The second book by a Vaticanista this summer to tackle the 'assault on Benedict' in the mass media is scheduled to come out around now in Italy, though I still do not see a blurb on it online. But EUROPA, to which the book author, Aldo Maria Valli (Vatican correspondent for RAI's premier channel) is a contributor, published this excerpt today.
Valli's book title LA VERITA DEL PAPA (The Pope's truth), and this excerpt, indicate that his approach may be more philosophical than investigative and documentary like the Rodari-Tornielli ATTACCO A RATZINGER...
Benedict in the bullseye:
He is the main target in
the attacks against the Church
by ALDO MARIA VALLI
Translated from
September 9, 2010
...Behind the attacks against the Church, there is a precise target: Benedict XVI.
He has been proposing to the contemporary world and its culture a concept as simple as it is revolutionary, which can be summarized as follows: to enlarge the space of reason.
It is not true, he says, that only whatever is experimentable in a scientific way can be rational. Rational is everything that has to do with human nature, even those aspects that we cannot demontrate with mathematical formulas or with laboratory experiments.
And rational is also to believe in a God who created man in his image and likeness out of pure love.
The Pope's other proposal arises from this, and it is addressed to those who do not believe in God: to live as if God exists.
In the Age of Enlightenment, man sought to codify some fundamental moral norms
etsi Deus non daretur - as if God did not exist. Done with religious wars and the political use of religion,
mankind [in reality, only the 'enlightenened' Westerners!] sought to discard the God hypothesis in the name of intellectual freedom.
But today, in an age when the decline of Christian vlaues exposes man to the risk of self-destruction, the perspective must be turned upside down: because even non-believers, if they think the search for God is a rational undertaking, live as though a supreme regulatory entity exists. An idea that could be pursued in a contemporary 'courtyard of the Gentiles'.
The monks who in the Middle Ages brought about the construction of Europe during a time of chaos (as Benedict recalled in his address at the College des Bernardins in Paris in September 2008) succeeded in elaborating a new culture because they had a thirst for the absolute and because they were seeking God.
It is a valid lesson even today, because in every epoch, cultures have been built on the search for God and the willingness to listen to him.
To bring back order into the Church and clean it up is the other great task that Benedict XVI has set for himself - beginning with his denunciation of the 'filth in the Church' on Good Friday of 2005 - and which led him to send out clear signals - as his unequivocal condemnation of sexual abuses committed by priests and religious; his repeated injunction against internal enmities and careerism; and the apostolic investigation of the Legionaries of Christ which brought to clear light "the extremely serious and objectively immoral behavior of their founder", Fr. Marcial Maciel.
With his modest ways and reserved nature, the humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord has not spared himself. And he has done all he can in the name of truth.
This, of course, has put him on a collision course with those who do not wish to unite but to divide and do not wish to bring light but shadows....
Last August 25, one of the persons who had a brief audience with the Holy Father after the General Audience in Castel Gandolfo was Adriano Stefanelli, the custom cobbler from the northern Italian city of Novara who has been making shoes for Benedict XVI, as he did for John Paul II.
But it was his first meeting with Benedict XVI, to whom he presented two new pairs of red shoes. Bruno Mastroianni, who has resumed his Thursday blogs, uses a statement made by Stefanelli after that audience as a metaphor for this commentary:
The Pope's well-worn shoes
a symbol of Benedict's style
Translated from
Sept. 9, 2010
Without knowing it, Adriano Stafanelli, the Novara shoemaker who has made the red shoes for Benedict XVI since he became Pope, provided one of the best descriptions of Benedict XVI's 'style'.
Emerging from his private audience with the Pope last August 25, he said: "I noticed that the shoes the Pope was wearing were well-worn - it's a sign that he is comfortable in them, that they are good for him".
Obviously, many of those who are swirling up the media dust storms in preparation for the Pope's visit to the UK hoping to ruin it have not read Stefanelli.
The man with the red shoes, who walks calmly but decisively, certainly will have no hesitation in setting foot on the secularized soil of the British Isles. Just as he never hesitated at the prospect of even more daunting scenarios in the past - perhaps the UK media have forgotten his visits to the Holy Land, to Turkey and even to ultra-secular France.
Of course, every effort has been taken in the past few months to make sure the world knows how hostile and refractory England is to the Church - controversy and bitter squawking have dictated the headlines of the newspapers along very predictable lines.
But all that - the Novarese artisan would agree - must be considered as nothing but the creases and folds that shoes acquire as they are worn. Let us heed Stefanelli because he knows about shoes and walking in them.
The signs that have so far seemed to be nothing more than scratches and scuffs on the Pope's red shoes as he moves forward attest to the goodness of the product. Because it is precisely on terrain that is most unforgiving and corrosive that the Pope walks most surely bearing his message of faith.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/09/2010 13:22]