The Vatican correspondents of the major Italian papers today played up the Holy Father's homily at the Mass of Ordination yesterday, stressing his exhortation to bishops and priests to consider their ministry as a service of love and truth to the Church and the people of God, not as a vehicle for personal power and selfishness. L'Osservatore Romano had this front-page editorial alongside the text of the Pope's homily.
Benedict XVI at St. Peter's yesterday. [OR photo]
Mankind in the hands of God
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
the 9/13/09 issue of
During the episcopal ordination of five of his close co-workers, Benedict XVI explained the Biblical readings for the day, as he does on important occasions and circumstance.s
And he did it with his customary limpidity - a clarity which in Papa Ratzinger is always from profound reflection - using the method of actualizing Scripture to here and now, a method traditional in Christianity from its earliest days, going back to Jesus Christ himself and rooted in the Jewish tradition.
The Pope spoke to the new bishops, and in this way, to the entire Church, in his role as Spureme Pontiff, as he underscored during his visit to Viterbo last week, in recalling his predecessor, Pope Leo the Great, the first Successor of Peter who left us a record of visrutally his entire preaching, which has remained exemplary in teh tradition of the Church of Rome.
Thus Benedict XVI explained to the faithful rpesent in St. Peter's Basilica - as to all Catholics and any who would pay attention to his words - what it means to be a bishop and what it means to serve the Church in every sassigned responsibility.
The Pope drew from the gestures of liturgy as well as the profound sense of Scripture, both converging to indicate that mankind is in the hands of God.
But man must open himself up to this God - this is the meaning of liturgical silences - because the gravest wound in man is his remoteness from God.
Therefore, the task of the bishops and all who wish to serve the Church is, first of all, to heal this wound - following Jesus who described in parables the traits that should characterize those who wish to be servants: faithfulness, prudence and goodness.
This is not easy given the human condition which is imperfect and subject to sin. Even in the time of Paul VI, quarrels among opposing views [of how to interpret Vatican II] were already evident among Catholics.
Those who are called on to carry out various responsibilities in the Church, said the Pope, have the duty to work not for themselves, but for the common good of the community entrusted to them. In which they must keep their hearts oriented profoundly towards God, whose hands welcome and protect every human creature.
P.S. I have posted OR's informative news account of yesterday's Ordination Mass in the original post on the Mass above.
Vittorio Messori gave an interview published in La Stampa today, in which he surprisingly takes a rather narrow view of the Pope's message as being directed against episcopal careerism for social and political (at least intra-Church) power.
He says the message does not apply to the bishops of the West who are treated as 'pariahs' in secularized societies, in which, therefore, they can hardly be said to have any power. But there are other kinds of 'power' - forms of ego-tripping really - in which the more publicized among the European and American bishops appear to indulge.
A mediatic power, one might say, in which they court headlines, knowing full well that any opposition to the Church and the Pope is not only guaranteed to earn them headlines but also some sort of star treatment from the secular media, precisely because they can be counted on to speak against the Church and the Pope on issues advocated (or opposed, as the case may be) by the dominant secular world view.
The more media-savvy among the Third World bishops know this very well, even in - especially - countries where careerism may still gain them the kind of social and cultural power some of them crave.
The real driving force to the open ecclesiastical dissent fomented by the wrong interpretation of Vatican II is sheer selfishness - which consists in an utter lack of the humility and obedience to the Pope and the Magisterium that they profess in their ordination vows as priest, nun or bishop; the false application of democratic 'rules' to rationalize their dissent; and the overweening conviction that they alone are right, and have the right to impose their own ideological personal views on the Universal Church.
As I was going through the libretto of the Ordination Mass yesterday, I noticed that the first step in the Ordination rite itself is the candicate bishops presenting themselves to the Pope who asks them a series of questions they are expected to answer Yes to. Two of the nine questions, in my translation from the Italian, are:
Do you wish to edify the Body of Christ, which is the Church, persevering in its unity, along with the order of Bishops, under the authority of the successor of the Blessed Apostle Peter?
Do you wish to pledge loyalty, subordination, obedience according to canonical rules, to the Blessed Apostle Peter, to whom God gave the power to bind and loosen ties, and to me and my successors, the Roman Pontiffs?
I am sure the ordination for priests and the consecration of nuns [not to mention the internal rules of the various religious orders] contains something similar. [If I can find the appropriate liturgical text in English, I will replace my translation.]
But we have seen how bishops and priests have behaved as though they had not made any such vows at all! And that is the deliberate oversight of ecclesiastical dissenters that is such a gross unpardonable offense, because it is equivalent to saying vows do not mean anything. Yet even in secular society, an oath of office is supremely and solemnly binding and subject to criminal prosecution if violated in any way!
Perhaps, more importantly, dissident bishops, priests, nuns and cafeteria Catholics all seem to deliberately forget that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth, not just Successor to Peter. But for them, it seems a matter of great pride to be able to vaunt and flaunt, "Hah! I can say NO any time to anything the Pope says! Who des he think he is anyway?" It is not about who he thinks he is - it's about who he is by virtue of Christ's mandate to Peter and the Apostolic Succession.
Their attitude is either flagrant defiance of Christ in the person of his Vicar, or a reflection that they simply do not believe much of what the Catholic Church teaches - that the Pope represents Christ, that the unbroken Apostolic Succession has a transcendental significance, that each priest himself is in persona Christi when he says the Mass, that the Mass is a re-creation of Christ's sacrifice, not a community kumbaya-cum-'banquet', that the commandments of God are meant to be honored... and all this, without even getting to the dissidents' unwaveringly ideological positions on the ethical and social issues that the Church considers non-negotiable!
In contrast to Mr. Vian's editorial, here is a down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts analysis of the Pope's homily. Though I have some reservations about some of his statements, he, too, ends up citing the bishop's pledge of obedience I cited above:
Papa Ratzinger's words
and key changes at State
by Gian Guido Vecchi
Translated from
Sept. 13, 2009
"We know how in civilian society, and even in the Church, things go bad when many of those who have been given a responsibility, work for themselves rather than for the community, for the common good".
Thus spoke Benedict XVI yesterday in his homily at the Mass to ordain five new Curial archbishops, who thus become successors to the apostles. It sounded like a specific exhortation, after the internal cracks that the Church in Italy sustained because of the Boffo case.
Across the Tiber, they say Benedict XVI studiously avoided any other appointments or distractions in order to devote one day to polish the homily, which was unmitakably 'Ratzingerian' from the first word to the last.
The most immediate reference point is the letter he wrote all the bishops of the world on March 10, at the height of the controversy that erupted after he lifted the excommunication of the four Lefebvrian bishops.
The homily also comes just several days before the autumn meeting in Rome on Sept. 21 of the Permanent Council of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI). The Boffo episode uncovered tensions between the CEI and the Holy See, evidenced by the lack of harmony between the reactions of both sides on how to counteract the attack on Boffo, who ended up resigning his editorship of Avvenire, the bishops' newspaper, as well as his leadership of the CEI's radio-TV networks.
The March 10 letter and yesterday's homily are related texts, starting with the reference last March to St. Paul's dramatic words on the 'biting and devouring each other' that can take place among the members of the Church, and now the exhortation that bishops must learn to be servants and be vigilant against quarreling.
In any case, the Pope is calling for unity in the Church, to a common responsibility that everyone in the Church hierarchy must be aware of.
It was noted that the setting for the Pope's words was in itself very suggestive: Concelebrating and co-consecrators with him were Cardinal Bertone, his Secretary of State, and Cardinal Levada, whom he had chosen to replace himself as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - to consecrate five new bishops who had worked in the Curia.
It almost summed up the 'gentle reform' of the Curia that Benedict XVI has gradually carried out during the past four years of his Pontificate.
Among the five new bishops, most prominent are Pietro Parolin and Gabriele Caccia - now Apostolic Nuncio to Venezuela and Lebanon, respectively - who were, in effect, third-ranking in John Paul II's Secretariat of State, and in the first four years of Benedict XVI's.
Replacing them are Mons. Ettore Balestrero, 42, as undersecretary for foreign relations in place of Parolin, and Mons. Peter Brian Wells, 46, as undersecretary-counselor for general affairs in place of Caccia.
Announcement of their nominations on August 17 completed the revamp at the top of the secretariat of State which is now completely Ratzingerian, and therefore also, more firmly under the control of Cardinal Bertone.
[Parolin and Caccia are widely believed to have pushed their own Old Guard agenda at State, generally counterproductive to Bertone's program.]
For his part, Bertone, in a 2007 letter to the then newly-named president of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, had said he wanted to take over the 'reins' of conducting the policy of the Church in Italy in its relationship with the Italian government, preferring a more 'institutional' approach minus any polemics. Cardinal Bagnasco has shown a more 'pastoral' approach compared to the active intervention of the Ruini years.
[But without in any way becoming a handmaiden to the Secretary of State, kudos to him. I still maintain that the Holy See has much less business and jurisdiction speaking for the Church of Italy on Italian domestic affairs than the Italian bishops' conference, for heaven's sake!
For some reason, Bertone appears to be hostile to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who handled this aspect brilliantly for more than 15 years. Perhaps because Ruini won the round on whom the Pope should name as CEI president: Bertone had advocated a little-known bishop from the south of Italy, Ruini wanted Cardinal Scola of Venice, and the resulting compromise candidate, Cardinal Bagnasco, turned out to be very much like Ruini.
Also, Bagnasco may appear to be less 'interventionist' than Ruini, but he has not been any less firm and forward with his statements of the Church position on social issues - and in his prompt support for the Pope whenever the latter is beleaguered in the media.]
It is in this context that the Pope's words must be considered, in which he calls on all bishops to faithfulness, to prudence that is not shrewdness, and to consider the essence of their ministry - "to heal man's most serious internal wound - his remoteness from God".
[The Pope's March 10 letter stated this mission in even more striking words that had a red-hot urgency. But I can't see how the Pope's words could apply to Bertone and Bagnasco in any way. From all accounts, Bagnasco never picked a fight with Bertone even after the February 2007 "I'm in charge here" letter. More important, both are undoubtedly loyal to Benedict XVI.
But could it be his way of telling State and the CEI to quit squabbling on all levels? Then Yes, among other things - if only because it is so unseemly and indecorous. But the Pope's words are not narrowly aimed: they have many direct implications on the actions, past and present, of many bishops, priests and nuns]
If the Boffo episode exacerbated any bad blood between some Italian bishops and the Holy See
[the handful of outspokenly dissident Italian bishops are appallingly intransigent in their disrespect and defiance of the Pope that they make the American dissidents sound tame in comparison!], Cardinals Bertone and Bagnasco want to restore harmony between their respective institutions.
Perhaps both should be constantly reminded of Benedict XVI's citation of Dante's words about St. Bonanveture when he visited Bagnoregio last week. Explaining the poet's lines about Bonaventure in the
Divine Comedy, Benedict XVI said "Bonaventure always set aside his concerns for temporal realities to attend first to the spiritual care of souls".
In this context then, even 'institutional lines' cannot be limited only to holding firm on issues, without pastoral involvement.
[Which goes to my argument that the CEI, under Ruini and under Bagnasco, simply executes the pastoral plan for the Church in Italy that is approved by the Primate of Italy, the Pope himself, who spelled out his pastoral priorities clearly in his great address - described at the time as a mini-encyclical - to the once-a-decade national convention of the Italian Church in Verona in 2006. And part of that pastoral plan is an active political apostolate to make the Church position known and felt in social issues affecting all Italians.]
Even more fundamental is each bishop's individual response to one of the questions asked at an episcopal ordination: "Do you wish to
pledge loyalty, subordination, obedience according to canonical rules, to the Blessed Apostle Peter, to whom God gave the power to bind and loosen ties, and to me and my successors, the Roman Pontiffs?"
Here is a translation of Messori's baffling interview, in which he is focused on the line about careerism while seeming to ignore the fundamental problem of unalloyed self-centeredness and disobedience to the Pope. It's true his interviewer just as bafflingly misses the point, but Messori could have brought it up himself!
The Pope and his bishops:
'Too many unacceptable situations'
Interview with Vittorio Messori
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from
Sept. 13, 2009
Vittorio Messori, to whom was Benedict XVI's advice against careerism in the Church directed?
I will say i with a somewhat bitter smile: in the secularized West, there is little reason to exhort the bishops not to look after their own interests. They are almost pariahs. In France, Spain, Holland Belgium, they count for nothing at all now. Indeed, they are looked on with great mistrust, or worss, ignored as survivors to be tolerated.
Under Zapatero in Spain, everything is done not to invite them to official functions. In France, it is expressly forbidden by law, and the situation is not much different elsewhere in Europe [
[except Italy, surely!]
The problem of using the Church to serve a bishop's personal interests instead of serving the Church herself, concerns above all Africa and Latin American, where the status of the priest, and especially the bishop, is a dream for most of the local young men who are poor, and who, for this reason, crowd the seminaries.
The bishop of the Third World, where religiosity is intense and civilian authority is discredited, still occupies the top step of the social ladder - I would say, almost as it was in the Europe of the ancien regime [before the French Revolution].
The Pope denounces serious internal problems in the Church. What is the situation in Italy?
The problem for bishops - more for the rest of the West than in Italy (where clerical presence is still high even if it has only weak power5s now) - is not to make a career but simply to survive. In central and northern Europe, but particularly in France and Germany, many dioceses are being integrated because they can no longer be administered separately for lack of priests, and historic church buildings are up for sale.
In this situation, what social weight can a bishop have and what mantle does he wear? I think the Pope's concerns are elsewhere.
[That's an unbelievably narrow reading of what the Pope said! Careerism was but a concrete example of the underlying problem - which is the selfishness and egoism of individual bishops, certainly much more marked among Western know-it-alls.]
According to the Pope, many men of the Church "to whom responsibility has been entrusted, work for themselves rather than for the conmunity. For example?
"In the culture of the Third World, the authoritative person, the head (as the bishop is), should be surrounded by a wife and children. Celibacy is not considered a virtue but
a deficiency that deprives ta man of every prestige.
[That's a pretty sweeping statement to make. It is not true in Latin America, conditioned by more than 400 years of the Catholic experience, and it is certainly not the case in much of Asia. While it may be true in some African societies, that has not prevented the growth of a Church where even priests who start families generally do not advertise the fact! And I do not know if a study has been made to determine whether the percentage of priests violating their vow of celibacy is any greater in Africa than in Europe or North America!]
In its realism, in many African as well as Latin American countries, it appears that the Church tolerates situations that should be unacceptable. According to the old theory of the 'lesser evil'. Which is better: to have a priest who is far from impeccable, or to have him abandon his flock, tearing apart ecclesial communities snd leaving them without a spiritual guide?
Probably this is one of the reasons why in many places, Africa, which was Christianized by the heroic sacrifices of 19th century missionaries, has replaced the Gospel with the Koran.
It is one of the reasons why Latin Ameirca is fast becoming a 'formerly Catholic' continent with the impressive advance of Protestant sects.
Imams and pastors do not have to worry about celibacy. Nonetheless, allow me to make astatement that is rather countercurrent.
Which is?
Whoever looks at the history of the Church knows that the terrible bloody ordeal of the French Revolution was not in vain. The Popes who came after the fall of Napoleon down to our day form a chain of men of God who had great culture, dignity and commitment - that is why many of them are now saints and blesseds, and many more will be in the future. Likewise, many cardinals, bishops and priests.
Benedict XVI's call takes off from the Gospel and a Letter from St. Paul, and thus, is valid for all time. But above all, it was applicable to pre-Revolutionary France] when the prelates, all nobles, often thought first about their personal presige and that of their family line.
Is there a problem about the ruling class in the Church?
Unlike other institutions, the Catholic hierarchy has not declined with time. On the contrary, it has improved qualitatively. One must not be misled by the stories of homosexuality in the clergy, especially in North America.
The damage here was in the submission of the Church to what is politically correct, opening wide the doors of convents and seminaries to just anybody in the name of 'non-discrmination'. Even so, the incidents have involved many priests and religious but very rarely, the Church hierarchy.
[Not directly, no, but indirectly in covering up for the erring priests or simply moving them from one place to another without doing anything proactive to prevent more victims.]
On the other hand, this writer in Libero goes straight to the disobedient 'heart of darkness' as the major problem in the Church today.
When our Pope criticizes
the selfishness of bishops...
by Luigi Santambrogio
Translated from
Sept. 13, 2009
"Be men of faith, altruistic and faithful" who do not think of "your own interests nor the fashion of the times" but rather follow "prudence and truth, that is Christ".
It's easyto imagine who said this - someone in the Church who has the authority to interpellate consciences sharply. Indeed, the words are those of Benedict XVI. But to whom were they addressed?
Yesterday morning, the Pope celebrated five episcopal ordinations, and his embarassing challenge was not directed to the faithful but to his own primary co-workers: the bishops - those who have the duty in the Church to guarantee the permanence of its doctrine and the mysterious and concrete presence of Him who founded the Church.
So if the Pontiff uses these words to the Church hierarchy, it is not by chance, nor in the name of some severe morality, that he calls his own collaborators to order.
The fact is that Papa Ratzinger, even before becoming Pope, has clearly seen the dangers that undermine the Church from within.
First of all,
the disobedience to the Magisterium in favor of personal opinions, 'the fashion of the times', or special interests. In his battle against a mortal enemy for mankind - that ethical and cultural relativism which Papa Ratzinger denounces in some way in all his messages to the faithful - he does not spare the Church hierarchy.
In this, he does not go easy on his own collaborators, namely, the bishops. Remember? One month before he was elected to Peter's Chair, then Cardinal Ratzinger famously exclaimed in his text for the Good Friday Via Crucis on 2005, "How much filth there is in the Church! How much arrogance!"
Later, as Pope, he would experience all this in his own flesh, as the Apostle Paul had prophecies: "The law finds fulfillment in only one precept: love your neighbor as you love yourself. But if you bite and devour each other, then watch out at least that you do not end up destroying each other".
The worst bites so far were those that followed his remission of excommunication from the four Lefebvrian bishops. His invitation to reconciliation with a Church group that has been separated for some time was transformed into its opposite.
Benedict XVI was virtually submerged in an avalanche of criticisms, accusations and mistrust expressed with surprising violence. The more scandalous because the worst bites came from within the Church hierarchy - fierce as wolves though dressed in sheep's clothing.
Extremists on both sides did not or chose not to understand the Pope's gesture of mercy. Some came to question the Pope's very attitude towards the Jews, others aggravated rifts within the Curia, particularly in the Secretariat of State. And finally, their depiction of Benedict XVI as an isolated man, out of touch with everyone.
These attacks led Benedict XVI to write last March, in a letter to all Catholic bishops about the Lefebvrian issue, that "even today, biting and devouring each other continues in the Church".
The Pope tells the bishops he is "saddened by the fact that even Catholics, who, after all, might have had a better knowledge of the situation, thought they had to attack me with open hostility".
Thus, his new exhortation yesterday was more than justified as he consecrated five more to the mission of being 'servants of God'.
The Church of Benedict XVI today has many enemies on the outside, especially in certain circles of the intelligentsia, hostile to a Pope who continually asks others to be open to the transcendent, starting from reason as the common horizon.
But the more insidious enemies are in ambush within the Church, crouched behind the columns, hidden behind the fumes of incense, sometimes even taking on the peaceful, educated semblance of dialog with the world.
Indeed, the most extreme challenge comes in the form of the 'parallel Magisterium', when ranking Church members proceed
etsi Benedictus non daretur, as though Benedict did not exist.
The most flagrant case is what Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has been writing for some time, such as the book he wrote with the ultra-liberal rector of Milan's San Raffaele University, Fr. Luigi Verze, or his article in
Corriere della Sera in which he states it cannot be known when human life begins or ends!
This is precisely the gray zone that Paul VI started to denounce towards the end of his years. Greatly alarmed by the dissent and conflicts within the Church after Vatican-II, he publicly said - to a stunned world - that "the fumes of Satan had penetrated into the Church... The Church is being attacked by its own members, and such a tumult assaults the Pope first of all".
And in an interview with the writer and theologian Jean Guitton, he said: "Within the Catholic world, it often seems that what predominates is non-Catholic thinking, and it can happen that such thinking may get the upper hand tomorrow. But it can never represent the thinking of the Church. It is necessary that a small flock [of true Catholics] subsists, no matter how small it is".
It is the subsistence of this flock that Papa Ratzinger has been defending.
[Cardinal Ratzinger called them the 'creative minority' in the 1994 Ratzinger Report.]
More than 30 years have passed since the words of Paul VI. And the danger remains. Stronger and more threatening than ever.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/09/2009 03:14]