BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

January 9, Wednesday after Epiphany

Center, modern icon showing the trip to Canterbury from Italy by Theodore of Tarsus and Adrian, who would succeed him as Archbishop of Canterbury.
ST. ADRIAN (HADRIAN) OF CANTERBURY (b North Africa ca. 635, d England 710)
Benedictine Abbot and Scholar
A Berber like St. Augustine, his family left Africa for Italy where he became a Benedictine monk and abbot of a monastery
near Naples. Pope St. Vitalian twice offered to make him Archbishop of Canterbury but he declined. The second time, he
recommended his friend Theodore of Tarsus (who would become St.Ttheodore of Canterbury), then already 67. The Pope
agreed, provided Adrian accompanied him to Canterbury, where Theodore made him head the abbey founded by Saint
Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century. Adrian, a gifted scholar, made the abbey one of the great centers of learning
in his time. To this day, the 'books of Theodore and Hadrian', including their commentaries on the Bible, are still issued
in modern editions as source material for Anglo-Saxon England. Adrian died peacefully in the abbey. The Normans completely
rebuilt the Anglo-Saxon abbey, and during the work, St. Adrian's remains were unearthed in 1091 and found to be incorrupt.
His tomb became an object of pilgrimage where many miracles were said to take place.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/010913.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - The Holy Father offered further reflections on the mystery of the Incarnation, saying we must
respond to his gift of himself to us with "a faith which accepts the truth of his word and shapes our daily lives".


@Pontifex 1/9/13

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY




At his second General Audience of the year, Pope Benedict XVI today offered further reflections on the mystery of the Incarnation, saying we must respond to God's gift of himself to us with "a faith which accepts the truth of his word and shapes our daily lives".

In English, he said:

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In this Christmas season, we celebrate the "Incarnation" –the mystery of the Son of God who "became flesh" (cf. Jn 1:14) for our salvation, so that we might become, in him, adoptive sons and daughters of our heavenly Father.

In the Child of Bethlehem, God gives us the greatest gift possible, the gift of himself. For our sake, God became one of us, sharing our human existence to the fullest and giving us in exchange a share in his own divine life.

This great mystery reveals the reality and depth of God’s love for us. It also invites us to respond to him in a faith which accepts the truth of his word and shapes our daily lives.

In contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation, we see in Christ the new Adam, the perfect man who inaugurates the new creation, restores our likeness to God and reveals our sublime human dignity and vocation (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 22).

As we continue to reflect on this great mystery in these final days of Christmastide, may we rejoice ever more fully in the light of the Lord’s glory and be ever better conformed to the image of the Son of God made man.

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Incidentally, it was the first time Archbishop Georg Gaenswein assisted the Pope at the GA as Prefect of the Pontifical Household, seated to his right now, instead of to his left as before.



Here is my translation of the catechesis:

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Dear brothers and sisters,

During this Christmas season, let us dwell once more on the great mystery of God who came down from his heaven to enter our flesh.

In Jesus, God incarnated himself - he became a man like us, and thus opened for us the way to his heaven, towards full communion with him.

These days, the expression 'incarnation of God' has sounded often in our churches to express the reality that we celebrate in the Holy Nativity: The Son of God became man, as we recite in the Credo,

But what does it mean - this word that is so central for the Christian faith? 'Incarnation' comes from the Latin incarnatio. St. Ignatius of Antioch, at the end of the first century, and above all, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, used the word in reflecting on the Prolog of the Gospel of St. John, particularly the verse "The Word became flesh" (Jn 1,14).

Here, the word 'flesh' (carne, in Latin and Italian)), in Hebrew usage, refers to man in his wholeness, all of man, but precisely under the aspect of his transcience and temporality, his poverty and his contingency [being subject to unpredictable events].

This underscores to us that the salvation brought to man by God-made-flesh touches man in his concrete reality and therefore, in whatever situation he is. God took on the human condition to heal it of everything that separates man from God, to allow us to call him, in his only Son, with the name 'Abba', Father, to become truly children of God.

St. Irenaeus states: "This is the reason the Word became flesh, and that the Son of God is also the Son of Man - so that man, entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine filiation, becomes a child of God" (Adversus haereses, 3,19,1: PG 7,939; cfr Catechism of the Catholic Church, 460).

"The Word became flesh" is one of those truths to which we have become so accustomed that we are almost no longer struck by the grandeur of the event which it expresses. Indeed, during this Christmas season, during which the verse often appears in liturgy, we are often more aware of the external aspects - the
colors' of celebration, one might say - rather than to the core of the great Cristian novelty we are celebrating: something that was absolutely unthinkable, that only God could make happen, and a mystery which we can enter only through faith.

The Word that is with God, the Word that is God, Creator of the world (cfr Jn 1,1), by whom and through whom all things were created (cfr 1,3),, who has accompanied and accompanies man in his history with his light (cfr 1,4-5),, becomes a man among others, he takes his dweliing among us, becomes one of us (cfr 1,14).

The Second Vatican Ecumenical Council says: "By His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin" (Gaudium et spes, 22).

It is therefore important to recover our sense of wonder at this mystery, to allow ourselves to be wrapped in the grandeur of this event: Gpd, true God, Creator of everything, walked our streets as a man, entering man's time, to communicate his own life to us (cfr Jn 1 1-4).

And he did it not with the splendor of a sovereign who subjugates the world to his power, but with the humility of a baby.

I wish to underscore a second element: At the Feast of the Nativity, we often exchange gifts with the persons closes to us. Sometimes, this can be just a conventional act, but in general, it expresses affection, it is a sign of love and esteem.

In the prayer over the offerings in the dawn Mass on the Solemnity of the Nativity, the Church prays: "Accept, Father, our offering on this night of light, and through this mysterious exchange of gifts, transform us into Christ your Son, who has raised man to your side in glory".

The idea of giving is therefore at the center of liturgy and calls our attention to the original gift at Christmas: On that holy night, God, in becoming man, gave himself to men and for men - he gave himself to us. God made his only Son a gift to us- he had taken on our humanity to give us his divinity. This is the great gift of Christmas.

Even in our own gift-giving, it is not important what the gift costs, since whoever does not give a little of himself always gives too little. Indeed, often it is sought to replace heart and the commitment of self-giving with money, with material things.

The mystery of the Incarnation shows us that God did not act that way: He did not give us something, but he gave us himself in his only=begotten Son. We find in this a model for our giving, so that our relationships, especially the most important ones, may be guided by the gratuitousness of love.

I wish to offer a third reflection: The fact of the Incarnation, that God became a man like us, shows us the unprecedented realism of divine love. God's action, in fact, is not limited to words - indeed, we can say that He was not content with simply speaking to man [as he did through the Jewish Patriarchs and the Prophets), but immersed himself in our history and took upon him the hardships and the weight of human living.

The Son of God truly became man. He was born of the Virgin Mary, at a specific place and time, in Bethlehem during the reign of Emperor Augustus, under the governorship of Quirinus (cfr Lk 2,1-2). He grew up in a family, he had friends, he gathered around him a group of disciples,he instructed the Apostles so they could carry on his mission, and he ended the course of his earthly life on the cross.

This way in which God acted is a strong stimulus for us to ask ourselves about the realism of our faith, which must not be limited to the sphere of sentiment, of emotions, but must penetrate the concreteness of our existence. It should touch our everyday life and orient it in a practical way.

God did not stop at words but showed us how to live, in sharing our human experience in everything but sin. The Catechism of St. Pius X, with its essentiality, which some of us had studied as children, gives this response to the question, "To live according to God, what must we do?": "To live according to God, we must believe in the truths revealed by him and observe his commandments with the help of his grace, which we obtain through the sacraments and prayer".

Faith has a fundamental aspect that concerns not just the mind and the heart, but our whole life.

I offer a last element for your reflection: St. John says that the Word, the Logos, was in the beginning with God, and that everything was created through the Word, and nothing that exists was made without it (cfr Jn 1,1-3).

The Evangelist is clearly referring to the account of Creation in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, and sees it in the light of Christ. This is a fundamental criterion in the Christian reading of the Bible: the Old and the New Testaments always go together, and it is from the New Testament that the more profound meaning of the Old Testament is revealed.

The same Word that was always with God, that is God himself, and through whom and because of whom everything was created (cfr Col 1,16-27),, became man. Eternal and infinite God had immersed himself into human finitude, in his creature, in order to lead back man and all of Creation to him.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says: "The first creation finds its meaning and its summit in the new creation in Christ, the splendor of which surpasses that of the first creation" (No. 349).

The Fathers of the Church considered Christ alongside Adam to the point of calling him 'the second Adam' or the final Adam, that is, the perfect image of God.

With the Incarnation, the Son of God began a new Creation which gives the complete answer to the question "What is man?" Only in Jesus is the fulfillment of the plan of God for the human being manifested: he is the ultimate man, the definitive man, according to God.

And so, the Second Vatican Council forcefully reiterates: "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear" (Gaudium et spes, 22; cfr Catechism of the Catholic Church, 359).

In that Baby, the Son of God whom we contemplate at Christmastime, we can recognize the true face, not just of God, but the true face of the human being. Only by opening ourselves to the action of his grace and by seeking to follow him every day, shall we be able to realize God's plan for us, for each of us.

Dear friends, at this time, let us meditate on the grand and marvelous riches of the mystery of the Incarnation, so that the Lord may enlighten us and transform us ever more into the image of his Son who became man for us.

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At the risk of sounding selfish, I am truly grateful for the spiritual exercise I derive from translating the Holy Father's texts, in the process of which I get to assimilate his words and their significance with a far greater resonance than I would just reading a readymade translation.

The RAI-TG2 special
on Benedict XVI

Thanks to Lella, who posted the link on her blog,
http://www.tg2.rai.it/dl/tg2/RUBRICHE/PublishingBlock-8f49a286-7527-4264-9979-72b4aca618d8.html
we can now conveniently watch the DOSSIER presentation by Lucio Brunelli aired on Italian TV on Monday night.

It's all in Italian, but you don't need the audio really to appreciate the video clips Brunelli has chosen to show us - footage that usually never gets shown to the public because for 'newscast' purposes, only a few seconds of it can be shown.

This includes the Pope's visit to the Sant'Egidio 'Viva gli anziani' home last month, and his visit to Rebibbia prison in December 2011, where we get a chance to see the Pope interact with older people and with inmates.

Brunelli also replays the Pope's answer to a First Communicant who asks him how does he know that Jesus is present in the Eucharist (In effect his answer was: "Many things we do not see - reason, intelligence,electricity - but we know they exist because we see their effects. So it is with Christ"; and to the Japanese girl who asked him on a Good Friday telecast for RAI why God allows bad things like the tsunami to happen. (Memorably, he says that even he does not have the answer, but that we can be sure that even if we do not seem to understand events, God is always on our side.)

Brunelli replays the video of the Pope's inflight Q&A on the way to Portugal in May 2009, when he says that the worst persecution of the Church is not from the outside, but from the sins of those within the Church - and how it was therefore essential for the Church to show penitence, undergo purification, and demonstrate true conversion, exercising forgiveness as well as justice.

While playing comments from a variety of resource persons, Brunelli replays video clips of public events with the Pope, including outtakes (footage RAI never uses in its broadcasts) of GAs and Angelus assemblies in St. Peter's Square or Castel Gandolfo, where we can hear all the crowd acclamation that we never get to hear in brief newsclips) that all show how Benedict XVI is far from the cold and remote personality that the MSM had rigged him out to be.

Other video clips are from some of his trips abroad (putting on a Panama hat in Germany, watching African dancers in Cameroon, scenes from his state visit to the UK, the storm during the WYD prayer vigil in Madrid followed by the Eucharistic Adoration with the fervent silence of a million young people, etc) There's also a wonderful if brief clip showing him in the 1990s walking across St. Peter's Square to go to work - the very portrait of a dynamic and oh-so-elegant man!

Among the resource persons, Enzo Bianchi, prior of Bose, says Benedict XVI will be remembered for 'emphasizing the essential centrality of Christ in the Church'. Sandro Magister and Andrea Tornielli, Vaticanistas, point out that media oftren prefer to play uo the negative while ignoring or downplaying the positive about the Church and the Pope.

Marxist philsopher Marco Troni and the director of the Fondazione Gramsci, Giuseppe Vacca - who have been called 'Ratzingerian Marxists' because they share much of Benedict XVI's view of man ('his anthropological vision') - are enthusiastic about how a brilliant intellectual like the Pope can communicate so well and simply to everyone - "His books can be read by anyone" - and yet, his intellectuality never diminishes the pastorality of his communication.

Brunelli also uses two amusing videos of the Pope - the first from Castel Gandolfo in August 2009, when he left the window without giving his usual blessing after Angelus prayers, and came back a few seconds later to apologize that he had "forgotten to do the most important thing"; and the clip with which Brunelli ends the broadcast: on the last occasion when the Pope had to release 'peace doves' with two children from Italian Cahtolic Action - and both doves refused to fly off. "They don't want to leave the Pope's house," he said with amusement.

The presentation made me realize in practical terms that even if this Pontificate has only been (almost) eight years so far, a great number of amazing things have already taken place and continue to take place that cannot all fit into a 45-minute video, however hard one may try to cram it all. Brunelli was wise to limit his overview to the usually unpublicized aspects of Benedict XVI's personality and humanity,

This Pope may not have called an ecumenical council as John XXIII did - how many Popes get to do that, after all (21 out oF 265, so far) - or helped bring about the collapse of Communism as John Paul II did, but he has had to deal with new generational challenges that were hardly imaginable in his precedessors' time (mainly, rampant secularism in the global village, free-market capitalism unmoored from all ethical considerations, the rise of Islam, the new age of anti-Christian persecution, and the growing acceptance of social practices that violate natural law and civilized behavior aa mankind has known it).

Amid all of which, he has focused on the essentials of the faith with laserlike clarity and penetration, while also managing to break two unfortunate obstacles to Church credibility that were not ever tackled seriously before him - sexual misconduct by priests and their superiors who helped them cover up; and the lack of financial transparency in Vatican affairs.

One has to believe in Divine Providence for having made Joseph Ratzinger the right Pope at the right time. DEO GRATIAS, and AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER!

Here are a few more pictures of Archbishop Gaenswein - now in bishop's regalia, with purple zucchetto, mozzetta and pectoral cross, everyday insignias of a bishop that somehow make the reality of his new rank much more immediate than the miter and pastoral staff he got after his ordination... Thanks to Gloria for those from the Pope's meeting with the diplomatic corps Monday morning, and to Beatrice for those of the audience with the Pope that afternoon with Mons. Georg's family and friends....

Re-introducing
Archbishop Gaenswein


Mons. Gaenswein is not in the picture which shows the Holy Father using his cane on his way to the Sala Regiafor the audience with the diplomatic corps.

The rest of the pictures at the reception for the Diplomatic Corps show Mons. Gaenswein taking his place for the first time as Prefect of the Pontifical Household to the right of the Pope.






That same afternoon, the Holy Father gave separate audiences to two of his four new archbishops (Mons. Gaensswein and Mons, Thevenin) with their families who came to Rome for the ordination. Beatrice picked up these photos from the Vatican photo service catalog. The first three photos appear to be the presentation of a gift from the Holy Father to the new bishop - possibly a set of commemorative medals of the Pontificate - as the aide also has a tray of what looks like rosary boxes to give out to the members of Mons. Georg's 'delegation' from his hometown of Riedern am Wald in the Black Forest of Germany.






Allow me this time to indulge the fondness I have felt towards Georg Gaenswein almost from the very first time he came to my attention in the days following April 19, 2005, because I got the immediate impression of someone who was devoted, attentive and loving to the Holy Father. And if he was going to be his closest associate - as he was bound to be, being his private secretary - then someone like him was what the Holy Father needed to get him through the unimaginable 'routine' work load of a Pope's day.

As we soon learned about GG's family background, his education and his credentials, it was apparent that Cardinal Ratzinger had the right instincts, to say the least, when he chose him to succeed Mons. Josef Clemens who had worked with him for 19 years. The Holy Father's decision to honor (the verb I prefer in this case) GG by making him a Curial head - and therefore, an archbishop, to begin with - was certainly unexpected and unprecedented, but entirely fitting. For practical reasons (having GG both private secretary and Prefect of the Pontifical Household streamlines the administration of the household itself, and the Pope's schedules and physical commitments) and for meritorious reasons (he has evidently enabled the Holy Father to carry out his tasks with a manageable balance of the essential and traditional papal duties, optional tasks that would be most helpful to his Petrine ministry, and enough free time for the octogenarian Pope to read and write, to pray and meditate). Such management of the Pope's time inevitably means saying No to a great many people who would be none too pleaaed with him, but for that, he is the Pope's firewall (protective dragon might be the more appropriate metaphor).

Just by comparison, it was not till the 20th year of his Pontificate, in 1998, that John Paul II named his longtime secretary Mons. Stanislaw Dsiwisz, a bishop, when he named him adjunct to the Prefect of the Pontifical Household. Dsiwisz was elevated to the dignity of archbishop three years later, and in January 2005, the Pope named him Archbishop of Cracow, a post he did not assume until after John Paul's death. Benedict XVI made him a cardinal in the first consistory of his Pontificate in 2006.

The first thought that came to my mind when GG's promotion was announced was the sorrow he must feel that his beloved mother Gertrud is no longer around to see him honored in this way by the Pope. The second thought was whether his ailing father would Be well enough to come to Rome for his episcopal ordination. The photos taken at the Vatican show that he wasn't present either. (News reports said that two of his brothers and one sister came to Rome for his ordination; apparently the other sister could not come.) I think probably the absence of his parents - and the sheer implications of his new responsibilities - might explain why most of the pictures taken at the ordination showed him in an almost melancholic mood, brightening up only during the exchange of the sign of peace with the cardinals and bishops.

For everything he has done and will do for the Holy Father, Mons. Gaenswein deserves our prayers that he may continue doing so with God's grace, as an exemplary priest and Christian in the footsteps of his Heilige Vater.

P.S. None of the regular newspbotos carried the following pictures from yesterday's GA, for which Gloria has quite a selection from Profimedia on her Phgotogallery...

It indicates that in the new post-Harvey configuration, Mons. Alfred Xuereb, the affable Maltese prelate who took the place of Mons. Mietek Mocryzski as the other private secretary to Benedict XVI (when 'Mietek', a holdover from John Paul II, was named Archbishop of Lvov), will now play a more visible role in the Pope's public events, taking over some of the functions Mons. Gaenswein used to carry out before he became Prefect. (Not that it matters what I think but perhaps GG will continue to ride in the Popemobile with the Holy Father.

I'm a few days late posting this bit of exciting archeological news...

In the native city of St. Nicholas,
well-preserved Byzantine chapel unearthed under mud -
medieval Myra could well be waiting to be dug out
by Jennifer Pinkowski


DEMRE, Turkey, January 7 — In the fourth century A.D., a bishop named Nicholas transformed the city of Myra, on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Turkey, into a Christian capital.

Nicholas was later canonized, becoming the St. Nicholas of Christmas fame. Myra had a much unhappier fate.

After some 800 years as an important pilgrimage site in the Byzantine Empire it vanished — buried under 18 feet of mud from the rampaging Myros River. All that remained was the Church of St. Nicholas, parts of a Roman amphitheater and tombs cut into the rocky hills.

But now, 700 years later, Myra is reappearing.

Archaeologists first detected the ancient city in 2009 using ground-penetrating radar that revealed anomalies whose shape and size suggested walls and buildings.


Section of uncovered chapel. Inset, map showing location of Myra in Turkey.

Over the next two years they excavated a small, stunning 13th-century chapel sealed in an uncanny state of preservation. Carved out of one wall is a cross that, when sunlit, beams its shape onto the altar. Inside is a vibrant fresco that is highly unusual for Turkey.



The chapel’s structural integrity suggests that Myra may be largely intact underground. “This means we can find the original city, like Pompeii,” said Nevzat Cevik, an archaeologist at Akdeniz University who is director of the excavations at Myra, beneath the modern town of Demre.

Mark Jackson, a Byzantine archaeologist at Newcastle University in England, who was not involved in the research, called the site “fantastic,” and added,“This level of preservation under such deep layers of mud suggests an extremely well-preserved archive of information.”

Occupied since at least the fourth century B.C., Myra was one of the most powerful cities in Lycia, with a native culture that had roots in the Bronze Age. It was invaded by Persians, Hellenized by Greeks, and eventually controlled by Romans.

Until the chapel was unearthed, the sole remnant of Myra’s Byzantine era was the Church of St. Nicholas. (The bishop, also known as Nicholas the Wondermaker, was a native Lycian of Greek descent.)

First built in the fifth century A.D. and reconstructed repeatedly, it was believed to house his remains and drew pilgrims from across the Mediterranean. Today, Cyrillic signs outside souvenir shops cater to the Russian Orthodox faithful.

But Myra attracted invaders, too. Arabs attacked in the seventh and ninth centuries. In the 11th, Seljuk Turks seized the city, and the bones thought to be those of Nicholas were stolen away to Bari, in southern Italy, by merchants who claimed to have been sent by the pope.

By the 13th century, Myra was largely abandoned. Yet someone built the small chapel using stones recycled from buildings and tombs.

Decades later, several seasons of heavy rain appear to have sealed Myra’s fate. The chapel provides evidence of Myra’s swift entombment. If the sediment had built up gradually, the upper portions should show more damage; instead, except for the roof’s dome, at the surface, its preservation is consistent from bottom to top.

“It seems incredible,” said Engin Akyurek, a Byzantine archaeologist with Istanbul University who is excavating the site. He and his team dug down 18 feet to the base of chapel, where they discovered a few artifacts from the early 14th century. (At the time, Turks were gaining control of Anatolia, and after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 the Ottomans ruled for nearly five centuries.)

In the layers of mud between the 14th-century ground level and the late-Ottoman level — which is just shy of the modern surface — they discovered nothing at all.

Ceramics unearthed at the chapel and at St. Nicholas Church indicate that Myra remained unoccupied until the 18th century. And while a sunken city “may sound romantic,” said Dr. Jackson, the British scholar, “this mud promises to have preserved a treasure trove of information on the city during an important period of change.”

How classical cities transformed into Byzantine cities during the Christian era, especially between 650 and 1300, is a subject of much scholarly debate.

“Each city was different,” Dr. Jackson said, “and so we need high-quality, well-excavated evidence in order to contribute to the debate about the nature of urban change in this period.”

The fresco in the excavated chapel is especially striking. Six feet tall, it depicts the deesis (“prayer” or “supplication” in Greek). This is a common theme in Byzantine and Eastern Orthodox iconography, but the Myra fresco is different.

Where typically these depictions show Christ Pantocrator (Christ the Almighty) enthroned, holding a book and flanked by his mother, Mary, and John the Baptist, whose empty hands are held palms up in supplication, at Myra both John and Mary hold scrolls with Greek text.

John’s scroll quotes from John 1:29: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Mary’s is a dialogue from a prayer for the Virgin Mary in which she intercedes on behalf of humanity, asking Jesus to forgive their sins. Dr. Akyurek said this scroll-in-hand version had been seen in Cyprus and Egypt, but never in Turkey.

The chapel is part of a larger dig that includes the Roman amphitheater — largely reconstructed in the second century after an earthquake leveled much of Lycia — and Andriake, Myra’s harbor, about three miles south. Long a major Mediterranean port, Andriake was where St. Paul changed ships on his way to Antioch (now Antakya).

Finds there include a workshop that produced royal purple and blue dye from murex snails and a fifth-century synagogue, the first archaeological evidence of Jewish life in Christian Lycia.

Much of Myra is under modern buildings in Demre, so archaeologists are unsure where they will dig next. They are buying property from local residents to prevent illegal excavations, though judging from the paucity of artifacts found so far, looters might be disappointed: the last residents of Myra seem to have looked at the rising floodwaters and packed their bags before they left.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 8, 2013, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Sealed Under Turkish Mud, a Well-Preserved Byzantine Chapel.

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January 10, Thursday after Epiphany

Extreme right: Icon of the three Cappadocian Fathers- Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzene and Gregory of Nyssa.
ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA (Cappadocia [in present Turkey],330-395) - Bishop, Theologian, Father of the Church
Gregory was the younger brother of St. Basil the Great. Their family Is distinguished by having seven canonized saints - grandmother, mother, and five of 9 siblings - and ultimately, two recognized Fathers of the Church, a feat that is unlikely to be repeated. Gregory was a brilliant student who got married early and was a professor of rhetoric before he was persuaded to devote himself to the Church. He studied for the priesthood and in 372 was named Bishop of Nyssa. He was at the forefront in the battle against the Arian heresy that denied the divinity of Jesus. He came into his own after Basil died in 379. He took part in the Councils of Antioch and of Constantinople, where he vigorously defended the Nicene Creed. Along with St. Basil and his great friend St. Gregory Nazianzene, Gregory of Nyssa is one of the three Cappadocian Fathers known as 'the triad who glorified the Trinity". Gregory is considered one of the great contributors to the mystical tradition and to early monasticism. Benedict XVI devoted two sessions to him in his catechetical cycle on the Church Fathers in 2007.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011013.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- H.E. Madame Slavica Karačić, Ambassador from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who presented her credentials.

- Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, his regent and five auxiliary bishops
to begin the second round of ad-limina visits in this Pontificate by the bishops of the world.

In 2013, the Italian bishops (220) will be taking their turn. Before this, Benedict XVI had met with almost all of the world's 5,000
bishops who were able to come to Rome ad limina Apostolorum. This obligatory pilgrimage to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and
Paul is also the occasion for the bishops, under canon law, to report to the Pope about their respective dioceses. It used to take
place every five years, but because of the increase in the number of the world's bishops, the interval has now been changed to every
seven years.

- Mons. Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (weekly meeting)

Noteworthy among today's episcopal appointments is the new Bishop of Limerick (Ireland), the Rev.
Brendan Leahy, of the Dublin clergy, who has been a professor of systematic theology at the Irish national
seminary in Maynooth, and is an associate member of the Pontifical Theological Academy.
Limerick has been under an apostolic administrator for three years since the former bishop resigned after having been criticized in
one of the Irish government reports on the handling of sex abuses by priests.

Vatican artist from Russia
follows the Old Masters


VATICAN CITY, January 10 (AFP) - After Michelangelo and Raphael, the Vatican's latest official painter is something of an unusual choice -- an ebullient Russian woman with a pet owl who is a regular at the court of cardinals and popes.

An Orthodox believer in the heart of Roman Catholicism, Natalia Tsarkova paints her classical-style portraits in a flat filled with Vatican memorabilia by the walls of the Holy See.

"I like the atmosphere here, I feel needed," Tsarkova told AFP in an interview in a studio with several unfinished works and back copies of the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

It is a dream come true for this graduate of the prestigious Moscow School of Arts, whose paintings, including portraits of Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II hang in Vatican palaces, Roman churches and museums around the world.

"When I studied in Moscow, masters like Raphael, Michelangelo, Pietro da Cortona were like God and now I find myself among them," said Tsarkova, a slight blonde woman with an easy laugh who wore a neat tweed dress and black shawl.

Tsarkova arrived in Rome in the early 1990s and began doing portraits of Roman aristocrats, who introduced her at the Vatican where her background captured the attention of late Pope John Paul II.

"He spoke Russian with me. He said 'Long live Russian art!'" remembers the now 45-year-old, thumping her fist for emphasis with the same glee as the late Pontiff.

John Paul II made great strides in rebuilding relations with the Russian Orthodox Church and Tsarkova said she too feels she can play a role.

"I feel like a small bridge between Orthodoxy and Catholicism. I am like a diplomat with art."

Tsarkova said she often reads religious texts written by her models so as to help understand them and inspire her work, but she also often makes small talk as they sit for hours in front of her.

"They have a very rich world view and they love Russia. We talk about everything, starting with history and ending with my pet owl Rufus," she said.

"It's very important to know how they think, to understand their energy," she said. "When I paint the portrait, that energy goes through my heart, my soul, and ends up on the canvas."

As for the Popes she has painted, Tsarkova said she reads papal doctrine as part of her research.

She spent hours studying Benedict in St Peter's Basilica where she was seated near him at Masses.

"I did millions of sketches! I was able to immerse myself in prayer and draw at the same time."


Obviously, the photo on the right, which comes from Tsarkova's website, resembles the actual portrait more than that on the left, with its bluish tint, taken back in 2007 when the artist was putting her finishing touches on the work.

The finished work is of a stern-looking pope seated on his throne with the light of the Holy Spirit behind him and images of angels all around him, including one who is a self-portrait of the artist.

"It's as if he gives life to the angels," she said.

Tsarkova said the Pope was a "sensitive" character who felt the importance of symbolism in painting "very deeply" and had greatly liked the inclusion of the angels in the final result.

"The face is very important, and the other objects are also very important since this is how they will be remembered for centuries to come." [YES! And thank God for contemporary artists who can still execute a 'classical' portrait, not some 'artistic distortion' that would require a psychoanalyst to decipher!]

"He is an unusual person, he is very sensitive, clever, patient. He is a noble person," she said of Benedict XVI.

Her latest work in progress is a painting of Saint George slaying a dragon. She said she is doing it for herself and was "inspired by the Holy Spirit".

A protege of award-winning Russian artist Ilya Glazunov, who is best known for his patriotic and religious themes, Tsarkova said she would not consider straying from her classical style.

"If you have one eye here and the other there, then it would be like a caricature!" she said.

Tsarkova's access to the papal residences helped lead to her newest venture -- a children's book inspired by a visit to a fish pond at the Castel Gandolfo papal summer residence near Rome.

The book tells the story of a young goldfish and his fondness for "the man in white" who feeds him bread -- a reference to the Pope's summer hobby.

At the book launch in December, the Pope's personal secretary Monsignor Georg Gaenswein said the book was "a window into the Holy Father's soul." [Gaenswein also wrote the Foreword to the book.]

Photo shows the Yad Vashem director and Nuncio Mons. Franco at the opening of the March 2008 conference that resulted in this book.

Pius XII and the Holocaust:
The truth and the black legend
by Andrea Tornielli

January 10, 2013

The book entitled Pius XII and the Holocaust: Current state of research(278 pp), edited by David Bankier, Dan Michman and Iael Nidam Orvieto, has been on sale at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial bookshop in Jerusalem for a few days now.

The book discusses the figure of Pope Pacelli and his actions during the closed-door international workshop held at Yad Vashem in March 2009.

Academics from all over the world met to compare their thoughts on Pius XII. The conference was organised by the International Institute for Holocaust Research and the Salesian Theological Institute in Jerusalem. The Apostolic Nuncio to Israel was also present.

The March 2009 meeting was held not long before Benedict XVI’s pilgrimage to Israel. Prior to the visit, a controversy had broken out over the content of the caption to a photograph of Pius XII, on show in the museum. The Holy See claimed the caption gave an unfoundedly negative picture of the late Pope who reigned during the Second World War.

But the intention of the late David Bankier, who was head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem from 2000 to 2010, was certainly not to fuel a debate about Pius XII under the impetus of political and diplomatic pressure linked to the forthcoming papal visit. The organisers’ intention was simply to encourage a serious debate on the most recently available documents and research.

The 2009 meeting in Jerusalem led to significant changes being made to the caption on Pius XII last year. [But that still does not remedy the fact that the pictures of the Pope are in the Museum's 'Hall of Shame' photo gallery at all, which is the basic protest that should be advanced by the Vatican and any thinking Catholic! Like, can't we just take him out of that gallery once and for all? He does not belong there! I could never understand why the caption was being disputed by the Vatican but not Pius XII's inclusion in a Hall of Shame. Especially because, by Yad Vashem's own standards, Pius XII would be a 'Righteous among Nations' thousands of times over. for having saved some 8,000 Jews from extermination in Rome alone, and deserves a place of honor instead in that museum's memorial forest for people they have officially recognized as 'Righteous among Nations'!]

The modified caption presents the Pope in a more complex and objective light. The decision did not go down well in many Jewish circles in or outside Jerusalem but was nevertheless defended by researchers at Yad Vashem, who backed it up with scientific data (i.e., documented).

The decision was not politically or diplomatically motivated, nor did it have anything to do with Jewish-Christian dialogue. After a long wait, the conference proceedings and a number of documents presented during the closed-door meeting have now finally been disclosed.

One very important element that emerged during the conference - which was attended by Thomas Brechenmacher, Jean-Dominique Durand, Dan Michman, Sergio Minerbi, Matteo Luigi Napolitano, Paul O’Shea, Michael Phayer, Dina Porat e Susan Zuccotti, amongst others – were the results of the research carried out by Sister Grazia Loparco, a historian, who is gathering documents and testimonies relating to Italian Catholic institutions which opened their doors to the persecuted Jews. [I am sure I posted the translation of an OR article about Sister Loparco's work some time in the past three years, but as the Forum posts are not indexed at all, I have to look for it.]

Of approximately 750 religious establishments (475 female ones and 270 male ones) in Rome alone, “we have confirmation of more than 200 - at least 220 female religious establishments and 70 male ones hiding Jews. The fact that no concrete information has been found yet regarding other institutes does not mean the assistance offered to the persecuted was not more extensive, because objective conditions advised caution and a number of witnesses who gave oral evidence confirm that they did not dare put anything down in writing at the time, as it was too risky.”

There is much disagreement over how far Pius XII influenced the convents’ decision. But it seems quite obvious - given the number of institutions involved and in particular one article published in the 25-26 October 1943 issues of the Holy See’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, a few days after the raid on the Jewish ghetto in Rome - that these initiatives had received the Pope’s approval. [Especially considering that he himself gave refuge to many Jews at the Apostolic Residence in Castel Gandolfo!]

A second closed-door meeting on various issues that remain open on Pius XII and the Holocaust was held on November 12-13 last year, organised by historian Edouard Housson at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

The abidingly outrageous reality is that all this 'controversy' would never have arisen were it not for the Soviet propaganda play 'The Deputy' written by one of their East German puppets. It was so promptly and globally effective - arguably the most successful black propaganda in history against a figure of Pius XII's magnitude - that it cancelled out all the positive things said about the Pope's support of Jews during World War II expressed by prominent Jewish leaders (including such as Albert Einstein and Golda Meir) during the decades between the final years of the war (early 1940s) and the year 'The Deputy' irrupted into the global consciousness.

The more curious and abiding corollary mystery is why so many otherwise intelligent Jews (and non-Jews, especially Christians) avidly seized on the Deputy propaganda to cast Pius XII as the 'real villain of the Holocaust' - not Hitler, not the Nazis, but Pius XII was being blamed that the Holocaust happened because he failed to speak out against it. Making Pius XII the ultimate scapegoat for the Holocaust simply violates every rule of reason and of elementary decency.

This article had an arresting title, "The Infancy Narratives: All the reasons for Christianity" - except that it is really not about that at all. The fault may be with the headline writer, who obviously did not read the piece, which is a good one for what it is, not for what its original headline promised.

In his new book, Benedict XVI tells
how the infancy Gospels recount the reality
of what was anticipated in the Old Testament
by Ignacio Carbajosa
Translated from

January 9, 2013

The Pope, with the realism of one who knows the pressure of age, started the publication of his work JESUS OF NAZARETH with the two volumes on the public life of Jesus.

He had no certainty that he could finish the entire work, and therefore, he chose to aim for the essential: the public life of Jesus, his claim to divinity, his death and resurrection.

Some could say: Then why does he need to add a volume on Jesus's childhood? Is there something else at stake? Has Benedict XVI not contributed enough already to the exegesis and the reasonableness of the Christian faith?

We can answer these questions decisively: There are still matters in play in the Biblical accounts of the childhood of Jesus that deserved a further contribution from theologian Joseph Ratzinger.

Indeed, at best, one could accept what the Pope wrote in the two earlier volumes about the interpretation of the Gospels and of the figure of Jesus, but still entertain some doubt, shared by a significant number of Biblical exegetes, about the historical nature of the infancy narratives.

These could be placed under the vague category pf 'theological accounts', understood as literary re-creations meant to deepen an understanding of the mystery of Jesus.

In this last volume, Benedict XVI faces this objection head on. To take an example, consider how he presents the evangelical tradition about the virginity of Mary and the interpretaitons of it in exegetical circles.

The Pope asks: Is it historical truth - what we have been told by the Gospels about the conception of Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary? Is it a real historical event or a pious legend which, in its way, would express and interpret the mystery of Jesus?).

To make the argument, Papa Ratzinger reviews the objections to the historicity of the events recounted in the Gospels, starting with the hypothesis that would trace the Gospel narratives to archetypioal ideas in the history of most religions.

In presenting these ideas and the Gospel narratives to which they have been linked, Benedict XVI shows the profound difference of the pre-Christian archetypes with the Gospel accounts, to conclude that there does not exist a true parallelism that can support the hypothesis of a literary dependency.

But Papa Ratzinger does not stop at historical and literary arguments, quite aware that many times, objections do not arise from facts but from the philosophical and cultural premises of the critics.

Indeed, to the mindset of contemporary man, "God is conceded to be able to work on ideas and thoughts, in the spiritual sphere - but not on matter". This, to the critics, is disturbing.

Without making it explicit, the Pope alludes to the so-called Kantian objection which Lessing formulated lucidly in that that historical and casual truths cannot become proof of eternal and necessary truths (On the demonstration of spirit and power). God may be allowed to exist, but not to intervene in history. That in fact, his intervention would make no sense. That what takes place within the coordinates of space and time cannot be used t try to explain man and his nature. And so, the virgin birth of Jesus as well his resurrection have become 'a scandal to the modern spirit'.

But is this objection even reasonable? The very nature of God is at stake here: "If God does not have power over matter, then he is not God". In the virgin birth and the resurrection, God gives proof of his creative power which embraces all that is. As for the Kantian proposition, the Pope says that in the Incarnation, "the universal and the concrete touch each other".

Beyond the refined arguments that Papa Ratzinger brings against modern objections to the infancy narratives, this third volume is also built with that pedagogic or teaching emphasis that has characterized the work of the German Pope from his first steps as a theologian.

Indeed, the point at which this book starts is the question on the origin of Jesus, a very concrete question which emerged in his time, even if everyone knew his biographical data: He was the son of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth.

"Who are you?" and "Where do you come from?" were questions that arose in the face of the stunning actions and revelatory words of Jesus. The Infancy Narratives replies to the question right off the bat. It is a question that highlights the supernatural origin of his Person. This is how we are introduced to the mystery of the man Jesus.

What Jesus revealed explicitly only towards the end of his public life is anticipated in the infancy Gospels by those who already believed in him.

In the desire to consider all the factors at play, Papa Ratzinger underscores the massive presence of the entire Old Testament, cited both implicitly and explicitly, that sustains and even configurse the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke.

Even here, Benedict XVI does not yield to the modern objection that the Gospel accounts were constructed artificially in order to demonstrate the 'fulfillment' of Scripture. Instead, he acknowledges that we are presented with an 'interpreted story but "there is a reciprocal relationship between the interpretative word of God and interpretative history".

St. Augustine's ancient saying,"Novum in Vetere latet et in Novo Vetus patet (The New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New), finds impressive illustration in the first pages of the Gospels. In the words of Papa Ratzinger, the Old is revealed in the New, in the sense that the latter "recounts a story that explains Scripture"; and inversely, what Scripture aimed to say in many places becomes visible only now, through this new story... The story told here is not just an illustration of the ancient words, but the reality that the words anticipated".

With this third volume, the Pope can truly and rightly say, "Explicit opus magnum” (I have concluded my master work).

Jean-Paul Sartre on Mary
contemplating her Baby

BTW, Beatrice has posted a lengthy review of The Infancy Narratives by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, that appeared in a weekly French edition of the OR (Dec. 20-27) and that was sent on to her as a clipping which she scanned and posted in full. Since the weekly editions of the OR cannot be downloaded, I cannot check if it was published in the English weekly edition at all, but I am quite sure I never noticed it if it was originally published in the daily... Ah, the travails of trying to get your hands on everything you could possibly use on a B16 site!.. In any case, I will translate and post it ASAP, but I would like to anticipate the 'surprise ending' in Cardinal Ravasi's review, which is a completely unexpected reflection on Mary by Jean Paul Sartre, of all people. It is very moving, and one must acknowledge the inspiration of a writer who is otherwise a symbol of modern agnosticism...

---

It was Christmas 1940, and in Stalag XII-D of Treves, where he was a prisoner, Sartre was asked by his Christian fellow detainees to compose some sort of sacred presentation. It was thus he wrote his first theatrical work, "Bar-Jona, or the Son of Thunder".

In this text, at a certain point, Mary enters the scene - she has just given birth to the Baby Jesus, and like any mother, was contemplating him tenderly, well aware of the uniqueness of her experience. Here then are some surprising lines from a writer who doubtless belonged to the world of the Gentiles:

"The Christ Child is her son, flesh of her flesh and fruit of her womb. She had borne him for nine months. She would breast=feed him and her milk would become the blood of God... She feels at the same time that the Christ Child is her son, her own little one, and yet he is God. She looks at him and thinks, 'This God is my baby. This divine flesh is my flesh, he is made up from me - he has my eyes and the shape of my mouth. He looks like me - he is God and he looks like me!... No other woman has the destiny of having God to herself, a God so tiny I can take him in my arms and cover him with kisses, a God who is so warm, who smiles and breathes, a God one can touch, a God who is alive'."

---

That is just breathtaking! Which is why I find the image of God as a baby the most appealing image one can possibly have of God.

German Catholic bishops
sack sex abuse study head
By Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor


PARIS, January 9 (Reuters) - Germany's Roman Catholic bishops sacked a criminologist studying sexual abuse of minors by their priests on Wednesday, prompting him to accuse them of trying to censor what was to be a major report on the scandals.

The independent study, examining Church files sometimes dating back to 1945, was meant to shed light on undiscovered cases of abuse after about 600 people filed claims against molesting priests in 2010 following a wave of revelations there.

The German scandals were part of a series of abuse scandals that also shook the Catholic Church in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands and forced Pope Benedict to issue a public apology. [??? Too soon to attempt revosong history, Mr. Heneghan!]

Bishop Stephan Ackermann, spokesman on abuse issues for the German Bishops Conference, said the hierarchy had lost confidence in the researcher, criminologist Christian Pfeiffer, and would look for another specialist to take up the study.

"We regret that this project ... cannot be continued and we will have to find a new partner," Ackermann said in a statement that blamed Pfeiffer's "communications behaviour with Church officials" for the breakdown.

Pfeiffer told German Radio the bishops wanted to change previously agreed guidelines for the project to include a final veto over publishing its results, which he could not accept.

"Everything was settled reasonably and then suddenly came ... an attempt to turn the whole contract towards censorship and stronger control by the church," said Pfeiffer, head of the Lower Saxony Criminological Research Institute.

The critical lay Catholic movement We Are Church called the decision "a devastating signal for the credibility of the church leadership" that showed the bishops could not accept an independent inquiry into the scandals. [Of course, they would say all that. Would they miss an opportunity to bash the Church? - which, BTW, they decidedly are not!]

The mainstream Central Committee of German Catholics expressed regret that the study "cannot be carried out in the agreed way" and said any new study should be up to the standards of independent academic research.

In Germany, some 180,000 Catholics left the Church in protest in 2010, a 40 percent jump over the previous year, after revelations about abuse in boarding schools prompted about 600 people to file accusations of abuse against priests. [Yeah, those who jumped ship being sanctimonious people of truly little faith who were really just looking for an excuse not to have to pay any church membership tax!]

Similar probes into the records of priests accused of molesting children have been conducted in recent years in Ireland, Belgium and the Netherlands, sometimes with devastating results for the reputation of the church involved. [Really! The MSM always write as if the majority of people in the West still took religion seriously! If the local churches had any 'reputation' at all among their potential faithful, they wouldn't have been losing membership steadily since the 1960s, long before the sex abuse spectre loomed suddenly like a mid-Western tornado that caught up everything in its path!]

Ireland was deeply shocked {SHOCKED! SHOCKED1 SHOCKED! indeed, like the character in Casablanca, about something they had known all along but chose to keep silent until it became p.c. and de rigueur to denounce priests and bishops for sex crimes!] when several inquiries conducted by the government revealed widespread abuse and a pattern of secrecy to cover them up. Three bishops resigned as a result.

An official Dutch report said up to 20,000 children had been sexually abused in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries between 1945 and 2010. Some 1,975 people filed complaints as victims.

A commission set up by the Belgian church received 475 reports of abuse before its premises were raided in 2010 by police seeking evidence for possible criminal cases against predator priests. It reported 13 victims were driven to suicide.

Revelations of sexual abuse cases in the United States starting in the 1990s led to a wave of court cases there costing the church $2 billion in settlements and a few diocesan bankruptcies.

[I once pointed out that MSM hardly ever cite relevant figures that would show how their reporting has really exaggerated the situation. Let me just cite again two sets of statistics that are hardly ever mentioned by MSM. In the United States, a study of the problem requested by the US bishops from the John Jay College of Criminology covering the years from 1959-2002 showed a total of 4,392 priests, deacons and religious (about 4% of the cumulative US clergy in that time period) were identified to have been accused of sex abuses (with 75% of cases taking place in 1960-1984); after police investigation, only 384 of the priests accused where criminally charged (8.7% of those accused), and 282 were convicted (5.7% of those accused), which indicates that some 94% of accusations made were not actionable, the cases could not stand up enough to be prosecuted, even if that does not mean they did not all merit accusation.

Now, Ireland: If we add together the complaints reported by the three government commissions in Ireland, we get a total of 100 from Ferns + 391 in the schools + 320 in Dublin = 811 complaints, not all of them necessarily true - alleged to have occurred between 1965-2004, over a 40-year period. 811 complaints in 40 years averages to about 20 complaints a year, and even assuming each complaint was founded, and, for argument's sake, that each accused priest victimized 10 children, that comes to about 8000 victims, not 'tens of thousands' as the media would have the world believe. Let's even add the 15 cases in Cloyne between 1996-2005 of which 9 were not reported to tbe police - since after all this was the report that touched off the delusional rant of the Irish Prime Minister against the Church and Pope Benedict in Parliament. The disproportionate outrage over Cloyne was not at all about the victims but about the deliberate misreading of a letter from a now-dead Apostolic Nuncio which was interpreted, against all reason and available fact, as a direct order from the Vatican to prohibit bishops from reporting priest offenders to the police.

The accusations, which are not all necessarily true, involve 1.5% of the cumulative priest population in Ireland during the study periods, far lower than the 4% accusation rate in the USA.

In other words, the media has simply been allowed to paint the sex abuse scandal as much much bigger than it actually is, and no one has bothered to point it out in MSM. That is the reason why few, if any, news reports and commentaries ever mention these figures - because the figures show how much they have exaggerated the case against the Church. Of course, this does not excuse a single offense committed, but the public is entitled to the full truth, not deliberate omission of facts to advance the false narrative the media has been perpetrating about the Church.]

Speaking to German Radio, Ackermann accused Pfeiffer of reinterpreting his research contract and said the bishops had tried to clarify some points in the agreement because they feared he would publish results without their permission.

"We weren't trying to hold things back," he said. "We want a similar project to go ahead and we will look for a new partner."

Ackermann noted that another researcher had produced a parallel report into the abuse crisis without any problem.

That study, which concluded most priests accused of sexual abuse were psychologically normal, was lambasted as a whitewash by victims' support groups. [Who, of course, will not accept any report that does not 'confirm' their prejudice that all priests are monsters and all their bishops are conniving enablers.]

Pfeiffer also said he found out after starting his study, which was supposed to study files for nine dioceses since 1945 and 18 dioceses for the period 2000 to 2010, that files on priests convicted of sexual abuse could be destroyed 10 years after the verdict.

He said his team of researchers would continue its work without church support, appealing to victims to report their cases to them so they can produce a report on their experiences.

I passed over this story yesterday, but from the tone of this Reuters report, it could well be used by MSM as a pretext to revive their 'evil Church-monster priests-shameless bishops-BAD!BAD!BAD!' narrative, though curiously they did not unduly overplay the fairly recent Mons Finn-Bishop Flynn convictions in the USA (perhaps because in both cases, neither prelate was himself a sex offender).

In this case, because the story involves sex abuses committed by German priests, some malicious mind could well try to find or fabricate a link that would lead back to the infamous story of the recidivist priest who came to the archdiocese of Munich in the last year of Joseph Ratzinger's service as Archbishop. And even if Fr. Hullermann was not reported to have committed a sex offense in his first dozen years in Munich, he did so again in 1994 thereabouts - long after Cardinal Ratzinger was out of the scene - and the priest was tried and convicted. I don't know - malicious writers could claim that Hullerman's files were among those that have been reported missing, destroyed or past the statute of limitations. Anything, in short, that could imply the future Pope was involved in some cover-up or condoning pastoral work by a sex offender and thus placing young people of his archdiocese at risk. I don't put it past any of the usual suspects in MSM (although if there was anything there at all, AP with all its huffing and puffing in 2010 failed to find it). And you can be sure that all the We are Church and SNAP types in Germany would have slaved 24/7 to help MSM do anything to uncover anything that could possibly 'embarrass' the Pope. With zip to show so far. Or ever.

But this story now gives them a pretext to say that surely one of the files kept back from the study group would have been the Hullerman file. I'm not being cynical, just realistic about the scum that the enemies of the Church are capable of generating.

January 11, Friday after Epiphany

Two martyrs who lived 400 years apart and who are each emblematic of their fellow victims during a time of persecution (Elizabethan England for the first one, and Nazi Europe for the second) are celebrated today in the English-speaking Churches and the European Churches, respectively. The English martyrs *87 of them) were beatified collectively in 1987, the Polish martyrs (108) in 1999.

Blessed William Carter (England, 1548-1684), Printer and Martyr
This was a man who was tortured for months, while his wife was hounded to death, for printing Catholic books and possessing Catholic literature, and then was sentenced summarily to be hung, drawn and quartered, literally, in the fiercely anti-Catholic period that followed the establishment of the Church of England. He was specifically condemned for publishing a book with a paragraph that expressed confidence that 'Catholic hope' would triumph, and a line that 'pious Judith would slay Holofernes', for which he was accused of incitement to slay the Queen. He was one of 87 martyrs of
the English Reformation who were beatified in 1987.

Blessed Franciszek Rogaczewski(Poland, 1892-1940), Priest and Martyr
It must be remembered that even modern Europe has contributed many martyrs for the Church. Rogaczewski was born in 1892 in Lipinski, and was ordained a priest in 1918 in the Archdiocese of Danzig (Polish Gdansk), which was an autonomous 'free state' between Poland and Germany which was created after World War I. As a parish priest, he. fought for the rights of the Catholic faithful. Returning to Poland, he was arrested by the Nazis, for simply being a priest, on Sept. 1, 1939, the day the Germans invaded Poland. After being tortured, he was executed in the Stutthof concentration camp on January 11, 1940. He was one of 108 Polish martyred by the Nazis who were beatified in June 1999 by John Paul II.

In the Italian Church, other saints of the day are:
St. Onorata of Pavia, Virgin (5th cent, sister of St, Epiphanius, Bishop); St. Iginus, Pope (2nd cent); St. Leucio of Brindisi, Bishop (2nd cent)

Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011113.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- The Honorable Renata Polverini, President of Lazio region

- The Honorable Gianni Alemanno, Mayor of Rome

before his traditional New Year audience with the administrators of the region and province of Rome,
city of Rome. This year, for the first time, he did not deliver an address to the administrators.

- Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Arch-Priest of St. Peter's Basilica, Vicar of His Holiness for the Vatican,
and president of the Fabbrica di San Pietro.

In the afternoon, he was to meet with

- Officials and Members of the Vatican Gendarmerie (New Year reception).

In this article, Magister makes a great point that no one else has noted in the media, but I object to the statement, "Acting as a shield for Benedict XVI was the Grand Rabbi of France", as his English translator correctly translates "A fare scudo al Papa c'era la gran rabbino di Francia". One gets what Magister means, but the way he says it does not quite sound right. The Pope wasn't using the rabbi as a shield - the statement sounds crassly opportunistic - but his citation of the Rabbi's statements did shield him from what would have been otherwise predictable denunciations of his and the Church's 'obscurantism'. I have adapted my translation accordingly...

Just as I have adapted the title and subtitle to reflect what the article is mainly about, rather than the original headline and subhead that simply repeated the statements in the last paragraph of the story, and which the Anglophone media have dutifully picked up and reported as 'Can the Pope trust Andrea Riccardi?" How can you build a headline out of two statements that are merely corollary to a corollary topic arising out of the main subject - which is the Church's insistence on non=negotiable principles and the support it is getting from unlikely places....

Why there was no media outcry
after the Pope's latest statements
opposing the homosexual agenda
Because he cited a study by the Grand Rabbi of France
and no one dares speak out against a Jewish luminary
no matter how much they oppose his views!


ROME, Jan. 10, 2013 – Every time Benedict XVI speaks out against same-sex 'marriage', he is promptly deluged with criticism from the media and secular circles. But the last time he did so, in his New Year address to the Vatican diplomatic corps, there was no reaction. Silence, unaccountably.

What shielded the Pope this time was the fact that he cited the recent study published by the Grand Rabbi of France opposing SSM as well as gay parenting and adoption, with views that the Catholic Church has been espousing.

Which means that none of the brave souls in MSM felt brave enough to attack a luminary of European Judaism for his inconvenient truths [which is what it would have meant if they had attacked the statements made by Benedict XVI to the diplomats!]

[Hats off to Magister for this apercu! Nowhere is the MSM double standard with regard to attacking religions and their leaders more evident! They can attack the Catholic Church and Benedict XVI all they please, but God forbid (er, Allah/Jehovah forbid) that they should attack Islam, Judaism, etc., and their leaders! If Benedict XVI had spoken as usual only 'on his own', not citing Rabbi Bernheim, he would have earned the same vituperation that rains down on him automatically everytime he expresses the Catholic view against the active practice of homosexuality or the degradation of the concept of marriage. But because he cited Bernheim, the MSM and contrary opinionmakers did not dare speak out at all, even if it meant giving Benedict XVI a 'pass' this time.]

Indeed, the controversy in France [over socialist President Francois Hollande's intention to legalize SSM in France this year] has gone far beyond France, into the battle for what the Church calls 'non-negotiable principles' [rooted in natural law, and not just in Christian doctrine
], of which a cardinal point is that marriage can only be a union between a man and a woman.

In France, this initiative is being fought vigorously not just by the Catholic Church, led by the Archbishop of Paris (and president of the French bishops' conference], but also by authoritative leaders of other major religions, including Rabbi Bernheim, and even the secular world, like the feminine philosopher Sylviane Agacinski (wife of ex-Premier Lionel Jospin, a Protestant).

Bernheim made waves when he published a 25-page study in which he rebuts one by one all the arguments that have been presented in support of gay 'marriage' and of parenting by homosexual couples who adopt children.

In citing Bernheim's study, Benedict XVI called it "carefully documented and profoundly moving", taking it out of a purely French context to call the world's attention to it.

In Italy, the Pope's statements were promptly welcomed by the historian Ernesto Galli della Loggia, a non-believer, who is a frequent contributor to Corriere della Sera. On December 30, he not only dutifully reported the arguments mobilized by Rabbi Bernheim and their consonance with what Benedict XVI has been saying, but also expressed full support and the wish that finally, the issue could be debated without being trapped in the dominant conformism that advocates homosexual 'marriage'.
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Galli della Loggia is one of those secular intellectuals whose ideas are said to be always attentively read at the Vatican. In fact, his wife, Church historian Lucetta Scaraffia, writes regularly for L'Osservatore Romano and is a close friend of its editor, Giovanni Maria Vian.

The Vatican newspaper itself duly noted Galli della Loggia's commentary as a 'turning point' - almost as though a wall had been breached in the secular front.

But he is not the first, nor will he be the last, among Italian lay intellectuals who have opted out of the secular chorus that regularly accuses the Church reflexively of 'obscurantism'.

On January 2, a leading Italian psychoanalyst, Silvia Vegetti Finzi, also in Corriere della Sera, opposed the adoption and raising of children by homosexual couples

Before Galli della Loggia's support, there were statements from the so-called Ratzingerian Marxists - philosopher Pietro Barcellona, labor union theorist Mario Tronti, political scientist Giuseppe Vacca, and sociologist Paolo Sorbi - all of them members of the leftist Partito Democcratico (PD) [which early surveys show will likely win a parliamentary majority in Italy's coming elections], and before that, of the Communist Party of Italy.

All profess to share Papa Ratzinger's 'anthropological viewpoint', in defending life 'from conception to its natural end', and in defining marriage only as a union between a man and a woman.

They held their last meeting in December at the offices of La Civilta Cattolica, the Jesuit journal published in Rome with the imprimatur of the Vatican Secretariat of State. [Although Magister frequently refers to this odd arrangement - namely, that the magazine allows the Vatican to vet its articles before they are published - he has never explained how it came about! I've been meaning to research it but have not gotten around to doing so.]

But both the Vatican and the Italian bishops' conference are understandably doubtful that the PD will heed the opinions of the four non-politicians at all, and that the party is, in fact, expected to be preparing to pass legislation, once it comes to power, that is hostile to Catholic teaching.

Nor is the prospect that Prime Minister Mario Monti could end up heading the next government any more reassuring to the Church, since he has explicitly said that his platform will not even get into 'ethical' issues, namely, those that the Church considers 'non-negotiable'.

The Church sees no guarantee either from the open support of Monti by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community, and a minister in Monti's present cabinet. Riccardi tends to pass himself off as the exclusive representative of the Church hierarchy to the outside world, but he has always been mute and passive every time there is a public free-for-all over the Church's non-negotiable principles.

[Riccardi and Sant'Egidio undoubtedly have their personal and organizational merits, respectively, and do a lot of good in the apostolate they choose to engage in, but IMHO, it has always been clear that their orientation is socially liberal. The best example would be Sant'Egidio's 'appropriation' of the so-called 'spirit of Assisi' into their sponsorship of annual inter-religious prayer-for-peace assemblies around the world, which have been the quintessence of meaningless kumbaya fellowship that passes for inter-religious dialog. I don't recall that Mr. Riccardi even bothered to attend Benedict XVI's 'corrective' Assisi assembly in 2010.]
__________

Their exact number is, of course, classified information, but from the photos above taken at the last gathering of the Gendarmerie at the Govenatorate, there are not too many of them. And judging by their different uniforms, they have a variety of different assignments. Their public presence is most visible in the plainclothes bodyguards who surround the Pope everywhere he goes except the papal apartment itself.


The Pope's special audience for
the Vatican Gendarmerie
Their commandant calls them
'little Cyreneans' for the Pope
by ANDREA TORNIELLI

January 11, 2013

The Vatileaks episode first involved the Vatican Gendarmerie as the target of a document very unfavorable to their Inspector General, Domenico Giani. which were published in Gianluigi Nuzzi's book Sua Santita [a document which, it must be said, was not among those pilfered from the Pope's desk, but information provided to Paolo Gabriele by persons hostile to Giani]

Then they figured as efficient investigators of the very Vatileaks in their work of apprehending Paolo Gabriele for the theft of documents from the Pope's study, after having searched his home and discovered a mass of documents and other evidence tending to prove he was the culprit.

But as Gabriele's trial drew to a close, they were once again 'villains' as he accused them - quite late in the day - of having maltreated him during his detention. The court ordered an investigation of those charges.

This afternoon, Benedict XVI received the Gendarmerie Corps at a special audience to express his closeness to them and his gratitude for their service, and calling on them to be 'always kind' to pilgrims and visitors to the Vatican.

According to a communique from the Vatican [which has not been posted as of Friday midnight in Rome], the Pope "granted this audience to show to the Corps his encouragement and gratitude after a period in which they had to respond to particularly demanding challenges". The reference to Vatileaks was obvious.

In the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace, Inspector General Giani delivered a moving address of greeting to the Pope. Giani, ex-agent of the Italian secret service, had remilitarized the Vatican Gendarmerie after Paul VI had demilitarized them, by providing them with the most up-to-date equipment and training to deal with security concerns in protecting the Pope [who is arguably and necessarily the most carefully guarded man on the planet other than the President of the United States].

He thanked the Pope for the 'profound significance' of his gesture: "To have wanted us to be all together here with you today," he said, "is a sign that makes us proud".

He also thanked Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone[; cardinal Giovanni Bertello, the President of the Vatican Governatorate [administratively, the Gendarmerie's direct boss], the Governatorate's Secretary, Mons. Gabriele Sciacca, but most especially, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, the new Prefect of the Pontifical Household.

"With the entire Vatican family," he concluded, "we feel like little Cyreneans [a reference to Simon of Cyrene] serving you who carries the weight of mankind on your shoulders".

Benedict XVI thanked his gendarmes for 'the admirable readiness' with which they offer their 'valuable work', and expressed his esteem, encouragement and acknowledgment of the work they carry out "with discretion, competence and efficiency - and not without sacrifice."

"Almost every day," the Pope said, "I have the opportunity to meet some of you in your various assignments and have personally experienced your professionalism".

He told them that the Gendarmerie Corps is called on for many tasks, including that "of welcoming with courtesy and kindness all pilgrims and visitors to the Vatican".

He also said that their work of vigilance and security checks "often requires much patience, perseverance and a willingness to listen".

Reiterating his reminder to be kind to others, he said: "In every pilgrim and visitor, learn to see the face of a brother that God has sent along your way. Therefore, welcome them with kindness and help them, feeling that with them, you are all part of the great human family".

It is possible the Pope was referring to a few complaints from diplomatic circles in the past few months that may have had to do with the tensions attendant to Vatileaks. [What? The gendarmes were rude to tourists because they felt the 'tensions'???]

The Pope also called on the Gendarmerie officials "to improve relationships of trust that would support encourage all the members of the Gendarmerie even in difficult times". Again, a possible reference to reports about internal tensions within the Corps.

In any case, despite everything, Giani remains firmly in the saddle. The relationship of trust that he has with both Cardinal Bertone and Archbishop Gaenswein seems unassailable, and there are no signs of any changes in the Corps leadership, despite rumors that Giani could leave the Vatican to take on an important position with Interpol.

But his number-2 man, Raul Bonarelli, is about to retire, and favored to succeed him is one of the men closest to Giani, Col. Costanzo Alessandrini. However, it is not ruled out that the Vatican may reach outside, for example, to the pontifical universities, if they want the new deputy to be less operation-oriented but more administrative and managerial.

Thanks to OR and RV for the formal photos, and to ROME REPORTS for the clip from which I took the videocaps...

The Pope receives the new
ambassador from Bosnia-Herzegovina -
and gets a hand-painted gift
from her little daughter

Yesterday morning, the Holy Father received the credentials of the new ambassador from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Madame Slavica Karačić.



The 37-year-old ambassador was accompanied by her husband and two young children. What made the audience unusual was that the ambassador's older child, Paula, had a gift for the Pope - a drawing she made of the Pope leading Angelus prayers at St. Peter's Square:



Born on October 18, 1975, Madame Karacic has a decree in philosophy and Croatian culture from the University of Zagreb. Fron 1999-2006, she held important positions in banks in Mostar, capital of the Herzegovina part of the federation. In 2006-2007, she was her country's ambassador to Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, based in Argentina, then returned to her country where she was an adviser to the Finance Minister (2008-2011) and then to the Prime Minister since 2011.


Bosnia-Herzegovina is one of the many states born out of the former Yugoslavia, which itself had been a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state cobbled after World War II and held together only by the stranglehold of Communism. There is no quick way to tell the story of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The break-up of Yugoslavia after the collapse of Communism in Europe led to almost all its constituent populations claiming territory where they were in the majority, and going on to declare independence. The term Balkanization was coined after parts of the former Ottoman Empire (mostly in the Balkan Peninsula) were arbitrarily divided into smaller states between 1817 and 1912. The term was later extended to the creation of artificial nations like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia after World War I, out of parts of the former Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. Well, nothing could be more confusing and in many ways, artificial - ueber-Balkanization, if you will - than the break-up of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia into at least 10 successor states after the collapse of Communism, with Serbs and Croats all over the map.

In Bosnia, Herzegovina and Kosovo, generations-long hostility between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Bosnian Muslims led to civil war and outright genocide in the early 1990s by some Serbs bent on 'ethnic cleansing'. In 1992, the Bosnians and Croats voted for the independence of Bosnia-Herezegovina from Serbia, which had been the dominant successor state to Yugoslavia - a move the Serbs in the territory opposed by declaring their own Serbian republic within the sovereign territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Civil war ensued, with both Serbia and Croatia supporting their respective peoples with weapons and troops against the Bosnians.

In July 1995, the Serbian army massacred more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the city of Srebrenica in what was called the first genocide in Europe since World War II. The massacre was accompanied by the forcible transfer of between 25,000 to 30,000 Bosniak women, children and elderly out of Srebrenica, confirming the genocidal intention of the perpetrators. And all this happened despite the fact that Srebrenica had been under UN protection since 1992. UN peacekeeping forces were unable to stop the Serbian capture and massacre in Srebrenica. The responsible Serbian leaders have since been brought to trial in The Hague for genocide.

The Croatians eventually joined forces with the Bosniaks in 1994 which contributed to ending the war in 1995, after NATO sent in peacekeeping forces and a treaty was negotiated in Dayton, Ohio, under the sponsorship of US President Clinton. The treaty recognized both the original Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Serbian Republic within it as autonomous units, and the country now has a three-man presidency representing each of the main ethnic groups.

Today, Bosnia-Herzegovina is 46% Bosniak (Muslim), 37% Serb (Orthodox), and 14% Croat (Catholic), reflecting the multi-ethnic/religious heterogeneity of the region's newly re-Balkanized states. The population is about 4 million, down at least 500,000 from before the Bosnian War.

The capital of the federation is Sarajevo, forever associated with the outbreak of the First World War, when the Austrian Crown Prince and his wife were assassinated there by a Bosnian Serb assassin agitating for secession from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the creation of a 'Yugoslavia' or Southern Slav nation. Seventy years later (1984) Sarajevo (as part of Yugoslavia) hosted the Winter Olympics, and then in 1992-1996, during the Bosnian wars, it underwent the longest siege of a city in modern times by Serbian forces and remnants of the Yugoslav army. Some 12,000 people lost their lives during the siege. Today, Sarajevo has regained its luster as one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Balkans and will be the European capital of culture in 2014.

The other 'tourist attraction' of Bosnia-Herzegovina is Medjugorje, a village near Mostar, capital of the Herzegovina region. It is estimated that about one million pilgrims visit the Marian shrine there yearly, even if the Church has yet to make a final ruling on the claimed daily apparitions of Mary to a group of seers who first reported seeing her in 1981.

Imagine how Pope Benedict must have to do a quick review of their recent muddled history [and geography] whenever he has to meet with leaders or bishops of these neo-Balkanized states! Note the atlases spread open on his desk. Even a history professor specializing in the Balkans would find it hard to get it all right without a cheat sheet!

On Sunday, a demonstration
against 'marriage for all'
in behalf of all the French
Translated from the 1/11/13 issue of


PARIS - A demonstration that is truly for everybody, to give a voice to families.

Thus Mons. Hippolyte Simon, Archbishop of Clermont and vice-president of the French bishops' conference, confirms the genuinely popular character - and above all, 'a-political and non-confessional' - of the march planned Sunday through the streets of the French capital to protest French President Francois Hollande's proposed law allowing 'marriage for everyone'.

The proposed legislation is to be debated at the National Assembly starting January 29 preparatory to a vote that would legalize 'marriage' between persons of the same sex and grant them the right to adopt children and minors.

Promoting the Sunday demonstration - called 'the manif manifestation) for everyone' - is a roster of at least 34 associations. Among them, National Confederation of Catholic Family Associations, the National Federation of Protestant Family Associations, the Union of Islamist Organizations in France, the Jewish Consistory of France, but even doctors and pediatricians, and associations of jurists.

The French bishops, for their part, although they have unequivocally expressed their clear objections to the proposed law, have said repeatedly that they had nothing to do with organizing this demonstration.

The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, president of the French bishops' conference, has announced that he will not be marching but that he may greet the demonstrators.

Mons. Simon told the news agency SIR that "The cardinal believes this demonstration underscores a question that concerns above all. parents, citizens and family associations. That it is by no means a 'confessional' demonstration. But that does not rule out that some bishops, on their own, would accompany demonstrators from their respective dioceses, as some already did in the local demonstrations held in the provinces last November. I myself will not be marching."

In fact, he points out, "to give this march a confessional character would tend to weaken its impact. It would provide ammunition for those who would limit it to one particular religion whose objections can therefore be dismissed. But this is a question that concerns all citizens, because the proposed law would significantly change the Code of Civilian Law and therefore, the idea itself of a civilian marriage".

The Church's position is not primarily religious, he said. "We have called on all citizens to inform themselves attentively about the proposed law. They can consult the draft on the Web. If you read it, you will see that this law calls into question many articles of the Civil Code. Indeed, in order to grant formal equiparity between all couples - heterosexual and homosexual - the law would change all the terms like father, mother, husband, wife, into the neutral words parent and spouse. The Church maintains that it is not reasonable to weaken the idea of fatherhood, motherhood, and especially, the filial relations of the majority of children. The right of children to know their family origin must be respected. It is important that this right is guaranteed by the Civil Code as it now does. It should be possible to guarantee the rights of the children of a single parent without infringing on the rights of the immense majority of children who have a mother and a father".

Mons. Simon says "a more profound discernment of reality is needed". Fifty years ago, for example, he says, "in the time of Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, they said that marriage was an old and conxervative institution. But look at what is happening now: Everyone seems to be clamoring for marriage, and they say this plan of 'marriage for all' represents progress! It is an indication that fashionable ways of thinking and ideologies can change".

The role played by the French bishops is also underscored by Mons, Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family. In an interview with Antoine-Marie Izoard of I.Media, Mons. Paglia said he observed at first hand, during the recent ad-limina visit of the French bishops, that "they are united in confronting these sensitive issues" such as the plan to legalize homosexual 'marriage'.

He praised the middle way chosen by the French bishops to avoid two extremes - on the one hand, silence, and on the other, 'the temptation to use the truth as a bludgeon'.

It was essential, he said, for the French bishops to follow one way with two perspectives: "in the first place, prayer and respect for the plurality of charisms; and in the second place, the culture itself, in which family and marriage are not subjects that belong to the Church but are part of the human patrimony".

As for the demands of homosexual couples for 'inheritance rights' and 'supplemental individual rights', Mons. Paglia says, "Let them have it - but without confusing these rights as equivalence to a family which is composed of a man, a woman and their children".



The MSM appear to have decided that the emblematic figure for the Sunday march in Paris is a sort of B-list (or less) entertainer who happens to be a Catholic convert and feels strongly against gay 'marriage'... Somehow I feel that the hype on her is meant to diminish somehow the seriousness of purpose of those who organized and will take part in the 'manif'. It would be like Lindsay Lohan, say, leading an anti-HHS mandate march in the US, though I cannot imagine any US (or UK) celebrity, A-list or B-list, who would so publicly identify himself/herself with a conservative cause so abhorrent to liberals...

Sassy French comedian rallies
broad front against gay marriage law
By Tom Heneghan
January 11, 2013

PARIS, January 13 - When the opponents of gay-marriage take to the streets in Paris on Sunday, their protest will be led neither by politicians nor priests, but by a sassy comedian in a pink T-shirt who goes by the stage name Frigide Barjot.

With her on the march, expected to be one of the capital’s biggest demonstrations in years, will be a young gay man who campaigns against homosexual marriage, and an an older activist from the right-to-life movement.

Notably absent will be most religious leaders who set the tone for the opposition with talking points based on social and legal arguments rather than appeals to faith.

“We’re all born of a man and a woman, but the law will say the opposite tomorrow,” says Barjot, warning the reform would break links between father, mother and children that ground human society. “It will say a child is born of a man and a man.”

Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, head of the Catholic Church here, will go to greet some protesters but not march. Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim, whose position paper won praise even from Pope Benedict, has no plan to join the demonstration either.

“We’ve coordinated this demonstration neither with the Church nor with the parishes,” Barjot, a slim 50-year-old in tight jeans and spike heel boots, told journalists on Thursday.

Asked if the hierarchy could take over the movement, she protested that she was in charge. [Really? Who put her in charge? There are 34 associations mobilizing these initiatives! Let not all this attention go to her head!]

Organisers have declined to estimate the size of the crowd, expected in the hundreds of thousands, but say about 900 buses and five trains have been reserved to bring marchers from the provinces to join the Paris protest.

'Pro-gay' French comedian
rallies against gay marriage


PARIS, January 11 (AFP) - The French anti-gay marriage movement has an unlikely figurehead in the form of a reactionary comedian who goes by the moniker “Frigide Barjot”.

The name – which translates as Frigid Loony – is a play on the name of Brigitte Bardot, the French actress better-known as a symbol of the 60s sexual revolution.

Barjot – real name, Virginie Tellene – is a born-again Catholic whose background belies her role as spokesperson for a movement that has brought a medley of conservative, far-right and Christian groups together to protest the Socialist government’s plans to allow same-sex couples to marry and have access to fertility treatment.

Barjot and her supporters hope to get 200,000 out on the streets on Sunday for a France-wide demonstration against the Socialist government’s proposed “marriage for all” law.

Taking up the bizarre pen-name in the 80s as part o the comedy and satire collective “Jalons”, Barjot became a household name for organising stunts poking fun at venerable French institutions.

Jalons’ debut “happening” was a protest against the cold during the freezing winter of 1984 at the aptly-named Paris metro station Glacière [meaning “freezer”], ironically blaming the French head of state for the weather conditions with the slogan: “Ice is a killer; Mitterrand its accomplice”.

Since then she has made her name as both a stand-up comedian and as a satirical writer.

Barjot refuses to be branded homophobic, citing her life-long attachment to her first boyfriend, who turned out to be gay, and “25 years working in gay nightclubs”.

“I do not deny gay love and I’ve got nothing against gay culture,” she told right-leaning daily Le Figaro for a portrait published on Friday. “But I cannot condone the introduction of a new type of marriage into France’s civil code.”

Barjot, who has described herself as “Jesus’s press officer”, says she was “struck in the heart” during a music concert at Notre Dame Cathedral in 1987 and has been an ardent Catholic ever since.

Since then she has been an increasingly active defender of the Catholic Church and its values.

In 2009 she set up the “hands off my Pope” movement in defence of Pope Benedict XI amid the scandal of former English bishop Richard Williamson, whose excommunication was lifted despite refusing to renounce views that “Jews are the enemy of Christ.” [I didn't know she was with that movement,'Touche pas a mon Pape'. though I posted a couple of items about their demos for the Pope at the time. If she was, then maybe her participation in this 'manif' is not just an opportunistic publicity ploy.]

According to the Figaro, Sunday’s anti-gay marriage outing will “write her into the history book of the French Catholic movement” – or not, if the event turns out to be a damp squib: "In an era when the Church has not one single charismatic character to represent it, she will become either the ephemeral media image of this movement, or Saint Frigide.” [See? They're using her as an instrument to deride the Church!]

Vatican doctrinal chief says politics
that ignore God are bound to fail
By Cindy Wooden


ROME, January 11 (CNS) -- Politicians who want to act as if God did not exist and as if there was no such thing as objective moral truths are bound to fail in their efforts to promote the common good, said the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

"The politics we have today in Europe and North America without ethical foundations, without a reference to God, cannot resolve our problems, even those of the market and money," said Archbishop Gerhard L. Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The archbishop made his comments during a short presentation of his new book in Italian, Ampliare L'Orizzonte della Ragione. Per una Lettura di Joseph Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI (Broadening the Horizons of Reason: Reading Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI).

The archbishop, coordinator of the project to publish the complete works of Joseph Ratzinger-Pope Benedict XVI, said one of the key teachings of the Pope is the importance of faith and reason going hand in hand.

Speaking Jan. 11 at a Vatican bookstore in downtown Rome, Archbishop Muller said, "Faith and reason are like two people who love each other deeply, who cannot live without each other, and who were intimately made for one another, so much so that they cannot be considered separate from one another and cannot reach their goals separately."

He quoted Pope Benedict XVI's speech to diplomats Jan. 7: "It is precisely man's forgetfulness of God, and his failure to give him glory, which gives rise to violence. Indeed, once we no longer make reference to an objective and transcendent truth, how is it possible to achieve an authentic dialogue?"

Archbishop Muller said that in the current run-up to Italian elections he has heard that some politicians want the Catholic Church to "talk about love, charity and mercy of God," but not insist that the truths it preaches be upheld.

"But where is love without truth?" the archbishop asked.

In the book, Archbishop Muller highlights: the importance Pope Benedict gives to the need for faith and reason to support and purify one another; the Pope's insistence that Christianity is primarily about a relationship with Jesus Christ and not simply the acceptance of rules and doctrines; and the key role that studying the life and work of St. Augustine has had both on the pope's theology and on his ministry.

During the presentation, the archbishop also underscored how deeply Pope Benedict believes the liturgy, especially the Mass, is central to the life and future of the church.

The first volume of the Pope's complete works in German to be translated into Italian was Volume 11 on the liturgy [it was also the first volume of the Complete Works released in the original German]; the decision to begin with that, Archbishop Muller said, was "the express will of the Holy Father, because he said it is a decisive question for the church today and for its future."

"The liturgy is not just a memorial, but an encounter with God ... with Jesus Christ present among us," the archbishop said.

Pope Benedict believes the pre-Vatican II liturgy needed to be reformed, he said. The Pope's position is not that of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, "with whom we are in discussions," but the Pope also has taken pains to reverse the "many abuses" that took place with the reformed liturgy after the Second Vatican Council.

"The liturgy is very important for the Church, and we must avoid these extremes of preserving forms at all costs and doing whatever one wants," he said.

Archbishop Muller said Catholics can rightly be proud of having such a great theologian as Pope. In fact, he said, he would list the pope -- along with the 18th-century Pope Benedict XIV and the fifth-century St. Leo the Great -- as the greatest theologian-popes.

At the same time, "the language of Benedict XVI is very simple," he said. "He has never used language to hermetically seal off his theology from people's real lives."

January 12, Saturday after Epiphany

ST. MARGUERITE BOURGEOYS (b France 1620, d Canada 1700)
Missionary and Foundress, Congregation of Notre Dame sisters
Canada's first woman saint migrated in 1653 from France, where she had been turned down by
two nuns' congregations, to start a school in the then new colony of Ville Marie (present
Montreal). She would go back three times to France to recruit more missionary helpers
dedicated to the needs of children and women, French as well as Indian. She established
the order in 1676 but its Rules were not approved till 1698. At 69, she walked from Montreal
to Quebec when the bishop asked her to establish a school there. By the time she died, she
was known as 'mother of the colony'. She was canonized in 1982.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/011213.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- Prince Albert II of Monaco and his wife, Princess Charlotte, with a delegation

- Cardinal Marco Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

The Vatican Press Office has posted the text of the Holy Father's remarks to the Vatican Gendarmerie yesterday.

Sacraments Benedict XVI
has administered in public
By Francis X. Rocca


VATICAN CITY, January 12 (CNS) -- As the chief shepherd of the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI plays many roles, among them minister of the sacraments. [No, he administers the sacraments in his capacity as priest (and bishop, in the case of Holy Orders) - not because he is Pope.]

Along with his daily celebrations of the Eucharist, the Pope's 2013 agenda opened with the ordination of new bishops Jan. 6. Just a week later, he was scheduled to mark the Jan. 13 feast of the Baptism of the Lord by baptizing 22 infants in the Sistine Chapel.

For most Catholics, receiving any sacrament from the Pope would be a special event, and such opportunities are necessarily rare. On what occasions does the Pope personally administer the sacraments and to whom?

Baptism: The babies whom the Pope baptizes in the annual January rite usually are the children of Vatican employees, as it will be this year. The Pope also traditionally administers the sacraments of Christian initiation -- baptism, confirmation and first Communion -- to a group of adult converts in St. Peter's Basilica at the Easter Vigil Mass every year.

This event became the focus of controversy in 2008 after one of the baptized, Egyptian-born journalist Magdi Allam, publicly and emphatically repudiated his former Islamic faith. [But he did that long before his formal conversion. It wasn't as if he made a dramtic announcement the day he was baptized!

Pope Benedict has not continued Blessed John Paul II's practice of baptizing adults during foreign trips, occasions that the late Pope used to initiate hundreds into the Church.

Communion: Who receives Communion from Pope Benedict at papal Masses in Rome and elsewhere is up to the Pope's master of liturgical ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini. During papal trips, prominent or highly active members of the local churches are usually among those chosen. Though parents around the world have asked, Pope Benedict has never celebrated a Mass specifically for a group of children receiving their first Communion, but a few children have received their first Communion from him at Mass during papal trips.

The Pope gives Communion at the Mass he celebrates every morning in his private chapel. During the pontificate of Blessed John Paul, those Masses were often attended by dozens of outside guests, but Pope Benedict has typically limited attendance to members of the papal household.

Confession: Pope Benedict heard the individual confessions of young people in St. Peter's during Lent in 2007 and 2008, then again at World Youth Day in Madrid in August 2011. He has not continued Blessed John Paul's practice of hearing confessions in St. Peter's every year on Good Friday morning.

Confirmation: Pope Benedict confirmed a group of young people attending World Youth Day in Sydney in 2008 and will confirm another group in Rome on April 28 of this year, one of the events organized for the 2012-13 Year of Faith.

Matrimony: While this sacrament is actually administered by the spouses themselves, [WHAT??? Is anyone out there aware of this, or have I been ignorant all this time? Laymen cannot administer a sacrament, to begin with!] the Church normally requires Catholics to marry in the presence of a priest or deacon. pt][A deacon can officiate at marriage? I've been shamefully out of touch with Church practices, it seems! I looked it up - they can if the ceremony is done without a nuptial Mass.]

Pope Benedict has not celebrated a marriage ceremony as Pope, but given his increasing emphasis on the need to defend traditional marriage, it would not be surprising if he were to do so soon.

At a Mass marking the Jubilee for Families in October 2000, Blessed John Paul celebrated the weddings of eight couples, using his homily to affirm the family as a life-long union of husband and wife with naturally conceived children. (The late Pope also married a young couple from Rome in 1979. Blessed John Paul had been visiting a sanitation center there when the bride, the daughter of a street cleaner, asked him to celebrate her wedding, which he did in the Vatican's Pauline Chapel.)

Holy Orders: Pope Benedict ordains priests in St. Peter's Basilica every year on the World Day of Prayer for Vocations, Good Shepherd Sunday, which will be April 21 this year. [Mr. Rocca is seriously challenging the state of my knowledge about some elementary things! Or maybe he should check his facts. The traditional day for priestly ordinations by the Pope, as Bishop of Rome, is June 29, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. I've checked back, and this Pope has only performed ordinations on the World Day for Vocations, which the Church obsreves on Good Shepherd Sunday, the fourth Sunday after Easter, in 2007 and 2012. I am sure he would like to do it every year, but there are just not enough deacons to be ordained for the Diocese of Rome twice a year!] Since his election as Pope, he has also ordained 22 bishops, most recently Jan. 6, when he ordained four new prelates including Archbishop Georg Ganswein, his longtime personal secretary who is now also prefect of the papal household.

Anointing of the Sick: The Pope has administered this sacrament in public only once since his election, to 10 sick pilgrims at the shrine of Lourdes in southwestern France in 2008.

I was frankly surprised - and greatly delighted - at the active protest in France against SSM and even by the fact that the usually timid (and rather liberal) French bishops' conference had led the protests from the start. That was followed by the surprisingly militant position of the Archbishop of Westminster against similar legislation looming in the United Kingdom. And now, UK priests are speaking up (though I doubt that there will be any public outcry in the UK similar to that happening in France...

The reaction in France shows that many protesters are not driven by religious belief but by a more basic and universal recognition of natural law. Whether you believe in divine creation or in 'self-directed' natural evolution, there is a reason there are two sexes in nature - their complementary functions are necessary to the propagation of life. Nature does not program itself for extinction. Period. Homosexual coupling is unnatural coupling that will forever be sterile and therefore life-stifling. And that's without even going into the civilized arguments for the necessity of the traditional family structure and children who deserve to have a father and a mother...

More than 1,000 priests write open letter
denouncing UK government's gay 'marriage' plan
Effect could be not unlike the open war against Catholics
that started under Henry VIII and lasted till the 19th century
by John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor

January 12, 2013

More than 1,000 priests have signed a letter voicing alarm that same-sex marriage could threaten religious freedom in a way last seen during “centuries of persecution” of Roman Catholics in England.

In one of the biggest joint letters of its type ever written, they raise fears that their freedom to practise and speak about their faith will be “severely” limited and dismiss Government reassurances as "meaningless".

They even liken David Cameron’s moves to redefine marriage to those of Henry VIII, whose efforts to secure a divorce from Katherine of Aragon triggered centuries of bloody upheaval between church and state.

They claim that, taken in combination with equalities laws and other legal restraints, the Coalition's plans will prevent Catholics and other Christians who work in schools, charities and other public bodies speaking freely about their beliefs on the meaning of marriage. Even the freedom to speak from the pulpit could be under threat, they claim.

And they fear that Christians who believe in the traditional meaning of marriage would effectively be excluded from some jobs – just as Catholics were barred from many professions from the Reformation until the 19th Century.

The comments are contained in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, signed by 1,054 priests as well as 13 bishops, abbots and other senior Catholic figures. They account for almost a quarter of all Catholic priests in England and Wales.

It comes as opponents of gay marriage launch a lobbying campaign targeting MPs in 65 of the most marginal seats.

The Coalition is due to publish its Equal Marriage Bill, allowing couples of the same sex to wed at the end of this month.

Legal opinions commissioned by opponents have argued that teachers could face disciplinary measures under equality laws if they refuse to promote same-sex marriage once the change has been implemented.

Hospital, prison and army chaplains could also face challenges if they preach on marriage being between a man and a woman, it is claimed.

Until 1829 Catholics and other religious dissenters in Britain and Ireland were barred from entering many professions or, in many cases, even meeting to worship under a body of restrictions collectively known as the penal laws.

The priests write: “After centuries of persecution, Catholics have, in recent times, been able to be members of the professions and participate fully in the life of this country.

“Legislation for same sex marriage, should it be enacted, will have many legal consequences, severely restricting the ability of Catholics to teach the truth about marriage in their schools, charitable institutions or places of worship.

“It is meaningless to argue that Catholics and others may still teach their beliefs about marriage in schools and other arenas if they are also expected to uphold the opposite view at the same time.”

Arguing that marriage as traditionally understood is “the foundation and basic building block of our society”, they add: “We urge Members of Parliament not to be afraid to reject this legislation now that its consequences are more clear.”

Last night the Bishop of Portsmouth, the Rt Rev Philip Egan, one of the signatories, insisted that the comparison with the penal laws was “dramatic” but not an exaggeration.

“It is quite Orwellian to try to redefine marriage,” he said. "I am very anxious that when we are preaching in Church or teaching in our Catholic Schools or witnessing to the Christian faith of what marriage is that we are not going to be able to do it – that we could be arrested for being bigots or homophobes.”

Rev Dr Andrew Pinsent, a leading Oxford University theologian, who also signed the letter, said: “We are very sensitive to this historically because of course the Reformation started in England on a matter of marriage.

“Henry VIII could have been forgiven for his adultery but he didn’t want to do that, he wanted to control marriage and redefine what was a marriage and wasn’t.

“Because the Church would not concede that point, that launched three centuries of great upheaval in English society, and from the Catholic point of view life was very difficult.

“We fear that what is happening now is that a network of laws are being put in place which would violate our freedom of conscience.”

He added: “I think people in the Westminster bubble have underestimated the level of concern in the country – at a local level there is great concern about these things.”

In recent weeks the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, and several other leading Catholics in Britain have stepped up their attacks on David Cameron’s plans, echoing concern in a series of pronouncements from Pope Benedict.

But the letter is the first large scale protest initiated by local priests.

Rev Mark Swires, one of the organisers, said it had taken weeks to compile the signatures but that it showed the strength of opinion in the pews.

“This is a grassroots initiative by priests, it isn’t an initiative by the hierarchy of the Church.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The Government’s proposals for equal marriage do not change anything about teaching in schools. Teachers will continue to be able to express their own personal beliefs about marriage.

“Schools have a requirement to ensure they do not teach anything that would be considered inappropriate to a pupil’s age, religious or cultural background and they must ensure pupils are presented with balanced, factual information about the nature and importance of marriage for family life and bringing up children. This will not change". [And why should we trust the UK Department of Education? Isn't this the same department that a few years ago enforced mandatory showing to all schoolchildren of Al Gore's fantasy film - a euphemism for grand scientific hoax - entitled 'An Inconvenient Truth' without requiring a factual film shown to balance it out? The government can say anything it wants now to try to sweeten the poison pill of gay 'marriage' and they will find every way to forcefeed this 'sweented' pill, but it is still poison that can infiltrate, deaden or even kill everything it touches.]