This is not strictly about Benedict XVI. However, on Friday, Italian state TV will present a program on Vatican-II using footage taken during the 1962-1965 Council. Apparently included in the selection for the program will be part of Cologne Cardinal Josef Frings's now-historic intervention prepared for him by his theologian consultant from the University of Bonn, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger. One can only hope that an Anglophone TV outlet will soon purchase the program and present it in translation.
Italian state TV to broadcast
Vatican-II documentary this week
TURIN, Sept. 22 (Translated/Adapted from ASCA) - RAI-3, the third channel of Italian state TV, will broadcast Friday night a documentary on "The Council", in its 12-year-old series 'La Grande Storia' (The Big Story) which has focused heretofore on portraits and biographies of the Popes.
This was announced by RAI executives at a news conference and preview of the documentary.
Thanks to the decision of Pope Paul VI to allow daily audio and film documentation of the sessions of Vatican-II, the program is said to be a 'true and proper' account of what is considered to be 'the greatest modern development in the history of Catholicism', which also led to the troubled history of the Church in the five decades since the Council.
Announced by John XXIII on January 25, 1959, and following three years of preparation, the largest ecumenical council in church history opened on October 11, 1962, in St. Peter's Basilica, with the participation of 2,500 bishops from around the world. It ended three years later (with sessions held September-December), on December 8, 1965.
Paul VI, who succeeded John XXIII in June 1963, presided over most of the Council and had the unenviable task of overseeing the initial implementation of its decisions.
"During the years that the Berlin Wall was being constructed," said Rai-3 director Paolo Ruffini, "the Church was opening to the modern world. Without the Council, the Church would not have the language it does today."
Among the curiosities in the documentary is the fact that the Council sessions were conducted in Latin.
[Also a great irony, considering that the progressivist 'spirit of Vatican II' fanatics swiftly moved to eliminate Latin from the liturgy and from the curriculum in seminaries, contrary to explicit statements in Vatican-II documents about the use and study of Latin.]
But most interesting to today's audiences would be the unscheduled intervention of a German bishop who told the Council at the beginning that it did not have to follow the agenda set down by a preparatory commission of the Roman Curia, and that the participating bishops should be allowed to speak for themselves.
The address, which was applauded enthusiastically, was co-written by a young theologian called Joseph Ratzinger.
During the Council, Phillips donated the recording equipment used as well as all the recordings made.
Unfortunately, it does not look as if the documentary would show any footage of Prof. Ratzinger at the time, or it would have been mentioned explicitly.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/09/2009 17:54]