Why the Pope draws people -
to his books and his audiences
Translated from
Oct. 27, 2009
In a recent General Audience, the Pope referred to "episodes of intolerance and incommunicability, divisions and conflicts" which afflict our time, comparing them to what was faced in his time by Peter the Venerable, who was famed for "his gentleness, his serene equilibrium" and for his "special talent for mediation".
In his message to the Food and Agricultural Organization on World Food Day, the Pope called for "the profound solidarity and farsighted fraternity" necessary in order to use responsibly the gifts of Creation.
And during the concert two weekends ago offered by the Piano Academy of Imola, the Pope pointed out the role of music as "a vehicle more than ever adapted for understanding and union among persons and peoples".
At last Sunday's Angelus, he spoke of "the light of the Gospel" as a force to guide peoples on their journey "towards the realization of one great family".
On October 26, talks began with the Lefebvrians; in early 2010, the Pope will visit the Lutheran Church in Rome and the Great Synagogue.
Meanwhile, Catholic publishing houses saw a 26.7% increase in book sales from last year, thanks to the texts of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI, and his audiences and Angelus gatherings continue to draw huge crows (just look at the photos to believe).
These are signs of great interest in Benedict XVI. Perhaps because of the controversies, quarrels and recriminations that mark the public debate, it is a welcome pleasure to listen to someone who speaks of peace in gentle and intelligent ways directed not to the gut but to the hearts and minds of those he addresses.
The modest theologian and even more modest Pope:
'A simple and humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord'
Sorry I still have no background information on Roberto Pepe - whose 10/21/09 article "This Pope is just getting started..." I translated and posted in the preceding page. But evidently, that excellent article was no fluke, as here is another one in which he gets back at the insufferably arrogant Eugenio Scalfari of La Repubblica and L'Espresso for his most recent insulting putdown of Benedict XVI.
Scalfari's dismissiveness of Benedict XVI:
It's the devil fearful of the Pope
for his incisive work of evangelization
by Roberto Pepe
Translated from
But it's all logical and consequential! One shouldn't be surprised that a small bearded homunculus, weighted down by years and 'authorized' to say whatever comes to his mind - because as a younger man, he held the sacred title of journalist and as an older man, founded a newspaper - affirms that Papa Ratzinger is just 'a modest theologian who makes us lament his predecessors".
Because all he did was to classify the Pope according to the petty intellectual meter of Italian politics, where the words 'love and peace' mean ragtag association and pacifist chic.
Quite apart from the fact that his predecessor John Paul II specifically wanted Joseph Ratzinger to be the guardian of Catholic orthodoxy, at the head of the former Holy Office, precisely because of his theological eminence, Eugenio Scalfari should perhaps clarify - especially since his age may be playing his memory wrong - why in
La Repubblica on February 5, 2006, in a Page 1 article on
Deus caritas est, he called the present Pope 'the finest of theologians' in an article entited "Evil in the world and God's love", in which he wrote:
"No one can possibly miss the extreme political relevance of this theological text, in an era when (religious) fundamentalisms are on the rise, including those that are admittedly Christian and those who would use Christianity as an
instrumentun regni [a tool to rule]."
Well then? Why suddenly come up now with this perverse judgment in a field - theology - in which everyone, admirers and atheist critics alike, consider Pope Benedict unassailable?
The Vatican Curia and all militant Catholics are naturally up in arms against Scalfari's latest dismissal of the Pope, ridiculing Scalfari's self-conferred stature as a super-theologian qualified to judge other theologians.
But this improvident judgment does have a more down-to-earth explanation. Far from expressing theological superiority, it is simply a conclusion reflecting our domestic petty politics.
And so, just as when the Great Pope Benedict spoke of 'universal love' some time earlier, Scalfari immediately referred it to multi-cultural, Marxist, anti-government [specifically anti-Berlusconi] universalism - as advocated by Catholic Marxists of dubious fame such as that Genoese dissident parish priest Don Farinella - so it was that when Cardinal Bagnasco called unacceptable the proposal to institute a Muslim religious hour in Italian public schools, our great journalist-theologian used the occasion to underscore the 'modesty' of Joseph Ratzinger's abilities in the divine sciences, and excluding him from the list of "great Popes (who) fought wars - not only religious ones - but wars for power". (You would think that the re-entry of traditional Anglicans into the Roman Church was no more than a bagatelle!)
Probably Scalfari never even read the preface to
Caritas in veritate, where Pope benedict clearly states: "The Church has no technical solutions to offer and does not in the least intend to interfere in the policies of States", or he would have known that it is precisely the obvious oxymoron of 'a powerful modesty' - mystical, not political - which constitutes the winning weapon that makes Benedict XVI great.
I wrote, rather casually a few days ago, that one wonders how could it be that the many signals he laid out at the time of his election as Pope were not perceived as fully as they should have been by the major 'secular' media outlets.
Well, now one can very well say someone did understand those signals very well: the Devil in person, in the guise of a gray-haired newsman, saw at once that the humble actions of a modest priest who was now Pope would result in the most incisive work of evangelization for the Catholic Church this side of 500 years, by a Pope who does not hesitate to say that theology remains a vain dialectic exercise if it is not nourished by a relationship with the Transcendent.
And the Devil is now gripped by fear!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/10/2009 01:15]