The attacks on the Pope show
this Papacy is 'explosive'
Translated from
Sept. 2, 2010
Vacation over, things are back to usual in the media. The Pope speaks about something noble like 'universal brotherhood' and the media reduce it to 'a severe admonition directed at [French President'] Sarkozy'. Are we surprised?
[Mastroianni wrote this before the Pope's WYD 2011 message was released, so he has not factored in how the MSM in Italy trivialized it - to the point that the Pope himself decided to summarize its main points in his Angelus message yesterday - much less how the Anglophone MSM have so far virtually ignored it. However, I must point out once more that Mastroianni uncannily anticipated one of the themes of the message in his 8/31 opinion column for TEMPI. which was about how Benedict XVI challenges the faithful 'to desire great things'..]
The same thing happened to the Fox News interview with Mons. Scicluna, promoter of justice at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, about his work on sexual abuse cases presented against priests and the attention Cardinal Ratzinger gave to these cases.
Did anyone see the Scicluna interview reported anywhere in those spaces which just a few months ago pullulated with stories about predator sharks in priest's robes?
And yet, Scicluna makes clear in that interview the lucid and shattering views Cardinal Ratzinger always had on the question of priestly abuses. "Of course, it is a crisis for the Church," Scicluna said. "But it is also an opportunity - an occasion to look at 'sin' in the face and to do something about it. It is an opportunity for the Church to show its determination in fighting sin and crime among its own ministers".
it will be interesting then to read the book ATTACCO A RATZINGER by Paolo Rodari and Andrea Tornielli (Piemme, 2010, 320 pp, 18 euro), in which the two Vaticanistas examine the causes and motivations that led to a profusion of misunderstanding and misrepresentation about this Papacy which, as the text says, "from one controversy to the next, have resulted in 'anesthetizing' the message of Benedict XVI and crushing him with the cliche of a retrograde Pope, and thus depotentiating its importance".*
But what spontaneously came to mind for us was this: Is this process of defusing
[the attack bombs against the Pope] not a confirmation of the 'conflagration' represented by Papa Ratzinger who is leaving his indelible marks on history?
Mastroianni's last thought is almost a re-statement of the conclusion drawn by Le Figaro's religion editor, Jean Guenois, in the Rodari-Tornielli book. Thinking outside the box, he sees the Pope as the one who continually attacks all the commonplaces of contemporary thought that constitute the raison d'etre for the MSM and their secular/liberal ilk (including those within the Church) - and that the attacks against him are their reaction.
Extrapolating Guenois's argument, one might describe the over-the-top counter-offensive of the Pope's enemies as a survival reflex. Except that where Benedict XVI fights with words of reason and faith, they resort to unreason, bad faith and hitting below the belt.
But in terms of the Rodari-Tornielli 'conclusion' that all the polemics about the Pope have resulted in 'anesthesizing' and 'depotentiating' his message, I wish to reiterate my skepticism that this is necessarily so. IMHO, such a conclusion represents the narrow, almost 'elitist', view peculiar to those who live with these stories too closely.
It does not necessarily reflect the attitude of the regular faithful - particularly those whose faith does not swing and sway according to the winds of opinion - whose thinking, I think, is the great omission from this book. I have obviously not read the book yet, but I have not seen a single review that indicates the authors had sampled the views of ordinary folk on this issue. My suggestion had been that they could have used testimonials from those who came to the Papa Day rally at St. Peter's Square last May and from the readers who write Avvenire for a broader spectrum pro and con.
This brings me to a short article by Sandro Magister published by L'Espresso, the magazine he writes for [where his wwww.chiesa articles first appear], on April 22 this year, at the peak of the anti-Benedict furor. It was Magister's rejoinder to the cover story that featured an interview by another L'Espresso writer with lay theologian Vito Mancuso, a man Magister has previously described as someone determined to rewrite all of Church theology by himself, and who is currently La Repubblica's house theologian (in an illusory world where publisher Eugenio Scalfari is Pope!).
L'Espresso cover, 4/22/10.
For some strange reason, Magister never used the article in the www.chiesa series, and even more odd, I failed to post it on this Forum although I had translated it. It's one of Magister's most powerful short pieces in praise of Benedict XVI. I came across the translation while I was cleaning up some Word files just now, and its current resonances are amazing. Not to mention the cover photo for L'Espresso which resembles that of the Rodari-Tornielli book, as does the title of the cover article, Scacco al Papa (Checkmating the Pope), referring to Mancuso's outre presumptions...
The enigma of Benedict
by Sandro Magister
Translated from
ROME, April 22 - He landed in Malta with the barque of the Church in a raging tempest. And he found himself welcomed by festive crowds that exceeded all expectations.
The enigma of Benedict XVI's Pontificate also lies in this: His 14 trips abroad as Pope have always upset dark predictions before each of them - especially to places which are considered 'tough'. The United States and France in 2008, Israel and Jordan the following year.
At lunch with the cardinals to mark the fifth anniversary of his Pontificate, the Pope quoted St. Augustine: "I am a pilgrim among the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God".
The enigma of Benedict XVI is that he is attacked precisely where the facts prove he is right. In the years when everyone - inside the Church and outside - were blind to the scandal of priests who sexually violated minors, Joseph Ratzinger was the only highly placed Church leader who had the foresight to sense the seriousness of the scandal and to impose effective counter-measures.
Today, when so many are casting stones against him, it is once again he who preaches that it is not enough for the Church to bring all concerned to earthly justice - because
what is right in the Church is the order of grace, which goes beyond laws, and signifies "doing penance, to acknowledge what is wrong, to open up to forgiveness, thus allowing self-transformation".
No Pope in modern times before him has decreed that an entire national Church carry out public penitence for the sins of its members, as Benedict XVI did in March with the Church in Ireland.
The gentle Benedict XVI will pass into history for his words and actions of great daring.
With his lecture in Regensburg, he laid open the ground in which the ultimate roots of religious violence are found - namely, the idea of God mutilated by rationality. Thanks to that lecture, moderate Muslims today have found their voice to invoke a revolution of enlightenment within Islam, such as the Catholic Church underwent in recent centuries.
Benedict XVI is a great 'enlightener' in an age when few respect the truth, and doubt is dominant.
He asks modern man to broaden the space of reason and not to limit it merely to data that is measurable by science. It is his idea to open up a modern-day 'court of the Gentiles' where everyone may meet in the shadow of God, even those who do not know God. It is he who has always proposed to the men of our time to "live as if God existed', because, as Pascal said, 'There is everything to gain and nothing to lose" by doing so.
Several weeks ago, during one of his Wednesday catecheses to pilgrims
[his catecheses on St. Bonaventure] , Benedict XVI compared the present moment of the Church to the time that immediately followed that of St. Francis of Assisi. Then, too, there were currents in Christianity
[Joachim di Fiore and his followers] invoking ‘an age of the Spirit’, a new Church that would no longer have hierarchies or dogmas.
Something similar is happening today when, riding the wave of accusations that aim to overwhelm the Church, some are calling for a Vatican III as a ‘new beginning and rupture’. Pressing further, advocates of this fantasy Council believe it would lead to the abolition of priestly celibacy, ordination of women, liberalization of sexual morals, and more democracy in the governance of the Church.
The very same things that, once realized in some of the Protestant churches, have failed to produce any regeneration at all. Indeed, as one can see with the Church of England, they have instead generated robust currents of migration towards the Church of Rome as the only port of certainty.
To the spiritualist utopia which leads to anarchy, Pope Benedict opposes an art of governance in terms of Bonaventure’s formula, ‘thought illuminated by prayer’. To a world wanting in faith, he speaks of God and Jesus.
When he became Pope, he said precisely that this was what he wanted to do: “To make the light of Christ shine on men and women today, not my light, but that of Christ” (April 22, 2005).
For those interested in a background on Mancuso, Magister had a comprehensive feature on him in February 2008:
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/189243?eng=y
What the article does not mention is that Mancuso was a priest, who earned his doctorate in theology, summa cum laude, from the Lateran University no less, but shortly after that, got a papal dispensation in the mid-1990s to leave the priesthood and get married.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/09/2010 18:56]