BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

Friday, June 7, Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
SOLEMNITY OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

Fourth from left: St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's vision of Jesus urging devotion to his Sacred Heart, 1650.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus goes back at least to the 11th century, but through the 16th century, it remained a private devotion, often tied to devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ. The first feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated on August 31, 1670, in Rennes, France, through the efforts of Fr. Jean Eudes (1602-1680). From Rennes, the devotion spread, but it took the visions of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690) for the devotion to become universal. In all of these visions, in which Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, the Sacred Heart of Jesus played a central role. The "great apparition," which took place on June 16, 1675, during the octave of the Feast of Corpus Christi, is the source of the modern Feast of the Sacred Heart. In that vision, Christ asked St. Margaret Mary to request that the Feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated on the Friday after the octave (or eighth day) of the Feast of Corpus Christi, in reparation for the ingratitude of men for the sacrifice that Christ had made for them. The Sacred Heart of Jesus represents not simply His physical heart but His love for all mankind.

The devotion became quite popular after St. Margaret Mary's death in 1690, but, because the Church initially had doubts about the validity of St. Margaret Mary's visions, it wasn't until 1765 that the feast was celebrated officially in France. Almost 100 years later, in 1856, Pope Pius IX, at the request of the French bishops, extended the feast to the universal Church. It is celebrated on the day requested by our Lord-the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, or 19 days after Pentecost Sunday.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060812.cfm


On this day, the Church also celebrates one of many Mexican martyrs for the faith in the 20th century:

In the 20th century, Spain and Mexico (during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, and during the open persecution of Christians by the Mexican governments of the early 20th century) gifted the Church with countless martyrs who were killed simply because of their faith. Most of them were priests. Our saint today was one such martyr awaiting formal recognition by the Church. Though most Mexican priests were executed by firing squads, Fr. Jose and his companions were simply stabbed to death.
SERVANT OF GOD JOSE PEREZ (Mexico,1890-1928), Franciscan and Martyr
He joined the Franciscans at age 17 but studied in Mission Santa Barbara, California, because of the civil unrest in Mexico at the time.
After being ordained, he returned to Mexico in 1922 just as persecution of the Church was peaking, forcing him to travel around in
different disguises to serve Catholics. In 1928, the priest and several companions were captured when returning from a secret Mass.
Soldiers stabbed him dead.

AT THE VATICAN, June 7, 2013

Pope Francis met with

- H.E. Mikayel Minasyan, Ambassador from Armenia to the Holy See, who presented his credentials.

= Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, emeritus Archbishop of Santiago (Chile)

- Students of schools run by the Jesuits in Italy and Albania.
Vatican Radio has a summary in English of the brief Q&A session that the Pope had with the students in place of a five-page text he had prepared to read to them. http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/06/07/pope_launches_into_spontaneous_qa_with_students/en1-699446

And in the afternoon, with Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
(weekly meeting).



One year ago...
Benedict XVI led what would turn out to be the last Corpus Domini liturgies of his Pontificate - the Mass at the Lateran Basilica, followed by the Eucharistic procession to the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, ending with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction.

Three years ago...
Some 15,000 priests from around the world had converged in Rome for a three day meeting from June 9-11 to mark the end of the Year for Priests declared by Benedict XVI in 2009 on the 150th anniversary of the death of St. Jean Marie Vianney, the Curate of Ars, patron saint of parish priests. The Year of the Priest began and ended on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is observed in the Church as a day of prayer for the sanctification of the clergy. The highlight of the three-day assembly in Rome was a prayer vigil with the Pope in St. Peter's Square on Thursday, June 10, eve of the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and the concluding Mass of the Year for Priests the following day. The prayer vigil was preceded by a 45-minute Q&A with Benedict XVI, in which, among other things, he spoke movingly of the concept behind priestly celibacy. It ended with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction. Along with the Year of St. Paul in 2008-2009, and the current Year of Faith, the Year for Priests was one of three great initiatives by Benedict XVI to underscore specific aspects in the life of the Church.

I shall post a lookback at that memorable prayer vigil separately.

Since this was one of the most memorable highlights of Benedict XVI's Pontificate - with the largest single gathering of priests to date - allow me the indulgence of a full re-post of the event. His Q&A with the priests was particularly moving - it synthesizes all the points he always makes to priests and bishops alike, and one must particularly appreciate it that on every occasion, he underscores to them the importance of first making sure they themselves are individually prepared by their own daily spiritual life of prayer and the Eucharist in order to go out and be able to minister to others - you cannot bring Christ to others unless and until you have Christ in you. To paraphrase this in terms of the current coin of the papal realm: A priest does not just go out to experience 'the odor of the sheep', a favorite phrase of Pope Francis - he must bring the odor of his own sanctity to the flock so that it becomes the 'odor of the sheep' as well! And a second point which he always underscored - and of which his decision to renounce the Papacy was the outstanding example - "Be humble enough to know you cannot do everything!"

Of course, the media at the time only reported what he said about priestly celibacy, which also happens to be one of the most beautiful explanations for the why of it.


The Pope and his priests:
Prayer vigil and Eucharistic adoration
St. Peter's Square
June 10, 2010



To set the scene, here's an adapted version in the past tense of the pre-event story this morning:

The prayer vigil on the occasion of the three-day International Meeting of Priests in Rome started at 8:30 tonight in St. Peter's Square.

The first part of the vigil, sponsored by the Congregation for the Clergy, featured testimonies by priests - live, through video clips, and by satellite link to some cities.

At 9:30 pm., the Holy Father joined the vigil, coming into St. Peter's Square on the Popemobile to allow him to greet the priests more closely as it goes through the various sectors.

After a greeting from Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and the reading of the Gospel, the Pope answered selected questions which came from priests representing each of the world's main geographical regions - Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas and Australia-Oceania.

This was followed by the Lord's Prayer, then the solemn procession of the Eucharist which was brought in from the Bronze Door of the Apostolic Palace.

After an extended time of Adoration while a choir sang hymns, the Pope will read a Prayer for Priests and imparted the Eucharistic Benediction.

Some 14,000 priests, including 3500 from Italy alone, came to Rome to take part in the closing ceremonies of the Year for Priests. This is the largest single gathering of priests ever, almost three times the number of priests who assembled in Rome for the Jubilee in 2000.

P.S. The Congregation for the Clergy said later that at least 15,000 priests from 97 nations were present for the prayer vigil.












Pope defends celibacy rule
By MITCHELL LANDSBERG

June 10, 2010


VATICAN CITY - Standing before more than 10,000 Roman Catholic priests, Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday strongly reaffirmed the Vatican's commitment to priestly vows of celibacy, cutting off speculation that he might reconsider the issue in light of the church's sexual abuse scandal.

At an outdoor vigil in St. Peter's Square that veered between moments of deep reverence and outbursts of enthusiasm more characteristic of a soccer game, the Pope told the gathering of priests, believed to be the largest in history, that celibacy "is made possible by the grace of God ... who asks us to transcend ourselves."

Celibacy would be a "scandal," he said, only in "a world in which God is not there."

Some critics have suggested the vow of celibacy may at least be partly responsible for the sex abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church, either because it is so difficult to uphold, or because it may discourage men with normal sex drives from becoming priests.

In recent months, as the abuse scandal has widened in Europe, an Austrian bishop urged the Vatican to drop celibacy, which he said should be voluntary.

Benedict's remarks came in response to a question posed by a Slovakian priest, and he made it clear he supported continuing the practice of celibacy under his pontificate. He compared it to heterosexual marriage, which he called "the foundation of Christian culture."

The Pope did not directly address the subject of sexual abuse by priests during the ceremony, although it was raised obliquely by others, both times to loud reactions from the assembled priests.

In a salute to Benedict, Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, drew loud applause when he said, "For those of us who are lost, we know Your Holiness has always forgiven and always forgives the pain that some have caused you."

Sister Maria Gloria Riva, a nun who addressed the gathering, prompted a similar response when she said, "We are the mothers of the priests, who sustain the priests at a time when they have been hit by scandal."

The vigil came during ceremonies marking the end of the Year of the Priest, which Benedict declared last year. He was scheduled to formally conclude the year with a Mass on Friday morning.

The crowd at St. Peter's consisted of 10,000 to 15,000 priests, along with several thousand others, including nuns and laypersons. Vatican spokesman Father Ciro Benedettini said he was fairly certain there had never been so many Catholic priests in one place at one time.

Benedict arrived in the late evening, making circles through the crowd in his popemobile as the priests cheered, chanted "Viva il papa!" and "Benedicto!" and waved an array of national flags reflecting their countries of origin, including Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Germany and El Salvador.

"We're preparing for the World Cup," joked Father Maurice Torres of Santiago, Chile, as he held a Chilean flag aloft.

The main event of the vigil involved Benedict answering questions from five priests, representing each of the five populated continents.

They covered issues such as the small numbers of young people joining the priesthood, the difficulty in balancing the duties of a parish priest, the potential clash of theology and doctrine, and the question of celibacy.

Several priests interviewed afterward said they were pleased with what they heard from Benedict, and that the vigil gave them a sense of renewal during a difficult period.

"The Pope was very wise in his comments, very generous to us priests," said Father David Kennedy, whose church is just outside the gates of Ft. Campbell, Ky., home of the 101st Airborne. He said the comments on celibacy were similar to what he was taught in a Benedictine monastery. "I agree with everything," he said.

His friend and traveling companion, Father Ken Mikolcik of Mayfield, Ky., agreed, adding, "We've been reminded constantly here that the Church is in need of reform and renewal."

Earlier in the evening, the crowd watched taped telecasts of priests in Buenos Aires and at Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Hollywood. Msgr. Antonio Cacciapuoti of Christ the King described the size and diversity of the Catholic archdiocese of Los Angeles, and spoke about John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests to whom Benedict dedicated the Year of the Priest.

In Los Angeles, an audience primarily of school students gathered at the church to watch a live feed of Cacciapuoti, who spoke on the taped message about his 100,000-strong parish, the Masses that are celebrated in 72 languages, and his efforts to bring new congregants to Christ "one person at a time."







The Q&A with priests
St Peter's Square
Thursday, 10 June 2010

---

Holy Father, I am Don José Eduardo Oliveira y Silva and I come from America, namely Brazil. Most of us here are committed to the parish apostolate, and not to just one community. Sometimes we pastors are in charge of several parishes or else of particularly large communities. We try our best to meet the needs of a society that has changed much, it is no longer entirely Christian, and we come to realize that our "doing" is not enough. How should we proceed, your Holiness? What direction should we take?
THE POPE:
Dear friends, First of all I would like to express my great joy because gathered here are priests from all parts of the world, in the joy of our vocation and in our willingness to serve with all our strength the Lord in our time.

As regards to the question, I am well aware that today it is very difficult to be a parish priest, also and above all in the countries of ancient Christianity. Parishes have become more extensive pastoral units... and it is impossible to know everyone, it is impossible to do all the work we would expect of a parish priest. So really, we are wondering how to proceed, as you said. But I would first like to say: I know there are many parish priests in the world who really give all their strength for evangelization, for the Lord's presence and for his sacraments. And to these faithful parish priests who work with all the strength of their lives, with our being passionate for Christ, I want to say a big "thank you" at this moment.

I said that it is not possible to do all we would like to do, that perhaps we should do, because our strength is limited and there are difficult situations in an increasingly diversified, more complicated society. I think that, above all, it is important that the faithful can see that the priest does not just perform a "job" with working hours, and then is free and lives only for himself, but that he is a passionate man of Christ who carries in himself the fire of Christ's love.

If the faithful see that he is full of the joy of the Lord and understand also that he cannot do everything, they can accept limits and help the parish priest. This seems to me the most important point: that we can see and feel that the parish priest really feels his call from the Lord, that he is full of love for the Lord and for his faithful. If there is this, you understand and you can also see the impossibility of doing everything. So, being full of the joy of the Gospel with our whole being is the first condition.

Then they must make choices, have priorities, to see what is possible and what is impossible. I would say that we know the three fundamental priorities: they are the three pillars of our being priests.

First, the Eucharist, the Sacraments. The Eucharist: to make possible and present the Eucharist, above all on Sundays, for as many as possible, for everyone, and to celebrate it so that it becomes really the visible act of the Lord's love for us. Then, the Proclamation of the Word in all its dimensions: from the personal dialogue to the homily.

The third point is caritas, the love of Christ: to be present for the suffering, for the little ones, for the children, for people in difficulty, for the marginalized; to make really present the love of the Good Shepherd.

And then, a very high priority is also the personal relationship with Christ. In the Breviary, on 4 November, we read a beautiful text by St Charles Borromeo, a great shepherd, who truly gave all of himself, and says to us, to all priests, "Do not neglect your own soul. If your soul is neglected, even to others you can not give what you should give. Thus, even for yourself, for your soul, you must have time".

Or, in other words, the personal colloquy with Christ, the personal dialogue with Christ is a fundamental pastoral priority in our work for the others! And prayer is not a marginal thing: it is the "occupation" of the priest to pray, as representative of the people who do not know how to pray or do not find time to pray. The personal prayer, especially the Prayer of the Hours, is fundamental nourishment for our soul, for all our actions.

Finally, to recognize our limitations, to open ourselves up even to this humility. Recall a scene from Mark, chapter 6, where the disciples are "stressed out", they want to do everything, and the Lord says: "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while" (Mk 6: 31). Even this is work, I would say pastoral work: to find and to have the humility, the courage to rest. So, I think, that passion for the Lord, love for the Lord shows us the priorities, the choices, helps us to find the road. The Lord will help us. Thank you all!

Your Holiness, I am Mathias Agnero and I come from Africa, from Côte d'Ivoire. You are a Pope-theologian, while we, when we can, just read some books on theology for formation. However, it seems to us that a rift has been created between theology and doctrine, and even more between theology and spirituality. One feels the need that studies should not all be academic but nourish our spirituality. We feel the need in the same pastoral ministry. At times theology does not seem to have God and Jesus Christ at the centre as the first "theological place", but it instead has diffused tastes and trends. The consequence is the proliferation of subjective opinions permitting the introduction, even in the Church, of non-Catholic thought. How can we stay focused in our lives and in our ministry, when it is the world judging faith and not vice versa? We feel "off-centre"!
Thank you. You touched upon a very difficult and painful problem. There is actually a theology that wants above all to be academic, to appear scientific and forgets the vital reality, the presence of God, his presence among us, his talking today not just in the past.

Even St Bonaventure distinguished two forms of theology in his time and said: "There is a theology that comes from the arrogance of reason, that wants to dominate everything, God passes from being the subject to the object of our study, while he should be the subject who speaks and guides us".

There is really this abuse of theology, which is the arrogance of reason and does not nurture faith but overshadows God's presence in the world. Then, there is a theology that wants to know more out of love for the beloved, it is stirred by love and guided by love. It wants to know the beloved more. And this is the true theology that comes from love of God, of Christ, and it wants to enter more deeply into communion with Christ.

In reality, temptations today are great. Above all, it imposes the so-called "modern vision of the world" (Bultmann, modernes Weltbild), which becomes the criterion of what would be possible or impossible. And so, because of this very criterion that everything is as usual, that all historical events are of the same type, the newness of the Gospel is excluded, the irruption of God is excluded, the real news that is the joy of our faith.

What should we do? I would say first to all theologians: have courage. And I would like to say a big "thank you" to the many theologians who do a good job. There are abuses, we know, but in all parts of the world there are many theologians who truly live the Word of God. They are nourished by meditation, are living the faith of the Church and want to help so that faith is present in our today. To these theologians I would like to say a big "thank you".

And I would say to theologians in general: "Do not be afraid of this ghost of science!" I have been following theology since 1946. I began to study theology in January '46 and, therefore, I have seen about three generations of theologians, and I can say that the hypotheses that in that time, and then in the 1960s and 1980s, were the newest, absolutely scientific, absolutely almost dogmatic, have since aged and are no longer valid! Many of them seem almost ridiculous.

So, have the courage to resist the apparently scientific approach, do not submit to all the hypotheses of the moment, but really start thinking from the great faith of the Church, which is present in all times and opens for us access to the truth.

Above all, do not think that positivistic thinking, which excludes the transcendent that is inaccessible is true reason! This weak reasoning, which only considers things that can be experienced, is really an insufficient reasoning.

We theologians must use a broader reason which is open to the greatness of God. We must have the courage to go beyond positivism to the question about the roots of being. This seems to me of great importance. Therefore, we must have the courage to use the great, broader reason and we must have the humility not to submit to all the hypotheses of the moment and to live by the great faith of the Church of all times.

There is no majority against the majority of the Saints. Saints are the true majority in the Church and we must orient ourselves by the Saints! Then, to the seminarians and priests I say the same. Do not think that Sacred Scripture is an isolated Book; it is living in the living community of the Church, which is the same subject in all ages and guarantees the presence of the Word of God.

The Lord has given us the Church as a live subject with the structure of the Bishops in communion with the Pope. This great reality of the Bishops of the world in communion with the Pope guarantees to us the testimony of permanent truth. We trust this permanent Magisterium of the communion of the Bishops with the Pope, which represents to us the presence of the Word. [Three times he uses the phrase "the bishops of the world in communion with the Pope.]

Besides, we also trust in the life of the Church while, above all, exercising critical thought. Certainly theological formation - I would like to tell seminarians - is very important.

In our time, we must know Sacred Scripture well, in order to combat the attacks of the sects. We must really be friends of the Word. We must also know the currents of our time to respond reasonably in order to give - as St Peter says - "reason for our faith".

Formation is very important. But we must also be critical. The criterion of faith is the criterion with which to see also theologians and theologies. Pope John Paul II gave us an absolutely sure criterion in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here we see the synthesis of our faith, and this Catechism is truly the criterion by which we can judge whether a given theology is acceptable or not.

So, I recommend the reading, the study, of this text, so we can go forward with a critical theology in the positive sense. That is critical of the trends of fashion and openness to the true news, the inexhaustible depths of the Word of God, which reveals itself anew in all times, even in our time.

Holy Father, my name is Fr Karol Miklosko and I come from Europe, from Slovakia, and I am a missionary in Russia. When I am celebrating Mass, I find myself and I understand that there I meet my identity as well as the root and energy of my ministry. The Sacrifice of the Cross reveals to me the Good Shepherd who gives all of himself for the flock, for each sheep. And when I say: "This is my body ... this is my blood" given and poured out as a sacrifice for you, then I understand the beauty of celibacy and obedience, which I promised freely at the moment of my ordination. Despite the natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ. But I am stunned to read so much worldly criticism of this gift. I ask humbly, Holy Father, to enlighten us about the depth and the true meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.
Thank you for the two parts of your question. The first, which shows the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy. The second, which shows all the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our times.

The first part is important, i.e. the center of our life must really be the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Central here are the words of consecration: "This is my Body, this is my Blood", which means that we speak "in persona Christi".

Christ allows us to use his "I", we speak in the "I" of Christ. Christ is "drawing us into himself" and allows us to be united. He unites us to his "I". So, through this action, the fact that he "draws" us to himself so that our "I" becomes united to his, he realizes the permanence, the uniqueness of his Priesthood. Therefore, he is at all times the unique Priest. Yet, he is very present to the world because he "draws" us to himself and so renders present his priestly mission.

This means that we are "drawn" to the God of Christ. It is this union with his "I" which is realized in the words of the consecration. Also in the "I absolve you" because none of us could absolve from sins it is the "I" of Christ, of God, who alone can absolve.

This unification of his "I" with ours implies that we are "drawn" also into the reality of his Resurrection; we are going forth towards the full life of resurrection. Jesus speaks of it to the Sadducees in Matthew, chapter 22. It is a "new" life in which we are already beyond marriage (cf. Mt 22: 23-32).

It is important that we always allow this identification of the "I" of Christ with us, this being "drawn" towards the world of resurrection. In this sense, celibacy is anticipation. We transcend this time and move on. By doing so, we "draw" ourselves and our time towards the world of the resurrection, towards the newness of Christ, towards a new and true life.

Therefore, celibacy is an anticipation, a foretaste, made possible by the grace of the Lord, who draws us to himself, towards the world of the resurrection. It invites us always anew to transcend ourselves and the present time, to the true presence of the future that becomes present today.

And here we come to a very important point. One great problem of Christianity in today's world is that it does not think anymore of the future of God. The present of this world alone seems sufficient. We want to have only this world, to live only in this world. So we close the doors to the true greatness of our existence.

The meaning of celibacy as an anticipation of the future is to open these doors, to make the world greater, to show the reality of the future that should be lived by us already as present. Living, then, as a testimony of faith: we truly believe that God exists, that God enters into my life, and that I can found my life on Christ, on the future life.

And now we know the worldly criticism of which you spoke. It is true that for the agnostic world, the world in which God does not enter, celibacy is a great scandal, because it shows exactly that God is considered and experienced as reality. With the eschatological dimension of celibacy, the future world of God enters into the reality of our time. And should this disappear?

In a certain sense, this continuous criticism against celibacy may surprise in a time when it is becoming increasingly fashionable not to get married. But this not-getting married is something totally, fundamentally different from celibacy. The avoidance of marriage is based on a will to live only for oneself, of not accepting any definitive tie, to have the life of every moment in full autonomy, to decide at any time what to do, what to take from life; and therefore a "no" to the bond, a "no" to definitiveness, to have life for oneself alone.

While celibacy is just the opposite: it is a definitive "yes". It is to let oneself be taken in the hand of God, to give oneself into the hands of the Lord, into his "I". And therefore, it is an act of loyalty and trust, an act that also implies the fidelity of marriage. It is the opposite of this "no", of this autonomy that accepts no obligations, which will not enter into a bond.

It is the definitive "yes" that supposes, confirms the definitive "yes" of marriage. And this marriage is the biblical form, a natural way of being man and woman, the foundation of the great Christian culture, of great cultures around the world. And if that disappears, the root of our culture will be destroyed.

So celibacy confirms the "yes" of marriage with its "yes" to the future world. So, we want to go ahead and make present this scandal of a faith that bases all existence on God. We know that besides this great scandal that the world does not want to recognize, there are also the secondary scandals of our shortcomings, our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal and make people think: "They are not really living on the foundation of God". But there is also so much loyalty!

Celibacy - as its adverse criticism shows - is a great sign of faith, of the presence of God in the world. We pray to the Lord to help us, to set us free from the secondary scandals in order to make relevant the great scandal of our faith: the confidence, the strength of our life, which is founded in God and in Jesus Christ!

Holy Father, I am Fr Atsushi Yamashita and I come from Asia, from Japan. The priestly model that Your Holiness has given us this Year, the Curé of Ars, sees at the centre of our life and ministry, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Penance and personal repentance; and love for worship, worthily celebrated. I see before me signs of the rigorous poverty of St John Vianney and his passion for everything connected to worship. How can we live these fundamental aspects of our priestly life, without falling into clericalism or an estrangement from reality that the world today does not permit us?
Thank you. So the question is how to live the centrality of the Eucharist without conducting a purely cultic life, as a stranger to the everyday life of other people. We know that clericalism is a temptation for priests in all ages, today as well. And it is even more important to find the true way to live the Eucharist, which is not closure to the world, but openness to the world's needs.

We must keep in mind that in the Eucharist is realized this great drama of God who goes out of himself, leaves as said in the Letter to the Philippians his own glory, goes out and lowers himself to be one of us, even unto death on the Cross (cf. Phil 2).

This is the adventure of God's love, which leaves, abandons himself to be with us - and this becomes present in the Eucharist. The great act, the great adventure of God's love is the humility of God who gives himself to us. In this sense, the Eucharist is to be considered as entering into this path of God.

St Augustine says in De Civitate Dei [Of the City of God], Book X: "Hoc est sacrificium Christianorum: multi unum corpus in Christ", i.e. the sacrifice of Christians is being united by love of Christ in the unity of the one body of Christ.

The sacrifice consists precisely in going out of ourselves, in allowing entrance into the communion of the one bread, of the one Body and, therefore, to enter into the great adventure of God's love. So, we must celebrate, live and meditate always on the Eucharist, as the school of liberation from my "I": to enter into the one bread, which is the Bread of all that unites us in the one Body of Christ.

Therefore, the Eucharist is, in itself, an act of love and it obliges us to this reality of love for others: that the sacrifice of Christ is the communion of all in his Body. So, this is how we must learn the Eucharist, which then is the opposite of clericalism, of closure in oneself.

We think also of Mother Teresa, truly the great example in this century, at this time. A love that leaves itself, which leaves every type of clericalism, of estrangement from the world, and goes to the most marginalized, to the poorest, to those nearing death and totally gives herself up to love of the poor, the marginalized.

But Mother Teresa who gave us this example and the community that follows in her steps, supposed always as the first condition of one foundation, the presence of a tabernacle. Without the presence of the love of God who gives himself, it would not have been possible to realize that apostolate. It would not have been possible to live in that abandonment to self.

Only by inserting their self-abandonment in God, in this adventure of God, this humility of God, they could and can perform today this great act of love, this openness to all. In this sense, I would say that living the Eucharist in its original sense, in its true depth, is a school of life. It is the surest protection against the temptation of clericalism.

Most Holy Father, I am Fr Anthony Denton and I come from Oceania, from Australia. Here tonight are many priests. But we know that our seminaries are not full and that in the future, in various parts of the world, we expect a decline, even sharp. What can we do to encourage new vocations? How can we propose our way of living, all that is great and beautiful in it, to a young man of our time?
Thank you. You too have touched upon a great and painful problem of our time: the lack of vocations, because of which local Churches are in danger of perishing, for lack of the Word of life, missing the presence of the Eucharist and other Sacraments. What's to be done?

The temptation to take things into our own hands is great, the temptation to transform the priesthood - the Sacrament of Christ, to be chosen by him - into a normal profession, a "job" with specific working hours, and for the rest one belongs only to oneself. If we do so, we make it just like any other vocation; we make it accessible and easy. But this is a temptation that does not solve the problem.

It reminds me of the story of Saul, the King of Israel, who before the battle against the Philistines waits for Samuel for the necessary sacrifice to God. When Samuel does not arrive at the expected time, Saul himself makes the sacrifice, although not a priest (cf. 1 Sam 13). He thought to resolve the problem, which of course he does not, because if one tries to take in hand what he cannot do, he makes himself God, or nearly so, then one cannot expect that things really go in the way of God.

If we too only perform a profession like any other, giving up the sacred, the novelty, the diversity of the sacrament which only God can give, that can only come from his calling and not from our "doing", we would not solve anything.

The more we should - as the Lord invites us - pray to God, knock on his door, at the heart of God, to give us vocations, to pray with great insistence, with great determination, even with great conviction. For God does not close himself to a persistent, permanent, confident prayer, even when he makes us wait, like Saul, beyond the time we expected.

This seems to me the first point: to encourage the faithful to have this humility, this confidence, this courage to pray insistently for vocations, to knock at the heart of God to give us priests.

In addition to this I would like to make some three points. The first: each of us should strive to live his priesthood in such a way as to be convincing. In such a manner that young people might say this is a true calling, one can live in this way, in this way one can do essential things for the world. I think that none of us would have become a priest if we had not met convincing priests who were on fire with the love of Christ. So this is the first point: Let us strive to be convincing priests.

The second point is that we must invite, as I said before, people to join in prayer, to have this humility, this trust to speak to God forcefully, decisively.

The third point: have the courage to talk with young people about whether God is calling them, because often a human word is required to open one to hear to the divine call. Talk with young people and especially help them find a vital context in which they can live.

Today's world is such that the maturation of a priestly vocation seems to be ruled out. Young people need environments in which to live their faith, in which to experience the beauty of faith, in which to feel that this is a way of life, "the" way of life.

And help them find movements, or the parish the community in the parish or elsewhere, where they really are surrounded by faith, by God's love, and can therefore become open so that the call of God may arrive and help them. Moreover, we thank the Lord for all the seminarians of our time, for the young priests, and we pray. The Lord will help us! Thank you all!

---

I have not seen a single photo showing the Adoration yet! The newsphoto agencies, as usual, skip important parts of liturgical rites. Not one photo of that procession of the Sacrament, and not one photo of the Adoration. Not to metnion hardly any photos of the assembly nor the setting. I had to capture some screen shots from ROME REPORTS video to get the establishing and crowd shots!

I hope many of you got to watch this event today.

For most of the priests present, it must have been their first exposure to Benedict XVI speaking extemporaneously - fluidly, without any pause or hesitation, clearly, succinctly, precisely (and with great awareness of his time limit), in a way I have never heard any leader or public figure today or in recent memory speak out without a prepared text! [Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez with their hours-long harangues are, like Hitler before them, indulging in mere rant and sheer demagoguery, babbling set pieces they can rattle off even while asleep!]

In a way we Benaddicts are now familiar with, the Holy Father freely and appositely cites St. Bonaventure, St. Augustine and St. Paul's hymn to love, as he did tonight, in these off-the-cuff responses. Tonight, I was struck by his allusion to Bonaventure's distinction between theologians of arrogance and theologians of humility, and his advice to the priests: "If you want to know what the right theology is, John Paul II gave us the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Read it, and let it be your guide for what is the right theology!"

It was nice to see that most of the priests had portable audio devices linked to a translation center so that the Pope's words in Italian could be understood by all.

The Eucharistic adoration was particularly beautiful tonight - beginning with a stately procession of the Eucharist under a baldachin carried by Swiss Guard in plain clothes - from the Bronze Door of the Apostolic Palace to the altar on the steps of St. Peter's Square. Nothing is more moving than a Eucharistic procession - no image or statue more powerful than the Eucharist - and this one moved me to tears.

The Holy Father knelt throughout the Adoration, through all the hymns sung by the choir, and in one of his most endearing habits, singing along with the hymns (you can see his lips saying the words)....

P.S. I bet the MSM will fault the Q&A for not touching on the sex-abuse issue at all... I personally think it would have been out of place for these 'normal' priests to discuss the criminal aberrations of a few, and that the repeated exhortations from the Pope that priests themselves must set the example of closeness to God, must strive constantly for holiness, fully encompass the issue of chastity. In fact, the Holy Father had a beautiful discourse on the true significance of priestly celibacy in response to one of the questions.

6/11/10
P.S. It's very frustrating not to find a single photo online - not even in the Brazilian newspapers today - of Cardinal Claudio Hummes when he delivered a greeting to the Holy Father at the prayer vigil. One Italian news agency at least reported some of what he said:

GREETING FROM CARDINAL HUMMES


VATICAN CITY, June 10 (Translated from SIR) - "We thank you from the heart, Holiness, for all that you have done, are doing, and will be doing for all priests, even those who have gone astray," Cardinal Claudio Hummmes said tonight at a prayer vigil in St. Peter's Square presided over by the Pope on the eve of the closing day of the Year for Priests.

The Prefect of the Congregation for Priests, which coordinated the worldwide events of the special jubilee year decreed by Benedict XVI in March last year, opened his greeting with these words:

"Welcome to our midst, Holy Father. All the priests present here, along with our brothers all over the world, wish to express to you their most filial devotion, their profound esteem, their sincere support and affection."

He said further:

"We wish, of course, that the Year for Priests would never end: namely, that the aspiration in every priest towards personal holiness will never end, and that in this path, which should begin in the seminary to last all our earthly life in one formative iter, we priests may always be comforted and sustained, as we were this year, by the uninterrupted prayers of the Church, by the warmth and spiritual support of all the faithful, who precisely because of their faith in the efficacy of the priestly ministry, are very often a source of profound comfort for each of us".


John Allen has a good summary of the Q&A...


As priests rally around him,
Benedict XVI defends celibacy

June 10, 2010


Though it wasn’t exactly drawn up this way, the closing ceremonies in Rome this week for the Vatican’s Year for Priests has the feel of a massive rally in support of Pope Benedict XVI, who has faced significant [and fully undeserved] criticism in recent months for his handling of the Catholic sexual abuse crisis.

A vigil service this evening in St. Peter’s Square drew an estimated 15,000 priests from 91 countries – which, assuming the count is accurate, would represent just under four percent of the total number of Catholic priests in the world.

According to Vatican Radio, this was the first time a Pope has invited priests from around the world to come to Rome for a celebration of the priesthood.

When Benedict XVI entered the square at roughly 9:30 pm Rome time, the crowd erupted into loud and sustained applause. Earlier, applause also greeted Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, when he said that the priests wanted to express their “support and sincere affection” for the Pope.

The Pope returned the favor, telling the crowd that he wanted to offer “a great thank you” to the priests of the world.

“I know that so many priests give everything they have to evangelize the world and to make Christ present through the Eucharist and the other sacraments," he said.

Benedict XVI never directly addressed the sexual abuse crisis tonight – offering only one passing reference to the “insufficiencies and sins” of priests as a source of scandal. The Pontiff may speak on the crisis in a homily tomorrow morning as part of the closing Mass for the “Year of Priests.”

The centerpiece event tonight was a 45-minute question and answer session with Benedict XVI, as the Pope took five questions from priests from different parts of the world. None raised the sexual abuse crisis. Instead, topics included:

• Increasing demands on priests, especially in parts of the world where the number of priests is in decline
• A perceived split between academic theology and spirituality
• The logic for priestly celibacy in the face of mounting criticism
• The dangers of clericalism
• How to promote vocations to the priesthood

Benedict’s most interesting reflections may have come in defense of celibacy, where he didn’t invoke the customary Biblical argument (that Christ wasn’t married) or more practical considerations (that priests without families can be more available to their parishes) or even the usual spiritual explanation (that priests have a spousal relationship with the Church.)

Instead, Benedict offered an “eschatological” argument: That a priest is drawn into the life of Christ, including Christ’s condition after the resurrection, so celibacy is an “anticipation of this new world ... in which we are beyond matrimony.”

Through the priestly life of celibacy, Benedict argued, “the future breaks into today.”

Celibacy seems difficult to understand, Benedict argued, in “an agnostic world in which God doesn’t enter the picture... (when) we no longer think of a future with God, because the present of this world seems sufficient.”

Yet celibacy, the Pope said, keeps the door open to this “great truth of the faith,” by “living the future as if it already is the present.”

In a rare flash of sarcasm that drew smiles and laughter in St. Peter's Square, Benedict said that in some ways he finds post-modern criticism of celibacy surprising, since today “it’s becoming ever more fashionable not to marry.”

The Pope went on to argue, however, that the tendency to avoid marriage is at bottom a “no” to commitment, while priestly celibacy is the direct opposite – a definitive “yes” to “giving one’s life completely to God.”

On a more practical front, Benedict encouraged priests to realistically accept that none of them can do everything one might expect a priest to accomplish these days.

He advised priests to set clear priorities, including celebration of the sacraments, proclamation of the Word of God, and charity. He also counseled them not to “neglect your own soul,” saying that priests can’t encourage others to prayer and holiness if they don’t pursue those qualities themselves.

In a line that drew laughter and applause, Benedict also advised priests to have the “humility and courage” to take time for rest.

In response to the question about theology and spirituality, Benedict distinguished between two kinds of theology: A theology based on “the arrogance of reason,” which tries to “make God an object of study rather than a subject who speaks to us”; and a theology “stimulated by love, and a desire to know the beloved better.”

The latter, Benedict suggested, is the kind of theology the Church needs.

Striving to strike a positive note, the Pontiff said that while there are occasional abuses, he wanted to thank “so many theologians who help make the faith present to us today.”

A former theology professor himself, Benedict said he’s old enough to have seen three generations in the field. The “new theology” of several decades ago, he said, which saw the discipline in strictly scientific terms, today “is itself old... and frankly seems almost ridiculous.”

Warning theologians against being seduced by the fashions of their time or passing majorities of opinion, the Pope said: “The true majority in the Church are the saints, and they are the ones who should orient us.”

Benedict also recommended study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and loyalty to the magisterium, meaning the teaching authority of the bishops in communion with the Pope. He counseled priests to be “critical” in their approach to various theological currents.

On the subject of promoting vocations, Benedict said the seeming urgency of addressing priest shortages can encourage a desire to “take the problem in hand ourselves,” with the risk of transforming the priesthood into “just another job, a profession.”

Instead, Benedict urged “insistent and determined” prayer for vocations, without compromising the “novelty and distinctiveness” of the identity of a Catholic priest.

On a more practical note, Benedict advised priests to offer “convincing” examples of priestly life, to speak openly with young people about vocations, and to create environments in parishes and elsewhere in which young people can be “surrounded by faith and the love of God.”

Prior to Benedict’s arrival in St. Peter’s Square, the crowd watched priests from different parts of the world tell their stories via satellite TV connections. One was from the United States: Monsignor Antonio Cacciapuoti, pastor of Christ the King Parish in Hollywood, California.

In keeping with the pep rally feel of the evening [Those priests didn't need pepping up for the Pope himself! And pep rally is hardly the term one can apply to a Eucharistic Adoration and Benedictiobn that followed!], Caccipuoti, speaking in English, set off cheers when he said: “We want to assure the Holy Father that we love him very much, we pray for him always, and we are very loyal to him.”

Benedict XVI chose the past twelve months as a Year for Priests in part because 2009 marked the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Vianney. Known as the Curé d’Ars, Vianney was a 19th century French pastor and confessor who is today the patron saint of parish priests.

June 12, Saturday, 10th Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF THE IMMACULATE HEART OF MARY

The feast is currently observed on the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This particular devotion was particularly popular in France, especially after the Marian apparitions in 1830 to St. Catherine Laboure, whose Miraculous Medal features both the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. But it was not recognized by the Vatican's Congregation for Rites as a liturgical feast until 1855. Worldwide devotion was renewed after the apparitions at Fatima. Subsequently, Pius XII, in an Apostolic Letter, consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart as Our Lady had requested. John Paul II repeated the consecration in a ceremony at St. Peter's Square in May 1982, on the anniversary of Ali Agca's assassination attempt against him, and on the Jubilee Year of 2000, he consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart. In Fatima, on MY 12, 2009, Benedict XVI consecrated the priests and religious of the world to the Immaculate Heart, and did so again in 2010 in St. Peter's Square, during the closing Mass of the Year for Priests.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/060813.cfm

Today's saint:

ST WILLIAM OF YORK (England, born late 11th-cent, d 1174), Monk and Bishop
William Fitzherbert was born into a powerful family - an uncle was second in line for the English throne - and was first named Archbishop
of York in 1140, a nomination contested by some of the local clergy who accused him of simony, sins against chastity, and being an
instrument of the royal court. Pope Innocent II had these investigated and eventually confirmed him. William immediately undertook
reforms in the clergy, but when he went to Rome to get his pallium as Archbishop, new opposition arose, particularly from the Cistercians
in England, who had the support of their superior general at the time, Bernard of Clairvaux. A new Pope, Eugenius III, a Cistercian
himself and great friend of Bernard, upheld his fellow Cistercians and William retired to a monastery in Winchester where he lived a
life of piety and penance. The next Pope, Anastasius IV. restituted William as Archbishop of York. His return to York was triumphal.
During the procession, the bridge across the Ouse River collapsed but miraculously no one died. Unfortunately, two months after his
return, William died. It was thought poison had been placed in the wine he used at Mass. After his death, many miracles were attributed
to him, and a sweet smell emanated from his tomb. Pope Honorius II had the miracles investigated and canonized him in 1226.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/060812.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting).




One year ago...
Benedict XVI met with H.E. Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of the Socialist Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka, and his delegation; 11 Bishops of Papua New Guinea on ad-limina visit; and in the afternoon with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting).



In 2012, the Vatican publishing house LEV published a book entitled GESU DI NAZARET all'universita: Il libro di Joseph Ratzinger/Benedetto XVI letto e commentato negli atenei italiani (the book of Joseph Ratzinger. Benedict XVI read and commented on in Italian universities). The 300-page book, edited by Pierluca Azzaro, contains the interventions of various scholars during the presentation of the book in 10 Italian universities in 2010-2011, a project initiated by LEV director Fr. Giuseppe Costa. The introduction was written by Mons. Georg Gaenswein, the Holy Father's private secretary, with the following excerpt published in today's issue of Avvenire.

The Pope's program -
Only the Gospel
by Georg Gaenswein
Translated from

June 8, 2012

It wasn't too long ago when here and there, some university professors derided the students of theology who cited the works of Joseph Ratzinger.

Many considered the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith the Pope's policeman, if only because of his position. Indeed, the cardinal had become a thorn in the side of the post-modern world in which the question of truth was considered nonsense, of a society of opulence and greed which more and more turned its back to God.

He was an inconvenient man who without much ado, had taken upon himself a gigantic yoke. But who was this man really? How was it that within 24 hours of his election as Roman Pontiff, the image conveyed of him by the media was of someone completely different from who he is? Had he changed his entire nature along with his new robes? Or was it public opinion that had held a false idea of this scholar of God who is as firm as he is humble?

The time has come to undertake a profound review of the image that the media have produced of the ex-Prefect of the CDF. Not just to do justice to a great person, but also to be able to hear without prejudice what the man now on Peter's Chair has to say to us.

The ministry of being Supreme Pastor of the Universal Church has a dimension that enables the man Joseph Ratzinger to express his nature and the gifts he has been given in the fullest and most limpid way.

The Pope is not a politician and his Pontificate is not a project. it is not about exercising singular creativity nor putting himself into high relief. It is not by chance that Benedict XVI often uses the word Providence.

On April 24, 2005, at the Mass that inaugurated his Petrine ministry, Benedict XVI affirmed that he had 'no program of government'. Because, in truth, that program had been fixed for some time, over 2000 years ago, to be exact.

The Pope said clearly and forcefully: "My true program is not to do my will, not to follow my own ideas, but to listen, with the whole Church, to the words and the will of the Lord, and to allow myself to be guided by him so that it is He himself who leads the Church at this time in our history".

Seven years have passed since he said those words. It is certainly not long for a Pontificate, but nonetheless it is long enough to make a first assessment.

What is Benedict XVI fighting for? What message does he wish to bring all men? What moves him and what has he succeeded in moving?

As 'servant of the servants of God', he is an example with his goodness, he fosters collegiality among bishops, he focuses his ministry on the essential, and above all, on the renewal of faith, the gift of the Eucharist, and the unity of the Church.

Evidently, precisely because he has reinforced these foundations, and by virtue of the legacy from his great predecessor, he has succeeded in that which few had thought possible within such a relatively brief period: to revitalize the Church at a difficult time in history. In the Curia, he has infused new lifeblood and has pruned away withered branches...

The question of God does not belong to the past. On the contrary, it is a most active one, because man finds fulfillment in a life that drinks from the spring of Christian faith. This is the fundamental message of the homilies and discourses of Benedict XVI. Because only God can liberate man from sin and from the difficulties of this life.

In the same way, the ex-Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith has caused wonder at how, with his natural warmth and his spontaneous and authentic simplicity, he has succeeded to win hearts.

Equally remarkable is his courage. Benedict XVI does not fear confrontation and debate. He acknowledges by name the deficiencies and errors of the West and criticizes all violence committed in the name of religion. He never ceases to remind us that relativism and hedonism are ways of turning against God that are no less serious than the imposition of religion by threats and by violence.

In the center of the Pope's thinking is the relationship between faith and reason, between truth and freedom, between religion and human dignity.

The new evangelization of Europe and the rest of the world, he tells us, will be possible when men understand that faith and reason are not in opposition but related to each other.

A faith that does not measure up to reason is itself irrational and senseless. On the other hand, a concept of reason that recognizes only what is measurable does not suffice to comprehend all of reality.

Ultimately, the Pope's main concern is to reaffirm the nucleus of the Christian faith: God's love for man, which finds its unsurpassable expression in the death of Christ on the Cross and his resurrection.

This love is the immutable center that is the basis for Christian trust in the world, as well as Christian commitment to mercy and charity, to renouncing violence.

It was not by chance that Benedict XVI's first encyclical was Deus caritas est, God is love. It is a clear signal, as well as a programmatic word for his Pontificate.

Benedict XVI wants the full grandeur of Christian truth to emerge in all its splendor. Man finds fullness and fulfillment in a life which slakes its thirst at the spring of faith. This is a central point for the Holy Father. For him, this is the power of the faith as well as its possibility for the future.

The message of the Successor of Peter is as simple as it is profound: faith is not a problem to be resolved, but a gift that must be rediscovered every day. Faith brings joy and fulfilment. More than anything else, this is what characterizes the Pontificate of Benedict XVI.

But this faith is not at all averse to the world and history. It is a faith with a human face, that of Jesus Christ, God and man. In him, the hidden God becomes visible, tangible. God, in his incommensurable greatness, gives himself to us in his Son.

The Holy Father must announce this God made man, urbi et orbi, to everyone, big and small, to those in power and those who are powerless, those within the Church and outside it - whether they like it or not.

And even if all eyes and the world's TV cameras are often focused on the Pope, it is never about him. The Holy Father is not the focus, he does not announce himself - it is always and only Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the world.

Whoever lives at peace with God, whoever allows himself to be reconciled with him, also finds peace with himself, his neighbor and all creation around him.

Faith helps us to live, faith gives joy, faith is a great gift: this is the great conviction of Pope Benedict. For him it is a great gift to be able to leave the tracks that lead to this gift.

Of this gift, he wishes to bear witness "in all of Judea and Samaria to the extreme ends of the earth".

At around the same time, a book on the first seven years of the Pontificate....



Assessing Benedict XVI's
Pontificate after 7 years

An analysis of the pontificate thus far of Pope Benedict XVI is the subject of a seminar today organized by the department of linguistics and comparative cultural studies at the University of Ca'Foscari in Venice.

It was to open with a lecture by Daniele Menozzi, scholar of Church history at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, on Benedict XVI's view of human rights as a fundamental element for civilian coexistence. Menozzi recently published a book on the Catholic Church and human rights.

He will be followed by presentations of the 'reception' of this Pontificate by various sectors of society: Claus Arnold of the Goethe University in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany; Philippe Portier of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris, France; Jan de Maeyer of the KADOC Documentation and Research centre for Religion, Culture and Society for Belgium and Netherlands;, and Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of L'Osservatore Romano, who is also a Professor of Church History at the University o Ca'Foscari.

The conference will offer a preliminary critical assessment - halfway between news and history - of Benedict XVI's first seven years as Pope.

Some fundamental elements will be highlighted. Besides a certain necessary continuity with John Paul II's Pontificate, Benedict XVI's is characterized by an emphasis on the interpretation of Vaticna-II according to the hermeneutic of continuity; a rigorous affirmation of Catholic doctrine; a return to the traditional dimension of the Papacy compared to the 'mediatic' high profile of his predecessor; the clear and insistent reproposition of Catholic principles as a basis for civilian society even in a situation of religious and cultural pluralism.

In recent months, partly due to the fact that Benedict XVI has turned 85, tensions and centrifugal forces have emerged that seem to hinge on the proper development model for the Church today, looking forward to the next conclave as an occasion to measure the strengths and weaknesses within the Church hierarchy today. [I never did come across a follow-through of this conference. It would be interesting to find what their conclusions were as to the last point brought up.]

The fact that someone like Mr. Gregg felt compelled to write this essay - to explain, in effect, what Pope Francis meant and means by one of his most quoted statements so far - shows that it is never enough (or even advisable) for any leader, including a Pope, to seek to convey his message through simplistic slogans, which can lead to demagoguery. That is why Benedict XVI was the despair of most journalists because what he said was never simply reducible to a catch phrase - 'soundbite' as the journalistic jargon has it. He always made sure no one could be in doubt of exactly what he meant. But the other side of the coin was that he was also a 'treat' for the journalists who could then choose to isolate a statement out of context - usually whatever was controversial or potentially controversial to the secular mind - and treat that like the soundbite they are used to, hitting two birds with one stone: they could generate a controversial headline out of it, and they created a new occasion to present Benedict XVI negatively.

By the same token, Pope Francis is a media darling because he does speak in catchy print-ready sound bites, easily adaptable to sloganeering, that are guaranteed to generate headlines - he has done all the work the media wants and thrives upon. Unfortunately, what we might call the Twitter generation is also spoiled by its increasing addiction to 140-character 'bites', generally meant to be transient and random messages never intended to be food for thought, but something to be taken in at face value for the length of time it takes anyone to read 140 characters. Of course, some of the pasta is bound to stick to the wall if you throw it against the wall often enough. But what is left? Strands or fragments that one will clean up ASAP and never have to deal with again! Sic transibunt verba Twitter!

Pope Francis on
the true meaning of poverty
by Samuel Gregg

June 5, 2013


St. Francis Marrying Poverty (detail), Andrea Sacchi, 1633


“How I long for a poor Church for the poor!”

With these words spoken after being elected pope, Jorge Bergoglio underscored a theme that continues to be front-and-center of his papacy. Not surprisingly, many have concluded such statements demonstrate that Pope Francis wants Catholics to devote greater attention to poverty-alleviation. In one sense, this is true. Yet it’s also an interpretation that misses the deeper meaning Francis attaches to poverty.

[Unfortunately, more people, including the media, have chosen to take the Pope's words literally, especially the secular do-gooders who have always thought that the Church was 'too rich' and ought to sell whatever it owns 'to help the poor'. An impression that was not helped by the Pope himself telling the bishops of Caritas, "If need be, sell the churches to feed the poor". Which surely he could not have meant, but said for rhetorical effect. So it is not at all quoted by the Vatican media, though it appears in the transcript of the extemporaneou8s remarks posted online by the Spanish service of Vatican Radio.]

No-one should be surprised Francis is so vocal about material poverty. After all, he comes from Latin America: a part of the world in which millions (with notable exceptions such as Chile) seem locked into dire poverty. You would have to be less-than-human not to be disturbed by the contrast between Buenos Aires’s beautiful Recoleta district which gives the city the appellation “Paris of the South,” and the misery of a Buenos Aires slum like Villa Rodrigo Bueno. [One could say the same thing about any major city in the world, with the possible exception of Singapore!]

[One must note that numerous books have been written about the specific phenomenon of 'social justice for the poor' as the winning slogan for every successful political party in Argentina, since the initisi ascendancy of Juan Peron in the 1940s. Peronism as 'social justicialism' has been the general approach taken by all Argentine governments including the military dictatorships that have punctuated the post-Peron period. Evita Peron's enduring popularity among Argentinians - despite the malevolent image that Western media has painted of her - is not because she was beautiful or glamorous, but because she was somehow able to convey to them that, having been dirt-poor herself once, she did care sincerely about the welfare of the disadvantaged, and that as questionable as many of her activities in behalf of the poor were, because they were unprecedented in terms of media and PR impact (does that sound familiar????), she had the right intentions, even given the political implications for her husband of everything she did. I read quite a few books on the subject in the 1980s when doing research for a project I was working on as a journalist, and have kept up an interest in it because I have visited Argentina three times in the past 15 years for business and private reasons having to do with properties owned by my husband's family in that country.

The final word has not been written about Peronism and Evita herself, because Peronism continues to be very much alive and active in Argentina, but it would be instructive if some Vaticanista researched what Cardinal Bergoglio has said about Peronism in its various forms... My point is that it would have been exceedingly strange if Cardinal Bergoglio, as an Argentine and as a Catholic bishop, had failed to be an outspoken advocate of working for the poor, if only because the contemporary history of Argentina demands it of all its leaders. The problem is that most of them may have been limited to lip service only, whereas Cardinal Bergoglio sought to practise it in his spiritual ministry to the poor 'peripheries' of Buenos Aires. For those who are interested, a Wikipedia round-up about poverty in Latin America en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_South_America#Argentina presents an objective view (substantiated by links to their primary sources) of the 'relatively low poverty rate' in Argentina and the major social structures it has had in place to deal with the problems of the needy.]

For Christians, indifference in the face of such disparities is not optional. But in understanding Francis’s words about poverty, we should remember the pope is an orthodox Catholic. He’s not a philosophical or practical materialist. Hence Francis’s conception of poverty and the poor goes far beyond conventional secular understandings of these subjects.

In a revealing question-and-answer session held on Pentecost eve with members of the new movements that have brought such life to the Church since Vatican II [more than two months after he first said the line about 'a Church for the poor' without further explication - after it had already sunk into the public consciousness by sheer repetition in the media] the pope said this about Christianity and poverty.

---

For us Christians, poverty is not a sociological, philosophical or cultural category. No, it is a theological category. I would say, perhaps the first category, because God, the Son of God, abased Himself, made Himself poor to walk with us on the road. And this is our poverty: the poverty of the flesh of Christ, the poverty that the Son of God brought us with His Incarnation. A poor Church for the poor begins by going to the flesh of Christ. If we go to the flesh of Christ, we begin to understand something, to understand what this poverty is, the poverty of the Lord.

---

Here follows Mr. Gregg's post-facto apologia pro Papa, before he seques into an exposition of what St. Francis was really all about:

In a word, it’s about humility. As another old-school Jesuit Philip Caraman once wrote, humility is the “virtue by which we take true measure of ourselves before God, bearing in mind all that God has given us and done for us and expects from us.”

Further illumination comes from recalling that the Greek word used in Matthew’s Gospel (5:3) to describe the “poor in spirit” (πτωχός) means being reduced to a beggar. Hence the poor in spirit are those of us — poor, wealthy, middle-class — who recognize our sins and beg Christ to save us.

This is central to what it means to be a poor church. A humble church isn’t a timid, handwringing congregation that compromises the Faith. Rather it’s a church that consists of people who freely submit to Christ as the only One who can save us.

Similar insights emerge from reflection upon the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Here it’s worth noting the gaps between the romantic myths about Francis and the reality of the man. [I think this is actually the whole point of Gregg's essay - contrasting what Francis of Assisi did and taught to the popular but fallacious ideas about him today which both media and the public opinion shaped by them have projected onto Pope Francis.]

In his superb recent biography of the saint, for example, Augustine Thompson OP observes that Francis’s famous conversation with Sultan al-Kamil of Egypt wasn’t motivated by something like anti-war activism. For Francis, the purpose of the exercise was to convert the Sultan to Christianity!

Likewise Thompson demonstrates Francis’s impatience with liturgical sloppiness, his “absolute lack of any program of legal or social reforms,” his capacity to distinguish between absolute and relative poverty, the absence of any “hint of pantheism” in his view of nature, and that “the last thing Francis wanted was for his order to become a group of social workers.”

Saint Francis, Thompson adds, was “fiercely orthodox” and that “for Francis, obedience to God and the Church, by which he meant the hierarchy, was absolute.” In his final Testament, Francis even insisted that any heretics found among his followers should be handed over to the appropriate authorities for punishment.

All of this makes it hard to view Saint Francis as a proto-dissenter, medieval hipster, or eco-feminist. Some Catholics are also surprised to learn that St. Francis’s own understanding of poverty had nothing to do with class-warfare or envy of those with material wealth.

Thompson notes that the saint wrote relatively little about poverty, and when he did, it was generally “not linked to giving up property, simplicity of life, or living only for the day.”

Rather it was primarily with reference to the fact that the Second Person of the Trinity humbled Himself by taking on human form in the Incarnation and sacrificed Himself for mankind by dying on the Cross.

Thus, as Thompson presents it, Saint Francis’s conception of poverty was overwhelmingly about “renunciation of one’s own will,” service of God, and obedience to the Gospel proclaimed by Christ’s Church. In that sense, St. Francis’s ideas about poverty, Thompson notes elsewhere, “are not political.” They are essentially about attaining the spiritual wealth found in embracing Christ.

So what does all this tell us about how Catholics should think about poverty?

In the first place, it’s clear political activism shouldn’t be what first leaps to mind when considering poverty-alleviation. It is not coincidental that Pope Francis insisted in his Pentecost Vigil remarks that “The Church is not a political movement, or a well-organized structure . . . We’re not an NGO, and when the Church becomes an NGO she loses salt, has no flavor, is only an empty organization.”

Certainly Francis’s calls for more state intervention vis-à-vis the global financial crisis underscore his conviction that there is a political dimension to reducing material poverty. Yet his pre-pontifical writings indicate that Francis isn’t naïve about this.

Back in 2001 (the year Argentina’s economy more-or-less collapsed), Bergoglio wrote in a small publication entitled Hambre y sed de justicia, that: “There are Argentines facing poverty and exclusion, and who we must treat as subjects and actors of their own destiny, and not as patronized recipients of welfare doled out by the State or civil society.”

But above all, Francis wants Catholics to bring a distinctly Christian dimension to poverty issues. In his Pentecost Vigil remarks, he stressed that our primary concern cannot be effectiveness and efficiency. “It is one thing to preach Jesus,” Francis told his listeners, “and another to be efficient.”

Obviously Christians are not excused from thinking (rather than simply emoting) about and debating the “hows” of poverty-alleviation and working to reduce it. There are requirements of justice. Francis’s point, however, is that if we only consider what he calls “worldly effectiveness,” we risk forgetting Christian love. [An argument well and explicitly presented in Part 2 of Benedict XVI's Deus caritas est, which distinguishes genuine Christian caritas from mere do-goodism or philanthropy.]

In developing this argument, Francis posed two questions to his audience: “Tell me, when you give alms do you look into the eyes of the man or woman to whom you give alms? . . . And when you give alms, do you touch the hand of the one to whom you give alms, or do you toss the coin?”

Three things—as Francis often says!—come to mind here. One is how many times we have all failed this test.

The second is Blessed Theresa of Calcutta. There was nothing “efficient” about her decision to care for some of the world’s most destitute people. During her lifetime, she was criticized for not being more politically-active with regard to poverty-alleviation. But her work wasn’t about politics. It was about something that dwarfs politics: the bringing of Christ’s love to those in whom Christ Himself told us we would see His face.

And herein lies the third point, which Benedict XVI dwelt on in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est. Though this encyclical emphasized the demands of justice, Benedict stressed there is something of which every suffering person has even greater need: “loving personal concern.” -[There it is! For the media, including veteran Vaticanistasm to treat Pope Francis's statements - about the disparity between rich and poor, and the ethical deficiency in contemporary culture in which governments and financial institutions act for no other motivation than profit - as if he were breaking new ground, is a disservice to all the Popes since Leo XIII who have written great social encyclicals, and most of all, as Amy Welborn commented recently, "did you ever read the Gospels?".]

For Pope Francis, for his predecessor Benedict XVI, and for Blessed Theresa, our response to poverty must above all be one that makes real the mercy that’s central to the Gospel. Among other things, this helps correct the very human tendency to imagine that justice is enough. [What did Benedict XVI say? To paraphrase - "There can be no enduring peace without justice. But justice without mercy is not enough. Justice without love is not justice".]

A God who was simply Justice rather than Love would never have condescended to enter human history in the Person of Jesus Christ to rescue us from ourselves. God owed us nothing.

In that sense, the Catholic understanding of poverty reminds us that it’s divine mercy rather than justice that truly saves us. [i.e., justice is a tool, but just one tool. and not the only one, by which Christian love of neighbor is expressed.]

June 9, 2013 Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

ST. EPHREM OF SYRIA [306-373), Deacon, Preacher, Theologian, Writer, Poet, Composer of Hymns, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Nov. 29, 7007
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20071128...
to this extraordinary man who was born to a Christian family in what is now Syria, but was not baptized till he was 18. He became a famous teacher in his native city, which he fled when it was taken over by the Persians. He settled in Edessa (in present-day Iraq) where he was ordained a deacon and established a theological school. His prolific writings were based on his knowledge of Scriptures and deep insight into the Christian mysteries and humanity. Besides his prose writings, he was a great religious poet and composed hymns as a means of catechesis as well as against the heresies of the day. One of the first to introduce song into Church worship, he became known as 'the harp of the Holy Spirit' for his exquisite hymns. Although he never became a priest, he lived poor and chaste all his life. He is said to have visited St. Basil the Great (330-379), with whose theology he had much in common. He died of the plague which he caught while caring for victims in Edessa. Benedict XV declared him a Doctor of the Church in 1920.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/060912.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Sunday Angelus - Pope Francis reflected on divine mercy, one of his favorite themes, as the Church dedicates the month
of June to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He related it to today's Gospel in which Jesus raises a young man from the dead out
of compassion = mercy - for his mother. After the prayers, he reminded the faithful that two nuns were beatified today in
Cracow, Poland: Zofia Czeska Maciejowska, who, in the first half of the 17th century, founded the Congregation of
the Virgins of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; and Margaret Lucia Szewczyk, who in the 19th century, founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of Sorrows
Vatican Radio's English translation of the Angelus remarks are on
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/06/09/pope_francis:_sunday_angelus_(full_text)/en1-699870
of the Vatican Radio website
-


One year ago...

Benedict XVI met with 11 bishops of Papua New Guinea (Group 2) on ad-limina visit. Later, he addressed all the visiting Papua bishops. In the afternoon, he met with Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting), and the CDF secretary, Mons. Luis Ladaria Ferrer... The Vatican released the text of the Pope's letter to Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, president of the Vatican Governatorate, naming him his personal representative to the formal celebration on June 19 of the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the Benedictine Sacro Eremo (Sacred Hermitage) of Camaldoli near Arezzo by St. Romuald. The Pope himself took part in the millennary celebration at the Camaldolese mother church in Rome, San Gregorio al Celio, last March, celebrating Vespers with the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Rowan. [P.S. 2013 I read in a recent article in the Italian media that the abbot of the Camaldolese monastery recalled that at the dinner Benedict XVI had with the monks that evening, the Pope spoke to them about the attractions to him of the monastic life of prayer and contemplation.]...The Vatican also announced that the Holy Father had accepted the resignation of Cardinal Raffaele Farina, who turns 79 in September, as Archivist-Librarian of the Holy Roman Church.


2013 P.S. At this time, one year ago, however, daily fodder and fare for the media were developments and speculations on Vatileaks following the May 25 arrest of the Pope's treasherous valet who admitted to stealing documents from the Pope's study that were subsequently published in a book by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi. The following editorial captures the malevolent media atmosphere of those days...

As someone who is fundamentally and deeply concerned about the way news about the Church, the Vatican and the Pope is being reported, I can only welcome and cheer this statement of journalistic principles by Famiglia cristiana, the enterprise that publishes Italy's most widely read weekly magazine...

Let's get the right perspective
on how media is reporting Vatican news
Translated from the online site of

June 8, 2012

Predictably, we have been getting - through e-mail, website posting, Facebook and even snail mail - observations from readers, both sympathetic and polemical, who think that we have been too timid in reporting about what has been summarily called 'the scandal at the Vatican'.

We should be more aggressive, we are told: Sing it out loud and clear, let the chips fly and fall where they may, say the truth, name the guilty, unmask the traitorous crows.

Easy to say, but we cannot do more than we are already doing. For three reasons:

First, Famiglia cristiana, in its different modalities, has written and continues to write a lot about the whole issue. Eleven articles alone in since May 25, when the Pope's valet, Paolo Gabriele, was arrested. Articles which were simultaneously posted on our Facebook and Twitter sites.

Not to speak of four-page spreads in two recent issues of the weekly magazine and commentqary by our editor, don Antonio Sciortino. That is hardly an index of our reticence or lack of interest in the issue. So those who criticize this have not really been paying attention.

Second reason: Approximative, speculative journalism is not part of our tradition nor editorial policy - we are not of the let's-publish-this-today-because-we-can-always-contradict-it-later school, we do not try to shoot at a fly in the hope of hitting something in any case.

Whoever has followed the media coverage of recent events at the Vatican ought to have realized a simple fact: No one yet knows what is really true! Nor the full truth. [At least, no one has yet said so, though every reporter claims to report 'new facts' citing only 'reliable sources' or 'anonymous sources'. Since such sources are not verifiable, and therefore anything attributed to them is unreliable, any reporter can well invent anything and attribute it to such 'sources'!]

So, one day, Cardinal Bertone is the victim, the next day, he is a mastermind. Gotti Tedeschi is a villain today, and a champion of rectitude the next. Gabriele acted alone, then suddenly, he was a double agent for the Vatican police all along. The Pope? He knows everything. No, he is being deceived on all sides.

It's easy to write up scandals - they have unlimited appeal to a certain readership. But objective facts - not to mention the truth - are what we need.

And this, therefore, is the third reason for the way we choose to cover this subject: That there are problems within the Vatican, everyone knows. [When was it ever problem-free anyway?] But allow us to disagree that it is useful - for the readers as well as for the Church - to face these problems by exposing them indiscriminately and unscrupulously.

We seek to stick to known facts. We are not interested in letters whose contents are blacked out nor in anonymous persons claiming to be responsible for the leaks nor in supposed tell-all memoranda that no one has read.

When we learn something that is objective fact, we write about it. Otherwise, we don't. Period.

Meanwhile, however, we continue to be concerned about the things that matter to the Church. Last week in Milan, a million or more persons rallied around Benedict XVI. To report on his visit to Milan and Family 2012 and its initiatives to change society in concrete ways, this publishing house (Edizione San Paolo) devoted hours and hours of live TV broadcasts on Telenova (the official broadcaster of the event), dozens of inquiries and background articles on the weekly magazine, 100 articles and 40 videos on the online site, a million and a half copies of Family News, distributed free in Milan during the three days of the Pope's visit.

All that about a Church that is more real and important than any tales of petty betrayal. We chose to cover it as extensively as possible, where most media only gave the event a few lines, if at all. Let the reader decide who is doing the service of information.





Thank God, I finally finished this post before Sunday is over, without losing it again...

I was googling about for an appropriate text from Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI on the Sacred Heart of Jesus and/or Divine Mercy, and this article came to light which I had never seen before.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus
in the theology of Benedict XVI
by Father Mark D. Kirby, O.Cist.
From the English weekly edition of

May 25, 2005

'We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer'
"In the pierced heart of the Crucified, God's own heart is opened up; here we see who God is and what he is like. Heaven is no longer locked up. God has stepped out of his hiddenness. That is why St John sums up both the meaning of the Cross and the nature of the new worship of God in the mysterious promise made through the prophet Zechariah (cf. 12:10). 'They shall look on him whom they have pierced' (Jn 19.37)". [1]

Pope Benedict XVI:
Theologian of the Heart of Christ
In July of 1985, 1 was standing in the bookstore of the Abbey of Sainte-Cécile of Solesmes in France when, by a wonderful providence of God, I met the Benedictine scholar, Mother Elisabeth de Solms. The encounter remains unforgettable. I had long studied and used her admirable translation of the Life and Rule of Saint Benedict, as well as her Christian Bible,2 a series of volumes setting the commentaries of the Church Fathers line by line alongside the Scriptures.

The simplicity of so great a woman was a marvel. She engaged me in conversation, asking if I had read the works of Cardinal Ratzinger. I admitted that I was familiar with certain writings of his, surely not with everything published. "Read him", she said. "You will see. God will make of him a great gift to his Church". That was 20 years ago.

I began reading Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. I devoured, in particular, his writings on the sacred liturgy in the wake of the Second Vatican Council. I discovered, among other things in the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger, elements of a theology of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

In Pope Benedict XVI God has given the Church a shepherd who has contemplated the pierced Heart of the Crucified and already written of it, notably in Behold The Pierced One [3] and, more recently, in The Spirit of the Liturgy.

Cardinal Ratzinger's writings on the Sacred Heart are warm and luminous. Fire and light are characteristic of a theology forged in experience.

Theologians who do not persevere in a humble prayer of amazement and adoration fall inevitably into one of two syndromes. Either they generate heat without shedding any light, or they shine a cold light, one that fails to warm the heart. The true theologian at once warms the heart and illumines the mind.

Recall the words of Jesus concerning John the Baptist: "He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light" (Jn 5:35). In our new Holy Father, God has given the Church "a burning and shining lamp" (Jn 5:35). Those already familiar with his writings and liturgical preaching know what I mean.

Theology itself is a difficult word. Theology of the Sacred Heart thrusts us into deep waters. The Song of Songs assures us that "many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it" (8:7).

Theology is more than a mere flood of words. All words oblige us, in some way, to wrestle with meaning. Words are the vehicle of meaning. Words wait to be unlocked. The words we use in talking about God, or in talking to God, can be unlocked only in prayer.

Before we can reflect on a theology of the Sacred Heart, we have to ask ourselves this question: "What do we mean by theology?".

The Greek etymology of the word discloses both God (theós) and word (lógos). Lógos, in turn, has a huge richness: it can mean word, but it also signifies meaning, message, poem and even hymn.

When we speak of theology we mean not one thing but at least three: word from God; word to God; and word about God. All theology, and therefore a theology of the Sacred Heart, is more adequately understood in terms of: God's self-revealing word addressed to us; the doxological word of Christ and of the Church addressed to God; and the healing word of the Church addressed to the world.

Sacred Heart: God's Word addressed to us
Theology is, first of all, God's word addressed to us. Apply this immediately to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The pierced Heart of the Crucified is God speaking a word to us, a word carved out in the flesh of Jesus' side by the soldier's lance. It is the love of God laid bare for all to see: "God stepping out of his hiddenness". [4]

When we speak of a theology of the Sacred Heart, we mean this first of all: not our discourse about love, but the love of God revealed first to us, the poem of love that issues forth from the Heart of God. This is exactly what St John, whom the Eastern tradition calls, "The Theologian", says in his First Letter: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins" (I Jn 4:10).

The difficulty here is that, in order to receive this word inscribed in the flesh of the Word (cf. Jn 1:14), we have first to stop in front of it, to linger there and to look long at the wound made by love. "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37).

To contemplate is to look, not with a passing glance, but with the gaze of one utterly conquered by love. Jeremiah says, "You have seduced me, O Lord, and I was seduced; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed" (20:7).

The call to be an adorer and an apostle of the Sacred Heart is addressed to every Christian. The apostle is, in essence, the bearer of a word, one sent forth and entrusted with a message. The message that the apostle carries into the world is the one he has learned by looking long with the eyes of adoration at the pierced Heart of the Crucified.

The word of Crucified Love is hard to pronounce — not with our lips but with our lives. Adoration is the school wherein one learns how to say the Sacred Heart. It is in adoration that the apostle receives the word of the pierced Heart that, in turn, becomes his life's message.

Adoration and apostleship together model a spirituality accessible to all Christians: the word received in adoration is communicated in the dynamism of one sent forth with something to say.

Sacred Heart: Our word addressed to God
Theology is, in the second place, our word addressed to God. Applying this also to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we see that all we could possibly want to say to God has already been uttered and is being said eternally through the "mouth" of Christ's glorious pierced Heart in heaven. It is through the Sacred Heart that the Blood of Christ speaks "more graciously than the blood of Abel" (Heb 12:24).

The Letter to the Hebrews puts it this way: "Christ is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him, since he lives for ever to make intercession for them" (7:25).

Christ exercises his priesthood of intercession in "the inner sanctuary behind the veil" (Heb 6:19) by presenting to the Father the glorious wounds in his hands, his feet and his side. The wound in the side of Christ, "great high priest over the house of God" (Heb 10:21), speaks to the Father on our behalf. It is our word addressed to God.

At the core of devotion to the Sacred Heart is a passing-over into the prayer of Christ to the Father, a long apprenticeship to silence by which we begin to let the Heart of Christ speak in us and for us to the Father.

The mystics of the Sacred Heart, in particular St Gertrude and St Mechthilde, speak of offering the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Father. This means allowing the Sacred Heart to speak for us, to pray in us, to pray through us, taking comfort in what Scripture says, "that we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Heb 4:15).

This suggests a simple way of praying, one accessible to all: "Lord Jesus, I come to be silent in your presence, trusting that your Heart will speak for me, knowing that all I could ever want to say, that all I would ever need to say, is spoken eternally to the Father by your Sacred Heart".

In this way, everything that prayer can or should express — adoration, praise, thanksgiving, supplication and reparation — finds its most perfect expression.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart, thus understood, is a manifestation in the Church of the Holy Spirit, "helping us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26). [5] The Sacred Heart is, in the life of the Church, the organ by which "the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God" (Rom 8:27).

Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer. The Christian confession of faith comes from participating in the prayer of Jesus, from being drawn into his prayer and being privileged to behold it; it interprets the experience of Jesus' prayer, and its interpretation of Jesus is correct because it springs from a sharing in what is most personal and intimate to him". [6]

This is the prayer of the Sacred Heart, the prayer that filled the days and nights of Jesus's earthly life, the prayer that suffused his sufferings and ascended from the Cross at the hour of his death, the prayer that with him descended into the depths of the earth, the prayer that continues uninterrupted in the glory of his risen and ascended life, the prayer that is ceaseless in the Sacrament of the Altar.

Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that "by entering into Jesus's solitude", and "only by participating in what is most personal to him, his communication with the Father, can one see what this most personal reality is; only thus can one penetrate to his identity".[7] The Sacred Heart represents and invites us into what is most personal to Jesus: his communication with the Father.

In words that today sound almost prophetic, Cardinal Ratzinger concluded that "the person who has beheld Jesus' intimacy with his Father and has come to understand him from within is called to be a 'rock' of the Church. The Church arises out of participation in the prayer of Jesus (cf. Lk 9:18-20; Mt 16:13-20)". [8]

Prayer of the Sacred Heart
in the New Testament
The Letter to the Hebrews tells us exactly what was the prayer of the Heart of Christ at the moment he took flesh in the Virgin's womb: "When Christ came into the world, he said, 'Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure'. Then I said, 'Behold, I have come to do your will, O God', as it is written of me in the scroll of the book'" (Heb 10:5-7). This is the first prayer of the Heart of Jesus, "substantially united to the Word of God". [9]

The prayer of the Heart of Christ revealed in the Letter to the Hebrews resonates throughout the Fourth Gospel. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "We could say that the Fourth Gospel draws us into that intimacy which Jesus reserved for those who were his friends" (ibid., 22). The Gospel of the Beloved Disciple belongs, in a special sense, to the friends of the Heart of Jesus.

The liturgy gives us the Gospel of St John on every Sunday and weekday during Paschaltide. Holy Thursday's Gospel of Jesus washing his disciples' feet at the Last Supper (cf. Jn 13:1-5) becomes Good Friday's Gospel of the Heart from which flowed blood and water: "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (cf. Jn 19:34-37).

By continuing to read the Fourth Gospel on Easter Sunday (Jn 20:1-9) and for the 50 days following, the liturgy guides us into the prayer of the Heart of Christ.

The Second Sunday of Easter, that of Divine Mercy, invites us in a particular way to the contemplation of the Sacred Heart. In the Gospel (Jn 20:19-31), the Risen Christ stands before Thomas, inviting him to touch his wounded side. Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: "All of us are Thomas, unbelieving; but like him, all of us can touch the exposed Heart of Jesus and... behold the Logos himself. So, with our hands and eyes fixed upon this Heart, we can attain to the confession of faith: 'My Lord and my God!'". [10]

The liturgical lectionary's repartition of the Fourth Gospel is integral to the mystical pedagogy of the Church. When the liturgical Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus arrives on the Friday following the Second Sunday after Pentecost, it finds us already prepared, ready and full of desire to pass fully into the prayer of the Sacred Heart.

For Cardinal Ratzinger, "the entire Gospel testimony is unanimous that Jesus's words and deeds flowed from his most intimate communion with the Father; that he continually went 'into the hills' to pray in solitude after the burden of the day (cf., Mk 1:35; 6:46; 14:35, 39)". [11]

He notes that "Luke, of all the Evangelists, lays stress on this feature. He shows that the essential events of Jesus's activity proceeded from the core of his personality and that this core was his dialogue with the Father". [12]

Prayer of the Sacred Heart in the Psalms
The psalms also express and communicate the prayer of the Heart of Christ. The Psalter is for the Church a "sacrament" of the prayer of the Heart of Christ to the Father, revealing that prayer and making it present in her.

Jesus intoned two psalms from the Cross, leaving it to his Church to continue them: Psalm 21 in Matthew 21:46, and Psalm 30 in Luke 23:46.

"And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"' (Mt 27:46). The Church, imaged in the Mother of Jesus, the beloved disciple and the other holy women at the foot of the Cross (cf. Jn 19:25), prays the psalm through to the end to discover in its triumphant final verses (cf. Ps 21:22-31) the promise of a banquet for the afflicted and the hope of the resurrection: "The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; and those who seek him shall praise the Lord! May your hearts live for ever" (Ps 21:26).

Psalm 30 gives the verse, "Into your hands I commit my spirit" (Ps 30:5). Praying it from the Cross at the hour of his death, Jesus adds a single word, a word that rises out of the depths of his Heart and utterly transforms the psalmist's prayer into one by which the Son entrusts everything to the Father. "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!'. And having said this he breathed his last" (Lk 23:46).

"Jesus died praying.... Although the Evangelists' accounts of the last words of Jesus differ in details, they agree on the fundamental fact that Jesus died praying. He fashioned his death into an act of prayer, an act of worship.... The last words of Jesus were an expression of his devotion to the Father.... His cry was not uttered to anyone, anywhere, but to Him, since it was of his innermost essence to be in a dialogue relationship with the Father". [13]

Prayer of the Sacred Heart in the liturgy
The prayer of the Heart of Christ at the hour of his sacrifice passes entirely into the heart of the Church, where it is prolonged and actualized "from the rising of the sun to its setting" (Mal 1:11) in the Liturgy of the Hours and in the mystery of the Eucharist.

Cardinal Ratzinger asks if, after the once-for-all Pasch of Jesus, anything more is needed. "After the tearing of the Temple curtain and the opening up of the heart of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified, do we still need sacred space, sacred time, mediating symbols? Yes, we do need them, precisely so that, through the 'image', through the sign, we learn to see the openness of heaven. We need them to give us the capacity to know the mystery of God in the pierced heart of the Crucified".[14]

It is through the liturgy, first and above all, that we pass over into the prayer of the Sacred Heart, the word to the Father forever inscribed in his pierced side.

Sacred Heart: the Church's Word to the world

Theology is, finally, a word about God addressed to the world, a word about God addressed to anyone who will listen. The Sacred Heart, pierced in death, becomes a word of life for the world.

"Death, which by its very nature is the end, the destruction of every communication, is changed by Jesus into an act of self-communication; and this is man's redemption, for it signifies the triumph of love over death. We can put the same thing another way: death, which puts an end to words and to meaning, itself becomes a word, becomes the place where meaning communicates itself". [15]

This means that after the mouth of Jesus fell silent in death, there remained the open side and the pierced Heart that speaks of nothing but love, the ultimate and everlasting word about God.

In the final analysis, one "impelled by the charity of Christ" (cf. II Cor 5:14) will have but one message, that of the pierced Heart revealing the love of the Father and "drawing all to himself" (cf. Jn 12:32).

One who has contemplated the message carved in the flesh of Jesus's side by the soldier's lance and learned to read it in adoration has but one language in which to speak to the world: the language of the heart.

It is learned not in conferences or classrooms or books, but in silence and in the contemplation of the Pierced One. It is learned especially in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.

The language of the heart encompasses a thousand local dialects, a million accents. Devotion to the Sacred Heart impels the Christian to an inventive charity, a charity ready to explore every dark and treacherous place in search of the lost sheep.

"Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and maimed and blind and lame" (Lk 14:21). "The great gesture of embrace emanating from the Crucified has not yet reached its goal; it has only just begun." [16]

Word from God, Word to God,
Word for the world
Word of God addressed to us, word addressed to God, word of the Church addressed to the world: herein lies one approach to a theology of the Sacred Heart. The liturgy remains its primary articulation. Together with the Liturgy of the Hours for the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, the 12 biblical texts provided for the Mass — a First Reading; Psalm, Second Reading and Gospel for each of the three years A, B and C — become a fundamental resource, an inexhaustible treasure waiting to be mined for every one called to hear, to pray and to offer the healing word that is the pierced Heart.

The Sacred Heart is the Heart of God laid bare for man: word from God. It is a human Heart lifted high on the Cross: word to God. It is the Heart of the Church open to all who seek, to all who thirst, to every lost sheep waiting to be found and carried home: word for the world.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the full and irrevocable message of the Father to us. It is everything we ever could or should need to say to the Father. It is all we have to say to one another and to the world.

Pope Benedict XVI, writing in 1981 as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, challenges us to nothing less: "In the Heart of Jesus, the center of Christianity is set before us. It expresses everything, all that is genuinely new and revolutionary in the New Covenant. This Heart calls to our heart. It invites us to step forth out of the futile attempt of self-preservation and, by joining in the task of love, by handing ourselves over to him and with him, to discover the fullness of love which alone is eternity and which alone sustains the world". [17]

NOTES
1 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 48.

2 Mére Elisabeth de Solms, La vie et la règle de saint Benoît (Paris: Téqui, 1984); Bible Chrétienne (Québec: Editions Anne Sigier et Desclée, 1988).
3 Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986).
4 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 48.
5 Cf. Litany of the Sacred Heart.
6 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 19.
7 Ibid., p. 19.
8 Ibid.
9 Cf. Litany of the Sacred Heart.
10 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 54.
11 Ibid., p. 17.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., pp. 22-24.
14 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 61.
15 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 25.
16 Card. Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 50.
17 Card. Ratzinger, Behold The Pierced One, p. 69.

Ecology prize goes
to Joseph Ratzinger
Translated from the 6/9/13 issue of


Among the winners of the 12th biennial Premio Ken Saro Wiwa (1941-1995) who was killed for his commitment to defending the environment, is a book by Joseph Ratzinger, Per una ecologia dell'uomo )For an ecology of man), an anthology of textsn(ed. Maria Milvia Morciano, 227 pp, LEV, 2012).

Will the appeals "for a more moderate lifestyle and for appropriately controlled means of consumption that question the widespread dogma of consumerism" be heard, asked Mons. Jean Louis Brugues, Librarian-Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, in the Preface to the book.

"Prophets are not asked to be popular," Brugues notes. :GTrue prophets never are. We do expect them to shake us up".

"In the course of his mission," the citation reads, "Joseph Ratzinger emphasized the importance of the environment, examined in its many facets, from the religious to the natural, social, cultural and economic. as he has presented them to us in the book, which was given the Premio AcquiAmbiente a few months before he resigned - aspects presented in a particularly striking way with concreteness and profound spirituality".

"The texts comprise an 'extraordinary' anthology of writings, interventions, and letters by the emeritus Pope during the years of his Pontificate, with the constant exhortation to safeguard nature and the environment [Actually, his preferred term for this is 'Creation'], in which he deals with a theme, ecology, that he has always felt strongly about, even as a cardinal, never failing to call on the faithful to resist the calls of consumerism,

"The author demonstrates an active concern for the actual generalized degradation of the environment and make3s man the protagonist whomust be responsible for the present state of nature".

The prize will be presented on June 29 in Villa Ottolenghi (where?). The Bishop of Acqui TErme, Mons.
Pier Giorgio Micchiardi, will receive the prise in behalf of the emeritus Pope.

What can one say of this woefully inadequate report which does not even identify who is giving the prize, nor any background about the prize, and worse, it presents the story as a prize to 'a book by Joseph Ratzinger', when, in fact, the prize goes to Benedict XVI for his ecological writings as Pope, and that it is the grand prize in 2012 among a number given out to other authors, including journalists, for outstanding work in promoting ecological causes.

One might almost think the inadequate and misleading report was deliberate. And here I was, thinking that the OR, at least, was treating the emeritus Pope with appropriate deference compared to Vatican Radio - how wrong I was, if we are to go by this report!

Thankfully, I had a post about this earlier, on the World Day for the Environment last June 5, which I will now re-post to give the larger picture.

Emeritus Pope gets 2012 diocesan prize
for promoting conservation of water resources
Translated from

June 5, 2013

The Diocese of Acqui Terme in the Piedmont region of Italy announced it has given its Grand Prize for 2012 in its Annual Premio Acui Ambienti in recognition of outstanding work for conserving and safeguarding water resources to Joseph Ratzinger, "who, in the course of his mission as Pontiff of the Roman Church, emphasized the importance of conserving the environment in its various aspects".

The jury that awarded the Prize said Benedict XVI's thoughts on the environment are best summarized in the book Per una ecologia dell’uomo (For an ecology of man), published by the Vatican Publishing House.



Benedict XVI was informed of the prize several weeks before he announced his renunciation of the Papacy. The Bishop of Acqui Terme,
Mons. Pier Giorgio Micchiardi, will accept it in his place.

My addendum:
In March last year, after his Angelus remarks, Benedict XVI said this:

---

Yesterday, in Marseilles, the VI World Forum on Water was concluded, and next Thursday, the world will mark the World Day of Water, which this year, focuses on the fundamental link between this precious and limited resource with food security.

I hope that these initiatives will contribute to guarantee equitable, sure and adequate access to water for all, thus promoting the rights to life and to nutrition of every human being, and a responsible and mutually supportive use of the goods of the earth for the benefit of present and future generations.

---

Under Benedict XVI, the Vatican, almost alone of all the countless entities concerned with the environment, has consistently promoted the conservation and sharing of water resources, especially in the poorer countries of Asia and Africa, which are chronically stricken with drought.

Here is a little sidebar about the book whose cover is in the photo above. In 2009, Benedict XVI had said enough in public about man's responsibility to preserve and protect creation that a researcher in Oregon had enough material for her 185-page book:

Author sheds light
on Pope’s 'greenness'
By Emily Smith
Monday, Aug 17, 2009

EUGENE, OREGON - Even some of the most devout Catholics are astonished to learn that Pope Benedict XVI powers his home in Germany by solar panels.

Although snippets of environmentalism have snuck into many of the Pontiff’s speeches and writings, Catholic author Woodeene Koenig-Bricker, 57, of Eugene, was as surprised as anyone to learn of the Pope’s fierce environmental advocacy, which she sheds light on in her new book, Ten Commandments for the Environment.


The notion of a green papacy is unfamiliar to most, she said. “People expect the Pope to talk about God, sex and marriage,” she said. “So the environment comes as a surprise to people.”

The Pope’s latest encyclical [Caritas in Veritate] touches on his own 10 commandments for the environment, but is hardly succinct, the author said. So, her book serves to enlighten on the Pope’s message and his own history with environmentally sound practices.

For instance, the Vatican set out to become the first carbon-neutral nation-state in the world just more than two years ago. In taking strides toward that goal, it has been outfitted with solar panels and has begun a reforestation project in Hungary.

And, of course, there’s Pope Benedict’s own home in Germany, which, like the Vatican, is heated by solar panels.

For a world leader — and a religious figurehead at that — to lead by example, not just pontificating, sets a new precedent for leadership, she said.

“Yes, he’s a theologian, but he’s also practical,” she said.

The environment was not a burning passion of Koenig-Bricker’s when she and her editor first discussed the Pope’s work as a book idea. But, she said, researching and writing about the green papacy led her to take the Pope’s message to heart.

“It forced me to change my life,” she said.

The Pope’s activism departs from the realm of politics and religion, Koenig-Bricker said, and enters that of morality.

“Care for the environment is truly a moral issue,” she said. “It’s not a religious issue, it’s not a dogmatic issue, but it is a moral issue.”

Although the Pope has given numerous talks on the environment, there has been little publicity of it. As she delved into the Pope’s writings, she was struck by his insistence that nations rich and poor alike have a responsibility to preserve the planet, each other, and all living species.

“I was taken aback a little by the intensity of his message and the extent of it,” she said.

Since humans alone are capable of destroying the environment, she said, the Pope urges that people take on the mission of saving it.

“The Pope makes a point of saying we have a responsibility to all the species on the planet,” she said. “We don’t have the right to force other species into extinction just because we can.”

Koenig-Bricker found the Pope’s message on potable clean water especially moving.

In a place with abundant clean water, she said, it’s easy to forget that people worldwide fight to survive without access to the same.

“Clean drinking water isn’t a privilege, it’s a right,” she said.

Since her research for the book, the writer has become vigilant about her own water waste.

From shutting off the water while she brushes her teeth to installing a sprinkler system to help eliminate excess water runoff in her yard, Koenig-Bricker said conservation has become a priority.

An exhaustive exercise in research, she said writing the 152-page paperback, with its 11 pages of footnotes, felt like preparing a dissertation. But it had its rewards.

“On a real personal level, it was an exciting intellectual stretch,” she said.

Regarding the many instances of blatant and gratuitously disrespectful reporting by Vatican Radio post March 13, 2013 about Benedict XVI, usually contrasting him directly with the current Pope, Beatrice cited one last week from the French service of RV, in a seemingly favorable report about Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels and his support of gay unions and other liberal causes, contained in a greeting to him on his 80th birthday. The report ends with this gratuitous sentence: "The former Primate of Belgium took part in the conclaves of 2005 and 2013. Cardinal Danneels, even if he seemed to have disapproved of the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, has not hidden his admiration for Pope Francis".

That's the kind of egregious and unnecessary reportorial partisanship that has no place in journalism, much less in Vatican Radio - but neither Fr. Lombardi nor any of the RV editors in the various languages appear to be supervising what their reporters write and read, as I have complained about over the past several years. Such irresponsible laxity, which is rampant and almost SOP in secular media, is unforgivable for Vatican Radio. But is anyone paying attention at all?

Apropos Cardinal Daneels and his pro-'gay union' position, Sandro Magister posts yet another unsigned article on www.chiesa presenting the number of ranking prelates who have now come out publicly in support of gay unions, and underscores that Pope Francis has yet to say something on the issue. Will the new Pope will change Church teaching on this? In Argentina, he favored some kind of legal recognition of such unions but deferred to the consensus of the Argentine bishops' conference against it before Argentina passed its law recognizing gay unions. As Pope, would he let himself be guided by a similar consensus of the bishops of the world rather than by what is right according to Catholic teaching? Let us hope an occasion will arise soon at which he would definitely have to take a position, because he has missed previous occasions so far - such as the approval of the law in France and the UK, and his address to the Italian bishops.

Vatican Diary:
Six more ranking prelates
in favor of legalizing 'gay unions'
Three Cardinals and two archbishops, plus the Vatican spokesman join
in public support for the legalization of unions between homosexuals.
Only 10 years ago the Church made it clear her position is an absolute NO.
The new Pope has yet to address the issue.

by ***
English translation provided by


VATICAN CITY, June 10, 2013 – "The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions."

In fact:
"The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity."

Therefore:
"The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself."

These are the concluding phrases of the "Considerations regarding proposals to give legal recognition to unions between homosexual persons" of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith (CDF), readily available on the website of the dicastery:

Considerations
The document bears the signature of the cardinal prefect of the congregation at the time, Joseph Ratzinger, today “supreme pontiff emeritus,” and of then-archbishop secretary Angelo Amato, a Salesian, today the cardinal prefect of the congregation for the causes of saints.

It was approved on March 28, 2003 by Blessed John Paul II and published on the following June 3, the feast day of St. Charles Lwanga and companions, martyrs.

A commemoration not chosen by coincidence. In the Roman martyrology it is in fact recalled that St. Charles Lwanga and his twelve martyr companions - between the ages of fourteen and thirty, belonging to the royal court of young nobles or to the bodyguard of King Mwanga, neophytes or fervent followers of the Catholic faith - having refused to consent to the vile requests of the king, were run through with the sword or burned alive on Namugongo hill in Uganda. Where 'vile requests' is taken to mean the homosexual desires of the 'dissolute' King Mwanga.

Ten years have passed since the publication of that document by the Ratzingerian CDF under the pontificate of Karol Wojtyla. In the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church, June 3 continues to be celebrated in honor of the holy martyrs of Uganda canonized by Paul VI in 1964, even if it would be interesting to find out how many understand the reasons for their supreme sacrifice. But the contents of the “considerations” cited above seem by now to belong to another ecclesial era.

One faithful mirror of this new course are the declarations released to the press by Cardinal Godfried Danneels, archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels, on the eve of his eightieth birthday on June 4.

The Belgian cardinal - who without hypocrisy did not conceal his disappointment at the election of Benedict XVI at the conclave of 2005, and this year was one of the main electors of Pope Francis - stated that the Church “has never opposed the fact that there should exist a sort of 'marriage' between homosexuals, but one therefore speaks of a 'sort of' marriage, not of true marriage between a man and a woman, therefore another word must be found for the dictionary.”

And he concluded: “About the fact that this should be legal, that it should be made legitimate through a law, about this the Church has nothing to say.”

The Belgian newspaper Le Soir, in reporting the words of Danneels, added that “the position of the cardinal is shared by Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard," his successor as archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. The newspaper does not provide the evidence for this agreement. But there is no doubt that Danneels has effectively said, with the frankness that distinguishes him, what other cardinals and prelates have said in recent months.

The media, in fact, have recently reported favorable words on the legal recognition of homosexual unions on the part of at least four leading representatives of the hierarchy of the Church:

- Archbishop Piero Marini, president of the pontifical committee for Eucharistic congresses and formal master of papal ceremonies;

- Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the pontifical council for the family, who afterward corrected himself;

- Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna;

- Colombian Cardinal Rubén Salazar Gómez, archbishop of Bogotà, this latter forced to make a rapid retraction before he received the cardinal's biretta in November of 2012.

Last April 24 the “Vatican spokesman,” Fr. Federico Lombardi, also spoke out on the matter when asked about the definitive parliamentary approval on the part of the French national assembly for “gay marriage,” responding that one must “clearly emphasize that marriage between a man and a woman is a specific and fundamental institution in the history of humanity. This does not change the fact that there could be some recognition of other forms of union between two persons.”

Asked afterward what the papal reaction might be to the French decision, Fr. Lombardi said: “It is the Pope who must speak, I will let him talk.”

The fact is that Papa Bergoglio has so far not uttered one syllable on the French decision to elevate homosexual civil unions to marriage, although these had already been legitimate for years under the name of “Pacte Civile de Solidarité," PACS.

Nor did the Pope wish to proffer a word on the argument when on May 23 he met for the first time with the bishops of the Italian episcopal conference, the Church of which he is primate “ex officio.”

While in the opening address delivered three days before Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco had reiterated that “the family cannot be humiliated and weakened by similar representations that in a stealthy way constitute a progressive 'vulnus' on its specific identity, and that are not necessary to safeguard individual rights that to a large extent are already guaranteed by the law.”

Taking as a paradigm what the catechetical tradition calls the four sins that “cry out for vengeance in the sight of God” (according to the terminology of the catechism of St. Pius X) or " cry out to heaven for vengeance” (according to the 1992 catechism of Ratzinger and Wojtyla), Papa Bergoglio has so far demonstrated that he considers the priority of his preaching, as also in his first address to new diplomats accredited with the Holy See, to point his finger at the social significance of the last two sins - the oppression of the poor and defrauding workers of their wages - rather than that of the second: the sin of the sodomites.

Last March 19, six days after the election of Pope Francis, the New York Times wrote that when - between 2009 and 2010 - the debate was raging in Argentina over the introduction of “gay marriage,” then-cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was in favor of a compromise solution that would have legitimized civil unions for persons of the same sex.

What really happened is controversial. According to reliable journalistic reconstructions, during the meeting of the episcopal conference the Argentine bishops effectively discussed how to address the question. And in the end the stance that prevailed was not that of the “doves” personified by Bergoglio, but that of the “hawks” led by the archbishop of La Plata, Héctor Rubén Aguer.

The divergence, nonetheless, was not about opposing “gay marriage,” but about how to do it and about the acceptability of a compromise that would admit civil unions without using the word 'marriage.'

A few weeks before the approval, on July 15, 2010, of the law that legalized homosexual marriage in Argentina with the possibility of adopting children, Bergoglio wrote a letter to the four Carmelite monasteries of Buenos Aires.

In it, after reiterating that what was underway was not "only a draft law (this is only the instrument)," but "a maneuver by the father of lies who seeks to confound and deceive the children of God,” he asked that they “invoke the Lord to send his spirit upon the senators who will be called upon to vote. That they may not do so moved by error or by contingent situations, but according to that which the natural law and the law of God indicate to them.”

Bergoglio saw at work in the new law “the envy of the devil, through which sin entered into the world: an envy that seeks astutely to destroy the image of God; that is, the man and woman who receive the command to grow, multiply, and rule the earth.”

But to react to the challenge he relies more upon the prayers of the cloistered sisters than upon public proclamations, solemn declarations, or demonstrations in the street.

Until today there are no signs that as bishop of Rome he may wish to change this line of conduct.

For more background on this:
The Bergoglio's letter to the four Carmelite monasteries of Buenos Aires:
> "Queridas hermanas…"
http://tn.com.ar/politica/la-carta-completa-de-bergoglio_038363

And the careful reconstruction made by John L. Allen of the discussion among the Argentine bishops with regard to the legalization of “gay marriage”:
> Hard questions about Francis in Argentina
http://ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/hard-questions-about-francis-argentina-and-lesson-chile

Monday, June 10, 2013, Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

ST. JOACHIMA (JOAQUINA) VEDRUNA DE MAS (1783-1854), Lay Franciscan, Mother, Widow
Founder, Carmelite Sisters of Charity
Born to an aristocratic family in Barcelona, she wanted to join the Carmelites when she was 12 but was turned down
because she was too young. At 16, her hand was sought in marriage by a wealthy landowner who was also a devout
Catholic. On her confessor's advice, she accepted. The couple became lay Franciscans and had nine children in 17
years of marriage. Her husband fought for Spain during the Napoleonic Wars but died shortly after he returned,
leaving her a widow at 33. She retired to her family's country estate to raise her children while maintaining her
personal discipline of prayer and penance. Three of her children died early, four would choose the consecrated life
themselves, and two would be married happily. At age 43, expressing a desire once again to join the Carmelites, her
spiritual confessor advised her to set up a Carmelite congregation of sisters who would help the sick and educate
poor children. Thus she founded the Carmelite Sisters of Charity, whose first convent was her country house in Vich,
outside Barcelona. Soon, the order had convents all over the Catalonia region, and eventually throughout Spain
and in Latin America. In 1849, she suffered the first of many strokes that left her paralyzed. She died during
a cholera epidemic. She was beatified in 1940 and canonized by John XXIII in 1959.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061013.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with

- H.E. Mariano Palacios Alcocer, Ambassador of Mexico to the Holy See, who presented his credentials

- The outgoing ambassadors from Poland, Brazil and Honduras (separately), on their farewell vis it.

- Mons. Javier Echevarría Rodríguez, Prelate of the Opus Dei Prelature

- Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefct of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (weekly meeting)


The Vatican officially announced the forthcoming visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Vatican.

---

On 14 June, His Grace Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, will visit His Holiness Pope Francis. This will be their first meeting, both of them having taken up their ministries only a short time ago.

The Archbishop will visit the tomb of St Peter beneath the Basilica, and, at his special request, will pray at the tomb of Blessed Pope John Paul II. He will then visit Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, and learn about the work of the Council.

The Papal audience will comprise a time of private conversation, followed by addresses and a service of mid-day prayer. The Archbishop will be accompanied by his wife, Caroline, and his official representative in Rome, Archbishop David Moxon, as well as by Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster.

---

One year ago...

It was the Sunday observance of the Feast of Corpus Domini (the actual feast date was the preceding Thursday, 50 days after Easter, during which Pope Benedict celebrated the traditional Papal Mass at the Lateran Basilica and led the subsequent Eucharistic procession to Santa Maria Maggiore for Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction. I posted the recounting of that day on this thread last June 2, the date for this moveable feast in 2013). On this Sunday in 2012, the Holy Father spoke once again of the importance of prolonging the grace of Holy Mass in the regular practice of Eucharistic Adoration of the Most Holy Body and Blood of the Lord. He tied this in to the fact that in the many churches damaged by recent earthquakes in Emilia-Romagna, the tabernacle housing the Eucharist survived beneath the ruins, and that the Bread of Life would continue to provide strength in suffering. as with the earthquake victims. He also referred to the observance of Blood Donors' day next Thursday... The 50th International Eucharistic Congress opened in Dublin, Ireland, with the Pope represented by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.




'The Eucharist brings strength
even to those who are suffering'
June 10, 2012

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's Angelus remarks today:

---

Today, Italy and many other countries celebrate Corpus Domini, the solmen feast of the Body and Blood of the Lord - the Eucharist.

It continues to be a living ttadition, even today, to hold solemn processions with the Most Blessed Sacrament, through the streets and public squares. In Rome, we already held this procession on the diocesan level last Thursday, the correct day for this feast, which every year renews joy and gratitude in Christians for the Eucharistic presence of Jesus among us.

The feast of Corpus Domini is a great act of public worship of the Eucharist, Sacrament in which the Lord remains present even beyond the time of celebration, to be with us always, with the passage of hours and days.

St. Justin, who left us one of the oldest testimonies on eucharistic liturgy, affirmed that after the distribution of communion to those present, the consecrated bread was brought by the deacons even to those who were absent (cfr Apologia, 1, 65).

That is why, in churches, the most sacred place is that which protects the Eucharist. In this respect, I cannot help think with emotion of the numerous churches which were seriously damaged by the recent earthquakes in Emilia-Romagna, to the fact that Eucharistic Body of Christ, in the tabernacle, was found in some cases under the rubble.

With affection, I pray for the communities who with their priests are gathered today for Holy Mass in the open or in large tents. I thank them for their witness and for what they are thus doing in behalf of the entire population.

It is a situation that highlights once more the importance of being united in the name of the Lord, and the strength that comes from the Eucharistic bread, which has also been called 'the bread of pilgrims'.

sharing this bread gives birth to and renewed the ability to share even our life and goods, to carry each other's burdens, to be hospitable and welcoming.

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of the Lord also re-proposes to us the importance of Eucharistic Adoration. The Servant of God Paul VI recalled that the Catholic Church professes worship of the Eucharist "not only during Mass, but even outside its celebration, conserving the consecrated hosts with maximum diligence, presenting these to the solemn veneration of the Christian faithful, bearing the Host in profession to the joy of the Christian crowd" (Enc. Mysterium fidei, 57).

The prayer of adoration can be done individually, lingering in recollection before the tabernacle; or in a communitarian form, with psalms and singing, but always favoring silence, in order to listen interiorly to the Lord who is living and present in the Sacrament.

The Virgin Mary is our teacher in this prayer, because no one better than he knew how to contemplate Jesus with the look of faith and to preserve in her heart the intimate resonances of his human and divine presence.

Through her intercession, may an authentic and profound faith in the Eucharistic Mystery be disseminated and grow in every ecclesial community.

---

Apropos the recent 'ecology' prize to Benedict XVI, this time last year, a book was released about Joseph Ratzinger's writings on Darwinism and the Bible... I am not aware that there is an English translation so far, but the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis did publish the full proceedings of their annual seminar on 2007 on 'Creation and Evolution', and that book is available in English...


Joseph Ratzinger on
Darwinism and the Bible
by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti
Translated from

June 7, 2012

In 1985, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, gave six lectures at the Stiftung Sankt Georgen in Carinthia, Austria, four of them dedicated to the subject of creation according to the Bible and to science.

These lectures which have not been published before in Italian have now been collected, along with another essay of Joseph Ratzinger published in 1969 on understanding the Christian faith in creation, in the book Progetto di Dio: La Creazione (God:s project: Creation) (Marcianum Press, 208 pp). Here are excerpts from the Introduction to the book written by Giuseppe Tanzella- Nitti, professor of fundamental theology at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce.

In the confrontation between the theology of creation and scientific thought, the lectures held by Cardinal Ratzinger in Carinthia in 1986 convey some intuitions, or at the very least, some of the approaches that Joseph Ratzinger takes in dealing with this sensitive subject. Let us examine them briefly.

A first element is the author's intention, as it is in all his writings, to offer a unitary perspective of Sacred Scripture, while demonstrating a dynamic view of its 'editing' history which, in the case of the Old Testament, reflects the progress in Israel's religious experience.

The truth of a Scriptural text is not to be sought only by reconstructing its historical-philological origins in the most precise way possible, tracing backwards, but one must also look forward: the truth of the Old Testament text is in its fulfillment, Christ, as Patristic exegesis had first suggested.

A second element that characterizes Joseph Ratzinger's Biblical theology with respect to the revelation about creation is to underscore the positive value of everything that is common to the religious experience of Israel as described in the Bible and the authentically religious experiences of other peoples and cultures. [i.e., It is a fact that there is a commonality to the creation myths of various religions and cultures.]

If the specific differences speak of the way in which the Word of Jahweh emerges from myth (understood as 'fable'), the commonalities, equally important, speak of revelation and the fulfilment of the myth, understood as a veritable archaic content that has strong anthropological bases.

Such a premise leads Ratzinger to distance himself from Karl Barth in this respect. His correction is explicit: "I grew up theologically in the era of Karl Barth," he says, recalling his university years, "and even my teachers were profoundly influenced by him, such that distinguishing Christianity and its difference from other cultures and religions, was like the first word in our theological thinking. But the more I went forward in theology, the more it became clear to me, by experience and by knowledge, that he was wrong. Recognizing the unity of cultures in the most profound questions of human existence is something absolutely decisive, because cultures communicate, and therefore, remain open even on the decisive question of creation".

A third aspect of extreme interest was the insistence of the former Archbishop of Muunich-Freising about avoiding a clear separation between the spiritual and scientific readings of the created world. He does not consider it right that the truth of Scripture is best defended by relegating the Biblical text on creation to the spiritual realm - thus depriving it of the capacity to formulate judgments on natural truths, forgetting that the Word of God also sheds light on how to regard nature, to learn to know it and to understand its intimate intelligibility.

Clearly the intention of Ratzinger to propose a doctrine of creation that is able to maintain the double perspective of creation ex nihilo (out of nothing) and creation ex amore (out of love), keeps together the metaphysical and existential aspects of the doctrine, the ontological foundation and a personal God, the Dei Filius (Son of God) and gaudium et spes (joy and hope). Both approaches are necessary today, and ignoring one or the other would be to lose the essential content.

The ontological foundation is indispensable the dialog with natural sciences, and can be reconciled with the openings of empirical analysis towards the existence of a single foundation of being and intelligibility for all things created.

At the time that Cardinal Ratzinger was sharing his reflections in Carinthia, echoes from Jacques Monod's seminal book Chance and Necessity published in 1970 were still resonating. And the German cardinal often entered into a mental dialog with the French biologist, reading the Monodian alternative between chance and necessity, in terms of the alternative between the gratuitousness of contingency and the exigency of natural laws, proposing to link the first to the purposefulness of love.

Ratzinger accepts and appreciates the differences between an organism and a machine as listed by Monod, and attributes the specificity of the organism to a supplement of information that it contains and transmits - not fearing to note the Platonic resonance - according to the way in which an organism is capable of reproducing.

It is certainly interesting how the Bavarian theologian faces the question of Darwinian mechanisms in biological evolution, when by underscoring the randomness of genetic mutations, he would seem to challenge the view most harmonious with faith that life ascends in an an orderly and purposeful way from inferior simple forms to superior and increasingly-organized forms, culminating in man.

How could casual errors in the transcription of genetic information (DNA) be the basis for the evolutionary mechanism of life, thus becoming entirely responsible for the specificity of the human being, the same creature that the Christian faith believes to be the image and likeness of God?

Ratzinger is very much aware of the challenge that Darwinian mechanisms seem to pose to faith: "If we are a product of accumulated casual errors, even this, I believe, is a very profound diagnosis and an image of man".

The response that he provides is prudent, and in some way, interlocutory. He would let science follow its course, examine if oyher equally important factors could exist in biological evolution - factors we now know to be operative - that favor stabilization of natural properties and of the rules to which evolution itself must conform, its 'platonism' if we can use the term...

Faith seems to tell us, he observes, that such factors must exist, though he does not specify at what level they must be sought, but limits himself to indicate that if the elements that would favor the stability of genetic information or its regular deployment could be negated empirically, then these factors would emerge sooner or later as global or globalizing descriptions, as seen by the fact that in the description of biologists, Nature is often depersonalized, and seen as an abstract 'subject' capable of fictitiously unifying (and therefore surreptitiously planning) the entire evolutionary process. [I'm not sure I understand this statement, but the writer seems to be saying that biologists see Nature in place of God as determining the evolutionary process.]

This kind of 'substitution', says Ratzinger, should not be accepted; rather, spiritual categories must be allowed to be recognized as such, and employed to express spirit, not matter.

In the face of such a state of things, and independent of the way in which the apparent alternative to the Christian view is stated, he reiterates the firm conviction, assumed by faith in Revelation, that man's being is the result of God's design, not a sum of errors in genetic transcription...

To place casuality at the ontological level [at the origin of things] would be equivalent to elevating Darwinism to a global philosophy, and it is this prospect, not the randomness of DNA transcription errors, that is not compatible with the message of Revelation.

P.S. The book cover design is dreadful! Is it supposed to be the left eye of Joseph Ratzinger? A depiction of the eye of God in the familiar iconography would have been more appropriate, given the book title... .

Mons. Romero's friend belies
media myth that Pope Francis
'unblocked' beatification process
Translated from

June 5, 2013
`
It wasn't just an initiative of Pope Francis that will accelerate the cause for the beatification of El Salvador Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, as reported widely in the media recently, claiming that the new Pope had 'unblocked' the process (implying thereny that it had been blocked under Benedict XVI).

Mons. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, auxiliary Bishop of San Salvador, where Romero was killed while celebrating Mass in 1980 by agents of a government he had actively opposed, said that a few months before Benedict XVI announced his resignation, he had expressed the opinion that Romero's cause should be acted on.

The information comes from the blog Super Martyrio, dedicated to Mons. Romero, based on an interview given by Mons. Rosa Chavez to the Portuguese magazine Fatima Missionaria.

Rosa Chavez was one of the late Mons. Romero's closest collaborators and has been a tireless promoter of his memory. He says in the interview: "From the postulator of Mons. Romero's cause, Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, we learned two pieces of information. The first, which was never made public, has to do with a conversation that Mons. Paglia had with Benedict XVI, during which the Pope told him that the beatification process should proceed. The other, which we all know now, was that which Mons. Paglia announced in a homily on the fourth Sunday of Easter saying that Pope Francis had asked him to 'unblock' the process". [What Paglia actually said was that Pope Francis told him he, the Pope, would 'unblock' the process. In which, presumably the Pope could ask the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to expedite the process, but this request has to be made before it even begins (as John Paul II did for Motehr TEresa, and Benedict XVI did for John Paul II). Otherwise. these causes are 'processed' by priority, depending on the stage of compliance by the postulators with the steps required prior to each phase of the process. (Even those Popes who are candidate saints have to wait their turn!) Each postulator also has to be able to push the cause he is working for, not sit back passively. Once the process has started however, a Pope cannot intervene and ask for an expedited process because that would be unfair to all those causes which are at the same stage as the cause to be favored.]

The first piece of information revealed by Mons. Rosa Chavez is significant because it says that even if a Latin American Pope had not been elected, Romero's cause was moving along. It also belies the conjecture promoted by earlier news reports that Francis's attitude towards Romero's cause was an example of the 'difference' between him and Benedict XVI.

Mons. Rosa Chavez says of his friend Mons. Romero: "He is an inconvenient saint. He compels us to acknowledge that we are all mediocre, that we all need to convert ourselves, that we need to ask ourselves who we are. He is not a saint in the way Mother Teresa was. He was a prophet who called on us to examine our own lives and our role within the Church. We need saints like him today. Pope Francis is a prophet in the same way Romero was."

[Some further background on this cause must be given here. According to an account by VATICAN INSIDER, which was among the proponents of the misleading 'Francis unblocks a cause blocked under Benedict XVI', there is a continuing question on whether Mons. Romero was killed in hatred of the faith, since the assassination appeared to be a political vendetta, because if his religion was not the primary motivation for the killing, he cannot be considered a martyr, which would exempt his cause from having to present a miracle in order to be proclaimed Blessed. Recognition of martyrdom, on the other hand, would automatically earn him the honor to be beatified, provided all the previously required documentation proving he lived a life of heroic virtue has been completed and approved by the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood. If all such documentation is complete, nothing stops Paglia - who is a Curial head - from requesting the Congregation for Saints to make a theological recognition of martyrdom.

The case of Blessed Giuseppe Puglisi, who was killed by the Mafia in Sicily because he openly opposed them and their work, and was recently beatified as a martyr, has been cited as a precedent for Romero to be recognized as a martyr. An earlier case was Solidarity activist priest Jerzy Popieluszko, who was killed by the Communists in Poland for his political activities, and was proclaimed Blessed in 2010. In his case, it was claimed that a Polish prelate who was secretary of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints from 2001-2009 had pushed his cause. What did Paglia do, if anything, to push Romero's cause - after speaking to Benedict XVI about it?

First, he never disclosed this conversation, and yet, on February 13, he told an Italian newspaper that he had spoken to Benedict XVI a few times before he announced his resignation, and that on those occasions, the Pope did not seem to be himself, had memory lapses, and could not even recognize him. He added that he had information the Pope had suffered a series of ischemic strokes that caused that condition. His slander was left to fester unopposed, until some time in mid-April, someone confronted him about it, and he denied he ever said it. He should have denied it the day the interview was published but he did not. This is the unspeakable treachery by Paglia that I referred to in an earlier post but which I could not bear to even write about then.

However, it is obviously part of an anti-Benedict animus by Paglia, whom Benedict named to be the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family (and soon after Benedict stepped down, declared he was open to the idea of gay unions). If the nomination came about because Paglia has been the longtime 'spiritual director' of the Sant'Egidio movement, then Benedict XVI was duped, and I can almost anathematize that movement for a grave disservice to the Church and to Benedict XVI.

The Vatican Insider account also says that until he died in 2007, Mexican Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who was president of the Pontifical Council for the Family in his time, had been very active as the chief Curial promoter of Mons. Romero's cause. What exactly has Mons. Paglia done in this respert? Bottom line: one must seriously consider the truth or untruth of anything Paglia says.

Tuesday, June 11, Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Barnabas

Third and fourth from left, from the Monastery of St. Barnabas, Famagusta: Image of the saint, and painting of the finding of his remains.
ST. BARNABAS (d 61 AD), Companion of St. Paul; Apostle, Missionary and Martyr; Patron of Cyprus
Born a Levite Jew in Cyprus, Joseph, his real name, settled in Jerusalem and and became one of the very first Christians. Barnabas, which means 'son of encouragement', was a name conferred on him by the Apostles. He sold his lands to raise money for the early Church. He vouched for Paul to Peter and the other Apostles, and later joined Paul who had retreated to Tarsus following his conversion on the road to Damascus, to convince him that his hour had come to preach Christ. In the catechesis of Benedict XVI on St. Barnabas on Jan. 31, 2007
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070131...
he points out that what we call Paul's first missionary journey - which included the evangelization of Cyprus - was really Barnabas's missionary journey because it had been assigned to him by the Church of Antioch, and he took Paul as his assistant. Both attended the Council of Jerusalem in 50 AD, in which they advocated admission of Gentiles to Christianity without requiring circumcision. After their second missionary journey together. Barnabas returned to Cyprus, where he carried on evangelizing the island. According to tradition, he was preaching in Salamis when exasperated Jews dragged him from the temple and stoned him to death. He was buried in secret by his cousin and missionary companion, John Mark. The official Cyprus Church history says that in 478, he appeared in a dream to a Bishop of Salamis to reveal the spot where he was buried. It was in the nearby city of Famagusta, where the remains were found. His tomb is still venerated in the Monastery of St. Barnabas built over the burial site. Some scholars attribute to St. Barnabas the authorship of the Letter to the Hebrews.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061113.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with Cardinal Leo Burke, prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Segnatura.
(Cardinal Burke is the latest of the Curial heads of office with whom the Pope has met one on one since he was elected.)

The Pope sent an audio message intended for all blind persons, but especially to 75 blind persons, mostly aged,
who are meeting under the auspices of the Italian Union for the blind at its study and vacation center in Tirrenia
(southwestern Italy).



Yet again, a local website has provided the transcript (though partial) of the extemporaneous and very informal remarks made by Pope Francis in Spanish, this time to the Executive Board of the Confederation of Latin American Religious. (The first was his remarks to the Executive board of Caritas Internationalis, during whic he said textually, "If need be, sell the churches to feed the poor"),

To the religious officials (three men and three women) of CLAR, he said, among other things, that reform of the Roman Curia will be difficult (his introduction to this topic is not included in the transcript) but what Italian media have picked out so far is that he said, among the few sentences excerpted, that "there has been talk of a gay lobby in the Vatican, and it is true, it is there...We shall see what we can do about it". He says many other things that are far more interesting and substantial, of course, as well as quite a few questionable and perplexing points, as I have now come to expect from Pope Francis's unscripted remarks (whether in his Casa Santa Marta homilettes or on occasions like this), and I shall translate the partial transcript released ASAP.




On this day in 2010...

The Holy Father presided at the single largest assembly of priests ever (at least 15,000), at the Mass to conclude the 2009-2010 Year for Priests.

One year ago...
Benedict XVI met with the outgoing Greek ambassador on his farewell visit; the community of the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica (which trains prelates for Vatican diplomacy); and participants of the XV international seminar of Catholic Chaplains for civil aviation, and airport chaplains. In the evening, at the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, his Cathedral as the Bishop of Rome, the Holy Father opens the annual ecclesial conference June 11-13 of the Diocese of Rome on the theme "'Go forth and make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching': Rediscovering the beauty of baptism".

I have chosen to feature the diocesan address which was a remarkable catechism and pastoral admonition on the sacrament of Baptism...




POPE OPENS ANNUAL
DIOCESAN CONVENTION
June 11, 2012

"Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Mt 28, 19-20)


In Baptism, Christians reject Satan and
a culture in which truth does not matter
Adapted from





Pope Benedict XVI on Monday night; June 11, met with the lay leaders of the Diocese of Rome in the Cathedral Basilica of Saint John Lateran at their annual ecclesial conference marking the end of the pastoral year. The theme of this year's conference is 'Let us rediscover the beauty of Baptism'.

---

Eminence,
Dear brothers in the Priesthood and the Episcopate,
Dear brothers and sisters:

For me it is a great joy to be here, in the Cathedral of Rome, with the representatives of my diocese, and I thank the Cardinal Vicar for his kind words.

We heard that the last wrods of the Lord on this earth to his disciples were: "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit" (Mt 28,19).

'Make disciples and baptize'. Why is it not enough for disciples to know the teachings of Jesus, to learn Christian values? Why is it necessary to be baptized? This is the subject for our reflection - in order to understand the reality, the profundity, of the Sacrament of Baptism.

A first door opens if we carefully read the words of the Lord. The choice of saying "in the name of the Father" in the Greek text is very important: The Lord says 'eis', not 'en', therefore, not "in behalf' of the Trinity - as we would say that a vice-prefect speaks in behalf of his prefect, an ambassador speaks in behalf of his government.

No. He says 'eis to onoma', which is an immersion within the name of the Trinity, an insertion into the Trinity, an interpenetration of God's being into ours, so we become a being immersed in the Trinitarian God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, just as in matrimony, for example, two persons become one flesh, they become a new and singular reality, with a new and singular name.

The Lord helped us to understand this reality even better in his conversation with the Sadducees about resurrection. The Sadducees were familiar, from the canon of the Old Testament, only with the five books of Moses, in which resurrection is not mentioned, and so they rejected the idea.

But the Lord, precisely from these five books, demonstrates the reality of resurrection, saying: "And concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (cfr Mt 22,31-32).

Therefore, God takes these three beings, and within his name, they become the name of God. In order to understand who this God is, one must see these persons who have become the name of God, a name of God, who are immersed in God.

Thus we can see that whoever is within the name of the Lord, whoever is immersed in God, is alive, because God, said the Lord, is a God not of the dead but of the living. The living live because they are within the memory of God, within the life of God.

This is what happens in our being baptized: we become inserted into the name of God, so that we belong to his name, and his name becomes our name, and we too - like the three patriarchs of the Old Testament - can be witnesses to God, a sign of who this God is, the name of this God.

To be baptized means to be united with God: in a singular new existence we belong to God, we are immersed in God himself. If we think of this, we can immediately see some consequences.

The first is that God is no longer very remote from us, he is not a reality to be disputed - is he or isn't he? - but we are in God, and God is in us. The priority, the centrality of God in our life, is the first consequence of Baptism.

To the question "Is there a God?", the answer is, "Yes, and he is with us. This closeness of God matters in our life, this being in God himself, who is not a remote star, but the environment of my life". This would be the first consequence, and so we must ourselves keep in mind this presence of God in us, and truly live in his presence.

The second consequence of Baptism and its significance is that we become Christians. This does not follow because of a decision I make, "Now I will become a Christian". Of course, my decision is also necessary, but above all, it is an act of God on me: It is not I who make myself Christian - I am taken on by God, he takes my hand, and thus, saying Yes to this act of God, I become a Christian.

Becoming Christian, in a certain sense, is passive: I don't make myself Christian - it is God who makes me his man, God who takes my hand and realizes my life in another dimension. By myself, I cannot make myself live, but life is given to me. I am born not because I made myself man, but because being man was given to me.

And so even being Christian is given to me. It is passive on my part, but it becomes active in my life. This fact of passivity, of not making myself Christian but to have been made Christian by God, already implies something of the mystery of the Cross. Only by dying to my own selfishness, by getting out of myself, can I be Christian.

A third element that immediately opens up in this perspective is that, being immersed in God, naturally, I am united to my brothers and sisters, because they are all in God, and drawn out of my isolation, immersed in God, I am immersed in communion with others.

To be baptized is never a solitary action of and on myself - it is always necessarily being united with everybody else, being in unity and solidarity with the entire Body of Christ, with the whole community of brothers and sisters. The fact that Baptism places me in a community breaks my isolation. We must keep this in mind when we think of being Christian.

Finally, let us go back to the Word of Christ to the Sadducees: God is "the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’ (cfr Mt 22,32), and that is why, they are not dead. If they are of God and in God, they are living.

It means that with Baptism, with our immersion into the name of God, we are also immersed in immortal life - we are alive for always. In other words, Baptism is a first stage in the resurrection. Being immersed in God, we are already immersed in indestructible life, and resurrection begins.

Just as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive, being 'names of God', we too, inserted into the name of God, are alive in immortal life. Baptism is the first step towards resurrection, towards entering into God's indestructible life.

Thus, in a first approach, with St. Matthew's baptismal formula, with Christ's last words before ascending to heaven, we have already seen something of the essence of Baptism. Now, let us look at the sacramental rite, in order to understand even more precisely what Baptism is.

Christianity is not a purely spiritual thing, something that is only subjective, having to do with sentiment, with the will, with ideas, It is a cosmic reality. God is the creator of all matter, and matter enters into Christianity - we are Christians only in this great context of matter and spirit together.

It is therefore very important that matter is part of our faith, the body is part of our faith. Faith is not purely spiritual: God has inserted us into the entire reality of the cosmos, transforming the cosmos as he draws us towards him.

With a material element - water - comes not just a fundamental element of the cosmos, a fundamental creation of God, but also all the symbolism in religions, because in all religions, water has symbolic meaning.

The journey of religions, this search for God in various ways - still a search for God, even when mistaken - is assumed in the Sacrament of Baptism. The other religions, with their respective journeys towards God, are present b- they are assumed into the sacrament, which thus becomes a synthesis of the world: All the seeking for God as expressed in the symbols of various religions, become present, but above all, in the symbolisms of the Old Testament, with all its experiences of the goodness and salvation of God. We shall get back to this point.

The other element of Baptism is words, which are present in three ways: as renunciations, as promises and as invocations. It is important that these words are not just words, but a path of life.

These words carry out a decision. These words contain our entire baptismal pathway - pre-baptism as well as post-baptism. With these words, as with the symbols, Baptism extends through our entire life.

The reality of the promises, renunciations and invocations we make in Baptism is one that lasts for our entire life, because we are always walking along this baptismal path, through these words and the realization of these words.

The Sacrament of Baptism is not an act lasting an hour - it is a reality for our whole life, it is the pathway for our whole life. In fact, behind the sacrament is also the doctrine of two lives which was fundamental in early Christianity: a life to which we say No, and a life to which we say Yes.

Let us start with the first part - the renunciations. There are three, and I will start with the second: "Do you renounce the seductions of evil in order not to allow yourself to be dominated by sin?"

What are these seductions of evil? In the early Church and for centuries afterwards, the expression was "Do you renounce the pomp of the Devil?" Today, we know all too well what the expression 'pomp of the Devil' means.

The pomp of the devil consisted first of all of great and bloody spectacles, in which cruelty became entertainment, in which killing men became a spectacle, something spectacular. The life and death of a man as a spectacle. These bloody spectacles, this entertainment by evil, is the 'pomp of the devil', and what was seen to be beautiful was actually shown in all its cruelty.

But beyond this immediate significance of the term 'pomp of the devil', it also refers to a kind of culture, a 'way of life' [The Pope uses the English term], [in which truth does not matter, only appearances. Truth is not sought, but effect, sensation; and under the pretext of truth, men are in fact destroyed. [For those who do this,] the object is to destroy others and to build upo themselves as the winners.

And so, this renunciation is all too real: renouncing a kind of culture that is really anti-culture, anti-Christ, and anti-God. It was a renunciation of a culture which in the Gospel of St. John is called kosmos houtos - this world. By 'this world', of course, John and Jesus were not speaking about God's Creation, about man as a creature of God, but of a creature who seeks to dominate and who imposes himself as though this was the world that matters, as if this was the way of life that must be imposed.

So let me leave each of you to reflect on this 'pomp of the devil', on the culture to which we say NO. To be baptized substantially means emancipating oneself, liberating oneself of this culture.

We also know today a kind of culture where truth does not count. Even if it is made to look as if all the truth is intended to be told, what really matters [to this culture] is the sensation it can produce, the spirit of calumny and destruction.

It is a culture that does not seek what is good, whose apparent moralism is actually a mask to deceive, to create confusion and destruction. To such a culture, in which lies are presented in the guise of truth and information, a culture that only seeks material wellbeing and rejects God, we say No.

We are familiar with so many psalms about the contradictions of a culture in which man holds himself untouchable by all the evils of the world, above everything and everyone, above God - in fact, a culture of evil, the dominance of evil.

Thus, the decision made at Baptism, the catechumenal way which lasts our whole life, is precisely this NO, which we say and carry out anew every day, with the sacrifices required to oppose what is in many places dominant. Even if this culture imposes itself as if it were the world, this world, it is not. Because there are so many who want the truth.

Let us go back to the first renunciation: "Do you renounce sin in order to live in freedom as children of God?". Today freedom and the Christian Life, that is, observing the commandments of God, are headed in opposite directions. Being Christian is seen as a state of slavery, while freedom is to be emancipated from the Christian faith, which means ultimately, liberating oneself from God.

The word sin seems to many almost ridiculous because, they say: "What, we cannot offend God? But he is so great that he could not possibly be interested if I make a small mistake? How is it that we cannot offend God when his interests are too great for him to be offended by us?"

It may seem true but it is not. God made himself vulnerable, In Christ crucified, we saw that God made himself very vulnerable, to the point of dying. God is interested in us because he loves us, and God's love is a vulnerability, God's love is his interest in man. God's love means that our first concern must be not to hurt him, not to destroy his love, not to do anything against his love because to do so, we would be living against ourselves and against our own freedom.

In fact, the apparent freedom of emancipation from God soon becomes a slavery to so many other dictatorships of the times which one is supposed to follow because that means keeping abreast of the times.

Finally, "Do you renounce Satan?" This tells us that a Yes to God is a NO to the power of the Devil who coordinates all this evil activity and wishes to be god of this world, as St. John also says.

But he is not God, only the adversary, and we shall not submit to his power. We say NO to him because we say YES, a fundamental Yes, the Yes of love and of truth.

The three renunciations, in the early rites of Baptism, corresponded to three immersions: Immersion in water as a symbol of dying, a NO which is really the death of one kind of life and the resurrection of a new one. We shall return to this.

Then the confession of faith in three questions: "Do you believe in God the almighty Father, Creator, and in Christ, and finally, in the Holy Spirit, and the Church?"

This three-part formulation developed out of the Lord's words when he said to "baptize in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit". These words have been concretized and deepened. What does Father mean, what does Son mean - all our faith in Christ, the whole reality of God made man - and what does it mean to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, namely all of God's action in history, in the Church, in the communion of saints?

That is why the positive formula of Baptism is also a dialog - it is not simply a formula. Above all, one's confession of faith is not just to be understood, not just an intellectual matter, something to memorize. Of course, it also involves the intellect, but it touches how we live, above all.

I find this very important. It is not an intellectual thing, just a formula. It is God's dialog with us, an action of God on us and in us, it is our response to him, it is a pathway.

The truth of Christ can be understood only if his way is understood. Only if we accept Christ as the way can we at last begin to be in him and able to understand him. Truth which is not lived cannot open up. Only truth that is lived, accepted as a way of life, as the way, opens up in all its richness and profundity.

So the baptismal formula is a way, the expression of our conversion, of an act of God. And we must keep this in mind all our life: that we are in communion with God, with Christ. And therefore with the truth. Living the truth, it becomes life, and living a life of truth, we find truth.

Now let us look at the material element of the Baptismal rite: water. It is very important to look at two significances of water here. On the one hand, it makes us think of the sea, especially the Red Sea, of the deaths that took place in the Red Sea.

The sea represents the power of death, as well as the necessity to die in order to come to a new life. I find this very important. Baptism is not just a ceremony, a ritual that was introduced some time ago. Nor is it just a washing off, a cleansing, a cosmetic operation.

It is more than just cleansing: it is death and life - the death of a certain existence, and the rebirth or resurrection of a new life. And this is the profundity of being Christian. It is not just a quality that is added - it is a new birth.

After having crossed the Red Sea, we are new beings. Thus the sea, in all the experiences of the Old Testament, has become for Christians a symbol of the Cross. Because it is only through death, a radical renunciation in which one dies to one kind of life, can one experience rebirth and can truly be in a new life.

This is one part of the symbolism of water: It symbolizes - especially in the immersion that was part of the baptismal rite in ancient times - the Red Sea, death, the Cross. Only from the Cross can we come to new life, and this must take place every day. Without this death from which we are always reborn, we cannot renew the vitality of a new life in Christ.

But the other symbol is the spring. Life is the origin of all life. So beyond the symbolism of death, it is also the symbol of new life. Every life comes from a spring, the water that comes from Christ as the new life that accompanies us through eternity.

Finally, let me say a brief word about the Baptism of children. Is it right to do it, or would it not be better to first have them undergo a catechumenal preparation in order to arrive at a Baptism that is fully 'achieved'?

The other question that is always asked is this: "Can we really impose a religion on a child who may not want to live it? Should we not allow the child to choose?"

Such questions show that we no longer see the Christian faith as a new life, the true life, but we only see it as a choice among many, even a weight that should not be imposed without the consent of the subject. Reality is different.

Life itself is given to us without having a choice as to whether we want it or not. No one can be asked, "Do you want to be born or not?" Life itself is given to us necessarily without previous consent - it is given to us, and we cannot say beforehand Yes or No, I want to exist, I don't want to exist.

The real question is: "Is it right to bring life into the world without that previous consent? Can life be 'given' even if the subject does not have the possibility to decide?" I would say - it is possible and right only if we can also give the guarantee that this life will be good, that it is protected by God, that it is a true gift. Only the anticipation of its meaning justifies the anticipation of life.

That is why Baptism as the guarantee that God is good, as anticipation of meaning, of God's Yes that protects life, justifies the anticipation of life. Therefore, baptizing children is not against freedom.

Indeed, it is necessary to give Baptism in order to justify the gift of life, which would otherwise be subject to dispute. Life which is in the hands of God, in the hands of Christ, immersed in the Trinitarian God, is certainly a gift that can be given without reservation. And so we are grateful to God who gave us this gift, and who gave us himself.

Our challenge is to live this gift, to truly live it in our post-baptismal pathway, both in the renunciations we made and in the Yes to always live in God's great Yes. Thank you.

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The full text of the Holy Father's address shows once again how inadequate and how sketchily approximative any news reports on such reflections can be. The great appeal and challenge of Benedict XVI's reflections is the way his thought flows, and it does not do him justice to simply pick out a few sound bites and report his discourse as if reporting a politician's speech.... Besides, it is so much easier to read his full text directly instead of trying to piece it from some reporter's tortured and tortuous attempts to present him in a few randomly chosen sound bites.

Last June 6, Pope Francis addressed the professors, students and staff of the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica, during his first meeting with them as Pope. The community of the Academy, which trains prelates for Vatican diplomacy, meets with the Pope once a year. After posting Vatican Radio's English translation of Pope Francis's address to them, I shall post Benedict XVI's address on the same occasion last year.

Pope warns future Vatican
diplomats against 'careerism'

June 6, 2013

Pope Francis on Thursday spoke to the members of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which is dedicated to training priests to serve in the diplomatic corps and the Secretariat of State of the Holy See.

In his address, the Holy Father reminded the students that they must cultivate a deep spiritual life in order to attain the “inner freedom” that is necessary for their future work. He also warned against ambition, and once again denounced careerism, which he called “a leprosy.”

Pope Francis looked to Blessed John XXIII as a model for the aspiring diplomats, recalling the care his predecessor always took “in guarding his soul, even in the midst of the most varied ecclesiastical and political occupations.”

Here is a translation of the Pope's address:

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Dear Brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear priests, dear sisters, friends

I extend a warm welcome to all of you! I affectionately greet your President, Archbishop Beniamino Stella, and I thank him for the kind words he addressed to me on your behalf, remembering the welcome visits that I have made in the past to your Casa.

I also remember the friendly insistence with which Bishop Stella convinced me, now two years ago, to send to the Academy a priest of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires! Archbishop Stella knows to knock at the door! The problem was on my end, because I had not found a priest to send, and I chose a “marathoner” . . . I sent him. A grateful thought goes also to his colleagues and to the Sisters and staff, who offer their generous service in your community.

Dear friends, you are preparing for a particular ministry of commitment, which will place you in the direct service of the Successor of Peter, of his charism of unity and communion, and of his solicitude for all the Churches.

The work that is done in the Pontifical diplomatic service requires, like any type of priestly ministry, a great inner freedom. Live these years of your preparation with commitment, generosity, and greatness of soul, so that this freedom can really take shape in you!

But what does it mean to have this interior freedom? First of all it means being free from personal projects, being free from personal projects: from some of the concrete ways in which perhaps one day, you had thought of living your priesthood, from the possibilities of planning for the future; from the perspective of remaining for a long time in a “your” place of pastoral action.

It means freeing yourself, in some way, even with respect to the culture and mindset from which you came, not by forgetting it, much less by denying it, but by opening yourself up, in charity, to understanding different cultures and meeting with people even from worlds very far from your own.

Above all, it means vigilance in order to be free from ambition or personal aims, which can cause so much harm to the Church, taking care to always put in the first place not your own self-fulfillment, or the recognition that you could get whether inside and outside of the ecclesial community, but the greater good of the cause of the Gospel and the fulfillment of the mission that has been entrusted to you.

This freedom from ambition or personal aims, for me, is important, it’s important! Careerism is leprosy! Leprosy! Please, no careerism! For this reason, each of you must be willing to integrate your vision of the Church, however legitimate, every personal idea or assessment, within the horizons seen by Peter, of his particular mission at the service of communion and the unity of the flock of Christ, of his pastoral charity which embraces the whole world, and that, thanks also to the action of the Pontifical diplomatic service, wishes to make itself present especially in those places, often forgotten, where the needs of the Church and of humanity are greatest.

In a word, the ministry for which you are preparing – because you are being prepared for a ministry, not a profession: it is a ministry! – this ministry calls you to go out of yourself, to a detachment from self that can only be achieved through an intense spiritual journey and a serious unification of your life around the mystery of the love of God and of the inscrutable plan of His call.

In the light of the faith, we are able to live the freedom from our own projects and our own will, not as a cause of frustration or emptying, but as an opening to the superabundant gift of God, that makes our priesthood fruitful. Living the ministry in service to the Successor of Peter and to the Church to which you are called may appear demanding, but it will allow you, so to say, to be and to breathe within the heart of the Church, of its catholicity. And this constitutes a special gift, because, as Pope Benedict recalled when speaking to your community, “wherever there is openness to the objectivity of catholicity, there is also the principle of authentic personalization” (Speech to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, 10 June 2011).

Have great care for the spiritual life, which is the source of inner freedom. Without prayer, there is no interior freedom. You can make a precious treasure of the instruments of conforming your priestly spirituality to Christ Himself, cultivating a life of prayer and making your daily work the gymnasium of your sanctification.

Here I am happy to recall the figure of Blessed John XXIII, the fiftieth anniversary of whose death we celebrated a few days ago: his work in the Pontifical diplomatic service was one of the places, and not the least significant, in which his sanctity was formed.

Rereading his writings, one is impressed by the care he always took in guarding his soul, in the midst of the most varied ecclesial and political occupations. Here was born his inner freedom, the joy that he conveyed outwardly, and the effectiveness of his pastoral and diplomatic action.

As he said in his Journal of a Soul, “the more mature I become in years and in experience, the more I recognize that the surest means for my personal sanctification and for the greater success of my service to the Holy See, remains the vigilant effort to reduce everything – principles, speeches, positions, affairs, to the greatest simplicity and calmness; in my vineyard, always to prune that which is simply useless foliage . . . and to go directly to that which is truth, justice, charity, above all charity. Any other [way] of doing things, is nothing but posturing and grasping at personal affirmation, which betrays itself and becomes cumbersome and ridiculous.” (Cinisello Balsamo 2000, p. 497).

He wanted to prune his vineyard: to chase out the foliage, to prune. . . And some years later, joined to the end of his work in the Pontifical diplomatic service, when he was already Patriarch of Venice, he wrote, “Now I find myself completely in the ministry of souls. Truly I have always held that for an ecclesiastic, diplomacy, so to say, should always be permeated by a pastoral spirit; otherwise, it counts for nothing, and makes a holy mission ridiculous”]/G] (ibid., pp. 513-14).

But this is important! Listen well: When in the Nunciature there is a secretary or a nuncio that doesn’t go along the way of sanctity, and gets involved in so many forms, in so many kinds of spiritual worldliness, he looks ridiculous, and everyone laughs at him! Please don’t be ridiculous: either [be] saints or go back to the diocese and be a pastor, but don’t be ridiculous in the diplomatic [service], in the diplomatic life, where there is so much danger of becoming worldly in spirituality.

I would also like to say something to the Sisters – thank you for coming! – who undertake their daily service among you with a religious and Franciscan spirit. They are good Mothers who accompany you with prayer, with their simple and essential words, and above all by the example of loyalty, dedication and love. Along with them I would like to thank the lay staff who work in the Casa. Their hidden, but important presence, allows you to spend your time in the Academy with serenity and commitment.

Dear priests, I hope that you will undertake the service to the Holy See with the same spirit as Blessed John XXIII. I ask you to pray for me, and I commend you to the safekeeping of the Virgin Mary and of Saint Anthony Abbot, your patron. May the assurance of my prayers and of my blessing – which I cordially extend to all your loved ones – go with you. Thank you!

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To future Vatican diplomats,
Benedict XVI underscores
the virtue of faithfulness

June 11, 2012



This morning, at the Hall of the Popes in the Apostolic Palace, the holy Father received the Superiors, students and alumni of the Pontificia Accademia Ecclesiastica. [This was the sixth time benedict XVI addressed the academy during his Pontificate.]

[My addendum: The academy is the Roman institution that trains priests for service in the Vatican diplomatic service (future Apostolic Nuncios and officials in charge of the bureaucracy at the Secretariat of State). Since the Academy was founded in 1701, five priests who went on to become Pope were trained at the Academy: Clement XIII (graduated 1714), Leo XII (1783), Leo XIII (1832), Benedict XV (1879), and Paul VI (1921).]

Here is the Vatican's English translation of the Pope's address:

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Dear Brother Bishop,
Dear Priests,

First of all, I thank Archbishop Beniamino Stella for the courteous words which he has addressed to me in the name of all present, and for the valued work that he carries out. With great affection I greet the entire community of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy.

I am pleased to receive you once again this year, as the academic year draws to a close and as, for some of you, the day is approaching when you will depart for service in Papal Representations throughout the world.

The Pope also counts on you for assistance in fulfilling his universal ministry. I encourage you to be confident and to prepare diligently for the mission which awaits you, trusting in the faithfulness of the One who has known you from the beginning and has called you into communion with his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Cor 1:9).

God’s faithfulness is the key to, and the source of, our own faithfulness. I would like today to remind you of precisely this virtue, which well expresses the unique bond existing between the Pope and his direct co-workers, both in the Roman Curia and in the Papal Representations:

For many, it is a bond grounded in the priestly character that they have received, which is then specified in the particular mission entrusted to each in the service of the Successor of Peter.

In the Bible, faithfulness is above all a divine attribute: God reveals himself as the one who remains ever faithful to his Covenant with his people, despite their unfaithfulness.

As the Faithful One, God sees to the fulfilment of his loving plan; thus, he is trustworthy and true. His way of acting makes it possible in turn for men and women to be faithful.

In our case, the virtue of faithfulness is profoundly linked to the supernatural gift of faith; it becomes the expression of that steadfastness proper to those who have made God the foundation of their entire lives.

In faith we find the sole guarantee of our standing firm (cf. Is 7:9b); only on this foundation can we in turn be truly faithful: first to God, then to his family, the Church our Mother and Teacher, and within the Church to our own vocation, to the history in which the Lord has set us.

Dear friends, with this in mind, I encourage you to cultivate a personal bond with the Vicar of Christ as a part of your spirituality. Certainly, this is something which ought to apply to every Catholic, and even more to every priest.

Yet for those who work in the Holy See, it is of particular importance, since they spend much of their energy, their time and their daily ministry in the service of the Successor of Peter. This entails a serious responsibility, but also a special gift which as time goes on should make you grow in closeness to the Pope, a closeness marked by interior trust, a natural idem sentire [feeling the same way], which is exactly expressed by the word "faithfulness".

Faithfulness to Peter, who sends you forth, also gives rise to a special faithfulness towards those to whom you are sent. The Representatives of the Roman Pontiff and their collaborators are called upon to interpret his solicitude for all the Churches, as well as the affectionate concern with which he follows the journey of each people.

You should therefore cultivate a relationship of profound esteem and benevolence, and indeed true friendship, towards the Churches and the communities to which you will be sent.

You are also bound to faithfulness in their regard, a faithfulness concretely manifested each day by your diligence and devotion to your work, by your presence among them at moments of joy, sadness and even tragedy, by your coming to know their culture, their journey as a Church, and by your appreciation of all that God’s grace has accomplished in every people and nation.

This represents a valuable contribution to the Petrine ministry, about which the Servant of God Paul VI once said: "By entrusting to his Vicar the power of the keys and by making him the rock and foundation of his Church, the Eternal Pastor also gave him the mandate to ‘confirm his brethren’: he does this not only by leading them and keeping them united in his name, but also by supporting and comforting them, certainly by his words, but also in some way by his presence" (Apostolic Letter Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum, 24 June 1969: AAS 61 (1969), 473-474).

Thus you will also encourage and help the particular Churches to grow in faithfulness to the Roman Pontiff and to find in the principle of communion with the universal Church a sure direction for their own pilgrimage through history.

Not least, you will also help the Successor of Peter to be faithful to the mission he has received from Christ, enabling him to know better the flock entrusted to his care and to be present to it more effectively by his words, his closeness, his affection.

Here I can only mention with gratitude the assistance that I receive every day from my many co-workers in the Roman Curia and in Papal Representations, as well as the support that comes to me from the prayers of countless brothers and sisters worldwide.

Dear friends, to the extent that you are faithful, you will also be worthy of faith. We know too that the faithfulness proper to the Church and to the Holy See is no "blind" loyalty, for it is enlightened by our faith in the One who said: "You are Peter, and on on this rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16:18). Let us all be committed to following this path, so that one day we may hear the words of the Gospel parable: "Good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master" (cf. Mt 25:21).

With these sentiments, I renew my greeting to Archbishop Stella and his collaborators, to the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Child Jesus, and to the entire community of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, and I cordially impart my blessing.

---

The fact that the Vatican went out of its way today to also publish the translation of the Pope's address above in all the Vatican official languages underscores that the theme of the Pope's message to the future diplomats and functionaries of the Secretariat of State was hardly coincidental!

Pope Francis's remarks
to Latin American religious officials


Before I proceed to translate this item, I must point out that the site from which it comes is that of a Chilean movement that describes itself as progressivist, a site I followed with the link provided by Rorate caeli which has posted its own English translation of the available transcript...

Perhaps the progressivist orientation may explain the selective excerpting of what Pope Francis said, i.e., to reflect only that which is favorable to 'progressivist' causes; or it may be that, like the Vatican official media, the omissions are meant to 'protect' the Pope from a misinterpretation of statements that he may have said too broadly or too loosely...

Anyway, since he was speaking on this occasion to the six officials who make up the Executive leadership of the Latin American confederation of religious men and women, the main message that the item appears to convey, above all, is that the Pope was encouraging the religious to proceed with whatever they were doing, even if they make mistakes, and even if they may get a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - a clear reference to the doctrinal problem raised by the LCRW in the United States which has been pushing its own contrary 'magisterium' for the past three decades against that of the Church.

Just as I found it inappropriate for the Pope, with all due respect, to have unfairly cited IOR in a Santa Marta homilette recently, I find this reference to the CDF even more unseemly, since the CDF has the duty, in behalf of the Church and of the Pope who is the primary defender of the faith, to uphold, defend and safeguard the faith from those who would distort it (or even wish to change it outright, as the LCRW types do, especially from within.

Many of the Pope's remarks are familiar from what he has said before in his homilettes and homilies, so obviously, these are the talking points he considers most important...But it is still unsatisfactory not to have a full transcript in order to provide better context for the excerpts that the website chose to publish.


Photo taken from the RyL site. Can't improve it much.

In a gesture without precedent, Pope Francis received and had a dialogue that lasted an hour with the executive directors of the Confederación Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Religiosas y Religiosos (CLAR). They conversed seated in a circle, as equals, as it was with the first communities founded by Jesus.[Since there were only six of them, seven with the Pope, how else would they have been seated????]

It was) an atmosphere of trust and simplicity. Francis stressed to the CLAR leaders that they should not be afraid to carry out their mission to the limits and to the frontiers: "Have courage! Advance towards new horizons. Do not be afraid to take risks by attending to the poor and any new subjects (sic) emerging in the continent" [The word 'sujetos' here refers to people, not topics.], Papa Bergoglio said, who concluded by emphatically thanking religious communities as a 'sign and witness of the Gospel' in many places of Latin America and the Caribbean.

We offer our readers this exclusive brief 'synthesis' of the historic encounter at the Holy See...

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Audience with Pope Francis
CLAR, 06.06.13

"Open doors! open doors!"...

You will make mistakes, you will get into trouble - that happens. Perhaps it may even get you a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine [of the Faith] telling you that you said such and such. But do not worry. Explain what you have to explain, but continue moving ahead. Opening doors. Do something wherever life calls. I prefer a Church that makes mistakes because she does something, to one that is sick because she is enclosed in herself.

[About his election]... At no time did I lose my composure, you know? And that is not me - I am one who worries, who becomes nervous. But I did not lose my composure at any moment. That confirms to me that this is from God....

[Reflecting on the hope that his gestures have brought us at this time, he refers to having chosen to live in Santa Marta]...These gestures - they did not come from me. They did not occur to me. It wasn't as if I had a plan, nor that I made a plan once I was elected. I do these things because I felt that this is what the Lord wanted. These gestures are not mine. There is An Other here... And that gives me confidence ...

I came [for the Conclave] with only the clothes I needed - I washed them at night. And suddenly, this... But I was not even given any odds! In the betting in London, I was #44 - imagine that! Whoever bet for me must have gained a lot, obviously!... But this did not come from me...

...One must turn the omelette upside down - It is not news when in Ottaviano, an old man dies of the cold during the night, or that there are so many children who cannot go to school, or are hungry - I am thinking of Argentina... Meanwhile, when the major stock markets of the world rise or fall by a few points, it is a world event. One must turn things around. This cannot be. Computers are not made in the image and likeness of God - they are instruments, nothing more. Money is not the image and likeness of God. One must make a change. That is the Gospel.

...One must go to the causes, to the roots. Abortion is bad, that is clear. But what was behind the approval of such laws [legalizing abortion], what interests are behind it? ... There are conditions that lead large groups to support such laws with much money, you know? We must look at the causes - we cannot just remain with the symptoms...

Do not be afraid to denounce... You will get into trouble, you will have problems, but do not be afraid to denounce - that is the prophetic nature of religious life...

...I shall share with you my concerns. One is a Pelagian current in the Church at present. There are some restorationist groups. I know some of them - I met with them in Buenos Aires. And one feels as if one were going back 60 years in time! Before the Council! As if one is back in 1940...

An anecdote, just to illustrate, not to laugh about, because I took it respectfully, but I am concerned: When I was elected [the form he uses is literally, "When they elected me..."], I received a letter from one of these groups who wrote; "Holiness, we offer you this spiritual treasure - 3,525 rosaries". Why not, "We are praying for you, we ask for you..." [Surely, offering rosaries for someone is a way of praying for him! He may have been referring to the FSSPX, which traditionally asks their members to offer rosaries for any cause they are espousing or any person they wish to pray for!]

This matter of settling accounts...And these groups still continue practices and disciplines such as those I experienced - but not you, because you are much younger - things which we lived at that time, but not now. Now they [the old practices and disciplines] are no longer around... [What could he have meant? Surely not the traditional Mass??? It's back! What other 'practices and disciplines' are no longer around? Confession? A nightly examination of conscience?]

...The second is a Gnostic current - those pantheisms...Both are currents of the elite, But the latter is of a more educated elite... I knew of a Mother Superior who urged the sisters of her congregation not to pray in the morning but to 'take a spiritual bath in the cosmos' - things like that!... They concern me because they are ignoring the Incarnation. The Son of God became our flesh, the Word became flesh, and in Latin America, we have a surfeit of flesh. Whatever happens with the poor, their sorrows - that is our flesh...

The Gospel is not the old rule. ["El evangelio no es la regla antigua" - Did he mean that it is not the Old Testament? Not the Ten Commandments?] nor is it this pantheism. If you look at the peripheries, at the indigent, the drug addicts! - treat them as persons. That is the Gospel. The poor are the Gospel...

[Reflecting on how difficult it is to take charge of the Roman Curia and about the commission of cardinals who will assist him, etc] Yes, it is difficult. In the Curia, there are holy men, truly. But there is also a current of corruption, there is that too, it is true... There has been talk of a 'gay lobby', and it is true, it is there... We shall see what can be done...
[Pope Francis is reinforcing - wrongly, unfairly and unhealthily - the public perception of a rotten Curia, without any substantiation so far other than blanket generic accusations by the likes of Vigano and Gabriele, and the media, and the cardinal electors before the Conclave. Just because they say so does not necessarily make it so. Not that 'evil' is inexistent in the Curia - it is always present in any human institution - but no specific charges have been raised against specific individuals, just generalized conclusions that no one has bothered so far to substantiate, whereas everyone in the Curia, and at the Vatican, is tarred with the same broad brush! If he was going to make the statements he made, he could have added, "These are documented in a report left for me by Benedict XVI" if that was the case, or cite any other documented source that show specifics behind his general statements.]

The reform of the Roman Curia is something that almost all of us cardinals asked for at the congregations that preceded the Conclave. I, too, asked for it. But I cannot carry out the reform - these are management questions. I am very disorganized - I have never been good at these things. But the cardinals of the commission will carry it out.

There is [Cardinal] Rodriquez Maradiaga, who is Latin American, and is taking the lead. There is Errazuriz [emeritus Archbishop of Santiago de Chile] - they are both very organized. So is the cardinal from Munich. They will carry out the reform...

...Pray for me, that I may make the least mistakes!

...Aparecide will not end. Aparecida is not just a document. It is an event. [He is referring both to the fifth conference of Latin Americna and Caribbean bishops held in Brazil in 2007, and to the final document of the conference which defined a 'continental mission' for the bishops.]

Aparecida was something distinct. Starting from the fact that it did not have a working document. It had many contributions, but no document. And at the end, not really a document. When we ended our work the day before, we had 2,300 'ways' [suggestions]... Aparecida launched a continental mission = and that is how the conference ended, with the impulse to mission.

What was special about Aparecida is that it was not held in a hotel or in a retirement home... It was celebrated in a Marian shrine. During the week, we celebrated the Eucharist, with about 250 persons attending, because people were at work. But weekends, we were full!... The People of God accompanied their bishops in praying to the Holy Spirit.

[What the Pope most strikingly omits in the above is any acknowledgment of Benedict XVI, whose idea it was to hold the CELAM conference in Aparecida, to begin with. The conference, which was first planned during John Paul II's Pontificate, was originally supposed to take place in Ecuador, but because John Paul was already unable to travel, it was decided to hold it in Rome. But when the CELAM officials first met Benedict XVI in 2005 to get his opinion, it was he who - to their surprise - said, "Let us hold it in Aparecida!" - site of Brazil's largest religious shrine.]

...[At that time], I saw = and I name him because I see him as more detached, but that is how he is - I saw the Prefect, Joan [Cardinal Braz de Aviz, former bishop of Brasilia, now Prefect of the Congregation in charge of religious orders] who came out with his miter, and the people flocked to him, they brought him their children, and he greeted them, embraced them... That same bishop later voted - he could not have voted as he did if the conference had been at a hotel! [????]

We had our meeting rooms on the level below the shrine. So our background music was the songs and the celebrations in the Shrine, which gave the conference something quite special...

...There is something which concerns me, even if I do not know how to read it. There are religious congregations - very very small groups with very few members, and very old ones... They no longer have (attract) vocations, as far as I know - maybe the Holy Spirit does not want them to continue, or maybe they have already completed their mission in the Church. I don't know. But there they are, clinging to their buildings, clinging to their money... I do not know why this happens. I do not know how to interpret it. But I ask you to concern yourself about such groups. Managing money is something that requires much reflection.

...Take advantage of this moment we are living in the Congregation for Consecrated Life. It is a moment of sunlight - Take advantage of it. The Prefect is good. And the Secretary, whom you 'lobbied' for! - but really, since he was president of the Union of Superiors-General, it was logical that he be named. [Former Franciscan Superior General Jose Rodriguez Carballo] Who could be better?

...Put all your commitment into dialog with the bishops. With CELAM, with the national bishops' conferences...I know that there are those who have a different idea of communion, but... Talk to them, converse with them, tell them.... [The clause is left unfinished]

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An apology and clarification
from the officials of CLAR
Apparently, the Pope did not exactly 'say' any of the statements quoted above -
they are merely recollections by those who were present
Translated from the CLAR site

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Bogotá, Colombia
June 11, 2013

STATEMENT BY THE EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP OF CLAR

The executive leadership of CLAR profoundly laments the publication of a text referring to a conversation with the Holy Fahter Francis at a meeting on June 6. A conversation that developed from questions made to the Pope by those who were present.

No recording was made of the occasion but shortly afterwards, a 'synthesis' was drawn up based on what the participants remembered. This synthesis, which does not include the questions made to teh Holy Father, was intended as a personal memorandum of the participants themselves, and in no way for publication, for which, in fact, no authorization was requested. [In that case, if someone - who had to be from among the participants and whoever helped them 'elaborate the synthesis' - provided the website with the 'synthesis', then whoever it was obviously meant it to be used, i.e., published.]

It is clear that on this basis, one cannot attribute, with certainty, to the Holy Father, the singular expressions contained in the text, but only the general sense.

The officials of CLAR profoundly regret what has happened and the confusion that it may have created.

Mercedes Leticia Casas Sánchez, FSpS, President
P. Gabriel Naranjo Salazar, CM, Secretary-General

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John Thavis, commenting on the story on his blog entry today, said:

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I asked Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman about the authenticity of the text, and he responded: “The meeting of the Holy Father with the presidency of CLAR was a meeting of a private nature. I therefore have no statement to make on the proceedings or on the content of the conversation.”

It’s important to point out that the text appears to be more working notes than an actual transcript, with plenty of ellipses*. That means that nuances and qualifiers may have been lost along the way.

Nevertheless, the text appears to echo the tone of Pope Francis’s off-the-cuff comments on other occasions. And it would seem that if anything patently false were reported, the Vatican would not have passed on the opportunity to knock it down.

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*I disagree that the CLAR 'synthesis' are more like 'working notes', because eee they do capture the conversational style (much more evident in the original Spanish), not to mention stock expressions, of Pope Francis that we have become used to in the past three months from his off-the-cuff sallies.. In fact, little of it sounds like paraphrase but direct quotation.

Fr. Ray Blake on his blog says, "So the Pope puts his foot in his mouth from time to time,,,He's only human...." [True, but IMHO, he should avoid occasions when he would tend to do so. He's the Pope, not my chatty next-door parish priest.]


Fair and balanced: Beatrice posts this comment from Carlota who translated the CLAR synthesis into French for Beatrice's website:

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I (would) interpret the Pope's words [about the CDF] in a more nuanced way. [namely}: "Go ahead, perhaps you will make mistakes. If you do, the CDF will let you know. And you will explain yourselves. (Of course, if there is a mistake, you must change course)".

But I understand or want to understand that it is a way for the Pope to encourage the religious not to error but to action.

Within a hierarchical administrative system for a membership of more than a billion faithful (those who work in administrative positions know well how much 'innovative' initiatives and energies can so easily be spoiled in the face of inertia, even if the Vatican is not an administration in the classic sense), it is much better to act than to wait for your plan of action to be 'validated'.

In current language, one might say, "Only those who do nothing are at no risk to make a mistake".

The Pope said what his interlocutors wanted to hear in order to be encouraged - It's pure Francis! It's his style of 'command'.

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Carlota's points are well taken. However, the activist religious communities today hardly need to be encouraged to 'act' - they have been doing so since Vatican II on their own initiatives and impulses. But the CDF is not 'supervising' their activities - it is concerned only with their words [which go with their actions] if such words contradict what the Church teaches. The Church has always taken care to praise the good work done by all religious, including the activist dissenters. It does take exception to their arrogance in proclaiming their own 'magisterium' as superior to that of 'the official Church'.

Apropos, although this takes us far afield from Pope Francis's idiosyncracies of communication, I was going to run this 2012 post one of these days, anyway, to remind everyone just what is so objectionable about the LCWR and their like. I must say I have no idea if any of the CLAR communities may be dissident in their own way, so I am not saying this applies to them. Here goes:

From June 9, 2012:



I have not thought it useful to report the various attacks against the CDF for its criticism of the 'magisterium of nuns' as arrogated by the LCWR leaders and spokesmen - and their supporters, even among priests - because they have consisted of nothing but uniformly kneejerk ultra-liberal reactions to any criticism at all. That, of course, is the typical Catholic dissenters' attitude who explicitly say that only they can possibly be right in everything that they dislike about the Church.

In this case, the LCWR sisters and their sympathizers are also in utter and deep denial - more caricaturish even than the MAD magazine 'Who, me?' = despite their more than ample written record of near-heretical heterodoxy. Everything they have said and done - 'she doth protest too much' - about the CDF assessment reflects and reinforces that denial. Which is a word that connotes the hypocrisy, mendacity, sanctimony and all the Luciferian arrogance that constitute the singular conceit of dissenters in the Church.

'The biggest distortion of all'
Ohio bishop responds to distortions
about CDF assessment of LCWR
by Ann Carey

June 9, 2012

Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo has issued a letter, “Reality check: The LCWR, CDF and the doctrinal assessment”, responding to public “distortions and misrepresentations of the facts” related to the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

Bishop Blair’s letter comes in response to an avalanche of highly critical and often grossly erroneous reports and articles about the assessment that have appeared in the mass media.

Bishop Blair was appointed by the Vatican in 2008 as the apostolic delegate to conduct the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR for the CDF. This year he was appointed to assist Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle in overseeing the renewal of the LCWR.

“The biggest distortion of all is the claim that the CDF and the bishops are attacking or criticizing the life and work of our Catholic sisters in the United States,” Bishop Blair wrote.

He went on to explain that the CDF action concerns only the LCWR, and while LCWR members lead most of the religious sisters in this country, “that does not mean that criticism of the LCWR is aimed at all the member religious communities, much less all sisters.”

The word “investigation” is often used to characterize the CDF assessment, Bishop Blair noted, but he explained that word implies an attempt to uncover unknown matters. In this case, he said, the doctrinal assessment was “an appraisal of materials which are readily available to anyone who cares to read them on the LCWR website and in other LCWR published resources. The assessment was carried out in dialogue with the LCWR leadership, both in writing and face-to-face, over several months.”

Bishop Blair went on to explain that the “fundamental question” posed by the CDF to the LCWR leaders was why the “LCWR constantly provides a one-sided platform — without challenge or any opposing view — to speakers who take a negative and critical position vis-a-vis Church doctrine and discipline and the Church’s teaching office.”

He cited these examples:
- In the keynote address at the LCWR 1997 annual assembly, Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, “proposed that the decisive issue for women religious is the issue of faith: ‘It can no longer be taken for granted that the members [of a given congregation] share the same faith.’”
- In the keynote address at the 2004 joint annual assembly of the LCWR and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men, Father Michael Crosby, OFMCap said, “We still have to worship a God that the Vatican says ‘wills that women not be ordained.’ That god is literally ‘unbelievable.’ It is a false god; it cannot be worshipped.”
- In the keynote address at the LCWR 2007 annual assembly, Sister Laurie Brink, OP spoke about four “directions” religious congregations seemed to be moving, saying “not one of the four is better or worse than the others.” One of those models was “sojourning,” which she said “involves moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus. A sojourning congregation is no longer ecclesiastical. It has grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion” and “in most respects is Post-Christian.” She also characterized as “courageous” the decision by one group of women religious to “step outside the church.” [So is that an admission that the LCWR and other dissenters who insist on remaining within a Church they treat with such contempt do not, in fact, have that kind of courage? Hoist by their own petard?]

Bishop Blair noted that “LCWR speakers also explore themes like global spirituality, the new cosmology, earth-justice and eco-feminism in ways that are frequently ambiguous, dubious or even erroneous with respect to Christian faith. And while the LCWR upholds Catholic social teaching in some areas, it is notably silent when it comes to two of the major moral challenges of our time: the right to life of the unborn, and the God-given meaning of marriage between one man and one woman.”

Also cited in his letter is a publication of the LCWR, the Systems Thinking Handbook, that proposed mental models — the “Western mind” and the “Organic model” — rather than Church doctrine for addressing the objections of some sisters to “priest-led liturgies.”

These examples are “certainly not” indicative of the thinking of all sisters whose communities belong to the LCWR, Bishop Blair emphasized. He asked the rhetorical question: “Is it the role of a pontifically recognized leadership group to criticize and undermine faith in Church teaching by what is said and unsaid, or rather to work to create greater understanding and acceptance of what the Church believes and teaches?”

People who do not hold the teachings of the Catholic Church, or Catholics who dissent from those teachings, have attacked the CDF and the bishops for the conclusions of the assessment, Bishop Blair noted.

On the other hand, he continued, “a person who holds the reasonable view that a Catholic is someone who subscribes to the teachings of the Catholic Church will recognize that the Catholic bishops have a legitimate cause for doctrinal concern about the activities of the LCWR, as evidenced by a number of its speakers and some of its resource documents.”

Bishop Blair observed that a key question in whether the process moves forward in a positive way is: “Would the LCWR at least acknowledge the CDF’s doctrinal concerns and be willing to take steps to remedy the situation?”

But he noted, “The response thus far is exemplified by the LCWR leadership’s choice of a New Age Futurist [Barbara Marx Hubbard] to address its 2012 assembly, and their decision to give an award this year to Sr. Sandra Schneiders, who has expressed the view that the hierarchical structure of the Church represents an institutionalized form of patriarchal domination that cannot be reconciled with the Gospel.”

Bishop Blair concluded on the positive note that in spite of the controversies, misunderstandings, and misrepresentations, he was confident that “if the serious concerns of the CDF are accurately represented and discussed among all the sisters of our country, there will indeed be an opening to a new and positive relationship between women religious and the Church’s pastors in doctrinal matters, as there already is in so many other areas where mutual respect and cooperation abound.”

The LCWR national board met May 29-31 to discuss the assessment and issued a statement June 1 charging that “the assessment was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.” The LCWR president, Sister Pat Farrell, OSF, and executive director, Sister Janet Mock, CSJ, are scheduled to meet in Rome on June 12 with Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the CDF, and Archbishop Sartain.

I wonder what kind of prayers the LCWR sisters say [or, for that matter, Hans Kueng and the entire motley gang of outspoken critics of the Church, organized or not]. Is there any room in their prayers at all for the humility even to ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of wisdom and discernment? Or the gift of humility itself, for that matter? Instead of stepping up their word war against the Church to a new level of scorn, they should simply answer the criticisms point by point. But since they cannot deny words which they have said and published and tirelessly disseminated all these decades - each of them documented amply and multiply - they have gone into hyper-hysterical harpie mode to distract public opinion from the objective criticisms against them. Kyrie eleison!



June 12, 2013
P.P.S. It is the second time that Pope Francis speaks of the CDF sort of disparagingly in wordsthat have been reported to the public. In his homily on his name day, the feast of St. George, he cited the fact that the original Christian community, the Church of Jerusalem, had sent the Apostle Barnabas to look into reports that the Christians in Antioch were evangelizing the Greeks of that community. He remarked gratuitously, though saying it 'with a sense of humor', that perhaps it might be considered the foundation of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, being the first 'apostolic visitation'. (The CDF had issued its LCRW doctrinal assessment based on findings after three years of an apostolic visitation ordered by Benedict XVI, not by the CDF, which has no authority to do so. Humorous or otherwise, it is unprecedented for a Pope to make any remarks that seem to disparage directly any office in the Vatican, as he also did earlier with the IOR, without citing any specific reason but simply playing on the public perception of hidden wrongdoings.

It would be necessary and appropriate for a Pope to say - out loud, in public, and formally - "This office (or diocese, or whatever) must be denounced because it failed grievously in its duty by....", mentioning a specific factual offense of omission or commission. But he cannot simply say "It is true there is a current of corruption in the Cutia" and "It is true there is a gay lobby in the Vatican" without at least referring us to an objective basis for these statements. Let us know now what the specifics are, if any, bullet by bullet, behind these shotgun charges. NB: All the reports in all the media today about the Pope's statements on corruption and a gay lobby in the Vatican have not added one iota of specific fact to these charges. Nor do the reports indicate that the editors or writers think there is any need to do so at all.

It has been more than a year since Mons. Vigano alleged 'corruption in the Vatican' and months since newspaper articles alleged the existence of this so-called 'gay lobby'. What have all the sanctimonious reporters been doing to investigate these allegations and come up with concrete facts? Nothing, apparently, or we would have heard of it. No, they prefer to leave the 'charges' hanging out there ominously - uninvestigated, even - to further inflate the poisonous balloon of iniquity with which they have sought to enclose the Church and the Vatican all these years.

Nor is it reassuring to hear the Pope say he will leave it to his cardinal advisers to deal with necessary reforms. The deputy secretary of State has said on more than one occasion in behalf of the Pope that "yes, there will be reforms in the Curia, but don't expect it to take place right away - there is no timetable".

The implication is that, meanwhile, that 'current of corruption' and that 'gay lobby', whose existence the Pope 'confirms', can continue to work evil in the Vatican. What happened to all the emergency alarums sounded in the pre-Conclave congregations? The present situation reinforces the impression that all that 'sky is falling' Chicken-Little squawking in the cardinal henhouse after Benedict XVI resigned was totally artificial, even if there is genuine need to straighten out the administrative and morale problems of the Curia.

And all that artifice to what end? It seems only to discredit Benedict XVI. Because now, the Church has 'the Pope of her dreams', and all the squawking has settled into the unclouded peace and grace of a new springtime, such as 'the world' is ever ready to proclaim with the advent of an Obama or a Morsi or their like. Everyone has drunk the Kool-Aid. And we never learn.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/06/2013 02:46]

Wednesday, June 12, 2013, Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

ST. JUAN DE SAHAGUN (Spain, 1419-1479), Augustinian, Preacher and Miracle Worker
Juan Gonzales de Castrillo was born in Sahagun, Leon, where he was educated educated by the Benedictine monks of Fagondez monastery. At age 20, he received a canonry from the bishop of Burgos in addition to many other parish assignments. He was ordained in 1445 and resigned all his benefices except that of St. Agatha in Burgos. He spent the next four years studying at the University of Salamanca and then began to preach. In the next decade he achieved a great reputation as a preacher and spiritual director, but recovering after a serious surgery, he became an Augustinian friar in 1463 and was professed the following year. He served as master of novices, definitor, and prior at Salamanca, during which time he experienced visions and became famous for his miracles. He denounced evil in high places and several attempts were made on his life. He died at Sahagun on June 11, reportedly poisoned by the mistress of a man he had convinced to leave her. He was canonized in 1690 as San Juan de Sahagun.
Readings for today's Mass:http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/061213.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - Continuing his catecheses on the Church, Pope Francis spoke about the Church as the People of God,
as defined by the Second Vatican Council.
Vatican Radio's English translation may be found here:
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/06/12/pope:_we_are_all_invited_to_be_members_of_the_people_of_god/en1-700783

After the GA, the Pope met with Mons. Pio Vito Pinto, Dean of the Tribunal of the Roman Rota, He is the latest
of the Curial heads with whom Pope Francis has met one on one since his election,


This time last year...

Communique on meeting between
CDF officials and leaders of the LCWR

June 12, 2012

---

Today the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met with the President and Executive Director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) of the United States of America.

The Most Rev. Peter J. Sartain, Archbishop of Seattle and the Holy See’s Delegate for the doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR, also participated in the meeting.

The meeting provided the opportunity for the Congregation and the LCWR officers to discuss the issues and concerns raised by the doctrinal Assessment in an atmosphere of openness and cordiality.

According to Canon Law, a Conference of Major Superiors such as the LCWR is constituted by and remains under the supreme direction of the Holy See in order to promote common efforts among the individual member Institutes and cooperation with the Holy See and the local Conference of Bishops (Cf. Code of Canon Law, cann. 708-709).

The purpose of the doctrinal Assessment was to assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium.

---

P.S. 2013 I sort of anticipated this in the previous post with the CWR report on the distortions that the LCRW and their supporters in the media have made regarding t.e amply documented and habitual doctrinal indiscipline they have practised for at least three decades. Of course, last April, Pope Francis upheld the CDF doctrinal assessment and the recommendations made to restore doctrinal discipline to the LCRW, whose reaction to the new Pope's pronouncement was egregiously muted compared to their vituperation against Benedict XVI when the CDF assessment and recommendations were issued in 2012.]




One year ago...
There were no events announced for Benedict XVI, as it was a Tuesday. However, interesting news from Dublin and the 50th International Eucharistic Congress.



Papal legate undertakes
penitential pilgrimage
in Ireland on his behalf

June 12, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI’s personal representative at the 50th International Eucharistic Congress is on a pilgrimage of penance to Ireland's historic sanctuary Lough Derg, at the express request of Pope Benedict XVI, to pray for forgiveness, reconciliation and healing in the wake of the sex abuse scandal in Ireland.

Before the Eucharistic celebration Tuesday, dedicated to Communion in Marriage and the Family, the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin informed the biggest congregation to date in the RDS Arena that Papal Legate Cardinal Marc Ouellet was not present because he had undertaken a pilgrimage to Station Island, more commonly known as St. Patrick’s purgatory, found on Lough Derg, a lake in northwest Ireland, which has been the object of pilgrimage for over a thousand years.

Earlier Tuesday morning , the issue of abuse, how it has damaged the communion of the Church and undermined the integrity of the Body of Christ was the subject of an extensive talk by visiting Archbishop Luis Tagle of Manilla in the Philippines.

Speaking to an overcrowded hall, the theologian bishop offered an in-depth analysis on the crisis as experienced by the Churches in Asia, but as he spoke, universal similarities emerged...

While Cardinal Ouellet's penitential pilgrimage at the Pope's express request is certainly a pious surprise, it is not surprising that Benedict XVI, who grew up frequenting the Marian shrine at Altoetting, would have thought of it. It is the kind of spiritual offering that he suggests, among so many ways of atonement and renewal of grace in his March 2009 Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, which I fear may really have been consigned to the dead files of the dioceses and parishes of Ireland, instead of being an active guide to the renewal of the Church in Ireland.

Here's an Irish participant's view of IEC 2012 that is very encouraging in many respects... It is truly an occasion of grace that the IEC has managed to bring together Catholics of 'good faith' - in both senses of the word - as this article shows.

IEC 2012 is flying in the face
of modern Irish culture – and
is all the better for it
The Irish Church is defying its own reputation, too
by Mary O'Regan

12 June 2012

Here at the Congress the air is alive with conversations about the best ways to bring lapsed Catholics and non-Catholics to the faith. There could be fewer less fashionable topics of discussion in modern Ireland. Mention this at a Guinness and oysters evening, and you’ll get a look that could split the oyster’s shell.

The days of 1932 are being remembered fondly as a time when the Irish were of more modest means but of proud faith. This is a change from rubbishing our “poor Catholic” Angela’s Ashes past. When I was growing up in Ireland, it always felt as though cradle Catholics were apologising for their religion.

But I was flabbergasted by some countercultural surprises which happened yesterday, the day devoted to ecumenism. Maybe because I am a strict, Latin Mass-loving Catholic I had been dreading the ecumenical day because I thought Catholicism would be presented as inferior to other faiths.

Thankfully, I was proved wrong. At the start of the day, in the press conference on ecumenism Ron Crane and Jackie Ottoway, members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, asked the Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, Michael Jackson, about Anglicanorum coetibus. They invited him to read their online magazine The Portal where they document the successes and struggles of the Personal Ordinariate. They enquired of him if he would like to join Anglicans in England who are swimming the Tiber. The archbishop was forthright that his flock have not shown “much interest”.

To me this is the spirit of true ecumenism, sharing the good news about revolutionary developments like the ordinariate and generously telling others that there is room for them too. It goes to show what a great boon the ordinariate is – and that we have so many former Anglicans that are now brave Catholics.

Not only is the Congress presenting a sign of contradiction to secular Irish society, but it is defying its own reputation. The Church in Ireland has long been characterised as one that dominates a muted lay people. But the Congress allows a two-way conversation.

Yesterday two young Dublin priests arranged for talks from two lay converts to Catholicism. This was a courageous attempt to allow converts a chance to evangelise the cradle Irish Catholics. And it certainly goes against the craze of leaving the Church.

Tracy and Gareth were brought up without religion. Tracy is from Canada and made prayer a part of daily life after a friend took her to Sunday school when she was 14. She decided to become a Catholic after moving to Ireland. But in 2010 she was the only person who was going through RCIA in her Dublin parish of Swords. She did feel a little daunted by the reports into clerical sex abuse, but persevered in becoming a Catholic because it was making her relationship with God “stronger”. Tracy said that at first it was a little lonely coming into the Irish Church, but that when she was confirmed in her parish, she felt like she received “a thousand welcomes” from her fellow parishioners.

Gareth hails from England, and first attended Mass when he was dating his wife. He moved to Ireland in 2000. At the beginning of his RCIA, Gareth “struggled” to understand the Gospels and found the ceremonies were way over his head. But he found that one exercise, “the lifeline”, helped him put his faith in perspective – it invited him to draw a line of his life and show the parts where he has felt close to God and parts where he didn’t.

Gareth is now a sponsor to other people who want to become Catholic. I asked him if he feels he is swimming against the current tide: “It’s not ‘cool’ to become Catholic in Ireland now, but my conversion generated a lot of interest in the parish and the people that I met when I was in RCIA are now really good friends of mine.”

Most refreshingly at the Congress there are little or attempts to pander to Irish society. The Ireland that I grew up in was a hard-drinking one, where many of my classmates in primary school were used to furtive drinking at the age of 11. Young members of the Pioneers Total Abstinence are dotted throughout the crowd at the Congress.

When I was in secondary school, there were pilot sex education programmes which taught that saving sex for marriage was an out-dated, freakish practice. The group Pure in Heart, a youth group that gives support to teenagers and twenty-somethings who want to stay pure, are some of the most active participants in the Congress. Some very high-profile Church leaders have said to me how “impressed” they are that Pure In Heart show other youngsters the benefits of chastity.

Irish Catholic culture is often stereotyped as one where priests prescribed penance and pilgrimage, but had took the easier options for themselves. The Congress is not about high and mighty Church figures lecturing us on sackcloth and ashes, while exempting themselves.

One very prestigious example is that Cardinal Ouellet is undertaking the gruelling Lough Derg pilgrimage. A prince of the Church he may be, but on the island, he will fast, stay up all night, eat dry crackers and endure the ceaseless rain.

Sor Teresita with Benedict XVI, August 20, 2011, Madrid.

Spanish nun who spent 86 years
in cloister passes away at 105
She entered the convent on the day Joseph Ratzinger was born
Translated from

June 12, 2013

GUADALAJARA, Spain - Sor Teresita, the nun who held the record for having lived longest in cloister, died today at the age 0f 106. She spent 86 years as a cloistered nun in the Convento de la Madre de Dios of Buenafuente del Sistal, and lived through ten Pontificates, from St. Pius X to Francis.

She entered the convent on April 16, 1927, the day Joseph Ratzinger was born. She left the convent for the first and only time in August 2011 in order to meet Benedict XVI at the Apostolic Nunciature in Madrid when he was there for World Youth Day.

The now emeritus Pope was deeply moved by the nun's commitment during eight decades of a contemplative vocation.

"She herself was most impressed by how the visit had been arranged and for the kindness and consideration with which she was treated," said her chaplain at the convent.

During her visit with Benedict XVI, she gave him a white rosary and a copy of a book entitled ¿Qué hace una chica como tú en un sitio como este? (What is a girl like you doing in a place like this?", which recounts the stories and experiences of ten cloistered nuns, including herself.

Present at that audience were the Archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal Antonio Rouco Varela; the current superior of the convent, Mother Maria, and the chaplain.

He said that Sor Teresita kept her lucidity and serenity to the very end. When the entire convent went agog over thew news that Benedict XVI had announced his renunciation of the Papacy, she reacted calmly: "If he feels he can no longer go on, he did the right thing. I will continue praying for him".

Here is the CNS report on that meeting with the Pope in 2011:

On the Pope's meeting with centenarian nun
and behind the scenes at the vigil
by Cindy Wooden


MADRID, August 21, 2011 — Pope Benedict XVI’s trip to Spain did focus on young people, including young religious women, but it wasn’t an exclusive focus.

Yesterday afternoon (Saturday), Pope Benedict met briefly with Cistercian Sister Teresita, who just turned 104. But what is even more interesting, she entered the Cistercian cloister on the very day Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope, was born: April 16, 1927.

With the exception of a few hours during Spain’s Civil War in the 1930s, Sister Teresita has spent the last 84 years inside the convent at Buenafuente del Sistal.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters that also present at the meeting was a younger consecrated woman, a sister of the Sacred Heart, who retired back to Spain after working with then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He did not give her name.

Father Lombardi also spoke a bit about what happened last night, during the violent freak storm that hit Cuatro Vientos airfield just after the Pope arrived.

He said the Pope “was very decisive” about remaining with the young people and leading them in Eucharistic adoration even when the sound system failed. Father Lombardi said Msgr. Guido Marini, papal master of ceremonies, suggested several times that the evening liturgy be cut short. The Pope decided not to read the bulk of the speech he prepared, but he said, “No,” to the idea of leaving.

While the Pope was waiting for the worst of the storm to pass and for the sound system to come back on, firefighters lowered a big screen on the altar platform because it was a danger in the wind, Father Lombardi said. But other than that, he said, the Pope was safe the whole time.

Father Lombardi also asked people to read the full text of the speech the Pope had prepared and “take it as if it were delivered,” especially because the vigil was the World Youth Day appointment where the Pope planned to speak about the importance of the vocation of marriage.

[I surmise that during the time backstage waiting for the storm to abate, the Pope also composed the words he said to the young people later, about living an 'adventure' together and praising them for enduring the unexpected and for their sacrifice. I loved his use of the word 'adventure' - a very youthful reference to what most people in other circumjstances, would have simply called a disaster!... About Sor Teresita, one naturally asks the Lord to give the same gift of longevity to his current Vicar on earth!]