| | | OFFLINE | | Post: 26.766
Post: 9.251 | Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009 | Administratore | Utente Master | |
|
Fr. Lombardi's statement: Why the full texts
of Pope Francis's morning homilies will never be published
Because Italian is not his native language, it would involve re-working
the transcripts so much they would lose their spontaneity and familiarity
Translated from the Italian service of
May 29, 2013
In response to repeated questions from many quarters including the media, Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office has released this :
The very great interest in the brief homilies of the Pope at the Masses he celebrates every morning in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta has raised and continues to raise requests from diverse quarters, of having access to the Masses themselves or to the homilies in their complete form, and not just through excerpts published every day by Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano.
The request is understandable and has been taken into consideration several times and has been the object of profound reflection. It deserves a clear answer.
First of all, one must keep in mind the character that the Holy Father himself attributes to these morning Masses in Santa Marta. They are Masses held in the presence of a bot-so-small group of persons (usually more than 50 persons), but the Pope wishes to keep a character of familiarity for these occasions.
That is why, despite the many requests to do so, he has explicitly not wanted the Masses to be broadcast live by audio or video.
As for the homilies, they are not given on the basis of a written text, but spontaneously, in Italian, in which the Pope is very much at home, but it is not his native language. An 'integral' test would therefore necessarily require a re-working of the text at various points, since a written text is different from an oral text which, in this case is the original form intentionally chosen by the Holy Father.
In short, it would mean 'editing' the holy Father himself, but the result would clearly be 'something else', not that which the Holy Father intends when he gives these morning homilies.
After careful reflection it was therefore decided that the best way to make the riches of the Pope's homilies accessible to a larger public without altering their nature is to publish an ample summary thereof, rich with original statements presented in quotation marks to reflect the genuine flavor of the Pope's expressions. This is what L'Osservatore Romano has committed to do daily, whereas Vatican Radio, because of its characteristic nature. offers a shorter summary that is accompanied by some excerpts from the taped homily, and CTV provides a videoclip corresponding to one of the Vatican Radio audio excerpts.
One must underscore the fact that in looking at the ensemble of the Pope's activities, the difference must be carefully marked between different situations and celebrations, as well as the various levels of significance of his various pronouncements.
Thus, during celebrations and the Pope's other public events, which are transmitted live on radio and TV, the homilies and discourses are transcribed and published integrally. For more familiar and private celebrations, the specific character of the situation, as well as the spontaneity and familiarity of the Holy Father's expressions, must be respected.
The solution that has been chosen thus respects first of all the Pope's desire and the nature of his morning Masses, and at the same time, allows a larger public to have access to the principal messages that the Holy Father offers to the faithful even on such occasions.
The webpage on the Vatican site with the OR summaries of the Pope's morning homilies is:
www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/cotidie/2013/inde...
No comment for now on the statement itself, which raises many more questions. The situation, however, makes it all the more remarkable, Deo gratias!, that even if, on a couple of occasions, the Vatican Press Office tried ineptly to 'tweak' what Benedict XVI had actually said during his inflight Q&As - once, about condoms, and the other, I think, about Mexican bishops and abortion) - it did furnish all the full transcripts of B16's extemporaneous answers during a variety of Q&A sessions, unscripted homilies such as those to the Schuelerkreis and on a few occasions at the Vatican (e.g., his 85th birthday Mass), his various lectionis divinas, and that awesome 45-minute lectio magistralis on Vatican-II that was his farewell gift to the clergy of Rome. Indeed, Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/05/2013 16:43] |