ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

The difficulty of
reconciliation in China
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from

January 29, 2010



Center, parishioners after Sunday Mass in Beijing's cathedral. Right photo, a Chinese edition of a 30 GIORNI book of prayers [He who prays, saves himself], originally published in Italian with an introduction by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and which has now been translated to Chinese.


The December 2009 issue of the magazine 30 GIORNI which comes out today carries a dossier that should be of interest to understand something of the situation in the Church in China two and a half years since Benedict XVI's unprecedented pastoral letter to the Catholics of China.

The dossier, edited by Gianni Valente, includes some documents that have not been published before which contribute to clarify many errors that have characterized reporting on the issue by the news agencies, as well as many Web sites, which tend to present a negative view of the work of the Vatican Secretariat of State, and more generally, the Holy See itself, and claim that for reasons of Realpolitik, the Vatican is abandoning the so-called 'underground Church' in China to its own fate.

As a necessary premise, it must be remembered that
1. There is only one church in China, not two.
2. Almost all the 'official' bishops recognized by the Beijing government are also recognized by the Vatican.
3. Both Catholic communities - 'underground' and 'official' - have been the object of persecution over the past six decades.
4. In his 2007 letter, Benedict XVI suggested a precise way towards reconciliation and overcoming the division between the two communities.

An emblematic case, presented by the magazine, is Bishop Francis An Shuxin, who was detained for 10 years by the Communists, and is now facing opposition by some of his own brothers in the faith.

Earlier auxiliary bishop and now coadjutor of Baoding, a city some 150 kms from Beijing, An was detained in isolation from 1996 to 2006, and after his release, decided to go 'above ground' in order to exercise his mandate, following procedures imposed by civilian authorities.

Today, some priests and faithful in the underground Church accuse him of betrayal and do not recognize his authority.

In documents published by the magazine, An explains his reasons for emerging from clandestinity, agreeing to register himself with the civilian authorities, but without any compromise in his faith (for instance, not signing a provision regarding election of bishops without Vatican approval, and adding an eloquent explanatory note "on the ground of not violating Catholic faith", to the provision referring to the principles of self-management and autonomy of the Church in China).

30 GIORNI also discloses that the Holy See, in 2006, had sent the diocese various documents recognizing An's legitimate authority as a bishop as soon as he became 'official' - but the documents have been ignored by underground priests opposed to An's decision.

The legitimacy of An's ministry was reiterated in a June 2008 letter from Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, with appropriate references to Benedict XVI's June 2007 letter: "Everyone should know that the esteemed bishop (An) enjoys the approval and total confidence of the Holy See. Therefore, no one should doubt his sincerity nor oppose his authority".

Bishop An, says the dossier, testified that "After the publication of the Holy Father's Letter in 2007, many priests [among them, those who oppose An] kept the faithful from reading the pastoral letter, saying that the Pope was confused".

Therefore, it was not by chance that last November, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone wrote a letter to all Chinese priests on the occasion of the year for Priests, reiterating the Holy Father's urging for reconciliation within the Catholic community, along with respectful and constructive dialog with civilian authorities, following the 'guidelines' in the Pope's letter.

So, the reality of the Chinese situation is far more complex than it is usually presented in Western reporting, and distortions and resistances can be found even in the 'underground' community which seems, on the whole, to be interpreting the Pope's letter as they see fit.


I have done a cursory reading of the articles in the 30 GIORNI dossier, a journalistic enterprise which, I understand, was made possible when magazine editor and publisher Giulio Andreotti travelled to Tibet last fall to take part in an international symposium on the Tibet question.

What struck me was the failure on the part of 30 GIORNI to get some direct input from Cardinal Joseph Zen, who is an advocate of the underground Church and often speaks up for them - and which 30 GIORNI writer Gianni Valente points out - but was also entrusted by the Holy Father to 'monitor' the consequences of the papal letter on the two Catholic communities in China.


Speaking of Cardinal Zen, Carlos Antonio Palad at

calls attention to the last traditional Latin Mass offered by the Cardinal in Hongkong on December 29:




The cardinal offered a Solemn Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form last Easter. Palad also informs us that the Cardinal "has actually volunteered to be part of the line up of priests who alternate in celebrating Hong Kong's Sunday TLM. To my knowledge, he is the only cardinal who frequently celebrates the TLM in a fixed site".


THE PRAYER BOOK

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote the Introduction for the prayer book
published by 30 GIORNI in 2005 just three months before he was elected Pope.



Here is a translation of the Introduction:

---

Since man was man, he has prayed. Always and everywhere, man has realized that he is not alone in the world, that there is someone who listens. He has always realized that he needs Another much greater than he, to whom he should address himself so that his life may be what it ought to be.

But the face of God had always been hidden, and only Jesus has shown us his true face, Whoever sees Him sees the Father (cfr Jn 14,9). Therefore, if on the one hand, praying comes naturally to man (to ask in times of need and to thank in times of joy), on the other hand, there is also man’s inability to pray and to speak with a hidden God. We do not know what we should ask, St. Paul writes (cfr Rm 8,26).

And so, we should always ask the Lord, as the disciples did: “Lord, teach us to pray!” (Lk 11,1). The Lord has taught us the ‘Our Father’ as a model for authentic prayer, and has given us a Mother, the Church, who helps us to pray.

The Church has received from Sacred Scripture a great treasury of prayers. In the course of centuries, there have also emerged, from the hearts of the faithful, numerous prayers with which, ever anew, they address themselves to God. In praying with Mother Church, we ourselves learn to pray.

I am therefore very happy that 30 GIORNI is publishing a new edition of this little book containing the fundamental prayers of Christians, as these have taken form through the centuries. May they be with us in all the events of our life and help us to celebrate the liturgy of the Church in prayer.

I hope that this little book can be a traveler’s companion to many Christians.

Rome, February 18, 2005
JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER

---

Furor over Paris Nuncio's
advocacy letter sent privately
to some European parliamentarians
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

January 28, 2010


Last January 8, the Apostolic Nuncio in France, Mons. Luigi Ventura,
wrote a letter accompanied by a 'memorandum' to some representatives of the Partita Popolare Europea (PPE) in the European Parliament asking them, in the name of the Holy See, to commit themselves to amending a resolution on sexual discrimination and suggesting that they should oppose its approval if the text remains 'unacceptable'.

The letter also proposed that they support the candidacy of Riccardo Ventre and Luca Volonte, respectively, to be the Italian judge in the European Court of Human Rights, and to be president of the PPE delegation in the European Council.

The letter was disclosed on the floor of teh European parliament by the Luxembourg Socialist representative Lydia Err, who denounced it as 'scandalous and unacceptable Vatican intervention".

The vote on the resolution against sexual discrimination, which requires, among others, a guarantee of legal recognition for homosexual couples, was scheduled to take place Wednesday, but it has been postponed to April because of 80 amendments presented mostly by PPE parliamentarians.

"At the behest of the Secretary of State," Mons. Ventura writes, "I would like to share with you the concerns of the Holy See with regard to two proposed resolutions whose texts are in open violation of natural law and the values promoted by the Catholic Church, and of the need to participate actively in the vote."

"Some members of the PPE," the letter goes on, "like Volonte, Farina and Gatti, have already been informed of the concerns of the Holy See and have submitted amendments to improve the proposed resolutions. In sending you a memorandum in this respect, allow me to request your support for the wishes of the Holy See".

The Nunciature in Paris would not comment on the news, while Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi merely remarked that "it is normal for the Church to intervene in defense of its moral principles".

"I am taken aback. I know nothing of this", said the head of the Italian parliamentary delegation to Strasbourg, Luigi Valente. "I am astonished at an initiative that was neither requested nor agreed upon, I hope teh Nuncio will make a clarification".

Pietro Mercenario, a senator from the Partita Democrata (center left), said the Nuncio's letter was "a serious institutional interference".

His colleague, Vannino Chiti, said the action was 'unbelievable', adding: "The Catholic Church, like any other religious confession, has the full right to publicly express its positions on every issue in society. Precisely because of this, it is unbelievable that a private letter should have been sent only to selected parliamentarians and that it gets down to the details of which amendments to approve or reject, and that specific candidates are endorsed".


The Nuncio, Mons. Ventura, was recently assigned to Paris after serving as Nuncio in Canada, and is considered to be one of the Vatican's most experienced diplomats. The question here is the ill-advised action of writing private letters to selected Parliamentarians, openly urging them to specific actions.

An open letter to all the Parliament members publicly expressing the Church's position on disputed parts of the proposed resoluti0n(s) would have been more appropriate.

Which is what the Russian Orthodox Church did:


Moscow patriarchate sends message
to European Parliamentarians
opposing resolution that would
validate homosexual unions



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 29 (Translated from ADNkronos) - The patriarchate of Moscow, through its minister for foreign relations, Archbishop Hilarion, has sent a message to the participants of the last session of the European Council's parliamentary assembly, to express its opposition to a resolution that condemns sexual discrimination and would require recognition of same-sax unions, in an open letter dated January 26.

The Vatican had earlier chosen to dot his by means of private letters sent by the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris to a selected group of parliamentarians belonging to the Partita Popolare Europea (PPE), including French, Dutch and Italian representatives.

Interesting comments here on revelations made in a book published earlier this week by the postulator of John Paul II's cause for beatification. I knew there was a reason why I was queasy about all the emphasis on self-flagellation! Not that I don't believe John Paul II was incapable of it, but he would have been the last person to 'advertise' his acts of self-mortification, since by its very nature, it should concern no one but the person making the sacrifice.


Some troubling questions
about Mons. Oder's revelations
by Salvatore Izzo




VATICAN CITY, January 29 (Translated from AGI) - The Vatican newspaper has not said a word about the book. And in Vatican circles, there is much criticism.

From Poland, especially from Cracow, there appears to be widespread disapproval among those who were close to Karol Wojtyla of the book Perche e santo (Why he is holy) written by Mons. Stanislaw Oder, the postulator of the late Pope's cause for beatification.

"The first reason to be disconcerted," says Gianfranco Svidercoschi, formerly deputy editor of L'Osservatore Romano, co-author of one book with the late Pope and of Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz's memoir about the Pope, "is that for the first time in memory, the postulator of a cause has revealed a considerable part of the testimonies given by clergy and laymen behind closed doors during a canonical process".

Even worse, he said, is to have the disclosures made even before the process has been completed.

[I would agree that for both reasons, publication of the Oder book was at the very least, premature, and ultimately improper.]

"We are still awaiting the verification and approval of the miracle and after that, the final approval by Benedict XVI," he explained.

He also cites Oder's statement in the book that, "Thinking back, the fact that the Pope had wanted to meet me when he was alive was a sort of 'precognition'. Perhaps he wanted to know better the man who would represent him before the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood."

Svidercoschi said it was like saying that John Paul II was certain he would be made a saint, and so he wanted to get to know the man who would be his postulator. "That was not John Paul II at all!"

What about the previously unpublished documents included in the book?

"It is not made clear that some texts were simply drafts, preparatory notes. So without such an explanation, it would seem that John Paul II had seriously thought of resigning. What he did was to ask experts in canon law if - like bishops who must retire at age 75 and cardinals who can no longer vote in a papal conclave after they turn 80 - there could be an automatic age limit for a Pope".

In the end, Svidercoschi points out, although John Paul II knew that Paul VI had laid down certain guidelines for what should be done if a Pope were incapacitated and unable to carry out his functions, he decided that he would stay for as long as God wanted him to".

As quoted in all his other biographies, Svidercoschi says, the Pope remarked, "Did Christ come down from the Cross?"

More generally, Svidercoschi raised the question of whether it was proper to publish drafts which the Pope had decided not to use - such as a handwritten letter to his would-be assassin Ali Agca - since obviously, the Pope had a reason for not using these drafts.

"Perhaps he did not think these discarded texts really expressed what he wanted. So how can we consider them significant if he himself did not?," the writer says. "I think that seeking to make a media 'scoop' at any cost ends up falsifying the image of this great Pope".

As for the late Pope's acts of self-mortification, Svidercoschi said, "I do not believe he self-flagellated". [Though I do not see why his opinion should matter in this respect.]

He thinks that the testimony of the nun during the investigative part of the beatification process was most likely a mistaken interpretation.

"The sounds that she claims to have heard coming from the Pope's room could well have been due to physical affliction from his illness," he notes. "We must not forget that the assassination attempt in May 1981 left serious and recurrent physical problems even in a man who was very strong and loved sports."

Out of thousands of pages of testimonies collected, he said, there are so many details that acquire a different and perhaps equivocal sense when isolated and emphasized - in the process, he said, the late Pope's personality can tend to be distorted.

He questions particularly Oder's interpretation of John Paul II's statements about Medjugorje.

"If he had said that he would want to go to Medjugorje some day, it cannot be interpreted to mean he approved of the so-called Marian apparitions reported by the Bosnian seers. If he had been convinced of it, he would have done something concrete about it [like have the CDF investigate the so-called apparitions, after the local bishop had carried out due investigation and concluded 'nothing supernatural had happened'].

"If he wanted to go there, he had more than enough time, since he reigned for at least 20 more years after the apparitions were first reported. [He also visited Bosnia some time during then and did not include Medjugorje in his itinerary, nor meet with the 'seers'.]

"He would have taken responsibility even in such a sensitive matter, as he did when he decided to disclose to the world the 'third secret' of Fatima."

Svidercoschi deplored that "the episodes cited and repeated in the media these days - some of them coming from the testimony of just a single person - end up being 'absolutized' and tailored to a particular interpretation."

Such as, he said, "John Paul II's attitude about Medjugorje (which was far more cautious than the Oder book makes it appear); his relationship with Padre Pio (which the Pope had clearly explained in our book together, Dono e mistero); and the inference about his self-flagellation (was it witnessed at all by the nun who recounts it, or merely 'heard'?)"

Likewise, he said, the hypothesis of a supposed plot by the Red Brigade to kidnap the Pope (about which at the time referred to, there was not a hint heard in the Vatican), or the account of the Pope's confrontation with General Jaruzelski [the Polish Communist leader at the time of a visit to Poland by John Paul II in 1983) - in which it should at least have been pointed out that twice during that visit, the Pope had threatened to go back to Rome if the Communist government tried any undue pressure on him."

In short, Svidercoschi says, a clear differentiation must be made between the investigative process for beatification, in which "everyone who testifies recalls what he remembers, what he understood, what he sensed or what he thinks he saw or simply deduced about the candidate. Not everything a witness says has the same weight or significance" - and reporting these details selectively in a book.

The cardinals and bishops of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, he pointed out, "do not approve the final 'positio' recognizing the heroic virtues of the candidate on the basis of individual details and testimonies, but on the overall person that emerges from these testimonies - his historical reality as well as his true personality - and if from these testimonies as well as the candidate's writings, from his acts, practices and beliefs, there do not emerge any shadows that are out of line with Christian doctrine, then they will not look further into details because doing so will not gain them any more knowledge to act upon".

Was the OR editor behind
the campaign that resulted
in Boffo leaving 'Avvenire'?


In his blog entry today, Sandro Magister reproduces much of an article in today's Il Foglio, in which Il Giornale editor Vittorio Feltri tells the newspaper edited by Giuliano Ferrara that his Page 1 accusation against the then-editor of Avvenire Dino Boffo in September last year - which Feltri subsequently retracted on December 3 in his newspaper, three months after his false accusation had forced Boffo to resign his three positions as the head of the Italian bishop's conference newspaper, radio and television network - was based on information he received from an 'institutional' source in the Church whom he had 'no reason to doubt'.

Neither Feltri nor Il Foglio identifies this source by name - except to say the emissary who provided the documents Feltri based his charges on represented "a lobby that availed of the naivete of the editor of L'Osservatore Romano".

But Magister's headline to his blog entry reads: 'Feltri strikes again: Yesterday, it was Boffo, now it's Vian', editor of L'Osservatore Romano. [Quite a concatenation of newspapers involved! Not to mention that Magister writes for L'Espresso, under which he publishes both www.chiesa and his blog.]

In a blog last December, Magister had also claimed that Vian was the real author of a Sept. 19, 2009, article written for Il Giornale, Feltri's paper, under the pseudonym Diana Alfieri, more than two weeks after Boffo's resignation, in which the writer defended Feltri's accusation and attacked the Italian bishops conference not only for standing up for Boffo, but for having kept him on for 15 years 'despite questions about his moral qualifications'. [Feltri's allegations openly called Boffo a homosexual and falsely attributed a homosexual basis to a minor court case for which Boffo was fined.]

Magister's claim has never been denied by Vian, Il Giornale or any representative of Vian. But perhaps they just did not want to be further involved in the polemics.

Magister concludes today's blog entry with these words:

---

Readers of www.chiesa and 'Settimo cielo' have been able to follow the developments in this case. Including the revelatory account of the article signed by 'Diana Alfieri' in the 9/19/09 issue of Il Giornale whose real author was Vian.

What Feltri tells Il Foglio in today's article thus confirms that the anti-Boffo operation, which was also against Avvenire and definitely against the line followed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini (during his 15-year-long presidency of the CEI) was born inside the Church itself, to strike against targets within the Church.

Now we have come to the final 'accounting' for this whole episode. The Pope's newspaper is on the carpet, in the person of its editor, and Vatican officials, especially the Secretariat of State [under which L'Osservatore Romano is a department], cannot continue pretending as if they were out of this.

The countdown has started and a TKO appears to be the most logical outcome.

---

Magister also refers in his blog entry to an article by Il Foglio's Vaticanista Paolo Rodari on Jan. 23, who claimed that when Cardinal Ruini had a private audience with the Pope last January 8, he took the opportunity to give the Pope a comprehensive background on the Boffo case and what came afterwards. And that this background information included all the pressures and 'lobbying' efforts on the part of some in the Vatican itself to undermine the CEI and its media outlets. Of course, as expected, Cardinal Ruini issued a statement next day denying the account of what he had discussed with the Pope.

It is true that Magister has not always been happy with certain moves and decisions taken by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as Secretary of State (beginning with an article back in 2007 entitled 'The man who should be helping the Pope but isn't'), particularly his seemingly high-handed and unwarranted attempt at a 'power grab' from the Italian bishops conference the moment a new president was named by the Pope to replace Cardinal Ruini.

But, as I noted about Cardinal Bagnasco earlier this week, he hasn't proven to be a pushover for Bertone and has managed to run his ship autonomously so far, and that Bertone himself has apparently stopped pushing, not overtly, at least.

Of course, Bertone has been responsible - on the principle of 'The buck stops here' - for egregious failures by the Secretariat of State such as the failure to do their duty to properly vet Mons. Wielgus in Poland before the Pope named him Archbishop of Warsaw, and failing to do due diligence on backgrounding Mons. Williamson for the Pope before the Vatican announced the recall of the FSSPX bishops' excommunication.

In both cases, I believe he did the Pope a great disservice, even without meaning to, by sheer negligence and taking things for granted. The Pope recently wrote him a very warm letter to confirm him as Secretary of State after he turned 75 - but that should be all the more reason for him to do all he can to avoid such dreadful embarrassments for the Pope as the Wielgus and Williamson affairs.

It is hard to attribute Magister's charges against Vian to a similar prejudice because until he blogged on the 'Diani Alfieri' article, Magister was a very enthusiastic supporter of Vian and how he has been doing his job at OR. Nor can anyone who follows Magister's reportage possibly think Magister is simply stirring up trouble by pointing out these apparent missteps by Vian.

At the very least, it is time for Vian to speak up, if only because the 'Diani Alfieri' article was truly scurrilous and calumniatory to Boffo, Avvenire and the leadership of the Italian bishops conference! I do wonder, too, why Magister could not have picked up the phone back in September to ask Vian directly about the 'Alfieri' article. Perhaps the fact that Vian did not rebut him was enough for him.

About Vian's editorial shortcomings and recurrent journalistic transgressions at OR, I could write a kilometric essay myself, with an abundance of objective examples to support my case. But being a sub-optimal editor is not as grievous as the sin of indulging in petty schemes that could reflect negatively on the Church. Vian owes the Pope - his employer, in effect - a public disclaimer, explanation or whatever of his seeming negative involvement in the Boffo case.]

New media test Vatican's digital fluency
by John Thavis



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 30 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI recently urged the world's priests to make better use of new media, but in his own backyard the digital revolution is still seen as a mixed blessing.

The Vatican Web site remains largely a repository of printed texts, displayed on pages designed to look like parchment. And despite more than a decade of discussion about making the site interactive, www.vatican.va continues to provide information in one direction only: from them to you.

Some Vatican agencies have embraced the digital possibilities, notably Vatican Radio, which offers online broadcasts, podcasts and RSS feeds along with photos and print versions of major stories.

Other departments prefer to fly below the radar. The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, for example, has posted exactly one new piece of information on its Web page over the last three years. {That's not fair, and it's also false - since the Congregation operates the FIDES news agency which can be accessed from their pages!

The more valid reproach is that most of the Curial organizations, including the Secretariat of State and the CDF, do not yet have their own websites, when even the Prefect of the Pontifical Household has its own subsite on the main Vatican site.]

The impression that the Vatican is slow on the draw when it comes to Internet possibilities was confirmed recently when a "Vatican" Twitter feed turned out to be someone impersonating the Vatican. It was a fairly innocent case of Twitterjacking, but begged the question: Why doesn't the Vatican have a real Twitter feed?

Among the few Vatican officials willing to tackle these issues head-on is Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications. He met with reporters to present the Pope's World Communications Day message Jan. 23, which called for better use of new media, and said it held lessons for everyone engaged in Church ministry.

"The risk is that our sites will merely be places where information is posted, and not a real meeting ground," he said.

Archbishop Celli has helped prod the Vatican toward more interactivity. Last year, his council designed and launched a special Vatican Web site, www.pope2you.net, to bring the Pope closer to a younger audience. It includes iPhone and Facebook applications, and visitors have used the site to send nearly 300,000 e-cards to their friends, each bearing a snippet of Pope Benedict's teaching.

Last Christmas, pope2you.net invited people to send personal photo-and-text Christmas greetings to the Pope, which were then posted to a linked Flickr account. The response was overwhelming, with messages from believers and nonbelievers all over the world.

In January, Archbishop Celli was busy putting together a representative selection in dossier form for the Pope.

When the Pope released his communications day message urging priests to take advantage of digital media, Archbishop Celli did something that reversed the usual hierarchy of communication in the church: His site encouraged young people, after reading the papal message, to click on a link and send it directly to their pastors.

[What about someone in the Vatican Press Office with a master list of all available e-mail addresses of priests, bishops, parishes and dioceses - who can do a mass e-mailing everytime there is a papal text or Church message to be shared with the universal Church?]

Archbishop Celli, a 68-year-old Italian who has spent his entire career in the Roman Curia, knows that communication novelties are usually introduced very gently at the Vatican. He readily concedes that at his age, when it comes to new media he may be part of the problem.

[On the other hand, there are a few cardinals who became Web-savvy early on, like Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos, now 80, and Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who was president of the Pontifical Council for Ministry to Health Care workers. Cardinal Sean O'Malley of Boston has been blogging since 2007, and Cardinals Angelo Scola of Venice, and Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna, have very active personal websites different from their diocesan sites.]

"We have our own digital divide. I think of myself. I was not born 'digital'. I belong to a certain era that feels more at home with a book," he told reporters.

He said, for example, that he was amazed at the Kindle but found it hard to imagine himself "sitting in a chair and watching the pages of a book stream past on a small screen."

The challenge for the Church is not to encourage young priests and seminarians to use digital media, because they're already doing so, he said. The bigger problem is convincing middle-aged and older priests to embrace these possibilities.

Archbishop Celli said his council is also willing to tackle an even more sensitive issue -- in many ways, the core issue -- of Vatican communications: the question of language.

"This is a topic we need to face in an explicit manner. Many times we speak, but in a language that is no longer comprehensible," he said. He said that's something that may be the focus of an upcoming plenary session of his council.

Speaking the language of new media is a delicate issue precisely because many Vatican officials do not trust these media to get it right about the Church, or to engage people at a more than shallow level. They doubt whether the language of the Internet is compatible with the beauty and depth of Catholic theology and liturgy.

Msgr. Paul Tighe, secretary of the communications council, launched what might be called a trial balloon on the question of language in a recent article in Cultures and Faith, a publication of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

While acknowledging the risks of superficiality, he said people should remember that the language of the digital culture would not substitute for dogma or theology, but would be employed primarily to make an initial point of contact with those who are far from the faith.

[Precisely! There is a hierarchy (or pyramid) of communications levels in any field. In the Church, the Pope's messages rank at the top of that pyramid. Fortunately for us, we have a Pope who is distinguished for the clarity of his message. But it then becomes the duty of the lower levels in that pyramid to spread it downward promptly and effectively - and that is the great deficiency so far in the Church's communications structure. That, and the fact that many bishops and priests continue to act and speak as though they know better than the Pope and the Church in general!]

As things stand, he said, the Church relies too much on texts, which often use a vocabulary and forms of expression that are experienced as "unintelligible and off-putting even by sympathetic audiences."

[You can't change the 'language of the Church' overnight. Besides, there is a place for that 'official language' - in the original documents, and in the official Acts of the Apostolic See (where everything is reported in Latin as the official basis for any textual references]. And it is right that the original documents should be made available ASAP.

It then rests with the Vatican Press Office to make clear and understandable news reports - also ASAP - based on those texts and documents, but mostly with the news agencies and Vatican correspondents who are primarily responsible for the version, often quite reductive, of the texts and documents that gets to be disseminated among the general public - with all the errors, distortions, shortcomings and generally unappetizing language we are familiar with, from which even the Catholic news agencies are not exempt.]

He said the Church needs to recognize that today's younger audience is fluent in "a language rooted in the convergence of text, sound and images," and will quickly move on if their attention is not immediately engaged.

Msgr. Tighe said that, ultimately, the church should look to the example of Christ, who spoke to his contemporaries with words, stories and parables, as well as deeds and actions. The Church can also turn to its rich heritage of art and music, he said.

"Just as the stained-glass images of medieval cathedrals spoke to an illiterate audience, we must find forms of expression that are appropriate to a generation that has been described as 'post-literate,'" he said.

[One way to do that right away is to introduce - systematically as well as adjunctively - the most attractive elements of Church tradition in art, sculpture, architecture, music and literature through the Web! Many bloggers already do so, to some degree, but the Vatican communications structure itself has to devote an organized effort to it.

The possibilities are infinite. The Vatican interactive sites devoted to the Pope could have daily vignettes featuring, say, a saint, a church, a work of art, the Gospel of the day, a poem, a hymn, a religious festival, local religious folklore, etc - all lend themselves to illustration with existing visuals from the Church tradition and with the appropriate passages from 'music by the masters' to accompany any kind of visual! And you would never run out of subjects or content! It is also important, of course, to identify (and provide relevant information)every illustration or piece of music used, because nothing is so frustrating as to be struck by a visual or a piece of music and not know what it it is!

For instance, illustrate the Pope's homilies or catecheses with visuals that amplify and enhance - but do not distract from - the message.]


There's also a problem of the great damage that could result from mis-translation - in this case, an Italian website mis-translating a statement made by a Polish bishop and causing great uproar unnecesearily:


Polish bishop calls Holocaust article
a 'complete misunderstanding'
of what he actually said



Krakow, Poland, Jan 29, 2010 (CNA) - Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus Tadeusz Pieronek of Sosnoviec, Poland, has roundly denied having referred to the Holocaust as “a Jewish invention.”

Calling it “a complete misunderstanding,” he explained that the Italian website Pontifex, which quoted him in an article this week, clearly failed to get his meaning.

“I was referring to the fact that the Jews have created the term ‘Shoah’ to define the tragedy that didn’t have a precedent in history,” Bishop Pieronek told ANSA news agency. “The journalist interpreted my words as if I said that the Jews had invented the Shoah.”

The bishop asked increduously, “How could I have said something so absurd?”

“Everyone who knows me knows my position on the crimes of the Nazis and on the horror of what happened,” added the 75-year-old former spokesman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, who has previously publicly condemned anti-Semitism.

The original article posted on Pontifex last Monday, reported under the title of “The Shoah, an invention of the Jews,” that Bishop Pieronek had made other incendiary statements, including, “undoubtedly, the majority of those who died in the concentration camps were Jews, but also on the list were Poles, Gypsies, Italians and Catholics. So do not steal this tragedy in the name of propaganda.” The article has since been pulled from Pontifex.

The article also quoted him as saying that “they, the Jews, have a good press, because the powerful have the financial resources - extremely powerful with the unconditional support of the United States. And this promotes a kind of arrogance, which I consider to be unbearable.”

[I don't know how the bishop actually expressed himself in Polish - was he as combative as the translation sounds? - but he does make valid though highly 'politically incorrect' points in the above two paragraphs:
1) That the Jews were not the only victims of Nazi barbarism. In a recent post about the Pius XII controversy, I pointed out that the total killed in World War II was as many as 62-78 million by the latest historical data, of which 20-25 million were military dead from both sides, which still leaves 37-53 million civilian victims. Germany itself lost 6.5-8 million of its citizens, of which 5.5 million were soldiers. The figures do not excuse the planned extermination of a whole race in any way, but they do provide some perspective, at least, and show that the Nazi bloodlust was not confined to the Jews. In this case, the Poles themselves lost six million citizens in the war, half of whom were Jews.
2) American Jews did have, and probably still have, vast influence on the US media simply by owning most of the big names, like the New York Times. But this may help them insofar as Holocaust-related stories are concerned - no MSM outlet in the US would dare be politically incorrect about the Shoah in any way - but not about Israel, where the liberal media are generally pro-Palestinian.]

Upon being informed of the Pontifex article, the bishop criticized the site for “the manipulation of (his) words in an unauthorized interview.”

Following the Polish bishop’s reaction and the disappearance of the article from their website, Pontifex rebutted by posting a message on Thursday calling for Bishop Pieronek to publicly recognize the alleged comments as true within 10 days or face “legal action for defamation.” [???? Something's not right there!]

In June 2008, Andrea Tornielli published a 682-page biography of Pius XII entitled Pio XII: Un'uomo sul trono di Pietro (Pius XII: A man on Peter's Chair) which is the definitive biography so far on the late Pope.

His comments about 'new' information relating to Pius XII's actions in World War II are therefore informed by the research he did for the book.



False scoop on Pius XII
by 'historians' who have
not read previous books
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from


In Corriere della Sera and La Stampa today, ample space is dedicated to supposedly new documents relative to the 'silence' of Pius XII in World War II.

Even Il Giornale [where Tornielli writes], alas, has used it, though fortunately in much more minor time, reporting it as a news brief, trusting in the Italian news agency ANSA which published Sunday afternoon the 'revelations' of two scholars who are not new at reporting false scoops.

They are Giuseppe Casarrubea and Mario Cereghino who have been researching British archives, and in the past few years - supported by ANSA - they have been presenting their 'discoveries' describing them as previously unknown and unpublished.

And yesterday, on their blog, they even mocked the postulator of Pius XII's beatification cause, Jesuit Fr. Peter Gumpel, to read their documents first before going any farther.

Thus, through a major news agency, quickly taken up by all the major newspapers in Italy, they cite a report made by the American charge d'affairs Harold Tittman to his government about a conversation in October 1943 with Pius XII, during which the Pope reportedly said that up till then [it was the month when the Germans sent off the only train of Jewish deportees from Rome to Auschwitz], the Germans had always respected the Holy See.

And do you know how 'previously unpublished' the document is? It was published in 1964 in the series Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Vol. 2 (on events in 1943), on page 950.

This text was published in the USA the year I was born, 45 years ago. So how could the two researchers not have known this? Basically, because they were researching British archives, in which they found a copy of the Tittman report, which the British had because Tittman had no diplomatic status and had to send his report through the British Embassy in Rome.

Even in Italy, it had been published much earlier by Ennio Nolfo in his book Vaticano e Stati Uniti: dalle carte di Myron Taylor (Vatican and the USA: From the letters of Myron Taylor), Milan 1978, reissued in 2003.

And of course, the so-called 'previously unpublished' document has since been used and discussed in biographies and many books on Pius XII.

In the words of Prof. Matteo Luigi Napolitano, who has published a few books on the Pius XII issue, Casarrubea and Cereghini "did not bother to look up, as they continue to pass off as 'new' and 'previously unpublished' data which serious historians have known and discussed for years".


John Allen reported the Casarrubea-Ceseghini 'discoveries' in his blog February 1, 2010 blog entry, in which he seeks out the opinion of another historian, Prof. Andrea Riccardi [better known as the founder of the Sant'Egidio Community], who also wrote a recent book about Pius XII's wartime activities:

The title translates as The longest winter, 1943-1944: Pius XII, the Jews, and the Nazis in Rome... Allen takes the Cassarubea-Ceseghini line that the documents are 'new', obviously writing his log before Tornielli's was published:


New documents fuel debate over Pius XII

Feb. 01, 2010


Two new documents concerning Pius XII and the Holocaust unearthed in an English archive seem destined to add fuel to the fire of an already polarized debate about the World War II-era Pope’s alleged “silence.”

Italian news agencies are reporting today that the first document is a brief account of an Oct. 19, 1943, meeting between Pius XII and the American Ambassador to the Holy See, Harold Tittmann. Although that session came just three days after the deportation of Roman Jews by the Nazis, the subject apparently did not arise.

Instead, Tittmann reported that Pius XII urged the Allies to ensure that the city of Rome did not become a battleground.

Pius XII also expressed concern, according to the document, about “small bands of Communists” operating around the city which might commit acts of violence between the departure of German occupying forces and the arrival of the Allies. Reportedly, he also stated that up to that point, the German occupiers had demonstrated respect for the Holy See.

The second document, apparently much longer, is a report of a November 1944 conversation between Pius XII and British Ambassador Francis D’Arcy Osborne. According to that text, D’Arcy Osborne pressed the Pope to denounce the Nazi deportation of Jews then unfolding in Hungary.

Pius replied that he was also under pressure to denounce Soviet war crimes in Poland and the Baltic states, something D’Arcy Osborne urged him not to do because of its possible impact on public opinion. At the time, the Soviets were an ally of the United States and Great Britain.

According to today’s reports, Pius XII said he was still considering what to do, but that in any event, a papal condemnation would be “anonymous,” meaning that he would denounce abuses without mentioning the guilty parties by name.

When D’Arcy Osborne insisted that Soviet conduct could not be compared to the mass extermination of Jews in gas chambers by the Nazis, according to his report, Pius XII agreed.

Some commentators in the Italian press have predicted that the new documents put Pius XII in an unflattering light, confirming his general reluctance to speak out directly against the Nazis.

However, Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio as well as a lay Catholic historian and a veteran of Catholic/Jewish dialogue, argued that they can be read in a different light.

The first document, Riccardi said, simply confirms Pius XII’s already well known concern for keeping Rome safe. The second, he said, illustrates his larger approach to crimes against humanity during the war – “to denounce the sin, but not the sinner.”

Pius’s agreement with D’Arcy Osborne that the Nazi campaign against the Jews could not be compared to other war crimes, Riccardi argued, is a “sign that the Pope was aware of the historical enormity of the Shoah as a crime without precedents.”

The two documents were revealed by Italian researchers Mario J. Cereghino and Giuseppe Casarrubea, best known for their work on the Mafia.


Back in 1999, there was this article in Catholic Insight about Tittman's reports on Pius XII - which I just stumbled on while googling 'Tittman' [presumably Casarrubea and Ceseghini never bothered to google Tittman, who, in fact, wrote a book called Inside the Vatican of Pius XII that was published posthumously in 2004.

The following is an excerpt from the 1999 article written soon after the publication of the late Fr. Blet's one-volume summary of the 12-volume compilation he adn three other historians made of the Vatican Archive documents concerning Pius XII's wartime activities:

Pius XII under attack

... The latest "revelation" from Washington, "kept secret until now," it was said, is the charge that Harold Tittman, specially appointed presidential delegate to the Vatican during World War II, had reported that in an audience on December 30, 1942, Pius XII told him "that he believed the news of the Nazi atrocities against the Jews were exaggerated" and that he would "denounce the Allies if they bombed Rome."

Tittman, in turn, told a "surprised" Pope that his Christmas message condemning the Nazis was insufficient in the eyes of public opinion.

First, the document has been known for 35 years, and was printed in Saul Friedlander's hostile book Pius XII and the Reich (1964) and Owen Chadwick's more nuanced Britain and the Vatican (1986).

Secondly, the Tittman report should be seen in the light of the impatience of Roosevelt, who had been in the war for only a year, who portrayed new-found ally Josef Stalin as a lovable Uncle Joe, and who was building pressure on the Pope to make unconditional flaming statements on behalf of the Allies.

When Pius XII maintained his independent judgement about Allied (including Bolshevik) motives and goals, Tittman was none too pleased and his account of what the Pope actually said should be treated with caution.




Much better yet is a 2004 review of the Tittman book (the memoir was edited and published posthumously by his son, who lived with his father in Rome during the war years) in First Things
www.firstthings.com/article/2008/12/001-the-unsilent-pope-15
which says at the outset:

---

...In works from Saul Friedlander’s 1966 Pius XII and the Third Reich to John Cornwell’s 1999 Hitler’s Pope, the occasional criticisms expressed in Tittmann’s dispatches have been quoted against Pius. Now we have the dispassionate postwar reflections of Tittmann himself, which paint a very different picture.
... Given Tittmann’s importance in the debate about the papacy during the war, these memoirs may be the most important document to be published on Pius XII in over twenty years. And they prove to be, far from an indictment, an overwhelming defense of the Pope and the Catholic Church...

---

Pius XII: 'The Pope cannot speak
if it means making things worse'
by Cardinal Paolo Dezza
Translated from
the 2/1-2/2/10 issue of


Editor's Note: On June 28, 1964, the Sunday Osservatore published the testimony of the then rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University [the Jesuit university in Rome] - who in 1966, became the confessor of Paul VI and John Paul I, and was made a cardinal in 1991 by John Paul II - regarding a confidential conversation he had with Pius XII. [NB: Cardinal Dezza died in December 1999].


In December 1942, I conducted the spiritual exercises at the Vatican for the Holy Father. At that time, I had the occasion for a long audience with the Pope, during which he spoke to me of Nazi atrocities in Germany and in the occupied countries, and expressed his pain and anguish because, he said, "They complain that the Pope does not speak. But the Pope cannot speak. If he did, it would only make things worse".

He told me he had recently sent three letters, one of them to 'the heroic Archbishop of Cracow", as he referred to him, the future Cardinal Sapeha, and to two other Polish bishops about their experiences with the Nazis.

He said they wrote back to thank him, but they also wrote they could not share the letter with their faithful "because it would aggravate the situation".

He recalled the example of Pius XI who in the face of vexation from the Russians, remarked: "You have to learn to keep silent to prevent worse evils".

It became clear that those who accused him of keeping silent about the Nazis because he supported them over the Russian Communists were simply wrong. He said, "Yes, the Communist peril is there, but for now, the greater danger is Nazism".

He spoke about what the Nazis would do if they were triumphant. "They want to destroy the Church and grind it underfoot like a toad. There will be no room for a Pope in their Europe. They have said 'Let him go to America'. But they cannot intimidate me. I will stay here".

He said it calmly, surely and firmly. If he did not speak up, it was not out of fear nor self-interest, but simply out of concern not to worsen the situation of those who were being oppressed.

When he spoke about the German threats to invade the Vatican and take it over, he was absolutely calm and trustful of Providence, but when he spoke about having to speak out, he sounded anguished. "If I speak, I make things worse."

So even if, historically, one can dispute whether he would have done better to speak out more, or in stronger terms, there should be no question that if he did not do so, it was only for that reason - not to make things worse for the victims and potential victims - not out of fear or other motives.

The other part of the conversation that was fascinating was when he started to tell me the things he had put into motion or had already done to help those he could. He also recalled his attempts to make contacts with Hitler, as agreed on with the German bishops, shortly after he became Pope, but he was unsuccessful. Then [Foreign Minister] Von Ribbentrop came to Rome, but that too came to nothing, although he tried his best not to get into political or military issues, but keep to what directly affected the Church and the Holy See.

In this respect, I remember that when the Germans occupied Rome in 1943, I was rector of the Gregorian at the time, and I welcomed those who came to seek refuge from the Nazi dragnet. But the Pope warned, "Father, try to avoid getting involved with the military, because the Gregorian is a pontifical institution. Everybody else, yes, as long as they are civilians, and the Jews". In fact, I did take in many Jews.

As to what the Pope did for the Jews in those years, one of the best testimonials was Grand Rabbi Israel Zolli of Rome, who took refuge with a worker's family during the Nazi occupation. After the danger had passed and the Allies came, he became a Catholic, and his conversion was sincere.

I remember he came to visit me on August 15, 1944, and he revealed to me his plan to convert. "Look," he said, "there is no quid pro quo. I want to be baptized, that's all. The Nazis have taken everything away. I am poor, I will live poor, I will die poor. It doesn't matter". [In fact, Dezza himself baptized Zolli.]

And when he was baptized, he chose the name Eugenio precisely to honor Papa Pacelli for what he had done to help the Jews. I myself accompanied him to see the Pope after his baptism in February, and I remember Zolli asked the Pope to remove the words 'perfidi iudaeis' from the liturgy [the Good Friday prayer]. Since changing the Missal was not something that the Pope could do right away, what Pius XII did was to publicize the fact that in Latin, 'perfidi' does not mean perfidious or treacherous as in 'perfidious', but 'non-believing'.

During the war, Pius XII wanted to be certain not to say anything that could lead to reactions that could worsen the situation for those the Nazis were targetting.

Did he decide correctly not to speak out, or would he have done more good by speaking? That's a question that can be debated historically. Perhaps Pius XI, who had a different temperament, may have acted differently. Objectively, this can be debated. Subjectively, I have no doubt that Pius XII sincerely sought to do what was best for all.


However, the following rebuttal of the 'non-news' regarding supposedly newly-discovered documents tending to show Pius XII was guilty of failing to do anything about the persecution of Jews, is. to say the least, rather lame and not adequately researched.



News that is not news
by Raffaele Alessandrini
Translated from
the 2/1-2/2/10 issue of



"In the face of the Shoah, the Allies and everyone else kept silent, but only Pius XII has been called to account - the rest have never been called to question", Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, who was for a long time in the forefront of Vatican diplomacy, said in an interview February 1 with La Stampa's Giacomo Galeazzi, concerning the latest 'new' accusation levelled at Papa Pacelli.

This time, the 'new' evidence is supposed be in two documents taken from the British Archives in Kew Gardens: a telegram dated October 19, 1943, and a letter dated November 10, 1944.

In the first, the United States charge d'affaires Harold Trittman in Rome describes the formal caution of Pius XII who reportedly failed to say anything about the deportation of Roman Jews to Auschwitz, when meeting with the Pope the day after the deportation.

[What this report does not point out is that the Trittman meeting with Pius XII took place three days before the deportation, as reported in the Osservatore Romano of that time, so Pius XII could not have commented about something that had not yet happened - and obviously, the roundup for deportation was sudden and unannounced.]

"During that tragic time," Cardinal Silvestrini points out, "the Pope was concerned that the Germans should leave Rome undisturbed, out of respect for the sacred character of the Eternal City".

Nor was this a choice militating against the Jews? On the contrary, Silvestrini say, "It was Pius XII's prudence that allowed him to act in effective and concrete ways not obvious to the Germans. For the Jews and others who were persecuted, any showy gesture of protest or opposition would have been counter-productive."

"At the same time, the Pope did all he could so that churches and Catholic institutions could accommodate as many Jews as they could.... Any explicit protest on their behalf would have caused more harm than good".

"Papa Pacelli knew the Germans better than most," Silvestrini says, "since he had been Nuncio in Munich and Berlin from 1917 to 1929, when he was an advocate of the Weimar Republic [the democratic post World War I government that the Nazis defeated in the elections of 1933.]He knew exactly what Nazism was."

The other document from the autumn of 1944 refers to a conversation between the British ambassador Francis D'Arcy Osborne and Pius XII, concerning the massacre of Jews in Hungary at a time when persistent denunciations of Stalinist crimes in the Baltic nations and Poland were reaching the Vatican,

But while the ambassador was advocating a public denunciation of Nazi atrocities, he suggested silence about those committed by the Soviets, who were now with the Allies.

The Pope chose to be consistent with his policy of prudence, 'o condemn the sins and not the sinners', as historian Andrea Riccardi put it in an interview with Antiono Carioti of Corriere della Sera on February 1.

Moreover, Cardinal Silvestrini recalls, "Pius XII considered what had happened earlier with the Dutch bishops a warning. In July 1942, the Dutch bishops wrote a pastoral letter read in all the Dutch churches which condemned the "merciless and unjust treatment of the Jews' by the Nazis. Their intentions were for the best, of course, but the consequences were disastrous. Immediately thee were more deportations of Dutch Jews and Catholics than there were from any other country of Western Europe".




One must thank ZENIT for publishing a separate news item about the big difference made by the mistaken date of Tittman's October 1943 conversation with Pius XII, referred to in a parenthetical in the first story above].



Incorrect date on Pius XII document:
Pope couldn't be 'indifferent' about
1943 Jewish deportation from Rome
as it had not happened yet
By Jesús Colina



ROME, FEB. 2, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Pope Pius XII was again in the news this week, as researchers presented two documents that were interpreted as putting the Pope in a negative light regarding his response to the Holocaust.

As ZENIT reported Monday, a brief document was presented as a new find dated Oct. 19, 1943. The document is a telegram from American diplomat Harold Tittmann on his meeting with the Pope.

The document does not mention the Oct. 16 raid on the Jews of Rome, when than 1,000 of the city's Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz.

Given that Tittmann's report does not mention the raid (though theoretically it had happened just three days before), and instead reports Pius XII's concern about Communists in Rome and his desire to keep the Eternal City in peace, headlines reported this was proof of the Pope's "indifference" to the Holocaust.

However, there is a basic problem.

In a statement sent to ZENIT, Professor Ronald Rychlak of the University of Mississippi explains that Pius XII could not have expressed concern about the roundup of Roman Jews because it hadn't happened yet.

Rychlak is the author of "Hitler, the War, and the Pope."

He explained: "The transcribed message to Washington from Harold Tittmann is dated Oct. 19, but this is a mistake. Vatican records show that the meeting between Pius and Tittmann took place on Oct. 14.

"In fact, L'Osservatore Romano of Oct. 15, 1943, reported on page one -- top of the first column -- that Tittmann was received by the Pope in a private audience on Oct. 14, 1943.

"Apparently a handwritten '14' was misread as a '19' when the documents were typed. The Pope did not mention the roundup of Jews because it had not yet happened!"

Rychlak noted that what the Pope did express to Tittmann was his concern "that a group of Communists would commit a violent act and this would lead to serious repercussions. Of course, he proved to be exactly correct the following spring."

Moreover, though the Oct. 14 document was presented as a new find, historians were already aware of it because it was published in 1964, with the incorrect date.

It is in the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) collection, in Volume II of 1943, on page 950.

In his blog, Andrea Tornielli, Vatican expert of the Italian daily Il Giornale, points out that the researchers who presented this "new document," Giuseppe Casarrubea and Mario Cereghino, have already made such "revelations" in the past.

"In October of 2008," he reported, "they presented as unpublished a document to use it against Pius XII (it was also referred to by ANSA [news] agency) and later they had to apologize."

New repercussions from
postulator's book on the late Pope

In an article in La Repubblica yesterday, 2/3/10, Vaticanista Orazio La Rocca reports more disapproval of the publication of a book on John Paul II by the postulator of his cause for beatification, the Polish priest Stanislaw Oder.

It's rather long, so I'll just summarize what he says - although I think his attention-getting headline was unduly alarmist: 'Wojtyla's postulator under a cloud; puts beatification at risk'. Why should the beatification be penalized for an apparent offense by the postulator, an offense that does not bear on the candidate in any way but only on the postulator?

He says the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, Arthbishop Angelo Amato is not too happy at the publication of documents used to support the cause for beatification.

And that Cardinal Stanislaw Dsiwisz, Archbishop of Cracow and John Paul II's private secretary for 40 years, had called Fr. Oder to a meeting in Cracow.

A third person who had been close to the late Pope in his lifetime was more explicit in his disapproval. Fr. Adam Bonecki, who was editor of the Polish edition of L'Osservatore Romano during John Paul's Pontificate and is now editor of Cracow's diocesan paper, saying it was improper to divulge "episodes, documents and confidential information about the late Pope's private life" at this time, before the beatification process has even been completed.

Bonecki added, "It is unthinkable and serious that this breach should have been committed by the postulator himself", a view he says is shared by Cardinal Dsiwisz, who also disapproved of the publication last year of a book by a Polish woman doctor about her decades of correspondence with Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II who considered her a sister.

Earlier, Gianfranco Svidercoschi, who co-wrote the autobiographical Memory and Gift with John Paul II (and Cardinal Dsiwisz's memoir My Life with Karol), pointed out that in divulging material used during the beatification investigations, the postulator had clearly violated Art. 220 of the new norms for the beatification process promulgated by Benedict XVI in 2007 to regulate and better control procedures followed by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.

Oder co-wrote the book with Savino Gaeta, editor of the magazine Famiglia Cristiana, who defended the book by saying that the book "reveals the true face of the Pope like no one has known him".


Even if there had been no specific canonical provision violated in publishing the book at this time, I do find it in poor taste, to say the least, and quite obviously opportunistic. It is not right that a postulator should use confidential material in his possession in a book that could, at the very least, have awaited the completion of the beatification process.

To have published it at this time is a ploy to take commercial advantage of the renewed public interest in John Paul II in anticipation of his imminent beatification. For all I know, Fr. Oder may have pledged all the proceeds from the book to a deserving cause, but he could have done that, too - and the book would sell just as much - if he had waited a decent period.

To use the pretext that the book intends to show the 'true face' of Karol Wojtyla is disingenuous. It is not as if the face he presented to the world during his 27 years as Pope was not his true face, or that the general public needs to be convinced about his saintliness - they already are, without need of the gratuitous and appparently conjectural account of his self-flagellation!

P.S. I think, perhaps, the Diocese of Rome, the Diocese of Cracow and the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood should consider naming a new postulator - one who is not self-serving - for the rest of John Paul II's cause.

Over the past few days, the soap opera has gone on in the Italian media with respect to the re-opening of the 'Boffo case' - in which it appears the former editor of Avvenire was dealt a low blow and that his resignation following the media melodrama last summer was both unnecessary and undeserved.

The media narrative is that the whole 'affair' was the result of ongoing rivalry over political influence in Italian affairs between the Secretariat of State and the Italian bishops' conference, in which the Vatican side has been the aggressor.

Rodari's title comes from St. Ambrose who described the Church as a "chaste whore, since many lovers frequent her because of the attractions of love; yet she is free from the contamination of sin." In the article, Rodari quotes Vittorio Messori who uses the term to describe the ongoing intramurals in Rome.


The Church as 'chaste and whore'
by PAOLO RODARI
Translated from

February 4, 2010


"They are quaking with apprehension at the Vatican," says an eminent Curial prelate about the revived controversy of the 'Boffo case'. "They are trying to get the right answers but they have not found it".

And they are quaking because of a statement made by Vittorio Feltri to Il Foglio last Saturday - that he had received the false information he used last September against Boffo from "a Church figure in whom one must have institutional trust".

Yet there has been no official denial or rebuttal from the Vatican. Just as no one from the Vatican has denied what Il Foglio wrote about recently in this connection, namely: "It appears from reliable sources that some telephone calls were made to Feltri from the editor of L'Osservatore Romano Giovanni Maria Vian, for the purpose of accrediting the false document".

When push comes to shove, an official denial can be ordered, but is that not too late now?

The silence from the Vatican says a lot. And give much food for thought. Because it is not a simple "No comment". Rather, it seems like an unsaid "No comment" for the simple reason that verification and investigation are under way.

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi has spoken out promptly on far less significant things. It may well be that the current hustle and bustle at the Vatican will end up with a decision to make a strong official statement for the benefit of the public.

But the fact that 12 days have passed since Il Foglio published its first background story on this case without an answer from the parties named makes one think that things are not clear at the Vatican itself.

For instance. Mons. Domenico Mogavero - who last September had been the first to call for Boffo's resignation as editor of Avvenire and his other jobs as director of the radio and TV networks of the Italian bishops conference [on the basis of an accusation that the accuser has since denounced as false and apologized for] - indicated to Corriere della Sera yesterday that he now regrets having acted in haste, and was concerned that our reconstruction of events may indeed prove to be correct.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, had a generic comment, telling La Repubblica that he found the idea of an internal plot in the Vatican against Boffo, and through him, the CEI, to be "unthinkable".

In an apparent attempt to further muddy the water, some have even tried to involve external elements like Comunione e Liberazione, which was immediately denied by Bishop Luigi Negri of San Marino-Montefeltro who was indignant that his name had once again been used by the media without any basis.

The Vatican is rather fearful of what could happen on February 22. That is when Vittorio Feltri faces a hearing by the Press Association of Lombardy which has started a disciplinary process against him for the false accusations he made against Boffo last summer.

Feltri will tell them what he told Il Foglio - and what he had written in his own newspaper, Il Giornale, when he admitted last December that he had accused Boffo on the basis of a document that proved to be false.


Would you trust a document like this no matter who sent it to you - and on its 'strength' alone, accuse a most respectable man of being a homosexual and concluding that the telephone molestation he was fined must have had to do with a homosexual affair?

[It's difficult to credit Feltri for the simple reason that the photocopy he published of the supposed 'supplemental information' (to a court document showing Boffo had been fined by a local court for 'telephone molestation') was very clearly a cheap tawdry-looking anonymous flier! Just as it is hard to believe someone like Vian would send or cause to be sent such a tawdry document - at the very least, he could have had it re-typed and presented cleanly!]

What the Vatican fears is that Feltri may feel compelled to name names to the press association - just who had sent him the documents, and who had brought it to him personally [earlier said to have been someone from the Vatican police force]. He could give them names, on condition that the press group keeps them secret.

But his only defense would be to reiterate that he believed the documents sent to him because they came from someone 'institutionally reliable' in the Vatican.

Writer Vittorio Messori told Il Foglio that he himself is not 'scandalized' even if he feels the Vatican must be "embarrassed because it seems the whole brouhaha came from within its walls". But he adds:

"The Vatican has always been a court rife with intrigues and conspiracies, fists and knives and vendettas. In the time of the Borgia Popes, they resolved their disputes through literal backstabbing. These days, they have other ways. History repeats itself.

"And the Church has always had two faces: it is an institution made up of humans who happen to hold on to a mystery: the mystery of faith. The Church is both chaste and whorish, but this fact should not be cause for horror. Alexander Borgia, for instance, was a good Pope - despite the known misdeeds, he never deviated from correct doctrine.

"What really matters is that the Pope is a master of the faith, as the great Benedict XVI is, and not a heretic. The Pope's faith is what should inspire the believer and draw his interest. Everything else is the way life is, and the person who has faith knows that.

"For as long as God's Church is run by men, we will have a sinful Church full of internal fights. Of course, the Curia seems to have a lot of problems, but I think it is paying the price for a lack of governance under Papa Wojtyla, who was a great Pope but left the Curia to their own devices".

Every year should be a Year for Priests if that is what it takes for all Catholics to pray daily for the priests and consecrated persons to have the strength and the grace to stand firm by their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.



Jesuit sex-abuse scandal
shakes German Church
by Christa Pongratz-Lippitt

6 February 2010


A child sex-abuse scandal that was uncovered at an elite Jesuit school in Berlin last week has spread to at least two other schools in Germany, causing deep embarrassment to the Church.



The Jesuit provincial leader, Stefan Dartmann, conceded that the order had had evidence of the sexual-abuse cases in question since 1981, but had never informed parents, students or authorities.

It has emerged so far that more than 25 pupils – boys around the age of 13 at the time – were subjected to abuse at the hands of two Jesuit priests in the three schools in the 1970s and 1980s.

The abuse started at Berlin’s Canisius College, one of Germany’s most prestigious high schools, in 1975. The two teachers concerned, Fr Wolfgang Stab, now 65, and Fr Peter Riedel, 69, left the Jesuit order of their own accord, in the 1990s.

The current headmaster of Canisius, Fr Klaus Mertens, who has been in his post since 1994, was first approached by two of the victims in 2004 and 2005 but both begged him not to tell anyone about the abuse and so he did not report it.

But when five more pupils turned to him after an alumni reunion in December last year, and several more in January, he decided to write to 500 alumni.

“I am deeply shocked and shamed by these appalling assaults which took place systematically over several years,” he wrote, and asked any pupils concerned or who had observed anything to come forward.

Twenty-two pupils wrote to say they had been abused. Fr Stefan Dartmann rushed to Berlin from the Jesuit headquarters in Munich on Monday to hold a press conference on the scandal.

“I beg forgiveness for the fact that those responsible in the Jesuit order failed to do their duty and did not look into the matter more closely and react accordingly. We are faced with the gnawing question why these incidents did not come to light at the time. The correct thing to do would have been to notify the prosecuting authorities,” he said.

The second school involved is St Blasien, another well-known Jesuit school, in the Black Forest. Fr Hans Joachim Martin, a former headmaster of St Blasien, told the KNA news agency that there had been “serious abuse” at the school and in the Jesuit order in the 1970s that had been “swept under the table”.

Wolfgang Stab had moved from Berlin to St Blasien but the school had not been informed of his “criminal past”, Fr Martin said.

There are reported indications from church files that Stab may have also sexually abused children in Chile and Spain until 1990.

In a statement addressed to his victims over the weekend, the 65-year-old former sports teacher, who left the order in 1992, said it was “a sad fact that I abused children and young people for years under pseudo-educational pretexts”. He said there was “no excuse”.

Stab, who now lives in South America, claimed that he had informed his Jesuit super­iors of his past in 1991. Fr Dartmann said that the order has hired a lawyer “to ascertain what the Jesuits specifically knew at the time, and what steps were taken”.

According to Fr Dartmann, Stab taught between 1975 and 1979 at Canisius College before moving on to the St Ansgar School in Hamburg between 1979 and 1982. He then went to St Blasien before moving on to Chile in 1985.

The other former Jesuit, Riedel, taught religion at Canisius between 1972 and 1981, before he moved on to Göttingen to work with young people between 1982 and 1989. He was suspended from 1989 and left the order in 1995.

Fr Mertens, the Canisius headmaster, blamed “homophobia” in the Church for the scandal. “Priests with a homosexual orientation are not sure that they will be accepted if they admit to being homosexual,” he said. [EXCUSE ME???? I fail to see the logic in that statement. It's not a question of admitting one's homosexu

In an interview with Domradio on Tuesday, the former head of Vatican Radio’s German section, Fr Eberhard von Gemmingen, said: “I fear that there are still a lot of cases of abuse to be uncovered.”

That night, his words were already appearing prophetic. Fr Dartmann revealed to domradio that a new unnamed perpetrator had presented himself to Ursula Raue, the Jesuit order’s lawyer for abuse affairs.

Faced with accusations by three victims, the man had admitted his guilt. “I told him to present himself to the police and he has done so. I immediately suspended him from his priestly duties,” Fr Dartmann said.


A more extended account can be found in
www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,675331,00.html

There's been a minor furor in the past few days over a homily delivered recently by the Superior-General of the FSSPX, Mons. Bernard Fellay, in which he said that 'humanly speaking', it would not be possible to come to an agreement in the current doctrinal talks with the Vatican, which was reported by the Italian news agency ASCA - and immediately picked up by the other Italian media - which failed to report the sentences that followed that statement.

I have not had time to translate the developing story, nor to listen to the full video of Mons. Fellay's homily, but here is a translation of the relevant part of his homily:

---

And now, it is asked, will a result be achieved in the discussions with Rome, will we soon have an agreement? Frankly, sincerely, speaking in human terms, we do not see such an agreement in view. What does an agreement mean? On what are we in agreement? On the fact that only through the Church we find the means of salvation? ...

This does not mean abandoning truth in order to find a middle way, absolutely not; yes, in human terms, we will not reach an agreement, the way we see things, [the talks] do not serve any purpose, in human terms. Yet, when we speak of the Church, we do not speak in human terms, we speak of a supernatural reality to which Our Lord promised that it would not fail, against which the gates of hell would not prevail.

And, therefore, even if we face a difficult and contradictory reality, we know that events are in God's hands, He who has the means to put things in order.

It would be proper to recall that to talk and to debate is necessary, but it is not enough: when one talks about saving souls, when one considers how God rescued the Church from other crises it faced through the centuries, we see that holiness is that with which He renews and heals the Church.

Without grace, and remaining solely at the level of men, all is lost from the beginning. All of us, as Catholics, must, therefore, act, advancing in grace, in the love of God, in charity.

---

It was wrong of ASCA to take one statement out of context, and even more wrong of the other Italian media and Catholic commentators to go to town denouncing Mons. Fellay for bad faith and subversion without checking out what he actually said.

I appreciate the staunchly traditionalist but also very reasonable people at messainlatino.com who not only had the good sense to reproduce exactly what Mons. Fellay had said, but also interpreted him correctly - in the Christian way that he said and obviously meant his words!

Cardinal asks dialogue partners
if an ecumenical catechism might work
By Cindy Wooden



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 8 (CNS) -- A Vatican official has floated the idea of a shared "ecumenical catechism" as one of the potential fruits of 40 years of dialogue among Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and members of the Reformed churches.

"We have affirmed our common foundation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity as expressed in our common creed and in the doctrine of the first ecumenical councils," Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, told representatives of the churches.

Opening a three-day symposium at the Vatican to brainstorm on the future of ecumenism, Cardinal Kasper said it is essential "to keep alive the memory of our achievements" in dialogue, educate the faithful about how much has been accomplished and prepare a new generation to carry on the work.

He said the members of his council "proposed an ecumenical catechism that would be written in consultation with our partners," but "we do not yet have any idea how such a catechism could be structured and written."

One thing for sure, he said, is that there is a need for "an ecumenism of basics that identifies, reinforces and deepens the common foundation" of faith in Christ and belief in the tenets of the creed. The churches may hold those positions officially, but if their members do not hold firmly to the basics of Christian faith, the dialogue cannot move forward, the cardinal said.

Cardinal Kasper, a theologian who will be 77 in March and has led the council for nine years, also said that ecumenical dialogue "is perhaps in danger of becoming a matter for specialists and thus of moving away from the grassroots."

He called for "a people-centered ecumenism" that would support and give new energy to the theological dialogues.

The symposium was a follow-up to the publication in October of Harvesting the Fruits, a book complied by Cardinal Kasper and his staff summarizing the results of 40 years of official Catholic dialogue with the Anglican Communion, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Methodist Council and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.

As for questions that still must be tackled in order for Christians to reach full unity and be able to share the Eucharist, the cardinal identified two basic areas: a common understanding of the church and its structure; and a common approach to applying the Gospel to modern social and moral concerns without falling into relativism.

Ethical issues, such as homosexuality and women's equality, not only divide churches, he said, they raise more fundamental questions for modern and post-modern society, such as, "What is man, and what does it mean to be a man or woman in God's plan?"

In the area of church structure and ministry, he said, the dialogues have seen progress toward a common agreement on the sacramental nature of ordination and on apostolic succession in the ministry of bishops, and have taken initial steps toward discussing the primacy of the bishop of Rome, the Pope.

But on a more basic level, the dialogues must get into "not only what is the church, but where is the church? Has God given his church a specific structure or has he left the church to find its own structure, in such a way that a pluralism of structures is possible?" Cardinal Kasper asked.

The cardinal said the Vatican needs to better explain to its dialogue partners the Catholic conviction that "the Catholic Church is the church of Christ and that the Catholic Church is the true church," even while "there exist many and important elements of the church of Christ outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church."

The Catholic Church does believe "there are deficits in the other churches," he said. "Yet on another level there are deficits, or rather wounds stemming from division and wounds deriving from sin, also in the Catholic Church."

Ecumenical dialogue is the place where all Christians "learn to grow and mature in their faithfulness to Christ," he said, and as each moves closer to Christ, they naturally will move closer to each other.

As expected, it did not take long for Sandro Magister to react - and at great length - to the Secretariat of State communique on the Boffo case which has now become more the Bertone-Vian case. However, the haste tells in some basic omissions - in regard to facts about the events, which I have supplemented in parentheses where necessary; and his failure to cite the sources of some quotations attributed to Bertone and Vian.

He is more belligerent than I expected, but he marshals his arguments fairly well, as he usually does on other issues, and of course, to defend his point of view tendentiously. But although I see where his argument leads, I do think his title is definitely overblown.



Italy, the United States, Brazil:
From the Vatican to the conquest of the world

The ambitious captain is the cardinal Secretary of State, with the help of L'Osservatore Romano.
The objective is to subject the national Churches to itself, on the terrain of politics.
But the bishops are resisting and reacting. A lesson from the experience of the Italian bishops.




ROME, February 11, 2010 – After more than two weeks of silence since the new explosion of controversy over the case of Dino Boffo, the Vatican secretariat of state, with a statement issued two days ago, flatly denied the accusations raised against the editor of L'Osservatore Romano, Giovanni Maria Vian, and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone himself.

The statement
- Denies that either of them had released or approved the anti-Boffo fliers that had defamed Boffo and forced him to resign as editor of the newspaper of the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire;
- Rejects what it calls "a defamatory campaign that involves the Roman pontiff himself"; and
- States that Benedict XVI "reaffirms his full trust in his collaborators."

Rome has spoken; is the question closed? Not quite.

The Boffo case has opened eyes to inter-ecclesial conflicts that go beyond the 'mechanics' behind the Boffo case. Conflicts and disorders that have not been addressed or removed by the Vatican statement. Of which the Boffo case is only one chapter, very Italian but ultimately global.

But the key to readings these events was evident from the start.

On August 28, 2009, Vittorio Feltri, editor of the newspaper Il Giornale, wrote a front-page broadaside against Boffo that proved to be immediately fatal for the latter's career.

On the basis of an authentic legal document [showing that Boffo had been fined by a local Italian court in 2004 for 'telephone molestation'] and an anonymous flier [which Feltri claimed to be a police informative document when it was one sent in the past to Italian bishops and media alike but previously ignored by all], Feltri branded Boffo a 'notorious practising homosexual', citing the flier, and also claimed that the molestation was for "harassing the wife of a man with whom he had had a relationship."

On the same day, in La Repubblica, the leading progressive Italian newspaper, lay theologian Vito Mancuso accused Cardinal Bertone of sitting at table with Herod, meaning Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with whom the Secretary of State had in fact planned a dinner meeting. [The dinner was cancelled that day.]

That same afternoon, L'Osservatore Romano [which is administratively under the Secretary of State], defended Cardinal Bertone in a front-page editorial in the next day's issue by its leading commentator, Lucetta Scaraffia - whereas it consigned the bishops' defense of Boffo to three lines from a news agency report carried in one of the inside pages.

Asked why the uneven treatment, Vian answered that the Church's real enemy is whoever attacks Bertone, "and therefore the Pope", not the one who goes after Boffo. According to Vian, Il Giornale was even too kind toward Boffo, writing about him with "exemplary moderation" and "Anglo-Saxon" cool. [Magister should have cited his source for these quotes. Not doing so, which is standrd journalistic practice, puts them on the level of gossip, not journalism.]

Three days later, when the attack on Boffo was at its height, Vian became even less evenhanded. He not only did not defend Boffo and Avvenire - he criticized them for, in his opinion, compounding the damage to the Vatican hierarchy. He said so to Corriere della Sera, in an interview that, as he later made known, had "the approval" of Cardinal Bertone.

Was it because Boffo and Avvenire represented, among other things, the Cultural Project of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI)now headed by Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who was president of the Italian bishops' conference from 1991 to 2007? In the Corriere interview Vian mocked the "cultural project of Christian orientation" likening it to a phoenix.

Within a few days of the Giornale broadside, Boffo resigned [all his positions in the CEI - editor of Avvenire, and director of the CEI's radio and TV networks] .

At which time, Cardinal Bertone [reportedly] confided to a very talkative politician friend, "My biggest mistake was making Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco head of the CEI, in Ruini's place." [Again, the quotation is not sourced.]

[Subsequently, in early December] Feltri admiited that the flier he uses as a basis for his story was false [although the court order on the fine was authentic] and retracted his accusations against Boffo. But he pointed out that he had taken the word of "a reliable informant, I would say, someone beyond suspicion" who had provided him with the documents.

Last January 23, Feltri said [in an interview with Il Foglio] that his informant was "a figure of the Church who should be trusted institutionally," making other statements that seemed to indicate the source of the information was Vian [and implying it was done with Bertone's approval].

[What Magister does not mention is that on the day the Foglio interview came out, Feltri dined openly with Boffo at a Milan restaurant where presumably they made their peace. But according to the Foglio account of the dinner, Feltri greeted Boffo by asking "But what is it that Cardinal Bertone has against you? And what does Vian have against you?" In a statement, Feltri did not deny making asking those questions, but did state carefully, "I do not know either Bertone or Vian and have not met any of them at any time".]

The antagonism between the Secretariat of State and the national bishops' conferences is a classic in the Church's recent history.

As soon as Bertone was appointed Secretary of State, in September of 2006, he made no secret of the fact that he wanted to subject the CEI to his leadership. He tried to have Cardinal Ruini replaced by a second-tier bishop, whom he could easily control [but the Pope instead chose Mons. Angelo Bagnasco, Bertone's successor as Archbishop of Genoa].

As soon as Bagnasco was installed at the CEI, Bertone wrote him a letter, immediately made public, that he himself would personally handle all "relations with political institutions" in Italy [something the Italian bishops had always done, particularly since the Lateran Pacts were updated in 1984].

The CEI, beginning with its new president, rebelled [An exaggeration by Magister since Bagnasco never deigned to answer Bertone's 'usurpation' but simply went ahead doing the CEI's business autonomously but in keeping with Benedict XVI's line, as Ruini had done before him], and from that point on, looked at Bertone's actions for signs of his presumption of command.

The current Secretary of State is also isolated in the Vatican. [Is there objective proof of that, apart from the hostility of some within his own department?]

Veteran diplomats won't forgive him for not being one of them. And in fact, Bertone's Curial experience was not with the Secretariat of State but with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where Cardinal Ratzinger entrusted him with some sensitive cases, like the Third Secret of Fatima and the Milingo case....

Bertone compensates for his internal isolation with a profusion of external activities of every kind: celebrations, appearances, anniversaries, addresses, inaugurations, interviews.

One of his predecessors, Agostino Casaroli, a great career diplomat who served from 1979 to 1990, gave a total of 40 speeches during that time. In a little more than three years, Bertone has given 365.

And then, there's his travelling. He has gone to Argentina, Croatia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Poland, Mexico - and in each place, he has met with heads of states and bishops, ambassadors and professors, with an agenda constructed like a papal trip.

[Until he left for Poland Tuesday afternoon to receive an honorary degree from Wroclaw], he did not travel in the past year, dedicating himself to governing the Curia, which reports to him by statute. But the past year was also the most harrowing, since it saw him eventually involved in the Williamson case and the Boffo case.

Bertone's only secure fortress is L'Osservatore Romano, with Vian as editor. The bond between the two is very close, marked by the telephone call that they share each day, late in the evening.

And the latter's responsibilities are not limited to the Vatican newspaper. Bertone has also entrusted Vian with the role that, at the time of John Paul II, was filled by Joaquin Navarro Valls: that of orchestrating the Italian and global media from behind the scenes.

Vian does this with some success here and there. He is the Vatican pundit most consulted by Corriere della Sera [considered Italy's leading newspaper]. The proximity between Vian and Corriere derives from his friendship with Corriere editorialist Ernesto Galli della Loggia, husband of Lucetta Scaraffia, an editorial writer for L'Osservatore, and with Paolo Mieli, Corriere editor, who, in 2005, was one of the most tenacious secular adversaries of Cardinal Ruini in the battle over the referendum on assisted reproduction. [Mieli, who is also a historian and of Jewish descent, has since written a couple of articles for OR about Pius XII, whom he defends against the standard Jewish accusations.]

And yet, there was a previous clash between Vian's newspaper and Avvenire, before the Boffo case - over the coverage of Eluana Englaro in 2008 and 2009.

Avvenire committed itself to leading the campaign to keep Englaro alive. By contrast, Vian hardly ever reported on the case, and was known to have expressed himself about the 'unconvincing arguments' and 'hysterical' defense mounted by Avvenire. [Again, Magister does not source this quote! Bad journalism!]

In the Englaro case, as well, Vian was apparently opposing the idea of a Church that is very visible and active in culture and politics - a position Cardinal Ruini once defined as "better to be contested than to be irrelevant".

The Vatican's failed attempt to dominate the newspaper of the CEI [I wouldn't call it 'the Vatican's attempt' since it appears to have been Vian's own personal bias, nor would I say that his bias was "an attempt to dominate the newspaper of the CEI" - as you cannot do that just by letting loose with a few barbs, no matter how sharp] is therefore one chapter in a struggle between much more than two newspapers: it is between two visions of Church governance, on a worldwide scale.

In addition to the Italian Church, in fact, the Vatican Secretariat of State has put itself at odds with other national Churches, including some of the most vigorous.

The actors and the script are almost always the same: Cardinal Bertone, L'Osservatore Romano, a very lively national episcopate, battles in defense of the life and the family.

On a war footing with Rome today, among others, are the two largest episcopates in the world, that of the United States and that of Brazil.

In the United States, the newly assertive wing of the bishops, headed by Chicago archbishop Cardinal Francis George, was first stirred up when an editorial in L'Osservatore Romano evaluating the first hundred days of Barack Obama's presidency, not only gave him a positive assessment, but credited the new President for a "rebalancing in favor of motherhood" which according to the American bishops, was far from the truth, because the exact opposite had happened. [And as anyone who reads the US newspapers would have known full well!]

A second conflict arose from the decision of the University of Notre Dame, the most renowned Catholic university in the United States, to give Obama an honorary degree. About eighty US bishops (including the most prominent ones) rebelled against the honor being given to a political leader whose positions on bioethics are contrary to Church teaching. Before and after the event, they manifested their opposition in vigrous dicussions and statements almost completely ignored by Vian in L'Osservatore Romano. [As I recall, Vian posted exactly one report on the bishops' objections, and featured the Notre Dame event on Page 1 with a report and a photograph.]

The other issue between the United States and the Vatican newspaper is over withholding communion from Catholic politicians who support abortion. Many of the American bishops refuse to compromise on this, and see the silence of the Secretariat of State and of the Vatican newspaper on the issue [even around the time of Edward Kennedy's death, when this issue occupied the Catholic debate in the US] - as a judgment on them, not to mention a moral surrender.

The desire to have peaceful institutional relations with the establishment, regardless of their ideology, seems to be typical of Bertone. In this, he is applying a classic canon of Vatican diplomacy, which is traditionally "realist," even at the cost of clashing with the national episcopates that are often critical of their respective governments.

But the effects often seem contradictory. Last March, an article in L'Osservatore Romano denounced the Brazilian bishop of Recife [for 'lack of compassion'] because he excommunicated the doctors who performed an abortion on a 9-year-old girl who conceived twins after being raped by her stepfather.

The Brazilian bishops saw this as a betrayal by Rome as a time when they were fighting a tough battle with the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over his full liberalization of abortion.

The author of the article, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, apparently wrote it at Bertone's request. The protest of the Brazilian bishops was joined by a rebellion within the Pontifical Academy for Life, of which Fisichella is president.

A good number of academy members called for his dismissal, and some of them appealed to the Pope, who ordered the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a note of "clarification," in defense of the bishop of Recife.

But Fisichella will remain in his place, as will Vian, and Bertone, who has just been reconfirmed.

In the Boffo case, Pope Benedict "knows". And he personally sees things more the way Cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini do, rather than like his Secretary of State.

[Not that the Pope has articulated this, but one may reasonably conclude so, by his continuing rapport with Cardinals Bagnasco and Ruini. The directives he has given the Church in Italy - notably his quite detailed address to the decennial Church convention in Verona in 2006 - certainly urge the continued activism of the Church in the public defense of non-negotiable values.

Each of his addresses to bishops on ad limina visit likewise always includes an exhortation for them - and for Catholic politicians - to play an active role in the public debate on issues that have to do with their own pastoral care of the faithful.]

But the Pope's pace is that of the perennial Church. Long and patient.
{What does that mean? A cop-out statement? Magister obviously does not want to criticize the Pope for not 'punishing' Bertone, Vian and Fisichella, but that is what he implies.

We cannot second-guess the Pope. He has information that neither the public nor the most 'wired-in' Vaticanista is likely to know, and he also has practical considerations that he must balance against off-message incursions by his closest collaborators. He will know, as he did with dissenting bishops last March, when to do what he must do, and how.]

Senior Anglican leader
dismisses Pope’s offer
By Anna Arco

12 February 2010



The Archbishop of York in front of Manchester Cathedral.


The Archbishop of York has suggested that Anglicans hoping to take up the Pope's offer would not be "proper Catholics".

Dr John Sentamu, the second most senior figure in the Church of England, told a reporter for the BBC: "If people genuinely realise that they want to be Roman Catholic, they should convert properly, and go through catechesis and be made proper Catholics."

He said: "This kind of creation [the Apostolic Constitution] - well, all I can say is, we wish them every blessing and may the Lord encourage them. But as far as I am concerned, if I was really, genuinely wanting to convert, I wouldn't go into an ordinariate. I would actually go into catechesis and become a truly converted Roman Catholic and be accepted."

He also said that if he were a Catholic bishop he would have a number of questions to ask of a "group within my diocese being looked after by an Ordinariate whose reference was back to the Vatican".

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, one of the Anglican bishops considering the Pope's offer, said the Catholic Church was far more complicated than Dr Sentamu acknowledged.

He pointed out that Catholic bishops often have groups of people in their dioceses belonging to other jurisdictions, such as religious orders, military dioceses and the personal prelatures of Opus Dei. The Personal Ordinariates proposed in the Pope's decree Anglicanorum coetibus would differ from the personal prelatures in that the laity would fall under the jurisdiction of the leader of an ordinariate.

Bishop Burnham, who is one of the bishops who ministers to Anglo-Catholics who cannot in good conscience accept women priests, said that, while catechesis and a genuine desire to be in communion with Rome were necessary for Anglicans taking up the Pope's offer, Dr Sentamu underestimated how close Anglo-Catholics were in belief to the Catholic Church.

Anglo-Catholic blogger Fr Edward Tomlinson SCC rejected the idea that Ordinariates made Anglo-Catholics taking up Anglicanorum coetibus second-class citizens.

He also suggested that while the beginning of a Personal Ordinariate in Britain would be small, consisting of some 20 parishes, hesitant Anglo-Catholics might be drawn to an ordinariate once it has been established.

Dr Sentamu's comments came shortly before the Bishop of Manchester put a dampener on the hopes of some traditionalist Anglicans that an alternative legal structure might be found within the Church of England so they would not have to accept women bishops.

The Rt Rev Nigel McCulloch, who is in charge of the group drafting legislation for women bishops, told the General Synod on Monday to expect the legislation to follow a model where diocesan bishops would delegate ministry to groups who objected to women bishops to a suffragan bishop. This will be presented at the General Synod in July.

Traditionalists - both evangelical and Anglo-Catholics - had hoped for a structure in which they would fall under the jurisdiction of a society or a new diocese.

The model being proposed would abolish the flying bishops - as the Provincial Episcopal Visitors who minister to parishes who cannot in conscience accept women priests are called - and parishes which fall under the jurisdiction of a woman bishop would be ministered to by a male delegate of the woman bishop.

The discussion of legislation for women bishops has been moved to July because the revision committee was inundated by hundreds of suggestions.

He said they had created a traffic light system by which some suggestions were given red lights or amber lights and that the committee had rejected the proposal to create additional dioceses in the summer.

He said: "But proposals for a recognised society, some sort of transfer or vesting, or for adopting the simplest possible legislative approach all got initial amber lights - that is, we agreed to consider them further.

"This meant that after more than six months' work we had rejected all the options which would have involved conferring some measure of jurisdiction on someone other than the diocesan bishop."

Earlier this month, Anglo-Catholic leaders pushed back the date on which they would ask their flock to make a decision in response to the Pope's provision for groups of Anglicans coming into full communion with the Church.

Bishop Burnham said the date, originally February 22, would constitute a day of prayer and reflection but he said he would ask his flock to make a decision only after the General Synod had discussed legislation proposed by the revision committee.

Since the discussion has been moved to July, the bishop said he would also move the day on which the response is to be made.

But he said decisions on Anglicanorum coetibus should not be dependent on what the General Synod would do.

Bishop Burnham has been accused of backtracking on earlier statements welcoming the offer made in the Apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus last year.

The decree offered Anglicans wishing to be in full communion with the Church a new canonical structure known as a Personal Ordinariate, similar in structure to military dioceses.

But friends of the bishop believe pastoral concerns have also contributed to the later date at which an official announcement is made.

They think the bishop feels it is necessary to wait for a critical mass of people willing to join a Personal Ordinariate before making a move and that some people would not make up their minds until they were faced with the reality of the General Synod's decision.

Other traditionalist Anglicans in Bishop Burnham's flock who have decided to stay in the Church of England want those who are considering taking up the Pope's offer not to rock the boat until the General Synod has a chance to make provisions for them.

A round-up of reactions
Translated from

February 11, 2010


The Vatican cannot have been too happy the day after the unusual communiqué issued by the Secretariat of State.

There were those who recalled past history in this regard: that in the days of someone like Cardinal Agostino Casaroli (John Paul II’s Secretary of State from 1979 to 1990), his office either immediately rebutted accusations against the Vatican with strong arguments, or, if it was controversial, kept quiet for months, sometimes years.

“I can say that in the years of Casaroli, something like this never happened,” Cardinal Achille Silvestrini told La Repubblica on February 4 [a week before the Vatican finally commented on a controversy that had been revived on January 23.

On Wednesday afternoon, Feb. 11, Cardinal Bertone left for Poland, and must have read the morning papers and how his note had been received.

In Corriere della Sera, political commentator Massimo Franco, former editorial writer for Avvenire, writes that the Vatican communiqué “can only raise new questions”.

He says, “It reads like the position of a structure under attack which reacts by using the Pope as a shield, in the belief that he is their strongest defense”.

[Because as usual – as in the Wielgus and Williamson causes – once again, Benedict XVI has taken the fall for his subordinates who should be helping him, not being counter-productive to him, and having to be defended by him.]

In Repubblica, long-time Vatican observer Giancarlo Zizola [habitually hostile to Benedict XVI] dismisses the communiqué as “a document in which the anxious desire to deny everything, along with its careless formulation, betrays too easily the attempt to negate facts.”

In Libero, Antonio Socci says the one thing the communiqué fails to do is to ‘stop the controversy’.

Ubaldo Casotto in Il Riformista asks: “Why do they have to involve the Pope in denying generic accusations?” – and indeed, using the Pope as shield remains the most singular curiosity about the communiqué.

Benedict XVI was completely out of the question in all of this. There was no question or doubt - and there isn’t now – about him.

And yet, he was put in the difficult position of having to approve a much belated reply – it was January 23 when Il Foglio published the article that reopened the controversy – which did not come from the Vatican Press Office.

A communiqué that even goes so far as to belie a blog! Because it was Sandro Magister, a Vaticanista evidently held in high regard at the Vatican, who said in a blog entry that it was Vian who had inspired or written an article published in Il Giornale in September.
[The article was written under the pseudonym ‘Diana Alfieri’ for the Sept. 19 issue of Il Giornale, almost three weeks since Boffo had resigned, but on the eve of the autumn meeting of the CEI’s permanent council, so the timing in itself was dubious.

Among other things, the article claims that the CEI and Cardinal Ruini’s supporters had done all they could to try and keep Boffo at the helm of “the entire galaxy of Catholic media… despite his history of ‘molestations with a sexual basis that were punished by the judge in Terni”. She goes on to question Boffo’s ‘moral fitness… (which) casts a cloud on the entire Church”. I don’t know if this ‘Diana Alfieri’ ever took back all these slander against Boffo after Feltri retraced his charges in December!]

The last line of the communiqué notes that the Pope hopes that ‘truth and justice’ may be upheld and expresses his trust in his ‘collaborators’. (In Vatican jargon, ‘collaborators’ refer to prelates, not laymen.)

The communiqué also says that the Vatican police had nothing do with this case. It was discussed before drafting the communiqué – Chief Inspector Domenico Giani was questioned by Cardinal Bertone, and after him, Vian, who conferred with Bertone and his deputy, Mons Fernando Filoni.

Together they framed the draft which they sent to the Pope, who approved it. The text was then published, first on line as a Vatican bulletin, and the following day in L’Osservatore Romano where, to dispel any possible doubt about the origin of the text, it was introduced with the statement that “The Holy Father approved this communiqué and ordered that it be published”.

The Italian bishops conference (CEI) released its own statement, which Avvenire, now edited by the moderate and competent Marco Tarquinio, published on Page 2 without comment, along with the Vatican statement, also without comment.


As a former newspaper editor, my hat is off to Tarquinio for the elegant manner in which he showed editorial impartiality on the Vatican and CEI notes, and the whole affair - after all, the time is long past for this sort of rearguard action. He simply placed both statements, appropriately highlighted by shading, in the center of the editorial page, playing up the statements without need of commentary!

[Very prudent of Tarquinio. Any comment would have been interpreted as fanning the flames, and, unnecessary, in any case, to Avvenire readers who have followed the developments.]

The CEI took note of the Vatican statement, mentions neither Bertone nor Vian [nor the Pope! – wisely I think], and expresses the hope that the Vatican’s statement may help to ‘bring back calm’.

A few lines to reflect the position of the CEI president, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who has kept himself away from the issue [since September when he accepted ‘with regret’ Boffo’s resignation from his media positions at CEI].

It is known he is clear about how everything developed, and the prudence manifested in his statement yesterday appears significant.

John Thavis wraps up most of the information I gleaned about this story from the Italian media earlier this week and posted earlier on this page as a quick summary at a glance, as I did not have time to be translating the articles.


Sainthood scoop:
Book on the 'real' John Paul II
snubbed at Vatican
By John Thavis



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 12 (CNS) -- When it was unveiled in late January, the insider book about the "real" Pope John Paul II looked at first glance like the Vatican's own effort at a pre-beatification biography.

But as the fallout over the next two weeks made clear, the Vatican was not directly involved. Nor was everyone happy that the book was co-authored by the official postulator, or promoter, of Pope John Paul's sainthood cause, using information that is generally considered confidential.

In addition, several officials thought the book's simple presentation of the late pope's reported penitential practices, with little explanation or context, was unwise and counter-productive.

The book reported that Pope John Paul regularly carried out various types of self-mortification. "In his closet, among the cassocks, there was a hook holding a particular belt for slacks, which he used as a whip," it said.

That news made headlines and prompted questions and even a bit of ridicule by people unfamiliar with the history of penitential practices in the church.


Right photo, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, emeritus Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, was with Oder at the news conference to present the book.

Msgr. Slawomir Oder, the postulator of the cause, teamed up with an Italian Catholic journalist to write, "Why He's a Saint: The Real John Paul II According to the Postulator of His Beatification Cause." Apparently no one at the Vatican told him not to write a tell-all book, so he did.

After the fact, however, the displeasure was quietly communicated in a number of ways. For one thing, no active Vatican official attended the book's presentation at a hotel a few steps from St. Peter's Square. The Vatican newspaper has not written a word about the book.

Polish Father Adam Boniecki, a longtime aide to Pope John Paul, said bluntly that Msgr. Oder had improperly published "episodes, documents and revelations about the private life" of the late pope.

"It is a surprising and serious thing that it was the postulator who wrote such a book," Father Boniecki said.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz was said by Polish sources to have been upset and to have called Msgr. Oder for an explanation.

Top officials at the Congregation for Saints' Causes refused official comment, but were also described as perplexed and unhappy at the book's publication. By early February, Msgr. Oder had withdrawn into "total silence" and was refusing to talk about the book, according to his secretary.

The role of postulator of a sainthood cause typically involves quiet investigation and discretion. Sources in Rome with experience in handling these causes said that while Msgr. Oder may not have technically broken any rules, he had acted imprudently on a couple of counts:

-- If writing a book about the subject of a sainthood cause, the postulator should be careful not to cite information provided by witnesses, because this could make future witnesses reluctant to come forward. This is particularly true if a witness has something to say against a sainthood cause, they said.

"If a witness feels he has to make objections and the next day it's in the newspapers, people will not be so willing to testify the next time. A postulator has to know these things, but publishing them is an entirely different question," said one church official.

-- Msgr. Oder cited unnamed members of the pope's Polish entourage as the source of the reports of self-mortification, but it was unclear whether he had asked and obtained their permission to publish this information. And even if he did, such a request might condition people's answers.

Italian newspapers speculated that the quiet controversy over the book's publication might even delay the beatification of Pope John Paul. Sources told Catholic News Service that was unlikely; the late pope's cause is awaiting approval of a miracle, and many believe the beatification could come later this year.

Others wondered if Msgr. Oder would be dismissed as postulator. That, too, seems improbable. "In the past, he might have been replaced. But that's not the way things are done around here now," said one Vatican official.

Publishing evidence of a "hidden" side of a would-be saint is not completely new. In 2002, the year before Blessed Mother Teresa's beatification, the postulator of her cause, Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, posted an article about Mother Teresa's "dark night of the soul," detailing her feelings of inner doubt and spiritual darkness.

But in this case, the details of the "crisis of faith" came from Mother Teresa's own letters, not from witnesses called to testify in the sainthood process. Father Kolodiejchuk's 2007 book detailing the correspondence, "Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light," caused quite a stir, especially because Mother Teresa had repeatedly begged for her personal correspondence to be destroyed.

That wish was ignored by her spiritual advisers and others, who felt the letters offered future generations a witness of unique holiness.



What Oder did is highly improper and almost distasteful. Certainly in poor taste. At the very least, he could have waited until after the beatification.

The Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood should lay down the rules now - postulators or others who have the inside track on confidential information used in the beatification and canonization process should be prohibited from exploiting their privileged access, and should not be able to profit from it at all by writing tell-all books, under pain of dismissal as postulator. (Or at least, there should be some timeline - not until five years after the canonization, or something reasonable.)

Vatican archive documents
on Pius XII going online
By Jesús Colina



VATICAN CITY, FEB. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See is planning to publish on the Internet, free of charge, several documents from the Vatican Secret Archives in relation to World War II.

The initiative is partially in response to a petition from Pave the Way Foundation, an organization dedicated to bridging gaps between religions.

The foundation proposed making digital files of, and later publicizing, some 5125 descriptions and copies of documents from the closed section of the Vatican archives, covering the period of March 1939 to May 1945.

Gary Krupp, the foundation's president and founder, told ZENIT that "the 'Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs a la Seconde Guerre Mondiale [Acts and Documents of the Holy See relative to the Second World War],'" which were "previously published and mostly ignored," will "shortly be available for worldwide scrutiny and study online, free of charge."



[The 'Actes...' were published in 12 volumes in the 1960s by a committee of historians assigned by Paul VI to compile the documents available in the Archives, in order to answer criticisms against Pius XII, following the propaganda success of The Deputy. For some reason, Jewish critics who keep insisting that the Archives containing these same documents be opened to researchers now, never refer to the 'Actes...' - as though they had never been published!]

He explained that these documents will be available on the Web site of his foundation as well as that of the Vatican.

This project is part of the mission of the foundation, a non-sectarian organization that works to remove obstacles between religions, foster cooperation and to end the misuse of religion for private agendas.

The organization's president, who is from New York but of Jewish decent, stated, "In the furtherance of our mission we have recognized the papacy of the war time Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) as a source of friction impacting over one billion people."

Krupp told Zenit that the publication of these documents was "not meant to be a substitute for the full access" to the Vatican archives, "but will absolutely show the unique efforts of Pope Pius XII and the dangers he was forced to operate under a direct threat from the Nazi regime."

[Yes, it is something that Pius XII's detractors could study between now and 2014 when the actual Archives will be open to outside researchers.]



Fr. Blet, who headed the scholars' group that compiled the 'Actes' later published a book summarizing the contents of the 12 volumes. Fr. Blet died last December.


P.S. The ZENIT item was reported by the Israeli news agency JTA, but I have not seen reactions yet.

COMMUNIQUE FROM THE COUNCIL
after the Feb. 8-10 symposium
on 40 years of ecumenical work

February 13, 2010


In October 2009, Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue was published. This book gathers together the results of forty years of bilateral dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Anglican Communion and the World Methodist Council, and also raises important questions for the future direction and content of ecumenical discussion.

The Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity hosted a Symposium from 8 to 10 February 2010 on the issues presented in the book. Theologians from the Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican and Methodist traditions met at the offices of the Pontifical Council at the invitation of its President Cardinal Walter Kasper.

The aim of the Symposium was not merely to take account of the many elements of agreement produced by forty years of official dialogue, but to consider ways of communicating this remarkable achievement to the members of all the various Christian communities, so they can express more fully in their lives the progress towards unity that has been made.

Over the three days of discussion, there was detailed examination of the question of reception of joint statements and agreements, the need for the common witness of Christians at every level, and the changed context in which Christianity must undertake its mission.

The Symposium also looked ahead, to ask discern how ecumenical dialogue should take place in future. There was detailed consideration of the steps that must be taken towards the goal of ecumenism, which remains full and visible communion.

As Cardinal Kasper reminded the participants, "What does communion mean in the theological sense? It does not mean community in the horizontal sense but communio sanctorum – what we might call vertical participation in what is ‘holy’, in the ‘holy things’ – that is, the Spirit of Christ present in his Word and in the sacraments administered by ministers .. duly ordained."

The Symposium explored how traditional disagreements might be re-assessed if they are looked at in the context of Mission and the vision of God’s Kingdom. There was mention of the new and promising approach whereby ecumenical dialogue is viewed as an exchange of gifts, and frank conversations were held on the limits of diversity and the role of the hierarchy of truths.

Discussion also included practical proposals to encourage the search for unity, most particularly the production of a Common Statement of what we have achieved ecumenically. One possible form this might take would be a common affirmation of Baptismal faith, including a commentary on the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.

Participants in the Symposium included those experienced in bilateral dialogues as well as younger theologians new to ecumenism. Theological discussion was at a high level, and the many positive suggestions that it produced will be taken forward to the Plenary of the Pontifical Council in November 2010.

The participants expressed gratitude for the opportunity to discuss in depth the real challenges encountered in the search for Christian unity, and affirmed that the ability to call together meetings of this nature is a particular potential of Rome, indicating the wider service that the Petrine ministry can offer to ecumenism.


Earlier, John Allen wrote about the symposium.


An unusual Vatican event marks
Kasper's (not-quite) swan song

Feb. 8, 2010


Both in style and in substance, a highly unusual Vatican meeting is taking place this week in the offices of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

In terms of content, the Feb. 8-10 event brings together leading Catholic minds with their counterparts in the Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist and Reformed traditions, for a sort of “state of the union” consideration of the entire ecumenical project, meaning the effort to put the divided Christian family back together again.

That’s a departure from normal practice in two senses. First, the Vatican normally conducts ecumenical conversation in bilateral fashion, one church at a time. Second, those dialogues are usually focused on some specific topic – Mary, for example, or the Bible, or authority in the church. This time, the field is wide open.

Stylistically, the most striking thing about the three-day session is that it’s actually a working meeting, with most of the time devoted to informal, unscripted back-and-forth conversation. There’s only one major address scheduled, delivered this morning by Kasper, with four short responses from representatives of the other traditions.

After that, none of the formal speech-making which typically distinguishes Vatican events – participants are instead spending most of their time on a working document to identify guidelines for future ecumenical dialogues.

Informally, this week’s gathering represents, if not quite a “swan song” for Cardinal Walter Kasper, at least the beginning of his farewell tour.

Widely considered one of the best theologian-bishops of his generation, and often thought of as a leading Catholic “moderate,” Kasper has led the Vatican’s ecumenical office since 2001. Now 76, it’s widely expected that Kasper will hand the reins to a successor sometime in 2010. (Speculation currently centers on Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, Switzerland, 59, who coincidentally had an audience with Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday.)

In some ways, Kasper has had the bad luck of being a gifted ecumenical leader during a period that some, at least, perceive as one of vast ecumenical malaise. While groundbreaking agreements have been negotiated with various Christian churches, when the dust settled it often wasn’t clear what authority those agreements actually enjoy inside the churches which signed them.

Meantime, the gap between Catholicism and some branches of Protestantism over hot-button issues such as the ordination of women or the blessing of same-sex unions becomes ever wider, making the venerable ecumenical aim of full structural communion look ever more like a pipe dream – or, at best, what many call an “eschatological” objective, not anything to expect in the here-and-now.

One indication of the “big ecumenical chill” is the working text for this meeting itself, which is the book Harvesting the Fruits published under Kasper’s name in 2009. The fact that the book came out as a personal work by Kasper, rather than an official document of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, led some to speculate that it wasn’t viewed positively within the Vatican or by Pope Benedict XVI.

In his speech today, Kasper tried to soothe those fears, reporting that an Italian version came out shortly after the original English edition. It was forwarded, he said, to all the offices of the Roman Curia, “and they, like the Pope himself, expressed gratitude and appreciation,” Kasper said.

(On background, Vatican sources say the primary reason the book came out under Kasper’s name was to short-circuit the normal lengthy review process for official Vatican texts, which in this case would likely have involved a review by both the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Secretariat of State.)

The point of this week’s gathering seems to take stock of what’s already been achieved – that’s the “harvest” part, born of a conviction that several fairly stunning ecumenical achievements in recent years aren’t well-known – and then to ponder how to move forward. One element of that effort is passing the torch to a new generation of leaders.

All told, some forty people are taking part in the session. They include some prominent members of the old ecumenical guard, such as Thomas Wright of the Anglican Communion, Geoffrey Wainwright of the Methodists, and Harding Meyer for the Lutherans, as well as several representatives of a new generation of theologians and church leaders.

The latter include Neil Presa, an American representing the Reformed tradition; Scott Cowdell, an Anglican from Australia; and Dawn de Vries of the Union Theological Seminary, another representative of what’s seen as a strong Reformed contingent.

In his address this morning, Kasper argued that the success of the ecumenical movement in the 20th century offered “a counterpoint of reconciliation and unity to the destructive forces of evil and violence” witnessed over the last one hundred years.

The “mutual respect, trust and friendship” developed over these years, Kasper said, represents the true “fruit” of the ecumenical movement.

“There is no reason to be doscouraged or reisgned, as many are today,” Kasper said. He pointed to a “new phase of dialogue ... which may be less enthusiastic than the dialogue of our youth, but will be more mature and no less imbued with courage and hope.”

Kasper then outlined four categories of problems facing ecumenical dialogue, which he outlined as follows:

• Hermeneutical: How to read the Bible and doctrine in the light of the church’s own tradition and self-awareness, “without falling into the trap of either fundamentalism or relativism.”

• Anthropological: Not just specific ethical issues such as homosexuality, but the deeper question of what it means to be a human person in light of God’s plan – a question, Kasper argued, with implications for “human rights, social justice, peace, bioethics, safeguarding creation, etc.”

• Ecclesiological: What is the church, and in particular, what are the sources of authority in the church? Pride of place in this category, of course, goes to the issue of the role of the pope.

• Sacramental: This category includes the vexed question of inter-communion, the absence of which is usually the most visible index of ecumenical frustration.

Kasper acknowledged that all these categories represent issues about which the various Christian traditions can, and do, have very different ideas.

“Yet if there is one thing I have learned in my academic life,” he said, “it is that once a problem is clearly identified it is half-resolved.”

Kasper offered “spiritual ecumenism” as the true heart of the movement, arguing that an over-emphasis on the “horizontal” dimension, meaning full structural communion, risks ignoring the “vertical” dynamic of joint movement towards Christ. In that regard, he said, all churches need to acknowledge their need for “repentence and renewal” – including, he pointedly added, the Catholic church.

“There are deficits, or rather wounds stemming from division and wounds deriving from sin also in the Catholic church,” he said. “The Catholic church is not perfect and is in need of constant renewal.”

In that regard, Kasper referred to the 2000 document Dominus Iesus, which caused a storm of ecumenical controversy by reasserting the traditional Catholic doctrine that the Catholic church is the church of Christ.

It was a “mistake,” Kasper said, not to have made it more clear that Catholicism did not intend this as a closure to ecumenical dialogue, but rather an “openness,” by also affirming that there are also important “elements” of the church of Christ outside the visible Catholic church.

“There is not an ecclesiastical vacuum outside the Catholic church,” Kasper said.

In his concluding remarks, Kasper floated one idea that may be discussed this week: The idea of an “ecumenical catechism,” written in consultation with the various Christian traditions and then issued by “the competent Catholic authority.”

“We do not yet have any idea how such a catechism could be structured and written,” Kasper said. “Perhaps some suggestions on this may emerge also from this symposium.”

For those who can make it to Padua this week, a rare opportunity:




For more information and pictures, visit the English subsite of the Basilica:
www.basilicadelsanto.org/ing/home.asp

Unprecedented pilgrim flow
to 'see' St. Anthony
by Silvio Scacca
Translated from
the Italian service of

February 18, 2010


PADUA - St. Anthony is 'surpassing himself': yesterday, the line was a kilometer long to get to enter the chapel where his remains are on exposition till February 20, and there is no sign the pace will slacken.

In 1981, some 700,000 pilgrims came to venerate the saint and briefly touch his plexiglas casket during an exposition that lasted 29 days, Padua authorities expect that number to be doubled during this weeklong exposition.

Since the exposition opened on Monday, the line of pilgrims has been endless, filing into the exposition chapel at the rate of 2,000 per hour - after standing in line for 3-4 hours, often in chilly wind and under winter rain.

But for the pilgrims, it is a small sacrifice for the great reward of being 'one on one' with the great saint who expressed in the immediate and simple language of the people his own perfection of life and profound theological insights.

It was a vivid image of what Benedict XVI said in his recent catechesis devoted to St. Anthony whom he called "one of the most popular saints of the Catholic Church".

One of the pilgrim groups to Padua yesterday was a delegation of fifty Franciscans from the Sacred Convent in Assisi, led by their superior, Fr. Guido Piemontese.

In his homily, Fr. Piemontese recalled the many personal and epistolary contacts between St. Francis and St. Anthony, whom he called 'Francis's most illustrious spiritual son', as well as the Holy Father's reference to Anthony as the first Franciscan theologian and precursor of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio and Blessed Duns Scotus.

Meanwhile, it seemed unlikely that the exposition would be prolonged because of the organizing committee's limited resources and the unavailability of enough volunteers beyond the time period originally scheduled.

The occasion for the exposition was the completion of a two-year renovation of the Renaissance Chapel of the Ark where the saint's tomb is located. During the renovation, the casket was temporarily kept enclosed in another chapel.