Google+
 

BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
Autore
Stampa | Notifica email    
29/10/2010 23:59
OFFLINE
Post: 21.338
Post: 3.974
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master







See preceding page for the bulk of stories posted earlier today, 10/29/10.






Pope will soon sign act
to bind the Vatican to the EU's
law against money-laundering

by Jeffrey Donovan and Lorenzo Totaro

Oct 29, 2010

Pope Benedict XVI will bind the Vatican to implementing European Union laws against money laundering and financial fraud, the European Commission said, after the Holy See’s bank was tainted by a series of scandals.

The Vatican is “fully committed” to putting relevant EU legislation into effect by the end of 2010, as stipulated by a monetary accord the Vatican signed with the commission Dec. 17 last year, Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn, said in an interview in Brussels.



A joint EU-Vatican committee, set up under the agreement, “discussed in detail” a draft Vatican law “approximating” the EU rules at an Oct. 15 meeting, Altafaj said.

By an “act of the Pope,” the law will become applicable to “the institutions of the Holy See, including the Institute for Religious Works, as the Vatican Bank is called, Altafaj said Oct. 26. The information was confirmed today by a high-ranking Vatican official, who declined to be identified, citing Vatican policy.

After scandals that included IOR involvement in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, the Vatican is seeking to embrace financial openness after a push by the Group of 20 nations for greater transparency in the wake of the economic crisis.

The Vatican’s efforts came under scrutiny last month when Italian prosecutors seized 23 million euros ($32 million) from a Rome bank account registered to the IOR and opened an investigation into the Vatican Bank and its top two executives for alleged violations of money-laundering laws.

Altafaj’s comments come after Italian media, including the newspaper Libero, had said the Vatican may not respect the Dec. 31 deadline to implement the EU legislation. Not complying with the deadline could nullify the monetary accord with the commission and lead to action by the European Court of Justice. The accord also sets rules for the Vatican, which uses the European single currency, on the issuance of euro coins.

“The IOR has long acted as an offshore bank mostly for Italian businessmen and politicians close to the Roman Curia,” the Vatican’s governing body, Gianluigi Nuzzi, author of Vaticano SpA (Vatican Inc.), a book about the IOR, said by phone before Altafaj’s remarks. “Maybe that’s starting to change.”

The Vatican agreed on Oct. 15 to set up a special authority as of Jan. 1 to implement the new financial legislation “with the right to control the institutions of both the Vatican and the Holy See,” Altafaj said.

The Vatican is a sovereign city-state outside EU jurisdiction, though surrounded by Italian territory. The Holy See refers to the institutions, many located within Vatican City, that manage the Roman Catholic Church’s global affairs.

The new authority will be “the contact point” for the EU and international organizations “active” in combating money laundering, such as the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force.

“This shows a strong level of commitment by the Vatican in implementing the legislation,” Altafaj said. “It’s a clear improvement from the current situation.”

The authority’s head is likely to be Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who will become a sort of “central banker of the Vatican,” Corriere della Sera reported on Oct. 26, citing no one.

Nicora currently oversees the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, which manages financial assets and real estate belonging to the Holy See. He was recently named to lead efforts to bring the Vatican in line with EU financial legislation, the Vatican’s Osservatore Romano newspaper said on Sept. 23.

In May, Nicora was asked in an interview on state-run RAI3 television about cases of alleged corruption involving Italian businessmen and Catholic Church officials. “The community of the apostles also picked the wrong administrator, whose name was Judas,” he said, referring to the man whose betrayal led to Christ’s crucifixion.

Rome prosecutors last month opened a probe into whether the Vatican Bank violated money-laundering laws by omitting information in wire-transfer requests from an IOR account at Credito Artigiano SpA.

The case stems from a misunderstanding with the Italian bank, the Vatican said on Sept. 21. Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who joined the IOR last year, and Director General Paolo Cipriani are also being probed. The Vatican has said it has “full confidence” in them.

Under Gotti Tedeschi, 65, who also teaches ethics in finance at Milan’s Catholic University, the Holy See has sought to improve the IOR’s image after scandals that included the $1.3 billion collapse of partly Vatican-owned Banco Ambrosiano, once Italy’s largest private bank in the 1980s. Its former Chairman Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in June 1982.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/10/2010 00:32]
30/10/2010 13:12
OFFLINE
Post: 21.339
Post: 3.975
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



The OR has once again indulged in something that is not comme il faut. Its lead story in its issue for 10/30/10 issue is on the Holy Father's audience for participants in a symposium on the late theologian Romano Guardini. As it happened to be the second occasion this week that the Holy Father addressed his audience extemporaneously in German (he spoke about theologian Erik Peterson last Monday), his text had to be transcribed first, and so, the Vatican press office could not post the text yesterday. And since the event took place at midday and ended just two hours before the OR had to go to press, the OR went to press anyway using it as the lead story without carrying a single word about what the Pope said!

And yet, both the English and Italian online services of Vatican Radio had come out with excerpts from the text - translated from the German transcript - reasonably early. It always bothers me that the various communications outlets of the Vatican don't even seem to check each other out!

So here is the OR story which is all about the introductory remarks of the president of the Romano Guardini Foundation, followed by the RV account of the Holy Father's remarks. The Foundation officer's remarks are, of course, significant, for giving a background on Guardini that includes references to Joseph Ratzinger's personal interest in Guardini, whom Sandro Magister once called one of Ratzinger's 'spiritual fathers'.






Romano Guardini:
His ideas continue to be relevant
and prescriptive for the future

Translated from the 10/30/10 issue of



When he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was the first signatory to an appeal by the Berlin-based Romano Guardini Foundation to restore the professor's chair named for the late great theologian.

This was recalled today by Ludwig von Pufendorf, Foundation president, in his greeting Friday to the Holy Father who met the participants of a congress on Guardini held in Rome this week, under the sponsorship of the Pontifical Gregorian University, to mark his 125th birth anniversary.

Von Pufendorf underscored how, as a young student in Munich, seminarian and then priest-professor Joseph Ratzinger had found in Guardini a great source of inspiration.

"How much more influential, relevant and worthy of commitment Romano Guardini's thought is in today's theological and philosophical debates! How much more important today is that chair for the philosophy of religion held by Guardini, and Guardini's Catholic view of the world - which was exemplary in its ecumenism - now institutionalized in the Guardini course at Berlin's Humboldt University!

"And not the least, how worthwhile is the work of our Foundation which is based on the three themes that were fundamental to Guardini's thinking: faith, science and art".

In 1985, Cardinal Ratzinger, together with the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, organized a symposium on Guardini in order to cobnfront what he then called "a lively voice which today, after a brief period of muting following his death, once more moves us deeply".

Von Pufendorf told the Pope that the current congress has so far shown that "much of Guardini's thought is still unknown - a thinking that has contributed greatly to enrich the outlines of present philosophical thought".

"Without being presumptuous," Von Pufendorf said, "we wish to contribute, renewing our bonds to the spiritual presence of Romano Guardini where he left his mark, in order to further develop his thinking on one of his favorite themes - reflecting on 'faith and the world' - to reinforce knowledge of the faith and give forceful expression to a theology of the heart".

"Guardini's exceptional contribution, his authentically creative intuition, has been to provide a methodology for looking at the reality of the world, including its spiritual and cultural dimensions, from the perspective of the Christian faith."

Once again, Von Pudendorf recalled another previous intervention by Cardinal Ratzinger - this time at an academic celebration of Guardini's birth centenary - when he had expressed the hope at the time that "universities should place themselves totally in the service of truth, beyond all instrumentalization and political and social motivations".

Von Pudendorf cited this in pushing the Foundation's pet project: "If we can succeed in guaranteeing the permanency of the professorial chair at Humboldt closely linked to the Guardini course - which is unique in the German university panorama - further impulses and initiatives that are increasingly more essential will result. These will contribute to giving the European university an inconfoundable profile in the world as an institution committed to European ideals of education and formation.

"It was precisely for this reason that the Guardini Foundation was established, a project that has the participation of 15 European universities, with the aim of developing a formative and binding nucleus for European curricula of higher studies.

"We believe that thanks to the work of the Foundation, which brings honor to Berlin, it can be an example in a world that for the past sixty years has been shaped by unjust systems, which despise both God and man, resulting from the profound rupture in the Christian tradition of the West.



Guardini's Spirit of the liturgy inspired Joseph Ratzinger's work with a similar title, and his book on The Lord (right photo), whose present edition has a foreword by Cardinal Ratzinger, is a forerunner of the Pope's JESUS OF NAZARETH. In fact, a complete list of Guardini's books shows a remarkable analogy of the themes that he and Joseph Ratzinger have written about.


Guardini's Christian world view
Adapted from


20 OCT 2010 (RV) - The Christian view of the world as a means of drawing closer to God’s truth: As a priest and theologian, Romano Guardini, spent his entire life on this inner journey, undertaken at the same time as he pursued dialogue with others.

Pope Benedict XVI, who studied Guardini's books as a student [and apparently audited some of his classes at the University of Munich, spoke of the key points of the theologian’s thought during an audience with participants of a Rome conference organised by the Pontifical Gregorian University for the Berlin-based Romano Guardini Foundation, dedicated to the analysis of the 'intellectual and spiritual heritage' of the Italian-German scholar, who died 40 years ago.

Benedict XVI spoke of Guardini as 'a man of inner dialogue', who was in love with "the truth of God and the truth about man", not as a mere exercise in abstraction, but as “a search that leads to choosing good for the benefit of others”.

Born in Verona in 1885, Guardini lived in Germany since early childhood and died in Munich in 1968.

Guardini defined the focus of his life as a journey of understanding and expressing "the Christian Weltanschauung or world view".
The specificity of the Christian worldview, the Pope said, is that "man knows he is in a relationship with God who precedes him and from whom he cannot detach himself”.

Guardini believed that ethos, the foundation for our moral behaviour toward our neighbour, follows from man’s openness to God’s truth. “It is precisely because man encounters God that he can do good".

Guardini also discovered a new approach to the liturgy: "The rediscovery of the liturgy was for him the rediscovery of the unity of body and spirit in the completeness of the whole man. In fact, the liturgical act is always both a physical and spiritual act".

Pope Benedict concluded with observations on Guardini's views on the university: Guardini saw the university as the place for seeking truth, but this can only be "if [the university] is free from exploitation and from any outside involvement for political or other purposes".

10/30/10
The Vatican posted the transcript of teh Pope's remarks today. Here is a full translation...


Excellencies,
Distringuished President, Prof. Von Pufendorf,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, dear friends:

It is a joy for me to welcome you to the Apostolic Palace, all of you who have come to Rome for the Conference of the Guardini Foundation on the theme, "The spiritual and intellectual legacy of Romano Guardini".

I wish especially to thank you, Prof. von Pudendorf, for the kind words you said earlier, during which you referred to the entire ongoing 'struggle' that links us to Guardini, and at the same time, demands of us that we carry on with his life work.

In his address of thanks on the occasion of the celebration of his 80th birthday in February 1965 at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Guardini described the mission of his life, as he understood it, as a way "of continual spiritual interrogation over what the Christian world view is".

That view, this overall look at the world, was not, for Guardini, a look from the outside as at an object of investigation. Nor did he mean a perspective on the spirit of the times which examines and analyzes what others have said or written on the religious situation of an era. All these viewpoints were insufficient for Guardini.

In his notes about his life, he said, "What interested me spontaneously was not what some have said about Christian truth but what is true."(Berichte über mein Leben, S. 24).

It was this orientation of his teaching that struck us who were young students then, because we were not looking to learn about any pyrotechnics of opinions that have been expressed about Christianity within it as well as from outside. We wanted to know what is. And here was someone who, fearlessly and with most critical thought, posed the question and helped us to think it through with him.

Guardini did not wish to learn some particular thing or many things: he desired the truth of God and the truth about man. And the instrument that he used to come closer to such truth was what was called at that time, the Weltanschauung, or world view, which comes from a living exchange with the world and with other men.

What is specifically Christian consists in that man knows he is in relationship with God, who precedes him, and from whom he cannot draw back.

It is not our thinking that sets the standard of measure, but God, who surpasses our measure and whom we cannot reduce to any entity of our creation. God revealed himself as the truth, but truth is not abstract. It is found in concrete living form, and it has its best expression in the person of Jesus Christ.

But whoever wishes to see Jesus - that is, Truth - must 'turn around', must emerge from the autonomy of arbitrary thought into a willingness to listen that can enable him to grasp 'what is'.

This movement of turning about, this conversion, shaped Guardini's entire thought and life. It meant a continual emergence from autonomy towards listening, towards receiving. And yet, even when he is in a genuine relationship with God, man does not always understand what God says. He needs a corrective, and this consists of an interchange with others who have found in the living Church at all times an interpretation that is reliable and binding.

Guardini was a man of dialog. Almost without exception, his work was the outcome of conversation - at the very least, an interior one. His lectures as Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Berlin in the 1920s consisted above all in encounters with the personages in the history of ideas. He read the works of these thinkers, 'heard' them thoroughly, learned from them, how they saw the world, and carried on a dialog with them, in order to develop through such a dialog what he, as a Catholic thinker, had to say about their thinking.

He continued this practice in Munich, and the fact that he was 'in conversation' with the great thinkers was the singular characteristic of his lecturing style. It was where he wanted to lead his students - the key word of his lectures was 'Look..." - even as he himself was carrying on an inner dialog with his listeners.

What was new compared to the rhetoric of other times was that he did not seek to use any rhetoric - he simply wanted to speak as simply as he could to us, and in doing so, speak the truth and lead us to dialog with the truth.

And so there was quite a wide spectrum of 'conversations' with authors like Socrates, St. Augustine or Pascal, with Dante, Hoelderlin, Moerike, Rilke, Dostoevsky. He saw them as living mediators, through whose words from the past, one could discover the present, see it in a new way, and allow us to live it in a new way. They give us the ability to infuse ourselves with something new.

A consequence for Guardini of man's openness to truth was an ethos, a foundation for our behavior with our fellowmen, as an exigency in our life. Since man can encounter God, he can therefore 'do good'. For him, ontology had primacy over ethos. Out of being, out of God's being rightly understood and heeded, follows right behavior. He said: "Genuine praxis - which means, right behavior - comes from truth, and one must strive for this" (ibid, p 111).

Guardini sensed this yearning for what is true, a reaching out towards the real and essential, above all in young people. In his conversations with them, usually on Rothenfels Castle, that had become through him a center of the Catholic youth movement, Guardini the priest and professor promoted the ideals of the youth movement, such as self-determination, personal responsibility, and inner truthfulness, purifying and deepening them.

As for freedom, he would say, "Only he is free who is completely what he is according to his nature...Freedom is truth" (Auf dem Wege, S. 20). The truth of man, for Guardini, was essentialness and self-moderation. Man achieves truth when he exercises "the obedience of our being to that of God". And this takes place ultimately in adoration, which Guardini believed was part of thinking.

In his guidance of young people, Guardini also sought a new approach to liturgy. The rediscovery of liturgy was for him a rediscovery of the unity of body and soul in the wholeness of the human being. And therefore, a liturgical act was always both a bodily and spiritual act.

Prayer ie amplified through physical and communal action, revealing the unity of all reality. Liturgy is symbolic action. The symbolic quintessence of the unity of the spiritual and the material is lost when these two are separated, when the world is split into spirit and body, subject and object. Guardini was profoundly convinced that man is spirit in body, and body in spirit, and that therefore, liturgy and symbol bring him to his inner essence, and through adoration, to the truth.

Among the great themes of Guardini's life, the relationship between faith and the world is of enduring relevance. He saw the university as the place for seeking truth. But it can be that, only if it is free of all exploitation and involvement in political and other purposes.

In today's world of globalization and fragmentation, we need more than ever to carry on this concern, which lies very much at the heart of the Guardini Foundation, and for whose realization the Guardini Professorial Chair was created.

Once again, I thank all those present for coming here. May your special interest in the work of Guardini sharpen awareness of the Christian foundations of our culture and society. I gladly impart to all the Apostolic Blessing
.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2010 14:23]
30/10/2010 13:42
OFFLINE
Post: 21.340
Post: 3.975
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


For those who may be interested, I've gone back to my posts in the PRF for this lengthy one from Oct. 1, 2008, which presents Guardini and the Ratzinger-Guardini connection in a much more expanded presentation that does justice to the subject:

Oct. 1, 2008


today has a story that anticipates the first-ever publication in January 2009 of the third volume, Part 1, of Der Mensch. Grundzüge einer christlichen Anthropologie (Man: Foundations for a Chistian anthropology), the life work of the German-Italian theologian Romano Guardini, who was unable to bring it co completion.

I was setting out to translate it, when I found out that Sandro Magister posted today a major article on Guardini and his influence on Benedict XVI, further elucidated in an article from a Milan journal.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As I often do, I find the titles and subtitles given to Magister's articles a bit over-stretched - and strange-sounding, even in the original Italian - as this one is.

Without meaning any diminution of Guardini's influence on the Pope, Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI obviously recognizes many 'fathers' and 'guides' of his thought, not just Guardini.

The attribution in Magister's article appears to implicitly downgrade - gratuitously and without reason (or for the sake of topicality) - the influence on the Holy Father of St. Augustine and the early Fathers of the Church, as well as other 20th century theologians like De Lubac and Von Balthasar!

Indeed, the long article by Fr. Zucal that he presents does not suggest what Magister implies in any way, but simply cites the convergence of thought between Guardini and Ratzinger. A similar article can be drawn up - with as many, if not many more, citations to make the point - regarding any of the individuals that the Pope has cited most often, without making the sweeping implication that a single individual was his particular 'father' and 'master', although for obvious reasons, Augustine would probably lead the rest.


Benedict XVI has a father, Romano Guardini
He was the guide of the young Ratzinger, who has not ceased to draw inspiration from his thought.
Forty years after the death of the great Italian-German intellectual, an analysis of his influence on the current Pope.





ROME, October 1, 2008 – This very same time of year, forty years ago, Romano Guardini (1885-1968) died in Munich. In her biography of him, Hanna-Barbara Gerl called the Italian-German philosopher and theologian "a father of the 20th-century Church."

Guardini's books nourished the most lively segment of Catholic thought during the 1900's. And one of his students was special – the current Pope.

When he was a student not much older than 20, Joseph Ratzinger had the chance not only to read, but also to listen in person, to the man he chose as his great "master".*

[*I question the translation of the Italian word 'maestro' to 'master' in the context of this article. The primary dictonary meaning of 'maestro' is teacher, and I believe that is how it should be translated here. Its secondary meanings are 'expert', in general, or in the sense of craftsmen and artists; or specifically, as 'teacher of a craft or skill', as in piano teacher or ski instructor. Translating it as 'master' in the primary sense of the English word is misleading, especially in this case, because it seems to imply that Ratzinger only recognized one academic/thelogical 'master'.]

As theologian, as cardinal, and also as Pope, Ratzinger has repeatedly acknowledged in his books that he is proceeding along pathways opened by Guardini.

In Jesus of Nazareth, he declares from the very first lines that he has in mind one of the classics by his master: The Lord. And in his Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy, he shows right from the title that he takes his inspiration from one of the masterpieces of Guardini himself, The Spirit of the Liturgy.

At the fortieth anniversary of Guardini's death, in Italy, Germany, and other European countries there will be symposiums, seminars, and conferences dedicated to him, seeking to analyze his extraordinary contribution to philosophical and theological thought.

But one of the most interesting areas to explore is that of the connections between the life and thought of Guardini, and of the current Pontiff.

This is what is done in the following essay, written by one of the leading experts in this matter, Silvano Zucal, a professor of philosophy at the University of Trent and the editor of the complete critical edition of Guardini's works, published in Italy by Morcelliana.

The article was published in the latest issue of Vita e Pensiero, the magazine of the Catholic University of Milan.

Ratzinger and Guardini,
a decisive encounter

by Silvano Zucal
Translated from



In this essay, we would like to call attention to the relationship between Romano Guardini and Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The Pope has called Guardini "a great figure, a Christian interpreter of the world and of his own time," and he often turns to Guardini, in almost all of his writings. [Also an exaggeration.]

In reality, Ratzinger considers Guardini's voice still relevant, one that, if anything, should be made audible again. The Italian-German thinker, in fact, did not only write many books that have been translated into a variety of languages, but in his time he succeeded in shaping an entire generation, a generation of which the Pontiff himself considers himself a member.

But before we delve into Guardini's vision, proposed again by the current Pontiff, let's explore the surprising biographical connections between the two personalities.

A unique "encounter" between the two appeared during Benedict XVI's visit to Verona on October 19, 2006. It should be remembered that Verona is the city where Guardini was born, on February 17, 1885.

And the Pope was deeply moved to receive, in Verona, the gift of a copy of the certificate of Guardini's baptism, which had taken place in the church of San Nicolò all'Arena.

There is, in this sense, a singular convergence of destinies between Romano Guardini and Joseph Ratzinger. Guardini would be taken from Italy in his early infancy, becoming "German" in terms of his intellectual and spiritual formation.

After his years teaching in Berlin, from 1923 to 1939, in the period following the second world war, after three years teaching in Tuebingen, from 1945 to 1948, he would for the rest of his professional life teach "christliche Weltanschauung," the Christian worldview, in Munich. Guardini's chosen home city was therefore Munich, where he would die in 1968.

Ratzinger would make the same journey, but in reverse. After teaching dogmatic and fundamental theology at the high school in Freising, he would continue his teaching activity in Bonn (1959-1969), the city where Guardini was educated and began his career, in Munster (1963-1966), and, finally, in Tuebingen (1966-1969), where Guardini had also taught for three years.

Beginning in 1969, Ratzinger would instead teach dogmatic theology and the history of dogma at the University of Regensburg, but on March 25, Pope Paul VI would make him archbishop of Munich and Freising. Just as for Guardini before him, Munich seemed to be the definitive stage for Ratzinger as well.

But their paths diverged. If the Veronese philosopher would be called to remain in the north for good, in the city of Munich that he loved so much because he felt that it was a sort of city-synthesis in which even his Italian soul could feel at home, the German bishop's destiny would instead take him to the south.

And he would not return home again, not even when the desire to go back to his Bavaria was compelling, and seemed near at hand. Rome and Italy would become his definitive spiritual "homeland."

Apart from these two paths, interwoven but in opposite directions, these two extraordinary figures would also have the opportunity to meet personally.

Ratzinger would be not only one of Guardini's readers, but also his occasional listener, as the great theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar had also been, in Berlin.

In the period from 1946 to 1951 – the very same years in which Ratzinger was studying at the philosophy and theology high school in Freising, just on the outskirts of the Bavarian capital, and then at the University of Munich – Guardini assumed in that same city, at the university and in the Church of Munich, the role of intellectual and spiritual leadership that all acknowledged was his.

For Ratzinger, who was just over twenty years old at the time, the fascination of a figure like Guardini was unquestionable, and would strongly impact his own intellectual perspective. When, beginning in 1952, he began teaching at the same school in Freising where he had been a student, the echo of Guardini's lectures sounded loudly in that little town, which took in all of the cultural and intellectual activity of the nearby Bavarian capital.

And the relationship between the future Pope and the "master" Guardini became extraordinarily intense.

There are, in fact, many elements common to these two thinkers, who would later become decisive figures for the twentieth-century Church. If one would become a cardinal, and then Pope, Guardini would also be offered to be made a cardinal, although he would refuse.

Both were preoccupied with rediscovering the essential in Christianity by seeking to respond to Feuerbach's provocation. Guardini would write a splendid book about this in 1938, entitled The Essence of Christianity, while Ratzinger would dedicate to this topic his Introduction to Christianity, written in 1968, undoubtedly his most famous work and, in all likelihood, his most important.

The two also shared a concern for the Church, for its meaning and destiny. If Guardini would prophesy in 1921 that "a process of great consequence has begun: the conscience of the Church is awakening," Ratzinger would, in more dramatic fashion, pose the ecclesiological problem just as radically, beginning with what he believed to be the overturning of Guardini's thesis: "The process of great consequence is that the Church is being extinguished in souls, and scattered in communities."

One only has to remember, in this sense, the vast resonance of the somber statement made by Ratzinger on June 4, 1970, at the Bavarian Catholic Academy in Munich, in front of thousands of people, on the topic, "Why am I still in the Church?" At that time, he said, "I am in the Church for the same reasons why I am a Christian: because one cannot believe on one's own. One can be Christian only in the Church, not alongside it."

The two also shared a similar preoccupation about the future of a Europe that tends to repudiate its past. Think of the lecture on Europe by Guardini, and the statements of Ratzinger, who even as Pope has recalled the meaning of Europe and of its roots, maintaining that Europe is "a binding heritage for Christians."


THE LITURGICAL QUESTION

One crucial point of encounter between the current Pope and Guardini is undoubtedly the liturgy. Both are united by a shared passion for this.

In order to make his debt to Guardini clear, Ratzinger entitled his book on the topic of the liturgy, published on the feast of St. Augustine in 1999 and extraordinarily successful (four editions in one year) Introduction to the Spirit of the Liturgy, referring to Guardini's famous The Spirit of the Liturgy, published in 1918.

Ratzinger himself writes in the foreword to his book:

One of the first works that I read after beginning my theological studies, at the beginning of 1946, was Romano Guardini's first book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, a small book published at Easter of 1918 as the inaugural volume of the series 'Ecclesia orans', edited by Abbot Herwegen, reprinted a number of times up until 1957.

This work can rightly be considered the beginning of the liturgical movement in Germany. It contributed in a decisive manner to the rediscovery of the liturgy, with its beauty, hidden richness, and greatness that transcends time, as the vital center of the Church and of Christian life.

It made its contribution to having the liturgy celebrated in an 'essential' manner (a term rather precious to Guardini); the desire was to understand it on the basis of its interior nature and form, as a prayer inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit himself, in which Christ continues to become present for us, to enter into our lives.

The comparison continues. Ratzinger compares his own intention to that of Guardini, maintaining that they are one and the same in spirit, even if their historical contexts are radically different:

I would like to hazard a comparison, which like all comparisons is to a great extent inadequate, but aids understanding.

One could say that the liturgy at the time – in 1918 – was in some ways similar to a fresco that had been preserved intact, but almost entirely plastered over; in the missal that the priest used to celebrate it, its form was fully present, as it had been developed from its origins, but for believers it was mostly hidden by instructions and forms of prayer of a private character.

Thanks to the liturgical movement, and, – in a definitive manner – thanks to Vatican Council II, the fresco was brought back into the light, and for a moment we all stood fascinated by the beauty of its colors and its forms.

But after the cleaning of the fresco, for Ratzinger the problem of the "spirit of the liturgy" is returning today.

To continue with the metaphor: For the current Pope, various mistaken attempts of restoration or reconstruction and disturbances caused by the great volume of visitors have brought the fresco into serious risk and threat of ruin, if the necessary measures are not taken to put an end to these harmful influences.

For Ratzinger, this is not a matter of returning to the past, and in fact he says:

Naturally, one must not plaster over it again, but a new understanding of the liturgical message and its reality is indispensable, so that bringing it back to the light should not represent the first step in its definitive ruin.

This book is intended to be a contribution to this renewed understanding. Its intentions therefore substantially coincide with what Guardini proposed in his time; for this reason, I intentionally chose a title that expressly recalls that classic of liturgical theology.

And in the text that follows, especially in the first chapter, he addresses Guardini's ideas, and his famous definition of the liturgy as "play" .

In his commemorative address in 1985, Ratzinger instead dwelt on the historical-philosophical foundation of the liturgical renewal proposed by Guardini.

In the 1923 work Liturgical Formation, the philosopher hailed the end of the modern era in the spirit of liberation, because it had represented the ruin of the human being, and, more generally, of the world, a schizophrenic separation between a disembodied and deceitful spirituality and a brutish materialism that is simply a tool in the hands of man and his objectives.

"Pure spirit" was sought, and abstraction was the result: the world of ideas, of formulas, of apparatus, of mechanisms, of organizations. Ratzinger emphasized that Guardini's avoidance of the modern coincided with his enthusiasm for the medieval paradigm, well illustrated in a book by a martyr under Nazism, Paul Ludwig Lansberg, The Medieval and Us, published in 1923.

For Guardini, this did not mean abandoning himself to a romantic view of the Middle Ages, but learning its permanent lesson. The celebration of the liturgy is the true self-fulfillment of the Christian, and therefore in the struggle over symbolism and the liturgy, what is at stake – Ratzinger notes, following Guardini's teaching – is the development of the essential dimension of man.

The future Pope would also dwell upon Guardini's statements in the letter that he sent in 1964 to participants at the third liturgical congress in Mainz, which contained this famous question: "Is liturgical action, and above all what is referred to as 'liturgy', so historically connected to the ancient and medieval world that, for the sake of honesty, it should now be entirely abandoned?"

In reality, this contained another dramatic question: Will the man of the future still be able to carry out that liturgical action which requires a symbolic-religious sense that is now dying out, in addition to the mere obedience of faith?

Without his earlier optimism, Guardini glimpsed the face of postmodernism with features that were very different from the ones he had hoped for before. This was a genuine spiritual shock, due to the technological civilization that had invaded everything, as previously expressed in his Letter from Lake Como in 1923.

For this reason, Ratzinger emphasizes, "something of the difficulty of recent times is found, despite his joy over the liturgical reform of the council developed on the basis of his own work, in his letter of 1964.

Guardini exhorted the liturgists gathered in Mainz to take seriously how far away are those who consider the liturgy as something that can no longer be celebrated, and to reflect on how it is possible – if the liturgy is essential – to come closer to it."


THE FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGICAL OPTION

Guardini, Ratzinger recalls, found himself in the thick of the drama over the modernist crisis. How did he emerge from it? Faithful to the lesson of his first master, Tuebingen theologian Wilhelm Koch, but also attentive to the limits and risks of this perspective, he went in search of a new foundation, and found it beginning with his own conversion.

The future Pope emphasizes:

The brief episode of how Guardini returned to the faith after losing it has something great and moving about it precisely in the modesty and simplicity with which he describes this process.

Guardini's experience in the attic and on the balcony of his parents' home bears a truly striking resemblance to the scene of the garden in which Augustine and Alypius saw their lives unfold before them.

Both cases are the revelation of the innermost part of a man, but in looking inside what is most personal and most hidden, in listening to the heartbeat of a man, one suddenly perceives a trace of history writ large, because it is the moment of truth, because a man has encountered the truth.

This is no longer an encounter with God in the universal sense, but with "God in the concrete." At that moment, Guardini, Ratzinger stresses, understood that he held everything in his hand, his entire life, and had to decide how to spend it.

His decision was to give his life to the Church, and from this arose his fundamental theological option: "Guardini was convinced that only thinking in harmony with the Church leads to freedom, and, above all, makes theology possible. This approach is of new relevance, and should be taken into consideration in the deepest way possible, as a requirement of modern theology."

For Guardini, there can be no constructive theological understanding as long as the Church and dogma appear only "as limitation and restriction." This led to his provocative motto, from the theological point of view: "We were definitely not liberals," a motto that alludes to the fact that for him, divine Revelation presented itself as the ultimate criterion, the "originating element" of theological understanding, and the Church was "its bearer."

Dogma thus became the fruitful ordering of theological thought. The effective foundation of his theology was, therefore, the experience of conversion, which for Guardini constituted the transcendence of the modern spirit, and especially of its subjectivist post-Kantian tendency.

For our thinker, therefore, "reflection is not at the beginning, but experience is. All of this presented itself later as content, and was developed on the basis of this original experience."

In describing the fundamental structure of Guardini's thought, the future Pope dwells upon what, in his view, constitute the principal categories within the unity of liturgy, Christology, and philosophy.

First of all, there is "the relationship between thought and being." This relationship implies attention to the truth itself, the search for the being behind doing. Again, just consider Guardini's words in his trial lecture in Bonn: "Thought seems inclined to turn reverently again to being."

Following in the footsteps of Nicolai Hartmann, Edmund Husserl, and above all Max Scheler, Guardini's proposal, for Ratzinger, expressed "optimism over the fact that philosophy was starting out again as a questioning of reality itself, a beginning that guided it in the direction of the great syntheses of the Middle Ages, and of the Catholic thought formed by these."

For Guardini – the future Pope emphasizes – the truth of man is essentiality, conformity to being, or even better, the "obedience to being" that is above all the obedience of our being before the being of God. Only in this way does one attain the power of the truth, the decisive and directional primacy of logos over ethos on which Guardini always insisted.

What he wanted, Ratzinger explains, was always "a new advancement toward being itself, the search for the essential that is found in the truth."

The obedience of thought to being – to that which reveals itself and is – therefore gave rise to many other categories in Guardini's though, which the future Pope sums up as follows:

Essentiality, to which Guardini opposes a merely subjective truthfulness; the obedience that follows from the relationship with the truth of man, and expresses the way in which he becomes free and becomes one with his own essence; in the end, the priority of logos over ethos, of being over doing.

To these must be added two other categories that emerge from Guardini's methodological writings: the "concrete-living" and "polar opposition."

The "concrete-living," in addition to being a general category of Guardini's thought, also assumes, according to Ratzinger, a Christological value:

Man is open to the truth, but the truth is not in some place, but rather in the concrete-living, in the figure of Jesus Christ. This concrete-living demonstrates itself as truth precisely through the fact that it is the unity of apparent opposites, because the logos and the a-logon are united in it. The truth is found only in the whole.

The "apparent opposites" are alluded to in the other fundamental methodological category, that of the "polar opposition" of the opposites that, in their tension, make reference to each other: silence-word, individual-community. Only those who know how to keep these together can abandon any form of dangerous exclusivism and all harmful dogmatism.


A WARNING FOR THE FUTURE

On March 14, 1978, the Bavarian Catholic Academy awarded the "Romano Guardini Prize" to the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Alfons Goppel, and according to custom, the head of the Bavarian bishops' conference – Joseph Raztinger – was asked to deliver the "Laudatio."

It was a text of extraordinary density, in which he reviewed the various dimensions of the 'political': politics as art, the grounding of politics in territory, responsibility toward the state, the relationship between truth and conscience in the political realm.

In this last passage, Ratzinger once again took up Guardini's teaching:

In Germany, we have experienced that kind of tyranny which sentences to death, prohibits, confiscates. The unscrupulous exploitation of words is a particular kind of tyranny which in its own way sentences to death, prohibits, confiscates.

Today there are certainly sufficient reasons to express similar warnings and to remember the forces that are capable of preventing this kind of tyranny, which is visibly increasing.

Romano Guardini's experience of Hitler's bloody tyranny and his vigilance before new threats led him, during his last years and almost against his own temperament, to issue dramatic warnings about the destruction of politics through the annihilation of conscience, and drove him to call for a proper interpretation, not a merely theoretical one, but a real and effective interpretation of the world according to the man who acts politically on the basis of faith.


Guardini proposed important themes like these to the German academic world from Berlin to Tuebingen to Munich.

According to the future Pope, Guardini had a controversial relationship with the German universities, which beginning with his professorship in Berlin made him suffer "because of the impression that he was outside of the methodological canon of the university, and that quite clearly he was not recognized by it. He consoled himself with the fact that, with his own struggle to understand, interpret, and give form, he might be the forerunner of a university that did not yet exist."

Ratzinger here makes a note that brings to mind the recent controversy over his canceled visit to La Sapienza University in Rome: "It is to the credit of the German university that Guardini was able to find room there, with all of his experience, and was able to feel it increasingly as the place of his specific vocation."

Only Nazism temporarily took his teaching post away from him, and, in the memory of that tragic event, following the war – the future Pope highlights – in an intense academic address on the Jewish question, Guardini passionately defended the university as the place for investigation into the truth, where human affairs and events are measured according to the full scope of the past, without the onslaught of the present, where responsibility for the community should be vigilant.

The Third Reich would not have come to power, Ratzinger reminds us in the words of Guardini, if the German university had not met its "downfall" due to the removal of the question of the truth on the part of the dominant academic models:

At that time, Guardini stated his position with a heartfelt appeal that ordinarily seemed entirely foreign to him, opposing the politicization of the university and its infiltration by party leadership, political chatter, the noise of the streets, and he cried out to his listeners: "Ladies and gentlemen, do not permit this! This concerns that which is common to all of us, our future."




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/10/2010 13:56]
30/10/2010 16:00
OFFLINE
Post: 21.341
Post: 3.977
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Oct. 30, Saturday, 30th Week in Ordinary Time

Second from left, The Vision of San Alfonso, Zurbaran, 1630.
ST. ALFONSO RODRIGUEZ OF MALLORCA (Spain, 1533-1617), Father and Widower, Jesuit Brother
He is often confused today with a later saint who has a near-identical name, St. Alonso Rodriguez, one of three Jesuit martyrs canonized in 1987 for their work as pioneering missionaries in Paraguay and Argentina (they lived at around the same time as today's saint). Alfonso inherited a family textile business in Segovia at age 23, and within the next three years, his mother, wife and daughter died, leaving him along with a young son. In the years that followed, he learned the discipline of prayer and meditation. When his son also died, Alfonso, at 35, sought to join the Jesuit order, and was twice rejected for lack of education. Finally, in 1571, he was admitted to the novitiate as a brother at a Jesuit college in Palma de Mallorca, where he became the doorkeeper for the rest of his life (45 years). He is one of a great line of 'doorkeeper saints' that include Conrad of Parzham, Padre Pio and Andre Bessette, who in addition to doing a whole range of menial duties, were also dispensers of charity and spiritual counsel, as well as exemplars of prayerful, meditative life. Alfonso quickly gained fame for his holiness and bringing comfort to those who came to him for advice. He was 72 when the future saint Pedro Claver came to the college as a seminarian. The became great friends, and it was he who encouraged the future 'apostle to the slaves' to serve in Latin America. After Alfonso died, his memoirs and spiritual notes revealed the depth of his interior life - he had been favored by God with mystical ecstasies and visions of our Lord, our Lady and many saints. He was declared Venerable in 1760, but his beatification was delayed until 1825 because the Jesuits underwent decades of suppression in Spain. He was canonized in 1877.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/103010.shtml



OR today.

Illustrations: 20th-cent Syriac icon of The communion of the Apostles; and poster for the Italian Catholic Action Youth rally today.
The Pope to participants of a symposium on Romano Guardini:
'The Christian looks at the world with truth'
Page 1 also has: An essay on the 'feast of dedication and renewal of the Church' observed by the Western Syrian Catholic tradition next Sunday as the start of their liturgical year. And in international news- European Union leaders at Brussels summit agree on a common fund but not on an amendment to the Lisbon Treaty; UN alarm over a possible resumption of civil war in Lebanon as Iran-backed Hezbollah receives new arms shipments; and the remarkable presence of women traders in the finance markets of the Arab Emirates. In the inside pages, an emphasis on the Italian Church on the occasion of the publication of its pastoral plan for 2010-2020, on the theme 'Educating for the good life according to the Gospel': the rally by Italian Catholic Action youth today at St. Peter's Square with the Pope; and an essay by Mons. Mariano Crociata, secretary-general of the Italian bishops' conference, on the significance of the decade's pastoral theme.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, P.S.S., Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

- Mons. Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

- Italian Catholic Action youth at a rally in St. Peter's Square. Instead of a regular address,
he answered a couple of questions from the assembly.
30/10/2010 16:27
OFFLINE
Post: 21.342
Post: 3.978
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Forgive this re-post from yesterday. It was the last post at the bottom of the page, so I am just highlighting it again... and have added an essay written 'about the book' when it was first announced last summer.... Frankly, I am surprised that none of the major Catholic blogs I follow have not yet picked up Ignatius's announcement from yesterday!.. I like the German cover design which uses B16's handwriting for the main title...


A CHRISTMAS GIFT
ONE MONTH EARLY



In less than a month Ignatius Press will be publishing a book by a fairly well-known man that is sure to get some attention: Light Of The World The Pope, The Church and The Signs Of The Times, the third book-length interview by German journalist Peter Seewald of Pope Benedict XVI.

The first two interviews, Salt of the Earth, and God and the World, took place before Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope; Seewald is also the author of Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait. Light of the World is wide-ranging and unprecedented:

Never has a Pope, in a book-length interview, dealt so directly with such wide-ranging and controversial issues as Pope Benedict XVI does in Light of the World. Taken from a recent week-long series of interviews with veteran journalist Peter Seewald, this book tackles head-on some of the greatest issues facing the world of our time. Seewald poses such forthright questions to Pope Benedict as:

•What caused the clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church?
•Was there a "cover up"?
•Have you considered resigning?
•Does affirming the goodness of the human body mean a plea for "better sex"?
•Can there be a genuine dialogue with Islam?
•Should the Church rethink Catholic teaching on priestly celibacy, women priests, contraception, and same-sex relationships?
•Holy Communion for divorced-and-remarried Catholics?
•Is there a schism in the Catholic Church?
•Should there be a Third Vatican Council?
•Is there any hope for Christian unity?
•Is Christianity the only truth?
•Can the Pope really speak for Jesus Christ?
•How can the Pope claim to be "infallible"?
•Is there a "dictatorship of relativism" today?

Twice before, these two men held wide-ranging discussions, which became the best-selling books Salt of the Earth and God and the World. Then, Seewald's discussion partner was Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican's chief doctrinal office.

Now, Joseph Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI, the spiritual leader of the world's over one billion Catholics. Though Seewald now interviews the Pope himself, the journalist "pulls no punches", posing some of the thorniest questions any Pope has had to address.

Believers and unbelievers will be fascinated to hear Benedict's thoughtful, straightforward and thought-provoking replies. This is no stern preachment or ponderous theological tract, but a lively, fast-paced, challenging, even entertaining exchange.

The Foreword to Light of the World was written by George Weigel, whose new book, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy, is available through Ignatius Press.


Of the thousands of literally ravishing photographs that are available of Pope Benedict XVI, why do book publishers always manage to choose the most 'pedestrian' [for lack of a more appropriate word to characterize their oh-so-undistinguished picks!] for their covers??? GRRRR!!!!


Summer conversations between
the Pope and Peter Seewald

by Deacon Keith Fournier


ROME, Italy, Sept. 1 (Catholic Online) - When he first assumed the Chair of Peter, some mistook Pope Benedict XVI's diminutive stature and milder manner of communication as a signal that he was somewhat less inclined to the spontaneous than his predecessor.

After all, the world had not seen the kind of easy communication which the late Servant of God John Paul II displayed. [Fournier forgets John XXIII!] So, it was assumed, his shoes would be somewhat hard to fill and we should not expect another communicator Pope.

This became the often repeated "conventional wisdom". However, what quickly emerged was something quite different: Pope Benedict XVI would continue the pattern of communicating comfortably with the faithful. Only, his manner and demeanor were very different from his predecessor. He just has different shoes ...and he fills them quite well.

Observers of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger knew of his extraordinary gift of teaching, amply demonstrated in his career as a theologian and a professor. They also knew of his manner. He offers reflective, gently expressed and insightful comments in response to questions. He has done this for years; and often, in small groups. The format of question and answer as a means of communication has been part of his priestly ministry for a very long time.

He continued the practice since he assumed the Chair of Peter and has demonstrated his comfort with the medium. For example, we only have to call back to mind some of his back and forth dialogue with priests and even with children while he was on vacation.

These dialogues reveal a kind man who is not only deeply evangelical, in the sense of wanting to bring people into an encounter with the Lord Jesus, but comfortable in his own skin and unafraid of spontaneity.

So when Fr Federico Lombardi announced on August 31 that Pope Benedict XVI had spent an entire week at Castel Gandolfo having conversations with Peter Seewald which would form the framework for a new book - observers of this Pope were not surprised. After all, he has done this very thing in the past.

In 1996 then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was the Head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. He gave a series of interviews to Peter Seewald. They became the best selling Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium. Those answers to the German Journalist on a wide range of subjects are still being reviewed by those following this Papacy.

In 2002, he did it once again - with the same journalist. It produced a sequel entitled God and the World: Faith and Life in Our Time.

[Fournier inexplicably omits the very first such interview-book which would create a new literary genre: the one in 1984 with Vittorio Messori that came out in English as THE RATZINGER REPORT, and which inspired John Paul II to do a similar interview-book with Messori years later, CROSSING THE THRESHOLD OF HOPE. ]

The announcement swept the global media instantly. Once again, the Pope has chosen Peter Seewald for the privilege. There are several reasons.

First, he is loyal to his friends, as well as his students. [The overriding consideration here, it appears, was to get the book out ASAP, which would be so much easier if he spoke to a German journalist in his own language, rather than conducting it in Italain with Messori or in some other language which the Pope would then have to review in the original language before it can be published and translated.]

Not only is Peter Seewald a highly respected European journalist, but he admittedly owes much to the priestly ministry of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger - now Pope Benedict XVI. He openly acknowledges that he was an atheist until his encounters with the Pope. Those encounters led to his re-conversion to the Catholic faith.

His desire for all men and women to encounter Jesus Christ is the very core of Pope Benedict XV's mission and reveals his heart. In his encyclical letter on the Love of God he writes "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

This new book will be something everyone reading this article will want to read. Like his other interviews it will reveal the very human side of this gifted man and, due to the format, it will communicate his profound insights on Christ and the Church in conversational and accessible manner.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/10/2010 16:48]
30/10/2010 17:53
OFFLINE
Post: 21.343
Post: 3.979
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master






100,000 children and teens
of Italian Catholic Action
gather to listen to the Pope

Oct. 30, 2010






30 OCT 2010 (RV) - As many as 100,000 young people gathered in St. Peter’s Square Saturday for a morning of prayer and fellowship that culminated in an encounter with Pope Benedict XVI, who answered questions from a few of their representatives.

The gathering was organized by Azione Cattolica Ragazzi (acr), the youth wing of Italian Catholic Action, and brought together children and teenagers from every part of Italy, who began to descend upon the square well before dawn, many of them carrying signs and banners on which were written variations on the theme of the encounter: "C’è di più. Diventiamo grandi insieme" (There is much more - Growing up together).

After an enthusiastic morning of song and cheer in the Square beneath his window in the Apostolic Palace, the Pope came to greet his young guests and the adults who had accompanied them, and to answer questions from three of their number: a boy, a girl and one of their grown-up leaders, a teacher, Milena Marrocco from the diocese of Gaeta, who asked the Holy Father what it means to be an educator.

The Holy Father answered that true educators are not those who lord it over their charges, but those who recognize that they are, in Jesus’s name, servants of joy, whose task it is to lead the little ones in their care to Christ.

The boy, Francesco Poddo of the diocese of Nuoro, asked the Holy Father what it means to grow up, and how to grow as a follower of Jesus. He also asked, “Who can help?” in the great task of coming into adulthood – to which the Holy Father responded that growing up means growing in real friendship with Jesus, through prayer and constant participation in the sacraments.

“You also want to say, loud and clear, to everyone you meet, how beautiful it is to have a friend in Jesus – and how beautiful it is to be together in friendship with him, helped by your parents, your priests and your pastoral leaders!”

The girl, Anna Bulgarelli of the diocese of Carpi, spoke of the heartache and suffering that often accompany adolescents in their relationships, and asked the Holy Father to help her and her companions better to understand what it means to love well and truly:

The Pope responded saying that pop culture often conveys a distorted picture of love that is really selfishness and closure. “It gives you the thrill of a moment,” said Pope Benedict, “but it doesn’t make you happy – it doesn’t make you great.”

“Rather,” continued Pope Benedict, “it costs something to live love truly. It requires sacrifice. But I am sure you are not afraid of the hard work that authentic, committed love requires.”





Commendably, the Vatican has already posted the transcript of today's Q&A, so here's a translation:




(Francesco Poddo, Diocese of Nuoro):
Holiness, what does it mean to grow up? What must I do to grow up following Jesus? Who can help me?
THE HOLY FATHER:
Dear friends of Italian Catholic Action, I am simply so happy to meet you in such numbers in thios beautiful piazza, and thank you from the heart for your affection.

I address a welcome to each of you, and I sespecially greet your president, Prof. Franco Miano, and your general spiritual adviser, Mons. Demonico Sigalini.

And I greet Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian bishops conference, the other bishops present, priests, educators and parents who have come here with you.

Now, to the question from the boy. The most beautiful answer to what it means to grow up is what you all carry written on your shirts, your caps and your posters: "There is much more".

Your slogan, which I did not know beforehand, has made me reflect. What does a child expect when he grows up? He compares his height with his peers, and he imagines himself growing even taller in order to feel bigger.

When I was a boy your age, I was one of the smallest boys in class, which made me want all the more to be very tall one day - not just tall in height, but I also wanted to do something great, something more of my life, even if I did not have that slogan in mind, "There is much more!".

This 'something more' can mean growing in height. Your heart also tells you, it wants to have more friends, that it is happy when you behave well, when you can give joy to Papa and Mamma, but above all, when you meet the friend who cannot be surpassed, a very good and unique friend, who is Jesus.

You know how much Jesus loved children and young people. One day, many children like you came to him because a beautiful understanding had been established between them, and in his eyes, they saw the reflection of God's love. But there were also adults there who felt annoyed by the presence of the children.

It happens to you sometimes, when you are playing or amusing yourselves with friends, and the elders tell you, "Don't bother us!" Well, Jesus reproached those adults and said to them: "Let all the children come to me, because they have in their heart the secret of the Kingdom of God!"

And so, Jesus taught the elders that even you are 'big' - which means that you have a heart that loves Jesus - and that adults should protect this in you.

Dear children and young people, to 'grow up' means to love Jesus so much, that you listen to him and talk to him in prayer, meet him in the Sacraments, in Holy Mass, at confession. It means getting to know him ever more and to make him be known to others. It means being with his friends, even the poorest, the sick, in order to grow together.

ACR is part of that 'something more'. It means that you are not alone in loving Jesus - there are so many of you, as we see this morning - and that you help one another. You would not like to see any friend left alone, and you wish to tell everyone clearly how beautiful it is to have Jesus for a friend, how beautiful it is to be a friend of Jesus. And it is beautiful to do so together, along with your parents, your priests and your teachers.

That is how you truly grow up, not just because you will be taller with age, but because your heart is open to the joy and love that Jesus gives you. And that means, you are open to the true greatness, which is to be in God's great love, which is also the love of your friends and family.

Let us hope and pray to grow in this sense, to find that 'something more', to be persons with a big heart, with a great friend who passes on his greatness even to us. Thank you.


OR photo.

(Anna Bulgarelli, Diocese of Carpi:)
Holiness, our teachers at Catholic Action tell us that in order to be 'big', we must learn to love. But often, we get lost and suffer in our relationships, in our friendships, in our first loves. What does it really mean to love to the utmost? How can we learn to love truly?
A great question. It is very important - I would say, fundamental - to learn to love, to love truly, to learn the art of true love.

As adolescents, we look at the mirror and we realize that we are changing. But as long as one just goes on looking at oneself, one will never grow up!

You grow up when you will no longer let the mirror be your only image of truth about yourself, but when you let your friends tell you who you are. You grow up when you are able to make of your life a gift to others, not searching for yourself, but to give yourself to others. This is the school of love.

But this love must carry within it that 'something more' that you have been shouting out today. "There's so much more!" As I said earlier, in my youth, I too wanted much more than what society and the mentality of my time presented to me. I wanted to breathe fresh air, I wanted a world that was beautiful and good, as our God had wanted for everyone, our God, the Father of Jesus.

And I started understanding ever more that the world becomes beautiful and good if we know the will of God, what he wants for us, and if the world corresponds to the will of God who is true light, who is beauty, the love that gives meaning to the world.

And that is true. You cannot and should not content yourself to 'love' that is reduced to a piece of merchandise, to be consumed without respect for oneself and for others, that is not capable of chastity and purity. This is not freedom.

Much of the 'love' that is offered in the media, in the Internet, is not love - it is selfishness, closedness; it gives you illusion for an instant, but it does not make you happy, it will not make you grow up, it will bind you down like a chain that stifles thought and the most beauiful feelings, the true impulses of the heart, that irrepressible force that is true love and which finds its maximum expression in Jesus, and in the Holy Spirit, the power and the fire to kindle your lives, your thoughts, your affections.

Of course, it also takes sacrifice to live love genuinely - without renunciation, you cannot take this path - but I am sure that you do not fear the effort needed for a committed and authentic love. It is the only thing, after all is said and done, that gives true joy.

There is a test that will tell you if your love is growing well: when you do not exclude others from your life, especially your friends who suffer and who are alone, people in difficulty, and when you open your heart to the great friend that Jesus is.

Catholic Action teaches you the ways to learn authentic love: taking part in the life of the Church; loving your friends in ACR and elsewhere; your availability to those you meet at school, in the parish and other places; the company of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who will protect your heart and lead you in the path of goodness.

Moreover, in Catholic Action, you have so many examples of love that is genuine, beautiful and true, like Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati and Blessed Alberto Marvelli. Of love that has led to the sacrifice of one's life, as did Blessed Pierina Morosini and Blessed Antonia Messina.

Young people of Catholic Action, aim for great goals, because God gives you the strength for them. The 'something more' is to be children and youth who decide to love like Jesus does, to be the leading player in your own life, as well as leading players in the Church, witnesses to the faith for your contemporaries.

The 'something more' is the human and Christian formation that you experience in Catholic Action, which brings together spiritual life, brotherhood, public witness to the faith, ecclesial communion, love for the Church, working with your bishops and priests, spiritual friendship.

And 'to grow up together' expresses the importance of being part of a group and a community that will help you to grow, to discover your calling and to learn true love. Thank you.


(Milena Marrocca, teacher, Diocese of Gaeta:)
Holiness, what does it mean to be an educator today? How can we face the difficulties we meet in doing our service? And how can we make it the responsibility of all to take care of the present and future of the new generations?
We see in this question the educational challenge. I would say that to be a teacher means to have joy in your heart that you can communicate to everyone as something that makes life beautiful and good.

It means offering goals for the journey of life, offering the beauty of the person of Jesus to make others enamored of him, of his way of life, of his freedom, of his great love full of confidence in God the Father.

It means holding up at all times the goal of every existence towards that 'something more' that comes to us from God. This requires a personal knowledge of Jesus, a personal contact, daily and loving, in prayer, in meditating on the Word of God, in faithfulness to the Sacraments, to the Eucharist, to confession.

It requires communicating the joy of being in the Church, to have friends with whom to share not just difficulties but also the beauties and surprises of a life of faith.

You know quite well that you are not the masters of the children in your care, but servants of their joy in the name of Jesus, guides to lead them to him. You have received the Church's mandate for this task.

Your membership in Catholic Action tells everyone, including yourself, that you love the Church, that you are ready to be co-responsible with the Church pastors for her life and mission, in an association that exerts itself for the good of people, for their and your journeys towards holiness, for the life of Christian communities as they carry out the Christian mission day to day.

You will be good educators if you are able to involve everyone for the sake of young people. You cannot be self-sufficient, but you must be able to feel the urgency of educating the younger generations at all levels.

Without the presence of the family, for instance, you risk building on sand. Without collaborating with the schools, you cannot shape in them a profound intelligence of the faith. Without involving the various other workers who work with them in their leisure activities and in communications, your work is at risk of not being effective, of not making a mark on their daily life.

I am sure that Catholic Action is well rooted in Italy and has the courage to be 'salt and light'. Your presence here this morning tells not just me but everyone that it is possible to educate children well, that it is hard work but beautiful to be able to give enthusiasm to children and young people.

Have the courage - I would even say, the daring - not to leave any place devoid of Jesus, of his kindness, that you can let everyone experience, especially the neediest and the abandoned, through your mission as educators.

Dear friends, finally, I thank you all for having taken part in this encounter. I would love to stay longer with you, because when I am in the midst of so much joy and enthusiasm, I too am full of joy, and I feel rejuvenated!

Unfortunately, time goes fast and others are waiting to see me. But in my heart, I am with you and will always be with you. And I invite you, dear friends, to continue along your path, faithful to the identity and the purposes of Catholic Action.

The power of God's love can achieve great things through you. I assure you of rememberance in all my prayers and I entrust you to the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, because like her, you can testify that 'There is much more" - the joy of a full life in the presence of the Lord.

I thank you all from the heart.





10/31/10
Newsphotos yesterday were hardly representative of the event. I kept waiting for them to post more, but even this morning, they have not added a single photo. For instance, not a single overview of the entire crowd [the one I used in the first photo above is from the OR and does not blow up well], and not a single photo of the Holy Father or the three questioners at the Q&A. Here are the rest of the photos from the news agencies - with great photographs of B16 during the Popemobile 'tour':








[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2010 13:09]
31/10/2010 12:18
OFFLINE
Post: 21.344
Post: 3.980
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



The Vatican did not post till Thursday the Holy Father's German text for his address last Monday to participants of a symposium on the late German theologian Erik Peterson - a convert from Lutheranism. The event was poorly reported at the time, and not even Vatican Radio provided enough text excerpts in its English service. Certainly, not enough emphasis to the Pope's recounting of Peterson's impact on him as a young priest and theologian... The text makes a companion piece to his remarks about Romano Guardini four days later and posted earlier on this page... The Pope had a prepared text, but much of what he said was extemporaneous, thus the delay in the posting of the transcript.


Benedict XVI praises German theologian
whose writings showed him in 1951
'the theology I was looking for'

Oct. 25, 2010




Eminences,
Dear brothers in the Priesthood,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends:

With great joy, I greet you all who have come to Rome for the international symposium on Erik Peterson. I thank you, especially, Cardinal Lehmann, for the friendly words with which you opened this encounter.

As you said, 120 years ago this year, this outstanding theologian was born in Hamburg, and almost on this very day, 50 years ago, on Oct. 26, 1960, he died in his native city.

Since 1930, he lived here in Rome at certain times, and then, from 1933 onwards, as a resident of the city, first on the Aventine near [the church of] Sant'Anselmo, and later near the Vatican, in a house across the street from the Porta Sant'Anna.

Therefore, it is a special joy for me to welcome his family, who are here with us - his distinguished daughters and his son, together with their respective families. In 1990, together with Cardinal Lehmann, I delivered to your cherished mother, in the apartment that you shared then, an autographed portrait of John Paul II for her 80th birthday, and I gladly recall meeting you then.

"Here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come" (Heb 13,14). This passage from the Letter to the Hebrews could be considered the motto for Erik Peterson's life. In fact, he never found a real place all his life in which he could obtain recognition and a stable residence.

The start of his scientific activity coincided with a time of upheaval in Germany after the first World War. The monarchy had fallen. Civilian order was at risk in the face of political and social upheavals. This was also reflected in the religious field, particularly, in German Protestantism.

The liberal theology which had prevailed till then, with its widespread optimism about progress, was in crisis and had given way to new and conflicting theological breakthroughs. The situation posed an existential problem for the young Peterson. With both historical and theological interest, he had already chosen the subject of his studies, saying "when we are left with human history alone, then we stand before a puzzle that makes no sense"
(Eintrag in das Bonner „Album Professorum" 1926/27, Ausgewählte Schriften, Sonderband S. 111).

Peterson decided - and I quote further - "to work in the historical field, especially the problem of the history of religions", since in the evangelical theology of his time, he claimed he "could not make his way through the jungle of opinions to get to the facts in themselves" (ibid).

Along this path, he came more and more to the certainty that there is no history detached from God, that in this history, the Church has a special place and finds its meaning.

I cite further: "That there is a Church and that she is constituted in a specific way depends closely on the fact that... there is a history that is specifically theological"
(Vorlesung „Geschichte der Alten Kirche" Bonn 1928, Ausgewählte Schriften, Sonderband S.88).

The Church received from God the mission to lead men out of their constricted and isolated existence to a universal society, from the natural to the supernatural, from transience to fulfillment at the end of times. In a beautiful booklet on the angels, he says of this: "The way of the Church goes from the earthly Jerusalem to the heavenly city... to the city of the angels and the saints" (Introduction).

The starting point for his journey was the binding character of Holy Scripture. According to Peterson, Scripture becomes and is binding, not as such - it is never just 'by itself' - but in the hermeneutic of the Apostolic Tradition, which in turn, is concretized in the Apostolic succession - and that is how the Church maintains Scripture living and actual while interpreting it.

Through the bishops who are in the apostolic succession, testimony to SCripture remains alive in the Church, laying down the foundation for the beliefs of faith that are premanently valid in the Church, which we find above all in the Credo and in Church dogma. These beliefs are continually manifested in the liturgy as the Church's favored means for praising God.

The Mass celebrated on earth thus stands in an indissoluble relationship with the heavenly Jerusalem - where the true and eternal sacrifice of praise is offered to God, and of which the earthly celebration is merely a representation.

The participant in the Holy Mass remains standing outside the threshold of the heavenly sphere, from which he contemplates the worship carried out by the angels and saints. Wherever the earth Church intones her eucharistic praise, she joins this festive celestial assembly, in which, through the saints, part of her has already arrived, giving hope to all those who are still in pilgrimage on earth towards eternal fulfillment.




Perhaps at this point I will interpose a personal reflection. I first came across the figure of Erik Peterson in 1951. I was a chaplain in Bogenhausen, and Herr Wild, the head of the local publishin house Koesel, gave me a copy of the just published Theologische Traktate.

I read it with growing curiosity and found myself truly gripped by it, because
here was the theology that I was looking for. Theology, that on the one hand, brought historical seriousness to studying and understanding [Scriptural] texts, analyzing them with all the seriousness of historical research, but not remaining in the past, going beyond the literal text, and into it, allowing it to lead the theologian into contact with him from whom theology itself comes - the living God himself.

Thus the gap between the past, which philology analyzes, and the present is bridged, since the words lead to an encounter with reality, and one realizes the entire relevance of the written word which has transcended itself.

Thus I learned from him, in a more essential and deeper way, what theology really is, and I also felt admiration that this book did not just express what he thought, but was the expression of the path that was the passion of his life.

Paradoxically, it was his exchange of letters with Harnack* that was the best manifestation of the breakthrough that he had achieved. Harnack had confirmed for him, or had previously written independently, that the Catholic principle according to which "Scripture lives in Tradition, and Tradition is the living form of the apostolic succession" is the original and objective principle. and that 'sola Scriptura' does not work.

Peterson took this almost self-explanatory affirmation of a liberal theologian in all seriousness, and allowed himself to be stirred, shaken, plied and transformed by it, and thus, found the way to conversion.

With that, he had taken a truly Abraham-like step, as we hear at the start of the Letter to the Hebrews: "Here we have no lasting city". He left the security of a professorial chair to step into the uncertain, to be homeless, and for the rest of his life, remained without any sure ground to stand on nor a home to stay in, truly cast adrift with his faith and for the faith - trusting that in his homeless wandering, he was. in another sense, 'at home' in being always headed for the heavenly liturgy that had so touched him.

From all this, it is understood that much of what Erik Peterson thought and did - because of his precarious situation in life after losing his teaching post after his conversion - remained fragmentary.

Although he had to live without a fixed income, he got married here in Rome and started a family. Thus he gave expression concretely to his inner certainty that although one is a stranger - which he was, in a very particular way - one can find support in the communion of love, and that in love itself, there is something that lasts for eternity.

He experienced the alienation of the Christian. He had become an enemy of evangelical theology, and he remained somewhat alien even in Catholic theology as it was at the time.

And now we know that he belonged to both, that both had something to learn from him about the drama, the realism and the existential and human demands of theology.

Erik Peterson, as Cardinal Lehmann said, was certainly appreciated and loved by many, a hidden gem known only to a small circle, but he was not given the scientific recognition he deserved; it was also, perhaps, somewhat too early.

As I said, he was a stranger in both camps. So we cannot praise Cardinal Lehmann enough for having taken the initiative to publich Peterson's works in a magnificent complete edition, and Madame Nichtweiss, to whom this task was given, which she performed with admirable competence.

Thus the attention given to him because of this publication is only right and fair, and that many of his works have now been translated into Italian, French, Spanish, English, Hungarian and even Chinese.

I hope that through this, there will be wider dissemination of the thinking of Peterson, who never lingered on details but always had a view of theology in its wholeness.

I sincerely thank all who are present for coming here. My special thanks for the organizers of this symposium, not the least Cardinal Farina, as patron, and Dr. Giancarlo Caronello. I gladly extend my best wishes for an interesting and stimulating discussion, in the spirit of Erik Peterson. I look forward to the fruits of this congress and impart to you and all those who are dear to you, the Apostolic Blessing.


*Adolf Harnack (1851-1930) was a Lutheran theologian and church historian who argued that the relevance of Christianity to the modern world lay not in theological dogmatism but in the understanding of the religion as a historical development. He was widely influential in the movement to treat Jesus primarily as a historical character.



One of a trio of articles on Peterson published by L'Osservatore Romano last July on the actual 40th anniversary of his death, contained the following information about a direct involvement of Joseph Ratzinger in the 'rehabilitation' of Peterson's theology - or at least in keeping his reputation alive... Here is a translation:

Excerpted from
In Rome, Peterson deepened
his concept of 'Ekklesia'

by Giancarlo Caronello
Translated from

July 23, 2010

...With the publication of the article 'The Church' by Joseph Ratzinger for the second edition of the Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, the rediscovery of Peterson's Catholic ecclesiology became clearly noticeable.

It was 1961. Peterson had been dead for a year. His position was taken up and partly integrated by Ratzinger with his constant references to the similar ecclesiology of the Biblical exegete Schlier*.

Some onesidedness in Peterson's essays of 1928 was taken in context and re-proposed with their original intention of returning to Patristic tradition, particularly its pneumatological [pertaining to the Holy Spirit] aspect.

Decisive for this was the perspective of the history of salvation, expressed by the unity of the two Testaments, which was the context for the 'rediscovery' of Peterson's ecclesiology.

It is equally significant that the publication of Peterson's lengthy manuscript Ekklesia took place in the same week as the publication of the eighth volume of Joseph Ratzinger's Opera omnia - Kirche: Zeichen unter den Völkern. Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene (Church: Signs among the People, Writings on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism), which includes the 1961 article (pp. 205-219).

Equally relevant is another article which appears in the same volume on the origin and nature of the Church written by Ratzinger in 1991, and available in Italian from the book La Chiesa. Una comunità sempre in cammino (The Church: A community ever on pilgrimage, Joseph Ratzinger, publ. San Paolo, 2008, pp. 9-40).

Ratzinger devotes careful attention to the ecclesiological formulations of Peterson - with revealing reflections on the self-determination of the Church as Ekklesia, as well as on the historiographic and eschatological paradigm with which he confronts the thorny problem of the constitution of the Church in time.


*Hermann Schlier is another favorite reference of Joseph Ratzinger. He was another famous Lutheran who, in 1953, converted to Catholicism. Ratzinger met and frequented him when he took the professorship in Bonn. He cites him in JESUS OF NAZARETH, because although Schlier was an acknowledged master of the historico-philological critical method, he, too, believed that the historical Jesus is the Jesus of the Gospels.

Yet another example of Joseph Ratzinger's amazing consistency through the decades!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 02:51]
31/10/2010 14:58
OFFLINE
Post: 21.345
Post: 3.981
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Oct. 31, 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Left, a German stamp commemorating the 100th anniversary of the saint's death in 1994.
ST. WOLFGANG OF REGENSBURG (Germany, ca 224-294), Teacher, Benedictine Monk, Bishop
Born in Germany but educated by Benedictine monks in Reichenau, Switzerland, he became friends with a nobleman who would become Archbishop of Trier. Wolfgang taught at the cathedral school of Trier and helped his friend to reform the clergy. When The Archbishop died, he decided to become a Benedictine himself and became directory of the monastery school in Einsiedeln. Later, he was sent as a missionary to Hungary. Emperor Otto II appointed him Bishop of Regensburg, where he immediately initiated clergy reform, keeping to his austere life as a monk. He became tutor to the future emperor and saint, Henry II. Wolfgang was noted for his preaching and teaching, his charity and his care for lay people in the diocese. In the final years of his life, he retired to a hermitage in upper Austria, where he died in 994. He was canonized in 1052. Along with St. Ulrich (who ordained him) and St. Conrad of Constanz, Wolfgang is one of the three great German saints of the 10th century,
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/103110.shtml



OR today.

In St. Peter's Square, the Pope and the children and teens of Italian Catholic Action:
'Growing up means being able to love'
The other papal story in this issue is the Pope's discourse on the late theologian Romano Guardini, who had a great influence on him. There is a Page 1 essay on the Feast of All Saints tomorrow. International news: Terrorism alert follows discovery of various bombs shipped from Yemen to London and the US; mid-term elections in the USA; and a report on the progress made in fighting malaria worldwide - incidence has been cut almost in half.


THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - The Holy Father reflected on today's Gospel reading about Zacchaeus of Jericho, saying God does not discriminate between rich and poor. He reminded the faithful that yesterday in Bucharest, the Church beatified Szilárd Bogdánffy, Romanian bishop and martyr, who was arrested in 1949 by the Communists, jailed and died in prison.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/10/2010 14:59]
31/10/2010 15:26
OFFLINE
Post: 21.346
Post: 3.982
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



ANGELUS TODAY


AsiaNews says the Angelus crowd today was around 50,000.

The Holy Father reflected on the Gospel reading today about Zacchaeus of Jericho, saying God does not discriminate between rich and poor.

He also reminded the faithful that yesterday in Romania, the Church beatified Szilárd Bogdánffy, Romanian bishop and martyr, who was arrested in 1949 by the Communists, jailed and died in prison.

In English, he said this:

I would now like to offer a word of greeting to all the English-speaking visitors present at today’s Angelus prayer!

In the liturgy of the word this morning, Our Lord tells us that he "has come to seek out and save those who were lost". May we always know our need for God and embrace his will for us, in love and humility. May God abundantly bless you and your loved ones!




Here is a full translation of the Pope's words today:



Dear brothers and sisters:

The evangelist Luke pays particular attention to the theme of Jesus's mercy. In his accounts, we find episodes which highlight the merciful love of God and of Christ, who says that he came to call not on the just but on the sinners (cfr Lk 5,32).

Among the accounts typical of Luke is that of the conversion of Zacchaeus which we read in today's liturgy. Zacchaeus was a publican, indeed, the chief publican of Jericho, an important city near the banks of the Jordan river.

Publicans were the tax collectors who exacted the tributes that Jews had to pay the Roman emperor, and for this alone, they were considered public sinners [by their fellow Jews] . Moreover, they often took advantage of their position to extort money from the people.

And so, Zacchaeus was very rich but also much despised by his townmates. Thus, when Jesus, passing through Jericho, stopped at the house of Zacchaeus, this caused a general scandal.

But the Lord knew very well what he was doing. He had, so to speak, taken a risk, and he won the wager. Zacchaeus, profoundly struck by Jesus's visit, decided to change his life and promised to restitute his victims four times what he had robbed them.

"Today salvation has come to this house," Jesus said. "..the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost."

God does not exclude anyone, neither the poor nor the rich. God is not conditioned by our human prejudices, but sees in each person a soul to be saved, and he is especially drawn to those who have been judged lost and who consider themselves lost.

Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God, showed this immense mercy, which does not lessen the gravity of sin, but always aims to save the sinner, to offer him the possibility to rescue himself, to start anew, to convert.

In another passage of the Gospel, Jesus says it is very difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven (cfr Mt 19,23). In the case of Zacchaeus, we see that, just when it seems impossible, it happens.

Says St. Jerome: "He gave away his wealth and immediately replaced it with the wealth of the Kingdom of heaven" (Homily on Psalm 83.3). And St. Maximus of Turin adds: "Wealth, for the foolish, feeds dishonesty. But for the wise, it is an aid to virtue. The latter are offered an opportunity for salvation; the former have an obstacle which will lead to their loss" (Sermons, 95).

Dear friends, Zacchaeus welcomed Jesus and repented, because Jesus first welcomed him. He did not condemn him, but met his desire for salvation.

Let us pray to the Virgin Mary, perfect model of communion with Jesus, so that we too can experience the joy of being visited by the Son of God, to be renewed in his love, and to transmit his mercy to others.

After the prayers, he said:

Yesterday, at the Cathedral of Oradea Mare in Romania, Cardinal Peter Erdo [Archbishop of Budapest, Hungary], proclaimed Blessed the bishop and martyr Szilárd Bogdánffy.

In 1949, when he was 38, he was consecrated bishop clandestinely, and therefore arrested by the Communist regime in his country, Romania, on the charge of conspiracy. After four years of suffering and humiliation, he died in jail.

Let us give thanks to God for this heroic pastor of the Church who followed the Lamb to the very end. May his witness comfort those who are persecuted today because of the Gospel.





[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 06:20]
31/10/2010 15:40
OFFLINE
Post: 21.347
Post: 3.983
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Brace yourselves! The MSM may now have a newspeg to revive their anti-Church, anti-Pope campaign...


Victims of priest abuse plan
protest at the Vatican this afternoon




ROME, Oct. 31 (AFP) - People from across the world who have been abused by priests will gather outside the Vatican Sunday afternoon to condemn the Catholic Church's handling of the scandal, its worst crisis in years.

Several hundred protestors -- victims of abuse and their families -- are expected to demonstrate at the home of the powerful Church before leading a candle-lit vigil at which they will leave personal messages for the Vatican.

"This isn't an attack on faith or religion, it's about behaviour and ethics," said Marco Lodo Rizzini, a spokesman for child victims of abuse from Italy's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf.

Sixty-seven deaf-mute children at the Catholic institute in the city of Verona were allegedly abused by priests and lay staff between the 1950s and 1980s.

Similar claims have emerged from across Europe and the United States, with the Church accused of not acting quickly or firmly against priests involved and even covering up the problem.

"Society has failed to address the problem of child abuse by priests, but we can't let this go unresolved, it's time to act," Bernie McDaid, co-founder of the US group Survivors Voice that is behind the event, told AFP.

"We're hoping to expose the cover-up and ensure that children all over the world who suffer abuse receive help," said McDaid, who was abused by a priest when he was a boy.

The protest, due at 1600 GMT, will draw people from 13 countries including Australia, Belgium, Britain, The Netherlands and the United States, organisers said.

McDaid founded Survivors Voice with a fellow victim of clerical child abuse, Gary Bergeron, "to bring survivors and supporters from around the world together for the first time" and to recognise the issue's "global impact."

"We're gathering at the Vatican because we want the world to realise that if a child can be abused somewhere that is supposed to be the ultimate safe place, it can happen anywhere," said Bergeron.

"If children can be abused by a person who represents God -- in any faith -- they can be abused by anyone," he said.

Bergeron, who told his parents in 2002 he had been abused before discovering that his father was also a victim of clerical paedophilia, said the demonstration was not about making an example of the Catholic Church.

"Sadly it has already made an example of itself," he said.

The Church is grappling with its worst crisis in recent years since the publication in November 2009 of a report revealing serial abuse of children by priests in Ireland and a subsequent cover-up, with similar cases unveiled in countries including Belgium and Germany.

Senior clerics were accused of protecting guilty priests by shifting them to other parishes, where some offended again, instead of handing them over to face justice.

Pope Benedict XVI himself has faced allegations that, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger when he headed the Vatican morals watchdog and earlier as the Archbishop of Munich, he failed to take action against predator priests.

The Pope has stepped up his displays of contrition towards victims of paedophile priests on state visits as part of a concerted effort to convince Catholics and the wider world that the Church is now serious about tackling abuse.

The US association plans to mark the demonstration in Rome by announcing "The Year of the Survivor" and has started a global online petition to call on the United Nations to define paedophilia a "crime against humanity."



UPDATE
I was curious to find out how many protesters would turn up. Now we know... This report is from RTE, the official Irish TV news channel, so one must assume it is accurate. It would not knowingly underplay the event... Remember the last time the victimhood advocates planned 'a huge protest at the Vatican'? Exactly four protesters showed up... But the sicko advocates never learn!


Abuse victims bring
protest to Vatican


31/10/2010


ROME - Clerical sex abuse victims from across the world on Sunday took their calls for justice from Pope Benedict XVI to the doors of the Vatican itself.

Close to a hundred protesters _ victims of abuse and their families _ gathered in Rome before leading a candle-lit vigil to the edge of St Peter's Square on which they will leave personal messages for the leader of the Roman Catholic Church. [So how many in the group were actual victims? The 'about a hundred' probably included many victimhood advocacy activists, too!.. Or maybe most of them were the 67 victims from Verona?]

The US group behind the event, Survivor's Voice, said the victims had not been given permission to enter the square as a group, but would attempt to go in small numbers to leave letters and stones to mark their visit.... [YADA YADA YADA....]

[The rest of the story is a recycling of what AFP has in the earlier story...]


Not to minimize the gravity of the offenses committed against the victims, but evidently, few of them felt the urgency to spend money and time to join the organized - and in many ways, contrived - protest. The organizers are merely interested in scoring propaganda points, which MSM is only to glad to give them, but I can almost bet the number of media present to cover the protest was easily at least twice the number of protesters.

Victims should campaign insistently with their local bishop to seek redress if they have not yet been listened to. At the same time, they shoudl write Mons. Scicluna at the CDF to let him know.

But it defies common sense to think that any of them needs to do any grandstand play, such as as that staged at the Vatican today, to call attention to their plight. Surely, local, regional and national media have already given everyone willing to talk about his experiences as much of a public forum as they can wish for! And in the United States, at least, many of them who had sustainable accusations have been given their day in court. And for the victimhood advocates to continue exploiting victims for PR purposes is victimizing them all over, not to mention promoting the very unhealthy affliction of victimhood, which has never done anyone any good!



Police block sex abuse
survivors near Vatican

By NICOLE WINFIELD



ROME, Oct. 31 (AP) – Italian paramilitary police [They're your usual carabinieri who carry out security functions around the Vatican. But suddenly inserting the word 'paramilitary' to describe them makes it all sound more ominous and sinister! Winfield, your bias is SOOOO obvious!] blocked a boulevard leading to the Vatican to prevent a march Sunday by some 100 survivors of clergy sex abuse [Nice try, but RTE already told us that number includes their families] from reaching St. Peter's Square, but later allowed two protesters to approach Vatican soil so they could leave letters from the abused at the Holy See's doorstep.

The pair, including one of the organizers, Gary Bergeron of Boston, were escorted by police as they carried thick, lit candles to the edge of the square.

Then, after the two were told to put out the candles, Vatican security guards accompanied them to the foot of the staircase leading to the Apostolic Palace's bronze entrance doors.

There, according to Bergeron's account, the two deposited the sealed letters at the foot of the stairs, and after their passports were examined they were accompanied to the obelisk in the middle of the square. There they were allowed to leave a dozen stones, to indicate a symbolic path marker so other survivors might know they have company in their suffering.

Bergeron then went into a meeting with Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi,
who earlier had beaten a hasty retreat to his office when a protester shouted "Shame, shame" in Italian....

I won't bother to post the rest of Winfield's biased ballast, but even she could not inflate the number of protestors. Also, she ignored a statement from Fr. Lombardi, translated below:

"There was no problem nor any incident with the protestors gathered in front of Castel Sant'Angelo. I approached them to speak to the organizers. Newsmen and TV coverage teams were there but I did not see the promoters, so I went back to Vatican Radio. That's all. Nothing happened while I was there.

The fact that one of the promoters did 'go into a meeting with Fr. Lombardi afterward', according to the AP story itself, validates Lombardi's statement.... Indeed, one must commend Lombardi for even thinking of walking up to the protesters!


So, alright already! MEDIA GO HOME, and lick your wounds in private. You expected a media-tailored bang - all you got was a whimper and a fizzle. Of course, not one of the MSM reports on the protest mentioned that 50,000 faithful were at St. Peter's earlier in the day for the Holy Father's Angelus. We can be sure, however, that he has been saying prayers for the victims and their advocates and the media.

P.P.S. John Allen has this informative follow-through account, with the text of a very beautiful Christian letter from Fr. Lombardi. Thanks, Mr. Allen, for working this Sunday; nobody else appears to have this story. (However, Fr. Lombardi's personal initiative - though I don't doubt it was cleared 'upstairs' - should not be automatically attributed to 'the Vatican'.)

Vatican asks victims to see Church
as ally in fighting abuse

by John L Allen Jr

Oct. 31, 2010

After roughly sixty victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy in various nations held a vigil today near St. Peter’s Square, a delegation of the victims met with Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson. Lombardi gave the victims a letter pledging to work towards “solidarity and consensus between us.”

“Of course, we must continue to do more. And your cry today is an encouragement to do more,” Lombardi wrote.

“But a large part of the church is already on the good path. The major part of the crimes belong to times bygone. Today’s reality and that of tomorrow are more beckoning. Let us help one another to journey together in the right direction.”

Lombardi asked the victims to see the Catholic church as an "ally" in the fight against abuse, wherever it occurs.

“This fight must be fought by us together, uniting our forces against the spread of this scourge,” he wrote.

Lombardi acknowledged that the church has learned about the reality of abuse in part because of what the victims of priestly abuse, including victims' groups, have taught it.

Lombardi provided the full text of his letter to the victims to NCR, which appears below.

The vigil, billed as “Reformation Day,” was organized by “Survivors Voice,” a group led by two Boston-area abuse victims from the United States, Gary Bergeron and Bernie McDaid. In April 2008, McDaid was one of five victims who met Pope Benedict XVI in Washington, D.C., the pontiff’s first encounter with victims of sexual abuse.

According to Italian news reports, Lombardi walked from his Vatican office to the area near Castel Sant’Angelo, roughly five minutes away, where the victims had gathered. They had been denied permission to assemble in St. Peter’s Square itself, though a few victims entered the square individually to deliver letters to the Vatican, where were received by a Swiss Guard.

ANSA, an Italian news agency, reported that when Lombardi approached the victims, a couple yelled “Shame!” Later, however, Lombardi met with a group of eight victims in his office at Vatican Radio for almost an hour.

In comments to the media, McDaid and Bergeron were critical of the church’s response to the sexual abuse crisis.

“No other institution would be permitted to protect its own management the way they do,” McDaid was quoted as saying.

Bergeron said “there’s no person, in any position or any institution, in any part of the world, whose importance ought to rank above defending children or the law.”


Fr. Lombardi's letter:

The windows of my office at Vatican Radio are just a few metres away, and therefore it seems fitting to me to listen, and to make a tangible sign of our attention, to your meeting.

This intervention of mine is not an official one, but because of my deep insertion and identification with the Catholic Church and the Holy See, I believe I can express the feelings shared by many regarding the object of your manifestation.

In this, I feel encouraged by the attitude of the Pope, made manifest many times, that is, to listen to the victims, and show the will to do everything necessary, so that the horrible crimes of sexual abuse may never happen again.

I must say that, even though I do not share all of your declarations and positions, I find in many of these the elements on which one can develop a pledge, that will bring solidarity and consensus between us.

It is true that the Church must be very attentive so that the children and the young, who are entrusted to her educational activities, may grow in a completely secure environment.

Yesterday morning, a hundred thousand young people were present in these places for a great celebration of their faith and of their youthfulness, and they are but a small part of the youths who take part with trust and enthusiasm in the life of the Church community.

We must absolutely ensure that their growth be healthy and serene, finding all the protection which is rightfully theirs. We all have a great responsibility with regards to the future of the youth of the world.

It is true that the procedures of investigation and of intervention must be ever swifter and more effective, whether from the Church or from the civil authorities, and that there must be a good collaboration between these two, in conformity to the laws and situations of the countries concerned.

I know you think that the Church should do more, and in a quicker way. From my point of view – even though one may and should always do more – I am convinced that the Church has done, and is doing a lot.

Not only the Pope, with his words and example, but many Church communities in various parts of the world have done and are doing a lot, by way of listening to the victims as well as in the matter of prevention and formation.

Personally, I am in contact with many persons who work in this field in many countries, and I am convinced that they are doing a lot. Of course, we must continue to do more. And your cry today is an encouragement to do more.

But a large part of the Church is already on the good path. The major part of the crimes belongs to times bygone. Today’s reality and that of tomorrow are more beckoning. Let us help one another to journey together in the right direction.

But the more important thing that I wanted to say to you is the following, and I feel encouraged to say it, because it seems to me that you also are aware of it.

The scourge of sexual abuses, especially against minors, but also in a general way, is one of the great scourges of today’s world. It involves and touches the Catholic Church, but we know very well that what has happened in the Church is but a small part of what has happened, and continues to happen in the world at large.

The Church must first free herself of this evil, and give a good example in the fight against the abuses within her midst, but afterwards, we must all fight against this scourge, knowing that it is an immense one in today’s world, a scourge which increases the more easily when it remains hidden; and many are indeed very happy that all the attention is focussed on the Church, and not on them, for this allows them to carry on undisturbed.

This fight must be fought by us together, uniting our forces against the spread of this scourge, which uses new means and ways to reach out today, helped in this by internet and the new forms of communication, by the crisis hitting families, by sexual tourism and traffic which exploit the poverty of the people in various continents.

What the Church has learnt in these years – prompted also by you and by other groups – and the initiatives that she can take to purify herself and be a model of security for the young, must be of use to all.

For this, I invite you to look at the Church ever more as a possible ally, or – according to me – as an ally already active today in the pursuit of the most noble goals of your endeavours.




P.P.S. 11/1/10
For the record, here is the CNS account of the episode. :


Sex abuse survivors
hold vigil near Vatican

By Cindy Wooden



VATICAN CITY, Nov. 1 (CNS) -- Gary Bergeron and Paola Leerschool, who had hoped to observe a moment of silence in St. Peter's Square with a large group of sex abuse survivors and their supporters, ended up walking to the Vatican alone, leaving letters for Pope Benedict XVI and leaving a small pile of stones to show survivors they had been there.

"The journey of a survivor is one step at a time. This is one step," said Bergeron, a native of Massachusetts and one of the numerous youngsters abused in the 1960s and 1970s by then-Father Joseph Birmingham, who once served as a priest in the Boston Archdiocese and since has been laicized.

Even though Italian military police prevented the whole group of about 100 people -- sex abuse survivors and their supporters -- from walking together to St. Peter's Square Oct. 31, Bergeron said the event "was very powerful for many of the survivors and, to me, that's a success."

Bernie McDaid, who also was abused by Father Birmingham, told the survivors, "My anger, your anger, our anger is justified."

He said that while the church has enacted new norms for preventing and dealing with abuse cases, the fact that new revelations of abuse erupted again this year, shows that more must be done.

"We cannot heal until things change," he said.

McDaid and Bergeron, founders of Survivors Voice, organized the event for Oct. 31, which many Protestants celebrate as Reformation Day, the anniversary of Martin Luther writing a letter in 1517 protesting the sale of indulgences and setting off what became the Protestant Reformation.

The two called on the United Nations to declare sex abuse a "crime against humanity."

Bergeron told Catholic News Service, "This is not a protest. This is a gathering of people standing with survivors and in one voice saying, 'Enough.'"

He said he and McDaid did not ask in advance for a meeting with anyone at the Vatican, but did ask dozens of U.S. bishops to help them get permission to hold a vigil in St. Peter's Square. Only two of the bishops answered and both said they couldn't help, Bergeron said.

The group did not have a permit from the Italian government to hold a public gathering, although police allowed them to give interviews, make speeches and observe their moment of silence in front of Castel Sant'Angelo down the street from St. Peter's Square.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, went to the castle grounds to speak to McDaid and Bergeron, but left after more than 100 photographers and reporters crowded around him and after one of the Italian survivors shouted "shame."

When the survivors' group tried to leave the castle grounds to walk down the boulevard to St. Peter's, a row of Italian police stopped them. In the end, a couple of police officers and dozens of journalists walked with Bergeron and Leerschool -- the wife of a Dutch survivor of abuse -- to the square while the rest of the survivors' group stayed behind.

Italian police also accompanied Bergeron and Leerschool to the Bronze Doors, a Vatican entrance, where they left about 75 letters from sex abuse victims. The two said the police held their passports for about 10 minutes before returning them and escorting the two into St. Peter's Square.

In the square, Bergeron and Leerschool left a dozen stones at the foot of the obelisk as a sign to other survivors that they had been there and were in solidarity with them, they said.

Bergeron and McDaid and six others later met with Father Lombardi.

The Jesuit said, "We spoke for almost an hour. They told me their position and their concerns."

Father Lombardi said that when he had gone earlier to Castel Sant'Angelo he had done so to greet the organizers, but since they had not yet arrived "and there was a certain confusion," he returned to his office at Vatican Radio after letting people know he'd be willing to meet the survivors.

Bergeron went up to his office briefly before the vigil began and Father Lombardi gave him a statement he had prepared as a sign that he and other Vatican officials were aware of the survivors' presence.

"I know you think that the church should do more, and in a quicker way," Father Lombardi's statement in English said. "From my point of view -- even though one may and should always do more -- I am convinced that the church has done, and is doing a lot. Not only the pope, with his words and example, but many church communities in various parts of the world have done and are doing a lot, by way of listening to the victims as well as in the matter of prevention and formation," he said.

Most of the survivors and supporters at the event were from a school for the deaf in Verona, Italy [I was right then to surmise earlier that probably most of them represented the victims from Verona!]; they said dozens of priests on the staff abused students over the course of decades and were never arrested or punished in any way. Other survivors came from Ireland, the Netherlands, England and Australia.


I may be quibbling, but this is a newsman's observation: Since the group of 'nearly 100' also included families and supporters of the victims, it might have been fairly easy for any reporter to do a headcount of the actual victims and the countries they came from. No one apparently bothered to do so. BTW, the few pictures posted by the news agencies of the protestors were all tight shots that made it appear there were so many more people - like the photos they took of the demonstrators in London.



I must also note that none of the MSM news agencies used Fr. Lombardi's letter at all - perhaps because it places the Vatican in a 'sympatthetic' light. But thank you, Fr. Lombardi, for that beautifully Christian letter. I think it is one of the best things you ever wrote and did!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/11/2010 16:14]
31/10/2010 18:55
OFFLINE
Post: 21.348
Post: 3.984
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



This year, Corriere della Sera gave ultra-liberal Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini a readymade weekly platform for propagating his views, with a Sunday column in which he responds to questions from readers. After months in which he has apparently not said anything controversial, Lella on her blog

calls attention to his column last Oct. 21 in which he evokes that so-called 'spirit' of the Council which runs very much contrary to what both the Council initiator John XXIII and the Council's primary implementor Paul VI have said in various statements... In this column, he cops out by citing a 5th-century bishop's argument, without committing himself to saying exactly what 'novelties' the Church can allow after many centuries. Not that we aren't familiar with his views on contraception, assisted reproduction, euthanasia. homosexuality, and married priests.



To rediscover the spirit of the Council
by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, S.J.
Translated from

Oct. 21, 2010

There is much discussion about how to interpret the Second Vatican Council. Continuity or discontinuity with tradition? I maintain that this is a sterile controversy. Don't you think that the true key to reading Vatican II, almost 50 years after, is to reread the Christian experience in the light of its original contents in the New Testament?
- Antonio Meli, Messina


It's true! Almost 50 years since Vatican-II, its interpretation is still being argued. [Only because the advocates of a false interpretation on the basis of their dubious 'spirit of the Council' insist that theirs is the right one! The fact that at least they have never claimed to equate that 'spirit' to the Holy Spirit would seem to indicate that they really are not all that certain about their ground!]

I agree with you that it is, at least in part, a sterile controversy but the controversy was somewhat inevitable.

I remember those days quite well because, although I was not a member of the Council [he would have been the same age as Joseph Ratzinger who did take part in the Council as a theological expert], I was living in Rome at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, where the discussions by the council bishops resonated in many ways.

It was feared that the Council would promote some literal or symbolic interpretations of Scripture which would systematically reject every reading according to the historico-critical method. Some bishops indeed claimed outright that such critical methodology would lead to loss of faith.

Actually, many exegetes supported an interpretation of Biblical texts that would nourish the faith but would also be attentive to historico-critical studies.

Thus, their joy was great when, after long and heated discussions, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation [Dei verbum] was approved. [NB: This was the Vatican-II document to which theology expert Joseph Ratzinger directly contributed most, and about which he has always expressed great satisfaction, often citing from it, especially during the 2008 Synodal Assembly on the Word of God.]

But for many, there was an even greater cause for joy. The documents approved by the Council Fathers altogether demonstrated the intention of the Church to get in touch with all men of good will and to listen respectfully to the voices and desires of everyone. [Yes, but listening does not always mean agreeing or accepting such voices and desires if they contradict what the Church has held to be true for 2000 years!]

Of course, it is not in such enthusiasm that we can find the spirit of the Council. If only because at that time, in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and even some naivete, so many plans were circulating for the future of the Church. [Yes, many enthusiasts - most of them sophisticated and not naive! - considered Vatican II as an 'open sesame' to reconstitute the Church, each according to his preference, forgetting that Jesus Christ had instituted the Church that has withstood all kinds of devastating crises through two millennia and survived substantially as it has always been!]

What then belongs or not to the spirit of the Council? The distinction between continuity and discontinuity with tradition is timely. [Martini egregiously ignores Benedict XVI's careful formulation of Vatican II as a 'renewal in continuity with Tradition.]

The supporters of a rigid interpretation, who look suspiciously on any novelty, do not admit that there can be novelty in the Church. [Such closed traditionalists do exist but they are in a very tiny minority - almost infinitesimal - even if we include the Lefebvrians, who are the largest group among them.]

The Church is a living organism which was born small, but in time, grew and developed like the human body that grows and in doing so, appears as new.

This view of Church history was sustained since the fifth century by Saint Vincent of Lerino. He affirmed that in the Church, there will certainly be progress in the course of years, progress that would be visible - and that it should not frighten anyone. Only when an organism is transformed into another can we speak of changes that must be rejected forcefully. [As when the 'spiritists' would turn the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic Church into an evangelical Protestant clone!]

As St. Vincent wrote: "It is therefore necessary that with time, there should be as much growth and progress as possible in understanding, knowledge and wisdom, of single things and of everything, in all of the Church". [And that has been obvious in the Magisterium as it has adapted itself to the times - even if not always promptly - without sacrificing any of the essentials of the faith... Also, not having heard of St. Vincent of Lerino before today, I cannot know if he is being quoted in context, instead of just being partially quoted to bolster the argument that change or 'progress' should come with time, without qualifying what kind of change or progress is allowable by the faith as it has been handed down since apostolic times!]

The reader's suggestion to 're-read the Christian experience in the light of its origins as contained in the New Testament' seems to me to conform with what I have said about what novelty the Church can express in the source of centuries. [The reader has obviously not been following Benedict XVI's statements, in which he is constantly doing just that! And doing so in both directions: He never cites Scripture without applying it to the situation today, and he never comments on contemporary issues without referring back to what the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, says that throws light on the issue.]


Lella also notes this about Corriere's editorial bias in today's issue:

While the Pope's encounter with a hundred thousand children and teens of Italian Catholic Action was reduced by Corriere to a couple of paragraphs in the inside pages within a commentary on the reactions of Famiglia Cristiana and Avvenire to the moral conduct of the Prime Minister (Berlusconi), Cardinal Martini, as always, rates Page 1.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 17:25]
01/11/2010 03:19
OFFLINE
Post: 21.350
Post: 3.986
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


This is such a shocking news report that I am posting it on this thread first.... And it's only been one week since the Synodal assembly on the Middle East ended!


At least 7 worshipers and 7 Iraqi troops
die in takeover of Baghdad church

By Ernesto Londono and Aziz Alwan

Sunday, October 31, 2010



In this 2008 file photo, an Iraqi policeman conducts a security check inside the church raided today.

BAGHDAD - At least seven Iraqi Christian worshipers and seven Iraqi security forces were killed Sunday night after commandos stormed a church in Baghdad where a band of suicide bombers had been holding parishioners hostage, Iraqi and U.S. military officials said.

As Iraqi troops stormed the Our Lady of Salvation Church in the upscale Karradah neighborhood shortly after 9 p.m., some of the assailants detonated suicide vests, said Lt. Col. Eric Bloom, a U.S. military spokesman.

The mayhem underscored how dangerous the Iraqi capital remains as a deepening political crisis continues. Iraqi lawmakers remain at an impasse over who is entitled to lead the next government after the March 7 parliamentary election. Many Iraqis fear that the impasse could sow instability and violence as the U.S. military mission here winds down.

Between 20 to 30 people were wounded in the attack and subsequent rescue operation to free the approximately 120 hostages attending evening Mass, Bloom said. He said all the attackers were gunned down, but an Iraqi official said some were in custody.

Bloom, who got the casualty numbers from the Iraqi army, said the death toll could rise. An Iraqi security official said at least 21 civilians and troops were killed.

The assailants, armed with grenades, rifles and at least one car bomb, turned a relatively secure neighborhood into a battleground. The operation was apparently carried out in a failed effort to secure the release of prisoners in Iraqi custody who belong to the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The attack Sunday began around sunset at a branch of the Baghdad stock market located near the church. Gunmen lobbed grenades and exchanged gunfire with guards at the exchange, killing two, an Iraqi police official said.

As Iraqi security forces moved in, the assailants jumped in a car, drove it to the entrance of the Our Lady of Salvation Church, got out and detonated explosives inside the vehicle, authorities said.

Sunday Mass was being held inside the Assyrian Christian church when the gunmen, reportedly wearing explosive vests, ran inside.

Hussain Abdul Amir, 35, who lives nearby and witnessed the attack, said the gunmen did not appear to be Iraqi.

"Their accent was not Iraqi," he said.

He said the gunmen were demanding the release of al-Qaeda in Iraq inmates in Iraqi custody.

Other witnesses and officials quoted by Iraqi television stations supported that account. Iraqi police officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk to reporters.

Residents in the area ran for cover as Iraqi security forces and a small team of U.S. military officials set up a security perimeter outside.

The hostages were held for about two hours, during which lengthy exchanges of gunfire and explosions were heard in the area.

Shortly after 9 p.m., Iraqi elite troops stormed the church and killed the four gunmen. It was not clear whether hostages, security forces or bystanders were hurt during the operation.

"We were able to assassinate all the gunmen," a police official said minutes after it was over. "They were all wearing suicide vests."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 03:20]
01/11/2010 06:07
OFFLINE
Post: 21.351
Post: 3.987
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Marie-Anne, Beatrice's friend who previously translated Michael Mandlik's biography of Benedict XVI from German to French for Beatrice's site,

has now done the same thing for a 2002 interview with Cardinal Ratzinger by Stefan von Kempis, an editor at the German service of Vatican Radio (shown in left photo). Thanks as ever to Beatrice...



The interview is appended as a CD to a new edition of Kempis's 2006 biography of the Holy Father. Obviously, Marie-Anne first had to transcribe it before she could translate, so we are doubly indebted to her.


An interview with the Cardinal
on his 75th birthday

Conducted by Stefan von Kempis
Translated to English
from the French translation



Your Eminence, you chose as your Episcopal motto, 'collaborators in truth'. All your life, you have sought to live by this. Can you tell us what is Truth?
It’s a difficult question. Pontius Pilate asked it of Jesus… To begin with, there is a subjective way to look at the truth: I say what I think. Then there is a subsequent step which is: What I say and what I think must correspond to a reality that is. That is to say, when my thought corresponds to an objective reality, then I am telling the truth.

But is it possible to think and say what is right? Is there a reality that transcends what is purely material and which, nonetheless, many people simply accept? We have become spiritually blind, and that is why such realities no longer leap to our eyes.

In the history of salvation, God has sought to open our eyes so that we can learn to see. The motto I chose refers principally to him who is Truth – Christ, through whom the invisible has been made visible to the world. And not only so that we may see Truth, but especially so that we can live by its criteria. Because faith is not a theory – it is, above all, a standard, a rule of life.

Since your youth, you have studied theology to better know Christ and his Church. In your current research, has there been a change of emphasis compared to the past?
Yes, but in continuity. Of course, there have been changes made necessary by the new challenges of our time. Fifty years ago, Christianity was still more or less stable in Western society, which is why at the time, the task of the Church was to see how we could improve society through our faith.

But today, the faith has practically been put aside. The figure of Christ has been reduced to its purely human dimension, a mentality reflected in naming him simply Jesus. God has been relegated to the private sphere.

The question these days is: Is there an objective reality beyond that which we can experience? Is it possible to arrive at knowing God? But if one cannot conceive the existence of God, then the consequence is that each one must invent his own life. This is why all questions must be posed much more radically today than 50 years ago.

You have often deplored the fact that the Church is too occupied with herself and is in danger of too much introspection. What would you advise the Church as it enters the third millennium?
According to Vatican-II, the Church should present herself as a window through which the world can have a glimpse of God. It should find the right language to speak about God to modern man. And those who work in the service of the Church should be believers themselves, first of all. It is very important to begin by cultivating one’s relationship with Christ in order to be able to bear witness to him. It is life which best gives witness, not words. And so it is important to live right!

According to many, the Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes, constitute a portrait of Christ. And you yourself have considered it as a program of action, a path to follow. And you have analyzed this text without equivocation, when you had the task of clarifying what the theology of liberation is all about. What is the message of the Sermon on the Mount for Christians today?
First of all, it is not a political formula. What it means is that we are in relation with the God whom we profess. And starting from that, we try to follow Christ in a radical fashion.

And I do think that the Beatitudes are, in effect, a kind of autobiography of Christ which reflect his own way. It is he who is truly poor, kind, peaceful, etc. Beyond the details, it is all about coming to Christ as closely as we can, to express communion with him by one’s life, allowing onself to be guided by him.

A few years back, it was fashionable to say, “Yes to Christ, No to the Church”. Today, they say, “Yes to Jesus, No to the Church’. What do you think of this? And how should one rightly frame the question of God these days?
Everything depends, of course, on the presence of God. But there are many atheists and agnostics who live their lives without bothering about the God question. Theological reflection today should consider this new lifestyle of non-believers, of the Godless.

The God question is not theoretical – God does not concern thought, as if he could have been invented by man. It has to do with experiencing God in one’s life.

In the Church, there are catechumenates who progressively introduce neophytes into the life of faith. What we need these days is to have places, like oases, in which people can dare together to experience God by living according to his standards. Then we shall be able to think and say, with our own reason, that God exists. But first, we must experience God as love.

Change of subject. Some think that at this time, ecumenism is rather shaky instead of making progress. What would you advise those who are engaged in this task? Can one imagine a time when all these problems will be resolved by the Church?
We know from our own personal experience that there are often insurmountable difficulties in life. A history of several centuries cannot be changed without some pain. I would say above all that we must be patient. Without making calculations aimed at obtaining quick success as they do in politics. We must not impose what we think on God. On the contrary, we must know that this has to do with his Church, not with a purely human institution, which is the case in political life.

Now, I shall ask you as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith a burning question: the role of women and the centralized government of the Church. It is often said that women should have a greater role in the life of the Church. Is the Church hostile to women?
If we review the long history of the Church, we will note the important role played by women. When I was a young professor, I recall hearing this complaint in a reverse sense – that the Church was too feminist with respect to men who felt slighted. [????] I wish to say that the Church has always spoken to the heart of women, starting with the Mother of God, and through the great women saints, because the evangelical message seems to be much closer to women than to men.

And the second part of the question? That the government of the Church is too centralized?
The Pope exercises a fraternal collegiality with the bishops. For instance, with respect to the German bishops’ conference, the Holy See has used much patience in order to seek dialog, an agreement, a harmony…
[Von Kempis should have pressed him on this question. The answers to this two-part far-from-controversial question are uncharacteristically curt and uninformative, almost dismissive, for Cardinal Ratzinger!]

Now, some easier questions. What are the character traits that you appreciate most in others, and which you would like to have yourself? And do you have a fault that you would publicly admit?
What I welcome in others are – an openness without reservation, truth and sincerity, humor and goodness. I find affinity with persons who have these qualities which I hope I have myself. I am not in the habit of listing my own virtues, but I hope I practice what one calls the cardinal virtues – moderation, justice, prudence and strength. These are the standards I try to live up to, and it is by measuring up to them that I know my limitations.

As for my faults, those who work with me know them better than I do. Besides, I am not about to make a public confession. But I do have a failing which perhaps others cannot be aware as well as I am – and that is my preference for peace, for a life in retirement far from the public eye, in the idyllic world of being a professor. But the Lord calls me to order, and he corrects me so that I may always face my responsibilities.

What are your plans for the future? What do you look forward to?
After 25 years, I have learned not to make too many plans. But there is one thing that I want very much to do – and is, to write a book about Jesus Christ. If I could find time to do that, I would welcome it as a real gift.

What could Truth mean for those who do not see things with the eyes of faith and perhaps lack any faith at all? They too would like to get to heaven. Truth – eternity – life after death… These are concepts that are difficult to imagine and understand, even among believers. What are the bridges that can lead from reason to faith?
Of course they are difficult concepts to imagine. But there are so many things in life we cannot imagine but we know they exist. We also know that man’s deepest desires go far beyond the years that are given to him to live on earth. And that Love aspires to eternity, and it would be absurd if this aspiration cannot be realized.

But what does eternity mean? How can we imagine it in practical terms?
There are realities, like love and truth, to which we can cling even beyond death. If we rely on Christ, he will help us traverse even the dark night of death. And we can think that in eternity we shall find the fulfillment of all our aspirations down here – it will be happiness without end.

And is that a goal which common mortals can achieve?
Yes, it is possible when we hold on to love in our life. Then, we look forward to seeing once again those whom we loved down here. And we will finally be truly at home! It is where our thirst for love will finally be quenched.

Let us go back to the idea of freedom. In Scripture we read that ‘the truth shall make you free’. Can you tell us about this liberating power of the truth?
Freedom does not mean that one can always do whatever comes to mind, but that interiorly, man lives according to what he truly is. Let us imagine ourselves caught within a net – which means we can no longer live as we really are, that one cannot do what is right but only keep up appearances, which is the opposite of truth. And this will lead us endlessly to new dependencies. That is the case with the man who does not live by valid standards, who does not live according to who he is.

On the other hand, when we follow Christ, we are liberated from false values to the point where not even heavy blows from public opinion can really hurt us. What counts is that we live doing what is right and good. If I do that, I know am on the right path, free of all other dependencies which are nothing more than appearances.

Can religion cohabit with fanaticism?
Alas, this happens every time a believer identifies himself with the God whose religion he professes, when one believes that God will take the course of history in his hands. Against this wrong use of the idea of God, there is a remedy.

One must look at the Crucified Lord. That is the true image of God. Whoever looks at the God who allowed himself to be killed for our sake cannot then believe in fanatical ideas. Looking at him, we learn what is true life, and how we too can serve peace in this world.

Can one confuse fanaticism with an aspiration for the Absolute?
Not at all.

But let’s turn to another subject. The recent publication of the document Dominus Iesus alienated many Catholics. What is the true significance of this document?First of all, it is the courage to admit that we did not invent God. He showed himself to us in Jesus so that we would not be tempted to confuse ourselves with false gods. And humbly, but without false modesty he makes us accept this revealed face of God.

We do not have the right to say that everything is relative, that everything is equally valid, because God has an absolute character. Consequently, we cannot behave according to the whim of the moment, doing as we wish – because God has revealed to us what Truth is.

The document does not have to do with presenting a kind of fanaticism with respect to other religions, but it is true that my acceptance of God places a limit to my own will. It gives me a standard to live by, thanks to which a light can infiltrate into the world to help us live right.


The Church obviously should not betray the mission entrusted to her by Christ. Do you see any danger of this happening with inter-religious dialog?
Whenever I carry on a dialog with anyone, I can understand him better, more or less. If we look at the person of Christ as he appears in the Gospel of John, he declares Truth – he is revealed Truth.

In inter-religious dialog, we should listen to the other so we can go as far as possible with him in the same direction. But mission also demands that I should be understood by the other. And I must be able to recognize, in some way, traces of Christ in his religion. At the same time, I must note what it is about the other religion that needs to be corrected from the Christian point of view.

Thus dialog is necessary, first because it is part of missionary work. But there must be a second stage which has no other intention but to proclaim the truth of Christ.

The problem begins when one turns dialog into ideology, to the point of renouncing oneself, as if the religion of the other fully corresponds to my own faith.

One last question. Who is Jesus Christ, for you?
He is the reference according to whom I try to live, carrying on a dialog with him. He relieves me every time I confess to him that I am helpless. He always puts me back on the right track. And I marvel how much he gives me confidence, accepting me as I am, so that I can continue along the way with Him.

I am reminded of a film in which the main character had a conversation with the Crucified Christ. Of course, for me, it takes place in far less spectacular fashion but at a level not any less profound.

I try to live a Christian life in a way that I can truly listen to him. And when he corrects me from time to time, he also gives me the courage to stay upright so I can start anew and to do a bit better in the future. I know that he is good, and that his strictness does not detract from his goodness. He will never let me down, nor let me fall down, and with him I can continue on my way with full confidence.



One can deduce the market for books on and by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI in the German-speaking world from Von Kempis's output alone: Since Von Kempis came out with his first book on Benedict XVI in February 2006, he has since published seven others, the latest one in January 2010. Grundkurs in February 2006, was a primer on Benedict XVI's thought; the Biographie was published In August 2006, along with Zur Liebe Geschaffen (Made for Love), a collection of writings on marriage and the family. In September 2007, Das Lexikon; von Ablass zu Zolibat (The Lexicon: From indulgence to celibacy), collating important citations related to 130 key words in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's pastoral and theological vocabulary, and Die Liebe Gottes begleitet uns (God's love is with us), a collection of meditations for everyday. In 2008, two more books: Maria: Mutter Gottes, bitte fuer uns [Mary, Mother of God, pray for us), a picture book on Benedict XVI's visits to various Marian shrines up to then; and Die Heilige Schrift: Meditationen zur Bibel (Sacred Scripture: Meditations on the Bible), containing published reflections on Biblical texts. And in January 2010, Worte der Hoffnung und Ermutigung, a selection from Benedict XVI's writings and discourses on faith, hope and charity.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 17:28]
01/11/2010 11:53
OFFLINE
Post: 21.352
Post: 3.988
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Monday, Nov. 1, 31st Week in Ordinary Time
ALL SAINTS DAY


Fra Angelico, Fiesole San Domenico altarpiece, 1423-24, National Gallery of London: From left, Virgin Mary with Apostles and Other Saints, Christ Glorious in the Court of Heaven, Forerunners of Christ.

From left, Raphael, Triumph of Religion, Fresco, 1508-1511, Vatican Apostolic Palace; Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, Ghent altarpiece, 1432; Vassily Kandinsky, All Saints, 1911.

The whole concept of All Saints Day is tied in with the concept of the Communion of Saints. This is the belief that all of God's people, on heaven, earth, and in the state of purification (called Purgatory in the West), are connected in a communion. In other words, Catholic and Orthodox Christians believe that the saints of God are just as alive as you and I, and are constantly interceding on our behalf. Our connection with the saints in heaven is one grounded in a tight-knit communion. The saints are not divine, nor omnipresent or omniscient. However, because of our common communion with and through Jesus Christ, our prayers are joined with the heavenly community of Christians.

The first reference to a general feast celebrating all saints occurs in St Ephrem the Syrian (d. AD 373). St. John Chrysostom (d. AD 407) assigned a day to the feast, the first Sunday after Pentecost, where in the Eastern Churches the feast is celebrated to this day. In the West, this date was probably originally used, and then the feast was moved to May 13th. The current observance (November 1) probably originates from the time of Pope Gregory III (d. AD 741), and was likely first observed in Germany.




No OR today.


THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - On the Feast of All Saints, the Pope expresses his sorrow and prayers over the violence against
Catholics in Baghdad last night.


THE HOLY FATHER'S
PRAYER INTENTIONS IN NOVEMBER 2010


General:
That victims of drugs or of other dependence may, thanks to the support of the Christian
community, find in the power of our Saving God strength for a radical life-change.

Missionary:
That the Churches of Latin America may move ahead with the continent-wide mission proposed
by their bishops, making it part of the universal missionary task of the People of God.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 17:29]
01/11/2010 13:11
OFFLINE
Post: 343
Post: 76
Registrato il: 28/05/2007
Registrato il: 19/02/2009
Utente Comunità
Utente Junior
Don Camillo
Well, Don Camillo was certainly one of a kind. And MUCH in need of Devine scolds.

The reference to men feeling slighted and feminism taking over in the Church is very realistic - I can completely attest to that.
At least in Germany - where girls are outnumbering boys as Altar servers, where girls perform better in every aspect of life and boys are generally instructed to accept the fact that girls are superior. Where Parish councils are dominated and controlled by women of a certain kind.
It's not that I'm a wall flower, but some of those women are the most scary, dominant, power hungry creatures you'll ever meet.

The German speaking Bishop Conferences are notoriously inclined to strive for independence from overly repressive, old-fashioned, backwards Rome. Surely their philosophy is superior and their ideas are revolutionary and more pastoral, and so much better than those ancient thoughts and 'rules' which are not livable by and applicable to modern man with all his hardships and struggles of a changing society.

It's a typical example of the arrogance of intellectuals in the German speaking part of Europe (which includes Bishops).
Their own thought is clearly superior to anybody else's and Rime is clearly out of touch with reality!!

If I was 'Rome', I would have lost my patience with them a LONG time ago!!





THANKS A LOT, HEIKE, for giving the context for that remark the cardinal made about women. It's certainly unusual - perhaps only in Germany? - and I could not figure it out by myself, but now it makes sense. German Catholic men should take comfort in that these bossy women will never be priests, at least not in the Catholic Church. Not now - and hopefully, not ever!

TERESA



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 16:42]
01/11/2010 16:30
OFFLINE
Post: 21.356
Post: 3.992
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona
finalize preparations for
'the year's most special visit'

by ANA MARTÍNEZ/ÁLEX GUBERN
Translated from

Nov. 1, 2010

In Santiago, hotels and lodging houses are almost all booked up (there are travelers who wait till the last minute hoping for an ultimate bargain offer).

The eight pilgrim pavilions (total capacity 2,000) are fully booked - free lodging for one or two nights for groups organized by parishes. And an unusual number of student housing and rooms in private houses have been made available for paying lodgers.

1,200 newsmen are accredited. Charter flights, buses and trains will start coming in Friday. And as many as 200 million worldwide viewers are expected based on foreign TV channels that have signed up for broadcast rights to the festivities when Benedict XVI comes to town on Saturday, Nov. 6 - perhaps the most famous of all pilgrims to come to Santiago during a Holy Year dedicated to St. James the Apostle (Santiago Apostol), patron of Spain.

Galicia and Santiago have prepared everything - except the weather. For now, meteorology experts say there seems to be a 60% change of rain on Saturday, but they won't know better until Friday.


Left, a Popemobile arrives in Santiago; CD handout with materials about the Pope's visit; and right, the welcome poster of the Xunta of Galicia, which says, 'Benedict XVI shares the Jacobean year with the Galicians [Gallegos]. Welcome to Galicia!'

Meanwhile, a Popemobile has arrived in Santiago (and another one in Barcelona) for the Pope's ride from the airport to the Cathedral of Santiago along a route that is expected to be lined by tens of thousands of faithful.



The Xunta of Galicia (the regional administration) has already spent 3 million euros for the preparations, but the city and its businesses expect a very high 'rate of return'.

For its part, Barcelona, Spain's second city, is a veteran host of huge events, including the 1992 Olympics - and the Pope's one-day visit is considered the city's biggest event since then.

Both the city government and the archdiocese are confident of laying out a grand welcome for Benedict XVI. On Sunday, when he dedicates Antonio Gaudi's Church of the Sagrada Familia, tens of thousands of faithful are expected to converge around the church for the Dedication Mass and Angelus.


The Popemobile route in Barcelona: From the Cathedral (left) to Sagrada Familia (eight).

In addition, organizers expect some 400,000 pilgrims to line the Pope's motorcade route from the Archbishop's Palace near the Cathedral in the city's medieval Gothic quarter to the Sagrada Familia, in the center of Barcelona's 19th-century extension.
[It would be quite a feat to register that many in a city which is Spain's most secularized. but even more than in Portugal, Catholicism has been so inbred into the Spaniards for centuries, that it is not unlikely. After all, 250,000 came to the papal Mass in Lisbon, a smaller city than Barcelona!]



Nowhere is the fervor for the visit more visible than at the Sagrada Familia itself, where they have just installed the panoramic elevator that will first be used by Benedict XVI.

This weekend, they started setting up 31 jumbo screens in strategic places to enable pilgrims to follow the rites on TV.

Buildings and house balconies along the motorcade route and around Sagrada Familia are festooned with the flags of the Vatican, Spain and Catalunya.


The banner reads, 'All together let us prepare for the Pope's visit', and 'Barcelona, make yourself pretty for the Pope!'

An Internet site called 'BARCELONA, POSA'T PAPA!', a play on a famous city slogan, 'Barcelona, posa't guapa!' [Barcelona, make yourself pretty!), has been campaigning for households to display flags and signs of welcome for the Pope and advertises distribution centers where these can be obtained for free.

The city expects to spend 370,000 euros for logistics - not including the cost over overtime for police and cleaning crews - but the one-day visit is expected to generate some 30 million euros in business.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 17:32]
01/11/2010 18:30
OFFLINE
Post: 21.357
Post: 3.993
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



ANGELUS TODAY:
Pope decries ferocious attack
on Iraq’s Christian community






1 NOV 2010 (RV) -Pope Benedict XVI has condemned a ferocious attack on the Christian community of Iraq in which over 50 people were killed and dozens injured.

In an appeal launched at the end of the Angelus prayer for the Feast of All Saints, the Holy Father once again renewed his call for an end to violence which is tearing the Middle East apart.



Rain lashed St Peter’s square Monday, as Pope Benedict XVI waited for the crowds gathered beneath the windows of his apartments to quieten. Then, speaking in Italian he began, “Last night, in a very serious attack on the Syrian Catholic Cathedral in Baghdad, dozens of people were killed and wounded, including two priests and a group of faithful gathered for Sunday Mass”.

He was speaking of the siege of Catholics in Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad by a group of Al Qaeda militants. A siege that tragically ended in a massacre when Iraqi security forces raided the place of worship to free the faithful being held inside.

The Pope continued: “I pray for the victims of this senseless violence, all the more ferocious as it affected defenceless civilians".

The Holy Father expressed his closeness to the martyred Christian community, targeted yet again by terrorists, and encouraged all pastors and faithful "to be strong and firm in hope”.

This latest attack comes less than a week from the closing of the special assembly of the Synod of bishops for the Churches in the Middle East, specifically called by Pope Benedict XVI to encourage the communities of the region.

“Faced with the brutal violence that continues to tear the peoples of the Middle East apart”, he concluded, “I renew my appeal for peace: it is God's gift, but it is also the result of the efforts of men of good will, national and international institutions. We must all join forces to ensure an end to all violence!”.




Here is a translation of the Pope's words today:




The Solemnity of All Saints which we celebrate today invites us to raise our eyes to heaven and to meditate on the fullness of the divine life that awaits us.

"We are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed" (1 Jn 3,2). With these words the Apostle John assures us of the reality of our profound bond with God, as well as the certainty of our future destiny.

As beloved chlidren, therefore, we also receive the grace to bear the trials of this earthly existence - the hunger and thirst for justice, incomprehensions, persecutions (cfr Mt 5,3-11). Meanwhile, we shall inherit what was promised to us in the evangelical beatitudes, "in which will shine the new image of the world and man that Jesus inaugurated" (Benedict XVI, JESUS OF NAXZARETH, p. 95).

Holiness - imprinting Christ on ourselves - is the purpose of Christian living. Blessed Antonio Rosmini wrote: "The Lord impressed himself on the souls of his disciples with his sensible behavior - and with his words: He gave them that grace with which the soul immediately perceives the Word" (Antropologia soprannaturale, Roma 1983, 265-266).

We have a foretaste of the gift and the beauty of holiness every time we take part in the Eucharistic liturgy, in communion with the 'immense multitude' of blessed spirits who in heaven eternally acclaim the salvation by God and by the Lamb (cfr Ap 7,9-10).

"The lives of the saints are not limited to their earthly biographies but also include their being and working in God after death. In the saints, one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them" (Enc. Deus caritas est, 42).

Comforted by this communion with the great family of saints, tomorrow we commemorate all the faithful departed. The liturgy of November 2 and the pious practice of visiting the cemeteries remind us that Christian death is part of the path of assimilation with God, which will vanish when God is everything in everyone.

Separation of earthly affections is certainly painful, but we should not fear it, because ,accompanied by the prayers of the Church, it cannot break the profound bond that unites us in Christ.

In this connection, St. Gregory of Nyssa said: "He who created everything in wisdom, gave us this sorrowful disposition as an instrument of liberation from evil and of the possibility to participate in the rewards that we hope for" (De mortuis oratio, IX, 1, Leiden 1967, 68).

Dear friends, eternity is not "an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of fulfillment, when totality embraces us and we embrace totality" (Enc. Spe salvi, 12) - of being, of truth, of love.

To the Virgin Mary, a sure guide to holiness, let us entrust our pilgrimage towards the celestial homeland, as we invoke her maternal intercession for the eternal repose of all our brothers and sisters who are asleep in the hope of resurrection.


After the prayers, he said:

Last night, a most serious attack on the Syro-Catholic Church of Baghdad, resulted in dozens of dead and wounded, among them, two priests and a group of faithful who had gathered for Holy Mass.

I pray for the victims of this absurd violence, the more ferocious because it struck at helpless persons gathered in the house of God, which is a house of love and reconciliation.

I aslo express my affectionate closeness to the Christian community which has been struck anew, and I encourage the pastors and the faithful to be strong and firm in hope.

In the face of these savage episodes of violence, which continue to rip through the peoples of the Middle East, I wish to renew my desperate appeal for peace: It is a gift of God, but it is also the result of efforts by men of good will, of national and international institutions. May all unite their efforts so that all violence may come to an end!






Baghdad church siege
ends in massacre



1 NOV 2010 (RV) - “Nowhere is safe anymore, not even the House of God”, says auxiliary Bishop of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, Shlemon Warduni, the day after an unprecedented attack on the Christian community of the Iraqi capital.



Together with Patriarch Delly he visited survivors and wounded of the Sunday massacre, in which over 50 hostages and police officers were killed when security forces raided a Baghdad church to free more than 100 Iraqi Catholics held hostage by al Qaeda-linked gunmen. Between 70 and 80 people were seriously wounded, many of them women and children.

The terrorists, some wearing suicide vests, had taken over 120 faithful hostage at the Syriac Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation, one of Baghdad's largest, during Sunday Mass and demanded the release of Al Qaeda prisoners in Iraq and Egypt.

“This tragedy represents a new and terrifying change in strategy by terrorists,” said an anonymous source from the Catholic community in Baghdad, “It means all Christian parishes in Iraq are in danger”.

An Iraqi affiliate of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack. It said in a statement posted on radical Islamic websites that it was an action against the Coptic church in Egypt.

Archbishop Georges Casmoussa, the Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul. notes “What we are asking for - and we repeat this appeal - is that our government and the international community push to bring peace to Iraq and push for the formation of a responsible government, so there is some authority over the situation here in Iraq”.

Church leaders have long warned that the political vacuum created by the failure to agree on a government formation following March elections has left the door open to increased extremist infiltration and insecurity.

“The ultimatum of these terrorists [for the release of Al Qaeda prisoners and the formation of an Islamic state in Iraq] is not our problem it is for other people to deal with”, continues Archbishop Casmoussa.

“Our problem is insecurity in our country. We are not against anyone. If they want an Islamic government, if they want power then they should try to obtain it by instilling confidence in the population, not fear”.

Bishop Warduni adds that “the Christian community no longer feel safe, not even in the House of God. This attack will have a very negative influence on those who until now had chosen to remain in Baghdad, with many saying they are ready to leave”.

One of the first victims of the terrorist were the priests who had been leading the congregation in Sunday celebrations.

“I knew them both very well” says Bishop Warduni, “They were former students, both very young, both very committed to their vocation and community”. “This whole episode is truly sad and really very painful, but we must have hope and trust in God that he will protect his Church”.



The death toll from the massacre so far is 52.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 20:10]
01/11/2010 19:05
OFFLINE
Post: 21.358
Post: 3.994
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Pope to make state visit
to Germany next year?

by Edward Pentin

Monday, November 01, 2010


A German newspaper reported today that the Pope wants to make his first official visit to Germany in 2011.

Citing “reliable sources”, the Frankfurter Rundschau said the Pope discussed the visit with the president of the German Bishops Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, who visited the Vatican last week.

It would follow two previous trips by the Pope to his homeland – in 2005 for World Youth Day in Cologne, and in 2006 to Bavaria. Those visits were solely of a pastoral or private nature.

The exact date is not known. Neither the Vatican nor the bishops’ conference have confirmed the report, although Germany’s former President, Horst Köhler, had originally invited him to visit Germany and the invitation was allegedly renewed by Kohler’s successor, Christian Wulff.

Frankfurter Rundschau says it is certain that any trip would include Berlin. It says the feeling among some is that a state visit is long overdue, and that if the Holy Father can make a state visit to Britain, and also meet the heads of state of the United States and Poland in their capital cities, then he should do the same for Germany.

The paper contends that Benedict XVI has been reluctant to visit to Berlin because he is “still traumatized” by the protests which greeted John Paul II on a visit to the German capital in June 1996. Judging by his approach to his visit to Britain and the overall success of that trip, however, he’s more likely looking forward to it.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 01/11/2010 19:06]
01/11/2010 23:46
OFFLINE
Post: 21.359
Post: 3.995
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Thanks again to Lella for calling attention to this book release in Spain. Googling material about it made me realize all over how 'rich' the Web is with Spanish Catholic sites. I found quite a reviews of the new book to translate, abut I will start with the most basic one from '21', a monthly magazine whose tagline is "the Christian space for today', is run by priests of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary (SS.CC., from the Spanish 'Sagradas Corazones')...


First book in Spanish on
Benedict XVI and the pedophile issue

by Fr. Fernando Cordero, SS.CC.
Translated from the online edition of

October 23, 2010


Juan Antonio Rubio, priest [a diocesan priest in the city of Jaen] and writer, and editor of the weekly Catholic magazine Vida Nueva, has just published his latest book, in a year when his literary activity appears to be boundless.



From his watchpost as a Catholic editor and with his numerous journalistic ties, Juan is able to document and analyze in depth the subjects that he writes about, in this case, Tolerancia cero. La Cruzada de Benedicto XVI contra la pederastia en la Iglesia (Zero tolerance: Benedict XVI's crusade against pederasty in the Church).

It is a well-documented exposition - with a geography of the cases in Australia, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Spain and the USA - on the challenge that the Church faces in combatting this lacerating evil, which is both sin and crime, and in which Benedict XVI - far from what a hostile media paints him to be - is not part of the problem but the key to a solution that is also a renewal.

Juan says in his Preface:

Benedict XVI has shown that he is with his brother priests in their dark night; that he is not, as he has been unjustly accused, responsible for the complicit silence in the face of the sins and crimes of some priests who betrayed the grace received at ordination by committing horrible crimes against the innocence of children and minors.

The whole world saw how several years back, Pope John Paul II, his face marked by the ravages of a painful illness, begged forgiveness for the sins of the Church [not of the Church, of some of its clergy and hierarchy], humiliating himself even for deeds in the most obscure pages of history, and yet there were still those who thought he had not beaten his breast enough.

He apologized for the Crusades, for dictatorships, for schisms, for heresies, for the neglect of women, for anti-Jewish behavior, for Galileo, for Calvin, for the the treatment of native Americans, for injustices, for the Inquisition, for integralism, for Islam, for the Mafia, for racism, for Ruanda, for slavery. Certainly, there are many more sins and offenses to apologize for.

Now it is the turn of Benedict XVI to apologize for the sexual abuse of minors by priests and religious: "We too seek forgiveness from God and the persons affected".

He has made the apologies and he has been working so that justice and truth will shine forth in the Church as an act of penance.

Benedict XVI is not the obstacle for the Church to confront the thorny, delicate and lacerating problem of pedophilia. He is a very important part of the solution. He himself has had to seek the solution from his daily work, from constant prayer, from spiritual closeness to the victims.

He got to know the extent of it reading the reports that came across his desk every day [at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith], and in those Friday mornings that he called 'his Fridays of penance', when since 2001, he had to read, review and decide on cases forwarded to him that showed all the failings and vilenesses of his brother priests. Day after day, year after year, since John Paul II gave him the responsibility.


The book also discusses Benedict XVI's apostolic trips, the media and their attempts to implicate the Pope in the scandal, as well as the case of Fr. Marcial Maciel as a paradigm of the issue.

He brings a psychological and pastoral approach to the problem of pedophilia, and ends with a very informative appendix and his acknowledgments.

This is a rigorous work that provides an overview of one of the major problems that the Church is facing and that must be answered with the formulation expressed in the title and thesis of Rubio's book: zero tolerance.


Some specific citations in the following review of the book give me second thoughts about the author's objectivity, not to mention whether he did 'due diligence' in his research. It appears he wrote the book to support a few hypotheses - widely shared by many in MSM - that became the premise for it. A couple of the hypotheses are troubling because they depend more on the author's subjective impression than on objective fact. And in doing so, he unfortunately perpetrates these impressions as 'fact'!


Rubio's book:
'The great error by the Church was
its complicit silence on priest offenders'

by Jose Manuel Vidal

Oct. 27, 2010

Fr. Juan Rubio, editor of Vida Nueva, enjoys challenges. Perhaps because of that, he has decided to tackle one of the most sensitive issued in the Church's agenda.

With his book Tolerancia cero: La cruzada de Benedicto XVI contra la pederastia en la Iglesia, published just now by Desclèe, he aims to show that Benedict XVI is "the start of the solution to the problem" despite "the difficulties that he still encounters in the Roman Curia itself".

Rubio's book, the first attempt in Spanish to deal with this 'great wound' in the Church which the Pope himself has called an internal persecution from within the Church itself, notes, to begin with, that Benedict XVI himself underwent a 'conversion' on this issue.

He cites a statement made by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in Murcia in which he referred to sex offenses by the clergy as something invented by newsmen and pure lies.

[I hope Vidal is not quoting directly from Rubio's book because that is a gross distortion of what Cardinal Ratzinger said at the time. To set things straight, here is what ZENIT reported in two parts on Dec. 2-3, 2002 of an interview given by Cardinal Ratzinger in Murcia.
www.zenit.org/article-5961?l=english
www.zenit.org/article-5979?l=english
The question about priest offenders comes in the middle of a wide-ranging interview about the state of the Church and its problems.

ZENIT conveniently used it to start Part 2 of the post. There was no follow-up question. The next question was about the debate over the failure to include God and Europe's Christian roots in the proposed preamble for the European Constitution. I have checked the Spanish version to compare it with ZENIT's English account:

CARDINAL RATZINGER SEES A MEDIA CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHURCH
Sees Agenda Behind the Reporting in U.S.


MURCIA, Spain, DEC. 3, 2002 (Zenit.org).- Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger suggests that a campaign is under way against the Catholic Church, judging by the way scandals involving priests have been reported in the United States.

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith shared these views when he met last weekend with a group of journalists, including a ZENIT correspondent. The occasion was the congress "Christ: Way, Truth and Life," over which the cardinal presided, at the Catholic University of St. Anthony....

This past year has been difficult for Catholics, given the space dedicated by the media to scandals attributed to priests. There is talk of a campaign against the Church. What do you think?
Cardinal Ratzinger: In the Church, priests are also sinners. But I am personally convinced that the constant presence in the press of the sins of Catholic priests, especially in the United States, is a planned campaign, as the percentage of these offenses among priests is not higher than in other categories, and perhaps it is even lower.

In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information nor to the statistical objectivity of the facts. Therefore, one comes to the conclusion that it is intentional, manipulated, that there is a desire to discredit the Church. It is a logical and well-founded conclusion
.

The questioner himself suggested 'the campaign against the Church'. And the cardinal's response was specifically about the situation then in the United States. It must be remembered that John Paul II gave the CDF the jurisdiction for dealing with these complaints in April 2001, after the US media began to train their spotlight on the problem. So by December 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger would already have had a 'feel' for the extent of the problem in the United States. If the cardinal erred at all in his response, it was in not being politically correct by bucking dominant but misinformed public opinion, thus giving the impression that he was dismissive of the issue.

As it turns out, his estimate of the percentage of guilty priests in the US was quite realistic: The study commissioned in 2002 by the USCCB from the John Jay College of Criminal Studies in New York later reported that between 1950-2002, about 4% of US priests and religious (4,392 out of 102,000) were named in abuse complaints, which were subsequently investigated by the police, of which only 384 were charged (representing 0.37% of all priests and religious in the US who served in that period), and 252 were convicted (0.25%). It is outrageous that journalists - even the best-intentioned such as Mr. Rubio - hardly ever cite these hard figures. The Irish statistics are even more striking, but those too are hardly ever cited in these stories, in which the MSM deliberately want to give the impression that the problem is an affliction of epidemic proportions in the Church!


A few months later [after the Murcia interview], and in the face of the flood of cases that started to arrive at the CDF, he changed his attitude and became the leading ecclesiastic whip against this wound.

What was clear, for Juan Rubio, is that "John Paul II did not focus on the problem", perhaps because when he was a priest and bishop in Poland, he saw enough 'false accusations' of the kind [used by the Communists to undermine the clergy]. But "he entrusted the task to Ratzinger, so he could do something about it".

In fact, on November 27, 2004, when the obviously ailing and aged Papa Wojtyla presided at a celebration of the Legionaries of Christ and called their founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel 'an example for the youth', on that very day, Cardinal Ratzinger signed the order to proceed with the investigation of Maciel for complaints of sexual abuses presented to the CDF against him. Rubio sees this as a 'paradigm' for the way in which the then CDF Prefect pursued such complaints.

For Rubio, since his 'conversion'*, Benedict XVI made the fight against pedophile offenses by priests one of his priorities, defining it as 'purification of the clergy'.

But he has met with many difficulties. First of all, by "obstacles placed by the Curia, especially Cardinal Sodano", then Papa Wojtyla's number-2 man as Secretary of State. [I hope Rubio has more than just the anecdotal information we know from previous MSM reports and Cardinal Schoenborn. Other than unsubstantiated charges against Cardinal Sodano and now-Cardinal Dsiwisz, nobody else in the Curia, under Wojtyla or at present, has been named as 'obstructing' the investigation of offending priests. Names please, and credible charges.]

The second obstacle for the future Pope in his clean-up was 'complicit silence' among the clergy and bishops themselves - a silence that Rubio calls 'a great sin'.

The third was that bishops failed to apply the Church's own juridical system, canon law, which has specific provisions for dealing with sex offenses by priests. Among other reasons, because "bishops chose to act more as fathers to their priests rather than judges".

But this dynamic started to change as soon as the responsibility for dealing with cases of sexual abuse by priests was taken on by the CDF.

Rubio does not believe 'there was an organized campaign' on this issue to discredit the Catholic Church. He does not think there was 'a crusade' to this effect, even if he claims there was pressure from 'the Jewish lobby' and that "Bush wanted to avenge John Paul II's opposition to the war in the Gulf".[These are really highly questionable assertions. 1) Of course, there was no organized campaign - but there can be no doubt of the alacrity and dogged insistence with which MSM seized on the problem as a way to paint the entire Church and her leaders in the worst light possible. Their unspoken alliance in this respect has been equivalent to an organized campaign, because once they had committed to their blanket judgment on the Church, there was - and has been - no turning back for them. 2) No one in the Anglophone world has ever raised the specter of supposed Jewish pressure in all this. 3) Which Bush and which Gulf War? And what influence did any of the two Presidents Bush ever have on what the media chose to report???? This is ABSURD!]

Nonetheless, he acknowledges that there is a 'before' and 'after' on the pedophile issue in the Church, such that "the next Conclave will be influenced by this topic and will be decisive in the profile of whoever gets elected".

In any case, he says "priestly pedophilia will not be the coup de grace for the Church, which has gone through much worst. Moreover, the faithful know perfectly well who is on God's side and who is on the devil's, and Spanish Catholics know better than to be baited by the issue".

He also thinks that the issue could have consequences for the process of John Paul II's beatification in that "the Church must surely think twice about cases of 'santo subito'" in its process of beatification. [No one is rushing, Mr. Rubio, despite the waiver of the 5-year waiting period for Mother Teresa and John Paul II. The process of verification remains as painstaking as ever, and the pedophile question was considered in the investigation of John Paul II's record. Cardinal Levada submitted an attestation that he never intervened in any of the cases submitted to the CDF.]

To explain why, so far at least, Spain ha had few cases of child-abusing priests, Rubio points out a few reasons.

First, because Spanish courts do not pay very much in damages. [That might be a reason for victims not having much incentive to file complaints, but it has no bearing on why any priest so minded would not commit the offense, to begin with.]

Second, because in the Mediterranean countries, "Catholic sentiment still prevails, whereas in the Anglophone countries, every effort is made to rub salt into Catholic wounds". [Again, this argument has nothing to with whether and why priestly pedophilia occurs. It might explain less media emphasis on the problem, but in highly secular Spain and Portugal, the secular media would be just as relentless if there were cases to report!]

The author also believes that "at this time, the Spanish bishops are complying with Rome's orders" and that therefore, "are not buying the silence of any victims", and in fact, advocate 'ending the culture of silence once and for all".

He also claims "there is no relation between pedophilia and celibacy" or homosexuality, for that matter, even if he thinks it is is not bad "if the subject of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church is debated", and that, in fact, he thinks "the day is not far when some married men will be qualified to be priests" and that "a homosexual can be a good priest". [No one has questioned that - provided the homosexual priest becomes 'asexual' and celibate like all Catholic priests are supposed to be.]

As the editor of a religious magazine, Rubio believes "The Church in Spain is not ready to face the communications challenge", because, among other things, "it does not possess the structure nor the discipline required for communications".

[Judging by the success of the Spanish bishops' conference and the Archdiocese of Madrid in organizing million-member marches in support of life every year - more than the Italian bishops have ever mobilized in Rome - I would think that the Church in Spain is doing quite well in its communications. During the years of the increasingly secular Zapatero government, they have also been very prompt in responding with a formal statement and with mibilization of the faithful against every new legislation prejudicial to the Church and her doctrine.]]

He therefore proposes "a unified team with the proper standards to face the communications challenge with truth and justice". [I certainly hope he, as a priest and an editor, can pass on any concrete suggestions he has to the Spanish bishops conference, and maybe sit down with them if he has a communications strategy to propose.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/11/2010 21:55]
02/11/2010 15:45
OFFLINE
Post: 21.361
Post: 3.997
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Tuesday, Nov. 2, 3st Week in Ordinary Time
FEAST OF ALL SOULS

'Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine'


All Souls' Day commemorates the faithful departed, those who are in Purgatory and cannot immediately attain
the beatific vision of heaven. The living can help them attain sanctification by prayer and Masses. The custom
of setting apart a special day to intercede for the faithful departed was first established by St. Odilo of Cluny
(d. 1048) at his abbey of Cluny in 998 and quickly spread through the Western Church. The Orthodox celebrate it
on several Saturdays throughout the year and associate it with Holy Saturday.



No OR today.


At 6 p.m. today, the Holy Father descended to the Vatican Grottoes for private prayers
at the tombs of his predecessors.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/11/2010 15:46]
Nuova Discussione
 | 
Rispondi
Cerca nel forum

Feed | Forum | Bacheca | Album | Utenti | Cerca | Login | Registrati | Amministra
Crea forum gratis, gestisci la tua comunità! Iscriviti a FreeForumZone
FreeForumZone [v.6.1] - Leggendo la pagina si accettano regolamento e privacy
Tutti gli orari sono GMT+01:00. Adesso sono le 14:07. Versione: Stampabile | Mobile
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com