Most of the first stories on the Pope's Msssage for WYD 2011, including those in the Italian media, have focused on what he said about his own youth, as if he were saying these things for the first time. In that sense, the following story by AFP is typical - never mind that Joseph Ratzinger discussed these things amply and openly in his memoir MILESTONES back in 1997, and in various other interviews since then... All very well, but today's reporting almost completely misses the main thrust of his message to the youth.
Pope gives rare glimpse into youth
and vocation in Nazi Germany
VATICAN CITY, Sept. 3 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI offered a rare glimpse into his youth, recalling the ambitions of his generation in Nazi Germany and his vocation in a message ahead of the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid.
"During the Nazi dictatorship and the war, we were, so to speak, 'hemmed in' by the dominant power structure. So we wanted to break out into the open, to experience the whole range of human possibilities," the Pope said.
Born in 1927 in the German region of Bavaria, Joseph Ratzinger was conscripted into Adolf Hitler's army in the last few months of World War II.
"We were not willing to settle for a conventional middle-class life," Pope Benedict said, comparing his own generation's ambitions with those of today's youth. "Naturally, part of that was due to the times we lived in," he added.
The Pope also discussed his vocation as a priest and his doubts about it after the war.
"I was somehow aware quite early on that the Lord wanted me to be a priest," the Pope said.
"Then later, after the war, when I was in the seminary and at university on the way towards that goal, I had to recapture that certainty. I had to ask myself: is this really the path I was meant to take?" the Pope said.
Pope Benedict said he then found certainty that priesthood was the right path for him.
World Youth Day, launched by Benedict XVI's predecessor John Paul II, is held in a different city every two or three years.
The last occasion was in 2008 in Sydney, Australia.
Meanwhile, Lella on her blog has drawn attention to this unusual reaction from someone who is apparently very much a 'secularist'...
What if the Pope is right?
by Davide Orecchio
Translated from his blog
Sept. 3, 2010
This time, Ratzinger has said something I like. His letter to the youth is beautiful. Read it in full, go beyond the news agencies' force-fitted headlines )Ex: "God first, before work"). And absorb all its theological implications (after all, he's the Pope). Set aside his attack on relativism and proceed to the core of the message, which is this:
"Dear young people, think big! Do not aim only for a permanent sinecure that someone may give you like alms sooner or later. Do not think only of having a 'secure job' for yourself in this society. Think instead of changing this society. Dream of changing it. Dream of your happiness and work to realize it. And if you do, if you are brave and courageous enough to do so, then you will see that the problem of work will resolve itself."
[The above is not a direct quote from the Letter for WYD 2011 at all! It is - mirabile dictu - Orechhio's own synthesis of what the Pope has been saying not just in this letter, but on various occasions, and which was, in fact, the theme fo Bruno Mastroianni's last opienion piece for TEMPI (see post at the top of this page).]
I am not a fan of the Vatican. I attend Gay Pride events out of sheer ideology, and I tremble with emotion whenever I pass by a statue of Giordano Bruno. But this letter, too, has moved me.
Ratzinger calls on the youth to achieve 'something great, something new', and not to get lost in the normality of 'conventional midle-class life'.
He writes:
"Part of being young is desiring something beyond everyday life and a secure job, a yearning for something really and truly greater. Is this simply an empty dream that fades away as we become older? No! Men and women were created for something great, for infinity. Nothing else will ever be enough."
If the young people of 1943 had been content with permanent sinecures [i.e., guaranteed jobs in government], would they have gone after the fascists and the Nazis?
If the young people of 1968 had been content with permanent sinecures, would they have been able to challenge authority?
The guaranteed job is a metaphor whose dark side is job precariousness, the slavery of what exists, the opposite of dreaming, the incubus to reality.
The guaranteed job, today, in Italy, in the world, is Matrix, an evil software. In the best of hypotheses, it's blackmail - ask the Fiat workers in Pomigliano or the Chinese laborers who manufacture the iPads.
[I must confess I don't get the sense of this paragraph at all. I do not know what the Matrix software is and why it is evil and how it can blackmail laborers.]
So dear young people, role up your sleeves and work to give us a different world in which the 'guaranteed jobs' are more desirable adn worthy.
Perhaps I am exaggerating in my Ratzingerian exegesis, so let me stop here...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 04/09/2010 01:28]