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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



See preceding page for earlier posts today, 5/26/13.





May 26, 2013, Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY


From left: Icon by Andrei Rublev, 1411; The Trinity at the Nativity, Lippi, 1480; a Crucifix from Altoetting; a painting from St Petersburg, 1433; The Trinity with Mary and Joseph, Dutch painting, 1726; and the Orthodox icon Paternitas.
NB: In the Orthodox tradition, the Trinity is most commonly represented by the scene known as Abraham and the three Angels who visited him, in which the Angels represent the three Persons of the Trinity. A popular representation in medieval imagery shows God the Father at the head of the Cross, and the Holy Spirit as a dove above the head of the crucified Christ, or alternatively, at the deposition from the Cross.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052613.cfm


Today's saint:

Center photo is the saint's 'founder' statue in St. Peter's Basilica; next to it, a Tiepolo painting from 1740.
SAN FILIPPO NERI (Italy, 1515-1575), Priest, Mystic, 'Apostle of Rome', Founder of the Congregation of the Oratory
He was born to a well-to-do family in Florence and sent as a teenager to live with an unmarried uncle near Montecassino whose business he was expected to inherit. But he decided to give up worldly advantages and went to Rome to study philosophy and theology, spending the next 17 years in prayer and a voluntary apostolate of helping the poor. During this time, he spent his nights in the catacomb of St. Sebastian, where in 1544, he is believed to have experienced a mystical ecstasy that inflamed his heart to the point of breaking two of his ribs. Meanwhile, he had gathered around him other laymen interested in prayer and serving the poor, pilgrims to Rome, and the convalescent. They also met every night for prayers, discussions and listening to music based on scenes of sacred history that were set to music. Among his disciples were Giovanni da Palestrina and Tomas Luis de Victoria who composed music that came to be known as oratorios, and from which the meeting halls came to be called oratories. In 1551, he finally was ordained a priest, and soon became known as an outstanding confessor as well as, even in his lifetime, 'the apostle of Rome'. In 1556, he founded the Congregation of the Oratory where priests engaged in apostolate for the poor and the sick could live in a community without professing monastic vows. Besides their daily Oratory gatherings, members also preached at a different church every night. They were accused of heresy by some because at their meetings, laymen spoke on religious subjects, and because the music they introduced was considered secular. Nonetheless, Philip - who was known for his good humor, ready laughter and easy communication with everyone, as much as for his holiness - was sought out for spiritual counsel by many prominent figures of his day and became one of the most influential figures of the Counter Reformation. The more ample version of the Roman chasuble that he and St. Ignatius are shown wearing in many paintings has been called the 'Philippine' chasuble. He founded the Chiesa Nuova in Rome, where his remains are venerated. He was beatified in 1615 and canonized in 1622 as the single Italian along with four great Spanish saints of the Counter-Reformation: Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco Javier (Francis Xavier), Teresa de Jesus of Avila, and Juan de la Cruz - the first two, founding fathers of the Jesuit order, the other two, Carmelite reformers who were also among the great writers of Spain's Golden Age and later named Doctors of the Church.



WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY

Pope Francis made his first pastoral visit to a Roman parish, that dedicated to Saints Elizabeth and Zachary,
parents of John the Baptist, where he heard the confessions of seven persons, celebrated Mass and gave first
Communion to 16 children.

Later at the Vatican, he led Sunday Angelus prayers at noon, speaking about the Feast of the Holy Trinity
before the prayers, and afterwards, recalling the beatification yesterday in Sicily of Father Giuseppe
Puglisi, a parish priest murdered by the Mafia in 1993. He also greeted a group of Chinese Catholics
on the occasion of the Feast of Our Lady of Sheshan (Mary Help of Christians) earlier this week.





One year ago...
Benedict XVI met with Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education (Seminaries and Higher Institutes of Learning), and then he was at St. Peter's Square for a special audience with members of the Italian movement Rinnovamento dello Spirito (Renewal of the Spirit) on their 40th anniversary. (I will post the account of that event today. Trinity Sunday last year came one week later than today, and Benedict XVI observed it in Milan where he offered the concluding Mass for the 8th World Encounter of Families. I will re-post that event on June 3, its actual anniversary.)...



Pope Benedict commends
Italian lay ecclesial movement
on its 40th anniversary


May 26, 2012

Some 30,000 people attended Holy Mass in Saint Peter’s Square Saturday morning to commemorate forty years since the founding of the movement Rinnovamento Nello Spirito (Renewal in the Spirit) in Italy.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops' conference(CEI), the main celebrant.



The celebration was immediately followed by a special audience with Pope Benedict XVI, who addressed the members of the movement:

I welcome you with great joy on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the birth of the movement Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo in Italy as an expression of that vast movement of charismatic renewal throughout the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council...

In this pilgrimage of yours, which gives you the opportunity to linger in prayer at the tomb of St. Peter, you will be able to reinvigorate your faith, grow in Christian witness and fearlessly face, led by the Holy Spirit, the demanding tasks of the new evangelization.

I am glad to meet you on the eve of Pentecost, a fundamental feast for the Church that is also very significant to your movement. I call on you to always welcome the love of God which is communicated to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the principal unifier of the Church.

In these four decades, you have striven to offer your specific contribution to spreading the Kingdom of God and to the edification of the Christian community, thus nourishing communion with the Successor of Peter, with your Pastors, and with the whole Church.

In various ways, you have affirmed the primacy of God, to whom we always render our supreme adoration. And you have sought to propose this experience to the new generations, showing them the joy of new life in the Spirit, through your wide-reaching work of formation and multiple activities linked to the new evangelization and the missio ad gentes.

Your Apostolate work has thus contributed to the growth of spiritual life in Italy's social and ecclesial fabric, through ways of conversion that have led many persons to be made whole again in the profundity of God's love, and many families to overcome difficulties.

Nor has your movement lacked for young men who have generously responded to the vocation of special consecration to God in the priesthood or in consecrated life. For all this, I give thanks to you and to the Lord.

Dear friends, continue to bear witness to the joy of faith in Christ, the beauty of being disciples of Christ, the power of love that his Gospel has liberated in history, as well as the incomparable grace that every believer can experience in the Church, through the sanctifying practice of the Sacraments and the humble and disinterested exercise of your charisms which, as St. Paul says, must always be used for the common good.

Cultivate elevated and generous desires in your soul. Take as your own the thoughts, sentiments and actions of Jesus. Yes, the Lord calls on each of you to be a tireless collaborator in his plan of salvation, which changes hearts. And he needs you in order to make your families, your communities, and your cities, places of hope and love.

In the present society, we live in a situation that is in many ways precarious, characterized by uncertainty and fragmentary choices. Often there are no valid points of reference to inspire one's own existence.

Therefore it becomes even more important to build the edifice of life and all social relationships on the stable rock of God's Word, allowing yourselves to be guided by the Magisterium of the Church. One increasingly understands the decisive value of Jesus's statement when he said: “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock" (Mt 7,24-25).

The Lord is with us - he acts through the power of his Spirit. He invites us to grow in trust and abandonment to his will, in our fidelity to our calling, and in the commitment to become 'adult' in faith, in hope and in charity.

Adult, according to the Gospel, is not he who is subject to no one and needs no one. Adult - meaning mature and responsible - can only describe he who makes himself small, humble and a servant before God, who does not simply follow the winds of time.

Therefore it is necessary to form consciences in the light of God's Word, and thus give them firmness and true maturity. The Word of God inspires and gives meaning to every ecclesial and human project, even when it concerns the edification of the earthly city
(cfr Ps 127,1). The spirit of institutions must be reanimated and history must be made fruitful with seeds of new life.

Today, believers are called on to a convinced, sincere and credible testimony of faith, closely linked to a commitment to charity. Indeed, it is through charity that even persons who are remote or indifferent to the message of the Gospel are able to get close to the truth and convert themselves to the merciful love of the heavenly Father.

In this regard, I express my satisfaction for what you are doing to spread a 'culture of Pentecost' in social circles, proposing spiritual animation with initiatives in favor of those who suffer poor living conditions and marginalization.

I am thinking especially of your work to achieve spiritual and material renewal for detainees and ex-detainees. Of the Pole of Excellence for Human Promotion and Solidarity named after Mario and Luigi Sturzo in Caltagirone. And of your International Center for the Family in Nazareth, whose first stone I had the joy of blessing in 2009. Continue with your commitment in behalf of the family, the irreplaceable place to educate children in love and self-sacrifice.

Dear friends of the Rinnovamento nello Spirito Santo! Do not tire of turning to heaven: the world needs prayer. It can do with men and women who feel the attraction of Heaven in their lives, who make of the praise of God a new lifestyle. And be joyous Christians!

I entrust you all to the Most Blessed Mary, who was in the Cenacle at the Pentecost. Be constant like her in prayer. Proceed along your journey quided by the light of the Holy Spirit, living and proclaiming the message of Christ.

I send you forth with my Apostolic Blessing, that I impart affectionately to you, and to all your members and your families. Thank you.






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Cover illustration: The Baptism of Jesus, by Fra Angelico.

It is a blessing and a delight that one can go online and find much of what Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has said or written about every conceivable subject that has to do with the faith and the Church. Indeed, one is often bound to come up with the proverbial 'embarras de richesses'.

As Providence would have it, at least three times during his Pontificate, he celebrated Trinity Sunday while on a pastoral visit: in 2008, when he was in Liguria (pastoral visit to Savona and Genoa), in 2011, when he was in San Marino (pastoral visit to San Marino-Montefeltro), and last year, when he was in Milan for the 8th World Encounter of Families.... And if he had not been Pope at all, in 1976, as a professor in Regensburg, he published an entire book about the Trinity entitled THE GOD OF JESUS CHRIST - Meditations on the Triune God. Almost 20 years later, in 2004, when he was John Paul II's special representative to the 60th anniversary commemoration of the Normandy landings, he would also deliver a memorable homily on the Trinity.



For today, I would like to start out with his Angelus remarks on June 6, 2009, which sets the Solemnity of the Trinity in the right liturgical context.


ANGELUS TODAY
June 6, 2009




In his mini-homily at the Angelus today, the Holy Father gifted us with yet another little gem of reflection on the Trinity: Here is a translation:

Dear brothers and sisters!

After Eastertide which culminated in the feast of Pentecost, the liturgy provides for three solemnities of the Lord: the Most Holy Trinity, today; Corpus Domini on Thursday, which in many countries, including Italy, will be celebrated next Sunday; and finally, on Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Each of these liturgical observances highlights a perspective which embraces the entire mystery of the Christian faith - thus, respectively, the reality of the One and Triune God, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the human-divine center of the person of Christ.

In fact, they are aspects of the one mystery of salvation, which in a certain sense, summarize the entire itinerary of the revelation of Jesus, from the incarnation to his death and resurrection and finally to the ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today, let us contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus has made us know it. He revealed to us that God is love "not in the unity of one single person, but in the Trinity of one single substance" (Preface): He is Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and resurrected for us; and finally, the Holy Spirit who moves everything, the cosmos and history, towards the full final recapitulation.

Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is all love and only love, the purest love, which is infinite and eternal. He does not live in splendid solitude, but is rather an inexhaustible source of life which he gives and communicates to us incessantly.

We can sense this somehow by observing around us - whether it is the macro-universe - our earth, the planets, the stars, the galaxies; or the micro-universe - cells, atoms, elementary particles.

In everything that exists, the 'name' of the Most Holy Trinity is somehow 'imprinted', because all being, until the last particle, is being in a relationship - the God-relationship, ultimately appearing as creative love.

Everything comes from love, reaches out to love, and moves at the impulse of love, though, of course, with degrees of consciousness and freedom.

"O LORD, our Lord, how awesome is your name through all the earth!" (Ps 8,2), the psalmist exclaims. When it speaks of the 'name', the Bible means God himself, his truest identity: one that shines over all creation, where every being, by the very fact of being and by the very 'fabric' of which he is made, refers back to a transcendent Principle, to eternal and infinite Life which can be said in one word: Love.

"In him", said St. Paul at the Areopagus of Athens, "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17,28). The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: that only love makes us happy, because we live in relationship - we live to love and to be loved.

Using an analogy suggested by biology, we can say that the human being carries in his own genome the profound imprint of the Trinity, of God-Love.

The Virgin Mary, in her obedient humility, made herself a handmaid of Divine Love: she accepted the will of the Father and conceived the Son by the action of the Holy Spirit. In her, the Almighty constructed a temple worthy of him, and made her the model and image of the Church, mystery and home of communion for all men.

May Mary, mirror of the Most Holy Trinity, help us to grow in our faith in the Trinitarian mystery.




From Ignatius Insight, we have the English translation of the homily delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger in the Cathedral of Bayeux (France) on June 5, 2004, on the eve of the 80th anniversary of D-Day. (Incidentally, his major speech on the anniversary itself, reads in part like a preview of the Regensburg lecture.)



Cardinal Ratzinger in Caen, June 4, 2004. Inset photos show the Abbaye-aux-Hommes/St. Etienne Cathedral in Caen and the German cemetery at La Cambe.


Faith in the Triune God
and Peace in the World

By Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
From Europe: Today and Tomorrow


The feast of the Holy Trinity is different from all the other feasts of the liturgical year, such as Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, when we celebrate the wondrous works of God in history: the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Descent of the Holy Spirit, and consequently the birth of the Church.

Today we are not celebrating an event in which "something" of God is made visible; rather, we are celebrating the very mystery of God. We rejoice in God, in the fact that he is the way he is; we thank him for existing; we are grateful that he is what he is and that we can know him and love him and that he knows and loves us and reveals himself to us.

But the existence of God, his being, the fact that he knows us--is that really a cause for joy? Certainly it is not something easy to understand or experience. Many gods in the different religions of peoples throughout the world are terrible, cruel, selfish, an inscrutable mixture of good and evil. The ancient world was characterized by a fear of the gods and a dread of their mysterious power: it was necessary to win the favor of the gods, to act in such a way as to avoid their whims or their bad humor.

Part of the Christian mission was a liberating force that was able to drive out a whole world of idols and gods that are now considered empty, illusory appearances. At the same time it proclaimed the God who, in Jesus, became man, the God who is Love and Reason.

This God is mightier than all the dark powers that the world can contain: "We know that 'an idol has no real existence,' and that 'there is no God but one.' For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth-as indeed there are many 'gods' and many 'lords'--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist" (1 Cor 8:4-6).

Even today this is a revolutionary, liberating message with respect to all the ancient traditional religions: No longer is there reason to fear the spirits that surround us on all sides, coming and going ceaselessly, eluding our vain efforts at exorcism.

Anyone who "dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty" (Ps 91:1) knows that he is safe, guarded tenderly by the One who welcomes him and offers him refuge. Someone who knows the God of Jesus Christ knows that the other forms of fear in the presence of God have disappeared also, that he has overcome all the forms of harrowing existential anguish that spread through the world in ever new ways.

In view of all the horrors of the world, the same question unceasingly arises: Does God exist? And if he exists, is he truly good? Might he not be instead a mysterious and dangerous reality?

In modern times this question is posed differently: the existence of God seems to be a limit to our freedom. He is perceived as a sort of supervisor who pursues us with his glance. In the modern era, the rebellion against God assumes the form of a fear of an omnipresent, all-seeing God. His glance appears as a threat to us; indeed, we prefer not to be seen; we just want to be ourselves and nothing more. Man does not feel free, he does not feel that he is truly himself, until God is set aside.

The story of Adam already notes this: he sees God as a competitor. Adam wants to lead his own life, all alone, and tries to hide from God "among the trees of the garden" (Gen 3:8). Sartre, too, declared that we must deny God, even if he must exist philosophically, because the concept of God is opposed to man's freedom and greatness.

But has the world really become brighter, freer, happier after setting God aside? Or has man not been stripped of his own dignity and condemned to an empty freedom that makes cruel and ruthless choices of all sorts?

God's glance frightens us only if we think of him as reducing us to some kind of servitude or slavery; but if we read in it the expression of his love, we discover that he is the fundamental requirement for our very being, that it is he who makes us live. "He who has seen me has seen the Father", Jesus said to Philip and to us all (Jn 14:9).

Jesus's face is the face of God himself: this is what God is like. Jesus suffered for us, and by his death he has given us peace; he reveals to us who God is. His glance, far from being a threat, is a glance that saves us.

Yes, we can rejoice that God exists, that he has revealed himself to mankind, and that he does not leave us alone. How consoling it is to know the telephone number of a friend, to know good people who love us, who are always available and never aloof: at any time we can call them and they can call us.

This is precisely what the Incarnation of God in Christ says to us: God has written our names and phone numbers in his address book! He is always listening; we do not need money or technology to call him. Thanks to baptism and confirmation, we are privileged to belong to his family. He is always ready to welcome us: "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of time" (Mt 28:20).

But the Gospel reading for today adds a particularly important statement: Jesus promises the Holy Spirit (Jn 16:13), whom he calls, several times, the "Paraclete". What does that mean? In Latin, the word is translated as Consoler, the Comforter. Etymologically, the Latin word means: the one who stays by us when we feel lonely. Thus our solitude ceases to be loneliness.

For a human being, solitude is often a place of unhappiness; he needs love, and solitude makes the absence of it conspicuous. Loneliness indicates a lack of love; it is something that threatens our quality of life at the deepest level. Not being loved is at the core of human suffering and personal sadness. The word Consoler tells us precisely that we are not alone, that we can never feel abandoned by Love.

By the gift of the Holy Spirit, God has entered into our loneliness and has shattered it. Indeed, this is genuine consolation; it does not consist merely of words but has the force of an active and effective reality.

During the Middle Ages this definition of the Spirit as Consoler led to the Christian duty of entering into the solitude of those who suffer. The first hospices and hospitals were dedicated to the Holy Spirit: thus men undertook the mission of continuing the Spirit's work; they dedicated themselves to being "consolers", to entering into the solitude of the sick, the suffering, and the elderly, so as to bring them light.

This is still a serious duty for us today, in our time.


Moreover, the Greek work parakletos can be translated in yet another way: it also means "advocate". A verse from the Book of Revelation might help us to understand it better: "And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God" (Rev 12:10).

Someone who does not love God with all his heart does not love man, either. Those who deny God quickly become persons who destroy nature and accuse men, because accusing other men and nature enables them to justify their opposition to God: a God who has made this cannot be good! That is their logic.

The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, is not an accuser; he is an advocate and defender of mankind and creation. God himself takes the side of men and creatures. Within creation, God affirms and defends himself by coming to our defense.

God is for us; we see that clearly throughout the earthly life of Jesus: he is the only one who takes our side, becomes one with us even unto death. Saint Paul's awareness of this prompted an outburst of joy:

If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? ... For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom 8:31-39)

This God is for us a cause of joy, and we want to celebrate him. To know him and to acknowledge him is of great importance in our time. We are remembering the terrible days of the Second World War, happy that the dictator Hitler has disappeared along with all his atrocities and that Europe has been able to regain its freedom.

But we cannot forget the fact that, even today, the world suffers from atrocious threats and cruelties. To corrupt and exploit the image of God is as dangerous as the denial of God that was part and parcel of the twentieth-century ideologies and of the totalitarian regimes that sprang from them, turning the world into an arid desert, outside and inside, to the very depths of the soul.

Precisely at this historical moment, Europe and the world need the presence of God that was revealed in Jesus; they need God to stay close to mankind through the Holy Spirit. It is part of our responsibility as Christians to see to it that God remains in our world, that he is present to it as the one and only force capable of preserving mankind from self-destruction.

God is One and Three: he is not an eternal solitude; rather, he is an eternal love that is based on the reciprocity of the Persons, a love that is the first cause, the origin, and the foundation of all being and of every form of life. Unity engendered by love, trinitarian unity, is a unity infinitely more profound than the unity of a building stone, indivisible as that may be from a material perspective.

This supreme unity is not rigidly static; it is love. The most beautiful artistic depiction of this mystery was left to us by Andrei Rublev in the fifteenth century: the world-renowned icon of the Trinity.

Of course, it does not portray the eternal mystery of God in himself, who would dare to do that? It attempts, rather, to represent this mystery as it is reflected in the gift of itself in history, as in the visit of the three men to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre (Gen 18:1-33). Abraham immediately recognized that they were not just like any other men, but that God himself was coming to him through them.



In Rublev's icon, the mystery of this event is made visible, presented as an event that can be contemplated in its many dimensions: thus the mystery as such is respected. The artistic richness of this icon allows me to underscore another characteristic: the natural surroundings of this event, which express the mystery of the Persons.

We are near the oaks of Mamre, which Rublev depicts in stylized form as a single tree representing the tree of life; and this tree of life is none other than the trinitarian love that created the world, sustains it, saves it, and is the source of all life. We see also the tent, the dwelling of Abraham, which recalls the Prologue of John's Gospel: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn 1:14).

The body of the incarnate Word of God became itself the tent, the place where God dwells: God becomes our refuge and our dwelling place. Finally, the gift that Abraham offers, "a calf, tender and good", is replaced, in the icon, with a cup, a symbol of the Eucharist, a sign of the gift in which God gives himself: "Love, sacrifice, and self-immolation preceded the act by which the world was created and are the source of that creation." [1]

The tree, the tent, and the cup: these elements show us the mystery of God, allow us to immerse ourselves in the contemplation of its intimate depths, in his trinitarian love. This is the God that we celebrate. This is the God who gives us joy. He is the true hope of our world. Amen.

ENDNOTES:
[1] P. Evdokimov, The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, trans. Steven Bigham (Redondo Beach, Calif.: Oakwood Publications, 1990), 247.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 26/05/2013 23:05]
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In praise of new Blessed Puglisi,
Pope Francis urges Mafiosi to stop
exploitation of others and to convert

By FRANCES D'EMILIO




VATICAN CITY, May 26, 2013 (AP) — Pope Francis paid tribute to a courageous priest murdered by the Sicilian Mafia as a martyr and urged mobsters on Sunday to abandon their evil ways, particularly the exploitation of people in trafficking rackets such as prostitution.

Francis issued his call to organized crime members to convert their hearts, a day after the beatification of the Rev. Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi in Palermo. The Vatican honored Puglisi as a martyr in the ceremony, 20 years after he was slain in the city by mobsters for defiantly preaching against the Mafia in a neighborhood where Cosa Nostra held sway.

Francis told a crowd in St. Peter's Square that the Mafia killed the Rev. Giuseppe Puglisi because he tried to keep youths from being recruited by mobsters.

Beatification is the last formal step before possible sainthood. As part of the process leading to beatification, church officials considered statements that convicted Mafiosi had given to investigators.

The mobsters told authorities that Cosa Nostra bosses had ordered Puglisi's murder because he had dared defy the Mafia by his preaching and work with young people. Mafia bosses convicted of ordering the slaying and are serving life sentences in prison.



The Pope didn't attend the beatification ceremony, which drew tens of thousands of people to an esplanade near Palermo's seaside. Instead, he used the traditional Sunday papal appearance to pilgrims, tourists and Romans in St. Peter's Square to hail Puglisi as a martyr and "an exemplary priest, especially dedicated" to serving young people.

"Educating young people according to the Gospel, he took them away from organized crime, and thus it (the Mafia) tried to defeat him by killing him," Francis said.

Puglisi was gunned down a few months after Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Sicily and angrily called on mobsters to "convert" their hearts. At the time the island was still shocked by the 1992 bomb blast assassinations by Cosa Nostra, two months apart, of Italy's top anti-Mafia magistrates.

"I think of the great pain suffered by men, women and even children, exploited by so many mafias," Francis said. He decried the crime syndicates for "making them do work that makes them slaves, prostitution."

"Behind this exploitation and slavery are the mafias," the Pope said. Francis, two months into his papacy, has branded human trafficking as one of the most terrible evils plaguing the world.

"They cannot make our brothers slaves," Francis said. "Let us pray that these Mafiosi and Mafiose convert to God," the pope said, using the Italian words to indicate both male and female mobsters. Women have increasingly been playing command roles in Italy's organized crime world as crackdowns see many of the male mobsters jailed for long terms, and have long helped syndicates by hiding fugitives in their homes and with other assistance.

Puglisi worked in one of Palermo's poorest and roughest neighborhoods, trying to give hope and options to young people, often recruited by Cosa Nostra for drug pushing, numbers running and other jobs in the mob's illicit activities. Francis has repeatedly said his vision of the Catholic church is a "poor church for the poor," and encouraged clergy to work with people on society's margins and avoid having the Church turn inwards onto itself.

Investigators say that along with drug trafficking, human trafficking, including in illegal immigrants to work clandestinely in agriculture or factories, and of young people from abroad for prostitution, has become one of the most profitable industries for organized crime.



Francis put his strategy of paying attention to faithful on the periphery into practice Sunday, choosing as his first parish to visit in Rome one so far on the city's outskirts that he took a helicopter from the Vatican, about 20 kilometers (13 miles) away, to arrive. [NB: Benedict XVI visited many parishes in the peripheries of Rome, as a matter of fact, not because of 'strategy', and always flew to them by helicopter because it makes more sense than going by car, especially as the Pope has to be back in the Vatican in time for Sunday Angelus.]

The pope is also bishop of Rome, and Francis spent much of the pastoral visit conversing casually with children in the front row who were making their first Communion at Mass celebrated by him.

Vatican Radio's English service was missing in action yesterday, for they did not bother to translate Pope Francis's unusual homily. Here is the Vatican bulletin on his pastoral visit yesterday to a Roman suburban parish.


The Pope's pastoral visit
to Prima Porta in Rome:
A homily becomes a catechism


May 26, 2013

At 8:30 this morning, Pope Francis lef the Vatican by helicopter to make a pastoral visit to the parish of Saints Elizabeth and Zachary in Valle Muricana (Prima Porta) in the northern sector of the Diocese of Rome.

On his arrival, the Pope met with the families of children who had been baptized during the year, as well as some sick parishioners, after which he heard eight confessions.

At 9:30, he celebrated Mass in the square facing the parish church. He was introduced by the parish priest, don Benoni Ambarus. The Pope replied to the tribute extemporaneously before starting the Mass:


Dear first sentinel, dear second sentinel, dear sentinels: I am pleased with what you told us just now - that the word 'periphery' has a negative sense as well as a positive sense. You know why? Because reality is better understood, not from the centers, but from the edges. It is better understood.

You also said that you must become sentinels, right? I thank you for this function, for the work of being sentinels. And I thank you for your welcome on this Feast of the Trinity.

Here with me I have two priests whom you know well - they are the two secretaries of the Pope, the Pope who is in the Vatican, yes? Today, it's the Bishop who has come here. ["...sono i due segretari del Papa, il Papa che è in Vaticano, eh? Oggi è venuto il Vescovo qui". Very strange remarks. He was obviously referring to Monsignors Gaenswein and Xuereb. But why the subsequent remarks about 'the Pope who is in the Vatican' and 'today, it is the Bishop who has come here'?]

These two are very good workers. One of them, Padre Alfred (Xuereb), marks today the anniversary of his ordination as a priest - 29 years ago. Let us applaud him! Let us pray for him and ask God to give him at least another 29 years, right? Now, let us begin the Mass, in a spirit of piety, in silence, praying altogether for everyone.

During the Mass, the Pope would administer First Communion to 16 children and also give communion to 28 others who had their first communion in previous Sundays. He addressed his informal homily to these children.

Your parish priest, with his words, reminded me of a beautiful thing about Our Lady. When, shortly after she received the announcement that she would be the mother of Jesus, she also learned that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant, the Gospel tells us "she went in haste' to visit her.

She did not wait. She did not say, "Now that I am pregnant myself, I must take care of my own health. My cousin will have friends who will help her". No, she felt something, and "left in haste".

It is beautiful to think this about Our Lady, our mother, who goes forth in haste because within her she feels she must help. She is going to help her cousin, not to boast to her, "Listen, now I give the orders, because I am the Mother of God". No, she did not do that. She went to help. And that is the way it always is with Our Lady.

She is our mother, who always comes in haste when we need her. It would be nice to add to the litany to Our Lady, "Our Lady who comes in haste to help us, pray for us". That is beautiful, yes? Because she always comes in haste. She never forgets her children.

And when her children are in difficulty, when they need something and invoke her, she comes in haste. This gives us security, the certainty of having a mother near us, always at our side. One walks better in life when we have our mother nearby.

Let us think of this grace from Our Lady, this grace she gives us of being near us, without making us wait. Always. She is there - we can count on this - to help us. Our Lady who comes in haste for us.

Our Lady also helps us to understand God well, Jesus, to understand well the life of Jesus, the life of God. To understand what the Lord is, why he is the Lord, who God is.

To you children, I ask: Who among you know who God is? Raise your hands, tell me!

All right, God is the Creator of the earth. And how many Gods are there? One? But I was told there are three: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. How can we explain this? Is there one God or are there three? There is only one God. One!

But how can we explain that there is the Father, there is the Son and there is the Holy Spirit...Louder, louder!...All right, that is correct. They are three in one. Three persons in one God. What does the Father do? The Father is the beginning, the Father who created everything, he created us.

What does the Son do? Who can tell me what Jesus does?... He loves us. Yes, and what more? He brings the Word of God. He came to teach us the Word of God. That is very good!... And then? What did Jesus do on earth? He saved us! Jesus came to give his life for us.

The Father created the world. Jesus saves us. And what does the Holy Spirit do? He loves us. He gives you love.

Now, all the children together: the Father creates everything, he creates the world. Jesus saves us. And the Holy Spirit? He loves us. That is Christian life: to speak with the Father, to speak with the Son, to speak with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus saved us, but he also walks with us in life. Is this true? How does he walk with us? What does he do when he walks with us in life? That's a difficult question. The one who can answer wins the derby!

What does Jesus do when he walks with us? Louder!... First, he helps us. He leads us. Very good! He walks with us, he helps us, he leads us, he teaches us how to go forward. And he also gives us the strength to go on walking. Is that true? He sustains us. Very well. In our difficulties, right? Even in our homework from school!

He sustains us, he helps us, he leads us, he supports us. That is how Jesus is always with us. Very good. But listen, Jesus also gives us strength. How does he give us strength.>You must know how he makes us strong... Louder, I can't hear you... He comes to us!

But when you say, "We receive communion" - how can a piece of bread give so much strength? Is that not just bread? That which is on the altar - is it bread or not? It seems to be bread. But it is not really bread. Then what is it? It is the Body of Christ. Christ comes to our heart.

So let us all think about this: God gave us life, Jesus gave us salvation, he accompanies us, he leads us, he sustains us, he teaches us. And the Holy Spirit? What does the Holy Spirit give us? He loves us. He gives us love.

Let us think of God in this way, and let us ask Our Lady, Our Lady who is our mother, who always comes in haste to help us, that she teach us well what God is: what the Father is, what the Son is, what the Holy Spirit is. Let it be so.


Too bad I cannot find any appropriate photos of Pope Francis giving this impromptu catechism. Admirable and quite endearing!

.
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Monday, May 27, 2013, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Extreme left, a portrait of Augustine in a medieval manuscript; next to it, an icon showing Gregory the Great(left) and Augustine.
ST. AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY (b Italy early 6th-century, d England ca 605)
Benedictine Monk, Missionary, Bishop, 'Apostle of England'
Augustine led the 'Gregorian Mission', one of 40 monks sent by Pope Gregory the Great to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons. Eventually, they
landed in Kent, where contrary to the hostility they expected, they were welcomed by King Ethelred, a pagan married to a Christian. He set them
up in Canterbury and were allowed to carry out their mission freely. In fact, he himself converted. Augustine was consecrated a bishop in France
and went back to establish his See in Canterbury. Soon they set up the Sees of London and Rochester as well, as well as a school for missionaries.
Problems arose from the hostility between the Christianized Britons, who also insisted on retaining Celtic customs, and the Anglo-Saxons. However,
following Pope Gregory's advice, Augustine and his missionaries "purified rather than destroyed pagan temples and customs, and transformed their
feasts into Christian feasts". Before Augustine died, he named one of his fellow missionaries, who would eventually become St. Lawrence of Canterbury,
to succeed him. Upon his death, Augustine was quickly revered as a saint.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052713.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with

- Mons. Zygmunt Zimowski, President of the Pontifical Council for Ministry to Healthcare Workers

- Cardinal Velasio De Paolis, C.S., Emeritus President of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See
(and Papal Legate overseeing the Legionaries of Christ)

- Mons. Lúcio Andrice Muandula, Bishop of Xai-Xai (Mozambique) and President of the Mozambique bishops' conference.



One year ago...

Benedict XVI celebrated Pentecost Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. Calling it the feast of the 'baptism of the Church', the Holy Father said Pentecost was also the feast of human unity, understanding and sharing, in which man invokes the Holy Spirit of unity and truth. At the Regina caeli later, he announced that on Oct, 7, 2012, at the opening Mass of the Ordinary Assembly of the Bishops' Synod on the New Evangelization, he would formally proclaim Saints Juan de Avila (Spain) and Hildegarde von Bingen (Germany) Doctors of the Church, bringing the numbe of these exalted saints to 35. They are the first Doctors of the Church proclaimed by him. The Vatican also released the text of the message sent by Benedict XVI to His Holiness Mar Dinkha IV, Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church, on the occasion of the Golden Jubilee of his episcopal consecration. (Benedict XVI himself was to celebrate the next day, May 28, the 35th anniversary of his episcopal consecration as Archbishop of Munich-Freising).

As I re-posted Benedict XVI's Pentecost homily of 2012 last Pentecost Sunday (which came one week earlier in 2013), I am re-posting here his words at the Regina caeli.

REGINA CAELI
May 27, 2012


Here is a translation of the Holy Father's words :

Today we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost, which brings the period of Easter to an end, fifty days after the Sunday of the Resurrection.

This solemnity reminds us and makes us relive the outpouring of teh Holy Spirit ont he Apostles and other disciples who were gathered in prayer with the Virgin Mary at the Cenacle
(cfr Acts 2,1-11).

Jesus, resurrected and having ascended to heaven, send his Spirit to the Church so that every Christian may take part in his divine life and become a valid witness for him to the world.

The Holy Spirit, bursting into history, defeats its aridity, opens hears to hope, stimulates and favors in us the interior maturation of our relationship to God and to our neighbor.

The Spirit, who "had spoken through the prophets", with the gifts of wisdom and knowledge, continues to inspire men and women who are committed to the search for the truth, proposing original ways of knowing and of appreciating in depth the mystery of God, of man, and of the world.

In this context, I am happy to announce that on October 7, at the start of the Ordinary Assembly of the Bishops' Synod, I shall proclaim St. Juan de Avila and St. Hildegarde von Bingen Doctors of the universal Church.

These two great witnesses to the faith lived in very different historical periods and cultural environments.

Hildegarde was a Benedictine nun in the heart of Germany's Middle Ages, an authentic teacher o theology and profound scholar of the natural sciences and of music.

Juan de Avila, a diocesan priest during the Spanish Renaissance, took part in the turmoil of the cultural and spiritual renewal of the Church and of society at the dawn of the modernity.

But the sanctity of their lives and the profundity of their teaching make them perennially relevant: the grace of the Holy Spirit, in fact, projected them into that experience of penetrating comprehension of divine revelation and of an intelligent dialog with the world that constitute the permanent horizon of the life and activity of the Church.

Especially in the light of the Church's drive for a new evangelization, to which the Synodal Assembly will be dedicated, and on the eve of the Year of Faith, these two figures - saints and Doctors of the Church - are of relevant importance and topicality.

Even in our day, through their teaching, the Spirit of the Risen Lord continues to make his voice heard and to illuminate the journey that leads to that Truth which alone can make us free ad give full meaning to9 our life.

As we pray the Regina caeli together, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary so she may obtain for the Church that she be powerfully animated by the Holy Spirit to bear witness to Christ with evangelical directness and to open herself ever more to the fullness of truth.


After the prayers, he said:
This morning, in Vannes, France, Mother St-Louis, born Louise-Élisabeth Molé, founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Louis, who lived between the 18th and 19th centuries, was proclaimed Blessed. Let us give thanks to God for this exemplary witness to love for God and neighbor...

In English, he said:
...Next Friday, I will go to Milan to be with families from all over the world celebrating the Seventh World Meeting of Families. I ask you to join me in praying for the success of this important event, and that families may be filled with the Holy Spirit, rediscover the joy of their vocation in the Church and the world, and bear loving witness to the faith. Upon all of you, I invoke God’s abundant blessings!




Today's issue of OR carries a full page advertisement for the latest volume of Joseph Ratzinger's Collected Writings (Opera Omnia) translated into Italian. It is the volume dedicated to his writings about the priesthood. It takes its title, "Announcers of the Word and Servants of your Joy", from the Bible verse Joseph Ratzinger chose as the motto on his ordination to the priesthood in 1951.




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Pope Francis:
God is love but not
in an 'emotional' sense

By David Uebbing


Vatican City, May 26, 2013 (CNA/EWTN News).- As he celebrated the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, Pope Francis spoke about how God is love, but not in an “emotional” or “sentimental” way.

“The light of Easter and Pentecost have renewed in us each year the joy and wonder of faith that recognizes that God is not something vague, abstract, but has a name: ‘God is love,’” the Pope said May 26, before reciting the Angelus in St. Peter’s Square.

And this love “is not sentimental, emotional, but the love of the Father who is the source of all life, the love of the Son who died on the cross and rose, the love of the Spirit who renews man and the world,” he stated.

Pope Francis then reflected on how the Trinity “is not the product of human reasoning, it is the face which God himself revealed, not from the top of a throne, but walking with humanity in the history of the people of Israel, and above all in Jesus of Nazareth.

“Jesus is the Son who made us know the merciful Father and brought to the world his ‘fire,’ the Holy Spirit,” he said.

On today’s feast, he explained, “we praise God not for a particular mystery, but for himself, ‘for his glory is immense,’ as the liturgical hymn says. We praise him and thank him because he is love, and for how he calls us to enter the embrace of his communion, which is eternal life.”...




Serendipitously, Beatrice has posted on her site a letter Benedict XVI wrote for readers of FAMIGLIA CRISTIANA, Italy's largest- circulation weekly magazine, when it gave out copies of his first encyclical to its readers, at the time DEUS CARITAS EST was issued in December 2005.

Benedict XVI presents his encyclical
to readers of 'Famiglia Cristiana'

December 2005



Dear readers of Famiglia Cristiana,

I am happy that Famiglia Cristiana is sending to your homes the text of my encyclical and has given me the opportunity to accompany it with a few words that may help facilitate your reading.

Initially, in fact, the text may appear a bit difficult and theoretical. But when one goes farther, it becomes evident that I have merely sought to answer a couple of questions that are very concrete for Christian living.

The first question is this: Can one really love God? And then: Can love be imposed? Is it not a sentiment that we either have or don't?

The answer to the first question is Yes. We can love God, since he has not been unreachable but has entered our life. He comes to us, he comes to each of us, in the sacraments which work on our existence; in the faith of the Church through which he addresses us; by making us meet others who have been touched by him and transmit his light; with the dispositions through which he intervenes in our lives; with the wonders of creation that he has given us.

He has not just offered us love, but he lived it for us, and he is knocking in so many ways on our hearts to awaken our love in response to his.

Love is not just a sentiment - it also involves our will and our intelligence. With his Word, God addresses our mind, our will and our sentiment so that we can learn to love him "with all our heart and with all our soul".

In fact, we do not find love 'ready made' - it grows. Therefore, we can learn it slowly, so to speak, in a way that it increasingly encompasses all our forces and opens the way for us to lead a correct life.

The second question is this: Can we really love our 'neighbor' even when he is alien to us or even downright unsympathetic? Yes we can, if we are friends of God. If we are his friends: In this way, it becomes even more clear that he has always loved us, even if we often take our eyes off him and live by following other orientations.

But if his friendship starts to be, gradually, more important and incisive in our life, then we will start to wish well - to love - all those whom he loves and who may need our help. He wants us to be friends with his friends, and that we can do if we are close to him ourselves.

Then there is the question: With her commandments and her prohibitions, does not the Church spoil for us the joy of eros, of being loved, which urges one to be with another person, to a union with the other?

In the encyclical, I have sought to show that the most profound promise of eros can only mature if we do not seek only to grasp transient happiness.

On the contrary, together, two people can find the patience to discover each other in their most intimate being, in the totality of body and soul, in a way that the happiness of the other becomes more important than my own.

Because then, one will not seek only to take from the other but to give, and it is in this liberation from the 'I' that man finds himself and is able to feel complete joy.

In the encyclical, I also write about a course of purification and maturation that is necessary so that the true promise of eros can be fulfilled. The language of tradition calls it 'education in chastity' which means none other than learning the fullness of love patiently through its growth and maturation.

The second part of the encyclical is about charity, the communitarian service of love by the Church for all those who suffer in body and spirit, who need the gift of love.

About this, two questions are usually raised: Can the Church not leave this service to other philanthropic organizations which exist in many forms?

The answer is No. The Church cannot do this. She must practice love for neighbor as a community, otherwise, its announcement of the God of love is incomplete and inadequate.

The second question: Is it not better to foster an order of justice in which there will no longer be any needy persons, and therefore, charity becomes superfluous?

The answer is this: Of course, the object of politics is to create a just order in society, which acknowledges the rights and needs of everyone, and no one suffers because of poverty. In this sense, the true goal of politics is justice, along with peace, which cannot exist without justice.

By her nature, the Church does not engage in politics directly, but she respects the autonomy of the State and its order in society. Common sense dictates the quest for an order of justice since politics is in the interest of all citizens.

Often, however, reason is blinded by special interests and the desire for power. Faith serves to purify reason so that it may see and decide correctly. Therefore, it is the task of the Church to heal reason and to reinforce the will to do good.

In this sense - without the Church herself engaging in politics - the Church participates most passionately in the quest for justice. It is up to those Christians who are involved in public professions to work politically in order to open new ways to justice.

But this is only the first part of the answer to the question. The second part, which is particularly close to my heart, is this: Justice can never make love superfluous.

Beyond justice, man needs love, which alone can animate justice. In a world as wounded as we are experiencing today, we do not really need to illustrate this.

The world expects the witness of Christian love which is inspired by our faith. In our world, which is often so dark, the light of God shines through this love.




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One of the personal 'style' preferences manifested by Pope Francis that I find rather regrettable is his decision to be minimal even with regard to the vestments he wears for liturgical celebrations. favoring for the most part a plain unadorned caftan in white or other liturgical color. This may be far more 'comfortable' for him compared to the older garments of previous Popes such as Benedict XVI wore more often than he did anything specially made for him (even for his inaugural Mass as Pope, he wore a chasuble and miter that had been made for John Paul II) - but still, when was it ever wrong to render to God the honor that is due him through these symbols that have been around for centuries. Even we, ordinary folk, are supposed to go to Mass in our 'Sunday best'...

Liturgical vestments do symbolize a great deal, especially if they are worn by the Pope, and are not in any way meant to reflect the individual Pope's personal style but a way in which the Church, since earliest times - following Jewish liturgical practice in this - has sought to practise liturgy in a manner that celebrates the glory of God, because liturgy is our act of worship to God. This is not to say, however, that Pope Francis's personal style makes his liturgies any less valid, but 'traditionalist' that I am when it comes to Catholic practices, there can be no demerit to observing traditions of beauty ad majorem Dei gloriam (to use a favorite Jesuit phrase), as saints, Popes and faithful alike have done through the centuries.

I am not attempting any extended comment here on this topic, which has been written about exhaustively by qualified Church scholars and liturgists, since this is only my way of introducting this item which came out in the Italian service of VATICAN INSIDER on April 24, 2013, and which, it turns out, was a re-post of an article first published by the online journal back in 2011. I can only speculate what prompted the re-post at this time...


Left, the Sacristy in St. Peter's Basilica, and entrance to the Sacristy Chapel; right, some of the Sacristy treasures on display in the Vatican Treasures Museum which is open to the public.

As this article shows, the papal vestments kept in the sacristy at St. Peter's are an invaluable liturgical resource that, happily, Mons. Guido Marini thought to draw upon for Benedict XVI's liturgies. [I understand from previous articles that the papal vestments usually come in sets - i.e., they are matched with the appropriate vestments for the deacons and prelate-acolytes who assist the Pope in the liturgy.] They do not cost anything, one size fits all - and more importantly, they are all tributes to the Lord from the nameless artisans who made them, who, in their way, contributed to the glorification of God as did all those who had anything to do with the sacred art, architecture and music that have uplifted generations of Christians through the centuries and that have not remained simply as museum pieces.


Two centuries of papal vestments
preserved in St. Peter's sacristy

by Luca Rolandi




An original piece of research that combines the study of costume and of sacred objects related to the history of the papacy was published in Genoa in 2011 as a book. Its presentation in Rome in the fall of 2011r was attended by Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Le vesti dei Papi I parati della Sacrestia Pontificia (Papal vestments and accessories in the Pontifical Sacristy) was written by Professor Marzia Cataldi Gallo, a scholar of international renown, who specialises in the field of old textiles and the history of costume. This is the first work that presents the rich heritage of the Papal Sacristy, located behind the Sistine Chapel.

The Sacristy’s spacious chestnut wardrobes hide treasures that have been woven and embroidered over the centuries: from the garments worn by Paul V Borghese (1605-1621) to the pieces worn by the Pope today.


Benedict XVI with concelebrating cardinals and cardinal deacons, in matching Roman chasubles, at the Mass of the Mother of God on January 1, 2011.

The papal vestments make for an incredibly rich heritage that remains unknown to date, especially the papal outfits which are sporadically published in books discussing golden and silver furnishings or occasionally shown in exhibitions. This first book on the topic gives readers the chance to experience two centuries of papal and Church history.

The study of the vestments preserved in the sacristy combined with the analysis of a number of archived documents that reveal the importance of the old outfits and the various stories that led to their preservation or destruction.

The analysis of thoroughly kept inventories and account books made it possible to reconstruct the identities and activities of many artists and artisans: embroiderers, the “banderari” – middle class artisans who tailored the vestments. and the merchants who supplied the finest materials. All these individuals worked in the service of various Popes over the centuries, producing liturgical garments that were then copied all over Europe.

The archive documents cited in the book are illuminating as they provide accounts of life in the Papal household. On the one hand they reveal information about the expenses incurred, as well as the “recycling” which took place, through the common tradition of Popes re-using their predecessor’s vestments.

Besides the papal liturgical vestments, other components of the Popes’ “daily” dress were also analysed, such as the 'superb' white cassocks of the Blessed Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689).

More than one century since the last complete inventory of the vestments in St. Peter's Sacristy was made in 1906, this extraordinary and previously unknown heritage is now revealed to contemporary readers.

In a statement to Vatican Insider, the author Cataldi Gallo said: “My desire to carry out this research grew after 30 years of working in the Ligurian sacristies, as a conservator for Liguria’s Regional Board of Artistic and Historical Heritage. My work involved cataloguing and restoring a great number of liturgical vestments (as well as other pieces of art of course). But my passion for old textiles and the history of costume goes back a while before this.”

Mrs. Cataldi Gallo worked as a civil servant (1984-2008) and head of Liguria’s Regional Board of Artistic and Historical Heritage (2003-2006). “The photos I used in my study were invaluable in helping me weave my way through the various parameters and in trying to work out which pontificate each piece of clothing belonged to. Daria Vinco’s beautiful photos are vital in presenting this unknown heritage to the public.”

I've subsequently found the following article in L'Osservatore Romano from Sept. 28, 2011, in connection with the book presentation in Rome:

Liturgical vestments
and what they stand for

by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi
President, Pontifical Council for Culture
Translated from the 9/28/11 issue of


Editor's Note: This Wednesday, after the General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI will receive a copy of the book I parati della Sagrestia Pontificia. Seicento e Settecento (Genova, De Ferrari, 2011, 175 pp). Here are some excerpts from the Preface written for the book by Cardinal Ravasi.


There's a verse in the Bible that is hardly comented upon, and practically ignored in the history of art, even if it belongs to one of the most famous pages in Sacred Scripture.

Man, who had rebelled and sinned against God, is about to be expelled from the delights of Eden, and the Lord performs a gesture which is curious at first glance: "The LORD God made for the man and his wife garments of skin, with which he clothed them" (Gen 3,21).

This, an action typical of a paterfamilias - which cannot be tagged as just a pure and simple 'etiology' of human clothing, namely, as an archetypical explanation of why man must protect himself from the inclemencies of weather and other external factors.

That gesture was something more, expecially since a few lines earlier, there was another significant verse. In that garden, before the rebellion against God, "the man and his wife were both naked, yet they felt no shame" (Gen 2,25).

Before the Fall, the situation of nudity was the reflection of a human nature that was intact and uncontaminated in its deepest reality. After they sinned, in order to recover some dignity, man needed to be clothed, not only as mere clothing but as an emblem, a sign of the constant protection of God who never abandoned his creatures even when they have sinned.

In other words, from the very beginning of human history, clothing was never simply just an article of wear but also a vestment. That is why the conferment of a responsibility or position is called an 'investiture', and when a person intervenes in full exercise of his functions, we say that he talks and acts 'clothed in his authority'.

Fashions have changed through the ages to the point of paroxysm so that dress has become a true and proper symbol of seduction and provocation, of beauty or of extravagance, of esthetics or of power.

[French philosopher] Roland Barthes's famous essay, Système de la mode (1967) is a refined and ccurate analysis of this material element that has been transformed into a true and proper status symbol, into a psychological index , into a tirual component - that is, into an expressive language (think of the word 'text' which comes from the Latin textus, for fabric).

The Bible, in many of its pages referring to sacred worship, present priestly garments as a kind of map on which is written multiple liturgical, spiritual and social meanings, starting with the Jewish ephod, variably described by exegetes, which was perhaps initially a loincloth which progressively became a priestly and royal sign, and even an instrument of oracular divination.

[The ephod dates back to ancient Israeli culture and may have started as a simple linen loincloth, but by the time of the Exodus, it is described as an elaborate garment woven of multicolored threads worn by the high priest, upon which he wore a breastplate, held with jeweled straps, to symbolize divine protection. In this sense, it is thought to be the precursor of the papal fanon.]

Thus it is understandable that this study by Marzia Cataldi Gallo on the liturgical vestments and accessories of the Popes in the 17th and 18th centuries = starting with Paul V (Paolo Borghese), whose name appears prominently across the façade of St. Peter's Basilica, to Pius VI, the Pope who was a victim of untold suffering under Napoleon Bonaparte - is not just a wondrous kaleidoscope of refined works of manual labor, of embroidery and design, of patterns and fabrics, but also a true and proper epiphany of the splendor of worship.

The wonder we experience just by looking at the photographs of these artistic gems in fabric is the same as that depicted in a beautiful page of the Book of Siracide (Ecclesiastes), who was a Jewish wise man of the second century before Christ, describing a high priest who was his contemporary "when he was dressed in glorious garments and was clothed in perfect splendor" during the liturgies of Zion.

One must read the entire Chapter 50 of that Biblical book to be involved in a pyrotechnic display of dazzling images that are meant to illustrate sacrality and the beauty that radiates from these high-priestly vestments to indicate supreme divine splendor.

Jean Guitton was right when he said that liturgy should constantly interweave numen (mystery) and lumen (clarity and intelligibility).

This wonderful series of papal vestments are a luminous and glorious demonstration of this. They are grandeur and clarity, nobility and concreteness, signs of God's ineffable transcendence and the human invocation made through art and artisanship, through creativity and loving, patient work.

I wonder if Cardinal Ravasi would have written the same Preface if it had been asked of him today, and not in the previous Pontificate.


While googling in vain for any illustrations from the Cataldi Gallo book. I came across this BlogSpot, which, after Benediict XVI's resignation, has been posting series of photographs showing B16 in various liturgical vestments... Check it out:
saintbedestudio.blogspot.com/2013_02_01_archive.html


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This article presents strong textual evidence [at least, going by the citations made by the writer referred to a leading Christian scholar of contemporary Islam] to show why Islam, even if it believes in one God, is theologically and even morally incompatible with Christianity in every other way. However, the article is flawed in that it starts out with an inexplicable misunderstanding of the term 'ecumenism' by the article's writer, who applies the term and its derivatives even to inter-religious or inter-faith dialog, a term which, for some reason, he places in quotation marks. Yet Mr. Kainz is an erudite professor and author of many books! (Still, the editors of Crisis might have pointed out the error to him, so he could have modified his words accordingly.)

Ecumenism refers to those initiatives that encourage greater cooperation - with a view to eventual reunification - among the different Christian churches. communities and denominations. We all believe in God the Father, in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who came to bring salvation to mankind, and in the Holy Spirit; and we all consider the Bible (although in various versions) as basic Scripture. Dialog with non-Christian religions - i.e., interfaith dialog (even with the two other monotheistic religions - cannot be considered ecumenical in any way!


Islam and the limits of dialog
by Howard Kainz

May 24, 2013

The 1964 Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis redintegratio, was quite clear: The newly launched ecumenical movement had as its sole goal, the reunification of Christians. The appeals for reunification would be directed to baptized Christians, “those who invoke the Triune God, and confess Jesus as Lord and Savior, doing this not merely as individuals but as corporate bodies.”

The prime interest would be in uniting with those Christian communities that possess the Apostolic Succession and preserve all seven sacraments, such as the Orthodox churches; and also other Christian bodies, such as the Church of England, whose liturgies and other usages are similar to Roman Catholic practices.

Other Vatican II documents, however, envisioned extending the outreach (not strictly ecumenical dialogue, but “interfaith dialogue”) to non-Christian religions.

Lumen Gentium (1964) strikingly affirmed that “the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Moslems: these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day”; and Nostra aetate (1965), urging “mutual understanding,” emphasized that “The Church has also a high regard for the Muslims. They worship God, who is one, living and subsistent, merciful and almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has also spoken to men. They strive to submit themselves without reserve to the hidden decrees of God, just as Abraham submitted himself to God’s plan, to whose faith Muslims eagerly link their own.”

The wording of the statement that God’s “plan of salvation” also includes Muslims, who worship the same God and “hold the faith of Abraham” seemed to “push the envelope”—as if we Christians shared a common religious heritage with Islam as well as Judaism.

[All three faiths trace their lineage back to Abraham, but in fact, inly Judaism and Christianity have a continuity, because Jesus was a Jew, and because the Old Testament is part of the Christian Bible - much of it is seen as a prefigurement of Christ, and moreover, it provides an ample record of God's interaction with men before he sent Jesus among us. The Muslims' descendancy from Abraham appears to be Mohammed's attempt to make a retroactive claim to religious legitimacy seven centuries after Christ, but Islam traces its lineage to Ishmael rather than Isaac. But let that be, and let's examine their belief in one god. By all accounts, Allah has a very different nature from the unitary God of the Jews and the triune God of the Christians. The nature of Allah (though he is acknowledged as Creator) as arbitrary will appears to be dictated by the teachings that Mohammed (who claimed to be God's last and only true prophet) left his followers. Even worse, however, is the dismissal of Jesus by Islam as 'just another prophet', and Islam's scorn for Christianity's belief in the Trinity which, they say, is not believing in 'one God'.]

The interfaith dialogue guidelines from the Council were followed up with further initiatives—for example, The Vatican Secretariat’s Guidelines for a Dialogue between Muslims and Christians (1969); Orientations pour un dialogue entre Chretiens et Musulmans (1981), under the auspices of the Vatican Secretariat; and Christian-Muslim Relations: An Introduction for Christians in the United States of America (2003), published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Keynoting a new quasi-ecumenical [no such hybrid![ approach to Islam, Pope Paul VI in his 1969 visit to Uganda, along with mention of Catholic and Anglican martyrs, also paid homage to Muslim martyrs for “refusing to transgress the precepts of their religion.”

He seemed to be referring to Bábís (who latter became Bahais) executed in Persia (Iran) during the 19th century. He spoke of “our high respect for the faith you profess, and our hope that what we hold in common may serve to unite Christians and Moslems ever more closely.” [That's not ecumenical at all - the unity he refers to is a unity in mankind's universal aspirations for peace, justice and freedom, not a unity of faith!]

In the same spirit, Pope John Paul II in 1986 convoked the World Day of Prayer for Peace in Assisi, attended by non-Christian religions as well as non-Catholic churches.



In 1999 a photo of the Pope kissing the Koran presented to him by an Islamic delegation — like the 2009 photo of President Barak Obama bowing to the Saudi King —“went viral” on YouTube.
[????YouTube only began in 2005! The incident took place at the Vatican during the visit of a delegation of Shiites and Sunnis from Iraq, who presented the Pope with the Koran as a gift.]

In our archdiocese (Milwaukee) in 2007, the Council for Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), offered presentations on Islam. Our parish scheduled four 90-minute presentations. I met with our pastor with my objections, and also wrote to the then-Archbishop Dolan about CAIR’s terrorist connections, but to no avail. I attended the first two of the presentations, which extolled the beauty of Islam at great length, with only a few minutes left for questions or comments.

Robert Spencer in Not Peace but the Sword: the Great Chasm between Christianity and Islam casts doubt on such efforts towards rapprochement with Muslims. Islam is an “Abrahamic” religion only in the sense that Muslims claim that Abraham’s sacrifice in Genesis 22 was of Ishmael, their ancestor, not Isaac.

The God of Islam is not a Father, certainly not love, but rather the master of the universe, in which all human beings are his slaves. Some non-believers (as well as the mysterious spirit beings known as jinn) are actuallAnd t created for hell.

The commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself” appears nowhere in Islam. Jesus was not the Son of God, was not crucified, and did not arise from the dead. Rather, he preached the coming of Mohammed—a fact that does not appear, Muslims claim, in the now corrupted versions of the New Testament.

Indeed, (Muslims say) Jesus will return at the end of the world to break all crosses, kill all pigs (food eaten by Christians), destroy Christianity, and Islamize the world. Mary was the daughter of Imran, the father of Moses and Aaron, and thus the sister of Aaron. And the New Testament has been defiled - because all the references of Jesus in the Gospels to the coming of Muhammad have been removed! Christians are the “vilest of creatures” (Qur’an 98:6), and can escape the death mandated for unbelievers only if they pay a special poll tax (juzya) in Muslim countries.

It is often claimed that we can at least join in concert with Muslims on moral issues. But, according to Spencer, this is problematic.

Islamic morality allows for practices that Catholicism abhors, including contraception, female genital mutilation, and even sexual slavery of non-believing women. Abortion is permitted in the first trimester. Child marriage is rampant in Islamic jurisdictions. Polygamy is permitted, along with easy divorce of wives by men and “temporary” marriage laws.

Sharia law, Spencer adds, makes the chasm between Christianity and Islam almost completely unbridgeable: “Sharia Law calls for, among other things: the dehumanization of women; the flogging/stoning/killing of adulterers; and the killing of homosexuals, apostates and critics of Islam. All of this is part of orthodox Islam, not some ‘extremist’ form of it.”

In a book I published during the 1980s, Ethics in Context, I included a section on the Golden Rule, which began with a listing of various versions of the Golden Rule in major religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

I was unable to find anything like the Golden Rule in Islam. There was nothing of the sort in the Qur’an. The closest approximation was in one of the Hadiths, saying “None of you believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.”

But this instruction only applies to fellow Muslims, as we discover from verses 9:23 and 48:29 in the Qur’an, which prohibit friendship with, and compassion for, unbelievers. Spencer also notes the very restricted application of the Ten Commandments: “‘Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal,’ and so on and so on? Islam does uphold those things, but for Muslims only.”

Aside from tolerance and normal respect and communication with Muslims, it remains questionable whether systematic and structured “dialogues”—to come to an agreement on religious doctrines or moral values—are of any benefit whatsoever. [But who said anything about that at all? Doctrinal agreement is obviously out of the question - it would be as pointless as expecting doctrinal agreement with Hindus or Buddhists. And moral values cannot be shared as long as 1) Muslims believe that the Ten Commandments should be followed only towards other Muslims, not to anyone else; and 2) sharia law allows contraception, abortion, polygamy, child marriage and the other barbaric practices that it allows, or worse, prescribes.

We can't even welcome Islam's disapproval of homosexual unions because their law considers the fact of being homosexual itself as a crime punishable in the most severe way! What then is left to 'dialog' about? Islam cannot plausibly talk to anyone about 'peace' because the greatest danger to international peace in our time is Muslim extremism - and yet, the jihadists are never denounced by any Muslim leader of prominence, civilian or religious. even when their violence kills other Muslims.

Ultimately, the Catholic Church has to keep up her dialog with moderate Muslims because she has to look out for the Christians who are openly persecuted in Muslim countries. In which we are left to be the supplicants, because the religious freedom of Christians is not respected and openly violated in Muslim lands, whereas the Western world has bent over backwards (unwisely, as in Britain) in the past three decades to grant Muslims the greatest possible freedom to practice their religion, a freedom far beyond mere tolerance.]


Our main hope in addressing the Christian-Muslim “chasm” is an emphasis on natural law and natural rights, which, being written on the hearts of all men, can be activated even in the midst of religious pressures and interdictions. [But Muslims are so rigidly bound by the Koran and what their imams tell them that if natural law is not consonant with what the Koran says, the Koran will always take precedence! Start with the most obvious 'natural law' that it is wrong to kill another person. The Koran allows a whole range of circumstances when killing is allowable and must, in fact, be prescribed. This is the sense in which the Paleologue Emperor made the remark cited by Benedict XVI in Regensburg - because the circumstances of allowable killing include imposing Islam by the sword if need be!

Howard Kainz is professor emeritus at Marquette University. He is the author of several books, including Natural Law: an Introduction and Reexamination (2004), The Philosophy of Human Nature (2008), and The Existence of God and the Faith-Instinct (2010). Professor Kainz is a regular contributor To Crisis Magazine


The use of the photograph showing John Paul II kissing the Koran led me to google what John Paul II has said about Islam. All the explanations and defenses I have read online justifying what he did fall back on one line - he did it out of respect for Islam. But one can respect Islam without kissing its 'holy book' which contradicts the basic tenets of Christianity!

John Paul II was an exceptionally intelligent man, and even more, a truly holy man. But even saints can make mistakes, and I agree with the ultra-trads who think he was wrong to make the gesture, which was really uncalled for. His Muslim guests would not have thought any less of him if he had simply accepted the gift, said Thank you, and handed it to his aide, especially in view of what he said himself about the Koran in his answer about Islam to Vittorio Messori in the interview-book Crossing the Threshold of Hope (in which the Pope gave written answers to questions sent to him by Messori).


John Paul II on Islam
from 'Crossing the Threshold of Hope', 1994

A very different discussion, obviously, is the one that leads us to the synagogues and mosques, where those who worship the One God assemble...
Yes, certainly it is a different case when we come to these great monotheistic religions, beginning with Islam.

In the Declaration Nostra Aetate, we read: "The Church also has a high regard for the Muslims, who worship one God, living and subsistent, merciful and omnipotent, the Creator of heaven and earth" (Nostra Aetate 3).

As a result of their monotheism, believers in Allah are particularly close to us. I remember an event from my youth. In the convent of the Church of Saint Mark in Florence, we were looking at the frescoes by Fra Angelico. At a certain point a man joined us who, after sharing his admiration for the work of this great religious artist, immediately added: "But nothing can compare to our magnificent Muslim monotheism."

His statement did not prevent us from continuing the visit and the conversation in a friendly tone. It was on that occasion that I got a kind of first taste of the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, which we have tried to develop systematically in the post-conciliar period.

Whoever knows the Old and New Testaments, and then reads the Koran, clearly sees the process by which it completely reduces Divine Revelation. It is impossible not to note the movement away from
what God said about Himself
, first in the Old Testament through the Prophets, and then finally in the New Testament through His Son.

In Islam all the richness of God's self-revelation, which constitutes the heritage of the Old and New Testaments, has definitely been set aside.
[The Pope's acute awareness of what the Koran is makes it even more puzzling that he kissed the Koran in 1999!]

Some of the most beautiful names in the human language are given to the God of the Koran, but He is ultimately a God outside of the world, a God who is only Majesty, never Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Islam is not a religion of redemption. There is no room for the Cross and the Resurrection. Jesus is mentioned, but only as a prophet who prepares for the last prophet, Muhammad. There is also mention of Mary, His Virgin Mother, but the tragedy of redemption is completely absent. For this reason, not only the theology but also the anthropology of Islam is very distant from Christianity.

Nevertheless, the religiosity of Muslims deserves respect. It is impossible not to admire, for example, their fidelity to prayer. The image of believers in Allah who, without caring about time or place, fall to their knees and immerse themselves in prayer remains a model for all those who invoke the true God, in particular for those Christians who, having deserted their magnificent cathedrals,
pray only a little or not at all.


[This is so true. I've always been very envious of how it seems Muslims never fail to go to mosque on Fridays, and if you have ever been in a Muslim nation, you cannot fail to be in awe at how at the ritual times for prayer during the day, everyone falls to his knees, bows in the direction of Mecca and prays. Every Muslim, it seems, (even the mass-murdering suicide bombers) adheres conscientiously to the obligatory Five Pillars of their faith - the creed, praying five times a day, almsgiving (the well-off are required to contribute 2.5% of their assets yearly to help the needy, and in 2011, it was estimated that the money raised annually is a15 times that of total global humanitarian aid, though much of it is mismanaged and misuse, by government collection authorities), fasting during the month of Ramadan, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his lifetime. No problem among the Muslims of empty mosques. In contrast, how many Catholics today are even aware that the Church has five binding commandments, much less keep them? (Mass on Sundays and religious holidays, confession at least once a year, communion at least on Easter, fasting and abstinence as required, and contributing to the Church). In short, Muslims as a whole perform their religious obligations conscientiously, whereas for most contemporary Christians, these obligations have become optional. This doesn't necessarily make Muslims 'better' persons than we are, but their religious discipline is awesome - and that makes the perceived threat of Islamic world domination frighteningly possible in the face of do-as-you please Christianity.]

The Council has also called for the Church to have a dialogue with followers of the "Prophet," and the Church has proceeded to do so. We read in Nostra Aetate: "Even if over the course of centuries
Christians and Muslims have had more than a few dissensions and quarrels, this sacred Council now urges all to forget the past and to work toward mutual understanding as well as toward the preservation and promotion of social justice, moral welfare, peace, and freedom for the benefit of all mankind" (Nostra Aetate 3).
3).
[And that defines the scope of inter-faith dialog, none of which is possible if Muslims do not allow religious freedom!]

From this point of view, as I have already mentioned, the meetings for prayer held at Assisi (especially that for peace in Bosnia, in 1993), certainly played a significant role. Also worthwhile were my meetings with the followers of Islam during my numerous apostolic trips to Africa and Asia, where sometimes, in a given country, the majority of the citizens were Muslims. Despite this, the Pope was welcomed with great hospitality and was listened to with similar graciousness.

The trip I made to Morocco at the invitation of King Hassan II can certainly be defined as a historic event. It was not simply a courtesy visit, but an event of a truly pastoral nature. The encounter with young people at Casablanca Stadium (1985) was unforgettable. The openness of the young people to the Pope's words was striking when he spoke of faith in the one God. It was certainly an unprecedented event.

Nevertheless, concrete difficulties are not lacking. In countries where fundamentalist movements come to power, human rights and the principle of religious freedom are unfortunately interpreted in
a very one-sided way - religious freedom comes to mean freedom to impose on all citizens the "true religion."

In these countries the situation of Christians is sometimes terribly disturbing. Fundamentalist attitudes of this nature make reciprocal contacts very difficult.
All the same, the Church remains always open to dialogue and cooperation.

Obviously, John Paul II had a clear idea of Islam and what it represents. Publicly. he had to be tactful, of course. Yet, he struck only one note of optimism - what he believed to have been the reaction of the Moroccan youth to his address about the one God. Except that the one God they have been brought up to believe in and worship is Allah, who is not identical at all to the God that Christians worship. If, say, yet another faith believed in one god, and that god was Lucifer, or Mammon, or the Golden Calf, it would be 'monotheistic', too, but would it have been covered by the openness of Nostra aetate?

It is also interesting that JP2 does not specifically mention terrorism which, at the time, two years before 9/11, the Palestinians had already been using quite routinely against the Israelis. (Incidentally, not that this was the case with John Paul II, hardly anyone thinks of the Palestinians as Muslims - their political identity overrides their Muslimness, at least in the eyes of Western liberals. And yet politics and religion are identical for Muslims. The Palestinians were tried and tested jihadists long before Osama bin Laden ever dreamed up Al=Qaeda. But they can lob rockets at Israeli cities 24/7/365 and the West does not condemn them but condones it! How is that any better than suicide bomber massacrists!]

Still, JP2 kissed the Koran when he did not have to, and he really had nothing to gain, in the short term, much less, longer, by doing it. Of course, the gesture was just one small blip among thousands of far more significant and positive gestures he made during his Pontificate. It still remains a very disturbing image, and probably a gesture he regretted right away. I wonder whether he ever discussed it with Cardinal Ratzinger at their Tuesday and Friday get=togethers.

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Tuesday, May 28, 2013, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Center photo: Statue of Mariana as the National Heroine of Ecuador
ST. MARIANA DE JESUS (Ecuador, 1614-1645), Virgin, Lay Franciscan, 'Lily of Quito', National Heroine of Ecuador
Mariana Paredes Flores was the daughter of expatriate Spaniards in the capital of Ecuador and showed signs of extraordinary holiness even as a child. After she was orphaned early, she lived with an older sister in hermit-like conditions of penance, self-mortification and prayer, during which she was known to go into ecstasies. She became a Franciscan lay sister to enable her to to serve the poor of the city. She established a clinic for them as well as a school for Africans and indigenous Ecuadorians. She became known for miraculous gifts of prophecy, healing, and at least one story of raising a dead person to life. When the plague hit Quito in 1645, she offered herself as a sacrifice to spare the city, even as she helped nurse the sick. She died soon after. In her images, she is shown with lilies because it is said that a lily sprung from her blood when she died, Her body is venerated incorrupt at the Jesuit Church in Quito. She was beatified in 1853 but not canonized till 1950 - the first saint of Ecuador, which has also declared her a national heroine.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052813.cfm

A note on 'Ordinary Time': In the pre-Novus Ordo calendar, it was easy - the week after Pentecost Sunday was called First Week after Pentecost, etc. until the next major liturgical season, Advent. For those like me who may not have been quite clear about 'ordinary time' in the Novus Ordo, it refers to the weeks of the liturgical year that are not within the Lenten season or the Advent-Christmas season. Last week, after Pentecost Sunday, we entered the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time, because the numbering continues from the six weeks after the Epiphany (which ends the Advent-Christmas season) to just before Lent; there are a total of 33-34 such weeks in ordinary time until Advent comes around.


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis.

A news conference was held to present the next two major events for the Pope in the Year of Faith.
- An hour of Eucharistic Adoration to be observed simultaneously in all the cathedrals of the world
at 5-6 p.m. Rome time, on Sunday, June 2, when Pope Francis will lead the Adoration in St. Peter's Basilica.
- A two-day observance in Rome on June 15-16 dedicated to the Gospel of Life (Evangeliumk vitae) to highlight
the Church's efforts to promote and defend the dignity of every human life. June 15 will be a day for pluri-lingual
catecheses led by various cardinals in Rome in the city's various cathedrals. On June 16, Pope Francis will
celebrate Mass in St. Peter's Basilica with all those involved in pro-life activities, as well as sick and
handicapped persons.
All these events were planned, programmed and approved after Benedict XVI had decreed the Year of Faith last year, and no changes were made or introduced because Benedict resigned and we now have a new Pope.

36 YEARS AGO TODAY...

On May 28, 1977, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger, until then Professor at the University of Regensburg, was consecrated Archbishop of Munich-Freising. He was named to the position on March 24, 1977. Within a month after he was ordained a bishop, he was made a cardinal by Paul VI on June 27, 1977.



One year ago...


Benedict XVI met with Madame Laura Chinchilla Miranda, President of the Republic of Costa Rica, and her delegation; and the Bishops of Malta and Gibraltar on ad-limina visit.




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Joseph Ratzinger, consecrated Archbishop May 28, 1977 (left); named Cardinal June 2, 1977, and created cardinal June 27, 1977.

Last year, L'Osservatore Romano observed this anniversary by publishing an editorial about it and a very important text by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on the function of bishops.

35 years ago, Joseph Ratzinger
was ordained Archbishop of Munich:
In the service of Truth

Translated from

May 27, 2012

"Our Munich, our Bavarian homeland, is so beautiful because the Christian faith has awakened the best in her - it has taken nothing away from her vigor, but it has rendered it generous and free. A Bavaria in which no one has faith any longer would have lost its soul, and safeguarding monuments of the past will not serve to deceive in this respect".

These were words spoken by the new Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Joseph Ratzinger, on his episcopal ordination 35 years ago in the Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady), the cathedral of the Munich.

The principal consecrators were Bishop Josef Stangl of Wurzburg, Bishop Rudolf Graber of Regensburg, and the Auxiliary Bishop of Munich, Ernst Tewes.

In naming the then professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Regensburg, three weeks before his 50th birthday, to succeed the late Cardinal Julius Doepfner to head the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, Pope Paul VI had chosen an eminent theologian from the Second Vatican Council, who had become acknowledged on an international level.

"In spirit, we turn to you, beloved son: You are endowed with excellent spiritual gifts. Above all, you are an important teacher of theology, which as a professor, you have transmitted to your listeners with zeal and fruitfulness. Therefore, in view of existing treaties, by virtue of our apostolic mandate, we name you Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Munich and Freising," one reads in the Pontifical letter of nomination dated March 24, 1977.

And so, after 80 years, the post was once more given to a priest of the diocese itself.

Cardinal Ratzinger concluded his 1977 autobiography La Mia vita ( published as Milestones in English) with a brief account of how he learned of his appointment to the Archdiocese of Munich, and of the day he was consecrated Archbishop.

What am I to say at the conclusion of this biographical sketch? As my episcopal motto I selected the phrase from the Third Letter of John, cooperatores veritatis - co-worker of the truth. For me, it seemed to be the connection between my previous task as teacher and my present mission.

Despite all the differences in modality, what is involved was and remains the same: to follow the truth, to be at its service. And because in today's world, the theme of truth has all but disappeared, because truth appears to be too great for man, and yet everything falls apart if there is no truth, for these reasons, the motto also seemed timely in the good sense of the word.

Five days after that episcopal consecration, on June 2, 1977, came the announcement that in the consistory on June 27, 1977, he would be made a cardinal.

The Lord had it all planned out for Joseph Ratzinger: In the space of four months, the year he turned 50, he rose from professor-priest to Archbishop of Europe's second largest diocese, and then to a Cardinal of the Church. I've never thought about it before, but surely, no prelate in the modern era had ever risen so high so fast. But who knew that he then had to mark time, for another 28 years, before he would reach the only possible culmination of his blessed life - and that 'Blessed' - Benedictus - is the name by which history and the Church will remember him. Indeed, he had to be the living saint he is not to let all his accomplishments and superior endowments ever get in the way of his humility and endearing humanity.

But the main feature of OR's observance of Benedict XVI's 35th anniversary as a bishop were major excerpts from the chapter written by Cardinal Ratzinger in the book of the Congregation for Bishops, Duc in altum. Pellegrinaggio alla tomba di San Pietro e incontro di riflessione per i nuovi Vescovi nominati dal 1° gennaio 2000 al giugno 2001 {'Put out into the deep': Pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter and reflections for the new Bishops named from January 1, 2000, to January 1, 2001)(Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2001). Unfortunately, we are not told when and for what occasion Cardinal Ratzinger wrote it. In any case, it's a major statement of how he sees the mission of the Bishop, especially as a successor to the Apostles, and as usual, it is as informative as it is enlightening.

The bishop as teacher
and guardian of the faith

by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

I. Biblical foundations

1. Paul's farewell address in Miletus (Acts 20,17-30) and
the portrait of the presbyter in the First Letter of Peter (5,1-4)

There is nothing as impressive on the relationship between the episcopal ministry and vigilance for the faith in the testament of St. Paul transmitted to us by the Acts of the Apostles as the farewell address of the Apostle in Miletus to the priests of Ephesus.

Paul knows that he is on the way to martyrdom. He knows he is never returning to this place. So he gathers the presbyters to entrust the Church to them formally. Here we have the introduction of apostolic succession. The responsibility which had been entrusted to the apostle was transmitted to the gathered presbyters.

Paul, according to the Acts, was aware that he was not acting on his own initiative, just as the integration of the presbyters into the ministry was not simply an organizational action on his part. "The Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, in which you tend the church of God that he acquired with his own blood" (20,28).

Three affirmations are particularly important here: It is the Holy Spirit who calls to the presbyteral ministry and confers it. The Church is not a secular organization for which we study the best possible and most efficient structures. She is the creature of the Holy Spirit, which not only created her at the beginning, at Pentecost: In the Church, it is continually Pentecost, because always, it is only the Holy Spirit that can create her; only the Holy Spirit can confer the apostolic ministry and thus the succession in this.

We must once more take into more attentive consideration and familiarize ourselves anew with this interior dependence on the Holy Spirit, with this continuous reference to him. Just as it was not the efforts of the disciples and their competence that had achieved the miraculous catch of fish, but the mission on the part of the Lord and their obedience to it, so the Church can continually subsist only from the mission she has received and obedience to it.

The second affirmation: the ministers who have up to now been called presbyters are now called bishops, and this expression is identified with the Biblical concept of the shepherd. The word 'episkopos' carried in it, before it was used in the New Testament, a vast range of meanings.

In Greek tragedy, God himself appears as the 'episcopos', he who watchfully scrutinizes the good and bad works of men. The Book of Wisdom, Philo, and the Sybilline Oracles picked up this linguistic usage, so that in the first Letter of Clement about the history of the word's meaning, we can find God designated as the Creator and the 'Episcopo' of every spirit (59,3).

In Philo, Moses appears as 'Episcopo' (rer. div. her. 30). The word was therefore not a denomination of secular function, but it described a sacred function on the model of and in participation with God's vigilance over men.

Thus it is not surprising that in the Letter of Peter, Christ himself is designated as 'the shepherd and the episcopo of your souls' (2,25).

In the Letter of Peter as in Acts 20, the two concepts of episcopo and of shepherd are united, and thus the word episcopowhich is new in Biblical tradition, is linked with the rich Biblical tradition of the idea of the shepherd, as we find it once more in the letter of Peter, which designates Christ as the great pastor (archiepiscopo), and so, once again a link to the service of episcopein (to watch over).

The superficial concept of the superintendent, that one can deduce from a literal translation of episcopo, thus assumes a completely different profundity: it has to do with watching with the heart, seeing by God, seeing with God. It means the loving care that a shepherd has for his sheep, each of whom he knows and calls by name, and whom he loves because they are his sheep.

Episcopein is interior responsibility for those whom God has entrusted to us, which in turn is a participation in God's care itself for men. The Biblical background reaches its true profundity with the affirmation that the Good Shepherd - Jesus - offers his life for his sheep (Jn 10,15): the shepherd becomes a lamb and thus redeems the sheep.

This connection reappears in Paul's farewell address in Miletus, where he reminds those who have now become Pastors of the Church of God, that the Son ransomed this flock with his own blood.

We are therefore in the third affirmation from the passage we have cited: The Pastor is responsible for the Church of God, and this Church is founded on the sacrificial offering of his life by the Son. The passion, which had begun with the dispersion of the disciples, now becomes the great act of gathering together.

From the height of the Cross, the Lord draws men to him; from the height of the Cross, he brings together the dispersed children of God (Jn 11,52). Once more all the grandeur of the Church appears to us: The Church as fruit of the Lord's Passion. It is evident that ultimately, it is always the one Church, the Church in its totality.

The presbyters of Ephesus each worked in their own place, but doing this, they were pasturing the Church together, the Church of Christ, not just part of it.

Above all, however, it is the martiriological dimension of the pastoral ministry that is manifested here.

If the pre-Christian concept of God as episcopo over men shows us a God who dominates only from above, a Lord untouched by human disorder and suffering, the figure of Christ instead shows us that God, in order to be the pastor of men, came to earth himself, that his pastoral ministry came at the cost of his Son's passion. Only by suffering with men, loving and dying with them, can he truly take their problems into his hands.

God without any effort could create the cosmos in all its grandeur, Cardinal Newman once said, but to bring man to him cost him the inexpressible effort of the Incarnation and his own death. Only through the commitment of one's own self can we become pastors for men, pastors of the Church founded on and to be founded on the passion of Christ.

This is the level of the commitment that is demanded of us. If we give less, if we do not want to involve ourselves, then we should not be surprised at the decline of the Church and of faith.

Moreover, the entire farewell address of St. Paul is impregnated with this martiriological foundation. Just as he had always suffered for the Church and the Gospel - think of the dramatic description of his sufferings in Chapter 11 of the second Letter to the Corinthians - now he lends himself to enter definitively into the communion of suffering with Christ, and only thus will he bring his apostolic work to completion.

Now we must ask ourselves yet again: What concretely is the content of this 'pastoring', this episcopein, this vigilance over the flock of Christ, this care for them which unites us to God's caring? In the farewell address at Miletus, we find two descriptions related to this.

The first is "to bear witness to the gospel of God’s grace" (v 24). The second speaks of the duty of the apostle "to proclaim the entire plan of God" (v 27). I find this formulation, in its very simplicity and grandeur of expression, particularly effective. It means communicating God's will to men, without reservations, in all its grandeur.

Which brings to mind the third invocation in the Our Father: 'thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven". Fulfillment of God's will makes heaven heaven. Earth becomes heaven when the will of God is fulfilled in it.

All of us want to know how to structure our life so that it may be good, 'happy'. All human beings want this. Everyone wants to know the key that will lead to true life. For this we study, we seek, and every search for happiness is an expression of this need to find life - life in abundance, the fullness of life.

If it is true that the will of God is our life, and conforming ourselves to this will represents the key that leads to life, then is it not also true that the thirst for life in its most profound essence is the thirst to know the will of God? Is it not therefore the highest and most beautiful mission to make known the will of God and thus pass on the key that leads to life? This is the apostolic ministry, this is the episcopal ministry.

But today, there are doubts if this is indeed our most intimate desire, that should also become our most practical desire. There is doubt not only among non-believers but also in the Church. In fact, many think that the will of God is really too difficult for us, so it would be better not to know it. If we don't know what it is, then living against or outside this will is not a sin - only knowledge of it would make us culpable. Ignorance is bliss, in this case, so they think.

Thus Christianity appears to them not as a grace but as a burden - those who do not know the will of God, so they think, live better. In which case, it is no longer a beautiful thing to announce the will of God. It fact, it would be better not to be so complete. On this subject, we are at the point at which the question of the Bishop as teacher and guardian of the faith becomes concrete in our time.

2. The introduction to the Letter to the Romans (Rom 1,1-7)

But before continuing with present problems, we must look deeper into the relationship between 'making the will of God known" and faith. For this purpose, we are offered the description of the apostolic mission by Paul, in his self-presentation at the start of the Letter to the Romans.

This description reprises many points his farewell address in Miletus, but places its emphasis on different parts and utilizes a slightly different vocabulary. Here Paul designates himself as "servant of Jesus Christ", as an apostle by vocation, as someone set apart for the Gospel of God.

The succession of titles is of great importance to understand the apostolic mission and thus, also for a correct view of the episcopal ministry. First of all, the apostle is a servant of God - he does not belong to himself, he is totally the property of someone else, ohe belongs to Jesus Christ.

At the same time, Paul enters - and with him, the bishop - into a genealogy: Israel, the holy people of God, was designated as servant of God, and then the great personages in which the mission of Israel was manifested: Abraham, Isaac, but especially Moses.

"Called to be an apostle" - the idea of mission resonates here, and could also have influenced by a memory of the vocation of the men of God in the Old Testament.

Finally, there is the idea of "being set apart", which is typical of the prophets, and places the apostle in the line of the prophets of the Old Covenant. Set apart for what? "For the Gospel of God". The link is evident here to Acts 20,24, which spoke of the Gospel of God's grace.

Paul in Romans 1,3f presents the content of the Gospel simply as Christology, the Church's Christological faith, citing a pre-Pauline Christological confession. In conclusion, the Apostle, the bishop, the evangelist, exists to announce Christ, and more precisely, Christ as the Church belies and confesses him.

By citing a confession of faith, the common faith of the Church, her authority, enters into the text of the Letter to the Romans, and consequently into the apostolic mission.

This becomes even more evident when Paul says that grace and apostolate would be conferred on them to lead all peoples to obedience of the faith. Here the link to his address to the Ephesian presbyters is evident once more, in which he spoke about announcing the will of God.

What Paul announced as an apostle is the faith. To accept the faith means entering into a relationship of obedience. What the apostle meant by this was expressed grandly in Galatians 2,20: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me".

With these words, Paul describes what happened at his conversion. What he describes is his overwhelming personal experience which is also an expression of the common reality of being Christian.
Completely personal and completely objective, a most singular personal experience and yet a presentation of that which is for everyone the essence of Christianity.

One can translate this by saying that to be Christian means a conversion. But then we must understand the word conversion in all the depth that it has acquired here. Conversion in the Christian sense is more than changing some opinions and attitudes. It means death and rebirth. It is a change of the subject.

"The I ceases to be an autonomous being and a a subject subsisting in itself. The I is taken from itself and placed into a new subject. The I does not simply disappear but must once and for all renounce itself in order to accept itself anew in a new I greater than itself and together with it".

Thus 'obedience' is understood in a new and very radical sense, as it was pre-announced earlier in the title 'servant of Christ'. For our context, it is important that this obedience, this rebirth of man, which tears him away from his solitude and his lack of orientation and leads him to the open, liberating him, is connected to the act of faith.

In this respect, it is significant that Paul presents the faith right away as 'catholic', namely as a reality that reunites all peoples together. The faith has universality - the Gospel is not just for the Romans, but it has a universal meaning.

The new community, which the believer enters, is open to all - because truth is open to all and concerns everyone in the same way. We see that 'faith' here is meant in both its objective and subjective senses.

It is an act of conversion, of renewal. Its obedience is liberation from the anguishes of the I and the blindness of pure opinion. But faith is also objective - it is the content of preaching, the content of the life of the Church in its totality.

Faith edifies the Church. It is her foundation. Thus Paul manifests here with particular evidence the centrality of the service of faith for the apostolic ministry, for the episcopal ministry.

3. A look at the pastoral letters

This therefore opens access to the pastoral letters, which by remodelling the ministry of Paul makes all of its key points known once more.

The presentation of the apostolate in 1 Timothy 2,1-7, is very similar to that in the Letter to the Romans. It says of Paul that he was instituted as the announcer and apostle of the one God and theone mediator, Jesus Christ, "as the teacher of all peoples in the faith and in the truth".

The importance of teaching emerges more evidently here, but the basic direction remains the same: universality is emphasized, coming from the universality of truth, the universality of the one God and of the one mediator.

And the essential mission of the apostle is that of being a teacher in faith and in truth. In these later letters, the apostolic succession is treated more concretely, along with the need that the apostolic ministry in the Church acquires her configuration, so that the flame of faith may be continually revived, that flame which is often threatened with extinction in the daily routine (2Tim 1,6).

Thus we understand the openly imploring tone with which the Apostle begs Timothy to persevere in announcing the one faith, against all routine, against falling into an arbitrary faith and into ideology: "I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingly power: proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching" (2Tim 4,1f).

I think that we bishops, much more than what we are doing, must place ourselves before the tribunal of God and Jesus Christ, before the judgment of the living and the dead, to measure our lives against the criterion of future judgment.

The court before which we must feel responsible is not the mass media, which have promoted themselves to be the great court of the past and the present, exalting or destroying persons.

Our criterion is future judgment, and in pondering our actions, the first question must be this: What will the true Judge say about my present decision?

The Pastoral letters are often classified facilely as minor works and therefore secondary from the theological and spiritual viewpoint. I personally see in the second letter to Timothy a passion and a fervor which presents Paul's last battle in a moving way - when he is separated from everything and everyone, from many things that had already been revoked or consciously forgotten, and yet, precisely because he was close to martyrdom, he makes a last effort to fight for the transmission of the Gospel.

In this sense, these letters are a portrait of the bishop by which we must always orient ourselves, and whose most profound identification with the initial affirmations are very evident to me.

II. Episcopal service to the faith today:
Four difficulties and responses to them


1. Freedom and bonds

The vigilance of the pastor, his attention to his flock, which all of the New Testament places in the foreground, is therefore, above all, taking care of the faith - positively, so that it may manifest in everything its luminous power, and negatively, so that it is protected from falsification.

And who does not see that falsifications abound, not just in apostolic times, at the time of the pastoral letters, but even today? In theory, everyone agrees about the mission of vigilance and care, which corresponds to the ministry of the bishop as pastor and teacher. But in practice, there are many "but's".

To any initiative of correction, the first response is objection: Should the freedom of teaching and of the teacher not be respected? Did not the history of the Inquisition damage the reputation of the Church? Is freedom not the pre-eminent good?

At present, the Frankfurt school [of philosophical thought] tells us that there is a dialectic of enlightenment, in which whenever freedom is pushed too much, it ultimately destroys freedom itself. The history of the ideologies in the last century demonstrates this with more than enough proof.

Freedom sometimes must be defended precisely in order to unmask false freedom as such, and return freedom to its proper limits. To believe means accepting a common decision, a common faith, which is therefore able to bring about peace and unity.

No one ought to believe. To believe must always be a free decision, and in this sense, there must also be the freedom to stay apart from the faith. Responsibility before God cannot be replaced by external constraints.

But he who makes the free decision for faith also accepts the bond of being in a common form, and he cannot use freedom as a pretext to stay within that form and be able to destroy it from within.
I am convinced that today, especially, we must decisively oppose any abuse of the concept of freedom.

Of course, there are various forms of bonds. Someone who has freely taken on the task of teaching in the name of the Church has a different bond than a lay Christian who, on his own responsibility alone, seeks to develop his ideas. One cannot teach against the Church in the name of the Church! There is also a question of honesty here.

In this context, of course, one must speak about conditions inherent to theology. If it retreats to the realm of pure academics, it loses its internal relationship with the life of the faith, with the Church, with the prayerful communion with Jesus Christ, and it cannot develop well.

Without the practice of the faith, it is impossible that reflecting on it can have a successful outcome. Therefore it is very important not to allow the ministry of theological instruction to wander into pure academic neutrality.

The structuring of such teaching must be articulated that it corresponds to its internal conditions. Theology is not pure speculation, but an interpretation of the faith of the Church and this is impossible if one does not live in her and with her.

2. To orient ourselves in the Babel of specialization

The first objection against vigilance and guarding the faith comes today from the unilateral idea of freedom. Along with it is a second strong objection: How could a bishop today interfere in the growing specialization and differentiation of theology? In the face of an increasingly detailed presentation of theology, is the bishop not almost like a secular person who must abstain from judgment? Will he not be accused immediately of incompetence and fundamentalism?

In this respect, I wish to offer three indications.

a. Obviously, the diagnosis of heresy and obfuscating the faith cannot be handed out lightly. Prudence is required. According to St. Ignatius of Loyola, one must first assume good will, and seek to interpret the new proposal in the good sense.

For the bishop, personal contact with the teachers of theology is very important. There are many things that can be clarified in a personal relationship. Closeness to the bishop helps to reinforce the theologian's pastoral sensibility and his co-responsibility for the communion of faith, just as in turn, it gives the bishop an access to the problems of present-day theology.

b. Mutual assistance among bishops and the advice of reliable experts are important. Thus the episcopal conferences should make sure that they have a truly competent commission for the problems of the faith, in which bishops of proven competence can work with professors who follow essential theological discussions and can help the bishop to deal with difficult questions.

c. Even more important than the first two aspects is the third: Today, the difference between theology and faith is often forgotten. In theology, we cannot all be specialists, and the theologian himself is not a specialist in all the considerably detailed construction of contemporary theology.

But bishops should not seek to carry out themselves the work of theologians. Their function is something else: they are teachers of the faith, on which theology is based. In theology, there can only be relatively few specialists. In questions of faith, we are all instructed by God, as the Gospel of John tells us (6,45).

What the Lord pre-announces prophetically in the Gospel is reiterated in the first Letter of John for what had now become the Church: "You have the anointing that comes from the holy one, and you all have knowledge....The anointing that you received from him remains in you, so that you do not need anyone to teach you" (1Jn 2,20.27).

The term anointing refers to the profession of faith at baptism: with that, all Christians have knowledge and a theology which, if it places this faith into question ,would be false doctrine.

In this sense, every Christian has the right and the ability to intervene against false doctrine and in favor of the common faith, but especially the bishop, who represents the right of the faithful and is their voice.

If it is important to defend the freedom of the teacher, one must however keep in mind that the more preeminent good is the defense of the faith in behalf of the faithful, who have a right to the genuine faith of the Church. Their faith is the asset of the Church that most deserves to be defended.

This is what a famous statement of the Lord refers to: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe [in me] to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea" (Mk 9,42).

This does not refer, as recent interpretations have used it, to sexual abuse of children. The expression 'little ones' is a designation for the faithful of Christ, and the scandal, whose atrocity Jesus stigmatizes with the image of a millstone around the neck, is to upset and destroy their faith.


These very words of the Lord can make us understand the great responsibility we have and the greatness of the good that we must protect.

The profession of faith in the Church is the solid ground upon which theology must rest. If theology abandons the faith, it ceases to be theology and becomes a private philosophy of religion.

Theology must measure up to the profession of faith at baptism, in which all of us "have knowledge". The simplicity of this confession of faith cannot be lost from sight, otherwise Christianity becomes a gnosis, a matter for erudites, who ultimately have nothing but hypotheses, but no longer have a foundation upon which we can live and die.

For the Fathers of the Church, it was perfectly clear that the regula fidei - the rule of faith - is the ultimate criterion for exegesis, within which a very vast space remains for the interpreter to research and to discover, while at the same time, the reality to be interpreted is safeguarded and does not dissolve in its interpretation.

Moreover, for the Fathers, regula fidei was not something written, nor something wider than the profession of faith, but it was something living - which includes the living voice of the Church, namely, the Magisterium. Thus, the Magisterium is the true aid in distinguishing between true interpretation and falce.

The bishop himself, in his local Church, is the living voice of the faith, its teacher and guardian. But in order that the Church be one, he teaches correctly only if he teaches in a manner that is synchronous and diachronous with all the Church - if the bishop is in harmony with the voice of the Successor of Peter.

In many regions, it has become customary to systematically defy the voice of the Magisterium, to consider it as an impediment to the freedom of research and thought. But we must accustom ourselves once more to consider the Magisterium as an aid that is given to us in order to identify the voice of faith as it is. And in this way, we defend the equal right of all the faithful against 'class thinking', in which only a few privileged ones would possess the key to knowledge.

3. Peace in the Church and
the struggle to defend the faith


Now we come to a third objection against the mission of vigilance and caring for the flock. If we enter into questions of faith, are we not dangerously disturbing peace in the Church? Mass media have taken over this question and confuse the faithful. This gives rise to polarizations - but is the danger deriving from public confusion and the resulting conflict not greater than if we just left the question undisturbed?

When we at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ask the bishops to take a position against a work which is openly deviant from Church teaching, we are often told: "Only a few people know about this book, it is no longer sold. No one has made a big deal out of it. Why should we give it any publicity and perturb our normally placid routine?"

Such arguments could be fully justified. St. Augustine, in the fight against the Donatists, coined the term tolerare pro pace - to tolerate for the sake of peace. Peace is an important asset, and it must be weighed in if the text in question, the group in question, is so important that one must assume responsibility for the uproar it will cause, as against allowing the question to go away silently.

As much as this may be true, we cannot tranquilize ourselves so easily. Peace - interior peace in the ecclesial community - is an important asset, we have said. But there are also false forms of peace. if we always just let things be, the feeling of arbitrariness arises - "One must not have problems; everything must be tranquil" - but this quiet no longer has content, so it loses consistency and becomes empty.

Every falsification of the faith that is not corrected becomes an element of internal poisoning in the organism of the Church. At first, it apparently does not cause any damage, until it becomes a general infection. It continues to propagate itself silently until the very sensibility for faith is lost, and faith itself is no longer manifested as a common good, because it has been so eroded from the inside. Of course, the external apparatus may continue for a bit more time, but from within, the Church is already doomed to exhaustion.

And we wonder why the churches are empty, why a silent exodus is taking place, a simple extinction of the faith. To be in the Church no longer seems to be important, because she no longer has a purpose, she seems no longer to take her deepest foundation seriously - the presence of the revelation of God in the faith.

Gregory the Great in his Psstoral Rule interpreted a very dense statement by the Lord in this way: "Keep salt in yourselves and you will have peace with one another" (Mk 9,50). Salt destroys peace, it burns, it can be bad. It seems to contradict peace.

But both should be realized together: peace, which tolerates the other, but salt as well, which seeks out and fights the elements of decomposition.

"He who is too concerned with purely human peace no longer opposes evil and so justifies the perverse, and has isolated himself from the peace of God... It is a great sin to come to terms with corruption", he said (II 408).

The bishop must be a man of peace, but he should also have salt in him. He must be ready for conflict when it has to do with the true good, so that the salt does not become insipid and we are not then rightly despised and trampled on.

4. The good of the faith

In conclusion, I wish to mention a last objection which, for the most part, we ourselves hide, but which we must bring out into the light. I made a reference to this objection at the start.

There are not a few Catholics - including some bishops - who, even if they are personally fully orthodox and devout, ask themselves - more or less openly: "If it is truly such a good thing to know everything about the will of God, perhaps the faith has become more of a burden than a grace. Would it not be burdensome to live the faith integrally? Could it be that the good conscience of those who do not know the will of God or know it only halfway is an easier way to salvation?"

At the start of the liberal age, when despite separation from the faith, the basic Christian certainties still held and appeared as certainties to common thinking, this would have been a truly averse impression. The faithful had to sustain the foundation for others and keep it from collapsing, because pure reason does not exist. Its effectiveness always depends on a thousand premises.

Today, when these basic certainties have widely collapsed, we see the darkness towards which man is hurtling, if he does not know anything about his origin or his destination. The non-culture of death arises. A world without sense, a world in which we do not know who we are and what we ought to do, a world that needs to deaden itself with drugs.

Nihilism is no longer easy - there is only darkness. Faith is the light. We Christians must believe anew in a more knowing way, more joyous, much more optimistic.

Yes, it is beautiful to know the will of God. It is beautiful to know God and to be known by him. It is beautiful to know what God looks like. We see the face of God himself in Christ who loves each of us and gave himself up to die for us.

Only if we go back to perceive once more from within the preciousness of faith, the authentic joy that there is in faith, as the first Christians felt in the midst of ancient paganism, only if we return to being truly happy in the faith, shall we spontaneously see that the most important thing is to defend this precious pearl, be engrossed in its splendor, and recognize that the most elevated part of our mission is our commitment to this treasure.

Concluding observations on
bringing the faith up to date


Up to this point, I have spoken only of conflictual cases, of the vigilant guardianship of the faith which is a task proper to the pastor. But the true task of the pastor is positive: to keep the faith so alive that it should not come to any conflicts.

I see three principal sectors in which special attention is required for bringing the faith up to date: preaching (which includes keeping abreast and more deeply examining our knowledge of the faith), catechesis, and theological instruction in seminaries and university faculties. To speak exhaustively about this would require a whole conference.

I shall merely cite briefly some of my concerns and considerations. Preaching after the Council has come closer to Scripture, in general, and this constitutes great progress. But it has also become more casual and more thematically poor, and this is a danger.

In general, in the course of the triennial cycle, all the doctrine of the faith is no longer presented, only random passages, while the rest is forgotten. I think that the bishops of a region must work together to establish an order of preaching in which it will be able to proclaim in the course of three years all that is contained in the faith, especially those themes that are often ignored - about God the Creator, sin and redemption, grace and the sacraments (above all the sacrament of penitence), contemplation of the 'last things', eternal life.

Even catechesis, in my opinion, has become too sectorial and often ignores great parts of the contents of the faith.Evidence completely far beyond what we might have thought certify to us an incredible ignorance in the younger generations of fundamental statements of the faith.

Preparation for communion in many places consists more of socializing than gradual penetration into the mystery of the presence of the Lord and of his sacrifice. The grandeur of the mystery of Christ is hardly ever transmitted, and so on.

For the completeness of preaching as for the integrity of catechesis, the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers valuable aid. It must be used much more. But, of course, it has to be translated into concrete terms to be used in preaching and catechesis.

Finally, there is the mission of theological instruction in seminaries and in college faculties. Thank God, there are a number of truly good theologians among the younger generation. But it is undeniable that there are serious problems.

A fundamental problem seems to be that one no longer sees a common philosophical background. Eclecticism prevails. One chooses from current philosophies which offer remarkable help, but in the end, they do not leave any room for the living God.

The encyclicals Veritatis splendor and Fides et ratio offer valuable aid in this respect: They must enter into theological reflection much more than they have been used.

Above all, we must not forget that the Fathers and the great theologians of the Middle Ages, as well as the most significant teachers of theology in the 19th and 20th century, continue to be teachers for us, who show us the way and whose basic approach has not lost any of its actuality even if it must be rethought, examined in depth, amplified, and brought into dialog with the present.

Whoever reads the Scriptures with the Fathers of the Church, especially with St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure, with Moehler and De Lubac (to mention just a few names), will draw from them valuable indications while finding at the same time ample room for creative analyses in depth.

In conclusion, I wish to return once more to the first Letter from Peter. The apostles designates himself in his humble and kind style as a 'co-presbyter', a presbyter along with us, and has almost formulated with unsurpassable clarity what the priestly and apostolic ministry is, the principle of apostolic succession.

In this context, he presented the model priest and bishop, against which we must constantly measure ourselves. The presbyter is "witness to the sufferings of Christ and a participant in the glory that he should make manifest". He watches over the flock not out of constraint, but gladly, as God wills it. He does not lord over the persons entrusted to him but is an example for them. "And when the chief Shepherd is revealed, you will receive the unfading crown of glory" (5,4). This is the perspective in which we carry out our service.

What an excellent presentation of the role of bishops! I gather now that Cardinal Ratzinger must have written it especially for the book prepared by the Congregation for Bishops to give out to the bishops who were ordained in the Jubilee Year 2000. A copy should be printed separately and sent out to all bishops and theologians of the world...



P.S. 2013 Benedict XVI was often criticized by his detractors as someone who lacked pastoral experience - having had only little over a year of serving as a parish in three Munich parishes before he got his first academic appointment to teach at the seminary in Freising, and then after 25 years of an academic career, five years as Archbishop of Munich-Freising.

But that presumed 'deficiency' was not at all evident in his superb exercise of his duty as Pastor of the Universal Church for 8 years. As Pope, he never failed to articulate his constant concern not just for the everyday Christian life of the lay faithful, but also for the priests and bishops who are supposed to be their first and immediate contacts with the Church - as 'announcers of the Word and servants of your joy', in the felicitous words of St. Paul from whom Joseph Ratzinger took the motto on his ordination day, and which is the title of the volume of his Collected Writings devoted to the priesthood and the episcopacy.

As Pope, he decreed a Year for Priests to reawaken all the ministers of the Church to the solemn demands of their vocation. Not to forget his yearly encounters, usually in the form of Q&A - with the seminarians and clergy of Rome, and a similar Q&A with the clergy of Val D'Aosta and the Cadore region during two of his summer vacations in the Italian Alps.

Someone - perhaps the Vatican publishing house itself - should put together all his exhortations to priests and bishops during his years as Pope into a volume, and perhaps the Rome-based Fondazione Benedetto XVI-Joseph Ratzinger can undertake to send a copy to all the priests and bishops of the world... Pardon the bee in my bonnet, but one gets the impression from media reports and commentary that Benedict XVI had never urged the very same essentials of priestly and episcopal function - extensively and in depth - that Pope Francis has been saying in his own way in the past two months. These solemn functions must be exercised correctly and devotedly by every priest and bishop towards everyone and everywhere, whether he is serving the faithful in the centers or at the peripheries.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/05/2013 05:37]
28/05/2013 22:12
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Beware anonymous stories -
especially if there is an apparent
ulterior motive for planting it


An article in today's Il Giornale purports to be the account of 'an anonymous monsignor in the Curia' - who claims to have visited the emeritus Pope a few days ago - about a typical day in the life of Benedict XVI today with the curious 'assurance' by the monsignor that the emeritus Pope "is not writing anything at all - if only because he no longer has the strength to do so"! I shall translate the article later, because it really tells us nothing else that any of us could not surmised and written ourselves from what is publicly known of Benedict XVI's near-monastic daily routine even when he was Pope.

Pardon my cynicism yet again - in these days when media reporting and commentary about the Papacy and the Vatican tend to rouse cynicism in those like me who do not share the media meme that this is now 'the best of all possible worlds' for a Church that only two months ago everyone said had gone to hell in a handbasket under Benedict XVI, or something just as dire - but it looks very much like a story planted by the Vatican press office in a continuing effort to erase what Pope Francis reportedly told a group of bishops from Puglia last week = that Benedict XVI was finishing up his encyclical on faith and that Francis would sign and promulgate it. Something which Fr. Lombardi immediately denied in the strongest terms, while acknowledging that an encyclical of faith would be published within the time that remains of the Year of Faith.

For purposes of the encyclical as encyclical, the faithful and all men of good will to whom the encyclical will be addressed really don't care - and should not care - whose signature comes with it, provided its teaching is in continuity with the Magisterium of the Church. We do not have any reason at all to think that it will not be, whoever wrote it. In this case, whatever role that Benedict XVI may have had to do with the final product, it should and can only be signed by Pope Francis because it is coming out during his Pontificate, and only the Pope can issue an encyclical.

If Pope Francis really said what the Bishop of Molfetta claimed he did, I said at the time that it was a measure of his character that he would disclose something he did not have to tell anyone - that the encyclical is Benedict's text even if he will sign it - but chose to confide, anyway. That, to me, is far more expressive of genuine humility than say, refusing to live in the Apostolic Palace.

Has the Bishop of Molfetta told a lie? If he did, the other 11 bishops who were with him ought to have said so by now. At least, he wrote his account under his own name. Whereas the 'source' for the Il Giornale story does not and hides behind anonymity.

Because that is the other obvious fact about this story today - it does not have a byline other than 'Redazione' (the editorial staff), which is most unlikely for a story about Benedict XVI which is a rarity these days - and especially because it purports to underscore that the emeritus Pope isn't writing anymore, which would be genuine news, indeed, if it were true. The 'anonymous monsignor' does not say Benedict XVI told him so = he, the monsignor, merely 'assures' us that this is so.

One can also surmise the story is a strategic plant, because it does not appear in any other media outlet - to plant in just one outlet would give it more verisimilitude, i.e., because it is not a news release to all and sundry. [It also has a couple of details to provide verisimilitude - that the Vatican police have a car stationed at Mater Ecclesiae to watch over the emeritus Pope; that he has visited the organic vegetable garden of his new residence; and that once, while walking in the Vatican gardens, he picked up a couple of puppies to ride with him in the car.]

But why would the 'anonymous monsignor' have given the story to just one outlet, considering that his 'revelation' is somewhat important? Would he have not wanted it to have the widest possible dissemination right away? Given the nature of it, of course, just one outlet was necessary in order to be picked up and amplified by everyone else! Which was the apparent whole objective of this exercise in PR manipulation - not meant in any way to protect Benedict XVI's privacy (on the contrary!) - but seemingly to counteract the effect of Pope Francis's reported words about the faith encyclical.

And why would the 'anonymous monsignor' not have written the story under his own name? Perhaps because he does not exist except as a convenient fiction from the PR-meisters. Who are not such masters at all, because the ploy is so obvious.

If the 'anonymous monsignor' was truly making any disclosures about matters that Benedict XVI does not want made public because his private activities should not be made news, why would this monsignor have volunteered to tell his story knowing this would be a breach of the emeritus Pope's trust and privacy?

Meanwhile, all speculation about the faith encyclical remains academic. The encyclical itself, when it comes out, will tell us what we need to know about its authorship.

But for all the concern that the anonymous monsignor manages nonetheless to raise among us Benaddicts by saying that our beloved Benedict is not writing anymore because he no longer has the strength to do so, he does begin his account to Il Giornale with the following words that contradict his later statement: "Ratzinger [sic] is well. Obviously, he is old, but he is very lucid and continues to walk about, using his cane". Even if we must take this as a statement from the spinmeisters behind this story, that doesn't sound to me like someone who 'no longer has the strength' to write!

And I don't get this emphasis by those who have seen him lately - or purport to have seen him - that he is 'very lucid', as if there was any doubt of that at all. He could not suddenly have developed advanced Alzheimer's or degenerated into senile dementia in the space of ten weeks since we last saw him in full possession of his astounding mental faculties!
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Since that first great and absolutely amazing MANIF POUR TOUS mounted by French men, women and children last January 13 to protest a proposed law to legalize 'marriage between homosexuals' through an initiative by President Francois Hollande's socialist government called 'Marriage pour tous' (marriage for everyone), I have not posted anything more about the movement which mounted another 'manif' (from 'manifestation', the French word for demonstration) on Paris last Sunday with at least as many people (400,000 is the conservative estimate). The organizers claim a million participated. When was the last big demonstration for a liberal cause that attracted such numbers?



The proposal has since been signed into law, and other large demonstrations in Paris and other French cities have taken place, but the protesters are not done fighting for their cause. The huge Sunday event in Paris was matched by events around the world led by expatriate Frenchmen and foreign supporters of the cause against homosexual 'marriage' and its corollary, adoption of children by homosexual couples.

Besides downplaying the size of the demonstrations, MSM news reports on the anti-gay 'marriage' events have taken to calling the demonstrators 'traditionalists' or 'right wing extremists', which is a kneejerk tag given to those who do not happen to share the media's liberal views. The following report also chooses to emphasize the aggressive actions of 200 out of an estimated 400,000-1 million protesters.


About 400,000 French traditionalists
take to streets to oppose new law

Huge gay marriage protest turns violent in Paris

by John Lichfield
]

PARIS, May 26 - Riot police fought running battles with hard-right protesters in the heart of Paris at the end of a mostly peaceful demonstration against gay marriage.

About 200 young people, many of them masked, pelted police lines with bottles, stones, fireworks and flares. The crowd – led bizarrely at one stage by a lone bagpiper – chased and beat up TV crews and press photographers. Police and gendarmes responded with tear gas and baton charges.

There were surreal battle scenes on the Esplanade des Invalides beside the foreign ministry as 200 gendarmes in riot gear formed into defensive squares to beat off attacks from running bands of protesters. Although a hard core of about 200 hard-right youths started the fighting, many hundreds of other, soberly dressed, middle-class protesters cheered them on.

Priests in long cassocks observed the battles without attempting to intervene. Other, more peaceful demonstrators stood in lines or circles nearby holding hands, praying and singing as tear gas and red smoke from flares swirled around them.

Earlier about 400,000 people, including many children, had defied warnings of possible far-right violence and marched in peaceful protest against France's newly enacted law permitting same-sex marriage.

Twenty members of a xenophobic far-right group, "Génération Identitaire", clambered on to the roof terrace of the headquarters of the Socialist party during the afternoon and unfurled a banner calling for the resignation of President François Hollande. They were rapidly dislodged and arrested by police.

Even before the violence broke out, the government said that there had been 96 arrests, mostly for possession of weapons.

The "marriage-for-all" law, allowing gay couples to marry in town halls and adopt children, passed its final legal and constitutional hurdles earlier this month.

The first officially recognised same-sex marriage in France will take place between two men in Montpellier on Wednesday.

The passage of the law, and warnings of possible violence, had been expected to dampen the ardour of protesters for what was billed as the "last demonstration" in a series of half a dozen large rallies that began in December. Police put the turn-out at 150,000. The organisers claimed 1,000,000. Other organisers estimated over 400,000, which seemed closest to the mark.

Same-sex marriage has provoked the most prolonged and powerful right-wing demonstrations in France for three decades. Since the law was passed, the movement has begun to splinter into moderate and extremist wings.

One of the principal leaders of the protests, the satirist turned activist Frigide Barjot stayed away from her own demonstration after receiving a flurry of death threats from extremist homophobes who accused her of being too moderate and a government "stooge".

"Frigide was wrong not to come," said Alain, 38, a lawyer who was demonstrating with his wife and two young sons. "The threat of violence is nothing in comparison to the threat we face from this law. This is just the beginning of a programme of legislation to impose the socialist ideology of one gender and to destroy the foundations of the family."

Many of the banners and signs in the protests made similarly apocalyptic claims about the importance of the law. The largest of the marches, starting in the well-heeled 16th arrondissement of Paris, was led by a 30ft-wide banner that proclaimed: "No to a change of civilisation."

The marchers insist that the real damage will come not from gay marriage but from allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

This, they say, will trample the fundamental principle that every child should have a mother and a father. It will also, they insist, blur or destroy the concept of "filiation" or parental origins and lead to a shallow, rootless, immoral society.

As a result, many slogans appeared to complain about adoption or single-parent families as much as against gay marriage. "No, to the anonymity of origins" said one large banner held by 20 people.

The New York Times article had a very 'low key' headline in a very tendentious new report. .

Gay marriage protested in Paris
by STEVEN ERLANGER

May 26, 2013

PARIS — Thousands of French marched on Sunday, France’s Mother’s Day, to protest the recent legalization of gay marriage. Despite initial worries, the demonstration was largely peaceful, with the police estimating that about 150,000 people took part.

Separately, the French police said they were continuing to search for the man responsible for stabbing a uniformed soldier in the neck on Saturday evening, an act that may have been inspired by the murder of a British soldier last week in retaliation for Western military intervention in Muslim countries.

The anti-gay-marriage march occurred as a recent poll shows many French are losing patience with the protests against the “marriage for all” law that passed May 18. The demonstrations have broadened to include those angry at the president for his overall leadership and some far-right protesters who have been violent.

Marchers converged from three parts of Paris to the esplanade in front of the Invalides. There was a separate, smaller march by conservative Christians.

In general, the demonstrations against the law have included a combination of religious leaders and their followers, opposed to gay marriage on religious grounds, and more conservative French, many of them Roman Catholic, who believe that gay couples should have equal rights, but within an institution other than marriage.

Many also object to the new ability of gay married couples to adopt children, arguing that a child should be raised by a man and a woman.

In the prelude to the protest, on Saturday night, 59 people were arrested after chaining themselves to metal barricades on the Champs-Élysées. On Sunday, 19 demonstrators were arrested after they climbed onto the headquarters of the Socialist Party and unfurled a banner demanding that President President François Hollande resign. Police officers also seized a van with masks, banners and smoke bombs, and near the end of Sunday’s demonstration, they used tear gas to break up a gathering of some masked protesters believed to be rightists known as “ultras.”

As an indication of the confusion around the focus of Sunday’s march, the main opposition party, the center-right Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, was split on whether to join. The party’s president, Jean-François Copé, urged participation, while other party dignitaries, like former foreign minister, Alain Juppé, urged people to remain at home.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, a Socialist, accused the UMP of “sparking tension and radicalization.”

With much advance publicity, the first gay marriage is supposed to take place Wednesday in Montpellier, sometimes called the San Francisco of France.

[The rest of the story is about the wounded soldier, which has nothing to do with the demonstration.]

The original Paris 'manif' last January:

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There were two interesting recent items from Sandro Magister that I failed to post promptly. I will start with this one from his blog, which does not have an online English translation as his regular website www.chiesa.

Interpreting Pope Francis:
From his confidences to bishops,
to a presumed exorcism

Translated from

May 26, 2013

Among the Italian bishops who have had an audience with Pope Francis during their current round of ad-limina visits, the bishops of Puglia (in southeastern Italy) have been the most loquacious in recounting what the Pope told them.

It has not just been the 'revelation' - contradicted immediately and in part by Fr. Federino Lombardi = by the Bishop of Molfetta, Mons. Luigi Martella, about two encyclicals 'on the way': the first, on faith, to be signed by Pope Francis but written by his predecessor, who is said to be completing it; and the second, on poverty, which will be the current Pope's very own.

Other bishops have also revealed statements made by the Pope about liturgy. The Archbishop of Bari, Francesco Cacucci, told Vatican Radio that Pope Francis had exhorted the bishops to "exercise the liturgy with simplicity and without suporstructures".

Then the Bishop of Conversano-Monopoli, Domenico Padovano, told his own priests that the Puglian bishops had complained to the Pope of the 'division' caused in the Church by the advocates of the traditional Mass.

And what did the Pope reply to them? According to Padovano, Francis exhorted them to guard against the extremism of some traditionalist groups, but also to treasure the Tradition of the Church and make it co-exist with innovation in the Church.

To explain this last point better, the Pope reportedly cited his own example: "Don't you see? There are those who say that my master of liturgical ceremonies [Mons. Guido Marini] is a traditionalist - and many, after my election, called on me to relieve him of his office and replace him. I said No, precisely because I myself can find his traditional preparation valuable, while at the same time, he too can avail of my more emancipated formation".

If the Pope said those words, they are instructive about his attitude to liturgy and his style of celebrating it. But it is not certain how the bishops of Puglia have interpreted him.

Another one of them, Mons. Felice Di Molfetta of Cerignola-Ascoli Satriano, who was once president of the CEI commission for the liturgy, wrote this, among other things, in a message to his diocese:

I did not fail to express my joy to the Pope for the celebrative style he has taken on - a style inspired by the 'noble simplicity' advocated by the Council, showing particular attention to this detail, about which he has elevated theological and pastoral considerations which were shared by everyone present.

I enjoyed the dialog we undertook, and having been occupied by a life of teaching liturgical and sacramental theology, to grasp the interest of the Holy Father in this vital aspect of the Petrine ministry as practiced by him in the daily Masses at Santa Marta as well as those in St. Peter's Basilica and at the canonization of the 800 martyrs of Otranto: celebration that is measured in its duration and in his overall ritual execution.

Pope Francis, in the light of certain phenomena of the recent past when not a few deviations were registered in the liturgy exhorted us bishops, even citing some concrete examples to us, to live in relation to liturgical action as a work of God, as true believers beyond any ceremonial triumphalism, fully conscious that the 'noble simplicity' described by the Council does not mean sloppiness but Beauty, with a capital B.

[As the bishop was careful to specify 'the recent past', he cannot be referring to deviations demonstrated in the Novus Ordo which have been there for the past 43 years, so he must be referring, in a totally disrespectful way, to Benedict XVI's 'reform of the reform'! And I certainly hope Pope Francis did not speak about 'ceremonial triumphalism', as the bishop would imply, in connection with the liturgies of Benedict XVI, who never ever once evinced any iota of triumphalism in anything he said or did. Most likely however, this bishop = who obviously has no respect for Benedict XVI - was putting words into the Pope's mouth.]

However, for the bishop to enlist Pope Francis among the progressivists even in the liturgical field is rash, at the very least. In fact, it has been shown that Cardinal Bergoglio was not hostile to the liberalization of the traditional Mass carried out by Benedict XVI in the 2007 motu proprio Summorum Pontificum.

What is true is that in 2007, Mons. Di Molfetta was one of the most combative critics of the motu proprio, before and after its publication. He said the traditional Mass was 'incompatible' with the post-Conciliar Mass and sought unsuccessfully for the Italian bishops' conference (CEI) to issue an interpretive note that would spell out restrictions on implementing Summorum Pontificum. [I have checked the bishop's biography, He was named a bishop in 2000 by John Paul II, i.e., decidedly not a B16 appointee, who therefore does not feel he owes Benedict XVI any 'loyalty', even when he was Pope.

Someone recently wrote that Vatican-II defined diocesan bishops as 'Vicars of Christ' in their own jurisdiction. I have checked, and Section 27 of Lumen gentium, the dogmatic Constitution on the Church, does say:

Bishops, as vicars and ambassadors of Christ, govern the particular churches entrusted to them... by their authority and sacred power, which indeed they use only for the edification of their flock in truth and holiness... This power, which they personally exercise in Christ's name, is proper, ordinary and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately regulated by the supreme authority of the Church, and can be circumscribed by certain limits, for the advantage of the Church or of the faithful.

The provision uses 'vicars' with a small 'v', which means 'representative'; and of course, every bishop, as does every priest, 'represents' Christ in the general sense, especially when he says the Mass, but that is different from being 'the Vicar of Christ on earth', which is reserved for the Pope alone. However, Section 27 must have been taken by many progressivist bishops to mean that they were therefore equivalent to the Pope, so no wonder many bishops behaved the way they did in defiance of Benedict XVI - they feel themselves just as much 'the Vicar of Christ' on earth as he was. And will probably feel so with respect to Pope Francis, if they have to decide whether to follow any part of his Magisterium that they do not personally favor!]


A post-script: The presumed 'exorcism' that Pope Francis was reported to have performed in St. Peter's Square on Pentecost Sunday, is actually a common gesture with him, done in contexts far from 'diabolical'.

An example is recounted by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, the editor of the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, who met the Pope for the first time after Mass at Santa Marta a few days ago. He says: "When I asked him for his blessing, he placed his hands on my head and traced the sign of the Cross. That was no different from what he did for the young man who was said to be possessed by the devil. It seemed to me a natural and simple gesture of prayer and benediction".

The other Magister item is a www.chiesa article on the new Annuario Pontificio, which is available in the English translation
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350523?eng=y
but I did want to post it here, nonetheless, because of some observations that have to do with Benedict XVI. I had prepared a whole post complete with a couple of illustrations when I hit a key (my 'fat finger' problem!) that closed the window, and since I was working with Internet Explorer rather than Firefox, there was no way to retrieve it by viewing the history of recently closed windows or tabs.


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Why Kueng et al are 'in fear'
of Benedict XVI's Magisterium

And (falsely) think Pope Francis is less demanding

by Michelangelo Nasca
Translated from

May 28, 2013

"I am happy. The surprising choice of this man, this very man, was a true quality choice... Yes, I insist - it was the best choice. First, he is Latin American, and I am very happy for this, Not only that - he is also a Latin American with open views. And he is a Jesuit, who surely has had a very solid theological formation and preparation. He is a man who has always led a simple life, not in great and sumptuous palaces of power. A man used to be among the faithful even in bare feet[???? Perhaps he means even among barefooted faithful, not that Cardinal Bergoglio himself went barefoot!], with his pastor's staff. He has already given advice and signals with his first gestures. He did not seek triumphal applause nor use pompous words but prayer in silence".

Those were the personal opinions of Prof. Hans Kueng, the principal critic of (orthodox) Catholic theology today, which were published in La Repubblica last March. [A rejoinder, now that HK has been identified: 1) Kueng fails to mention above that the prayer was requested for Benedict XVI, and 2) Kueng is implying - falsely - that all the Popes before Francis sought 'triumphal applause' and used 'pompous words' upon their election.]

But even Vito Mancuso, a lay theologian who has been among the leading Italian critics of orthodox Catholicism, said upon the election of Pope Francis that he felt, for the first time in a long while, "truly and spontaneously represented by the gestures of Pope Francis, by his words, by his way of understanding Christian hope."

"Perhaps the image which struck me principally," Mancuso wrote in Agoravox.it , "is the Pope who went to the reception desk of the hotel where he used to stay in Rome as a cardinal, in order to pay his bill in person. To which I could add his choice of using an ordinary automobile instead of that reserved for the use of the Pope; a metal (pectoral) cross instead of a golden one; and travelling in a minibus with other cardinals. But above all, the fact that he never calls himself Pope, but always and only 'Bishop of Rome' (just as, to my knowledge, he has never referred to his predecessor as 'emeritus Pope'). It has to do with attitudes which reflect an ecclesiology derived from the Second Vatican Council, and which, I think, should not be minimized because I think they express a deliberate programmatic intention by the new Pontiff".

In the past, it was customary to attack and speak ill of the reigning Pope. [The Italians have a saying that "the only good Pope is a dead one".] But now, the opposite is happening. And so, there are some who think that through Pope Francis, Benedict XVI, the emeritus Pope, can be completely counted out. [In fact, he can be counted out from any and all prerogatives of a Pope, because he is no longer the Pope! Nor does he lay claim to any of it.]

But an emeritus Pope, like Joseph Ratzinger, 86, 'enclosed' in a monastery within the Vatican, detached from the organs of information, cannot possibly pose any 'danger' at all to anyone, except through some teachings in his Magisterium.

Which is the crux of the matter. It is the theological thinking of Benedict XVI which truly raises fear among his detractors who wish to keep it hidden, to replace it preferably with something less demanding for everyone in the Church.

Thus, they deliberately limit themselves to gossip about Benedict's red shoes and other trivia that serve to keep the public profile of Christianity low (too low) and linked only to superficial images [that goes for Pope Francis, too, one must say!] and thus avoid confronting with maturity and evangelical consistency those questions about a God who has entered man's flesh and history.

It is such questions - well discussed and explained by Pope Benedict XVI in language that is accessible to all - that are being skirted, because they find his teaching inconvenient and fearsome.

Hans Kueng and Vito Mancuso have been reciting their 'litanies' (long known to everyone) before the image of a Pope Francis who has been instrumentalized and cut to measure for various reasons, including settling accounts [with Benedict XVI and Catholic orthodoxy].

Kung invokes among his usual list of 'reforms' those that have to do with 'the role of women' (i.e., female priests should be allowed); Paul VI's encyclical Humanae vitae against artificial contraception; ecumenism; and the Church's openness to the tragedies of the world, from the cultural aspects of sexual morality in Africa to everything else.

And Vito Mancuso, for his part, asks for the same things, more or less, calling on the Pope "to confront things without pretense or diplomacy, and fully describing things as they are. First of all, regarding sexual morality - there are too many statistics to show that the overwhelming majority of 'practising' Catholics completely ignore what the Magisterium says regarding sexuality". [Yeah, right! Statistics and consensus should dictate the Magisterium!]

In this carousel of opinions, there are those who have grasped only one aspect of Pope Francis's discourse. For instance, the idea of 'a poor Church', interpreted by both the right and the left simply in reference to the economic aspect. But if the term 'poor' also refers to a specific way of belonging to God - namely, fully stripped of the materiality of human things (including money), of everything that gives material basis to human existence - then that would be another story.

As for moral questions, one simply has to read some texts of Cardinal Bergoglio in which he clearly states that he follows and agrees with the Magisterium on these matters.

Not the least, he expressed recently one more sign of his continuity with and adherence to the Church Magisterium when he spoke in one of his morning homilies about the culture of well-being and the fascination for the transient, when he said that even in the choice of whether to have children, couples today are often conditioned by their 'wellbeing', whether it will be good for their 'wellbeing'.

He imagined a conversation between spouses: "No, more than one child, no! Because how can we go on vacations, go where we please, afford to buy a home? No! It is fine to follow what the Lord says, but only up to a certain point..."

He also spoke about people who get married thinking, "As long as love endures, then we will see!" He thus remarks that "the fascination of the temporary (provisional)" is considered today as the second kind of 'wealth' that people can have, which urges them, he said "to become masters of time - by reducing time to the moment."

But he also thought about "so many men and women who left home to enter into matrimony that is for life and have gone on to the very end" He said this was "following Jesus closely, and conclusively"., whereas "the provisional is not following Jesus - it is our own territory, which we lord over".

Professors Kueng and Mancuso are certainly able to read the emphases laid by Pope Francis which presage a morality well-rooted in the Magisterium of the Church. [And to complete the thought expressed in the title of this piece, a morality no different from that which they scorn in Benedict XVI.]

As well-meaning as this item is, OK ALREADY! Pope Francis is in continuity with his predecessors on the doctrine of the faith. Nothing he has said so far shows he is swerving from the established Magisterium in any way. That's not news any more. It will be news if and when = if ever - he does express any doctrinal deviation. Until, then and may it never happen, enough already of the tiresome continuity meme. He is the Pope - it is his primary duty to uphold and defend the deposit of faith passed on to him.

Doctrine is not a question of his personal preference, as the latter factor is in the way he chooses to be Pope (or 'not Pope', really, but simply 'bishop of Rome'. Frankly, I find this distinction rather fatuous. You cannot decline to call yourself Pope because you think the title is pompous or unnecessary, when you are at the same time enjoying all the power and prerogatives that go with it. The faithful do not think of the Pope as Bishop of Rome, even if he is - they think of him as Pope. He responds to them with obvious delight and enjoyment when they shout "Viva il Papa" - no one shouts "Viva il Vescovo di Roma"!

Which leads me to my 'Francis problem' -
with all my apologies to the Pope
and his legion of enthusiasts


My major 'Francis problem' really has to do with all the superficial gestures by which, from the start, he has sought to show that he is different from any other Pope before him. Thus, he has refused to follow traditional papal practices (which are not just 'harmless' but have great symbolic and historical meaning) just because it is his personal preference not to do so. Many Popes have become saints 'despite' adhering to certain papal traditions established over the centuries. Insisting on doing your own way when there is nothing inherently wrong at all in 'the way it has always been' for your predecessors is a kind of selfishness that is the opposite of humility, because it ensures calling attention to oneself.

What are the pros and cons of Francis's personal style? On the one hand, there is the unfailing media attention and favorable commentary he gets, all the enthusiasm for a new springtime, a fresh gust of oxygen for the Church, a new tone for the Church, etc, etc. But that does not necessarily mean it will be more than just wishful thinking. Vatican II was supposed to be all that, and look how misused it has been!

Worse, however, it is all at the expense of his predecessors (especially the immediate one) whom, even if he does not mean to do so, he is showing up to be somehow 'less virtuous' than he is, and in the eyes of the media, the secular world and liberal Catholics, that is equated to meaning that he is 'more Christlike' than the Popes before him. But they can also easily turn that fervor for him into fervor against him once they realize that he is not about to sanction homosexual marriage or abortion at will or euthanasia or women priests of any other secular cause dear to them.

I know how politically incorrect it is to say these things, and how it may even downright offend some Catholic sensibilities that I should be critical of the Pope. (And yet, my devotion to Benedict XVI did not keep me from decrying the fact that he kept Cardinal Bertone on as Secretary of State despite all the initial snafus brought on by the latter, whatever personal loyalty the Pope may have felt he owed him - especially considering that Bertone hardly reciprocated that loyalty in his obstinate disservice by flagrant acts of omission and commission. So much for my one great regret about B16.)

Back to my 'Francis problem': Where do you draw the line between genuine humility and playing to the crowd? Today, one reads the Pope chose to tour the crowd in St. Peter's Square without an umbrella in driving rain. Yet all those people who came to the GA came prepared for the rain and used their umbrellas and their common sense! Is it heroic - nay, more than heroic - to register another new 'first' in papal history this way, especially if you have only one lung, as he does? Of course, the papal physicians will make sure he does not get bronchitis or pneumonia as a result, but why even risk it?

Benedict XVI cannot tolerate the direct heat of the summer sun, so he wore the saturno or a baseball cap when he had to (and sunglasses against glare, when he had to), and the camauro because he cannot tolerate extreme cold in his head and ears. The same intolerance of cold that made him keep on his old black sweater when he donned the papal vestments for the first time. Was it wrong of him to do those things out of practical prudence and common sense, knowing he was in his 80s and susceptible to illness? There was never any question of showing off, on his part.

Blessed John XXIII used both papal headgear - and all other papal accessories - frequently, gladly, and with his characteristic good humor! Was he any less blessed and saintly, any less 'il Papa buono' for that?



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Wednesday, May 29, 2013, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

The prayer card showing a young Madeleine honors her as the patron of home schooling.
ST. MADELEINE-SOPHIE BARAT (France, 1779-1685), Virgin, Founder of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
Born on the eve of the French Revolution, the young Madeleine received first-class home schooling from her brother, a monk who taught school. By the time she was 15, she was
well-schooled in the classics as well as in Scriptures and theology. When the Reign of Terror began, her brother took her with him to Paris where he would become a Jesuit and part
of a group that was seeking to reform the order in post-revolutionary France. He introduced her to a colleague who was interested in setting up schools for girls to provide
education similar to what Jesuits were providing to boys. In 1800, with three other postulants, Madeleine started the order devoted to the Sacred Heart, establishing their first
convent in Amiens. At age 23, she was elected Superior-General and remained so until her death. Their work progressed apace with more convents and schools founded all over
France. Eventually, she brought the order and its work to Italy, Belgium and Switzerland. One of her earliest nuns, Philippine Duchesne (who would be canonized herself in 1988),
went to Louisiana where she and her fellow nuns established the first free school west of the Mississippi, and where the Sacred Heart institutions flourished. In 1826, the rules of
the congregation were approved by the Vatican. For the rest of her life, Mother Barat travelled actively, founding and visiting convents, and compiling voluminous correspondence,
while maintaining her interior life well-nourished by prayer and contemplation. She died in Paris at the age of 94, on Ascension Day, as she foretold. At that time, the order
counted about 4,000 nuns in 99 communities around the world. In 1893, her body was found incorrupt when it was exhumed during her cause for beatification. In 1904, when the order was
forced to leave France because of the new secular laws forbidding Catholic instruction, her remains were taken to Belgium where it remained in the order's convent in Jette,
near Brussels, returning to France in July last year. It is now venerated at the St. Francis Xavier Church in Paris. Mother Barat was canonized in 1925.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/052913.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - Pope Francis began a new catechetical cycle on the mystery of the Church as described in some
key expressions of the Second Vatican Council. Today it was 'the Church as the People of God'. He referred to
his predecessor as 'Pope Benedict XVi' when pointing out that the latter repeatedly said that the Church is
the work of God, born out of his plan of love which realizes itself progressively in history. The Pope toured
among the faithful in the open Popemobile, choosing not to be protected by an umbrella despite driving rain
before the audience.
An English translation of the catechesis can be found here:
www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=5114...


After the GA, the Pope met with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, DC, at the small reception
room of the Aula Paolo VI.



One year ago...
Being a Tuesday, there were no official events for the Holy Father, But in a Vatican statement, he expressed his distress and that of the entire Catholic community for the massacre of more than a hundred civilians, including many children, in Houla, Syria, at the hands of President Bashir Assad's armed forces the latest of many such incidents since the civil war began in Syria in March 2011.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released, in the Vatican's official languages, the "Norms for How to Proceed in Discerning Personal Apparitions and Revelations" promulgated by the CDF in February 1978, for the guidance of bishops around the world, but earlier available only in Latin. The English version is on
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111214_prefazione-levada_en.html




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My lookback feature today takes us back to the media obsession one year ago around this time last year.


Yesterday, my focus was on the 36th anniversary of Benedict XVI's consecration as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and last year, unfortunately, it came right after the climax of the Vatileaks 'mystery' with the arrest of Paolo Gabriele, who admitted to the theft of the Pope/s private documents.



Here is Vittorio Messori commenting on two aspects of the episode - the Pope's own attitude, on the one hand, and on the other, the Roman Curia's post-Vatican-II staffing problem and the Bertone problem...I had been waiting for Vittorio Messori to speak up about the current headline-making developments, and he does so first in Corriere della Sera.


Benedict XVI's serene strength
(that some mistake for 'apathy')

by VITTORIO MESSORI
Translated from

May 28, 2102

It's the conditioned reflex in journalism - and it's understandable, perhaps even dutiful, but it is often abused, and unwarranted. I refer to the fine-tooth comb to which the newspapers subject every papal statement to find some reference to current events regarding Church affairs.

I have very carefully read the complete text of the homily delivered by Benedict XVI at the Mass of Pentecost yesterday, said to have been written entirely by him (i.e., not based on a draft prepared by others according to his written or oral instructions).

I find it a text of high spirituality, an urgent appeal not just to the faithful but to all mankind to rediscover mutual understanding and communion, abandoning so many conflicts, some of them violent.

Even his contrast between Pentecost, sign of union, and Babel, sign of disunion, is a classic of homiletic art, such as that employed by one of its great practitioners, the mythical Bossuet who was the preacher in the court of the Sun King.

But I could not find any 'hook' to the present black chronicles about the Church. I say 'black' intentionally because this seems to be one of the very rare times, since the Papacy lost its temporal powers, that anyone, let alone a layman, has been described as detained ' by priests' in one of their prisons. [Gabriele is detained at Vatican police headquarters, not in a jail.]

It is hardly the imagined dungeons of the former Holy Office of the Inquisition, where Benedict XVI worked for a quarter-century, but in effect, that is the general impression.

The holding cell for the ex-valet also reminds us, among other things, of a fact that is often forgotten or overlooked: The Vatican, despite its half-square-kilometer territory is a State in the world's family of nations, it has a [permanent observer] seat in the United Nations, its own flag, its own coat of arms, a state hymn, a newspaper and an official gazette; it has ambassadors, policemen, a small armed force (the Swiss Guard), its own civilian courts, a radio-TV network, a railway station. It even has its much-gossiped-about central bank, and of course, its own jail.

And it is important not to forget this because, especially in the current uproar, there is the continuing practice of confusing Vatican City State for the Roman Catholic Church. They are not the same thing.

And so, issues over IOR, the Vatican newspaper, or the Vatican's Nuncios throughout the world concern Vatican City State, not the Church.

Even the recent arrest and the months-long media interest in Vatileaks have no religious relevance whatsoever - it's a matter for the Vatican police and magistrature, thus for the State, certainly not the Church.

[But it's a distinction that will hardly be noted because in the public mind, Vatican automatically means the Church, a notion long ingrained into them by the news media who have never differentiated between the Vatican as a civilian institution (Vatican City State) and the Vatican (the Pope and the Roman Curia) as the central authority for the Roman Catholic Church.]

To get back to Benedict XVI's Pentecost homily: He probably had these reflections noted down for some time, even if the actual text itself is recent, but it is difficult to claim that he was making any references to current events. If only because, and this bears repeating, the homily is part of the teaching of the Successor of Peter as guardian of faith and morals in the Church.

Then, there is the fact that the liturgical occasion was Pentecost, which, as the Pope reminded us, was the 'baptism' of the Church, born a few days earlier, at the Ascension.

Prof. Ratzinger was - and is - a great expert in dogmatic theology [theology of the Church's doctrine, in the strict sense of the adjective 'dogmatic', and not in its popular pejorative connotation]. He had - and has - excellent formation in Biblical exegesis, as shown in his recent books on the historical Jesus. He may not be a specialist in Church history, but he moves about easily in that realm.

Therefore, he knows quite well that there is great license in the myth of the primitive Church as having been composed only of saints - as critics of the Holy See today invoke in claiming today that the Church should 'return to its origins'.

The myth arises from a few passages in the Acts of the Apostles describing the idyllic primitive Christian community of Jerusalem, where everyone loved each other and pooled all their resources together for the common good.

Unfortunately, that state of affairs did not last long because that first community, made up of Jews, was soon torn between the 'hellenists' and the 'Judaicizers', even coming to blows. Which resulted in the first schism - that of the Christian Jews.


The letters of St. Paul give us an unexpected and rather discouraging picture of the early local churches: Even those that had been personally founded by him, almost upon their founding, were not only divided almost immediately by doctrinal disputes, but were also not shining examples of morality. Which is why Paul in his letters was always reproaching and exhorting them, and stigmatizing sinful behavior.

If we leap ahead in time, it must not be forgotten that in many cities of North Africa, where Christianity had been implanted very early on, it was often the Christians who in the Middle Ages opened the doors for the Muslims, hailing their arrival because they felt that they were preferable to the representatives of the Byzantine Church who lorded it over them. And better even than the continuous fighting, often bloody, and the immorality of the infinite sects and factions within the Latin Church.

Tired of all these, the Christians of North Africa virtually cried out, "Let the disciples of Mohammed come, and perhaps they will be able to impose order among these so-called followers of Christ's Gospel who are laden with sin".

Why do I point out these things? Because Benedict XVI's serenity amid any turmoil is born from the awareness that from the Church's very beginnings - from that first Pentecost - that the ecclesial institution has rarely risen to the level of the ideal, that imperfection is the norm, wherever man is concerned.

Some have spoken of this Pope's 'apathy' in the face of recent grave episodes that certainly do not affect doctrine and theology at all, but that are damaging to the institutional machinery, with the risk of 'scandalizing' the faithful and loss of credibility for Catholicism itself.

And there are those who claim, speaking as friends of the Pope and for the good of the Church, that he should resign and take up his true calling - a scholar confined in some hermitage, alone with his books. And leaving the Church to be governed by someone else who is more active and more 'attentive' to the problems of the Church. [And where is that someone else? If such an imaginary creature exists, he should be named Secretary of State right away for Benedict XVI, who needs an efficient administrator who can work with everyone instead of making make enemies right and left, not someone to replace him as Pope!]

But these so-called friends of the Pope, friends whose good will we cannot question, seem not to realize that they are playing the game of the Pope's enemies who are trying to chase him out with efforts such as Vatileaks.

As for apathy, anyone who says that about Benedict XVI ignores the fact that he is a man who does not like the spotlight or headlines, but someone who works patiently, thoughtfully, quietly, respectful of every individual, and that there are things he has done, and continues to do, that are often not reported by the media at all but which are all relevant to the mission of the Church.

Some believe that we will soon have proof that will surprise those who accuse him of being uninvolved in current events.

The fact remains that a theologian like him is fully aware that the Church is and has always been, as the Fathers used to say, immaculata ex maculatis - spotless in her Mystery, Christ himself, but too often soiled in her institutional wrapping, composed of men that the Sacraments have not all made saints.

The Pope knows well that the Church must not be confused with its personnel. Of course, this all causes him pain and sorrow, as he said without hesitation in dealing with the pederast crimes committed by some clergy, and other similar transgressions shameful to the Church.

But this sorrow does not in any way diminish his conviction that whatever men of the Church may do, however sinful some of them may be, they will never manage to make a dent or a scratch on what truly counts: that faith in him who is Innocence by definition, who on that first Pentecost, launched his Church on its missionary journey throughout the world.

What really counts, Benedict XVI, once said, is the pearl, not the shell that surrounds it.



More than one Italian commentator has repeated lately a famous riposte by a 19th-century cardinal to Napoleon's threat that "I will destroy your Church". To which Cardinal Ercole Consalvi replied, in effect, "Good luck to you! Even we ourselves have not managed to do that!"

The Church is Christ's Church. For two millennia, it has withstood, firm on its Rock, despite sinful Popes, immoral and unworthy priests, and the legion of sinners within who are nonetheless part of the 'communion of saints' - along with the outright and relentless hostility of those who are not part of the Church. She will withstand this current blizzard of headlines mostly signifying nothing, and even Satan's nth success at infiltrating into the institutional heart of the Church.


Messori speaks about more down-to-earth considerations in the following interview:

On mediocre personnel in the Curia,
waiting it out till Bertone turns 78,
and why the Pope sleeps well at night



VATICAN CITY,May 29 (Translated from TMNews) - "I really do not understand all the brouhaha. There's already the Damocles sword of age hanging over Bertone. All it takes is a bit more patience. He will be 78 soon...."

Thus, Vittorio Messori, journalist and authoritative Catholic author, author of two interview books - one with the present Pope when he was just a cardinal, a book that has gone into the annals of the Church, and the other with John Paul II - is far from the Vatican these days, completing a book about Lourdes.

He attributes the Vatican scandals of recent months to a fundamental problem of mediocrity among Curial personnel. He is not scandalized if it should turn out that a cardinal could be part of the Vatileaks scheme, 'in good faith' as anarchics say when they launch their murderous attacks.

But he absolutely excludes the possibility that Benedict XVI may resign, as some have suggested: "They do not know him at all if they think he would resign over an episode like this!"

"Since the end of Vatican II and the Revolution of 1968 through the 1970s, 30 percent of the international clergy has been lost, and the seminaries are half-empty," Messori points out.

"By tradition, the Roman Curia has always recruited personnel from the dioceses of the world. When the dioceses had all the priests they needed, it was normal to send some of their good priests to serve in the Curia, but now that most seminaries are closed, if a local bishop has any promising priests, he will keep them close to him instead of sending them to Rome. It's a banal question of recruitment. The new crop of priests often do not have adequate formation. I was educated in a classical liceo (high school) with strict standards, but now, when I read Vatican documents in Latin, I am often jolted by the many errors that I find.. And yet at the Vatican, Latin is not a matter of archeology!... The Curia does not have enough competent people. When Spain found itself with a huge empire in the 17th century, the Emperor Charles V cried out in his palace in Madrid - 'Give me men!'

"The Church is a worldwide empire herself, and if she does not have the men to run the empire, she is in trouble. It's as if a government department announced a competition for an important position. If only a few take part, then it will be forced to live with the little that is available. Of course, there are exceptions - I personally know quite a few Vatican functionaries who are very qualified, but Curial personnel are generally rather mediocre".

Is there the same problem among cardinals? "Most of them are 70 years or older - they became priests at a time when the seminaries were full and vocations were plentiful. And they rose in the ecclesiastical ladder at a time when they had a lot of competition."

But now that a cardinal may be involved in Vatileaks? Can a cardinal possibly fall so low?

"It's not necessarily about falling so low. In this case, another interpretation is possible: Often, people who do these underhanded things say they are doing it for the good of the Church, and may really believe that. When anarchists act, most people consider them to be despicable murderers, but others consider them heroes who, by killing the king, are striking a blow at the monarchy itself.

"If a cardinal is involved at all, I don't think he is doing it for money or power, because a cardinal can also become Pope. Perhaps it is someone convinced he is acting for the good of the Church, that the end justifies the means, and that getting rid of certain persons would be for the good of the Church. And that's a line of thought that we consider menacing, but those involved in it think it is beneficial". [2013 P.S. And it turns out he was so right in that, except that the only sanctimonious figure - or at least, the only one that has emerged after all these months - is the weaselly ex=valet Gabriele.]

But don't they run the risk that, in wanting to 'do good for the Church', they are weakening the Pope to the point of perhaps having him resign?

"But the Pope, in fact, remains serene. I have known him for 20 years, and I have had the opportunity to be with him when he is on vacation. Twice he spoke to me at length about the troubles of the Church, from his point of view as CDF Prefect, and I asked him with a smile, 'With all that, how can you sleep at night?'

"He looked at me somewhat amazed and said, 'I sleep very well. At night, I examine my conscience, and know that I have nothing to be ashamed of'.

"For him, the Church is not ours nor the Pope's - it is the Church of Christ. It belongs to Him alone. The Pope must be disappointed and saddened by all that has happened recently, but only those who do not know him could possibly think he would resign because of these troubles.

"He would resign if he becomes physically disabled as Papa Wojtyla was in his final months. But as long as he is physically able, I cannot imagine him resigning because the Church has become 'ungovernable' or simply because 'I am sick of all this. Let me retire to a monastery!'
He knows that the Church will not be 'saved' by him or by the cardinals. It is the Church of Jesus!"


Then what could be the objective of these unwarranted disclosures?
"The immediate target is probably Bertone. Now, I have never wanted to be a Vaticanista, I write primarily about religion, and I keep myself informed, but I cannot claim to know what is happening in the Vatican.

"All I am saying, as someone who reads the newspapers, is this: it seems that the apple of discord is the Secretary of State. But he has passed the usual age-75 retirement age in the Curia. One simply has to wait until he turns 78 (in December), which is the maximum age allowed. So I do not understand all the brouhaha. The Damocles sword of age hangs over his head... Be patient just a little bit more."

I disagree - although his 78th birthday may be the most face-saving exit for Bertone. But a lot of bad things could happen between now and December. Bertone's very presence will continue to fester because he has made too many enemies, including those who were once his friends. A festering presence is unhealthy, any way you look at it. It's not he personally who festers, but the atmosphere around him, and, as we know, miasma sticks to the skin when it engulfs you. He moves out, the atmosphere will clear - at least enough to allow whoever takes his place to show his mettle. Otherwise, we start all over...

BTW, all those who are discussing Vatileaks openly now - and claiming to be part of the conspiracy - are saying the main target is Bertone. Ain't it obvious! But someone (Alberto Melloni, I think) expressed it well earlier, "They want to tell the Pope what a mistake he made in choosing Bertone, and that he continues the mistake by keeping him on".


The third point of view is from Cardinal Salvatore Di Giorgi, one of the three octogenarian cardinals named by the Pope to conduct an internal inquiry into Vatileaks ant the envjronment that made it possible.

Cardinal De Giorgi:
'The Church may be going
through a difficult time, but
let us be serene like the Pope'

by Salvatore Scolozzi
Translated from



As the ranking prelate in the region, Cardinal De Giorgi was with the Pope during the Holy Father's pastoral visit to Santa Maria di Leuca and Brindisi in June 2008.


Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi was calm and serene, but above all, he wanted to reassure the faithful in his former home diocese, with words of reality and confidence.

He said this morning (Sunday), "Even the Church of God has its troubles, there have always been troubles in the Church, from the time Judas betrayed Jesus, through today. Unfortunately, evil is always at work". [2013 P.S. To hear the bear-universal hosannahs today, one would think the Church was in a never-ever situation in which it is the best of all possible worlds, and all it took was Benedict XVI to step down!]

These have been busy days for the retired cardinal, 82, from the Salento region of southeastern Italy, who along with two other emeritus cardinals, Julian Herranz and Josef Tomko, were named by Benedict XVI to seek answers to the questions raised by Vatileaks.

The arrest last week of the Pope's valet, Paolo Gabriele, is only the start of the commission's work alongside the Vatican police and prosecuting magistrates of the Vatican in a wide-ranging inquiry.

But for Cardinal De Giorgi, emeritus Archbishop of Palermo, "There is nothing to fear: The Pope is a man of calm - we see him serene even in the midst of difficulties. This is a man who should be declared a living saint, who with his theological culture is already one of the Fathers of the Church".

He is not speaking to anyone about the case, of course, but he did not ignore it either, saying words of reassurance during a half hour homily at the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in the Santa Rosa district of his native city, Lecce.

He came home for the weekend from Rome in order to preside at a baptism and 50 weddings, and to bring the parish a relic of Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, "at whose beatification at the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mure it was my pleasure to preside recently".

In his homily, he cited the new Blessed as a man to emulate: "Toniolo in his time put into practice what the Gospel taught. He lived a very straight life". Like Toniolo, the cardinal is a veteran of Italian Catholic Action, having once been its spiritual director.

He has always lived moderately, this cardinal, and shuns discussing scandals or gossip. And so, it bothers him that recent days have seen all sorts of exaggerated headlines in the newspapers, with false allegations and inaccuracies of every kind, some attributed to priests and prelates.

He does not say it, but the Cardinal makes it clear that the Vatican means business with their inquiry. They will not allow any dispensations, exemptions or waivers. Their mandate from the Pope is to clear up questions at all levels, but to avoid 'grandstanding' and fueling headlines.

In his homily, he was also clear that the Pope himself must be the ideal reference: "He has been telling the whole world that men should follow the safe horizons of the faith, and not those that lead to unhappiness and despair. Our task, which comes from baptism, is not just to know his teaching but to put it into practice, for our own holiness, for our sanctification".




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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!
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I am grateful to George Weigel for this item which has given me for the first time a different. more balanced idea about the late Cardinal Ottaviani, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time of Vatican-II, who has been depicted in almost all media accounts of Vatican II as an ogre who tried everything he could to foil new ideas from being promulgated by Vatican II...But he was realistic in saying 'error has no rights' if we are talking of Catholic teaching. Dissidents and dissenters of the Magisterium certainly have the right to express their opinions but tat does not make them 'right'...

The late - and widely vilified -
Cardinal Ottaviani is having the last laugh

by George Weigel

May 29, 2013

Despite his humble origins as a baker’s son from Trastevere, Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, longtime curial head of the Holy Office (“successor to the Inquisition,” in journalese) and scourge of the nouvelle théologie of the 1950s, was a formidable figure in pre-conciliar Catholicism.

Ottaviani’s approach to theology was neatly summarized in the Latin motto of his cardinalatial coat of arms, Semper Idem [Always the Same], and his fierce defense of what he understood to be orthodoxy made him a not-implausible model for the character of Cardinal Leone in Morris West’s novel The Shoes of the Fisherman.

Despite the caricatures of the world press, Ottaviani was no monster; indeed, he was reputed to be a man of considerable personal charm. Nor was he a dyed-in-the-wool conservative politically; he wanted the council to condemn all forms of modern war, another cause in which Ottaviani (whose Vatican II batting average did not rise above the Mendoza Line) failed.

But perhaps his greatest defeat at the council came on the question of Church and state. For before and during the Vatican II years, Cardinal Ottaviani stoutly, and, ultimately, futilely, resisted the development of doctrine that led the world’s bishops to approve the council’s “Declaration on Religious Freedom.”

As a legal scholar considering the future of society, Ottaviani’s fear was that religious freedom would result in religious indifference and then a collapse of religious conviction, which would in turn lead to state hostility toward religious believers and religious institutions.

His theological argument against religious freedom, widely held in the Roman universities of the day, rested on the proposition that “error has no rights”. The council’s response to that claim was that persons have rights, whether their religious opinions be erroneous or not, and that, in any event, states lack theological competence.

Alfredo Ottaviani lost virtually every one of the battles he fought at Vatican II, but from his present, post-mortem position he may be enjoying a last laugh (if of a subdued, even sorrowful, sort). For the notion that “error has no rights” is very much alive

and precisely in those quarters where religious indifference has indeed led to intolerance of religious conviction.

When a Canadian Evangelical pastor is levied a significant fine for advocating biblical truth about men, women, and the nature of marriage, or when a Polish priest and magazine editor is punished with even stiffer fines (these, like the Canadian fines, were later thrown out) by a Polish court for accurately describing in print what an abortion does, the forces of coercive political correctness (embodied in the gay insurgency and the global campaign for “reproductive health”) are using state power to nail down the notion that “error has no rights.”

When the present U.S. administration attempts to overturn decades of equal employment opportunity law by attacking the legal exemption that allows religious bodies to choose their religious leadership according to their own criteria, the same dynamic is at work.

And that mantra—“Error has no rights!”—will, inevitably, be used to punish religious bodies that do not recognize any such thing as same-sex “marriage”: by taking away their tax-exempt status, denying their ministers the legal capacity to act as witnesses of marriage under civil law, or both.

An idea long associated with the farther reaches of Catholic traditionalism has thus migrated to the opposite end of the political spectrum, where it’s become a rallying point for the lifestyle left.

There are many reasons why Kathleen Sebelius, the HHS secretary responsible for the coercive contraceptive/abortifacient/sterilization mandate currently being fought by the seriously Catholic elements of American Catholicism, is ill-cast in the role of Ottaviani redivivus.

But in the oddities of history, that’s what has happened. The Catholic Church in the United States, which did more than any other local church at Vatican II to disentangle the universal Church from the notion that, in the civil order, “error has no rights,” is now being hard-pressed by aggressive secularist forces arrayed under that banner.

There are many ironies in the fire.
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Thursday, May 30, 2013, Eighth Week in Ordinary Time
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST (CORPUS DOMINI)

This is another traditionally Thursday holiday like Ascension that some countries, including the USA, since after Vatican-II, have been observing on the Sunday following the actual holiday.

At left: Two processions - Pius VII leading a Corpus Domini procession; and at Orvieto, site of a famous Eucharistic miracle. Third from right, the Eucharist portrayed in flowers on a street in Bolsena, another Eucharistic miracle site. Across Italy, Corpus Domini is generally the occasion for the so-called 'infiorata', when the townsfolk decorate the main streets with huge tapestries or mosaics made up of fresh flowers to depict a sacred subject.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060213.cfm


Today is also the feast day of a great reformer Pope:

POPE ST. GREGORY VII (1020-1085)
Ildebrando da Soana was a Benedictine monk recruited by the reforming Pope Leo IX to be his special counsel and eventually his diplomatic envoy for several crucial
missions within the Holy Roman Empire. At the time, the Church was plagued by three great problems: simony (buying and selling sacred offices and objects);
unlawful marriage by priests; and lay investitures, in which kings and nobles decided Church appointments. When Leo IX died, Ildebrando was elected Pope the day
after, but for admiring Romans, he could easily have become Pope by acclamation. He quickly undertook reforms - which were to be known as the Gregorian reforms -
to deal with the triple 'plague', and was particularly resolute about enforcing celibacy in the clergy. He stressed the role of the Pope as Vicar of Christ and as
the visible center of unity for the Church. Because of his previous diplomacy, he had relations with all the nations of Christendom and wrote to many leaders of
his time, including the leader of Kievan Rus and the Saracen king of Mauretania. He also sought good relations with the Byzantine emperor. His long dispute with
Henry IV, the Holy Roman emperor, for the Pope's right to appoint bishops lasted for the rest of his life although Henry famously came to see him in Canossa
and knelt in penance. The reconciliation was temporary and the Church would not gain back full right to investitures until 30 years after the death of Gregory VII.
Twice he excommunicated Henry, and after the second time, Henry marched on Rome and installed an anti-Pope. But Gregory called in a Norman ally, Robert de
Guiscard, who drove out Henry and liberated Gregory. The Romans however soon turned against Gregory because of the excesses of his Norman allies. he fled to
Montecassino and then to nearby Salerno where he died soon after. He is buried in Salerno, which has refused to yield his remains to the Vatican.



WITH THE POPE TODAY

Pope Francis led his first Corpus Domini observance as Pope with an afternoon Mass at the piazza of the Lateran Basilica
followed by the procession with the Eucharist to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. He set another papal 'first'
by walking the 1500-meter distance between the two basilicas instead of kneeling in front of the Eucharist on a vehicle
as did John Paul II and Benedict XVI.



In 2012, the Solemnity of Corpus Domini was on June 7. I will re-post the news reports and Benedict XVI's homily on Sunday, June 2, when Corpus Domini is celebrated in most of the world, and when Pope Francis will be leading a worldwide Eucharistic Adoration to mark its observance in the Year of Faith.

One year ago, on May 30...
At his General Audience, Pope Benedict XVI continued his catecheses on prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, the Pope reflected on Paul's concept of Jesus embodying man's YES to God, and his Church the AMEN to him. Citing all the tribulations that the Apostle underwent in carrying out his mission of evangelization, the Pope underscored that "he never yielded to discouragement, sustained by the grace and the nearness of the Lord Jesus Christ". A thought that carried over to the Pope's concluding words, after greeting the pilgrims in various languages, when he expressed his sadness over recent events affecting the Vatican (Vatileaks and the arrest of Paolo Gabriele) and his certainty that the Lord will never fail his Church.

GENERAL AUDIENCE
May 30, 2012




Here is a translation of the full catechesis:

In these catecheses, we have been meditating on prayer in the letters of St. Paul, seeking to see Christian prayer as a true personal encounter with God the Father in Christ, through the Holy Spirit.

Today in this encounter, we shall consider the dialog between the faithful YES of God and the trusting AMEN of believers. I wish to underscore this dynamic, by focusing on the Second Letter to the Corinthians.

St. Paul sent this passionate letter to a Church which had more than once questioned his apostolate, and he opens his heart so that the Cotinthians could be reassured about his fidelity to Christ and to the Gospel. This second Letter to the Corinthians begins with one of the most elevated prayers of benediction in the New Testament, and it reads:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement, who encourages us in our every affliction, so that we may be able to encourage those who are in any affliction with the encouragement with which we ourselves are encouraged by God"
(2Cor 1,3-4).

Paul lived in great tribulation, he had to undergo many difficulties and afflictions, but he never yielded to discouragement, sustained by the grace and nearness of the Lord Jesus Christ, for whom he had become an Apostle and witness, giving over his entire existence into his hands.

Because of this, Paul begins this letter with a prayer of benediction and thanksgiving to God, because there was not a moment in his life as an apostle of Christ that he ever felt the support of the merciful Father, the God of every consolation, fail him.

He suffered terribly, he says so in this Letter, but in all these situations, when it seemed as if there was no way out, he received God's consolation and comfort.

In order to announce Christ, he underwent persecutions, until he was thrown into jail, but he always felt himself interiorly free, animated by the presence of Christ and desirous to announce the word of hope in the Gospel.

From prison, he wrote to Timothy, his faithful co-worker. In chains, he wrote: "But the word of God is not chained. Therefore, I bear with everything for the sake of those who are chosen, so that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, together with eternal glory
(2Tm 2,9b-10).

In his suffering for Christ, he experiences God's consolation. He writes: "For as Christ’s sufferings overflow to us, so through Christ does our encouragement also overflow" (2Cor 1,5).

Thus, in the prayer of benediction that introduces the Second Letter to the Corinthians, alongside the subject of affliction, what dominates is the subject of consolation, which is not to be understood as simple comfort, but above all, as encouragement and exhortation not to allow oneself to be overcome by tribulation and difficulties.

The invitation is to live every situation united to Christ, who has taken upon himself all the suffering and sin in the world in order to bring light, hope and redemption. Thus Jesus makes us able to console in turn those who find themselves in every kind of affliction.

The profound union with Christ in prayer, trust in his presence, lead to a readiness to share the sufferings and afflictions of our brothers. Paul writes: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is led to sin, and I am not indignant?"
(1Cor 11,29)

This sharing is not born out of simple benevolence, not only from human generosity or the spirit of altruism, but it springs from the consolation of the Lord, from the unshakeable support that comes from "the surpassing power of God and not from us" (2Cor 4,7).

Dear brothers and sisters, our life and our Christian journey are often marked by difficulties, incomprehensions, sufferings. We all know that. In the faithful relationship with the Lord, in constant daily prayer, we too can concretely feel the consolation that comes from God.

And this reinforces our faith, because it makes us experience in a concrete way the YES of God to man, to us, to me, in Christ. It makes us feel the faithfulness of his love which went as far as giving his Son on the Cross.

St. Paul states: "The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was proclaimed to you by us, Silvanus and Timothy and me, was not YES and NO, but YES has been in him. For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him; therefore, the Amen from us also goes through him to God for glory
(2Cor 1,19-20).

The Yes of God is not halfway, it is not between Yes and No, but a simple and sure Yes. And to this Yes we respond with our own Yes, our Amen, and thus we are secure in the Yes of God.

Faith is not primarily human action but a freely given gift from God which is rooted in his faithfulness, in his Yes, that makes us understand how to live our existence loving him and our brothers.

The whole story of salvation is a progressive revelation of this faithfulness of God, notwithstanding our unfaithfulness and our refusals, in the certainty that "the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable", as the Apostle says in the Letter to the Romans
(11,29).

Dear brothers and sisters, God's way of acting - quite different from ours - gives us consolation, strength and hope because God never withdraws his Yes. In the face of conflicts in human relations, often even familial ones, we are led not to persevere in freely given love which costs commitment and sacrifice. But God never tires with us, he never tires of being patient with us and with his immense mercy, he is always ahead of us, he comes towards us first - his Yes is absolutely reliable.

In the event of the Cross, he offers us the measure of his love, which is not calculated, which cannot be measured. St Paul in his Letter to Titus writes: "The kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared"
(Tt 3,4).

And because this Yes is renewed everyday, "He has anointed us; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment" (2Cor 1,21b-22).

In fact, the Holy Spirit that continually makes present and alive the Yes of God in Jesus Christ, and creates in our heart the desire to follow him in order to totally enter, one day, into his love, when we receive a dwelling not built by human hands in heaven.

There is no person that cannot be reached and interpellated by this faithful love, which is able to wait even for those who continue to respond with the NO of rejection or hardness of heart. God awaits us, he is always seeking us, he wants to welcome us into communion with him to give each of us fullness of life, hope and peace.

On the faithful Yes of God is grafted the Amen of the Church that resounds in every act of liturgy: Amen is the response of faith that always closes our personal and communitarian prayer, and that expresses our Yes to God's initiative.

Often we respond with our Amen in prayer out of habit, without grasping its profound significance. This Amen derives from aman which in Hebrew and in Aramaic, means "to make stable', to consolidate, and consequently, 'to be sure', 'to say the truth'.

If we look at Sacred Scripture, we see that this Amen is said at the end of the psalms of benediction and praise, as, for example in Psalm 41: "In my integrity may you support me and let me stand in your presence forever. Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel, from all eternity and forever. Amen, Amen"
(vv 13-14).

Or it expresses adherence to God, at the moment when the people of Israel return full of joy from the Babylonian exile and they say their Yes, their Amen to God and his Law.

In the Book of Nehemiah, it is said that after this return, "Ezra opened the scroll so that all the people might see it, for he was standing higher than any of the people. When he opened it, all the people stood. Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people, their hands raised high, answered, 'Amen, amen!'
(Ne 8,5-6).

Thus, from the very beginning, the Amen of Jewish liturgy became the Amen if the first Christian community. And the book of Christian liturgy par excellence, the Apocalypse of St. John, starts with the Amen of the Church: "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever [and ever]. Amen." (Ap 1,5b-6). So it is in the first chapter of the Apocalypse. And this book closes with the invocation, "Amen, come, Lord Jesus!" (Ap 22,21).

Dear friends, prayer is the encounter with a living Person whom we must heed and with whom we dialog. It is an encounter with God who renews his unshakeable faithfulness, his Yes to man, to each of us, to give us his consolation amidst the tempests of life, and to make us live, united to him, an existence full of joy and goodness, which will find its fulfillment in eternal life.

In our prayer, we are called to say Yes to God, to respond with this Amen of adherence, of faithfulness to Him all our life. We can never achieve this faithfulness with our own strengths, it is not simply the fruit of our daily commitment - it comes from God and is founded on the Yes of Christ who affirms: “My food is to do the will of the Father"
(cfr Jn 4,34).

It is this Yes that we ought to enter - into the Yes of Christ - in adherence to the will of God, in order to be able to affirm with St. Paul that it is not we who live but Christ himself who lives in us. Then the Amen of our personal and communitarian prayer shall surround and transform our whole life, a life of God's consolation, a life immersed in eternal unshakeable Love. Thank you.




After greeting the Italian pilgrims, the Holy Father made the following statement, the first he has made in public directly addressing the 'Vatileaks' episode:

Pope speaks out
on recent events


Events which have happened these days have brought sadness to my heart, but they have never obfuscated the firm certainty that the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit, and that the Lord will never fail to sustain her in her journey.

Conjectures and insinuations have proliferated, amplified by some communications media, that are completely gratuitous and have gone well beyond facts, offering an image of the Holy See which does not correspond to reality.

I wish to renew my confidence and my encouragement to my closest co-workers and all those who, daily, with loyalty, spirit of sacrifice, and in silence, help me in the fulfillment of my ministry.

He proceeded to express his concern and prayers for the people of the central Italian region of Emilia-Romagna who were struck by a second earthquake in 9 days on Monday morning.

From everything we know of Benedict XVI, he has never once shirked from acknowledging episodes that are super-hyped in the media, when there is an objective basis for the reports. As usual, his message is firm and realistic. God bless him!

Apropos, a very odd, to say the least, press statement today from the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz, who was John Paul II's private secretary, to deny that Paolo Gabriele ever worked for John Paul II. News reports in recent days on Gabriele's background included the fact that, on a recommendation from the Polish rector of the church Paolo attended as a Divine Mercy devotee, he was taken on as one of two assistants to John Paul II's valet Angelo Gugel, who eventually recommended him to take his place as Benedict XVI's valet when Gugel retired in 2006. One story said that Gabriele was in Dsiwisz's good graces and that the late Pope affectionately called him 'Paulus'...

If these background stories were wrong, then certainly, any mistakes should be pointed out and corrected. But if Gabriele had not worked in the papal apartments before he became Benedict XVI's valet, surely someone at the Vatican would have corrected it by now. If he did assist the late Pope's valet, what is wrong with that? He was not accused of anything then!

I think it's odd to hasten to dissociate oneself from a 'lowly' man (perhaps that's how they see Gabriele in Cracow) who has not yet been formally indicted for anything, and whose most grievous imputed charge so far is aggravated theft (though the overriding offense has been gross betrayal of the Pope's trust, and therefore of the Pope himself) - but never to have seen the need to be publicly dissociated from the likes of Marcial Maciel!






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Sorry not to have anything right now on the Mass of Corpus Domini because the Vatican press Office won't be releasing the bulletin on it till tomorrow, and Vatican Radio's English service is missing in action tonight. RV copped out with a generic feature story about the Corpus Domini procession, and not even the fact that the Pope decided to walk during the procession instead of kneeling before the Eucharist (riding on a flatbed vehicle) was apparently not news enough to assign someone to report the story promptly (and the Mass before the procession).

For now, I can only post the AP story - which, I suspect, reported on the procession only (not the Mass before it, or the Eucharistic Adoration after it), because the Pope walked instead of riding with the Eucharist. If he had not set another papal 'first', they may never have bothered to report on it at all. Just as they regularly ignored reporting on the Corpus Domini observances led by Benedict XVI, although they did release excellent newsphotos of the event every year. Today, however, I still have to see any newsphotos of the Mass before the procession.


Unlike his predecessors,
Pope Francis walks during
the Corpus Domini procession

-



ROME, May 30, 2013 (AP) -Pope Francis has again broken with the practice of his predecessors, walking the full length of an annual 1.5 kilometer (mile-long) procession from one Roman basilica to another.

The 76-year-old Francis, who walks with a slight limp because of apparent lower back pain, paused several times in prayer during the 45-minute nighttime walk between St. John Lateran and St. Mary Major.

Thousands of pilgrims holding candles lined the route on a chilly spring evening.

During his nearly eight-year pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI would make the annual Corpus Domini procession riding on a specially outfitted flat-top pickup truck, kneeling in prayer. Pope John Paul II did the same in his final years.

On Thursday, two priests knelt on the truck in prayer before the Eucharist while Francis walked behind the truck.


The Pope elevates the Blessed Sacrament at the Eucharistic Adoration that closed the Corpus Domini procession.

Without detracting in any way from the Pope's admirable new 'first', I think anyone who has been following the reports about him would be aware that he is said to have difficulty with kneeling - why he never genuflects during Mass. (Though there were photos of him kneeling in front of the Marian icon at Santa Maria Maggiore the day after his election during the few minutes he spent in prayer there. and on the two occasions when he shared a brief moment of prayer with Benedict XVI.) That being so, to remain kneeling for the half hour that it usually takes the procession to go down Via Merulana with the Eucharist would have been near impossible and probably not adivsable for him. But the alternative would have been to have him sitting on a chair behind the Eucharist for a half hour, which does not make for the 'right' image at all. It was obviously the best solution to have him walk the route, which also provides another great image for a Pope who has had a succession of images considered emblematic of his uniqueness since his election. John Paul II, who revived the Corpus Domini procession led by the Pope, never walked it, even in his younger years.




Since there will not be a Corpus Domini procession on Sunday, June 2, I will re-post the pictures here from the May 30, 2012, procession...







I would have appreciated more newsphotos of the procession tonight - I don't even see one of the Blessed Sacrament on the truck - and nothing that gives an idea of the crowd, which was always such a compelling feature of the procession during B16's Pontificate. (It probably was under John Paul II, too, but I was not following papal events closely at the time.) However, following B16's years as Pope, I always thought that the Corpus Domini procession and the Pope's annual tribute to the Immaculate Conception in Piazza Spagna were the best occasions that visitors to Rome could avail of to see the Pope fairly close up without having to fight for a good vantage point in St. Peter's Square... And I remember a great article by a Catholic journalist a few years ago in which he decried how the MSM generally ignored reporting on the Corpus Domini processions despite the great popular participation it elicits...
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Since Summorum Pontificum was promulgated by Benedict XVI in July 2007, this is the first homily by a diocesan bishop I have seen in open public support of the Estraordinary Form of the Mass, so I consider it news, even if it was given last Pentecost Sunday. It was delivered by Mons. Luigi Negri, named Archbishop of Ferrara-Comacchia last December by Benedict XVi (after having been Bishop of SanMarino-Montefeltri). Mons Negri is associated with Comunione e Liberazione. The homily was on the occasion of a pilgrimage to the shrine of the Madonna of Poggetto venerated in the Ferrara church of Stant'Egidio. My great thanks to Beatrice and her website for providing the link and the photo of the poster.

Homily by Mons. Luigi Negri
at the Solemn Mass in Extraordinary Form

on Pentecost Sunday, May 19,
for the Popolo Summorum Pontificum
Shrine of the Madonna of Poggeto
Church of Sant'Egidio, Ferrara




The Holy Mass according to the traditional rite is celebrated today on the great Solemnity of Pente4xost which reminds the Church in every time, at every moment, and therefore, to every Christian, that the event of faith, and the development of faith in a life of community and of communion, in the practice of charity, in the active exercise of mission - all this is born from the miracle of the effusion of the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the faithful as the purest gift from the Lord.

The Holy Father Benedict XVI, in a wondrous intervention at the Synodal Assembly of Bishops on the New Evagnelization - at which I had the honor to take part, at the personal invitation of Benedict XVI - said, "The Church was not born out of a decision by the base. The Church was not born through a constituent assembly".

The Church was the work of the Holy Spirit who changes the heart of man and identifies them with the heart of God himself. It is the spirit of the crucified and resurrected Lord. It is his way of filling our life, his way of judging existence, his way of relating to men.

And the novelty of his being and his existence, which entered in what we might call a shattering manner into the life of a community that was certainly in prayer, awaiting him, though they could absolutely not presume to grasp the modality nor the content of the great event of which they became spectators as well as protagonists.

The Spirit changes man's heart, his way of being, his way of doing, his way of feeling existence itself. He continues in the world the humanity of Christ. The Church born of the Spirit keeps herself alive in the Spirit. She communicates to men through the Spirit. This Church is the definitive face that the Lord Jesus Christ assumes in history.

We have this other great and definitive legacy: that of participating in the mystery of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, of living that mystery with truth in our daily life, for better or for worse, in health and in sickness, in joy and in pain, as the protagonists say in that great ecclesial event that is matrimony.

I believe that this situates your praiseworthy initiative of pilgrimage with this Mass in its true context. I hope and I wish that this Eucharistic celebration on the day of Pentecost serves each of you - as I think and hope it will serve me - to recover the warmth of the beginnings, the warmth of that Church event generated in the Holy Spirit. The greatness of the event in our mission is to make us relearn this novelty and not to keep it to ourselves but to spread it to all men.

I took part yesterday in the Pentecost vigil that Pope Francis held with more than 150,000 members of various ecclesial organizations. At one point, the Pope said, "the Church should not stay within herself." If she closes herself in, she becomes sick. She should get out of herself, not abandoning her identity, but to live it, because the vital environment of the Church is mission, and the Church should therefore go forth towards men, visiting all the peripheries of existence today.

Thus, Pentecost hands us the mission of the Church. It consigns to us the task of being witnesses to the risen Christ to the ends of the world, generators - as St. Irinaeus says in a formidable passage - who have been made capable of being generators of the children of God. To make men children of God

...I think that it is important that this celebration takes place under the tender but strong gaze of Mary as an event of grace and responsibility. Christianity is an event of grace because it is entirely something given to us, and no one can say, "I have a right to it". We did not have a right to faith. We had no right to the Incarnation of the Son of God. In this way there are those among our 'faithful' who claim and demand the Sacraments even if they have no right to it.

Sacraments are a gift that the Church received from the Lord Jesus Christ and which the Church in turn bestows on those who are in the condition of receiving them appropriately. And I am referring to a question that is absolutely inconsistent from the theological and pastoral point of view - that remarried divorced persons have the 'right' to receive the Eucharist.

You are living the grace of the Church at the starting point of the faith, which is the Eucharist, its liturgical celebration. Through the prudent and great mercy of Benedict XVI, now you can do so using one of the great treasures of the Church - traditional liturgy.

It is not an alternative to the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council, but one that lives with full dignity, with full physiognomy, with full freedom and with full responsibility side by side with the reformed liturgy. Benedict XVI said so with admirable clarity in his motu proprio.

He wished to amplify the possibilities of living the richness of Church liturgy. And so he asked the entire Church, starting with the bishops, to respect his intention of amplifying access to the treasury of the Church, allowing those who legitimately desire the traditional Mass the right to have access to this 'old' treasure and to live it fully in the faith today and in the mission of today.

Thus the Pope overcame that spurious and unacceptable separation between the 'old' and the 'present', breaking and overcoming that hermeneutic of discontinuity among those who had lived before the Council, who had announced the Council, and those whom the Council had brought to the present situation.

There is only one Church of the Lord, and the Spirit has made her live through many different times. The Second Vatican Council was a time of extraordinary importance, as well as a great challenge to the Church community.

And now you are availing of this liturgy - I am happy that you are doing so in this diocese of which I have been Archbishop for only a few months. And you are not doing so against anyone, nor to affirm your opinions, but to live the mystery of the Church according to the profundity and truth that you feel you have the duty and the right to live it. And now the Church allows you this possibility.

I am not someone who uses words lightly, but Benedict XVI used pastoral mercy by placing the extraordinary form in the service of individual Christians and small groups that cannot be strictly defined by numbers: the 'coetus' (groups of people) who have the right and the duty to have access to this liturgy.

You have it in your hands. The Church now allows you to live it with full freedom. There can be no one, no diocese in Italy or in the world, that can say No to you. If ever there should be any No at all, the bishop must be called to question. Until then, the dialog between the faithful who want the traditional liturgy and the Church is a dialog with the priest who can help you in the exercise and participation in this most beautiful right, which requires the appropriate preparation that you most certainly have.

For this to be an experience for those who are not familiar with the traditional Mass requires a period of formation and preparation. I tried to implement the Motu Proprio in a small diocese like San Marino-Montefeltro without any unusual reactions. But I did document the reactions in a report to the Holy Father, explaining how I managed the situation even before the implementing directives which were issued two years after the Motu Proprio.

I received a brief personal letter from Benedict XVI praising how the traditional Mass had been restored without significant tensions in the diocese of San Marino-Montefeltro.

Participate in the traditional liturgy as you wish. For the truth of your faith. For the truth of your charity. For the impetus of your mission. Just as those who practice the reformed liturgy do so for the truth of their faith and their charity. These are two treasures that serve one people. This one people of God is nourished by the faith if it knows how to live the freedom that the Church allows. The liturgical freedom which, in this case, the Church does not just allow but guarantees.

There are no viewpoints that you must defend nor oppose to others. The Archbishop of Ferrara-Comacchio is not the custodian of any partisan viewpoint nor the propagator of any such viewpoint. His viewpoint is one alone: the truth of the Lord, the Gospel, the tradition of the Church, the Magisterium of the Holy Father, and my own magisterium that is always linked to that of the Holy Father.

This is the space within which Benedict XVI promulgated liturgical freedom in the motu proprio. I have been one of the bishops - I must say truthfully, not very many - who has gained from all of this a deepening of my own identity with respect to my experience of God. It (the traditional Mass) is a great thing, not just for those who practice it but for the whole Church.

I conclude by saying that because of this, you must always seek maximal adherence to the life of the ecclesial community. This practice does not withdraw you from the life of the ecclesial community, much less from the difficult but beautiful realization of communion with all the faithful.

Ecclesial life in our diocese today is strongly engaged in the slow but inexorable effort of seeking to recover faith and charity from material ruin. Together with the clergy of this diocese, I have seen how so many laymen refused to be put into crisis by the consequences of the severe earthquake one year ago which made hundreds of churches unusable. This has forced us to live the Eucharist in random places, in the temporary camps where the homeless have been living, and in the few churches spared by the earthquake.

The earthquake destroyed homes and churches. It did not destroy the faith. We count on this faith to make a recovery. Unfortunately, we also have to count on public institutions which until now have not given much proof of timely assistance, so the first resource we have is our experience of the faith.

We are all within one Church. Therefore, even within this most special and beautiful experience [of the extraordinary form of the Mass], you must seek to increasingly live every day as a vital member of the Church, taking part in the one Body and Blood of the Lord so that, as faith, hope and charity grow in you, you are truly vital members of the one Church.

I shall follow your activity with affection. I encourage you in your path. I ask you to show the same humility that Pope Francis, before asking it of us, shows every day by his presence and his way of being. Have no other preoccupation but to live deeply that which the Church has given you for your good and for that of the whole Church. Be assured that you will always have my welcome and my support, along with any correction if necessary, which I owe to every community entrusted to my care, but which I assume you will not need...

Best wishes to everyone.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 31/05/2013 15:06]
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