BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Please see preceding page for items posted earlier today, 6/11/10.








June 11, 2010

What a great service from Ignatius Insight that a theologian has taken the time to present an overview of what he rightly calls Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's 'theology of priesthood' - an aspect of the Holy Father's teaching that has always held me almost spellbound, because they are his most personal and intimate reflections, born out of his direct and firsthand experience of friendship with Christ...


As this Year for Priests draws to a close it seems appropriate to look again at the theology of the priesthood in the work of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict. In this essay I intend to examine what Pope Benedict has said and written about the identity and mission of the Catholic priest. My source material covers both papal documents and his personal, non-Magisterial remarks, as well as some of his personal theological work prior to his election as pope.

In particular, I focus on his essays on the priesthood in the works Called to Communion (CC) and Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith (PFF), as well as some relevant comments from the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth (JN).

In terms of his official, pontifical remarks on the issue, I've naturally looked to the homilies, addresses and letters pertaining to this Year for Priests as well as his homilies from the Chrism Masses during his pontificate.

The title of this essay comes from the Holy Father's letter last June proclaiming this Year for Priests, as well as from his homily on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart which inaugurated this Year. He concluded the letter this way:

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Dear priests, Christ is counting on you. In the footsteps of the Cure of Ars, let yourselves be enthralled by him. In this way you too will be, for the world in our time, heralds of hope, reconciliation and peace!

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In this short passage, it seems to me that we find many of the central themes of Pope Benedict's theology of the priesthood, and it it to that theology that we will now turn.

The outline for this presentation is as follows: I'll begin with Benedict's analysis of the historical context: the post-conciliar crisis in the priesthood. Following that, we'll focus in on a central theme in his vision of priestly identity and mission: the Christological roots and foundation of both. I'll conclude by examining what Benedict calls the "spiritual applications" of these theological considerations.

Historical Context

Benedict was and is a man of the Council. He was a peritus at the Council for Cardinal Frings of Cologne, and he played an important role in the unfolding of the Council's work in general and in the development of several of the conciliar texts, particularly Dei Verbum and Lumen Gentium.

But like so many others, Benedict was surprised at the events which unfolded both in the Church and in the world after the Council. Focusing in particular on the priesthood, decades later he spoke of the "profound crisis" which the Catholic priesthood entered after Vatican II. His analysis of the roots of this crisis is interesting both on its own account and also insofar as it points to his understanding of the way out of the crisis.

In short, Benedict argues that the basic framework for Vatican II's theology of the priesthood is essentially that of the Council of Trent. While the texts of Vatican II most certainly incorporated biblical motifs in a greater way than did Trent, Benedict nonetheless believes that the framework remained essentially Tridentine in nature.

One might fairly ask, "So what?" After all, the decrees of Trent on these lines are dogmatic, they belong to the deposit of faith. Benedict certainly agrees with this; he has never called the dogmatic points into question.

Rather, his concern mirrors the reasons for which Pope John called the Council to begin with: to initiate a renewal within the Church which would enable her to respond more adequately to the problems and questions of the age.

As with the Council in general, Benedict does not call the doctrines of the priesthood into question, but instead proposes that a new framework for those doctrines is required to more ably respond to the challenges raised with regard to our theology of the priesthood.

Specifically, he argues that after the Council, Catholic theology was incapable of adequately responding to a combination of Reformation-era arguments together with findings of modern biblical exegesis. In Benedict's words, the conclusions of these challenges was as follows:

It appeared indisputably clear that the teaching of Trent concerning the priesthood had been formulated on false assumptions and that even Vatican II had not yet found the courage to lead the exodus from this misguided history.

On the other hand, the inner tendency of the Council seemingly required that we now finally do what it had not dared to do itself: to abandon the ancient conceptions of cult and priesthood and to seek a Church at once biblical and modern that would resolutely take up the challenge of the profane world and would be organized solely according to functional considerations" (CC, p. 109)

"Functional" is a key term here: as Benedict sees it, these challenges to our theology of the priesthood hold that in the apostolic and post-apostolic era, ministerial offices had a purely functional character, concerned entirely with practical utility.

It seems to me that such a perspective remains both dominant and ubiquitous. I'm reminded of some of the comments made by Catholics faced with the prospect of having to go to another parish for liturgies: we can run the parish, we just need Father to come on Saturday night or Sunday morning to say Mass.

Both the priesthood (the office) and the priest (the man) are reduced to what they can do, to the role, the function they play. In essence, both priesthood and priest are regarded as little more than vending machines, candy dispensers for the soul.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that Catholics have been reading Martin Luther and Karl Barth. But I do think that the theology which is the subject of Benedict's analysis here is "in the air", and given that the Christian roots of our culture are basically Protestant, it's not surprising that a function vision of Christian ministry has found its way into the minds even of Catholics.

What, then, does Benedict propose by way of a solution to this post-conciliar crisis in the priesthood? His answer to this question is the same as his answer to every other question which in some way pertains to the human heart: Jesus of Nazareth.

Christological Foundations

If we look at the pontificate of Benedict XVI from a superficial public-relations perspective, it's apparent that within the first year of his election, Benedict's public image was rehabilitated, to put it mildly.

Gone were monikers like "Dr. No" and "der Panzerkardinal". Instead, we saw a man who -- despite his lack of "stage presence" -- saw more people attending his Wednesday audiences than did his predecessor, John Paul the Great! We saw a man who entitled his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est (DCE) and who said that we must emphasize the "Yes!" of Christianity.

Now, as those who were familiar with his personal writings knew, this rehabilitation was largely in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. The themes of Benedict's pontificate are essentially in keeping with his previous personal theological work.

What is surprising, at least to me, is the emphasis of that "Yes!" which he has been making. To put it another way: because of his office, we are now seeing the evangelical dimension of Benedict's work in a clearer way, even more then in his prior work.

To borrow a title of one of Fr. Robert Barron's works, in Benedict's pontificate -- as in John Paul the Great's, albeit in his own way -- we are seeing "The Priority of Christ".

Again, his work was always Christocentric, but this dimension has been amplified since his election asPope. Consider, for instance, the conclusion to the Foreword to volume one of Jesus of Nazareth: explaining why he began his study with Jesus's public ministry and not with the infancy narratives, he writes,

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In Part Two I hope also to be able to include the chapter on the infancy narratives, which I have postponed for now, because it struck me as the most urgent priority to present the figure and the message of Jesus in his public ministry, and so to help foster the growth of a living relationship with him (JN, p. xxiv).

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These are not the words of sawdust theology, dry and coarse! Rather, they reveal what is at the heart of Benedict and his work: Jesus Christ.

With this preface, we now look at the Christological foundations of Benedict's theology of the priesthood.

The priesthood as participation
in the mission of Christ

In Benedict's vision, the foundation of the ministerial office in the New Testament is this: apostleship as participation in the mission of Jesus Christ. As Benedict notes, both the novelty and the center of the New Testament is Jesus. He says, "what is new about [the New Testament] is not, strictly speaking, ideas -- the novelty is a person: God who becomes man and draws man to himself" (CTC, p. 111).

This is a point which Benedict has been making more repeatedly and more insistently in the last couple of decades. Consider these words from the first article of DCE: "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."

Or consider these words from his lectio divina with the seminarians of Rome last month: "It is not we who must produce the abundant fruit; Christianity is not moralism, it is not we who must do all that God expects of the world but we must first of all enter this ontological mystery: God gives himself."

Even in the context of this Year for Priests, Benedict returns to this theme, which might rightly be considered the major key of his pontificate: we cannot reduce Christianity to ideas -- ideology -- or to moralism; while ideas (truths) and morality are certainly important to our faith, they are not the center, they are not the novum: that place is held by Christ alone.

Remember, this is a theologian writing these things! We make our living by reducing our living, vibrant relationship with Jesus to cures for insomniacs! But not Benedict.

So even in the case of the priesthood, he tells us that the point of departure must lie in Christology, in our understanding of who Jesus is. In this context, Benedict's emphasis is on Jesus's mission, on the fact that He is sent by the Father, that He represents God's authority concretely in His person.

Benedict hones in on the following formula from John's Gospel, and on the interpretation of this formula given by Benedict's personal favorite theologian, St. Augustine: "My doctrine is not my own but his who sent me" (7:16).

Benedict makes this point: Jesus both has and is nothing of his own aside from the Father... nothing. As Benedict sees it, in this Johannine formula Jesus "is saying that precisely what is most intimately his own -- his self -- is that which is altogether not his own. What is his is what is not his" (CTC, p. 113).

And it is by this very expropriation of himself that Jesus is totally one with the Father.

What does this have to do with the priesthood? This: Jesus prolongs His own mission, His own sending from the Father by the creation of the office of "those who have been sent": the office of the apostles.

According to Benedict, "Jesus confers His power upon the apostles and thereby makes their office strictly parallel to his own mission" (ibid.). As Jesus tells the Twelve on numerous occasions, "he who receives you receives me" (Matthew 10:40). Or even more clearly: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (John 13:20).

Recalling that Jesus's entire being is mission and relationship, Benedict sees this statement of Jesus as having enormous weight for the proper understanding of the priesthood of the New Covenant, particularly when we look to the following parallelism:

The Son can do nothing of himself (John 5:19, 30)
Without me you can do nothing (John 15:5)

Benedict argues that the power and the impotency (the potency and impotency) of the apostolic office -- and hence the priesthood in general -- derives precisely from this "nothing" that the disciples share with Jesus. It's worth quoting Benedict at length here:

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Nothing that makes up the activity of the apostles is the product of their own capabilities. But it is precisely in having 'nothing' to call their own that their communion with Jesus consists, since Jesus is also entirely from the Father, has being only through him and in him and would not exist at all if he were not a continual coming forth from and self-return to the Father. Having 'nothing' of their own draws the apostles into communion of mission with Christ.

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So somewhat counter-intuitively, what brings the apostles into union with Christ's mission, what makes their own mission the extension of his, is the nothingness of their own activity.

From this point, Benedict elaborates at length on the nature of the sacrament of ordination. It is because the apostle's (and by extension, the priest's) communion with Christ derives from having nothing of his own that ordination is not about the development of one's own abilities and talents.

Jesus receives everything from the Father -- He has nothing which is His own -- and He brings salvation to the world. The priest receives everything from Jesus -- he has nothing which is his own -- and he brings salvation to the world.

Just as self-expropriation, self-dispossession and selflessness were necessary for the High Priest to be one with the Father and to accomplish that for which He was sent, so too are these things necessary for those who act in his person.

In this we see the beginnings of a "Benedictine" response to a denuded, functional conception of ministerial office: the priesthood is not about developing one's personal powers and gifts, but rather it is about sharing our very nothingness with Christ, and in so doing being united with Him to the Father in the Spirit, and thereby bringing the life of the Father -- His grace -- to the Church and to the world.


An Ontological Union

A second aspect of the Christological foundations of Benedict's theology of the priesthood flows from the first: the priest's union with Christ is an ontological one.

This is by no means a new insight; the Church has always been very clear that the union which the sacrament of Holy Orders effects is ontological in nature; it is not a superficial union, but one which goes to the depths of human nature, to the depths of our being.

Nor is this union unique to orders: it occurs for all of us in baptism, [the Holy Father often reminds us of the 'common priesthood' of all Christians by virtue of Baptism, and the 'ministerial priesthood' of those who undergo Holy Orders] and is deepened in the other sacraments as well. We are joined to Christ, conformed to Him, and this is true as well of ordination.

At the same time, Benedict indicates that this truth -- an ontological union -- has been somewhat obscured in our time, to the detriment of a proper understanding -- and therefore a proper exercise -- of the New Testament priesthood.

Benedict addresses this topic in a number of places. I've already referred to his lectio divina with the Roman seminarians from earlier this year. In that lectio, Benedict is commenting on John 15:1-17. As you know, in this passage Jesus speaks of Himself as the true vine and of the twelve (and ultimately, all his disciples) as the branches of the vine.

In his lectio, Benedict keys in on Jesus's imperative, "Abide in me," affirming that the idea of abiding in the Lord is fundamental as the first topic of this passage.

In order to be laborers in the vineyard, in order to be priests of Christ's mystery, Benedict emphasizes that the union between Jesus and the priest is an ontological one, for it is only by being deeply rooted in Christ, it is only by being joined to Christ at the deepest level of his being that the priest is capable of exercising his ministry. As Jesus says in this passage, "as the branches cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me." For the priest -- as for every Christian -- this abiding in Jesus, this ontological intimacy is foundational and primary.

This is also seen, according to Benedict, in that the second imperative of the passage -- "observe my commandments" -- only comes after the imperative to abide in the Lord and in his love.

Benedict observes, "'Abide' comes first, at the ontological level, namely that we are united with him, he has given himself to us beforehand and has already given us his love, the fruit."

Benedict affirms that Christ's being, Christ's loving comes first, and that it is only because we abide in His being and love that we are able to act: we are only able to act in Christ because we have first been rooted in Christ. The priest, then, is only able to act in the person of Christ precisely because he is first in persona Christi. [Should be in persona Christi as the Son of God with a message of eternal salvation, but many post-Vatican-II priests appear to have forgotten that Christ, or perhaps more properly, the 'persona Christi' they see appears to be nothing but a political activist-social worker focused on man's material well-being in the here and now, with hardly any thought for man's spiritual health and salvation, much less for the hereafter.]

Benedict also notes that it is in this context of abiding in Christ and His love that Jesus speaks of the twelve as His friends: "I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you."

Again the previous theme: Christ has nothing of his own, but rather, everything He has has been given to Him by His Father, and He in turn shares everything He has received from the Father -- His teachings, but also His life, His love, His very being -- with these men.

Friends are those who share with one another, and here Jesus affirms that the twelve are not merely servants, but are also His friends, because He has shared everything He has received from His Father with them.

So for Benedict, it is because of this ontological union which begins at baptism and is given a new configuration at ordination that the priest truly becomes a friend of Christ and is able to act in His name.

The same theme is also present in another lectio from this year, this one with the parish priests of Rome. Commenting here on passages from the Letter to the Hebrews, Benedict notes that it was the author of this letter who first introduced a second way of understanding Christ as the fulfillment of the Old Testament; the first saw Him above all as the fulfillment of the Davidic promises: Jesus as the true King of Israel and in fact of all of creation.

The author of Hebrews, however, finds in Psalm 110:4 ("You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek") an indication that Jesus also fulfills the expectation of the true Priest. It is this author who realized that Jesus fulfilled both the promise of a true King as well as the promise of a true Priest.

Beginning with this introduction, Benedict unfolds the theme of Christ's priesthood as Hebrews presents it, in three levels: the priesthood of Aaron, of Melchizedek, and of Christ Himself.

For the purposes of our present theme I'd like to look briefly at Benedict's remarks regarding the first level: Christ's priesthood -- and thereby the New Testament priesthood -- as a fulfillment of the Aaronic priesthood as presented in Hebrews.

According to Benedict, the author of Hebrews indicates that the Law tells us two things about the priesthood:
- First, that if the priest is to be a mediator between God and man, the priest must be a man; and it was for this reason that Christ became man.
- Second, though, is this: the man who would be a priest is intrinsically unable to make himself a mediator for God; man lacks the power, the ability to become a priestly mediator of his own accord. He needs to receive divine authorization, he needs to be divinely instituted in order to be the bridge that a mediator is called to be.

Benedict is not content, however, to make the simple point that the priest must be "picked for God's team" in order to truly become a priest. He goes farther, or rather, deeper: for a man to truly be on God's team, for a man to truly become a bridge, a mediator, a priest, his being must be introduced into Christ's divine being.

Benedict affirms that the priest can accomplish his mission only by means of the sacrament of ordination which brings him into communion with Christ, which introduces him into participation in Christ's mystery, His being.

Again: the New Testament priesthood requires, demands an ontological bond, a communion with Christ at the deepest level of one's being. Anything else is incapable of enabling a man to be the bridge that brings God and man together which the priesthood requires.

Benedict also gives some practical thoughts on this, but we'll save those for the final portion of this presentation.


Augustinian Synthesis

For the final block in the Christological foundation of Benedict's theology of the priesthood I'd like to focus on one of his discussions of Augustine's treatment of the New Testament priesthood, particularly two series of images which the Doctor of Grace employed in his theological exegesis. As we will see, it is in Benedict's analysis of these images that the points we've been considering here come together.

The first scriptural image is of the priest as servus Dei or servus Christi: the priest as the servant of Christ. The Scriptural background and context for this image is found in the great Christological hymn found in Philippians 2:5-11: "Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men..."

Benedict focuses on the fact that the term "servant" implies a relationship: to be a servant means to serve someone, to serve another. So if we understand the priest to be a servant of Christ, we are saying that the life of a priest is oriented towards and determined in a substantial way by Jesus; to be a priest means, fundamentally, to be in relationship with Jesus.

Benedict affirms that the essence of the office of priesthood -- even the essence of the priest himself, of his being -- is to be oriented towards Christ as a servant.

Benedict goes on to note that it is only by and because of his orientation towards Christ that the priest is able to serve the Church; the priest cannot be servus Ecclesiae unless he is first servus Christi.

As Benedict puts it, it is precisely because the priest belongs to Christ that he is able to belong to others, and in a radical manner. For Benedict, the ontological truly enables the functional: understanding that to be a priest is to be in relationship with Jesus Christ, and to share His being is in fact the only solid basis by which the priest is able to fulfill his priestly duties and responsibilities in the radical way necessary.

Benedict sees the concept of servant as deeply connected with the image of the indelible character, the notion of a ineradicable mark on the soul of the man who is ordained. The connection is seen in that in late antiquity, "character" referred to the seal or stamp of possession which was placed on a thing, even on a person, a seal which could no longer be removed or erased.

By virtue of this stamp, the recipient of the stamp was forever and irrevocably marked as belonging to its master. Continuing the line of thought just seen, "character" thus indicates a belonging which becomes a part of the recipient's very existence: character thus implies being in relationship with another. And of course, in the case of ordination, the owner is Christ.

With the imposition of hands, Christ says to the man being ordained: "You belong to me": He has taken possession of him.

And again, as we've seen previously in other contexts, the initiative for this character comes from the master, the proprietor: it comes from Christ. As Benedict puts it, to be ordained thus means that I am only the recipient of the action of Christ: I cannot ordain myself, I cannot declare that I am on God's side in this radical way, but rather He must first act, He must first declare me and make me his own, and only then can I enter into this acceptance and make it my own. I am only able, then, to actively receive, and nothing more.

The second series of images of priestly service which Benedict explores comes from Augustine's contemplation of the figure and role of John the Baptist. In the Gospels, John is presented as the voice which prepares the way for the coming of the Word: vox (voice) and verbum (word): the relationship between the two characterizes the relationship between the priest and Jesus.

The word is prior to the voice: the word is present in my mind, in my heart before it is uttered by my voice. But it is through the mediation of the voice that the word becomes perceptible to the other and is thereby able to become present in the heart of the other, while remaining present in the heart of the one who spoke the word.

So: the voice is the transitory mediator; the word remains present in the heart of the speaker and then of the hearer, but the voice passes away. The application thus becomes clear: the task of the priest, Benedict notes, is simply to be a voice for the word.

Referring to John the Baptist's affirmation of his own transitory role ("He must increase, but I must decrease"), Benedict affirms that the voice has no other purpose than to pass on the word, after which it passes away. The priest is, in the entirety of his existence, vox, and in this light we can see his radical and complete dependence upon and orientation towards the Verbum, Jesus Christ.


Spiritual Applications

What application, then, does Benedict see these theological observations having on the life and ministry of the Catholic priest today? To begin with, it's helpful to consider Benedict's grasp of the difficulties which being a priest in our age entail. In an essay in PFF written just over ten years ago, he wrote the following:

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A parish priest who may today be in charge of three or four parishes is forever traveling from one place to another; this situation, well known to missionaries, is becoming more and more the rule in the heartlands of Christianity.

The priest has to try to guarantee the availability of the sacraments to the communities; he is oppressed by administrative work; problems of all kinds make their demands on him in addition to the personal troubles of so many people, for whom he can often — because of the rest — hardly find any time.

Torn to and fro between such activities, he feels empty, and it becomes more and more difficult for him to find time for recollection, from which he can draw new strength and inspiration. Outwardly torn and inwardly emptied, he loses all joy in his calling, which ends by seeming nothing but a burden and scarcely bearable any longer. Escape increasingly seems the obvious courseÓ (PFF, p. 169).

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What, then can be done to address and prevent such a situation? Benedict turns to the conciliar decree on the life and ministry of the priest -- Presbyterium Ordinis -- as the starting point from which he elaborates his proposed solutions.

First, Benedict notes that the reality of the ontological unity which the priest has with Christ might be present and alive in the priest's consciousness and therefore in his actions. The priest, in other words, must have a clear and conscious understanding that everything he does, he does with Christ.

It's important to note that the ontological is prior to the epistemological: Benedict and the Council Fathers are not saying that it is by the power and force of my awareness that I am in union with Christ, but rather that the already-real ontological fact must pervade my consciousness.

The intimacy of being which the priest has with Christ must rise to the level of intentionality, of awareness, of consciousness, and it must usher forth in every aspect of his life and ministry. For Benedict, "the priest must be a man who knows Jesus intimately, who has encountered him and has learned to love him" (CC, p. 128).

In order for this to happen, in order for the priest to be vitally aware of his union and fellowship with Christ in all of his activities, Benedict makes his second proposal: ascetic discipline must not be allowed to become an additional burden, an extra program that you must fit into your schedule alongside all of your various pastoral activities/.

Rather, the work itself must be recognized and lived as asceticism, in that it is in one's priestly work that he learns to overcome himself, that he learns to let his life go and give it up to others.

Itis in the disappointments and failures of priestly work, Benedict proposes, that the priest learns renunciation and the acceptance of pain, of letting go of himself; it is in the joy of succeeding that the priest learns gratitude, and so on. For Benedict, the ascetic discipline that enables the priest to be aware of his fellowship with Christ is found in the very life and work of ministry itself.

But Benedict is clear with his third theme: for these things to happen, "I still need moments in which to catch my breath" (PFF, p. 170). Again drawing upon the Council, Benedict affirms that this conscious fellowship with Christ and ministry-as-asceticism can only occur if priests "penetrate ever more profoundly into the mystery of Christ" (ibid.).

Benedict affirms that attention to the interior life is absolutely necessary and essential for the priest, in his life and in his work, noting that without an inner dimension, ministry degenerates into activism.

Therefore, Benedict states that making time for God must be a pastoral priority for priests, even above all other priorities. As he puts it, "this is not an additional burden but space for the soul to draw breath, without which we necessarily become breathless -- we lose that spiritual breath, the breath of the Holy Spirit within us" (ibid.).

He argues that inwardly seeking God's face is the only rest which enables the priest to love his work, the only rest which restores the priest's joy in God.

I conclude this section with a text from Saint Gregory the Great which Pope Benedict cites in this context:

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What else are holy men but rivers that water the parched earth? Yet they would dry up if they did not return to the place where they began their course. That is, if they do not abide in the interiority of the heart and do not bind themselves fast with chains of longing in love for the Creator, their tongue withers up. But out of love they constantly return to this inner sanctuary, and what they pour out in public, they draw from the well of love. By loving they learn what they proclaim in teaching (In Ezechielem 1, hom. 5, 16, cited in CC, p. 131).

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Conclusion

Drawing these insights from the Holy Father together, we can draw the following conclusions:

- In order to overcome a flattened vision of the priesthood which reduces the priest to little more than a machine and which in fact flattens the man himself, we must recover the vision of the priest as a man united to Christ in the deepest levels of his being, a man who brings nothing of his own, but precisely in that nothingness brings Christ's love and life into a parched world, dying of thirst for Christ.

- The priest exists completely and totally for Christ; he is in a sense determined, ordered by his relationship with Christ, and it is this radical structuring for Christ which enables and empowers him to serve others.

- But for this ontological reality to bear fruit, it must rise to the level of awareness, and the priest must recognize and embrace his work as his own ascetic discipline.

- Finally, the priest must catch his breath, and make every effort to find time for that rest which brings him life: seeking after the face of Christ.

Chris Burgwald holds a Doctorate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome and has been the Director of Evangelization & Adult Catechesis for the Diocese of Sioux Falls in South Dakota for the past eight years. He and his wife have four children.

Pope's beatification of Cardinal Newman
to take place at an old car factory site?
by Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent

11 Jun 2010

The highlight of the Pope’s visit to Britain could take place at the largely disused Longbridge car plant.

Sources told The Tablet, the Roman Catholic magazine, that the site of the former MG Rover factory is now the “preferred venue” for Benedict XVI’s beatification of Cardinal Newman.

It is claimed that as many as 100,000 pilgrims could attend an open-air Mass at the site in the south of Birmingham, to see the pontiff take England’s most famous convert to Rome one step closer to sainthood.

Much of the vast Longbridge site remains vacant, after MG Rover went bust in 2005, although the new MG6 is being built there by the Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation and a further 468 acres are being redeveloped to include homes, a college and shops.

For many the name is synonymous with the decline of British manufacturing, from the strikes led by Derek “Red Robbo” Robinson in the 1970s when the plant was run by British Leyland to the loss of 6,000 jobs when the Phoenix Consortium took MG Rover into administration.

But Longbridge is just a few minutes’ walk away from the Catholic cemetery on Rednal Hill where Cardinal Newman was buried in 1890, and beatification ceremonies are meant to take places at locations linked to their subject’s life or death.

It is thought that the Church now sees Longbridge as a suitable site for the event because it can hold half as many people as the first choice, Coventry Airport, making it cheaper to host and also making security easier to arrange.

The Church has now confirmed Bellahouston Park in Glasgow as the location of one of the public gathering’s during the Pope’s three-day visit in September, with Susan Boyle likely to sing there, but it is still trying to keep costs down after they were estimated to have doubled to £14million.

Meanwhile Lord Patten, the Catholic Tory grandee appointed by the Government to oversee its organisation of the first ever state papal visit to Britain, suggested that the Pope may address David Cameron’s pet idea of the Big Society.

“Education is going to play a part as will what the Government has said about the Big Society and its connections with Catholic social teaching themes such as solidarity and subsidiarity,” Lord Patten told The Tablet.


Damian Thompson, who has been all fired up about the sorry state of preparations for teh papal visit on the Church side, reacts:


Now they would have the Pope
beatify Newman in an old car plant


"Pope to beatify Cardinal Newman at disused Longbridge car plant.”

Sounds like one of the fantasy suggestions from that infamous Foreign Office memo, doesn’t it? But, as Martin Beckford reports, the former MG Rover factory in the West Midlands is now the “preferred venue” for the ceremony on September 19.

Martin’s source is the house journal of the Magic Circle, The Tablet. No surprises there. ['The Magic Circle' is Thompson's shorthand for a supposed group of high-ranking English prelates who have never made a secret of their liberal agenda, have systematically thwarted Vatican directives (most notably Summorum Pontificum), and apparently includes or was headed by the former Archbishop of Westmnister, Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor.]

Instead of directly telling Catholics that the Coventry venue has been dropped (despite being already officially announced), probably in favour of a site that can accommodate 100,000 instead of 200,000, the organisers have a quiet word with their ideological allies in the media.

Which is how politicians behave. But what else should we expect? From the very beginning, Mgr Andrew Summersgill and his team have behaved like politicians, constructing a wall of waffle to conceal setbacks, overspending, details of contracts and now drastic changes of plan not just from the media but also from parish priests and the poor bloody infantry in the pews.



The important point is not that the ceremony could be held in an inactive car plant because it can always be fixed up appropiately - and it would not be much different from the originally intended venue, Coventry airport. The sad thing is that the place would only be able to hold half as many Massgoers as Coventry would - and that's a great pity for such a once-in-a-lifetime happening! A disservice to British Catholics, to the Pope and to Cardinal Newman.

It's difficult to imagine how the organizers could have miscalculated so badly. They used Coventry for John Paul II's Mass as they did Bellahouston Park in Glasgow (which can hold as many as 300,000) about which the Scottish bishops say everything's A-OK for this Pope's Mass.

Times are hard, but isn't there a Catholic billionaire anywhere who could pitch in with the 7 million pounds that the organiizers are short of? That's one-tenth of what former E-Bay CEO Meg Whitman recently spent of her personal fortune to win the Republican nomination for governor of California!


On the other hand, how to explain this report quoting the spokesman of the Archdiocese of Birmingham? It's dated June 6, after Thompson's expose of the apparent behind-the-scenes chaos in preparing for teh papal visit.

Pope's Coventry Mass
'goes ahead'

6 June 2010

The Pope's planned papal visit to Coventry is going ahead as planned, the Archdiocese of Birmingham has stressed.

Some reports had suggested that an open-air Mass at the city's airport may be scrapped and a smaller event be held near Birmingham instead. But an archdiocese spokesman said that is not the case.

Pope Benedict XVI will travel to Coventry airport for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, a convert to Catholicism.

Peter Jennings, the archdiocese spokesman, said: "The facts are that the papal visit to Coventry will go ahead on Sunday 19 September as planned."

The Mass is expected to start at 1000 BST and last for two hours.

"During that time Pope Benedict XVI will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman," he added.

The Pope is visiting the country between 16 to 19 September, in what will be the first papal visit to the UK since that of John Paul II in 1982.

[As of today, June 11-12, there are no later stories than this, nor has this story been updated, on the BBC site, Obviously, the BBC is not giving credence to the Tablet report! Or is this just my wishful thinking?.]

June 10, 2010

---

"In our time, in which the faith in many places seems like a light in danger of being snuffed out for ever, the highest priority is to make God visible in the world and to open to humanity a way to God. And not to any god, but to the God who had spoken on Sinai, the God whose face we recognize in the love borne in the very end in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."
- Benedict XVI, Fatima, May 12, 2010. Letter to Catholic Bishops of the World, L'Osservatore Romano, English, May 19, 2010.

"We impose nothing, yet we propose ceaselessly, as Peter recommended in one of his Letters: 'In your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you'" (1 Peter 3:15).
- Benedict XVI, Porto, May 14, 2010.

---

I.

Benedict XVI visited Portugal from May 11-14, 2010. He was in Lisbon, Fatima, and Oporto. While there, the Pope gave some eleven sermons, lectures, or talks to various kinds to Portuguese civil and religious bodies. The President of Portugal was often present.

A papal visit produces some remarkable words and the present one is no exception. A papal visit is a genuine teaching experience that comes to a nation from outside, in the sense that a Pope comes to its midst, focusing attention on fundamental issues of the human soul —and not merely on politics or economics, though not ignoring these either.

Anyone who goes to Portugal will at some time have Fatima on his mind. "We would be mistaken to think that Fatima's prophetic mission is complete. Here there takes on a new life the plan of God which asks humanity from the beginning: 'Where is your brother, Abel?'"

Mankind did not in fact find a way to solve its own problems by itself. The subsequent history of salvation deals with how this question to Cain is finally answered.

The Fatima apparitions occurred on May 13, 1917. Benedict recalls the geopolitical irony: "At a time when the human family was ready to sacrifice all that was most sacred on the altar of the petty and selfish interests of nations, races, ideologies, groups and individuals, our Blessed Mother came from heaven, offering to implant in the hearts of all those who trust in her the Love of God burning in her own heart. At that time it was only to three children..."

God chooses other ways than ours to make his will known. The irony of the powers of the world at war, unable to resolve their issues, over against the three children to whom Mary appears is striking.

One of the themes of this papal visit was a constant reminder both of the openness of Christianity to truth wherever it is found. and the insistence that but one God and but one proper understanding of salvation exist.

As Benedict said in the Chapel of the Apparitions in Fatima, the true God is the one who announced himself to Moses and who appeared in Jesus Christ. It is this God to which the papacy is to witness down the ages. By implication there are false gods. In general, if we get the God-question wrong, we will get everything else wrong.

Portuguese intellectual history is filled with Enlightenment disputes over the place of the faith in modern culture. Portugal was one of the first "modern" states. Its early empire in Brazil, Africa, and the Orient is still influential in our time. The missionary impulse was part of the culture. The Pope is concerned with the "European-ness" of that particular culture that would send missionaries into the world with the "good news."

Today we see that this very dialectic represents an opportunity and that we need to develop a synthesis and a forward-looking and profound dialogue. In the multicultural situation in which we all find ourselves, we see that if European culture were merely rationalist, it would lack a transcendent religious dimension, and not be able to enter into dialogue with the great cultures of humanity all of which have this transcendent religious dimension —which is the dimension of man himself.

A view of reason that in principle excludes a transcendent dimension is itself lacking all of the being that is given to man. Man cannot be completely be understood without his transcendent dimension.

"Reason as such is open to transcendence and only in the encounter between transcendent reality and faith and reason does man find himself," Benedict explained in an interview on the plane to Lisbon. "So I think that the precise task and mission of Europe in this situation is to create the dialogue, to integrate faith and modern rationality in a single anthropological vision which approaches the human being as a whole and thus also makes human culture communicable."

What Benedict means here, I think, is that, unlike other cultures, Western civilization has within it an ongoing challenge of reason by transcendence and of transcendence by reason. This inclusion of both is why the modern definition of reason as being itself autonomous is implicitly and actually a rejection of Western civilization as such. That is, a rejection of a civilization in which both reason and revelation are possible. No other civilization has an ongoing example of how these sources fit together.

II.

Benedict often speaks of a "public" role of the Church in the world, within all nations and cultures, including the most closed, such as China and the Arab states. In principle, it cannot be excluded. The Church's concern and understanding of truth is not just a private thing.

"Situated within history, the Church is open to cooperating with anyone who does not marginalize or reduce to the private sphere the essential consideration of the human meaning of life."

These were among the first words that Benedict spoke at the Lisbon airport on his arrival. All men have both the duty and desire to know the truth about themselves. The Church has an understanding of that truth which is not merely private or subjective, but possessing information and truth about God and man.

"The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and a religious system, as much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom."

If "freedom" means that no binding truth can be found such that we are free even of the principle of contradiction, then we really have eliminated the world as having anything to do with us or our lives. We are simply what we do and think. No one can object to anything done by anyone else because no ground exists for such an objection on the premise that freedom is based on nothing but itself.

The Pope praises the understanding of Church and State that exists in Portugal with its mutual recognition of each by the other. The Pope again notes that the best way to see what the faith means is not by reading but by seeing how saints live, a witness that leads "even to the radical choice of martyrdom."

In his talk to priests, Benedict remarks: "many of our brothers and sisters live as if there were nothing beyond this life, and without concern for their eternal salvation. Men and women are called to know and love God. The Church has the mission to assist them in this calling. We know well that God is the master of his gifts, and that conversion is a grace. But we are responsible for proclaiming the faith, the whole faith."

The Pope thinks that the Church has done much thinking about itself and its relation to modern thought and what is valid in it. "The Church herself accepted and refashioned the best of the requirements of modernity by transcending them on the one hand and on the other by avoiding their error and dead ends."

The secular world has largely refused to do its own rethinking of its own limits, largely because that rethinking involves an admission that the Church does stand for an abiding truth of philosophical import about man which modern thought has refused to admit or see.

This sophisticated rethinking of faith and the world under recent Popes has made it clear that Catholicism is actually much stronger intellectually than modern secularism, which has limited its range only to itself. It has cut off revelation not because it is unnecessary or refuted, but because it shows the lack of grounding in being of much modern thought.

This theme of the Pope that the Church has rethought modernity is new to me. There is no doubt that the Church has made every effort to see the good in modernity when it can. When it cannot, the Pope says so.

In a Public Mass at the Palace Square in Lisbon, Benedict, as he often does, made a Platonic point, namely that we must first attend to our own souls before we reform the state.

"Often we are anxiously preoccupied with the social, cultural, and political consequences of the faith, taking for granted that faith is present, which unfortunately is less and less realistic. Perhaps we have placed an excessive trust in ecclesial structures and programmes, in the distribution of powers and functions..."

This point is crucial in our understanding of modernity. It does not judge the Church in those things in which the Church is competent. Rather, modernity is itself judged by the Church when it misunderstands man's nature and destiny.

What is the "public" teaching all men need to know not by "imposition" but by "persuasion?" It is this: "Only Christ can fully satisfy the profound longings of every human heart and give answers to its most pressing questions concerning suffering, injustice and evil, concerning death and the life hereafter."

Likewise, only the Church can teach us of that for which we are to hope — the sacraments, eternal life, the City of God, seeing God face-to-face, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment.

The title of these Portuguese reflections is that we are to seek not just any God, but that God revealed to us within the history of our life on this planet, the one who appeared to Moses, and then in the flesh in Christ.

The public life of nations needs to hear these truths not in any manner but in a calm one. Modern political constitutions should be designed to all for this hearing to happen. However, these same constitutions, including our own, however designed, can be used to interfere with this free listening which, as such, is the beginning of salvation.

As Paul said, "faith comes by hearing," and as Benedict added in Portugal, by seeing the living examples of saints who live their faith and follow their reason, both together. This latter is something that should be, but is not, present in all civilizations. It is the mission of Europe to teach this — Europe, a continent that is near to losing its own faith.

The Archdiocese of Birmingham continues to assert itself on preparations for the Pope's visit. It will host the Holy Father for the Beatification Mass of Cardinal Newman, regardless of where the final venue will be.




Here's the latest from Birmingham, England's second largest city after London (it was the center of the Industrial Revolution).

Pope adds Birmingham
college to UK visit plans
by Jonathan Walker

June 12, 2010


THE Pope will be coming to Birmingham during his historic visit to Britain, officials have confirmed.

There had been disappointment that Pope Benedict XVI would apparently miss out the city during the first Papal state visit to Britain, despite beatifying the Victorian Cardinal John Henry Newman, who is closely associated with Birmingham.

But a spokesman for the Catholic Church said the Pope would visit St Mary’s College in Sutton Coldfield.

He will spend an afternoon at the seminary following a Mass to beatify Cardinal Newman, which will take place at Coventry Airport and will be attended by an expected 170,000 people.

The Pope will then fly from Birmingham International Airport to Rome.

But the Church dismissed reports the venue for the Mass would be shifted from Coventry to the former MG Rover plant in Longbridge.

Some reports suggested the Church was considering Longbridge because it would be a cheaper venue, holding fewer people.

Peter Jennings, spokesman for the Birmingham Archdiocese – which includes Coventry as well as Birmingham – said speculation about a change of venue was “unhelpful”.

He said: “The Mass will be held on Sunday September 19 at Coventry Airport beginning at 10am and lasting two hours.

“After the Mass, the Pope will travel by helicopter to St Mary’s College to spend the afternoon there, have lunch and have a rest and meet Bishops from across the country.

“Then he will travel to Birmingham International Airport to fly back to Rome.”

Cardinal Newman, who founded the first English Oratory on the outskirts of Birmingham in 1848, is England’s most famous convert to Catholicism.

The Oratory later moved to Alcester Street and then to Edgbaston, and Cardinal Newman lived there for almost 40 years.

His beatification by the Pope will be the third of the four steps in the canonisation process.

Bosses at MG earlier said they had received no contact from the Vatican over the Pope’s visit and the Cardinal Newman ceremony.

Doug Wallace, PR Manager for MG Motor UK Ltd, said: “It is very nice to think that Longbridge could be considered for the Pope’s visit but I am sure the Vatican would have been in contact with us by now. To my knowledge, we have not been approached at all.”




Meanwhile, there are new details about the Pope's itinerary on the official site of the visit, but few of the venues are identified. As of today, 6/12/10, this is what's on the site:




Apropos, I'd like to share this poster for an upcoming event for young adults in Olcott, Archdicoese of Birmingham.



I think, ideally, all posters and promotional material for any church activity, at any level, should include an image of Christ and an image of the Pope. In the months when I have been rearching out images of saints and blesseds, I am surprised that most parish websites don't even carry any image of their own patron saint!

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

The feast is currently observed on the day after the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This particular devotion was especially popular in France, especially after the Marian apparitions to St. Catherine Laboure, whose Miraculous Medal features both the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. But it was not recognized by the Vatican's Congregation for Rites as a liturgical feast until 1855. Worldwide devotion was renewed after the apparitions at Fatima. Subsequently, Pius XII, in an Apostolic Letter, consecrated Russia to the Immaculate Heart as Our Lady had requested. John Paul II repeated the consecration in a ceremony at St. Peter's Square in May 1982, on the anniversary of Ali Agca's assassination attempt against him, and on the Jubilee Year of 2000, he consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart. In Fatima last month, Benedict XVI consecrated the priests and religious of the world to the Immaculate Heart, and did so again yesterday in St. Peter's Square, during the closing Mass of the Year for Priests.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/061210.shtml



OR today.

In closing the Year for Priests, the Pope says the priest is not an officeholder
but one whose duty is to demonstrate God's attention to men:
'The daring of a God who is near us'
The Pope also says there should never be any more abuses against children
and asks forgiveness from the victims of these abuses
This issue includes an editorial and a coverage of the last two events of the year for Priests - the Prayer Vigil with the Pope on Thursday night, and yesterday's closing Mass. There is also an article about St. John Chrysostom's ideas on the priesthood. Page 1 international news: US Treasury Secretary calls on Beijing to reform its monetary system in line with the rest of the world; and a commentary on the current World Cup soccer championship games in South Africa as an opportunity for the world to look more seriously on the problems and potential of Africa.



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Participants in the current session of the European Council's Development Bank. Address in French.

- Bishops of Brazil (Group 2, East Sector-II) on ad-limina visit

And in the afternoon:

- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)



The Vatican announced that the Holy Father has named Mons. Ruggero Franceschini, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Izmir,
as Apostolic Administrator of the Apostolic Vicariate of Anatolia(Turkey), left vacant by the assassination of
Archbishop Luigi Padovese last June 3.

The truth from Turkey:
Vatican diplomats gave wrong
'advice' to the Holy Father
Translated from

June 12, 2010


"I think that in the Vatican, they have now seen that I am right: the killing of Mons. Luigi Padovese was solely motivated by religion. In fact, the murder demonstrated explicitly Islamist elements [associated with ritual killing]. The Turkish government had nothing to do with it. Nor personal motivations. Only radical Islam.

"I know that on his way to Cyprus, the Pope had said 'It was not a political or religious assassination but a personal one'. I think he was badly informed. There are some things that the Vatican cannot tell us".

This was the start of an interview given by the Bishop of Izmir (Smyrna), Mons. Ruggero Franceschini, to Il Foglio's Paolo Rodari in the newspaper's issue today (June 12).


Funeral Mass for Mons. Padovese in Iskenderun. Inset photo, Mens. Franceschini.

He is a veteran of the Church in Turkey and was president of the Turkish bishops conference before Padovese. He was also his predecessor in Iskenderun, and on the same day as his interview came out, he was named by the Holy Father to be the Apostolic Administrator of the Vicariate of Anatolia left vacant by the assassination of Mons. Padovese.

It's an interview that must be read in full. It is very detailed about the Islamist assault on Christians in Turkey. About Turkish schools that incite religious hatred and humiliate any Christian students. About the dynamics of Padovese's murder. About the killer and his family.

"It is always a risk for us to hire Muslims - and we have learned this at a high price," Franceschini says.

He took part in Mons. Padovese's funeral Mass in Iskenderun last Tuesday, which was presided by the Apostolic Nuncio in Turkey, Mons. Antonio Fucibello, and preached his eulogy. From the beginning, he has called attention to the true motive for the assassination which, he said, cannot be set aside as the isolated act of a madman. [AsiaNews editor Fr. Bernardo Cervellera wrote a strong article on this matter earlier this week, based on an interview with Mons. Franceschini, posted in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread.]

And now it is he who is publicly denouncing the error made by the Vatican authorities in drawing a hasty conclusion about the murder. First through Vatican spokesman Fr. Lombardi, and then, with the words that the Holy Father himself said enroute to Cyprus.

It seems clear that the Pope was 'badly advised' by the Secretariat of State, judging from the directness of a bishop like Franceschini who has every reason to say, "About certain things, the Vatican cannot know better than we do".

This error is a potentially disastrous prelude to the Synodal Assembly on the Middle East in October. Nothing could better spur on those Muslims who are enemies of Christianity than statements which they consider to be a sign of weakness and pure submission.


I went back to the official Italian transcript to check exactly what the Pope said about this matter. Here is my translation:

---

This shadow [of the killing] has nothing to do with the subject or the realities of this trip [to Cyprus], because we should not attribute it to Turkey or the Turkish people. It is something about which we have little information. What's certain is that it was not a political or religious assassination; it was a personal matter.

We must still await all the explanations, but we do not wish to mix up this tragic situation with the dialog with Islam and the problems of this trip. It is a separate matter which makes us sad, but which should not get in the way of dialog in all senses which is the theme and objective of this visit.

---

While the Holy Father's intention was obviously not to create an extraneous problem that could easily overshadow his carefully calibrated trip to Cyprus, I must admit that I had a sinking deja-vu feeling when I first read the statements I underscored: It reminded me of Obama saying he knew very little about the incident between a white Boston-area policeman and a Harvard professor friend of his, then went right ahead and said in the next sentence that the police officer had acted stupidly.

I am sure the Vatican - and the Holy Father - have since read the reports from AsiaNews in which the madman theory about the bishop's driver-assassin was almost immediately debunked. In fact, the Pope's references to Mons. Padovese in Cyprus and later in the prayer vigil with priests at the Vatican all but declare the bishop's death as a martyrdom - which would not be the case if he continued to believe the murder arose from purely personal reasons.

And that these facts, and Mons. Franceschini's earlier statements about the killing, were factored into his nomination as Apostolic Administrator for Anatolia until a new bishop can be named.

The obvious first source for the Secretariat of State of official information about the killing was the Apostolic Nuncio in Turkey, Mpns. Lucibello, but he lives in Ankara and did not get to Iskenderun until the day of the funeral five days later. Mons. Franceschini in Izmir was the nearest ranking prelate. Did anyone ever think to call him?

In his eulogy for Mons. Padovese, Mons. Franceschini was unequivocal from teh outset: " And once again, this land has become the place of martyrdom for those who loved her so much."

Items about the Padovese murder are posted in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread unless they involve the Holy Father as in this case.

Pope to European bankers:
Save human 'capital'




The Holy Father greets bank members and their families.

VATICAN CITY, June 12 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI told European banking and development officials Saturday to keep families' needs paramount as they devise solutions to the continent's financial crises.

Economy and finance "are no more than tools, means" to safeguard human "capital, the only capital worth saving," Benedict said.

Benedict told representatives of the European Council's Development Bank during a Vatican audience that their task was to make the "human person, and even more particularly, families and those in great need, the center and the aim" of economic policies.

He urged experts to draw on what he called Europe's tradition of "generous fraternity" in coming up with rescue plans.

Benedict named no country, but efforts to help bail out Greece from its financial disaster exposed tensions in Europe over how much countries should help a fellow European Union nation.

Many European nations are grappling with dwindling revenues and budget shortfalls amid the euro's plunge against the dollar and other currencies, a stubborn recession and chronic unemployment. Generous social welfare plans like early pensions and heavily subsidized health care are at risk as their costs are being scrutinized.


Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address, which was delivered in French:

---

Mr. Governor and Presidents,
Mesdames and Messieurs Ambassadors,
Mesdames and Messieurs Administrators,
Dear friends:

The 45th general meeting of the Council of Europe's Bank for Development has brought you to Rome, and it is my pleasure to receive you at the Apostolic Palace at the end of your meeting.

I thank you, Mr. Governor, for your words which underscore the importance that the Holy See gives to Europe's Development Bank, of which it has been a member since 1973.

In 1956, the Council of Europe established a bank for exclusively social objectives as an appropriate instrument to promote its policy of solidarity with all nations.

At the beginning, this bank occupied itself with problems concerning refugees and has since extended its competence to the entire domain of social cohesion.

The Holy See can only view with interest a structure that supports social projects, which is concerned with development, which responds to emergency situations, and aims to improve living conditions for persons in need.

Political developments in Europe towards the end of the last century allowed her finally to breathe with both lungs, to adapt an expression of my venerated predecessor. We all know that there is still a long way to go to make this an effective reality.

The economic and financial exchanges between Western and Eastern Europe have certainly developed, but has there been real human progress?

Has not the liberation from totalitarian ideologies been utilized unilaterally for economic progress alone to the detriment of a more human development that respects the dignity and nobility of man, and has it not sometimes ignored the spiritual riches that had shaped European identity?

I am sure that the Bank's interventions in favor of the countries of eastern, central and southeastern Europe have allowed a correction of disequilibria, towards a process based on justice and solidarity, which are indispensable for Europe's present and future.

You know as well as I do that the world and Europe are undergoing today a particularly serious time of economic and financial crisis. This period should not lead to limitations that are based only on a strictly financial analysis.

It must, on the contrary, allow the Development Bank to show originality in reinforcing social integration, management of the environment, and development of public infrastructures for social purposes. I strongly encourage the Bank's work in this respect and in terms of solidarity. Because thus, it is being true to its calling.

In the face of present challenges that the world and Europe must manage, I wished to call attention, through my last encyclical, Caritas en veritate, to the social doctrine of the Church and its positive contribution to the formation of the human person and of society.

Following Christ, the Church sees love for God and neighbor as a powerful motor that can generate authentic energy for the entire social, juridical, cultural, political and economic landscape.

I wished to highlight that the relationship between love and truth, when truly lived well, is a dynamic force that regenerates all interpersonal bonds and offers true novelty in reorienting the economic and financial life, which it renews in the service of man and his dignity.

Economy and finance do not exist for their own sake - they are only a tool, a means. Their end is the human being alone, and his full realization in dignity. That is the only capital that must be saved.

And in this capital, in the human being, one finds a spiritual dimension. Christianity has allowed Europe to know what freedom is, the responsibility and the ethic that permeate its laws and its societal structures.

To marginalize Christianity - as by excluding the symbols that represent it - would contribute to cutting off our continent from the fundamental spring that is indispensable for its nourishment and its true identity.

Christianity is the origin of the "spiritual and moral values that are the common patrimony of the European people" - the values to which the member states of the Council of Europe manifested their unshakable attachment in the Preamble of the Council's Constitution.

This attachment, which was reaffirmed in the Warsaw Declaration of 2005, anchors and guarantees the vitality of the principles on which European political and social life are based, and in particular, the activities of the Council of Europe.

In this context, the Bank of Development, as a financial establishment, is also an economic tool. Nonetheless, it was created to respond to exigencies that go beyond the financial and economic: It has a social reason for existence. It is therefore called on to be fully what it was meant to be: a technical instrument that allows solidarity. This must be lived as brotherhood, which is generous, which does not calculate.

Perhaps these criteria can be employed further in the internal choices of the Bank as in its external activity. Fraternity allows the kind of gratuitousness which, while indispensable, is difficult to imagine or to manage when the only ends pursued are efficiency and profit.

Likewise, we all know that this dual objective is not an absolute and insurmountable determinism because it can be overcome. To do this, the novelty would be to introduce a logic that makes the human being, more especially families and those in serious need, the center and the purpose of the economy.

Europe has a rich past which has included experiences of economy based on brotherhood. There are enterprises today with social or mutualist objectives. They have had to bear with the laws of the market, but they wish to recover the strength of generosity that came with their origins.

It seems to me that the European Council's Development Bank, in order to manifest true solidarity, would respond to the ideal of brotherhood that I have evoked and explore the spaces in which brotherhood and the logic of giving freely may be expressed.

These are the ideals with Christian roots which presided, along with the desire for peace, at the birth of the Council of Europe.

The medal which you have just offered me, Mr. Governor, for which I thank you, will remind me of this meeting. I assure you, dear friends, of my prayers, and I encourage you to pursue your work with courage and clarity in order to accomplish the important duty entrusted to you - that of contributing to the good of our beloved Europe.

May God bless you all. Thank you.

---

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's Q&A with priests at the Prayer Vigil on Thursday night in St. Peter's Square.


Benedict XVI's dialog with priests
at the Prayer Vigil before the
conclusion of the Year for Priests
Translated from
the 6/13/10 issue of

---

Most Holy Father, I am Fr. Jose Eduardo Oliveiros y Silva from America, Brazil to be exact. Most of us here are involved in direct pastoral work in the parish, and not only with one community, but sometimes we are parish priest for several parishes, or of communities that are particularly extensive.

With every good will, se seek to attend to the needs of a society that has changed greatly. which is no longer entirely Christian, but we realize that what we can 'do' is not enough. How should we proceed, Holiness? In what direction?

Dear friends, first of all, I wish to express my great joy that priests from all over the world have gathered here, in the joy of our vocation, and in the willingness to serve the Lord in our time with all our powers.

As for the question: I am well aware that today it is very difficult to be a parish priest, even and especially in the countries which have been Christian for a long time. Parishes have become more extensive pastoral units. It becomes impossible to know everyone, it is impossible to do all the work that is expected of a parish priest. That is why we must ask, what do we do, as you ask.

I wish first of all to say: I know that so many parish priests in the world are truly giving everything they have for evangelization, to make the Lord present with his Sacraments. To these faithful parish priests, who are working with all the strength they are capable of, who are passionate about Christ, I wish to say a great 'Thank you" at this time.

I have said that it is not possible to do everything that one wishes, nor everything that needs to be done, because our powers are limited, and situations are difficult in a society that is increasingly diversified, more complicated.

I think that above all, it is important that the faithful see that a priest is not merely doing a 'job' [he uses the English word], who puts in his hours of work and then is free to live for himself alone - but that he is a man who is passionate for Christ, who carries the fire of Christ's love in him.

If the faithful see that he is full of the Lord's joy, they will also understand that he cannot do everything, they will accept his limitations, and help him. This seems to me to be the most important point: that it can be seen and felt that the parish priest truly feels that he is someone called by the Lord, that he is full of love for the Lord and for his flock. If this is so, then he will be understood, and his flock will understand that he cannot do everything.

So, to be filled with the joy of the Gospel in all our being is the first condition.

Then, se must make choices, have priorities, see what is possible and what is impossible. I would say we all know the three fundamental priorities - the three pillars of our priestly being:

First, the Eucharist, the Sacraments: to make the Eucharist present, especially on Sundays, as much as possible, for everyone, and to celebrate it in a way that truly makes visible the Lord's act of love for us.

Then, the announcement of the Word in all its dimensions: from the personal dialog to the homily.

The third priority is 'caritas', the love of Christ: to be present for those who suffer, for the little people, for children, for persons in difficulty, for those who are marginalized - to render the love of the Good Shepherd truly present for them.

And a very important priority is one's own personal relationship with Christ. In the Brevary of November 4, we read a beautiful sermon by St. Charles Borromeo, a great pastor, who truly gave all of himself, and who tells all of us priests: "Do not neglect your own soul. If you neglect your own soul, then you cannot give others what you should give them. Therefore, you must have time for yourself, for your own soul".

In other words, a relationship with Christ, personal conversation with Christ, is a fundamental pastoral priority - it is a condition for our work in behalf of others.

And prayer is not a marginal thing: it is truly the priest's 'profession' to pray, even in representation of people who do not know how to pray or who do not find time to pray. Prtsonal prayers, especially the Liturgy of the Hours, is fundamental nourishment for our soul, for all our activities.

And finally, we must recognize our limitations - we must be open even to this humility. Let us recall a scene from the Gospel of St. Mark, Chapter 6, when the disciples are all 'stressed out' as they want to do everything, and the Lord says: ""Come away... and rest a while" (cfr Mk 6,32). I would say that this too is pastoral work: to find and have the humility and the courage to rest!

Theefore, I think that passion for the Lord, love for the Lord, shows us our priorities and choices, and helps us to find the road to take. The Lord will help us. Thanks again to all of you.


Holiness, I am Mathias Aguero from Africa, the Ivory Coast. You are a theologian Pope, whereas we, if we can, barely read any theology during our training. Nonetheless, it seems to us that there has been a break between theology and doctrine, and even more, between theology and spirituality. We feel the need that study should not be all academic but that it should nourish our spirituality.

We feel this need even in our pastoral ministry. Sometimes, theology does not seem to have God at the center nor Jesus Christ as the first 'theological place', but rather reflects diverse tastes and a wide range of tendencies. Consequently, there is a proliferation of subjective opinions which allows the introduction into the Church itself, of non-Catholic thinking.

How can we avoid being disoriented in our life and ministry when it is the world that judges our faith and not the other way around? it makes us feel 'ex-centric'!

Thank you. You have touched on a problem that is very difficult and painful. There is truly a theology that is above all academic, that wants to appear 'scientific' and forgets the vital reality - which is the presence of God, his presence among us, what he says today, not just in the past.

Already, St Bonaventure distinguished two forms of theology in his time. He said, "There is a theology that comes from the arrogance of reason, that wishes to dominate everything, and makes God the object rather than the subject of our study, when he should always be the subject who speaks to us and guides us."

There really is such an abuse of theology, which is the arrogance of reason and does not nourish the faith, but rather, obscures the presence of God in the world.

But there is a theology that wants to know more out of love for the beloved - it is stimulated by love and guided by love, wanting to know more about the beloved. This is true theology, that comes from love of God, love of Christ, from wishing to enter into profound communion with Christ.

In truth, the temptations are great today with the so-called 'modern view of the world [Bultmann's 'modernes Weltbild'] which has become the criterion for what is possible or not possible. This criterion - according to which everything is as it always was, and that all historical events are the same - excludes the novelty of the Gospel, excludes the irruption of God into history, which is the true novelty that is the joy of our faith.

What should we do? I would say, first of all, to theologians: Have courage. And I wish to say thank you to so many theologians who are doing good work. There are abuses, we know, but in all parts of the world, there are so many theologians who truly live the Word of God, who nourish themselves by meditation, who live the faith of the Church and who truly help so that the faith continues to be present in our day. To these theologians, I say Thank you!

And I would say to theologians in general: Do not be afraid of these phantoms of scientificity! I have been following theology since 1946; I started to study theology in January 1946, and so I have seen three generations of theologians, and can say this: The hypotheses that in that time, and then in the 1960s and the 1980s, were what was considered the latest, the most absolutely scientific, absolutely dogmatic almost, have meanwhile grown old and no longer valid! Many of them even seem almost ridiculous.

Therefore, have the courage to resist apparent 'scientificity', to resist submitting to all the hypotheses of the moment, but to think by starting off from the great faith of the Church which is present at all times and which opens access to the truth.

Above all, do not think that positivist reason, which excludes the transcendent - which cannot be accessible - is true reason! This weak reasoning, whicb only presents experimentable things, is really insufficient reason. We theologians need to use a greater reason, which is open to the grandeur of God. We should have the courage to go beyond positivism to the question of the very roots of being.

I believe this is of great importance - to have the courage for the greater, more ample reason; to have the humility not to submit to all the hypotheses of the moment, to live the great faith of the Church in all times. There is no consensus greater than that of the saints: the true majority are the saints of the Church, and we must be oriented by them!

And so, I say the same thing to seminarians and priests: Sacred Scripture is not an isolated book; it lives in the living community of the Church, which remains the same throughout the centuries and guarantees the presence of the Word of God.

The Lord gave us the Church as a living subject, with the structure of bishops in communion with the Pope, and it is this reality of the bishops of the world in communion with the Pope that guarantees witness to permanent truth. Let us have trust in this permanent Magisterium of the communion of bishops with the Pope who represent for us the presence of the Word.

Let us trust in the life of the Church, and above all, let us be critical. Of course, theological formation - this I say to seminarians - is very important. In our time, we should know Sacred Scripture very well, even to use against the attacks by the sects: we must be true friends of the Word.

We must also know the currents of our time in order to able to respond reasonably, in order to give, as St. Peter said, 'reason for our faith'. Formation is very important. But we should also be critical: the criterion of faith is the same criterion by which we must look at theologians and their theology. Pope John Paul II gave us an absolutely sure criterion in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: here, we see the synthesis of our faith - the Catechism is the true criterion to judge whether a theology is acceptable or not.

Therefore I urge the reading, the study of the Bible, so we can proceed with a theology that is critical in the true sense - namely, critical of fashionable tendencies but open to the true news, the inexhaustible profundity of the Word of God which reveals itself new at all times, even in our ours.


Holy Father, I am Fr. Karol Miklosko, from Europe, Slovakia in particular, and I am a missionary in Russia. When I celebrate Holy Mass, I find myself and I understand that in it I discover my identity and the root and energy of my ministry.

The sacrifice of the Cross shows me the Good Shepherd who gives everything for his flock, for every sheep, and when I say, "This is my Body... This is my Blood" given and spilled in sacrifice for you, then I understand the beauty of celibacy and obedience which I freely promised at the moment of ordination.

Even with its natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ, but I am bewildered by reading so much worldly criticism for this gift. I ask you humbly, Holy Father, to enlighten us on the profundity and authentic meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.

Thank you for both parts of your question - the first which shows the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy; the second, about all the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our time.

The first part is important, namely, that the center of our life should really be the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in which the words of the Consecration are central: "This is my Body... This is my Blood" - when we speak 'in persona Christi'.

Christ allows us to use his "I", we speak of the "I" of Christ, Christ draws us into himself and allows us to unite with him, he unites with us in his 'I". Thus this action, the fact that he 'draws' us into himself so that our "I" is united to his, realizes the permanence and uniqueness of our priesthood - he is truly the only Priest, and yet he is very much present in the world becaus he draws us into himself and thus makes his priestly mission ever present.

This means we are drawn to God in Christ: this union with his "I" is realized in the words of the Consecration. It is also in the words "I absolve you" - because none of us can absolve sins. Only Christ's "I", the "I" of God, can absolve.

This unification of his "I" with us implies that we are also drawn into the reality of the Resurrected One, that we are going forward in the full life of Resurrection about which Jesus speaks to the Sadducees in Matthew, Chapter 22: It is a new life, in which already, we are beyond matrimony (cfr Mt 22,23-32).

It is important that we allow ourselves to be penetrated ever anew by this identification of Christ's "I" with ourselves, of being drawn forth towards the world of the resurrection. In this sense, celibacy is an ancticipation: We transcend our time and go forward, we draw ourselves and our time towards the world of the resurrection, towards the newness of Christ, towards the new and true life.

Celibacy is thus an anticipation made possible by the grace of the Lord who draws us to himself towards the world of the resurrection - he invites us ever anew to transcend ourselves, to transcend the present, towards the 'true present' of the future which becomes present today.

Here we come to a very important point. A great problem of Christianity today is that people no longer think of the future with God - when only the present of this world seems to suffice, when we mean to have only this world, to live only in this world. And so, we close the doors to the true grandeur of existence.

The sense of celibacy as an anticipation of the future serves to open these doors which make the world much greater, which shows the reality of the future which we can live as if it were already present.

To live this way in witness to our faith: truly believing that there is a God, that God has everything to do with my life, that I can base my life on Christ, and therefore on the life of the future.

We know the worldly criticisms you referred to. It is true that for the agnostica, who say God has nothing to do with their world, celibacy is a great scandal - precisely because (it shows that) God is considered and lived as a reality.

In the eschatological [oriented towards the end of time] life of the celibate, the future world of God enters the reality of our time. But this, the critics say, must not be! It must disappear!

In a sense, this continuing criticism of celibacy is surprising in a world where it is becoming more fashionable not to marry! But not marrying is totally and fundamentally different from celibacy, because it is based on the desire to live only for oneself, not to accept any definitive bond, to have a life that is fully autonomous at all times, that can decide freely at every moment what to to do and what to take from life. It is a No to any ties, No to any definitiveness, simply having life for oneself alone.

While celibacy is the exact opposite: It is a definitive Yes, allowing oneself to be taken in hand by God, giving ourselves over to God, to his "I" - therefore, it is an act of faithfulness and trust, an act which is like the faithfulness of matrimony. It is the precise opposite of the No that characterizes the autonomy that refuses to be obliged, which refuses to be bound by any ties.

Celibacy is the definitive Yes that presupposes and confirms the definitive Yes of matrimony - the matrimony that is the Biblical kind, the natural form of matirmony between a man and a woman, the foundation of Christianity's great culture, of the great cultures of the world. If it disappears, then the root of our culture would be destroyed.

Celibacy thus confirms the Yes of matrimony with its Yes to the world of the future. That is why we wish to go forward and keep present this scandal of a faith in which everything rests on the existence of God.

We know that besides this great scandal which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our own insufficiencies, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make others think, "But their life is not really based on God!"

But there is much faithfulness to God othewise! Priestly celibacy, as its critics demonstrate, is a great sign of the faith, of the presence of God in the world. Let us pray to the Lord that he may keep us free of the secondary scandals in order to make visible the great scandal of our faith - fidelity, the strength of our life, which is based on God and Jesus Christ.


Holy Father, I am Fr. Atsushi Yamashita, from Asia - Japan in particular. The priestly model that Your Holiness proposed this year, the Curate of Ars, saw the center of his life and ministry as the Eucharist, sacramental and personal penance, and love of worship which is worthily celebrated.

I have before my eyes the austere poverty of St. Jean Marie Vianney, together with his passion for the precious objects of worship. How can we live these fundamental dimensions of our priestly life without falling into clericalism or into an alienation from reality that today's world does not allow?

Thank you. the question is how to live the centrality of the Eucharist without losing oneself in a life that is purely cultic and alien to the daily world of other people.

We know that clericalism has been a temptation to priests through the centuries, even today. It is all the more important to find the true way of living the Ecuharist, which is not a closure to the world, but precisely an opening to the needs of the world.

We must keep in mind that it is in the Eucharist where the great drama is played out of God who comes forth himself, leaving - as the Letter to the Philippians says - his own glory, to come down to be one of us, and descending even further to his death on the Cross (cfr Phi 2).

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

St. Augustine says, in De Civitate Dei. Book X: "This is the sacrifice of Christians: many united in the Body of Christ". The sacrifice of Christians is to be united by the love of Christ in the unity of the one Body of Christ.

And the sacrifice consists precisely in emerging from ourselves, being drawn to the communion of the one bread, the one Body, thus entering into the great adventure of God's love. This is how we should celebrate, live and always meditate on the Eucharist - as a school of liberation from my "I" - entering into the one bread, which is everyone's bread, that unites us in the one Body of Christ.

The Eucharist is in itself an act of love - it obliges us to the reality of love of all others, the reality that the sacrifice of Christ is the communion of all in his Body. This is how we must learn the Eucharist which is the very opposite of clericalism, of being closed in on oneself.

Let us think of Mother Teresa, the true great example in the past century, in our time, of a love that abandons the self, which leaves aside every kind of clericalism, alienates itself from the world in order to tend to the most marginalized, the poorest, to people near death, giving oneself totally to love for the poor and the marginalized.

Mother Teresa has given us the example - the community that follows her footsteps always presupposes as the first condition for establishing itself the prewence of a tabernacle. Without the presence of the love of a giving God, it would not be possible to live in this total abandonment of self.

Only by abandoning oneself to God, to the adventure of God, to the humility of God, was and is it possible to fulfill this great act of love, of being open to everyone.

So I would say in this respect: To live the Eucharist in its original meaning, in its true profundity, is a school of life and is the surest protection against every temptation to clericalism.


Most Holy Father, I am Fr. Anthony Denton from Oceania - Australia. Tonight, there are many of us in attendance. But we know that our seminaries are not full, and that in the future, in various parts of the world, we can expect a further drop, even a brusque one. What can be effectively done for vocations? How can we propose our life - and what is great and beautiful in it - to the young people of our time?

Thank you. You have brought up another great and painful problem of our time: the lack of vocations, due to which local Churches are in danger of drying up because they lack the Word of life, they lack the Sacrament of the Eucharist and other Sacraments.

What do we do? The tempation is great: to take things into our hands and transform the priesthood - the Sacrament of Christ, of being elected by him - into a normal profession, a 'job; with hours, in which one belongs to oneself alone, thus making it like any other calling - accessible and easy.

But this is a temptation that does not resolve the problem. It makes me think of the temptation of Saul, King of Israel, who, before the battle against the Philistines, was awaiting Samuel for the necessary sacrifice to God. And when Samuel failed to show up at the appointed time, Saul himself offered the sacrifice, even if he was not a priest (crf 1Sam 13). He thought he could resolve the problem that way, but of course, it did not. Because by doing something he was not supposed to do, he was almost playing God, and therefore, it could not be expected that things would truly proceed according to God.

We, too, if we carry out our priesthood as a profession like any other - renouncing sacredness, the novelty and the distnction of a sacrament that only God can give, that can only come through his calling and not from our 'doing' - then we do not resolve anything.

All the more we should, as the Lord invites us, pray to the Lord, knock at his door, on the heart of God, and ask him to give us vocations - pray with great insistence, with great determination, with great conviction, because God is not deaf to any prayer that is insistent, continual and trustful, even if he makes us wait, as he did with Saul, beyond the time we expect.

So this is the first point: we must encourage the faithful to have this humility, this trust, this courage to pray insistently for vocations, to knock on God's heart to give us more priests.

I would make to like three other points.

The first is this: Each of us must do everything possible to live our priesthood in a convincing way, such that young people can say: "This is a true vocation, this is how one can live, this is how one can do something essential for the world".

I don't think any of us would have become a priest if we had not known convincing priests in whom the flame of Christ's love burned. That is why this is the first point: Let us strive to be convincing priests ourselves.

The second point is that we must invite others, as I have already said, to the initiative of praying, to have this humility, this trust, of speaking to God with decision.

The third point: to have the courage to speak to young people who think that God may have called them, because often, a human word is necessary to open up listening to the divine call. Speak to young people and help them to find a vital space in which to live.

The world today is such that it seems to exclude the possibility of maturing a priestly vocation. Young people need an environment in which faith is lived, where the beauty of faith is evident, where it can be seen as a model of life - the model of life.

So they should be helped to find a setting - a movement, the parish, the parish community or other contexts - in which they are truly surrounded by the faith, by love of God, which therefore helps to make them open to God's call.

Moreover, let us thank God for all the seminarians of our time, for our young priests, and let us pray: May the Lord help us.

Thank you to everyone.

---

June 13, 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

SANT'ANTONIO DA PADOVA (Anthony of Padua) (b Lisbon 1195, d Padua 1231)
Franciscan, Preacher, Theologian, Doctor of the Church
This great saint was the subject of a catechesis by Benedict XVI last February 10
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100210...
just a few days before the special exposition of his remains at his Basilica in Padua on Feb. 10-15, which drew some 300,000 pilgrims.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/061310.shtml


OR today.

Benedict XVI to the European Council's Development Bank:
'Man is the only true capital that must be saved'
The other papal story in this issue is the transcript of the Holy Father's Q&A session with the priests attending the prayer
vigil at St. Peter's Square before the closing of the Year for Priests on Thursday evening (full translation in the post above
this). Page 1 international news: Kyrgyzstan government asks Russian aid to quell bloody fighting between Kyrghizi natives
and Uzbeks that has led to many killings in the capital of the former Soviet republic; six African nations - Cameroon, the
Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and the Sudan - seek to prohibit conscription of minors as soldiers in their
respective countries. Page 1 also features a commentary from the June issue of the Messaggero di Sant'Antonio that vice
has become so widespread in our time because, among other things, schools have stopped teaching virtues - personal and
civic - to children.



THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - The Holy Father gave thanks for all the benefits to the Universal Church of the recently
concluded Year for Priests, which closed as it opened on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He said
the priest is a gift from the Heart of Christ, and urged that the faithful continue to pray daily for them,
recalling once again the example of St. Jean Marie Vianney of Ars, as well as that of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko,
the Solidarity priest martyred by the Communists who was beatified in Warsaw last Sunday. Once more he
entrusted the priests of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Whose feast was observed by the
Church yesterday. After the prayer, the Pope called attention to the beatification in Spain yesterday
of Manuel Garrido, the first journalist to be beatified; and the beatification in Solvenia today of
the teenaged Lojze Grozde, a Catholic Action youth who was killed by Communist police. Cardinal Bertone
represented the Pope at the beatification rite held in conjunction with the closing of a National
Eucharistic Congress.

ANGELUS TODAY:
Post-script to
the Year for Priests

The Holy Father gave thanks today for all the benefits to the Universal Church of the recently concluded Year for Priests, which closed, as it had opened, on the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He said the priest is a gift from the Heart of Christ, and urged that the faithful continue to pray daily for them, recalling once again the example of St. Jean Marie Vianney of Ars, as well as that of Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, the Solidarity priest martyred by the Communists and who was beatified in Warsaw last Sunday.

Once more the Pope entrusted the priests of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Whose feast was observed by the
Church yesterday.

After the prayer, the Pope called attention to the beatification in Spain yesterday of Manuel Garrido, the first journalist to be beatified; and the beatification in Solvenia today of the teenaged Lojze Grozde, a Catholic Action youth who was killed by Communist police. Cardinal Bertone represented the Pope at the beatification rite held in conjunction with the closing of a National Eucharistic Congress.




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

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

The Year for Priests came to an end in recent days. Here in Rome, we lived some unforgettable days, with the presence of more than 15,000 priests from every part of the world.

Thus, today, I wish to give thanks to God for all the benefits that have come to the Universal Church from this observance. No one will ever be able to measure these effects, but certainly, the fruits can be seen and will continue to be seen.

The Year for Priests ended on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which has traditionally been the "day for priestly sanctification'. This time, it was - in a very special way.

Indeed, dear friends, the priest is a gift from the Heart of Christ: a gift for the Church and for the world. From the heart of the Son of God, overflowing with charity, come all the good things in the Church. In particular, it is the origin of the vocation of all those men who, conquered by the Lord Jesus, leave eveything in order to dedicate themselves entirely to serving the Christian people, following the example of the Good Shepherd.

The priest is shaped by Christ's own charity - that love which made him give his life for his friends and to pardon his enemies. That is why priests are the first workers in the civilization of love.

I think of so many priests, famous and otherwise, some of them raised to the honor of the altars, others whose memory remains indelible among the faithful, perhaps in a small parish community. Just as it did in Ars, the village in France where St. Jean-Marie Vianney carried out his ministry.

We do not need to add more words to what has been said about him in the past months. But his inercession should ever more accompany us from this day on. May his prayer, his 'Act of Love' that we recited so many times during the Year for Priests, continue to nourish our conversation with God.

I wish to remember another figure: Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko, priest adn martyr, who was proclaimed Blessed last Sunday in Warsaw. He exercised his generous and courageous ministry alongside those who were working for freedom, for the defense of life and its dignity.

His work in the service of good and truth was a sign of contradiction for the regime that governed Poland at the time. Love for the Heart of Christ led him to give his life, and his testimony has been the seed for a new spring in the Church and in society.

If we look at history, we can see how many pages of authentic spiritual and social renewal were written with the decisive contribution of Catholic priests, inspired solely by their passion for the Gospel and for man, for his true freedom, religious as well as civil. How many initiatives for integral human promotion have come from the intuition of a priest's heart!

Dear brothers and sisters, let is entrust to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, whose liturgical commemoration we observed yesterday, all the priests of the world, in order that, with the power of the Gospel, they may continue to construct in every place the civilization of love.


After the prayers, he said this:

I wish above all to note with joy the proclamation of two new Blesseds, both of whom lived in the last century. Yesterday, in Spain - the beatification of Manuel Lozano Garrido, layman and journalist. Despite illness and physical disability, he worked with Christian spirit fruitfully in the field of social communications.

And this morning, in Slovenia, Cardinal bertone, as my personal legate, presided at the concluding celebration of the National Eucharistic Congress, during which he beatified the young martyr Lojze Grozde.

He was particularly devoted to the Eucharist, which nourished his unshakeable faith, his capacity of sacrifice for the salvation of souls, his apostolate in Catholic Action to lead other young people to Christ.


In English, he said this:

I am happy to greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus prayer, especially the group of faithful from Seychelles.

Last Friday, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I had the joy of concluding the Year for Priests, marked by moving moments of community prayer and adoration.

Let us continue to remember all priests in our prayers, thanking Christ for this great gift of his love and asking him to keep them in his grace as faithful friends and ministers.

I wish you all a pleasant stay in Rome and a blessed Sunday!


He said more about the journalist who is now a step away from sainthood, in his Spanish language greeting:

...I also greet the members of the Confraternity of Jesus the Nazarene and the Most Blessed Mary of Seven Sorrows, from Jaen. Precisely in that Andalucian diocese, specifically in the city of Linares, the beatification took place yesterday of Manuel Lozano Garrido, faithful layman who radiated the love of God through his example and his writings, despite the suffering that kept him in a wheelchair for almost 28 years.

Towards the end of his life, he also lost his eysight, but he continued faining hearts for Christ with his serene joy and ubreakable faith.

Newsmen can find in him an eloquent testimonial of the good that can be done when the pen reflects the grandeur of the human soul and is placed at the service of truth and of noble causes.

---

'Priests are a gift
from the Heart of Christ'


Vatican City, Jun 13, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News) - Thousands of pilgrims and faithful gathered at noon Sunday in St. Peter’s Square to pray the Angelus with the Holy Father. Before the prayer, he said that the fruits of the recently ended Year for Priests could never be measured, but are already visible and will continue to be ever more so.

“The priest is a gift from the heart of Christ, a gift for the Church and for the world. From the heart of the Son of God, overflowing with love, all the goods of the Church spring forth,” proclaimed Pope Benedict XVI. “One of those goods is the vocations of those men who, conquered by the Lord Jesus, leave everything behind to dedicate themselves completely to the Christian community, following the example of the Good Shepherd.”

The Holy Father described the priest as having been formed by “the same charity of Christ, that love which compelled him to give his life for his friends and to forgive his enemies.”

“Therefore,” he continued, “priests are the primary builders of the civilization of love.”

Benedict XVI exhorted priests to always seek the intercession of St. John Marie Vianney, whose prayer, the “Act of Love,” was prayed frequently during the Year for Priests, and “continues to fuel our dialogue with God.”

The {ontiff also spoke about the close of the Year for Priests, which took place this past week and culminated with the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He emphasized “the unforgettable days in the presence of more than 15,000 priests from around the world.”

The feast of the Sacred Heart is traditionally a “day of priestly holiness,” but this time it was especially so, Benedict XVI remarked.

Pope Benedict concluded his comments by noting that, in contemplating history, “one observes so many pages of authentic social and spiritual renewal which have been written by the decisive contribution of Catholic priests.” These were inspired “only by their passion for the Gospel and for mankind, for his true civil and religious freedom.”

“So many initiatives that promote the entire human being have begun with the intuition of a priestly heart,” he exclaimed.

The Pope then prayed the Angelus, greeted those present in various languages, and imparted his apostolic blessing.





Clearly, the Holy Father wants to call attention and give proper credit to the Church's 400,000 priests around the world whose daily heroic work is overlooked by the world, because media chooses to focus on the few rotten apples in the Church's global orchard (or vineyard).

The Pope and the Church have set the guidelines often enough for dealing with these rotten apples, and for looking after the welfare of their victims. Meanwhile, the Church must get on with its daily labors, and it needs every dedicated worker out there.

Nonetheless, trust AP to stamp its obsessive bias on its report! They certainly are not among those who will look at the example of Blessed Manuel Lozano and "the good that can be done when the pen reflects the grandeur of the human soul and is placed at the service of truth and of noble causes"!


Pope praises priests as a gift
to the Church and the world -
doesn't mention sex abuse scandal



VATICAN CITY, June 13 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI hailed priests on Sunday as gifts to the world for their generous and courageous work, in a speech that didn't mention the clergy sex abuse scandal.

"Dear friends, the priest is a gift from the heart of Christ, a gift for the church and the world," Benedict told faithful in St. Peter's Square.

"If we look at history, we can observe how many pages of authentic spiritual and social renewal have been written with the decisive contribution of Catholic priests, inspired only by passion for the Gospel and for man, for his true religious and civil freedom," he said.

The Pope's comments didn't mention the international scandal involving pedophile Catholic priests or the mishandling of that abuse by bishops and even Vatican officials.

Two days earlier, in a ceremony in the square capping three days of pro-priest rallies and prayers, Benedict acknowledged the scandal by begging forgiveness from victims of sexual abuse by priests and made a symbolic pledge to do everything possible to protect children.

In his remarks Sunday from his studio window overlooking the square, Benedict cited Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko, who was beatified in Warsaw on June 6 as a martyr during the Communist crackdown on the Solidarity freedom movement in Poland the 1980s.

Popieluszko, who was tortured and killed in 1984 by Polish secret police for championing Solidarity, "carried out his generous and courageous ministry next to all those committed to freedom, to the defense of life and its dignity," Benedict said.

Much of the momentum to rid the Church of pedophile priests and bring them and those covering up for them to justice has come from faithful in the U.S. and Irish churches. [In other words, the Vatican - much less Benedict XVI - had very little do with it! What mean and petty minds there are at AP!]

On Sunday, Benedict asked the faithful to "remember all priests in our prayers" and pray that God "keep them in his grace as faithful friends and ministers."

He also urged Catholics to support their pastors with "wise advice."

We did not need a study to tell us the obvious, but it's good to have some statistical data to back up horse sense... More importantly, it reflects that, at least in the USA, the influence of newspaper coverage appears far less than one might have thought... Sorry I didn't see this item earlier.


US study shows media
pin scandal on Benedict XVI



WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 11, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI again took a leading role in dealing with the scandal of sexual abuse of minors today, affirming that a priest who abuses "little ones" turns the priesthood into the opposite of what it is.

His comments -- made at the closing Mass on Friday for the Year for Priests, in the presence of some 15,000 priests from around the globe who are in Rome for the celebration -- is the latest in a long series of this Pope's declarations on the subject.

Nevertheless, today's affirmation, like previous ones (including a whole letter on the issue to Irish Catholics) might do little to change a negative perception about this Pontiff's handling of the crisis.

That's due in part to the fact that Benedict XVI has been made the face of the scandal, according to a study released today by the Pew Research Center.

The report reveals that the Holy Father was "featured in 51.6% of the stories about the scandal in the mainstream media during the six-week period studied. All other individual figures combined, including cardinals, bishops and priests, appeared as lead newsmakers in just 12% of the stories."

The Pew study -- an extensive and multifaceted look at media coverage of the scandal -- compares 2010 reporting on the issue to that of 2002 (when it was big news in the United States and eventually led to the resignation of Boston's archbishop).

Interestingly, the reigning Pontiff during that scandal, Pope John Paul II, was mentioned in only 15.5% of stories about abuse in May-August 2002, the period when newspaper coverage of the crisis peaked, the Pew study noted.

[51.6% associating B16 with the scandal reporting - in most of which he is the subject - against 15.5% simply 'mentioning' JP2. Now, that's a statistical measure of the media's SHEER UNMITIGATED BIAS against B16!]

Among other findings of the study: "The level of coverage this year came very close to that of 2002. [...] A Nexis keyword search of 90 media outlets found 1,559 stories mentioning the scandal in the first four months of 2010, just 77 fewer articles than in a similar four-month period in mid-2002 (May 1-Aug. 31). No other developments in the scandal during the intervening eight years even came close to generating that level of coverage."

The research also revealed that while the scandal was big news for newspapers and news Web sites, cable TV and talk radio were somewhat oblivious.

"On cable, the scandal filled about 1% of the news hole, and on talk radio, not a single story appeared during the six weeks of programming studied," the study reported.

It further revealed that the scandal found "little traction" in new media: "Across the millions of blogs and Twitter posts tracked in PEJ's weekly monitoring, the clergy abuse scandal registered as a leading topic in only one of the six weeks analyzed."

In any case, Benedict XVI is likely to be undeterred by his adverse place in the limelight.

At the Mass on Friday, he reflected that the scandal hitting the headlines during the Year for Priests was anything but ruinous for the celebration.

"Had the Year for Priests been a glorification of our individual human performance, it would have been ruined by these events," the Pontiff said. "But for us what happened was precisely the opposite: We grew in gratitude for God's gift, a gift concealed in 'earthen vessels' which ever anew, even amid human weakness, makes his love concretely present in this world.

"So let us look upon all that happened as a summons to purification, as a task which we bring to the future and which makes us acknowledge and love all the more the great gift we have received from God. In this way, his gift becomes a commitment to respond to God’s courage and humility by our own courage and our own humility."

June 14, Tuesday, 11th Week in Ordinary Time

Extreme right: 'Ecce Homo', painted by the saint
ST. ALBERT CHMIELOWSKI (Poland, 1845-1916)
Painter, Lay Franciscan, Founder of the Gray Brothers and Gray Sisters
Born to a wealthy family near Cracow, Adam Chmielowski took part in the revolt against the Russian Czar Alezander III. Wounded and imprisoned in 1863, his left leg was amputated. But he managed to escape and fled to Paris. Since he had a talent for painting, he studied art in Paris, then engineering in Ghent, and further art studies in Munich. Returning to Cracow, he devoted himself to his art and is said to have undergone a spiritual conversion when painting 'Ecce Homo'. His life thereafter was marked by poverty, service and prayer, with a particular devotion to the Eucharist, the Cross and Our Lady of Czestochowa. After a brief stint with the Jesuits who rejected him because of poor health, he joined the Franciscan Third Order in 1887, taking the name Albert. He started by restoring churches and paintings, and then realizing the plight of the homeless in Cracow, he founded the Brothers of the Third Order of St. Francis, more familiarly known as the Gray Brothers, dedicated to helping the homeless, the aged and the needy regardless of race or religion. Later, a similar community of Albertine sisters was established. Despite his handicap and a bad false leg, he travelled around Poland to propagate his mission, founding shelters, orphanages, soup kitchens and homes for the aged, as well as 21 houses for the order. During World War I, he ordered the Albertine nuns to help out in the military hospitals. He died of stomach cancer in 1916. He was beatified by John Paul II in 1983 and canonized in 1987.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/061410.shtml


No OR today.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Bishops of Brazil (East Sector-II, Group 3) on ad limina visit

- Mons. Beniamino Stella, President of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy (which trains Vatican diplomats), and

- The community of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy. Address in Italian.


The Vatican also released the text of the Vatican statement to the 64th session the United Nations General
Assembly in New York on the implementation of the UN Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS.

The Holy Father's homily in the Closing Mass of the year for Priests last Friday was such a spiritually rich compendium of his best reflections on the priesthood, but also on the Psalm in the day's liturgy about 'the rod and the staff', that I am not surprised few have really written about it as it deserves to be. In the secular media, of course, all they cared about was that the Pope had 'finally-issued-an-apology-BUT', a predictable and shamelessly mendacious spin of objective documented fact!

Now, at least one religious commentator has seen beyond the 'apology', although he is Jesuit and clearly shows his almost characteristically 'contemporary Jesuit' bias against the Pope and the Vatican.

What this commentator and MSM missed completely - even as they regurgitate victim advocates' complaints that the Pope is not doing anything about bishops who erred in the abuse situation - is what the Holy Father said about the use of the rod whenever called for! In this case, the rod is not to be used only against erring priests but erring bishops as well.


The priesthood's dark valley
by Mathew Schmaltz

June 14, 2010

Schmalz writes and teaches in the fields of Comparative Religions and South Asian Studies. He is a Professor of Religious Studies at the Jesuit College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts.


Last Friday, at the liturgy marking the end of "The Year of the Priest," Pope Benedict XVI once again addressed the scandal of clerical sexual abuse. Some media reports had indicated that the Pontiff would offer an extensive apology.

While the Holy Father did indeed "beg forgiveness from God and from the persons involved," he also quite passionately affirmed the distinctive vocation of the Catholic priesthood.

Through his reflections, the Pontiff attempted to reconcile two seemingly opposed images: the "sins of priests" the and "grandeur and beauty of the priestly ministry." Such a task was not easy, but the Pope did it in a way that confounded conventional understandings of the sexual abuse scandal, not to mention my own initial reading of his remarks.

The sexual abuse crisis in Catholicism is about many things, of course. But in terms of public discourse - whether it be official Vatican pronouncements, anti-Catholic polemics, or media reporting -the fundamental issue is one of narrative or, more simply, which story one chooses to believe.

From one perspective, the sexual abuse scandal is a crisis of a priesthood and institution that are too removed from the world: celibacy, an exclusively male priesthood, as well as rigidly hierarchical notions of authority and obedience, create an insular culture that is unwilling, or unable, to see and to check its own faults and excesses.

Only priesthood that reflects and embraces the depth and breadth of human experience and identity can reform an institution that has lost its connection with those whom it seeks to serve. [If that means that only married priests could be properly equipped, then he is completely wrong. Mary and all the celibates in communion of saints did not need to be unchaste to comprehend 'the depth and breadth of human existence'!]

From another perspective, the sexual abuse scandal is a crisis of a priesthood and institution that are too close to the world: in an age of relativistic "tolerance" without a sense of truth or the sacred, the supernatural aspect of the priestly vocation is lost as is the ability to discern and identify authentic qualities necessary for priestly ministry. [Again, a misrepresentation of the piresthood. Could anyone have been closer to the world than Jean Marie Vianney was in his little parish in Ars, where the world sought him out because he had something to share that the human spirit thirsts for?]

Only a priesthood that reflects and embraces the other-wordly end of human destiny can refocus an institution that has lost its way in its adaptation to contemporary intellectual fashions and cultural trends.

[Benedict XVI has also often told his priests, "First, be a man of God - then everything else will follow." Nothing can be a better or simpler formula for priests. Nothing equivocal about that, nothing that needs to be parsed and analyzed in order to be understood.]

Each of these views tells a story not only about where the Catholic Church has been, but where it needs to go in the future.

To me, the Holy Father's remarks initially read as a rather uncritical affirmation of the second narrative that placed the
origins of the scandal in the corrupting influence of the world.

There were familiar villains of this well-known story: the Enlightenment, with its denial of a personal God; the Devil, whose seemingly successful recent efforts to undermine the priesthood only call attention to the priesthood's importance.

Against this background, the priest becomes the hero, a shepherd with a "rod and staff." In this regard, of particular importance was Benedict's emphasis on the "rod" that "protects the faith against those who falsify it."

Such remarks echoed not only the Pope's distrust of the contemporary world, but also the Catholic Church's efforts to re-establish the priest as someone truly set apart from the laity.

For me, initially problematic was the implication that the sexual abuse scandal could be attributed largely to the influence of elements external to the Church itself.

Equally problematic was the seeming lack of recognition of the role of the victims, as well as the laity and the non-Catholic press, in revealing the true extent of the crisis.

Clearly, if the goal is a renewed and purified Church, then it has to be admitted that non-clerical voices sometimes speak the most clearly.

[That would indeed be true if such non-clerical voices had something constructive to say, but they have all been contemptuous, derisive and certainly not well-meaning towards the Church.

Other than the handful of lay psychologists who have seriously sought to investigate the contemporary phenomenon of priests abusing minors, all other high-profile lay voices are intent more on bringing down - or at least discrediting - the Pope and the Church, than on any serious concern for all minors who are victims of sexual abuse, not just those who were abused by priests, the only focus of their so-called champions who are clearly exploiting them to push their socio-cultural agenda and/or collect mega-millions in damages from the Church.]

But as I reread the Holy Father's remarks, I realized that his message was more nuanced than I had initially thought. [Anyone who reads Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI realizes quickly enough that he does NOT hesitate to get into grey areas in order to illuminate them with the Christian perspective.]

The most compelling image was drawn from Psalm 23 as Benedict made reference to that "darkest valley" of "death" where no one except the Lord can "accompany us."

Changing the image slightly, the Pope offered a prayer: "Help us priests, so that we can remain beside the persons entrusted to us in these dark nights."

The word "entrusted" recalls the hierarchical sense of priesthood that the Pope certainly does wish to reaffirm. But the use of the word "beside" qualifies that sense of hierarchy, by evoking an image of companionship in a shared journey through the "darkest valleys" of human life.

Indeed, it is a sign of God's "audacity" that he has entrusted himself to weak and fallible human beings to make Himself known.

This Pope will most certainly not offer a confessional apology for the sexual abuse scandal in the manner that an elected official would.

Expressed in complex theological language, the Pope's reflections do not have the kind of immediate resonance that many think is necessary given the scope of the crisis.

But close attention to how the Pope is framing discussion also shows that his views cannot be easily subsumed within the standard narratives of the sexual abuse scandal. [DUH! The basic error is in assuming that the Pope must necessarily think the way secular media and public opinion think! He would be a poor excuse for a Pope if he did! Both by virtue of his office and by his own personal qualities, Benedict XVI's standards are obviously transcendentally different. He is neither a Barack Obama or a Tony Heyward (of BP) whose concerns are almost exclusively secular, pragmatic and PR-oriented.]

What comes through most clearly is Benedict's awareness of the extent of human frailty and of the absolute necessity of God's love and mercy. [But that's precisely the abiding Christian message - endlessly reiterated by the Pope - that MSM and secular commentators choose to ignore completely, because it is the polar opposite of the post-modern idea that 1) man has full individual autonomy; and 2) that there is no other God outside of the god that post-modern man has constituted his own personal individual self to be!]

Recognizing the import of this observation does not in itself reconcile the competing narratives regarding clerical sexual abuse. But it does offer a necessary point of departure as the priesthood travels through a very dark valley.



Related to the above, on the factual if not doctrinal level:

Where to find the facts
on clerical sex abuse
By Russell Shaw

June 14, 2010

It is sometimes said that to know everything is to forgive everything. Personally, I doubt it. Unquestionably, though, having a good grip on relevant facts is the best basis for making sound judgments about people and controversial events.

This is eminently true of making sound judgments about the sex abuse scandal that’s once again troubling many Catholics. Herewith a short quiz on that.

Did the incidents of abuse that we’re now hearing so much about occur very recently or several decades ago — or both, and roughly in what proportion? How does the Catholic Church compare with other churches and other large institutions (e.g., public schools) on this matter? What is the difference between “defrocking” and “laicizing” a cleric?

How did Pope Benedict XVI deal with the problem during the nearly quarter-century when he was head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith? In that role, was he the Vatican’s point man on this issue all the time or did the CDF handle only certain cases during much of it? If certain cases, which ones? If that changed, when? How has Benedict managed the problem since becoming pope?

I could go on, but you get the point. There’s a lot to know about this matter. In case you wonder — I don’t immediately have the answers to all the questions above either. But the answers are out there if you want them. And someone relying for his or her information exclusively on the partial, often confused, and sometimes slanted coverage in the secular media would have a very poor picture of the facts.

A timely new source of reliable information is a book called Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis by Gregory Erlandson and Matthew Bunson (OSV, $12.95). Disclosure: I am a contributing editor of Our Sunday Visitor newspaper, and Erlandson and Bunson are friends.

Be that as it may, the book is short, clear, trustworthy, and chock-full of facts. In the interests of truth-telling, it pulls no punches about this whole ugly business.

Another reliable source is the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Particularly useful there are the annual reports of the all-lay National Review Board established to monitor the bishops’ implementation of the tough policy on clergy sex abuse adopted in 2002.

Note, too, that the widely anticipated, comprehensive study of the causes of this ugly problem by social scientists at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York is expected later this year.

There are many other sources as well, and a Google search will bring you a deluge of links. But be careful: Some of what you will find there is reliable and some is not. This crisis has provided many groups and individuals with a glorious opportunity to grind their particular axes. Without a solid grounding in the facts, it can be difficult to separate the facts from the axe-grinding.

In the end, Erlandson and Bunson write, the story they tell is “about hope and trust”.

“For two millennia, hope and trust have always been justified, despite the sins of popes, bishops, priests, and laypeople. The way forward will be difficult and painful. But the commitment to the truth will guide our path, and our trust and hope in the Holy Spirit will shield us in the dark days and lead us to a renewal of the entire People of God.”

Amen to that.

The Pope to future Vatican diplomats:
The Pontifical Representative is a sign
of the presence and charity of the Pope
Translated from
the 6/14-6/15 issue of





Benedict XVI reminded officials and the current 40 students of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy Monday morning that the mission of the Pontifical representative is to be a solid 'bridge' and a 'secure channel of communication between local Churches and the Apostolic See', when he met with them at the Consistory Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

[The Academy serves as the career school to train priests and religious for the diplomatic service of the Holy See, serving in Apostolic Nunciatures abroad or in the Secretariat of State.]

Here is a full translation of the Pope's address:

---

Venerated brothers in the Episcopate,
Dear Priests:

It is always with joy that I welcome you for our usual meeting which offers me the opportunity to greet you, to encourage you, and to offer you a reflection on the meaning of working as pontifical representatives.

I greet the President, Mons Beniamino Stella, who oversees your formation with dedication and ecclesial sense, and I thank him for the words which he addressed to me in your name. And my grateful thoughts go to his co-workers and the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Child Jesus.

I would like to dwell briefly on the concept of representation. Not uncommonly, it is considered only partially in contemporary understanding: indeed, there is a tendency to associate it with something that is merely external, formal, hardly personal.

The service of representation for which you are preparing yourselves is something much more profound because it is participation in the
sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum (the care of all churches), which characterizes the ministry of the Roman Pontiff.

It is therefore an eminently personal matter, destined to impact profoundly on the person who is called on to carry out such a task. Precisely in this ecclesial perspective, the exercise of such representation implies the need to welcome and nourish with special attention some dimensions of the priestly life that I would wish to indicate, if rather summarily, as a theme for reflection in your formative course.

First of all, to cultivate full personal adherence to the person of the Pope, to his Magisterium, and his universal ministry - a full adherence to him who has received the task of confirming his brothers in the faith (cfr Lk 22,32) and "who is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity both of bishops as well as the multitude of the faithful" (Lumen gentium, 23).

In the second place, to take on - as a lifestyle and daily priority - the responsibility of attentive concern, indeed a true 'passion', for ecclesial communion. Because to represent the Roman Pontiff also means being capable of being a solid 'bridge', a secure channel of communication between local Churches and the Apostolic See:

On the one hand, by placing at the disposition of the Pope and his co-workers an objective, correct and in-depth view of the ecclesial and social reality in which you live [the host country]. And on the other, by committing yourself to transmit the norms, instructions, and orientations that come from the Holy See, not in a bureaucratic manner, but with profound love for the Church and with the help of personal trust that is patiently built, respecting and giving value at the same time to the efforts of the bishops and the course of the local Churches to which you are sent.

As one might sense, the service for which you are being prepared to carry out demands full dedication and a generous willingness to sacrifice, if necessary, your personal intuitions, your own plans and other possibilities for exercising the priestly ministry.

In the context of faith and concrete response to the call of God - of always nursing an intense relationship with the Lord - this does not diminish the originality of anyone, but on the contrary, it is extremely enriching.

The effort of placing oneself in harmony with the universal perspective of the Church and serving the unity of the flock of God, which is specific to the Petrine ministry, is in fact singularly suitable for enhancing individual gifts and talents, according to the logic that St. Paul expressed so well to the Christians of Corinth (cfr 1 Cor 12,1-31).

In this way, the Pontifical Representative - together with those he works with - truly becomes a sign of the presence and charity of the Pope. As a benefit for the life of all the local Churches, it is especially so in particularly delicate or difficult situations which, for various reasons, the Christian community finds itself constrained to live.

One can see that it has to do with authentic priestly service, characterized by an analogy not remote from the representation of Christ, which typifies the priest, and as such, it has an intrinsic sacrificial dimension.

It is this that bestows the style that is specific to the very service of representation you are called on to exercise with state authorities or international organizations.

Even in those circles, in fact, the figure and the presence of the Nuncio, the Apostolic Delegate or the Permanent Observer, are determined not just by the environment in which he has to work, but first and principally, by him whom he is called on to represent.

This places the Pontifical Representative in a special position with respect to other ambassadors or envoys. In fact, he will always be profoundly identified, in a supernatural sense, with the person he represents.

To be the spokesman of the Vicar of Christ can be demanding, often extremely exigent, but it will never be demeaning or depersonalizing. It becomes instead an original way of realizing your own priestly ministry.

Dear students, in wishing that your institution may be, as my predecessor Paul VI liked to say, 'a higher school for charity', my prayers go with you, as I entrust you to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mater Ecclesiae, and of St. Anthony Abbot, patron of the Academy.

To all of you and your loved ones, I impart my blessing.

---

[NB: Since the Academy was founded in 1701, five Popes have been trained at the Pontifical Ecclesiastic Academy: Clement XIII (graduated 1714), Leo XII (1783), Leo XIII (1832), Benedict XV (1879), and Paul VI (1921).]

I can think of no better complement to the conclusion of the Year for Priests than the life and death - martyrdom perhaps - of Mons. Luigi Padovese, whose fate mirrored that of the martyred priest Andrea Santoro whom he himself buried three years ago in Turkey.

And no eulogy about Mons. Padovese - and all the Church's priest martyrs and missionaries - can match the one delivered at the funeral Mass this morning in the Cathedral of Milan by Mons. Ruggero Franceschini, Archbishop of Smyrna, whom the Pope has named to be Apostolic Administrator of the diocese that Mons. Padovese left orphaned.


'He who has given witness
with his blood does not
need words nor even miracles'
by Mons. Ruggero Franceschini, OFM Cap.
Archbishop of Smyrna
Apostolic Administrator of Anatolia
Translated from
the site of the Archdiocese of Milan

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

We are here to give our final greeting to Mons. Luigi, our Bishop and yours. As I said in my homily in Iskenderun, this is not about giving a funeral eulogy for him, to tell the world how good, humble, intelligent and modest he was!

He who has given witness with his blood does not need words, nor even miracles. The Church knows this. You yourselves know it, who each have a special reason for being here today, and need no other.

And his church in Anatolia knows it - that little dispersed flock that has now been struck, dismayed, and in fear.

A good shepherd has been killed. Leaving this city of his birth, he became a pilgrim of the spirit and of the mind, turning out to be one of the most competent experts on the life and work of all the Church Fathers who lived in what is now Turkey.

When he was made a bishop, he also became a pilgrim of the heart, placing himself alongside the heirs of that Church of the early years, never tiring to remind them of their roots, even as he came to fully share their fears and hopes.

One is struck today by one of his earliest pastoral letters to his flock: "Dear brothers," he wrote, "perhaps we will not be asked to bear witness to our faith with martyrdom, but nonetheless we are asked to bear witness".

Alas, at least for Fr. Andrea Santoro, and now for himself, he was mistaken. Or perhaps, he was merely being careful not to frighten his flock.

In fact, he wrote in the same letter: "Among all the countries with an ancient Christian tradition, none has had so many martyrs as Turkey. The ground we walk on has been awash with the blood of so many martyrs who chose to die for Christ rather than deny him".

The small Church that is in Anatolia now, even if it dates back to apostolic times, is too green to survive such a tragedy by itself, too fragile to face the evil that has struck it, too poor to have any resources of its own to continue to hope, at least to continue existing.

To our sister churches, we ask for vocations: and for priests and religious, for what is certainly a most difficult mission, one that admits no reservations or compromises. About this, I will not delude anyone. Come and live the Gospel, come and help us simply to survive.

To those who have to do with informing the public: keep a window open to this land and to the suffering of the Church that inhabits it. Be the voice for those who do not even have the freedom to cry out their own sorrow.

Let truth and justice prevail over any human convenience. We ask the same of those who have to do with politics and the economy.

Finally, to all of you who simply feel your communion with the faith, to those who offer their sufferings to the Lord, to whoever has at heart peace among peoples: help us, keep us in your heart, let this be the flower you lay on the blessed body of Mons. Luigi.

I have said that I will not speak of his death, and I won't. What else has to be said about a missionary bishop who is killed on the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ? His broken body speaks for him, and the blood he shed 'for many'.

To his flock, he had written: "I wish to reaffirm my joy at being with you. I consider it a gift from the Lord to be here for you, and to be, like you, a Christian belonging to the Church of Anatolia".

Today we are all the Church of Anatolia - I, certainly, but you, too, your Archbishop, our other brother bishops - just as we are all the Church of Milan. Indeed, we are all simply the Church, the Body of the Lord, tormented, suffering, but risen again and glorious.

---

'A builder of peace and
a witness to hope for
the Church in Turkey'
by Fabrizio Contessa
Translated from
the 6/14-6/15 issue of




A 'son of the Ambrosian Church' who became 'son and father of the Church in Turkey". but above all, "a true disciple of Christ', who gave 'all of himself to announce the Gospel and for the life of those who were entrusted to his care".

He was also called 'a grain of wheat' that has fallen to the ground, from which despite everything, hope will flourish for the Church in Turkey and for the sincere and constructive encounter among cultures and religions.

This was the image used by the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, n paying tribute to the late Capuchin bishop, Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar in Anatolia, who was killed by his Muslim driver on June 3 in Iskenderun on the southern Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

The cardinal presided Monday morning at a funeral Mass in the Cathedral of Milan for the slain bishop, born in that city 63 years ago. In Iskenderun, the funeral mass celebrated last Tuesday was presided over by the Apostolic Nuncio in Turkey, Mons. Antonio Lucibello.

Among the assembly were more than 30 bishops, some 300 priests, many of them Capuchins, and about 5,000 faithful. Representing the government was the Deputy Foreign Minister Stefania Craxi; the vice-president of the Italian House of Representatives, Maurizio Lupi; the Mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti; and the president of the Lombardy region, Roberto Formigoni.

Representing the Holy See was Archbishop Edmond Farhat, former Apostolic Nuncio to Turkey, who had ordained Padovese as a bishop in November 2004.

In a message to Cardinal Tettamanzi conveyed by the Cardinal Secretary of state, Pope Benedict XVI, saying he was 'profoundly saddened' by the loss, expressed to the Ambrosian Church "his deepest condolences and assurances of his nearness in prayer".

He said he joined the congregation in commending "the noble soul of this beloved pastor to the infinite mercy of God" and in giving thanks "for his generous witness to the Gospel and his firm commitment for dialog and reconciliation which characterized his life as a priest as well as his episcopal ministry".

In the name of the Pope, Cardinal Bertone also sent telegrams to the family of Mons. Padovese (a brother and sister-in-law, and their two children) and to the Minister General of the Capuchins, Mauro Joehri, expressing condolences and invoking for the late bishop "the celestial intercession of St. Francis of Assisi in whose footsteps the lamented prelate offered his testimony of faith and peace in the Middle East".

Mons. Padovese was also remembered as 'a man of dialog and peace' in his episcopal service and as president of the Turkish bishops' conference in a letter sent to Cardinal Tettamanzi by the President of the Council of Episcopal Conferences of Europe, Cardinal Peter Erdo, Archbishop of Budapest.

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano sent a message noting that Mons. Padovese "had borne witness with generosity and commitment to the universal values of dialog, tolerance and reciprocal understanding".

He expressed the hope that "beyond the circumstances of this tragic event... respect for the Christian presence, like that of any other religious confession, should be a common commitment of institutions and societies in all nations who belong to the international community".

Messages of tribute for Mons. Padovese offering prayers for him were received from sister Christian Churches. Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I of Constantinople; the Orthodox Archbishop of Cyprus, Chrysostomos II; and the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of the Armenians, Karekin II.

At the same time, the secretary-general of the Union of Islamic Communities in Italy, Alessandro Paolantoni, expressed "gratitude and appreciation" to the Holy Father "for the words of wisdom and balance that he has expressed with regard to this terrible event".

Finally, Cardinal Tettamanzi, in his homily today, did not forget the Church in Turkey, saying "The sacrifice of Father Luigi now unites us to you more intimately", and that "hope is the first fruit that will be borne by the witness of this wise and gentle bishop, who was a true builder of peace".

June 15, Tuesday, 11th Week in Ordinary Time

In the absence of any images to be found online (not even from Italian and Franciscan sites) of the indicated saint of the day, the illustrations above show, extreme left and extreme right, St. Francis receiving the stigmata, in paintings by Giotto and El Greco, respectively. Other photos show a general view of La Verna; the Chapel of the Sitgmata with a Crucifixion scene by Andrea della Robbia; and Franciscans processing along the Corridor of the Stigmata for a daily Office liturgy.
Today is the feast day of the Servant of God Orlando Catanii, one of several companions and followers of St. Francis in his lifetime who have been declared saints, blessed or servants of God. As a count, Orlando possessed property near Arezzo including the mountain of La Verna. In 1213, hearing Francis preach about the dangers of worldly pleasures, he rethought his life, asked Francis to be his spiritual director, and spent the rest of his life performing charitable work. He also gave La Verna to Francis and built a church there. Francis, who found the wooded mountain and its caves an excellent place for meditation, accepted gratefully. It was in La Verna in 1224, two years before his death, that Francis had the mystical vision at which he received the stigmata of Christ. Orlando himself was buried in the convent church in La Verna.


OR for 6/14-6/15:

At the Sunday Angelus, Benedict XVI pays tribute to the contribution of priests to spiritual and social renewal and calls them
[IMG]'The first workers for the civilization of love'[/IMG]
The other papal story in this issue is the Pope's address yesterday to officials and students of the Vatican's school for diplomats (extreme right photo), with prominent play for the funeral Mass of Mons. Luigi Padovese held in Milan yesterday, at which the Pope paid tribute to him as a peacebuilder and witness to hope for the Church in Turkey. International news on Page 1: 100,000 Uzbeks flee Kyrgyzstan in the wake of violent ethnic fighting between Kirghizi and Uzbeks that has taken hundreds of lives in the past few days.


THE POPE'S DAY

It turns out the Holy Father did have an important public event today - and it's hard to explain
why the Vatican Press Office took no notice of it:

In the afternoon:
Opening of the Diocesan Convention of Rome at the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
Address in Italian.





14 new priests for Rome

The Vatican announced that on June 20, XII Sunday in the ordinary time, the Holy Father will preside
at 9:30 Mass in St. Peter's Basilica to ordain 14 deacons as priests in the Diocese of Rome.

The Pope 'rethinks' clerical celibacy -
but only to reinforce it
It is the sign, he says, that God exists when priests allow
themselves to be seized by total passion for him -
a 'great scandal' for a world that would do away with God.




ROME, June 15, 2010 – Benedict XVI has rresponded to those who have been demanding a "rethinking" of the rule of celibacy for the Latin clergy. But in his own way.

On the evening of Thursday, June 10, in St. Peter's Square, the eve of the closing of the Year for Priests, the Pope devoted one of his responses to five questions from as many priests representing the world's five great conteinental regions, to a rationale for priestly celibacy. Doing so in an original way - one that departed from the usual historical, theological, and spiritual arguments used.

Here is the question and the Holy Father's response:

---

...Even with its natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ, but I am bewildered by reading so much worldly criticism for this gift. I ask you humbly, Holy Father, to enlighten us on the profundity and authentic meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.

Thank you for both parts of your question - the first which shows the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy; the second, about all the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our time.

The first part is important, namely, that the center of our life should really be the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in which the words of the Consecration are central: "This is my Body... This is my Blood" - when we speak 'in persona Christi'.

Christ allows us to use his "I", we speak of the "I" of Christ, Christ draws us into himself and allows us to unite with him, he unites with us in his 'I". Thus this action, the fact that he 'draws' us into himself so that our "I" is united to his, realizes the permanence and uniqueness of our priesthood - he is truly the only Priest, and yet he is very much present in the world becaus he draws us into himself and thus makes his priestly mission ever present.

This means we are drawn to God in Christ: this union with his "I" is realized in the words of the Consecration. It is also in the words "I absolve you" - because none of us can absolve sins. Only Christ's "I", the "I" of God, can absolve.

This unification of his "I" with us implies that we are also drawn into the reality of the Resurrected One, that we are going forward in the full life of Resurrection about which Jesus speaks to the Sadducees in Matthew, Chapter 22: It is a new life, in which already, we are beyond matrimony (cfr Mt 22,23-32).

It is important that we allow ourselves to be penetrated ever anew by this identification of Christ's "I" with ourselves, of being drawn forth towards the world of the resurrection. In this sense, celibacy is an ancticipation: We transcend our time and go forward, we draw ourselves and our time towards the world of the resurrection, towards the newness of Christ, towards the new and true life.

Celibacy is thus an anticipation made possible by the grace of the Lord who draws us to himself towards the world of the resurrection - he invites us ever anew to transcend ourselves, to transcend the present, towards the 'true present' of the future which becomes present today.

Here we come to a very important point. A great problem of Christianity today is that people no longer think of the future with God - when only the present of this world seems to suffice, when we mean to have only this world, to live only in this world. And so, we close the doors to the true grandeur of existence.

The sense of celibacy as an anticipation of the future serves to open these doors which make the world much greater, which shows the reality of the future which we can live as if it were already present.

To live this way in witness to our faith: truly believing that there is a God, that God has everything to do with my life, that I can base my life on Christ, and therefore on the life of the future.

We know the worldly criticisms you referred to. It is true that for the agnostics, who say God has nothing to do with their world, celibacy is a great scandal - precisely because (it shows that) God is considered and lived as a reality.

In the eschatological [oriented towards the end of time] life of the celibate, the future world of God enters the reality of our time. But this, the critics say, must not be! It must disappear!

In a sense, this continuing criticism of celibacy is surprising in a world where it is becoming more fashionable not to marry! But not marrying is totally and fundamentally different from celibacy, because it is based on the desire to live only for oneself, not to accept any definitive bond, to have a life that is fully autonomous at all times, that can decide freely at every moment what to to do and what to take from life. It is a No to any ties, No to any definitiveness, simply having life for oneself alone.

While celibacy is the exact opposite: It is a definitive Yes, allowing oneself to be taken in hand by God, giving ourselves over to God, to his "I" - therefore, it is an act of faithfulness and trust, an act which is like the faithfulness of matrimony. It is the precise opposite of the No that characterizes the autonomy that refuses to be obliged, which refuses to be bound by any ties.

Celibacy is the definitive Yes that presupposes and confirms the definitive Yes of matrimony - the matrimony that is the Biblical kind, the natural form of matrimony between a man and a woman, the foundation of Christianity's great culture, of the great cultures of the world. If it disappears, then the root of our culture would be destroyed.

Celibacy thus confirms the Yes of matrimony with its Yes to the world of the future. That is why we wish to go forward and keep present this scandal of a faith in which everything rests on the existence of God.

We know that besides this great scandal which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our own insufficiencies, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make others think, "But their life is not really based on God!"

But there is much faithfulness to God othewise! Priestly celibacy, as its critics demonstrate, is a great sign of the faith, of the presence of God in the world.

Let us pray to the Lord that he may keep us free of the secondary scandals in order to make visible the great scandal of our faith - fidelity, the strength of our life, which is based on God and Jesus Christ.

---

It is clear that one of the cornerstones of this pontificate is not a distancing from clerical celibacy, but its reinforcement. Closely connected with what Benedict XVI has repeatedly pointed to as the "priority" of his mission:

"In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize [...] in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen."

The Pope said this in the memorable open letter that he wrote to the bishops of the whole world, dated March 10, 2009.

But even before this, there was another important speech in which Benedict XVI explicitly connected the celibacy of the clergy with the "priority" of leading men to God, and explained the reason for this connection.

In an address to the Roman curia on December 22, 2006, he commented on his trip to Germany three months earlier, at which he had given the famous Regensburg lecture [which overshadowed everything tlese he said during that trip]:

---

The great theme of my journey to Germany was God. The Church must speak of many things: of all the issues connected with the human being, of her own structure and of the way she is ordered and so forth. But her true and – under various aspects – only theme is 'God'.

Moreover, the great problem of the West is forgetting God. This forgetfulness is spreading. In short, all the individual problems can be traced back to this question, I am sure of it. Therefore, on that journey, my main purpose was to shed clear light on the theme 'God', also mindful of the fact that in several parts of Germany there are a majority of non–baptized persons for whom Christianity and the God of faith seem to belong to the past.

Speaking of God, we are touching precisely on the subject which, in Jesus' earthly preaching, was his main focus. The fundamental subject of this preaching is God's realm, the 'Kingdom of God'.

This does not mean something that will come to pass at one time or another in an indeterminate future. Nor does it mean that better world which we seek to create, step by step, with our own strength. In the term 'Kingdom of God', the word 'God' is a subjective genitive.

This means: God is not something added to the 'Kingdom' which one might even perhaps drop. God is the subject. Kingdom of God actually means: God reigns. He himself is present and crucial to human beings in the world. He is the subject, and wherever this subject is absent, nothing remains of Jesus's message.

Therefore, Jesus tells us: the Kingdom of God does not come in such a way that one may, so to speak, stand along the wayside to watch its arrival. 'The Kingdom of God is in the midst of you!' (cf. Lk 17: 20ff.).

It develops wherever God's will is done. It is present wherever there are people who are open to his arrival and so let God enter the world.

Thus, Jesus is the Kingdom of God in person: the man in whom God is among us and through whom we can touch God, draw close to God. Wherever this happens, the world is saved.

---

Having said this, Benedict XVI continued by connecting to the question of God that of the priesthood and of priestly celibacy:

---

Paul calls Timothy – and in him, the Bishop and in general the priest – 'man of God' (I Tm 6: 11). This is the central task of the priest: to bring God to men and women. Of course, he can only do this if he himself comes from God, if he lives with and by God.

This is marvellously expressed in a verse of a priestly Psalm that we – the older generation – spoke during our admittance to the clerical state: 'The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup, you hold my lot' (Ps 16 [15], 5).

The priest praying in this Psalm interprets his life on the basis of the distribution of territory as established in Deuteronomy (cf. 10: 9). After taking possession of the Land, every tribe obtained by the drawing of lots his portion of the Holy Land and with this took part in the gift promised to the forefather Abraham.

The tribe of Levi alone received no land: its land was God himself. This affirmation certainly had an entirely practical significance. Priests did not live like the other tribes by cultivating the earth, but on offerings. However, the affirmation goes deeper.

The true foundation of the priest's life, the ground of his existence, the ground of his life, is God himself.

The Church in this Old Testament interpretation of the priestly life – an interpretation that also emerges repeatedly in Psalm 119 [118] – has rightly seen in the following of the Apostles, in communion with Jesus himself, as the explanation of what the priestly mission means.

The priest can and must also say today, with the Levite: 'Dominus pars hereditatis meae et calicis mei'. God himself is my portion of land, the external and internal foundation of my existence.

This theocentricity of the priestly existence is truly necessary in our entirely function–oriented world in which everything is based on calculable and ascertainable performance.

The priest must truly know God from within and thus bring him to men and women: this is the prime service that contemporary humanity needs. If this centrality of God in a priest's life is lost, little by little the zeal in his actions is lost.

In an excess of external things the centre that gives meaning to all things and leads them back to unity is missing. There, the foundation of life, the "earth" upon which all this can stand and prosper, is missing.

Celibacy, in force for Bishops throughout the Eastern and Western Church and, according to a tradition that dates back to an epoch close to that of the Apostles, for priests in general in the Latin Church, can only be understood and lived if is based on this basic structure.

The solely pragmatic reasons, the reference to greater availability, is not enough: such a greater availability of time could easily become also a form of egoism that saves a person from the sacrifices and efforts demanded by the reciprocal acceptance and forbearance in matrimony; thus, it could lead to a spiritual impoverishment or to hardening of the heart.

The true foundation of celibacy can be contained in the phrase: 'Dominus pars' – You are my land. It can only be theocentric. It cannot mean being deprived of love, but must mean letting oneself be consumed by passion for God and subsequently, thanks to a more intimate way of being with him, to be able to serve men.

Celibacy must be a witness to faith: faith in God materializes in that form of life which only has meaning if it is based on God. Basing one's life on him, renouncing marriage and the family, means that I accept and experience God as a reality and that I can therefore bring him to men and women.

Our world, which has become totally positivistic, in which God appears at best as a hypothesis but not as a concrete reality, needs to rest on God in the most concrete and radical way possible. It needs a witness to God that lies in the decision to welcome God as a land where one finds one's own existence.

For this reason, celibacy is so important today, in our contemporary world, even if its fulfilment in our age is constantly threatened and questioned.

A careful preparation during the journey towards this goal and persevering guidance on the part of the Bishop, priest friends and lay people who sustain this priestly witness together, is essential.

We need prayer that invokes God without respite as the Living God and relies on him in times of confusion as well as in times of joy. Consequently, as opposed to the cultural trend that seeks to convince us that we are not capable of making such decisions, this witness can be lived and in this way, in our world, can reinstate God as reality.

---

After rereading this speech from December of 2006, it is no wonder that Benedict XVI still continues to dedicate so much energy to the clergy.

The proclamation of the Year for Priests, the proposal of exemplary figures like the holy Curé of Ars, the reinforcement of celibacy are part – in the Pope's vision – of an extremely coherent picture, which is one and the same with "the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the successor of Peter at this time," which is "to lead men to God."

THIRD BOOK OUT IN
'COLLECTED WORKS' -
A fourth expected in September




The Pope's meeting at the Vatican with Birhop Gerhard Mueller of Regensburg last June 11 was not just a 'regular' audience.

Mueller, in fact, presented the Holy Father with Volume 8 (in two parts of 792 and 696 pp, respectively) of the Collected Works of Joseph Ratzinger, published by the Institut Papst Benedikt XVI based in Regensburg and headed by Bishop Mueller.

Three of the titles in the 16-volume collection have been published since 2008 - the writings on liturgy, the theology of St. Bonaventure, and this two-book volume on Joseph Ratzinger's Ecclesiology and Ecumenical Thinking.

A fourth volume to be released in September is about the priesthood, Announcers of the Word and Servants of Your Joy.


A refresher:
The volumes in GESAMMELTE SCHRIFTEN

1. Volk und Haus Gottes in Augustins Lehre von der Kirche
Die Dissertation und weitere Studien zu Augustinus von Hippo
(The People and the House of God in Augustine's Teachings on the Church:
Dissertation and further studies on Augustine of Hippo)

2. [Das Offenbarungsverständnis und die Geschichtstheologie Bonaventuras
Die ungekürzte Habilitationsschrift und weitere Bonaventura-Studien
(Revelation and St. Bonaventure's Theology of History:
The unabridged Habilitation dissertation and other studies on Bonaventure)
Published Sept. 2009

3. Der Gott des Glaubens und der Gott der Philosophen
Die wechselseitige Verwiesenheit von fides und ratio
(The God of Faith and the God of Philosophers: The reciprocal relationship between faith and reason)

4. Einführung in das Christentum
Bekenntnis – Taufe – Nachfolge
(Introduction to Christianity: Profession of Faith - Baptism - Discipleship)

5. Herkunft und Bestimmung
Schöpfung – Anthropologie – Mariologie
(Origin and Destiny: Creation - Anthropology- Mariology)

6. Jesus von Nazareth
Spirituelle Christologie
(Jesus of Nazareth: Spiritual Christology)

7. Zur Theologie des Konzils
Texte zum II. Vatikanum
(On the Thology of the Councl: Texts on Vatican II)

8. Zeichen unter den Völkern
Schriften zur Ekklesiologie und Ökumene
(Signs among Peoples: Writings on Ecclesiology and Ecumenism)
Published June 2009

9. Offenbarung – Schrift – Tradition
Hermeneutik und Theologische Prinzipienlehre
(Revelation - Scripture - Tradition: Lessons on hermeneutic and theological principles)

10. Auferstehung und Ewiges Leben
Beiträge zur Eschatologie
(The Resurrection and Eternal Life: Essays on eschatology)

11. Theologie der Liturgie
Die sakramentale Begründung christlicher Existenz
(The Theology of Liturgy: The sacramental foundation of Christian existence)
Published October 2008 - First volume published
at the express request of the Holy Father

12. Künder des Wortes und Diener eurer Freude
Zur Theologie und Spiritualität des Ordo
(Announcers of the Word and Servants of your Joy: The theology and spirituality of the Ordo)
To be published Sept. 2010

12. Im Gespräch mit der Zeit
Interviews – Stellungnahmen – Einsprüche
(In Conversation with the Times: Interviews - Positions - Objections)

14. Predigten zum Kirchenjahr
Meditationen, Gebete, Betrachtungen
(Homilies for the Liturgical Year - Meditations, Prayers, Observations)

15. Aus meinem Leben
Autobiographische Texte
(My Life: Autobiographical Texts)

16. Bibliographie und Gesamt-Register
(Bibliography and Complete Index)

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 09/05/2012 12:51]

UK bishops launch
'The Pope in the UK' booklet
and official Papal Visit logo
www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/
June 15, 2010




Archbishop Vincent Nichols today launched “The Pope in the UK” booklet which will go out to parishes across England, Wales and Scotland.

It can be downloaded from
www.thepapalvisit.org.uk/content/download/5448/39081/file/THE%20POPE%20IN%20THE%...

The 32-page booklet aims to answer some simple questions about the visit itself, the call of faith and its unfolding in daily life and the role of the Catholic Church.

It is made up of 10 questions, ranging from why the Pope is meeting the Queen to the contribution of the Catholic Church to British society and why the Pope will be beatifying cardinal Newman.

[One of the questions, 'What about child protection?" provides an opportunity to give an overview of how the Church has dealt with the issue of priests who abuse minors.]

Archbishop Vincent Nichols said:

“We wanted to try to answer the questions of those curious about the visit in an accessible and intelligent way. It is an attempt to get beyond the immediacy of headlines and make available the immensely rich tradition of the Church in dealing with the dilemmas of human life that Pope Benedict so eloquently expresses.

“We are looking to spell out the richness of Catholic tradition and also the enormous contribution of the Catholic Church to this country and around the world. It is important to explain who the Pope is so people can better appreciate this historic visit.”

As the preface to “The Pope in the UK” sets out: “Today there are many gaps in public knowledge in these matters. This booklet seeks to address those gaps, not in a profound or systematic manner but just by way of some clear facts and indications.

“They will be helpful in preparation for this Papal Visit: helpful to those who are curious, helpful to those who need to understand a little more, helpful to those who are looking forward intently to these historic days.”

The cover of the booklet features the official logo of the Papal Visit. It was designed by leading architectural artist Brian Clarke and incorporates the Papal Visit motto “Heart speaks unto heart”, taken from Cardinal Newman’s writings.


The Papal Visit will take place from 16-19 September. Full details of the Pope’s itinerary will be published in July.

The image on the front cover is the official logo for the Papal Visit, designed Brian Clarke (regarded as the world’s leading artist in stained glass).

It is a detail from a stained glass window by Mr Clarke for the Papal Nunciature in London, which will be blessed by the Pope during his visit in September. The final work is in transparent stained glass and celebrates the intellectual and spiritual achievements of Thomas More, John Fisher and John Henry Newman. The blues and reds in the composition recall the rubies and ultramarines of medieval stained glass.

About the motto
for the papal visit

The theme for Pope Benedict XVI's 2010 visit to the UK is Cor ad cor loquitur - Heart speaks unto heart. Cardinal John Henry Newman chose the words as the motto to go on his coat of arms. 'Heart speaks unto heart' is a fitting choice for this papal visit as, on the final day of his Apostolic Journey, the Holy Father will beatify Cardinal Newman - the much-loved Victorian theologian.

When Newman became a Cardinal in 1879, he had to choose a motto to go on his coat of arms. He chose the Latin words Cor ad Cor loquitur – heart speaks unto heart.

Where did these words come from? At the time, Newman thought they came from the Imitation of Christ (written in the 1400s), but in fact he was mistaken – they're from St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622) a French Bishop and great spiritual writer whom Newman revered. In fact, Newman chose to put a painting of St Francis above the altar in his own Chapel at the Birmingham Oratory.

The phrase has different levels, which together tell us a lot about Newman, his understanding of what it is to be human, and his vision of a humanity redeemed by Christ.

Newman thought that true communication between us speaks from our heart to the heart of others around us – much more than just clever talking.

He wrote in an Anglican sermon: 'Eloquence and wit, shrewdness and dexterity, these plead a cause well and propagate it quickly, but it dies with them. It has no root in the hearts of men, and lives not out a generation.'

Truth speaks from the centre of the person, from their heart: 'By a heart awake from the dead, and by affections set on heaven, we can... truly and without figure witness that Christ liveth.' In the age of the Internet, Newman tells us that however we communicate, what we say should come from the heart, the fruits of a moral life lived in communion with Christ.

In fact, Christ speaks to us from his own Heart. 'Thou art the living Flame, and ever burnest with love of man' – he is 'the Word, the Light, the Life, the Truth, Wisdom, the Divine Glory.'

So, in the end, it's the Heart of God himself which speaks to us – in prayer, in the Mass, through the Scriptures. But also through other faithful Christians, and in the teachings of the Church.

As Newman says, 'when the Church speaks Thou dost speak.' The Church has no other heart than the Heart of Christ himself.


Of the major news agencies, only AFP took notice of the above, but, not surprisingly, its headline and lead paragraph are misleading and false.

The subject of the story is not the Pope - who, in any case, never actively tries to bridge the image gap, he simply is who he is - but the Church in the UK that is making this effort. A commendable one, and perhaps the first positive step in the disarray that appears to have characterized organization of the England part of the visit (the Sottishbishops appear to have their day under control):

Pope hopes to bridge
image 'gap' when in the UK



LONDON, June 15 (AFP) – Pope Benedict hopes to address a "gap" in public perception of the Catholic Church after recent child sex scandals when he visits the country this year, aides said in plans for the trip unveiled Tuesday.

Archbishop Vincent added that the Pope's September 16-19 visit could give a crucial spiritual boost to Britain as it struggles to recover from the global financial downturn.

"Catholicism can easily become defined in the public mind in the light of one or two recent controversies," said a pamphlet setting out the purpose of the three-day papal visit, the first to Britain in nearly 30 years.

"This is the gap in public knowledge that this pamphlet aims to address," it added, without referring specifically to the sex abuse scandals rocking the Roman Catholic Church, notably in Britain's neighbour Ireland.

The booklet, entitled The Pope in the UK, includes sections on child protection within the Church, the contribution of the Catholic Church to British society and on the purpose of the Catholic Church itself.

Benedict's visit to Britain will be the first by a Pope since 1982, when a six-day tour by John Paul II's drew huge crowds. He was the first pope to make the trip for 450 years. [But did a Pope ever visit England before Henry VIII broke off from theChurch????]

Benedict XVI will be received at the start of his tour by Queen Elizabeth II, the head of the Church of England, in Edinburgh, before travelling to Glasgow and London.

He will also beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th century theologian, at a special ceremony at Coventry airport in northern England.

The visit to Britain -- which has five million Catholics -- "is really a very significant moment for this country", said Nichols.

"In times of difficulty we need all the inner resources that we can muster and the resource of religious faith is a crucially important one for giving society stability and generosity, especially in times of financial constraints," he added.

The Pope's visit will come amid lingering tensions between the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches following a move by the Vatican last November to make it easier for disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism. [Which, it must be mentioned, followed years of campaigning for facilitating en-masse conversions by traditionalist Anglican groups.]

The trip is expected to cost around seven million pounds and will be paid for by the British state and Catholic Church. A full itinerary of the visit will be released two months before the trip, in July.

The illustration for the program is the fresco of St. Stephen painted by Fra Angelico in the Nicoline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace. It shows Stephen being ordained as a deacon and then distributing alms to Rome's poor as part of his duties. It illustrates the link betwen liturgy and charity that it the theme of the diocesan convention for 2010-2011.




The Pope opens Rome's
diocesan convention
Translated from
the 6/16/10 issue of



The centrality of the Sunday Mass and testimony of charity.

These are the two themes for the pastoral program this year in the parishes of the Diocese of Rome.

Discussions, reflections and suggestions got underway in September 2009 at the Cathedral of Rome, San Giovanni in Laterano, at a meeting of the diocesan priests with the Pope's Vicar in Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini.

Now a diocesan convention June 15-17. also at the Lateran, must draw conclusions, put together the pastoral plan, and agree on a specific program. The theme of the convention is "Their eyes were opened, they recognized him, and they announced him".

The importance of this event was underscored by the presence Tuesday afternoon of Benedict XVI who opened the convention.




After an introductory prayer, and the invocation of the Holy Spirit with the hymn Veni, Creator spiritus, a passage from Benedict XVI's Magisterium was read.

The Pope addressed the participants after words of greeting from Cardinal Vallini.

In the next two days, Rome's over 300 parishes and ecclesial units will listen to what has been discussed at the level of prefectures, chaplaincies, associations and movements, universities and migrant communities.

At the May 2009 diocesan convention, the Pope had offered guidelines for developing the pastoral plan aimed at rediscovering the importance of Sunday Mass and how it connects to the equally important exercise of charity where it is needed.

The Pope called the Sunday Mass a 'school of love' for the faithful to place themselves at teh service of the poor, the sick and the suffering.





{Since the issue went to press before the event, the text of the Pope's address was not published with the story.]