A Church persecuted
by the sins of her children
This is the 'terrifying' relevance of the message of Fatima, according to Benedict XVI.
But the last word is always the goodness and mercy of God.
And Christians must earn it in prayer, penitence and witness.
ROME, May 14, 2010 – Curiously, Benedict XVI spoke the most striking words of his four-day trip to Portugal, centered on a pilgrimage to Fatima, before he landed in Lisbon, while he was still in flight, the morning of Tuesday, April 11.
He spoke them, apparently off the cuff, in response to a question posed by journalists on the airplane.
Actually, his words were carefully chosen. The questions had been presented to him ahead of time by the director of the Vatican press office, Fr. Federico Lombardi. And the Pope had chosen three of them, the third of which concerned the "secret" of Fatima and how it could relate to the scandal of priestly pedophilia.
Here is the question with the Pope's answer:
Now we come to Fatima, which will be the spiritual culmination of this trip. Holy Father, what meaning do the apparitions of Fatima have for us today? When you presented the text of Third Secret of Fatima at the Vatican Press Office in June 2000, many of us and other colleagues asked if the message of the secret could be extended, beyond the assassination attempt against John Paul II, to the sufferings of other Popes. Could the context of that vision also be extended to the suffering of the Church today, for the sins of sexual abuse of minors?
First of all, I want to express my joy at going to Fatima, to pray before Our Lady of Fatima, which is for us a sign of the presence of faith - that from little children, a new power of the faith was born, not limited to them, but with a message for the whole world that touches history in the present and illumines it.
In 2000, during the presentation, I said that an apparition, that is, a supernatural impulse does not come only from the imagination of the person [perceiving it] but in fact, from the Virgin Mary herself. Such ab impulse enters the [perceiving] subject and is expressed according to the possibilities of the subject, who is conditioned by his or her historical, personal and temperamental circumstances. Therefore the subject translates this great supernatural stimulus into his/her own possibilities to see, imagine and express it.
But in the expressions formulated by the subject, there is a hidden content that goes beyond, goes deeper. Only in the course of history will we be able to see all this depth which was, shall we say, 'clothed', in this vision that was made concrete to actual persons.
Therefore I would say, even in this case, beyond the great vision of the Pope's suffering, which we attributed in the first instance to John Paul II, other realities about the future of the Church are also indicated that will gradually develop and become clear.
And so it is true that beyond the moment indicated by the vision, it also speaks and sees the need for Passion (suffering) in the Church, which is naturally reflected in the person of the Pope. But the Pope represents the Church, and therefore, the sufferings indicated are those of the Church.
The Lord has told us that the Church would always suffer in various ways till the end of the world. The important thing is that the message, Fatima's answer [to such suffering], does not substantially refer to particular situations, but is the fundamental answer itself, namely, permanent [continuing] conversion, penitence, prayer, and the three theological virtues- faith, hope and charity.
Thus we see the true and fundamental response that the Church must give, that each of us must give, in this situation.
As to any new thing that we may find in this message today, there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church do not only come from outside, but that the sufferings of the Church also come from within the Church, from the sin that exists in the Church.
We have always seen this, but today we see it in a really rerrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies but is born from sin within the Church, and therefore the Church has a profound need to re-learn penitence, to accept purification, to re-learn forgiveness, on the one hand, but also the need for justice. Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice.
So we must relearn the essentials: conversion, prayer, penitence and the theological virtues. But we must be realistic: evil always attacks - it attacks from within and from without - but also that the powers of goodness are present, and that ultimately, the Lord is stronger than evil, and for us, Our Lady is the guarantee. The goodness of God is always the last word in history.
These words of Benedict XVI were a twofold shock to some observers.
First of all, because the interpretation Papa Ratzinger gave to the 'third secret' was not limited to what has happened, as the standard Church interpretations have been, but is open to the present and the future.
"We would be wrong to think that Fatima’s prophetic mission is done," he said again to the faithful gathered at the shrine.
And in the second place, because of the statement that "the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from outside enemies but is born from sin within the Church." [COLORE=#1216FF
[When the MSM reported this statement, reporters omitted the important words 'is born' which is unmistakable in the Pope's words in Italian!]
Here again, he contradicts the view expressed by many ecclesiastics,
who claim that the Church suffers primarily from the attacks against it from the outside.
[But I must protest this dismissive misreading of what 'many ecclesiastics' say. Those who have spoken out against the anti-Pope media campaign do not claim that "the attacks are primarily from the outside". What is claimed - and factually so - is that attacks from the outside are a deliberate campaign to weaken, if not to bring down, the Church.
I don't think anyone like Cardinal Sodano, for instance, who has been falsely accused of dismissing media reports of sexual abuse as 'petty gossip' (and for whom I hold no particular brief but deserves fairness), ever thought that the problems of the Church are entirely caused by external forces, much less that the Church - the men who represent it - have not done anything wrong! That is a facile generalization that is fallacious, as most generalizations often are.]
But in both cases, Ratzinger did nothing but to confirm and enunciate views he had formulated on previous occasions.
Just recall, for example, this passage from the homily – also improvised – that he gave during the Mass he celebrated last April 15 with the members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission:
There is a tendency in exegesis to say that Jesus in Galilee announced unconditional grace, absolutely unconditional, therefore, a grace without repentance, grace as such, without human preconditions. But this is a false interpretation of grace.
Repentance is grace. It is a grace that we can recognize our sins, it is a grace that we acknowledge the need for renewal, for change, for a transformation of our being. Repentance - to be able to do penance - is a gift of grace.
I must say that we Christians have in recent times avoided the word repentance, which appears to us rather harsh. Now, under the attacks by a world that tells us of our sins, we can see that to do penance is a grace. We can see it is necessary to do penance - which is to acknowledge what is wrong in our life, to be open to forgiveness, to prepare for forgiveness, to allow ourselves to be transformed.
The pain of repentance, namely of purification, of transformation - such pain is grace, because it is renewal, the work of divine mercy.
And on March 19, in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland, he wrote similar things. For example, that the scandals of pedophilia among the clergy "have obscured the light of the Gospel to a degree that not even centuries of persecution succeeded in doing."
And that only a journey of penance, on the part of the entire Church of that country, could open the way to purification and conversion – in a word, to grace.
Also in the letter to the Catholics of Ireland, Benedict XVI wrote that the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by priests "has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith."
For Pope Benedict, the weakening of faith is the greatest danger not only for today's world, but also for the Church. Therefore, he associates with this danger what he calls the "priority" of his mission as pontiff.
He wrote this with crystalline clarity in the memorable letter that he addressed to the bishops of the whole world on March 10, 2009:
"In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; that God whose face we recognize in a love which persists 'to the end' (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."
And he said it again, in the exact same words, on the grounds of the shrine of Fatima, the evening of May 12 this year, in blessing the torches before the recitation of the rosary:
"In our time, when the faith in many places seems like a light in danger of being snuffed out for ever, the highest priority is to make God visible in the world and to open to humanity a way to God. And not to any god, but to the God who spoke on Sinai; the God whose face we recognize in the love borne to the very end (cf. Jn 13:1) in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."
Speaking to the bishops of Portugal, on the afternoon of Thursday, May 13, Benedict XVI again proposed this priority for all Catholics of that country: "Keep the prophetic dimension alive, without muzzling it, on the stage of the present world, because 'the word of God is not chained!' (2 Timothy 2:9)."
But he also warned them that simple speeches or moral appeals are not enough to witness to the Christian faith. A holy life is necessasry.
The same holiness that this Pope has long been asking for, above all from priests. Especially in the Year for Priests, which is about to conclude next month, at the center of which he placed as a model a humble nineteenth-century country priest, the holy Curé of Ars.
Because "precisely from the little ones is born a new power of faith". From the little ones like the three little shepherds of Fatima.
Second from left, the handwritten text by Sor Lucia of the 'third secret'; next to it, a painting of the 'Third Secret', by Georgette Backs, 2005.
It took me some time to do this post, because in the rush to post items on the day the Pope arrived in Fatima, I posted the Vatican translation of his inflight interview without going through it, as I usually do. And now, going through Magister's post, I checked that English translation and discovered to my horror that it was 'doctored' in quite a few unnecessary ways.
Luckily, I remember that shortly after the Pope arrived in Lisbon, Andrea Tornielli had posted his transcription of the interview for his newspaper, Il Giornale. The translation in the above post is mine (from Tornielli's transcription), as is the translation of the Pope's homily to the members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (from the original Italian transcript).
BTW, I hardly ever use the English translations provided for Magister's posts as is, because I find them too literal, and often awkward and unidiomatic. So I always refer to his original article as written in Italian.)
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/05/2010 21:18]