BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Monday, August 23, 21st Week in Ordinary Time

ST. ROSA DE LIMA (Peru, 15816-1617), Dominican Lay Sister, Mystic, First Saint of the Americas
Born Isabel Flores de Oliva to Spanish parents, the future saint was baptized by the future St. Toribio de Mongrovejo, Archbishop of Lima. Pious and devout even as a girl, she was unmindful of her family's position and wealth and her own personal beauty. An admirer of Catherine of Siena, she imposed mortifications on herself, tended a garden and did fine embroidery from which she earned money to care for the poor. At age 20, she professed her vows in the Third Order of St. Dominic, and spent the remaining years of her short life in good deeds - caring for homeless children, the elderly and the sick - penance and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, experiencing many ecstatic visions. When she died, all of Lima turned oout for her funeral, and many miracles were soon attributed to her. She is venerated in Lima's Basilica of St. Dominic along with two other Lima saints, Martin de Porres (who had been her confessor) and Alonso Abad. She was beatified in 1667 and canonized in 1671.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/082310.shtml


No OR today.

No Vatican bulletins today so far.

A 'behind the scenes' look
at the Hyde Park prayer vigil
aka 'Liturgical Entertainment'
by Fr. RAY BLAKE, Parish Priest
St Mary Magdalen, Brighton, UK

August 18, 2010

NB: In July, Fr. Blake, who is one of the most active blogger priests, spearheaded an Open Letter welcoming the Holy Father from the priests of England and Wales.


One of the people who are singing at the Prayer Vigil ay Hyde Park sent me this email about the programme for what was originally entitled the Liturgical Entertainment. I am sure somewhere there is the Holy Rosary, and at three o'clock, everything will stop for the Divine Mercy Chaplet, and somewhere, nuns will appear to sing Sext and None, Vesper will of course be part of the Liturgy when the Holy Father appears.

What surprises me is that for a Pope who has said so much about chant and the more noble music of our Christian heritage there is so little of it... [Well, thankfully, he will not be around for Parts 1-5!]

Here is the email:

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Thank you for taking up the invitation to sing at the Papal Vigil in Hyde Park.

I am delighted to say that the choir will consist of 160 singers from nearly all the dioceses in England and Wales. Together with 50 singers and 50 musicians from the New English Orchestra, you will provide the majority of the accompaniment to the Vigil. You will also be on stage (under cover should it rain) and in close proximity to the Holy Father. It should be an experience to cherish for many years.

The programme for the afternoon is as follows:
12.00/12.30 tbc Doors open to the public
12.30- 14.00 Information slides on big screens
14.00- 16.00 Part One
Various acts by different music and drama groups from across the country
16.00-17.00 Part Two
Procession of diocesan youth, parish representatives and representatives from Catholic charities and organisations.
17.00-17.50 Part Three
A presentation on the Heart of the Church
17.50- 18.15 Part Four
Build up to the arrival of the Holy Father
18.15-19.45 Part Five
Vigil Liturgy with the Holy Father
19.45-20.15 Part Six
A “Soft Close” with musical accompaniment.

The full choir will sing to accompany the procession in Part Two, the build up to the arrival of the Holy Father (Part Four) and the liturgy (Part Five). To avoid having to be seated on stage from 14.00 – 20.15, you will take your place on stage at 15.40 and have a comfort break back stage between 17.00 and 17.40.

The music which you are being asked to sing is:
Part Two:
Save us Lord our God (Rutter): 4-part refrain (not including the descant). Verses sung by the NEO.
Christ be Our Light (Farrell): All verses and chorus in unison.
Out of Darkness (Walker): 4-part harmony, verses and chorus (not including the descant; 1st chorus is in unison).
One Bread, One Body (Foley): Chorus only in unison.
Shine Jesus Shine (Kendrick): All verses and chorus in unison.

Part Four: Halleluiah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Prout Edition.

Part Five:
Opening Hymn: Christ be beside me
Psalm response
Gospel Acclamation: Alleluia Beati (Walker). Refrain in unison
Lord Jesus Christ your light shines within us (Taizé):
4-part harmony
Adoramus Te (Taizé): 4-part harmony
Lead Kindly Light
Tantum Ergo
Tell Out My Soul (Dudley-Smith): Unison

Rehearsals
Thursday: Please be at Hyde Park for 2 pm. Entry to the site (see attached map) is on South Carriage Drive, close to Hyde Park Corner. The rehearsal will begin on stage at 3 pm and finish by 6 pm.
Friday: Please be at Hyde Park for midday for a full rehearsal which will hopefully finish by 6.30 pm. Please be prepared for periods of inactivity while other groups are rehearsing. Tea, coffee and biscuits will be available (free of charge) through the course of the afternoon.
Saturday: Please be at Hyde Park for 9 am. There will be a morning rehearsal, time tbc. You will be free to relax in the performers back stage changing room between 12.00 and 15.40 but won’t be possible to leave the site.
The Vigil will end at 8 pm and we estimate that you will be able to leave by 8.30 pm.

Dress
The following dress code applies only to Saturday. Dress is informal for the rehearsals on Thursday and Friday. We ask that for Saturday afternoon you wear black trousers or skirt and a shirt (and jumper) of a single plain colour (bearing in mind that the temperature may require you to wear more than one layer). In other words: no garments with stripes or printed patterns. Please also avoid wearing white which is apparently sensitive to the cameras.

Accreditation
Please bring photo ID. You will be issued with a security pass on Thursday which will be valid for the 3 days.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.
I look forward to seeing you on Thursday 16th.

With kind regards,
Rev. Andrew Headon BSc STL MBA
Hyde Park Vigil Co-ordinator

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UK government opens
webpage on the Pope's visit

The official papal visit site is late today with its Monday posting of the weekly audio update, but meanwhile, the UK government has opened a Papal Visit web page on its Cabinet Office site, with all the necessary links even to the local governments hosting the Pope:


http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/papal-visit.aspx


'Draconian' security for
Pope's visit to Birmingham

Aug. 22, 2010

Security plans for the Pope's visit to the Midlands have been described as "draconian" by a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

The Pope will use Cofton Park in the city on 19 September for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was buried in nearby Rednal until his remains were transferred to the Birmingham Oratory last November..

The spokesman, Peter Jennings, said he had "never seen security like this".

The Cabinet Office said "a very good job is being done" in Birmingham towards organising the event.

Mr Jennings said: "I think the security's draconian. But I can't question the authorities on security. They're in charge. The government is in charge of the security and they have to make the decisions."

In a statement, the Cabinet Office said: "A very good job is being done in Birmingham towards organising the event with dozens of organisations involved.

"The government is working with local authorities and the police and has to balance security whilst working with the Church to secure a good experience for pilgrims."

The Pope is visiting the UK between 16 and 19 September in what will be the first papal visit to the UK since that of John Paul II in 1982.

Marco Ansaldo was the replacement at the militantly anti-Church, anti-Pope La Repubblica when their star Vaticanista Marco Politi, and fierce purveyor of the editorial line, retired in November this year. To the credit nonetheless of Repubblica, Ansaldo and his colleague, veteran Vaticanista Orazio La Rocca, have been allowed to publish their objective news reports and even-handed commentary on Vatican and Church affairs, even if not entirely free of MSM reflexes - as the title of this article indicates (which was very likely imposed by the desk editor, not the writer himself).

In a review of the new Tornielli-Rodari book examining the media storms around Benedict XVI since his Pontificate began, Ansaldo focuses on the authors' inevitable critique of the Vatican's highly inadequate communications set-up. But the headline misses the more important and painfully obvious point they make: that there is no home 'team' behind the Pope, that the Curia, starting with Benedict XVI's own most trusted collaborator, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, have been hiding behind him, rather than shielding him from the media siege; that the Holy Father has been left alone on the ramparts to ward off the legions of Hell.


Too many attacks against the Pope:
The Vatican needs a 'spin doctor'
by Marco Ansaldo
Translated from

Aug. 23, 2010


When the Pope is travelling abroad, there is a very important time of day - central, in fact, for the media - which takes place virtually at dawn: In the hotel room occupied by Victor van Brantegem, veteran Press Office aide during papal trips, journalists are given the printed texts of all the Papal discourses for the day.

So it was on the morning of September 12, 2006, in Regensburg, during Joseph Ratzinger's first trip back to Bavaria as Benedict XVI. Later, however, something important happened. As soon as the Pope had delivered his academic lecture at the University of Regensburg, the news agencies reported on it focusing on a citation made by Benedict XVI from the 15th century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologue, from which it was deduced that the Catholic Pope believes Islam is a violent religion dedicated to holy war. A quotation extrapolated from its ample and well-articulated text - 12 dense pages in all - profoundly outraged the Muslim world which racted with indignation on the even of Benedict's next apostolic visit, which would be to Muslim Turkey..

[I don't know if, in their book, Tornielli and Rodari make the fallacious claim I underscored above, but Ansaldo himself is reporting his impression (and the general impression) about the Regensburg episode, rather than fact. Later, I will attempt a brief overview at the initial reports about the Regensburg lecture, because it is one of those episodes that immediately became subjected to instant historical revisionism, and it is the revisionist view that now persists!]

And yet, eight hours before the text was delivered, newsmwn who were reading it over breakfast immediately understood that that single sentence could lead to dangerous misunderstandings and was potentially explosive. They immediately warned the Vatican's press officers but the text was not changed.

And very promptly [if 'promptly' means 48 hours later], an international storm that was violent and lasting came down on the Vatican, with demands for apologies from every ranking Muslim leader, a crisis that was not to ease until Benedict XVI's genius instinct to stand in prayer at the Blue Mosque of Istanbul alongside the Mufti of Istanbul.

[The actual 'storm' lasted two weeks, exactly, as I had occasion to note with some surprise at the time, so obvious was the fact that the omnibus and relentless media focus on 'the Regensburg blunder' ebbed almost overnight - even if it would remain a constant touchstone for all those who obsess about this Pope's 'unmediatic' personality!]

But how is it possible that in Regensburg, none of the Papal staff had the foresight to warn Benedict XVI of the risk he was taking? [First of all, Fr. Lombardi, who was already Vatican press officer at the time, probably read the lecture and saw the Manuel II quotation in context, as most sensible persons would (and did for about two days in 2006 before the media storm erupted). But after he was warned by the more experienced Vaticanistas of the media risk, do we really think he would have had the initiative to point it out to the Pope? The only major reproach I have about Fr. Lombardi is his unwarranted timorousness in asking for a few minutes of the Pope's time to get his guidance when he has to! In Regensburg, he could at least have pointed out the media 'warning' to his immediate boss, Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano, who was serving out his last days then, but Sodano immediately said after hell broke loose that he was never consulted about the lecture and he had no idea what it was about until he was listening to the Pope deliver it!

Second and more importantly, I remain firmly convinced Benedict XVI himself was aware of the risk he was taking but chose to use the passage nonetheless. Not that he subscribes to its sentiments literally, but that it was a most effective way to underscore the irrationality - or determined mission of conquest - of militant Islam or any religion, including the Catholic faith, seeking to justify violence in the name of God.]


The center photo shows a 48-page booklet published by religion sociologist Massimo Introvigne in 2007 in response to the poisonously fallacious BBC documentary on sex abuses by priests in Ireland, in which Cardinal Ratzinger is directly accused of ordering bishops to cover up for priest offenders.

An illuminating new book by two of the most qualified of Vatican correspondents, Paolo Rodari and Andrea Tornielli, deals not just with a reconstruction of the Regensburg episode, but a whole series of resounding media 'crises' in which the Vatican has found itself entangled, especially this year which has been particularly difficult for the German Pope. [Benedict XVI has already given his best response - which is to see in these ordeals an occasion for the Church and its members to renew themselves through self-purification and appropriate penance and justice.]

In fact, Regensburg could be seen as the prototype of such media crises, followed by so many - the nomination of the Polish bishop Wielgus to be Archbishop of Warsaw, who was then revealed to have worked as a spy for the Communist regime; the lifting of the Lefebvrian bishops' excommunication, in which one of the four bishops happens to be a Holocaust denier; the statement about AIDS and condoms; management of the 'sex abuse scandal' in general; and even the unprecedented confrontation before the Pope of Cardinals Schoenborn and Sodano.

The two authors maintain that all these unfortunate episodes - which tend to gravely damage the image of the Church and its leaders - could easily have been cushioned and minimized with wise management from the Vatican. [All of that is painfully obvious, of course, but I think the real value of these books - two others along the same lines coming out in Italy this month - is, above all, to document the emblematic news reports and commentaries that created and sustained each 'crisis'. Sure, much of it would reflect communications ineptitude at the Vatican - and the much more serious quesition of why the Pope's closest collaborators have been unable and/or unwilling to be proactive in all this, instead of leaving the Pope to do all the heavy lifting himself- but it would also show the active role that media has played in fomenting and fostering such crises.]

All it takes is to carefully think out measures to pre-empt or minimize any potential crises, as Rodari and Tornielli show in the cases they analyze one by one in their many complex facets and their brutal consequences. Their deconstruction reveals the lack of a true communications strategy in the Vatican more than the failings of the hierarchy.

[I disagree. A 'strategy' is only possible if the hierarchy itself is clear and united about what it must do - and they have not been, certainly not at the level of the Curia. My greatest concern, IMHO, is that Cardinal Bertone, who is supposed to integrate the disparate activities of the Curia and of bishops around the world, has not taken a single initiative all this time, not even in words, to make an appreciable change at all in the Vatican culture of insensibility to the media. An emblematic example: L'Osservatore Romano, which is directly under him, chooses not to say a word to show why the Pope rejected the resignations sumitted by two Irish bishops, a move that fanned new flames from the embers of the 'sex abuse scandal' that raged in the spring - and yet, the OR never fails to publish every address and homily that Bertone makes, and finds all the space in the world to eulogize the Beatles, Elvis Presley and other pop icons in the past half century. That is not merely poor editorial judgment, but an abdication of the OR's primary communications responsibility - which is to propagate the message of the Pope and the Church as clearly, promptly and unequivocally as it can!]

The Vatican does not have an overview media strategy. It has been limited to trying to plug the holes, stamp out fires, and neutralize bombs that have already exploded.

The task entrusted to the current Vatican press director, Fr. Federico Lombardi - a man of great qualification, preparedness and self-abnegation - and his very access to the Pope appear very different from those of his predecessor, Joaquin Navarro Valls, who was not only an adviser to John Paul II but also acted as a true and proper spin doctor.

{Of course, I disagree with the use of the term 'spin doctor' for anyone who speaks for the Pope, because 'spin' is a derogatory term for cosmetic dissimulation of fact. Nothing that the Pope says needs dissimulation! It must simply be presented right. And you do so by providing the right context and background information for every major item of Church news - the Church has its own highly specialized rules and a very specific history, but they are not known to everyone, not even to some Vaticanistas and the chatterati who routinely report and comment from an uninformed or disinformed point of view.]

This is a matter to which the Holy See should pay great attention. [What? having a spin doctor?] As an authoritative source in teh Vatican told Tornielli and Rodari:

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Attacks against the Pope are multiplying. attacks of every kind. That he expresses himself badly, that he does not know how to communicate, that there is no coordination among his Curial officials, that many of them are, in fact, incompetent.

Personally, I think that there is no 'team' that provides him with the adequate support, that can anticipate potential problems, that can reflect on how best to prevent or minimize such problems. Nor is there anyone who seems capable of reinforcing the Pope's messages, which are often distorted or trivialized.

And so the favorite question among themselves seems to be, "When and what will the next crisis be?"

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[Do you suppose the Secretariat of State people who prepare the daily news summaries for the Pope would ever include an item like this in the folder they send him to read? Someone should do a special daily clipping service that puts together a representative sampling of the negative things written about him. He has never been thin-skinned about criticism and he knows he attracts all the poisonous gadflies. His underlings are not doing him a favor by seeking to screen him from negative stories - they would instead be providing him with a welcome occasion for self-mortification... All I can think of is that things might be very different if his Secretary of State were someone more militant (but wisely so) like Cardinal Ruini or Cardinal Bagnasco, who have proven themselves in media wars.]



REGENSBURG REVISITED

Like all black myths in the media, it only takes the constant repetition of a lie to 'establish' it as 'fact' that will live on in the history books, unfortunately. Regensburg is one of these myths, and has become almost a shortcut code for some in the media to refer to 'a monumental media blunder' by Pope Benedict XVI.

Almost four years since that day, it is worth looking back on how the crisis was manufactured and then blown out of all proportion.

Initial reports about the Regensburg lecture were rather routine, almost 'ho-hum', and did not, in fact, focus on the controversial quotation that would become a bone of contention - it was not until more than 24 hours later, when the Pope was back in Rome, that it came into raging focus.

A review of the posts about the visit to Bavaria in the APOSTOLIC VISIT TO BAVARIA thread on the PRF - which kept abreast of the coverage in real time and therefore has reliability with respect to the chronology of events - shows that the Regensburg lecture was first reported Sept. 12 soon after it was delivered, on Page 5 of the thread.

But the first rumblings of the media rampage about it did not come until Sept. 14 on Page 7, some two days and 40 posts later: after the Pope had celebrated Vespers in the Regensburg Cathedral, visited his old home and his parents' graves in Pentling, proceeded to Freising for a most beautiful Mass and homily in the cathedral where he was ordained a priest, and returned to Rome.

Initial reports by the news agencies did not even consider it as significant as his homily in Munich two days earlier, widely criticized even by the likes of Vittorio Messori and Magdi Allam in Corriere della Sera on the day of the Regensburg lecture, because Benedict XVI had said that “the peoples of Asia and Africa... see a threat not in the Christian faith itself, but instead, in the contempt for God and the cynicism that considers mockery of the sacred as a civil right”. [Sadly, all those other beautiful discourses the Pope made in Bavaria have been consigned to obscurity because of the titanic prominence that the Regensburg lecture came to acquire.]

On the day of the Regensburg lecture and the day after, the Italian papers were full of commentary on the Munich homily, with Marcello Pera, Giuliano Ferrara and Davide Rondoni (Avvenire) placing it all in the right context.

On Sept. 13, the AP's Victor Simpson, who would later paint himself as having been instantly incensed upon reading the pre-distributed text of the Regensburg lecture - and having marched off to confront Fr. Lombardi about it right away - wrote a warm and fuzzy retrospective of the Pope's Bavarian trip on Sept. 13, entitled "Pope sheds image of dour theologian" in which he describes the Pope's activities in Regensburg but does not even mention the lecture!

On the other hand, Ian Fisher of the New York Times, was probably the only major correspondent who reported the lecture with some measure of due diligence at the time, though I did not post his report in the BAVARIA thread (I felt it was just a distraction from the full text itself, which was so stunningly unexpected and was very clearly a work of genius that I was in a state of babbling wonder about it).

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Pope calls West divorced from faith,
adding a blunt footnote on jihad
By IAN FISHER

Published: September 13, 2006

REGENSBURG, Germany, Sept. 12 — Pope Benedict XVI weighed in Tuesday on the delicate issue of rapport between Islam and the West: He said that violence, embodied in the Muslim idea of jihad, or holy war, is contrary to reason and God’s plan, while the West was so beholden to reason that Islam could not understand it.

Nonetheless, in a complex treatise delivered at the university here where he once taught, he suggested reason as a common ground for a “genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.”

In all, the speech seemed to reflect the Vatican’s struggle over how to confront Islam and terrorism, as the 79-year-old Pope pursues what is often considered a more provocative, hard-nosed and skeptical approach to Islam than his predecessor, John Paul II.

As such, it distilled many of Benedict’s longstanding concerns, about the crisis of faith among Christians and about Islam and its relationship to violence.

And he used language open to interpretations that could inflame Muslims, at a time of high tension among religions and three months before he makes a trip to Turkey.

He began his speech, which ran over half an hour, by quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, in a conversation with a “learned Persian” on Christianity and Islam — “and the truth of both.”

“Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread the sword by the faith he preached,” the Pope quoted the emperor, in a speech to 1,500 students and faculty.

He went on to say that violent conversion to Islam was contrary to reason and thus “contrary to God’s nature.”

But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech, and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith — leading to the secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict’s worries.

This, he said, has closed off the West from a full understanding of reality, making it also impossible to talk with cultures for whom faith is fundamental.

“The world’s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion from the divine, from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions,” he said. “A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures.”

Several experts on the Catholic Church and Islam agreed that the speech — in which Benedict made clear he was quoting other sources on Islam — did not appear to be a major statement on, or condemnation of, Islam. The chief concern, they said, was the West’s exclusion of religion from the realm of reason.

Still, they said that the strong words he used in describing Islam, even that of the 14th century, ran the risk of offense...

The full article can be found on
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/13/world/europe/13pope.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq='benedict%20xvi%20regensburg%20lecture'&st=cse

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And this is how Reuters, which is not less dogged than its fellow British institution, the BBC, in its militant anti-Popery, reported the Regensubrg lecture initially:

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Pope invites Muslims to dialogue
By Philip Pullella and Madeline Chambers


REGENSBURG, Germany, Sept. 13 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict invited Muslims on Tuesday to join a dialogue of cultures that agrees the concept of Islamic "holy war" is unreasonable and against God's nature.

In a major lecture at Regensburg University, where he taught theology between 1969 to 1977, Benedict said Christianity was tightly linked to reason and contrasted this view with those who believe in spreading their faith by the sword.

The 79-year-old Pontiff avoided making a direct criticism of Islam, packaging his comments in a highly complex academic lecture with references ranging from ancient Jewish and Greek thinking to Protestant theology and modern atheism.

In his lecture, the Pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who wrote in a dialogue with a Persian that Mohammad had brought things "only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

The Pope, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, added: "Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul"...

The rest of the story describes the Pope's other activities in Bavaria.

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The first post in the BAVARIA thread that had any hint of 'controversy' about the Regensburg lecture was AFP's wrap-up story on Sept. 14:

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Pope wraps up sentimental
tour of homeland
by Guy Jackson



MUNICH, Germany, Sept. 14 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI winds up his nostalgic visit to his native Bavaria with a visit to the cathedral in the city of Freising where he was ordained to the priesthood in 1951.

The Pope, who also taught in the city's seminary, will address priests and deacons before travelling the short distance to Munich airport, where he will make his farewell address before returning to Rome.

Benedict has courted controversy during the trip with thinly veiled criticism of the Islamic concept of "Jihad" or holy war.

But the visit is more likely to be remembered as a sentimental stroll down memory lane [Did the writer ever reflect afterwards how wrong he was not to have seen the Regensburg lecture for the epochal statement that it was, even if it had never generated the controversy it did?] in what the 79-year-old Pope himself admitted may be his final major visit to his homeland.

After describing all the nostalgia bits about the trip, the story ends with these paragraphs, which also incidentally cites the first Muslim criticism of the lecture I ever came across:

On Tuesday Benedict had hit the only political note of his visit, during which his addresses have been almost entirely spiritual, when he fleetingly criticised the Islamic concept of "Jihad".

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," the Pope had said in a complex treatise on reason and faith.

His comments drew criticism on Wednesday from a leading Muslim figure in Italy. Ejaz Ahmad, a member of an Italian governmental consultative committee on Islam, called on him to retract them.

"The Muslim world is currently undergoing a deep crisis and any attack from the West can aggravate this crisis," Ahmad was quoted as saying by Italy's ANSA news agency.

"In his speech the Pope overlooks the fact that Islam was the cradle of science and that Muslims were the first to translate Greek philosophers before they became part of European history," he said. [Which, of course, has nothing to do with the use of reason in articulating and promoting Islam as a religion!]

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I would dearly love to go back and see how Marco Politi first reported the Regensburg lecture in La Repubblica. In Corriere della Sera and in Avvenire on Sept. 14, Vittorio Messori and Giuliano Ferrara wrote their first commentaries on the Regensburg lecture as a whole, not singling out the Manuel II quotation at all, even if Messori remarked incidentally that the Pope might well earn a fatwa for the things he said.]

On Sept. 14, AP's wrap-up story after the Pope had left Bavaria for Rome, also treated the Regensiburg lecture almost as a triviality, mentioning it almost dismissively, as below:

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...The trip included many personal moments — but he made it more than a simple exercise in nostalgia by warning that modern societies — like his secular, socially liberal homeland — must not let faith in reason and technology alone cut them off from God.

Celebrating Mass before 250,000 in Munich on Saturday, he warned Western countries that faith in reason and science alone had made them "deaf" to God's message.

While cautioning against reason without faith, he also said that faith needs reason, alluding to ancient Christian concerns about Islam and violence.

The trip also showed the warmer side of Benedict, who can sometimes seem stiff and shy in public. He visited the house of his birth in Marktl am Inn, prayed at the graves of his parents, and visited the University of Regensburg, where he once taught and served as vice president. He repeatedly delighted his fellow Bavarians by taking time to shake hands and kiss babies.

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On the same day, Sept. 14, Sandro Magister, wrote a brief piece in www.chiesa entitled 'Munich, Altoetting, Regensburg: Diary of a Pilgrimage of Faith', subtitled 'The homilies and speeches delivered by Benedict XVI during his trip to Bavaria'.

Magister gives a brief summary of the homilies in those three cities, but his only mention of the Regensburg lecture comes in this sentence: "The evening of that same day, after the lecture at the University of Regensburg, the Pope celebrated vespers together with the Orthodox and Protestants..." But then he had posted the text of the lecture separately on the day that it was delivered.

However, in this later article, he writes in his concluding paragraph in words that were oddly prophetic:

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But the words of Benedict XVI do not lend themselves to easy interpretation in short summaries. Understanding them requires the patience to read them in their entirety. One must put oneself in the place of the persons to whom the pope was speaking at that moment – as if one were hearing him live and in person.

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AFP's first round-up of the Muslim reaction came on Sept. 14, but it did not strike me as inflammatory at all.

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Sharp reactions from Muslims
to Pope's Regensburg lecture


PARIS, Sept. 14 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI was facing sharp reactions to a lecture in which he linked Islam with violence, with Muslim leaders in several countries demanding he apologise.

"We hope that the Church will very quickly... clarify its position so that it does not confuse Islam, which is a revealed religion, with Islamism, which is not a religion but a political ideology," the head of the French Council for the Muslim Religion (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, told AFP Thursday.

Benedict provoked the outcry with comments on Tuesday in a theological lecture to staff and students at the University of Regensburg, in the most political part of a largely personal visit to his native Bavaria in southern Germany.

Couching his criticism in a historical reference to a 14th century Byzantine emperor, the Pope implicitly denounced connections between Islam and violence, particularly with regard to jihad, or "holy war".

"He said, I quote, '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,'" Benedict said, quoting the Byzantine source on the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Muslim faith.

The comments provoked an outcry among Muslims in several countries.

Turkey's top Muslim religious leader described the pontiff's remarks as hateful, prejudiced and biased.

"It is a statement full of enmity and grudge," said Ali Bardakoglu, the head of Turkey's state-run religious affairs directorate. He also expressed opposition to the pope's planned visit to Turkey in November.

Senior Islamic officials in Kuwait demanded an immediate apology from the pope to the Muslim world.

Haken al-Mutairi, secretary general of the Umma (Islamic Nation) party, urged him to apologise for "calumnies against the Prophet Mohammed and Islam". Sayed Baqer al-Mohri, head of the assembly of Shiite ulemas, or theologians, echoed the call.

The speech at Regensburg University explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith.

"Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul," Benedict said.

Justo Balda Lacunza, a Vatican-based priest specialising in Islamic affairs, said the speech was not intended to look unfavourably on Islam, but was an "examination" of this relationship.

His reaction followed that of Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, who said earlier that he did not believe the Pope's words were meant as a severe criticism of Islam.

"He certainly doesn't want to give... an interpretation of Islam as violent," he said.

But in Morocco, the daily Aujourd'hui warned of the possible damage done by Benedict's words. It called on him to "prove that his ambition is not to spark a war of religions by pointlessly upsetting almost a billion faithful".

The president of Germany's Central Council of Muslims, Aiman Mazyek, responded to Benedict's comments by recalling violent chapters in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Thursday.

"After the bloodstained conversions in South America, the crusades in the Muslim world, the coercion of the Church by Hitler's regime, and even the coining of the phrase 'holy war' by Pope Urban II, I do not think the Church should point a finger at extremist activities in other religions," he said.

Benedict had also drawn criticism on Wednesday from a leading Muslim figure in Italy. Ejaz Ahmad, a member of a governmental consultative committee on Islam, called on him to retract his comments.

"The Muslim world is currently undergoing a deep crisis," Ahmad was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency. "Any attack from the West can aggravate this crisis."

---

On the same day, Sept. 14, AP filed a long story from Istanbul quoting at length the reaction from Turkey's Religious Affairs Minister... and the media's deadly games began.

The AP's own Victor Simpson and the New York Times's Ian Fisher led the charge with aggressively slanted and suddenly emboldened articles that were far from their original 'innocuous' reports! (Just as AP and the New York Times led the charge last spring in trying to slander the person of Joseph Ratzinger over the sex abuse issue.)... Because the headline for Ian Fisher's next article for the NYT was "Pope Benedict, in inflammatory speech, attacks everything: secularism, jihad, Islam and the prophet Mohammed"... Journalistic amnesia, instantly invoked and summoned when expedient, is one of the most dishonest of afflictions.

My little exercise here does not pretend to be exhaustive in any way about how Regensburg became the 'crisis' it became, but I think I have cited enough concrete examples to show that the breast-beating panjandrums of MSM certainly did not see it as a crisis until people like the Turkish Religion Minister weighed in - and suddenly, every MSM reporter took on an omniscient 'I told you so' smirk belying the record of their own earlier reports! And gloatingly went on to feed the flames, hardly hiding their Schadenfreude over the 'uprising' against Benedict XVI : "Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-yah! Now you're public enemy No. 1!"

P.S. On the last page of the BAVARIA thread in the PRF,
http://freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354945&p=9
I also posted Der Spiegel's 'reconstruction' of the Regensburg episode, in 2006, but it is written from the false premise that the media found it a 'too hot to handle' story from the get-go! And the Italian magazine Radici Cristiane has its own brief account.

I don't think this Pope will be told to soften, or re-build his rhetoric, or the way he expresses himself (in terms of possibly simplifying the message) for the sake of coming across better in the news.

I think he'd rather stand insulted and critized than selling out or reducing himself to adapt some kind of dictation that would suit the press.



Nor do I think anyone could dare tell him what to say or write! He's been his own master since he began to write and preach, and although he used to try out his lectures on his sister to see how they 'played' with her, I don't think even brother Georg would think of telling him now what he ought to say or how he ought to say it.

Because the question has never been what he says, but the PR or PC ('public relations' and 'political correctness' are near synonymous these days) implications of his statements - important to consider only because perceptions rather than fact shape public opinion. Some of these implications are clearly foreseeable and even pre-emptable if he had a supportive and enterprising team with simple common sense to backstop him. But outside of Cardinal Levada's prompt and detailed response about the Murphy case in Wisconsin, and Cardinal Sodano's Easter Sunday tribute (even if it bommeranged), no one in the Curia has shown any such gumption.

I don't know what's wrong with Cardinal Bertone but he just is nowhere to be found when someone needs to stand up for the Holy Father. You'd think that if the Pope writes a letter praising your service in glowing terms (though undeserved from the point of view of Bertone's consistent non-performance in times of crisis), that ought to spur you to prove yourself worthy of such praise, but so far, niente, nada, zero, zilch from Bertone....

TERESA

Vatican prosecutor says Cardinal Ratzinger
showed 'frustration and anger' over abuse cases
by Greg Burke
Rome Correspondent for

August 23, 2010




In an extensive interview with Fox News, the chief Vatican prosecutor for clerical sex abuse cases, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, said he watched Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s “compassion, anger and frustration” as the future Pope reviewed hundreds of cases between 2002-2005.

When asked if those three years fundamentally changed Ratzinger’s view of the abuse scandal, Scicluna said the experience would change anybody.

“I think it was an eye-opener to the gravity of the situation and to the great sadness of priestly betrayal and priestly failure,” he said. “I think that anybody who has to review so many cases will certainly change his perspective on things, on human failings, but also on the great suffering they create.”

While Benedict has been accused of mishandling abuse cases, as an Archbishop in Germany, and also as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, Scicluna rejected those charges.

The priest, who grew up on the island of Malta, said those who worked with the future Pope in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith were full of admiration for him and his “courage and determination” in dealing with the crisis.

“I am a direct witness to the compassion, the frustration and the anger that these cases instilled in Cardinal Ratzinger, the man, Joseph Ratzinger,” Scicluna said.

While Scicluna seems determined to avoid using the term “crisis,” he insists on calling sin by its name, and crime as well.

“People call this a crisis,” he said. “It is certainly a challenge to the Church, but it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to call sin sin in its face, and do something about it. It is an opportunity for the church to show itself determined in its fight against sin, against crime.”

While the sexual abuse of minors clearly does not take place only in Church circles, Fox asked Scicluna if he thought the Catholic Church should be held to a higher standard.

“I think so,” Scicluna responded. “Because we do stand for a very clear message which should be a light to the world. So we do complain about the headlines sometimes, but the headlines are a reflection that the world takes what we say very seriously, and is scandalized when what we do does not correspond to what we say.”

Scicluna, whose official title is Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said a priest who abuses makes a “mockery” of his vocation.

“There is a sacred trust which has been violated,” he said. “The priest has been ordained to be an icon, a living image of Jesus Christ. He is another Christ at the altar, when he preaches. Now when he abuses, he shatters that icon.”

He said the Church has to face up to the truth, even if it’s not very nice: “There’s no other way out of this situation, except facing the truth of the matter.”

Scicluna said the Church has to be severe with offenders, as Christ was: “He had words of fire against people who would scandalize the young. And if we stick to his words and are loyal to his teaching, we are on very good ground. We are not alone.”


8/24/10
P.S. I have been trying to find a full transcript of Burke's interview but it's not to be found anywhere. Then, of all places, the Italian service of Vatican Radio amplifies on Burke's own report by publishing trasnlations of more excerpts from the interview - whereas the English service does not even report the interview at all! Here is a re-translation to English of Scicluna's words as reported by Vatican Radio.

Addendum
Translated from the Italian service of

August 23, 2010

---

More about the attitude of Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI to the issue of sexual offenses by priests:
I was a direct witness of what Cardinal Ratzinger did beteen 2002-2005 when he reviewed hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by priests. I was a direct witness of the piety, the sense of frustration and annger that these cases aroused in the cardinal - the man who became Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005.

I can say that on May 6, 2005, not long after his election, met with Mons. Angelo Amato, who was then still the secretary of the CDF (there was no prefect yet, as Mons. Levada would not be appointed until later). The new Pope reviewed with him the decisions that John Paul II had made on some of the sexual abuse cases and he said, "I confirm them'. Since 2003, he himself had asked John Paul II to give priority to these cases. And now, these were among the first decisions he confirmed as Pope.

[After Mons. Levada was named], Benedict XVI met with him to verify the most serious cases that required priority attention. The Pope always studied the most serious cases with great care and attention...

We know how determined he is to set a very clear example and a very high standard in this field. Anyone who doubts his intentions should simply read his letter to the Catholics of Ireland.

It is a very beautiful letter - written by a Pope to the Catholic community of a noble nation that has a great Christian tradition, now wounded by the sins of some of her priests.

The Pope speaks from the heart. He addresses the victims as well as their offenders telling them: "You must admit your sins, humbly, and with great humility, you must subject yourself to their consequences, and you must repent - you must ask forgiveness and the grace to be able to lead a life of prayer and penitence for what you have done". [Which was the forumla with which, in 2006, he sanctioned Fr. Marcial Maciel of the Legionaries of Christ.]

Mons. Scicluna speaks about his own touching experiences with victims of pedophile priests, which he describes as 'an extremely sad experience':
At times you cry with them, because the pain is raw when they have to revisit the trauma suddenly... It is a very important experience - these victims need to be heard by the Church.

Whenever I become personally involved in a case and I meet the victims, I realize that I myself am a priest, and that a priest is someone who brings comfort, and so obviously, it makes me very sad that a priest could have done such things... It is not easy, but it is even less so for them, and as for me, it is something I must do....and that it is important that I do.

For Scicluna, what makes the sexual abuse committed by priests even more serious is that "it is a double betrayal":
Because young people have trust in those who then abuse them. The first effect of abuse is to destroy that trust. And when the offender is a priest, it is not merely human trust that is violated, but also a sacred trust. A priest is ordained to be an icon, a living image if possible, of Jesus Christ... (and when he sins), it is a tragedy for himself, for his victim and for the Church...

Victims demand justice and they have a right to demand it, and to this within a generous period of time, but we also need to respect individual rights, those of the victim as well as the offender.

Respecting the right of the offender does not mean ignoring the victim, but justice must follow the course of the law for both sides. So we continue to follow the initiatives of then Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, and the CDF can offer fast procedures to deal with the most serious cases that bishops refer to us.

---

JON-II on the Resurrection:
Benedict XVI's next bestseller
by Franca Giansoldati
Translated from

August 23, 2010

If Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's first volume on JESUS OF NAZARETH was a worldwide publishing success, volume 2 which will focus on his Passion, death and Resurrection, cannot be less.

That book will come out during the first week of Lent in 2011, it is now known.

It consists of nine chapters, and starts with a narration based on the Gospel of Luke, of Jesus's last entry into Jerusalem, a triumphal one, amid celebrating crowds, Hosannahs and palms, with the city on the hill in the background as a metaphor for a better place.

The title of the second volume has not been decided on - it could be "The Risen One" or "The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth".

In any case, it will be published on a worldwide scale, with simultaneous launchings in all the major language editions.

The Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana (LEV), anticipates a mammoth first printing - at least 2.5 million copies in the various languages.

Fr. Giuseppe Costa, the Salesian director of LEV, is the chief organizer who holds all the reins of this unprecedented publication undertaking.

The first concern has been to have the most faithful translation possible of the Pope's original German text, which is rich and dense with meaning, although it is written in Benedict's now familiar language, which is simply, crystal clear and devoid of frills.

And this will be done initially in about 20 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Lithuanian ["Not Arabic at this time, though we may be requested for it eventually"). The translation has been entrusted to experienced linguists at the Secretariat of State who, it is thought, will be able to convey the full theological sense of the text without changing, modifying or distorting it.

Fr. Costa believes that this is much better than the previous practice of farming out the job to professional translators who were not always at home with theological concepts, which led to many unnecessary delays until proper translations were made.

Fr. Costa is in Rimini at the C&L 31st annual Meeting for Friendship among peoples to present the first volume (The Theology of the Liturgy) in the Italian edition of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works.

"In Septmber, there will be a meeting to review the progress of the translation work on the Jesus book," he said. "Their deadline is January 15, 2011".

Another novelty with JON-II is the choice of publishers for the various editions. With JON-I, large publishing houses acquired local distribution rights, but this time, "We have chosen small Catholic publishing houses who will be capable of following through even after the book is launched, to keep local interest alive in the reflections of the Pope," Fr. Costa said.

"We do not wish the book to be treated like any other book because it is very much more than that. It is an instrument for those who are searching for a sense of faith and the meaning of life".

Having finished about two years of work on JON-II earlier this year, the Holy Father apparently wasted no time in starting a third volume - previously not anticipated - dedicated to the infancy and pre-public life of Jesus.

He continues to draft all his texts by hand, which are dutifully transcribed by the two German women who have worked him him for over two decades and can read his tiny script - Brigid Wansing and Ingrid Stampa.

No one can say when the JESUS trilogy will be completed, but very likely, JESUS OF NAZARETH will go down in history as Benedict XVI's most important work. In many ways, it is his spiritual testament.


5 US publishers working on
'Complete Works' in English


Rimini, Italy, Aug 23, 2010 (Adapted from EWTN News) - Five U.S. publishing houses are working to publish the complete works of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in English.



The news comes as the first Italian language installment of the extensive body of the cardinal's teachings on the liturgy was presented at an interfaith meeting in Italy on Sunday.

At the moment, the first few volumes of the 16-volume opera omnia or Complete Works of Joseph Ratzinger are out only in German Gesammelte Schriften, Herder), the language in which they were originally written.

The first Italian installment focusing on Cardinal Ratzinger's thoughts on the liturgy was presented on the opening day yesterday of the weeklong annual Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples sponsored by the movement Comunione e Liberazione in Rimini, Italy.

Although it is the first to be printed, it is actually the eleventh book of in the series, but it was Pope Benedict's choice to start publication with the volume on liturgy.

The cover note explains that the book is dedicated to the theme of liturgy because it is "in the relationship with the liturgy that the destiny of the faith and the Church is decided."

The series' German-language publisher, Bishop Gerhard Muller of Regensburg, representing the Papst Benedikt XVI Institut, participated in the "Theology of the Liturgy" session in Rimini.



The first four titles out in German by Oct. 2011: After the Theology of Liturgy, the volume on St. Bonaventure, which contains Prof. Ratzinger's entire Habilitation dissertation, including Part 1 which he had suppressed to meet his thesis adviser's objections, now published for the first time); his writings on ecclesiology adn ecumenism, in two volumes; and the theology and spirituality of the Sacraments, out this fall.

Msgr. Giuseppe Costa, the director of the Vatican's publishing house, was also at the presentation. He said five publishers in the U.S. are working simultaneously to publish the complete works, which comprise some 20,000 pages of essays, homilies and lessons.

Msgr. Costa made it clear that the Complete Works "do not relate to his teachings as Pope, but his writings, his teachings, and his interviews before he became Pope".

Benedict XVI's texts as Pope are published in the Vatican's regular compilations of papal texts called Insegnamenti (Teachings) published annually, of which five volumes covering 2005-2009 have already been published.

Tuesday, August 24, 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Fifth from right: Bartholomew holding his sikn, from Michelangelo's Last Judgment.
ST. BARTHOLOMEW (b Judea, d Armenia, 1st cent), Apostle and Martyr
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Oct. 4, 2006,
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2006/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20061004...
to this apostle about whom little is known for certain. He is mentioned in all four Gospels, always associated with Philip, and once in the Acts, but as Bartholomew, he was never the center of any Gospel episode. It has become widely accepted however that he was likely the man called Nathanael who became a disciple after an encounter when Jesus told him, "Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree", a reference known only to Nathanael, who then professed "Rabbi, you are the Son of God, the King of Israel!" In John's Gospel, Nathanael is quoted to have told Philip "Can anything good come from Nazareth", after Philip tells him he has found "the man of whom Moses and the prophets wrote" in Jesus of Nazareth. The early historian Eusebius claimed that after the Ascension, Bartholomew brought the Gospel eastward up to India. A stronger tradition holds that he and Jude Thaddeus evangelized Armenia (they are the patron saints of teh Armenian Apostolic Church), where Bartholomew converted the king, and was then flayed alive and crucified head downward by the king's brother. A famous monastery in Armenia was built in the 13th century on what was said to be the site of Bartholomew's martyrdom. Eventually, his remains were brought to Rome, where he is venerated in the church named for him on Tiberina island on the Tiber river. The legend of his martyrdom, particularly the aspect of having been skinned alive, was a favorite subject of artists in the past. Michelangelo depicts him in the Last Judgment, holding out his skin, on which the artist painted his own face.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/082410.shtml


OR for 8/23-8/24/10:

At the Sunday Angelus, Benedict XVI invokes Mary Queen of Peace for an end to the 'absurd logic of violence' and calls for
'A world of brothers to construct the civilization of love'
Says acceptance of diversity is the basis of universal brotherhood
Other Page 1 items: A new report says the region using the euro as currency needs at least 15 million jobs to bring the economy back to the levels before the 2008 economic crisis; another 200,000 rendered homeless by new floods in Pakistan during a 24-hour period, swelling the millions previously displaced by monsoon flooding that has left one-fifth of the country under water; in China, hundreds of thousands also displaced by continuing monsoon rains. In the inside pages, the Holy Father's message to Comunione e Liberazione's 31st Meeting for Friendship among Peoples in Rimini, which opened Sunday; and a story on the Sunday workshop in Rimini at which the first volume (on liturgy) of the Italian edition of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works was presented.


The Pope's message to the Rimini Meeting was also published today as a Press Office bulletin.
 

What on earth was wrong on the Forum? I've spent more than an hour trying to log in again after the system suddenly rejected this post, saying I was not qualified, etc. I logged in again but kept getting an error message. I even registered under a new account but kept getting the same error message...I hope the problem does not recur....

For UK parishes:
One million pocket liturgies
for the papal visit

August 24, 2010



A million copies of the ‘Magnificat – Liturgies and Events of the Papal Visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom’ are due to be distributed to parishes across England, Scotland and Wales.

The handbook contains the texts for the times the Holy Father will participate in public prayer, together with a series of brief articles about the Visit. It comes in a hard-wearing, pocket-sized format which makes it easy to carry around and ‘pray as you go’. It's also a key companion for the Papal liturgies.

Papal Visit Co-ordinator, Monsignor Andrew Summersgill said: “Although [a million copies] isn’t enough for everybody who regularly attends Mass, it is enough for each household, certainly, to have a copy. And also of course for those people who are going either to Bellahouston, to Hyde Park, or to Cofton Park. It will also be helpful for those who will be following the Pope from home, or from gatherings in their own parish, it’s designed to help across the board.

“We will be asking people if they would like to make a donation towards the costs. That would be really helpful and information will be given by local priests as to how to do that.”

The publication has been produced by the Bishops’ Conferences of England and Wales and Scotland in co-operation with Gabriel Communications, the Catholic Truth Society and Magnificat. It also includes texts for the Liturgy of the Church (Morning and Evening Prayer, and the Mass) for some days before and after the Papal Visit.

Launched in France in 1992, then in other European countries and in the United States, Magnificat has proved a rich resource for laypeople in many countries.

With this special issue for the Papal Visit, and beginning on a monthly basis in November, it is available for the first time with readings, texts and calendar appropriate for the British Isles.


Weekly audio update
on the Papal Visit
by Mons. Andrew Summersgill
Coordinator of the papal visit for
the Catholic Bishops of England Wales
Transcript from

August 23, 2010

There's been a lot of interest in the timeline of events for the Papal Visit, can we go over the main parts of this?
Yes, by all means. The itinerary is more or less as it was when an outline was published a month ago, but in keeping with its normal practice the Holy See has now published a much more detailed and timed itinerary of what Pope Benedict will be doing while he’s in the UK.

As we know, he’ll be going to Edinburgh where he’ll begin his visit by meeting with Her Majesty The Queen and there will be a reception in Holyroodhouse. And then in the afternoon Pope Benedict will travel to Glasgow to celebrate Mass in Bellahouston Park.

On the Friday the Pope spends the day in London and will be in St Mary’s University College, beginning the day with prayer with representatives of religious congregations. Then he will meet with children and young people to celebrate Catholic education. That will be broadcast on the internet and the invitation is there to all Catholic schools and colleges, and indeed any school and college, to participate in that and to be part of that at the beginning of the academic year.

And then Pope Benedict will conclude the morning by meeting with representatives of other religions and people of faith, to reflect together on the importance of faith in society.

Then in the afternoon Pope Benedict will have his meeting with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He will then go to Westminster Hall to speak to representatives of British society, before concluding the day with prayer, with evening prayer in Westminster Abbey.

Saturday begins with courtesy calls from the political leaders of this country. Then the celebration of Mass in Westminster Cathedral during which there will be a particular moment for young people and also a greeting to Wales, because as we know, sadly the Pope can’t go to Wales because of the pressures of time.

In the afternoon Pope Benedict will go and visit older people at the St Peter’s residential home, and then join the Vigil which will have started in Hyde Park. He will join for the end part which will include, while he is there, his address and Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction.

The final day of the Visit sees the Pope travelling to Birmingham to celebrate the beatification of Cardinal Newman in Cofton Park, followed by a brief personal visit to the Birmingham Oratory. He will then travel to Oscott College where he will have lunch with the bishops of England, Scotland and Wales. He will meet with them and then move to Birmingham airport for the departure and farewell ceremony before returning to Rome.

So it’s quite a detailed programme, and then within that there will be times when Pope Benedict will be travelling in the Popemobile - these will be published in due course and will offer the opportunity for people to see him and greet him as he travels around.

What do you think are some of the most significant events?
I think for all those concerned they are all significant. The beatification of Cardinal Newman is clearly a highlight, and it’s the "Church" reason if you like for Pope Benedict coming here.

In terms of the other parts of the visit, I think at the very beginning, the meeting between Pope Benedict and The Queen will be particularly significant and I’m looking forward to listening to what both of them have to say.

And the series of things on the Friday afternoon, the Pope going to Lambeth and then travelling back across the river, to Westminster firstly to the Palace of Westminster to speak in Westminster Hall, and then to pray in Westminster Abbey - I think those will be lovely moments as well.

The Missal has been published for the Papal Visit - what are the plans for sending this out to the parishes?
Yes, the Missal has been prepared and is now with the distributors. The plan is that towards the end of this week and the beginning of next it will be distributed to parishes across England, Scotland and Wales. There are approximately one million copies of the Missal available.

Although that isn’t enough for everybody who regularly attends Mass it is enough for each household, certainly, to have a copy. And also of course those people who are going either to Bellahouston, to Hyde Park, or to Cofton Park. They need to get their copy from their local parish as well so that they can take them with them, because it has all the details of the liturgy that they will need. They will be available in time for 5 September which is two weeks before the visit and we hope that it will be a helpful aid for those who are attending the papal gatherings.

It will also be helpful for those who will be following the Pope from home, or in parish gatherings - it’s designed to help across the board and a lot of hard work has gone into it. It looks really good I think and we'll be asking people if they would like to make a donation towards the costs. That would be really helpful and information will be given by local priests as to how to do that.

So it’s a great step forward really, it shows us that the Pope’s on the way and that the excitement’s really rising.

And we hear this week that some organisations are planning prayer campaigns for the Holy Father and for the success of the Papal Visit - did you hear about that?
I did, yes. I think the one you’re talking about is Aid to the Church in Need who’ve organised that. I’m also aware of a spiritual bouquet that has been prepared by the Catholic Women’s League. I’m sure those prayers join with lots and lots of others who are praying both for Pope Benedict and also for the success of the Visit. I know certainly in the parish I was in this weekend helping out, the bidding prayers included a prayer for the success of the Papal Visit, so that was lovely.



The following item is a virtual press release for a Catholic disident group - and I am only posting it for the record. No names except one are mentioned, but in any case, their members will likely not be familiar or mean anything to those of us who do not live in the UK. Besides, it is not as if they will have anything new to say, although they will surely think of numberless ways to be offensive to the Pope.


Reformist Catholic media group launched
to rival Catholic Voices sponsored
by the bishops of England and Wales
by Riazat Butt

August 24, 2010


A Catholic speakers' bureau is being launched ahead of next month's papal visit to provide alternative views on controversial church issues such as child abuse, women's ordination, married priests and homosexuality.

Catholic Voices for Reform will go head to head with Catholic Voices, an established group which has recruited and trained 20 media-friendly "ordinary" Catholics to articulate traditional Church positions before and during Benedict XVI's four-day tour.

The original Catholic Voices is backed by life peer and barrister Lord Brennan, president of the Catholic Union of Great Britain, and a celebrity monk, Abbot Christopher Jamison, of Worth Abbey, West Sussex. Its team of speakers includes a parliamentary researcher, several lawyers, an pro-life campaigner, a commodity buyer, a scientist and a management consultant.

Recruits to the original bureau have spent six months preparing to explain and present Church teaching on subjects that the wider public "often find baffling or offensive". They have received "briefings from experts and training in how to carry off an effective short interview" and can comment on the papal visit in "clear, human language."

The new organisation, unlike its older and more conformist counterpart, will call for a wholesale transformation of the papacy and the Vatican. It will offer the media a chance to hear the views of Catholics who are "deeply concerned at the present state of the church".

"These people, women and men, have formed the backbone for the call for the change in the church, some for many years but others more recently," the group said in a statement. "They are its loyal opposition who have remained within the church calling for reform. All our members are people with different experiences who have found a conflict between these experiences and the official teachings of the church."

It said the word "reform" was to differentiate itself from the "official" group, which has the blessing of the bishops of England and Wales.

A spokesman for the group described the reformists as "a lobby, not a communications exercise on behalf of the church". But one of the founders of Catholic Voices for Reform, Myra Poole, who supports the ordination of women, was not overawed by the academic and corporate pedigree of the rival lineup.

She said: "I'm not frightened of them. They are the official group, they're very with it, but we're not daft. We all have experience and know about theology. It's going to be hard because as the trip gets nearer, we're going to be up against them."

Poole also revealed that a prayer vigil will be held in central London on the eve of the papal visit and that two letters will be hand-delivered to the residence of the archbishop of Westminster, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols.

She said: "One will be for the archbishop and the other will be for the Pope. We will be asking six very simple questions on reform. We're working on them now."


But what about the internal dissesion within the Church in England, Wales and Scotland itself? I have only formed an impression of that dissension from the ongoing commentaries of 'orthodox' British Catholics like Fr. Tim Finigan and Damian Thompson, but the folowing manifesto posted today by the man behind the site Protect the Pope spells out, through some appalling specifics, the degree and extent of that internal dissension, which in the past, was represented for me, as an outsider reading about Catholicism in the UK, only by the scant support - and even overt opposition - from UK bishops for Summorum Pontificum.


Three hopes for the visit
by Rev. Nick Donnelly
Permanent Deacon, Diocese of Lancaster
Founder of

---

August 24th, 2010

I have three hopes for the Holy Father’s visit to the UK.

The first is that in his speeches to this secular state he witnesses to the splendour of the objective, perennial truth, in order to challenge the blight of subjectivism, and utilitarianism in our culture and politics.

It is only the truth of the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person made in the image of God that can set us free from the culture of death that has this society so firmly in its grip.

My second hope is that in his homilies to the Church in this country Pope Benedict exhorts us to be 100% faithful to the doctrines of the Church, to remain loyal to the Holy See and to have the courage to witness to the faith come what may.

My third hope is that Pope Benedict will challenge the damaging disunity in the Church in this country.

The days must be over when an official of the Catholic Education Service, an employee of the Bishops’ Conference, publicly demeans a bishop in a national newspaper for teaching the faith of the Church.

The days must be over when Catholic schools are encouraged by the CES to co-operate with Connexions, a government agency that promotes contraception and abortion.

The days must be over when CAFOD, the development agency of the Bishops’ conference, has a not-so-secret policy to promote the use of condoms in its work throughout the world.

The days must be over when the Tablet publishes an article by a Catholic theologian that not only advocates abortion but mocks the Church’s teaching and no one challenges it, let alone criticises it.

The days must be over when a diocese is met with opposition and hostility by professional catechists and clergy of other dioceses for promoting the use of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The days must be over when seminarians are summoned to the rector’s office to be berated for kneeling during the consecration.

The days must be over when the Maryvale Institute is mocked and derided by Catholic clergy for teaching the theological tradition of the Church and the fullness of the truth.

The days must be over when the governing body of a Catholic adoption agency votes down the recommendation of its bishop to follow the Church’s teaching on gay adoption.

The days must be over when a bishop of England and Wales is called a ‘fundamentalist’ by a Member of Parliament and summoned before a House of Commons select committee and no one speaks out in his defence or stands by him when he faces his accusers.

Jesus teaches us that a house divided will fall. I pray that the Holy Father’s visit will save us from this headlong fall.

---

From 'The Theology of Liturgy'
in Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works:
'Liturgy teaches man how angels live'
by Silvia Guidi
Translated from the 8/23-8/24 issue of


"A gift also implies responsibility: that of accepting it, of not neglecting it, of seeking to understand its value and to perceive its importance over time," said the director of the Vatican pushing house, Don Giuseppe Costa, in presenting the first volume in Italian of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works - Teologia della Liturgia (LEV, 2010, 849 pp, Euro 55) - at the 31st annual Meeting for Friendship among Peoples in Rimini.



"The Pope's books are an immense wealth," Don Costa went on, "a gift which it is our task and responsibility to disseminate. We will be publishing the second volume of JESUS OF NAZARETH, even as we continue to publish the anthologies of his Wednesday catecheses.

"To give you an idea of the interest in the Complete Works around the world, five US publishers will be publishing them simultaneously. It is all about sharing a good that the Lord has given us, in the thinking of Joseph Ratzinger, which is particularly valuable in this time of disorientation".

The enterprise is impressive: 16 volumes containing 20,000 pages of essays, homilies and lectures which Mons. Gerhard Mueller, Bishop of Regensburg, who is also in Rimini, says he has 'the joy and commitment' to publish (through Herder) in the original German.

"One might say that in these writings, the most complicated subjects are extricated from their complexity and made transparent in their internal linearity," Mons. Mueller told L'Osservatore Romano, speaking about the monumental project of which it has been the fortune of his diocese be the custodian.

Prof. Joseph Ratzinger taught at the University of Regensburg from 1969 until he was named Archbishop of Munich-Freising in 1977. It was also in Regensburg that in 2006, the ex-Professor as Pope pronounced the lectio magistralis heard round the world on the intimate links between faith and reason [though it came to be primarily linked to violence Islam].

The volume that inaugurates the publication of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete Works in Italian, edited by Pierluca Azzaro and Edmondo Caruana, is dedicated to liturgy because "the fate of the faith and of the Church is decided by their relationship to liturgy", according to the cover blurb for the book.

In his Preface to the volume on liturgy, written in 2008 when it was the first book in the German collection to come out, Benedict XVI wrote:

---

Starting with the subject of ‘liturgy’ [as Vatican II did in passing Sacrosanctam concilium, the constitution on liturgy, as the first of its 16 documents] unequivocally brings to light the primacy of God, the priority of the subject ‘God’. God above all, that is what the constitution on the liturgy says at the start.

When attention to God is not determinative, then every other thing loses its orientation. The words of the Benedictine rule "Ergo nihil Operi Dei praeponatur" (43, 3: ‘Therefore place nothing before the Work of God) are valid specifically for monasticism, but are valuable, as an order of priority, even for the life of the Church and of everyone, in their respective ways.

It is perhaps useful to recall here that in the term ‘orthodoxy’, the second half of the word – doxa – does not mean ‘opinion’ but ‘splendor’, ‘glorification’. It is not about a correct ‘opinion’ about God, but about the right way to glorify him, to respond to him.

---

"If Beauty is the splendor of Truth, the key for communicating the experience of 'the eternal in time' is precisely 'the wound of beauty'," observed Alberto Savorana, spokesman for C&L, citing a message on Holy Week sent by then Cardinal Ratzinger to the Meeting in 2002.

"Beauty wounds," the cardinal wrote. "It is like an arrow that pierces the spirit, reminds it of its ultimate destiny, and opens its eyes to its infinite nature".

He goes on to recall an old Russian legend according to which Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, was not converted to Christianity by particularly convincing missionary efforts, but thanks to his encounter with the beauty of divine worship.

Roberto Fontolan, director of C&L's International Center in Rome, said about the book, The Theology of Liturgy:

---

"My first and continuing reaction was surprise. Joseph Ratzinger's clarity of expression is well-known, but the Pope's passion for liturgy, which he calls 'the center of my life' is truly contagious.

Above all, a fundamental point: Far beyond liturgical actions considered individually, about which there are numerous illuminating pages, he conveys the fact that Christian worship is "the experience of contemporaneity with the Paschal mystery of Christ" - in which 'there exists something of the primordial sacraments, the sacraments of creation which are born from the crucial points of the human experience and allow us to see the image and essence of man as well as his relationship with God".

Crucial points such as birth, death, eating, sexual union. In his biological conditions, man experiences a power that he can neither summon nor suppress, and which surrounds and supports him even before he makes a decision. (Ratzinger) calls them fissures, citing Schleiermacher, through which "eternity looks upon the monotonous progress of man's daily life"

Thus begins man's sense of spirituality, his connection to the cosmos, projecting himself into the dimension of relationship: with things, with other men. For Christians, namely, for myself, liturgy thus becomes something that is of the utmost seriousness - that has something to do with the concept of faith itself, and invests the very life of the Church and her effective presence in the world.

Loss of the centrality of God, the detachment from Christ of contemporary consciousness, is seen in many ways, even in the liturgy, demonstrating a surrender to modernity which eliminates mystery from the human horizon.

Contemporary visual arts, for instance, portray the entire problem with the modern consciousness, the author says. If man cannot find an interior openness that can enable him to see more than that which is measurable and perceptible, and to see in Creation the splendor of the divine, then God will remain excluded from our field of vision. Not to see God is not to live at all.

As for churches themselves, in the sense of edifices, he writes: "In order to conserve its Christian legitimacy, the church must be catholic in the original sense of the word - that is, a home for believers in all places".

And he cites Albert Camus "who gave unsettling expression to the experience of human alienation and solitude" and who recounts a trip to Prague: in a city where he could not understand the native language, he felt like an exile - even the splendor of the churches said nothing to him and gave him no comfort. "For a believer, this would be impossible: where there is a church, there is the Eucharistic presence of the Lord, and there he feels at home".

For the author, everything converges to construct the wonderful cathedral of Christian liturgy, which is worth the effort to learn, to love, and above all, to live in full, because liturgy, as Don Luigi Giussani [C&L founder] wrote, "is a never-ending discourse through which one is drawn into the power stream of God's Grace, of the mystery of God".

---

"Drawn into' - it is precisely the experience I had and which I have sought to propose to you, feeling myself as a reader who has everything to learn," Fontolan concluded.

Savorana, for his part, picked up from the Holy Father's greeting sent to the Meeting by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone:

---

Praying is not an event that takes place in the clouds, it is not an escape from the world, but is the maximum of concreteness. To learn to ask, to learn what to desire, and to 'orient one's desires well' is to learn to live.

Prayer is man's advance post in the battle to defend the human heart in its desire for great things. The hope that Pope Benedict XVI often expresses is that the intelligence of faith may become the intelligence of reality.

And a church ought to be the place where beauty is at home, "the beauty," according to Benedict XVI, "without which the world becomes the first circle of Hell".

---

Savorano then quotes Joseph Ratzinger's conclusion to an essay about sacred music in this volume, from a chapter dedicated to 'the image of the world and of man reflected in liturgy':

---

Let me end my reflections with a beautiful statement by Mahatma Gandhi that I once found on a calendar: "Fish live in the sea and are quiet, animals live on earth and scream, but birds, whose vital space is the sky - they sing. Man takes part in all three: he carries in him the depth of the sea, the gravity of the earth, and the heights of heaven - and that is why he also possesses all three abilities: to remain silent, to scream, and to sing".

I wish to add that today, we see that for the man who has no sense of the transcendent, all that remains is to scream, because he has chosen to remain solely of the earth and wishes to turn even the sea and the sky into land.

The correct liturgy, the liturgy of communion, restores man's integrity. It teaches him to be quiet and to sing, opening up the depth of the sea and teaching him to fly, which is how angels live. Uplifting his heart, it awakens in him once more the song that had been buried.

---

I'm re-posting here a translation I did in October 2008 in the BENEDICT thread of the PRF, of the Preface that Benedict XVI wrote specially for the first volume of Joseph Ratzinger's COMPLETE WORKS (GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN) at the time it came out in Germany.

---

Preface to the first volume
of my collected writings
by JOSEPH RATZINGER

The Second Vatican Council began its work with the discussion of the schema on sacred liturgy which was later voted on solemnly on December 4, 1962, as the first fruit of the great Church council with the rank of a Constitution.

That the subject of liturgy was at the beginning of the Council’s work and that the Constitution on liturgy should be its first result may be thought at first glance as nothing but a coincidence.

Pope John had convoked the assembly, in a decision that was shared with joy by everyone, in order to reassert the presence of Christianity in an era of profound changes, but without proposing a definite program. The preparatory committee put together a wide series of projects. But it lacked a compass to find the way through the abundance of proposals.

Among all the projects, the text on sacred liturgy seemed to be the least controversial. That is why it was taken up immediately: as a kind of exercise, so to speak, with which the fathers of the Council could learn the methods of Conciliar work.

So, that which at first glance may have seemed simply coincidence now reveals itself to be – looking at the hierarchy of the issues and tasks of the Church – as intrinsically the most correct thing.

Starting with the subject of ‘liturgy’ unequivocally brings to light the primacy of God, the priority of the subject ‘God’. God above all, that is what the constitution on the liturgy says at the start.

When attention to God is not determinative, then every other thing loses its orientation. The words of the Benedictine rule "Ergo nihil Operi Dei praeponatur" (43, 3: ‘Therefore place nothing before the Work of God) are valid specifically for monasticism, but are valuable, as an order of priority, even for the life of the Church and of everyone, in their respective ways.

It is perhaps useful to recall here that in the term ‘orthodoxy’, the second half of the word – doxa – does not mean ‘opinion’ but ‘splendor’, ‘glorification’. It is not about a correct ‘opinion’ about God, but about the right way to glorify him, to respond to him.

Because this is the fundamental question of man when he begins to understand himself in the right way: how should I encounter God? We learn the right way of adoration – of orthodoxy – above all, through what is given to us in the the faith.

When I decided, after some hesitation, to accept the project of publishing all my works, it was immediately clear to me that it should avail of the Council’s order of priority, and that therefore, the first volume to come out should be that of my writings on liturgy.

The liturgy of the Church has been, for me, from childhood, the central activity of my life, and it became, in the theological school of teachers like Schmaus, Söhngen, Pascher and Guardini, also the center of my theological work.

As my specialty subject, I chose fundamental theology because I wanted above all to go to the very depths of the question 'Why do we believe?' But this question also includes from the beginning the other question about the right reply to give God, and therefore, also the question of divine service.

It is from this perspective that my works on liturgy should be understood. The specific problems of liturgical science did not interest me, but rather, it was always the anchorage of liturgy as the fundamental act of our faith, and therefore, its place in our entire human existence.

This volume puts together all my works of small and medium dimension through which, in the course of years, on different occasions and from different perspectives, I took a stand on liturgical questions.

After all the contributions that had started this way, I was finally impelled to present a total view which appeared in the Jubilee Year of 2000 under the title The spirit of liturgy: An introduction, which constitutes the central text of this book.

Unfortunately, almost all the reviews were focused on one chapter: “The altar and its orientation of prayer in liturgy”. Readers of the reviews may have deduced from them that the entire work had dealt only with the orientation of liturgical celebration, and that its contents come down simply to wanting to re-introduce the celebration of the Mass ‘with the (priest’s) back to the people”.

In consideration of this distortion, I thought for a moment of suppressing this chapter (nine pages out of 200) in order to be able to re-conduct the discussion to the true subject which interested me and continues to interest me in the book.

This would have been more easily possible, because in the meantime, two excellent books had appeared in which the question of the orientation of prayer in the Church of the first millennium was clarified persuasively.

I think first of all of the important little book by Uwe Michael Lang, Turning towards the Lord: The orientation of liturgical prayer (Italian translation published by Cantagalli, Siena, 2006); and very particularly, of the great contribution from Stefan Heid, 'Attiude and orientation of prayer in the first Christian era (in Rivista d’Archeologia Cristiana, 72, 2006), in which sources and bibliography on this question are amply illustrated and brought up to date.

The result is quite clear: the idea that priest and people should face each other during prayer was born only with modern Christianity and is completely alien to earlier practices.

Priest and people certainly do not pray to each other, but to the one Lord. That is why they look in the same direction during prayer: either towards the East, as the cosmic symbol for the Lord who will come, or where this is not possible, towards an image of Christ in the apse, towards a Cross, or simply upwards to heaven, as the Lord did in the priestly prayer the evening that preceded his Passion (Jn 17,1).

Meanwhile, fortunately, a proposal I made at the end of the chapter in question has been making headway increasingly: not to proceed to new transformations [i.e., structural changes in Church architecture] but to simply place the Cross at the center of the altar, towards which priest and faithful may look together, to be led in this way towards the Lord, to whom we all pray together.

But perhaps I have said too much for now on this point, which represents a mere detail in my book, and which I could even leave out.

The fundamental intention of the work was to place liturgy above and beyond usually petty questions about this or that form, in its important relationships that I sought to describe, in three areas that are present in each single topic.

First of all, the intimate relationship between the Old and New Testaments. Without the relationship to the Old Testament legacy, Christian liturgy is absolutely incomprehensible.

The second area is the relationship with the religions of the world, while the third is the cosmic character of liturgy, which represents something more than the simple gathering, great or small, of human beings.

Liturgy must be celebrated within the breadth of the cosmos, embracing creation and history at the same time. This is the meaning of orientation in prayer: that the Redeemer to whom we pray is also the Creator, thus, liturgy also always expresses love for creation and the human responsibility for it.

I will be happy if this new edition of my liturgical writings could contribute to show the grand perspectives of our liturgy and to relegate to their right place some petty controversies over external forms.

Finally, and above all, I must give thanks - above all to Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, who has taken the Opera omnia project into his hands and has created the personal and institutional conditions for its realization.


Benedict XVI met with Mons. Mueller, Volderholzer and Schaler of the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI at the Vatican in May 2008 on preparations for publication of the Complete Works.

In a very special way, I wish to thank Prof. Dr. Rudolf Volderholzer, who has invested time and energy to an extraordinary degree in gathering and identifying my writings. I also thank Dr. Christian Schaler, who assists him in a dynamic way.

Finally, my sincere thanks to the publishing house Herder, who with great love and thorough attention, has taken on the burden of this difficult and effortful labor.

May all this contribute so that liturgy may be understood ever more profoundly and celebrated worthily.

‘The joy of the Lord is our strength’ (Neh 8,10).


Rome
Feast of Saints Peter and Paul
June 29, 2008

---

in his blog today, Sandro Magister draws a blunt conclusion from recent news reports - an interview given to Canadian Catholic News by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, an interview given to FoxNews by Mons. Charles Scicluna at the CDF, and the editorial judgment of Vatican Radio, under Fr. Lombardi's direction, compared to that of L'Osservatore Romano.


The Pope's 3-man team
in the war on pedophilia
Translated from

August 24, 2010


L'Osservatore Romano reported not a single line of the interview that Mons. Charles Scicluna, chief 'prosecutor' at the CDF, gave to Fox News on Monday.

On the other hand, Vatican Radio, under the direction of Fr. Federico Lombardi [long before he was also named Vatican press director], reported ample parts of it, which included many statements that had not previously been made.

"I was a direct witness of what Cardinal Ratzinger did between 2002-2005 when he reviewed hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by priests. I was a direct witness of the piety, the sense of frustration and anger that these cases aroused in the cardinal - the man who became Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005.

"I can say that on May 6, 2005, not long after his election, met with Mons. Angelo Amato, who was then still the secretary of the CDF (there was no prefect yet, as Mons. Levada would not be appointed until later). The new Pope reviewed with him the decisions that John Paul II had made on some of the sexual abuse cases and he said, "I confirm them'. Since 2003, he himself had asked John Paul II to give priority to these cases. And now, these were aong the first decisions he confirmed as Pope.

[After Mons. Levada was named], Benedict XVI met with him to verify the most serious cases that required priority attention. The Pope always studied the most serious cases with great care and attention."

[I have added to the original post from FoxNews earlier on this page a re-translation of other parts of Mons. Scicluna's interview as reported in the Italian service of Vatican Radio.]

The interview also included a lien that is crucial for understanding the viewpoint of Benedict XVI and Mons. Scicluna about the scandals:

"People call this a crisis - it is certainly a challenge to the Church, but it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to call sin sin in its face, and do something about it. It is an opportunity for the church to show itself determined in its fight against sin, against crime.”

It's the same concept expressed recently by Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, called to Rome recently by Benedict XVI to be the new Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

He said he shared Pope Benedict XVI’s view that the focus on the sins of priests during the Year for Priests gives the Church “an opportunity for purification.”

Like Benedict XVi, he is convinced that "the sins committed by some priests came to light during the Year for Priests",, adding that "after the Church goes through her purification, the community of the faithful will help the rest of humanity to face this horrific problem".

Judging therefore from what has been said and done by the Curia in the past few months regarding the issue of pedophile priests, it is evident that there are three on whom Benedict XVI can count on most - because they understand him best - Fr. Lombardi, Mons. Scicluna, and the new man in the Curia, Cardinal Ouellet.

In fairness, I would include Cardinal Levada, who, with Mons. Scicluna, is carrying on the work begun by Cardinal Ratzinger on the abuse cases (and who did come to the Pope's defense over the Milwaukee case - a defense that was promptly included in the Resources webpage on the Church response to the sex abuse problem); and Cardinal Hummes and his #2 man at the Congregation for the Clergy, who issued urgent and relevant messages to the world's priests during the Year for Priests in full support of Benedict XVI.

And I am glad Magister underscores my running reproach of OR's serious lapses in editorial judgment...

Bishop Mueller speaks
of the Pope's suffering
because of pedophile crimes
by Fausta Speranza
Translated from

August 24, 2010


"The Pope is suffering very much because of all the pedophile offenses that have made the Church less credible and have eclipsed the image of the priest as the good shepherd". [Surely he is suffering just as much for all the innocent victims of these predator priests! I am shocked that Mons. Mueller has left that out.]

He does not mince his words - Mons. Gerhard Mueller, Bishop of Regensburg, the German prelate whom Benedict XVI entrusted with publishing his complete works before he became Pope.

At Rimini, on the opening day of the 31st Meeting for Friendship among peoples, Mons. Mueller was among those who presented the first volume in Italian of Joseph Ratzinger's Complete works, but agreed to talk about the current situation of the Catholic Church as well.

He says "the circumstances are a benchmark test for priests and for the sense of the priesthood", and that "Benedict XVI is profoundly saddened and pained, especially because the latest outbreak of the scandal came during the Year for Priests which was so close to his heart".

Nonetheless, he said, "The Church is not founded on an ideology, it is not built on ideas - it is Peter's boat on which Christ is always present and guarantees that it will never sink, despite man's failings."

That explains, he said, "the Pope's certainty that after the storms, the Church will be stronger than before".

The important point is not to lose confidence in the "efficacy of the presence of God in the life of men".

He then goes on to the heart of the scholarly work of Joseph Ratzinger. The volume presented here is one of 16 volumes comprising more than 20,000 pages published by the Benedict XVI before he became Pope.

Mueller points out that because the first volume is about liturgy, the author discusses man and his relationship to God, man and the mystery of God.

In it, the theologian Ratzinger explains that modernity seeks to rob human experience of mystery. And the liturgy is the ground on which Cardinal Ratzinger then and Benedict XVI today has chosen to take the most conservative positions.

He believes that unwarranted 'creativity' in the liturgy leads to a 'personalism' and a 'banalization' that tend to keep God out of the field of human vision. Which have been evident in some post-Conciliar liturgical expressions that have incorporated all kinds of novelties that have nothing to do with authentic liturgy.

Cardinal Ratzinger was convinced that such novelties embody the modern sensibility which exalt man's 'virtuosity' rather than God, whereas the object of liturgy is a sacramental worship of God.

For this reason, certain elements of the traditional Mass are essential to this worship and sense of sacredness. Mons. Mueller cites the physical orientation of churches which were generally oriented towards the east, and the fact that priests celebrated Mass facing the altar, in the same direction as the congregation.

Mons. Mueller shares the Pope's lament that "today, the liturgical education of priests and laymen is very deficient".

This line was much applauded when he said it at the roundtable discussion held in the main hall of the venue.

Also a presentor of the book was Don Giuseppe Costa, director of the Vatican publishing house which is publishing the Complete Works in Italian.

Don Costa also said that he expects Volume 2 of Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH to come out in the first week of Lent next year simultaneously in more than a dozen languages.

I have always wanted to properly 'cover' the significant celebrations of major ecclesial milestones around the world, especially when the Holy Father sends a personal representative, as a way to learn about the traditions of local churches, but have not been able to do so until now... and I hope I wil be able to


100 years of a diocese and
a papal Golden Rose for Mary
Translated from the Spanish service of




CATAMARCA, Argentina, August 21 (RV) - With Holy Mass celebrated by the Holy Father's representative, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Saturday evening marked the conclusion of celebrations for the centennial of the Diocese of Catamra, in northwestern Argentina.

In the name of benedict XVI, Cardinal Errazuriz offered a Golden Rose to the patroness of Catamarca, the Virgen del Valle (Virgin of the Valley). The image is the latest Marian image to be honored by Benedict XVI with a Golden Rose, a tradition that backs a thousand years.



The history of the Dicoese of Catamarca is tightly linked to the miraculous image of the Immaculate Conception which was found in a cave some time in 1618-1620. A chapel was built to house the image, and the cult to the Virgin of the Valley took hold of the region ever since.

The present church was completed in 1895, when the pontifical coronation of the image also took place. Three years later, a seminary was established under the French Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception. Eventually, the desire of the faithful in the region to have thir own diocese was sent to Pope Pius X who created the new dicoese in February 1910.

ZENIT has a story that focuses on the Golden Rose:

Pope sends Golden Rose
to the Virgin of the Valley





VATICAN CITY, AUG. 23, 2010 (Zenit.org).- In addition to sending a special envoy to the centenary celebrations for the Argentinean Diocese of Catamarca, Benedict XVI also gave the 11th Golden Rose of his pontificate to Mary at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Valley there.

Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, archbishop of Santiago, Chile, represented the Pope at the centenary celebrations on Saturday.

The image of the Virgin to receive the rose is a 42-centimeter (16-inch) marble statue that dates back to original Spanish missionaries of South America. The native population developed strong devotion to the Virgin in this representation, and over the years, various miracles have been attributed to her.

The Golden Rose is a papal decoration originally conferred on prominent Catholic personalities; it has gone through a significant evolution. Initially, kings and dignitaries received it, later it was conferred almost exclusively on queens and, more recently, on images of the Virgin Mary that hav earned enduring popular devotion. The distinction was created by Pope Leo IX in 1049.

In more recent times, after the Second Vatican Council, the papal decoration has become almost exclusively a gift from the Popes to Our Lady.

This was the 11th Golden Rose that the Pontiff has given to Our Lady in the more than five years of his pontificate. The other 10 were given to the Shrine of Jasna Góra in Poland (2006), the Basilica of Aparecida in Brazil (2007), the Mariazell Basilica in Austria (2007), the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. (2008), Our Lady of Bonaria in Cagliari, Italy (2008), Our Lady of Pompeii, Italy (2008), Our Lady of Europe in Gibraltar (2009), and the "Virgen de la Cabeza" (literally, Virgin of the Head) of the Diocese of Jaen, Spain (2009), the Shrine of Our Lady of Ta' Pinu in Malta (2010), and Our Lady of Fatima (2010).





When an Italian bishop dies, it is a double loss for the Holy Father, who is also Primate of Italy.

Pope mourns an emeritus bishop
of northern Italy who was
a leader in Jewish-Catholic dialogue


VATICAN CITY, AUG. 24, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI expressed his grief at the death of a retired bishop of Livorno, Italy, Alberto Ablondi, who died Saturday at age 85.

The prelate was a protagonist in inter-religious and ecumenical dialogue.

In a telegram sent to Bishop Simone Giusti of Livorno, the Pope's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said the Holy Father "participates spiritually in the grief" that has stricken the diocesan community.

"While recalling [the bishop's] generous ministry, especially beneficial in the commitment to the ecumenical realm and fruitful in the biblical apostolate, [the Pontiff] raises fervent prayers of suffrage, entrusting him to the maternal intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary," the message added.

Alberto Ablondi was born in 1924 in Milan and ordained in 1947. He served for 30 years as the bishop of Livorno. He also served as vice-president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, and was a member of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, president of the World Catholic Federation for the Biblical Apostolate [now the Catholic Biblical Federation] and vice-president for Europe of the United Bible Societies.

Bishop Brian Farrell, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, praised Bishop Ablondi's service in a statement reported by the SIR news agency.

Bishop Farrell referred to the prelate as an "enlightened interpreter and tireless promoter of the commitment of the Catholic Church -- as formally sanctioned by the Second Vatican Council and by all the Supreme Pontiffs from that time up to today -- to the search for full communion of all the baptized and of renewed religious relations with the Jewish people, as well as the diffusion of sacred Scripture."

"All of us are witnesses of his great love of the Church and of his undying trust that God is raising her up as the common home of all, able to embrace in her communion all men and women of good will, especially the little ones and the forgotten," Bishop Farrell added.

Bishop Ablondi's successor in the Diocese of Livorno, retired Bishop Diego Coletti, recalled him as an "attentive and generous pastor."

Lauding his contribution to ecumenical and interreligious work, Bishop Coletti said, "But it is above all humanly that his figure was a splendid testimony of faith and of attention to people, with particular predilection in caring for personal relationships."

Irish president and Dublin archbishop
much applauded at Rimini meeting
by PADDY AGNEW

August 25, 2010


IF ARCHBISHOP Diarmuid Martin’s wings have really been clipped by the Holy See, then he has been performing a series of minor miracles in Rimini this week, flying ever higher.

Vatican insiders and exponents of the influential Catholic lay group, Communione e Liberazione, whose annual gathering has been attended by both Archbishop Martin and President McAleese this week, have expressed incredulity at the “Irish” notion that the Archbishop of Dublin does not have the full, unqualified support of Pope Benedict XVI.

Whilst many in Ireland chose to see the “non-resignation” of Dublin auxiliary bishops Eamonn Walsh and Ray Field last week as a setback for Dr Martin, Vatican insiders have discounted that line of media speculation.

Sources in the Holy See have confirmed that Archbishop Martin has recently had exhaustive discussions on the sex abuse crisis with Pope Benedict, who remains in complete agreement with the manner in which Dr Martin has confronted the Irish Church’s tortured and long-running trauma.

[Not so complete agreement, because the Holy Father chose the just course of keeping on the two bishops - even if Martin gave in to media pressure and had turned against them by demanding their resignations as well. The most well-meaning people can have their blind spots, and the fact that the Pope did not go with Martin on this particular decision does not imply he disapproves of everything else Martin is doing.]

While there has been understandable concern among the Irish faithful that the resignations of the two auxiliaries mentioned in the Murphy report were in effect rejected by Pope Benedict, Church observers this week have emphasised that this “reinstatement” in no way represents a vote of no confidence in Archbishop Martin. [It is ridiculous for anyone, including the media, to read everything that has to do with such a complex situation as black or white!]

On the contrary, Vatican sources point to the fact that both auxiliaries are to be assigned to new, but as yet undefined, roles. [That's a loser's self-consoling argument that is obviously Agnew's own but he is attributing it to the conveniently anonymous 'Vatican sources'.]

Last Sunday, addressing a 10,000-strong crowd here in Rimini, President McAleese broke off from her analysis of the Northern conflict to offer her own, unequivocal endorsement of Archbishop Martin, calling him a “wonderful” archbishop who is doing an “amazing job”.

No one who witnessed the huge round of applause generated by that remark to an almost exclusively Italian audience, and one that is especially well informed on Vatican affairs [What a fallacious statement! Just because you are Italian and live in Italy, even if you are a C&L member, does not necessarily make you 'especially well-informed' on Vatican affairs, espcially not what goes on behind the scenes] , could have much doubt about Archbishop Martin’s high standing and authority, on this side of the Alps at least.

That public expression of respect was repeated yesterday when the archbishop addressed the gathering on the subject of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Introduced as someone who had “paid in person” for his forthright stand on the sex abuse issue, Dr Martin received an extended standing ovation.

The fact, too, that he has been a regular speaker at one of the largest Catholic gatherings in the western world (up to one million people are expected to attend this week’s six-day meeting) makes its own point.

As so often in analysis of Catholic Church affairs, differences of interpretation may well be linked to sociolinguistic misunderstandings.

The Holy See remains a very Italian organisation and one only passingly concerned with the “universal” nature of its vocation.

To understand the bureaucratic workings and decision-making processes of the Holy See, one must first understand the complex mindset of the average, high-ranking, 19th century Vatican state functionary.

Furthermore, an exhaustive understanding of Italian is not so much helpful as essential. Not every Irish commentator on church affairs ticks all these very particolare boxes.

Not for nothing, Archbishop Martin addressed the Rimini faithful yesterday in Italian, the lingua franca of Vatican affairs, making his text available only in Italian. Those who need to hear what he had to say will have listened closely.

In particular, his observation that many Irish Catholics remain “theological illiterates”, notwithstanding up to 15 years of religious teaching, will have touched a major chord with Pope Benedict, someone who believes strongly in the need to “re-evangelise” western Europe.

On this, and on many other issues, Archbishop Martin and Pope Benedict see eye to eye, despite what the archbishop’s Irish critics might say.

Not for nothing, Dr Martin chose to speak this week about Cardinal Newman, a figure much admired by Pope Benedict, who next month, of course, travels to Britain to preside personally over his beatification.


I am sure Archbishop Martin deserves much praise, but this article is obviously a puff piece for him which is also intended as a rebuff to the Vatican - sort of 'us good guys in Ireland who are truly concerned about the Church in Ireland and know better than the Pope'. Although Agnew wants to have it both ways- tout the superiority of Martin over the Vatican, but claim at the same time that he has its full blessings!

Wednesday, August 25, 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Fourth from left, portrait by El Greco, Ca. 1600; 6th from left, 16th century portrait of Louis feeding the poor; next to it a medieval illumination depicting the meeting in Cluny between Pope Innocent IV and Louis.
ST. LOUIS IX OF FRANCE (b France 1226, d Tunis 1270), King, Crusader, Confessor
Descended from the Capetian dynasty, he became king at age 12, and his mother Blanche aced as regent until he was 19, when he married Marguerite of Provence with whom he would have 11 children, one of whom would found the Bourbon dynasty. He took his coronation oath seriously to 'behave as God's anointed' and became the embodiment of the ideal Christian monarch. He was primus inter pares among the monarchs of Europe because France at the time was the largest and wealthiest of the European nations. He brought many reforms to civil administration, particularly in the justice system, and building on the earlier work of his mother, he successfully fought down the Albigensian (Cathar) heresy. But in his efforts to defend the faith, he also expelled the Jews and strengthened the Inquisition in France. He was devoted to his people, keeping lists of the needy to bring them regular aid, founding hospitals, visiting the sick, caring for lepers, and bringing together all classes of people by his personality and holiness. He was a patron of arts and culture, under whom Gothic architecture and arts flourished, and Paris reinforced its medieval reputation as center and arbiter. He built the famous Sainte Chapelle in Paris as his private chapel. As a Christian king, he took part in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades. The first time, he conquered the Egyptian city of Damietta, but ended up being captured by the Mameluke army and had to be ransomed by the Knights Templar. He spent the next four years in the Holy Land, using his wealth to help the Crusaders and build defences in Acre, Jaffa and Haifa. More than 20 years later, in 1570, he would take part in the Eighth Crusade, but he died unexpectedly of disease (probably dysentery) in Tunis. He was canonized in 1297, just 24 years after his death. He is the only French king to have been canonized.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/082510.shtml


No papal stories in today's OR. Page 1 news: New signs of sputtering US recovery drives down Asian stock markets; Pakistan president says it will take years for the country to recover from the effects of the current floods, which has affected one-third of the nation's agriculture, claimed 150,000 dead and left at least 8 million homeless; slow work in untangling the mammoth 100-km long traffic jam that began August 14 on the main route from Beijing to Tibet, because the only alternative route is too narrow to accommodate the volume. Inside, an essay of how Orthodox imagery preaches and reinforces the faith by appealing to the 'eyes of the heart'; a story from the monastery of Patmos, built on teh site where John is believed to have written the Apocalypse; a story on what is being called 'the Sistine Chapel of prehistoric African art', remarkably preserved cave art dating to 4000-8000 B.C. in a cave in Gilf Kebir in the area where Egypt, Libya and Sudan adjoin each other; and a feature on Swiss Guards choosing to spend their vacation this year by visiting the Bavarian places associated with Joseph Ratzinger.


THE POPE'S DAY

General Audience - Another abbreviated catechesis from Castel Gandolfo, where the Pope chose to speak
about St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica whose feast days are on August 26 and 25, respectively.
He also expressed the hope that the international community may do all it can to re-establish the rule
of law and respect for human rights in civil war-torn Somalia. He then addressed the overflow crowd on
the town square from the external balcony of the Apostolic Palace.

When compromise trumps
apostolic tradition


August 25, 2010


Pope Benedict XVI’s pastoral visit to Great Britain next month will unfold along a pilgrim’s path metaphorically strewn with landmines.

Headline-grabbing new atheists like Richard Dawkins, along with their allies in the international plaintiff’s bar, may try to have the Pontiff arrested as an enabler of child abuse.

More subtly, but just as falsely, homosexual activists and their allies will portray John Henry Newman, whom the Pope will beatify, as the patron saint of gay liberation.

No challenge facing Benedict in Britain, however, will be greater than the challenge of re-framing the Anglican-Catholic ecumenical dialogue, which is on the verge of de facto extinction.

The death of that once-promising dialogue would have been unimaginable 40 years ago. Then, in the aftermath of Vatican II, it seemed possible that Canterbury and Rome might be reconciled, with full ecclesiastical communion restored.

That great hope began to run aground in the mid-1980s, when the Church of England faced the question of whether it could call women to holy orders (a practice already under way in other member communities of the worldwide Anglican Communion).

As I discovered when researching the biography of Pope John Paul II, a theological Rubicon seems to have been crossed in a 1984-86 exchange of letters among Dr. Robert Runcie, the Anglican primate, Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and the Pope.

John Paul and Willebrands made quite clear to Runcie that the bright hope of ecclesial reconciliation would be severely damaged were the Church of England to engage in a practice that the Catholic Church (and the Orthodox churches) believed was unauthorized by apostolic tradition, and in fact contradicted that tradition.

While admirably candid, Dr. Runcie’s attempt to explain why the Church of England believed it could proceed to the ordination of women demonstrated that Anglicanism and Catholicism were living in two distinct universes of discourse, one theological, the other sociological.

For Runcie advanced no theological arguments as to why apostolic tradition could be understood to authorize the innovation he and many of his Anglican colleagues proposed; rather, he cited the expanding roles of women in society as the crucial issue. Sociological trends, Runcie’s letter implied, trumped apostolic tradition — which was not, of course, something the Catholic Church could accept.

The same issue recently re-emerged in the Church of England’s debate over the ordination of women as bishops. Dr. Rowan Williams, the current Anglican primate, and his colleague in York, Dr. John Sentamu , proposed a compromise in which the Church of England would ordain women to its episcopate, but parishes unable to accept this innovation would be allowed to invite a male bishop to preside over those rituals for which a bishop’s presence is required.

This compromise was rejected by the General Synod of the Church of England, leading the London Telegraph to deplore editorially the loss of the Anglican “ tradition of compromise that has preserved the church for more than 400 years.”

The Telegraph’s sense of what has “preserved the Church for more than 400 years” is misplaced, I fear. Elements of sanctity, intelligence, and beauty have been nurtured in the Anglican Communion for more than four centuries by the work of the Holy Spirit, who distributes gifts freely, and not only within the confines of the Catholic Church.

Thus there have been great Anglican theologians and noble Anglican martyrs in the Anglican Communion, which has also given the world a splendid patrimony of liturgical music and a powerful example of the majesty of the English language as a vehicle of worship. None of this has had much, if anything, to with a “tradition of compromise.”

The sad truth of the matter is that the “tradition of compromise” is what is destroying the Anglican Communion. For that “tradition” has come to mean that the apostolic tradition of the Church — the essential constitution bequeathed to the Church by Christ, which can be discerned in the Scriptures and which was articulated in the creeds — has ceased to have any normative claim within Anglicanism.

Thus an ecclesiological rule-of-thumb: when anything goes, the first thing to go is apostolic tradition.


The wonder to me is how someone as intelligent as Rowan Williams cannot see the obvious: The Catholic Church remains what it is today after 2000 years, despite the Great Schism and the Reformation, because she has not compromised her basic beliefs in any way - which means, she has not compromised the faith she professes. She is literally keeping the faith and keeping faith. She is an example for other faiths, because faith is no longer faith when it makes itself subject to change.


Cost-benefit look at the visit:
'The global exposure will be invaluable'
Editorial

25 August 2010


IF the date of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Edinburgh was not in your diary yet then, like it or not, it will soon have to be.

Of course, tens of thousands of people will be looking forward immensely to September 16, many with happy memories of Pope John Paul II's visit to Murrayfield Stadium 28 years ago.

However, the details of the preparations announced today - especially the massive road closures - spell out just how much disruption the Holy Father's visit will bring. Edinburgh, or large parts of it, will grind to a halt for much of the day.

There will be those who question whether it is all worth it, particularly when you consider the estimated £400,000 cost as well.

Aside from the wider significance to many both in and outside of the Catholic Church, the day does represent a rare opportunity for the city.

The Pope begins his visit to Britain here, and past experience shows that interest is greatest on the first day of these events, with the global television audience expected to reach one billion.

We all know television producers and newspaper editors across the world will choose pictures of the Pope meeting the Queen amid the splendour of Holyrood Palace ahead of ones of the faithful gathered in a park in Glasgow.

It doesn't take a marketing genius to work out this kind of exposure is invaluable to Edinburgh's tourist trade.

We have grown used to living with the disruption of being a Capital city over the years, and on this occasion at least the benefits are clear and well worth it.


OK already...'Susan Boyle to sing for Pope' is dominating the online headlines about 'the Papacy' now, but we've known that for some time. Now we also know what she will sing... but the way it looks, the Pope may not hear her solo performances at all...

Boyle will sing 2 songs
before the Mass and sing
with the choir at Mass


LONDON, Aug. 26 (AFP) – Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle confirmed Wednesday that she would perform for Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Britain next month, saying it was her "greatest dream come true".

Boyle, who was catapulted to global stardom after appearing on a British television talent show, told Scotland'M Daily Record newspaper that she would sing at an open-air mass in Glasgow on September 16.

"It is my greatest dream come true," said the 49-year-old, a devout Catholic and former church volunteer.

Before the Mass, she will perform "I Dreamed A Dream", the song which propelled her to fame last year when a clip of her singing received more than 120 million views on YouTube, as well as the hymn "How Great Thou Art".

"To be able to sing for the Pope is a great honour and something I've always dreamed of. It's indescribable," Boyle told the Daily Record.

"I think September 16 will stand out in my memory as something I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to sing for His Holiness and I can't really put into words my happiness that this wish has come true at last."

She said the Pope's four-day state visit -- which some in Britain have criticised because of the cost and the scandal over clerical child sex abuse -- was a "very big event" for Scotland's estimated 670,000 Catholics.

"My own faith is the backbone of my life. I pray and say the rosary each day and am very close to my religion," the singer said. "I am humbled and honoured by this invitation and I hope I can do my best."

The pope will visit England and Scotland from September 16 to 19, taking in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Birmingham, where he will preside over the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY



Pope Benedict on St. Augustine and
the constant search for Truth


25 Aug 10 (RV) - During his general audience this morning at Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict launched an appeal for an end to violence in Somalia. In his catechesis he urged believers to view the saints as companions on the journey of faith and again returned to speak of St. Augustine, specifically of his constant search for Truth.

After his catechesis, the Pope turned his thoughts to the continuous reports of bloodshed in the Somali capital Mogadishu, with news today yet another massacre claiming innocent civilians,

He said "I am close to the families of the victims and all those in Somalia, who are suffering from [the consequences] of hate and instability. I hope that with the help of the international community, there will be unstinting efforts to restore respect for life and human rights. "

In his catechesis, Benedict XVI urged the faithful to view the saints as "fellow travellers" on the path of Christian life.

"Everyone," he said, "should have some saint who is familiar [to them], to feel close to in prayer and intercession, but also as an example to imitate".

Therefore, he added, we should know more about the saints, starting with those whose names we carry, their life and writings. He cited his own experience with St. Augustine....

Here is a full translation of his catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

In the life of each of us, there are persons who are very dear to us, to whom we feel particularly close - some are already in the arms of God, others still share with us the journey of life. They are our parents, our relatives, our teachers - persons to whom we hsve done some good or from we have received some good, persons whom we knew or know we can count on.

But it is also important to have 'travelling companions' in the journey of Christian life - such as a spiritual director, a confessor, persons with whom we can share our experience of faith. But I am also thinking of the Virgin Mary and the saints.

Each of us should have a saint who is 'familiar' to us, to whom we feel close in prayer and in seeking their intercession, but also to be emulated.

Therefore, I wish to invite you to know the saints better, starting with the one whose name you carry - read his/her life and writings. You can be sure that the saints will be good guides for loving the Lord ever more and will provide valid assistance for your human and Christian growth.

As you know, I too have a special connection to some saints. Among them, in addition to St. Joseph and St. Benedict whose names I bear, there is St, Augustine, whom I had the great gift of knowing quite closely, so to speak, through study and prayer, and who has become a good travelling companion in my life and ministry.

I wish to underscore once more an important aspect of his human and Christian experience, which is relevant even in our time when paradoxically, relativism seems to he the 'truth' that guides thinking, choices and behavior.

St. Augustine is someone who never lived with the superficial: the search, the uneasy and constant thirst for Truth, is one of the fundamental characteristics of his existence - not, however, of 'pesudo-truths' that are incapable of bringing lasting peace to the human heart, but of that Truth which gives meaning to existence and which is 'the home' in which the heart finds serenity and joy.

We know his was not an easy journey. He thought he could find Truth in prestige, in career, in possession of things, in voices that promised him immediate human happiness. He committed errors, he underwent sorrows, he met with failures - but he never stopped, he was never content with anything that only gave him a glimmer of light. He learned in his most intimate and became aware, as he writes in his Confessions, that the Truth he sought, the God whom he sought with all his powers, was more intimate to him than his own self, that he was always with him, had never abandoned him, was waiting to be able to enter into his life definitively (cfr iii, 6, 11; x, 27, 38).

As I said in commenting on the recent film on his life, St. Augustine came to understand, in his uneasy seeking, that it was not he who had found the Truth, but Truth itself, who is God, who had chased him and found him.

Romano Guardini, commenting on a passage in Chapter 3 of the Confessions, said: "St. Augustine understood that God is "the glory who brings us to our knees, the drink that extinguishes thirst, the treasure that makes us happy... (He not only had) the pacifying certainty of someone who had finally understood, but also the beatitude of a love that knows: 'This is everything, and it's all I need'." (Pensatori religiosi, Brescia 2001, p. 177).

Also in the Confessions, Book 9, our saint recalls a conversation with his mother. St. Monica - whose memory we celebrate on Friday, day after tomorrow. It is a beautiful scene: he and his mother are in Ostia. in an inn, and from the window they can see both sea and sky - they transcend sea and sky, and for a moment, they touch the heart of God in the silence of Creation.

Here appears a fundamental idea in the journey towards Truth: that creatures should be silent in order to achieve the silence within which God can speak. This is true even in our time. At times, we seem to fear silence, meditation, thinking about our own actions, about the profound sense of our life. Often we prefer to live every fleeting moment, deluding ourselves that they bring lasting happiness. We fear searching for the Truth, or perhaps we fear that Truth will find us, take us in its grip ,and change our life, as it had happened with St. Augustine.

Dear brothers and sisters, I wish to tell everyone, even those who are in present difficulty in their journey of faith, and those who take little part in the life of the Church or who live 'as though God does not exist':

Do not fear the Truth, never interrupt the journey towards it, never stop searching for the profound truth about yourself and about things with the interior eyes of the heart. God will not fail to give us light to see and warmth to make our heart feel that he loves us and that he too wants to be loved.

May the intercession of the Virgin Mary, St. Augustine and St. Monica be with us on this journey.

After his plurilingual greetings, he made this special appeal:

My thoughts go to Mogadishu, from which we continue to get news of brutal violence and which was the theater of a new massacre yesterday. I express my nearness to the families of the victims and to all who are suffering in Somalia because of hatred and instability.

I hope that, with the aid of the international community, no efforts will be spared to re-stablish respect for life and for human rights.

After greeting the pilgrims gathered in the inner courtyard of the Apostolic Palace for the catechesis, the Holy Father proceeded to the balcony overlooking the main square of Castel Gaondolfo and addressed the crowd that could not be accommodated in the courtyard:

Dear friends,

Thank you for your presence and for your enthusaism! I wish you all a good day, happy vacations, and much joy in these hot days. May the Lord help and be with you always. I give you my blessing.

---

Thanks to Lella's blog for leading me to this item...

Manoppello to honor Pope
for his historic visit in 2006
Translated from

August 24, 2010


MANOPPELLO - His Holiness Benedict XVI has accepted the honorary consignment to him of the keys to the city of Manoppello, an initiative originally proposed by the German journalist Paul Badde.

In a latter received from the Vatican yesterday, the Holy Father also agreed to a plaque to be installed in the piazza facing the Basilica del Santo Volto (Holy Face) in Manoppello to recall his private visit to the shrine on Sept. 1, 2006, becoming the first Pope ever to visit Manoppello.

(It was also the first of what have been four visits to the Abruzzo region so far - afterwards he visited L'Aquila, then
Sulmona, and recently, he visited three little shrines in the Abruzzi mountains on a private excursion from Castel Gandolfo.)



He arrived by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo and landed on the piazza, where some 8,000 residents and visitors had gathered to welcome him.

Accounts of that visit on Sept. 1, 2006, can be read in the PRF on
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354494&p=47

The letter signed by Mons. Peter Wells to the president of the Communal Council of Manoppello read: "In thanking you for the sentiments that inspired these initiatives, I am happy to inform you that arrangements for the ceremony of consigning the keys are to be made with Mons. James Harvey, prefect of the Pontifical Household to whom you may address your correspondence".

"We wrote back right away," said Villani, "because almost at the same time we received a message from the Prefecture that the ceremony will take place after one of the General Audiences on Wednesdays."

The news was promptly conveyed to the Bishop of Chieti-Vasto, Mons. Bruno Forte, and to the regional prefect Vincenzo D'Antuono, who will take charge of planning participation in the ceremonies.

The plan, Villani said, is to have the marker-laying done on a Sunday morning between the end of September and early October to avail of what remains of good weather in order to have as many people attending.

"It is a historic event for our city. Benedict XVI was the first Pope ever to set foot in Manoppello, even if it was a private visit. We were very happy at the latest response because it confirms to us that his pilgrimage to the Holy Face was also a significant memory for him."

Villani also said that the commune had previously consigned the keys to the city to Paul Badde, the journalist most responsible for calling widespread attention to the Santo Volto, since he first started writing about it and researching it in 2004.

he Holy Face of Manoppello is a piece of very thin fabric measuring 24x17 cm, apparently woven from byssum (the fine hairs of a marine shellfish), on which there is imprinted front and back the image of a man who has undergone torture. Yet the fabric is so fine that a newspaper placed behind it can be read even from a few feet away.

Originally believed to be Veronica's Veil, scholars believe it is more likely a cloth placed over the face of Jesus before he was wrapped in his burial shroud. A German scholar nun has shown by detailed photographs that the image superimposes perfectly on the face imprinted on the Holy Shroud of Turin. Like the Shroud, no explanation has been found for how the image came to be imprinted on the cloth.

The relic came to Manoppello in 1606 and was said to have been left by a mysterious stranger to the member of a prominent local family, which eventually turned it over to the Capuchin friars of the local church for custody. It has been kept since then between two pieces of glass to protect it.


I was quite struck in 2006 by Benedict XVI's early decision to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Face in Manoppello which, like the Holy Shroud of Turin, the Church has not authenticated, but unlike the Shroud, is much less well-known. It was very endearing that an intellectual like him had no hesitation to validate a popular devotion by his own visit. (But then again, he is Bavarian!) Many dearly-loved traditions associated with devotional practices and local cults have bee based on legend or apocrypha but that does not make them any less 'valid' for the believer. Faith is in the heart of the believer and does not need scientific chapter and verse to justify it.

In his homily in Manoppello, Benedict XVI first reminded the faithful that Jesus had told his disciples, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father", and then: "To seek the Face of Jesus should be the desire of all Christians. We are, in fact, the generation toat must seek his Face. If we persevere in seeking his Face, then at the end of our earthly pilgrimage, thre be he, Jesus, our eternal joy, our reward and glory for ever and ever".

Significantly, he visited Manoppello just a few months before the publication of JESUS OF NAZARETH, which he had described as 'his personal search for the face of Jesus'.

A number of book reviews and commentary have now come out in the Italian media on the Rodari-Tornielli book documenting the attacks on Benedict XVI, and despite its great length, I have chosen to translate first this one by Massimo Introvigne, the sociologist and religious historian who heads CESNUR, a center for the study of new religion. Introvigne, whose lucid commentaries and analyses I have had occasion to translate on this Forum and the PRF earlier, is perhaps best qualified by training, temperament, and his own personal inclinations to undertake this commentary. He himself produced a booklet in 2007 to counteract the lies and fallacies purveyed by the BBC documentary on sexual abuses by priests when it was presented on Italian TV in 2007 to widespread 'acclaim' by the Italian MSM.




The three enemies responsible
for the assault on Benedict XVI
by Massimo Introvigne

August 24, 2010

Attacco a Ratzinger. Accuse, scandali, profezie e complotti contro Benedetto XVI {Attack on Ratzinger: Accusations, scandals, propheies and plots against Benedict XVI) (Piemme, Milano 2010) by the Vaticanistas Paolo Rodari and Andrea Tornielli is not a history nor a sociological analysis of Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

But it is excellent journalism, a careful chronicle of the details and the background of the attacks against Benedict XVI - attacks that from 2006 to the present, have made him the Pontiff who has been most systematically attacked through a relentless media campaign.

Rodari and Tornielli list ten principal episodes, and for each of them, they provide details some of which were previously unpublished.

The first offensive against Benedict XVI started with the Regensburg lecture on Sept. 12, 2006, which contained a quotation from the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologue (1350-1425) which was considered by some to be offensive to Islam and Muslims [worse, to Mohammed himself!]

It gave rise to a massive campaign against Benedict XVI, fuelled by the Western press and by Muslim fundamentalists, which degenerated into violent episodes, including tje killing of an Italian nun in Somalia.

Already in this first example, the authors' analysis demonstrates all the ingredients that were at work in all of the succeeding crises as well.

A large part of the media, especially in the West, had extrapolated the Manuel II statement from its context and hammered on the presumed offense against the Muslims in the front pages of the newspapers everywhere.

This media chorus was joined by a second element - which must never be ignored - made up of Catholics hostile to the Pope. In this case, persons like the Jesuit Islamologist Thomas Michel, a typical representative of the inter-religious 'establishment' in the Vatican that Benedict XVI has dismantled for its 'do-gooding' Islamophilia bordering on relativism.

Interviewed by the international press, these hostile Catholics launched 'a frontal attack on Benedict XVI' (p. 26), which was essential in lending credence to the polemical arguments of the lay media.

The third element that Rodari and Tornielli underscore is a weakness in the Vatican communications set-up, which has been too slow to react to controversy in the era of the Internet, has not always anticipated the consequences of some statements made by the Pope which may be too 'strong' for the media, and have not been prepared to take countermeasures as needed.

But turning from the Regensburg lecture as a media event to the lecture as a document, the authors report the opinion of another Jesuit Islamologist, Fr. Khalil Samir Khalil, who believes the Manuel II citation was not a 'gaffe' by the Pope that needed a correction, but an integral and unavoidable part of an analysis of contemporary Islam and its difficulty in correctly applying reason to faith.

Paradoxically, the authors point out, the profound motivation for that brief part of the lecture devoted to Islam was grasped by many Muslim intellectuals but ignored by much of the Western media. [Mainly because most of those who wrote about it apparently never read it in full. Because if they had, they could not have missed the fact that it was a monumental essay, one that was unprecedented for any Pope in modern times, to which my first reaction had been that it should be made required reading for every student who enters university! Like his lecture at the Bernardins in Paris two years later, it is a rare distillation of historical, cultural and philosophical analysis that makes one giddy with its richness and depth, not to mention its elegant economy of language.]

Thus there emerges a pattern on three levels - communications errors by the Vatican [worse than errors- - incompetence!], the aggression of the secular media, and the crucial role of Catholics hostile to Benedict XVI in supporting that aggression - that is found in all the other episodes analyzed by the authors, with few variations.

The role of Catholic progressivist dissent was particularly crucial in the campaign that came on the heels of the 2007 Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum which liberated the traditional Mass of PSt. Pius V [in its 1962 revision by John XXII], and the Pope's 2009 act lifting the excommunication of the four bishops illegally consecrated by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre .

In the first case, Rodari and Tornielli describe a disquieting scenario of resistance from liturgists, Catholic magazines, intellectuals with excellent media connections like Enzo Bianchi, but also bishops and even entire bishops' conferences who agitated, enlisted the secular media, and plotted in numberless ways to sabotage the Pope's motu proprio.

What was at stake, they note correctly - citing a study by Fr. Pietro Antonio published in Cristianita, the magazine of the Alleanza Cattolica - was not just liturgy but the very interpretation of the Second Vatican Council.

Those who have been fighting tooth and nail against the Motu Proprio are those who wish to defend the hegemony of their interpretation of Vatican II as discontinuity and rupture with all that had gone before - an interpretation that Benedict XVI has been trying in various ways to correct and eliminate.

The case of the Lefebvrian bishops, as we well know, became the 'Williamson case'. The Pope became the object of the harshest attacks when it turned out that one of the four bishops, Mons. Richard Williamson, believes the Nazis used no gas chambers on prisoners and that 'no more than' 300,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis, not 6 million.

Without going into that issue, it was obvious that the Holy See does not share such views - Benedict XVI has repeatedly denounced the Holocaust - but anyone with common sense would have known that any measurethat could in any way be considered favorable to a 'Holocaust denier' would surely provoke media reaction. And then there was the question: When did the Holy See know about Williamson's Holocaust views?

Rodari and Tornielli reconstruct the episode in minute detail, and point out that a note about this had been sent by Swedish bishops through the Apostolic Nunciature in Sweden - because in November 2008, a Swedish TV channel had recorded an interview with Williamson in which he expresses his views - to the Secretariat of State, where its potential implications were not appreciated and the report was simply shelved by the minor functionaries at the desk concerned with the Scandinavian countries. [When did they send it, though? The interview was never aired nor reported on until January 21, 2009, the day it was aired. Did they know about the interview and its contents well before January 21?]

On January 21, 2009, when news about the interview appeared on the Swedish TV's website, it was quickly picked up by Der Spiegel, and from them, by the rest of the world. At that time, the decree lifting the excommunications had not been issued [the release was timed for January 24, at the start of the annual Week for Christian Unity], but a copy of it had already been given to the Lefebvrians on January 17[to Mons. Fellay himself who was summoned to the Vatican by Cardinal Castrillon, then head of Ecclesia Dei, principal Vatican liaison with the FSSPX since 1988}.

It was no longer possible to recall it nor to modify it. [And how could it have been modified without making a mockery of the excommunication process? Williamson's excommunication had nothing to do with his personal opinions or knowledge of history, and in any case, excommunication is not a penalty for regular crimes, not even for mortal sins including murder, much less for historical ignorance even if it is willful, but for canonical violations.]

Nonetheless, the authors rightly point out that the Holy See should have accompanied the release of the decree on January 24 with a clear explanation that Williamson's excommunication had nothing to do with his Holocaust views, which neither the Pope nor the Church share [and explaining the canonical bases for excommunication].

This was mot done until several days later, giving the impression that the Vatican was reacting in embarrassment and was on the defensive.

Moreover, as the Pope himself would indirectly note in his subsequent letter on March 20 to all the bishops of the world, Williamson's views could have been found on the Internet even before Swedish TV broadcast its interview.

"I have been told that consulting the information available on the Internet would have made it possible to perceive the problem early on. I have learned the lesson that in the future in the Holy See we will have to pay greater attention to that source of news".

From Benedict XVI's letter, the authors note, two other elements emerge. The first is the generous spirit of the Pope who personally took on responsibility for errors made by the Vatican, breaking with every precedent in which the Pope's collaborators always carried the blame. [And to this day, none of those collaborators have been man enough to own up, brazenly happy to let Benedict XVI take the whole blame!]

The second is that, even if Benedict XVI obviously had no knowledge of Williamson's views on the Holocaust at the time he approved the decree, the secular campaign launched against Benedict XVI succeeded immediately because of the simultaneous attack by prominent Catholic progressivists who saw an opportunity to avenge themselves for the Motu Proprio.

Thus the Pope wrote the bishops: "I was saddened by the fact that even Catholics who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility."

The timing of events in the Williamson case was not at all random. The authors recall the hypothesis - first raised during the worldwide dissemination of the news on the negationist bishop in connection with the lifting of excommunication - of the role behind the scenes of a French lesbian couple Fiammetta Venner and Coroline Fourest, known for their anti-clerical campaigns and for their 'closeness to the Great Orient of France' (p. 99), i.e., to French Masonry. [Introvigne sort of leaves the lesbian couple's involvement in the 'plot' dangling. From what I understood at the time, they orchestrated the timing of the interview broadcast (which, remember, had not been used at all since it was taped in November 2008) and then alerted Der Spiegel to it. Without Spiegel's inflammatory report, before the Swedish TV channel itself advertised the program online, few people might have ever noticed the Swedish broadcast.]

According to Rodari and Tornielli, the Swedish TV interview with Williamson "had not been arranged for beforehand - the TV crew simply showed up at the seminary [FSSPX seminary in Zaitkofen, near Regensburg] and managed to get an interview with Williamson" (p. 88). It seems then that Williamson 'organized' the whole episode.

When he gave the interview in November 2008, the news of a possible lifting of the Lefebvrian excommunication was already circulating in the Internet. Rodari and Tornielli ask who could possibly have instigated the obscure TV journalist Ali Fegana to do the interview.

Personally, I have my doubts about Williamson himself, who would certainly have been in the know about an imminent remission of excommunication - but he was always notoriously against any idea of 'compromise' with Rome by the FSSPX, and at the very least, he was most imprudent in his statements to the Swedish TV crew.

The role of Catholic progressivists in stoking the flames already emerged in two previous campaigns against Benedict XVI, particularly serious since they had succeeded. [Except that the second campaign - against Mons. Wagner - took place soon after the Williamson case, not before - in February-March 2009.]

Two bishops chosen in the regular manner by the Pope [the national bishops conference and the Apostolic Nuncio screen candidates for an upcoming episcopal vacancy and then send on a short list of candidates, with their dossiers, to the Congregation for Bishops, which is supposed to check out the candidates, after which the prefect presents the short list to the Pope with his recommendations] had to renounce their nominations: Mons. Stanislaw Wielgus, who had been named Archbishop of Warsaw and therefore Primate of Poland - after documents turned up showing that he had collaborated with the Communist regime in Poland to spy on the Church; and Mons. Gerhard Wagner, named to be auxiliary bishop of Linz, Austria, who was fiercely opposed by most of the Austrian clergy and some bishops because of statements he had made regarding hurricane Katrina as a punishment from God, the Satanic character of the Harry Potter novels, and the possibility that homosexuality could be 'remedied' through therapy.

Rodari and Tornielli note that these opinions held by Wagner were shared by many in the Church. Cardinal Ratzinger himself had expressed his sympathy for a book written by a German woman who was critical of the Harry Potter novels, even while admitting he had not read the books. However, it is equally true that Wagner's objections were far more heated.

The two cases, the authors note, are not as remote or different from each other as it may seem at first glance. Even Mons. Wielgus, although he was denounced primarily by rightist 'pursuers of Communist collaborators', was then systematically attacked by the Polish media not so much for his collaboraionist past - which, after all, he shared with more than 100,000 persons in Poland, including numerous priests and quite a few bishops - but for his subsequent and current reputation as a conseervative bishop.

If, in the case of Wielgus - who imprudently first sought to deny his collaborationist past - accepting his renunciation was inevitable, one must share the perplexity of the authors in the case of Mons. Wagner.

The apparent yielding by the Vatican to pressure from part of the Austrian clergy and episcopate, among whom the most outsponen was a priest who soon thereafter proudly announced that he has been living in concubinage for years, encouraged global anti-Vatican opposition in Austria, an opposition in which most of Austria's ranking bishops have joined and which continues unresolved.

In March 2009, with the Pope's first trip to Africa, the attack entered a new phase. On the flight to Cameroon, Benedict XVI, following a now-established practice, answered a few questions pre-submitted by the journalists travelling with him.

To a French journalist who asked him about AIDS, the Pope replied that the massive distribution of condoms does not resolve the problem but aggravates it. The Pope, as the authors point out, is technically right [Not just technically - I don't understand this false distinction - but in terms of objective statistics comparing countries in Africa and Asia who rely on condoms alone versus those who empasize sexual responsibility!].

Indeed, in the following days, what he said was confirmed by many top epidemiologists and AIDS experts: By promoting sexual promiscuity and creating a false sense of security, policies to minimize the spread of AIDS based mostly on condom use have simply aggravated the problem in the countries where they are followed.

But that did not stop the international media from focusing on the story during the Pope's entire trip to Africa, and failing to report, especially in the West, all that he said on the other crises in the African continent, and his denunciation of the damages done by international institutions and some multinationals in Africa. Was this perhaps the real reason for the focus on thE AIDS remark?

The entry into the arena against the Pope of the usual dissenting theologians was not surprising. The new elemnt now was the intervention by government officials in Spain, France and Germany who demanded that the Pope apologize, and in the European Parliament, a resolution of censure against the Pope failed to pass but got 199 votes. Unlike the Belgian Parliament which did vote for censure, provoking a harsh response from the Holy See that led to an unprecedented diplomatic crisis between the two states - which appeared to have been reflected later on in the aggressive attiude of Belgian police recenrly against the archdicoese of Mechelen-Brussels in their ivnestigation of sex abuse claims against Belgian priests.

Two of the episodes in Rodari-Tornielli's list are interesting because they did not come from 'the left' as usual but from 'the right' - proving that even persons who are generally respectful can be induced by the general climate to use language against the Pope and the Church that they would never have used in earlier times.

The episodes have to do with criticisms by some conservative Catholics of Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in veritate and about the so-called 'third secret' of Fatima.

Regarding the encyclical, two United States Catholic commentators like George Weigel and Michael Novak considered it unjustly hostile to the capitalist model practised in the United Sattes. And on the 'third secret', the Vatican has been accused of failing to reveal the entire message.

Th merits of both cases are certainly arguable, although in the case of the encyclical, the two American critics seem to have been more irritated that they were not consulted, as they were for John Paul II's social encyclicals. But the tone and vitriol were nonetheless signs of the unhealthy climate that had grown around the Pope. {In fairness, Weigel and Novak were certainly sharp-tongued and vehement in their criticism, but not vitriolic.]

The opening given to Anglicans dismayed by the acceptance by the Anglican Communion of women priests and bishops and homosexual unions and who had turned to Rome, was bitterly opposed by the Catholic left as dangerous for ecumenism - but what ecumenism is possible with Christians who would sanctify homosexual marriage in Church? - and also by the Catholic right because it would mean accepting married Anglican oriests into the Church, which in their view, would compromise the defense of priestly celibacy.

Even in this, the most serious aspect is the global misunderstanding [about Angliganorum coetibus] by some self-described conservatives who pour gasoline instead of water on the flames of anti-papal hostility.

The other nine crises described pale in comparison to the tenth which is about pedophile priests. Since the authors amply cite and use material from my book Preti pedofili(San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2010), substantially sharing its premises, perhaps I should not summarize the large part of the book dedicated to this issue and simply allow myself to refer the reader to the book itself.

Rodari and Tornielli reiterate what I had underscored regarding absurd criticisms that have unfortunately also come from some bishops and cardinals: If there was one prelate in the Church who was most severe in confronting the problem of pedophile priests - to the point of being accused of violating their right to self defense and of having had disputes about the issue with many episcopal colleagues - this was Cardinal Ratzinger when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Therefore to present him as the opposite, as having been tolerant on this issue, is simply ridiculous, and yet the claim finds credence among the less-informed who get their news from the media.

The authors do ask whether the obstacles in the way of Cardinal Ratzinger during the final years of John Paul II's Pontificate - when his requests for harsher measures were not always granted - would cast a shadow on the great Polish Pope and would eventually compromise his cause for beatification. But in the case of John Paul II, that question had already been confronted and overcome during the investigation that preceded the decree on his heroic virtues.

However, the conclusion is drawn that certain brakes on Cardinal Ratzinger's work in dealing with the problem of pedophile priests were applied in the last years of his predecessor's pontificate, when John Paul II, increasingly ill, was no longer able to follow routine affairs personally and delegated the responsibility to his closest collaborators, against whom the criticisms should properly be directed.

In conclusion, Rodari and Tornielli ask whether one can speak of a plot against the Pope, citing various opinions pro and con, including mine in an interview that they sought specificially for this book.

They conclude that there have been three different attacks on Benedict XVI by three distinct enemies.

The first is from the galaxy made up of secular lobbies, homosexuals, masons, feminists, the pharmaceutical giants that deal in contraceptives and abortifacients, and the lawyers seeking damages in the megamillions for victims of pedophile priests.

This galaxy - which is too diverse to maintain that they all fall under a single direction - is able to mobilize the new information technologies with a power that no other enemy of the Church has had in all of history, wielded against a Pope who is seen as the principal obstacle to the construction of a universal dictatorship of relativism, in which God and the values of life and family count for nothing. These enmies see the Pope as an obstacle who must be swept away at any cost and by any means.

This lobby has also succeeded because they have enlisted in their cause the second group hostile to the Pope, made up of Catholic progressivists, especially those theologians and not a few bishops who see their authority and power in the Church threatened by Benedict XVI's dismantling of their interpretation of Vatican II as discontinuity and rupture with the past, an interpretation on which they have built their careers and reputations for decades.

Interviews with these progressivists allow the secular media to present their propaganda not as anti-Catholic in any way but as 'Catholic support' for their campaign against a Pope they describe as a reactionary who intends to 'nullify Vatican II' - which means he disputes the so-called 'spirit of Vatican II' that they claim to embody. Especially since secular journalists are not even familiar with the texts of the Conciliar documents, and their travelling companions who call themselves 'adult Catholics' have preferred to ignore what the documents actually say as if the texts were irrelevant.

In the third place, Benedict XVI's third enemy - often involuntary and not consciously, but no less dangerous - found in the Vatican itself, in the many "'self-produced' crises unintentionally brought about by numerous imprudent statements and frequent errors committed by the Pope's own collaborators" (p. 313).

The authors report various opinions on the communications problems in the Holy See - in the era of the Internet, social networking, and cellphones directly linked to the Web, which enable hundreds of millions (500 million of them active daily users of Facebook) to learn the news seconds after anything is posted and that become archivial items within a few hours.

So if a false report is not immediately corrected within 2-3 hours at most, or if there is no response to an attack in the first 24 hours, then the possibility of effective response is reduced to almost zero.

If all this is true, then the opinions of those interviewed by the authors who lament that Fr. Federico Lombardi compares unfavorably as Vatican spokesman to the sharp and astute Joaquin Navarro Valls can be disputed infinitely but fail to go to the heart of the problem.

It is the manner and means of communications that has changed radically since the time of John Paul II, since his death, even. The problem is not the Internet itself but the increasing number of its users - hundreds of millions, not just a small elite - who are wired into the Internet 24/7 through smart phones, netbooks, and iPads; whose reaction time, on demand or by provocation, is measured in minutes not hours. On this point, those in the Vatican should probably read Il tempo breve ('Time is short' is perhaps the most idiomatic translation rather than the literal 'Short time'), a new book by Italian journalist Marco Niada.

Benedict XVI is not unaware of these attacks. He is also very interested in the new information technologies and in the urgency of improving the Holy See's communications capacity.

But Rodari and Tornielli also say that he is too 'calm'. That he keeps abreast of the problems for the Church brought on by the information revolution - one perhaps that is more important than the cultural revolution of the late 1960s against authority and morality - but not to pursue them.

As Pope, he is convinced that the solutions for a persecuted Church will not come from strategies, from diplomacy, from technology - although these are important and must not be ignored - but from faithfulness in prayer and reflection on the Crucified Christ.

He is probably right not only on the spiritual level, obviously, but also on the cultural and sociological levels, in which the Church must not be expected to follow dominant models but to be herself.

But not everyone, including many Catholics, seem to understand this. [Which goes to a basic incomprehension of what faith should be - our faith, the religion, should be accepted totally and not just 'choose and pick', and it cannot change according to prevailing cultural winds, because if it changeable and not total, then it is no longer faith.]

Thank you for this last translation, Teresa. It confirms certain conclusions reached by most of us, I suppose, who are following this papacy day by day. I don't know what could be done to change two of the three main "enemies". Not much, I suppose. But problem no. 3, the Vatican's communication skills - or lack of it - in this day and age, is something that must be possible to correct? And I sometimes wish Benedict XVI would open his eyes and recognize that people like Bertone and others around him are a dead loss for his papacy. IMO the manner in which they leave him for the dogs to devour is absolutely scandalous. THEY mess up and he takes the flak. Lovely.

I have reached the stage that I cannot even look at Bertone without a bitter taste in my mouth.

Well now, let's see what the visit to Britain will kick up. Our Pope deserves a monument for even contemplating to enter that lion's den.



Dear Crotchet -

Personally, I feel that the greatest value of the three books coming out this month in Italy on the subject of the attacks on Benedict XVI is not so much the conclusions they draw, which are, as you pointed out, self-evident to the sensible reader.

Rather it is that they marshal the available evidence together in a fair, objective but comprehensive way - which will be of great utility for historians in the near and long term because the record contained in these books is contemporaneous to the events described and conveniently put together already, which saves the would-be historian much time and effort. More importantly, they present both sides of the picture, not just the negative as he might tend to see if he had to research the archives himself and found page after page of search results containing items that are overwhelmingly negative.

As for the trip to the UK, I think Benedict is going to the UK not just as a modern Anselm ("to bring to their brethren on the other side of the Channel the renewal that was being brought about on the continent" is how he described why Anselm and his monks were summoned from France to Canterbury in the 11th century, in his catechism on St. Anselm in 2009) but also as an almost lifelong disciple of Cardinal Newman, whom he will have the privilege to beatify. To how many Popes has it been given to beatify a master of reason and faith that he himself discovers at age 18!

He will need all our prayers - and the intercession of Blessed Newman himself - not just to 'survive' the trip itself and its obvious perils, but to make an eventual difference in the life of the Church in the UK. Four days seems inconsequential compared to that challenge, but all things are possible in Christ....

And Bertone is a very sore point for me, too. With apologies to the Pope, Bertone seems to be his one egregious lapse in judgment. I am sure he has his good points, but he has failed to do what he was hired to do - run the Church administration for the Pope. But what's worse is failing to stand up for the Pope when the going gets tough. On the contrary, he becomes conspicuously missing in action then turns up several days or weeks later, safely away from the initial salvoes. You'd think all those glowing letters of praise from the Pope would shame him into proving himself, but so far, zip!

TERESA

Thursday, August 26, 21st Week in Ordinary Time

Third from left, Fr. Jose's Last Communion, by Francisco Goya, 1819; next to it, the saint's founder statue in St. Peter's Basilica.
ST. JOSE DE CALASANZ (Joseph Calasanctius) (b Spain 1556 - d Rome 1648), Priest, Educator, Founder of the Piarist Order
Born in Aragon, he obtained degrees in canon law and theology before he was ordained a priest. He performed a variety of pastoral activities during which he revived religious zeal among the laity. In 1592, following a vision, he gave away much of his inheritance, renounced the rest, and travelled to Rome where he worked as a theological adviser to a Cardinal. In 1595, he worked with plague victims. Then he and some colleagues in a Confraternity for Christian Doctrine opened a small free school for poor children, the first such free public school in Europe. Demand for this revolutionary service was so great that they soon had a number of 'pious schools' (scuole pie) in Rome. Their work attracted the attention of Pope Clement VIII who gave them his support, which continued under his successor Paul V. As more schools were opened and more men were drawn to the work, the teachers who lived as a community were recognized as a religious community, the Clerks Regular of Religious Schools, of whom Jose was appointed superior for life. But the Piarists, as they came to be called, were to have many problems - opposition from social classes who feared that educating the poor would leave no one to do lowly tasks, from other communities working for the poor who feared they would be absorbed by the Piarists, and within the order itself, from those who mistrusted Calasanz's friendship with Galileo. An advocate of educating his schoolchildren in Latin, science and mathematics, Calasanz sent some of his teachers to learn from Galileo. At one point, Calasanz was replaced as superior by a younger priest who accused him of incompetence. A papal investigation in 1645 acquitted Calasanz of all accusations and returned him as Superior. Nonetheless, internal dissent continued to the point that Innocent X dissolved the Order and placed the priests under their local bishops. The Piarists would not be reconstituted until 1656, eight years after their founder's death at the age of 92. He was beatified in 1748 and canonized in 1767. In 1948, Pope Pius XII declared him the Universal Patron of all Christian popular schools in the world.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/082610.shtml


OR today.

Illustration: St. Augustine and his mother, St. Monica, church window in Varese, northern Italy.
At the General Audience, the Pope calls on everyone not to fear Truth:
'Saints like Augustine should be our travelling companions through life'
He appeals for inernational efforts to enforce respect for life and human rights in Somalia
Other Page 1 items: US housing market has worst slump in over a decade; terror-bomb massacres continue in Iraq; Pakistan seeks more help to deal with its unprecedented flood catastrophe, as epidemic threatens survivors. In the inside pages, Benedict XVI's message to the Sisters of Charity to commemorate the 100th birthday today of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. (Also issued as a Vatican bulletin today.)


Sorry, I was unexpectedly called away this morning and have only gotten back, so I am just now beginning my day on the Forum for 8/26!