Google+
 

BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
Autore
Stampa | Notifica email    
08/01/2011 16:06
OFFLINE
Post: 21.873
Post: 4.505
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master








Saturday, January 8
BLESSED ANGELA OF FOLIGNO (Italy, 1248-1309), Widow, Franciscan Tertiary, Mystic, Author
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Oct. 13, 2010, to Blessed Angela
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20101013...
Born to a wealthy family in Foligno, near Assisi, she married early and had children but lived a life described as 'wild, adulterous and sacrilegious'. She reportedly converted after praying to St. Francis who came to her in a dream. Shortly afterwards, her husband and children died and she joined the Franciscan Third Order for lay people. She wrote an account of her conversion and the temptations she met with afterwards: The Book of Visions and Instructions continues to be published in modern editions), and for this, she has been called 'mistress of theologians'. She organized a community of Third Order Franciscan sisters who worked for the poor. Her increasing fame for sanctity attracted many women to the order. After she died, many miracles were attributed to her. Her incorrupt body lies in the Church of St. Francis in Foligno.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010811.shtml



OR for 1/7-1/8/11:

On the solemnity of the Epiphany, the Pope reflects on
'The wise men, the star and the Baby in Bethlehem'
He extends comfort and hope to the eastern Christians who celebrate Christmas on January 7

The double issue covers all the papal events and texts from the afternoon of January 5 when he visited the children's wards at Gemelli Hospital in Rome, and the Mass and Angelus at Epiphany. Other Page 1 news: South Sudan goes to polls Sunday to decide on a peaceful secession from the rest of Sudan; violence picks up again in the Ivory Coast; China picks up Spain's debt; and an article summarizing the contents of the October 24, 1964 issue of the Italian weekly OR (extreme right photo, lower panel), which recounts how the Black Legend about Pius XII began with the 1960 propaganda drama The Deputy by an East German palywright, and the responses at the time by Catholic witnesses and historians to counter the play's KGB-mounted allegations. In the inside pages, a wrap-up of developments related to the anti-Christian car bombing in Alexandria, Egypt, on New Year's Day.


PAPAL EVENTS TODAY
The Holy Father met with

- Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting)

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

- Cardinal Claudio Hummes, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy.


Jan. 12 Mass to commemorate victims
of Haiti earthquake one year later


The Vatican announced that on Wednesday, January 12, at 5:30 pm, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State,
will preside at a Mass in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore to commemorate the victims of the earthquake in
Haiti on the first anniversary of that catastrophe. The Mass is held at the initiative of the Embassy of Haiti to
the Holy See. Diplomats accredited to Rome and to the Holy See have been invited.



- Yesterday, Vittorio Messori had a Page 1 commentary in Corriere della Sera entitled 'The roots of anti-Christian hatred' which I would have translated right away but didn't, because, to my shock, he identifies these roots as Zionism and the fact that Israel had made Jerusalem its capital! And that this has translated into anti-Christian hatred by the Muslims - or at least, by Muslim extremists - because the principal 'godfather' of Israel is the United States!

I can see how Islamic extremists would equate the United States to Christianity, but surely, they 'hated' Christianity long before they had reason to hate the United States; or better yet, their hatred of Christianity, which is primarily cultural and historical, is distinct from their hatred of the United States, which is primarily political.

I was certain someone far more qualified than I would respond to these rather outrageous, counter-intuitive and patently questionable claims right away - by someone whose thinking I have always had reason to respect, of all people! And sure enough, Antonio Socci has, in an article in today's Libero entitled "Whose side is Messori on, anyway: the Pope or the Imam of Al-Azhar?", whom Messori cites favorably in his article, without once referring to the objectionable statements the Imam made about the Pope! This is one time I would like to hear a reaction from Maghdi Cristiano Allam, who has been inexplicably 'silent' since he became a Catholic two Easters ago. And I continue to be shocked at Messori's apparent lapse of judgment on this issue! It's worse than the betrayal of trust I felt when George Weigel inveighed against Caritas in veritate almost irrationally, I felt. I have posted my translations of both articles a few posts below.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 14:00]
08/01/2011 16:57
OFFLINE
Post: 21.874
Post: 4.506
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Here is a belated commentary from CNS - with a rather snarky headline - on Pope Benedict XVI's Assisi 2011 initiative. It extends the observations made by Andrea Tonrielli in his Jan. 3 editorial from La Bussola Quotidiana to include the Pope's visit to the Blue Mosque in istanbul and the Western Wall in Jerusalem...


Back to Assisi: Pope Benedict
to commemorate event he skipped

By Cindy Wooden


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 7 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI said he would go to Assisi in October to mark the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's inter-religious prayer for peace, but he did not actually say anything about praying with members of other religions. [In fact, we know nothing so far of the format he has in mind for the October 2011 event.]

Announcing the October gathering, he said he would go to Assisi on pilgrimage and would like representatives of other Christian confessions and other world religions to join him there to commemorate Pope John Paul's "historic gesture" and to "solemnly renew the commitment of believers of every religion to live their own religious faith as a service in the cause of peace."

While Pope Benedict may be more open to inter-religious dialogue than some of the most conservative Christians would like, he continues to insist that dialogue must be honest about the differences existing between religions and that joint activities should acknowledge those differences.

In the 2003 book, Truth and Tolerance, a collection of speeches and essays on Christianity and world religions, the then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger dedicated four pages to the topic of "multi-religious and inter-religious prayer."

As a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was one of the very few top Vatican officials to skip Pope John Paul's 1986 meeting in Assisi. He later said the way the event was organized left too much open to misinterpretation.

His chief concern was that the gathering could give people the impression that the highest officials in the Catholic Church were saying that all religions believed in the same God and that every religion was an equally valid path to God. [In other words, the kind of erroneous impression and fuzzy faith encouraged by Vatican-II progressives, which made it necessary for the Roman Catholic Church to issue the declaraton Dominum Iesus in the Jubilee eyar of 2000 that makes it unequivocally clear that the Catholic Church is the only church instituted by Jesus, Son of God, who is the only way to salvation - even if 'some truths' are inherent in non-Christian religions]

A few years later -- and after having participated in Pope John Paul's 2002 inter-religious meeting in Assisi -- he wrote in Truth and Tolerance that with such gatherings "there are undeniable dangers and it is indisputable that the Assisi meetings, especially in 1986, were misinterpreted by many people."

He wrote that Church leaders had to take seriously the possibility that many people would see Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Hindus and others gathered together for prayer in the Umbrian hilltown and get the "false impression of common ground that does not exist in reality."

At the same time, he said, it would be "wrong to reject completely and unconditionally" what he insisted was really a "multi-religious prayer," one in which members of different religions prayed at the same time for the same intention without praying together.

In multi-religious prayer, he wrote, the participants recognize that their understandings of the divine are so different "that shared prayer would be a fiction," but they gather in the same place to show the world that their longing for peace is the same.

U.S. Jesuit Father Thomas Michel, who was an official at the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue in the 1980s and was involved in organizing the first Assisi meeting, said, "It wouldn't make a lot of sense to pray together when you don't believe in the same God," but Catholics believe there is only one God and he hears the prayers of whoever turns to him with sincerity and devotion.

In an e-mail response to questions, Father Michel said, "The only confusion (surrounding the 1986 Assisi meeting) was among those who did not understand Vatican II teaching and subsequent magisterium. They expressed their confusion before the event, boycotted the event itself, and expressed more confusion afterwards." [This Jesuit continues to be as perverse as ever. This is the person who, right after the Regensburg lecture, wrote a commentary for a Turkish paper assailing the Pope and then agreed to host a Muslim website on Muslim reactions against the Regensburg lecture.]

Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council document on relations with other religions, affirmed that Jews, Christians and Muslims believe in, worship and pray to the same God. [That is a simplistic and inaccurate reduction of Nostra aetate - a very short declaration, www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate... which says very carefully in Paragraph 2:

"One is the community of all peoples, one their origin, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God...."

When Pope Benedict went to Istanbul's Blue Mosque in Turkey in 2006, some people believed he blatantly contradicted what he had written in 2003 about the impossibility of praying together.

At the mosque, a place of prayer for Muslims, the Pope stood alongside an imam in silent prayer.

Days later back at the Vatican, the Pope said it was "a gesture initially unforeseen," but one which turned out to be "truly significant."

"Stopping for some minutes for reflection in that place of prayer, I turned to the one God of heaven and of earth, the merciful father of all humanity," the Pope said.

Muslims were touched by the Pope's gesture, but some Christians went to great lengths to insist that the Pope's "turning to God" was not the same thing as prayer, especially in a mosque. [This hair-splitting is absurd. We are taught that God is everywhere, so one can pray anywhere. The theological argument against 'inter-religious' as opposed to 'multi-religious' praying has to do with the the manner of praying, i.e., various faiths can pray together on a common occasion but not in a 'common prayer service' as it is possible among Christian confessions.]

People found it easier to accept the fact that Pope Benedict stopped for prayer in Jerusalem at the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site.

After visiting Jerusalem, Pope Benedict told visitors at the Vatican that faith demands love of God and love of neighbor; "it is to this that Jews, Christians and Muslims are called to bear witness in order to honor with acts that God to whom they pray with their lips. And it is exactly this that I carried in my heart, in my prayers, as I visited in Jerusalem the Western or Wailing Wall and the Dome of the Rock, symbolic places respectively of Judaism and of Islam."

In a message commemorating the 20th anniversary of Pope John Paul's Assisi meeting, Pope Benedict said the 1986 gathering effectively demonstrated to the world that "prayer does not divide, but unites" and is a key part of promoting peace based on friendship, acceptance and dialogue between people of different cultures and religions.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/01/2011 20:19]
08/01/2011 18:19
OFFLINE
Post: 381
Post: 24
Registrato il: 17/05/2006
Registrato il: 02/05/2009
Utente Comunità
Utente Junior
Re: Interview about liturgy

What place do sacred song and music have in liturgy? And what type of music should it be?
Song and music are an integral part of liturgical celebration, not just mere decoration. That is why song and music in liturgy, when they are authentically part of it,



Why do Catholics always speak about sacred song and/plus(?)music as though differentiating between "song" and "music"? Isn't song and chant music?? Even the Pope does this! I presume they mean by this weird,incorrect and amateurish habitual expression "sacred vocal and instrumental music". [SM=g7953]



Dear Crotchet -

I agree that the phrase 'song and music' is technically wrong and redundant, and the first time I came across the phrase in Italian (canto e musica) when I first joined a Forum more than five years ago, I was similarly annoyed. So I checked it out on Google, and found that it is a ready-made phrase in Italian, with similar equivalents in Spanish (canto y musica) and in French (chant et musique), and I suppose in other Romance languages, but even in German (Musik und Gesang). Whose use is not limited to Catholics. It's a language convention - and I do not have the time right now to research how it came to be a convention) - not an intentional or ignorant mistake.

Just now, I checked into Sacrosanctum concilium, the Vatican II document on liturgy, and I see that it uses the terms 'sacred music' and 'sacred song' not 'music and song' together.

I also checked out Joseph Ratzinger's Spirit of Liturgy, and the English translation does not carry the redundant phrase at all. And since it's a slow news day, I think it is a good time to post Ignatius Insight's excerpts that have to do with liturgical music from the book.

TERESA

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/01/2011 16:18]
08/01/2011 21:53
OFFLINE
Post: 21.876
Post: 4.508
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master





Italian members of Parliament to
attend tomorrow's Angelus to pray
for persecuted Christians

Translated from the site of

January 8, 2010

Some 200 members of the Italian Parliament - representatives as well as senators across the political spectrum - have responded to the invitation of Mons. Enzo Leuzzi, chaplain of the Chamber of Representatives, to take part in the Angelus prayers led by the Pope tomorrow, to pray for the Christians of the Middle East and to appeal to the international community to respect religious freedom everywhere.

The week in Parliament will start Monday with a general call to all members to express themselves courageously on the question of religious freedom.

Among those promoting the initiative is Paola Binetti, a physician and a member of the Opus Dei [now a representative from the Lombardy region and former senator in the Prodi government] who said: "Religious freedom is part of fundamental human rights in the Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. Full respect of this right by everyone is a fundamental premise to build a world that follows the way of peace and progress."

"Unfortunately, the right to religious freedom seems to be in question now, and we are witnessing growing levels of religious intolerance, often nourished and exploited by political and economic motives which increasingly result in aberrant acts of collective violence to the detriment of minorities.

"In the face of such dangerous dynamics of violence, the Western worlds and its institutions have shown indifference, that ends up becoming moral complicity - the fruit of a culture in which the economic dimension has become central while it has become inattentive to the spiritual dimension of the human being".

She said that many Italian politicians, from all parties, "wish to take their share of the responsibility to place man at the center of attention with the totality of his rights and needs, without leaving aside or trampling on his relationship with God and all other men who must be considered as brothers and not mere economic competitors".

Binetti said that "attending the Angelus with the Pope is a concrete way to underline this aspect and reiterate and absolute NO to violence and to the violation of human rights, however and wherever these are perpetrated. As Catholics, we are always on the side of man and his rights, the more so when he appears most isolated and helpless".


Meanwhile, the EU intends
to say or do nothing...


In today's paper edition, Avvenire reported that

"A spokesperson for the Foreign Minister of the European Union, Lady Peggy Aston from the UK, said that the EU has 'nothing in particular' to say at the moment about what it intends to do regarding the persecution of Christians in places like Pakistan, Iraq, and Egypt"

The newspaper adds that Ashton, a member of the British House of Lords, who was nominated for her current position by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown in December 2009, under the terms of the Treaty of Lisbon, has been very unpopular and is known by the nickname 'the absentee Baroness'. having attended missed 66% of the 46 meetings so far that required her presence, requesting furhter that she be allowed to attend all meetings by videoconference. The Telegraph has used to describe her an old Winston Churchill joke about Clement Attlee, the Labour PM who replaced him after
world War II: "An empty cab stopped in front of #10 Downing Street, and out stepped Mr. Attlee".



US bishops urge Obama administration
to be more attentive to religious freedom



WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 7, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The U.S. episcopal conference is urging the Obama administration to make economic and political decisions being mindful of governments' indifference to the protection of their citizens.

Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, New York, chairman of the bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, in a Thursday letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said that "egregious violations of human rights as well as indifference and inaction by foreign governments to the protection of their own citizens must be weighed seriously" in economic and political decisions taken by the administration.

Bishop Hubbard's letter as well as two statements from Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the United States Catholic of Conference Bishops, responded to a recent surge in anti-Christian violence, particularly the Jan. 1 explosion at an Orthodox Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt, which claimed the lives of 21 people and injured more than 100.

Archbishop Dolan called the Alexandria attack a "shocking assault on human life and religious freedom."

"So many innocent lives lost to such senseless violence calls for the strongest condemnation by all religious leaders and by persons of conscience everywhere," Archbishop Dolan wrote in a message to the Coptic leader, Patriarch Shenouda III of the See of St. Mark in Alexandria. "Please be assured that the Catholic bishops of the United States stand in solidarity with you and your Church in this time of trial and suffering."

In a separate statement, Archbishop Dolan called for prayer for religious freedom, for Christians and people of other faiths: "The recent violence in the Middle East and the ongoing threats to religious freedom in countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, China and North Korea remind us of what Pope Benedict has recently said, that religious freedom is essential not only as a human right, but in ensuring world peace."

Meanwhile, Ray Flynn, a former mayor of Boston who served as the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President Bill Clinton, released a statement questioning why anti-Christian violence gets so little attention.

He wrote: "The central question I asked was, 'Why is it that Catholics are afraid to speak out against injustice, hatred and even violence directed against them?' I complained to the national media. One outlet said to me, 'Ambassador, you are the only person to bring this to our attention. We don't hear too much from you folks.'"

"I can't imagine another religious group who would allow the media -- conservative or progressive -- to get away with this," Flynn remarked. "[…] I'm beginning to see no difference between the [political] parties or in the media, when it comes to traditional Catholic concerns."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/01/2011 18:59]
08/01/2011 23:11
OFFLINE
Post: 21.877
Post: 4.509
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Excerpts from The Spirit of the Liturgy



Music and the Bible
The importance of music in biblical religion is shown very simply by the fact that the verb "to sing" (with related words such as "song", and so forth) is one of the most commonly used words in the Bible. It occurs 309 times in the Old Testament and thirty-six in the New.

When man comes into contact with God, mere speech is not enough. Areas of his existence are awakened that spontaneously turn into song. Indeed, man's own being is insufficient for what he has to express, and so he invites the whole of creation to become a song with him:

"Awake, my soul! Awake, O harp and lyre! I will awake the dawn! I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples; I will sing praises to you among the nations. For your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds" (Ps 57:8f.).

We find the first mention of singing in the Bible after the crossing of the Red Sea. Israel has now been definitively delivered from slavery. In a desperate situation, it has had an overwhelming experience of God's saving power. Just as Moses as a baby was taken from the Nile and only then really received the gift of life, so Israel now feels as if it has been, so to speak, taken out of the water: it is free, newly endowed with the gift of itself from God's own hands.

In the biblical account, the people's reaction to the foundational event of salvation is described in this sentence: "[T]hey believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses" (Ex 14:31). But then follows a second reaction, which soars up from the first with elemental force: "Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord" (15:1).

Year by year, at the Easter Vigil, Christians join in the singing of this song. They sing it in a new way as their song, because they know that they have been "taken out of the water" by God's power, set free by God for authentic life. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 136-7)


Liturgical music flows from love
The singing of the Church comes ultimately out of love. It is the utter depth of love that produces the singing. "Cantare amantis est", says St. Augustine, singing is a lover's thing. In so saying, we come again to the trinitarian interpretation of Church music.

The Holy Spirit is love, and it is he who produces the singing. He is the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit who draws us into love for Christ and so leads to the Father. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 142)

In liturgical music, based as it is on biblical faith, there is, therefore, a clear dominance of the Word; this music is a higher form of proclamation. Ultimately, it rises up out of the love that responds to God's love made flesh in Christ, the love that for us went unto death.

After the Resurrection, the Cross is by no means a thing of the past, and so this love is always marked by pain at the hiddenness of God, by the cry that rises up from the depths of anguish, Kyrie eleison, by hope and by supplication.

But it also has the privilege, by anticipation, of experiencing the reality of the Resurrection, and so it brings with it the joy of being loved, that gladness of heart that Haydn said came upon him when he set liturgical texts to music.

Thus the relation of liturgical music to logos means, first of all, simply its relation to words. That is why singing in the liturgy has priority over instrumental music, though it does not in any way exclude it.

It goes without saying that the biblical and liturgical texts are the normative words from which liturgical music has to take its bearings. This does not rule out the continuing creation of "new songs", but instead inspires them and assures them of a firm grounding in God's love for mankind and his work of redemption. (The Spirit of Liturgy, p 149)


Sacred Music in the West
In the West, in the form of Gregorian chant, the inherited tradition of psalm-singing was developed to a new sublimity and purity, which set a permanent standard for sacred music, music for the liturgy of the Church.

Polyphony developed in the late Middle Ages, and then instruments came back into divine worship--quite rightly, too, because, as we have seen, the Church not only continues the synagogue, but also takes up, in the light of Christ's Pasch, the reality represented by the Temple.

Two new factors are thus at work in Church music. Artistic freedom increasingly asserts its rights, even in the liturgy. Church music and secular music are now each influenced by the other. This is particularly clear in the case of the so-called "parody Masses", in which the text of the Mass was set to a theme or melody that came from secular music, with the result that anyone hearing it might think he was listening to the latest "hit".

It is clear that these opportunities for artistic creativity and the adoption of secular tunes brought danger with them. Music was no longer developing out of prayer, but, with the new demand for artistic autonomy, was now heading away from the liturgy; it was becoming an end in itself, opening the door to new, very different ways of feeling and of experiencing the world. Music was alienating the liturgy from its true nature.

At this point the Council of Trent intervened in the culture war that had broken out. It was made a norm that liturgical music should be at the service of the Word; the use of instruments was substantially reduced; and the difference between secular and sacred music was clearly affirmed. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 145-6)


Religious and liturgical music
Whether it is Bach or Mozart that we hear in church, we have a sense in either case of what gloria Dei, the glory of God, means. The mystery of infinite beauty is there and enables us to experience the presence of God more truly and vividly than in many sermons. But there are already signs of danger to come.

Subjective experience and passion are still held in check by the order of the musical universe, reflecting as it does the order of the divine creation itself. But there is already the threat of invasion by the virtuoso mentality, the vanity of technique, which is no longer the servant of the whole but wants to push itself to the fore.

During the nineteenth century, the century of self-emancipating subjectivity, this led in many places to the obscuring of the sacred by the operatic. The dangers that had forced the Council of Trent to intervene were back again.

In similar fashion, Pope Pius X tried to remove the operatic element from the liturgy and declared Gregorian chant and the great polyphony of the age of the Catholic Reformation (of which Palestrina was the outstanding representative) to be the standard for liturgical music.

A clear distinction was made between liturgical music and religious music in general, just as visual art in the liturgy has to conform to different standards from those employed in religious art in general.

Art in the liturgy has a very specific responsibility, and precisely as such does it serve as a wellspring of culture, which in the final analysis owes its existence to cult. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 146-7)


The challenge of popular music
After the cultural revolution of recent decades, we are faced with a challenge no less great than that of the three moments of crisis that we have encountered in our historical sketch: the Gnostic temptation, the crisis at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modernity, and the crisis at the beginning of the twentieth century, which formed the prelude to the still more radical questions of the present day.

Three developments in recent music epitomize the problems that the Church has to face when she is considering liturgical music.

First of all, there is the cultural universalization that the Church has to undertake if she wants to get beyond the boundaries of the European mind. This is the question of what inculturation should look like in the realm of sacred music if, on the one hand, the identity of Christianity is to be preserved and, on the other, its universality is to be expressed in local forms.

Then there are two developments in music itself that have their origins primarily in the West but that for a long time have affected the whole of mankind in the world culture that is being formed.

Modern so-called "classical" music has maneuvered itself, with some exceptions, into an elitist ghetto, which only specialists may enter--and even they do so with what may sometimes be mixed feelings. The music of the masses has broken loose from this and treads a very different path.

On the one hand, there is pop music, which is certainly no longer supported by the people in the ancient sense (populus). It is aimed at the phenomenon of the masses, is industrially produced, and ultimately has to be described as a cult of the banal.

"Rock", on the other hand, is the expression of elemental passions, and at rock festivals it assumes a cultic character, a form of worship, in fact, in opposition to Christian worship. People are, so to speak, released from themselves by the experience of being part of a crowd and by the emotional shock of rhythm, noise, and special lighting effects.

However, in the ecstasy of having all their defenses torn down, the participants sink, as it were, beneath the elemental force of the universe. The music of the Holy Spirit's sober inebriation seems to have little chance when self has become a prison, the mind is a shackle, and breaking out from both appears as a true promise of redemption that can be tasted at least for a few moments. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 147-8)


Music and Logos
Not every kind of music can have a place in Christian worship. It has its standards, and that standard is the Logos. If we want to know whom we are dealing with, the Holy Spirit or the unholy spirit, we have to remember that it is the Holy Spirit who moves us to say, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Cor 12:3).

The Holy Spirit leads us to the Logos, and he leads us to a music that serves the Logos as a sign of the sursum corda, the lifting up of the human heart.

Does it integrate man by drawing him to what is above, or does it cause his disintegration into formless intoxication or mere sensuality? That is the criterion for a music in harmony with logos, a form of that logiké latreia (reason-able, logos-worthy worship) of which we spoke in the first part of this book." (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 151)


Liturgical dancing
Dancing is not a form of expression for the Christian liturgy. In about the third century, there was an attempt in certain Gnostic-Docetic circles to introduce it into the liturgy.

For these people, the Crucifixion was only an appearance. Before the Passion, Christ had abandoned the body that in any case he had never really assumed. Dancing could take the place of the liturgy of the Cross, because, after all, the Cross was only an appearance.

The cultic dances of the different religions have different purposes--incantation, imitative magic, mystical ecstasy--none of which is compatible with the essential purpose of the liturgy of the "reasonable sacrifice".

It is totally absurd to try to make the liturgy "attractive" by introducing dancing pantomimes (wherever possible performed by professional dance troupes), which frequently (and rightly, from the professionals' point of view) end with applause.

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment.

Such attractiveness fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation. I myself have experienced the replacing of the penitential rite by a dance performance, which, needless to say, received a round of applause. Could there be anything farther removed from true penitence?

Liturgy can only attract people when it looks, not at itself, but at God, when it allows him to enter and act. Then something truly unique happens, beyond competition, and people have a sense that more has taken place than a recreational activity. None of the Christian rites includes dancing. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 198-9)


On external actions
Of course, external actions--reading, singing, the bringing up of the gifts--can be distributed in a sensible way. By the same token, participation in the Liturgy of the Word (reading, singing) is to be distinguished from the sacramental celebration proper.

We should be clearly aware that external actions are quite secondary here. Doing really must stop when we come to the heart of the matter: the oratio.

It must be plainly evident that the oratio is the heart of the matter, but that it is important precisely because it provides a space for the actio of God.

Anyone who grasps this will easily see that it is not now a matter of looking at or toward the priest, but of looking together toward the Lord and going out to meet him. The almost theatrical entrance of different players into the liturgy, which is so common today, especially during the Preparation of the Gifts, quite simply misses the point.

If the various external actions (as a matter of fact, there are not very many of them, though they are being artificially multiplied) become the essential in the liturgy, if the liturgy degenerates into general activity, then we have radically misunderstood the "theo-drama" of the liturgy and lapsed almost into parody.

True liturgical education cannot consist in learning and experimenting with external activities. Instead one must be led toward the essential actio that makes the liturgy what it is, toward the transforming power of God, who wants, through what happens in the liturgy, to transform us and the world. In this respect, liturgical education today, of both priests and laity, is deficient to a deplorable extent. Much remains to be done here. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, pp 174-5)


Silence
We are realizing more and more clearly that silence is part of the liturgy. We respond, by singing and praying, to the God who addresses us, but the greater mystery, surpassing all words, summons us to silence. It must, of course, be a silence with content, not just the absence of speech and action.

We should expect the liturgy to give us a positive stillness that will restore us. Such stillness will not be just a pause, in which a thousand thoughts and desires assault us, but a time of recollection, giving us an inward peace, allowing us to draw breath and rediscover the one thing necessary, which we have forgotten.

That is why silence cannot be simply "made", organized as if it were one activity among many. It is no accident that on all sides people are seeking techniques of meditation, a spirituality for emptying the mind. One of man's deepest needs is making its presence felt, a need that is manifestly not being met in our present form of the liturgy.

For silence to be fruitful, as we have already said, it must not be just a pause in the action of the liturgy. No, it must be an integral part of the liturgical event. (The Spirit of the Liturgy, p 209)


It is, of course, gratifying to note how well Mons. Guido Marini has synthesized the Holy Father's thinking on liturgy in the interview he gave to a Spanish magazine (see last post on the preceding page).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/01/2011 23:29]
09/01/2011 00:48
OFFLINE
Post: 21.880
Post: 4.512
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



The Pope, the poor, and children

8, 2010

The Christmas season ends tomorrow with the Solemnity of the Baptism of Christ. The Christian world has once again relived the great mystery of God who became a baby and was born in poverty a cave in Bethlehem. And it is the children and poor people exalted in the Christmas Gospels that interpellate all believers, including the Pope, during the season. Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican press director, comments on this in his editorial this week for the CTV weekly news round-up, Octava Dies.

During the Christmas season, the Pope takes the occasion to encounter and celebrate with poor people and with children. This year, he had lunch at the Vatican on December 26 with the homeless wards assisted by the Blessed Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in Rome, and with the nuns, priests and brothers of the order. And on January 5, he visited the pediatric patients at the Gemelli Hospital in Rome.

These are small signs that mean a lot. They are not mere perfunctory formalities. It is something that belongs to the essence of Church life and of the Pope's own service.

God is love. It was the title of Benedict XVI's first encyclical. In his public life, Jesus often tended to the poor and the sick, and he welcomed and embraced the children who came to him.

Christmas spontaneously reminds us of the need for solidarity. The Baby Jesus, God-made-man, helps us to recognize in each child his image, to welcome unborn life with affection and awe, to know that each child needs care and protection.

Of course, the message is valid for every day of the year. The Church prays, it listens to the Word of God, and celebrates her encounter with God in the Eucharist, but it also lives in loving work, particularly for the little ones, the helpless, and those who risk being overlooked or forgotten socially and individually.

And so the Pope, too, observes each aspect of the life of the Church at all times, wherever he is, and in everything he does.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/01/2011 00:54]
09/01/2011 05:54
OFFLINE
Post: 21.881
Post: 4.513
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Here is my translation of the Messori-Socci run-in, but I am posting the Socci retort ahead of the Messori article that provoked it, since Socci cites the parts he questions.


Whose side is Messori on, anyway:
The Pope or the Imam?

by Antonio Socci
Translated from

January 8, 2011

I do not wish to enter into a debate with Vittorio Messori, since I hold him in friendship and esteem. Unfortunately, however we can be drawn into polemics even if we do not want it, by our duty to the truth. That is why, many years ago, I first disputed Messori for his judgments - which I felt ungenerous - about John Paul II shortly after the latter's death,

Today, I am forced to do so again for the sake of the truth, in behalf of Christians who continue to be martyred these days.

“Amor mi mosse che mi fa parlare” [Love moved me and compelled me to speak - A quotation from Dante's Divine Comedy]: Vittorio's article yesterday in Corriere della Sera truly does disservice to Christians, but above all, it is a disservice to historical truth.

Let us not even talk about his most disputable excursions into the seventh century and the Arab invasion of Egypt and North Africa. But I searched anxiously through Messori's text for at least one phrase that would highlight the problem with Islam - as Benedict XVI enunciated so well in Regensburg: Islam's unresolved relationship with violence, an issue certainly well-known to Messori, one that has horrendous fallout not just on Christians, but on the relationship of Muslims will all other religions and cultures, not to mention with contemporary social issues (such as the status of women).

Unfortunately, I did not find any such statement. Rather, the article is a condemnation 'without appeal' but not against the unresolved issue of Islam and violence.

No. The condemnation is directed at 'Zionism' (accused of 'violent intrusion' in the Middle East) - which has absolutely nothing to do with the massacre at the Coptic cathedral of Alexandria. Perhaps Messori meant Islamist ideology which he does not dissociate from Zionism.

Among the unmitigated villains, Messori cites the usual scapegoat George W. Bush (and the United States). But he also represents Christians in ways that are hardly flattering.

The one he agrees with, according to this article, is the Grand Imam of Cairo Al Tayyeb, who had said that the massacre was "not an attack against Christians but against all of Egypt".

This is the same Al Tayyeb who days earlier accused the Pope of 'interfering' in internal Egyptian affairs when the Pope condemned the Alexandria massacre on January 1.

The same imam who, the day after the massacre, in an interview with Corriere della Sera, said again - as Luigi Ippolito noted in a side-by-side commentary in Corriere - that he felt it was "his duty to reproach the Pope for asking for protection of Christians in Egypt", claiming that "this appeal by the Pope in defense of Christian faithful could create misunderstanding"! [But the objective fact is that it was not Pope Benedict XVI who asked for protection of the Christians in Egypt, but the Coptic Pope Shenouda who had every right to do so. Corriere's reporter should have challenged the Imam on that but did not, and simply reported the Imam's remark as if he had stated a fact!]

The Imam then proceeds to demand of the Pope "a tension-relieving gesture towards the Muslims" - in the words of Ippolito, "as if those who were under threat were the followers of the Koran!"

And it is amazing that none of this is found in Messori's article for Corriere. He makes absolutely no criticism of the imam, and instead says 'he was right' to say the Alexandria attack was not against Christians but against all Egypt.

It was almost like saying that the massacre was a surprise to the Muslims of Egypt, and that terrorists are a foreign body who had come to upset this idyllic Muslim world in the state of Egypt!

And what would have provoked the terrorist(s) to such an act? Here is what Messori says (something most Muslims agree with) after having swallowed the imam's line:

"All the governments of all the Islamic nations are laboring under the tsunami that was detonated by the violent intrusion of Zionism which even dared to establish its capital in Jerusalem, a city almost as holy to Muslim believers as Mecca. Rage, humiliation, a sense of impotence, led to a pan-Islamism which intends to demolish all present frontiers and regimes in order to form one common ironclad bloc of Muslim faithful. A sort of superpower that can challenge even the United States, godfather of Israel."

It is evident to anyone that Messori's theorem does not stand up. If the problem were really Zionism, why would the terrorist(s) massacre Copts who are Egyptian citizens and have always been loyal to the Egyptian state?

If the problem were really the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, why is it that for fourteen centuries, Islam has been trying to conquer and subjugate Christian nations? They came to the gates of Vienna, up to the Pyrenees, and even to Sicily, before they were pushed back by European Christians.

Besides, it is well known that some Islamist groups feel as much robbed of 'Palestine' - the part that is now Israel - as they feel defrauded of Andalusia, and who knows, perhaps, of Sicily too. What are we supposed to do? Give them back Spain ? [And drive out the Israelis from the Middle East!]

I must also point out that the Ottoman Turks' genocide of the Armenian Christians [700,000 to a million] - the first genocide of the 20th century - took place decades before the modern state of Israel was born. [i.e., How could Zionism have been the driving force for that anti-Christian persecution?]

And that the Muslim Brotherhood [a fanatical Islamist terrorist organization that even Imam Al Tayyeb opposes!]started in 1928. This brotherhood emerged, employing fanatic terrorism, only in the 1980s, not in 1948 when Israel was founded.

And how, Messori, do you explain that the Islamist regime of Khartoum in the Sudan has, since 1980, massacred two million Christians and pagan tribes in South Sudan?

In this case, I will tell you: Because these Sudanese non-Muslims resisted the imposition of sharia law, not because thousands of kilometers away, the State of Israel exists!

Why, too, on the far end of the world, did Indonesia invade East Timor and massacred a great part of its Christian population [East Timor was an ex-Portuguese colony, hence the Christian heritage] although neither Indonesia, nor the residents of East Timor, had absolutely any interest in Israel and Palestine?

The truth is something else. Let us listen to two historians of the Middle East, neither of them Catholic:

"For almost a thousand years," writes Bernard Lewis, "from the first Moorish debarkation in Spain to the second Turkish siege of Vienna, Europe was under constant threat from Islam".

Samuel Huntington reminded us that "Islam is the only civilization that placed the very survival of the West, not once but twice, in serious danger".

Given this enduring imperialistic ambition of Islam, where religion and politics are one and the same, the great trauma of the modern Islamic world was the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. That was the detonator.

Later, with decolonization after World War II, the Arab elites focused on establishing lay political movements with socialist and/or nationalist ideologies.

These regimes were the first to push for the possibility of a Palestine state, and, fueled by pan-Arab and anti-Zionist ideology, they launched a series of wars intended to eliminate Israel - but coming out of these wars soundly defeated.

Thus these illiberal regimes, often corrupt and bankrupt, fed anti-Israeli and anti-Western hatred among their peoples, the better to have them focus on an external enemy [rather than on their internal problems].. A hatred that gets stronger the more they perceive the superior standard of living in the West [including Israel, which they consider part of the West].

After the Shiite Islamic revolution in Iran in the 1970s, this hatred gave rise to the rebirth of Islamist fundamentalism.

One might say that the real concrete problem is that the Arab and Islamic nations have not known democracy and respect for human rights. And thus Islam has yet to reject violence of any kind.

The Pope's invitation to a world peace meeting in Assisi is the other face of Regensburg: a Christian attempt to help everyone who wishes to liberate the religious sentiment expressed in the various faiths from violence and intolerance.


One last thing. The title of Messori's article is 'The roots of hatred against Christians'.

Christians have been hated, persecuted and massacred in the past 200 years under various regimes and ideologies. And they are still subject to that in the few remaining Communist regimes. Therefore the 'root of hatred' cannot be the existence of Israel. Messori knows that, Whey then did he write the editorial that he did?


The roots of hatred against Christians
by Vittorio Messori
Translated from

January 7, 2010

I think that everyone, including Christians, has something to learn from Benedetto Croce, that agnostic, but not atheistic, individual, who was anti-clerical but respectful of the Gospel. [Croce, 1866-1952, was an Italian philosopher, critic and prominent liberal who had a great influence on Antonio Gramsci, a founding member and eventual leader of the Italian Communist Party.]

That great realist maintained that knowledge of history is the best antidote to every extremism, to any crusading spirit.

History, Croce said, is never black and white; it is not the battle between good and bad, but a stage on which victims and executors exchange roles as soon as they can.

So, speaking of our situation today, even with the solidarity we feel for the victims and our horror at the homicidal violence perpetrated in Alexandria, we have a right to a historical context that certainly does not justify what happened, but prevents us from making mistaken prognoses and diagnoses.

So, let us imagine ourselves along the banks of the Nile, when around the middle of the seventh century, the knights of Allah burst forth from the deserts of Arabia. They were courageous and 'high' from the words of Mohammed the prophet, but they were not many and they had no true military organization nor a war machine. In short, they were like the 'thousand' Garibaldinis against the 200,000-strong army of the Bourbons [in the mid-196h-century war for Italian unification].

Never would those incursors have had any chance of defeating the army of Byzantium, to which Egypt then belonged, if the Christian troops had not disbanded before the encounter and if the local populace had not acclaimed the invaders as liberators.

In fact, Egypt had accepted Christianity early with a fervor that one might even consider excessive. [After all, the Holy Family had fled to Egypt, decades before Jesus began his public ministry! In fact, the Copts trace their history back to the Holy Family's exile in Egypt.]

Egypt gave rise to the ascetic cults of the desert hermits, but also teemed with heresies which were at war with each other, often in bloody ways. But all the Egyptians were united in the desire to get rid of their hated dependency on Constantinople.

It is a fact that upon learning that the Arab invaders were fighting the Eastern Roman (and Christian) Empire, the Byzantine troops in Egypt, mostly mercenaries, refused to fight, and in Alexandria, they started to put up triumphal arches to welcome the invaders.

Moreover, was it not Christians who summoned the forces of the Crescent to Spain in order to deal with internal strife among the Visigoths? And would not France later be, even in the Battle of Lepanto, always on the side of the Ottoman Turks? [I have no time to check out these historical assertions, and I have only a general acquaintance with the period, but since historical research has always been a strong point with Messori, I will assume he is stating facts, even if Socci thinks he makes disputable assertions.]

The enthusiasm of those seventh-century Egyptians soon vanished: True, the Muslims did not force people to convert - instead, they sought to rein it in, because in their view, each new convert would mean one less subject to exploit. But their pitiless regime of subjugating believers in the Gospel to believers of the Koran led most of the Christians to convert.

Those who refused to apostasize were called 'Copts', an Arabic deformation of the Greek word for Egyptian, indicating that they were descendants of those whom the Arabs first found in that land.

The resistance of this group of Christians, who over the centuries, stabilized at about 10 percent of the population (the same as at present), has aroused the admiration of other Christians as a sign of the firmness of the faith despite the yielding of many others.

It must also be said that Copts have somehow provided the backbone for the succession of Muslim regimes in Egypt. Their culture, which is superior to the average in Egypt, their enterprise, their willingness and zeal to help relieve burdens where they can, made their presence essential in politics, in administration, in the economy.

That is why Egyptian Muslims have won battles against Christians, starting with the Crusades, with the faithful support of the Orthodox Copts. Who, it must be said, were themselves pitiless against Catholic Copts and even against other Orthodox, such as Greek and Slavic Orthodox - who refused to accept monophysitism [[C]the doctrine that Christ essentially had only one nature, as his divine nature had completely absorbed his human nature].

Therefore, from the very beginning, the history of Muslim Egypt has been an interweaving - often fecund and culturally prestigious - and reciprocal complicity between God and Allah. But it has also been a story of bloody conflicts among Christians of various confessions. {Really??? Have there been that many Christians and that many intra-Christian conflicts in Egypt?]

In any case, until recent times, Muslim and Christian coexistence, that had been cemented over centuries, was never seriously in question. What has happened then to change things?

I think that the Grand Imam of Cairo, Al Tayyeb, was not mistaken - at least in this respect - when he said in the interview published in Corriere yesterday that "The criminal attack in Alexandria was not against Christians but against all of Egypt".

In effect, the governments of all the Islamic nations have been laboring under the tsunami that was detonated by the violent intrusion of Zionism which has even established its capital in Jerusalem, a city almost as holy to Muslim believers as Mecca itself. [Never mind that Jerusalem had been the capital of Davidic Israel for at least 1600 years before Hohammed was born! And for Messori to use the term Zionism - an ideology that became obsolete the moment the modern state of Israel was born, because that was its driving goal - instead of Israel which is the state, indicates an anti-Israeli position I never suspected in him!]

Rage, humiliation, a sense of impotence, led to a pan-Islamism which intends to demolish all present frontiers and regimes in order to form one common ironclad bloc of Muslim faithful. A sort of superpower that can challenge even the United States, godfather of Israel. [And Messori does not feel outrage - or at least alarm - about this ruthless-sounding ambition of pan-Islam hegemony????]

The undoubted success of the Islamist action on September 11, 2001, inflamed Muslim enthusiasms - it proved to them that victory was possible in their war.

If in Egyot and elsewhere, Christians are attacked, in Irag Shiites are being massacred [And Christians, too! How can Messori leave them off after the church massacre in Baghdad that had a death toll thrice as many as Alexandria???], but for pan-Islamists, Shiites are not true Muslims and can therefore not be part of their Great Front [Hmmm, what will Shiite Iran say to that? Isn't Iran pan-Islamist as well, except that it sees itself as the sole and undisputed leader of the dreamed-of Universal Caliphate that will rule the planet!]

Christians will be put to flight like anybody else who will not form part of the sacred umma [the worldwide Muslim community]. [If the umma has blanketed the world, as the pan-Islamists intend to, where can Christians flee to????]

If this is the diagnosis, then there are 'cures', such as those a la [George W] Bush, which only aggravate and exasperate the evil.

Let us honor the Christians who were killed, and render sincere commemoration of their witness, but to proclaim a crusade against nations like Egypt, which is itself the victim of an imperial design [By whom????? Iran?], would mean adding more victims and throwing gasoline onto Koranic flames - as the Americans know, having been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[WHOA!!! First, who has declared a crusade against Egypt, or any other nation that has been persecuting Christians? No one, to my knowledge. And how can Messori objectively and sweepingly claim that the Americans have been defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan? In Iraq, they made a demcocratic Iraq possible - the first genuine democracy in the Arab world (who can forget the millions who have defied terrorists to go to the polls in three national elections now, and proudly showed off a purple finger to prove they had cast a vote??? - with all the attendant birth pains, true, but the Iraqis are now responsible for their destiny. And in Afghanistan, the war is still going on....

I am not sure if and how Messori will reply to Socci, but surely, he cannot have been himself when he wrote this piece! Too many things in it are simply off-kilter and even flatly untrue. You can see why I had no desire to translate it yesterday after I had read it.]


I would normally post the following in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread, butposting it here provides a kind of counterpoise to the mostly negative historical record of Islam with respect to Christians as pointed out by Antonio Socci. The news reported below is unprecedented in recent memory. The only caveat is that it comes from the English online edition of the Cairo-based Al-Ahram newspaper, considered the Arab world's most widely-read and prestigious newspaper, and whose content is controlled by the Egyptian Ministry of Public Information. The following article could be seen as a well-crafted propaganda piece, replete with open criticism of the ruling party in Egypt for various malfeasances... Ot it may indeed be the harbinger of a miracle hardly hoped for...


Egypt's Muslims attend
Coptic Christmas Mass
to serve as 'human shields'

by Yasmine El-Rashidi

7 Jan 2011

Muslims turned up in droves for the Coptic Christmas Mass Thursday night, offering their bodies, and lives, as “shields” to Egypt’s threatened Christian communi

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve Mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s Mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular Muslim televangelist and preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended Mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak.

Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

The attack has rocked a nation that is no stranger to acts of terror, against all of Muslims, Copts and Jews. In January of last year, on the eve of Coptic Christmas, a drive-by shooting in the southern town of Nag Hammadi killed eight Copts as they were leaving Church following mass.

In 2004 and 2005, bombings in the Red Sea resorts of Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh claimed over 100 lives, and in the late 90’s, Islamic militants executed a series of bombings and massacres that left dozens dead.

This attack though comes after a series of more recent incidents that have left Egyptians feeling left out in the cold by a government meant to protect them.

Last summer, 28-year-old businessman Khaled Said was beaten to death by police, also in Alexandria, causing a local and international uproar. Around his death, there have been numerous other reports of police brutality, random arrests and torture.

Last year was also witness to a ruthless parliamentary election process in which the government’s security apparatus and thugs seemed to spiral out of control.

The result, aside from injuries and deaths, was a sweeping win by the ruling party thanks to its own carefully-orchestrated campaign that included vote-rigging, corruption and widespread violence. The opposition was essentially annihilated.

And just days before the elections, Copts - who make up 10 percent of the population - were once again the subject of persecution, when a government moratorium on construction of a Christian community centre resulted in clashes between police and protestors. Two people were left dead and over 100 were detained, facing sentences of up to life in jail.

The economic woes of a country that favours the rich have only exacerbated the frustration of a population of 80 million whose majority struggle each day to survive. Accounts of thefts, drugs, and violence have surged in recent years, and the chorus of voices of discontent has continued to grow.

The terror attack that struck the country on New Year’s eve is in many ways a final straw – a breaking point, not just for the Coptic community, but for Muslims as well, who too feel marginalized, oppressed, and overlooked by a government that fails to address their needs.

On this Coptic Christmas eve, the solidarity was not just one of religion, but of a desperate and collective plea for a better life and a government with accountability.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/01/2011 21:42]
09/01/2011 13:27
OFFLINE
Post: 21.882
Post: 4.514
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Sunday, January 9
SOLEMNITY OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD


Illustrations, from left: Medieval Russian icon; Bellini, 1426; Fra Angelico, 1441; Verrochio/Da Vinci, 1472; El Greco, 1608; Murillo, 1655.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011011.shtml


Today's saint:

Center, St. Augustine's Abbey today, a World Heritage site along with Canterbury Cathedral.
ST. ADRIAN (HADRIAN) OF CANTERBURY (b North Africa ca. 635, d England 710)
Benedictine Abbot and Scholar
A Berber like St. Augustine, his family left Africa for Italy where he became a Benedictine monk and abbot of a monastery
near Naples. Pope St. Vitalian twice offered to make him Archbishop of Canterbury but he declined. The second time, he
recommended his friend Theodore of Tarsus (who would become St. theodore of Canterbury), then already 67. The Pope
agreed, provided Adrian accompanied him to Canterbury, where Theodore made him head the abbey founded by Saint
Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century. Adrian, a gifted scholar, made the abbey one of the great centers of learning
in his time. To this day, the 'books of Theodore and Hadrian', including their commentaries on the Bible, are still issued
in modern editions as source material for Anglo-Saxon England. Adrian died peacefully in the abbey. The Normans completely
rebuilt the Anglo-Saxon abbey, and during the work, St. Adrian's remains were unearthed in 1091 and found to be incorrupt.
His tomb became an object of pilgrimage where many miracles were said to take place.



No papal news in today's OR, but there is a background story on the tradition of the papal Golden Rose offered these days to Martian images venerated in major shrines. Page 1 international news: Thousands of young persons clash with police forces in major Algerian cities as they protest in several cities against continued unemployment (70% of the population are 25 years or younger) and rising food prices - similar protests have been taking place in neighboring Tunisia; South Sudan votes in a referendum today on whether to become independent from the Muslim-dominated main territory - violent clashes on the eve, Cardinal Napier of South Africa heads an interfaith delegation of election observers; severe drought aggravates the tragedy of civil war-torn Somalia; and US Federal Reserve chairman warns it will take at least five years to bring unemployment down to 8% from its present 9.4%.


PAPAL EVENTS TODAY

Mass of the Baptism of the Lord at the Sistine Chapel, with the baptism of 21 children. Homily.

Sunday Angelus - After the prayers, he recalled the disastrous Haiti earthquake one year ago, and
said he was sending the president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, Cardinal Robert Sarah, to Haiti
as his personal representative to offer concrete help.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 00:33]
09/01/2011 14:22
OFFLINE
Post: 21.883
Post: 4.515
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




MASS OF THE BAPTISM OF OUR LORD


Illustration: From a 12th-cent. Evangelarium, Benedictine Monastery of Pruem, Bibiliotheque Nationale de France, Paris.





Pope baptises newborns
and prays for Haiti

Adapted from


09 JANUARY 2011 (RV) - One year on from the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the people of the nation were in Pope Benedict XVI’s prayers this Sunday, as he marked the Solemnity of the Baptism of our Lord with Mass at the Sistine Chapel and the now traditional Baptism of Roman babies, 21 this year, and the Sunday Angelus afterwards.

The infants baptised, aged four weeks to four months, are children of Vatican employees and were welcomed into the Church in a joyful and intimate ceremony presided over by the Pope.

In his homily Pope Benedict described Baptism as an act of love. God he said, “in gifting us the faith.. has given us what is most precious in life, that is, the most beautiful and real reason for which to live”.




Here is the Vatican Radio translation of the Holy Father's homily:


Dear brothers and sisters,

It is my pleasure to warmly welcome you this morning, especially you parents and godparents of the 21 infants upon whom, in a few moments time, I will have the joy of administering the Sacrament of Baptism.

As has become tradition, this ritual takes place again this year as part of the Eucharistic Sacrifice during which we celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. With this Feast, on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, the Christmas season concludes with the manifestation of the Lord in the Jordan.

According to the evangelist Matthew
(3:13-17), Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. In fact, all of Palestine had been flokcing to hear the preaching of this great prophet who announced the coming of the Kingdom of God, and to be baptized, that is, to submit themselves to the sign of penance that calls to conversion from sin.

While that rite was called baptism, it was not the sacramental rite which we celebrate today. As you well know, it was by his death and resurrection that Jesus instituted the Sacraments and gave birth to the Church.

What John the Baptist administered was rather an act of repentance, an act which called for humility before God, for a new beginning: by immersing themselves in the water, the penitents acknowledged their sins, implored God for the purification of their sin,s and were sent out to change the error of their ways.

So, when the Baptist sees Jesus who, in a line with sinners, comes to be baptized, he is stunned; recognizing him as the Messiah, the Holy One of God, He who is without sin, John expresses his confusion.

Hhe himself, the Baptist, wants to be baptized by Jesus, but Jesus tells him not to resist, to agree to carry out this act, necessary to 'fulfill what is right'.

With these words, Jesus shows that he came into the world to carry out the will of He who sent him, to do everything that the Father asks him, that it is in obedience to the Father that he has agreed to become a man.

This first act reveals that Jesus is the Son of God, true God like the Father. He is the One who "humbles himself" to become one of us, He who made man agreed to humble himself to death on the cross
( cf Phil 2:7).

The baptism of Jesus, which we commemorate today, fits into this logic of humility: it is the gesture of he who wants to be one of us in every way and who stands in line with sinners,

He who is without sin allows Himself to be treated like a sinner
(cf. 2 Cor 5:21). to carry on his shoulders the burden of guilt of all humanity. He is the "servant of Yahweh" of which the prophet Isaiah spoke in the first reading (see 42.1).

His humility is dictated by his wish to establish full communion with humanity, the desire to achieve genuine solidarity with man and his condition. Jesus's gesture anticipates the Cross, the acceptance of death for our sins.

This act of self-abasement, in which Jesus wants to totally conform Himself to the Father's plan of love, expresses the perfect harmony of will and purpose that exists between persons of the Holy Trinity.

In this act of love, the Spirit of God manifests himself as a dove and comes over him, and at that moment the love that unites Jesus and the Father is witnessed by those who attend the baptism, in a voice from on high, which they all hear.

The Father openly reveals the deep communion uniting him to the Son: the voice that resonates from on high states that Jesus is totally obedient to the Father and that this obedience is an expression of the love that binds them together.

Therefore, the Father is pleased with Jesus, the Son, because he recognises in the gesture Jesus’ desire to follow his will in everything: "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased"
(Mt 3 17). The words of the Father, are also a prelude to the victory of the resurrection.

Dear Parents: the Baptism you ask today for your children, also places them in this mutual exchange of love between God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for this gesture I am about to make, sweeps the love of God over them, flooding them with His gifts.

Through the washing with water, your children become part of the life of Jesus, who died on the cross to free us from sin and in rising again, conquered death. So, spiritually immersed in his death and resurrection, they are freed from original sin and begin their life of grace, which is the very life of the Risen Jesus.

"He gave himself for us ", St. Paul says, "to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good"
(Titus 2:14).

Dear friends, in gifting us the faith, the Lord has given us what is most precious in life, that is, the most beautiful and real reason for which to live: it is by grace that we believe in God, that we know his love, he wants to save us and deliver us from evil.

Now you, dear parents, godparents, ask the Church to accept these children to her bosom, to give them Baptism, and you make this request because of the gift of faith that you yourselves have, in turn, received.

Together with the prophet Isaiah, every Christian can say: "The Lord formed me as his servant from the womb"
(cf. 49.5), so, dear parents, your children are a precious gift of the Lord, who has reserved their hearts as His own, to be able to fill them with His love.

Through the sacrament of Baptism, he consecrates them and calls them to follow Jesus, through the realization of their vocation according to the particular design of love the Father has in mind for each of them; the goal of this earthly pilgrimage will be full communion with Him in eternal happiness.

By Baptism, these children are gifted an indelible spiritual seal, a "character" that marks them forever as belonging to the Lord and makes them living members of his mystical body, which is the Church.

While becoming part of the People of God, a path of holiness and conformity to Jesus starts today for this children, a reality that is placed within them like the seed of a beautiful tree, which must be made to grow.

Therefore, understanding the magnitude of this gift from the earliest centuries, care was taken to give Baptism to infants at birth. Certainly, free and conscious adherence to this life of faith and love is also required, and that is why it is necessary that, after baptism, they must be educated in faith, educated according to the wisdom of Scripture and the teachings of the Church, so that the seed of faith, which they are receiving today, grows in them and reaches full Christian maturity.

The Church, which welcomes them among her children, is responsible, together with the parents and godparents, to accompany them on this path of growth. Collaboration between the Christian community and family is greatly needed in the current social context, in which the family institution is threatened from all sides, and finds itself having to face many difficulties in its mission to educate in the faith.

The lack of stable cultural reference points and the rapid transformation to which society is continuously subject, makes the commitment to education very difficult. Therefore, it is necessary that the parishes strive increasingly to support families, as the small domestic churches in their task of transmitting the faith.

Dear parents, I thank the Lord with you for the gift of the baptism of these your children; As we pray for them, we invoke the abundant gifts of the Holy Spirit, who today consecrates them in the image of Christ priest, prophet and king.

We entrust them to the maternal intercession of Mary, asking for them health and long lives so that they can grow and mature in the faith, and bring, with their lives, the fruits of holiness and love. Amen.




After the Mass, the Holy Father told the thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square that he has sent Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of Cor Unam, the Pontifical council charged with fostering charity, to Haiti to express his closeness and that of the entire Church to the troubled population.

He also underlined that the “terrible earthquake” has been followed by a grave cholera epidemic, and called for prayers and support for the Haitian people.

Before the Angelus prayer, the Pope recalled Sunday’s feast of the Baptism of Our Lord; when the Church; “contemplates once more the revelation of God who is close to humanity, who visits his people in the person of Jesus Christ, in order to set them free from the tyranny of sin and death”. He prayed “may we open the doors of our hearts to Christ and welcome him into the world of today”.


Baptism in Sistine Chapel marks
the end of the Christmas season



VATICAN CITY. Jan. 9 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI baptized 21 newborns in an intimate ceremony in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday that marked the end of the Christmas season.

Standing under Michelangelo's magnificent "Last Judgment" fresco, the Pope poured water on the foreheads of 13 baby boys and eight baby girls. Some babies screamed, other squirmed, some slept through it.

Benedict prayed for their "life and health so they can grow and mature in the faith."

He said that, in an ever-changing society without firm cultural references, it has become more difficult to educate children in the faith, and urged parishes and parents to cooperate.

The babies — aged between four weeks and four months — are all children of Vatican employees.

The annual ceremony is held the first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 01:07]
09/01/2011 17:47
OFFLINE
Post: 21.885
Post: 4.517
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


ANGELUS TODAY



After a mini-homily on the significance of the Baptism of Jesus, the Holy Father today asked for continuing prayers and assistance in behalf of the people of Haiti, who were struck by a calamitous earthquake one year ago.

He said he was sending Cardinal Robert Sarah, the new president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which administers Vatican charities, as his personal representative to Haiti as an expression of his closeness to the Haitians, Most of those who lost their homes in the quake - numbering in the hundreds of thousands - continue to live in tent cities and are now threatened by a cholera epidemic.

The Holy Father also greeted Italian Parliamentarians who came to the Angelus gathering and thanked them for their commitment to religious freedom for people everywhere.

Likewise, he greeted Christian Copts present among the pilgrims in St. Peter's Square.



Pope reaches out to Haiti
one year after earthquake



VATICAN CITY. Jan 12 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI says he feels constantly close to the population of Haiti after last year's catastrophic quake and a cholera outbreak.

Benedict said during his Angelus prayer Sunday that he wished to remember the "Haiti people a year after the terrible earthquake, which was unfortunately followed by a grave cholera epidemic."

More than 1 million people remain homeless in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, and cholera has killed more than 2,400 people nationwide since October.

Speaking from his studio window overlooking St. Peter's Square, the pontiff said he had dispatched Cardinal Robert Sarah of the Vatican's charitable and humanitarian relief office to Haiti "to express my constant closeness and that of the whole Church."




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

Today, the Church celebrates the Baptism of the Lord, the feast that concludes the liturgical season of the Nativity.

This mystery of the life of Christ shows visibly that his coming to the world in the flesh is the sublime act of love of the Divine Trinity. We can say that from this solemn event, the creative, redemptice and sanctifying action of the Most Holy Trinity would be manifested farther in the public ministry of Jesus, in his teaching, in his miraacles, in his passion, death and resurrection.

Indeed, we read in the Gospel of St. Matthew that "After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened (for him), and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove (and) coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying,'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased'"

(3,16-17).

The Holy Spirit 'dwells' in the Son and testifies to his divinity, while the voice of the Father, coming from heaven, expresses the communion of Love.

"The conclusion of the Baptism scene tells us that Jesus has received this true 'anointing', that he is the awaited Anointed One - the Christ..."
(Jesus of Mazareth, Milan 2007, 47-48), confirming the prophecy of Isaiah: "Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one with whom I am pleased" (Is 42,1).

He is truly the Messiah, the Son of the Most High, who, emerging from the waters of the Jordan, establishes regeneration in the Spirit and opens, to those who wish it, the possobility of becoming children of God, acquires the character of a child starting with the Christian name, a sign that the Holy Spirit makes him 'born again' in the womb of the Church.

Blessed Antonio Rosmini said that "the baptized person undergoes a secret but very powerful operation which elevates him to a supernatural order, which places him in communication with God"
(Del principio supremo della metodica…, Torino 1857, n. 331).

All this was realized anew this morning, during the Eucharistic Celebration in the Sistine Chapel, where I conferred the sacrament of Baptism on 21 newborn children.

Dear friends, Baptism is the start of spiritual life, which finds its fullness through the Church. At the propitious time for the Sacrament, while the ecclesial community prays and entrusts a new child to God, the parents and godparents commit themselves to welcome the newly baptized child and sustain it through Christian formation and education.

This is a great responsibility, which comes from a great gift. That is why I enocurage all the faithful to rediscover the beauty of being baptized and belonging to the great family of God, and to give joyous testimony of your faith so that it may generate fruits of goodness and concord.

We ask this through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Help of Christians, to whom we entrust the parents who are preparing for the Baptism of their children, as well as our catechists. Let the whole community take part in the joy of rebirth from water and the Holy Spirit!


After the prayers, he said:

In the context of our Marian prayer, I wish to offer a special thought for the people of Haiti, one year since the terrible earthquake which has now been unfortunately followed by a cholera epidemic.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, is going to that Caribbean island today to express my constant nearness and that of the Church to the people of Haiti.

I greet the group of Italian Parliament members who are present today and I thank them for their commitment, which they share with their other colleagues, to uphold religious freedom. With them, I also greet the Coptic faithful who are present to whom I renew the expression of my nearness.





Copts demonstrate in Rome

Pictures below shows Coptic residents in Rome who demonstrated today for relgious freedom and were present at the Angelus with the Pope:




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 04:04]
10/01/2011 00:29
OFFLINE
Post: 21.887
Post: 4.518
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Unless the Church in Malta has a credible explanation for this snafu, the following appears to be another shameful and emblematic example of cavalier and needlessly stupid negligence on the part of local Church authorities in dealing with sex abuse charges against priests.... The Pope did his part when he was in Malta last year. Apparently, no one bothered to follow through with the nitty-gritty....


Maltese Church to set up tribunal
on sex abuse by local priests
after victims write to Vatican

by George Cini



VALLETTA, Malta, Jan. 9 (AP) - The Maltese Catholic Church will set up a special tribunal to deal with claims that three Maltese priests abused boys at an orphanage 20 years ago — but critics said the Church is still moving too slowly.

Victims of the alleged abuse have repeatedly urged quicker action, most recently in a Dec. 27 letter to the Vatican in which they said Church authorities and courts were taking too long to deal with the case. Local courts have been holding closed-door hearings on the allegations for seven years.

The Maltese curia said the tribunal will be set up following instructions from the Vatican. No date was set. Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said Sunday that those instructions had already been sent over Christmas.

"We hope that now the case can be dealt with speedily," Lombardi said Sunday.

Pope Benedict XVI visited Malta last spring and had a private, emotional meeting with the alleged victims, who faced abuse in the 1980s and 1990s.

Lawrence Grech, one of the five complainants, said the priests involved ought to have been defrocked ages ago. "The court case has been taking far too much time," he said Sunday.

In a surprise move, the three accused priests filed a constitutional case Thursday claiming their right to a fair hearing had been breached because of the media exposure the case has garnered. This constitutional case is expected to delay proceedings further.

The Mediterranean island of Malta has 400,000 people, the overwhelming majority of them Roman Catholic.


Unless the Church hierarchy in Malta have undue - and improper - influence in the Maltese courts, it's the civilian court system that ought to take the primary blame for this seven-year delay. And how is it that the lawyers representing the victims have not raised a row about judicial delay all these years? Most important, why is the Maltese church only now setting up a tribunal to deal with these old accusations? Is that not totally unacceptable canonical negligence? Have they learned nothing at all from the past decade's experiences???? If they had to be prodded to do it, why did they not do so as soon as the Pope visited Malta last year?

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 00:30]
10/01/2011 02:58
OFFLINE
Post: 21.888
Post: 4.519
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



On the eve of the Pope's
New Year speech to diplomats:
An overview of the Vatican's
international relations

by Gianni Cardinale
Translated from

January 9, 2011

Tomorrow, Benedict XVI will have his traditional New Year's audience for the diplomats accredited to the Holy See - the occasion for the last of his major year-end addresses, expected this year to focus on the issue of religious freedom and anti-Christian persecution.

It is the occasion which best highlights the role of the Church on the international geopolitical scene. A role which, on the basis of the growing number of countries who wish to establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican, merits international interest and acknowledgment.

It must be recalled that, according to Wiki-leaked documents, the briefing paper given to President Obama before he visited the Vatican in July 2000 emphasized that the Vatican was next only to the United States in the number of countries with which it has formal diplomatic relations.

In 1900, those countries numbered only 20. In 1978, there were 84, in 2005, 174, and with Benedict XVI, 178, adding the newborn Montenegro in 2005, the United Arab Emirates in 2006, Botswana in 2008, and The Russian Federation in 2009.

The Holy See also has diplomatic relations with the European Union and with the Sovereign Order of Malta. It has permanent observers in major international organizations, starting with the United Nations in both its New York and Geneva headquarters, the Council of Europe, the Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO, and the World Trade Organization, as well as with the large regional blocs like the Arab League and the Organization of African States. It is a founding member of the European Union's Organization For Security and Economic Cooperation.

The Vatican has special relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and a unique relation with Taiwan, with whom it has had formal diplomatic relations since the 1950s, but since 1979, the Vatican has withdrawn its Apostolic Nuncio, replacing him with a charge d'affaires ad interim.

The arrangement is in expectation of eventual restoration of diplomatic relations with Beijing. For the moment, the Vatican has a 'China study mission' in Hongkong led by the cultural counselor in the Apostolic Nunciature in Manila [an hour away by plane from Hongkong).

Besides China, the there are 17 other nations, mostly Asian and many of them Muslim, with which the Vatican has no diplomatic relations: In Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Bhutan, North Korea, Maldive, Oman, Tuvalu and Vietnam, it has no diplomatic representation at all, whereas in seven countries, it is represented by an apostolic delegate - who is the Vatican's representative to the local Catholic community but not to the government: Comoro Islands, Mauritania an Somalia in Africa; and in Brunei, Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar.

The Vatican has begun negotiations for diplomatic relations with Vietnam, to which it will soon name a non-resident representative in the person of the Apostolic Nuncio for the newly-erected Nunciature in Singapore.

Currently, about 80 nations have resident ambassadors to the Vatican, the others being represented by ambassadors based in other European nations. Exceptionally, the Vatican does not accept any ambassador accredited to the Italian government to be simultaneously accredited to the Holy See.

Under Benedict XVI, four countries have named resident ambassadors - Australia, Cameroon, East Timor and Benin, with Guinea Conakry to follow soon.

In turn, the Holy See currently has 105 Apostolic Nuncios abroad, many of them responsible for more than one country. 53 of them are Italian, the lowest percentage of Italian Nuncios yet, who represented 83% in 1961.

Benedict XVI has named 34 Nuncios to their first assignment among whom only 13 are Italian. till, Italian Nuncios are in charge of the most important posts abroad - France, Spain, the UK, Poland. the USA, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and Italy itself.

The other Nuncios are mostly European (27, including six Spaniards, 5 Poles, 5 Frenchmen, and 3 Swiss); 13 Asian (including six Indian, four Filipino); six North American (all from the USA), four African, and two from Latin America.

Besides his pastoral interest in Africa, Benedict XVI's interest is also diplomatic. He created two new African Nunciatures - Burkina Faso in 2007 and Liberia in 2008. And in 2010, he named a non-resident charge d'affaires for Chad, Gabon and Malawi. A new Nunciature is to be built in Tripoli, pending the approval of President Khaddafi.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 10:59]
10/01/2011 10:45
OFFLINE
Post: 21.890
Post: 4.521
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Monday, January 10

Extreme right: Icon of the three Cappadocian Fathers- Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzene and Gregory of Nyssa.
ST. GREGORY OF NISSA (Cappadocia [in present Turkey],330-395) - Bishop, Theologian, Father of the Church
Gregory was the younger brother of St. Basil the Great. Their family is distinguished by having seven canonized saints - grandmother,
mother, and five of 9 siblings - and ultimately, two Doctors of the Church, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated. Gregory was a brilliant
student who got married early and was a professor of rhetoric before he was persuaded to devote himself to the Church. He studied
for the priesthood and in 372 was named Bishop of Nyssa. He was at the forefront in the battle against the Arian heresy that denied
the divinity of Jesus. He came into his own after Basil died in 379. He took part in the Councils of Antioch and of Constantinople,
where he vigorously defended the Nicene Creed. Along with St. Basil and his great friend St. Gregory Nazianzene, he is one of the
three Cappadocian Fathers known as 'the triad who glorified the Trinity". Gregory is considered one of the great contributors to the
mystical tradition and to early monasticism. Benedict XVI devoted two lessons to him in his catechetical cycle on the Church Fathers
in 2007.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011011.shtml



No OR today.


PAPAL EVENTS TODAY

New Year audience for the Diplomatic Corps to the Holy See. Address.


The Vatican today issued a communique on the mission to Haiti in behalf of the Holy Father by Cardinal Robert Sarah,
president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, specifying his actitivies in connection with the first anniversary
of the Haiti earthquake this week.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/01/2011 11:38]
10/01/2011 15:02
OFFLINE
Post: 21.891
Post: 4.522
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master





The Pope's address on
'the state of the world' to
the Vatican diplomatic corps

January 10, 2011






At 11 a.m. today, the Holy Father received the diplomatic corps for the traditional New Year reception at the Sala Regia of the Apostolic Palace.

After a greeting from the dean of the diplomatic corps, H.E. Alejandro Emilio Valladares Lanza, Ambassador of Honduras, the Holy FatHer delivered the following address in French, the traditional language of diplomacy. (The Vatican press Office released the translation in all the Vatican official texts).



Your Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to welcome you, the distinguished representatives of so many countries, to this meeting which each year assembles you around the Successor of Peter. It is a deeply significant meeting, since it is a sign and illustration of the place of the Church and of the Holy See in the international community.

I offer my greetings and cordial good wishes to each of you, and particularly to those who have come for the first time. I am grateful to you for the commitment and interest with which, in the exercise of your demanding responsibilities, you follow my activities, those of the Roman Curia and thus, in some sense, the life of the Catholic Church throughout the world.

Your Dean, Ambassador Alejandro Valladares Lanza, has interpreted your sentiments and I thank him for the good wishes which he has expressed to me in the name of all. Knowing how close-knit your community is, I am certain that today you are also thinking of the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Baroness van Lynden-Leijten, who several weeks ago returned to the house of the Father. I prayerfully share your sentiments.

As a new year begins, our own hearts and the entire world continue to echo the joyful message proclaimed twenty centuries ago in the night of Bethlehem, a night which symbolizes humanity’s deep need for light, love and peace.

To the men and women of that time, as to those of our own day, the heavenly hosts brought the good news of the coming of the Saviour: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined” (Is 9:1).

The mystery of the Son of God who became the son of man truly surpasses all human expectations. In its absolute gratuitousness this saving event is the authentic and full response to the deep desire of every heart. The truth, goodness, happiness and abundant life which each man and woman consciously or unconsciously seeks are given to us by God.

In longing for these gifts, each person is seeking his Creator, for “God alone responds to the yearning present in the heart of every man and woman” (Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, 23).

Humanity throughout history, in its beliefs and rituals, demonstrates a constant search for God and “these forms of religious expression are so universal that one may well call man a religious being”
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, 28).

The religious dimension is an undeniable and irrepressible feature of man’s being and acting, the measure of the fulfilment of his destiny and of the building up of the community to which he belongs. Consequently, when the individual himself or those around him neglect or deny this fundamental dimension, imbalances and conflicts arise at all levels, both personal and interpersonal.

This primary and basic truth is the reason why, in this year’s Message for World Day of Peace, I identified religious freedom as the fundamental path to peace. Peace is built and preserved only when human beings can freely seek and serve God in their hearts, in their lives and in their relationships with others.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your presence on this solemn occasion is an invitation to survey the countries which you represent and the entire world. In this panorama do we not find numerous situations in which, sadly, the right to religious freedom is violated or denied?

It is indeed the first of human rights, not only because it was historically the first to be recognized but also because it touches the constitutive dimension of man, his relation with his Creator. Yet is this fundamental human right not all too often called into question or violated?

It seems to me that society, its leaders and public opinion are becoming more and more aware, even if not always in a clear way, of this grave attack on the dignity and freedom of homo religiosus, which I have sought on numerous occasions to draw to the attention of all.

I did so during the past year in my Apostolic Journeys to Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, the United Kingdom and Spain. Above and beyond the diversity of those countries, I recall with gratitude their warm welcome.

The Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, which took place in the Vatican in October, was a moment of prayer and reflection in which our thoughts turned insistently to the Christian communities in that part of the world which suffer greatly because of their fidelity to Christ and the Church.

Looking to the East, the attacks which brought death, grief and dismay among the Christians of Iraq, even to the point of inducing them to leave the land where their families have lived for centuries, has troubled us deeply.

To the authorities of that country and to the Muslim religious leaders I renew my heartfelt appeal that their Christian fellow-citizens be able to live in security, continuing to contribute to the society in which they are fully members.

In Egypt too, in Alexandria, terrorism brutally struck Christians as they prayed in church. This succession of attacks is yet another sign of the urgent need for the governments of the region to adopt, in spite of difficulties and dangers, effective measures for the protection of religious minorities.

Need we repeat it? In the Middle East, Christians are original and authentic citizens who are loyal to their fatherland and assume their duties toward their country.

It is natural that they should enjoy all the rights of citizenship, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom in education, teaching and the use of the mass media”
(Message to the People of God of the Special Asembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, 10).

I appreciate the concern for the rights of the most vulnerable and the political farsightedness which some countries in Europe have demonstrated in recent days by their call for a concerted response on the part of the European Union for the defence of Christians in the Middle East.

Finally, I would like to state once again that the right to religious freedom is not fully respected when only freedom of worship is guaranteed, and that with restrictions.

Furthermore, I encourage the accompaniment of the full safeguarding of religious freedom and other humans rights by programmes which, beginning in primary school and within the context of religious instruction, will educate everyone to respect their brothers and sisters in humanity.

Regarding the states of the Arabian Peninsula, where numerous Christian immigrant workers live, I hope that the Catholic Church will be able to establish suitable pastoral structures.

Among the norms prejudicing the right of persons to religious freedom, particular mention must be made of the law against blasphemy in Pakistan: I once more encourage the leaders of that country to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law, all the more so because it is clear that it serves as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities.

The tragic murder of the governor of Punjab shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction: the worship of God furthers fraternity and love, not hatred and division. Other troubling situations, at times accompanied by acts of violence, can be mentioned in south and south-east Asia, in countries which for that matter have a tradition of peaceful social relations.

The particular influence of a given religion in a nation ought never to mean that citizens of another religion can be subject to discrimination in social life or, even worse, that violence against them can be tolerated.

In this regard, it is important for inter-religious dialogue to favour a common commitment to recognizing and promoting the religious freedom of each person and community.

And, as I remarked earlier, violence against Christians does not spare Africa. Attacks on places of worship in Nigeria during the very celebrations marking the birth of Christ are another sad proof of this.

In a number of countries, on the other hand, a constitutionally recognized right to religious freedom exists, yet the life of religious communities is in fact made difficult and at times even dangerous (cf. Dignitatis Humanae, 15) because the legal or social order is inspired by philosophical and political systems which call for strict control, if not a monopoly, of the state over society.

Such inconsistencies must end, so that believers will not find themselves torn between fidelity to God and loyalty to their country.

I ask in particular that Catholic communities be everywhere guaranteed full autonomy of organization and the freedom to carry out their mission, in conformity with international norms and standards in this sphere.

My thoughts turn once again to the Catholic community of mainland China and its pastors, who are experiencing a time of difficulty and trial.

I would also like to offer a word of encouragement to the authorities of Cuba, a country which in 2010 celebrated seventy-five years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations with the Holy See, that the dialogue happily begun with the Church may be reinforced and expanded.

Turning our gaze from East to West, we find ourselves faced with other kinds of threats to the full exercise of religious freedom. I think in the first place of countries which accord great importance to pluralism and tolerance, but where religion is increasingly being marginalized.

There is a tendency to consider religion, all religion, as something insignificant, alien or even destabilizing to modern society, and to attempt by different means to prevent it from having any influence on the life of society.

Christians are even required at times to act in the exercise of their profession with no reference to their religious and moral convictions, and even in opposition to them, as for example where laws are enforced limiting the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care or legal professionals.

In this context, one can only be gratified by the adoption by the Council of Europe last October of a resolution protecting the right to conscientious objection on the part of medical personnel vis-à-vis certain acts which gravely violate the right to life, such as abortion.

Another sign of the marginalization of religion, and of Christianity in particular, is the banning of religious feasts and symbols from civic life under the guise of respect for the members of other religions or those who are not believers.

By acting in this way, not only is the right of believers to the public expression of their faith restricted, but an attack is made on the cultural roots which nourish the profound identity and social cohesion of many nations.

Last year, a number of European countries supported the appeal lodged by the Italian government in the well-known case involving the display of the crucifix in public places. I am grateful to the authorities of those nations, as well as to all those who became involved in the issue, episcopates, civil and religious organizations and associations, particularly the Patriarchate of Moscow and the other representatives of the Orthodox hierarchy, as well as to all those – believers and non-believers alike – who wished to show their sympathy for this symbol, which bespeaks universal values.

Acknowledging religious freedom also means ensuring that religious communities can operate freely in society through initiatives in the social, charitable or educational sectors. Throughout the world, one can see the fruitful work accomplished by the Catholic Church in these areas.

It is troubling that this service which religious communities render to society as a whole, particularly through the education of young people, is compromised or hampered by legislative proposals which risk creating a sort of state monopoly in the schools; this can be seen, for example, in certain countries in Latin America.

Now that many of those countries are celebrating the second centenary of their independence – a fitting time for remembering the contribution made by the Catholic Church to the development of their national identity – I exhort all governments to promote educational systems respectful of the primordial right of families to make decisions about the education of their children, systems inspired by the principle of subsidiarity which is basic to the organization of a just society.

Continuing my reflection, I cannot remain silent about another attack on the religious freedom of families in certain European countries which mandate obligatory participation in courses of sexual or civic education which allegedly convey a neutral conception of the person and of life, yet in fact reflect an anthropology opposed to faith and to right reason.

Ladies and Gentlemen, on this solemn occasion, allow me to state clearly several principles which inspire the Holy See, together with the whole Catholic Church, in its activity within the intergovernmental International Organizations for the promotion of full respect for the religious freedom of all.

First, the conviction that one cannot create a sort of scale of degrees of religious intolerance. Unfortunately, such an attitude is frequently found, and it is precisely acts of discrimination against Christians which are considered less grave and less worthy of attention on the part of governments and public opinion.

At the same time, there is a need to reject the dangerous notion of a conflict between the right to religious freedom and other human rights, thus disregarding or denying the central role of respect for religious freedom in the defence and protection of fundamental human dignity.

Even less justifiable are attempts to counter the right of religious freedom with other alleged new rights which, while actively promoted by certain sectors of society and inserted in national legislation or in international directives, are nonetheless merely the expression of selfish desires lacking a foundation in authentic human nature.

Finally, it seems unnecessary to point out that an abstract proclamation of religious freedom is insufficient: this fundamental rule of social life must find application and respect at every level and in all areas; otherwise, despite correct affirmations of principle, there is a risk that deep injustice will be done to citizens wishing to profess and freely practise their faith.

Promoting the full religious freedom of Catholic communities is also the aim of the Holy See in signing Concordats and other agreements. I am gratified that states in different parts of the world, and of different religious, cultural and juridical traditions, choose international conventions as a means of organizing relations between the political community and the Catholic Church, thus establishing through dialogue a framework of cooperation and respect for reciprocal areas of competence.

Last year witnessed the signing and implementation of an Agreement for the religious assistance of the Catholic faithful in the armed forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and negotiations are presently under way with different countries. We trust that they will have a positive outcome, ensuring solutions respectful of the nature and freedom of the Church for the good of society as a whole.

The activity of the Papal Representatives accredited to states and international organizations is likewise at the service of religious freedom. I would like to point out with satisfaction that the Vietnamese authorities have accepted my appointment of a Representative who will express the solicitude of the Successor of Peter by visiting the beloved Catholic community of that country.

I would also like to mention that in the past year the diplomatic presence of the Holy See was expanded in Africa, since a stable presence is now assured in three countries without a resident Nuncio.

God willing, I will once more travel to that continent, to Benin next November, in order to consign the Apostolic Exhortation which will gather the fruits of the labours of the second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.

Before this distinguished assembly, I would like once more to state forcefully that religion does not represent a problem for society, that it is not a source of discord or conflict.

I would repeat that the Church seeks no privileges, nor does she seek to intervene in areas unrelated to her mission, but simply to exercise the latter with freedom.

I invite everyone to acknowledge the great lesson of history: “How can anyone deny the contribution of the world’s great religions to the development of civilization? The sincere search for God has led to greater respect for human dignity.

"Christian communities, with their patrimony of values and principles, have contributed much to making individuals and peoples aware of their identity and their dignity, the establishment of democratic institutions and the recognition of human rights and their corresponding duties.

"Today too, in an increasingly globalized society, Christians are called, not only through their responsible involvement in civic, economic and political life but also through the witness of their charity and faith, to offer a valuable contribution to the laborious and stimulating pursuit of justice, integral human development and the right ordering of human affairs”
(Message for the Celebration of World Peace Day, 1 January 2011, 7).

A clear example of this was Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta: the centenary of her birth was celebrated at Tirana, Skopje and Pristina as well as in India, and a moving homage was paid to her not only by the Church but also by civil authorities and religious leaders, to say nothing of people of all religions.

People like her show the world the extent to which the commitment born of faith is beneficial to society as a whole.

May no human society willingly deprive itself of the essential contribution of religious persons and communities! As the Second Vatican Council recalled, by guaranteeing just religious freedom fully and to all, society can “enjoy the benefits of justice and peace which result from faithfulness to God and his holy will”
(Declaration Dignitatis Humanae, 6).

For this reason, as we exchange good wishes for a new year rich in concord and genuine progress, I exhort everyone, political and religious leaders and persons of every walk of life, to set out with determination on the path leading to authentic and lasting peace, a path which passes through respect for the right to religious freedom in all its fullness.

On this commitment, whose accomplishment calls for the involvement of the whole human family, I invoke the blessing of Almighty God, who has reconciled us with himself and with one another through his Son Jesus Christ our peace
(Eph 2:14).

A Happy New Year to all!




This is as 'hard-hitting' as a speech by Benedict XVI can get, indicating the unprecedented level of concern these days at the escalation of anti-Christian persecution and perhaps just as terrible, the continuing indifference of world leaders to the tragedy...

I am sure accusations that the Pope is 'interfering' in internal affairs will follow soon from knee-jerk types like the Imam of Al-Azhar, who considers seeking protection for Egyptian Christians 'interference' in Egyptian affairs. By his logic any comment made by anyone outside Egypt about Egyptian affairs is 'interference'. So much for 'tolerance'!...








I do not understand a statement from the spokesman of the Pakistani bishops' conference who said today in reaction to the Pope's speech that the blasphemy law was "a civil issue and not to be considered in the context of a Christian-Muslim conflict". Perhaps he's simply trying to limit any 'provocations' to the dominant Muslim society that could cause the government to tighten the screws against Christians.

Consider this report from Vatican Radio today, even if the headline is misleading (I thought they meant the government of Pakistan reacting):


Pakistan reacts
to the Pope's address



10 JAN 2011 (RV) - In his speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI on Monday encouraged the leaders of Pakistan to take the necessary steps to abolish the blasphemy law, saying that “it serves as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities.”

Reacting to the Holy Father’s words, Peter Jacob, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Justice and Peace of the Pakistani Bishops Conference, says debate over the blasphemy law “should be seen as a civil society cause and not Christian-Muslim conflict.

“The extremists in Pakistan – or the fundamentalists – they have a benefit attached to such a proclaim,” Peter Jacob told Vatican Radio. He goes on to say that many members of Pakistan’s parliament and press from Muslim backgrounds have been clear that this issue is not a religious conflict".

Last week, Punjab’s provincial governor, Salam Taseer, was assassinated by one of his security guards because of his opposition to the law. The governor had also requested a pardon for Asia Bibi, the Christian mother of five sentenced to death under the law.

Some insight into the situation in the Punjab is provided by an excellent enterprise story from the UK Guardian which I have posted in the NOTABLES thread, because the story is told using Asia Bibi and the slain governor as emblematic figures in this tragic strife.

The 'civil issue' appears to arise from the fact that most of the Christians in the Punjab are from the 'untouchable' caste, as Asia Bibi is, and once they turn Christian, they become doubly anathema to their Muslim neighbors.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 00:52]
10/01/2011 15:17
OFFLINE
Post: 21.892
Post: 4.523
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master





In an unusual move,
Pope urges Pakistan
to reverse its blasphemy law

By NICOLE WINFIELD


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 10 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI today urged Pakistan to reverse its blasphemy laws, saying they were a pretext for violence against non-Muslims, and demanded that all governments do more so Christians can practice their faith without fear.

Benedict issued one of his most pointed appeals yet for religious freedom in a speech to ambassadors accredited to the Vatican, saying it was a fundamental human right that must be protected in law and in practice.

Benedict has frequently denounced the wave of attacks against Christians in the Middle East and warned of the threat that religious intolerance poses to world security. On Monday, he catalogued a wave of injustices against the faithful from China to Nigeria in pressing governments to take action.

He cited, in particular, recent attacks on Christians attending Mass in Egypt and Iraq, where violence has forced droves of the faithful to flee elsewhere for safety. He said Christians are original members of these societies and deserve to live there in security with full civil rights.

"This succession of attacks is yet another sign of the urgent need for the governments of the region to adopt, in spite of difficulties and dangers, effective measures for the protection of religious minorities," he said.

He urged governments on the Arabian peninsula to let Christians have churches — in Saudi Arabia worship is only allowed in private. And he cited China while saying the state should never have a "monopoly" over the faith — the Beijing government controls Catholic Churches in China, a source of great tension with the Vatican.

He told Pakistan to reverse its blasphemy laws, which carry a death sentence for insulting Islam, and noted the recent slaying of the Punjab governor who opposed them. The governor, Salman Taseer, had spoken out forcefully for clemency for a Christian woman sentenced to die for allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Many Pakistanis have come out in support of the governor's killer since the assassination nearly a week ago. Crowds showered him with rose petals and shouted supportive slogans during court appearances.

"I once more encourage the leaders of that country to take the necessary steps to abrogate that law, all the more so because it is clear that it serves as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities," Benedict said.

Benedict also spoke of his concern about Europe and the West, saying religious freedom is at risk in places where all religion is so marginalized that society considers it alien or destabilizing.

He praised a recent Council of Europe decision granting doctors and nurses the right to exercise conscientious objection concerning abortion, and applauded European countries for joining Italy's fight to keep crucifixes displayed in public places.

Benedict plans to attend a daylong prayer for peace with other religious leaders in the hilltop Italian town of Assisi in October — an event first instituted by Pope John Paul II 25 years ago.


I am afraid that the worldwide headlines may choose to ignore the Pope's main point to focus - and present it in in precisely this wrong way - as the AFP has done:


Pope says sex education
an 'attack on religious freedom'



ROME, Jan. 10 (AFP) - Sexual and civic education in schools in Europe is an "attack" on religious freedom, Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday in a traditional annual address to foreign diplomats to the Vatican.

"I cannot remain silent about another attack on the religious freedom of families in certain European countries which mandate obligatory participation in courses of sexual or civic education," the Pope told the ambassadors.

He said such courses "convey a neutral concept of the person and of life, yet in fact reflect an anthropology opposed to faith and to right reason".

The Pope said this was an example of the "threats" against "the cultural roots which nourish the profound identity and social cohesion of many nations".

In a collection of interviews published in November 2010, Pope Benedict said for the first time that he approved of condom use to reduce the risk of disease, leading some to wonder whether his attitude to sex education was changing.

But the Vatican later insisted that the Pope's comments referred [only to sex workers who were HIV-positive and could not be applied more widely.

[Of course, the media would persist in getting the condom issue all wrong in the interests of promoting their own liberal agenda. It is maddening, very wrong and most irresponsible.]


In contrast, this admirable commentary from Fr. Lombardi, which underscores certain points that the MSM and the general public need to be reminded about...

Fr. Lombardi comments
on the Pope's address

Translated from the Italian service of

January 10, 2011



With his address to the Diplomatic Corps today, the Pope has added a new chapter of major importance in his resolute commitment to religious freedom in the world.

A commitment that was always active but about which he has, in recent months, become even more incisive in the public statements of the highest authorities of the Catholic Church.

We must recall the Pope's interventions during the recent Bishops' Synodal Assembly on the Middle East, his address to UK civilian representatives in Westminster Hall, his recent appeals after the tragic church bombings in Iraq and Egypt, or the intervention by the Cardinal Secretary of State in the last summit meeting of the European Organization for Security and Economic Cooperation in Astana (capital of Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic in central Asia).

The Pope's recent message for the World Day of Peace offered a wide panorama of the bases for the right to religious freedom and the need to protect this right against risks and attacks - whether they are concrete and tragic violations, or negative positions with ideological-cultural origins with juridical consequences.

His address to the Diplomatic Corps today offered an impressive series of places and situations in which this right has been clearly violated or placed into question more or less explicitly and radically.

Certainly, no one can reproach the Pope for failing to speak clearly. Everyone can understand what he said without difficulty.

Allow us nonetheless to observe that in confronting this issue, the Pope is acting from the heart of his mission. We cannot forget his first speech as Pope, from the Sistine chapel the day after his election: Benedict XVI said than that God and man's relationship to God constitute the first priority.

And this is what impels every commitment of his and of the Church in the service of the human being and the entire human community. Thus, even the presence of the Church in the world of international relationships is aimed, first of all, to promote the cause of God as the guarantee for the cause of man.

The explicit and courageous manner in which Benedict XVI carries out his service in promoting the right of religious freedom for everyone - encouraging inter-religious dialog and the commitment of all religious and civilian authorities in this cause, convinced that this serves best and effectively the dignity of the human being as well as peace, and defending the freedom of the constructive and beneficial presence of Christian witness in the world and culture of today - is certainly becoming one of the characteristics of this Pontificate and its mission in history.


For the record, here is how the New York Times reported the Pope's address in an unbylined story field from Milan(!) - either Rachel Donadio is ill (or otherwise unavailable), or the Times did not think the address important enough for a report from their Rome correspondent.... Anyway, it's a good report that does not even mention what has been the focus of the Italian media reporting on the address - the Pope's objection to mandatory sex education in many Wetsern schools.

Pope Benedict urges Pakistan
to repeal its blasphemy law



MILAN, Jan. 10 — In a forceful appeal for religious freedom, Pope Benedict XVI urged Pakistan on Monday to repeal contentious blasphemy laws as he called on governments worldwide to do more to enable Christians to practice their faith without violence, intolerance or restriction.

The Pope was speaking in an annual address to diplomats accredited to the Vatican, a long-scheduled event. But this year his words came after bomb attacks in Iraq and Egypt — the most recent in the Egyptian city of Alexandria less than two weeks ago — and the assassination last week of a leading Pakistani politician who had opposed his country’s law that makes blasphemy against Islam punishable by death.

The politician, Salman Taseer, had campaigned against the law and had petitioned the government to re-examine the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who was sentenced to death last November under the legislation.

Mr. Taseer’s “tragic murder,” the Pope said, “shows the urgent need to make progress in this direction: the worship of God furthers fraternity and love, not hatred and division.”

Referring to the attacks on Christians in Iraq and Egypt, Benedict called on the governments of those predominantly Muslim countries to adopt “effective measures” to better protect religious minorities.

Urging Pakistan to repeal its blasphemy law, the Pope said the legislation was being used “as a pretext for acts of injustice and violence against religious minorities.”

The Pope has often spoken out against religious intolerance, but his condemnations increased after recent attacks on Christian communities in several countries, including Nigeria and the Philippines, where churches were bombed during the recent holidays.

The plight of Christians in the Middle East has been of particular concern to the Vatican, which hosted a meeting of bishops in October to address the issue.

The concerns have deepened in recent months in the face of what clerics see as sustained violence. After a New Year’s Mass at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, a suicide bomber killed at least 23 people and wounded nearly 100. In October, a siege at a Baghdad church killed 63 people, prompting yet another exodus of Christians from the country.

On Monday, the Pope cited a message to Christians in the Middle East that he delivered during the bishop’s synod in October. “It is natural,” he said, that “they should enjoy all the rights of citizenship, freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom in education, teaching and the use of the mass media.”

The Pope also took Western nations to task for marginalizing religion and minimizing its role in contemporary society, and he called for dialogue between faiths to promote “a common commitment to recognizing and promoting the religious freedom of each person and community.”


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 15:59]
10/01/2011 18:40
OFFLINE
Post: 21.893
Post: 4.524
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master





Freedom of religion:
The Pope’s campaign for world peace

Benedict XVI offers step by step instructions
on how to put religious freedom
into practice in the East and West

by Fr. Bernardo Cervellera
Editor


Vatican City, Jan. 10 (AsiaNews) - Convincing the world that "authentic and lasting peace… passes through respect for the right to religious freedom in all its fullness”: this, in no uncertain terms, is the dominant intention of Benedict XVI’s address delivered today to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.

In a pounding and compelling sequence the phrase "religious freedom" is mentioned 19 times, nearly five times per page, to call "politicians, religious leaders and people of all categories" to commit themselves to seriously implementing it.

For this very reason he goes on to lists a series of steps, a sort of primer, which governments (primarily) should put into practice.

As if to answer every objection, and rouse the indifference and deafness of the world, the Pope cites philosophy and history, to remind people that religious freedom is "indeed the first of human rights, not only because it was historically the first to be recognized but also because it touches the constitutive dimension of man", so much so that "man can be called a religious being".

The Pontiff asks society "to reject the dangerous notion of a conflict between the right to religious freedom and other human rights, thus disregarding or denying the central role of respect for religious freedom in the defence and protection of fundamental human dignity".

In recent years China, Myanmar and Western countries continue to defend themselves against the importance of religious freedom, claiming specific cultural or pragmatic rights ("the right to food and clothing comes first") to push it into last place.

At the same time, the Pope condemns attempts to set religious freedom against the alleged "new rights" (gay priests, women-priests,...) "which are nonetheless merely the expression of selfish desires lacking a foundation in authentic human nature".

Benedict XVI reviews those areas of the world where religious freedom is humiliated, first of all Iraq and Egypt, where the attacks that occurred in Baghdad and Alexandria elicited a chorus of global solidarity.

But - unlike the usual practice in international diplomacy - the Pope does not merely stop at denouncing terrorism and 'shedding a few tears', in effect.

He demands that "despite the difficulties and threats," Middle Eastern governments should ensure the safety of minorities and full citizenship for Christians, he demands that school textbooks - especially in Saudi Arabia - be purified from hate speech.

He asks that where there are Christian immigrant workers (in the UAE or again Saudi Arabia), "the Catholic Church can provide suitable pastoral structures" for their care.

With the same clarity, he asks the Pakistani government not to amend, but to "repeal" the notorious blasphemy laws.

He also makes specific requests to China: the Pope rejects the "monopoly of the state on society" and calls for “full autonomy of organization and the freedom to carry out their mission, in conformity with international norms and standards in this sphere".

And as if to suggest a model to Beijing, Benedict XVI cites the example of Cuba, where after more than 75 years, diplomatic relations with the Vatican have been restored. (Later he also cites the positive experience with Vietnam, where the authorities " have accepted my appointment of a Representative who will express the solicitude of the Successor of Peter by visiting the beloved Catholic community of that country").

The Pope also points his finger at the West where in the name of a false tolerance and pluralism, "religion faces a growing marginalization. There is a tendency to consider religion, all religion, as something insignificant, alien or even destabilizing to modern society, and to attempt by different means to prevent it from having any influence on the life of society"

The Pope recalls once again the controversy over religious symbols in public and the ban on displaying the crucifix in public places. He demands - especially in Latin America - the social space for the commitment of Christians in health and education, against laws "that might create a sort of state monopoly on schools".

This step by step implementation of religious freedom has a purpose: "to reaffirm strongly that religion does not represent a problem for society, that it is not a source of discord or conflict." On the contrary, "how can anyone deny the contribution of the world’s great religions to the development of civilization? The sincere search for God has led to greater respect for human dignity".

The Pope implores that "no human society willingly deprive itself of the essential contribution of religious persons and communities! " and cites the example of Mother Teresa that shows " the extent to which the commitment born of faith is beneficial to society as a whole ".

Finally, it is worth recalling these words to the Vatican diplomats: "The activities of the Pontifical Representatives to states and international organizations," he says, "is also at the service of religious freedom."

Nunzios and Vatican officials are thus not only called to mediate or lessen tensions, but to undertake to guarantee religious freedom for Christians and for all believers.



Pope rips anti-Christian tide
in major foreign policy speech

by John L Allen Jr

Jan. 10, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI today devoted his most closely watched annual foreign policy address to religious freedom, especially what many observers see as a rising global tide of anti-Christian hostility. He denounced assaults on Christians in Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and China, as well as a growing “marginalization” of Christianity in secular Europe.

While this was hardly the first time a Pope has lauded religious freedom, Benedict’s defense of beleaguered Christians was unusually focused – reflecting a growing conviction in the Vatican that anti-Christian persecution around the world, sometimes referred to as “Christianophobia,” is taking on epidemic proportions.

How much difference Benedict’s language will make on the ground remains to be seen, but it does clearly confirm that religious freedom, and especially the defense of embattled Christians, has become the Vatican’s supreme diplomatic priority.

“Acts of discrimination against Christians,” the Pontiff complained, frequently “are considered less grave and less worthy of attention on the part of governments and public opinion.”

The remarks came in Benedict’s annual address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, considered the Pope’s most important foreign policy speech of the year. The Holy See currently has diplomatic relations with 178 nations and the European Union, as well as special observer status at the United Nations.

In years past, Popes have typically used the speech to diplomats as a sort of foreign policy panorama, surveying major global concerns such as economic justice, war and peace, the environment, and equity in diplomatic relations.

This year, however, Benedict XVI was focused like a laser beam on religious freedom, and in particular with attacks on Christians. [It was obvious that he would, as Gianni Cardinale noted in his preparatory article in Avvenire yesterday - given that his Message for World Peace Day was focused on religious freedom, following egregious offenses against Christians in many places of the world, and the subsequent car-bomb massacre of Copts in Alexandria!]

Benedict began by citing the plight of Christians in Iraq, where two-thirds of what was once the Middle East’s second-largest Christian population has vanished since the first Gulf War in 1991, and Egypt.

“Need we repeat it?” the Pope asked rhetorically. “Christians are original and authentic citizens” in the Middle East, Benedict said, quoting the concluding message from the recent Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, who should “enjoy all the rights of freedom of conscience, freedom of worship and freedom of education, teaching and the use of the mass media.”

Benedict pointedly added that it’s not enough to guarantee freedom of worship. Bishops in the region frequently say that while Islamic states generally allow Christians to celebrate religious rituals, they do not respect freedom of conscience – for instance, the right of a Muslim to convert to Christianity without legal fallout. Further, they say, Christians are often discriminated against in housing, employment, and civic life.

Benedict also said he hopes the Church will be able to establish “suitable pastoral structures” on the Arabian Peninsula to serve immigrant Christian populations.

(At the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, participants said that fully half the Christians of the region today are not traditional Arab faithful, but “guest workers,” mostly migrants from Asia and Africa. Saudi Arabia now contains the second largest Catholic community in the Middle East, with what the Vatican estimates at 1.25 million believers, though [the more appropriate adverb is 'but'] the country does not permit public expression of any non-Islamic faith.)

While Popes typically offer broad moral principles in their foreign policy addresses rather than specific legislative recommendations, Benedict bluntly demanded that the anti-blasphemy law in Pakistan, which the country's small Christianity minority says is used as a tool of intimidation and persecution.

Last July, two Christian brothers accused under the law of writing a blasphemous letter against Muhammad, the founder of Islam, were gunned down outside a Pakistani court. In 2005, another Christian accused of blasphemy was beaten to death in a prison hospital by a guard wielding a hammer.

In November, a Christian mother of four was sentenced to death under the law, a case that has sparked wide international protest. In early December, a pro-Taliban Pakistani cleric offered a reward of $5,800 to anyone who kills the woman in prison, angered by attempts of the local governor to save her life.


[One must add the fact that hundreds of Pakistani imams issued a statement hailing the assassin of Punjab Governor Taseer - a Muslim who opposed the anti-blasphemy law - as a national hero!]

Benedict also noted that in other parts of the world, “philosophical and political systems call for strict control, if not a monopoly, of the state over society” – specifically mentioning China and Cuba, both places where the Catholic church has a troubled relationship with an officially Marxist government.

In the West, meanwhile, Benedict warned against what he described as a growing tendency to “marginalize” Christianity. In particular, he cited a case currently on appeal before the European Court of Human Rights which would require Italy to remove crucifixes from its public school classrooms.

The Pope also insisted on upholding the “right to conscientious objection” on the part of Christian health care workers and legal professionals.

Benedict concluded by asserting that the “path leading to authentic and lasting peace” necessarily “passes through respect for the right to religious freedom in all its fullness.”

For those foreign ministries around the world (including, of course, the U.S. State Department) seeking to understand the diplomatic priorities of the Holy See in the New Year, Pope Benedict’s speech this morning seems to provide a clear one-word reply: “Christianophobia.”

Taking that concern seriously, it would seem, is the price of admission to collaboration with the Holy See on anything else.


The wave of Christianophobia in the Western world - which is hardly disguised or veiled in the United States, where I live - is the second most egregious hypocrisy of self-professed 'liberals' (even those who enjoy a great reputation as 'intellectuals') who are liberal only with those who share their views but are illiberal and fanatically intolerant of anyone who holds different views.

The first great hypocrisy was their fanatical allegiance to Communism and Marxism when half the world was under Communist-Marxist hegemony, and they played deliberately blind to the ruthless supression of basic freedoms by Communist regimes and their obvious anti-democratic principles.

Liberals continue to exercise that hypocrisy with Communist China, except that in this case, they are also joined by a legion of not necessarily liberal 'pragmatists' who kowtow to Beijing because it now holds the purse strings of the world, even those of the USA.



One year ago, Sandro Magister wrote an article based on an extensive study of religious freedom around the world by the Pew Forum. The entire article is on Page 13 of the CHURCH&VATICAN thread, and makes a very useful reference.
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8593...
Here is how it starts and the Pew charts which show the situation at a glance - I think we can be sure things have not improved in a year, and may even have worsened :




For 5 billion people,
religious freedom
is a forbidden dream

The Pew Forum has shown this with the biggest study ever conducted on the issue.
Government restrictions are compounded by social hostilities.
Even the most liberal countries are not immune.




Because of rounding, totals may be >100%.

The size of the circles representing the nations shows their comparatize size in terms of population.


ROME, January 8, 2010 – The chart above classifies the fifty most populous nations in the world on the basis of their respective restrictions on religious freedom: both the restrictions imposed by governments, increasing from left to right, and those produced by violence on the part of persons or groups, increasing from bottom to top.

Violations of religious freedom will be a major theme in the speech that Pope Benedict XVI will give on January 11 – as at the beginning of every year – to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.

The theme is not a new one. But never before has it been analyzed with the scientific precision achieved by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, in the study from which the chart is taken.

The study includes 198 countries, leaving out North Korea, because of the insurmountable scarcity of data, and covers the two-year period from the middle of 2006 to the middle of 2008.

A summary of the study and the complete 72-page report can be downloaded for free from the website of the Pew Forum:

> Global Restrictions on Religion, December 2009
pewforum.org/newassets/images/reports/restrictions/restrictionsfullre...

....


US ambassador reflects
on the Pope's address





10 JAN 2011 (RV) - “We are in one heart when it comes to the issue of defending fundamental human rights and of course the right to religious freedom”, says US Ambassador Miguel H Diaz, who was among those present Monday morning at the Pope’s annual encounter with the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.

“We celebrate the anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States today”, he adds “this is a great opportunity to underscore that the US had been a steady defender of the right to religious freedom. President Obama has strongly condemned the attacks against Christians in Iraq, Egypt and Nigeria and has offered any necessary assistance to bring the perpetrators to justice.”

He also reflected on the Pope’s words of warning against the marginalisation of religion in Western society in the name of a false pluralism.

“One of the great treasures of American society has been religious tolerance - it's at the heart of what it is to be American. We do not have this kind of radical secularism that dismisses the positive contribution of religious figures to society”.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 00:57]
11/01/2011 02:15
OFFLINE
Post: 21.894
Post: 4.525
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



January 10, 2011


A change of pace.... From Benedict the diplomat and peacemaker to Benedict the scholar and book lover....



"While it is an eminent place of the historical memory of the universal Church in which venerable testimonies of the manuscript tradition of the Bible are preserved, the Vatican Library nevertheless has another reason for being the object of the care and concern of the Popes. Since its origin it has preserved the unmistakable, truly 'catholic' universal openness to everything that humanity has produced down the centuries that is beautiful, good, noble and worthy..."
— Benedict XVI, Letter at Reopening of the Vatican Library, November 9, 2010. [1]



"In recording everything that the Roman people has experienced in successive wars up to the time of writing, I have followed this plan—that of arranging all the events described as far as possible in accordance with the actual times and places. But from now on I shall no longer keep to that method: in this volume. I shall set down every single thing that has happened anywhere in the Roman Empire. The reason is simple. As long as those responsible for what happened were still alive, it was out of the question to tell the story in the way it deserved. For it was impossible either to avoid detection by swarms of spies, or if caught to escape death in its most agonizing form."
— Procopius (490-560 A.D.), The Secret History. [2]


I.
The manuscript text of Procopius of Caesarea's famous Secret History of the late Roman Empire was discovered in the Vatican Library in 1623. Though it was known indirectly from other sources before then, this discovery was considered a great find and witness to the importance of the Vatican Library.

I cite the introductory passage from Procopius's book because it is an example of the wide breadth of interest in every area for which the Vatican Library is famous. As can be seen from the first citation, the reason for this interest is a main topic that Benedict addresses in his November 2010 Message to the present Vatican Librarian Raffaelle Farina.

Though the Vatican Library, or more exactly, the Vatican Apostolic Library, is well known, many might be surprised about the care that the popes have taken over the centuries to establish and keep it growing.

The library was closed in 2007 for repairs and updating. It was reopened in the Fall of 2010. No doubt libraries today all have high-tech facilities of all sorts. Much of the material that can be found in a library can now be found on-line. Large portions of the Vatican Library itself are filmed and made accessible on-line in some form or other. The library's web site gives instructions what to do if you want to have a copy of a page or so from one of its book holdings.

Both as Pope and as a scholar, Benedict obviously has a special fondness for this library. The library building itself and its rooms, designed by Dominico Fontana, are themselves works of art.



Benedict recalls that Pope Sixtus V (1520-90) placed a Latin inscription on the entrance to the library. Sixtus proclaimed that the library was founded by Popes "who listened to the voice of the Apostle Peter." The library is necessary to this "listening."

The Pope adds: "This idea of continuity through a 2,000-year-old history contains a profound truth: the Church of Rome has been linked to books from the outset: first of all they would have been those of the Sacred Scriptures, then books on theology and concerning the discipline and governance of the Church." The Church is linked to books. It keeps records to keep the record straight.

The Library in a more formal sense was founded in 1475. But Popes had their own libraries long before that. Benedict even states that "The Apostolic Library, like the neighboring Secret Archives, is an integral part of the means required to carry out the Petrine Ministry and is likewise rooted in the exigencies of the Church's governance."

Evidently, our more recent Library of Congress was itself founded
with a similar understanding of the relation between a library and governance. The Vatican Library is not just an interesting collection of important books and manuscripts. Rather it enables the Pope to see problems in historical perspective. With it, he is not a prisoner of his own time.

The Library obviously keeps as much of the historical record of Scripture as it can and as are available. But its interests are broader.

"The Vatican Library has another reason for being the object of the care and concern of the Popes. Since its origin it has preserved the unmistakable, truly 'catholic,' universal openness to everything that humanity has produced down the centuries that is beautiful, good, noble, and worthy."

II.
Catholicism is not interested in destroying books, but in keeping them. In this sense, the books and writings of the "heretics" and agnostics are as important as the books of orthodox theologians.

But beyond that, the vast part of the world that does not arise from the inspiration of faith is also fundamental to what it is to be Catholic. The Vatican Library is thus a source of Greek and Latin classics, of things medieval, of things from almost anywhere.

In a passage worthy of emphasis, Benedict wrote: "Nothing truly human is foreign to the Church."

It is because of its openness to all that is that institutions like libraries are built and developed by Christian institutions. The Church has "always sought, gathered, and preserved, with a continuity rarely matched, the best results of the effort of human beings to rise above the purely material to the conscious or unconscious search for the Truth."

The very constitution of any human being, when sorted out, is a search for truth. This search is what unsettles him and keeps moving him when he does not find it and knows that he does not find it.

In Benedict's mind, this search for truth exists in the soul of every human person. It grounds the notion of freedom of religion. It explains the duty of revelation to address itself to philosophy and to the nations.

On this basis, the Pope observes that on the right wall of the Vatican Library is pictured the "orderly sequence" of the Ecumenical Councils. On the left wall are the great libraries of the ancient world. On the middle pilasters are portraits of inventors of alphabets. This arrangement is not "accidental." All of these belong together — what the Church knows, what man knows, what language tells us.

Once we grasp this arrangement of the building itself, we notice, in addition, that "all converge towards the figure of Jesus Christ, 'celestis dotrinae auctor' (author of heavenly doctrine), the Alpha and the Omega, the true Book of Life." It is for Christ that "all humanity yearns and strives."

What a remarkable way to teach us that the whole world order includes within it, as the direction of everything else, the Incarnation!

This is how Benedict concludes his reflection on the structure of the Sistine Hall: "The Vatican Library is therefore not a theological or predominantly religious library; faithful to its humanistic origins it is by vocation open to the human being."

We are not, of course, "faithful to our human origins" if we think we can have a library or university which does not include the scriptural or theological sides of humanity. But the opposite is true also. Both the secular books and the theological books belong in the same place, under the same roof.

III.
We should not be surprised that the Library of the Vatican has known this truth all along. In this context, Benedict cites the words of Paul VI in 1975, when the Library was five hundred years old. Paul said that human growth begins from "within" us. The faculties we are given by the Creator are designed, when used, to make us "more of a man." They are to make us more like God. A library is considered "female." It nourishes us.

The openness of the Church is addressed both to past and to present. Moreover, "in the Vatican Library all seekers of the truth have always been welcomed with attention and respect without any confessional or ideological discrimination; all that is asked of them is the good faith of serious, disinterested and well-qualified research."

The Popes understand that "every partial truth is part of the Supreme Truth of God and every thorough and meticulous investigation to ascertain it is a path to reach it."

So any library in its most fundamental workings is not just a place where books are stored.

A library, at its best, is a place where truth is actively pursued. Truth, in its own logic, will lead the soul from one truth to another. "Love of literature and historical and philological research are therefore interwoven with the longing for God."

This latter was a theme that Benedict developed and recalled from his Lecture in Paris in September 2008 at the Collège des Bernadines, itself a former Benedictine monastery.

In Paris, Benedict recalled that the very purpose of monastic life was to seek God. This seeking included the love of letters. Why? "Because in the biblical Word, God comes towards us and we turn towards him, we must learn to penetrate the secret of language, to understand it in its construction and in the nature of its expression."

The sciences are driven by this search for the truth of things. Monasteries thus always had libraries to preserve the Word. Schools followed. The ultimate aim of learning is "how to serve God."

"The Vatican Library is then the place in which the loftiest human words are gathered and kept, the mirror and reflection of the Word, the Word that enlightens every man."

What is in the Library is saved from our past, for our present. We hope it is handed on. To do so, we must keep them as they were first spoken and written. All words, to repeat, mirror and reflect the Word, the Word that enlightens. All being looks to what is. All words look to the Word.

The Vatican Library not only assists the Popes in governing, but in recalling and knowing the truth, lest we should forget it.

IV.
In his book Persecution and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss remarked that authors often had to write under fear of political repercussions. This situation means that they had to be careful what they set down in print. Sometimes they had to hide what they were thinking under obscure language. Some argue that apocalyptic language in the Bible was written in this way. Surely, that is what Procopius meant also in his Introduction about his not being able to write while certain people were still alive. As Strauss worried, he too had to write "secretly," as the title of his book suggests.

All libraries and archives have certain restrictions about materials in their collection. Often, the private papers of people cannot be open till a certain number of years after their death. I remember being in Rome when Fathers Schneider, Martina, and Graham were publishing the Vatican documents dealings with the Germans during World War II. These papers were published early because of accusations against Pius XII that he did not do enough to oppose the Nazis. It turned out that he did a lot. What he did do had to be kept secret lest any effort be closed off. Had he done what his later critics suggested, he probably would have caused much damage by Nazi retaliation. Again, this is the point of Strauss and Procopius.

In Christopher Morley's novel The Haunted Bookshop, we read: "'I should have thought,' said Gilbert, 'that living in a bookshop would be delightfully tranquil.'

'Far from it. Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world — the brains of men.'" [3]

Somehow, as I read the remarks of Benedict on the Vatican Library, these lines of Morley seem like a better way to describe the place. The library is but a big bookstore, in a way. And the Vatican Library exists to be sure that an accurate memory of the most explosive idea that was ever addressed to men be not forgotten, the reality that the Word, made flesh, did dwell amongst us.

This truth is what the popes are commissioned to keep before us all days, even to the end of the world.

While a library may be made for the peaceful reflection of scholars in pursuit of truth, the fact is that truth is itself "explosive." It wakes us up out our slumbers, dogmatic or otherwise. Truth does require that we pursue it to the end, to what is true in itself.

On failing to do so, many a man has, instead, torn up the world seeking to construct his own truth. The writings of such men are also in the Vatican Library along with those of our kind who have wanted to keep everything all together — what is in Scripture, what the Councils of the Church say, what is found in the ancient libraries, what the inventors of language tell us.

In short, we want to keep all things directed to reason including faith. "Nothing truly human is foreign to the Church." Even our errors and our sins are human. This is why records of these too will be found in libraries, including the Vatican Library.

A successor of Peter who does not know what men are at their worst, at their ordinary, and at their best. is unfit to rule the Church. This independent memory of what men hold and do, of what incites them to pursue what is true, is, as Benedict notes, what is found in the Vatican Library. No wonder the Popes have taken such care of it.

ENDNOTES:

[1] Benedict XVI, "The Truth Open to Researchers," Letter to Vatican Archivist, Cardinal Raffaelle Farina, L'Osservatore Romano, November 17, 2010.

[2] Procopius, The Secret History, translated by G. A. Williamson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966), 37.

[3] Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop (Philadelphia: Lippencott, 1919), 25.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 02:15]
11/01/2011 14:06
OFFLINE
Post: 21.896
Post: 4.527
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Tuesday, January 11

A generic image of the 87 English martyrs beatified in 1987.
Blessed William Carter (England, 1548-1684), Printer and Martyr
This was a man who was tortured for months, while his wife was hounded to death,
for printing Catholic books and possessing Catholic literature, and then was sentenced
summarily to be hung, drawn and quartered, literally, in the fiercely anti-Catholic
period that followed the establishment of the Church of England. He was specifically
condemnded for publishing a book with a paragraph that expressed confidence that
'Catholic hope' would triumph, and a line that 'pious Judith would slay Holofernes',
for which he was accused of incitement to slay the Queen. He was one of 87 martyrs of
the English Reformation who were beatified in 1987.

Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011111.shtml


OR for 1/10-1/11/2011:

In an address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, the Pope denounces anti-Chistian violence
and calls for effective measures to protect religious minorities:
'Religious freedom for everyone'

The double issue covers the Pope's Mass and Angelus on Sunday, Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, and his annual address to the diplomatic corps yesterday. There is a front-page editorial on the 'politics' of the Church and the Pope's insistence on religious freedom these days. Page 1 international news: Demonstrations by young people protesting unemployment and high food prices continue in Algeria and Tunisia. In the inside pages, an account of how German forces actually bombed the Vatican in 1943 twice, fortunately causing little damage (but probably intended to pressure the Vatican against its behind-the-scenes protests against Nazi decrees).


No bulletin posted yet on the Vatican site for 1/11 as of 2 p.m. Rome time.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/01/2011 14:16]
11/01/2011 15:00
OFFLINE
Post: 21.897
Post: 4.528
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Regensburg revisited:
Benedict and the Koran

By Peter Brown

January 10, 2011

Peter Brown is completing a doctorate in Biblical Studies at the Catholic University of America.

After reading the Pope’s famous Regensburg lecture for the umpteenth time, I am ready to conclude that if one were to excise paragraphs 2-4, which concerned Islam, what we have is Benedict boilerplate. Here we find the repetition of themes that pervade Benedict’s writings in his long career.

He reminds us of the early “decision” of Christianity to accept dialogue with and critique from philosophy and that Christianity never sought immunity from rational analysis.

In the modern age, the relationship between faith and reason has been strained a bit. From the Reformation (Luther) to the final destruction of metaphysics (Kant) to the reduction of the scope of scientific Jesus study to the man Jesus apart from the accretions of “Greek” theology (Harnack), each succeeding wave in the de-Hellenization of Christianity was spearheaded by Germans.

The Pope did not mention Hegel, F. C. Baur, Strauss, Nietzsche, or Bultmann but these Germans all made outsized contributions to the Enlightenment’s dialogue with Christianity, for good or ill. [He may not have mentioned them in the Regensburg lecture but except for Baur - a name I must look up - he mentions them often enough in his writings, previous and current.]

It was not Benedict’s purpose to bemoan the indelible stamp of German idealism on Christian scholarship. The scholar-Pope himself stands as much an exponent of the German intellectual tradition as a critic.

In the final analysis, it was not Christianity or the Church really that was harmed by the edgy, skeptical, and even – at times – hostile German guild. Rather, it was reason itself that suffered when scholarship excluded from its purview the investigation of the highest order truth claims about God.

Benedict did not echo the well-worn traditionalist critique by arguing that Christian scholarship had failed because the scholars slew too many sacred cows or had the wrong attitude when slaying them.

On the contrary, the scholars stopped asking questions at all concerning the rationality of faith – relegating it to the realm of subjective opinion. This was paradoxically subversive of the central conceit of the Enlightenment itself, to say nothing of faith, which is intrinsically joined to reason.

But what has all this to do with Islam? His point was this: Though Christian scholars might have taken a long sabbatical from fundamental questions of truth, Christianity has always opened its sources and truth claims to friendly criticism from within and even to hostile criticism from without.

Unfriendly external criticism is one of Providence’s main tools to help the Church forge more precise understandings of revealed things. But there is no tradition of either kind of criticism in Islam, and indeed no basic recognition among Muslims that Islam and its sacred text are suitable objects for such rational analysis. Such recognition is the sine qua non of real dialogue with Islam.

How has Islam mostly avoided German-style criticism up to now? One way is through simple intimidation. A friend of mine in New Testament studies wanted originally to learn Arabic and to embark on a historical/critical study of the Quran. “Don’t do this, Tim,” a Muslim friend advised, “You will be killed!” A joke perhaps, but with a kernel of truth. Christian Salman Rushdies are a dime a dozen, but in Islam, there still are few enough to attract notoriety.

The main reason Islam has escaped much rough-edged Enlightenment scrutiny, however, was historical timing. Earlier generations of Western scholars who would have been inclined to do it were already consumed with the mammoth undertaking of applying new criticism to the Bible and the early Church.

Mastering Hebrew and Koine Greek, poring over Bible manuscripts, and chasing sources proved an immense and formidable undertaking. Few scholars had the time or the inclination to learn Arabic and turn their attention to the Quran as well.

Besides – since controversy is the lifeblood of the German theologian – why rile up Muslims when there were plenty of pious Christian noses to tweak in Europe and America? The Quran weathered the nineteenth century and most of the twentieth nearly unaffected by the influence of German-style techniques.

And by the time the Quran appeared on the academic horizon in the late twentieth century as a yet largely unexplored frontier, the paradigm for religious study had shifted drastically.

The Muslim faith could be studied under the rubric of “Islamic studies,” “comparative religion,” or as a socio-political phenomenon. The purpose of these approaches was fostering understanding and the dispelling of Western misconceptions and stereotypes – desirable goals, of course.

But Benedict’s real complaint is that Western academics have punted on the more fundamental question of whether Islamic beliefs are actually true – thinking it to be above their pay grade. He wants this question asked so that truth seeking remains the goal of inter-faith dialogue.

The Pope is going to get his wish. Right now in Germany (where else?) there is a massive project underway to publish a critical edition of the Quran. This involves careful analysis of all the available textual variants to produce to most ancient version – mirroring the process that has been underway in Bible scholarship from almost the beginning.

Why is this noteworthy? Because it is an article of Islamic faith that there are no textual variants of the Quran. It is an historic cavil of Islam against Christianity that its sacred text was free of any of the “corruption” that affected the Bible.

The trouble is that the claim is not merely debatable, it is demonstrably untrue. The scholars have the variants culled from old Qurans that pious Muslims used to discard in mosques. More variants will surely surface in the years ahead.

How will ordinary Muslims respond to this? Will Western-style reason win out or will Islam even more resolutely embrace a God who is immune from rational analysis?

Implicit in Regensburg is Benedict’s big bet that Western-style reason summed up in the Eternal Logos will prevail – even among non-Western religious traditions like Islam. By this time next century, if a lot of Muslims have embraced the Eternal Logos made flesh, we’ll know that he was right!

11/01/2011 18:54
OFFLINE
Post: 21.899
Post: 4.530
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master





I like this unorthodox view of the Pope's address yesterday, as it provides the 'solidity of specification' to the overwhelming impression I had yesterday that this was Benedict XVI's most hard-hitting address yet in advocating the primacy of religious fredom as a fundamental human right.


Papa Ratzinger shows his 'rage':
Metamorphosis of a Pope

by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from



He said everything that had to be said, he kept silent about nothing, and he did not seek any accommodation. It was a truly global Pope in high relief whom we heard yesterday speak about religious freedom.

He named the nations that violate it, starting with the scenes of recent Christian massacres - Iraq on All Saints' Day and Egypt on New Year's Day.

He called on the world to act now in defense of persecuted Christians.

He was concrete - one might even say, cutting - in his references. He urged Pakistan to repeal its law against blasphemy and recalled 'the tragic assassination of the governor of Punjab' - a Muslim who advocated such a repeal - which shows 'the urgent need to make progress in this direction'.

To the states of the Arabian Peninsula, he asked for room to allow the 'pastoral' activity of the Church. Not only was he unaccommodating about the demands he presented but he even raised the bar, introducing relatively new and strongly conflictual problems.

I will cite two, in reference to Western countries: His denunciation of the tendency to "consider discriminatory actions against Christians as less grave and less worthy of attention", which seems
to introduce "a sort of scale of degrees of religious intolerance".

And citing - among the threats' to religious freedom ' in some European countries' - of obligatory 'courses' in 'sexual and civic education' imposed from a perspective that is 'opposed to faith'.

The introduction of such conflictual issues is the most vivid - and revealing - element of this papal address, which constitutes a papal manifesto in defense of the Christians of the world.

Note that the Pope speaks in defense of all Christians, not just Catholics - another proof of the theologian Pope's 'non-diplomatic' and uncompromising attitude that is not new to those who know him.

There were at least three passages in which Benedict XVI appealed directly yesterday to the international community - particularly the Western countries, and especially the European - to defend Christians and be more attentive to their interests.

It would have been convenient for him to just use this card - difficult enough to play - without bringing up questions that have placed the Church in conflict with most European governments for some time. But he eschewed this convenient way, just as he made all his other statements devoid of prior calculation.

The first instance was to thank some European nations - thereby soliciting others to follow suit - for their "concern for the rights of the most vulnerable and the political farsightedness which they have demonstrated in recent days by their call for a concerted response on the part of the European Union for the defence of Christians in the Middle East".

The reference is to France, Italy, Poland and Hungary which, on January 7, at the initiative of Italy, signed a memorandum sent to the 'foreign minister' of the European Union, Catherine Ashton, asking for 'concrete measures' by the EU in defense of Christians and to place the question on the agenda for the meeting of EU foreign ministers on January 31.

The second instance concerned the banning 'from public life' of 'religious feasts and symbols', particularly Christian. Even in this case, he formulated the request as an expression of gratitude to some in order to 'enlist' everyone else:

"Last year, a number of European countries supported the appeal lodged by the Italian government in the well-known case involving the display of the crucifix in public places. I am grateful to the authorities of those nations..." These are Albania, Armenia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece, Lithuania, Malta, Moldavia, Monaco, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, and the Ukraine [Note that other than Catholic Malta, Monaco and San Marino - the smallest European states after the Vatican - all the others are nations with an Orthodox majority.]

The third was his appeal, mentioned earlier, for the Western nations to consider Christianophobia just as seriously as they do Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

It would seem obvious - by the criterion of diplomacy, since the Pope was addressing the diplomatic corps - that in order to obtain, shall we say, the support of France or Spain for the idea that "everything possible must be done' for the protection of Christians in the Middle East, the Pope ought not to have raised questions that are 'sensitive' for them, such as religious symbols in public life (France) or compulsory sexual and civic education with radically secular content (Spain).

But the Pope ignored such calculations. And in proposing the demands of religious freedom in the most organic and broad manner, Benedict XVI made clear that the Church of Rome does not belong to any continental or ideological bloc, and that her decision to assert and claim that freedom is not for her exclusive benefit, but in the name of every other faith.


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 22:46. Versione: Stampabile | Mobile
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com