few miles to a nearby lake or mountain chapel.

The party stays out for only 90 minutes, compared with the excursions of up to 12 hours enjoyed by John Paul.

Upon the motorcade's return, several dozen Lorenzago residents and tourists, most of them elderly, gather along the sleepy town's only main street.

Benedict, sitting in the front seat next to the driver, rolls down his window and his car moves slowly up the mountain road, leaving Lorenzago in the rear view mirror.

It's dinner time and the end of another "well structured" vacation day in the life of the Pope.

END OF VACATION, LORENZAGO DI CADORE, JULY 9-27




THE POPE'S VACATION
'Arrivederci, Cadore!
Everything was beautiful!'
By Salvatore Mazza







After 19 days, Benedict XVI left Lorenzago yesterday and arrived at Castel Gandolfo in the early evening.

"Please come back," they told him, and he answered, "God willing."

The bells of Lorenzago chimed their last concert of the season for the departing guest at 5:02 p.m., as the white helicopter with the Pope lifted off from the local tennis grounds.

ARRIVEDERCI, the people called out, and so did large streamers they had put up along the roadsides. "ARRIVEDERCI. COME BACK TO US".

Will he? "Of course, God willing," he told them. "Everything has been beautiful here."

And so, Pope Benedict - serene, rested, lightly bronzed - left the Cadore after 19 days in the Dolomites. In a farewell very much in the style of his holiday - simple, essential, intimate.

He politely told journalists wanting to ask him questions before he got into the car leaving his vacation villa, "Please, this is not the time for questions, just for greetings."

First he spoke to the volunteers from Lorenzago parish. He bantered with Marco Dambros, factotum of the small museum in Lorenzago which commemorates the Dolomite vacations of John Paul II.

He was presented with a commemorative medal of this, his first vacation in the Dolomites, as well as one that had commemorated his predecessor's last visit. Benedict is shown wearing his Papal skullcap on his medal, while John Paul is wearing a miter. "Well, you can certainly tell the difference," he remarked lightly, drawing laughter.

He thanked the parishioners for the concert they offered in his honor on the Feast of St. Benedict (July 11) and complimented them on the 17th century organ that had been restored and used for the concert.

Finally, accompanied by his hosts, the Bishop of Belluno-Feltre, Mons,. Giuseppe Andrich, and the Bishop of Treviso, Mons. Andrea Mazzocato, he passed through the gate of the simple villa he had occupied for almost three weeks.

Outside were children from the Oratory of San Dona in Piave, who had climbed the hill from the lowland highway to the grounds of Castello Mirabello. He stopped to greet them and spoke to their rector, Don Francesco, who thanked him for his encounter with the clergy in Auronzo last Tuesday. The Pope said, "Bless you. I will pray for you."

Then he got into the car, which made the long descent towards town and the temporary heliport in the tennis grounds. He passed through streets with people waving the flags of the Vatican, Italy and Germany, scarves, handkerchiefs.

Mayor Mario Tremonti told him before he boarded the helicopter: "Holiness, my people are very enthusiastic. They ant to know when they will see you next year - shall it be before or after your trip to Sydney?" (scheduled in mid-July).

"We will see, we will see," the Pope said smiling. And he said so again to Don Sergio de Martin, parish priest of Lorenzago.

Now it was 5 p.m. and time to go. And off he went in the white helicopter of the Italian air force en route to Treviso. It was to fly over the cemetery of Longarone for an overhead blessing of the cemetery for the 2000 victims of the Vajont dam disaster in 1963.

At the Istrana airbase in Treviso, he transferred to a Falcon jet of the air force which brought him to Ciampino airbase in Rome. Shortly before 7 p.m., he was in a car enroute to the summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, where he will be in residence till the end of September.

Greeting the townspeople from the balcony of the Apostolic Palace, he said, "Dear friends, I have spent many beautiful days on vacation in the Dolomites, but I am always happy to be back here. I always feel at home surrounded by your friendship and hospitality. I hope to see you Sunday for the Angelus."

Nineteen days of rest and work and prayer, on his third summer vacation in the mountains as Pope. Memorable for his evening excursions to take a walk in the woods and visit some little church or roadside shrine that are typical of the Cadore.

They had said beforehand he planned to spend a monastic vacation. Indeed it was monastic. In the style of Benedict, Benedict XVI.




Avvenire, 28 luglio 2007

Oiriginally posted 28/07/2007 01:31



POPE GREETS TOWNSPEOPLE
AT CASTEL GANDOLFO



ROME, July 27 (Apcom) - Benedict XVI arrived early tonight at the summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in the Alban Hills near Rome, after almost three weeks on vacation in Lorenzago di Cadore, in the northeastern Italian province of Belluno.

Papa Ratzinger came out to the balcony of the Apostolic Palace to greet the crowd of faithful who had awaited his arrival.

He told them he was happy to be back at Castel Gandolfo and wished everyone a good vacation. He also expressed the hope that the days would be less warm.

On Sunday, the Pope will lead the noonday Angelus from this same balcony.

He will spend the rest of the summer in Castel Gandolfo, where his older brother, Mons. Georg Ratinger, is expected to join him, as he has in the past two years.


Earlier story:


VATICAN CITY, July 27 - The Pope, ending a vacation in the Dolomites of the Cadore, is back in Rome. The papal flight, a Falcon 900 of the Italian air force, landed at 18:45 at the military airport in Ciampino, coming from Istrana airbase in Treviso, northern Italy.

Smiling and bronzed from the Alpine sun, the Pope appeared at the head of the ramp as soon as the doors opened. Waiting to greet him was Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone,and other ranking Vatican prelates.

Shortly afterwards, the Pope got in to a car which left Ciampino under escort at 18:55 for the Papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.

The Holy Father's Q&A with the clergy of the Veneto last Tuesday covered the range of parish priests' pastoral concerns that he addressed in his usual systematic manner, But the only way to truly appreciate the Pope's responses is to read the full transcript.

He is never difficult to read in these spontaneous lectii - indeed, he's probably at his most fascinating on these occasions (including homilies delivered off the cuff), when one can see his mind at work in real time, as it were, because he is talking as he thinks and not reading from a text he has previously prepared.

Of course, everyone comes out of such reading with different reactions. In my case, I thought the Vatican-II answer most newsworthy because of its significance per se, but particularly in the light of the MP on the Mass and the CDF statement. Sandro Magister apparently thought the same from his presentation of the Q&A in yesterday's post.

CNS is the first of the Anglophone media I have seen that has reacted to the transcript released by the Vatican. Here are the two stories they filed about it.

For correspondent Wooden, the message that most resonated was one on the ecology - the excerpt where the Pope talks about natural law in relation to morality.


Ecology: Key to teaching young people
about Christian morality
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY, July 25 (CNS) - Pope Benedict XVI believes ecology could hold the key to teaching young people about Christian morality.

The papal intuition is sparked by the fact that ecology is a widely accepted moral concern, but one that points much deeper: Nature itself teaches that some things are naturally right and some are naturally wrong.

Appropriately, Pope Benedict had Alpine peaks and meadows as a backdrop when he added the environmental twist to his oft-repeated call for a moral education of the young based on a recognition of natural law.

When a priest in northern Italy asked him July 24 for suggestions on how to educate the moral conscience of the young, the pope began with a rather philosophical explanation of conscience and natural law.

In the Christian view, the natural moral code is not an arbitrary list of do's and don'ts thought up by religious leaders or resulting from a majority vote, but is part of human nature and the result of being created by God, the pope said. Humans are special creatures precisely because they have the ability "to listen to the voice of the Creator and, in this way, know what is good and what is bad."

In helping people understand the natural moral law, the pope said, the first step is to help them recognize that within themselves there is "a moral message, a divine message, which must be deciphered" and obeyed.

More concretely, "I would propose a combination between a secular way and a religious way, the way of faith," he said, before launching his new idea.

"Everyone today can see that man could destroy the foundation of his existence - his earth - and, therefore, we can no longer simply use this earth, this reality entrusted to us, to do what we want or what appears useful and promising at the moment, but we must respect the inherent laws of creation," the pope said.

People must "learn these laws and obey these laws if we want to survive," he said.

The destruction of the environment, the pope said, is a stark example of how future survival requires that people obey the laws of nature, especially when everyone else is taking shortcuts that may increase their pleasure at the moment, but are obviously damaging in the long term.

The first thing young people can learn is that "our earth speaks to us, and we must listen if we want to survive," the pope said.

Pope Benedict said it might not be that great of a reach to help young people understand that the same natural voice telling them littering is bad, clear-cutting a forest is a shame, and that water and clean air are precious resources is really saying that life is precious.

"We must not only care for the earth, but we must respect one another," he said. "Only with absolute respect for this creature of God, this image of God which is man, only with respect for living together on this earth can we move forward."

Pope Benedict said that once people understand human freedom involves the entire human community and not just what one individual feels like doing at any one time they can be led to see how the Ten Commandments also are expressions of truth about human nature and about the regulations needed for living together on this earth.

The pope said priests should try to use "the obvious paths" opened up by secular moral concerns, such as ecology, to lead Christian young people to "the true voice of the conscience," which is communicated in Catholic moral teaching.

"Through a journey of patient education, I think we can all learn to live and to find true life," he said.


And this was the CNS wrap-up story of the meeting, which did pick out the Vatican-II answer to lead off its brief summary:


Pope meets privately with priests,
discusses wide range of topics
By Catholic News Service

AURONZO, Italy (CNS) -- Faith and reason, mercy and the defense of the truth, dialogue and evangelization were just some of the topics Pope Benedict XVI touched on when he responded to questions posed by the priests of two northern Italian dioceses.

After meeting privately with about 400 priests July 24, Pope Benedict told the crowd waiting outside, "We spoke about God, about the church, about humanity today and, mostly, about the fact that we are the church and in this journey we must all collaborate."

Nearing the end of his vacation in the Diocese of Belluno and Feltre, at a villa owned by the Diocese of Treviso, Pope Benedict thanked his hosts by spending two hours praying with and answering questions posed by the dioceses' priests.

The following day, the Vatican released a text of the pope's answers to questions posed by the priests during the meeting in the Church of St. Justina in Auronzo.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters the topics included educating young people in the faith and moral values, the problems of priestly life, evangelization, interreligious dialogue, "the always-delicate situation" of divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, and "the theme of faithfulness to the (Second Vatican) Council and its spirit."

The Jesuit said that at the end "it was not just the priests who thanked the pope, but the pope who thanked the priests for their welcome and for the climate" created by the gathering.

A priest who described himself as one of many priests who thought they could "change the world" after the Second Vatican Council asked the pope if the council still had value today.

Pope Benedict said he, too, had great expectations for the church after the council, "but things turned out to be more difficult."

However, he said, putting a council's teaching into practice often requires "suffering, and only in suffering can growth be realized." Those who pushed an "incorrect progressivism" and those who adopted a stance of "anti-conciliarism" were both wrong, the pope said.

"We can see with eyes wide open how much positive growth there has been since the council: in the renewal of the liturgy," the development of the synods of bishops, diocesan and parish pastoral councils, "the new responsibility of the laity," a greater awareness of the universality of the church and in the birth of new religious communities and lay movements, he said.

In his responses to several questions, including those about morality and about the difficulties people have in believing in God in a world focused on science, Pope Benedict spoke about the reasonableness of faith in God's existence.

The brief video clip released by the Vatican showed the pope explaining how Christians believe that human beings are special precisely because they have a capacity for puzzling over and groping for meaning in a way that goes well beyond concern for their material needs.

"Our being is open," he said. "It can hear the voice of being itself - the voice of God."

"The greatness of the human person lies precisely in the fact that he is not closed in on himself, he is not reduced to concern about the material and quantifiable, but has an interior opening to the things that are essential, has the possibility of listening," the pope said.

Pope Benedict also told the priests that evolution and the existence of God the creator should not be seen as two ideas in strict opposition to one another.

"Evolution exists, but it is not enough to answer the great questions," such as how human beings came to exist and why human beings have an inherent dignity, he said.

Father Lombardi said the pope had told the priests that when they encounter young people who think science has all the answers and they do not need God, priests should help them see "the great harmony of the universe" and ask if science alone can explain how it all works together and leads to such beauty.

"A world without God would become a world of the arbitrary," the pope told the priests.

Pope Benedict also spoke about the importance of seeing the need to protect the environment as a moral imperative.

"Everyone today can see that man could destroy the foundation of his existence - his earth - and, therefore, we can no longer simply use this earth, this reality entrusted to us, to do what we want or what appears useful and promising at the moment, but we must respect the inherent laws of creation," the pope said.

In a region marked by a large influx of immigrants, many of them Muslims, Pope Benedict told the priests to help their parishioners "recognize these persons as neighbors to be loved."

The pope also told the priests that Christians have an obligation to share the good news they have been given the grace to believe.

The proclamation of Christianity involves sharing truths that are fairly simple, he said. It is not a matter of explaining a collection of doctrines, but of presenting the truth and the hope that Christians have found in Christ.

The pope reminded the priests that in his first letter, St. Peter "did not say formally, 'Proclaim the Gospel to everyone.' He said, 'You must be ready to explain the hope that is in you.' It seems to me that this is the necessary synthesis between dialogue and proclamation."

When Christians live as people of hope and as people who love their neighbors, he said, "then it is easier to present the source of our behavior" and explicitly offer a witness to faith in Christ.


8/1/07
I have belatedly found that John Allen did have a clumn last Friday, July 27, in which he commented on the Pope's encounter with the clergy in Auronzo - and like Cindy Wooden, he appears to have found Benedict's statement on ecology the most significant - although he situates it in the larger context of the Pope's advocacy of natural law as humanity's common ground for morality, regardless of religion or lack of it.

For Benedict, environmental movement
promises recovery of natural law tradition
All Things Catholic
by John L. Allen, Jr.
Friday, July 27, 2007

One could say that summer 2007 is when the Vatican decided to go green.

First came an announcement in June that more than 1,000 photovoltaic panels will be installed atop the Paul VI Audience Hall, allowing the building to utilize solar energy for light, heating and cooling.

A month later, the Vatican became the first state in Europe to go completely carbon-neutral, signing an agreement with a Hungarian firm to reforest a sufficiently large swath of Hungary's Bükk National Park to offset its annual CO2 emissions.

To some, these may seem curiously cutting edge moves from a pope whose recent decisions to revive the pre-Vatican II Mass and to reaffirm claims that Catholicism is the lone true church have cemented his reputation as the ultimate "retro" figure. He sometimes brings to mind the famous quip that rolling back the clock is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if it's keeping bad time.

This week, we got the outlines of an answer from the pope himself, during a July 24 conversation with priests from the northern Italian dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso. (Such encounters have become an annual ritual as part of the pope's summer vacation.)

The first question had to do with the formation of conscience, and Benedict replied with his now-familiar diagnosis of the cultural situation in the West. By truncating the sphere of reason to only those things which can be empirically verified or falsified, the pope said, spirituality and morality have been "expelled" from rationality, consigned to a merely subjective sphere, understood as a matter of individual taste and judgment.

In response, Benedict proposed a two-pronged strategy, one being the path of religious faith, the other being what he called "a secular path." By that, Benedict appeared to mean natural law, the idea that nature itself carries a moral message that can be deciphered utilizing the faculty of conscience, even by those who aren't Christian or who aren't religious at all.

In the pope's mind, this seems to be where environmentalism enters the picture.

"Everyone can see today that humanity could destroy the foundation of its own existence, its earth, and therefore we can't simply do whatever we want with this earth that has been entrusted to us, what seems to us in a given moment useful or promising, but we have to respect the inner laws of creation, of this earth, we have to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive," Benedict said. "This obedience to the voice of the earth is more important for our future happiness than the voices of the moment, the desires of the moment. … Existence itself, our earth, speaks to us, and we have to learn to listen."

From there, Benedict said, we may also learn anew to listen to the voice of human nature as well, discovering in other people and in human communities moral laws that stand above our own ego. In that regard, the pope said, we can draw upon the great moral experience of humanity. Doing so teaches that human liberty never exists in isolation from others; it works only if it's rooted in a sense of common values.

In other words, Benedict sees in the modern environmental movement the most promising route for recovery of the natural law tradition. What today's rising ecological awareness presumes is that there are limits inscribed in nature beyond which humanity trespasses at its own peril. Without any particular reference to religion, the secular world today is arriving at its own version of natural law theory. Building upon that momentum, and directing it beyond environmental matters to questions of individual and social morality, is what Benedict seems to mean by a "secular path" to formation of conscience.

To extend a metaphor, one might say that Benedict XVI is trying to paint a distinctively Catholic shade of green.

I don't mean to suggest that the pope's environmental concern is entirely instrumental, as if he OKed putting solar cells on Vatican buildings simply because, in some round-about fashion, he thinks that'll convince people not to have abortions. He's made clear on multiple occasions that he regards defense of the environment as an urgent moral necessity all by itself. But Benedict also appears to see something deeper stirring in Western environmentalism, a new sense of moral restraint grounded in objective natural reality.

To put the pope's point simplistically, if the world is willing to limit its carbon output on the basis of the laws of nature, then maybe it will become more willing to accept limits arising from nature in other spheres of life as well.

At the moment, the International Theological Commission, the main advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has a sub-commission working on a document on Natural Law. A draft is expected to be ready for discussion in October. The project is led by Dominican Fr. Serge Bonino, the editor of the Revue Thomist; the American member is Jesuit Fr. John Michael McDermott of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio. It will be interesting to see if the sub-commission develops this line of reflection.

* * *

Two other points are worth picking up from that July 24 session.

First, for the last couple of years a series of somewhat confusing statements from senior Catholic officials have created doubt as to whether the Catholic church accepts the theory of evolution. Benedict addressed the subject again on Wednesday. Here's what he said, on the subject of trying to find a source of meaning in the context of modern culture.

"Presently I see in Germany, and also in the United States, a fairly bitter debate between so-called creationism and evolutionism, presented as if they were mutually exclusive alternatives: whoever believes in a Creator cannot believe in evolution, and likewise whoever believes in evolution has to exclude God," Benedict said.

"This opposition is an absurdity, because on the one hand, there are many scientific proofs in favor of an evolution that seems to be a reality that we have to see, and that enriches our understanding of life and of existence as such. But the doctrine of evolution does not respond to all questions, above all to the great philosophical questions: Where does everything come from? How did everything start on the path that finally arrived at humanity?"

One news agency reported that Benedict's comments "appear to be an endorsement of the doctrine of intelligent design," but that doesn't seem quite right. Intelligent design theorists question evolution on scientific grounds, arguing that it can't explain gaps in the fossil record or the "irreducible complexity" of organic life.

When Benedict said that evolution doesn't answer all questions, he meant that it doesn't address deep philosophical matters such as the origin and meaning of life. If anything, his comments should be read as an endorsement of evolution, not of intelligent design, understood as a scientific hypothesis rather than a philosophical system.

To put this into a sound-bite, Benedict believes in both evolution and creation, each understood on its own terms. Speaking later in the session on a different topic, Benedict XVI said that this passion for synthesis is the spirit of Catholicism, always seeking both/and solutions.

The last question came from a priest who described himself as a member of the Vatican II generation. He said many priests of his era are feeling tired and disheartened; they began, he said, with great dreams of changing the world, many of which have not been realized. What message, he asked, does the pope have for them?

Benedict began by describing Vatican II as a magna carta for the future of the church, which remains "very essential and fundamental." He also noted that historically, councils are always followed by turbulence. St. Basil, he recalled, compared the situation following the Council of Nicea to a naval battle at night, when nobody can recognize who's who and so the fight becomes all against all. St. Gregory Nazianzen, he said, actually refused to participate in the First Council of Constantinople for precisely this reason.

Benedict argued that the post-conciliar period was framed by two great historical turning points. The first was the explosion of revolutionary energies in 1968, which the pope said triggered a cultural crisis. The "new, sane modernity" envisioned by the council found itself facing a Marxist-inspired violent break with the past. Some Catholics, he said, read the council as a warrant for cultural revolution, while others rejected the council for the same reason.

Then came 1989 and the implosion of Marxist utopian dreams, which left skepticism and nihilism in its wake. In that context, he said, "the timid, humble search to realize the true spirit of the council" was often overwhelmed.

Yet, Benedict said, while falling trees make noise, growing ones are silent. In just that fashion, he said, it's possible today to see new growth resulting from the council.

He pointed to Brazil, saying that when he went in May he knew about the explosion in non-Catholic religious movements in the country, but what he didn't understand was the growth taking place inside Catholicism. He said that almost every day in Brazil, a new religious order or lay movement is born. That growth is not enough to "refill the statistics," he said, but he called that a "false hope," adding that "statistics are not our divinity."

Despite the vicissitudes of recent history, Benedict argued, Vatican II provided "a great roadmap," allowing the church to move forward "joyously and full of hope."

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

And I was counting on him to parse the significance of what I truly consider to be a tour-de-force spontaneous summation of the consequences for Vatican-II!

Making up for 'reporting' lapses in the past two days. Most of my Forum workday on Thursday was taken up translating the Pope's Q&A session in Auronzo, and I began my limited Forum workday early yesterday morning translating Mons. Gaenswein's long interview with Peter Seewald, and was gone for the rest of the day, and had to finish the translation as soon as I got back...

Here's a China update from AsiaNews, which reports with a decided partisanship hostile to the 'offical' Catholic Church in China:


CHINA - VATICAN
Liu Bainian goes back on his invitation to Pope,
and the government talks of 'changing times'

Celebrating 50 years of the Patriotic Association,
the Chinese vice premier praises the Association for having guaranteed the Chinese church's independence,
urging it to continue its work 'with a spirit that changes with the times'.


Beijing, July 26 (AsiaNews) – A hurried U-turn by the vice-president of the Patriotic Association Liu Bainian regarding his “hope” to see the Pope in Beijing, while comments made by the vice-premier Hui Liangyu on the progress of the PA in “times that change” raise a series of questions.

Yesterday in Beijing the “Catholic Assembly” celebrated 50 years of the Patriotic Association – which depends on the People’s Republic’s Office for Religious Affairs – offering a further occasion for reflection on relations between China and the Holy See. [The word 'depends' here is a literal translation of the original Italian report, in which the cognate word 'dipende' means in this sense that the PA is an agency of the Office for Religious Affairs.]

Liu Bainian, the lay vice-president of the AP – harshly condemned Pope Benedict XVI’s Letter to China’s Catholics – he used the government's China Daily to officially renege on the “hopes” he himself had expressed in an interview with the Italian daily Repubblica.

[I think it's the reporter's conclusion that Liu 'used' the China Daily, when it might be the other way around. The China Daily, as a government organ, was directly refuting Liu by quoting him. How can we be sure Liu actually said what he is supposed to have said?]

“What I meant was – he declared - I hoped the Pope could visit China and celebrate Mass but only after normalization of diplomatic ties”.
[He is therefore not 'reneging' on his hope. He still hopes so, only he is making clear under what condition such a visit can be made.]

The daily newspaper goes on to attribute to Liu the traditional criticism of the Vatican, for diplomatic relations with China and “interference in internal Chinese affairs”, in short the nomination of bishops.

According to China Daily, over 200 people were present at the Assembly, Catholics, exponents of other religions and government officials. Among them, writes state news agency Xinhua, 40 bishops and around 20 priests. In recent days Catholic sources related to AsiaNews that over five thousand were invited.

The agency also reports that in his intervention at the Assembly, the vice premier said: “The new century, with its new tasks in the new stage, has new demands for the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. There is hope that the association will inherit the outstanding tradition of being patriotic and loving the church, remember its holy mission, and strengthen its work with a spirit that changes with the times”.

The statement, while on the one hand seems to query the existence of the AP - as the Vatican would like to see done – on the other it is obscure enough to allow for opposing interpretations on the actual standing of the Chinese government regarding the Pope’s Letter. [This sentence makes a good example of what has troubled me about AsiaNews translations lately of its own Italian reports into English, including its accounts of Papal texts, starting with the Angelus messages.]

On July 16th last, Vatican Secretary of State Card. Tarcisio Bertone, had underlined the lack of government response, hypothesizing a “moment of thought and reflection”.

During the Assembly, Vice-Premier Hui then praised the PA for having taken steps to guarantee the independence of the Chinese Church. He urged the association to "hold fast to the principles of independence, autonomy and self-management" and serve as a bridge to lead Catholics to building a socialist nation”.

Liu, in his intervention to the same Assembly, revindicated the growth in Catholicism over the last 50 years of the Association's existence. [Again, an Italian word 'rivendicare' which simply means to assert or claim something is being translated literally, although 're-vindicate' means completely something else in English!]

However he also lamented the lack of clergy and in particular the fact that 42 diocese have no bishops. A potentially threatening reference , this last one given that Lui himself is in charge of illicit Episcopal ordinations, which the Holy See contests. [What is threatening about stating a fact?] (FP)

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

As a journalist, this is what I find most interesting in the above report, citing a report by the state news agency Xinhua:

---

The agency also reports that in his intervention at the “Assembly”, the vice premier said: “The new century, with its new tasks in the new stage, has new demands for the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. There is hope that the association will inherit the outstanding tradition of being patriotic and loving the church, remember its holy mission, and strengthen its work with a spirit that changes with the times”.

---

Here is a vice-premier of the People's Republic of China - an officially Communist and therefore atheistic state - saying the PA should continue 'loving the church, remember its holy mission' - is that not cause for wonder?

Since when has an atheistic regime spoken about the Church, any church, having a 'holy mission' when it does not believe in 'holiness' at all?

In fact, AsiaNews should have asked Xinhua for a text of Hui's full statement and examined it carefully. If anyone wants to find signals, might there not be a signal in the statement about 'new tasks in the new stage, new demands [for the PA]...with a spirit that changes with the times"?

What has changed in the past 50 years where Chinese Catholics are concerned - this 'new stage' and 'changes with the times' that Hui refers to - except what might result from the Pope's letter?

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

Here's an item in PETRUS afterwards (on 7/27) apparently from the Italian news agency APCOM. It is really not right that PETRUS continues not to credit its sources properly. If they prefer to take off the customary dateline at the start of the item, fine, but at least, they should put the agency or newspaper credit at the end. Both are accepted journalistic practices. What is not right is to fail to credit the story. It helps the reader to evaluate the credibility of a story if the source is cited.


Cardinal Zen criticizes
Liu Bainian

VATICAN CITY - The head of the Chinese Catholics Patriotic Associaiton in China, Liu Bainian, "has already retracted" an invitation to Pope Benedict XVI to visit Beijing, and in any case, he does not have the 'authority; to even issue one, according to Cardinal Joseph Zen of HongKong.

In an interview with APCOM, the cardinal also said it was 'very difficult' to imagine that the Holy See would transfer its nunciature from Taiwan to Beijing.

He also said the 'moderate' reaction from Chinese officials so far to the Pope's letter to the Catholics of China was a hopeful sign.

About Liu, he said: "Liu Bainian has already retracted his earlier statement. He has said that diplomatic relations must first be established with the Holy See before the Pope can come to China. Besides, I don't know what authority he has to invite the Pope to China, seeing that he (Liu) is actually usurping power."

[NB: In the interest of fairness, here is what Liu actually said in the interview with La Repubblica: "I hope with all my heart to be able to see the Pope here in Beijing to celebrate Mass for us Chinese. The Catholics of Italy cannot imagine how much we desire to see him. Through La Repubblica, I would like to send the Holy Father a special greeting: I want him to know that we always pray for him, and that we pray the Lord will grant us the grace of welcoming him among us." He never said directly he was extending an invitation, so there was nothing for him to retract. Indeed, according to the government newspaper report in the earleier story, he reiterated his 'hopes'.]

As to the hypothesis of a transfer of the Vatican's diplomatic mission from Taiwan to the mainland - with the restoration of diplomatic relations with Beijing - Cardinal Zen said: "It is something very difficult. The Holy See, however, has already decided that if such a move is, it would do so. But it is also on condition that China guarantees religious freedom"....

About the Pope's letter to the Chinese Catholics, Zen said: "The first reactions seem to be moderate and give us reason to hope. The government has received it without major objections."

He spoke about meeting with the Pope in Lorenzago di Cadore last Sunday: "I accompanied a group of permanent deacons from HongKong who are making a pilgrimage to Italy, and it was a good occasion to meet the Holy Father. I thanked him for the letter, and I also had an opportunity to ask for some clarifications."

[The news item refers to previous statements by Cardinal Zen about some mis-translations to Chinese of some parts of the letter in the Vatican official translation to 'simplified Chinese', but Apcom failed to ask him what were the clarifications he got from the Pope! After all, Zen has raised points of interpretation far more important than the couple of mis-translations he objected to - principally his interpretation that the Pope was not asking the underground Catholics to surface at all. Which is strange, considering that the whole point of the letter is to get the Chinese Catholics to be 'one Church', and that the letter clearly says clandestinity is not a normal condition for any Church.]

On the recent nomination by the 'official Church' of Li Shan as Bishop of Beijing, Cardinal Zen said: "Cardinal Bertone has already said that the Holy See thinks the right person was named. But they still must ask for Vatican approval, and they still have not done that."


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

I hope a competent China expert comes out with an objective analysis of the situation so far, presenting both sides of the picture. The reporting in the Catholic media has so far been partisan on the side of the underground Church, and in apparent disregard of the Pope's letter.

Because of his personal history, I understand Cardinal Zen's own partisanship, but I think at this point, his role should be to straighten out misunderstandings in a fair manner, instead of sticking to his hard line against the open Church in China, which seems to me a defiance of the Pope's letter itself.

My own perceptions about this issue would have been completely different without the couple of expert analyses by historians that came out in the Italian secular media, and the reporting of 30 GIORNI - a Catholic magazine which has been generally traditional, i.e, 'conservative' - consisting of interviews with and statements by leading Chinese bishops, including two who were originally 'illegal' bishops, but whom Pope Benedict XVI validated and thereby canonically recognized in 2005 by inviting them to take part in the Bishops Synod on the Eucharist.

The rancour by some elements of the underground Church against the open Church can be seen in the diatribes on their Websites against someone like the Bishop of Shanghai, whom they continue to call a 'usurper' despite Pope Benedict's official blessing.

As no one apparently thought it interesting enough to say even one word about my repeated question in REFLECTIONS ABOUT OUR FAITH... to speculate when the Holy Father might celebrate the traditional Mass in public for the first time, let me console myself by this report from ADNkronos, thanks to PETRUS, and translated here:


Benedict may offer trad-Mass
for the first time in public
on the first Sunday of Advent


VATICAN CITY, July 28 (ADNkronos) - Pope Benedict XVI could celebrate the traditional Mass in public for the first time on the first Sunday of Advent, which begins the liturgical year, ADNkronos learned today from authoritative Vatican sources.

The prospect of such a public 're-introduction' by the Pope was welcomed by the edtior of the Vatican magazine Latinitas, Don Anacleto Pavanetto.

"A public Mass according to the rite of St. Pius V! Then may it be! It would be a communal act of offering praise to God," he said. He himself says the traditional Mass daily.

The sources said the Pope's first public Mass in the traditional manner will not necessarily take place in St. Peter's, and that most likely, it would be during a pastoral visit to a Roman parish where the Tridentine Mass is already celebrated.

In one of the four Papal basilicas in Rome, Santa Maria Maggiore, the traditional Mass is said every Wednesday.

Fr. Pavanetto said that in preparation for September 14, Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, when the Motu Proprio on the Mass goes into effect, Latinitas has organized twice-weekly courses to prepare priests who are interested in celebrating the traditional Mass.

"It will also be a refresher course for those who may have forgotten the details, help them cover any 'gaps', and at least, to understand the liturgical nuances," he said.

But for priests who have not disdained learning the language of Cicero, Fr. Pavanetto reminds them of the Certamen Vaticanum, a contest sponsored by the Latinitas Foundation for its 50th anniversary on November 25 for works written in Latin by any interested person, including laymen.

So it is to be on the first Sunday of Advent! Wonderful news. Let's hope it will be televised as well.

Here is how the China situation is seen by The Tablet, the British weekly Catholic newspaper which is generally considered liberal.


Vatican-China relations
show signs of thaw
Francis Wong in Hong Kong
Robert Mickens in Rome
The Tablet
July 28,2007

A NEW rapprochement between Beijing and the Holy See is on the cards, after signs that the Pope’s recent letter to Chinese Catholics has been well received in official circles.

The leading spokesman for China’s state-sanctioned Catholic Church has praised Pope Benedict’s pastoral letter to the country’s divided Catholic community and said he hoped the Pope would visit soon, while the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has indicated that the omens for a positive response to the letter are good.

The vice-chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) – Liu Bainian – told the Italian daily La Repubblica that the June 30 papal letter was a “positive” development.

He said he hoped “to see the Pope one day, here in Beijing, celebrating Mass for us”.

When asked about Mr Liu’s comments on Tuesday after meeting priests near his holiday spot in northern Italy, the Pope reportedly responded, “It’s rather complicated.”

In his letter Pope Benedict invited Chinese Catholics to unite under his authority – both those in the state Church loyal to Beijing, and those “underground” faithful loyal to Rome. But he stressed that the appointment of bishops, which the CCPA has overseen, was part of the supreme spiritual authority of the Holy See and should not be treated as an affair of state.

However, the Vatican has indicated that it will approve the appointment of the new Bishop of Beijing – Fr Joseph Li Shan – as soon as China’s government-sanctioned Church requests it.

“We are waiting,” said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on 18 July. The Pope’s Secretary of State called Joseph Li Shan “a very good and suitable subject” and said his appointment o Beijing was “certainly a very positive sign”.

He said that the Vatican had not had “an official communication about this election”, but was hopeful that the state-sponsored Church
would seek the Holy See’s approval.

“We hope this will happen,” Bertone said.

Bishop-elect Joseph Li Shan, 42, was chosen on 16 July by 93 Catholics – 48 priests, eight nuns, two seminarians and 35 representatives from parishes – to succeed Bishop Michael Fu Tieshan who died in April. He is the first CCPA bishop to be appointed since the papal letter was issued.

Cardinal Bertone said the Vatican has not yet received an official response to the papal text. “We think the Government is reflecting [on it] with prudence, and this is a very positive attitude,” he said.

The letter had “brought dialogue between the official Church and the clandestine Church” and there had been a positive response to it from at least one “official bishop”.

But Fr Paul Sun Shan’en, a senior Beijing priest who oversaw the recent episcopal election, said bishop candidates should be patriotic and uphold the principles of an independent, autonomous and self-managed Church. The Holy See has always viewed such principles, which are upheld by the CCPA, as a challenge to papal authority.

Asked if the Diocese of Beijing would request the papal mandate for its new bishop, the CCPA’s Mr Liu told UCANews that it was the business of the diocese.

But Fr Paul Sun told UCANews that it was a matter for the state-sponsored Chinese Bishops’ Conference. The Holy See does not formally recognise the authority of either body.

Meanwhile, differing interpretations of Pope Benedict’s recent letter have emerged among China experts in communion with Rome. Hong Kong’s Cardinal Joseph Zen SDB, who is fiercely anti-Communist, this week rejected comments by a respected missionary based in Belgium.

Fr Jeroom Heyndrickx, CICM, director of the Verbiest Institute at the Catholic University of Leuven, said in a UCANews commentary that the Pope’s letter indicated that there was “no longer any reason to keep an underground Church community going in China” and that underground bishops should seek recognition from Chinese authorities.

But Cardinal Zen accused the priest of “misreading” the papal text and insisted that it did not encourage underground bishops to seek state recognition, because the state continues to oppress the Church.

“Fr Heyndrickx seems to be confused; he reads too many things into the letter of the Holy Father,” wrote the cardinal. He accused the priest of “disturbing the wonderful balance achieved in the letter between truth and charity”.

Let us be grateful to this writer who had the good sense to pick up on Benedict XVI's remarks at the July 22 Angelus and place Benedict XV's historic initiative in the right context.

BENEDICT XV:
AHEAD OF HIS TIME
By Ashley Beck
The Tablet
July 28, 2007

Ninety years ago this August, Benedict XV sent his “Peace Note” to the warring nations of the First World War.
Joseph Ratzinger took the same papal name in acknowledgement of his predecessor’s courage.
But in 1917, this prophet was ignored.


In December 2006, at the end of his visit to Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass at the cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul. Outside he released a dove, symbol of peace, near a statue which had been specially cleaned by the city council for the pope’s visit. The statue is of Pope Benedict XV, who was pope during the First World War.

On the statue is this inscription: “To the great Pope of the world’s tragic hour, Benedict XV, benefactor of the people, without discrimination or nationality or religion, a token of gratitude from the Orient.”

When Benedict XVI was elected in 2005 he stated that he was consciously taking the name of the last pope to bear the name Benedict, referring to him as a “courageous prophet of peace”. This coming week marks the ninetieth anniversary of the most important
initiative that Benedict XV undertook to end the war, the “Peace Note” sent to the leaders of all the belligerent nations in August 1917.

Giacomo della Chiesa had been elected pope barely a month into the war in September 1914. From the beginning of the conflict he had called passionately for the warring nations to stop fighting and negotiate; in 1915 he wrote a special prayer for peace which he ordered to be used at special days of prayer throughout the world; he also tried unsuccessfully to stop Italy from entering the war and condemned German atrocities committed during the war, especially in Belgium.

His efforts and even-handedness earned him obloquy on both sides of the conflict: in France he was called le pape Boche, in Italy Maledetto XV and in Germany Der Franzöische Papst.

By the summer of 1917 the combatant nations seemed weary of the slaughter. Pope Benedict rightly perceived that any initiative would succeed only if Germany were prepared to make concessions. He sent Mgr Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) to Germany to see the Kaiser and his Chancellor. These meetings established the specific issues on which Germany would be prepared to negotiate peace: ncluding the limitation of armaments, the setting up of international courts, negotiations about Alsace-Lorraine and, above all, the restoration of the independence of Belgium.

The note is sometimes known by its opening words in French, Dès le Début: “Since the beginning of our pontificate, in the midst of the horrors of the terrible war which has burst upon Europe, we have considered three things among others: to maintain an absolute impartiality towards all belligerents, as becomes him who is the common father, and who loves all his children with an equal affection; to endeavour continually to do the utmost good to all without distinctions of persons, nationality or religion, in accordance not only with the universal law of charity, but also with the supreme spiritual duty laid upon us by Christ; and finally, as is demanded by our pacific mission, to omit nothing, as far as it in our power lies, to contribute to hasten the end of this calamity by trying to bring the peoples and their leaders to more moderate resolutions in the discussion of means that will secure a ‘just and lasting peace’.”

He proposed that the rule of law be restored and that the moral force of right replace the material force of arms. This needed to be done in three stages: first, fighting should be suspended; second, there should be a reduction in armaments “according to rules and guarantees to be established to the extent necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of public order in each State”; third, there should be international arbitration “on lines to be determined and with sanctions to be settled against any State that should refuse either to submit international questions to arbitration or to accept its awards”.

He called for occupied territories to be restored, negotiations to settle territorial disputes, the free movement of peoples and common rights over the seas. Demands for reparations and indemnities should be renounced.

In addition to the points already agreed in Germany, of note are the provisions for the renunciation of indemnities and the freedom and community of the seas; as can be seen Benedict set out detailed plans for negotiations in relation to Belgium, Poland, the Balkan states and Armenia.

The initiative failed: no one on the Entente side showed any interest. Britain, still a country in which much of the establishment was anti-Catholic, did not even show the Holy See the common courtesy of a proper reply.

Much hostility to the pope’s initiative was shown in France and Italy, and the rejection on behalf of the alliance was made by United States President Woodrow Wilson, who had initially remarked of the pope: “What does he want to butt in for?”

[What an insensitive, thoughtless and ill-considered remark by an American President who has lived on in history, ironically, as a civilian parallel to Benedict XVI - the naive statesman who conceived of the League of Nations, which came to nothing at the time.]

By the way, it is worth repeating here what Benedict XVI said on July 22 - that part of it which the Western media ignored - except fir the references to Paul VI and John Paul II - when they reported on it:

---

Pope Benedict XV's note was not limited to condemning the war. It also indicated, on a juridical basis, the means to construct a just and lasting peace: the moral force of the law, balanced and controlled disarmament, arbitration of controversies, freedom of the seas, reciprocal condonation of war damages, restitution of occupied territories, and equitable negotiations to resolve disputes.

The proposal of the Holy See was oriented towards the future of Europe and the world, according to a plan with Christian inspiration that could be shared by all because it was founded on the rights of man.

It is the same formulation that the Servants of God Paul VI and John Paul II advocated in their memorable addresses to the General Assembly of the United Nations, repeating, in the name of the Church, "War never again!"

From this place of peace, in which the inhabitants are more vividly aware how unacceptable are the horrors of 'useless slaughters', I renew an appeal to follow tenaciously the rule of law, to reject the arms race with determination, and in general to resist the temptation of facing new situations with old ways.

With these thoughts and hopes in our hearts, let us now raise a special prayer for peace in the world, entrusting it to the Most Holy Mary, Queen of Peace.

BENEDICT PP XVI

---

Benedict XVI's Election Made the Old New Again:
Interview With Adviser to Germany's Chancellor



ROME, JULY 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- When age-old religious issues were making headlines with the Benedict XVI's election, many were confronted with something new, especially in eastern Germany, said an adviser to Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In this interview with ZENIT, Andrea Schneider discusses what Benedict XVI's election to the pontificate has meant for Germany, Catholic social teaching and the role it plays in her life.

Schneider recently spoke in Rome at a conference "The Foundations of the Free Society," hosted by the Michigan-based Acton Institute.

The event was the last of a series of conferences commemorating Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus.

Q: How has the situation of Catholics changed in Germany after the election of Benedict XVI?

Schneider: I think what happened after John Paul II died and Benedict XVI was elected was that religion came to the forefront, it became a subject to be discussed openly. It was discussed by Catholics in their parishes before, but not at the workplace.

These themes were all of a sudden making headlines in newspapers, and we could discuss it openly with our neighbors. We were no longer outsiders.

So it made people recall topics which had been long forgotten or which they tried to erase from their lives. Hence, many people were confronted with something new, especially in the eastern part of Germany.

When Benedict XVI was elected, people in Germany felt, whether they were Catholics, Protestants or atheists, that something is happening, and that if we are all parts of this, then there is something that we have to do ourselves and that this is wonderful. I think that in the long run this election will make an impact.

We discuss religion more, and I think this is what we Catholics and Protestants have to do to talk about our faith, to keep discussing such topics and challenge our neighbors.

The rest of the interview is about Centesimus Annus. I am posting in in the JOHN PAUL II thread.

THE POPE IN RESIDENCE, SUMMER OF 2007


A translation of the Holy Father's words at Angelus today has been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.




The Pope calls for nuclear disarmament,
peaceful uses of atomic energy, and
release of Korean hostages in Afghanistan

In his Angelus message today, Pope Benedict XVI called attention to the 50th anniversary today of the International Atomic Energy Agency, created with the mandate to "promote and increase the contribution of atomic energy to the cause of peace, health and prosperity in the world".

He also issued a plea for the release of Korean hostages held captive in Afghanistan and called on all armed groups to desist from using innocent persons to push partisan objectives.

It was the Pope's first summer Angelus at the Papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, where he arrived Friday to spend the rest of the summer.

On atomic energy, he said:

"The epochal changes that have taken place in the past 50 years show how, in the difficult crossroads at which humanity now finds itself, the commitment has become even more actual and urgent to encourage the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, to promote a progressive and consensual nuclear disarmament, and to favor the peaceful and safe use of nuclear technology for authentic development, which is respectful of the environment and always mindful of the most disadvantaged populations.

"I hope that the efforts of those who are working to pursue these three objectives with determination will have the desired outcome, so that "the resources saved in this manner may be employed in development projects for the benefit of all, especially the poorest." (Message for teh World Day of Peace, No. 13).

He offered a prayer that "scientific and technological knowledge may always be applied with a sense of responsibility and for the common good, in full compliance with international law."

In his brief messages to the various language groups, he reminded them that in today's Gospel, Jesus taught us how to pray by formulating the 'Our Father.'


POPE CALLS FOR
RELEASE OF SEIZED KOREANS

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, July 29 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for the release of Korean hostages held in Afghanistan, saying their abduction represented "a grave violation of human dignity."

The 23 Koreans were seized by Taliban militants on July 19. One was fatally shot by his captors.

"I issue my appeal so that the perpetrators of such criminal acts desist from the evil they have carried out and give back their victims unharmed," the pope said, speaking from Castel Gandolfo, his summer retreat in the hills south of Rome.

"Unfortunately the habit of taking advantage of innocent people for partisan ends is spreading among armed groups," he said. "It is a grave violation of human dignity that is in contrast with every elementary norm of civility and law and gravely offends divine law."

The militant group has given a list of 23 insurgent prisoners it wants released in exchange for the hostages, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said. He said the militants might kill some hostages if the prisoners weren't released by midday Monday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the kidnappings "shameful" on Sunday and said his government would "spare no effort" to secure the hostages' release.

Benedict also issued an appeal for nuclear disarmament, saying nuclear technology must be used to promote development and clean energy alternatives.

Benedict delivered his traditional Sunday prayer to hundreds of pilgrims gathered underneath the window of his palace in Castel Gandolfo. He moved there on Friday, after spending about three weeks in the Italian Alps.

The pontiff called for "encouraging the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, promoting a gradual and agreed-upon disarmament and encouraging the peaceful and safe use of nuclear technology" to achieve "tangible development" goals.

HOW TO TELL THE POPE 'YOU'RE WRONG'
[or "If I were Pope, I'd never have done what you did!']


PETRUS has this story apparently taken from the Sunday supplement today of the Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, but I cannot find it on the online service.

Oh, the progressives must be levitating in a Sunday 'high' for the first time since 7/7/07 - to hear from one of their champions and heroes in no uncertain terms that they continue to be 'right', not this Pope. Here is a translation:


Cardinal Martini says of the Latin Mass:
'I love it but I will never celebrate it'


VATICAN CITY - "I feel very much linked to the pre-Conciliar Mass and to the Latin of my First Communion and the first 35 years of my faith, but I will not celebrate it."

This, in summary, is what Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini writes in the Sunday supplement of the financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore on the subject of the traditional Mass granted new explicit recognition as a valid rite of the Church through Pope Benedict XVI's recent Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.

The emeritus Archbishop of Milan, after describing at length his love of Latin liturgy and his experiences with it, lists three reasons for choosing not to say the traditional Mass ever again:

1) Because "I believe that with Vatican-II, a very good step was taken forward towards the understanding of the liturgy and its ability to nourish in us the Word of God, which it offers in much more abundant measure than the old rite."

And if there have been abuses, "I don't think this has happened among us' [Italians?], although 'abusus non tollit usum' and "one must acknowledge that for many people the reformed liturgy has been a source of internal rejuvenation and spiritual nourishment."

2) "I cannot help feel the sense of 'being closed in' that emanated from the ensemble of that type of Christian life as it was lived then [pre-Conciliarly], in which it was an effort for the faithful to find an atmosphere of freedom and responsibility... to experience first-hand the faith that St. Paul spoke about".

"I am very grateful to the Council because it opened doors and windows to a Christian life that is happier and humanly more livable." [How? By allowing open liturgical license?]

3) "While I admire the immense benevolence of the Pope who wants to allow everyone to worship God in both the old and new forms, I have seen as a bishop the importance of communion in the form of liturgical prayer which expresses in one language only the adherence of everyone to the highest mysteries."

"I trust in the good sense of our people, who will understand how each bishop already finds it difficult enough to provide the Eucharist to everyone and cannot easily multiple celebrations nor conjure out of nowhere ordained ministers capable of meeting individual demands.' [Hold it, Your Eminence! The bishop, starting September 14, has nothing to do with these 'individual demands'. It's between the 'individuals' and their priests, and I am sure, yes, both 'individuals' and priests will use their common sense.]

Cardinal Martini says that 'a valid contribution' of the Motu Proprio is "the ecumenical willingness to confront everyone, which makes us hope for a future of dialog among those who search for God sincerely."

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

I wish Vittorio Messori or Sandro Magister, John Allen or George Weigel, someone knowledgeable and clear-minded, will come out soon with a summary and analysis of the many ways in which Cardinal Martini has openly rebuffed Pope Benedict XVI since April 19, 2005, with 'forked tongue' but seemingly 'reasonable', thoroughly Jesuitic ways!


7/30/07 P.S. HERE IS HOW AFP REPORTS THE STORY:

Liberal cardinal opposes mass in Latin

ROME, July 30 (AFP)- A leading liberal cardinal in the Catholic Church yesterday said he will not celebrate mass in Latin, criticising Pope Benedict XVI's decision to allow for greater use of the old Latin mass.

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, who has broken with the Vatican on a number of issues, said he considered it important to have a common language for prayer.

"A bishop cannot ask his priests to satisfy all individual demands," he said in an article published by Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper.

The cardinal said he loved the Latin language and would have no trouble celebrating Latin mass.

"But I will not do it," he wrote.

A papal decree earlier this month said priests should now meet requests by the faithful to hold mass in the traditional Church language, which had widely been dropped after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Martini tempered his criticisms by paying hommage to "the immense benevolance of the pope, who wants to allow everyone to praise God with old and new forms," but made clear that he was not on board.

The 80-year-old cardinal also defended Vatican II, saying it "took a major step forward in the understanding of the liturgy".

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

7/31/07
Comment by Teresa -
I have a really huge problem with the Pavlov-reflex defense/rationale of the 'progressives' who keep saying that the Paul VI Mass has resulted in 'better understanding of the liturgy' when it obviously has not! On the contrary, it has resulted in an almost blanket misunderstanding by the post-1970 generations of what liturgy is, particularly the liturgy of tne Mass.

First, in terms of language. Let me speak as a citizen of a Third- World, very disadvantaged country. For centuries, even backward illiterate uneducated Catholics in the boondocks of the Philippines heard Mass regularly and followed it, each in their own way, without any problems or complaints at all. Latin was simply the language of the Mass. No ifs or buts. A special language for a special purpose.

They, and we all who were raised with the rudiments of the faith, saw the Mass - properly - as an extraordinary, extra-special event celebrated by a priest, ordained to represent Jesus Christ himself in the Sacrifice of the Mass, in our behalf - we the congregation.

Our participation was no less full and active, because we did not have individuals walking up to the altar and reading out something that the reader himself likely does not understand at all, even if he is reading it in his own language. [I dare anyone who is not a priest, theologian or Biblical scholar, to tell me they understand even 50% of the readings prescribed in the famous 3-year Lectionary of the Novus Ordo! I always found this 'participation' rather hypocritical and meaningless, precisely because Scriptural readings are never easy, especially when they are read completely out of context, as they tend to be in the selections used in the Mass.]

Those of us who could, did follow the traditional Mass word for word, through our bilingual Missals [mostly Latin-English but also some Latin-Spanish, in the Philippines], and this was, for me at least, from the time I could read, a completely engrossing, focused act of continuous prayer - when the liturgy systematically goes through the whole range of persons, groups of persons, intentions and situations that one can possibly pray for. If that's not full and active participation, I don't know what is. 'Active' does not necessarily mean one has to sing and dance and jump about.

And what about the whole ceremony of kneeling, standing, sitting, bowing your head, ritually 'beating your breast' in penitence, that is so much a part of the traditional Mass - especially the kneeling! Observance of this ceremony is part of one's active participation. President and peasant, prince and pauper alike, all follow the ritual. It would be extremely bad form - and therefore, contrary to an act of worship - to remain seated [unless one were sick or disabled and physically incapable] when everybody else is kneeling. The non-verbal aspects of participation are clearly not insignificant.

No one, even without a Missal to follow along, could be a passive participant in a service that everyone understands to be an act of worship to God and a recreation of Christ's sacrifice. That was the most important thing the priest had to teach his people - even while preparing parents for baptism or preparing the Catholic himself for the other sacraments: that Mass is the central act of our faith - when we celebrate that Jesus makes Himself actually present in the Bread and Wine of the Mass, in the Eucharist we receive at Communion and worship in the Tabernacle.

So the Catholic grew up with this awareness of the central mystery of the faith and did not question it, precisely because our faith was bred into our bones, almost. We were told to live our faith in two ways: first, by what we owe God - to know him, to love him and to serve him; and second, by what we owe ourselves, and all other human beings as our brothers and sisters in God. The two basic commandments of Jesus, under which the Ten Commandments can be subsumed.

The first way, by rendering unto God what is his. The second way, in everything else we do, day to day, moment to moment. Therefore Sunday is a day apart, and Mass is an activity apart, not to be reduced to the level of the day-to-day and mundane.

Why did something that seemed so simple for Catholics of every generation till 1970 suddenly turn into a problem overnight, and has been considered a 'problem' since then? Is it not because the post-modern world does not make room for mystery or transcendence, that everything must be spelled out, spoonfed, easy, familiar, and most of all, 'fun' even if ordinary fun!

For me, the traditional Mass is all about mystery and transcendent joy; but the new Mass soon degenerated into fun and games, or alternatively, a meaningless bore.

Not that the traditional Mass didn't also lend itself to becoming an occasion of boredom. But as tedious as some priests may have made it, I have never been at a Mass when the Consecration was anything less than the sublime defining moment that it should be, when even the most listless or robotic priest cannot possibly do it wrong. Instinctively, it is the moment everyone awaits, the reason we are here at Mass. I have been far less likely to sense this in the New Mass - and it is not out of prejudice, because nothing could complete the joy of participating in the Mass than to feel that everyone shares that joy.

Therefore, forgive me if I sincerely believe that all this talk about a more 'understandable' Mass - simply because it has been reduced to literally the most common denominators possible - is really a crock of nonsense. The progressives have been accusing the handful of militant traditionalists of using the liturgy as an instrument in an ideological battle. Excuse me, but it is they who have been doing that that all these past 42 years since the end of Vatican-II! And they have been in triumphant ascendancy.

That's why we have intelligent people like Cardinal Martini advancing these arguments (to me, patently fallacious) about a 'more understandable' liturgy. 'More understandable liturgy' is really their code for 'more liberal practices' such as euthanasia and homosexual parenting and condoms that the Cardinal has indicated he is inclined to favor, along with the married priests, women priests and same-sex marriages that his more extreme fellow liberals now advocate.

In any case, whichever form of the Mass one attends, it should never be other than an extra-ordinary act of individual and communal worship, a re-creation of the central mystery of our faith, an evocation of the real presence of Jesus. In which the focus is God, not 'ME, ME, ME'.

TERESA

Actually, you don't need anyone to write a column on Cardinal Martini. Whenever Pope Benedict does anything, just figure that Martini will take the opposite opinion. He still cannot get over the fact that Papa Ratzinger is actually Pope and not him.

Janice0Kraus, 31.07.2007 14:59:

---

Actually, you don't need anyone to write a column on Cardinal Martini. Whenever Pope Benedict does anything, just figure that Martini will take the opposite opinion. He still cannot get over the fact that Papa Ratzinger is actually Pope and not him.

---

I totally disagree on your last point. Whatever motives one might want to insinuate Cardinal Martini has, not being Pope certainly is not one of them!

Since the Vatican released the full transcript of the Holy Father's Q&A with the clergy of the Veneto in Auronzo di Cadore last week, I have been hoping for a commensurate commentary/analysis about his words on Vatican-II which concluded that session.

It had brought on one of my usual transports when coming in contact with the mind of Benedict XVI 'at work, in real time', as it were, whenever he gives these spontaneous discourses.

But the Italian media for the most part did not pick up on it because they had already commented extensively the previous days based on the 'abstract' Fr. Lombardi gave in his briefing about the Q&A before the transcript was released.

Even Sandro Magister who thought enough of it to publish translations of the answer on Vatican-II was noncommittal. I noted at the time that the lack of any Anglophone commentary so far must have to do with the fact that there was no immediate translation of the Holy Father's words.

And now, the first Anglophone reaction I've seen comes from Joseph Komonchak of Commonweal, of all people. Because of the conclusion he draws - not at all negative, but tendentious so as to use the Pope's words to say, in effect, that the Bologna school of discontinuity, which Komonchak represents, was right all along- let me repeat up front - for context - my remarks on 7/27 after I had translated the transcript:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"...I wish to keep this citation here as a worthy epigraph and epilogue, not only to the Holy Father's summer vacation of 2007, but to the great initiatives he launched just before it, in order to assert once and for all that Vatican-II was a growth in continuity with Church tradition, and not a complete break with the 1965 years that had preceded it.

---

As the proverb goes, "If a tree falls, it makes a big noise, but if a forest grows, you don't hear anything
because it is a silent process". Therefore, during all those big noises of mistaken progressivism, of
anti-Conciliarity, the Church proceeded to grow silently, with much suffering and even with much loss,
in constructing a new cultural path.

It is very important that we should now see, with open eyes, the positive things that have been achieved
after the Council: the renewal of the liturgy, the Synods... parochial structures, the collaboration
and new responsibilities of laymen...a new experience of the catholicity of the Church, of that unanimity
which grows humbly but is the true hope of the world.

I think that is how we should rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a spirit
reconstructed beyond the texts, but is composed of the actual great Council texts re-read through
the experiences we have had and which have borne fruit in so many movements and new religious communities.

---

I don't believe anyone has ever described the hollow claims of the self-designated 'Spirits of Vatican-II' more accurately and cuttingly."

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



The Pope and the interpretation of the Council
by Joseph A. Komonchak
Commonweal
July 30, 2007


I thought it might be worthwhile to devote a separate theme to Pope Benedict and the interpretation of Vatican II. I had not read until this afternoon the remarks the Pope made to the group of priests who had asked his opinion about the Council. From what had been described in other posts, I expected to find it giving aid and comfort to anti-conciliarists and restorationists and to promote continuity over discontinuity in the interpretation of the Council.

Instead, I find that this dichotomy between continuity and discontinuity is absent from his remarks and that he distinguishes two extremes that he thinks once predominated with reference to the Council: a progressive mentality that thought everything can and ought to change in the Church and an absolute anti-conciliarism, between which, he says, a third and more valid interpretation had difficulty making its way.

[No! This is making an obviously tendentious and absurd equivalence in weight beteen the Bologna school of discontinuity represented by Komonchak - which has had ascendancy in the past 42 years since the Council - and the anti-Conciliar Lefebvrians who have never ever been represented in the Church hierarchy, much less in the mainstream thinking of the Church, post Vatican-II. What Komonchak now wants to call the third way has always been the alternative to the Bologna school, i.e. 'continuity with reform' - which is the sense of Vatican-II.]

The idea that Pope Benedict wants to return us to "those thrilling days of yesteryear", that is, before the Council, should be discredited, I think, by two quotes, one at the beginning and one near the end.

The first is the one to which Bob Imbelli drew attention: "We had such great hopes, but in reality things proved to be more difficult. Nonetheless, it is still true that the great legacy of the Council, which opened a new road, is a "magna carta" of the Church’s path, very essential and fundamental." The other quote describes all the good the Council has brought:

"It seems very important to me that we can now see with open eyes how much that was positive also grew following the Council: in the renewal of the liturgy, in the synods – Roman synods, universal synods, diocesan synods – in the parish structures, in collaboration, in the new responsibility of laypeople, in intercultural and intercontinental shared responsibility, in a new experience of the Church’s catholicity, of the unanimity that grows in humility, and nonetheless is the true hope of the world.

"And thus it seems to me that we must rediscover the great heritage of the Council, which is not a "spirit" reconstructed behind the texts, but the great conciliar texts themselves, reread today with the experiences that we have had and that have born fruit in so many movements, in so many new religious communities."

And then the Pope recommends a re-reading, a re-reception of the conciliar texts in the light of what has happened in the Church and in the world since the Council.

I do not know what could possibly be considered restorationist about these remarks.

The Pope’s speech to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, contained in its final section, comments on the interpretation of the Council. The text can be found at: www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2005/december/documents/hf_ben_xvi_spe_20051222_roman-curia_...

Here the Pope did describe two hermeneutics of the Council, a hermeneutics of discontinuity or rupture and a hermeneutics of reform. The names he gave to the two trends are odd, I think: to discontinuity one would expect to see continuity counterposed, but that is not what the Pope did, and I think that the reason for this is that in his explanation of reform, his stress falls on all that had to be rethought and restated when it came to the Church's relationship to the world. In other words, the very notion of "reform" involves some degree of discontinuity.

Sandro Magister and others expected that in this address the Pope would confirm the criticisms of the five-volume History of Vatican II, edited by Giuseppe Alberigo, of which I am the editor of the English version.

This project was criticized for placing the two popes of Vatican II, John XXIII and Paul VI, in tension or even opposition to one another; for relying too much on unofficial sources; and for neglecting the conciliar texts in favor of "the spirit of Vatican II" and of the event-character of the Council, that is, its discontinuity with previous moments of Church history.

Pope Benedict had surprisingly little to say about the hermeneutics of discontinuity. He simply warns against thinking that there are "breaks" in the Church’s history, as if it were possible to give the Church a new constitution, and against attempting to identify a "spirit of the Council" apart from the conciliar texts. That is all.

[In the three paragraphs above, Komonchak is clearly using the Pope's spontaneous 'summation' to an audience of parish priests as a defense-cum-justification of the 'spirit of Vatican II' school's version of Vatican-II, making much of the fact that he "had surprisingly little to say about the hermeneutics of discontinuity." What did he need to say about it in the context of what he was saying as a whole and to whom he was saying it? Because he did not mention that phrase at all does not mean he thought any less of it or had reconsidered what he set out to show in his historic speech to the Roman Curia on December 22, 2005, about which the rest of Komonchak's article really is about.]

After two rather brief paragraphs, he turns to what is clearly his main purpose: to set out what a hermeneutics of reform might mean. His attention focuses on the conciliar texts that deal with the Church’s relationship to the world. He stresses several times how necessary it was for the Council to rethink, reconceive, these relationships, a rethinking that was long delayed by the estrangement of the Church from the modern world that Pope Paul VI had deplored in his closing speech at the Council. I will add here a few paragraphs from a forthcoming article: [What follows is all about the Pope's December 2005 speech now, not what he said in Auronzo].

The Pope offers a rapid historical survey of the difficulties the Church had experienced over the previous four centuries, beginning with the trial of Galileo (described with some understatement as a "very problematic beginning"), moving on to Kant’s reductive religion and to the "radical phase" of the French Revolution, which left no room for the Church and faith, and ending with the "radical liberalism" of the nineteenth century and with natural sciences that claimed they had no need of the "God-hypothesis."

Under Pope Pius IX the Church had responded with such "harsh and radical condemnations of such a spirit of the modern age" that it appeared "that there were no longer any grounds for a positive and fruitful understanding," given also the equally drastic refusals of those who considered themselves "representatives of the modern era." This impasse, and the implied criticism of Pius IX, provides the background against which Benedict sets out the novelty of Vatican II.

It was prepared, he says, by certain developments. In a statement that would have pleased John Courtney Murray, the Pope points to the recognition that the American political experiment offers "a model of the modern state different from that theorized by the radical tendencies that had emerged in the second phase of the French Revolution." Meanwhile, the natural sciences were learning more modesty about their range and limits.
Developments were also taking place in the Church. Between the two world wars and especially after the second, "Catholic statesmen had shown that a modern lay state can exist that, nonetheless, is not neutral with respect to values but lives by reaching back to the great ethical sources opened by Christianity." (Perhaps a reference to Konrad Adenauer?) Finally, Catholic social teaching was developing and offering a "third way" between radical liberalism and Marxist theory of the state.

As a result of all this, as the Council opened, three circles of questions, defining a single general problem, awaited responses, required new ways of defining the Church’s attitude to them:(1) the relation between faith and the modern sciences, including also modern history, here presented by the Pope as if it were as reductive as the natural sciences had been; (2) the relation between the Church and the modern State, the latter described as one "that was making room for citizens of various religions and ideologies, acting impartially towards these religions and simply assuming responsibility for the orderly and tolerant co-existence among citizens and for their freedom to exercise their own religion" (this limited role also a description that Murray would have welcomed); (3) the relation between Christian faith and the world religions, especially Judaism. The adjective "new" occurs four times in this section, and the Pope admits that in these areas a certain degree of discontinuity did in fact emerge

In the Pope’s remarks about the developments that led to this situation, one can hear echoes of the position he set out thirty years earlier when he said that Gaudium et spes, Dignitatis humanae, and Nostra aetate, represent "a revision of the Syllabus of Pius IX, a kind of counter-syllabus." Then he had spoken of twentieth-century developments, beginning with Pius XI, as a result of which

.".. the one-sidedness of the position adopted by the Church under Pius IX and Pius X in response to the situation created by the new phase of history inaugurated by the French Revolution was to a large extent corrected via facti, especially in Central Europe, but there was still no basic new statement of the relationship that should exist between the Church and the world that had come into existence after 1789. In fact, an attitude that was largely pre-revolutionary continued to exist in countries with strong Catholic majorities. Hardly anyone today will deny that the Spanish and Italian Concordats strove to preserve too much of a view of the world that no longer corresponded to the facts. Hardly anyone today will deny that in the field of education and with respect to the historical-critical method in modern science, anachronisms existed that corresponded closely to this adherence to an obsolete Church-state relationship."

Against this background, Gaudium et spes can be interpreted as "an attempt at an official reconciliation with the new era inaugurated in 1789."

Properly to understand and evaluate the discontinuity that this rethinking of the relation between the Church and the modern world entailed, the Pope told the Roman Curia, requires one to make certain distinctions. The first distinguishes "between concrete historical situations and their demands," on the one hand, and "principles," on the other.

This was, of course, the distinction in the matter of Church and State that was urged by people like Jacques Maritain and Murray and was rejected by their Roman and American critics for whom the Catholic confessional state was an ideal theologically, even dogmatically, required.

For Pope Benedict, however, it is a valid and important distinction. Affirming continuity on the level of principles and discontinuity on the level of concrete applications - "this process of novelty in continuity" - reveals "the nature of true reform" and grounds the hermeneutics of reform. An affirmation of discontinuity in relation to Vatican II, then, is common to the two hermeneutics that the Pope has counterposed. The clash between the Pope’s rival hermeneutics does not revolve around the issue of continuity vs. discontinuity.

The Pope goes on to explain and illustrate his distinction. Church decisions with regard to certain forms of liberalism or to liberal interpretations of the Bible had themselves to be contingent because they referred to concrete and changeable realities. He is, I believe, here referring to condemnations of religious freedom in the last two centuries and to decrees of the Pontifical Biblical Commission at the beginning of the last century.

In the remarks with which he presented his Congregation’s "Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian" (Donum veritatis), Ratzinger had already pointed to such texts as examples of magisterial decisions that "cannot be the last word on a subject as such"; "provisional dispositions," they are valid at their core, but may need "further rectification" with respect to "individual details influenced by the circumstances at the time."

In his remarks to the Roman Curia, Benedict XVI makes a perhaps more valid distinction when he says that only the principles express the lasting element; "the concrete forms" instead are dependent on the historical situation and are therefore changeable. "Thus the basic decisions can remain valid while the forms of their application to new contexts can change."

The Pope then offers an illustration: "if religious freedom is associated with agnosticism and relativism, it is only natural that it be rejected by those who believe us capable of knowing the truth about God. Quite different is a view of religious freedom that links it to the need of social co-existence and derives it from the fact that "the truth can never be imposed from without but must be appropriated by a person only through a process of being convinced." Religious freedom in the first sense, therefore, the Church can only condemn; religious freedom in the second sense the Church can embrace.

In the final paragraphs the Pope summarizes what the Council did as "a basic ‘Yes’ to the modern era," and as "the step taken by the Council toward the modern era." He is at pains to point out that this was not and could not be an indiscriminate Yes and that there are important respects in which the Church must remain "a sign of contradiction."

Repeating something he has said often in other places, he says that the Council did away with "mistaken or superfluous contradictions in order to present to this world of ours the demands of the Gospel in all their greatness and purity."

In the end one is left with the impression that the sharp disjunction between rival hermeneutical orientations with which the Pope began his remarks on the Council has become much less sharp in the course of his argument.

The "reform" which Benedict sees as the heart of the Council’s achievement is itself a matter of "novelty in continuity," of "fidelity and dynamism," indeed it involves important elements of "discontinuity." It is, of course, possible to contrast two approaches by saying of one: "You stress only continuity!" and of the other: "You stress only discontinuity!" But these positions are abstractions, and it would be difficult to find anyone who maintains either position.

Perhaps the Pope’s counterposed hermeneutics represent what sociologists call "ideal-types," possibly useful tools for setting out the important questions, but not to be taken as literal descriptions of positions actually held by anyone. A hermeneutics of discontinuity need not see rupture everywhere; and a hermeneutics of reform, it turns out, acknowledges some important discontinuities.

So far from the Pope’s remarks being aimed at the Alberigo-led historical project, I wonder whether they are not more precisely aimed at the Lefebvrist interpretation of the Council as a radical break with the past. His choice of the topic of religious freedom to illustrate "continuity in novelty," "fidelity and dynamism," may indicate that it was the anticonciliarists that he had principally in mind.

In any case, I see no reason to fear that he is about to go back on the great conciliar texts on the Church’s relationship to the modern world, and no reason to doubt that he continues to consider them a necessary "counter-Syllabus."

[Komonchak's conclusion is, of course, a dramatic contrast to his colleague Alberto Melloni, directly of the Bologna school, who has been screaming every chance he gets that Pope Benedict is turning his back on Vatican-II and bringing the church back to pre-Vatican II, even if when it suits him, he also says that Joseph Ratzinger really was 'sympathetic' to the Bologna school because he had promised to bequeath his own personal papers from his Vatican-II years to Alberigo's institute in Bologna! These guys want to have their cake and eat it too.

Regardless, we can only be happy that Komonchak has articulated the conclusion he does above!]

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

In connection with what I see as this attempt by Komonchak to use the Pope as an unwitting prop for the Bologna school of thought, read the article by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf in the preceding page of this thread called "The School of Bologna's Council of Discontinuity" in which he rightly points out:

---

There is a vast and hitherto virtually unchallenged hermeneutical discontinuity machine dominating nearly every "power structure" in the Church right now. Much of the grease and fuel for that engine of rupture comes from the School of Bologna and the volumes they published. You will not find a Catholic library that does not have Alberigo’s multi-volume History of the Council. It is new. It is glossy. It will be the standard. It is effectively an instrument of reinterpretation of the Council along the lines described.

The Holy Father’s move in Summorum Pontificum to say that the Roman Rite necessarily includes the integral use of the pre-Conciliar Roman Rite, the CDF’s document about subsistit, are terrifying to the hierophants of the discontinuity machine and their localized cells of minions. The progressivist Church establishment see these moves of the Holy See much as the tenders of a great machine welcome the approach of interlopers carrying monkeywrenches and buckets of gravel.

---

Finally, worth repeating is the epigraph I used to introduce Father Zuhlsdorf's article:

---

“The Second Vatican Council has not been treated as a part of the entire living Tradition of the Church, but as an end of Tradition, a new start from zero. The truth is that this particular Council defined no dogma at all, and deliberately chose to remain on a modest level, as a merely pastoral council; and yet many treat it as though it had made itself into a sort of superdogma which takes away the importance of all the rest.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
13 July 1988
Santiago, Chile

---

Teresa,

You are absolutely right. Komonchak is completely using Pope Benedict in a tendentious manner, as part of a propaganda piece. I think Komonchak's "theory" owes a lot to Melloni's piece on Il Riformista.

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

Thanks, Janice. It usually pays to look a 'gift horse' in the mouth - Komonchak's approbation in this case! TERESA

A full translation of the Holy Father's text has been posted iN AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.




Here is a translation of the report from AsiaNews' Italian service:

The Pope rejoices with Iraqis
over football championship

VATICAN CITY, Aug. 1 (AsiaNews) - "Just as I have wept so many times with the Iraqis, this time I rejoice with them," Pope Benedict XVI said today, referring unusually to Iraq's winning the Asian Cup championship in soccer this weekend, at the General Audience today.

After his vacation in the Italian Dolomites, the Pope resumed his Wednesday catechesis at the Aula Paolo VI in the Vatican, flying in by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo where he is spending the rest of the summer.

His words about the Iraqis came at the end of the audience. He referred to the 'explosion of popular joy' in all of Iraq for a "historic victory, becoming football champions of Asia for the first time." He spoke of the "enthusiasm which caught up all Iraqis who went to the streets to celebrate", showing, he said, "the desire of a people for a normal and peaceful life."

"I hope," he concluded, "that the event could contribute to realize in Iraq, with everyone's contribution, a future of authentic peace in liberty and reciprocal respect. Congratulations!"

The Pope addressed some 6000 pilgrims today, including 200 Boy Scouts representing the worldwide movement which marks this year its centenary anniversary.

The Pope said, "I will resume the catechesis from where we left off, with the figure of Saint Basil, bishop, who is considered one of the fathers of social doctrine because he told the Church, 'All those who are in need look at our hands as we look at God's. We should not offend Christ by dishumanity towards men.'"

In St. Basil's steps, the Pope said, "Only virtue is an inalienable good which remains through life and after death" and that "only if we are open to God, our Father in common, can we create a just and fraternal world."

He also cited St. Basil for the criteria by which classic authors should be approached: "We should take that which is useful, with discernment. Bees do not go to all flowers indiscriminately, and, if we are wise, we should take only that which represents the truth and helps us to grow spiritually."

From Vatican Press bulletins:

Pope Benedict XVI today named the delegation of the Holy See for the funeral of Orthodox Patriarch Teoctist of Romania on Friday, August

Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity; Mons. Brian Farrell, Segretary of the Council; and Mons. Jean-Claude Périsset, Apostolic Nuncio in Romania.

The funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Patriarchal Cathedral of Bucharest.



Pope John Paul II, waves to the crowd with Romanian Orthodox
Patriarch Teoctist,
at the end of an Orthodox mass in Bucharest's Unirii Square Sunday, May 9, 1999.

Teoctist, the head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, made history when he invited the late John Paul II to his Orthodox country in 1999, but was criticized for being too close to former Communists,

He died Monday, July 30, at the age of 92, of a heart attack following surgery on his prostate gland earlier Monday.

Here is the text of Pope Benedict's telegram of condolence to the Patriarch's lieutenant:

HIS EMINENCE DANIEL
THE LOCUM TENENS
ROMANIAN ORTHODOX PATRIARCHATE
BUCHAREST

HAVING RECEIVED NEWS OF THE DEATH OF HIS BEATITUDE TEOCTIST, PATRIARCH OF THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH, I HASTEN TO EXPRESS TO YOU, TO THE HOLY SYNOD AND ALL THE MEMBERS OF THE CHURCH MY HEARTFELT CONDOLENCES, AND TO ASSURE YOU OF MY SPIRITUAL UNION WITH ALL THOSE WHO MOURN THE PASSING OF THIS DISTINGUISHED AND HIGHLY REGARDED CHURCH LEADER.

THE VISIT OF MY BELOVED PREDECESSOR POPE JOHN PAUL II TO HIS BEATITUDE TEOCTIST IN 1999, AND THE RETURN VISIT OF THE PATRIARCH TO THE BISHOP OF ROME IN 2002, WILL REMAIN IN THE MEMORY OF OUR CHURCHES AS A PARTICULAR GIFT OF GOD'S GRACE, WHICH STRENGTHENED AND GAVE NEW IMPULSE TO THE GROWING FRIENDSHIP AND IMPROVING FRATERNAL RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CHURCHES.

BOTH MEN WERE FILLED WITH A DETERMINATION TO WRITE A NEW PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COMMUNITIES, OVERCOMING A DIFFICULT PAST WHICH STILL BURDENS US TODAY, AND LOOKING FORWARD WITH CONFIDENCE TO THE DAY WHEN THE DIVISIONS AMONG THE FOLLOWERS OF CHRIST WILL BE OVERCOME.

I PRAY THAT THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH WILL REJOICE IN THE LEGACY OF PATRIARCH TEOCTIST'S MANY YEARS OF WISE MINISTRY, AND THAT YOU WILL BE SUSTAINED AND COMFORTED BY THE FRUITS OF HIS APOSTOLATE AS YOU COMMEND HIS NOBLE SOUL TO THE MERCIFUL LOVE OF OUR HEAVENLY FATHER.

IN CONVEYING MY CLOSENESS IN PRAYER AT THIS TIME OF GRIEF, I ALSO WISH TO EXPRESS MY EARNEST GOOD WISHES FOR YOU AND YOUR BROTHER BISHOPS AS YOU GUIDE THE CHURCH IN THIS TIME OF TRANSITION. WITH FRATERNAL AFFECTION IN THE LORD.


BENEDICTUS PP. XVI