BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier etnries today, 5/21/12.





Italian bishops denounce publication
of the Pope's confidential files as
a violation of the law and individual rights


VATICAN CITY, May 21 (Translated from AGI) - "It is an attempt to twist facts with the improper weapon of stolen information from the highest institutional levels, with international status".



Photos from the March sessions of the CEI Permanent Council. The new photos have not been posted on the CEI site yet.

This was the description given by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI) about the publication of a book containing documents leaked to journalist Giancarlo Nuzzi from the Vatican Secretariat of State.

[This was but one of several topics addressed by the cardinal in his speech Monday afternoon to open the spring meeting of the CEI's Permanent Council. These speeches, since the time when Cardinal Camillo Ruini led the CEI, have become like bi-annual state-of-the-Church-and-Italy statements by the Italian bishops.]

Bagnasco said: "New episodes of savage reporting have been manifested once more in the national system of communications media with bitter repercussions even outside the country".

"As if the country did not already have enough problems, we are getting new ones that are completely gratuitous," the cardinal said, adding he was taking the occasion to "make the firm reminder that journalistic ethics are not to be used only when one chooses to use it according to circumstances and self-interests, that it has rules, duties and precise limitations".

"It is not a journalistic obligation to violate the fundamental rights of an individual or the community - which includes the right to privacy for every person that is a fundamental element of civilization".

Expressing himself on behalf of the Italian bishops, he said, "It pains us very much that this desire to strike at the Church shows up too often, almost as if those who do so profit by it. And yet, these are criminal acts which cause distress to everyone and certainly do not bring glory nor honor to the protagonists, be they famous or not".



Let me take off from Cardinal Bagnasco's statements to vent myself about the much-hyped book exposing private files of the Pope illegally obtained by the Vatican's resident vipers and handed over to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi - who seems bent on establishing himself as a one-man Woodward-and-Bernstein super-mediahero who will bring down Benedict XVI as those Washington Post reporters did Richard Nixon in.

I have had little incentive to translate Italian media commentary on Nuzzi's criminal journalistic exploit because most of what I have read so far - including those from leading Italian Vaticanistas - seem to be finding fault with the Vatican for having denounced the book as a criminal act: But it is criminal in the unlawful and unauthorized thievery of confidential files by some traitors working in the Vatican Secretariat of State, and criminal in the knowing disclosure of such stolen information by Nuzzi and its exploitation for commercial purposes (to sell a book).

The media consensus seems to be - "Yeah, well, the Pope's private rights have been violated, but why go after the journalist instead of the persons who stole the information and passed it on? A journalist will publish any information he can get his hands on." Thus agreeing with Nuzzi's self-justification for publishing the book, and ignoring the fact that the Vatican clearly states crime was committed on both sides of that fence.

I find that attitude emblematic of the loss of scruples by most journalists - when violating the privacy of even someone as exalted as the Pope is shrugged off as a secondary concern because the overriding factor is that a journalist must publish any information he can get, even if this is obtained by criminal means.
It is, in effect, pandering in the worst way to public prurience, trading on the titillatory effect of the documents being 'secret', 'private', 'confidential' - as though by buying the book, the reader would suddenly discover sordid, scabrous tidbits about the Pope's private life.

From all accounts, there appears to be not one morsel of juicy gossip in the book, much less anything salacious or shameful, nor does it introduce any useful new knowledge by providing the concrete documents in support of essentially innocuous stories that have been reported in the media before!

The Italian commentators also cite Nuzzi's other sanctimonious but absolutely weightless justification for publishing these documents - that the traitors who gifted him with the purloined letters thought it was 'one way to break the purported culture of silence that has reigned in the Vatican for centuries'.

And how have they done that with the collection of stolen documents they have released?

For instance, notes made by Mons. Dominique Mamberti of dinner talk between the Pope and the President of Italy, who did not gossip about Berlusconi's escapades, say, but discussed substantive problems like proposed Italian legislation that would attenuate the rights of traditional married couples and their families.

Or even Mons. Vigano's letters, which were the first fetid outflow from the Vatileaks sewer, and perhaps the most 'revealing' of the pilfered documents in terms of allegations of wrongdoing within the Vatican. The letters, despite their obvious vengeful ire against Cardinal Bertone, did not so much damage Bertone (already quite shopworn because of his questionable attempts to consolidate power at the Vatican in his hands, but he has been an open book all along), much less the Pope, who did order an investigation of Vigano's scurrilous shotgun accusations again all his perceived enemies at the Vatican (which turned out to be mostly baseless). It is Vigano most of all who comes out in the most unflattering light - and by his own pen!

If they really wanted to break what they call Vatican omerta (the criminal secrecy at all costs demanded by the Mafia of its members), let them dig out any documents, if they exist, that will show how the powers-that-be at the Secretariat of State managed to silence accusations against Marcial Maciel for decades and kept him afloat and upright as a 'pillar' of the Church!

And just as objectionable as the general shrugging-off by Italian journalists of the criminal acts committed and the outrage of treating the Pope as if he has no private personal rights at all, is the general but truly mindless conclusion that this book is another black mark against the Church and the Pope which is bound to further erode the trust of the faithful.

Why? How? Political infighting and petty skulduggery at the Vatican or in lesser hierarchies in the Church are nothing new to the faithful since the early centuries of Christianity. The same situation was present in the Wojtyla Pontificate as in the far-less-reported Pontificates before him. It's just that no one seems to have given these absolutely not abnormal situations as much publicity as the media are making of it in Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

I must add one other conclusion drawn by the Italian commentators - that the treason is the work of persons whose loyalty is to the 'old guard' at the Secretariat of State and who are bitter that Benedict XVI appointed a 'non-diplomat' like Bertone to this present position. If we are to believe them, then consider even more the irony of the Pope's words earlier today in calling the cardinals "friends among whom he feels at home" and what would be, in effect, the hypocrisy of Cardinal Sodano's opening tribute to him.

No one is saying Sodano is personally behind Vatileaks, but that people loyal to him are, and that other leaders of the 'old guard', of which he is considered head centurion, were among those who wrote the Pope furiously in support of Mons. Vigano (like Cardinal Re and the shadowy but seemingly ubiquitous retired Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan). If this is so, then has Sodano tried to stop his over-zealous loyalists in any way, one might ask?

I might point out that - knock on wood! - Nuzzi's book has been out a few days now, and surely, many in the Italian media received it weeks before as review copies, yet I have yet to see any headline trumpeting some major scandal, or even any genuinely 'juicy morsel' disclosed by the book. I hope it is as big of a dud in its sales as the over-hyped Facebook IPO!

I've relented, and translated a blog entry by Andrea Tornielli on the Nuzzi book. (BTW, why has the Vatican not sought a temporary injunction to prevent its distribution until a criminal case can be established - or not????) And I've chosen it because, first, it describes specific contents in the book (to which the most likely reaciton is 'Ho-hum!'); and next, it illustrates some of my earlier reservations about the tenor of commentary in the Italian media, even by someone like Tornielli, whose judgments and opinions I have generally found congenial. But this time, I find even the premise of his title almost outrageous!

The Vatican's irritation
over Vatileaks and Nuzzi's book
Translated from

May 20, 2012

Dear friends, I have just finished reading the book by Gianluigi Nuzzi that contains all the Vatileaks - letters and documents coming from someone (or more than one) from the Vatican who turned them over to the journalist.

As you know, on Monday, the Holy See reacted with extreme severity, defining the entire operation as 'a criminal act' and that "it will take the necessary measures" including a request for international collaboration [namely, Italy's - since the documents taken unlawfully from Vatican files were given to an Italian citizen who published them in Italy].

The great irritation at the Vatican is evident and even understandable ['Irritation' is hardly the word to use in this case: the outrage and the criminal acts are not just like an attack of prickly heat; they are heat-seeking missiles hoping to be destructive!] to see notes, memoranda and letters disclosed in public barely a few months, in some cases, a few weeks after they were written.

I do not know what legal bases there may be to take recourse against the book's publication, but it is obvious to me tat the Holy See has a serious problem of internal security, and that the 'criminal act' was committed by someone (or some people) who work in the Apostolic Palace [which houses the papal apartment, the various papal reception halls and offices, and the Secretariat of State] and have access to the archives - being able to intercept documents coming from the Pope's desk, from his secretary and from the Secretary of State.

Committed by someone who is apparently following a precise plan whose contours are still unclear. But the problem seems to be worsening, and it is about these moles in the Vatican.

[Fine! The Vatican has terrible if not inexistent security measures for safeguarding its confidential files. That does not make the pilfering of these documents any less criminal. Nor does it make the apparently continuing laxity of Vatican security in this respect criminal in a literal sense, though it is figuratively, and abjectly so!... I'm sorry but I find it outrageous that even someone like Tornielli makes the this security problem the paramount concern, without even touching on the violation of the Pope's personal right to privacy and to privileged communication "as an individual, as the Supreme Head of the Church, and as sovereign of Vatican City State", in the words of the Vatican statement.

I have now found the provision in the Italian Constitution which is applicable, in its listing of fundamental personal rights: "Art. 15 - The freedom and the secrecy of correspondence and any other form of communications are inviolable". It's like the postman or your neighbor opening your mail - that action is criminal in any civilized country. Why should stealing the Pope's private files be any less criminal, considering he is also a Head of State? So I do not understand why the Italian journalists commenting on the matter can simply shrug it off!]]

As far as I can see, the internal investigation to discover the responsible parties (leakers) is still scrabbling around in the dark.
The three aged cardinals in charge of the investigation (Herranz, Tomko and De Giorgi) have received the report of the inquiries made by the Vatican Gendarmerie, but it seems that they contain no precise elements attributable to anyone in particular, despite the fact that persons who could have access to the confidential files in question are certainly not too many. [That was always a basic assumption made by interested 'onlookers' like me; and common sense might say that surely, there cannot be more than, say, 20 people concerned, at most - counting the top 3 officials at State, their respective number 2 men and their secretaries, and the actual archivists. How hard could it be to determine the leak by process of elimination? It becomes hard - and virtually impossible - if it turns out that instead of only 20 people, virtually the whole Secretariat is authorized because every department head, and his #2 man, and his secretary, is given confidential access. In which case the boat is certainly bound to leak from all sides... And it's irrelevant for Tornielli to refer to the investigating cardinals as 'aged' - no one has accused them of being less than sharp at their age, much less senile, and they are all younger than the Pope, whose faculties have not been questioned.]

From this angle, the appointment of the investigating committee, which began work on April 25, as well as the Vatican statement on Monday, would seem to be deterrent measures to avoid that further leaks should occur. But four months since the first leaked documents were published, no one seems to have learned anything!

[What seems to be the problem then? The only explanation I can imagine - assuming that everyone concerned in the investigation is diligently doing what he is supposed to do - is that virtually everyone was enabled access to the Secretariat's confidential files, so how do you smoke the culprits out when the universe of possibilities is in the hundreds and not 20 or less?]

One must not fail to point out, too, that the harsh Vatican statement was virtually an involuntary gift to Nuzzi [ie, it helps raise interest in the book and therefore its sales]. Obviously, this was not the intention at all, but rather to send a precise signal.

As for the book itself, it certainly has some documentary interest because of the letters - already partly disclosed last January-February in Nuzzi's TV program and in the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano.

They serve to confirm the general context of reports that even without having seen those documents, in some cases, even I, in my little way and from fragments gleaned here and there, was able to report.

Take the private meal of the Pope with President Napolitano on January 19, 2009. I reported about that lunch (not dinner as reported) in Il Giornale four days after it took place. [What the book publishes are notes prepared by Mons. Dominique Mamberti, Deputy Secretary for Relations with States, of the talking points for the discussion. So, big deal already!]

Also interesting was a note on the episode of a car with a Vatican license plate which on the evening of December 10, 2009, was riddled by bullets while its passengers were having dinner in a Roman restaurant. This, too, confirmed a reconstruction of that event provided in Il Giornale a few weeks after it happened. I wrote about it in connection with the Christmas Eve episode in St. Peter's Basilica when a mentally troubled young woman lunged at the Pope.

Same thing with the paragraphs dedicated to the Williamson case and the lifting of the excommunication from the four Lefebvrian bishops. Nuzzi recycles the substance of the meeting held at the Secretariat of State that we [Tornielli and co-author Paolo Rodari] made public in the book Attacco a Ratzinger published in August 2010.

Same thing with the reconstruction of Cardinal Bertone's attempt to gain control of the Toniolo Institute (which manages the Sacro Cuore University and its affiliates like the Gemelli Hospital) by naming his own man, Giovanni Maria Flick, in place of Cardinal Tettamanzi as chairrman of the board= [and how the Pope overruled Bertone after Tettamanzi came to see the Pope privately. After all, and Bertone should have known this, the incoming Archbishop of Milan would take over as soon as Tettamanzi retired.].

Same thing with the internal debates generated in the Apostolic Palace by Bertone's plan to acquire the financially-troubled San Raffaele health-and-education empire with IOR funds [also vetoed by the Pope].

New details are provided only in the Boffo case, by disclosing Boffo's letters to Mons, Gaenswein; as well as previously unpublished communications regarding the appointment of Cardinal Angelo Scola to be Archbishop of Milan.

In subsequent posts, I will write about some other documents that serve to illustrate internal dynamics within the Apostolic Palace.

But I disagree on one point that Nuzzi writes in his Introduction and which some authoritative book reviewers agreed with. And that is when they say that it is immaterial to ask who could have lifted so many and so varied an assortment of documents, but that one must concentrate on what the documents contain. Which, as I said above, simply contribute to contribute more details to episodes that had already been reported in the media.

But I think that to ask questions about what happened and what possible disputes are going on in the Vatican, about who carried out such a massive and unprecedented document leak and why, are just as important as simply examining the documents to decipher the dynamic of relationships in the Apostolic Palace. [More important, I would say, since, in effect, what do the documents show but the normal differences of opinion and yes, even factional wrangling, that happens in any major executive office?]

And Nuzzi will excuse me if I find his explanation hard to believe that the source(s) he codenames 'Maria' who fenced all the stolen documents to him did so only because he/they want 'transparency' at the Vatican. [Especially since they've only made 'transparent' what was already known - it's like switching on floodlights in an already quite visible show window. It makes us perhaps notice dust and cobwebs we might not otherwise have seen, but little else that is informative or useful... Also, Tornielli leaves out Nuzzi's other attribution to his source/sources - that they wanted to do this "for the good of the Church and the Holy Father". My eye! Gee, guys, if that's the best sales pitch you can make, don't try selling the Sant'Angelo bridge to anyone, OK?]


Too bad we don't have a 'shuddering' emotikon, but if the following is supposed to be a 'rolling my eyes' emotikon, it will do for now:


Info gleaned first-hand from
e-book preview of Nuzzi's work

P.S. I've just had a chance to read through the Table of Contents and the first few pages of Nuzzi's book which is previewed as an e-book on some Italian site, and I'm still having the creepy-crawlies, not because of anything disconcerting I could discern against the Pope - Nuzzi has repeated in recent interviews that he absolutely respects the Pope, etc - but for the general style and tone of the writing.

To give you an idea, let me quote what's in big bold letters on the back part of the book's dust cover:

---

"My courage is to make known the most troubling events in the life of the Church, make public certain secrets, small and big stories, that have not gone beyond the Bronze Door. Only this way can I feel free, liberated from the unbearable complicity of someone who, while knowing things, must keep silent" - Statement to the author by 'Maria', codename for the principal, anonymous and secret source within the Vatican who furnished the hundreds of documents on which this book is based.

---

That patently phony tone, deliberately melodramatic in the most smarmy way, is what characterizes Nuzzi's writing. None of the journalists who have written about the book so far could say so, obviously, out of professional fraternity or whatever. But I ought to have been forewarned by the interview he gave to Stanze Vaticane in which he spoke about living in fear for a year because he and only he had the secrets of the Pope, all found in a USB drive which he wore on a chain around his neck! More melodramatic you cannot get!

He starts his narration with a creepily faux-cinematic account of how one day, 'Maria' carefully trailed a car with the Pope in it, as it drove from the Vatican - to end up in a convent of the Schoenstatt sisters, where the Pope was welcomed by - guess who - Birgit Wansing, once his faithful secretary (a 'typing/transcribing' secretary as opposed to the 'administrative' secretary that GG is), to whom he supposedly went to unburden himself of some of the troubles he had to deal with. [First of all, I was not aware Wansing has resigned or retired. Has she? I had the impression she is still at the papal apartments every day transcribing the Pope's tiny handwriting. Since he sees her everyday, why does he have to be driven to her convent to seek her out?]

But then Nuzzi only uses the device as an artificial setting for 'Maria' to make his final decision on whether to consign the documents he has been diligently collecting and copying since, he claims, the day of John Paul II's funeral! [Why ever did he choose to start then? And why is it that all the documents he released apparently only have to do with Benedict XVI's Pontificate and with fairly recent events at that?]

'Maria' reportedly spent his nights poring over every document he obtained during he day, and as he did, all he came up with were more questions to which he could find no answers! (Naturally, we have to assume that Nuzzi has dressed up his story to keep even people in the Vatican guessing who 'Maria' is.) Then, 'Maria' supposedly reached a point when, troubled by all these questions, he found others who thought like him and "thus was born a group of persons with diverse functions and roles in various organisms of the Holy See who were united in their decision to 'document' [ie., steal documents], try to understand and confront these questions, particularly careful to set aside unpublished stories, critiques and reports of Church business in every corner of the world".

My, my! If that was the case, then the mountain has given birth to a pipsqueak of a mouse, as a look at Nuzzi's Table of Contents would show, and which we can well judge by the 'blah' nature of much of these documents which reveal nothing new. In this light, one cannot believe the melodrama of 'Maria' poring over his pilfered documents every night or having had any organizing principle at all in the documents he chose.

The sketchy outlines ndicated by Nuzzi's detailed Table of Contents suggest that most of the pilfered documents appear to be fragmentary, often insignificant parts of greater themes or subjects. The apparent randomness of the available documents dictates the randomness of his chapter topics, and one gets the impression that Nuzzi is unable to develop any of his major 'themes' integrally or organically by relying simply on the documents he obtained.

I think I may have to translate this opening chapter (it's not very long), since it's the best way to illustrate the hugely undeserved hype on the book. Let me just add that shortly after the paragraph I quoted, Nuzzi devotes a long paragraph to praising Benedict XVI for his many virtues, BUT... for all that, he has had to make compromises, Nuzzi claims.

If we go by Nuzzi's table of contents (which lists the subjects he treats in each chapter), there is hardly any topic mentioned in which the Pope has had to make any significant 'compromise' if at all.

Nuzzi tackles the following subjects:
1) the Dino Boffo case,

2) the Vigano case,

3) the Vatican's various ways of generating funds for the Pope's charities [apparently this is the chapter where he touches on the Pope's 'bank account" in something called "Millions for the Pope's foundation" (the Pope's own millions, of course, from his royalties);

4) Vatican 'interference' in Italian affairs - but the four episodes he lists are more like the Italians advising on Vatican affairs: the former Economics Minister briefing Bertone on how to handle the government's attack on tax exemptions for the Church; Berlusconi's Ruby dossier forwarded to the Pope]; the Pope's dinner [Tornielli says it was lunch] with President Napolitano; and advice by former Berlusconi cabinet undersecretary Gianni Letta on security and the Popemobile. (How does all that constitute 'Holy interference in Italy", as the chaptger is titled?);

5) Vatican secret agents operating in Italy: Of the six episodes listed - none of them remotely interesting - only one appears to involve the Pope, namely suggestions made to him about how to deal with the Orlandi case;

6) 'Cardinal Bertone and his ambition for power';

7) Benedict XVI's relations with C&L, the Lefebvrians and the Legionaries [??? As in "The Legionaries' secret relations with Benedict XVI" - if there was anything there, you can bet it would have been the banner headline everywhere on Day 1, but this sub-topic is preceded by something entitled "The known but hushed-up secrets of Maciel", that takes up three pages; again, if there were anything new in that, it would have blared out from the headlines already), and Angela Merkel;

8) a chapter entitled 'Checkmate Benedict XVI' whose sense does not seem to jive with the four sub-topics listed - "The wealth of the Christian West to Christianize the East"; "If Italy risks going into default, Ratzinger will intervene"; "China has declared war on the Church"; and "Japan: Violence and corruption come from the West"; and

9) a smorgasbord of topics from the Basque terrorists to abortions and gay marriage to an ayatollah who wants to meet the Pope.

These are the documents that kept Nuzzi's sources sleepless with their conscience??? The Church is in danger of utter collapse and chaos because Benedict XVI cannot resolve any of the above????

"The very future of the world depends on what takes place at the Pope's desk" or something similar is one of the self-hypes Nuzzi writes. Obama would levitate and feel himself ascending to heaven if he had a comparably thin list of problems! For crying out loud! Gimme a break! Are you out of your collective mind?

From what I have seen, the book is a grand scam, and it's too bad no one in Italy appears ready to say the emperor is stark awful naked! I hope those conned into buying it will realize they have bought something as worthless as fool's gold.

The very subtitle of the book - "The secret letters of Benedict XVI" - is deliberately misleading. The letters are addressed to him, they are not his letters as the title suggest! Nor are they 'secret' at all in the other misleading sense of the word as the title suggests - the appropriate sense of the Italian word 'segrete' (plural of 'segreta', a feminine noun) in this case is 'private' or 'confidential', i.e., not meant for public consumption as such, despite any noble intentions that Nuzzi and his traitor-sources profess. Violation of privacy let alone betrayal, is never noble. Especially in this case when much of what is contained in the letters was already reported in the regular course of Vatican reporting!

And no, there's no mention of God or Christ or pedophilia, at least, not in the Table of Contents. From the hype, one would have expected a letter from the Archbishop of Munich in 2010 telling the Holy Father, "Holiness, don't worry. We've taken care of the Hullerman problem", or something that would have been the 'smoking gun' that AP and the New York Times have desperately been seeking in vain. Yet no one can come up with any plausible fiction on that front - because there is nothing to discover!

Italy's leading newspaper cashed in on the pre-release hype with a special issue on May 19 of its Friday weekly supplement SETTE with major excerpts from the book. It perpetrates the misleading title "The secret letters of Benedict XVI".

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/05/2012 14:06]

Tuesday, May 22, Seventh Week of Easter

ST. RITA DA CASCIA (Italy, 1391-1457), Mother, Widow, Augustinian nun, Mystic
Born near Perugia, Margherita Lotti always wanted to be a nun, but at 12, her family married her off to a powerful local politician who turned out to be abusive. She bore him twin sons. After 18 years of marriage, her husband was murdered. Not long after, both sons died of natural causes, and at age 36, after several attempts, she was finally accepted at the Augustinian convent in Cascia, where she would remain until she died. She lived a life of penance and prayer and was particularly devoted to the Passion of Christ. In 1451, she received a stigma on the forehead resembling those made by the crown of thorns, a wound that bled and caused her pain for the rest of her life. Because of her reputation, many came to seek her spiritual counsel. She spent the last four years of her life bedridden - it is said, sustained only the Eucharist. One day, she asked a cousin to bring her a rose from her old home. Though it was wintertime, the cousin found a single rose blooming. This became a symbol for the belief in Rita's grace to obtain the impossible. With St. Jude Thaddeus, she is considered the saint of impossible and desperate causes. After her death, many miracles were attributed to her, and her body remained incorruptible. She was beatified in 1606 but was not canonized till 1900. Her remains are venerated in the Basilica of Santa Rita in Cascia.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/052212.cfm


No events announced for the Holy Father today.

A news conference was held at the Vatican to present the program for the VII World Encounter of Families
to take place in Milan from May 29-June on the theme "The Family: Work and Celebration.

Jointly presiding were Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family,
Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, and Prof. Pierpaolo Donati, Professor of Family Sociology
at the University of Bologna who presented the book "Famiglia risorsa della societa" (ed. Il Mulino, 2012).


Pope's remarks to cardinals
after yesterday's luncheon


The Vatican released the transcript of the Holy Father's brief remarks at the luncheon he offered yesterday for cardinals resident or present in Rome, and it turns out that the OR account (translated and posted yesterday on the preceding page) carried everything he said, but did not present it as an integral whole. or the record, here it is:

---

Eminence,
Dear brothers,

At this time, my words can only be words of thanks. First of all, thanks to the Lord for the many years that he has conceded to me - years with so many days of joy, splendid times, but also dark nights. But looking back, one understands that even the nights were necessary and good, and a reason for gratitude.

Today the term ecclesia militans ('Church militant') is somewhat out of style, but in fact, we can understand increasingly that it is true, that it carries the truth.

We see how evil seeks to dominate the world, and that it is necessary to enter into battle against evil. We see how evil does its work in so many ways, viciously, through various forms of violence, but also masquerading behind good and proper things while destroying the moral foundations of society.

St. Augustine has said that all history is a battle between two loves: love of oneself to the point of spurning God; and love of God to the point of giving oneself in martyrdom.

We are in this battle, and in this, it is very important to have friends. As far as I am concerned, I am surrounded by friends from the College of Cardinals. They are my friends, and I feel at home, I feel secure in the company of great friends who are with me, and all together, we are with the Lord.

Thank you for this friendship. Thank you, Eminence {Cardinal Sodano], for everything you have done for this occasion and for everything that you have always done. Thanks to all of you for your communion with me in joy and in sorrow.

Let us go forward. The Lord has said, "Take courage, I have triumphed over the world". We are on the Lord's team, therefore on the winning team.

Thanks to you all. May God bless you all. And now, let us drink a toast...

---

CDF publishes Church criteria for judging apparitions
and other purported supernatural phenomena
1978 document was previously in Latin only
and restricted to bishops and theologians
by Andrés Beltramo Alvarez
TAdapted and translated from the Italian service of

May 22, 2012

VATICAN CITY - Visions, revelations, divine messages. the history of the church is full of mystical events. Since the Marian apparitions in Lourdes and Fatima - earthly manifestations of the Virgin Mary that have been recognized as authentic by the Church - bishops and theologians around the world have had to confront various supposedly supernatural phenomena.

The question is always the same: How do you determine which ones are authentic? The Vatican has had guidelines known to bishops and interested theologians since 1978 in a document prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the time under Cardinal Franjo Seper, on orders of Paul VI in 1974 and published in 1968.

The document, eNtitled "Norms on the way to proceed in discerning presumed apparitions and revelations", had only been available in Latin and was never posted on the Vatican website, until yesterday when the CDF posted an official Italian translation on its improved more pro-active site.

The CDF said that in the next few days, translations in the official Vatican languages will be posted, so that the guidelines may be available to anyone who is interested. The Vatican publishing house LEV has already printed the norms in the various languages. The guidelines will also be published in L'Osservatore Romano.

It is a step-by-step guide for local bishops on what to do in the face of a possible apparition. Contrary to the popular impression, it is always the local bishop who is dutybound to personally investigate the presumed supernatural phenomenon, not the Vatican. The Holy See itself does not have its own specialized experts or scientific investigators but it is able to call them in when needed.

Nonetheless, the Vatican receives a number of dossiers every year on presumed revelations or apparitions. These are based on reports from local bishops, to whom their faithful report a variety of purported supernatural phenomena.

In the Internet age, news of purported visions spreads rapidly among the faithful, and travel opportunities allow spontaneous 'pilgrimages' by those who want to check out things for themselves. This has become a challenge for Church authorities.

Benedict XVI shares the concern of local bishops. In his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, he acknowledged the need to "help the faithful to discern the Word of God properly in private revelations [the Church term for divine messages received by individuals, such as in Lourdes and Fatima], whose function is not to complete the definitive revelation by Christ, but to help the faithful live it more fully during a specific historical time".

To determine the credibility of an extraordinary phenomenon, the norms offer positive and negative criteria, with the principal purpose of defending the faith of the people and avoid the proliferation of claims that either deny the teachings of the Church or even directly oppose them.

Rigorous investigation of the claims made is indispensable to guarantee moral certainty about the manifestation. Establishing the psychic equilibrium of the presumed seer is a necessary condition, along with the person's honesty, rectitude of living. sincerity, obedience to Church authorities, and the ability to return to a normal life of faith. The investigating authority - the local bishop, in the first place - must also rule out episodes of psychosis or mass hysteria.

Conversions (spiritual transformations reported by some pilgrims during a visit to a presumed apparition site) in themselves do not suffice to prove there has been a supernatural divine manifestation, even if "abundant and constant spiritual fruits" attributed to a site and its object of devotion, deserve to be considered.

Moreover, the message that the seers claim to have received must correspond to doctrine, without errors. Likewise, suspicion would be raised by an evident greed for material things by the seer, or by immoral acts committed by the subject of investigation and his/her followers during a purported phenomenon or connected to it.

Every bishop must be vigilant and keep informed in order to be able to react promptly to correct or prevent any abuses in the liturgy or worship, to condemn doctrinal errors, and to avoid the risk of false mysticism.

But once he decides positively and with certainty that the reported phenomenon is indeed a divine event taking place on earth, the bishop has the faculty to allow public devotions related to it.

The decision to publish the norms and make them known to the general public was taken independent of any specific cases, and the directives apply equally to all cases of presumed apparitions.

Nonetheless, it is significant that it comes at a time when an international commission appointed by Pope Benedict in 2010 has been investigating the presumed Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, a small village in Bosnia.

The place has attracted tens of thousands of pilgrims every rear, and has given rise to two opposing camps - those who believe fervently in the apparitions, and those who dismiss them as a hoax.

The two local bishops who have investigated the phenomenon over the years, using the norms now published for the first time, have both concluded that the phenomenon is not authentic.

Samuel Gregg adds his voice to American commentators tolling the death knell for 'liberal Catholicism' (which encompasses everything a simple by-the-book Catholic like me cannot stand). But I'd go slow on booking the funeral service. Dying gasps can sometimes be adrenaline-driven so that the departing warrior is able to make a last spurt, or even get a second wind! God forbid...

Liberal Catholicism:
Requiescat in pace
by Samuel Gregg

May 22, 2012

With the dust settling on the uproar which followed the Vatican’s April intervention into the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), it’s possible to put this and other emerging trends into a longer-term perspective.

The blustering reaction of the LCWR and supporters such as the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof (whose grasp of rudimentary Catholic teaching is, well, rudimentary) confirms what’s been apparent for some time: that it’s almost “game-over” for self-identified liberal or dissenting Catholics.

The demographic evidence for impending extinction is striking. The average age of members of female religious orders that are moving “beyond Jesus” into an alternative spiritual universe is over 70. [It's 74 - I had to check it out twice when I first saw that stat!]

This contrasts with those orders who joyfully embrace Catholic faith in all its fullness. They’re positively flourishing. Similarly, it’s very hard to find dissenters among seminarians – also growing in numbers – and priests below 50.

The dissenters’ replication challenge, however, goes beyond the clergy. It also affects laypeople. Many self-described liberal Catholics have either raised their children to think and act more-or-less like liberal Protestants (another fast-disappearing species), or they’ve decided their children should be “free to make up their own minds” about religious matters.

Of course, the latter position isn’t as neutral as it sounds. As the philosopher J. Budziszewski writes, “Declining to teach [the faith] is itself a way of teaching.” Among other things, he adds, it tells children that what their parents think about God is unimportant, and that reflecting adequately about God requires no theological or philosophical formation. Hence, no one should be surprised that many who grow up in such families end up knowing or caring little about Catholicism.

A second symptom of liberal Catholicism’s internal crisis is the increasingly strange character of the positions advocated by prominent dissenters. You see this in their frantic efforts to absolutize subjects that are mostly prudential (such as economic policy) for Catholics, while clumsily attempting to relativize those truly non-negotiable matters.

Hence they end up hurling anathemas at Congressman Paul Ryan while simultaneously supporting entities such as “Catholics for Sebelius.”

But perhaps the biggest factor driving dissenting Catholicism’s perceptible crack-up is its embrace of an error excoriated by Blessed John Henry Newman in his 1879 biglietto speech. Describing it as the “great apostasia,” Newman defined “the spirit of liberalism in religion” in the following terms:

---

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another. . . . [it holds that] Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.

---

Needless to say, you won’t find such notions contained in any document promulgated at Vatican II. But close inspection soon indicates they lurk just beneath the surface of many dissenters’ writings.

Whether it’s biblical exegesis, moral theology, or ecclesiology, their doubts about Catholicism’s truth-claims are manifest. Revelation and reason are out. Skepticism and feelings are in.

Unfortunately for dissenters, embracing “liberalism in religion” has rendered them largely impotent when it comes to doing what dissenting Catholics invariably claim to value – engaging modernity. For given their palpable unease with Catholicism’s unique truth-claims (which, by definition, can’t be whatever you want them to be), many dissenters are reduced to affirming various social and political causes as “anonymously Christian” developments.

So what are some likely results of dissenting Catholicism’s accelerating meltdown?

One is that Catholics in the West will increasingly fall into one of two categories. They will either be (1) quite orthodox on matters of faith and morals and trying, despite sin, to live the Church’s teaching; or (2) more-or-less totally detached from the Church, living lives indistinguishable from secularists. Slowly but surely, the mushy-middle is emptying out.

'This book'
Introduction to 'SUA SANTITA'
Translated from the book
by Gianluigi Nuzzi


The secret visit

Benedict XVI leaves the Apostolic Palace in a car with dark windows and devoid of any signs [what was the automobile plate - Italian or Vatican?], without an escort and without informing his internal security service.

These were the first days of January 2012, an afternoon different from others. The Pope was not aware of it but he was being followed. Along the route from Piazza San Pietro to Via Aurelia, not far from the Villa Doria Pamphilia, a man who works in the Vatican and is one of the most important collaborators to important cardinals, does not take his eye off the car.

[Now, exactly what kind of work would someone have who would be "one of the most trusted collaborators to 'important cardinals', when in the Roman Curia, there is only one cardinal per dicastery, even in the Secretariat of State. Or is 'Maria' such a superman that he is rotated to collaborate with the most important cardinals in their respective dicasteries?]

Both men, though quite different in their roles, character and culture, are facing decisions which could mark the future of the Church.

[Yeah? What were the crucial decisions Benedict XVI had to make int hose days that he had not already made? In January 2012, his trip to Mexico and Cuba was announced on New Year's Day; on the Feast of the Epiphany, he announced his third consistory to create 22 new cardinals; a few days later, he named a new Nuncio to Ireland, then he celebrated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. And then, KA-BOOM! on the very evening he celebrates Vespers at St. Paul's basilica, Nuzzi discloses the Vigano letters on his TV program followed by their publication in Il Fatto Quotidiano the next day, and the Vatileaks sewer works are under way! Nuzzi had just disrupted matters at the Vatican the same way that three years ago, at the same time, the Williamson case had disrupted the week of Christian unity. ]

Joseph Ratzinger is saddened by the ruptures which are taking place within the Roman Curia, the community of cardinals who have emerged more lacerated with each consistory. [What does he mean, 'more lacerated'? It is not that anyone can point, or has pointed, to the lack of qualifications of those who have been named by Benedict to be cardinals! The quibbling is that there are 'too many' Italians, 'too many' Curial members, 'too few' from the Third World - as though choosing cardinals were simply a pro-rata exercise with no other considerations in mind].

He is aware that to open any discussion, though it be merely hypothetical, his fragile alliance with the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, would be a point of no return, {Big deal! If it was really necessary and inescapable, he would do it!]

Our man however is afflicted by having to make a decision that will have a more immediate impact. He must decide whether to carry out to the end - or not - the mission of truth that he chose to begin with the death of Karol Wojtyla, heeding the teaching of his successor, Benedict XVI, that in a world where lies are powerful. truth pays with suffering.

[Excuse me, did he know at the time Papa Wojtyla died that Joseph Ratzinger would be the next Pope? And was that the reason he decided to start his espionage - because Joseph Ratzinger would be the next Pope? ]

In short, he would allow everyone to know the truth about the 'sacri palazzi' so that the merchants could be chased out of the temple.

His decision, whatever it would be, would forever change his life. This man had a firm purpose at heart and had been prepared for some time to accept every consequence. Even that of being found out, thus prejudicing his own future.

By instinct, he had followed the Pope's rare departure from the Vatican. [What did this man do? Spend his free time lying in wait within sight of the exit door that Benedict XVI uses to leave the Apostolic Palace by car? Because unless less he did that, how could he have been there for this 'excursion' that the Pope had not even informed his own security about it? If that is at all possible!]

It was not so much to find out his destination but in order to share, ideally, and even at a distance, a secret moment with the leader of the universal Church. And then decide. [EEEEWWWW!]

The black car entered the gate of a nuns' convent. It is the mother house of the secular Schoenstatt Institute, a German spiritual movement. Ratzinger had gone to meet with one of the very few friends he has maintained in Rome since he became Pope, other than monsignors and other prelates.

An old German sister, Birgit Wansing, is awaiting him, She was once his faithful secretary, with whom he shares memories, listens to her words, grateful for her esteem.

Beyond his brother Georg, the German banker Thaddeus Kuhnel and his former housekeeper the faithful Ingrid Stampa, there are not many people who enjoy this consideration from him. The simplicity of these individuals expresses forcefully the Pope's aversion for the geometries of power.

[It seems Nuzzi is imagining the Pope's circle of intimates, but limits himself to mentioning only those he is aware of. Egregiously missing is the name of Josef Clemens, the Pope's former secretary, nor a few other German priests who have lived in Rome a long time.]

Outside the gate, the solitude of making a decision constrains our man to take a walk, immersed in his thoughts. Should he nonetheless remain always in absolute silence and blind faithfulness even in the face of oppression and injustices? Should he betray the trust, consolidated over time and reposed in him by everyone in the Curia, starting with the Pope, the Secretary of State, the most important cardinals? Should he keep silent, or should he act to overcome lies and silence, the scarce information given out at the Vatican while covering up events, affairs and all the secrets of daily life at the Vatican?

If you are reading this book now, it is because that evening, the man who remained outside the convent gate decided not to turn back. He overcame his doubts, his fears, with the conviction that he was doing a 'good and right thing'.

Satisfied, he took one last look at the walls surrounding the convent in order to proceed, more determined now than ever. He had decided to let everyone know what was happening at the Vatican.

"At some moments in life", he would tell me a few days later, "one is a man or isn't. The difference? It's courage - to say and do the things you know and that you consider right. My courage is to make known the most troubled affairs of the Church. To make public certain secrets, small and big stories, that have not so far gone beyond the Bronze Door. . Only this way can I feel free, liberated from the unbearable complicity of someone who must keep silent while knowing about things".

A little later, the man goes to one of the secret places we had agreed upon where we could leave folders, flash drives or other communications. And there he deposited his last delivery, completing the voluntary mission that began almost by chance during the funeral of John Paul II in April 2005. [Wait, if he had just made his decision to go ahead with releasing the material he had, why was it already 'his last delivery'? And why all the Cold War spy stuff about drop zones, for heaven's sake?]

In the early years, his secret archive was constructed without order, or method, or specific purpose. This man accumulated documents, circulars, letters, bank records, and would study them at night in his private study, far from indiscreet eyes.

Then, after so many questions which found no answers, after surprises, disappointments and doubts, his selection of documents became more careful, targeted and programmed. His uneasiness led him over time to express his criticisms, meeting with other persons who, like him, work and live in the Apostolic palace, and who thought like he did.

Thus was born a small group of persons with various roles and functions in various agencies of the Holy See, who were united in the same decision - to document, understand, and meet each other, while setting aside documents which reveal unpublished stories, critiques and various affairs of the Church in every corner of the world.

[Whew! After all that build-up, and the unrelenting work of these dedicated few for almost seven years, the best documents they could come up with only relate to fairly recent events that have already been previously reported? Never mind that earlier news reports lacked the few details here and there that relevant documents might reveal! None of the details left out appears to be substantial.

What major skulduggery or scandal did they uncover? The worst seems to be that about the 500,000-euro Nativity scene, which was objectively the most serious of Mons. Vigano's accusations (though his letters were so full of many other peripheral accusations and high dudgeon about supposedly criminal and moral wrongdoing by his enemies that the Nativity scene expense was inflated in the public perception to something monstrously corrupt!

But the Vatican technical superintendent explained that it was because that year, they decided to make the foundations and frames permanent, built of metal, so that putting up the scene in subsequent years would be more efficient and they would not have to spend on new temporary foundations and frames every year].

The incidents of factional infighting recounted - mostly, it appears, poor Cardinal Bertone's hamhanded and inexplicable power-grabbing maneuvers - are par for the course in any high-powered executive office! Never have a devoted few worked so hard and so long to produce a grand dud, or a pipsqueak, any way you look at it.

Not even Nuzzi's most ardent new fans among his colleagues have gleaned anything new and startling from the book. What a scam!]

The desk of Benedict XVI

These papers present a common, fascinating and even incredible characteristic: they all ended up in the office of one of the world's most powerful and influential men. [Influential yes, powerful in the earthly sense, no! The Pope still has no army divisions to deploy, just a hundred halberd-wielding Swiss Guards in an age of killer drones..]

The papers you are about to read are the confidential files that Benedict XVI and his two faithful secretaries, Georg Gaenswein and the Maltese Alfred Xuereb, received during the most sensitive years of this Papacy.

Dossiers which came from the Secretariat of State, from the nunciatures, from individual cardinals, and from every part of the world, coming to the desks of the two secretaries in the private study of the Holy Father on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, with its window overlooking St. Peter's Square. [Oh wow, thanks for that information. We would never have known that, would we?][/DIM]

Already at first reading, the documents reveal something important. It is evident that in the Curia, there is still a persistent will to omit facts. This choice not to make public everything that happens, suffocating in silence the stories that could embarrass or even simply raise questions and doubts in the relationship between citizens, believers or not, and representatives of the Word of God.

[Excuse me! If these documents are supposed to be your primary sources - Exhibit A, each and every one - how do you or anyone know what has been omitted in them? Official documents are not meant to be encyclopedic accounts with all the 'sausagemaking behind the scenes' described! Each document has a specific purpose, and the goal of communications is to get to the point as fast and as well as you can. Fr. Lombardi, or any spokesman for those in power, cannot possibly issue a statement that says, "The Pope announced this today ... but his decision was reached only after Cardinal X exchanged hot words with Cardinal Y, almost coming to blows, and Cardinal Z had to step in..." Not even the most obsessive Vatican news junkie cares to hear about how the sausage is made! ]

The words of St. Matthew are as clear and relevant as they are unheeded: "That which I tell you in the shadows, say it out in full light, and that which I tell you in your ears, preach it from the rooftops". [The devil too quotes Scriptures, but in his case, he is bright enough to quote something appropriate. Jesus was speaking about proclaiming the Gospel, not about screaming your secrets to the world, burdening it with 'too much 8information' it does not need to hear! Nuzzi and his 'Deep Throats' seem to want everything broadcast indiscriminately to the world at large. The key word is 'discrimination', knowing what to say and what not to say. So Bertone tried to take control of Toniolo or of San Raffaele. It couldn't have been hidden at all since all the Vaticanistas wrote about it at the time of the events. Whatever one may think of Bertone, he always makes his moves openly.

That was the expression of hope with which I began Vaticano s.p.a, my book on the secrets of Vatican finances at the time of Wojtyla and disclosed, thanks to the immense archive of Mons. Renato Dardozzi. With this Pontificate, the situation appears not to have changed.

[Surely he cannot mean the way the IOR is now run, or the new financial laws promulgated by Benedict XVI in 2010! Or does he mean in terms of not disclosing everything - implying cover-up of unpleasant things? Nuzzi, that's human nature. Obama campaigned promising he would have the most transparent administration that ever was - it has turned out to be the most deliberately and defiantly opaque! But not even you, Nuzzi, have been able to come up with news of any cover-up in Benedict's Vatican that had serious moral and other consequences for other people

If any cover-up has resulted in a priest or bishop getting away with a criminal act, then that must be denounced and made public. It does not mean that the Vatican should also inform the world of the peccadilloes and vanities of everyone who works there. If there is something serious to be uncovered, the mass media should work and seek to uncover it.

From all that I have read all these past seven years of following Vatican news and commentary closely, the worst faults of omission and commission that I would lay on the Vatican have to do with their communications ineptitude. It's maddening and puts the Holy Father in a bad light, but Fr. Lombardi and his people are not abusing children or tripping up old ladies or telling outright lies. Lack of common sense is not a crime nor an act of moral turpitude!]

Another truth emerges that cracks open a rather widespread commonplace about this Pope: the common impression of Benedict XVI as a dogmatic theologian who is remote from the problems of the Roman Curia and of the Church in general, does not correspond to the truth. The image of a Pontiff dedicated only to studying sacred texts and doctrinal questions is false. [Tell that to Marco Politi, will you?]

Of course, Joseph Ratzinger remains a very cultured and highly refined scholar, but he is also a pastor who attentively follows in detail the critical situations of daily life, and seeks to impose changes that are often hindered - on thorny topical issues, scandals that must be set right and quieted down, the persecutions that continue to be perpetrated against Christians in many parts of the world.

He is a Pope who is alert and dynamic, who desires light and truth, but inevitably, in the opinion of this writer, the victim of compromises and of 'reasons of state' that manage to hamper any change.

He always asks to be kept up to date on the most serious troubles that the Church faces. And he even proposes radical measures while seeking to mediate among the various elements that make up the Church.

He is engaged in intense activity which makes the papal apartment the physical seat of a rule that embraces the whole world.

A simple office, a modest library stuffed with books, low armchairs, a wooden desk, and two landline telephones, no cellulars. That is the office of Joseph Ratzinger, 265th Pontiff in the history of Roman Catholicism,

It does not have the avant-garde technology of the White House. Nor any sophisticated anti-intrusion measures. [Which facilitated the extreme intrusion - that I have called virtual home invasion!]- perpetrated by the leaker(s).]

And yet this office is one of the centers of world power. The pulsing heart of the Church, yet inaccessible to the more than a billion Catholics who inhabit the planet. Here the Pope advises his secretaries as they filter through the most sensitive documents. Here he makes his most difficult decisions. [Probably not. In his chapel, more likely!]

What you are about to read are the private papers of Benedict XVI. Hundreds of documents that reveal the daily precariousness of the Church between fathomless truths, emergencies that are resolved, permanent difficulties and jealously guarded secrets. [Secrets are kept for various reasons, not all of which are sinister!] Secrets that have remained secret until our man, watching the profile of the Pope in the light and shadows of an evening in January, became finally convinced that to make these documents known, beyond any personal consequences for him, was the only decision he could make.

[Bravo, already! I can hardly keep my tears from flowing! But what exactly have you all accomplished with this antipasti of minor documents, none of which will be handed down to history - or even remembered next year? Because in the larger picture of the Church, they are just part of the ballast that any institution tends to accumulate by the tonload!]

If you are reading this book, it means that neither the Vatican nor any other entity has blocked its publication. And thus we have the possibulity to know and to evaluate dossiers, information and writings which, for the first time in the history of the Catholic church, have emerged from the Curia. [Hate to puncture your ego, Nuzzi, but it's all paper ballast. They might as well be trivia rescued from the office shredder.]

Now we all have access to the Sacri palazzi, not just to the splendors of the Sistine Chapel, to the treasures of the museums, to the doctrine of the Church, but to the very desk of Benedict XVI, with its secrets about money, about business, about conspiracies uncovered in the letters sent to the Pope's apartment.

[You'd think there was more than one conspiracy. But you see what I mean about Nuzzi's lack of a discriminatory sense? He would give the delirious fantasies of some anonymous letter-writer the same value as, say, Cardinal Bertone's letter to Cardinal Tettamanzi asking him to step down as Chairman of the Toniolo!]

And my thanks to that courageous man whom I met for months. Without him, this book would never had been written.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 29/05/2012 21:37]

The 'mandate' war:
At stake is nothing less than the future
of civil society in the United States.

May 21, 2012

The battle for religious freedom between the Catholic Church in the United States and the Obama administration just entered the second quarter.

The first quarter was bureaucratic and rhetorical. The debate began with the January 20 announcement that the administration’s implementation of Obamacare would require Catholic institutions and individual Catholic employers to provide “preventive health services” (including contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs) that the Church rejects as gravely immoral. It was a clumsy attempt at coercing consciences, and it drew widespread condemnation across the spectrum of Catholic opinion.

The debate intensified after the administration announced, on February 10, a future “accommodation” of Catholic concerns; but the proposed “accommodation” was an accounting shell game that would change absolutely nothing in either the moral or the legal structure of the issue.

Showing a remarkable degree of unanimity, the Administrative Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops rejected the “accommodation” at its March meeting and insisted that the issue at stake was not birth control, but religious freedom: The federal government was trying to compel the Church and individual Catholic believers to do something the Church’s settled teaching considers immoral. That same point was underscored a month later by the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty in its Easter-week statement, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.”

Throughout the first quarter of this deadly serious game, the administration did not move a millimeter, the claims of its flacks and some of its Catholic apologists notwithstanding. The “contraceptive mandate” (which, remember, is also a sterilization and abortifacient mandate) is now law, without any “accommodation.”

The administration continues to insist on provision of the services in question; it continues to define a “religious exemption” that is so stringent that it is not clear whether any Catholic entity (or Orthodox Jewish entity, or Mormon entity) would qualify; its narrow definition of “religious ministry” puts the Church in legal and financial peril for serving people who are not Catholics, which is another requirement of the Catholic conscience.

But the debate is not only about religious institutions; it is about the rights of conscience of employers (Catholic or otherwise) whose convictions require them not to include contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilizations in the health-insurance coverage they provide their employees.

These men and women, like the numerous Catholic entities (including dioceses and educational institutions) that are self-insuring, are all put in grave legal and moral peril by the administration’s intransigent determination to impose its concept of “reproductive health” on the entirety of American society — and to force those who oppose that concept to provide the very means by which the concept is imposed.

Now comes the game’s second quarter, which will be legal, as the battle for religious freedom moves into the federal courts. A dozen lawsuits challenging the administration’s mandate are being filed today on behalf of more than 40 plaintiffs: Catholic dioceses, including the archdioceses of New York and Washington; Catholic social-service and health-care agencies; Catholic educational institutions, including the Catholic University of America, the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and the University of Notre Dame; and Catholic publications.

These suits, in addition to those already filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the Alliance Defense Fund on behalf of other religious litigants, ought to help clarify several sometimes-confused points in the months ahead.

This is not an argument about birth control, nor is it part of some “War on Women” waged by misogynistic clerics and their political allies from the fever swamps of the Right.

The mandate is being legally challenged, in twelve different federal district courts, on the grounds that it violates the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

If those legal protections mean anything, they must mean that neither religious institutions nor individuals can be compelled to provide “services” that are readily available through means other than coercing religiously informed consciences.

Contraceptives are more readily available [and far cheaper!] in the United States in 2012 than either cigarettes or beer. There is no compelling public need to dragoon institutions and individuals who conscientiously object to providing them into doing so — with the threat of ruinous financial penalties if they do not.


Why the bishops are
suing the U.S. government
The main goal of the contraception mandate is not to protect women's health.
It is a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda.
By MARY ANN GLENDON

May 22, 2012

Ms Glendon is president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and is a professor at Harvard Law School. She was ambassador to the Holy See under President George W. Bush.

This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate.

Like most Americans, the bishops have long taken for granted the religious freedom that has enabled this nation's diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. But over the past year they have become increasingly concerned about the erosion of conscience protections for church-related individuals and institutions.

Their top-rated program for assistance to human trafficking victims was denied funding for refusing to provide "the full range of reproductive services," including abortion. For a time, Catholic Relief Services faced a similar threat to its international relief programs. The bishops fear religious liberty is becoming a second-class right.

Along with leaders of other faiths who have conscientious objections to all or part of the mandate, they hoped to persuade the government to bring its regulations into line with the First Amendment, and with federal laws such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that provide exemptions to protect the conscience rights of religious institutions and individuals.

On Jan. 20, however, HHS announced it would not revise the mandate or expand its tight exemption, which covers only religious organizations that mainly hire and serve their co-religionists. Instead, the mandated coverage will continue to apply to hospitals, schools and social service providers run by groups whose religious beliefs require them to serve everyone in need.

Continued attempts to solve the problem by negotiation produced only an announcement by the Obama administration in February that insurance providers would pay for the contested services. Since many Catholic entities are self-insured and the others pay the premiums, the bishops' concerns were not alleviated. [The shell-game 'solution' is an insult to anyone with common sense, but it's the only token the administration is prepared to make - in other words, zilch!!]
.
The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect women's health. It is rather a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions.

The media have implied all along that the dispute is mainly of concern to a Catholic minority with peculiar views about human sexuality. But religious leaders of all faiths have been quick to see that what is involved is a flagrant violation of religious freedom. That's why former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, declared, "We're all Catholics now."

More is at stake here than the mission of all churches, including the Catholic Church, to provide social services like health care and education to everyone regardless of creed, and to do so without compromising their beliefs. At the deepest level, we are witnessing an attack on the institutions of civil society that are essential to limited government and are important buffers between the citizen and the all-powerful state.

If religious providers of education, health care and social services are closed down or forced to become tools of administration policy, the government consolidates a monopoly over those essential services.

As Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it, we are witnessing an effort to reduce religion to a private activity. "Never before," he said, "have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith."

With this week's lawsuits, the bishops join a growing army of other plaintiffs around the country, Catholic and non-Catholic, who are asking the courts to repel an unprecedented governmental assault on the ability of religious persons and groups to practice their religion without being forced to violate their deepest moral convictions.

Religious freedom is subject to necessary limitations in the interests of public health and safety. The HHS regulations do not fall into that category. The world has gotten along fine without this mandate — the services in question are widely and cheaply available, and most employers will provide coverage for them.

But if the regulations are not reversed, they threaten to demote religious liberty from its prominent place among this country's most cherished freedoms. That is why Cardinal Dolan told CBS's "Face the Nation" on April 8: "We didn't ask for this fight, but we won't back away from it."


Biggest religious lawsuit in U.S. history
is ignored by major TV news channels
By Brent Bozell

May 22, 2012

The evening news broadcasts all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom. The May 21 editions of ABC’s World News and NBC’s Nightly News refused to report the fact that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Obama administration. CBS Evening News gave this historic news a mere 19 seconds of air time.

This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter century history of the Media Research Center. Every American knows about the Chinese communists withholding for 20 years the news that the US had landed on the moon, because it reflected poorly on the government. Our US media today are no different. They are now withholding news from the American people if it is harmful to the re-election of Barack Obama.

This is not a mistake, nor is it an editorial oversight by the broadcast networks. This is a deliberate and insidious withholding of national news to protect the ‘Chosen One’ who ABC, CBS and NBC have worked so hard to elect and are now abusing their journalistic influence to reelect Obama.

And when a network like CBS mentions the suit ever-so-briefly, they deliberately distort the issue by framing it as a contraception lawsuit instead of what they know it to be: a religious freedom issue. It’s bogus, dishonest – a flat-out lie.

The fact is that the Catholic Church has unleashed legal Armageddon on the administration, promising ‘we will not comply’ with a health law that strips Catholics of their religious liberty. If this isn't 'news' then there's no such thing as news.

This should be leading newscasts and the subject of special, in-depth reports. Instead, these networks are sending a clear message to all Americans that the networks will go to any lengths – even censoring from the public an event of this historic magnitude – to prevent the release of any information that will hurt Obama’s chances of re-election.

The so-called 'news' media have sunk to a new low. This is despicable.


Read more: newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2012/05/22/biggest-religious-lawsuit-us-history-launched-liberal-evening-news-sho#ixzz1...

Wednesday, May 23, Seventh Week of Easter

Paintings are by Rubens, 1607, and by Murillo, 1678.
ST. FELIX DA CANTALICE (Italy, 1515-1587), Capuchin, Mystic
Felix was a farmhand and shepherd until he was 28 when he finally was accepted into the Franciscan order after several failed attempts.
Three years after joining the order, he was assigned to the convent in Rome as the official beggar, a post he would carry out for 42
years until his death. He would become the first Capuchin to be canonized, the first of many Franciscans who would achieve sainthood
from the lowly position of official beggar. During his begging rounds, he shared what he had with the poor, had the gift of converting
sinners, catechized street children by teaching them simple hymns that he made up spontaneously, and came to be known as the
'apostle of Rome', and 'Brother Deo gratias' because he thanked God all the time. He became a friend of Phillip Neri, who had set up
his Rome Oratory as an agency for priests to help the poor. When Charles Borromeo sought Neri's help to revise the charter of the
Oblates, Neri referred him to Felix. He gave spiritual counsel to a fellow Franciscan who would become Pope Sixtus V. It is said
that while praying before a statue of the Madonna, she came down to let him hold the Baby Jesus in his arms, whence the most common
depiction of him. When Felix died, so many people packed the church for his funeral that they had to cut open a door to allow an
orderly exit. Attesting to have knowledge of 18 miracles attributed to Felix while he lived, Sixtus V would have wished him canonized
by acclamation but he died before this could happen. Felix was eventually canonized in 1712. He is buried in the Capuchin church
on the Via Veneto best known for its underground ossuary, in which the skulls and bones of some 4,000 Capuchins who died between
1500-1870 have been fashioned into baroque and rococo-style adornments in five crypt chapels.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/052312.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - Continuing his catecheses on prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, the Holy Father said
the Apostle teaches us that Christian prayer is not simply our own work, but primarily that of the Spirit,
who cries out in us and with us to the Father.

- An Indian news report says that this afternoon the Holy Father will be watching a 2007 film from India entitled 'Dharma'
which espouses the teachings of Hinduism as it shows a rigidly Hindu man adopting an orphaned Muslim child as his own.

Italian bishops say they forwarded
135 cases of pedophile-priest charges
to the CDF between 2000-2011


VATICAN CITY, May 23 (Translated from ASCA) - Between 2000-2011, Italian dioceses forwarded altogether 135 cases of priests accused of abusing children and minors to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, according to Mons. Mariano Crociata, secretary of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI).

Mons. Crociata briefed the press on the second day of the spring meeting of the CEI's Permanent Council, which yesterday approved guidelines to be used by Italian bishops in dealing with such cases.

He said that of the 135 cases, 53 were found guilty and penalized canonically, 4 were absolved, and the rest are still under investigation.

Of the 135, 77 priests were prosecuted in criminal courts, which sentenced 22 for first-degree offenses and 17 of second-degree offenses; acquitted 5, and dismissed 12. Twenty-one of the 77 cases were settled out of court.

He pointed out that most of the offenses were committed before 2000 but came to light only after US cases of priestly sex offenses led the Italian bishops to look into their own dioceses.


Italian bishops publish
first clerical sex abuse norms
By Cindy Wooden


VATICAN CITY, May 23 (CNS) -- The Italian bishops' conference released its first ever set of guidelines for handling accusations of clerical sexual abuse, urging bishops to cooperate with civil authorities, but also making it clear that bishops in Italy have no legal obligation to report suspected cases to police.

Bishop Mariano Crociata, general secretary of the bishops' conference, presented the guidelines to reporters May 22 and told them that 135 cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors had been reported between 2000 and 2012.

The bishop did not give further details about the cases or how they were handled, other than to say that none of the priests involved will be allowed to return to normal pastoral work where they would have contact with children.

The introduction to the Italian guidelines says that a bishop's first concern must be "the protection of minors, care for the victims of abuse and the formation of future priests and religious."

A bishop informed of a case of abuse "always must be available to listen to the victim and the victim's family, assuring them that all care will be taken to treat the case with justice and making a commitment to offer spiritual and psychological support while respecting the freedom of the victim" to take the matter to the police.

The introduction also urged bishops to take special care when screening candidates for the seminary and priesthood and providing for their formation, adding that it is particularly important to exchange information with a transfer candidate's previous diocese, seminary or religious order.

The permanent council of the Italian bishops' conference approved the guidelines in January and distributed them at the conference's spring assembly that started yesterday at the Vatican.

Drawn up in response to an order by the Vatican in May 2011 that every bishops' conference had to have guidelines in place within one year, the Italian norms still must be approved by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Italians were one of the last bishops' conferences in Western Europe to draw up national guidelines.

While the introduction to the guidelines mentions the need for outreach to victims and for care in selecting and training priests, the brief norms focus almost exclusively on summarizing Vatican guidelines and canon law on the steps to follow in investigating allegations and dealing with priests when they are accused and when the accusations appear to be well-founded.

Looking specifically at Italian law, the guidelines say "the cooperation of the bishop is important" in criminal investigations of clerical sexual abuse.

However, the guidelines also say that under Italian law, bishops "do not have the juridical obligation to report to state judicial authorities news they receive" regarding sex abuse.

The guidelines do not indicate any plans to create national structures for coordinating or monitoring the church's response to abuse allegations, to create child protection programs or to institute any special priestly formation programs.

The Vatican's 2011 letter said that in every nation and region, bishops should have "clear and coordinated procedures" for protecting children, assisting victims of abuse, dealing with accused priests, training clergy and cooperating with civil authorities.

It encouraged bishops to consider implementing child protection programs, which some bishops' conferences already encourage on both the parish and diocesan level.

The letter also insisted that while bishops should work together to ensure a uniform national approach to dealing with accusations and preventing abuse, the final responsibility always lies with the individual bishop.

Legionaries head admits he has known since 2005
that the order's most prominent priest had fathered a child
by Philip Pullella


ROME, May 22, 2012 - The leader of the Legionaries of Christ admitted on Tuesday he knew for years that the scandal-plagued religious order’s most famous priest had fathered a child but still allowed the popular cleric, a moral theologian, to contnue with his work.

The religious order, still reeling from revelations that its founder was a sexual abuser and drug addict with two secret families, suffered another major blow last week when it admitted that Father Thomas Williams, an American based in Rome, had also led a double life.

But the question that had been left hanging after the first admission was how long Williams’ superiors knew.

In a letter to members published on the order’s website, Father Alvaro Corcuera said he found out about Williams’s child “early in my new assignment” as the order’s director-general, which began in 2005.

In an interview with Reuters last week, Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, the man Pope Benedict appointed in 2010 as his personal delegate to try to reform the order, said he did not find out about Williams’ affair until this year.

Williams was the public face of the order, appearing often on American television networks to explain Church teachings. He was the author of more than a dozen books, including one called “Knowing Right From Wrong: A Christian Guide to Conscience”.

He was a big draw on the lecture circuit at Catholic institutions and had two websites, both of which were shut down last week after the order issued a statement about him.

In his letter to members, Corcuera said that after he first found out that Williams had a child he asked him to “start withdrawing from public ministry” but admitted that the restrictions “were not firm enough” and Williams was allowed to continue teaching. [Typical of the Legion's attitude then, since Corcuera and his other colleagues in leadership positions pretended at the time they had no knowledge at all of Fr. Maciel's transgressions despite multiple denunciations by victims dating back to the 1950s.]

In fact, Williams continued to appear in public and teach at Rome’s Pontifical Regina Apostolorum University.

He appeared as a consultant to a U.S. television network until 2010 and had a contract with the network until May 2011, when it was not renewed, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.

Corcuera said in his letter that he did not give Williams an “explicit indication to fully withdraw from all public ministry“ until March 2012. By that time it was an open secret to a number of television journalists.

In the letter, Corcuera “begs” forgiveness from members of the order for being an ineffective leader and for not being “diligent in setting proper restrictions and enforcing them” in the Williams case.

The Legionaries of Christ run private Catholic schools and charitable organizations in 22 countries via a network of 800 priests and 2,600 seminarians. The order’s lay movement, known as Regnum Christi, has around 75,000 members.

The order and its leaders have been at the centre of controversy since 2009 when they were forced to admit that their charismatic Mexican founder, Father Marcial Maciel, had led a double life for decades.

[And it took them till 2009 to do this, despite the fact that Pope Benedict XVI had punished him canonically in 2006 without bringing him to canonical trial because of his advanced age (86) and failing health) for sexual crimes and abuses that that the CDF had investigated and confirmed. The LC admission only came after apostolic visitation of their institution resulted in their being placed under papal supervision through a papal legate. These leaders shave shown nothing but bad faith all these years.

If Cardinal De Paolis does not demote Corcuera from his position now and send him to some desert island to atone for his blatant irresponsibility - and apparent moral callousness - then even the Pope should consider replacing De Paolis, who has been bending over backwards too much to accommodate Corcuera and company despite their rle in the decades-long cover-up for Fr. Maciel. How can he continue to trust Corcuera - what else does Corcuera know that he hasn't disclosed yet, and which will come back soon to plague De Paolis and the Church! Every little thing that Corcuera fails to disclose is like Maciel's ghost rising in the form of an asp's tail to strike again and again when it will! ]

Maciel, who made huge financial contributions to the Vatican, secretly fathered children with at least two women, used drugs, misused donations and sexually abused seminarians.

He had enjoyed the support of the late Pope John Paul and was spared official censure for years despite what critics say was overwhelming proof of his crimes.

Some Churchmen say the scandal may delay John Paul’s road to sainthood. Last year he was beatified, the last step before being made a saint.

Pope Benedict ordered Maciel to retire in 2006 to a life of “prayer and penitence” when the evidence could no longer be disputed, and he died in disgrace in 2008.

Some critics of the order say that since the Legionaries have such a history of scandal and cover-up that they are beyond repair and should be shut down, with good priests joining other religious orders or be put under control of bishops.

Corcuera said the Legionaries now had put in place new procedures to act quickly “when a serious charge is brought against any Legionary” including possible immediate removal from public ministry.

Seven members of the order are being investigated by the Vatican’s doctrinal department for sexual abuse of minors. {Yes, but these seven cases were also only recently reported! Cardinal De Paolis's public silence about these developments is most disturbing. He doesn't seem to realize that his inaction and passivity as the Pope's personal legate to the LC makes the Pope look bad, not him! He is a member of a religious order himself. Would his order have tolerated the things that he has since appeared to tolerate at the LC?]

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY





'Holy Spirit enables us to address
God as Father the way Jesus did'

May 23, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday continued his series on prayer in the letters of Saint Paul. Speaking to tens of thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the weekly general audience, the Holy Father expanded on the previous week’s catechesis on the Holy Spirit’s role in prayer.

Here is how he synthesized today's lesson in English:

---

In our reflection on prayer in the letters of Saint Paul, we now consider two passages in which the Apostle speaks of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to call upon God as "Abba", our Father (cf. Gal 4:6; Rom 8:5).

The word "Abba" was used by Jesus to express his loving relationship with the Father; our own use of this word is the fruit of the presence of the Spirit of Christ within us.

Through the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism, we have become sons and daughters of God, sharing by adoption in the eternal sonship of Jesus. Paul teaches us that Christian prayer is not simply our own work, but primarily that of the Spirit, who cries out in us and with us to the Father.

In our prayer, we enter into the love of the indwelling Trinity as living members of Christ’s Body, the Church. Our individual prayer is always part of the great symphony of the Church’s prayer.

Let us open our hearts ever more fully to the working of the Spirit within us, so that our prayer may lead us to greater trust in the Father and conformity to Jesus, his Son.

---

In the main catechesis, he made two citations from the Pauline epistles:

In the letter to the Galatians: “As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’”(Gal 4:6)

And then in Romans, Paul says: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Rom 8:15)

“These two substantial statements," he said, "speak of the sending and receiving of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Risen One, who makes us sons in Christ, the Only-begotten Son, and gives us a filial relationship with God,” the Pope said.

Pope Benedict said the modern phenomenon in which the father is often absent from the family makes it more difficult to understand the profound meaning of God being a father to us.

“Perhaps modern man does not perceive the beauty, grandeur and profound consolation contained in the word ‘father’ with which we can turn to God in prayer, because the father figure is often not sufficiently present in today’s world, and is often not a sufficiently positive presence in everyday life,” the Pope said.

“But from Jesus himself, by his filial relationship with God, we learn the true significance of the word ‘father’, and what is the true nature of the Father who is in heaven. When we turn to our Father in the privacy of our rooms, in silence and recollection, we are never alone,” he said.

And finally, on the role of the Holy Spirit:

---

Paul teaches us that Christian prayer is not simply our own work, but primarily that of the Spirit, who cries out in us and with us to the Father.

In our prayer, we enter into the love of the indwelling Trinity as living members of Christ’s Body, the Church. Our individual prayer is always part of the great symphony of the Church’s prayer.

Let us open our hearts ever more fully to the working of the Spirit within us, so that our prayer may lead us to greater trust in the Father and conformity to Jesus, his Son.

---

Here is a translation of today's catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

Last Wednesday I spoke about how St. Paul says the Holy Spirit is the great teacher of prayer, who teaches us to address God with the affectionate term that children use, calling him 'Abba', Father.

That is what Jsaus did even at the most tragic moment of his earthly life. He never lost trust in the Father whom he always addressed with the intimacy of a beloved son.

At Gethsemane, when he felt the anguish of imminent death, his prayer was: "Abba! Father! all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will" (Mk 14,36).

From the very first steps of her journey, the Church has accepted this invocation and made it her own, especially in the Lord's Prayer, in which we say daily, "Our Father... they will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Mt 6,9-10).

In the letters of St. Paul we find it twice. The Apostle as we heard just now [The Gospel readings relevant to the catechesis are read aloud before the Pope begins the catechesis], addresses the Galatians with these words: "As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!'" (Gal 4,6).

And in the center of that hymn to the Holy Spirit that is Chapter 8 of the Letter to the Romans, St, Paul says: "For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, 'Abba, Father!'" (Rm 8,15).

Christianity is not a religion of fear, but of trust and love for the Father who loves us. These two dense affirmations speak to us of the sending of the Holy Spirit and his acceptance by us.

The Holy Spirit is the gift of the Risen Lord, making us God's children in Christ, the only begotten Son, and placing us in a filial relation with God, a relationship of profound trust, like that of children. A filial relationship analogous to that of Jesus, though the origin is different as is the weight.

Jesus is the eternal son of God who became flesh - whereas we become children in him, in time, through faith and the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. Thanks to these two sacraments, we are immersed in the Paschal mystery of Christ.

The Holy Spirit is the precious and necessary gift that makes us children of God, which makes real that filial adoption to which all human beings are called, because, as the divine blessing in the Letter to the Ephesians specifies, God, in Christ, "chose us before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ" (Eph 1,4-5).

Perhaps man today cannot perceive the beauty, the grandeur and the profound comfort found in the word 'Father' with which we can turn to God in prayer, because especially today, the father figure is often not present enough, and often, too, not sufficiently positive in daily life.

The absence of the father, the problem of a father who is not present in the life of a child, is a great problem of our time. So it becomes difficult to understand in its profundity what it means to say that God is a father for us.

From Jesus himself, from his filial relationship with God, we can learn what 'father' really means, the true nature of our Father who is in heaven.

Critics of religion have said that to speak of the Father, of God, would simply be a projection of our fathers to heaven. But it is the contrary which is true: In the Gospel, Christ shows us who is the Father and how a true father is, so that we can grasp what true fatherhood is, learn what it is.

Let us think of Jesus's words in the Sermon on the Mount where he says, "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father" (Mt 5,44-45).

And it is really the love of Jesus, the only-begotten Son - who gives himself on the Cross - that reveals to us the true nature of the Father: He is Love, and even we, in our prayer as children, enter into this circuit of love, love of God who purifies our desires, our attitudes, that are otherwise marked by being closed off, by self-sufficiency, by forms of selfishness that are typical of the old man [before salvation].

I wish to linger a bit on the fatherhood of God, so that we may warm our heart with this profound reality that Jesus has made us know fully, and so that our prayer may be nourished with it.

We can therefore say that in God, being father has two dimensions. First of all, God is our Father, because he is our Creator. Each of us, each man and woman, is a miracle of God, wanted by him and personally known to him.

When, in the Book of Genesis, it is said that the human being is created in the image of God (cfr 1,27), it expresses this very reality: God is our Father. For him, we are not anonymous beings, impersonal, but we each have a name.

There is a sentence from the PSalms that always touches me when I pray it, "Your hands made me and fashioned me", the psalmist says (Ps 119,73). Each of us can say, using this beautiful image, about our personal relationship with God: Your hands have shaped me. You conceived, created and wanted me.

But even this is not enough. The Spirit of Christ opens us to another dimension of the fatherhood of God, beyond creation, because Jesus is the 'Son' in the full sense, "of the same substance [consubstantial with] as the Father", as we profess in in the Credo.

He became a human being like us, with his Incarnation, death and resurrection. And in his turn, Jesus accepts us into his humanity and his being the Son of God, so that even we can enter into his special belonging to God.

Of course our being children of God does not have the fullness of Jesus: we must become children of God increasingly, along the journey of our entire Christian existence, growing in our following of Christ, in communion with him, in order to enter ever more intimately into a relationship of love with God the Father who sustains our life.

It is this fundamental reality which is disclosed to us when we open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and he makes us turn to God calling him "Abba! Father!', entering truly [a new relationship with God] beyond creation, in our adoption with Jesus: we are truly united with God and children in a new way, in a new dimension.

I wish now to return to the two passages from St. Paul that we are considering in relation with this action of the Holy Spirit on our prayer. Even in these, there are two corresponding steps which each contains a different nuance.

In the Letter to the Galatians, in fact, the Apostle says that the Spirit cries in us "Abba! Father!". In the Letter to the Romans, he says that it is we who cry out "Abba! Father!".

St. Paul wants us to understand that Christian prayer is never - and never happens - in a unilateral sense from us to God: it is not merely our 'own action', but an expression of a reciprocal relationship in which it is God who acts first.

It is the Holy Spirit who cries out in us, and we can cry out because the impulse comes from the Holy Spirit. We cannot pray if the desire of God, our being children of God, were not inscribed in the depth of our heart.

For as long as he has existed, Homo sapiens has always been seeking God, seeking to speak to God, because God has inscribed himself in our hearts. Therefore the first initiative comes from God, and with Baptism, God acts in us again, the Holy Spirit acts in us - he is the initiator of prayer so that we can really speak to God and say Abba to him. And so, his presence opens our prayer and our life to the horizons of the Trinity and the Church.

Moreover, we understand - and this is the second point - that the prayer of the Spirit of Christ in us and ours in him, is not just an individual act, but an act of the entire Church. In praying, our heart opens up, we enter into communion not just with God but with all the children of God, because we are all one.

When we call on the Father in our interior room, in silence and in recollection, we are never alone. Whoever speaks to God is not alone. We are in the great prayer of the Church, we are part of a great symphony that the Christian community, spread throughout every part of the earth and in every time, raises to God.

Yes, the musicians and the instruments are diverse - and this is an element of richness - but the melody of praise is only one and in harmony.

Every time then that we cry out and say, "Abba! Father!" it is the Church, the entire communion of men in prayer, that sustains our invocation, and our invocation is the invocation of the Church.

This is reflected as well in the wealth of charisms, of ministries, of missions, that we carry out in the community. St. Paul writes to the Christians of Corinth: "There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone" (1Cor 12,4-6).

Prayer guided by the Holy Spirit, which makes us say "Abba! Father!" with Christ and in Christ, places us into the one great mosaic of the family of God in which everyone has a place and an important role, in profound unity with all.

One last observation. We also learn to cry out "Abba1 Father!" with Mary, Mother of the Son of God. The fullness of time that St. Paul speaks about in his Letter to the Galatians (cfr 4,4), occurred when Mary said Yes, in full adherence to the will of God - "Behold the handmaid of the Lord" (Lk 1,38).

Dear brothers and sisters, let us learn to enjoy in our prayer the beauty of being not just friends but children of God, of being able to invoke him with the confidence and trust that a child has in the parents who love him.

Let us open our prayer to the action of the Holy Spirit so that he may cry out "Abba! Father!" in us, and so that our prayer may constantly change and convert our thinking, our action, to conform them ever more to that of the only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ. Thank you.

---

The current secular push for gay marriage
revives what was a popular pagan practice
Gay marriage and homosexuality were part of the moral
landscape faced by the first Christians in Ancient Rome -
but that does not justify legalizing them now
by Benjamin Wiker

May 22, 2012

Given that the gay marriage agenda will be increasingly pressed upon Catholics by the State [by the Obama administration, for now, but not by any foreseeable Republican administration!] we should be much more aware of what history has to teach us about gay marriage — given that we don’t want to be among those who, ignorant of history, blithely condemn themselves to repeat it.

Contrary to the popular view — both among proponents and opponents — gay marriage is not a new issue. It cannot be couched (by proponents) as a seamless advance on the civil rights movement, nor should it be understood (by opponents) as something that’s evil merely because it appears to them to be morally unprecedented.

Gay marriage was — surprise! — alive and well in Rome, celebrated even and especially by select emperors, a spin-off of the general cultural affirmation of Roman homosexuality. Gay marriage was, along with homosexuality, something the first Christians faced as part of the pagan moral darkness of their time.

What Christians are fighting against today, then, is not yet another sexual innovation peculiar to our “enlightened age,” but the return to pre-Christian, pagan sexual morality.

So, what was happening in ancient Rome? Homosexuality was just as widespread among the Romans as it was among the Greeks (a sign of which is that it was condoned even by the stolid Stoics). The Romans had adopted the pederasty of the Greeks (aimed, generally, at boys between the ages of 12 to 18). There was nothing shameful about such sexual relations among Romans, if the boy was not freeborn. Slaves, both male and female, were considered property, and that included sexual property.

But the Romans also extended homosexuality to adult men, even adult free men. And it is likely that this crossing of the line from child to adult, unfree to free — not homosexuality as such — was what affronted the more austere of the Roman moralists.

And so we hear from Tacitus (56-117 AD), the great Roman historian, about the shameful sexual exploits of a string of Roman emperors from Tiberius to Nero.

Nero was the first imperial persecutor of the Christians. His tutor and then advisor was the great Stoic moralist Seneca himself. Unfortunately, Seneca’s lessons must have bounced right off the future emperor.

When he took the imperial seat, complete with its aura of self-proclaimed divinity, no trace of Stoic austerity remained.

In Nero, Tacitus tells the reader, tyrannical passion, the hubris of proclaimed divinity, the corruption of power, and “every filthy depraved act, licit or illicit” seemed to reach an imperial peak. He not only had a passion for “free-born boys” but also for quite literally marrying other men and even a boy, sometimes playing the part of the woman in the union and sometimes the man.

As Tacitus relates one incident (Grant’s translation): “Nero was already corrupted by every lust, natural and unnatural. But he now refuted any surmises that no further degradation was possible for him. For…he went through a formal wedding ceremony with one of the perverted gang called Pythagoras. The emperor, in the presence of witnesses, put on the bridal veil. Dowry, marriage bed, wedding torches, all were there. Indeed everything was public which even in a natural union is veiled by night.”

Such was only one instance. We also have from historian Suetonius, a contemporary of Tacitus, a report of Nero’s marriage to Doryphorus (who was himself married to another man, Sporus).

Martial, the first-century A.D. Roman poet, reports incidences of male-male marriage as kinds of perversions, but not uncommon perversions, speaking in one epigram (I.24) of a man who “played the bride yesterday.” In another (12.42) he says mockingly, “Bearded Callistratus gave himself in marriage to…Afer, in the manner in which a virgin usually gives herself in marriage to a male. The torches shone in front, the bridal veils covered his face, and wedding toasts were not absent, either. A dowry was also named. Does that not seem enough yet for you, Rome? Are you waiting for him to give birth?”

In Juvenal’s Second Satire (117), we hear of one Gracchus, “arraying himself in the flounces and train and veil of a bride,” now a “new-made bride reclining on the bosom of her husband.” Such seems to have been the usual way of male-male nuptials among the Romans, one of the men actually dressing up as a woman and playing the part of a woman.

The notoriously debauched emperor Elagabalus (ruled 218-222) married and then divorced five women. But he considered his male chariot driver to be his “husband,” and he also married one Zoticus, an athlete. Elagabalus loved to dress up as a queen, quite literally.

Our reports of homosexual marriage from Rome give us, I hope, a clearer understanding of what is at stake. As is the case today, it appears that the incidence of male-male marriage followed upon the widespread acceptance of homosexuality; that is, the practice of homosexuality led to the notion that, somehow, homosexual unions should share in the same status as heterosexual unions.

We must also add that heterosexuality among the Romans was also in a sad state. Both concubinage and prostitution were completely acceptable; pornography and sexually explicit entertainment and speech were entirely normalized; the provision of sex by both male and female slaves was considered a duty by masters.

Paeans to the glory of marriage were made, not because the Romans had some proto-Christian notion of the sanctity of marriage, but because Rome needed more citizen-soldiers just when the Romans were depopulating themselves by doing anything to avoid having children.

The heterosexual moral disrepair in Rome therefore formed the social basis for the Roman slide into homosexual marriage rites. We hear of them from critics bent on satirizing such unions. The problem for the Romans wasn’t homosexuality as such, but that a Roman man would debase himself and play the part of a woman in matrimony.

Christians had a problem with the whole Roman sexual scene. We are, of course, not surprised to find that the first Christians accepted and carried forward the strict rejection of homosexuality inherent in Judaism, but this was part of its more encompassing rejection of any sexuality outside of heterosexual, monogamous marriage.

Christians are not to be lauded for affirming that marriage must be defined as a union of a man and a woman, because that is the natural default of any people intent on not disappearing in a single generation.

What was peculiar to Christianity (again, not just following Judaism, but intensifying it) was the restriction of sexuality only to monogamous, heterosexual marriage.

The Christians found themselves in a pagan culture where there were few restrictions on sexuality at all, other than the imagination — a culture that, to note the obvious but exceedingly important, looks suspiciously like ours.

The first-century A.D. catechetical manual, the Didache, makes refreshingly clear what pagans will have to give up, in regard to Roman sexuality, once they entered the Church.

It begins with the ominous words, “There are two ways: one of life and one of death — and there is a great difference between the two ways.” The pagan converts are then confronted with a list of commands. Some of which would have been quite familiar and reasonable to Romans, such as, “You will not murder” and, “You will not commit adultery” (although for Romans, abortion wasn’t murder, and a husband having sex with slaves or prostitutes was not considered adulterous).

But then followed strange commands (at least to the Romans), “You will not corrupt boys”; “You will not have illicit sex” (ou porneuseis); “You will not murder offspring by means of abortion [and] you will not kill one having been born.”

Against the norm in Rome, Christians were obliged to reject pedophilia, fornication and homosexuality, abortion, and infanticide. The list also commands, “You will not make potions” (ou pharmakeuseis), a prohibition against widespread practices in the Roman Empire which included potions that stopped conception or caused abortion.

I include the prohibitions against sexual practices heartily affirmed by the Romans alongside prohibitions against contraception, abortion, and infanticide for a very important reason. Christians defined the goal of sexuality in terms of the natural ability to procreate.

What was different, again, was not recognizing the obvious need for a man and a woman to make a child — Stoics argued along the same lines. What was peculiar to Christianity was removing all other expressions of sexuality from legitimacy (many Stoic men had male paramours).

The Roman elevation of sexual pleasure above procreation, and hence outside this tightly-defined area of sexual legitimacy defined by Christianity, led to the desire for contraceptive potions, abortifacients, and infanticide.

It also led to seeing marriage as nothing but an arena for sexual pleasure, which in turn allowed for an equivalency of heterosexual and homosexual marriage.

The Theodosian Code, drawn up by Christian emperors in the fifth century, A.D. made same-sex marriage illegal (referring, as precedent, to edicts published under fourth-century emperors Constantius II and Constans).

We can see, then, that Christians face nothing new in regard to the push for gay marriage. In fact, it is something quite old, and represents a return to the pagan views of sexuality that dominated the Roman Empire into which Christianity was born.

Thanks to Beatrice who posted the following item on her site:

Cardinal Burke says:
'Benedict XVI is a saint'
Exclusive interview
by Pierre de Bellerive
Translated from

May 20, 2012


Left, the Pope and Cardinal Burke at a February 2011 audience for the Apostolic Signatura; center and right, recent official photos of the cardinal show he has lost considerable weight. (Cardinal Dolan should compare his new diet with Cardinal Burke's apparently successful regimen.)

I met Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura's Supreme Tribunal, at the Apostolic Chancellery for this exclusive interview. [He was Archbishop of St. Louis, Missouri, when he was called to Rome by Benedict XVI in 2008 to head the Apostolic Signatura and was subsequently made a cardinal in the November 2010 consistory.]

He began by explaining the functions of thee tribunal that he heads, saying that the term 'apostolic signature' comes from a time when the court's judges signed their decision in the name of the Pope.

"The tribunal's first mission is to9 render justice, as well as to administer canonical verdicts", he said.

How is it important for the Church? He says it allows 'correct relationships among the members of the Church". He quickly adds that "justice alone does not suffice because the Church lives above all according to the law of charity, but it must allow justice before it can speak about love".

Therefore, he considers that the canonical tribunal he heads has a fundamental role.

When asked what he thought about Benedict XVI, the American cardinal was very prolix.

"What do I think of Benedict XVI? Many things! First of all, that he is someone with the extraordinary ability to teach the faith."

Very laudatory about the Holy Father, my host called him "a man of very great kindness", a Pope "who always the best in whoever he is speaking to... Of course, he cannot meet everyone, but he's trying his best."

"Benedict XVI is a saint," he says of the current Vicar of Christ on earth.

He expresses his immense admiration for the Holy Father, "especially for his efforts to restore the liturgy, which some, including myself, call his 'reform of the reform'".

He cites the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, whose early fruits the cardinal appreciates. "The traditional liturgy", he explains, "is a link to what has been good in the past. There is no rupture in liturgy".

Rather, he sees a mutual enrichment of the two forms of the Roman rite. "I myself celebrate the traditional form, which makes me appreciate even better the roots of the Novus Ordo".

He shares this special sensibility for the traditional Mass with the FSSPX which has been discussing a reconciliation with Rome. Cardinal Burke says "I hope sincerely that this reconciliation will take place".

"I know some priests in the FSSPX and I know that much can and ought to be done for them... Benedict XVI is engaged in the process and has been very generous in trying to facilitate it".

Before I left, he gave me a sacred image as a gift.

The dependable Mr. Restan has a completely benign view of the Pope's post-prandial remarks at his luncheon with the cardinals last Monday, May 19, not seeing in his words any trace of typically German irony, as I did hard-headedly when I first read the words ...

The Pope to cardinals:
'You are my friends'
Translated from

May 24, 2012



The radiators were sputtering in the Apostolic Palace, and irritation was growing in the corridors. Once more, because of the pathetic Vatileaks - the orchestrated disclosure of documents, this time, letters to the Pope himself, containing the most sensitive opinions and consultations sought, the kind that requires to be considered in total freedom and therefore, with absolute confidentiality.

Fodder for the talkshows, for cacophonic screaming, with all the 'spice' associated with anything coming "from across the Tiber".

Further evidence of treason committed by those who trumpet (though anonymously) that doing so, they are fighting for transparency and renewal. Parasites, the Bishop of Regensburg has called them.

It would appear, from these quarters, that outrage has reached such stratospheric heights within the Vatican that one could point to hard factions within, to power infighting in which the first victim would be Benedict XVI.

At this time came the lunch which the cardinals offered the Pope on the occasion of his 85th birthday. [Actually, the luncheon was offered by the Pope to thank them for their good wishes on his recent birthday and papal anniversary.]

When it came time to offer toasts, the Pope rose and spoke extemporaneously, saying he felt at home surrounded by friends. And for a moment, there was the reality - not the truculent perversity of so many in the media, but the reality of a home, a family with all kinds of members, some more or less bright, some more or less obedient, with various temperaments, some spark-raising - but united in the only struggle that matters, around the rock which supports the edifice.

The Pope was serene as usual, looking at them with his child-like smile. He speaks about his long life so far, of his days full of sunlight and of some dark nights, each a reason to give thanks to God.

He cites St. Augustine, of course, and the cardinals smile - how could he not cite him? - who said that history is a battle between two loves: love of oneself to the point of spurning God, and love of God to the point of spurning oneself in martyrdom.

This was an occasion for celebration, but the Pope does not gloss over the difficulty of the struggle against evil, even when it masquerades as doing good. That stitch is not threadless!

But then comes something rather unexpected. Benedict speaks of friendship ("You are my friends"), not in a sentimental way. But in the sense that the difficulty of the struggle requires the gentleness of friendship. "i feel at home, I feel secure in the company of good friends who are with me, and that we are all together with the Lord".

The Church is this great friendship - it is this well-afflicted body which shows the wounds of its long struggles, that would be literally exhausting if she depended only on the strength and cohesion of her members.

It is curious - the Pope didn't say, "You have done everything well, impeccably". He said, "You are my friends, and we are all together with the Lord".

A communion in joys and sorrows, he said - something which could never be imagined by the traitors in the Vatican nor the scribes of hatred against the Church who proliferate so much these days.

In the end, Benedict refers with a wink to his old and rather discreet affection for football, telling the cardinals not to worry because "we are on the Lord's team, the winning team".

Several days earlier, he had written a beautiful letter on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary of the Cathedral of Bamberg (Germany), in which he described its walls "that have resisted the storms of a millennium, the waves pf 20th-century ideologies that were hostile to God and men", and concluded with this serene certainty: "In the Church, of which this millennial Cathedral is a powerful symbol, future generations of faithful Catholics will continue to find the homeland of the heart, and protection".

How much we have to learn!

Mr. Restan calls my attention to a major oversight on my part - I must translate that letter on the millenary of Bamberg Cathedral that I completely missed!

I don't generally agree with Alberto Melloni, who is one of the more prominent and outspoken proponents of the misguided 'spirit of Vatican II', but I agree with what he says here. Especially because most Italian commentators have had the kneejerk reaction that these leaks - actually one and the same massive leak by one or more traitors to one and the same journalist, Gianluigi Nuzzi, which should therefore considerably narrow down the universe of possible traitors, for anyone who is seriously seeking to get to the bottom of all this - are a direct attack on Benedict XVI and are meant to undermine him directly.

As one can see in any news reports of objective facts from the actual contents of Nuzzi's book, none of it casts any aspersion on Benedict XVI himself, directly indirectly. What is objectionable is the fact that the massive leak exists at all, which undermines the institution of the Papacy because it shows blatant disregard for the right of Benedict XVI (and by implication, of any Pope), as a person, as Pope, and as chief of state, to the privacy of his personal correspondence.

Prominent papal critic says Vatileaks
constitutes 'an attack on the Pope
to tell him he erred in choosing Bertone
as his #2 man and wrong to keep him on'
Interview by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

May 24, 2012

"It appears to me that there is hardly anything new [in Nuzzi's book]. The problem is who is raking up all this muck and who is flinging it into the fan. Nor do I think that the right to report news can be claimed here".

That is how Prof. Alberto Melloni, who reaches History of Christianity at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia, who also heads the Fondazione per le scienze religiose Giovanni XXIII in Bologna, sums up the Vatileaks case. in an interview with the Vatican Insider.

These leaks, of course, have provoked and continue to provoke the Vatican which has been trying to identify the person(s) who have purloined documents, letters and notes from the confidential files of the Secretariat of Stat and passed these on journalist Gianlugi Nuzzi who has now published these documents in a book after previewing some of them last January and February [on his TV show and through the newspaper Il Fatto Quotdiano.

What opinion do you have of Vatileaks?
It looks to me like an attack against the Pope by those who want to tell him: You made a mistake in choosing your Secretary of State and you are making another mistake by not replacing him.

Are there any precedents to which this episode can be compared?
I don't think so. I must say that the book discloses nothing significantly new, and that these documents are not, in fact, 'secret letters or papers" but simply internal private correspondence. But the obvious intention is to demonstrate that there are no controls, that anything can come out, that the archives [at least at the Vatican Secretariat of State] are not properly safeguarded. [That the Vatican appears to be no nearer to finding the culprit(s) than they were on Day 1 is a real disgrace that observers who have some knowledge about security controls for private and confidential papers are quick to point out.]

What should we expect now?
Nothing, I believe. In my opinion, this book represents the end of Vatileaks. I think that whatever papers were obtained illegally are all there - a rather motley assortment of documents which are mostly unrelated, and basically, of no special relevance.

[Well said! If what appears in the book is all that the traitors pilfered - and is the worst they can find to say about this Pontificate, then they are really very slim pickings, not worth a fraction of the hype that Nuzzi and his sympathizers in the Italian media make of it, and the traitors are nothing but clueless closet Clouseaus beating their breasts about picayune 'feats', not the 'noble heroes for the truth' that they imagine themselves to be!... Perhaps that is why the Anglophone media has so far ignored the story. And I must commend Prof. Melloni for being the first significant name to say "But the emperor is really naked!"

The 'worst' of the documents - Vigano'[s letters and the accusations he makes, and Cardinal Bertone's most egregious missteps in the past year - are already well-known from previous news reports,. Dino Boffo's accusations against the editor of OR (his faxes to Mons. Gaenswein were written months after the controversy and after the newspaper editor who accused him rashly published a retraction and apology) only confirms what that editor also reported back in 2010 about Vian's possible involvement. THE BOOK IS NOTHING BUT A BIG SCAM, which the author is trying to pull off for a book that is not what it claims to be.

And I concluded this after reading Andrea Tornielli's first impressions of the book and seeing Nuzzi's detailed Table of Contents to his book. [I must complete the abridged account I did of that Table a few days ago to do real justice to the apparent scarcity and randomness of the material it presents in terms of subject matter, and the relative lack of substance and news value in the documents it does present. Though I obviously have not read anything but the smarmily sanctimonious introduction to the book, I base this latter conclusion on the glaring reality that no one, not even among the most assiduous critics of Benedict XVI - has gleaned any 'headline' material from it so far, other than the fact that the book was published!

When Benedict XVI last Monday told the cardinals that the evil which seeks to dominate the world today also masquerades as doing good, Nuzzi and his mealy-mouthed accomplices immediately came to mind!

But how can you say that Dino Boffo's letters to the Pope's secretary, to take an example, are not relevant?
Because it states matters that have already been reported. The speculation about possible behind-the-scenes machinations at the Vatican occupied the news in Italy front and center for weeks. Likewise, the controversy over Mons. Vigano. Likewise, Cardinal Scola's opposition to the attempt [by Cardinal Bertone] to use IOR funds to get control of San Raffaele [a financially-afflicted Milan-based health and education empire]. And so on. We could cite more examples from the book.

The 'news' here is the message being sent by those responsible for feeding the stolen documents to Nuzzi, which is that his own people are not able to protect the Pope's privacy.

What consequences do you anticipate?
Whoever stole those documents is excommunicated latae sententiae - by the very action committed and upon commission of it - because his actions pose a threat to the Pope.

There is a discussion over the right to report and publish versus the right to private correspondence. Do you think the Holy See has any legal grounds for action as stated in the Vatican communique earlier this week?
I would point out that the privacy of the Pope is subject to the Concordat between the Holy See and Italy [ie., a document with the force of international law], and since this was signed in 1928, it has guaranteed this privacy. [Which is also separately guaranteed to every individual by the Italian Constitution! The Pope is not an Italian citizen or resident, but the person who violated his privacy by making his private correspondence public could be Italian, and the one who making use of illegally obtained material is definitely Italian, therefore prosecutable both under Italian law, and under the terms of the Concordat.]]

From this point of view, I believer there do exist grounds for legal action and even to seek the collaboration of Italian authorities.

But, excuse me, what about the right to report?
I don't think the right to report is applicable here. This was not the result of a journalistic investigation, but the acceptance of a packet of [illegally obtained] documents and the publication of such. These are documents that have to do with the internal activities of the Holy See. One count is that these documents were stolen, and another count is to fence such stolen material.

Thursday, May 24, Seventh Week of Easter
FEAST OF MARY, HELP OF CHRISTIANS
World Day of Prayer for China

Mary, Help of Christians, in various depictions as Our Lady of China

Benedict XVI wrote this prayerin 2008 when he first decreed May 24 as the annual World Day of Prayer for China.


ST. MARIA MADDALENA DE' PAZZI (Italy, 1566-1607), Carmelite nun, Mystic and Author
Caterina de' Pazzi was born in Florence to a noble family whose members were among the first to scale the walls of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. She knew as a child that her calling was for Jesus, experienced her fist mystic vision when she was 12, and entered the Carmelite convent in Florence at age 16 against her family's objections. A year into her novitiate, she fell critically ill so preparations were made for her to to make her final vows from her sickbed. After receiving Communion, she fell into an ecstasy that lasted two hours. This happened for 40 consecutive days, but she survived the illness. To make sure that she was rooted in reality, her superiors ordered her to dictate all her spiritual experiences to her fellow nuns, which later became the basis for six books published under her name. In her lifetime, many miracle cures were attributed to her, as well as the gift of teleportation and of being able to read the thoughts of her nuns. She would become the superior of the convent, setting an example of holiness for her nuns, and praying for the renewal of the Church. However, before she died, she also underwent five years of a 'dark night of the soul' familiar to many saints. A quotation from her might apply to many bishops and priests today: "A little drop of simple obedience is worth a million times more than a whole vase of the choicest contemplation". She was canonized in 1668. her incorrupt body is venerated at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Florence.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/052412.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met separately with two official delegations to commemorate the annual observance of the liturgical feast
of Saints Cyril and Metodius, brothers who evangelized the Slavic peoples:

- H.E. Rosen Plevneliev, presidnet of the Republic of Bulgaria, and his delegation; and
- H.E. Nikola Gruevski, President Republic of Macedonia, and his delegation.

The Orthodox world celebrates the brother-saints' feast on May 24, while the Latin Church observes it on February 14. In 1980,. John Paul II named them among the co-Patrons of Europe.

At noon, he addressed the 64th annual plenary session of the Italian bishops' conference in the Hall of Synods
at the Vatican. The theme of the plenary meeting, from May 21-25, is "Adults in the community: Mature in their faith and witnesses for humanity".

Having seen the news just now on Italy's leading financial newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore, I checked the Vatican website and Vatican Radio for their version, but there is none so far - although the following brief report from AP mentions a Vatican statement that makes the situation more alarming than it was reported in the Italian newspaper. AP's account makes it appear very much like, as the current jargon goes, the now ex-president of IOR has been 'thrown under the bus' mercilessly by the Vatican... This does not look good at all.

Vatican bank chief ousted
after 'no-confidence' vote


VATICAN CITY, May 24 (AP) -- The Vatican says the head of its bank, who is being investigated in a money laundering case, has been ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers.

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has been a polarizing figure in the Vatican ever since he was named president of the Institute for Religious Works, known as the IOR, in 2009.

He is currently being investigated on suspicion of money laundering. {What is this now? Wasn't it announced by the Vatican itself a few months back that this investigation had shown there was no wrongdoing on the part of IOR and therefore some 24 million euros in sequestered IOR funds were released by the Italian government? And why is it now being made to appear that Gotti Tedeschi was personally being investigated for suspected money-laundering activities at IOR, when he was named in the investigation only because he happened to be the president of IOR, not because he himself is personally suspected of money-laundering.]

In a statement Thursday, the Holy See said the vote was taken because of Tedeschi's failure to fulfill the "primary functions of his office."

It said it hoped to find a new president who will "rebuild relationships with the institute and the financial community based on mutual respect based on internationally accepted banking standards."

I will translate the Il Sole article which sounds more 'rational' - and which once more points to Cardinal Bertone as the villain - and which was obviously written before the Vatican statement cited by the AP.... Meanwhile, I have found the Vatican statement on the Italian service online of Vatican Radio, so I will translate it first. I can only describe the language of the report, as well as the note on which it was based, as hostile - unaccountably and uncharitably so. Also, it does not pass the test of Journalism 101 not to mention the names of those who participated in the no-confidence vote. The statement ought to have carried their names.

'No confidence' vote against
IOR president Gotti Tedeschi
Translated from the Italian service of

May 24, 2012

The Administrative Council of the IOR met in ordinary session today. Among the items on the agenda was, once more, the governance of the institute, which for some time now, has raised progressive concern in the Council, because notwithstanding repeated communications about this to Prof. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, IOR president, the situation has deteriorated further. [This is a subjective statement that has no place in a news report, especially since it is not attributed to anyone in particular, and appears to be the view of the newswriter - who may have been directed to present the report as such!]

After deliberating, the Board unanimously adopted a no-confidence vote in the President for failing to carry out various functions of primary importance in his position. On this basis, the following statement was released:

---

At the ordinary meeting of the Administrative Council of the IOR on May 24, 2012, at 2 p.m., this Council adopted a no-confidence motion in President Gotti Tedeschi and has recommended the cessation of his mandate as President and as member of this Council.

The Council members are saddened by the events which led to the n-confidence vote, but they consider this action important to maintain the vitality of the Institute.

The Council now looks forward to the process of finding a new and excellent President who will help the Institute to restore efficient and broad relations between the Institute and the financial community, based on mutual respect for internationally accepted banking standards.

---

Tomorrow the Commission of Cardinals overseeing IOR will meet to consider the consequences of the Council's decision and decide the most timely measures for the future.

Whatever the immediate and ulterior reasons for Gotti Tedeschi's firing, it is a shabby way to treat someone who, when he was brought in to head IOR in 2009, was touted by the Vatican and financial quarters as the very man to clean house at IOR. And who seems to have succeeded by all accounts. Why could this not have been handled in a more civilized manner, at a time when Vatican PR is already at a very low ebb?;... Meanwhile, here is the Il Sole article:

Gotti Tedeschi leaves IOR after
standoff on financial transparency
by Carlo Marroni
Translated from

May 24, 2012

The president of the Vatican IOR, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, has left the position he has occupied since October 2009.

The decision - which has been up in the air for some time - came today at a meeting of the Vatican quasi-bank's Administrative Council.

It is the epilog to a hard standoff between Gotti Tedeschi and some powers-that-be at the Vatican on the application of the new Vatican law for financial transparency and the conduct of IOR affairs, which is run administratively by Paolo Cipriani, its director-general.

Gotti Tedeschi's position will be temporarily assumed by the vice-president, German banker Ronald Hermann Schmitz.

The leadership crisis in the Vatican's lead financial agency erupted in January when a new law was launched calling into question some of the reforms contained in an unprecedented law on financial transparency promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI on December 30, 2010.

The 2010 law was a complete revision of procedures regarding financial transactions by all agencies of the Vatican. It followed an investigation by a Rome prosecutor of IOR transactions through a private Italian bank for possible violation of international norms against money-laundering. Gotti Tedeschi and Cipriani, as the top IOR officers, were named in the investigation.

The Italian government also sequestered 23 million euros of IOR funds during the investigation. The funds were subsequently released. [The IOR explained that the sum involved was the Institute's own funds, not those of a client or clients, which it intended to invest in German bonds.]

Benedict XVI's reform instituted the AIF, the authority for financial information, headed by Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who is also president of APSA, the Administration of the Apostolic See's Patrimony. The AIF was given ample supervisory powers over all financial transactions in all Vatican agencies.

But last January 25, at the instance of Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone and the new president of Vatican City Governatorate, Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, a Bertone protege - a new internal law was promulgated which reduced the powers of the AIF, and granted supervisory powers as well to the Secretariat of State, the Governatorate and the Vatican Gendarmerie.

This new law was contested by Cardinal Nicora and by Gotti Tedeschi, as revealed in some documents exposed in the Vatileaks dump. But even Moneyval, the Council of Europe watchdog on anti-money laundering measures instituted by European financial institutions, questioned the January changes in its recent visit to evaluate the Vatican's system against money laundering. These changes were the subject of a recent meeting in Strasbourg between Moneyval and a Vatican delegation.

The standoff between the Nicora-Gotti Tedeschi and the Bertone-Bertello factions hardened in recent weeks, to the point that communications between Gotti Tedeschi and Cipriani broke off.

Today, before their meeting, the Administrative Council (Gotti Tedeschi, Cipriani and three other lay directors) was informed by the Secretariat of State that Gotti Tedeschi no longer had the confidence of that dicastery.

Gotti Tedeschi, who heads the Council, came to the meeting and presented his resignation before the Council could act, and then walked out.

So, a completely different picture emerges from a disinterested reporter, who filed the story hours before the Vatican statement came out.... My first reaction to this was: "OMG, Gianluigi Nuzzi (who considers himself the world's expert on all things IOR after his book Vaticano spa) completely missed this story!", which would have been an authentic scoop for him! - a far more legitimate story than the pathetic low-grade documents he exposed in SUA SANTITA. But apparently, he has been so focused on his new book that he failed to keep his eye on the IOR ball, on his 'home turf', so to speak!

Of course, all this regretfully - and even disgustingly - leaves Benedict XVI once more 'trapped' by Vatican infighting, and what looks like another misguided power grab by Cardinal Bertone, who seems not to learn his lessons at all . It's most unfair for him to keep doing this to the Pope - first the CEI, then the Toniolo Institute, then San Raffaele. And now this. From the outside looking in, we obviously cannot tell what his problem is. But the objective fact is that the Pope overruled him on the first three attempts, so obviously the Pope disagreed with him on these major but misguided initiatives. "If you don't succeed, try and try again" is not applicable when you are consistently wrong. It becomes insanity! Could this be the straw that will finally break the camel's back, the drop that will make the cup of patience and forbearance finally run over??? Let us all pray that the Holy Spirit leads the Pope to do the right thing soon about Cardinal Bertone!

I wonder how the OR, which is directly under Cardinal Bertone, but which has been using Gotti Tedeschi for its voice on all things financial and economic for the past five years, will treat this story - and Gotti Tedeschi!

Andrea Tornielli's account bears out Il Sole's version that Gotti Tedeschi resigned before the no-confidence vote was taken but although the subhead suggests a background, he shies away from saying so in the story itself. Perhaps he is gathering more facts????...

Gotti Tedeschi resigns from IOR
in light of tensions over the San Raffaele case
and the Vatican transparency law
by ANDREA TORNIELLI

May 24, 2012

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has resigned from his post as President of the IOR, the Institute for the Works of Religion. He did so during a meeting of the Supervisory Council, the Vatican bank’s administrative council for the laity, before a no-confidence vote was passed.
He is to be succeeded by Vice President Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz.

The reason behind the Italian banker and economist’s decision seem to be the internal tensions that have been growing over the past months over the new transparency law which was supposed to get the Holy See onto the white-list of financially virtuous countries.

Gotti Tedeschi was appointed as President of the Vatican bank in 2009, to advance financial transparency work, as Benedict XVI had requested. A few months after his arrival, the IOR became involved in an inquiry carried out by the Roman magistrate into some money transfers: Gotti Tedeschi decided to collaborate with the judges, agreeing to answer all questions without the need for any international letters of request.

[ Tornielli continues and concludes his report by quoting from the Vatican statement announcing the no-confidence vote but not saying that Gotti Tedeschi resigned before he could be fired. It is very lamentable - if not reprehensible - that the Vatican statement should be dishonest about this if this was the case!]

The OR issue for 5/25/12 carries front-page pictures of the Bulgarian and Macedonian Presidents calling on Pope Benedict XVI today, Thursday, but no other information, apart from identifying them and saying why they came to call... For now, I will use the Daylife photo grid of the photos taken by the news agencies because the OR pictures are more washed out than usual...


Bulgarian and Macedonian presidents
call on Pope Benedict XVI as
Orthodox Churches celebrate
the Feast of Saints Cyril and Metodius

The Holy Father met separately with two official delegations to commemorate the annual observance of the liturgical feast
of Saints Cyril and Metodius, brothers who evangelized the Slavic peoples:

- H.E. Rosen Plevneliev, presidnet of the Republic of Bulgaria, and his delegation; and
- H.E. Nikola Gruevski, President Republic of Macedonia, and his delegation.

The Orthodox world celebrates the brother-saints' feast on May 24, while the Latin Church observes it on February 14 (the day of Cyril's death). Slavic pilgrims come to Rome for the brothers' feast day because St. Cyril, who died in Rome, is buried in the Basilica of San Clemente.




SAINTS CYRIL AND METODIUS (9th century), Apostles to the Slavs, Co-Patrons of Europe


The two brothers were born (Cyril in 826, Methodius in 815) to an influential Greek family in Thessaloniki but soon moved to Constantinople. Methodius became a monk, eventually becoming abbot of a monastery while carrying out important administrative functions for the Byzantine Empire. His younger brother concentrated on his studies, even learning Aramaic, Jewish and Arabic, later becoming a university professor. Because of his language skills, the emperor sent him on a peace mission to the reigning Caliph, and later to a Byzantine dependency to prevent the spread of Judaism.

The brothers first worked together when they were sent to evangelize at the request of the Prince of Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic). For this purpose, they decided to translate the Bible to Slavonic; they they devised an alphabet that would best represent Slavonic sounds - this eventually developed into the Cyrillic used by Russia and other Eastern European Slavic languages.

In 867, the brothers were invited to Rome by Pope Nicholas III, at which time they brought with them the relics of Pope St. Clement, that Cyril had recovered in the Crimea on one of his expeditions. (Clement was persecuted under Trajan, exiled to a quarry and then thrown into the Black Sea weighed down with an anchor. Cyril apparently found bones that had been buried with an anchor.)

On this visit, Cyril was ailing, and sensing his end was near, he decided to become a monk. He died 50 days later. At his funeral procession in Rome in 869, the people are said to have expressed their own version of 'Santo subito'. He was buried in what would become, appropriately the present-day Basilica of San Clemente in Rome which is built over two former basilicas. St. Cyril's tomb was discovered in 1863 during archeological excavations on the underlying churches.

Methodius returned to Moravia to carry on their work for another 16 years, most of which he spent fighting off challenges from the German bishops of Salzburg and Regensburg who resented that part of their jurisdictions were assigned to his new archdiocese. Pope Adrian II Rome supported him in these disputes and also approved the Slavic liturgy.

Three years after he died (884), widespread political changes resulted in the exile of all his missionaries from Moravia - it is thought that their dispersal throughout the rest of Eastern Europe was responsible for spreading Christianity throughout the Slavic world.

The two brothers were immediately venerated by the Eastern Orthodox Church as 'Equal to the Apostles', but they were not introduced into the Roman Catholic liturgy until 1880. One hundred years later, John Paul II would declare them Co-Patrons of Europe together with St. Benedict of Norcia.

The feast of the two brothers is observed by the Catholic Church on Feb. 14, the day of Cyril's death. Pope Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis to them on June 17, 2009.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/05/2012 01:55]

Pope tells Italian bishops
New Evangelization must begin with
their own personal conversion
by David Kerr



Sorry for the poor photos - best I could do with what's available from the OR.

VATICAN CITY, May 24, 2012 (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI told the bishops of Italy today that personal holiness is an indispensable first step to reconverting their country and the Western world to Christianity.

"The fundamental condition in order to be able to speak about God is to speak with God, increasingly to become men of God, nourished by an intense life of prayer and molded by his grace,” the Pope said on May 24.

He encouraged his fellow bishops to allow themselves “to be found and seized by God so as to help the people we meet be touched by the Truth.”

Pope Benedict made his remarks to the participants of the 64th General Assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference, which is being held at the Vatican May 21--25.

The Italian bishops gathered in the Vatican’s Synod Hall, where they heard the Pope lament how for many people in the West, God has “become the great Unknown and Jesus is simply an important figure of the past.”

The Pope said that this is resulting in people no longer understanding the “profound value “ of the “spiritual and moral patrimony” that the West’s roots are in and that “is its lifeblood.” What was once “fertile land,” he said, is now at risk of “becoming a barren desert and the good seed (is in danger) of being suffocated, trampled on and lost.”

Even many baptized people in the West “have lost their identity” and “do not know the essential contents of the faith, or they believe they can cultivate faith without ecclesial mediation,” he warned the bishops.

The practical impact of this, Pope Benedict said, is that while many baptized “look doubtfully at Church teaching,” others have reduced “the Kingdom of God to certain broad values, which are certainly related to the Gospel but which do not touch the central nucleus of Christian faith.”

But the Pope did not finish his remarks without offering a solution to the Italian bishops.

He pointed them to the New Evangelization, which has its roots in the prophetic words of Pope John XXIII. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962, John XXIII said that the council would help “transmit pure and integral doctrine, without any attenuation or misrepresentation” but in a new way “according to what is required by our times.”

This, explained Pope Benedict, is the key or “hermeneutic” of “continuity and reform” required to properly understand the council today.

He repeated, though, that any new evangelization will not be achieved simply by “new methods of announcing the Gospel” or by “pastoral activity” but only through personal conversion.

“We must begin again from God, celebrated, professed and witnessed,” said the Pope. “Our primary task, our true and only task, remains that of dedicating our lives to the one thing that is truly dependable, necessary and ultimate.”

Before concluding with a prayer to the Holy Spirit, Pope Benedict assured the bishops that the Catholic faith preached by word and example still has the power to draw all people to Christ.

“Where space is given to the Gospel, and therefore to friendship with Christ, man realizes he is the object of a love which purifies, warms, renews, and makes us capable of serving mankind with divine love,” he said.

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's address:

---

Venerated and beloved brothers:

Your annual gathering in plenary assembly, is a moment of grace when you live a profound experience of confrontation, sharing and discernment for a common journey, inspired by the Spirit of the Risen Lord. It is a moment of grace that manifests the nature of the Church.

I thank Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco for the kind words with which he welcomed me, in your behalf.

To you, Eminence, my best wishes for your continued leadership of the Italian bishops' conference. May the collegial affection that animates you increasingly nourish your collaboration in the service of ecclesial communion and for the common good of the Italian nation, in a fruitful dialog with her civilian institutions.

In your new five-year term, you will pursue together the ecclesial renewal indicated by the Second Vatican Council. May the 50th anniversary of its opening, which we will celebrate in the fall, be reason for a deeper study of its texts, which is the condition for a dynamic and faithful reception of these teachings.

"What most interests the Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine be safeguarded and taught in the most effective way", said Blessed Pope John XXIII in his opening address to the Council. It is well worth reading and meditating on these words.

The Pope called upon the Council Fathers to study in depth and to present this perennial doctrine in continuity with the millenary tradition of the Church - "to transmit the doctrine, pure and integral, without attenuation or misrepresentation", but in a new way, "as required by our time". (Address at the solemn opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Oct. 11, 1962).

With this key to reading and applying [the teachings of Vatican II] - certainly not in the perspective of an unacceptable hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture, but in a hermeneutic of continuity and reform - to heed the Council and adopt its authoritative instructions constitutes the way to identify the ways in which the Church can offer a significant response to the great social and cultural transformations of our time, which have visible consequences even on the religious dimension.

Scientific rationality and technological culture, indeed, do not only tend to homogenize the world, but often go beyond their respective spheres, claiming to delineate the perimeter of the certainties of reason solely with the empirical criteria of their own conquests.

Thus the human capacity ends up being the measure of action, detached from every moral norm. It is precisely in such a context that a singular and growing demand for spirituality and the supernatural cannot fail to emerge, the sign of the uneasiness lodged in the heart of man when it is not open to the transcendent horizon of God.

This situation of secularism characterizes above all the societies of ancient Christian tradition and erodes the cultural fabric which, until the recent past, was a unifying reference that could embrace the entire human existence and mark its most significant moments, from birth to the passage to eternal life.

The spiritual and moral patrimony in which the West is rooted and which constitutes its lifeblood is no longer understood today for its profound value, to the point that increasingly, the occasions of truth are no longer grasped. Even fertile earth risks becoming an inhospitable desert, and good seed can be stifled, trampled on and lost.

A sign of this is the diminution of religious practice, visible in [lack of] participation at the Eucharistic liturgy, and even more, in the Sacrament of Penance. So many baptized persons have misplaced their identity and sense of belonging. They do not know the essential contents of the faith, or they think they can cultivate it without need of ecclesial mediation.

While many look doubtfully on the truths taught by the Church, others have reduced the Kingdom of God to a few major values which certainly have to do with the Gospel but which nonetheless have nothing to do with the central nucleus of the Christian faith.

The Kingdom of God is a gift which transcends us. As Blessed John Payul II affirmed, "The Kingdom is not a concept, a doctrine, a program subject to free elaboration, but is first of all a person who has the face and the name of Jesus of Nazareth, image of the invisible God" (John Paul II, Enc. Redemptoris missio, Dec. 7, 1990, 18).

Unfortunately, God remains excluded from the horizon of so many persons. And when it does not encounter indifference, closedness or rejection, any discourse about God would nevertheless be relegated to the sphere of the subjective, reduced to an intimate private fact, marginalized in the public consciousness.

The heart of the crisis that is wounding Europe - a spiritual and moral crisis - passes through that abandonment, that lack of openness to the Transcendent: Man claims to have an identity that is completed simply by himself.

In this context, how can we live up to the responsibility that has been entrusted to us by the Lord? How can we sow the Word of God with confidence so that everyone can find truth about himself, his own authenticity and hope?

We all know that new methods of evangelical proclamation or pastoral action cannot suffice for the Christian message to receive maximum acceptance and sharing.

In preparing for Vatican II, the prevailing question which the Council intended to answer, was: "Church, what do you have to say about yourself?" In examining this question deeply, the Council Fathers were led back, so to speak, to the heart of the question: To start again from God - celebrated, professed, and witnessed.

Externally by chance, but fundamentally not by chance, the first Constitution approved by Vatican II was that on Sacred Liturgy: Divine worship orients man towards the City of the future and restores the primacy of God, shapes the Church, is incessantly called forth by the Word of God, and shows the world the fruitfulness of the encounter with God.

In turn, while we ought to cultivate an appreciative regard for the growth of good seed even in terrain which is often arid, we must also note than our own situation requires a renewed impulse which aims at what is essential in the faith and in Christian life.

At a time when God has become for many the great Unknown, and Jesus simply a great personage from the past, missionary action cannot be relaunched without a renewal of the quality of our own faith and our prayer. We shall not be capable of offering adequate responses without a new acceptance of the gift of grace. We shall not be able to conquer men for the Gospel if we don't first turn ourselves towards a profound experience of God.

Dear Brothers, our first, true and only task is to commit our life to that which is truly worthwhile and which endures, that which is truly reliable, necessary and ultimate. Men live from God - He whom they often unconsciously or only blindly seek in order to give full meaning to existence. We have the task of announcing him, showing him, leading others to encounter him.

But it is important always to remember that the first condition for speaking about God is to speak to God, to become more and more men of God, nourished by an intense life of prayer and shaped by his grace.

St. Augustine, after a troubled journey in his sincere search for the truth, finally arrived at finding truth in God. And then he became aware of a singular aspect that filled his heart with wonder and joy. He understood that throughout his journey, ti was Truth that was seeking him out and which had found him.

I wish to say to everyone: let us allow ourselves to be found and gripped by God so that we may help every person we meet to be reached by Truth. It is from our relationship with him that our communion is born, and that the ecclesial community is generated that embraces all times and all places to constitute the one People of God.

That is why I decreed a Year of Faith, which will begin on October 11, in order to rediscover and accept once more this precious gift that is the faith, to know much more profoundly the truths which constitute our vital lifeblood, to lead man today, who is often distracted, to a renewed encounter with Jesus Christ - the Way, the Truth and the Life.

In the midst of transformations which affected many strata of mankind, the Servant of God Paul VI clearly indicated that the task of the Church was to "affect, and as it were, to upset, through the power of the Gospel, mankind's criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are opposed to the Word of God and the plan of salvation" (Ap. Exhort. Evangelii nuntiandi, Dec. 8, 1975, 19).

I wish to recall that, on the occasion of his first visit as Pope to his native land, Blessed John Paul II visited the industrial district of Cracow which had been conceived a a kind of 'Godless city'. Only the obstinacy of the workers had resulted in the erection first, of a Cross, and then a church.

In those signs, the Pope recognized the beginning of what he called, for the first time, 'new evangelization', going on to say that evangelization in the new millennium must refer itself to the Second Vatican Council. It must be, he said, as the Council teaches, the common work of bishops, priests, religious and laymen, of parents and their children". He concluded: "You have built a church; now edify your life with the Gospel" (Homily, Shrine of the Holy Cross, Mogila, June 9, 1979).

Dear brother bishops, the old and new mission that is before us is to introduce men and women of our time to a relationship with God, help them to open their mind and heart to that God who seeks them and wants to be close to them - we must lead them to understand that following his will is not a restriction of freedom but it is to be truly free to realize true good in life.

God is the guarantor, not the competitor, of our happiness, and wherever the Gospel - thus, the friendship of Christ - comes in, man experiences being the object of a love that purifies, warms up and renews us, that makes us capable of loving and serving men with divine love.

As the principal theme of your assembly proves very opportunely, the new evangelization needs adults who are 'mature in the faith and witnesses to humanity'. Attention to the world of adults shows your awareness of the decisive role of those who are called upon, in the various spheres of life, to assume an educational responsibility towards the new generations.

Be watchful and work in such a way that the Christian community may be able to form persons who are mature in their faith because they have encountered Jesus Christ, who has become the fundamental reference for their life. Persons who know him because they love him and who love him because they have come to know him. Persons capable of offering solid and credible reasons for life.

In this formative journey, twenty years since its first publication, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is particularly important, as a valuable aid towards an organic and complete knowledge of the contents of the faith, and as a guide to encountering Christ. With the help of this instrument, may assent to faith become a criterion of intelligence and action that involves man's whole life.

Since we are in the nine-day period before Pentecost, I wish to conclude this reflection with a prayer to the Holy Spirit:

Spirit of Life, who, in the beginning, hovered over the abyss,
help man in our time to understand
that the exclusion of God will lead him
to get lost in the desert of the world,
and that only where faith enters,
there will dignity and freedom flourish
and all of society can be built on justice.

Spirit of Pentecost, who makes of the Church one Body,
restore to us who were baptized
an authentic experience of communion;
make us a living sign of the presence
of the Risen Lord in the world,
a community of saints who live
in the service of charity.

Holy Spirit, who makes mission possible,
make us recognize that, even in our time,
so many persons are in search of the truth
about their existence and about the world.
Make us collaborators of their joy
by announcing the Gospel of Jesus Christ,
seed for God's field which makes the soil of life good
and assures the abundance of the harvest.

Amen.

---

Thousands of pilgrims reach Sheshan
on Day of Prayer for China
by Jian Mei




Sheshan, May 24 (AsiaNews) - Thousands of pilgrims from Shanghai and across the country gathered to pray at the Our Lady of Sheshan Basilica today, 24 May, feast day of Mary Help of Christians, anniversary of the Day of Prayer for the Church in China set aside by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007, a day that also marks the feast day of the national Marian shrine.


Procession in 2008. No similar photo, showing the image of Our Lady of Sheshan, was available this year from Asianews, from which the other photos below come from.


Amid a drizzle, at half-past 8, Fr Thaddeus Ma Daqin, vicar general of Shanghai, led the crowd of Catholics in a procession from the Mid-hill Church, carrying the Statue of the Blessed Mother, up to the hilltop basilica.



Once at the hilltop church, Father Ma and almost 40 priests celebrated the Eucharist. Sheshan novices sang during the Mass. There were more than 3,000 faithful inside the basilica for the Mass.

In his homily, Father Ma explained the 'Prayer to Our Lady of Sheshan' written by Pope Benedict XVI for this particular day, Joseph, a Shanghai Catholic, told AsiaNews.

He also called the participating faithful to give reverence to our Blessed Mother and to worship Jesus Christ. "Father Ma's warm and emotional homily moved the faithful at the scene," Joseph said.

In the past, the feast day of Our Lady of Sheshan shrine used to draw up to 200,000 pilgrims from all over China.

Since 2008, a year after the Pope set aside that day as a Day of Prayer for the Church in China, the government has not allowed pilgrims from any diocese, except that of Shanghai, to visit the shrine in Sheshan.

For this reason, many dioceses mark the feast day in shrines closer to hope with Masses, Eucharistic adorations and vigils.

This year, the feast day saw a new church consecrated in Shanxi province.

Fr John, a priest from the open Church in Hebei province, told AsiaNews that he led a pilgrimage to Sheshan earlier this month. He found the security very tight, with many plainclothes police were monitoring the pilgrimage site.

Some underground priests told AsiaNews that they could not have big celebrations as security was tight, but they did remind their parishioners to pray for the suffering Church in China and for harmony in their respective dioceses.

"I especially prayed for the all the bishops and pastors in China, especially those who are under detention. May the Lord strengthen their faith. We feel lonely in this struggle for the freedom of faith," Fr Peter, an underground priest, noted.

Last week, a priest and a seminarian from the underground community in Baoding were taken into custody by police and taken to an unknown place.

They are likely to undergo sessions of political indoctrination and brain washing to get them to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose goal is to control Catholics and set up a Church independent of the Pope.

Meanwhile, Bishop Li Yi of Lu'an (Changzhi, Shanxi), 89, died this afternoon, on the special Day of Prayer for China. Ordained in 1949, he was consecrated as coadjutor of Changzhi in 1998.