Posted today in the preceding page:

PAPAL LITURGICAL EVENTS DURING THE CHRISTMAS SEASON -
From December 24 to January 13.


The Holy Father at the Mass for Cardinal Stickler, 12/14/07.

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A BELTWAY VIEW OF THE VATICAN


I started posting this item in NOTABLES, but Mons. Sambi gives a very good word portrait of the Holy Father, the man he represents in the United States, and the article itself devotes a large part to describing the Benedictine pontificate so far (even if it is the standard MSM stereotype) so I think it is more appropriate here, especially in view of the coming papal visit to the US. Thanks to Rocco Palmo for leading us to the story.


Vatican Envoy Preaches Peace
Through Religious Bridges
by John Shaw
The Washington Diplomat
December 2007 issue




In today’s hostile world, religious leaders of all faiths need to answer another high calling — to unite rather than divide — according to Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s envoy in Washington and a man who practices what he preaches.

Sambi believes religions should be a force for cohesion and healing rather than acrimony and conflict, and he has engaged in a kind of spiritual diplomacy to build bridges between nations and peoples during his 43-year priesthood, which has taken him to hotspots around the world ranging from Israel to Cuba.

“Religion is — and must be — an instrument of peace. Historically, religion has sometimes been an instrument of conflict. I think the youth will abandon their religion if it is an instrument of conflict. The mission of religion is peace — between individuals and God, and between individuals,” he told The Washington Diplomat.

“And a diplomat’s mission is the creation of bridges. Diplomats are human beings with our beautiful days and dark days, with our efforts to overcome ourselves and to be better. You can build bridges when you give of yourself and exchange truth.”

Warm and charismatic, Sambi is the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio to the United States, serving as Pope Benedict XVI’s official ambassador here. He is also widely seen as one of the Vatican’s most experienced and able diplomats.

Born in the Northern Italian town of Sogliano sul Rubicone on June 27, 1938, Sambi was ordained a priest in 1964. With a passion for history, he initially dreamed of life as a priest and as a professor of history. Speaking with a broad smile, Sambi is quick to say that his career in diplomacy was chosen for him.

“In the Catholic Church, you cannot ask to enter the diplomatic service,” he says. “If you ask, you will surely be rejected. You are called.”

Sambi was called into diplomatic service in 1969 as an attaché in Cameroon. Later, he was assigned to Jerusalem in 1971, Cuba in 1974, Algeria in 1978, Nicaragua in 1979, Belgium in 1981 and India in 1984. Sambi was also the Holy See’s apostolic nuncio to Israel, Cyprus, Burundi and Indonesia, as well as apostolic delegate in Jerusalem and Palestine from 1998 to 2005.



Pope Benedict appointed Sambi to Washington in late 2005. He officially began his work as apostolic nuncio on March 9, 2006 — with concurrent accreditation to the Organization of American States —serving as the highest-ranking Catholic official in the United States.

Sambi says that each of his postings has influenced him in personal and professional ways. During his time in the Middle East, for instance, both Jews and Arabs came to view him as fair-minded and forceful. He negotiated to free the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem after it became the site of a standoff between Palestinian militants and Israeli forces.

As nuncio in Israel, he criticized Israel for building walls to separate Israelis from Palestinians, calling it a “shame to humanity,” as well as for failing to take practical measures to implement the accords reached with the Holy See in 1993 and 1994.

But he’s also taken aim at Palestinian officials for anti-Semitism. In 2003, Sambi brought some Palestinian textbooks to the Vatican, which criticized the books as anti-Semitic and urged the Italian government not to provide any further funds for the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

In addition, Sambi has been a vocal defender of the rights of the Christian minority in the Holy Land. During his tenure as nuncio in Israel, he pushed for Jerusalem to have a special status that would provide the three monotheistic religions access to holy sites.

Sambi acknowledges that Middle East diplomacy is very difficult and that to be effective in the region, diplomats must be scrupulously fair. “Each side tries to take you completely on his own side,” he says. “If you do this, you can go home. Your mission is finished. You should not let yourself be identified with either of the contenders.”

Sambi says that during his time in the Middle East, he tried to reach out to all parties of goodwill and impart a simple message: “Peace is not a defeat for anybody. Peace is victory for everybody and for the future.”

But he admits that tragedies of the past continue to burden the region. “This is a conflict that has been going on since at least 1948. In almost every family you have the memory of someone who has been killed. So the past is of great weight in the present. But fear of the future is of even greater weight.”

Sambi passionately believes that the solution to the struggles of the Middle East is not the separation of the Jewish and Arab peoples.

“The Holy Land does not need walls. It needs bridges. As a professor of history, I’ve never seen any example that the construction of a wall led to peace. To build a wall is a manifestation that you want to impose a solution,” he argues. “Peace can never be imposed. It will not last. Peace is always the result of an agreement with mutual trust.”

Sambi also believes that hope for the future is essential to solving any international problem. “When you become convinced there is no hope for peace, you stop working for peace. You abandon any initiative. You give space to those who have an interest in war, not peace,” he says. “I believe that human beings are greater than these problems and that earlier rather than later, before the Holy Land becomes just a cemetery, there will be peace.”

Spiritually, Sambi says his work in the Middle East was deeply satisfying. “From the Christian point of view, being in Jerusalem was the most important place because every stone helps you understand the history of man, his relationship to God, his tragedy and his blessings, and his Salvation.

“But of course, here in the United States, because of the influence this country has on the rest of the world, I feel such a sense of responsibility in my work,” he adds.

In its current territorial iteration, the Holy See is the smallest country in the world, resting on 109 acres. The Holy See refers to the authority, jurisdiction and sovereignty invested in the pope and his advisers to direct the Roman Catholic Church.

As the central government of the Roman Catholic Church, the Holy See has a legal status that allows it to enter into treaties like a state and to send and receive diplomatic representatives.

In fact, the Holy See has formal diplomatic relations with 175 nations, and 78 nations maintain permanent resident missions accredited to the Holy See in Rome. The rest have missions located outside of Italy with dual accreditation.

In turn, the Holy See maintains 106 permanent diplomatic missions in capitals around the world, with two separate missions to the European Union and the Russian Federation.

Despite its small size territorially, the Vatican represents the estimated 1 billion Catholics worldwide (some one-sixth of the world’s population), and although the church has seen a downward trend in the number of followers over the years, Sambi views the Holy See as having been a positive force in international diplomacy for centuries — something that continues to this day with Pope Benedict XVI.

Sambi is Benedict’s main liaison with the American Catholic Church. He speaks frequently and admiringly of Pope John Paul II as well as of Pope Benedict XVI, whom he says has been important in advancing the message of the church.



“Benedict is one of the great thinkers of our time. He is very deep in his analysis of the human being in our time and very deep in his analysis of the place of God in the salvation of the human being,” Sambi says. “I would describe Pope Benedict as an old man with a young faith in Jesus Christ, his church and in human beings,” he adds.

American Catholics will get a first-hand look at Pope Benedict in April 2008 when he visits Washington and New York in what will be the first papal visit to the United States since 1999. Coming on the eve of his 81st birthday, the trip marks Benedict’s eighth foreign journey since becoming head of the Catholic Church in April 2005.

During that brief tenure, however, Benedict has sparked controversy. His references to the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church have angered many non-Catholics and his strong and vocal opposition to abortion rights have generated criticism from pro-choice Catholics. In addition, his decision to ban gay men from the priesthood has sparked a debate among Catholics around the world — as have his ideas on changing the Church’s liturgy.

Last year, during a much-anticipated visit to Turkey, the pope suggested that Islam was inclined toward violence, a comment that infuriated many in the Muslim world and spurred angry calls for a papal apology. Vatican officials said his comments were taken out of context and that the pontiff is committed to a respectful dialogue with the Islamic world.

More recently, Benedict met with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in the Vatican, a meeting that garnered much interest because it was one of his first meetings with a Muslim leader. The session was described as cordial, and Benedict has said he wants to reach out to all countries that don’t have formal relations with the Vatican, which includes Saudi Arabia, as well as China—whose government Benedict has clashed with over its desire to ordain bishops in China without the approval of the Vatican.

Benedict is also clearly trying to reach out to the dwindling numbers of Catholics in the United States with his upcoming April visit. Currently, the American Catholic Church still has about 67 million members, making it the largest religious denomination in the country. The United States has the third largest population of Catholics in the world, after Brazil and Mexico.

“We should make the visit of the pope a moment of assurance to those who have left the church in the last year, an invitation to return,” Sambi said on Nov. 12 during an address to the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. “This is possible to think less to the suffering of the past and more to the problem of the future.”

During his U.S. visit, the pope will make a stop at the White House, meet with American bishops, celebrate mass at the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium, address the United Nations, meet with other religious leaders and visit ground zero in New York.

Interestingly, some have noted that the pope’s visit does not include Boston, a center of American Catholicism and one of the communities most affected by the wave of sexual abuse scandals that have rocked the church and shaken the faithful in recent years.

In fact, Sambi himself has a constant reminder of those scandals. That’s because the Holy See Embassy, which is located right off Observatory Circle facing the vice president’s home, is also the site of an unusual protester—a man named John Wojnowski, who has made a daily stand along Massachusetts Avenue since 1998, denouncing the church with slogans such as, “My life was ruined by a pedophile priest.”

In addition to widely publicized sex scandals, the American Catholic Church has gone through difficult times in recent years, suffering from lawsuits, financial problems, declining numbers of priests and nuns, and an exodus of followers to other faiths.

Sambi acknowledges these problems, but insists that the American church remains vibrant and strong. He points out that large numbers of American Catholics attend mass regularly and give generously to charities. Sambi also argues that the tragedy of the sex crisis has forced the church to acknowledge its failings and rediscover its mission.

“The sex scandal is a call to the church to greater fidelity,” he says. “This is the secret of the church to make even a failure an occasion of conversion, of identity. This is the only way to go forward. I think this process is very strong inside the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church will come out of this situation stronger and more rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The 13th representative of the Holy See to serve in the United States, Sambi presides over an embassy staff of about 25 and works with the Bush administration and Congress.

Sambi begins most of his days at 6 a.m., with a private prayer and then a mass with his colleagues at the embassy. He is at his desk by 8 a.m. and spends his days in meetings, on the phone, and attending receptions. He is also very involved in the selection of bishops in the United States.

“I try to open the doors and see a lot of people. To know a country and a church, it is important to meet a lot of people. Usually they enrich you very much,” he says.

He also uses the Internet, but laughingly says he is hardly an expert. “I started pretty late but today it has become an indispensable tool for my work. The church should use it more as a way to reach more people, especially the young.”

In the evenings, Sambi enjoys reading, and especially has a passion for history. “If you find me on a plane, 90 percent of the time you will see me with a book of history. The past is always an influence on the future and on the present. To understand the present, it is always useful to understand the past.”

One of Sambi’s other lifelong passions is interfaith dialogue. He believes that religious leaders need to meet, learn from each other, and find common ground.

Shortly after arriving in Washington, he attended a conference at Georgetown Univer-sity with other Christian, Jewish and Islamic leaders. It was a powerful experience that prompted an epiphany of sorts.

“At Georgetown, I saw Jewish and Christian and Muslim leaders walk together, hand in hand, as sign of brotherhood. But I’ve never seen this in Jerusalem, or Cairo, or Beirut or Amman. Why is it possible in Washington but not in these other places? I think there is one reason: freedom. When you are free, there is the possibility of brotherhood and fraternity. If you don’t have freedom, it’s difficult to discuss this publicly.”

Reflecting on his long and consequential career in diplomacy, Sambi says it has been full of surprises but deeply gratifying. “I thank God who called me to do this service in the church. I’ve had the opportunity to learn so much about reconciliation, about the world, about human beings throughout the world,” he says.

“I’ve discovered that everywhere human beings are born the same way, and what makes them happy or sad is more or less the same. They all die, bringing nothing with them. But if they are to improve themselves and the reality around them a little bit, it will be a good contribution. We cannot change the world. But we can change ourselves. When we improve ourselves, we help improve humanity a little.”


John Shaw is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat- an independent monthly newspaper with a readership of more than 80,000. It is distributed to all Washington-based foreign embassies, the World Bank and IMF Group, the U.S. State Department, Capitol Hill, the White House and many other points of influence within the greater metropolitan area.

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The Holy Father met today with
- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
- Bishops of Japan, Group 4, on ad limina visit.
- Later, he met with all the Japanese bishops and addressed them in English.

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And here's a surprising
item today from
the Italian service of



POPE TO MAKE A PASTORAL VISIT
TO ANOTHER ROMAN CHURCH TOMORROW

Benedict XVI will make a pastoral visit tomorrow morning to the Roman parish of Santa Maria del Rosario di Pompeii in Martiri Portuensi, which is under an Irish parish priest, Fr. Gerard McCarthy, of the Missionaries of San Carlos Borromeo.

The parish was also visited by John Paul II in November 1998. But tomorrow, Pope Benedict will celebrate a Mass to dedicate the parish's new church.

RomaSette, the online journal of the Diocese of Rome, has details of what will take place tomorrow, translated here:



The new church still smells of new wood and varnish. But it will be inaugurated tomorrow y Pope Benedict XVI at 9 o'clock Mass, resuming his visits as Bishop of Rome to Roman parishes.

Before the Mass, the architect of the church, Pietro Sanpaolo, will present the keys of the Church to the Pontiff.

Concelebrating with the Pope will be Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the Pope's Vicar in Rome; Mons. Benedetto Tuzia, bishop of the west sector of Rome; Mons. Ernesto Mandara, secretary of the Opera Romana for the provision of new churches in the capital; Mons. Massimo Camisasca, superior-general of the Missionaries of San XCarlo Borromeo; and Fr. McCarthy, the parish priest.

The Pope will deposit three relics in the church altar: from St. Charles Borromeo; from St. Columban, a 14th-century Irish missionary; and St. Faustina Maria Kowalska, the mystic devotee of Divine Mercy canonized by John Paul II in 2000.

After the Mass,the Pope will bless a parish hall which the parish has named after him, and where religious services were held while the Church was under construction. The Pope will have a meeting here with the children of the parish.

Fr. McCarthy said the Pope's visit would be 'a moment of great grace and benediction" crowning two years of construction work, and 'an unexpected gift' for a parish in transition.

The new church replaces one dedicated to the Santi Martiri Portuensi [This refers to the martyrs Simplicius and Faustinus who were victims of Diocletian's persecution in 303.] which had become too small for a constantly growing parish.

Fr. McCarthy, who has been parish priest for 10 years, says it has about 21000 parishioners belonging to some 7,000 families.

He says the parish has had to ask help from the Oblate Sisters int eh nearby parish of Divino Amore for catechetical instruction.

Besides the new Church, the parish also has a new parish house, chapel and a football field.

Until the 1950s, Fr. McCarthy said, there were more sheep here than people. Then the community started bulding up, starting with families of employees, to the mostly middle-class community that it now us.

Greeting the Pope tomorrow will be two new bells named for Paul Vi and himself.


Here, Giovanni Peduto interviews Fr. McCarthy about the visit for Vatican Radio:

What is the social situation of this parish?
The parish is made up of so many different types of persons. But it is mostly middle class, people who are fairly well off, even though there are also many poor people. For instance, we find many foreigners living under the bridges who are always in need of food, medicines, all the necessities of life.

On the whole, our parishioners have a close relationship to the church which is very beautiful. It is not a rich parish, but it is rich in good people, with much love for the Church.

The parish has been entrusted to a religious congregation, the Missionaries of San Carlo Borromeo. How do you carry out your mission in a parish?
Above all, our way of life is to understand the Church as the house of God among people's houses. We live a very intense life of prayer and mission. Everything begins with prayer and the unity among us priests. The people can see that among us, there is a truly strong friendship in Christ, and this becomes the first missionary lesson: to provide an example of how to live in unity.

This really helps us all, because I have learned that each one on his own does not have all the gifts from the Lord, but God has put us together so that we can help each other with the gifts that we do have. We follow a rule of silence and prayer and intense apostolic mission.

The other thing we emphasize is educating our parishioners in the sacraments, and catechesis which we are committed to promote and carry forward both among adults and among the young.

Your community also has an explicitly Marian vocation. How do you express the link of your parish to Our Lady of Pompeii to whom ti is dedicated?
Above all, we encourage pilgrimages to Our Lady of Pompeii. And in the parish, we have this great cult of Supplication to Our Lady. Our day begins with a prayer to Mary and ends with the Memorare. ["Remember, oh most Blessed Virgin..."]. We live the Rosary intensely.

We not only encourage pilgrimages to Pompeii but also to Lourdes and Fatima. It's a homage to Mary who almost immediately upon conceiving, went forth to her cousin Elizabeth, reached out to others. Int he same way, our great desire is to bring to others the gift of the Lord through the great love of our heavenly mother, Mary.

The following is translated from the current issue of TEMPI, a weekly journal of politics and culture.


Interview with the
new OR editor
by Roberto Persico


"What struck me most about the encyclical was its tone, which is very immediate and direct. It really speaks to all men and women of our time," says Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano.

And yet, there are those who point out that the absence of "all men of good will" in the salutation of the encyclical signifies a retreat, a closure, a lack of desire for dialog.

"But we are talking here of a canonical formula," Vian answers. [Since an encyclical is a letter from the Supreme Pontiff to his flock, it is customarily addressed "To the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, and all the lay faithful"]. "It is understood that an encyclical addresses 'all men of good will' in general. And the Pope himself expressly said so during his Angelus homily for the first Sunday of Advent, where he said that waiting for Christ was a hope for all men."

Spe salvi is the first encyclical for Vian since he took over as editor of the Vatican newspaper last October.

[The article continues with a brief biographical sketch of Vian, then continues with this interview:]

Your newspaper is a privileged observation point on the Church and the modern world. What do you think is decisive for this time in the history of the Church?
That which has always been decisive: loyalty to Christ's mandate to announce to all men the hope that he came to bring us. Even in the tragic circumstances in which many Christians find themselves today.

From this viewpoint, the recent pronouncement of the European Parliament on Christians persecuted throughout the world is very important, because the EU has sometimes seemed to be following the tendency of some Parliamentary representatives who want to repudiate the Christian tradition in Europe.

The European Parliament remains an important symbol of this union, and let us not forget that Pius XII considered the UE of great importance for giving an institutional dimension to the Christian tradition which gave rise to Europe.


And in Italy, people keep saying Italian Christians are a dead letter, but they continue to live on and make themselves felt, as they did in Family Day earlier this year.
The reality of facts is often different from the image that the information media give. It's that great law of journalism according to which it's man biting dog that makes news, not vice-versa. But, as the president of the Italian bishops conference always says, Iraly still has a Christian people which lives and functions, even if they never get into the newspapers. Reality is not what some journalists love to represent.


And your newspaper presents reality as it is?
It should be the task of all organs of information, lay or Christian, right or left.


You have said that the Ratzinger of Spe salvi strikes you for his capacity to speak to the men and women of our time. What would make a Pope as intellectually gifted as he is to take this tone? [What a senseless question to ask! Intellectually gifted or not, a Pope must communicate to as many people as he can!]
He has always been that way. It's the language of Joseph Ratzinger - theologian, archbishop, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 1968, his Introduction to Christianity sold 50,000 copies in its first few weeks of publication in Germany, precisely because of his ability to talk to everyone in plain and precise language. It was that unusual publishing event that first called the attention of the media to a theologian who was relatively young - he was 41 - even though he was already established in the field.


What about the contrast between Wojtyla the great communicator and Ratzinger the cold scholar?
That was always absolutely artificial. Of course, this encyclical also has some difficult passages that demand the reader's patient attention. But in life, there's always a price for everything that is worthwhile. And if I love someone, I would be ready for any sacrifice to make him a beautiful gift, as this one is.


Does the encyclical condemn modernity?
In Spe salvi, there is absolutely no fight with modernity. Rather, a profound wish to dialog with the modern world. The Holy Father knows perfectly that we are all immersed in modernity - it's the climate that men and women live in today. That is why, for example, he criticizes Marx from the point of view of the 'Frankfurt school' - so he uses arguments that come from modernity itself.

Even elsewhere, he does not hesitate to use secular statements, as in the paragraphs where he talks about justice and the Last Judgment, where he cites Plato and Dostoevsky, not some Father of the Church.


And he does not spare criticism of the modern Church.
Yes, Christianity in the modern world has been reduced to being personal, individualistic, which does not measure up to its best tradition, and so it must be led back to it.


To bring back Christianity to the level of its best tradition. Now you edit a newspaper that should play an important role in this.
I am simply the editor of a newspaper, even if it is the Pope's newspaper.


But you must be doing something to bring the newspaper itself to the level of that tradition. What changes have you made?
As I have had occasion to note in writing, citing a famous discourse by then Cardinal Montini, the Osservatore is 'a difficult newspaper 9to run), a very difficult one', but above all, it is a 'great newspaper."


Is that why it has closed down the Sunday edition?
That was a great insert in the manner of the newspaper's historic supplements - the illustrated features published from 1930-1938 under the initiative of Pius XI, who had grasped the great communicative value of pictures - and Ecclesia, which came out in 1942 at the initiative of the then Secretary of State Montini, and continued till 1960.

This time, we closed down Domenica, the Sunday supplement, preparatory to a new magazine that we hope will revive the era of the great illustrated Vatican magazines.

And still according to the tradition of keeping abreast of what is new in the world of communications, we are preparing an online presence that will be more punctual and efficient. But always with the idea of realizing that 'journal of ideas' described by Montini in the speech I cited earlier.

Following the example of Benedict XVI and in disseminating his teachings, the newspaper wants to address everyone with friendship towards all, believer or non-believer, and confront everyone with respect and clarity on issues like the dignity of the human being and the promotion of justice. In order to make ever more evident the testimony to Christ and his truth in the modern world.


And what are today's battles?
One must get back to basics. As the Holy Father is doing - who dedicated his first encyclical to love - according to St. Paul, the principal theological virtue - and now this one on hope which, the Pope points out, is identical to faith.

Few have really paid attention to the attention he gives in the encyclical to the 'Novissimi' (the last things - death, the last judgment, hell, paradise). It's true he does not explicitly speak of purgatory, which is a transitional phase.


Perhaps the Pope did not, because as one important historian noted, it is a medieval invention?
Medieval? The idea was already in Hellenistic Judaism, in the book of the Maccabees!

Tempi num.50 13/12/2007

PASTORAL VISIT TO
SANTA MARIA DEL ROSARIO DI POMPEII

At 9 a.m. today, the third Sunday of Advent, the Holy Father arrived for a pastoral visit to the parish of Santa Maria del Rosario of Pompeii in the Magliana district, west sector of the diocese of Rome, to celebrate Mass and dedicate the new parish church.

After the Mass, Pope Benedict also inaugurated the new parish hall, built on the site of the old church and named after him. Here, he also met with 300 children who are candidates for First Communion and Confirmation.

[Refer also to the preparatory story from the Diocese of Rome two posts above which anticipated the events today and has details about the parish.]

A full translation of the Pope's homily and brief remarks to the children has been posted in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.













'Spiritual temples' need constructing too,
Pope says, in dedicating the new church


ROME, DEC. 16, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Christians need to put as much effort into building up their faith as they do in constructing and caring for places of worship, says Benedict XVI.

The Pope affirmed this today when he visited the parish of Santa Maria del Rosario ai Martiri Portuensi in Magliana, in the western part of the Diocese of Rome.

Pope John Paul II visited the parish nine years ago. Since then, an increasing number of faithful in the area required the construction of a bigger church. Benedict XVI blessed the new structure.

Referring to today as Gaudete Sunday, the Pope said, "In truth, all of Advent is an invitation to rejoice because 'the Lord is coming,' because he is coming to save us. [...] The Advent liturgy constantly repeats that we must wake up from the slumber of habit and mediocrity, we must abandon sadness and discouragement; we must refresh our hearts for 'the Lord is near.'"

The Holy Father continued: "Today, there is another reason for us to rejoice. [...] It is the dedication of the new parish church which is built on the same site where my beloved predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, celebrated Holy Mass on the occasion of his pastoral visit on Nov. 8, 1998."

The Pontiff reflected on the readings from the Mass, the first "taken from the book of Nehemiah, a book that narrates the recomposition of the Hebrew community after the exile. [...] It is therefore the book about the origins of a community and it is full of hope. [...] The text describes the solemn moment when, after the dispersion, the little Hebrew community is reconstituted; it is the moment of the public re-proclamation of the law, and everything unfolds in a climate of simplicity and poverty. [...] Some begin to cry for the joy of being able again, after the tragedy of the destruction of Jerusalem, to hear the word of God in freedom."

He added: "Does not this reading move you too, dear faithful? In this moment how many memories crowd into your mind! What toil to build up the community year after year! How many dreams, how many projects, how many difficulties! Now, however, we are given the opportunity to proclaim and listen to the word of God in a beautiful church, which favors recollection and awakens joy; a church that wishes to be constantly a recall to a solid faith and a commitment to grow as a united community. Let us give thanks to God for his gifts and let us thank everyone who has worked at the construction of this church."

Benedict XVI drew from the second reading, from Revelation, to remind the faithful "that the living community is more sacred than the material temple that we consecrate. And to construct this living, spiritual temple - which you are - many prayers are necessary, it is necessary to value every opportunity offered by the liturgy, catechesis, the multiple pastoral, charitable, missionary and cultural activities that keep your promising community 'young.' May the care that we show for the material edifice -- sprinkling it with holy water, anointing it with oil, incensing it -- be a sign and stimulus of a more intense care in defending and promoting the temple of persons, formed by you, dear parishioners."



The Pope's chasuble is taken off preparatory to consecrating the new altar.





At the parish hall.



Leaving the parish.




NB: The Pope did not wear a pink chasuble today for Gaudete Sunday as he did in 2005 and 2006.
I think the chasuble today was supposed to be a salmon hue, but it comes out too yellow.

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ANGELUS TODAY

A full translation of the Holy Father's Angelus homily and messages has been posted in
AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.



FROM THE HOLY FATHER'S
ANGELUS HOMILY:

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Christian joy comes from this certainty: God is near, he is with me, he is with us, in joy and in pain, in health and in sickness, as a friend and as a faithful spouse. This joy remains even through trial, in suffering itself, and it remains not superficially, but in the depth of the person who trusts in God and confides in him.

Some might ask: Is this joy still possible today? The answer is given, with their lives, by men and women of every age and social condition, who are happy to consecrate their existence to others.

Was not Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, in our day, an unforgettable witness of true evangelical joy? She lived daily in contact with poverty, human degradation, death. Her soul knew the ordeal of the dark night of faith, and yet, she gave everyone the smile of God.

We read in one of her writings: "We await Paradise with impatience, where God is, but it is in our power to be in Paradise starting here and starting now. To be happy with God means to love like him, to help others like him, to give like him, to serve like him" (La gioia di darsi agli altri [The joy of giving oneself to others], Ed. Paoline, 1987, p. 143).

Yes, joy enters the heart of whoever places himself in the service of the little ones and the poor. God takes up his dwelling in he who loves this way, and the soul is in a state of joy.

If instead one makes happiness an idol, then one loses his way and it is truly difficult to find the joy whereof Jesus speaks. Unfortunately, this is the proposition of cultures which place individual happiness in place of God, a mentality which finds its emblematic effect in the search for pleasure at any cost, in the use of drugs for escape, as a refuge in artificial paradises which then prove to be totally illusory.

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Here is AP's story of the Angelus homily:


Pope says seeking drugs
and 'pleasure at all costs'
does not bring happiness


ROME, Dec. 16 (AP) -- Pope Benedict XVI warned Sunday against seeking happiness in drugs or other "artificial paradises'' and the self-centered quest for "pleasure at all costs.''

Instead, the pope held up Mother Teresa - the Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere - as an example.

"Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death,'' the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square. "Yet, she offered the smile of God to everybody.''

The pope, speaking during the traditional Sunday noon Angelus prayer, said real happiness cannot be found in cultures "that put individual happiness in the place of God, a mentality that has its emblematic effect in the quest for pleasure at all costs, in the spread of the use of drugs as an escape, a shelter in artificial paradises, which turn out to be completely illusory.''

In an annual tradition, children came to St. Peter's Square bearing Nativity figures of baby Jesus for the pontiff to bless.

Earlier Sunday, Benedict consecrated a new church on the outskirts of Rome, blessing the parish's children.

An encyclical even for pagans
By LUIGI AMICONE


Here is another commentary on Spe salvi in this week's issue of TEMPI magazine, written by its editor.


Faith is the 'substance' of things hoped for, and the proof of things unseen. (Spe salvi, No. 7).

It is true - one needs an open spirit not to hide oneself from the lesson given us by the 'boy-Pope' ['papa bambino' referring to the 81-year-old Pope's youthfulness], pastor and theologian.

Spe salvi is Benedict XVI's second immense encyclical. Spe salvi: in hope we are saved. As St. Paul said. And as the 50 paragraphs of this Petrine document reiterate with crystal clarity.

Hope is a virtue of the young.

"Charity, God says, does not surprise me. What surprises me, God says, is hope. This small hope that seems to be nothing of worth. This child." (Charles Péguy, Il portico del mistero della seconda virtù [The mysterious doorway of the second virtue], Jaca Book, 1980).

Like a boy, the Vicar of Christ offers us a word rich with primordial wonder. He speaks and forces us to to dissipate the mists of cunning. With a language that is plain and not at all devotional. He speaks, adapting himself to us, moderns and post-moderns, with the language of non-experts. A language that is elementary, almost pagan, almost devoid of any occasion to provoke exegetic frivolity, theological referencing, or apologetistic frenzy.

There is not a part of it that does not refer to experience, to a specific name and surname that represents a general statement. Nor is it the language of a religion that has been made private. Rather, that of a life, private and public, outside lies and outside fear.

Thus, if in his first encyclical, Benedict XVI confronted Nietzsche head on, here he cites Plato and Dostoevsky as 'witnesses', and he dialogs with the apostles of modernity, from Kant to Marx, from the neo-Marxists of the Frankfurt school to the martyrs of totalitarianism.

At the start, he cites a Latin epitaph which summed up the sentiment of an era (ours, too) that was sated and desperate. "How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing!"

Then he introduces Josephine Bakhita, s tiny slavewoman from Darfur who was rescued by an Italian consul. How many unknown women have discovered their name and their dignity by meeting the good 'paron' (master), who was 'not a Spartacus, not a combatant for political liberation' but 'the Lord of all Lords'?

Bakhita first, then St. Gregory Nazianzene, [who wrote that at the very moment when the Magi adored Christ the new King, astrology came to an end, because the stars were now moving in the orbit determined by Christ]. And Benedict adds: "A personal God governs the stars, that is, the universe; it is not the laws of matter and of evolution that have the final say , but reason, will, love - a Person."

Francis Bacon later said that in the end, facts will eventually prevail and therefore, "it would do us well to concern ourselves that they should be on our side". Benedict is concerned with being on the side of facts (Stanley L. Jaki, Cristo e la scienza, Fede&Cultura, 2007).

And so, Benedict only shows facts. The first inscriptions on Christian tombs represented Jesus as philosopher and shepherd, because in him, life and the way coincide. What is the way? and what is life?

Let us pay attention. Here, the Pope indicates the center of gravity of the whole encyclical. He says, in effect, that faith is not a mere flutter of a whirling imagination nor a shampoo for those who fear the dandruff of death.

Nor is faith a subjective conviction, as Luther thought (and, the Pope adds, "at least in Germany, even by Catholic exegetes").

Indeed, "faith is the substance (hypostasis) of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen". Proof in the objective sense ('a reality present within us').

Faith is how we were conceived. As one sees in the apocalyptic and visionary novel by the American Cormac McCarthy (La Strada [The Road], Einaudi, 2007).

Faith sustains the Pope as a Christian, as it can sustain a non-believer. "We need to study the life that is given to us, the life which remains to us, and the life we expect - that is hope, understood as the root of our being, not simply a generic and psychological expectation," Giuliano Ferrara wrote recently ("Spera anche il laico quando il papa impugna il bastone del filosofo" [Even the layman hopes, when the Pope takes up the philosopher's staff], Il Foglio, Dec. 1, 2007).

Many questions follow. The Pope's responses are never theoretical. He answers with the lives of people who have modelled themselves after the Life of one Person.

The Pope cites a certain Proba, "a wealthy Roman widow and mother of three consuls", to whom St. Augustine wrote: "Ultimately we want only one thing - 'the blessed life', the life which is simply life, simply 'happiness'. In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for in prayer."

But life itself carries its own prayer within. "Many names no longer answer./ I do not hear them,/ since they dwell outside time./Their faces are beautiful again-/after the narrow arduous path/ towards the Beyond -/they are kept in memory./ All we have lost is the dear habit/ of seeing them./The substance of things is that they live" (Maria Giovana Fantoli, L'effimero e l'eterno [The ephemeral and the eternal], Mef, 2007).

"Faith is the substance (hypostasis) of things hoped for, the proof of things not seen". Is there a prayer more clamorous that that of whoever gets cast into hell?

The Pope says: "The atheism of the 19th and 20th centuries is, according to its roots and its goal, a moralism: a protest against the injustice of the world and of universal history."

To that moralism which presumes to nail God, a God responds who allowed himself to be nailed to the Cross. Christ descending to hell. Was that a sentence? No, but an emblem of the human experience.

Such as that of the Vietnamese martyr Paul Le Bao Thin: "I, Paul, in chains for the name of Christ, wish to relate to you the troubles besetting me daily, in order that you may be inflamed with love for God and join with me in his praises".

Equally dramatic is the critique addressed to the surrogates ('ideologies') which modernity opposes to the experience of faith-hope. To the point, the Pope says, citing Kant ("if Christianity should one day arrive at being no longer worthy of love"), of coming near to seeing 'the perverse end of all things".

The Pope asks, is Christian hope individualistic? No, "it is linked to being in existential union with a 'people' and can be realized for every individual only within this 'we'."

And to understand this 'we', what is meant by this 'people', read a book by someone who, reading through the registers and annals of the first 500 years of the Fabbrica (work plant) attached to the Cathedral of Milan, saw the workyards and the Piazza populated by faces of "sculptors, architects, princes, merchants, soldiers, old women, ladies, who, after their evening walk, thronged the Church square, counted the few pennies they had earned for the day, and offered part of it to the Madonna, not hesitating to have their names registered by the official on duty to be accompanied by an unequivocal 'meritorious' credit" (Martina Saltamacchia, Milano, un popolo e il suo Duomo[Milan: A people and their Cahtedral], Marietti 1820, 2007).

'People', such as the 9th century monk Hermann, who was called 'the cripple', an anomaly that should not have been born nor should survive because he was so deformed and repugnant to the sight. But instead, welcomed and raised in the German monastery of Reichenau, he ended up distinguished for his 'acumen' in all the arts, for his 'kindness and humanity', whose death 'was greatly mourned by those who knew him".

It was that 'cripple' who wrote one of the most beautiful hymns to Mary, Alma Redemptoris Mater, in which "our desire to rise again, that is, to 'emerge' from evil, finds in Mary the luminous path" (Gaetano Brambilla, Maria nei mosaici dell'abside di santa Maria Maggiore [Mary in the mosaics of the apse of Santa Maria Maggiore], Elledici, 2007).

Tempi No. 50, 12/13/2007

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071215/ap_en_ot/people_franco_zeff...

I expect this has already been posted elsewhere, so I've merely put the link. I think Zeffirelli has a cheek to criticise Papa in this way and to offer to be his image consultant!!!! He mentions, among other things, the "winter" mozzetta with the ermine edging. This has been papal attire for hundreds of years. Our Papa is merely returning to tradition because he sees it as part of his office, not because he is showy as a person.

Anyway, I think Papa looks beautiful....red shoes, white socks...just everything!!!!!

Cardinal Ratzinger visited St. Joseph's Seminary on Jan. 27, 1988.


Pope to address 20,000 youths in Yonkers
By GARY STERN
The Journal News (NY)
December 17, 2007


Pope Benedict XVI's scheduled visit to St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers will revolve around a meeting with disabled youths inside the seminary chapel and then a papal address to nearly 20,000 young people from across the region who will assemble on the seminary grounds.

The April 19 visit will take place in the late afternoon, and the pope should be in Yonkers for about 90 minutes.

This will occur on the third anniversary of Benedict's election as pontiff.

Since the pope's itinerary for his first American trip was announced Nov. 12, a team of about 70 people from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York has been working feverishly to prepare for several papal events that are set to take place in New York on April 18, 19 and 20.

These will include an ecumenical meeting at a Manhattan church on April 18, a Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral on April 19, and a visit to Ground Zero and a Mass at Yankee Stadium on April 20.

It will be on the afternoon of April 19 that nearly 20,000 youths from parishes across the archdiocese and neighboring dioceses will be bused to parking areas on the grounds of the Yonkers seminary. The gathering will probably look much the same as when Pope John Paul II visited St. Joseph's on Oct. 6, 1995.

"I think we have a well-rehearsed plan," said Mark G. Ackermann, executive director of the archdiocese's office of the papal visit. "The grounds will be tightly controlled, but it's a good plan."

When Benedict arrives - John Paul came to Yonkers by helicopter, but such details will be confidential until the event - he will first meet with about 50 disabled young people in the seminary chapel.

"He will want to let them know that they are as welcome as anyone, as important to him as anyone else in God's family," said Bishop Gerald Walsh, the seminary's rector.

The youths who will be invited are still being identified by archdiocesan officials.

Meanwhile, there will be music, videos and talks outside for the thousands of young people who will assemble.

"We will want to provide inspiration, some motivation, for the young people gathered," said Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the archdiocese.

Then Benedict will go outside to address the crowd.

Security will be intense. Tickets will be distributed to individuals and are nontransferable. Upon reaching the seminary, all visitors will have to show a picture ID that matches a master list of those invited to attend.

The process will be the same for the next day's Mass at Yankee Stadium, with all ticket holders required to show government-issued IDs.

Ackermann said that detailed ticket information will be available in mid-January on the archdiocese's Web site: www.archny.org.

Most tickets for the youth rally will be made available through parishes and Catholic schools. Parishes will also distribute tickets for Yankee Stadium. All tickets will be free.

The archdiocese has been working with the Yonkers Police Department and Mayor's Office, and the Secret Service, state police and New York City police on planning for the papal visit to Dunwoodie.

At Kennedy Catholic High School in Somers, as at other Catholic schools across New York, everyone is itching to get tickets.

"We are very excited as a school, certainly," said Alexander Malecki, JFK's director of alumni and public relations. "It's really a once-in-a-lifetime event for most people. For our youngsters, it's something they've never experienced, the pageantry of it. We are looking forward to putting together a contingency to go down. It will be something to see."

Benedict will come to Washington on April 15. He will visit the White House and address the U.S. bishops the next day, on his birthday. On April 17, he will celebrate Mass at the new Washington Nationals baseball stadium and hold two other events.

He is scheduled to arrive in New York on April 18 to address the United Nations in the morning.

The rest of his itinerary in New York was suggested by the archdiocese and approved by the Vatican.

There's no word yet on whether the pontiff will have a few minutes to visit a tree he planted on the seminary grounds on Jan. 27, 1988, when he visited as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.

Vatican rules out papal visit
to Holy Land in 2008





Vatican City, Dec. 17 (dpa) - Conditions for a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to Israel are not in place, Vatican officials said Monday, adding that talks last week between the Holy See and Holy Land on issues including taxation of church property and visas for Catholic clergy had made no progress.

"There is no talk," of a papal trip to the Holy Land in 2008, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said at a reporters' briefing.

"The Pope has expressed on many occasions his desire to travel to the Holy Land," he said, referring to an invitation made by Israeli President Shimon Peres when he met the pontiff at the Vatican in September.

"However, there is both the need for a condition of general peace in the area, and that relations between the Church and the local realities be taken into consideration, so as to determine if there are positive signs to encourage an act as important as a visit," Lombardi said.

Speaking earlier at the same briefing, Archbishop Antonio Maria Veglio, a senior Vatican cleric who participated in talks with Israeli officials on December 13 in Jerusalem, said that most sticking points with the Jewish state remained unresolved.

Noting how post-meeting communiques "say everything and nothing", Veglio said that the joint statement issued after the Israel-Vatican talks "said everything that could have been said, because the nothing expressed therein is the reality."

"As long as we talk about God, about peace, the promotion of the rights of women and other human rights, it is easy to reach agreement. But when we start discussing the details, and I refer in particular to the issue of taxes, then differences emerge," Veglio said.

Veglio, who is Secretary of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, was referring to the long-standing dispute between the Vatican and the Jewish state over the taxation of church property in the Holy Land including churches and shrines, but also schools and hospitals.

The Vatican has also repeatedly asked Israel to ease visa restrictions on Catholic priests and nuns, especially those from Arab nations.

"However, we greeted each other with cordiality," Veglio said, adding that the next round of Vatican-Israel talks would take place in Rome in May 2008.

Last month remarks by a senior Vatican diplomat, Monsignor Pietro Sambi, that relations between Israel and the Vatican "were better" before the two established full diplomatic ties in 1993, triggered a diplomatic row.

The Vatican later qualified the remarks as expressing Sambi's "personal" opinion, but the incident was widely interpreted as signalling the Holy See's frustration over negotiations with Israel.

For years the Vatican resisted establishing diplomatic ties because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, disputes over church property in the Holy Land and the status of Jerusalem, a city sacred to Jews and Muslims for which the Vatican champions the granting of an international status.

While Israel has in the past offered to create a special panel to oversee property cases involving the Vatican, it has also expressed fear that giving tax exemptions to the Catholic Church could open the door for other churches and groups to seek similar treatment.


The following report comes from something called the Middle East Times, which is published out of Washington, D.C., but otherwise gives no other information about what it it is. From the way it reports this story, ti seems to be a pro-Arab site.


Barriers prevent
papal Holy Land visit
The Middle East Times
Published: December 17, 2007


The Vatican urged Israel Monday to send out the "positive signals" Pope Benedict XVI needs to pave the way for an historic visit to the Holy Land.

Israel and the Vatican have been in negotiations since 2004, following a 10-year hiatus, over a bilateral accord on the legal and financial status of the Roman Catholic Church in Israel.

In September, Israel's President Shimon Peres indicated after a private audience that the pontiff could make the journey in 2008, but chief Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said obstacles remain.

"The conditions for a papal visit, specifically the pacification of the situation in the region and the sending of positive signals by Israel in these bilateral negotiations, are not yet in place," said Lombardi.

"There are no concrete plans for a voyage to the Holy Land," he added during a press conference on the situation for Christians in Israel, AFP reported.

Antonio Maria Veglio, secretary of the Congregation for Oriental Churches, regretted the lack of progress in negotiations, adding: "Dealing with Israel is not easy."

Israel's ambassador to the Vatican, Oded Ben Hur, had said the two states were "very close" to an "historic" agreement on Dec. 3, with the next round of talks scheduled for Dec. 13 in Israel, AFP reported.

Centered on the economic element of a heads of agreement signed between the two states in 1993, the negotiations are principally concerned with the legal and tax status of church property and commercial activities of Christian communities in Israel.

In a related complaint, the Custos of the Holy Land, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has bemoaned the difficulties for priests and monks who come from Arab countries in obtaining visas to travel to Israel.

"A third of our people, a proportion which is falling fast, incidentally, come from Arab lands. However, getting an Arab priest into the Holy Land has become virtually impossible," he said.

He also described "the great suffering" of Israel's 170,000-strong Christian community, given political, economic, and social problems in the region.

The Custos is in charge of Catholic friars across the Middle East and coordinates the reception of pilgrims to the Holy Land.



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


In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful


AL-QAEDA'S #2 MAN QUESTIONS
SAUDI KING'S MEETING WITH
'THE POPE WHO OFFENDED ISLAM'


Translated from PETRUS today:

VATICAN CITY - In the last video released showing Al-Qaeda's second in command, the Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, Benedict XVI's image appears for a few seconds as "the Pope who has offended Islam'.

At 1 minute and 57 seconds of the long interview filmed by Al-Sahab Productions, the Al-Qaeda ideologue fiercely attached Muslim scholars, particularly Saudi, who 'prohibit' jihad against the Americans. [Really? Has anyone been that explicit ever?]

Al-Zawahiri was particularly incensed at the recent visit of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah II to Pope Benedict XVI.

"I ask these ulema why jihad against the Russians was a duty, while they prohibit finding the Americans in Afghanistan," he said. "I also ask these Mufti who are now following the school of Bush if it was appropriate that the governing authority (i.e., King Abdullah) should have visited the Pope who has offended Islam and the Muslims. Is this the way they propose a moderate doctrine and meet the polytheism of Saudi Muftis?"

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

I am looking for a less sketchy report about this, with better context.....

Meanwhile, Vatican officials commented this afternoon on the Al-Qaeda tape. Here are APCOM items, translated:


VATICAN OFFICIALS SAY
TERRORISTS FEAR
INTER-RELIGIOUS DIALOG

VATICAN CITY, Dec. 17 (Apcom) - 'Al Qaeda fears whoever wants inter-religious dialog," said Fr. Federico Lombrdi, Vatican press director, when asked for a comment to statements made by Al-Qaeda's #2 man in the latest video from the terrorist organization's propaganda machine.

Speaking to newsmen after a book presentation at the Vatican, Lombardi said, "They seem to understand that the contacts for dialog that authoritative Muslim representatives have made, such as the King od Saudi Arabia and the 138 Muslim leaders, are significant for the Muslim world - that they are voices who want dialog, and implicitly, dialog means a desire for peace."

"That this desire appears to be growing among Muslim leadrs evidently concerns those who do not want this dialog at all," he concluded.

On the same occasion, the new president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Mons. Gianfranco Ravasi, also commented, saying that Ayman Al-Zawahiri "definitely does not represent the entire horizon of Islam, which on the whole is patiently trying to establish within the Muslim world itself stable relations among its diverse elements, which are, however, united in their faith in one God."

"That there are Muslims who only want duel and confrontation is something we all know, and it will be a constant thing," Ravasi noted."It is the easiest way for those who are determined to avoid any sort of understanding, friendly encounter and humanity."

---

The Holy Father met with
- Cardinal José Saraiva Martins, Prefect of the Congregation for the Cause of Sainthood
- Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, Arch-Priest of the Basilica of St. Paul outside-the-walls
- Mons. Jean-Paul Gobel, Apostolic Nuncio to Iran
- The College of Postulators for causes of beatificaiton and canonization. Address in Italian.

---

The Vatican released decrees proclaiming verification of miracles attributed to six Venerables,
who will now qualify for beatification; and the heroic virtues of eight Servants OF gOD, for whom the
beatification process will begin.

There was a news briefing at the John Paul II Press Hall on "The situation of Christians in the
Holy Land", conducted by Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, O.F.M., Custodian of the Holy Land, assisted
by Mons. Antonio Maria Vegliò, Secerteary of the Congregation for Oriental Churches.


POSTULATORS OF SAINTS:
ALWAYS AT THE SERVICE OF TRUTH





VATICAN CITY, DEC 17, 2007 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, the Holy Father received postulators of the causes of beatification and canonization of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

The Pope began his address to them by mentioning the forthcoming 25th anniversary of the promulgation of the Apostolic Constitution "Divinus Perfectionis Magister" with which, in 1983, John Paul II revised the procedures of the causes of saints in order to respond to the wishes of experts and pastors who were calling "for a more manageable procedure, while still maintaining solidity of research in this field, which is so important for the life of the Church.

"Through beatifications and canonizations," the Pope added, the Church "gives thanks to God for the gift of those of His children who have responded generously to divine grace, honoring them and invoking them as intercessors." And the Church "presents these shining examples for the imitation of all the faithful, called through Baptism to sanctity, which its the aim and goal of every state of life."

At the same time "ecclesial communities come to realize the need, even in our own time, of witnesses capable of incarnating the perennial truth of the Gospel in the real circumstances of life, making it an instrument of salvation for the entire world."

"Saints, if correctly presented in their spiritual dynamism and historical reality, contribute to making the word of the Gospel and the mission of the Church more believable and attractive. Contact with them opens the way to true spiritual resurrection, lasting conversion and the flowering of new saints."

"All those who work in the causes of saints," said Benedict XVI, "are called to place themselves at the exclusive service of truth. For this reason, during the diocesan enquiry, witness statements and documentary evidence should be gathered both when favorable and when contrary to the sanctity of the fame of sanctity or of martyrdom of the Servants of God."

"Hence, the postulators' role is fundamental, both in the diocesan and apostolic stages of the process; their actions must be above criticism, inspired by rectitude and marked by absolute probity."


In connection with the decrees proclaiming pre-beatification miracles and the heroic virtues of some candidates for beatification, here is a unique storu about one of the latter:


POPE APPROVES 'HEROIC VIRTUES'
OF SIX-YEAR-OLD ITALIAN GIRL


Vatican City, Dec. 17 - An Italian girl who died at six after losing a leg could become one of the youngest Roman Catholics to be beatified, Vatican officials said on Monday.



Pope Benedict XVI approved the "heroic virtues" of the child, putting her on the path to possible beatification, Vatican Radio said.

The radio report said Antonia Meo "could be the youngest, non-martyr saint" in the Church should beatification and then sainthood be approved.

The girl, from Rome, had one of her legs amputated in 1936, when she was 5? after doctors diagnosed a malignant tumor, the radio said.

Before she died a year later, the child, known by her nickname "Nennolina," wrote "more than 100 letters to Jesus, Maria, God the Father and the Holy Spirit, which reveal a life of truly extraordinary mystical union," it said.

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Surprisingly, most of the Italian newspapers today played up Al-Qaeda's anti-Pope message in its latest propaganda video and the response of Vatican press director Fr. Lombardi. SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops conference, has a reaction from a Muslim theologian, translated here:


Dialog has begun:
We cannot turn back


ROME, Dec. 18 (SIR) - "We cannot turn back because dialog has seriously begun," says Adnane Morani, a Muslim theologian who is a lecturer at the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University, commenting on the statements made by Al-Qaeda ideologue Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

"The threats from Al Qaeda or al-Zawahiri are not new," he added. "Whereas dialog is an ethical principle that is well-rooted in the various faiths, but especially in the Abrahamic religions. Choosing dialog is a civilian and religious choice - it is not mere diplomacy or a peripheral dimension in the religious sphere."

"A religious person," he continued, "has a universal dimension to his faith, which makes him seek an encounter with 'others', to learn from other experiences of faith, to work for peace, justice, reconciliation, human rights."

Now, he said, the Muslim-Christian dialog is under way. "The letter of the 138 Muslims and Benedict XVI's response have opened a path on which there is no turning back." [Excuse me! Benedict opened the way in Cologne and Regensburg and Castel Gandolfo and Istanbul - to which the Muslims have now respondedd]

"There are many other Muslims committed to this dialog," Mokrani said, "who have the education for dialog, just as there are so many Christians who have worked for years towards this. None of them would ever let anyone or anything affect their efforts."

"Extremism and terrorism do not coincide with human nature, which wants peace and a calm life," he noted. "Therefore, this blind massacres, this terrorism that does not distinguish between civilian and military, Muslim or Christian. Terrorism has no future - and most Muslims know that. Most Muslims are moderate and peaceful."

Mokrani says he is a 'realist', recalling that "the letter of the 138 Muslim leaders to the Pope was preceded by the Declaration of Amman which concerns intra-Muslim dialog itself and condemns terrorism with honesty and clarity." [Then this has not been publicized enough, if at all!]

Even that declaration, he says, was signed by Muslims from around the world in favor of dialog among Muslims themselves, " to show that internal dialog should go hand in hand with inter-religious dialog, and that the efforts at dialog are serious."



Reuters had this belated report on Fr. Lombardi's reply to the Al-Zawahiri tape:

Vatican says Pope's dialog
with Muslims scares Al-Qaeda
By Phil Stewart


VATICAN CITY, Dec. 18 (Reuters) - The Vatican on Tuesday [Fr. Lomardi's statement was made Monday afternoon] rejected condemnation by al Qaeda of a historic meeting between Pope Benedict and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, saying the militants were afraid of inter-religious dialogue.

Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, referred to Benedict as a Pontiff who had "insulted Islam and Muslims" and criticized King Abdullah's meeting with him last month.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said Zawahri's video-taped comments, posted on the Internet on Sunday, showed al Qaeda's was worried about the implications of the meeting - the first between a Pope and a Saudi monarch.

The Pope was also pursuing dialogue with a group of prominent Muslim scholars, including Jordanian Prince Ghazi bin Mohammad bin Talal, Lombardi noted.

"These people want dialogue and are working toward peace," Lombardi said. "This worries those who don't want dialogue."

Zawahri has previously denounced the Pope for a speech he made last year at a university in his native Germany, when the Pontiff used a quote that associated Islam with violence.

Muslims around the world complained about the speech, but the Pope said he was misunderstood and has several times expressed his esteem for Muslims.

In the latest message, Zawahri noted that Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdel-Aziz Al al-Sheikh was quick to condemn jihad in Iraq but not the Saudi king's visit with Benedict.

"Wouldn't have it been more appropriate for this mufti who rules according to the school of Bush to reproach his so-called guardian (King Abdullah) for his visit with the Pope," Zawahri asked, quoted by U.S. terrorism monitoring organization IntelCenter.

"Is this how the moderate creed and confrontation of polytheism is supposed to be?," he added.

Lombardi said the entire episode showed that dialogue and pursuit of peace were "gaining more weight and this is undoubtedly a positive factor."

'BLESSED ARE YOU WHO HAVE THE POPE
AN INTERVIEW WITH RABBI JACOB NEUSNER

There is no difference between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the faith,
says the rabbi made world-famous
by Benedict's citations in JESUS OF NAZARETH.

By ROBERT PERSICO




Here is yet another article from the Dec. 13 issue of the weekly magazine TEMPI that I had meant to translate ASAP but somehow got 'lost' in the daily shuffle of my Forum priorities. I beg pardon for the delay.


'Celebrity' came with the Pope's book. But for a long time, Jacob Neusner has been an undisputed authority in his field.

Born in Connecticut in 1932, a Harvard graduate ordained a rabbi and specialist in Hebrew literature with the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, he also has a doctorate from Columbia University, and with more than 950 books written, he is the most published humanist scholar in the world.

To have an idea of his authority, he is also the editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia and in charge of Judaism for Encyclopedia Brittanica. he is a member of several prestigious academies from Princeton to Cambridge, recipient of numerous honorary doctorates, father of four and grandfather to nine.

A Rabbi Speaks to Jesus - the book that Pope Benedict cites amply in JESUS OF NAZARETH - has been re-published in Italy. It allows the reader to meet a man who has a concept of faith as uncommon as his views on inter-religious dialog and the historicity of Jesus.

"Why did I write the book?" he answers to a question.

"Because I like Christians, I respect Christianity, and I want to take seriously the faith of people I respect. My professional life as a scholar of Judaism, within the academic world of the study of religions, developed because Catholics and Protestants wanted Judaism taught in universities.

"My dream of studying Judaism in depth was realized in response to my teachers and then my colleagues, who saw that the things I respected and wrote about should be disseminated in public teachings.

"That is the spirit in which I conceived the book on Jesus: to give back something. Christianity - Catholic as well as Protestant - has distinguished many persons in my life whose religious convictions have impelled them not just to respect my religion but to want to know about it. The only way to reciprocate was to show a reasoned interest in Christianity and attempt to discuss that with them."

The result is an extraordinary book, in which Neusner, sweeping away all the sophisms that would make Jesus a nebulous or mythical figure, leads the reader to a flesh-and-blood Jesus, infinitely more real than that evoked in numberless Catholic preachings, and makes the reader participate in a dialog that has all the concreteness and immediacy of what took place on a hilltop by the lake of Galilee two thousand years ago.


Professor, what do you think of the reading Benedict XVI made of your book?
He has a very sharp mind and he grasped perfectly the essence of what I intended to say, and answered in the clearest manner. His response grasps the heart of the question and shows perfect understanding of the ideas I put into play in my book.


Your book makes it clear that Jesus cannot be dismissed as merely another prophet among many - that he claims to be God, and that he is either that which he claims to be, or he is nothing at all.
The Gospel narratives are clearly an account of the teachings of Jesus, on the basis of which a religious dialog can develop. I do not see a difference between the historical Jesus and the Christ of the faith.

One of the key points in my interpretation is that statements such as "The Son of Man is the lord of the Sabbath" and similar statements present the historical Jesus as the Christ of the faith. Therefore, the Gospels propose an authentic presentation of the Christian faith.

The question that I have concerns the Torah, and it is whether Jesus taught the Torah of Moses as he said he did. The religious dialog [between Christians and Jews] starts from the premise that both sides are subject to the commandments from Mt. Sinai. When Jesus says that he did not come to destroy the Torah but to fulfill it, then he makes us refer back his Sermon on the Mount to the Torah.


One of the most interesting statements you make is that "A well-argued discussion is considered in the Torah to be the best way to address God. In my religion, discussion represents an aspect of liturgy just as much as prayer. It is not only a gesture of esteem and respect for the other, but it is also an offering of the intellect on the altar of the Torah." That's an idea that is very far from the diluted idea of dialog that is current today.
Yes. The Holy Father and I agree on the point that the aim [of dialog] is the truth, and that the worship we render to God is an affirmation of truth. I think that if we each took our respective religions seriously, then we are obliged to compare their respective claims to truth.

Religions do not negotiate the truth. They teach absolute truth. We should have the same concept of truth, otherwise there an be no true dialog. We do not need to negotiate what I believe and what you believe.


So Jews have the task of teaching the world the value of discussion?
Yes. We Jews have made criticism a way of life. We are few in number but we stay faithful to the truth that God revealed on Sinai.


Do you think that this type of dialog would be possible even with Islam?
It is difficult to say, because Islam is such a complex world [Persico's note: In the book, Neusner writes, "I cannot imagine that a Jew who grows up in a Muslim country could write a book like this about Mohammed (and survive much longer after he publishes it!)"]

In fact, it is difficult to say what one means by Islam, and they halve no authority analogous to what Christians have in the Pope. It is easy to dialog with Christians through the Pope, because Christianity has clear statements about its faith, whereas there are too many Islams.

It's the same thing with Judaism- it doesn't have a Pope, there is no authority analogous to the Pope. Christianity is fortunate to have a Pope, because of the clarity that a Pope allows it to have.


How is it possible that between two friends, one can say Yes to Christ [and his claim to being God] while the other says No, and still remain friends?
What they share is the truth of religion, and that is a solid basis for human relationships. Faith is a perpetual challenge. Mother Teresa recently reminded us of the doubts that obscure the dark night of the soul. We are comforted by the faith of others, because what we share is the quest for God in the world, and every religion has something to teach about the life of the spirit.

Tempi No. 50 of 12/13/2007

The Pope who is eternally
misunderstood - by the media
By VLADIMIR


This is one of several articles I have been meaning to translate. Lella posted it on her blog from Europa online, which is the official organ of Italy's Margherita party - a loose coalition ranging from ex-Communists to so-called theodems considered rightwing, and the whole intervening political spectrum) which has now merged with the new Partito Democrata, although it is one of the parties in the coalition supporting the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The writer only signs himself VLADIMIR, and I have been unable to find out anything about him. Which does not detract from the validity of his arguments.



Someone went at it with a will and counted all the interventions of the Holy See which could more or less be considered expressions of pontifical criticism of choices that have been made by organizations at the international level.

Among the top 10 agencies 'reprimanded' this way, there is no doubt that the European Union and the World Bank are by far in the lead.

Which is to say that the news agency which recently reported an address given by Benedict XVI to representatives of Catholic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as 'an attack against the United Nations' once more mistook a firefly for a lantern.

It is not, of course, the first time this has happened since Benedict XVI became Pope. And by all accounts, it won't be the last.

Vatican reporters (the Vaticanisti) who delude themselves that they are all eligible for knighthood, as it were, and can therefore game the system to be able to publish books eventually that may even become best-sellers, are in fact widely and largely tolerated in their illusions, eventually rewarded, if they have been writing long enough, by the 'knighthood' they have been aiming for.

As everyone knows, even for modest orchestras of little parishes, when the conductor changes, so also does the music. But there are Vaticanisti, evidently, who don't know that - [still writing as though there has not been a change of Popes].

Yet another reason why laymen, those who take their news seriously, hold them rightly to account. Above all, it's a question of the journalist's professional seriousness and honesty. And from those of them who actively cultivate and embody the prevailing cultural and political secular mentality, the non-partisan reader expects at least an elementary degree of prudence in their reporting.

For instance, why attack - which has been quite widespread in Italy - the encyclical Spe salvi obviously without having read it, basing the attacks only on the inadequate and sketchy summaries written by other colleagues? Or unleash a spate of negative commentary on the Pope's presumed attack on the United Nations, based only on what one news agency reported - and wrongly? Worse, refusing to even credit or report the immediate official clarification made by the Vatican? Such an attitude can only be damaging to the journalist who knowingly violates the most elementary rules of journalism.

An unprofessional attitude particularly odious because it recalls the time and the manner when, in September of 2006, starting from non-existent anti-Islamic allusions read by some Italian journalists into the Pope's Sunday homily in Munich, it escalated only three days later into a fullblown and global cultural war with the mis-reporting of the Pope's Regensburg lecture.

Even so, almost 70% of New York residents polled recently said they were convinced that the Pope's visit to UN headquarters next April can only be beneficial for the level of discourse within that organization on the issues of democracy and human rights.

In a context where, for more than a decade now, there has been much talk about 'a clash of civilizations', the Pope's analysis [in Spe salvi] of the failure or incompletion of the 18th- and 19th-century revolutions (the French and the Marxist) says much about how open this Pontiff's outlook is, who for too long has been pigeonholed as nothing more than a theoretical theologian and an obscurantist concerned only with recovering Christian hegemony.

Is it not most 'secular', if not even 'progressive', to maintain as Benedict does, that social structures alone cannot resolve the problem of good and evil?

What layman today can reasonably sustain the argument that it is possible to entrust the definition of 'the common good' only to economic and political solutions?

Why must the head of the Catholic Church be faulted because Christianity has been able to maintain the rational and philosophical character of its moral principles? Thanks to which, the Church is now trying to take part in a debate - that has become a universal necessity - within the globalized world which, precisely because it is now so interlinked by infinite and complicated aspects of individual and social living, needs stimuli which would indicate all the possible ways to follow for an acceptable life worthy of human beings and their dignity.

Recently, the president of the Italian bishops conference lamented the poor representation that the Church has - the universal church a well as the Italian church - in the Italian mass media. He was only describing a situation that has been accentuated by the recent reporting about Spe salvi and the Pope's words to the Catholic NGOs.

Meanwhile, what about all the multiple talking points that the Pope's second encyclical - and even his speech to the NGOs - offers any thinking man?

Remember that encounter between a Greek thinker and a Thracian slave girl who, seeing the philosopher fall into a ditch because he was looking up at the stars as he walked, called out to him: "Dear philosopher, before looking up to the heavens, why don't you pay attention first to where your feet are going?"

We could well say with the Pope, if we truly want to see a starry sky, then first let us plant our feet firmly on the ground.

Europa, 5 dicembre 2007

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

I have decided to translate Lella's comments to the above editorial because she may well speak for all of us:

By Raffaella R.

What can I say? I would have wanted to underline each and every word of this marvelous (and I must say so!), honest and biting editorial by Vladimir.

The truth is stated in this editorial which shows what we all think and understand about the mainstream media: that there is no desire or intention there to plumb the grandeur and the beauty of the discourses and writings of Benedict XVI.

Perhaps because he does not deal with 'slogans' that the media has been accustomed to, but even without the fancy wrapping and stuffing they are also used to, they they don't even try to get to what he is really saying.

Because of this, too often, and increasingly more often, those who are supposed to inform us oversimplify, create artificial controversy, invent a 'case', as they did with the Pope's speech to the Catholic NGOs.

Exactly as they did, most unfortunately, with the Regensburg lecture, when the media's obsessive search for a phrase or sentence that could most put the Ratzinger Pontificate into crisis mode caused incalculable harm peripherally, including the death of a brave and loving nun in Somalia.

I still ask myself today: Was it worthwhile for the culprits?
And what have they learned from that experience if they are still in the same rut? Of writing what they please without even reading what they are supposedly reporting on? Is that professional?

But perhaps we should take some comfort. The Regensburg lecture did lead to great and important results (and certainly unexpected, from the point of view of many critics of the lecture): witness the letter of the 138 Muslim leaders and the Pope's reply, with the Saudi king's visit in between.

It is even likely that the pedestrian heavy-footed interpretation of the Pope's remarks to the NGOs will bring surprising results!

What can we deduce from all this? That we should never trust summaries, reductions, comments without having read the ORIGINAL TEXTS. Editorials and commentaries can be useful, and are even welcome, because they can show us new things, but only after we have first read the original text ourselves....

I can only thank Osservatore Romano (under its new editorial direction), Avvenire and Vatican Radio for providing us with correct and intellectually challenging information...

An endorsement from Protestant
National Council of Churches in the USA

The NCC is the ecumenical voice of America's Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican, historic African American and traditional peace churches. These 35 communions have 45 million faithful members in 100,000 congregations in all 50 states.


NEW YORK, December 18, 2007 (From Worldwide Faith News )- The second encyclical of Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (Saved by Hope), addresses important truths that will be affirmed by Christians in and outside the Roman Catholic Church, a National Council of Churches spokesperson said today.

Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos, the NCC's newly elected Senior Program Director for Faith & Order and Interfaith Relations, said the encyclical, based on Romans 8:24, "For in hope we were saved," (NRSV), asserts that basic Christian beliefs have been obscured by modern developments, and that this situation has caused today's Christianity to forget the centrality of hope.

Benedict's declaration that hope is based on our encounter with the living God in Jesus Christ has "significant implications" for contemporary Christians who may have lost their moorings, Kireopoulos suggested in a reflection on the encyclical.

"It means that God is with us in our suffering, even to the point of death," he wrote. "It also means that, as Jesus was vindicated through the resurrection, we have hope in the same resurrection."

Kireopoulos asserts that all Christians should share the concern that modern Christianity, as Benedict sees it, "has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task."

"This self-limitation is indeed a cause for concern among churches across the ecumenical spectrum," Kireopoulos said. "We can therefore be thankful that the Pope has reminded us of the limitless nature of the hope that is within us."


The full text of Kireopoulos' reflection follows:


Reflection on Pope Benedict XVI's
Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi
By Dr. Antonios Kireopoulos
Senior Program Director for Faith & Order and Interfaith Relations
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA


On November 30, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued an encyclical, Spe Salvi. On the importance of Christian hope, it seeks to answer the question, "What sort of hope could ever justify the statement, on the basis of that hope and simply because it exists, we are redeemed?" (par. 1).

Intended as a teaching tool for the faithful of the Roman Catholic Church, this encyclical is to be warmly welcomed within the wider ecumenical community, both for addressing this critical topic as well as for raising urgent issues regarding Christian self-understanding.

The Pope bases his encyclical on this scripture: "For in hope we were saved" (Romans 8:24, NRSV). He defines Christian hope as a certainty of one's future that is based on knowledge of God through the encounter with God in Christ. It is the kind of experience that, while in fact pointing to the future, more so determines how one lives one's faith in the present.

As he writes: "it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness. Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well" (par.2).

It bears emphasizing that this hope is based on the crucified and risen Christ. Because we believe the apostolic testimony that God raised Jesus from the dead, we also therefore believe that God was revealed in the cross. This has significant implications: it means that God is with us in our suffering, even to the point of death; it also means that, as Jesus was vindicated through the resurrection, we have hope in the same resurrection.

Based on this hope, Christians can live genuinely human lives: in relationship with God and one another in a way that transcends division, isolation, and death. His Holiness' lament, and the reason for this encyclical, is that "We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God" (par. 3). The consequences of this forgetfulness, he rightly believes, are dire.

In some ways, Pope Benedict's articulation of the problem recalls his frequent critiques of secularism. Here, he faults modernity's faith in progress - scientific, political and economic - as that which caused this Christian amnesia.

As a result of putting faith in progress, Christian faith - the substance of hope (par. 10) - has been relegated to the private sphere and therefore largely irrelevant outside the bounds of one's personal experience.

"This programmatic vision," he writes, "has determined the trajectory of modern times and it also shapes the present-day crisis of faith which is essentially a crisis of Christian hope" (par. 17).

To someone who understands salvation, in line with the historic and living doctrines of the Church, to be communal as well as personal, this "crisis of Christian hope" demands "a self-critique of modern Christianity, which must constantly renew its self-understanding setting out from its roots" (par. 22).

This need for self-reflection, constituting the first issue of urgency raised by this encyclical, has implications for prayer, proclamation, and witness. Ultimately, it means a move away from self-reference to openness to God, away from political liberation to transfigurative justice, away from escapism to compassion and consolation.

While some readers might find these distinctions unhelpful, others will see in them a worthwhile attempt by the Pope to invest the deepest of human yearnings with the fullness of divine meaning.

A second matter of urgency has to do with understanding who Christians are as the Church. The change in one's self-perception caused by hope - certainty in one's future determining one's present - means that the Church itself becomes the vehicle by which the world is transformed.

Drawing upon St. Paul, the Pope argues that baptism into Christ brings about a society's change from within even as social structures remain unchanged. Again, this is due to one's certainty in the future, but more so refers to that certainty's effect on the present: "this does not mean for one moment that they live only for the future: present society is recognized by Christians as an exile; they belong to a new society which is the goal of their common pilgrimage and which is anticipated in the course of that pilgrimage" (par. 4).

In considering accession to genuine Christian hope, the Pope in fact points to the sacrament of baptism: "It is not just an act of socialization within the community, not simply a welcome into the Church. The parents expect more for the one to be baptized: they expect that faith, which includes the corporeal nature of the Church and her sacraments, will give life to their child - eternal life" (par. 10).

It is here that some Christian readers outside the Roman Catholic Church might feel uncomfortable, especially in light of last summer's Vatican statement on the doctrine of the Church. That statement equated "the full identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church" while seeing the ecclesial nature of other churches on a sliding scale ("Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church").

Given this, the Pope would understandably believe that entry into the Roman Catholic Church (as compared to entry into another church) brings about a more perfect faith. Though it would be right at some point in time to pursue the implications of such a belief, such discomfort should yield now to consideration of his question as to whether or not the Church has remained steadfast as the locus of divine hope.

Here again, the communal nature of salvation comes into play. "'[R]edemption' appears as the reestablishment of unity, in which we come together once more in a union that begins to take shape in the world community of believers" (par. 14).

This recalls the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order statement, "A Common Account of Hope" (1978), which calls the Church "a communion of hope," and states: "To those who put their faith in [Christ], He gives a communion of hope, and He sends them as a sign of hope for all humanity. They share his own divine life, the communion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God whose own being is mirrored in all creaturely love. In the Christian community of faith, sharing in the confession of the apostles, gathered around God's Word and partaking of the sacraments, we are given the power to share with each other. We can rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. We can bear one another's burdens. It is in this communion that we also learn to share one another's hopes."

A third urgent issue has to do with interfaith relations. Early in the encyclical, when outlining the importance of hope to the Christian community, Pope Benedict writes: "We see how decisively the self-understanding of the early Christians was shaped by their having received the gift of a trustworthy hope, when we compare the Christian life with life prior to faith, or with the situation of the followers of other religions" (par. 2).

Citing Ephesians 2:12, and referring to those at that time who believed other gods and thus were "without God," he finds the importance of Christian hope. In short: "To come to know God - the true God - means to receive hope" (par. 3).

Although His Holiness does not apply these statements to believers of other religions today, to avoid such a misapplication by some readers, one wishes he had included references to recent Catholic (and ecumenical) theological developments that affirm the working of God through the Spirit in other religions and cultures. (See, for example, Nostra Aetate: "The Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions.")

Without such references, some Christians inclined toward the denigration of other religions might read into his statements a justification for their own dismissiveness when it comes to their neighbors of other faiths. And if the message of Christian hope is to bring the eternal love of God into our everyday relationships with others, such a temptation to dismissiveness invites the neglect of this precept.

Nevertheless, the mention of other religions in this encyclical does invite a necessary consideration of how Christians approach interfaith relations. Oftentimes, Christians are the first in interfaith dialogue to be reticent in affirming their respective truth claims. Ultimately, this is not helpful, because it prevents an honest dialogue on theological differences. More to the point, however, is how such truth claims are expressed in dialogue with others.

One of the greatest challenges today for Christians engaged in interfaith dialogue is discussing their own theological beliefs, or to give "an accounting for the hope that is in [them]" (1 Peter 3:15, NRSV), in a way that is neither triumphalistic nor dismissive of others' beliefs.

Immediately before Paul states "for in hope we were saved," he affirms the following: "I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18, NRSV). He can say this because of his experience of the crucified and risen Christ. This experience transformed Paul, who then sought to share it with others. It is an experience that, through those who have embraced the Gospel, is to be continually offered to the world.

Some forty years ago, in his seminal work, Theology of Hope, Jürgen Moltmann wrote: "[T]he hope of resurrection must bring about a new understanding of the world. This world is not the heaven of self-realization...This world is not the hell of self-estrangement...The glory of self-realization and the misery of self-estrangement alike arise from the hopelessness in a world of lost horizons. To disclose to it the horizon of the future of the crucified Christ is the task of the Christian Church."

Pope Benedict XVI writes in Spe Salvi that modern Christianity "has limited the horizon of its hope and has failed to recognize sufficiently the greatness of its task" (par. 25).

This self-limitation is indeed a cause for concern among churches across the ecumenical spectrum. We can therefore be thankful that the Pope has reminded us of the limitless nature of the hope that is within us.

A spiritual meditation, encyclical touches on vintage papal themes


By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
National Catholic Reporter
Dec. 21, 2007

Both philosophers and poets have always recognized that hope is as essential to human life as a heartbeat. Dante made the absence of hope the precise definition of hell, by emblazoning its entrance with the warning, “Abandon hope all ye who enter!”

Sages have long understood that hope can be cruel as well as kind, bleeding into rage or despair when it turns out to be false. The quest for lasting hope is thus among the most primordial philosophical and spiritual exercises. On Nov. 30 Pope Benedict XVI provided the latest entry in the genre with his new encyclical Spe Salvi, or “Saved by Hope.”

An encyclical is considered the highest form of papal teaching, though in Spe Salvi Benedict does not declare any new dogmas or settle doctrinal disputes. Instead, in the style of his earlier encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, “God Is Love,” the text is more an extended spiritual meditation.

In essence, Benedict’s message is that the ultimate foundation for hope lies not in earthly structures or ideas, but in the person of Jesus Christ. Only the transcendent hope that comes from God, the pope argues, can save the world from the destructive power of ideology, and from impossibly messianic expectations of either science or politics.

Deus Caritas Est won praise for its warm treatment of the theme of Christian love, and Spe Salvi shows the pope again determined to strike a largely positive tone.

For example, Benedict offers a novel reinterpretation of what has long been considered among the most ominous doctrines of the church, inspiring countless pieces of portentous art and music -- the Last Judgment. Rather than styling God’s judgment as a threat of eternal damnation, Benedict argues that it is actually about hope for the triumph of justice, in a world where too often cruelty and evil seem to have the upper hand.

“I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or, in any case, the strongest argument in favor of faith in eternal life,” the pope writes. “The purely individual need for a fulfillment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive ... but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ’s return and for new life become fully convincing.”

“A world without God,” Benedict writes, “is a world without hope.”

In the Christian sense, the pope argues, hope is not merely “informational,” meaning the message that there is another world in which death and mourning will be wiped away. Christian hope must also be “performative,” the pope insists, changing lives in the here and now.

Benedict offers the example of St. Josephine Bakhita, an African born in Darfur, Sudan, around 1869 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. A slave while in Sudan, Bakhita bore 144 scars from beatings administered by her masters. When she was brought to Italy, however, she was freed. She converted to Christianity, joined the Canossian sisters in Venice, and developed a reputation as a spiritual guide and missionary.

“She had hope,” Benedict writes, “no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope,” the pope suggests, meaning hope for redemption and eternal life.

Benedict also rejects an individualistic interpretation of hope in Spe Salvi, arguing that Christian hope points toward a “communitarian salvation” leading the believer “out of the prison of the ego.”

At turns Benedict becomes lyrical, such as his discussion of what it means to experience eternal life.

“To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us, and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality -- this we can only attempt,” he writes. “It would be like plunging into the ocean of infinite love, a moment in which time -- the before and after -- no longer exists.”

Early indications suggest that Spe Salvi may succeed in appealing to a wide cross section of readers; even the German reform group Wir Sind Kirche (We Are Church), for example, one of the pope’s harshest critics over the years, issued a statement calling the encyclical “impressive and engaging.”

Benedict’s positive and poetic touch, however, does not mean that Spe Salvi lacks a critical edge. At the same time the pope lauds the hope that flows from Christ, he also rejects any attempt to treat rival sources of hope, such as politics and science, as sufficient without reference to God.

For example, Benedict draws a sharp distinction between Jesus and contemporary social revolutionaries such as Spartacus and Bar-Kochba, making the point that Christianity is not a political movement, and warns once more that Karl Marx’s “fundamental error” of materialism led to “a trail of appalling destruction.” Quoting 20th-century German intellectual Theodor Adorno, the pope also warns that scientific progress by itself too often means “progress from the sling to the atom bomb.”

Freedom, Benedict argues, remains “freedom for evil” unless it’s subordinated to what he describes as the truth revealed in Jesus Christ. Moral well-being, the pope argues, cannot be guaranteed through human structures, and “the kingdom of God will never be definitively established in this world.”

In keeping with his reputation as a European cultural critic, Benedict offers an extended excursus on what he considers the fundamental error of the modern age: an attempt to replace the idea of redemption through faith in Christ with liberation through science and material progress. Benedict traces this trajectory all the way back to Francis Bacon in the 16th century, and brings it forward through the French Revolution, Immanuel Kant, and finally Marx, Engels, and 20th-century communism.

Throughout the 19,000-word encyclical, there are other vintage papal touches.

For example, Benedict has long pressed the need to re-present basic concepts of the faith to a modern world he regards as jaded by a sort of weary familiarity with Christianity. Thus in Spe Salvi, he writes: “We who have always lived with the Christian concept of God, and have grown accustomed to it, have almost ceased to notice that we possess the hope that ensues from a real encounter with this God.”

The wide appeal of Spe Salvi does not mean that early reaction has been uniformly positive. The Wir Sind Kirche statement, for example, posed three critical questions about the encyclical:

Why doesn’t it cite Gaudium et Spes, or “Joy and Hope,” the Pastoral Constitution on the Church and the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), long seen as a sort of charter document for the reform wing of Catholicism?

Why doesn’t the pope ask whether the current structures and disciplinary systems of the church actually promote an atmosphere of hope?

Will this encyclical generate real hope for progress toward ecumenical reunion?

Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesperson, said in a Nov. 30 news conference in Rome that the encyclical is “absolutely and personally” a work of Benedict XVI. As a matter of fact, Lombardi said, papal advisers had been working on another encyclical on social themes, and were “surprised” when Benedict chose to bring this project to completion first. Lombardi said Benedict wrote Spe Salvi during the Easter season as well as his summer period at Castel Gandolfo.

Lombardi said work on the social encyclical will continue. Many observers expect it to be published prior to Benedict’s expected April 15-20 trip to the United States, which will include a major address to the United Nations.

By JOHN L. ALLEN Jr.
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
Published: December 19, 2007

POPE BENEDICT XVI has offered a couple of recent previews of what's likely to be his core message to the United Nations next April, the projected highlight of his first visit to the United States. Last Tuesday, the pontiff released the text of his annual statement for the Vatican's World Day of Peace, raising typical papal concerns like poverty and disarmament, but also a defense of the family based on heterosexual marriage and, in the section reflecting Benedict's budding environmentalism, a reminder of human supremacy over the animal kingdom.


Nora Krug

Ten days earlier in Rome, Pope Benedict offered a more targeted message in a meeting with Catholic nongovernmental groups that work with the United Nations, delivering a stern warning against the "bitter fruits" of "relativistic logic" and a "refusal to admit the truth about man and his dignity." Given the titanic battles the Vatican has waged against certain United Nations agencies over abortion and birth control, his comments were quickly spun by the Italian press as a major papal "attack" ahead of next year's General Assembly address.

But if the pope's words have fed expectations of a "High Noon"-style showdown, they are likely to be dashed. Benedict had no intention of making an anti-United Nations jeremiad. Like every pope since the birth of the United Nations in 1945, Benedict supports robust global governance, in a fashion that has long bewildered neoconservative critics of the United Nations in the United States and elsewhere. If there was anything remarkable in what he said, it's only that the Vatican's public-relations crew still hasn't found a way to keep the pope from making cosmetic missteps that distract attention from his message.

While the Vatican may have its differences with United Nations agencies over sex, it also sees the organization as the lone realistic possibility for putting a human face on international politics and economics — what Pope John Paul II called a "globalization of solidarity."

Moreover, Benedict undeniably has a point about relativism. From China to Iran to Zimbabwe, it's common for authoritarian regimes to argue that rights like freedom of the press, religion and dissent represent Western — or even Anglo-American — traditions. If human rights are to be protected in a 21st century increasingly shaped by non-Western actors like China and the so-called Shiite axis from Lebanon to Central Asia, then a belief in objective truth grounded in universal human nature is critical. That's hardly just a Catholic concern, but no one on the global scene is making the argument with the clarity of Benedict XVI.

Part of the problem is that so far, this cerebral pope has a track record of blurring such compelling arguments during his biggest turns on stage. When he visited Auschwitz in May 2006, for example, he offended some Jews by asserting that the Nazis tried to destroy Christianity too. Four months later, he set off a firestorm among Muslims with a lecture at the University of Regensburg by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor to the effect that Muhammad brought "things only evil and inhuman," such as "his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." And in Brazil last May, the pope incensed indigenous people in Latin America by suggesting that Christianity was not imposed on them.

In each case, Benedict was actually trying to make a deeper point worth hearing. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power; his Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence; and in Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone's spiritual experience.

Those ideas, however, were overshadowed by a few throwaway phrases that betray a worrying insensitivity to how unfamiliar audiences are likely to hear what he says. One would think that by now the lesson would have been learned, but all evidence is to the contrary. While it was intended to strike a tone of sympathy and common human concern, the speech to the nongovernmental groups instead came off as a screed.

Benedict's trip to the United Nations in April will be his most important voyage to date, and his best opportunity to address the community of nations. He clearly has something valuable to say, a message that focuses on what he has termed a "dictatorship of relativism" menacing not just the Catholic Church or institutional religion, but everyone, especially the most vulnerable. The question is whether he'll be able to find a language to ensure that what he pitches is also what people catch.

At this stage, the odds that he'll succeed seem, well, only relatively good.


John L. Allen Jr. is the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter and author of "The Rise of Benedict XVI."


SOURCE: www.nytimes.com/2007/12/19/opinion/19allen.html?_r=1&ore...


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

Allow me to comment:


One has to protest the title given to this piece, 'The Vatican's relative truth', as a deliberately malicious way to get at Pope Benedict XVI, who has denounced relativism in all of its pernicious forms.

To begin with, it has nothing to do with the article itself. Nowhere is the idea of 'relative truth' in Vatican or papal statements even implied.

The article is, in fact, Allen's 'defense' of certain statements made by the Pope which he calls 'cosmetic mis-steps that distract attention from his message.'

While one must be grateful for the 'defense', Allen does not really help the Pope's cause by not acknowledging that what has 'distracted' attention from the Pope's message is not the Pope's 'cosmetic mis-steps' [whatever that means - it sounds like a weak attempt to coin something analogous to 'wardrobe malfunction'] but the deliberate attempt by many journalists to distort his message by mis-reporting it. Vladimir in the preceding piece from EUROPA has gone into these journalistic offenses.

Allen then exacerbates further with this comment:

---

Those ideas, however, were overshadowed by a few throwaway phrases that betray a worrying insensitivity to how unfamiliar audiences are likely to hear what he says. One would think that by now the lesson would have been learned, but all evidence is to the contrary.

---

"Throwaway phrases"? Can anyone really think Benedict XVI says anything that is a 'throwaway phrase!? That's like accusing someone as meticulous and scrupulous as he is of intellectual sloppiness! It's Allen who should be more careful of his throwaway thoughts!

"Worrying insensitivity" to 'unfamiliar audiences"? It's not the audience he is addressing that's the problem - it's the way the media report what he says to the worldwide audience which does not have a chance to listen directly to what he says or read his original statements - and so, all they know about what the Pope says is what the media tell them he said!

"One would think that by now the lesson would have been learned, but all evidence is to the contrary." In effect, Allen is saying, "Bad boy, Benedict! How many times must we rap your knuckles before you learn? Stubborn coot!" Allen sometimes betrays a dismaying flippancy that does not otherwise go with his habitual conscientiousness as a reporter.

What is there to learn? Let's take up the incidents that the media love to dredge up again and again to hold up as 'proof' of the Pope's 'insensitivity':

1. Auschwitz - The main objection by the dissenters was that he did not say enough about the Holocaust. That is, of course, a matter of opinion for those who think that the entire history of the Holocaust has to be recounted in full everytime the subject comes up.

The Pope's messages are often targeted to a specific audience, as it was in Auschwitz, but also intended to reach everyone else who could possibly hear it. In Auschwitz, he was speaking to people who, for the most part, experienced the Holocaust either in person or through their families and friends. They did not have to be lectured about the Holocaust. The Pope's address, which expressed theological considerations of an experience that transcends words and human understanding, was entirely appropriate both to the audience and to the occasion.

2. Regensburg - Everything has already been said and written about the deliberate choice by the media of a single citation - while ignoring the main message of the lecture - in order to make headlines, and what did they care what consequences such mis-reporting might bring.

3. About the pre-colonial cultures of Latin America - The Pope was addressing a conference of bishops who understood very well what the Pope meant [a concept which, by the way, was very well expressed in the recent Doctrinal Note on evangelization]. To my recollection, there was no adverse reaction from any of those present, and the first objection only came two days later from a political group known for its activism in trying to revive pre-colonial native religions - an objection taken up immediately, of course, by everyone else who cannot wait for an occasion to bash the Pope.

As we now know, that 'issue' eventually came down to nothing but a three-day media 'happening' that didn't have any 'legs' to go anywhere, as the media jargon has it. But it's people like Time's Jeff Israely and now John Allen who keep bringing it up as more than the artificial issue that it was.

The Pope 'insensitive'? Allen, who is usually very hip in his terminology, should have used the current jargon for 'insensitive', namely 'politically incorrect'. Because 'political correctness' is all about not wanting to offend anyone, aiming to please everyone, even at the expense of the truth, or relativizing it, or being hypocritical, banal and anodyne.

And that's not the kind of 'sensitivity' that will be indulged by a servant of truth like Benedict.

TERESA

The Holy Father dedicated his catechesis today to a reflection on the meaning of Christmas, in place of a lesson about the Fathers of the Church, which is the subject of his current catechetical cycle.

A full translation of the Pope's words has been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS. Here is how the Pope synthesized the catechesis in English:

---

In this Advent season, the Church invites us to reflect on Christ’s birth and to prepare ourselves, in watchfulness and prayer, for his second coming.

Advent is thus a time of joyful expectation that our hope, and indeed the hopes of all humanity, will find fulfilment in the peace and salvation which only God can give.

"Waiting in joyful hope" for the Lord’s coming also means preparing his way, and welcoming him as the incarnate Son of God, the Truth which gives meaning to every human life.

How important it is, then, to proclaim this mystery in all its saving power: the Son of Mary, born in Bethlehem, is the Light which illumines our life, the Way that leads to human fulfilment.

The Good News of our salvation in Christ must be made known to a world which longs for this message of reconciliation, solidarity and hope. May this Christmas be for everyone a celebration of peace and joy: joy at the birth of the Prince of Peace.

Together with Mary and Joseph, let us contemplate the new-born Child lying in the manger. Through the prayers of the Virgin Mother, may we grow in the knowledge and love of Christ the Saviour.

A happy Christmas to you and your families!

---

Here is a brief adaptation of the AsiaNews report on the audience:

“If we do not recognise that God became man,
what sense is there in celebrating Christmas?'

Benedict XVI once again invited the faithful to live the true meaning of Christmas today as the “gift” of God-with-us who came to bring peace and justice to the world.

“This faith and its great hope," the Pope told some 6,000 pilgrims gathered in the Paul VI audience hall for the general audience, " seem far removed from the reality of everyday life, public and private, in a world that is increasingly chaotic and violent: we see it every day, if the light of truth goes out, then life becomes dark and without direction”.

Christmas, he said, “gives us the wonder of the birth in a grotto” even as it “exhorts us to hold vigil and pray to our Redeemer who will return at the end of time to judge us".


THE POPE INAUGURATES
A MEXICAN EXHIBIT AT AULA PAOLO VI





Translated from
the Italian service of



Pope Benedict XVI inaugurated today a special Maxican exhibit on Christmas at the Aula Paolo VI and met a Mexican delegation headed by Margarita Zabala, the wife of Mexican president Felipe Calderon.


Left photo, the Pope looks at silver-framed image of Our Lady of Guadalupe presented tohim as a personal gift by Ms. Zabala.

The exhibit includes Christmas creches with figrues exe cuted in wood or ceramic, as well as photographs. The Christmas tree that goes with the exhibit is decorated with hand=painted ceramic ornaments.

The exhibit commemorates the 15th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the Holy See and Mexico. Itwill be open to the public till February 2, 2008.

It was also made known that the Nativity scene on St. Peter's Square, which will be unveiled on Christmas Eve, will include several statues representative of Maxican baroque art.



TODAY WAS THE LAST GA FOR THE YEAR

Translated/adapted from PETRUS:

Today's General Audience was the last one scheduled for 2007 - a weekly occcasion which has been highly successful in attracting huge and unprecedented attendance numbers.

The Prefecture of the Pontifical Household said today that since April 27, 2005, Benedict XVI's first Geneeral Audience, they have given out more than 2,200,000 tickets for the Wednesday GA. But the actual attendance is often far beyond the number of tickets issued, because anyone can come provided they go through the routine security check.

The Prefecture estimates that some 810,000 attended the 32 general audiences held by the Pope in 2005, based on police estimates. In 2007, 624,000 tickets were issued, but the police estimate is not in yet.

SARKOZY SET FOR FIRST VATICAN VISIT,
WILL OFFICIALLY INVITE POPE TO FRANCE


PARIS, Dec 18, 2007 (AFP) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy travels to the Vatican on Thursday for talks with Pope Benedict XVI and a visit that his office has described as "extremely important."

During his first trip to the Vatican since taking office, the president will be made an honorary canon of Saint-Jean-de-Latran, a distinction bestowed on all French heads of state.

"This extremely important visit will give the president an opportunity to reaffirm his respect and commitment, not to religion in particular... but to spiritual issues in general," said presidential spokesman David Martinon.

After arriving at the Vatican, Sarkozy will go directly into talks with the pope and then meet with senior Vatican officials before holding a working dinner with Italian and Spanish prime ministers Romano Prodi and Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Rome.

The Vatican has portrayed the visit as routine and part of the president's international agenda since he took over from Jacques Chirac in May.

A Catholic, Sarkozy has said that French identity is deeply rooted in the Christian faith and has often spoken with admiration about Benedict's predecessor pope John Paul II among other Catholic leaders.

His visit to the Vatican comes amid a media frenzy in France over his reported romance with singer and ex-model Carla Bruni, just two months after a divorce from his second wife Cecilia was announced.

Sarkozy is expected to extend a formal invitation to the pope to pay an official visit to France next year, according to French diplomats.

The pope is expected to travel this fall to the southern town of Lourdes, where celebrations are being held to mark 150 years since the young shepherdess Bernadette saw visions of the Virgin Mary.

OF THE CLERGY WHO OPPOSE 'SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM'?



Here's a translation of an article it his week's issue of the Italian magazine Panorama.

The Pope seeks to heal divisions
in the wake of the Mass MP
By IGNAZIO INGRAO


Pope Benedict XVI is expected to ask for more 'collegiality' in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia on December 21.

This Christmas tradition is usually a formality. But Benedict XVI used his first Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2005 to spell out the position of the Church that the second Vatican Council was not a break with the past but a 'continuity in renewal'.

Vatican sources said that the Pope has been working on the address with Archbishop Paolo Sardi, who helps draft Vatican statements.

Many believe that the Pope will issue a new appeal for collegiality from the bishops. Since the start of his Pontificate, Benedict XVI has always underscored the importance of team play in the Church.

After more than 20 years spent in the Roman Curia as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict is well aware of the importance of Church governance that is fully shared by the ecclesiastical community.

But such collegiality has been damaged thee past months by bishops and cardinals who should be the primary supporters of the Successor of Peter. Some of them have expressed open defiance of the pope's Motu Proprio issued last July which validates the traditional Mass as an extraordinary form of the Latin rite, which may be celebrated anywhere without need for the local bishop's approval - only that of the parish priest.

This was a solution deemed appropriate by Benedict XVI to simplify the indult granted by Pope John Paul II which had required the local bishop's consent and which was often denied.

More importantly, Benedict's decree guarantees authentic freedom to Catholics in deciding which rite they prefer. However, the dissenting bishops have seen this as a limit to their authority, despite the Pope's explanatory letter that this was not so.

Leading the dissent were some French bishops led by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Jean-Pierre Ricard. Other leaders of bishops' conferences who expressed dissent were Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, representing the bishops of England and Wales, and Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo, of Portugal.

Italian dissidents have included three presidents of local episcopal commissions for the liturgy - Felice Di Molfetta, of the Center for Liturgical Action; Luca Brandolini, of the Abruzzo bishops' conference; Carlo Ghidelli... - as well as the Archbishop of Salerno, Gerardo Pierro.

Even Cardinal Carlo Maria Marini, who in 1984 had authorized celebration of teh traditional Mass in the Archdiocese of Milan, wrote a newspaper article to say he would never again celebrate the traditional Mass himself, because he prefers the Novus Ordo celebrated in the vernacular.

Two leading Curia officials have expressed themselves strongly about the open disobedience being shown to the Pope - the secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, Mons. Albert Malcolm Ranjith, and Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.

Cardinal Castrillon reportedly is ready with a draft of regulations that will clear up any questions about interpreting teh Pope's Motu Proprio on the Mass.

Also among the adversaries of the traditional Mass is Archbishop Piero Marini, who was the master of papal liturgical celebrations responsible for the liturgical spectacles of the Wojtyla era.

His successor as papal master of liturgical ceremonies, Mons. Guido Marini, has been giving papal ceremonies a more traditional look - a pleasant surprise to many, but interpreted by dissidents as yet another sign of Benedict's 'involution' into the past.

Benedict XVI's actions have also been disputed by some prelates in other fields - ecumenical dialog, the interpretation of Vatican-II, and the Church's relationship to the modern world.

The recent statement by the CDF on the ecclesiology of Vatican-II re-stated that the only true Church of Christ is the Catholic Church, which drew criticism from many Protestant circles, but also from someone like the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi. Even as his predecessor, Cardinal Martini has become the icon of progressivist elements in defense of what they call the 'conciliar' Church.

On the other hand, the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, with his characteristic exuberance, has sought to give greater visibility to Papal actions. But he too has been criticized by prelates in the Secretariat of State itself who still consider him alien because he had no previous experience in diplomacy. They have accused him of excessive activism and publicity-seeking.

Nevertheless, these tensions apparently failed to mar the plenary session held by the Pope with the full College of Cardinals before the recent consistory for new cardinals.

New objections may follow the recent Doctrinal Note of the CDF about evangelization.

But the Pope, characteristically, has not allowed the dissent to keep him from proceeding as he intends to. Ad even his draft on the second volume of JESUS OF NAZARETH appears to have made good progress.

Panorama n. 51/2007

'Spe salvi':
From Virgil's Elysian fields
to the Christian Paradise
By MARTA SORDI

A just retribution for good and evil.
A Judgment which will establish for eternity the right order of values.
The 'last things' recalled by the Pope and intuited by the ancient world.

The day after the encyclical came out, Sordi was quoted in an article in Il Foglio, posted on this thread on Dec. 1, as follows:

---

"It struck me very much that in his first paragraphs, the Pope took up again the theme of Christianity's penetration into the world of antiquity, which was possible because Christianity responded even to the deepest desire of pagan people, of a 'God with us' who enters history," says Marta Sordi, emeritus professor of Greek and Roman history at the Catholic University of Milan.

"There are two essential citations: the Letter to the Ephesians which recalls that before Christ, they were 'without hope and without God in the world'. The other, from the First Letter of Peter, who exhorts Christians to 'give reason for their hope.' In the ancient world, there was a profound sense of desperate expectation and invoked hope, the peak of which one sees in Verse LVIV of Catullus and the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, which we may define as 'the songs of pagan hope'".

She explains: "There was the horror of civil war, the subversion of human and divine laws and of natural family relations. This perversion, according to Catullus, led to a distancing from the 'power that justifies' which the gods possessed, and to the extinction of divine light in the world, generating desperate regret. On the other hand, Virgil's prophecy concerned the new generation which, after the annulment of 'original sins' [in the literal sense, not in the Christian sense], would be born into a pacified world to which divinity would return."

---

Today, she wrote this article for Avvenire, translated here:



After the brief observations that I made in Il Foglio on the first part of the encyclical Spe salvi, about the invitation for Christians to "explain the reason for the hope we carry" in the Greek and Roman world of the first century which was 'without hope and without a God in the world', but filled nevertheless - as the poets of the last Roman Republic wrote - with desperate expectation of a god who would be present, I think it is right to call attention to that which, in the encyclical, is the goal of hope: eternal life.

There is no doubt, in fact, that this is the fundamental content of the encyclical itself. Eternal life, which the contemporary world - all projected towards a purely earthly fulfillment for mankind and to progress determined by the triumph of reason and liberty detached from any connection to God - does not want nor show the least interest in. In this context, an 'interminable' life would be frightening to whoever conceives of eternity as 'an unending succession of calendar days' and not as the 'supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality" (Par. 12).

A moment in which we will be 'overcome with joy' according to the promise of Jesus in Jn 16,11.["I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you."]

But immersion in this "ocean of infinite love, in which time - the before and after - no longer exists" (ibid.) presupposes a Judgment, which the encyclical defines, like the prayer of action and suffering as a 'setting for learning and practising hope'.

---

The image of the Last Judgment is not primarily an image of terror, but an image of hope....Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value.... Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction as though nothing had happened (Par. 44)

---

Against the widespread do-goodism in the dominant culture of our time, which ends up ignoring the existence of evil and debases human liberty itself, the Pope reminds us of the demand that mankind has always made for a just retribution for good and evil, and for a Judgment which reestablishes for eternity the order that is often turned upside down in earthly life (ibid 44). Among the Greeks, , he cites Plato, who in Gorgias (525a-525c) presents a judge beyond this earth in the act of punishing the bad and rewarding the good.

One could add, for the Roman world, two beautiful passages from the 6th book of Virgil's Aeneid, in which the poet (v. 608, 661), sees punished in Tartarus - beyond the usual personages of mythology - the many anonymous sinners who, dum vita manebat [as long as life lasted], hated their brothers and parents and cheated their clients, as well as the masters who enjoyed their wealth by themselves, not sharing anything with others, committed adultery and provoked cruel wars; but saw rewarded in the Elysian fields those who died fighting for their homeland, chaste priests, those who benefited humanity with inventions meant to make life better, and who, through their merits, earned the commemoration of their fellowmen.

Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, which hardly anyone speaks about anymore even in Sunday homilies, are the fruit of the life-choice made by man, which becomes definitive with death(Par. 45).

---

There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love...(in whom) all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable...(and) there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbors...whose journey towards God only brings to fulfillment what they already are.

---

Extremely comforting, finally, in these admirable re-proposition of subjects too often forgotten, is the reference to Purgatory in paragraph 46, considered with lucid realism according to 'what we know from experience' as the destiny that concerns the majority of human beings, in whom "there remains in the depths of their being, an interior openness to truth, to love, to God", which however, "in the concrete choices of life, is covered over by ever new compromises with evil".

In my opinion, we should all be very grateful to Benedict XVI for this encyclical which has the courage to re-propose the fundamental themes of our faith which are today, unfortunately obscured even among believers.

Avvenire, 19 dicembre 2007

Posted today in the preceding page:

---

General Audience today - The Pope delivered a reflection on the mystery of Christmas in place of
a catechesis in his current cycle on the Fathers of the Church.

French president visits Pope tomorrow - President Sarkozy is expected to officially invite him to France.

Will Christmas bring charity to the hearts of the dissenters? -
A Panorama article says the Holy Father will call on the bishops for more 'collegiality' when he addresses them on Friday, wishing to heal the rift caused by his Motu Proprio on the Mass. Translated.

SPE SALVI: From Virgil's Elysian fields to the Christian Paradise - A classics professor focuses on the encyclical's
treatment of eternal life and the Last Judgment. Translated from Avvenire.

---

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




LOGO UNVEILED FOR POPE'S U.S. TRIP
"Christ Our Hope" Chosen as Theme

WASHINGTON, D.C., DEC. 19, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The message "Christ Our Hope" over an image of Benedict XVI before the dome of St. Peter's Basilica is the logo for the Pope's visit to the United States, April 15-20.

The papal visit will be highlighted by a trip to the United Nations, in response to an invitation from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The Pope will also visit the Archdioceses of New York and Washington, D.C.

The theme reflects the Holy Father's new encyclical, "Spe Salvi," an invitation for people to personally encounter Jesus Christ. In the encyclical, the Pontiff said that faith in Christ brings well-founded hope in eternal salvation, the "great hope" that can sustain people through the trials of this world.

The logo features a full color photograph of Benedict XVI waving both hands. Behind him is a yellow-screened image of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. In black type running at the top and over the cupola of the dome are three lines of type reading "Pope Benedict XVI/Christ Our Hope/Apostolic Journey to the United States 2008."

Logo designer Donna Hobson, director of publications at the Catholic University of America, explained her goal with this design.

"I wanted to incorporate the papal colors -- yellow and white," she said, "and my vision was to show a welcoming, arms-open, smiling Pope Benedict."


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

Here is the logo posted on the Catholic University's special site for the Papal visit:



I must say I find the logo rather disappointing. They could have used a different picture of the Pope, to begin with, and the design doesn't exactly 'grab' attention....I have incorporated the motto in a provisional banner I put together for the thread on the APOSTOLIC VOYAGE TO THE U.S.A. AND THE U.N. which I am still constructing (putting together all previous posts about it) - I hope to get caught up by tomorrow.


Link to the official site of the Papal visit to theUS:
uspapalvisit.org/itinerary_en.htm

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful


In his blog today, Sandro Magister calls attention to two articles written by Muslim scholar and Jesuit professor Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, in this month's issue of Mondo e Missione, the official organ of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME from its Italian acronym). The first is his analysis of the Pope's response to the letter of the 138 Muslim scholars last October. Here is a translation:

The Pope's response to the 138:
Deceptively brief, but profound
By Samir Khalil Samir, SJ

To a letter almost 30 pages long, Benedict XVI responded with one that had less than 400 words. It may seem a discourtesy, but instead, the reply goes deep.

It starts with a "deep appreciation...for the positive spirit which inspired the text and for the call for a common commitment to promoting peace in the world." And Pope Benedict has often called on everyone to condemn violence without ambiguity.

It continues: "without ignoring or downplaying our differences as Christians and Muslims, we can and therefore should look to what unites us". This is typical of this Pope, who has a positive vision that is never partial. Differences should not hide what unites us, but neither should these hide what the differences are. A word of truth (qawl al-haqq), as the Koran says (sura 19,34) of Christ: "He is the word of truth."

The Pope enumerates three common elements: belief in one God, who is both provident Creator, and the second element, universal judge, who at the end of time will judge everyone according to his actions on earth; and third, that we are all called upon to dedicate ourselves totally to him and to obey his divine will.

In order that these should not remain merely 'pious intentions', the Pope therefore proposes the most important thing in the letter: an invitation for a working session between a group of the letter's signatories chosen by its principal sponsor (Jordanian Prince Ghazi) and a group of Catholic specialists.

The aim is to concretize good will and make it lasting. and the Pope proposes four areas of discussion.

The first is "effective respect for the dignity of every human being". In the letter of the 138, there is no clear reference to this point. dignity presupposes respect for freedom of conscience, equality between men and women, between believers and non-believers, distinguishing between religious authority and politicalpowe4r.

Some of the signatories to the Muslim letter are of the thinking that "The ethical-social dialog is already tasking place every day, through institutions which are completely secular. Therefore, many Muslim theologians are not interested at all in an ethical dialog about culture and civilization."

But for the Pope, who told the Roman Curia in his December 2006 address that "It is necessary to grasp the true conquests of the Enlightenment - the rights of man, especially freedom of faith and its exercise, recognizing elements in these rights that are also essential for the authenticity of religions."

For Benedict, "the content of the dialog between Christians and Muslims should be, at this time, above all a common commitment to finding the correct solutions" and together, to be committed "against violence Adan for the synergy between faith and reason, between religion and freedom."

In dialog, the Church is inspired by the Gospel, but does not use it as the basis in order not to exclude anyone. Instead, the basis is "the dignity of every human being', as expressed in human rights.

The second point is an objective knowledge of each other's religion. In fact, Christians have no serious knowledge of Islam, and vice-versa. This implies changing all the school books as well as the discourses in churches and mosques. This is a vast and long but essential program.

The third point: to share the religious experience. Faith is experiencing God, not something intellectual nor ideological. And to dialog is to share this profound experience with each other.

The last point is focused on the young. A new generation must be raised that promotes respect and reciprocal acceptance. Because it is the young who most risk being carried away by the ideology of violence.

Benedict XVI's reply points to a passage from mere good will to a concrete plan to build the peace, starting with the young.



Fr. Samir's second article was about Saudi King Abdullah's visit at the Vatican. Here is a translation:

Dialog between the Pope
and the Saudi King:
'Even moral values and the family
should be kept in mind'
By Fr. Samir Khalil Samir, SJ





The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia does not have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The visit of King Abdullah II to the Vatican last November 6 - the first of its kind - was therefore a historic event.

Arabia today represents the most recognized authority in the Sunni Muslim world, for historical reasons (Islam was born and developed there), as well as socio-economic (it gives financial aid to almost all the Muslim countries). And the continuing increase in the price of oil contributes to widen and strengthen this power.

The meeting between the Pope adn the King lasted half an hour. The Vatican communique about it was brief but dense: "The conversations took place in an atmosphere of cordiality which allowed a discussion of the subjects of greatest interest to both sides. In particular, they reaffirmed a commitment in favor of inter-cultural and inter-religious dialog, aimed at a fruitful and peaceful coexistence among men and peoples, and the value of collaboration among Christians, Muslims and Jews for the promotion of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values, especially those that support the family."

Four points deserve reflection.

The first: As in all encounters with Muslims, dialog is always inter-cultural and inter-religious. It is impossible to separate religion and culture, as it is impossible to separate religion, politics and society.

That is one of the reasons that made Benedict XVI temporarily place the Pontifical Councils on culture and on inter-religious dialog under one head, even if they now have separate presidents once again.

What the West and the Christian world consider in the category of culture - like dress, food, language, physical fitness, customs.. -constitute, for most Muslims, the essence of religion, This, the veil for women, food which is 'halal', Arabic for prayer, purifications...

The second point: 'Fruitful and peaceful coexistence' refers to the relatively recent but persistent phenomenon of violence, especially if done in the name of religion, culture or politics.

The official Saudi news agency wrote: "Both sides underscored that violence and terrorism have nothing to do with religion." Surely, Arabia is completely against terrorism, as is the majority of Muslim governments. [Is that a straight statement, or intended to be sarcasm? If it is straight, how? Since when?]

It is not surprising, therefore, that the Saudi newspaper Arab News wrote: "The King and the Pope underscored that violence and terrorism do not have a homeland nor a religion... All nations and all peoples should work together to eradicate terrorism (cfr Asia News of November 7).

Still, the problem remains and is double-bladed: On the one hand, the Muslim countries justify violence when their religion is at risk. On the other hand, they do not connect religious radicalism (which is what the Wahhabi doctrine of Saudi Arabia is) to violence and terrorism.

The third point: collaboration among Christians, Muslims and Jews. The mention of the Jews is very important indeed: King Abdullah's realism has brought him to this position, and we must acknowledge this. Some Arab newspapers omitted any mention of the Jews, which is equally significant. The Vatican, for its part, alluded to the problem of religious freedom, a subject that requires much deeper examination by itself.

Finally, the two agreed that the aim was "the promotion of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values, especially those that support the family".

Three elements: peace, justice, ethics. The first two are clear: "There is no peace without justice," John Paul II used to say. For the Arab world, this principle is the basis of all debates over Palestine, where injustice is flagrant. [This is a biased, one-sided opinion, if what he means by justice is that all Palestinian political demands must be met, which, in turn, would create injustice for Israel. Even the 'fence' to keep out Palestinian terrorists from killing Israelis is the Israeli government's exercise of its right and duty to defend its own citizens.]

But the most interesting is the third element: to promote 'spiritual and moral values'. The general criticism by Muslims of the West (which for them is Christian) is the loss of 'spiritual and moral values, especially those that support the family".

The widespread practice of abortion, divorce, sexual liberty (pre-marital as well as intra-marital), homosexuality, de facto unions, etc. are seen as proof of the decadence of Western civilization, despite all the progress obtained through science and technology.

One of the fundamental causes of the Islamic battle against the West - which is seen as the great Satan - is this excessive freedom. Perhaps their analysis deserves reflection.

Mondo e Missione n.10/2007

The Vatican's Cold Shoulder
The Wall Street Journal
December 20, 2007


China's wrath toward those who meet with the Dalai Lama - a list that has recently included George W. Bush and Angela Merkel - had its desired effect in Italy last week, when Pope Benedict XVI backed out of a planned meeting with the Buddhist leader.

The meeting had been on the Dalai Lama's calendar for several months, says Thupten Samphel, a spokesperson for the exiled Tibetan government, but on Nov. 26 the Vatican announced that nothing of that sort was on the Pope's schedule. No reason was given for the cold shoulder.

Vatican Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi stressed that the Dalai Lama had other reasons for coming to Italy, anyway. "Last year the Pope received him. I don't think it is necessary to receive him every time he has come."

If they had met, the two would have had a lot to talk about. For both men, gaining religious freedom for their followers in China has been high on their agendas.

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict took the unprecedented step of writing a lengthy letter to Chinese Catholics that expressed tempered support for China's state-run Catholic Church and encouraged Chinese bishops to openly express their loyalty to the Pope.

Italian media speculated that the Pope canceled the meeting to ease relations with China just before Beijing's appointment of a pro-Vatican bishop in southern China. The bishop, who has in the past proclaimed his loyalty to the Pope, was ordained on Dec. 4 in Guangzhou.

It's nice that the Vatican can now count one more Chinese bishop in its fold. But the Pope's decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama is a disappointment in the broader fight for religious freedom for Catholics and people of other creeds in China.


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I hope the Vatican answers this, since it makes out the Vatican to be a liar. Would Father Lombardi go out there and say the meeting was never on the schedule if it was? It's his word against the Dalai Lama's spokesman....Besides which, of course, the whole thrust of the item is to make the Pope look as if he bowed to political expediency compared to Merkel and Bush.

The Office of Papal Liturgical Celebrations has just re-posted the calendar of liturgical celebrations that Pope Benedict XVI will preside over during the Christmas season, from December 24 to Jan 13, but this time with illustrations, so here it is again.


December 24
SOLEMNITY OF THE LORD'S NATIVITY

Cappella Papale Holy Mass
St. Peter's Basilica, 24:00


December 25
SOLEMNITY OF THE LORD'S NATIVITY

Central Loggia of St. Peter's basilica, 12:00
The Holy Father will deliver his Christmas message to the world
and impart the Urbi et Orbi blessing.


December 31
SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOST HOLY MOTHER OF GOD

First Vespers
St. Peter's Basilica, 18:00
Vespers will be followed by the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament,
a Te Deum to mark the end of the civilian year,
and the Eucharistic Benediction.


January 1, 2008
SOLEMNITY OF MARY, THE MOST HOLY MOTHER OF GOD
WORLD DAY OF PEACE

Cappella Papale Holy Mass
St. Peter's Basilica, 10:00
Concelebrating with the Holy Father will be Cardinals Bertone and Martino;
Mons. Fernando Filoni, deputy secretary of state; Mons. Dominique Mamberti,
secretary for external relations; and Mons. Giampaolo Crepaldi, secretary-general
of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.


January 6
SOLEMNITY OF THE LORD'S EPIPHANY

Cappella Papale Holy Mass
St. Peter's Basilica, 10:00


January 13
FEAST OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD

Holy Mass and Baptisms
Sistine Chapel, 10:00
During the Mass, the Holy Father will administer Baptism to some babies.

TIME magazine indulged itself once again in perverse pleasures, naming Vladimir Putin its Man of the Year for 2007, though one would question whether he was the single individual who most affected the world for good or bad this year! He's definitely Russia's man of the year, but internationally?

Anyway, TIME also chose not to name newsmakers this year, choosing instead to make 'Top 10 News' lists in various categories - and Pope Benedict's MP on the Mass is chosen #4, after the 'revelation' of Mother Teresa's spiritual ordeal, religion taken up by the US presidential wannabes, and the death of Jerry Falwell.

Note that they did not even notice they spelled the MOTU in Motu Proprio wrong!!!

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#4. The Pope's Moto Proprio



The Pope has made it easier for priests to celebrate the Latin Mass, whose eclipse was one of the major symbolic consequences of Vatican II — but now, a priest who wants to celebrate old-school need no longer get his bishop's permission to do so. To many Catholics the Pope's moto proprio meant an unwelcome comeback of a ritual they regarded as elitist, in which the priest turns away from the congregation and speaks a language few understand. But the papally approved access to the Latin Mass has nonetheless been soothing to traditionalists, as well as a good many people who never knew they missed the beauty of Latin.

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For the record, the other religion stories cited are, from #5-10, respectively: the Anglican church's internal problems, the greening of evangelicals [why they singled out the evangelicals puzzles me!], the success of atheist books, the financial deaings of the New Life mega-church in the US, the opening of a Creastionism Museum in Kentucky, and the kidnapping of South Korean missionaires in Afghanistan.

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful


Here is another skeptical view - or probably, realistic is a more charitable term - of the 'letter from the 138'. It's the second enterprise article on religion in the New York Sun this week.


Answering the 'Call'
BY DANIEL JOHNSON
The New York Sun
December 20, 2007


The crisis in the Sudanese province of Darfur is usually reported as if it were something new. In fact, the Arab Islamists who are committing genocide there have also been committing genocide in other regions of Sudan over decades, killing some two million Christians in the process. But marauding Arabs have preyed on East Africa for centuries, as the story of Josephine Bakhita demonstrates.

She was born in Darfur in 1869. At age nine, she was kidnapped by Arab slave-traders. The experience so traumatized the girl that she forgot her real name; Bakhita, meaning "lucky," was the name given her by her masters.

Luck is always a relative concept; in this case, Bakhita was fortunate to survive. She was sold five times in the slave markets, flogged every day, and her entire body was covered with deep incisions into which salt was rubbed. She was left with 144 scars.

Bought by the Italian consul in Khartoum in 1882, Bakhita found herself caught up in the rebellion of the fanatical Islamic movement led by the Mahdi which drove out the Europeans and was eventually crushed by the British at the battle of Omdurman. She was brought back to Italy as a nanny and encountered Christianity in the gentle form of the nuns of the Canossian order.

At this point, Bakhita ceased to be a victim and took control of her destiny. When the consul's wife came for her to return with the family to Sudan, she refused. The court decided that she could not be coerced, since slavery was illegal, and the Church took her side.

She was baptized with the name "Josephine," became a nun, and lived on until 1949. By the time she died, Josephine Bakhita had become widely revered as a holy woman, and half a century later Pope John Paul II canonized her as the first modern African saint.

Now Josephine Bakhita has acquired a new significance as a symbol of the ordeal of her native Darfur. In his new encyclical, Spe Salvi, John Paul's successor Benedict XVI gave the slave girl who became a saint pride of place. The Pope did not need to spell out her symbolism: countless Africans have shared her fate at the hands of Arab raiders.

Sudan is in the grip of an Islamist regime that has much in common with the Mahdists of the 1880s. Why has the Pope once again brought up the problem of Islam, albeit in an indirect form, by drawing attention to one of its victims?

More than a year has passed since the controversy erupted over his Regensburg speech on September 12, 2006, in which he quoted the words of the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Since then, Benedict has demonstrated his own readiness to engage positively with Islam: first by visiting Turkey — which, due to that very command, has become an overwhelmingly Muslim land — and more recently by replying, though cautiously, to the "Call" issued by 138 Muslim scholars and clerics on October 13, inviting Christian leaders to "A Common Word between Us."

But the Pope, whose Regensburg speech drew attention to Islam's theological failure to reconcile faith and reason, is surely aware that this "Call" is not a genuine show of mutual respect, but a subtle attempt to weaken the West's resistance to jihad.

As the Anglican expert on Islam Patrick Sookhdeo has pointed out, this "Call" – the term is important — has the character of a missionary tract, or dawa. It is signed by Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabi scholars from Saudi Arabia, none of whom believes in any dialogue that does not result in submission to Islam. The letter's theological assumptions are hostile to Christian doctrines such as the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ.

The letter also suggests that Christians have been waging a crusade against Muslims and are therefore the aggressors, while omitting any mention of the persecution of Christians. The letter implies that under certain circumstances the Islamic world may declare holy war against the Christians. This sinister document is more of an ultimatum than an olive branch. A "Call," an invocation to infidels to convert, is the necessary precursor to jihad.

Not many Christians have grasped this subtext. They, like Jewish rabbis, have responded warmly to the letter, not to mention secular leaders such as Prime Minister Brown, who praised this "remarkable" gesture and promised to make Britain a "European centre of excellence in Islamic studies." As the British commentator Melanie Phillips says, this is like responding to Nazism by holding road shows on German culture.

The only one of these Western interlocutors who has firmly insisted on reciprocity as a condition for dialogue with Islam is Pope Benedict. Unless Islam is ready to tolerate other faiths, to explicitly abandon the irrational bellicosity already noted by the Byzantines and other civilizations Islam crushed in its path, the Pope will not give the Muslim intelligentsia the benefit of the doubt, as they demand.

As Benedict tries to fathom the meaning of Islam's new phase of global expansion, he has the consolation of Josephine Bakhita's indomitable spirit looking over his shoulder. She is a reminder that the price of submission to Islamofascism will not be paid in the first instance by pontiffs and presidents, governors and senators, prime ministers and chancellors, but by slave-girls in Africa and Asia.

The Vatican Press Office released the following communique at midday today:

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This morning the Holy Father Benedict XVI received in audience Nicolas Sarkozy, president of the French Republic.

The president subsequently went on to meet Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B., and Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.

The cordial discussions provided an opportunity to examine a number of questions of mutual interest concerning the current situation of France. Mention was made of the good relations that exist between the Catholic Church and the French Republic, and of the role of religions, especially the Catholic Church, in the world.

Particular attention was given to the international situation with reference to the future of Europe, the conflicts in the Middle East, the social and political problems of certain African countries, and the drama of hostages.

At the end of the conversation, best wishes were exchanged for the forthcoming Feasts of Christmas and the New Year.

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12/21/07: I will come back to fill up this post properly, as I was unable to do any more Forum work after these initial posts. I only regret that the initial reports from the wire agencies gave equal billing to the tabloid side of Sarkozy's life and his visit to the Vatican.


AMID MEDIA FRENZY ABOUT PERSONAL LIFE,
DIVORCED SARKOZY MEETS POPE


VATICAN CITY, Dec 20, 2007 (AFP) - Nicolas Sarkozy, the first French president to divorce while in office, met at the Vatican on Thursday with Pope Benedict XVI amid a new blaze of publicity over his personal life.

The private audience lasted about half an hour. Vatican sources said the pair discussed secularism in French society.

The pair later exchanged gifts, Benedict offering Sarkozy a commemorative medal of his papacy while accepting a copy of a 2004 book that Sarkozy co-authored titled "The Republic, Religions and Hope."

French society was more interested in Sarkozy's new romance with Carla Bruni, the Italian pop singer and ex-supermodel.

There is a media frenzy in France over Sarkozy's relationship with Bruni, just two months after the president and his second wife Cecilia announced their divorce.

French celebrity magazines brought forward publications days to get several pages of photos of Sarkozy and Bruni together at the Paris Disneyland out on the streets.

There had been speculation that Bruni would accompany him to the Vatican but this was quashed by Italian media.

Sarkozy's audience with the pope "will give the president an opportunity to reaffirm his respect and commitment, not to religion in particular ... but to spiritual issues in general," his spokesman said ahead of the audience.

The Vatican has portrayed the visit as routine and part of the president's international agenda since he took over from Jacques Chirac in May.

A Catholic, Sarkozy has said that French identity is deeply rooted in the Christian faith and has often spoken admiringly of Benedict's predecessor Pope John Paul II.

Sarkozy was to extend a formal invitation to the pope to pay an official visit to France next year, according to French diplomats.

The pope is expected to go to Lourdes to take part in celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the visions of the Virgin Mary by shepherdess Bernadette Soubirous, which has made the French town an international landmark.

Later, Sarkozy was to be made an "honorary canon" at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the pope's seat as bishop of Rome. The title has been bestowed on French leaders since the 1589-1610 reign of Henry IV, who converted to Catholicism from Calvinism.

While in Rome, Sarkozy was also to have talks with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Spanish leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The board of the ailing Alitalia airline and the Italian government are debating which of two rival bidders should take over the state firm -- Air France-KLM or Italian carrier Air One.

Prodi denied reports that he would discuss the Alitalia sale with Sarkozy, who for his part said last week that he would discuss the issue with the Italian leader.

On Thursday evening Sarkozy was to dine with Prodi and the Spanish prime minister, with talks to focus on a ideas for a Mediterranean Union, a proposed community of Mediterranean countries.

Sarkozy suggested the grouping, partly as an alternative to Turkish membership of the European Union. Italy favours Ankara's entry into the EU.


Sarkozy in Rome:
Affairs of State and the Heart
By IAN FISHER
The New York Times
Published: December 21, 2007

ROME — Affairs of state and more personal ones mixed to bring Italy and France a little closer as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France arrived here on Thursday for his first official visit. For the official part, Mr. Sarkozy, a Roman Catholic but twice divorced, met with Pope Benedict XVI and with Italian and Spanish leaders.

But buzzing in the background, unavoidably, was the French president’s love life, relevant to Italians since last weekend, when he was photographed at Disneyland Paris with Carla Bruni, the Italian singer and former supermodel.

Any hopes that Mr. Sarkozy might accompany Ms. Bruni, an heiress from Turin who grew up in France, back to her native country for a coming out of sorts were dashed even before he arrived.

“Out of the question,” Ms. Bruni was quoted as saying in several Italian newspapers on Thursday. Mr. Sarkozy and his wife, Cécilia, announced their divorce in October after 11 years of marriage.

Still, in this city where world leaders come and go without much notice, Mr. Sarkozy, a conservative elected in May, was mobbed by cameras, and love was not completely beside the point.

“I love Italy,” he told reporters, as he left after his lunch in Piazza del Popolo. “I have always loved it. We are in Rome, and the sky is blue.”

Mr. Sarkozy began his day at the Vatican for a visit with Benedict. He asked the pope where he had learned his “remarkable” French.

“At school,” the pope said in a brief moment open to reporters before the two spoke privately for 25 minutes, without interpreters.

A Vatican statement described the meeting as cordial, touching on “the future of Europe,” the Middle East, problems in Africa and unspecified “hostage dramas.” France has recently been working to free Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held by Colombian rebels for nearly six years.

Mr. Sarkozy extended a formal invitation for Benedict to visit the shrine to the Virgin Mary in Lourdes next year.

In the evening, Mr. Sarkozy was named canon of the Basilica of St. John, the cathedral of Rome, an honor bestowed on French leaders since the 15th century.

At the cathedral, Mr. Sarkozy, who has praised the role of spirituality in public life, spoke of the importance of the church as well as “other great religious and spiritual movements to enlighten our choices and build our future.”

On a continent where public officials speak of religion far less openly than in America, he also said he agreed with Benedict that Europe could not ignore its Christian roots. To do so, he said, “commits a crime against its culture.” But he also underscored the importance of a secular state, which he described as “the freedom to believe or not, to practice a religion and change your faith.”

Later, he met with President Giorgio Napolitano of Italy, then with two more left-leaning leaders, Prime Minister Romano Prodi of Italy and Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of Spain, to discuss a proposed Mediterranean union, aimed at closer ties through trade and educational exchanges between Europe and poorer northern African nations.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 20, 2007

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday and said he was "personally moved" by his first audience with the pontiff.


Pool photo by Alberto Pizzoli.

Pope Benedict XVI and French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a private audience at the Vatican on Thursday.

The two men discussed a range of international issues, including "the drama of hostages," an apparent reference to France's efforts to free Ingrid Betancourt, who is being held by Colombian guerrillas, the Vatican said.

Betancourt is a dual French-Colombian citizen and former Colombian presidential candidate. She has been held for nearly six years and France has been actively seeking her release.

The Vatican described the visit as cordial and noted what it called good relations between the French government and the Roman Catholic Church.

Sarkozy, in 25 minutes of private talks with the pope and in a meeting with the secretary of state of the Holy See, discussed themes of common interest and the role of religion, "in particular the Catholic Church," in the world, the Vatican said.

Before the visit, Sarkozy spokesman David Martinon described the Vatican as "extremely active and influential" in diplomacy. "It's a partner that counts, and it's a heavyweight ally on a great number of subjects," such as on Lebanon and the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, Martinon said.

Benedict greeted Sarkozy outside his study and two men posed for photographers before taking their seats at a desk for their talks.

"Where did you learn your French?" Sarkozy was heard to ask the German pope in the televised preliminaries. "In school," Benedict replied.

Sarkozy presented the pope with three books, including one he had written before becoming president on the role of religion in secular France.

After the talks, Sarkozy said on television that he was "personally moved" by the meeting.

In the evening, the president was to dine with Italian Premier Romano Prodi and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to talk about his idea for a union of Mediterranean countries, Martinon said.


SOURCE: www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Vatican-France-Sarkoz.html


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

Beatrice on her site benoit-et-moi.fr has a good round-up of the French media coverage yesterday. The story translated here is from the Catholic newspaper La Croix, but the picture is from Le Figaro.



Le Figaro had a Page 1 photo with this caption: Received yesterday by Pope Benedict XVI, the President of France said: "In a world obsessed with material comfort, France needs convinced Catholics who are not afraid to affirm who they are and what they believe in." Defending a 'positive secularity', he also said, "The roots of France are essentially Christian."


PRESIDENT SARKOZY'S
DAY AT THE VATICAN
By Isabelle Gaulmyn
La Croix
Dec. 21, 2007

Thursday, December 20. For the President of the French Republic, Benedict XVI donned a stole over his red mozzetta. A liturgical symbol reserved for Catholic heads of state.

It was as president of the 'eldest daughter of the Church' that Nicolas Sarkozy spent this day in the heart of the universal Church, fully assuming, as he would make clear in his address at the Lateran basilica a few hours later, "France's past and the special link which for so long our nation kept with the Church."

Visibly moved, the President entered the Pope's library at 11 o'clock for a conversation that lasted almost half an hour. One conducted in French, which Benedict XVI speaks perfectly, as Sarkozy had occasion to remark to him.

His host seemed pleased to be able to talk to him in his language, as much as he later appreciated the books by Georges Bernanos presented by Sarkozy, 'La Joi'e (Joy) and 'L'Imposture' (Deception). [He also gave him a copy of his 2004 book entitled 'The Republic, Religion and Hope'.]

The Pope's staff, someone remarked with surprise that the official delegation with the President did not include a cabinet minister, but the President did bring along comic actor Jean-Marie Bigard, who describes himself as a practising Catholic; two priests - Fr. Guy Gilbert and Fr. Philippe Verdin, Dominican; as well as Max Gallo, of the Academie Francaise.

During his tete-a-tete with the Pope, Sarkozy discussed the Papal visit to France next year and his thoughts on secularity, about which he would speak at length in his address at the Lateran Basilica later.

Afterwards, Sarkozy met with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and the Pope's 'foreign minister', Mons. Dominique Mamberti.

Second stop: St. Peter's Basilica, to the delight of tourists. A quick look at Michelangelo's Pieta, then a moment of silence at the tomb of John Paul-II, and a descent to the tomb of St. Peter.

The President then hastened to the French Embassy to the Holy See for an interview with Vatican media (Osservatore Romano, Vatican Radio and CTV).

Fourth stop: At 4 p.m., Sarkozy was welcomed by a cortege of canons at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, where he took possession of the seat of the Lateran's first and only honorary canon, after a brief ceremony presided by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who, addressing him in French, said, "It will not be an affront to the legitimate secularity of the French Republic to pray for it".

Last act half an hour later: Nicolas Sarkozy's address in a splendid hall of the Lateran Palace, in front of the French community in Rome of priests, religious and laymen eho work for the Church.

It was an expansive speech to seal this very special Roman day which visibly marked a new stage in the relations between France and the Catholic religion.

Never before, without a doubt, had a French head of state so vigorously defended the Catholic heritage of the nation, recalling its long history, without omitting the shadows. It was surprising to hear him speak of the 'suffering' provoked by the enforcement of the law of 1905 [Law of the Separation of Church and State, which established state secularism in France].

This form of 'repentance' would certainly touch to the core the memory of many Catholics, as much as Sarkozy's acknowledgment that, at times, secularity has been used in an attempt to deny the past.

The President was then able to develop his concept of 'positive secularity' in a pluralist nation, a secularity that recognizes the role of religions not only in private life, but also in the public life.

The President was able to cite the Pope's recent encyclical on hope, saying that all the great ideologies of the past century, no more than all the material gains of economic growth, "were in no position to fulfill the profound need of men and women to find a sense to existence."

This allowed him to conclude with a vibrant eulogy of the religious vocation which he compared, in surprising manner, to the political vocation: "One cannot be a priest halfway," he said, "just as, believe me, one cannot be a president halfway either."

And the President, who, insofar as the marathon day was concerned, was only halfway through, glided past the guests at the Lateran to hurry to his next appointment at another Palace, but a republican one this time - to the Quirinal, where he was to meet President Giorgio Napolitano, before meeting with the Prime Minister of Italy and Spain.

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The Holy Father today met with

- President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, and his delegation.
- Cardinal Luigi Poggi, emeritus Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church
- H.E. Darko Tanasković, Ambassador from Serbia, in a farewell visit
- H.E. Mohammad Javad Faridzadeh, Ambassador from the Islamic Republic of Iran, also in a farewell visit
- Children of Italian Catholic Action for traditional Christmas greetings. Address in Italian.

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Sanctity Is for All Ages, Pontiff Tells Youth;
Offers Example of 6-Year-Old's Heroic Virtue


VATICAN CITY, DEC. 20, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Sanctity is for all ages, says Benedict XVI, for little children and for youth, for adults and for elderly.

The Pope affirmed this today in a traditional Christmas meeting with youth from Italian Catholic Action.

He spoke to the youth about the example of Antonietta Meo, a 6-year-old girl who died of bone cancer in 1937. Documentation of her heroic virtues was promulgated Monday by the Congregation for Saints' Causes.

The Holy Father recalled how during her brief life she "showed special faith, hope and charity" and he presented her as a model for young people. He affirmed that "her existence, so simple and yet so important, shows that sanctity is for all ages: for little children and for young people, for adults and the elderly."

The Pontiff continued: "She traveled quickly down the 'highway' that leads to Jesus [...] who is, in fact, the true 'path' that leads to the Father, and to his and our definitive home that is heaven.

"Jesus is the way that leads to true life, the life that never ends. It is often a steep and narrow way but, if one allows oneself to be attracted by him, it is always stupendous, like a mountain path: The higher one climbs, the easier it becomes to gaze down upon new panoramas, ever more beautiful and vast. The journey is tiring but we are not alone. [...] What is important is not to lose our way, not to miss the path, otherwise we risk falling into an abyss or getting lost in the woods."

"Dear friends," Benedict XVI added, "God made himself man to show us the way. Indeed, by becoming a child he made himself the 'way,' also for young people like you: He was like you; he was your age."

The Pope concluded, expressing his hope that Catholic Action might "walk jointly and briskly along the path of Christ, bearing witness, in the Church and in society, to the fact that this is a beautiful path. It is true that it requires commitment, but it leads to true joy."

Link to Vatican video:
www.radiovaticana.org/it1/videonews_ita.asp?vaiflv=0000149.flv&vai=149.jpg&var1=21/12/2007&var2=Vatican%20City&var3=Papa%20alla%20Curia:%20l%20uomo%20ha%20bisogno%20della%20tras...




The Holy Father delivered his Christmas message to the Roman Curia today, but contrary to the speculation in the Panorama article this week, it had nothing to do with the subject of collegiality.

Rather, it was a review of what the Pope considered to be the highlights of his pastoral year, with particular emphasis on the trip to Brazil, because of the central point he wished to make. And surprisingly, there was not a single mention of Summorum Pontificum!

The emphasis on the Brazil trip had to do with questions that had been raised about the choice of theme for the Fifth General Conference of Latin American Bishops held in Aparecida.

The theme had been "Disciples and missionaries of Jesus Christ - so that in him they may have life". Which the Pope, just a few months after his election, had a hand in framing.

The Pope said it had been questioned why the bishops should have 'retreated' to considering the 'interior' life of the faith instead of confronting actual social problems, especially in Latin America. Here is the heart of his answer, which is a re-statement of the heart of his Magisterium - that in getting back to the basics, knowing Christ and his message, the faithful will do good and know how to do good.

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To become disciples of Christ is a path of education towards our own true being, towards the right way of being human. In the Old Testament, the basic attitude of the man who lives the word of God is summarized in the term zadic - the just man: whoever lives according to the word of God is a just man. He practices and lives justice.

In Christianity, the attitude of the disciples of Christ was expressed with a different word: the faithful. Faith comprehends all this - the word indicates both being with Christ and being with his justice. We receive in our faith the justice of Christ, we live it first-hand and we transmit it.

The [final] document from the Aparecida conference concretizes all this, in speaking of the 'good news' about the dignity of man, about life, the family, science and technology, human labor, the universal destination of all the goods of the earth, and ecology. These are all dimensions in which justice must be expressed, through which we live our faith, and through which answers are given to the challenges of our time.

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Here's the VIS story posted one day later:

BENEDICT XVI MEETS ROMAN CURIA
FOR CHRISTMAS GREETINGS


VATICAN CITY, DEC 21, 2007 (VIS) - This morning in the Clementine Hall, the Holy Father held his traditional meeting with cardinals, archbishops, bishops and members of the Roman Curia, for the exchange of Christmas greetings.

"The Curia is a 'working community'," said the Pope opening his address, "held together by bonds of fraternal love which the Christmas festivities serve to reinforce."

He then went on to recall one of the significant events of the year that is drawing to a close: his trip to Brazil to meet with participants in the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, and with "the Church in the vast continent of Latin America."

Referring specifically to his encounter with young people in the municipal stadium of Sao Paulo, he observed: "There are mass events which have the single effect of self-affirmation, in which people allow themselves to be carried away by the rhythm and the sounds, and end up deriving joy merely from themselves. On that occasion however, ... the profound communion which spontaneously arose between us caused us, by being with one another, to be for one another. It was not an escape from daily life but became a source of strength for accepting life in a new way."

The Holy Father then went on to recall the canonization of Frei Galvao: "Each saint who enters into history," he said, "represents a small portion of Christ's return, a renewal of His entrance into time, showing us His image in a new light and making us sure of His presence. Jesus Christ does not belong to the past and He is not confined to a distant future. ... Together with His saints He is ... journeying towards us, towards our today."

Still on the subject of his Brazil visit, the Pope recalled how at the "Fazenda da Esperanca" where "people who have fallen into the slavery of drugs, rediscover freedom and hope," he had felt "the renovating power of God's creation." And he went on: "We must defend creation, not only with a view to its utility, but for itself - as a message from the Creator, as a gift of beauty which is promise and hope," because "mankind has need of transcendence."

Turning then to his meeting with Brazilian bishops in the cathedral of Sao Paulo, Benedict XVI highlighted how "the experience of 'effective and affectionate collegiality' of fraternal communion in the shared ministry, led us to feel the joy of catholicity. Over and above all geographical and cultural confines we are brothers, together with the Risen Christ Who has called us to His service."

Having presided, in Aparecida, at the opening of the Fifth General Conference of the Episcopate of Latin America and the Caribbean, which had as its theme "Disciples and missionaries in Jesus Christ, that in Him our peoples may have life," Benedict XVI considered some possible objections to this choice of subject: "Was it not," he asked, "perhaps excessively concentrated on interior life at a time in which the great challenges of history - the urgent problems of justice, peace and freedom - require the complete commitment of all men and women of good will, and in particular of Christianity and the Church?"

To answer this objection, the Holy Father proceeded, "it is necessary to understand the true meaning of the theme." The key idea is that of "finding life," he said, "and the theme presupposes that this objective ... is to be attained through discipleship of Jesus Christ and through commitment to His word and His presence."

Being a disciple of Christ, the Pope said, "means in the first place coming to know Him" by listening to the Word. And to meet Christ "we must listen, then reply through prayer and through practicing what He tells us."

"The disciple of Christ must also be a 'missionary,' a messenger of the Gospel," said the Pope, adding: "Here too the objection could be made as to whether it is still legitimate to 'evangelize' today? Should not all the religions and philosophies of the world coexist peacefully and together seek what is best for humanity, each in its own way?" And he went on: "of course, it is indisputable that we must coexist and cooperate with mutual tolerance and respect."

In this context, Benedict XVI mentioned the letter sent to him by 138 Muslim religious leaders "bearing witness to their joint commitment to promoting peace in the world." In his reply, he said, "I expressed my convinced adherence to such noble sentiments, at the same time underlining the urgent need for a harmonious commitment in order to safeguard values, mutual respect, dialogue and collaboration. The shared recognition of the existence of the One God ... is a premise for joint action in defense of ... the dignity of all human beings, for the edification of a more just and united society."

"Those who have recognized a great truth, those who have discovered a great joy, must pass it on, they cannot keep it to themselves. ... In order to reach fulfillment, history needs the announcement of the Good News to all peoples, to all men and women. How important it is for forces of reconciliation, of peace, of love and of justice to come together in humanity. ... How important it is, ... in the face of the sentiments and the reality of violence and injustice, for rival forces to be mobilized and reinforced.

"And this," the Holy Father added, "is what happens in the Christian mission. Through the encounter with Jesus Christ and His saints," humankind "is re-equipped with those forces for good without which none of our plans for social order is realized but, faced with the enormous pressure of other interests contrary to peace and justice, remain as abstract theories."

Then, definitively answering the question he had posed at the start of his talk, the Pope indicated that the Aparecida meeting was right "to give priority to discipleship of Jesus Christ and to evangelization," and that this was in no way a "misguided retreat into interior life." This, he explained, "is because the renewed encounter with Jesus Christ and His Gospel - and only that - revives the forces that make us capable of giving the right response to the challenges of our time."

The Holy Father subsequently went on to consider the Letter he had sent in June to Catholic Church faithful in the People's Republic of China, in which he gave "certain guidelines for confronting and resolving, in a spirit of communion and truth, the delicate and complex problems of Church life in China. I also indicated the Holy See's willingness to undertake a serene and constructive dialogue with the civil authorities, with the aim of finding a solution to the various problems concerning the Catholic community. ... It is my hope that, with the help of God, the Letter may produce the desired fruits."

At the end of his address to the Curia, the Pope briefly mentioned his visit to Austria in September, and his meeting with young people in the Italian town of Loreto, "a great sign of joy and hope," he said.

"We must not delude ourselves," the Holy Father said, "the secularism of our time and the pressure of ideological presumption (to which the secularist mentality with its exclusive claim to definitive rationality tends), present no small-scale problem." Nonetheless, he concluded, "we also know that the Lord maintains His promise: 'Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age'."

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President Sarkozy's visit yesterday - and his full and unabashed statements about the Catholic roots of France and Europe - were appropriately played up in the Italian media. An example is Repubblica's headline for Marco Politi's story: 'SARKOZY EMBRACES RATZINGERIAN POSITIONS AND REAFFIRMS THE CHRISTIAN ROOTS OF FRANCE'.

None of the Anglophone wire services so far have given enough attention to Sarkozy's address at St. John Lateran later in the day, when he was made an honorary canon of the basilica, nor to the historical significance of the event.