God's forest
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 11/8-11/9/10 issue of
Benedict XVI's second visit to Spain in five years was a historic trip for its importance and symbolic for its significance. By visiting two cities which confretely express the diversified reality in a hreat nation that is strongly rooted in the Christian tradition
[More than just generically Christian, Spanish tradition and religiosity have always been very specifically and floridly Catholic], and although largely secularized, welcomed the Pope with sympathy and listening to him attentively.
A sympathy and attention demonstrated publicly by the King and Queen of Spain, by the Princes of Asturias, by the President of the government (the Prime Minister), and by national and regional authorities. Of course, in addition to the Church which has confirmed itself to be a vital and lively presence in Spanish society.
The Roman Pontiff's itinerary, touching down at Santiago de Compostela and in Barcelona [from the eastern part of Spain to its western coast], symbolically traces the history of the nation and supports Spain's openness not just to all of Europe but also to the rest of the world.
Speaking to the Spanish people - and to the rest of the world - the Pope underscored above all the significance of the Christian faith, which did not arise as a human project but from God himself who lives within the heart of every man.
It is a tragedy, Benedict XVI said, in his homily in Santiago, in front of its wondrous Romanesque-Baroque cathedral, that on the European continent, especially during the 19th century, the idea that God is an antagonist to man and an enemy of his freedom could have been disseminated.
In the face of this almost incomprehensible denial of God, he said, it is necessary that God, 'the sun of intelligence', returns to the skies over Europe, a continent that in its turn should open herself to transcendence.
Just as the image of the crucified Christ is found as a marker along the ways that lead to Compostela - where the memory of the Apostle James has lived on for more than a millennium - so should 'the blessed Cross shine again in European lands to 'the glory of man', Benedict XVI said, expressing the wish that the Europe of culture and science would also open up to transcendence.
This openness to God was mentioned once more by Benedict XVI in Barcelona when he consecrated the expiatory temple born from the genius of Antoni Gaudi, and during his visit to give a tender embrace to children and youths in care of Nen Deu, the institution named for the Child Jesus, and to encourage those who do such charitable work.
The immense mass of stone that is the Sagrada Familia church - almost like a magic forest of columns that can seem to be in motion, was defined by the Pope as a sacramental reality, "a visible sign of the invisible God, to whose glory these spires rise like arrows pointing towards absolute light and to the One who is Light, Height and Beauty itself"
God's sanctuary, as every human heart is. And so, it is sacred, and therefore the Church, founded by and on Christ - not out of hostility to man and his freedom - hopes for measures to support the family and opposes every form of rejecting human life.
With this visit to Spain, the Successor of Peter has once again clearly demonstrated the meaning of the path he has chosen and that of the Church: to present God to the world, God who is man's friend and who invites us to his home.
A home whose beauty is merely foreshadowed by the Portico of Glory that welcomes the pilgrims who arrive in Compostela, and in Barcelona, by that forest of God that Gaudi - visionary artist and authentic Christian - specifically wished to arise from the center of a city of men....
So that they may see his presence among them, contemplate his inexpressible wonder, and learn how to accept him.
The Holy Father's two major discourses in Spain - both homilies - were very rich, dense with multiple significances and resonances, but in a way that was completely different from the powerful major speeches and homilies he delivered in the United Kingdom. The Pope's major texts always leave me in awe at the near-infinite ways he has of delivering the message of Christ - eloquently and elegantly - and how it applies to specific situations that reflect the universal human condition. Most commentaries, even the most favorable, on the substance of his texts can only pale beside what he says and how he says it.
This is one of the best commentaries I have read about the visit so far - because it is more than just about the visit...
Benedict XVI shatters pre-conceptions:
The future of the faith
must pass through Spain
Editorial
by Lucio Brunelli
Translated from
Nov. 9, 2010
The Pope in Zapatero's Spain. And the army of the media ready to file the visit under the category of a Church reduced to the trenches, in a perennial war against the 'enemy', modernity.
But again, the Pope himself shattered their preconceived notions. Starting with his in-flight meeting with newsmen, he spoke of an encounter, not a clash, with secularism,
[In Italian, it sounds better, because it is 'scontro' versus 'incontro'.]
And though it is a 'tragedy' that contemporary man perceives God as 'an antagonist to his freedom', it would have been useless to lose time in recrimination or denunciation. Rather, what is needed is authentic witness to the Christian faith in order "to hear God once again under the skies of Europe".
It was a visit that was in no way 'reactive'. and it was focused on two simple acts. The pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and the consecration of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
It was said when his pontificate began that Benedict XVI would be a Pope of words, where John Paul II was a Pope of 'gestures', that he would be a Pope to 'read' and not one to see. But this simplistic scheme seems, after five and a half years, inappropriate and worn out.
Papa Ratzinger cannot be appreciated if one does not see how he celebrates the liturgy and how he prays, the way he knelt, for example, on Saturday, in front of the tomb of the Apostle James.
It is impossible to separate his judgments, even those that are most sharply delineated, from the gentleness and serenity of his look. We saw it even in the less official moments of this visit to Spain: the look of wonder, almost childlike, with which he followed the breathtakingly perilous swinging of the famous giant censer in the cathedral of Santiago. And his look of enchantment as he appreciated the beauty of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona at the Dedication Mass.
[It truly is extraordinary to see that childlike wonder in an 83-year-old - as when he looks at the Nativity scene in St. Peter's or any creche, for that matter.]
Professor Ratzinger is well and truly all Pope. And the first to know this are the regular folk who instinctively like him and wish him well. From his presence and from his teaching, they seem to feel truly confirmed and encouraged in the simplicity of their faith.
It used to be, in ecclesiastical circles, that 'Ratzingerian' was taken to mean to be always and only 'against' - to be hardline and purist, grim and forbidding. The risk was that such prelates resembled and soon started to assume all the tics and neuroses of their 'enemy', the so-called 'progressivist Catholics' or the 'secularists".
But even in this respect, Benedict XVI shatters such notions. We saw it in his trip the United Kingdom, And once again on this visit to Spain. He is not a Pope 'against' anyone - he is a Pope who communicates positiveness and in a very human way.
He wishes to speak to man today, to each of us. He sincerely desires that we should understand and experience Christianity not as a 'minus' but as a 'plus' for our humanity.
It is a humble but joyous announcement, because of the awareness that ultimately, its success depends not on our arguments or our activism - rather, that it is a grace of God, as he once again reminded us in his homily at the Sagrada Familia:
From him the Church receives her life, her teaching and her mission. The Church by and of herself is nothing; she is called to be the sign and instrument of Christ, in pure obedience to his authority and in total service to his mandate. The one Christ is the foundation of the one Church. He is the rock on which our faith is built. Building on this faith, let us strive together to show the world the face of God who is love and the only one who can respond to our yearning for fulfilment.
Here's an evaluation of the visit by someone who was very much involved in the organized effort by the bishops of England and Wales to counteract the fierce anti-Pope propaganda that proliferated in the UK media before the Pope's visit there. He was apparently in Spain, at least for the Sagrada Familia consecration....
The Pope in Spain:
Was it a success?
by Austen Ivereigh
Nov. 9, 2010
Judging the success of a papal visit is never a scientific exercise. But there are certain criteria: was the Pope listened to, or ignored? Did people turn out? Did the media give it good coverage? Did words and actions go together? Were there moments which made people sit up?
Some visits, however wonderful for those taking part, get obscured by particular stories which dominate the headlines and marginalize the deeper message - -as happened in 2008 when the Pope made comments on the papal plane on AIDS and condoms which drowned out any further reporting of the trip.
This time, it was Pope Benedict's comments on the papal plane linking modern-day Spanish secularism and anticlericalism to the 1930s which threatened for a while to derail the trip. Many on the left reacted furiously, as did secularists in the UK when Pope Benedict's Edinburgh speech
lumped together atheism and Nazism.
[I am surprised Ivereigh himself falls into the trap that the secular MSM did by this misrepresentation of what the Pope actually said!]
But unlike in the UK, where the furious reaction wasn't taken up by the newspapers, the Madrid daily
El Pais, the mouthpiece of the left-liberal establishment, and
El Publico, saw it as insult, one that was both historically inaccurate (6,000 priests and religious were killed in the civil war, and countless churches torched) and one-sided (because it failed to acknowledge the Church's errors).
Yet what the Pope in fact said was that Spain saw the birth of "a strong and aggressive secularism such as that of the 1930s" and that "this dispute, this clash between faith and modernity, both very lively, is coming about again in Spain today", before going to call for an "encounter" between faith and secularism to resolve misunderstandings. It was clear that Benedict XVI was referring to the shadows of the past which still hang over the present -- which nobody would dispute.
But whereas in the UK, the Pope's messages and actions made a powerful case against the exclusion of faith from public life by demonstrating that the Church had much to contribute to it, in Spain
Benedict XVI didn't manage to persuade the children of the Franco era to reconsider.
[Perhaps not the hidebound ultra-reactionary liberals of El Pais and their ilk, who will go to their graves as rabid anti-clericalists! But who's Ivereigh to say what its effect may have been on regular folk who have not necessarily swallowed the ultra-reactionary line as if they were nothing but robots? The million-man marches that the Church in Spain has mobilized yearly to demonstrate in defense of life are all composed of 'Franco-era children' too. And from the accounts I have read in the Spanish press of the 300,00 who did show up in Barcelona for the Pope, the majority were of teh below-25 generation!]
He made the usual eloquent and passionate argument in favour of the need to reconcile faith and reason, truth and freedom, modernity and morality, in elegant, direct texts, but steered clear of addressing some of the historic causes of that alienation.
No doubt, there was only so much he could do in two Masses, and there was more than enough to tackle in the themes of pilgrimage, faith, the Christian origins of Europe, God and beauty, the sanctity of life, and so on. He was there too briefly, it could be argued, to start up a passionate debate about the Church's historical record.
But while it lifted the pros, it didn't shift the antis.
The Church was happy with the turnouts. As happened in the UK, the contemporary European obsession with security has to a large extent killed off the spontaneous crowds of the John Paul II era.
Going to the Sagrada Familia, it was extraordinary to see a policeman every two feet stretching for miles down streets which, again for security reasons, the Popemobile sped along at 20 miles an hour. Just as in the UK, the way the Church now organises attendance for the events -- each parish is allocated tickets, and has to organize a coach to be bussed in -- meant that the crowds were far smaller than in the previous pontificate. Hotels in Santiago de Compostela and Barcelona were at 70-80% capacity, more than usual for November, but far lower than in the summer season.
That said, Barcelona managed a highly respectable 250,000 spontaneous turnout -- similar to that which came out for Benedict XVI in London.
The greatest success of the visit was visual -- a display of the power of Catholic liturgy in two of the world's most iconic cathedrals. Few places of worship can match the botafumeiro in Santiago de Compostela, or Gaudi's dazzling modern masterpiece in Barcelona.
The Sagrada Familia liturgy was a rare spectacle followed by millions on television -- one in four Spaniards, estimate today's papers -- assisted by the Catalan television station TV3's spidercam, which swooped and soared through the basilica (from where I was sitting, it was a wonder to behold), giving an angel's eye view.
And in Barcelona, the tone was set by its highly-esteemed daily,
La Vanguardia, whose editor -- I was told -- had observed the UK papal trip and learned from it: he knew this was a once-in-a-lifetime, heaven-sent chance to register the city in the consciousness of the world. The newspaper's coverage was respectful, phenomenally detailed, and scornful of what it saw as the petty-mindedness of the protesters.
[I saw its headlines which give an idea of the variety of its coverage - too bad I can't breach its online paywall, and will have to wait till they surface on the online religious journals!]
That left the secularists looking like a powerless, disgruntled minority. An anti-Pope protest of 2,000 -- with bizarrely ideological slogans such as "No to the Church and the state" -- and a gay "kiss-in" were made to look bad-tempered and ill-judged.
[It was, of course, the pre-visit demo by 2000, and the 'kiss-in' by 100 gay couples that the Anglophone media reported - not the 300,000 who were in Compostela, and the 300,000 in Barcelona.]
By leaving Spain, preferring to visit troops in Afghanistan, the prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, was also made to look sectarian and un-presidential, giving the main platform to Spain's royal family.
By reinforcing stereotypes of socialist anticlerical state versus Catholic monarchy, Zapatero came off looking small-minded in comparison to the Catalan politicians of all stripes who made sure they were in the Sagrada Familia for this historical cultural moment.
[That he chose to travel to Afghanistan so that he would return to Spain way after the Sagrada Familia Mass was over, was a most clumsy way to give himself an alibi not to attend an event that was historic for all of Spain, and not just for Catholicism! It's hard to understand how Fidel and Raul Castro in Cuba have not been hesitant nor embarrassed to attend important Masses since John Paul II visited Cuba, but Zapatero, who was baptized Catholic and is socialist not Communist, cannot even bear to be seen attending a papal Mass! To think that he and Benedict XVI share the same baptismal names - Jose Luis is Spanish for Joseph Alois.]
As in the UK, this was another success for Vatican diplomats. They squared off the government well in advance, and have lowered the temperature of Church-state conflict over the heads of the Spanish bishops' conference.
But the greatest achievement of the papal visit was to heal the wounds left by Pope John Paul II's visit to Barcelona in 1982, when he made the fatal mistake of addressing Catalans without mentioning their nationality, using the same phrase with which Franco addressed them, as "Barcelonians". [An interesting historical fact that I have not read elsewhere... But it is hard to imagine how the Vatican could have overlooked that most significant detail, when Catalan touchiness and fierce pride in their 'national identity' being distinct from the rest of Castilian Spain is legendary. In this, Catalunya is very much like the two other autonomous regions of Spain, the Basque country and Galicia, which also have their own respective languages distinct from Castilian.]
That insult -- for which the Madrid bishops were responsible -- has lingered long in the Catalan Church, but has been amply compensated by Pope Benedict's warm words in Catalan, and his frequent mention of "this Catalan land".
Globally, that's not going to make much impact. But it has left Catalonia's 1-million Catholics feeling recognized, vindicated and more confident.
[To say nothing of the number of Catalan men and women who have been proclaimed saints and blesseds in Benedict's Pontificate, so far!]
In that sense Pope Benedict XVI's Spanish trip, like his UK visit, has been a huge success in encouraging Catholics to step up and be counted.
By reminding Spain of the glories of the Church and its vital place in their nation, he may have gently helped to roll back the secularist tide. To the Catholic world at large, he has shown what it means to preside over an authentically sacred liturgy, in a setting of daring modernity
[and yet, in full continuity with the tradition of the great cathedrals of Europe!].
In some senses, it's too early to evaluate, because last weekend should be seen as the first part of a two-part visit, the second stage of which takes place next August at World Youth Day in Madrid.
It may be then that the Vatican sees the major opportunity to heal the wounds left by the Civil War -- and put the Church at the centre of that historic reconciliation. If nothing else, this trip has been a perfectly executed curtain-raiser for that massive event.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/11/2010 20:31]