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Tuesday, May 15, Sixth Week of Easter
SAN ISIDRO LABRADOR (Isidore the Farmer) (Spain, 1070-1130), Confessor, Patron of Farmers
Our saint was born poor and all his life, he worked on the estate of a wealthy Madrid landowner, along with his wife who would herself be canonized as Santa Maria de la Cabeza.
He was well-known for his piety, going to Mass everyday before starting work, often coming late. But his colleagues said an angel did the work for him while he was away, and
later, his master would claim seeing two angels alongside Isidro as he plowed the land. Despite his own poverty, he was known to help other poor, miraculously coming up with
food to share. More than 400 miracles were presented for his canonization. Among them, that he saved his own son from drowning in a deep well and that he brought back his
master's dead daughter to life. In 1212, almost a century after he died, his exhumed body was found to be incorrupt. He became the patron of Madrid from then on. He was
canonized in 1622 along with three other great Spanish saints - Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco Javier (Francis Xavier), and Teresa of Avila, along with Filippo (Philip) Neri. In 1960,
John XXIII proclaimed him patron of farmers and day laborers. He is one of the most popular saints in the Hispanic world. In the Philippines alone, countless farming communities
venerate him as patron saint, and his feast day is observed as a very colorful harvest festival celebrating the fruits of the earth. A major agricultural fair named for him
is held every year in Seville, Spain. He and his wife are among the patron saints of WYD 2011 in Madrid.
Readings for today's Mass: usccb.org/bible/readings/051512.cfm
No events announced for the Holy Father today.
The Vatican Press Office released the official program of the Pope's pastoral visit to Milan June 1-3,
where he will attend the concluding events of the VII World Encounter of Families.
OR for 3/14-3/15/12:
The Pope visits Arezzo and Sansepolcro but bad weather makes him unable to fly to La Verna
His message: 'To construct the city of man'
Italy must not give way to discouragement in crisis but take the way of spiritual and ehtical renewal
The issue contains a complete account and the paapl texts on the pastoral visit last Sunday. Page 1 international news: Angela Merkels Christian Democrats suffer defeat to Social Demcorats in NorthRhine-Westphalia regional elections; Greek election winners still seeking a compromise over Greek debt and remaining in the eurozone. In the inside pages, a lengthy essay on who gener ideology has infiltrated into recent declaraitons from the UN and other international bodies.
P.S. Can someone explain why the OR editors would have made the choice they made for the Page 1 picture???? In which you can hardly see the Pope, at an event which was at best, a colorful sidebar, in a day of much greater events????
Ambassadors visit IOR
May 15, 2012
Vatican press director Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J. said today that a group of about 35 Ambassadors to the Holy See visited the IOR, the Vatican's major financial agency.
He said it was an opportunity to show them "the transparency, professionalism, and strict adherence to the ethical norms" practiced by the Institute.
The ambassadors were greeted with introductory words by the principal Counsellor to the Secretary of State, Msgr Peter Bryan Wells. He said this was part of the Holy See’s commitment to ensuring that the monetary activities of the Vatican remain transparent.
He was followed by IOR’s director, Paolo Cipriani, who spoke for an hour about the mission of the Institute and the services it provides. Mr. Cipriani also responded to questions, particularly those pertaining to the IOR’s response to the money laundering investigations.
A second group of ambassadors will be visiting the IOR in the coming days to ensure that the entire diplomatic body can witness firsthand the Institute’s activities. Some time back, a group of American beneficiaries also paid a similar visit to the Institute.
[The IOR, though often described in news reports as 'the Vatican bank', is an institution that does not perform all the functions of a bank, such as giving loans. It was established in 1942 by Pope Pius XII "to provide for the safekeeping and administration of movable and immovable property transferred or entrusted to it by physical or juridical persons and intended for works of religion or charity."]
- I failed to notice it earlier, but in case you didn't, and true to (his) form - however much in poor taste it is - John Allen has decided to beat everyone else to the punch by publishing his list of 'front-runners' and 'possibilities' for a successor to Benedict XVI.
http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/poll-average-rome-next-pope
One must remember that Allen specifically ruled out Cardinal Ratzinger from his 'papabile' lists before the 2005 Conclave, and acknowledged that possibility only two days before the Conclave! As John XXIII reportedly said after the 1958 Conclave, "The Holy Spirit does not read the newspapers".
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Final program for the Pope's
pastoral visit to Milan and
the VII World Meeting of Families
May 15, 2012
Milan, Italy’s economic hub, is the host city for the VII World Meeting on the theme The Family: Work and Celebration. From Wednesday May 30th to Sunday June 3rd, it will welcome Catholic families from around the globe to celebrate together the vocation to family life and its specific role within the life of the universal Church.
Activities include a theological pastoral congress, an international family fair, workshops and liturgies of prayer and adoration. But without doubt, the defining moment for many taking part will be the opportunity to pray and witness together to family life in the presence of the Pope.
(The report continues with a recitation of the Pope's activities in Milan, better appreciated in program form below.)
************
The Vatican today released the program for the Pope's pastoral visit to Milan. It is substantially what Cardinals Scola and Antonelli announced in Milan on February 28. Below is the full program incorporating some minor additions.
PASTORAL VISIT OF THE HOLY FATHER TO MILAN and
THE VII WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES
June 1-3, 2012
P R O G R A M
Friday, June 1
ROME
16.00 Departure from Rome-Ciampino airport for Milan-Linate.
MILAN
17.00 Arrival at Linate airport, Milan
Welcome by the authorities
The Pope travels by car from the airport to Piazza Duomo in the city center.
17.30 GREETING TO THE CITIZENS OF MILAN
Piazza Duomo
- Address by the Holy Father
The Holy Father then proceeds to the Archbishop's Residence.
19.15 Proceed by car to Teatro alla Scala
19.30 CONCERT IN HONOR OF THE HOLY FATHER
Teatro alla Scala
- Remarks by the Holy Father
After the concert, he returns by car to the Archbishop's Residence.
Saturday, June 2
08.00 Private Mass at the Archbishop's Residence.
09.50 The Holy Father leaves the Archbishop's Residence for the Duomo (Cathedral)
10.00 CELEBRATION OF LAUDS
Duomo of Milan
with the priests and religious of the Archdiocese
- Meditation by the Holy Father
- Veneration of the relics of St. Charles Borromeo in the cathedral crypt
The Holy Father proceeds by car to
the Stadio di San Siro (Milan's football stadium)
11.00 MEETING WITH YOUNG PERSONS PREPARING FOR CONFIRMATION
Stadio di San Siro
- Address by the Holy Father
The Pope then returns to the Archbishop's Residence.
17.00 MEETING WITH CIVILIAN AUTHORITIES
Archbishop's Residence
- Address by the Holy Father
20.00 Proceed by car to Milano Parco Nord-Bresso Airport
20.30 MEETING WITH FAMILIES
FEAST OF TESTIMONIALS
Milano Parco Nord-Bresso
- Address by the Hooly Father.
21.30 The Pope leaves Milano Parco Nord by car to return to the Archbishop's Residence
Sunday, June 3
09.15 The Holy Father leaves the Archbishop's Residence for Milano Parco Nord
10.00 EUCHARISTIC CELEBRATION
Milano Parco Nord-Bresso
- Homily by the Holy Father
12.00 ANGELUS
- Message by the Holy Father
He leaves Milano Parco Nord by car to return to the Archbishop's residence.
13.15 Lunch with cardinals and bishops and
representatives of the families attending the Encounter
Archbishop's Residence
16.30 Meeting with members of the Fondazione Milano Famiglie 2012
and the organizers of the visit
Archbishop's Residence
17.00 He leaves the Archbishop's Residence and proceeds by car to Milan Linate airport.
17.30 The Holy Father bids goodbye to his hosts at the plane steps,
before boarding the plane for Rome
ROME
18.30 Arrival at Rome-Ciampino airport.
Transfer to helicopter for the Vatican.
18:45 Arrival at the Vatican heliport.
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Mons. Fellay was in Rome this weekend
for a 'clarificatory' meeting with
the CDF's Ecclesia Dei commission
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of
May 15, 2012
Another step closer to the resolution of the FSSPX issue desired by Benedict XVI: Mons. Bernard Fellay, Superior-General of the FSSPX, was in Rome this weekend for a clarificatory meeting with the Ecclesia Dei Commission, the agency of the CDF that is principally responsible for liaison with the FSSPX.
Soruces told the Vatican Inside that the modifications to the Doctrinal Preamble proposed by the FSSPX in its April 17 response to the Vatican were examined and discussed, and that the meeting appears to have ended positively.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, the cardinals and bishops making up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will be holding their plenary session. Among other things, they will decide whether to approve the modified Doctrinal Preamble, and their decision will then be forwarded to Benedict XVI, who will have the last word.
[Current members of the CDF, under Prefect Cardinal William Levada (who is due to actually retire any day now) and Mons. Luis Ladaria Ferrer, secretary are: Cardinals George Alencherry, Angelo Amato, Tarcisio Bertone, Antonio Canizares Llovera, Francesco Coccopalmerio, Fernando Filoni, Zenon Grocholewski, Claudio Hummes, Walter Kasper, Kurt Koch, Marc Ouellet, Giovanni Battista Re, Leonardo Sandri, Christoph Schoenborn, Jean-Louis Tauran, and Peter Turkson; and Bishops Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg, Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux, Angelo Scola of Milan, and Donald Wuerl of Washington, DC.]
Cardinal Levada is expected to turn over to the Pope not just the results of the voting over the modified Preamble but also the opinions that may be expressed by the individual members. But his decision will be autonomous of their opinions.
From what the Insider has learned, the modifications suggested by Fellay underscore the importance of Tradition as a stable element in the Magisterium of the Church. Apparently, the starting-point for the doctrinal terms of the Preamble was the agreement signed by the late Mons. Marcel Lefebvre in 1988 in which he accepted "the doctrine contained in No. 25 of the Pastoral Constitution Lumen gentium of the Second Vatican Council on the ecclesial Magisterium and the adherence to which it is due". [The agreement was negotiated by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. However, Lefebvre reneged on the agreement a few weeks later and proceeded with the illegal consecration of four bishops.]
Insofar as dissent on some teachings of Vatican II, the 1988 agreement stated: "With regard to certain points taught by the Second Vatican Council or relative to post-Conciliar reforms in liturgy and canon law which seem to be difficult to reconcile with Tradition, we commit ourselves to a positive attitude and communications with the Apostolic See, avoiding every polemic".
Surprises are always possible, but what transpired in the previous plenary of the CDF regarding this issue, as well as opinions already expressed by some of the CDF members, seem to point to a positive outcome. An outcome that could be further facilitated by Fellay's weekend meetings at the Vatican.
What concerns the Vatican more these days are the contents of the dissenting letter sent by the three other FSSXP bishops to Mons. Fellay a week before the latter submitted the FSSPX's final response to the Vatican proposal for reconciliation.
The letter harshly opposed any agreement with Rome, but Fellay's response was equally tough, spelling out the reasons for his decision as a response to a personal appeal by Benedict XVI.
The publication of the letters is concerning for the Vatican because it reveals a significant opposition within the FSSPX, not from ordinary priests, but from three of the four bishops consecrated by Mons. Lefebvre, and whose excommunication Benedict XVI had lifted in January 2009.
Cardinal Koch reassures German leader
that reconcilliation with the FSSPX
will not affect relations with the Jews
by Alessandro Speciale
Adapted and translated from the Italian service of
May 15, 2012
The possibiity that the FSSPX may soon be re-integrated into the Church has raised much concern among some European leaders who are worried about its effects on dialog with the Jews, which is rooted in the Vatican-II declaration Nostra aetate, one of the Conciliar documents disputed by the traditionalist group.
It will be recalled that Benedict XVI drew much criticism all around when he lifted the excommunication of the four FSSPX bishops because one of them, the British Richard Williamson, had made public statements amounting to Holocaust negationism.
At that time, the governments of Germany, France and Ireland sought assurances from the Vatican that the Catholic Church was not changing its position on the Jews. The Belgian Parliament went one step further and passed a Parliamentary motion denouncing the Pope's action.
This time, the first reaction was from Germany, The vice-president of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Thierse, who is a member of the Central Committee for German Catholics, which 'governs' the ecclesial affairs of the German laity, spent four days in Rome meeting with various leaders of the Roman Curia, starting with Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews.
Back in Germany, he said in various interviews with German media that he was 'reassured'. He said on Radio Cologne: "There have been concerns expressed in Germany that the Vatican 'surrendered' to he Lefebvrians, but Cardinal Koch reassured me that was not so. He explained that the FSSPX would have to recognize the authority of the Church Magisterium which includes that of Vatican II. He said that on the question of relations with the Jews and acknowledgment of religious freedom, the Vatican stands firm".
Koch is said to have pointed out that the Vatican could not pursue its worldwide advocacy of human rights including religious freedom and "accept within its ranks a group for whom religious freedom is still disputed". These are essential points, he said, in which the Vatican would never yield.
But the Jewish world itself is very concerned about a possible reconciliation between Rome and the FSSPX. Last week, the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, Yona Metzger, said the Vatican should not enter into any agreement unless the FSSPX changes its position on Nostra aetate and relations with the Jews.
A similar appeal was sent to the Vatican in recent months by European rabbis and the US-based Jewish Anti-Defamation League.
Perhaps it was not by chance that when Benedict XVI met last Thursday with leaders of Jewish communities in Latin America, he reaffirmed the value of Nostra aetate, thanks to which, he said, Jews have become "trusted interlocutors and friends, good friends even, with whom we are able to face crises together and to overcome conflicts in a positive way".
Liturgist-theologian to the Lefebvrians:
'Now is the right time to return to the fold'
NAPLES, May 15 (Translated from ASCA) - "This is the propitious moment for the FSSPX to return to full communion with Rome," says theologian Don Nicola Bux in an interview given to the Neapolitan newspaper Roma for its May 16 issue.
"The 'today' of God cannot be postponed. One must avail of the moment when the Lord knocks", Fr. Bux said. The date for the publication of the interview is not random. It coincides with the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which will consider the FSSPX response to the reconciliation formula offered by the Vatican.
Bux, who is a consultor to the CDF, and a close associate of Benedict XVI in liturgical matters, is optimistic about a positive outcome to the dialog between the FSSPX and the Vatican.
He calls on the diocesan bishops to welcome the priests and religious of the traditionalist society and not to persist in "objections to the celebration of what Benedict XVI has codified as the extraordinary form of the Roman rite", which was the Mass celebrated by the universal Church for 500 years before Vatican II, and was also the Mass of the Council itself.
Last March 19, Fr. Bux wrote an open letter to Mons. Bernard Fellay calling on the Lefebvrians to "return to Rome without any fear". He hopes that "everyone at the Vatican may be desirous of contributing to such a reconciliation".
He noted that in his March 2009 letter to all the bishops of the world, the Pope had referred to the 1,500 FSSPX priests and religious asking whether the Church could under-estimate their value, much less abandon them, which would be 'unthinkable', Bux says.
As for the FSSPX objections to Vatican II, Bux says, "What the FSSPX has most objected to are the liberal interpretations that have been made of Vatican II and the over-simplification in the media of these questions. The specific objections they presented are not matters of basic doctrine. Within the Church, there are persons and groups who deny truths that are far more basic and important!"
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I wish I could have illustrated the OR coverage of the Pope's visit with appropriate photos from the OR itself, but you saw all they had in the presentation of the 3/14-3/15 issue in the earlier post, and there is not much I can do with them because of the poor technical quality... Here is the OR's wrap-up article on the visit, which contains a few interesting details not found in the regular news reports, as well as a significant excerpt of what the Pope told the bishops of Tuscany after the lunch he had with them) and its front-page editorial...
In Tuscany, the Pope gives new vigor to
the old but always new experience of faith
among a people who have always looked forward
by Mario Ponzi
Translated from the 3/14-3/15 issue of
In his invitation to counteract 'the temptation to be discouraged' and for each one to make his own contribution "to that ethical and spiritual renewal of society' that can help bring about an improvement in living conditions, one sees the closeness that Benedict XVI feels for Italy and her people.
A closeness and a deep concern that the Pope expressed on Sunday in Arezzo, city of gold, a land permeated by the spirituality of its monasteries - some millenary, like Camaldoli, set in the luxuriant Apennine forest.
Benedict's visit to this corner of Tuscany, long awaited and prepared for with care and love, was an occasion for intense reflection on social issues.
In order to face the complex circumstances that Italy is undergoing at present, the Pope said, essentially, that it is necessary to re-think the relationship between political life and ecclesial commitment, between a culture in constant ferment and the legacy of an illustrious history that deserves to be remembered.
The appeal went straight to the heart of a people - the Aretini (citizens of Arezzo) - who have always reconciled secularity with the Catholic faith, and who, in the course of centuries, have always decided to be protagonists in their own future.
Arezzo, a city that is intelligent, dynamic, imaginative, and proud but always open to spiritual values, readily accepted the challenge.
Listening to the Pope's homily in the front row was Prime Minister Monti, with his wife, in that great Church in the open into which the Prato park of Arezzo had been transformed for the morning.
A more direct explanation of the Pope's thinking came in the few but deeply felt words of thanks at the end of the luncheon in the Bishop's Palace with the bishops of Tuscany.
Thanking Archbishop Riccardo Fontana for his gift of a book about the saints and martyrs of Tuscany, the Pope stressed the power demonstrated by the saints in their service of love to God and his Church, a Church made up of men.
He continued:
But the saints are not a thing of the past. They are among us, and one can see this in the vitality of the Church. The Church is always the Church of saints. But we are more used to more easily see the sinners rather than the saints among us. But it is time to think that there are saints among us today, and that they are in the majority.
These visits are, for me, always very important because they allow me to see, to my great consolation, the saints today who are simple people but great ones.I am able to see that even today, the Church is rich with men and women who think and work for the poor, who truly wield a spiritual power without which no society can survive. We are truly the salt of the earth. We say this with humility, but it is true that the Catholic Church, with the presence of the Lord, with her saints, continues to give the power of God's light to society and to the world. We must continue to do so".
It was a vibrant appeal to the ecclesial community, to continue to be - and more so at this time of great difficulty - a sign of God's love among those who are suffering most. To help them not to lose heart, even in time of trial.
Although this took place during a fraternal meal, it was one of the most significant moments in a Sunday that of intense experiences, which however, held a great disappointment for the Holy Father.
Bad weather kept him from being able to return and breathe the spirit of St. Francis once more in the mountain shrine of La Verna. He had specially desired ti visit La Verna on this his first visit as Pope to Tuscany.
And had hoped until the very last to do so, as the meteorologists of Italy's Miltiary Aeronautics [which owns the helicopter in which the Pope flies] considered all possible airlanes into La Verna, but the mountain was wrapped in dense fog that it was not safe even to attempt it.
This was the only 'blemish' on a visit that was prepared for with typical Tuscan industry even in the least details: the city was dressed up for the occasion, the roads were marked with color bands to indicate the shortest way to get to the points where the Popemobile would pass through windows along the route were hung with flags and standards using fabric woven especially for the visit, and there were celebratory children everywhere.
The feast began as soon as the Pope stepped off the helicopter that had brought him from Rome. Welcoming him, alongside Mons. Fontana, was Prime Minister Monti, along with a rank of civi,ian and religious authorities, including the Apostolic Nuncio to Italy, Mons. Adriano Berardini; the Italian ambassador to the Holy See, Francesco Greco; the presidents of the Tuscany region and the pronvice of Arezzo, Enrico Rossi and Roberto Vasai,r espectively; and the mayor of Arezzo, Saverio Ordine.
The bishops of Tuscany were represented by Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence and president on the Tuscan bishops' conference.
Present at the Mass besides the officials mentioned were the vice presidents of the Italian Senate and Chamber of Deputies, Vannino Chiti and Rosy Bindi, respectively, who are both from Tuscany.
Hundreds of banners and placards wree held up along the Popemobile route towards the Prato park where the Mass was held. A special banner at the improvised heliport read: "The parish of Sacro Cuore praye vigilantly", from the home parish of Domenico Gianai, head of the Vatican Gendarmerie, who comes from Arezzo.
At the Prato, lengthy applause and acclamations greeted the Pope. Before the Mass, there was a short program when the mayor welcomed the Pope in the name of the people and Mons. Fontana followed, saying the city opened its heart to Benedict XVI.
The altar stage was simple but original, adorned with a great floral 'frontal' mae of white roses and yellow gerberas, upon which was a pentagram showing the first notes of Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' from the Ninth Symphony.
Concelebrating with the Pope were Cardinal Betori, Mons. Fontana and the other Tuscan bishops, and members of the Pope's entourage including Archbishop Angelo Becciu, deputy Secretary of State; Mons, james Harvey, preect of the Pontifical Household and his regent, Mons Nicolo; and Mons Georg agenswein, the Pope's secretary.
After the Mass, the Pope visited the Cathedral of San Donato for a private visit. Welcoming him to the church were the canons of the cathedral, the Carmelites of Santa Margehrita Redi convent, and two 12-year-olds, Giada Santucci and Matteo Tavini, from Arezzo's city choir.
While Benedict prayed before the miraculous image of the Madonna della Conforto, the two children sang Petrarch's hymn of praise to the Madonna, 'Bella che del sol vestita" (Beauty clothed by the sun) set to 17th century music. Benedict XVI thanked the children emotionally for their moving performance.
The day was rich with emotions for the Pope. As when the members of Arezzo's 'corteo historico' (historical pageant) put on a display for him beneath the windows of the bishop's palace.
It was an affectionate tribute from the historic heart of Arezzo, which the Pope did not fail to acknowledge in th words that he spoke to them after a performance by the flag-jugglers, who were judged the best in Europe at a recent competition.
Dearest friends,
I thank you from the heart for this beautiful presentation of your great Renaissance culture which has truly touche me deeply.
Whoever is capable of rendering present in such a perfect manner the culture of the past is also able to open culture to the future because he knows man and he loves man, whose greatest dignity is not just by being man but because he is the image of God.
This dignity of man places an obligation on us, but it also comforts and encourages us. If we are truly in the image of God, then we must also be capable of going forward and to overcome the problems of the present and open the way for a new future.
I thank you from the heart for all this. May the Lord Bless you... Thank you. These sounds will be unforgettable for me.
When it became clear that the ehlicopter trip to La Verna was not possible because of the dense fog and bad weather around the mountain shrine, the Pope sdet off directly for Sansepolcor, which was to have been the third stop on the pastoral visit.
In Sansepolcro, he joined the town's celebraiton of the 100th anniversary of the community founded by two pilgrims returning from the Holy Land in 1012 as a 'new Jerusalem' on the banks of the upper Tiber River.
First, the Pope made a private visit to the diocesanco-cathedral dedicated to St. John the Evangelist to pray before the 'Volto Santo' (Holy Face), the oldest known wooden sculpture in Europe that depicts the crucified Christ.
He the proceeded to the Piazza di Torre Berta to meet the townspeople led by Mayor Daniela Frullani, where he got an enthusiastic reception despite the bad weather.
There were numerous gifts for the Pope. Among the most significant, a unique reproduction of a mosaic designed by Leonardo da Vinci, and some splendid miniatures.
After the meeting - and his powerful discourse about the civic responsibility of Catholic laymen to become involved in political life - the Pope headed back to Rome bearing precious new memories with him, but also the lingering disappointment of failing to get to the Franciscan shrine at La Verna.
The Pope in Tuscany:
Words stronger than the storm
Editorial
by Carlo Di Cicco
Translated from the 3/14-3/15 issue of
The words of Benedict XVI were more powerful than the bad weather which kept him from returning as Pope to La Verna, shrine of Franciscan mysticism, where he was to have delivered words on the spirit of Christian living, that are specially important at a time when Catholics are called on to involve themselves in the secular world afflicted today by crisis and discouragement.
Arezzo and Sansepolcro, the two stops of Benedict XVI's 27th pastoral visit in Italy, along with La Verna - which proved inaccessible due to impenetrable fog on the mountain - only seem apparently unrelated, but they really constitute an itinerary on why and how to be Christians in the service of the common good of society.
In order for this to be true, the Pontiff's message was that one must be able to spiritually ascend to La Verna, listen to the Word of God, and then descend to the veryday world transformed ready to serve not self-interest but the needs of others, especially the poorest and weakest.
To do good for everyone, he said, to promote 'cities that have an ever more human face', cannot be achieved "with purely materialistic logic". An ethical shake-up is always necessary, but especially now.
Even believers cannot succeed if all they have is words, or 'do good' without conforming their lives to Christ, following the exmaple of St. Francis.
The Pope said that the heart of the pilgrim's experience in La Verna is in fact, to follow Christ seekign to imitate him and conform oneself to him.
In Sansepolcro, Benedict XVI recalled the founders of the city who, returning from Jerusalem, founded a city tin which the disciples of Christ are called on to be the motor of society in promoting peace through the practice of justice.
This is an objective that is possible only if man has his eyes and heart fixed on God, who does not alienate him from daily life, buoreints him and makes him live it even more intensely.
But God does not wish to stay on the heights as at La Verna. Rather he comes down to man in the cities and towns where they live. And the Pope addresses himself to Christians who make their presence felt in society, who are enterprising but consistent with their faith.
Not so much as social or political activists but as the bearers of the hope that does not disappoint, a hope based on the resurrection of Jesus, historicized as fraternal love towards everyone, near and far.
This is an intimate theological conviction of Joseph Ratzinger which emerged powerfully in his meetings with the communities of Arezzo and Sansepolcro. One that he sees alive even today, as it was, most fruitfully, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. when to be Christian had a meaning and Christians were the 'salt of the earth'. If they cease to be such, renouncing their diversity, then they become superfluous like salt that has lost its taste and is cast away.
That is why, despite all trials and difficulties, Benedict XVI remains optimistic for the Church, which God sees to it that there is no lack of saints, of good Samaritans, of Christians who will be friends to all especially in difficult historical times.
The Pope was obviously very disappointed that he had to cancel his pilgrimage to La Verna, the emblematic Franciscan experience that dramatizes Francis's absorbing model of Christianity.
How many pilgrims have gone up to La Verna in search of God "who is the reason why the Church exists - to be the bridge between man and God".
And finally, an encouragement to all Italy - that the Pope also expressed in his brief encounter at Arezzo with Prime Minister Mario Monti - and especially to young people, that they must 'learn to dare', ready to give a 'new flavor' to all of society with the salt of honesty and disinterested altruism'.
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Wednesday, May 16, Sixth Week in Easter
ST. MARGHERITA DA CORTONA (Italy, 1247-1297), Franciscan Tertiary
When Pope Benedict XVI was in the Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro diocese last Sunday, he mentioned this homegrown saint
of Cortona. A medieval Magdalene, she was for 17 years the concubine of a nobleman, with whom she had a son, who
would later become a Franciscan friar. Her conversion came after her lover was murdered. At age 30, she joined
the Franciscan lay order and devoted herself to helping the sick. She established a hospital for the poor and started
a congregation of tertiaries to work as nurses. She lived the last years of her life as a contemplative in a hilltop cell
where tradition says she had mystical experiences. She was canonized in 1728.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/index.html
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
General Audience - The Holy Father began a new section of his catecheses on Christian prayer which began a year ago
by focusing this time on prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, which make up a great part of the New Testament.
After the GA, he had a private audience for Mons. Gerhard Mueller, Bishop of Regensburg, who attended the plenary
session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he is one of four diocesan bishop members.
At 5 p.m., the Holy Father was to attend a screening of the film 'MARY OF NAZARETH' at the Sala Clementina of
the Apostolic Palace. The film is a co-production of RAI-Fiction, Lux Vide, BetaFilm, Tellux, Bayerischer Rundfunk,
and Telecinco Cinema, and was directed by Giacomo Campiotti.
Vatican anticipates further discussions
with FSSPX, including separate treatment
of the objections made by the 3 bishops
who oppose reconciliation with Rome
Translated from
The Vatican released a statement on the CDF meeting which considered, among other things, the FSSPX reply to the Vatican proposal. The statement indicates further discussions with the FSSPX before the issue is resolved. Here is a translation of the communique:
As anticipated by news agencies, the Ordinary Session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met May 16, 2012 and discussed, among other things, the issue of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X (FSSPX).
In particular, the Session considered the text of the reply of His Excellency Bishop Bernard Fellay, received April 17, 2012. A few observations were formulated, which shall be taken into consideration in further discussions between the Holy See and the FSSPX.
In view of the positions taken by the three other bishops of the SSPX, their situation must be treated separately and individually.
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GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY
Our ageless Pope!
'No human cry is
not heard by God'
Continuing his catechesis on Christian prayer, Pope Benedict today turned to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, whose letters show us that “in reality there is no human cry that is not heard by God” and that “prayer does not exempt us from trial and suffering”, “but allows us to live and cope with a new force, with the same confidence of Jesus”.
Here is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:
In our catechesis on Christian prayer, we now turn to the teaching of the Apostle Paul. Saint Paul’s letters show us the rich variety of his own prayer, which embraces thanksgiving, praise, petition and intercession.
For Paul, prayer is above all the work of the Holy Spirit within our hearts, the fruit of God’s presence within us. The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, teaching us to pray to the Father through the Son.
In the eighth chapter of the Letter to the Romans, Paul tells us that the Spirit intercedes for us, unites us to Christ and enables us to call God our Father.
In our prayer, the Holy Spirit grants us the glorious freedom of the children of God, the hope and strength to remain faithful to the Lord amid our daily trials and tribulations, and a heart attentive to the working of God’s grace in others and in the world around us.
With Saint Paul, let us open our hearts to the presence of the Holy Spirit, who prays with us and leads us to an ever deeper union in love with the Triune God.
He also had special words for Caritas Internationalis which recently received new statutes from the Vatican:
I am pleased to greet Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, President of Caritas Internationalis, together with Members of the Executive Board and Representative Council. Your presence here today expresses your communion with the Successor of Peter and your readiness to welcome the new juridical framework of your organization. I thank you for this and I am certain that the new structures will support and encourage your important service to those most in need.
At the end of the GA, the Pope also had these words to say about the observance yesterday of the World Day for Families:
Yesterday, Tuesday, May 15th, we celebrated the World Day of Families, established by the United Nations and dedicated this year to balance between two closely related issues: family and work.
This should not hinder the family, but rather support and unite it, helping it to be open to life and to enter into a relationship with society and with the Church.
I also hope that Sunday, the Lord's Day and weekly celebration of His Resurrection, will be a day of rest and an opportunity to strengthen family ties. This comes two weeks before the opening in Milan on May 29 of the weeklong VII World Encounter of Families, where the Pope will be present for the last three days.
Finally, to the Italian-speaking pilgrims, he had these messages:
My thoughts now go to the representatives of the Catholic community Shalom.
Dear friends, you are celebrating the 30th anniversary of your founding, Thank you for your presence. May this anniversary, like the approval of your statutes, serve to encourage you to proceed in your evangelical witness with enthusiasm. An enthusiasm I can see here today!
My prayers and my blessing go with you so that you may be joyous instruments of the love and mercy of God among all those whom you encounter in your missionary activities.
To young people, the sick, and the newlyweds: The Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord , which we celebrate tomorrow, invites us to look to Jesus who, ascending to heaven, entrusted to his Apostles the mandate of bringing his message of salvation throughout the world. May we all place our enthusiasm in the service of the Gospel.
For some reason, a number of the photos posted by the news agencies today are in black-and-white.
Here is a translation of the full catechesis:
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the last catecheses, we reflected on prayer in the Acts of the Apostles. Today I wish to start speaking about prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles.
First of all, I wish to note that it is not by chance that his Letters are introduced by and close with expressions of prayer: at the start, thanksgiving and praise, and at the end, a wish that the grace of God may guide the journey of the community to whom the letter is written.
The contents of the Appostle's letter develops beetween his opening formulation: "First, I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ" (Rm 1,8),and the final wish: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you" (1Cor 16,23),.
St. Paul's prayer is manifested in a great richness of forms that go from thanksgiving to benediction, from praise to request and intercession, from hymn to supplication. A variety of expressions that demonstrate how prayer involves and penetrates every situation in life, be it personal, or that of the community that it concerns.
A first element that the Apostle wants us to understand is that prayer should not be seen simply as a good work done by us towards God, as an action of ours. It is, first of all, a gift, a fruit of the living and vitalizing presence of the Father and Jesus Christ in us.
In the Letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" (8,26).
And we know that what the Apostle says is true: "We do not know how to pray as we ought". We want to pray, but God is distant. We do not have the words, the language, to speak with God, not even the thought. We can only open ourselves up, place our time at God's disposition, wait for him to help us to enter into a true dialog with him.
The Apostle says that it is precisely this lack of words, this absence of words, and yet the desire to enter into a contact with God, that is prayer, prayer that the Holy Spirit not just understands but that he brings and interprets to God. Our very weakness becomes, through the Holy Spirit, true prayer, true contact with God. The Holy Spirit is almost the interpreter who makes us and God understand what we want to say.
In prayer we experience, more than in other dimensions of existence, our weakness, our poverty, our being creatures - because we are faced with the omnipotence and transcendence of God. The more we progress in listening to God and in dialog with him, so that prayer becomes the daily breath of our spirit, the more we also perceive a sense of our limitations, not just in front of the concrete situations of every day, but in our very relationship with the Lord.
Thus the need to trust grows in us, to entrust ourselves ever more to him. We understand that "we do not know how to pray as we ought" (8,26). And it is the Holy Spirit who helps us in our inability, he enlightens our mind and warms our heart, guiding us in addressing ourselves to God.
For St. Paul, prayer is, above all, the working of the Holy Spirit in our humanness, and by taking charge of our weakness, he transforms us from men bound to material realities into spiritual men.
In the First letter to the Corinthians, Pail says: "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms" (2,12-13). By inhabiting our human frailty, the Holy Spirit changes us, intercedes for us, and leads us towards the highness of God (cfr Rm 8,26).
With the presence of the Holy Spirit our union with Christ is realized, because it is the Spirit of the Son of God, in which we have been made his children.
St. Paul speaks of the Spirit of Christ (cfr Rm 8,9) and not just of the Spirit of God. It is obvious: If Christ is the Son of God, his Spirit is also the Spirit of God, and so, if the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ had become very close to us in the Son of God and Son of man, the Spirit of God also becomes the human spirit. Thus we can enter into the communion with the Spirit.
It is like saying that not just God the Father became visible in the incarnation of the Son, but the Spirit of God manifested itself in the life and actions of Jesus, of Jesus Christ who lived and was crucified, died and resurrected.
The Apostle points out that "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1Cor 12,3). Thus, the Spirit orients our heart toward Jesus Christ, such that "yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (cfr Gal 2,20).
In his Catecheses on the Sacraments, St. Ambrose states, reflecting on the Eucharist: "Whoever is inebriated in the Holy Spirit is rooted in Christ" (5, 3, 17: PL 16, 450).
I would like now to show three consequences in our Christian life when we allow, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of Christ to work in us as the interior principle of all our actions.
First of all, with prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are in a condition to abandon and overcome every form of fear or slavery, living the authentic freedom of the children of God.
Without the prayer that daily nourishes our being in Christ, in an intimacy that grows progressively, we find ourselves in the condition described by St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans: we do not do the good we want, but we do the evil we do not want (cfr Rm 7,19).
This is the expression of the human being's alienation, the destruction of our freedom: through the circumstances of being who we are by virtue of original sin, we want the good that we do not do, and we do what we do not want to do, evil.
The Apostle wants us to understand that it is not our will that liberates us from these conditions, not even the Laws, but the Holy Spirit. And since "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2Cor 3,17), in prayer we experience the freedom given by the Spirit: an authentic freedom, which is freedom from evil and sin for good and for life, for God.
The freedom of the Spirit, St. Paul continues, is never to be identified with libertinage, nor with the possibility of choosing evil, but with "the fruit of the Spirit (which) is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5,22).
This is true freedom: to be able to truly follow the desire for good, for true joy, for communion with God, and not to be oppressed by circumstances which ask us to go in other directions.
A second consequence that we can experience in our life when we allow the Spirit of Christ to work in us is that the relationship with God becomes so profound that it cannot be undermined by any reality or situation.
We can also understand then that prayer does not liberate us from trials and sufferings, but makes us able to live them in union with Christ, with his sufferings, in the hope of participating also in his glory (cfr Rm 8, 17).
Many times, in our prayer, we ask God to be liberated of physical and spiritual ailments, and we do so with great confidence. Nonetheless, we often have the impression that we have not been heard, and we therefore risk discouragement and failing to persevere.
In fact, there is no human cry that is not heard by God, and it is precisely in constant and faithful prayer that we understand with St. Paul that "the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us" (Rm 8,18).
Prayer does not exempt us from trials and sufferings, but, St. Paul says, "we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Rm 8,23). He says that prayer does not exempt us from suffering but allows us to live this suffering and confront it with new strength, with the same trust as Jesus had, when, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, "In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (5,7).
The answer of God the Father to the Son, to his loud cries and tears, was not to liberate him from his sufferings, from the Cross, from death, but a fulfillment which was much greater, a response that was far more profound. Through the Cross and death, God responded with the Resurrection of his Son, with new life.
Prayer animated by the Holy Spirit brings us, too, to live every day the journey of life with its trials and sufferings, in full hope and trust in God who answers us as he answered his Son.
Thirdly, the prayer of the believer is also open to the dimensions of all mankind and of creation, taking upon himself "creation's eager expectation of the revelation to the children of God" (Rm 8,19).
This means that prayer, sustained by the Spirit of Christ that speaks within our own intimacy, never remains closed in on itself, it is never just a prayer for me, but opens up to sharing the sufferings of our time, the suffering of others.
]
It becomes an intercession for others, therefore a liberation from myself, a channel of hope for all creation, expression of that "love of God poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us" (cfr Rm 5,5). This is the very sign itself of true prayer, when it does not end with ourselves, but opens up to others and therefore, frees us, and helps towards the redemption of the world.
Dear brothers and sisters, St. Paul teaches us that our prayer must open us to the presence of the Holy Spirit, who prays in us with 'inexpressible groanings', in order to bring us to adhere to God with all our heart and all our being.
The Spirit of Christ becomes the strength of our 'weak' prayer, the light of our 'extinguished' prayer, the fire of our 'arid' prayer, giving us true interior freedom, teaching us to live by confronting the trials of existence, in the certainty that we are not alone, opening us to the horizons of mankind and creation 'groaning in labor pains even until now" (Rm 8,22). Thank you.
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More steps ahead before
FSSPX issue is resolved
by Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY, May 16 (CNS) - Reconciliation talks between the Vatican and the Society of St Pius X have not reached their conclusion but will continue, the Vatican has said, after members of its doctrinal congregation examined the latest communication from the head of the breakaway traditionalist group.
“Some observations were formulated which will be kept in mind in further discussions,” said Fr Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, following a meeting of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Those observations regarded the SSPX’s official response to a “doctrinal preamble”, prepared by the Vatican in September, outlining “some doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary to guarantee fidelity” to the formal teaching of the Church, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.
The response was submitted in April by Bishop Bernard Fellay, the society’s superior general. While Bishop Fellay has been generally positive about the possibility of reconciliation with Rome, leaked letters show that the society’s three other bishops have had serious reservations about the process. ['Serious reservations' is quite an understatement - they are unequivocally opposed to any reconciliation with Rome, considering Benedict XVI himself a heretic to Church Tradition for adhering to Vatican II! And yet they did not object when he lifted their excommunications. If they do not recognize his authority at all, they ought to have said so in January 2009!]]
“In consideration of the positions taken by the three other bishops of the Society of St Pius, their situation will have to be treated separately and individually,” Fr Lombardi said in a statement.
In addition to the hesitancy of the three bishops to support fully Bishop Fellay’s efforts, Fr Lombardi said, Bishop Richard Williamson’s public denials of the Holocaust and anti-Semitic statements would also require discussions separate from those of reconciliation with the FSSPX as a whole.
“It is not that this is a process that necessarily will reach a solution that embraces all the positions” found among all the SSPX members, Fr Lombardi said.
Even if the FSSPX as a whole is reconciled with Rome, he said, “the individual bishops each must make a commitment” to full communion with Rome. “It’s not as if there will be one solution that automatically extends to all.” [Why did no one ask him what happens if the three bishops persist in their defiance of Rome? They could conceivably carry on their own rump schism with whatever part of the present FSSPX that sides with them. We do not know what part that is, although in recent days, one of its main districts, that in France, expressed itself firmly on the side of the opponents of reconciliation - so far the only district that has said NO. Other districts that made their positions public earlier are with Mons. Fellay. France has the paradoxical distinction of having the most dissident progressivist bishops 'within' the Church as well as now, the most defiantly anti-Vatican II traditionalist group.]
Many observers of the process had expected the May 16 doctrinal congregation meeting to mark the penultimate step in the reconciliation talks. It appeared that congregation members would review Bishop Fellay’s response and forward their opinions about it to Pope Benedict XVI for his final action.
Fr Lombardi, however, said officials at the doctrinal congregation informed the Pope of the results of the day’s meeting but did not believe the reconciliation process was nearing its end.
“Obviously, the decision is in the Pope’s hands” and he can act when and how he wants, “but despite how it may have seemed – that we were talking about a brief amount of time – it is a process that continues,” Fr Lombardi said. “It would be premature to guess when the process will end.”
Pope Benedict’s latest efforts to bring about reconciliation with the traditionalist group began when he lifted the excommunications imposed on Bishop Fellay and other SSPX bishops after they were ordained without papal permission.
The Pope also established a Vatican committee for doctrinal talks with society representatives in 2009, and drafted the “doctrinal preamble” to explain the “minimal, essential” elements on which the society would have to agree for full reconciliation, Fr Lombardi had said.
I'm confident that Benedict XVI has his own ideas of how to cut through this muddle quickly and efficiently, and not spoil the opening that Mons. Fellay has accepted, especially if the problem with the other three bishops is to be treated separately anyway.
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More bad news for the Legionaries of Christ:
Popular LC priest admits fathering a child
By Deacon Keith Fournier
May 6, 2012
The Legionaries of Christ has been undergoing a major time of penance, purification and restructuring under the corrective hand of the Church.
The intervention and oversight was occasioned by the scandal arising out of the immoral double life and criminal activity of its disgraced and deceased founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado. The intervention has been serious and properly severe.
Sadly, on Wednesday, May 15, 2012, one of the legion's most prominent and popular clerics, Fr Thomas Williams, LC, ThD, a moral theologian, announced his own moral failure. Fr Williams is widely known for his writing, speaking and commentary during numerous television appearances om NBC,CBS and Sky News.
He has been a source for the major networks on the Vatican, as well as a "go to guy" for comments on the sexual abuse scandals over the last several years. Among his fourteen published books on Christian living and spirituality were Becoming the Christian You Want to Be and A Christian Guide to Conscience. His popular web site has now "gone dark".
The Legionary Priest admitted on Tuesday he had fathered a child and announced he is taking a one year leave of absence under the direction of his religious superiors. Fr Williams released the following statement:
"A number of years ago I had a relationship with a woman and fathered her child. I am deeply sorry for this grave transgression and have tried to make amends. My superiors and I have decided it would be best for me to take a year without active public ministry to reflect on the wrong I have done and my commitments as a priest. I am truly sorry to everyone who is hurt by this revelation, and I ask for your prayers as I seek guidance on how to make up for my errors."
Regnum Christi is the lay movement associated with the Legionaries of Christ. It has been depleted in the wake of the fallout occasioned by the evil acts of the founder. Their website contained the following letter concerning Fr Williams. It was written by Fr. Luis Garza, a member of the US leadership.
May 15, 2012
To all Legionaries and Regnum Christi consecrated members,
It is with sadness that I send you this note, especially at a time when we are experiencing renewed enthusiasm for our mission within the Church. The last thing I would wish is to add a fresh wound when older wounds may not have healed fully.
Nevertheless, it is my duty to inform you that Father Thomas Williams, LC, after consultation with his superiors, will undergo a period of reflection, prayer and atonement without public ministry, and has issued the following statement. [He quotes the statement cited above.]
I know that this will be shocking news to you. In the wake of all that we have been through as a Movement in the past several years, it won't surprise me if you are disappointed, angry or feel your trust shaken once again.
Father Williams has enriched the faith of so many through his teaching, public speaking and writing, and has been a spiritual guide for many in the Movement. That is what makes this failing such a painful reminder that we are all frail humans, in desperate need of God's mercy.
I hope that you will join me in praying for all those who have been affected by his actions, and for Father Williams during his time of prayer, penance and renewal of his priestly ministry.
Any further information is at the discretion of those involved. We will support them in any decision they make.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Luis Garza, LC
Father Williams is the third American priest with unusually high media profile to have 'fallen' in the past year, after Fr. John Corapi (who, I think, has 'left' the priesthood) and Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, who ran Human Life International. It is always sad when highly trusted priests prove to be so disloyal to their vows before God - and to their followers. One can only pray that the good they have done lives on, and that they are able to reconcile themselves to God.
We ask the global readers of Catholic Online to pray for the child, his or her mother - and, yes, to pray for this priest who has acknowledged and confessed his sin against consecrated celibacy and his priestly service to Christ's Church. John Allen, a reliable Catholic source, reports that Fr Williams is undergoing medical treatment for a form of cancer and is living with his parents.
We also ask for prayer for all who are still associated with the Legion of Christ. Finally, we ask for prayers for the Church and those in leadership who seek to pastor this difficult situation. [Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/05/2012 18:06] |
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For German Catholics:
A departure and a new start?
May 16, 2012
The German Church is holding its bi-annual meeting, more commonly known as Katholikentag, in Mannheim, with over 30,000 participants and guests assembled to discuss, to worship, to celebrate and to share the current state of the Church in Pope Benedict XVI’s homeland. Father Bernd Hagenkord, S.J., director of Vatican Radio's German service reports from Mannheim:
The book containing all the events of this Katholikentag [entitled with this year's motto, 'Einen neuen Aufbruch wagen' (Committing to a new start)] is nearly 600 pages long [I can't imagine anyone other than Germans going to such literal lengths!], with 1200 events listed covering all possible topics relating to the Church in Germany, its relations with other religions, and its work in international charity.
There are lectures and discussions, presentations and new initiatives, and as during every Katholikentag the city is strewn with white tents, every one of them containing an initiative, parish, diocese, association, or other catholic organization. Ecumenism, mission, parish organization, moral theology, music, social responsibility: There seems to be no topic not represented here. The whole four-day meeting is framed by liturgies and prayer-services.
A particular focus this year is local churches (parishes). For lack of money, of priests many parishes have had to be merged with other parishes, creating administrative units rather than living communities. So the focus is on how to make this work and how to bring to life this changing structure with new initiatives or ideas.
This meeting of Catholics shows the signs of the times. Alois Gluck, president of the German Catholics lay council ZDK [Zentralkomitee der deutschen Katholiken] which organizes the Katholikentag, said during a press conference said it also shows the contribution the Church can make to society today. The event is supposed to be inspirational for all those coming here.
After the sex-abuse scandals and the loss of significant numbers of Catholics in Germany, many perceive the church as being stale or numb, without answers to today’s crisis or challenges. Therefore the title of the meeting is „Aufbruch“ - meaning departure as well as new start.
The Church hierarchy and laity in Germany want to find a way out of what Alois Gluck called the inner blockade in many questions. The price to pay is to give up a lot of much-loved customs or structures. However, this is necessary to move the Church forward. How to do this is what this Katholikentag is for.
Too bad Fr. Hagenkord fails to mention the big white elephant in the room, this being the first Katholikentag since then: Benedict XVI's ringing call to the German Church when he addressed the Katholikentag organizers, the ZDK, in Freiburg last September, telling them, among other things:
In order to accomplish her true task adequately, the Church must constantly renew the effort to detach herself from her tendency towards worldliness and once again to become open towards God...
This does not, of course, mean withdrawing from the world: quite the contrary. A Church relieved of the burden of worldliness is in a position, not least through her charitable activities, to mediate the life-giving strength of the Christian faith to those in need, to sufferers and to their caregivers...
Openness to the concerns of the world means, then, for the Church that is detached from worldliness, bearing witness to the primacy of God’s love according to the Gospel through word and deed, here and now, a task which at the same time points beyond the present world because this present life is also bound up with eternal life.
Hagenkord also fails to describe the general tone of the Katholikentag in its recent history, even while taking place under the supposedly vigilant watch of the German Church hierarchy, when non-Catholic views on social issues were often given more prominence than orthodox Catholicism, nor the fact that ZDK represents liberal Catholicism's tendency to detach the question of God from their breastbeating do-goodism.
I don't have the time to go over the 600-page program online to get an idea just how much the current Katholikentag is taking heed of the Pope's admonitions, but we must all pray that this represents indeed 'a new start' for that troubled Church that seems to have derived little spiritual advantage from having one of their own as the Supreme Pontiff.
P.S. The Vatican Press Office has just posted the message sent by the Holy Father for this year's Katholikentag. Here is a translation..
To my Venerated Brother
Robert Zollitsch, Archbishop of Freiburg,
to the Bishops, Priests, Deacons and Religious,
aand all the Participants in the Katholientag in Mannheim,
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
'To commit to a new start'. Under these words many believers are gathering these days for the 98th German Katholikentag in Mannheim. In union with you, I greet you all who have come together for the celebratory opening on the Markplatz in the heart of the city.
I greet most especially the Archbishop of Freiburg and President of teh German Bishops' Conference, Dr. Robert Zollitsch, all the cardinals and bishops present, as well as the Central Committee of German Catholics, with along with the Archdiocese of Freiburg is hosting this event.
I likewise greet the representatives of of other Christian churches and of public authorities, and everyone who are joining you through the carious communications media.
The occasion brings back to me with pleasure and with great gratitude my pastoral visit last year to our homeland and on the many enriching meetings I had with people from all sectors of society in a great celebration of faith.
Your meeting in Mannheim is taking place under the motto, 'Committing to a new start". What does this really say to us? A new start means to set forth, to get under way. Many times, it means at the same time making a choice for change and renewal.
Only he who is ready to leave the old behind and commit himself to the new can really set out on a new beginning. What then does this mean for the ecclesial community, which, according to the Apostle Paul, is the mystical Body of Christ?
Christ is the Leader, and we are the members. We must not manipulate the Church around its Leader, but we ourselves are called to renew ourselves continually as members, and to reach out as 'leaders and perfecters' of our faith (cfr Heb 12,2).
Renewal can only bring fruit when it arises from the true novelty of Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Jn 14,6). Thus, a new start concerns every believer in his innermost.
Through Baptism, we became 'new' in Christ. The Lord redeemed our humanity from the slavery of sin and opened us for a life-giving relationship with God. This God-given new start must always be a personal going forth to God.
Each one must strive to live his faith concretely and to seek to develop it. But in our faith, we are not alone, isolated from others. We believe with and within the community of the Church. A new start for each baptized person is also a new start in and with the Church.
At all times there have been persons who have dared to make a new start and in whom the presence of God has been clearly manifested. The witness of faith of the saints and the great ranks of Christians who have announced the message of the Gospel freely and fearlessly, can encourage us today to make this new start, spur us on to new courage in our faith.
Sacred Scripture and the history of the Church tell of many men for whom the customary in their time did not suffice, could not suffice. With uneasy but open hearts they were capable, in their life and in the challenges of daily living, to undertake God's call for them to set forth. It was not human vicissitude that prompted them to do so, but the yearning for truth and to listen to God's Word.
The true departure, as they have shown us, is obedience and trust in God's behest and call. He who knows how to speak to God and shapes his life according to his dialog with God will overcome constraints and difficulties and be ready to "to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope" (cfr 1Pt 3.15).
A son of Mannheim, the Jesuit priest and later martyr Alfred Delp, describes to us in a meditation written a few weeks before his death, those who have responded to God's call and set forth to their mission: "These are the persons who have infinite vision. They truly hunger and thirst for the ultimate things. They are capable of making the necessary choices, ordering their lives according to the ultimate things. They are seeking, travelling men since they believe more in that interior call and external signs - that they would miss without their interior hunger and watchful vigilance - rather than in certainties and comfortable settledness" (Im Angesicht des Todes, 97f).
Dear brothers and sisters, the Katholikentag is taking place in a city where there is an obvious diversity of ideas and opinions, of lifestyles and religions. Wagering on a new start, in such an environment, means getting to know its opportunities and its hazards, and to make room for a genuine exchange of ideas.
Only men ruled by 'the civilization of love' can edify true and enduring peace. As a Church, we have the task to announce the message of the Gospel openly and clearly. The contribution of every baptized person to the New Evangelization is essential. Even our country needs a new missionary and apostolic start.
I wish to say a special word to young people and young adults. Last year, I met many of you at World Youth Day in Madrid, and a few weeks later, at the prayer vigil in Freiburg. Those who like you still have much of your life before you are always challenged to make decisions, and even when disappointed, to get up and continue building a strong future.
Have the courage to orient yourselves to Jesus Christ. Strengthen each other in the faith. Among your friends, in school and at work, bring the message of the Gospel. As Christ loves the Church (cfr Eph 5.25), so must we love the Church.
Yes, identify yourself with the Church, because Christ identified himself with the Church, because Christ identified himself with us! Draw from the life and the truth that Christ has given us in the Church. We all want to bring this treasure of God's love to our land. Following his Word, we wish to set off to a new start (cfr Lk 5,5), reciprocating God's coming to us.
The 98th Katholikentag constitutes in a way a prelude to the Year of Faith which we shall begin shortly on the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Therefore, may these days in Mannheim be a feast of faith, helping to rediscover the faith of the Church in its beauty and freshness, to reclaim it in an ever deeper way and to announce it anew.
With this wish, I commend the Katholikentag to God's hands and from the heart, I impart to you the Apostolic Blessing.
From the Vatican
May 14, 2012
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Fr. Schall, who is a professor at Georgetown University, the Jesuit university in Washington, DC, takes issue with the institution's decision to ask Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius - a nominal Catholic who, as governor of Kansas, openly supported a notorious mass-abortionist who performed third-trimester abortions and so-called partial birth abortions - as their principal commencement speaker this year. Fr. Schall also tackles the risible rationale issued by the Georgetown PR-meisters that Sebelius is just one of 'many' commencement speakers at Georgetown this year, saying in effect, 'Who are they kidding? Will anyone ever report on the other commencement speakers?'
The uproar over HHS mandate enforcer
as Georgetown U's commencement speaker:
'Tell me who you honor and
I'll tell you who you are'
By James V. Schall, S.J.
May 16, 2012
Each year, controversy arises about the honorary awards that universities give to individuals judged worthy to receive them on the basis of a criterion of excellence. Scenes of students or faculty sitting with backs to invited speakers abound. Yet no one can logically “honor” himself. It is something for others to do. The failure to honor what is worthy usually falls into the category of envy.
Essential to an award of honor is that it need not be granted. The award transcends justice. It is not a duty but an overflow. We might sympathize with the man who runs last in the 100-meter dash, but we give the medal to the winner. Honors have the connotation of an accomplishment that is worthy of praise.
The problem with honors arises when someone is worthy in one category of life but not in another. We may try to keep these things separate. A good artist may be a very dissolute person in other respects. This situation makes it delicate to distinguish between the reward and the life of the artist.
I bring these things up in the context of the invitation of the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to one of the many graduation ceremonies here at Georgetown. We are assured that hers is not an invitation to give a “formal” commencement address. We have some twenty or thirty different ceremonies, most of which have their own speaker or ceremony. This array includes colleges, institutes, programs, professional and graduate schools, no one knows what all.
The invitation to Mrs. Sebelius is pictured by the university publicity office as one of rather minor significance, in the Public Policy Institute. I am sure this comes as news to the HHS secretary. It is an honors program, an awards ceremony, not a graduation. What difference this makes is not exactly clear. Fine distinctions abound. In any case, an address is to be delivered.
Now, no one is naïve enough to think that more attention will be paid to some other speaker this year than to the HHS secretary. It is a perfect public relations or newsworthy set-up.
A bureaucrat, speaking at a Catholic university, has proposed, in effect, shutting down most Catholic charitable and educational organizations unless they agree to support programs that are contrary to reason and faith.
She speaks presumably in support of her position, a position specifically rejected by the nation’s bishops as contrary to our tradition of liberty and religious autonomy. It’s man bites dog. No reporter worth his salt would miss it. “FEDERAL OFFICIAL DEFINES RELIGION IN HONORARY ADDRESS.” We can see it now.
Georgetown admires her.
The rule of thumb in these matters is: “Tell me who you honor and I will tell you what you are.” Honors do not have to be given. They mean nothing unless they are freely given. When given, they signify agreement, distinction.
A university might well invite to its halls someone to lecture who denies everything the university stands for. But this invitation would not be offered as an “honor.” Both the speaker and the audience would know the conflicting nature of the address.
There might be debate, questioning, and controversy. But neither the listeners nor the speaker would think that anyone was being honored except in the sense that the invited representative really knew the matter at controversy.
An honor does not come from the side of the honoree. The latter is surprised and pleased to learn that his deeds or works have been recognized by some institution. To receive such an invitation is taken as recognition of one’s accomplishment or worth.
No one invites his enemy to be honored for so skillfully undermining one’s own status or stature. One must assume that whoever invited the person to be honored found grounds for agreement or praise.
No one honors those who undermine the fundamentals of civilization. The foundation of our civilization is the Socratic “It is never right to do wrong.” In effect, this doing wrong is what the government through the HHS secretary is asking us to do.
One can hardly blame the person being honored for thinking the he is worthy of the honor to be conferred. He may be modest about it, but he knows that the award was designed to acknowledge or approve or praise his unique accomplishment. Moreover, he only accepts the honor if he thinks it is sincerely given by those who are worthy judges of excellence and worthiness.
An institution awards the HHS secretary high honors because it admires her. She has every right to think that such an offer comes to her in this spirit. If her views are radically disagreed with, she would expect not to be invited.
Tell me who you honor and I will tell you what you are.
It is obvious that the powers-that-be at Georgetown have decided not just to defy the statement of the US Catholic bishops condemning the anti-religious freedom health mandate that Sebelius is tasked by the Obama administration to enforce, but also Benedict XVI's recent admonition to US bishops visiting the Vatican against Catholic schools that do not uphold the Catholic identity, not to mention John Paul II's Ex corde ecclesiae decree about the functions and duties of Catholic schools. How are the Georgetown Jesuits morally and ecclesially different from the three Lefebvrian bishops who continue to consider all of Vatican-II as heretical? In both cases, it is clear and open defiance of the Church Magisterium. But even the best Catholic commentators in the Anglophone media fail to point this out, not now nor in any other case of persistently defiant dissent to the Magisterium in the US Church.
Georgetown has decided "If Notre Dame could do it, so can we" - learning nothing at all from the moral wrong that Notre Dame University committed three years ago when it honored Barack Obama knowing full well his stand on abortion - he even supports the barbarous practice of partial birth abortion. And surely knowing about his publicly documented flip-flop-flip-again record on gay marriage, which he has now 'finally' established as one he advocates as a matter of 'equal human rights' for all'. And has followed up with a demand for the repeal of the 'Defense of Marriage Act' passed in the Clinton administration. Surely, even Giovanni Vian at the OR cannot rationalize his way out of Obama's now unequivocal moral abjection and still consider himself Catholic.
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Thursday, May 17, Sixth Week of Easter
ASCENSION THURSDAY
From left: The Ascension - by Andrei Rublev, 1408; Dosso Dossi, 1490; Perugino, 1496; Garofalo, 1520; and a modern Macedonian icon; the structure is the Ascension edicule - a Church/Mosque on Mt. Olivet in Jerusalem where the Ascension was believed to take place, with what pilgrims believe to be a footprint of Christ. Strangely, the Ascension has not been a popular subject of art in the Western world. nor does the feast itself receive the same importance in the Roman Catholic Church as it has in the Orthodox Churches.
The Feast of the Ascension of Christ, which the Acts tell us took place 40 days after Easter, was always celebrated by the Church on a Thursday in keeping with Tradition, until the post-Vatican-II liturgical reform gave local Churches the option to celebrate it on the Sunday following Ascension Thursday.
Saint of the day:
SAN PASCUAL BAILON (Spain, 1540-1592)
Franciscan brother, Mystic, 'Seraph of the Eucharist'
One of the constellation of saints that Spain produced during the Counter-Reformation, St. Pascual, who was given his
name because he was born on Pentecost, considered as the 'Pasch of the Holy Spirit', was a shepherd until he was 24 when
he became a Franciscan friar. Before that, he was known to be a passionate devotee of the Blessed Sacrament, living a life
of penance, attending as many Masses as he could and kneeling in the fields whenever he heard the church bells ring out to
signal the Consecration of the host at Mass. As a child, he had a vision of Jesus actually present in the host. As a friar,
he took on the multiple roles of porter, cook, gardener and official beggar familiar from the lives of so many Franciscan
saints down to Padre Pio - during which he became known not only for his attentions to the poor but for his spiritual advice
and a reputation as a mystic. As a friar, he spent all his free hours in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, to whom he wrote
prayers and poems. The appellative 'bailon' (dancer) comes from a story that a fellow friar once saw him dancing before
the image of Mary, saying "I don't have any qualities to offer you but I can dance for you like we peasants do". Although
uneducated, his discourses on the Eucharist were so powerful that his superiors sent him to France to preach about the
Eucharist against the Calvinists. Soon after he died, his tomb at the royal chapel in Villareal near Valencia soon became
the object of pilgrimage, and many miracles were attributed to him. He was canonized in 1690. In 1897, Leo XIII, calling
him the 'Seraph of the Eucharist' also proclaimed him patron of eucharistic congresses and societies. His tomb was
desecrated and his relics burned by anti-clerical leftists during the Spanish Civil War.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/051712.cfm
No events announced for the Holy Father today.
The Vatican published the text of the Pope's remarks yesterday afternoon after watching a new TV film
MARIA DI NAZARET.
OR today.
The OR today mixes up three stories in its main headline. which has a supertitle and a subtitle:
The supertitle: At the General Audience, the Pope calls for support for the family through jobs and making them open to life.
The main title: 'Prayer makes us free'
[A sub-theme of the catechesis, not related to the supertitle, which referred to a [secondary message during the GA]
The subtitle: He calls on German Catholics for a new missionary start in obedience and trust
[Which had nothing to do with the GA at all - it's a separate story altogether]
Image: A 17th-century Syrian icon of the Ascension.
Anyway, the papal pictures shown were taken at the GA - two are generic, while the third one on the back page shows the Pope receiving an illustrated Genesis from the Bible presented by an Israeli artist. Other Page 1 items: An essay on the Ascension in the Byzantine tradition; Greeks rush to withdraw their money from banks as the country is posised with one foot outside the eurozone; and a rare picture of the Iguazu falls on the border between Brazil and Argentina, showing one of the world's mightiest waterfalls reduced to a virtual trickle these days because of many months of the worst drought in Brazil's recorded history. Four million people are in a state of emergency because of the drought.
In the inside pages, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the new French President Francois Hollande meet for the first time in Berlin after Hollande is sworn in (lightning hit his plane on the way and he had to turn back to Paris and take a second plane); and the European Court of Human Rights makes a landmark decision upholding religious freedom by recognizing the right of a Spanish bishop to decline to renew the teaching contract of a priest who had married and published a book condemning priestly celibacy; the court recognized the right of the bishop to determine who is qualified to teach in a Catholic school.
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Pope laicizes Canadian Bishop Lahey
who pled guilty to possession of child porn
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued this statement yesterday:
May 16, 2012
On May 4, 2011, then Bishop Raymond Lahey entered a plea of guilty in civil court to the possession of child pornography. He was sentenced in accordance with civil law on January 4, 2012.
It remained for the Holy See to follow the canonical procedures in effect for such cases to determine what appropriate disciplinary or penal measures would be imposed.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops has now been informed by the Holy See that Raymond Lahey has been dismissed from the clerical state.
According to Canon 292 of the Code of Canon Law, the penalty of dismissal from the clerical state has the following effects:
- Loss of the rights and duties attached to the clerical state, except for the obligation of celibacy;
- Prohibition of the exercise of any ministry, except as provided for by Canon 976 of the Code of Canon Law in those cases involving danger of death;
- Loss of all offices and functions and of all delegated power, as well as prohibition of the use of clerical attire.
Raymond Lahey has accepted the Decree of Dismissal, which also requires him to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in reparation for the harm and the scandal he has caused, and for the sanctification of the clergy.
I have to check when was the last time a Pope laicized a bishop. I'm not sure that the Viennese and Polish bishops who admitted to sex abuse of minors during the John Paul II Pontificate were laicized. The known offense by the now-plain Mr. Lahey - possession of child porn - is far less than theirs.
On the question of religious freedom, about which the United States Bishops have been actively fighting against any laws that would violate it, the Canadian bishops issued a forceful statement of their position onthe issue in the form of a 12-page pastoral letter last month:
The full document is on
www.cccb.ca/site/images/stories/pdf/Freedom_of_Conscience_and_Reli...
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Once again, the MSM tendency to extrapolate froma single incident to sweeping generalization is evident in AP's treatment of the Fr. Williams case...
Vatican's reform of Maciel's LC
in doubt with revelations
By NICOLE WINFIELD
VATICAN CITY, May 17 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI's ability to reform the troubled Legion of Christ has again been thrown into doubt following revelations that a half-dozen priests are under Vatican investigation for allegedly molesting children and that the order's leadership knew its most prominent priest had fathered a child yet did nothing to prevent him from teaching and preaching about morality.
The Vatican on Thursday expressed confidence in Benedict's delegate running the congregation but acknowledged that the process of reform is "certainly long and complex precisely because it aims to be profound."
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi rejected suggestions that the revelations proved that the reform process wasn't working and that the Legion was too flawed to be saved.
On the contrary, he told The Associated Press, the revelations showed that the Legion under papal delegate Cardinal Velasio De Paolis is doing the right thing by taking action once the revelations became known.
"Even the recent public communications about the Legion seem to be new and a positive sign of transparency," he said. "There is no reason then not to have confidence in the way Cardinal De Paolis is guiding this complex path of renewal."
The Rev. Thomas Williams, an American moral theologian who was the public face of the Legion for years, admitted Tuesday he had had a relationship with a woman and had fathered a child "a number of years ago." He didn't identify the woman. The Legion said the child is being cared for.
The Legion subsequently admitted that Williams' superiors knew about the child but didn't remove him immediately from his prominent role as a professor of moral theology at the Legion's university in Rome and a popular television commentator, author and spokesman.
The order has refused to say precisely when Williams' superiors knew, but former Legion priests say they suspect at least some of the Legion's leadership knew years ago.
How is it that Cardinal De Paolis had no hint that these leders knew? This really raises new questions about the wisdom of Cardinal De Paolis's decision to still retain some of Fr. Maciel's most trusted aides in leadership positions two years since he was assigned by the Pope to oversee the order. If he has not learned enough from them in two years, he will never find out more. So if only for the look of it, he should relieve them of their high-profile positions now. Surely by now, he must know which among the younger LC priests are potential leaders that he can tap. who are untainted by association with Maciel, much less prisoners of Maciel's personality cult and the 'fourth vow' of keeping silent about anything their superiors did that LC priests were once required to take! For now, Cardinal De Paolis apparently continues to have the Pope's trust, but he should not use that as a crutch for his rather passive supervision of the LC so far!
Williams was only removed from his teaching position in February after a Spanish victims' group confronted the Legion with a letter outlining the allegations against Williams and other Legion priests accused of abusing children. The matter became public after The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter and last week requested comment from the Legion.
The revelations and apparent cover-up of the initial knowledge of Williams' child have raised questions about whether it's really possible to rehabilitate the Legion, which has been in disarray since admitting in 2009 that its founder had raped and molested seminarians and fathered three children with two women.
The order, founded in 1941, became one of the fastest growing and most influential because of its ability to attract money and seminarians to the priesthood. As late as 2004, Pope John Paul II held its leader, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, up as a model for the faithful.
The facade, however, began to crumble in 1997, with revelations of Maciel's abuse, but the Mexican prelate continued to enjoy Vatican support and protection. It wasn't until 2006 that the Vatican sanctioned him to a lifetime of prayer and penance for his crimes. [Of course, the AP does not mention that this action was taken by Benedict XVI, carrying on something he was finally allowed to pursue late in his predecessor's Pontificate and was able to adjudicate just a little more than a year after he became Pope.] Maciel died in 2008.
Benedict took a big risk when he assumed control of the Legion in May 2010 after a Vatican investigation determined that Maciel was a fraud who had created an order bent on silence and obedience to cater to his double life. The Vatican concluded that his order was beset by such problems it could only survive if it were thoroughly "purified."
Benedict could have shut the order down, and some critics of the cult-like movement say that remains the only possible solution.
American canon lawyer Edward Peters, the Vatican's expert witness in U.S. sex abuse lawsuits and an adviser to the Vatican's highest court, has concluded the Legion "needs to disappear."
But Benedict chose instead to name De Paolis to oversee a process of reform that includes rewriting the order's constitutions, correcting the abuses of power and defining the charism, or the essential spirit of the order that makes it unique.
The aim is to preserve whatever good that the order may still provide the Church with its 800 priests and zealous lay members.
Two years in, the logistical process of rewriting the constitutions is going ahead. And just this week - on the same day the Williams revelations made headlines - De Paolis announced that he had named new leaders for the Legion's female branch to help shepherd it through a process of reform as well.
But in yet another indication that the process is anything but linear, none of the members selected by De Paolis are considered reformers, with most, if not all, of them strongly linked to the old guard leadership and with little experience in the field. [That's truly unfortunate, because you cannot rehabilitate the Legion using the same people who were part of its corrupt or corrupted leadership! De Paolis needs an executive assistant who understands something about effective and efficient management take-over!]
Former members of the so-called consecrated branch of the Legion say De Paolis's choices don't reflect the results of the voting undertaken by current members to choose their own leaders. They predicted a new exodus of members frustrated that their efforts to reform had again been rebuffed. [The malcontents may have vested interests, but that they exist is a measure of how little De Paolis appears to have taken charge!]
"I believe this will generate numerous and significant desertions," said Nelly Ramirez, a former consecrated woman who left in 2009 and has written a book about her experiences.
Since the revelations about Maciel were first disclosed in 2009, some 350 women out of more than 900, have abandoned the Legion's consecrated branch, where women live like nuns, fundraising, recruiting members and working in schools and youth programs. A group of 35 who have left formed their own group in February that has been canonically approved by the Vatican.
De Paolis has warned current members not to mix with the members of Totus Tuus lay association, lest they be poached away. ][???? If the new group has been canonically approved by the Vatican, what is wrong with it? Or has it been approved? I must check it out.]
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The Pope watches
a film on Mary
Yesterday afternoon, the Holy Father watched the TV film MARIA DI NAZARET jointly produced by Italian, German and Spanish TV channels and first presented on Italy's state TV RAI last Palm Sunday.
The film depicts the 'intertwined' lives of three women in the New Testament: Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas; Mary Magdalene; and Mary, the Mother of Jesus. [The film's major historical license is to imagine that Mary the mother of Jesus knew Mary of Magdala before the events that changed her life.]
Here is a translation of the Pope's multilingual remarks after watching the film:
Dear friends:
He began in Italian:
Thanks to all for this moment that invites us to reflect on the images and dialog we have seen in the film MARIA DI NAZARET. Special thanks to RAI and its Director General, Madame Lorenza Lei, and its other representatives, to Lux Vide and the Bernabei family, as well as the production staff.
In German he said:
My sincere thanks to the director of the Bayreishe Rundfunk (Bavarian state broadcasting agency) Prof. Gerhard Fuchs, the producer Martin Choroba of Tellux-Film-Gesellschaft of Munich, all your collaborators, as well as the cast members present and the camera crew for this presentation at the Apostolic Palace.
And in Spanish:
Likewise my thanks go to the reprecentatives of Spain's Telecinco.
He spoke the rest in Italian:
It is not easy to portray the figure of a mother because it contains a richness of life that is difficult to describe. This is even more challenging when it has to do with Mary of Nazareth, Mother of Jesus, the Son of God made man.
You have built the film around three female figures whose lives cross but who make distinctly different choices. Herodiade remains closed in herself, in her world - she cannot lift her sights enough to read the signs of God and therefore does notescape from evil.
Mary Magdalene has a more complicated life: she experienced the fascination of an easy life, based on material things, using various means to attain her ends, until the dramatic moment when she is condemned for her sins and is forced to face her life. Her meeting with Jesus opens her heart and changes her existence.
But in the center is Mary of Nazareth - in who we find the richness of a life with was a 'Here I am' to God. She is a mother who would have wanted to have her own Son always with her, but she knows that he belongs to God. She has a faith and a love so great that she accepts her mission to give birth to a child. Her life is a repeated "Here I am" to God, from the Annunciation up to the Cross.
Three experiences - a paradigm of how one can structure one's life. Whether it is to be on selfishness, on being closed in on oneself and on material things, letting oneself to be led by evil; or on the sense of the presence of God who came to us and remains among us, who awaits us with his goodness even when we err, who asks us to follow him, to trust in him.
Mary of Nazareth is the woman of the full and total 'Here I am" to divine will, and in her Yes, repeated even in the sorrow of losing her Son, she finds full and profound beatitude.
Thank you all and a good evening.
The roles of Mary and the adult Jesus are played by a couple of German actors, 21-year-old Alissa Jung, who has appeared in various TV series; and Andreas Pietschmann, a boyish 42-year-old stage and TV actor from Berlin who auditioned for the role of Joseph, but one look at him and the director said, "No, you are Jesus!"
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They're still very much around - the vipers in the Vatican and their willing agents in the media. How many private letters to Benedict XVI have been leaked out that a muck-raking journalist - who seems to have found his niche dredging the sewers of the Vatican - can write a whole book about them? Is it a real 'book', anyway, or a puffed-up propaganda pamphlet? In any case, reports in the Italian media today are focused on only one letter (it may have been more than one) - written to the Pope by former Avvenire editor Dino Boffo at the time he was being slandered by a major Italian newspaper in 2009, which made it appear that he was fined by a provincial Italian court for some telephone tapping claimed by the newspaper editor to have been part of a homosexual affair that Boffo was involved in. A few months later, the editor publicly retracted his story and apologized for it , saying he had been misled because the source of the documentation he used was 'someone reliable'.
The crucifixion of Papa Ratzinger
A new book entitled 'Sua Santita'
divulges private letters to the Pope
by Francesco Grana
Translated from
May 17, 2012
Benedict the prophet. Seven years ago, when the took over the Barque of Peter from the hands of the great Pope John Paul II, the new Pope said clearly: "Pray for me that I may not flee the wolves for fear". He knew what awaited him.
From the Regensburg lecture to lifting the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops, to the pedophile priest scandals, and to the moles which seem intent on burying his Pontificate.
"Sometimes one has the impression", he wrote to the bishops of the world in March 2009, "that our society needs at least one group towards which no tolerance can be shown, against whom one can peacefully lash out with hatred. And if anyone should dare get close to this object of hate - in this case, the Pope - he too loses the right to tolerance and he too may well be treated with hate without fear or reservation".
He too also noted at the time that in the Church today - as in some of the early communities in the time of St. Paul - there are those who bite and devour each other in what they consider to be an expression of freedom that is wrongly interpreted.
So the latest scourge he has to bear is to witness the public divulgation of private letters sent to him.
Nuzzi's book, and the Libero front page with its headline bank:
Venom in the Vatican
The secret letters of Benedict XVI'
A book by Nuzzi lifts the veil on a series of sleazy episodes. There's the letter to the Pope from Dino Boffo who accuses the editor of OR for the scandal that engulfed him.
Numerous private letters to Benedict XVI are to be made public in a book to come out in Italy soon by Gianluigi Nuzzi, a journalist of the private Italian TV channel La7 [who had hosted the TV programs that first divulged the Vigano letters last January and other minor correspondence leaked from the Secretariat of State. Nuzzi gained minor celebrity with his book Vatican s.p.a. [s.p.a. is the Italian equivalent of 'Inc.' after an English corporation's name] in 2009 in which he researched the workings of the Vatican institution IOR and the major financial scandals and questions that have plagued it in the past four decades.] The letters cast both light and shadows on the Vatican and on the Pope.
The newspaper Libero announced the book publication today with a front-page editorial by its editor Maurizio Belpietro [an article which contained quite a few glaring mistakes in reference to the letter it chose to focus upon.
Friday morning, Corriere della Sera plans to come out with a special edition of its weekly magazine Sette, dedicated to Nuzzi's book and its contents.
It is a war against the Vatican carried to the extreme by Nuzzi who wrote Vatican s.p.a., which was a big best-seller at a time of economic crisis. [Gossip always sells! I'm sure Nuzzi researched his first best-seller well enough, but it's also the nature for expose books to include a lot of gossip for 'enhancement'.]
The case study held up as an exemplar in this new expose concerns the Dino Boffo case from three years ago (summer of 2009). Those who follow Vatican news know the basic elements: the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, Giovanni Maria Vian, with the support of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone [to whom the OR editor reports], vs Dino Boffo, at the time, the triple-threat supremo of the Italian bishops' widespread multimedia enterprise; Boffo who then writes the Pope complaining about Vian, whom he claims appears to have been responsible for the slanderous lies written by Il Giornale editor Vittorio Feltri against Boffo; Feltri dragged [willingly, it seems] into a war that one can hardly call holy.
Then there's the matter of papal succession, in which Angelo Scola is considered the top cardinal in the running (with Cardinals Marco Ouellet and Mauro Piacenza in seocnd place). [But why would anyone write to the Pope about such speculation? It's indelicate and unseemly, to say the least, and most inconsiderate!]
And what about the Church in all this?
The first question has got to be: How can private letters to the Pope be leaked to anyone? Is there any confidential file that can still stay confidential in the Vatican? When this happened with Mons. Vigano's letter to the Pope, one surmised that Vigano himself or someone acting in his behalf could have leaked it. But this time? One cannot imagine anyone in the Pope's immediate circle doing it - Monsignors Gaenswein and Xuereb? Birgit Wansing? The Memores Domini? Paolo the valet? Ingrid Stampa whenever she comes around? Who else would have access to the Pope's files? Or is there perhaps some supposedly trusted assistant sent up by the Secretriat of State from time to time to assist, who takes advantage of the opportunity to make copies of documents that he is given access to? Do the disclosed letters also include any replies the Pope may have sent?
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On Georgetown and the essential
unity of all knowledge
Freedoms are being restricted with the aid of Catholics who have denied,
in practice, any real connection between reason and revelation
by James V. Schall, S.J.
May 17, 2012
"Faith’s recognition of the essential unity of all knowledge provides a bulwark against the alienation and fragmentation which occurs when the use of reason is detached from the pursuit of truth and virtue; and in this sense, Catholic institutions have a specific role to play in helping to overcome the crisis of universities today.”- Pope Benedict XVI,
Address to U. S. Bishops on ad-limina visit
May 5, 2012
I.
In its editorial occasioned by Georgetown University’s invitation to Kathleen Sebelius — a Catholic, who is engineering the requirement that Catholic institutions must provide services to any employee, even if they include things contrary to conscience, faith, and reason — the Catholic Standard (May 10) called the invitation disappointing “but not surprising.” [The Standard is the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, whose archbishop, Cardinal Wuerl, has been seen by many to have taken his usual 'cautious' stand on controversial matters directly affecting his diocese.]
Though this statement is rather blunt, it is probably too mild in light of the damage the invitation causes. It is more than “disappointing,” though it is indeed no “surprise.”
The distance that many Catholic universities are perceived to have moved from Catholicism is, for many, illustrated by the publicity of this invitation. Honoring the person who intends to shut one’s institution down unless it conforms to laws that deny religious liberty and human intelligence seems, at best, dubious.
The best background “theory” about why Sebelius was interested in this invitation is that the Obama administration does not think it can win the election if people are reminded of the economy. Thus, effort is made to shift attention to what are called “moral” issues, a euphemism for the use of “rights” to redefine the whole field of public life.
Obama’s advocacy of gay-marriage also falls into this category. The administration understands the value of splitting the religious vote between those who stand for Christian teachings and practices and those who reject them but insist on changing the Church to conform to the secular pattern. However many can be enticed by this tactic may be enough at the polls to win reelection. The only bad prince, as Machiavelli put it, is one who loses power.
The Church would expect, at a time when its liberty of mission and action is threatened by specific governmental decree, that universities, not just Catholic ones, would be the first to come to its aid. But they seem to be the last.
They appear mostly indifferent to what has been probably the most unique of American legal innovations about the relation of religion and government. The Sebelius invitation, from the outside, seems an indifference to the Church by those who would be most expected to support her on the grounds of intelligence itself.
The issue is whether universities called “Catholic” have not become rather secular with vague religious symbols still about but no substantial connection with what it is to be Catholic in reason and intelligence.
The bishops, for all their courage in facing this question, have not addressed the factual question about what is the actual orientation of universities that are called “Catholic” for whatever reason. [And that is the question that perplexes me! Twenty-four years after John Paul II's Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Eccleiae (in which he defined and refined the Catholicism to be followed and exemplified by Catholic institutions of higher learning, especially in the United States, it remains a literal dead letter - almost a laughingstock - for many of the leading universities in the United States that call themselves Catholic, of which Notre Dame and Georgetown are the most egregious examples. Georgetown's invitaiton to Sebelius was made public just days after the aforementioned admonition of Benedict XVI to visiting US bishops, and yet no US bishop has come out against it, not even those whom Benedict XVI had addressed directly in Rome. And yet dozens of US bishops protested Notre Dame's invitiation to Obama in 2009.]
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI has been speaking to various groups of the American hierarchy on their periodic visits to Rome to report on the status of the local Church. To the final group of visiting American bishops, the Pope spoke of education.
“Catholic colleges and universities need to reaffirm their distinctive identity in fidelity to their founding ideals and the Church’s mission in service of the Gospel,” Benedict observed.
Obviously, Benedict knows that both the identity and fidelity are in serious question in many if not most universities. The universities are not doing what might be expected of them. The Pope tells the bishops, however, that “the schools remain an essential resource for the new evangelization” He acknowledges that they should be better recognized and supported.
“It is no exaggeration to say that providing young people with a sound education in the faith represents the most urgent internal challenge facing the Catholic community in your country.” The young, in fact, have a “right to encounter the faith in all its beauty, its intellectual richness and its radical demands.”
One would be hard-pressed to say that the young are so presented with this fullness in many of our schools.
Education is directed both to minds and hearts. “The question of Catholic identity, not least at the university level, entails much more than the teaching of religion or the mere presence of a chaplaincy on campus.”
The Pope is direct. “Catholic schools and colleges have failed to challenge students to re-appropriate their faith as part of the exciting intellectual discovery which mark the experience of higher education.”
The Pope himself clearly understands the excitement of intellect, an excitement enhanced and elevated by revelation directed to reason. The harmony of faith and reason should guide our life-long “pursuit of knowledge and virtue.”
In this endeavor, teachers and professors are vital. This fact underscores the issue of who is hired and by what criterion. If it is only a secular criterion, the school will soon be secular. The “splendor” of truth, both human and divine, needs to be seen in the teachers themselves.
By its nature, faith incites us to know the fullness of truth that includes what Christ revealed. And who is Christ? “He is the creative Logos in whom things were made and in whom all reality ‘holds together.’”
Christ is the new Adam who reveals “the whole truth of man,” a phrase that Bl. John Paul II used to love. The Pope here repeats a title that is proper to Christ, something that he discussed in his Jesus of Nazareth. Christ is the new Adam “who reveals the ultimate truth about man and the world in which we live.”
III.
As he often does, Benedict recalls Augustine and Plato. He compares the unrest of our time with that of Augustine’s time. “Augustine pointed to this intrinsic connection between faith and human intellectual enterprise by appealing to Plato, who held, he says, that ‘to love wisdom is to love God’” (City of God, Book 8, c. 8).
It just happens that I had been reading the City of God with a class this semester. I went back to reread this remarkable chapter of Augustine.
Augustine pointed out how, of all the philosophers, Plato is the closest to revelation. (See Josef Pieper,Platonic Myths). “Plato defined the Sovereign Good as the life in accordance with virtue (Gorgias, 470d), and he declared that this was possible only for one who had the knowledge of God and who strove to imitate him; this was the sole condition of happiness.”
And Augustine concludes: “Now this Sovereign Good, according to Plato, is God. And that is why he will have it that the true philosopher is the lover of God, since the aim of philosophy is happiness, and he who has set his heart on God will be happy in the enjoyment of him.”
It seems most remarkable that, in these very days of hassle about what a Catholic university ought to be, the Pope himself explains it to the bishops in terms of Plato. As I often say, there is no such thing as a university in which the constant reading of Plato does not go on. It seems quite clear that this reading has not been going on.
“The Christian commitment to learning, which gave birth to the medieval universities, was based upon this conviction that the one God, as the source of all truth and goodness, is likewise the source of the intellect’s passionate desire to know and the will’s yearning for fulfillment in love.”
In recalling that the very foundation of universities was in the effort to relate revelation to reason, to the fact that the source of intellect both in reason and revelation is the same God, Benedict puts his finger on the heart of the issue.
Universities, on a very narrow basis of methodological reason, close themselves off from the whole of reality that is open to the human mind. All of this was brilliantly set forth in John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio, a seminal document which, I would estimate, was read by less than one percent of graduates of Catholic colleges during their past four academic years.
Leading us all to “the truth is ultimately an act of love.” What is lacking in our universities is precisely this openness to all reality.
“Faith’s recognition of the essential unity of all knowledge provides a bulwark against the alienation and fragmentation which occur when the use of reason is detached from the pursuit of truth and virtue,”
Catholic institutions have a role to play but only if they are able to recognize what is at stake in their purpose for existing. Evidently, many have failed in this matter.
The Pope speaks of a “culture that is genuinely Catholic.” What is obvious today is that, with the decrees constantly coming from the government, the culture is becoming less and less open to any sort of Catholic presence except that which is confined to a narrow range of itself. It is consoling that the bishops seem to recognize what is at stake. It is, shall we say, “unsettling” that the universities largely do not. [But the US bishops seem to have taken a generally hand-off policy towards Catholic universities, as though they were somehow in awe of academe, or felt that it was not within their competence to ride herd on dissident Catholic institutions. In a country where everyone who is capable of speech screams 'freedom of expression' at every opportunity, the bishops have never really exercised their own freedom of expression to actively counteract the rampant expression of doctrinal and pragmatic heterodoxy that has been the hallmark of places like Notre Dame and Georgetown since Vatican II.]
In an official statement (May 15), the President of Georgetown has affirmed, even in cases like the current one, that the university does not approve of anything that is contrary to basic Catholic teachings. Kathleen Sebelius speaks because she recognizes the value of her role as a nominal Catholic in submitting the freedoms of the Constitution to the control of a “rights-state” that all too willingly defines for us what religion must mean if it is “allowed” to participate in public life. [???? I must go back and review what the Georgetown officials said, but it seems to me that the burden of their justificaiton was that she was only one of many commencement speakers at Georgetown this year, so why all the fuss. And what value is there in a Catholic 'submitting the freedoms of the Constitution to the control of a 'rights-state'" as Sebelius is only too willing to do? ]
We are perhaps seeing the end of the great American experiment of religious freedom by those who have little understanding or sympathy for it. Catholics, ironically, are seeing their freedoms restricted and ended by the aid of other Catholics, political and academic, who have denied, in practice, any real connection between reason and revelation.
This reminds me that I must translate ASAP the story about the surprising but most welcome decision by the European Court for Human Rights on May 15 upholding religious freedom by recognizing the right of a Catholic bishop in Spain not to rehire as a teacher in a Catholic a priest who had married and written a book opposing priestly celibacy before his contract expired. The Spanish government disputed the Church's action. The ECHR decision is analogous to the recent US Supreme Court decision that the government cannot tell religious institutions who they can hire or not.
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Friday, May 18, Sixth Week of Easter
ST. POPE JOHN I (Italy 470?-526, Pope (523-526) and Martyr
Very little is known about this Pope who was born near Siena. He was only an archdeacon when he was elected Pope
within seven days of his predecessor's death. At the time, Italy had been under the Visigoth king Theodoric the Great
for 30 years. He espoused Arianism, the heresy which denied the divinity of Christ, but tolerated the orthodox Christians.
He asked the new Pope to lead a Roman delegation to Constantinople to ask the Eastern Emperor Justin I, the first non-Arian
on the throne in 50 years, to recall his new decree punishing Arians for their heresy. John I received a tumultuous welcome
from the court and the people, and the patriarchs of the East came to pledge their loyalty to him. Justin I stood by his
anti-Arian decree, and John I returned to Italy. Because of the billiant reception he got in Constantinople, Theodoric had
him arrested when he landed in Ravenna and thrown into prison on charges he was part of a plot against him. The Pope quickly
died in prison of ill treatment and privation. His body was eentually taken to Rome and is buried in St. Peter's Basilica.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/051812.cfm
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
The Holy Father met with
- H.E. Bruno Joubert, Ambassador of France, who presented his credentials
- Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, and president of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI)
- Bishops of the United States (Region XIV and XV) on ad limina visit. Addresses in English.
And in the afternoon with
- Cardinal William Joseph Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
BLESSED JOHN PAUL II
would be 92 today
Küng declines to take part in Mannheim
celebration of Vatican II - says
its funeral must be observed instead
17 May 2012
Theologian Hans Küng has turned down an invitation to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council at the German Katholikentag at Mannheim May 18- held from tomorrow until Sunday.
The Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Germany's largest Catholic lay organisation which is organising the Congress and has more than 12 million members, invited Fr Küng and the former President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, to participate in their "Council Gala". But four days before the congress was due to begin, Fr Küng declined.
"I was honoured to receive the invitation but is one really in the mood to celebrate at a time when the Church is in such sore distress?" Fr Küng asked in his four-page reply. "In my opinion there is no reason for a festive Council Gala but rather for an honest service of penance or a funeral service," he said.
That Kueng uses the words 'funeral service' in a public statement about Vatican II - whether he used it deliberately, or it came out as a Freudian slip - seems to be one of the strongest signs so far of the literal dying away of the 'spirit of Vatican II' generation of heterodox Catholics of whom Kueng has become the universal icon! ('Spiritist' standard bearers who were in their 20s or 30s at the time of Vatican II are in their 70s and 80s now).
Many American Catholic commentators have written lately about this eventual disappearance of that dissident generation, and consequent weakening of the progressivist cause, but it hasn't been taken up by their counterparts in Europe, because the new organized dissident groups of priests in Austria, Germany and Ireland are proving to be the equally contentious, and perhaps even more militant, heirs of that generation.
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Today is the day that the administration's chief Obamacare enforcer Kathleen Sebelius, the seemingly Catholic-in-name-only (CINO) US Secretary of Health and Human Services, addresses Georgetown University graduates at their commencement exercises. Here is an interesting development... Both the following article and William Oddie's commentary which follows pose the very same obvious questions that have been bothering me about the inaction of the US bishops about CINO universities who continue to call themselves Catholic...
'Exorcist' author and other concerned alumni
organize to contest right of Georgetown U
to continue calling itself Catholic
Washington, D.C., May 18 – Academy Award winner William Peter Blatty, whose best-selling book and blockbuster film The Exorcist were situated at his alma mater, Georgetown University, announced today that he will lead alumni, students and other members of the new Father King Society to petition the Catholic Church for remedies up to and including the possible removal or suspension of top-ranked Georgetown’s right to call itself Catholic or Jesuit in its fundraising and representations to applicants.
The move comes on the heels of an unprecedented rebuke of Georgetown and its first lay president by His Eminence, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, over Georgetown’s invitation to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to be a diploma ceremony speaker today. Georgetown, however, has not backed down.
The editors of the Archdiocesan newspaper wrote in an editorial last Sunday regarding Georgetown: “When the vision guiding university choices does not clearly reflect the light of the Gospel and authentic Catholic teaching, there are, of course, disappointing results.”
The Father Kings Society’s Canon Law action, based on Georgetown’s failure for more than two decades to comply with the requirements of Ex corde Ecclesiae (ECE), the 1990 Apostolic Constitution for Catholic Universities, was already being planned before the Sebelius scandal.
“This is simply the last straw,” said Blatty. “The scandals that Georgetown has given to the faithful are too many to count, and too many to ignore any longer.”
On the Father King Society website [www.fatherkingsociety.org ] announcing the Canon Law action, Blatty writes: “Of course, what we truly seek is for Georgetown to have the vision and courage to be Catholic, but clearly the slow pastoral approach has not worked. …Georgetown is being dishonest. Together, we need to end that!”
Linking GU’s non-compliance with Church law to GU’s regular scandals, the website tracks the Archdiocesan editorial: “Twenty two years of GU scandals, since Ex corde Ecclesiae was promulgated, are not just proof of a failed Catholic identity, they are evidence and a direct result of Georgetown’s failure to comply with ECE.”
Blatty does not mince words about who is to blame for Georgetown’s slide:“Many believe that to make Georgetown truly Catholic is to turn back the clock hands and somehow limit its very nature as a university, as if the notion of ‘Catholic’ and ‘university’ are new to each other, or inherently at odds. On the contrary, to make Georgetown ‘Catholic’ is to move the clock forward; it is to make the University better than it now is! Of course, there are always those who are afraid of change — who lack vision. They may need to step aside.”
“John Paul II exhorted us all to preserve for the Church the highest places of culture — our universities. Generations of alumni have long been seduced to ‘go along’ by dinners, medals, and board seats. We have all been negligent for too long: the laity, the clergy, and the bishops as well.”
The Fr. King Society has enlisted the help of The Cardinal Newman Society, which for nearly two decades has been a leader in the movement to promote strong Catholic identity. The Cardinal Newman Society will provide expert advice, research assistance, and public relations support.
In 1991-1992, Georgetown was the stage for a similar Canon Law action based on Ex corde Ecclesiae. Then-Dean of Student Affairs Dr. John J. DeGioia, now GU’s first lay president, authorized funding and support for a pro-abortion student advocacy group. Cardinal James Hickey rebuked Georgetown but held that the matter needed resolution in Rome, and the petitioners appealed directly to John Paul II. Georgetown’s Jesuit president was called to Rome.
A few weeks later on a Friday afternoon, the support for the pro-abortion student group was reversed, and the Canon petition became moot. It was a success that reverberated as other universities announced defunding of similar clubs.
The new planned Canon Law action is larger in scale and potential consequences than the 1991-1992 petition. The United States Catholic Bishops are presently evaluating the implementation of Ex corde Ecclesiae two decades later, and on May 5th His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI urged American bishops expressly to implement the constitution in the United States.
NB: Father King is Thomas King (1929-2009), who was a professor of theology at Georgetown U. In 1999, The Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper, declared King "Georgetown's Man of the Century", noting that "no one has had a more significant presence on campus and effect on students than Father King." He wrote many books on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the controversial Jesuit archeologist-philosopher, but firmly stood for very orthodox positions.
Here we go again: another supposedly ‘Catholic’
US university honours a prominent anti-Catholic
But why are we all so surprised? And why are secularised institutions
still allowed by the Church to describe themselves as ‘Catholic’?
By William Oddie
Friday, 18 May 2012
I begin with an editorial, headlined “Disappointed but not surprised”, published in The Catholic Standard, the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington. This says most of what needs to be said, both about the invitation by Georgetown University (a supposedly Catholic institution) to the supposedly Catholic US Secretary for Health Kathleen Sebelius (who promotes abortion) to speak there, and also about Georgetown University itself:
Late last Friday, Georgetown University announced that US Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is the featured speaker for an awards ceremony at the University’s Public Policy Institute. This news is a disappointment but not a surprise.
As is well known, Secretary Sebelius is the architect of the “HHS mandate”, now federal law, which requires all employers – including religious institutions – to provide health insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilisation and contraceptives for its employees and redefines religious ministry to exclude Catholic social services, hospitals and universities if they serve or employ non-Catholics. Given her position, it is disappointing that she would be the person that Georgetown University would choose to honor.
Founded in 1789 by John Carroll, a Jesuit priest, Georgetown University has, historically speaking, religious roots. So, too, do Harvard, Princeton and Brown. Over time, though, as has happened with these Ivy League institutions, Georgetown has undergone a secularisation.
This, says the Standard, is “due in no small part to the fact that Many are quite clear that they reflect the values of the secular culture of our age. Thus the selection of Secretary Sebelius for special recognition, while disappointing, is not surprising”.
This seems both reasonable and realistic. It says, almost, well, Georgetown University used to be Catholic and now isn’t: what do you expect? So why are US Catholics making such a fuss about this invitation?
After all, to take an example for me closer at hand, Oxford used to be a Catholic university. Then it became an Anglican university (to receive a degree you had to accept the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion). Today it’s an entirely secular university (which makes it possible for Catholics to attend it once more), though it has a theology department, many senior teaching positions in which are reserved for Anglicans.
But the university operates in an entirely secular way: nobody asks whether those it honours support abortion or execrate religion: some do, some don’t. Catholic members of the University like me take this for granted: it would be nice if it were otherwise, but it’s not. So why don’t US Catholics similarly accept that Georgetown has just changed? It happens.
Well, there’s a very good answer to that question: it’s that in its own official description of itself, it still is a Catholic institution and hasn’t changed at all. Being Catholic, and Jesuit, is part of its sales pitch. So perhaps the Catholic Standard is wrong to be so fatalistic. Have a look at Georgetown’s website if you doubt me:
Established in 1789, Georgetown is the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university. Drawing upon this legacy, we provide students with a world-class learning experience focused on educating the whole person through exposure to different faiths, cultures and beliefs. With our Jesuit values and location in Washington, DC, Georgetown offers students a distinct opportunity to learn, experience and understand more about the world.
So what exactly are Jesuit values these days, we ask ourselves. What does Georgetown think they are? I ask not to invite the horse-laugh some of you are no doubt already emitting, but with the intention of posing a serious question.
Here’s another question: if Georgetown University really has “undergone a secularisation”, why is it still calling itself Catholic? More to the point, why is the Archdiocese of Washington allowing it to call itself Catholic?
Georgetown is presumably describing itself as Catholic in order to attract Catholics as students, and perhaps deceitfully to allay the anxieties of their parents. If so, its self-description is simply fraudulent. Is there no American equivalent of our Trade Descriptions Act? [But Georgetown is only one of many 'brand-name' CINO universities in the USA who have gone merrily thumbing their noses and flippantly baring their behinds at Catholic orthodoxy while the bishops do nothing. The public condemnation by more than 100 bishops - the US has more than 200 - of Notre Dame Unviversity when it invited openly pro-abortion President Barack Obama (someone I would call Christian-in-name-only, or even Christian-only-for-political expediency, since majority of Americans are still Christian) to be its commencement speaker in 2009 was unprecedented but alas, also a one-time hiccupt, it seems, because there is none of that now about Goergetown!]
The Archdiocese of Washington, according to the New York Times, released a strong letter of rebuke to Georgetown’s president on Tuesday afternoon, calling Ms Sebelius the architect of the birth control mandate — “the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history”. But if even the archdiocese’s own newspaper accepts that it is now a secular university, why bother? [They must at least 'bother', be it simply in a token manner, as the Archdiocesan 'rebuke' appears to be, or be even more derelict in their Catholic duty.]
The conflict, as the New York Times reminds us, is only the latest example of friction between Catholic universities and their local bishops, who, as it says “are charged with ensuring that the universities uphold Catholic doctrine and exhibit an explicitly Catholic identity”. [Friction? No! Friction is two surfaces rubbing against each other, but in this case, the rubbing against has been virtually one-sided. Catholic academe defies repeatedly, and the ocal Catholic hierarchy simply play the dumb monkey who sees and hears nothing!]
But is this now a realistic expectation? I ask this as a genuine question. From this side of the great pond, I just don’t know, and solicit the informed opinion of any American reader who may be reading. This isn’t a problem we have here.
Is this a fight that can still be won? The Cardinal Newman Society of Virginia, which seems to be a rather admirable outfit, is dedicated to waging precisely this particular culture war. The New York Times says it has “played an influential role as a whistle-blower, alerting bishops when they find a university stepping out of line” and informs us that “This spring, the group compiled a list of 12 Catholic universities with commencement speakers they found objectionable because of their support for abortion rights or gay rights.”
Its mission statement reads as follows:
Founded in 1993, the mission of The Cardinal Newman Society is to help renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education. The Society seeks to fulfill its mission by
- Assisting and supporting education that is faithful to the teaching and tradition of the Catholic Church;
- Producing and disseminating research and publications on developments and best practices in Catholic higher education;
- Advising students, alumni, trustees, campus officials, faculty and others engaged in renewing and strengthening the Catholic identity of Catholic colleges and universities and Church-affiliated ministries at non-Catholic colleges and universities; and
- Studying and promoting the work of our patron, John Henry Cardinal Newman, especially as it relates to Catholic higher education and the unity of faith and reason.
But can they possibly win? Have they, in fact, had any success in persuading the authorities of any officially Catholic university to “disinvite” a speaker with anti-Catholic beliefs it was intending to honour? Again, this is a real question: if they have been successful in this way, I’m at least partly wrong.
I am pessimistic about this. Not about the renewal of the Church herself: that is already happening. But in the case of universities like Georgetown, has not the whole process of secularisation gone too far? Should not effectively secularised institutions be declared non-Catholic by the Church herself? [Clearly, papal admonition, even by formal decree, does not work. All these CINO universities have been among the most ostentatious in their praise of John Paul II, both when he was alive and afterwards. Yet all they did with his 1999 Ex Code Ecclesiae was to toss it into the wastebasket as soon as they received it! I hope some canon lawyer - like Dr. Ed Peters - writes about the recourses possible that a local bishop can take to withdraw the 'Catholic' cachet from the CINOs. This is a competency of the local bishop, not the Vatican. ]
The dangers of the present situation are obvious. Every time a self-proclaimed Catholic university like Georgetown honours a Catholic apostate it promotes the notion that Catholics can believe what they like, for all the world as though they were Anglicans (there is or used to be an organisation for Anglican priests who don’t believe in the existence of God).
I end on an uncertain note. I have written this piece as much to gather information as to air my own anxieties. This is still, clearly, very much a live question in America. Why is that? Here, it was unhappily settled centuries ago. [But how many Catholic universities are there in the UK compared to those in the USA?]
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Pope Benedict concludes 6-month
course of meetings with US bishops
on their ad limina visit to Rome
May 18, 2012
Sorry for the washout quality of the pictures, which appear in tomorrow's OR, but the OR hasn't been doing anything to improve the quality of its published photos.
Pope Benedict XVI met with the final group of bishops from the United States coming to Rome on their ad limina visits, including bishops of the various Eastern Churches present in the United States, and then addressed all the bishops of Regions XIV and XV, most of whom he had met with in separate groups earlier.
Here is the full text of the the Holy Father's address:
Dear Brother Bishops,
I greet all of you with fraternal affection in the Lord. Our meeting today concludes the series of quinquennial visits of the Bishops of the United States of America ad limina Apostolorum.
As you know, over these past six months I have wished to reflect with you and your Brother Bishops on a number of pressing spiritual and cultural challenges facing the Church in your country as it takes up the task of the new evangelization.
I am particularly pleased that this, our final meeting, takes place in the presence of the Bishops of the various Eastern Churches present in the United States, since you and your faithful embody in a unique way the ethnic, cultural and spiritual richness of the American Catholic community, past and present.
Historically, the Church in America has struggled to recognize and incorporate this diversity, and has succeeded, not without difficulty, in forging a communion in Christ and in the apostolic faith which mirrors the catholicity which is an indefectible mark of the Church.
In this communion, which finds its source and model in the mystery of the Triune God (cf. Lumen Gentium, 4), unity and diversity are constantly reconciled and enhanced, as a sign and sacrament of the ultimate vocation and destiny of the entire human family.
Throughout our meetings, you and your Brother Bishops have spoken insistently of the importance of preserving, fostering and advancing this gift of Catholic unity as an essential condition for the fulfilment of the Church’s mission in your country.
In this concluding talk, I would like simply to touch on two specific points which have recurred in our discussions and which, with you, I consider crucial for the exercise of your ministry of guiding Christ’s flock forward amid the difficulties and opportunities of the present moment.
I would begin by praising your unremitting efforts, in the best traditions of the Church in America, to respond to the ongoing phenomenon of immigration in your country.
The Catholic community in the United States continues, with great generosity, to welcome waves of new immigrants, to provide them with pastoral care and charitable assistance, and to support ways of regularizing their situation, especially with regard to the unification of families.
A particular sign of this is the long-standing commitment of the American Bishops to immigration reform. This is clearly a difficult and complex issue from the civil and political, as well as the social and economic, but above all from the human point of view.
It is thus of profound concern to the Church, since it involves ensuring the just treatment and the defence of the human dignity of immigrants.
In our day too, the Church in America is called to embrace, incorporate and cultivate the rich patrimony of faith and culture present in America’s many immigrant groups, including not only those of your own rites, but also the swelling numbers of Hispanic, Asian and African Catholics.
The demanding pastoral task of fostering a communion of cultures within your local Churches must be considered of particular importance in the exercise of your ministry at the service of unity (cf. Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops, 63).
This diaconia of communion entails more than simply respecting linguistic diversity, promoting sound traditions, and providing much-needed social programs and services. It also calls for a commitment to ongoing preaching, catechesis and pastoral activity aimed at inspiring in all the faithful a deeper sense of their communion in the apostolic faith and their responsibility for the Church’s mission in the United States.
Nor can the significance of this challenge be underestimated: the immense promise and the vibrant energies of a new generation of Catholics are waiting to be tapped for the renewal of the Church’s life and the rebuilding of the fabric of American society.
This commitment to fostering Catholic unity is necessary not only for meeting the positive challenges of the new evangelization but also countering the forces of disgregation within the Church which increasingly represent a grave obstacle to her mission in the United States.
I appreciate the efforts being made to encourage the faithful, individually and in the variety of ecclesial associations, to move forward together, speaking with one voice in addressing the urgent problems of the present moment.
Here I would repeat the heartfelt plea that I made to America’s Catholics during my Pastoral Visit: “We can only move forward if we turn our gaze together to Christ” and thus embrace “that true spiritual renewal desired by the Council, a renewal which can only strengthen the Church in that holiness and unity indispensable for the effective proclamation of the Gospel in today’s world” (Homily in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, 19 April 2008).
In our conversations, many of you have spoken of your concern to build ever stronger relationships of friendship, cooperation and trust with your priests. At the present time, too, I urge you to remain particularly close to the men and women in your local Churches who are committed to following Christ ever more perfectly by generously embracing the evangelical counsels.
I wish to reaffirm my deep gratitude for the example of fidelity and self-sacrifice given by many consecrated women in your country, and to join them in praying that this moment of discernment will bear abundant spiritual fruit for the revitalization and strengthening of their communities in fidelity to Christ and the Church, as well as to their founding charisms.
The urgent need in our own time for credible and attractive witnesses to the redemptive and transformative power of the Gospel makes it essential to recapture a sense of the sublime dignity and beauty of the consecrated life, to pray for religious vocations and to promote them actively, while strengthening existing channels for communication and cooperation, especially through the work of the Vicar or Delegate for Religious in each Diocese.
Dear Brother Bishops, it is my hope that the Year of Faith which will open on 12 October this year, the fiftieth anniversary of the convening of the Second Vatican Council, will awaken a desire on the part of the entire Catholic community in America to reappropriate with joy and gratitude the priceless treasure of our faith.
With the progressive weakening of traditional Christian values, and the threat of a season in which our fidelity to the Gospel may cost us dearly, the truth of Christ needs not only to be understood, articulated and defended, but to be proposed joyfully and confidently as the key to authentic human fulfilment and to the welfare of society as a whole.
Now, at the conclusion of these meetings, I willingly join all of you in thanking Almighty God for the signs of new vitality and hope with which he has blessed the Church in the United States of America.
At the same time I ask him to confirm you and your Brother Bishops in your delicate mission of guiding the Catholic community in your country in the ways of unity, truth and charity as it faces the challenges of the future.
In the words of the ancient prayer, let us ask the Lord to direct our hearts and those of our people, that the flock may never fail in obedience to its shepherds, nor the shepherds in the care of the flock (cf. Sacramentarium Veronense, Missa de natale Episcoporum).
With great affection I commend you, and the clergy, religious and lay faithful entrusted to your pastoral care, to the loving intercession of Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States, and I cordially impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of joy and peace in the Lord.
*I like the Pope's phrase about 'credible and attractive witnesses' to the Gospel. Anyone engaged in 'evangelizing' others, in whatever way, can do so much more credibly if he can do it in a way that 'attracts' others, that draws them in up to the point of involveement in the message, that is positive and not reeking of sulphur and brimstone - in other words, the way Benedict XVI himself, John Paul II and all the saints have done...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/05/2012 19:20] |
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