BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries today, 7/9/10.



For his weekly column today, John Allen writes about two topics, the first one being about "Benedict and Obama: A partnership delayed but not yet denied", which you may check out yourself
ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/obama-and-benedict-partnership-delayed-not-ye...
I personally find it rather preposterous because it is based on two false premises: 1) That there was ever an intention by either side for a 'partnership', other than the passive kind which comes from an occasional convergence of views on certain obvious issues. An 'Obama-Benedict partnership' was never anything but the wishful thinking of liberal Catholics like Allen (and OR editor Vian, most conspicuously!) who are over-eager to place Obama 'on the side of the angels' - odd that they should think that was necessary at all since they bought into the myth that Obama walks on water; and

2) That Obama has ever thought he needs the approbation of the Vatican for anything (the Pope has no army divisions, after all) - he's more interested in courting the Muslims to the point of telling the head of the Obama-denatured NASA that the primary mission today of the once-glorious space agency is to make Muslims feel good about Muslim achievements in the arts and sciences (which were many and admirable, but they arose during the Middle Ages and stopped there!!)

However, Allen's second topic is on the first anniversary of CIV, and Allen's commentary for the occasion is so far a rarity even among those Catholic writers who were very gung-ho about CIV last year.


'CIV was one of the clear
PR success stories
from the Vatican'

July 9, 2010

This week marks not just the anniversary of the meeting between Benedict and Obama, but also the release of Caritas in Veritate. (The encyclical was presented in a Vatican news conference on July 7, 2009, although formally it carried the date of June 29, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.)

Originally projected for release in 2007 in order to mark the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s social encyclical Populorum Progressio, the document was delayed for two years in order to allow Benedict to reflect on the implications of the global economic crisis.

At the PR level, Caritas in Veritate is among the few clear success stories in recent Vatican experience. Timing its release to coincide with a G8 meeting in Italy and the encounter between the Pope and Obama ensured significant global interest, and Benedict’s analysis (including his call for a world political authority with “real teeth”) generated wide, and often positive, editorial comment around the world.

Toronto’s Globe and Mail, for example, editorialized that “the letter’s strength is in challenging all ordinary agendas, and in denying that business, politics and morality are separate, watertight compartments of human life.”

Even The Economist conceded that “despite some lapses into trendy jargon,” Caritas in Veritate “is certainly not a banal or trivial document” and will “occupy a prominent place among religious leaders’ competing attempts to explain and address the problems of an overheated, overcrowded planet.”

To mark the one-year anniversary of the encyclical, Avvenire [which all these years Allen maddeningly insists on calling L'Avvenire as if he has never seen a copy of the newspaper or referred to it online!], the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference, published interviews on July 7 with two leading Catholic commentators: Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, a distinguished economist and since September 2009 the chairman of the Vatican Bank, and Archbishop Giancarlo Maria Bregantini, president of the Italian bishops’ Commission for Social Problems, Labor, Justice and Peace.

Taken together, the two interviews seem to make a single point, one with obvious relevance for divided American Catholics: Defending the unborn and defending the poor are a package deal, and ignoring one at the expense of the other is always a mistake. (The attempt to cajole the Church’s pro-life and peace-and-justice wings into a better working relationship would seem deliberate, since in Italian terms Gotti Tedeschi is seen as a prominent conservative while Bregantini is a liberal favorite.)

* * *

Here are a few highlights from the interview with Gotti Tedeschi, who worked at senior levels for various banks and multi-national companies in addition to teaching economics in Milan and Turin before taking over at the Vatican Bank (formally callede IOR, from the Italian acronym for “Institute for the Works of Religion.”)

What should world leaders have learned from Caritas in Veritate?
Assuming they actually read it, they should have understood three things: Economic development isn’t possible where people don’t have children, and it can’t be founded either on consumption or debt. In sum, economic development is either integral, or it doesn’t exist.

Can one say that the economic crisis ‘rewrote’ the encyclical?
One might say that during those two years, some important points were integrated: think about the first chapter, where Humanae Vitae [Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control] is forcefully confirmed, as a way of clarifying that the reason for the economic crisis is a collapse in fertility.

The rejection of new life -- induced in the Western world from 1975 to 1985 by neo-Malthusian movements -- is at the origin of the economic decline, and of the various “compensatory maneuvers” attempted over the last 25-30 years.

Everybody has commented on this encyclical. What are the most common errors?
The first is that many go directly to the fifth chapter, which speaks about the redistribution of wealth, the economy as gift, and so on. They read it forgetting about the other four chapters, and ignoring the introduction -- it’s like reading the Ten Commandments by skipping the first.

Other commentators held that the Pope wanted to give a new shape to capitalism: however, Benedict XVI is not giving lessons on the economy, because his call concerns not the means but the ends. The market and capitalism are instruments, and the Pope knows that an instrument in itself is neither good nor bad.

One year since it was published, what do you think of the encyclical?
I’m convinced that nothing is more rational than Catholic morality, and that this is one of the most rational encyclicals -- more than Rerum Novarum.

All of Caritas in Veritate is permeated by a clear thrust: that the means cannot take on a moral autonomy, that they must have a clear end, and that this end is explained by the truth which the human person needs as a point of reference.

In that sense, the introduction is almost a mini-encyclical against the dominant nihilism.

* * *

The following are a couple of highlights from the interview with Archbishop Bregantini, well known for his social advocacy. At the moment, Bregantini is asking critical questions about a mini-boom in windmills in his region of Molise, in central Italy.

While representing a potential source of clean energy, the wind mills have been constructed, according to critics, in poorly chosen locations without regard for environmental impact. Some critics charge they’re more a boon for certain well-connected contractors than for the environment.

What’s the fundamental intuition of the encyclical?
I think the heart of it, which seems ever more profound, is that ethics improves the economy. The Pope recalls that rules of an ethical nature render economic activity better able to serve the human person and to protect the ‘little ones’ of the earth, who otherwise would be crushed.

The Pope, following the Christian anthropological vision, asks that respect always be given to the little ones, whether we’re talking about unborn life, the family, the relationship with the environment, and in all other areas.

What form does this intuition take?
What’s striking in the encyclical is the deep logical coherence, even ontological coherence, between respect for a baby in its mother’s womb, and respect, for example, for creation, for the migrant laborer, for everything God has created. The Pope proposes a coherent ethical vision.

For example, while I defend Molise from ill-advised windmills, I also look to the struggling family expecting another child, the young man who’s unemployed, and the elderly person who needs dignified hospice care. This means there’s a deep unity in the struggle against everything that kills life.

What does this mean concretely?
For the Church, it implies a precise duty to take sides against anyone who threatens the dignity of the earth with the same evangelical zeal with which we condemn those who kill a life in the mother’s womb. This needs to happen at various levels in the defense of life.

* * *

As a footnote, the “True Wealth of Nations” research project at the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, an independent body hosted at the University of Southern California, is organizing an event in Rome in tandem with the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace Oct. 15-16 titled “Caritas in Veritate and the United States.”

The symposium brings together a diverse sampling of leading intellectual lights from the American Catholic church, along with officials from the Council for Justice and Peace, to ponder the reception of the encyclical in the United States and its potential implications.

Along with the best and brightest of American Catholic thinkers, organizers have also asked me to sit in -- apparently on the theory that such a high-brow event needs at least one amateur to lower the tone. [Allen is being too modest. He is invited to all these gatherings because he invariably writes about them, and he has a following and cachet even in the secular media who consider him an authoritative, all-knowing voice on Catholic affairs. As a reporter, I admire him for his diligence and initiative, but he is not always accurate, even about easily veriable facts. However, I have more serious objections to his opinions when they arise from patently fallacious but to him, dearly-held, premises. ]


I did find one other commentary on CIV online today from a regular contributor to a US Catholic online newspaper who uses a pseudonym and zooms in one specific provision of CIV:


Pope Benedict XVI on the economic situation:
Not for the faint of heart (liberals or conservatives)


Well - here is a challenge for those Catholics who like to say they are orthodox AND political conservatives- even as the Pope calls us “to liberate ourselves from ideologies, which often oversimplify reality in artificial ways..”.

If you don’t like social security systems, and you don’t like trade union organizations, and you like deregulation of the labour market for the benefit of corporate outsourcing, and you believe that Man should conform to the “free market” - not the economy to Man - you may need to go to the Vatican and line up for spanking.

Or better yet, just repent of your ideological ways, and read the Social Doctrine of the Church with an open mind and an open heart. The Pope’s social teaching is consistent with what the Church has been teaching and advising ever since the first papal social encyclical back in the late 1800′s.

From Caritas in Veritate, paragraph 25:

---

25. From the social point of view, systems of protection and welfare, already present in many countries in Paul VI’s day, are finding it hard and could find it even harder in the future to pursue their goals of true social justice in today’s profoundly changed environment.

The global market has stimulated first and foremost, on the part of rich countries, a search for areas in which to outsource production at low cost with a view to reducing the prices of many goods, increasing purchasing power and thus accelerating the rate of development in terms of greater availability of consumer goods for the domestic market.

Consequently, the market has prompted new forms of competition between States as they seek to attract foreign businesses to set up production centres, by means of a variety of instruments, including favourable fiscal regimes and deregulation of the labour market.

These processes have led to a downsizing of social security systems as the price to be paid for seeking greater competitive advantage in the global market, with consequent grave danger for the rights of workers, for fundamental human rights and for the solidarity associated with the traditional forms of the social State.

Systems of social security can lose the capacity to carry out their task, both in emerging countries and in those that were among the earliest to develop, as well as in poor countries.

Here budgetary policies, with cuts in social spending often made under pressure from international financial institutions, can leave citizens powerless in the face of old and new risks; such powerlessness is increased by the lack of effective protection on the part of workers’ associations.

Through the combination of social and economic change, trade union organizations experience greater difficulty in carrying out their task of representing the interests of workers, partly because Governments, for reasons of economic utility, often limit the freedom or the negotiating capacity of labour unions. Hence traditional networks of solidarity have more and more obstacles to overcome.

The repeated calls issued within the Church’s social doctrine, beginning with Rerum Novarum[60], for the promotion of workers’ associations that can defend their rights must therefore be honoured today even more than in the past, as a prompt and far-sighted response to the urgent need for new forms of cooperation at the international level, as well as the local level.

The mobility of labour, associated with a climate of deregulation, is an important phenomenon with certain positive aspects, because it can stimulate wealth production and cultural exchange.

Nevertheless, uncertainty over working conditions caused by mobility and deregulation, when it becomes endemic, tends to create new forms of psychological instability, giving rise to difficulty in forging coherent life-plans, including that of marriage. This leads to situations of human decline, to say nothing of the waste of social resources.

In comparison with the casualties of industrial society in the past, unemployment today provokes new forms of economic marginalization, and the current crisis can only make this situation worse.

Being out of work or dependent on public or private assistance for a prolonged period undermines the freedom and creativity of the person and his family and social relationships, causing great psychological and spiritual suffering. [Obama ought to read this! ]

I would like to remind everyone, especially governments engaged in boosting the world’s economic and social assets, that the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity: “Man is the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life”[61].

---

Does anyone believe that the Catholic Church can understand human sexuality and biology well enough to apply moral teachings to such things as homosexuality and embryonic stem cell research - but is too thick to comprehend economics and the moral application of basic principles to market and labor theory and practice?

Doesn’t Scripture provide enough evidence that simply following our desires in any realm - be it sexual or economic is not enough - not for a good end to result??

Every human transaction of a sexual or economic kind has something more than mechanical operation at play. The God who created human sexuality for our good is also the God of economics, and He desires that the good of Man be “the source, the focus and the aim of all economic and social life.”

Goodness usually requires some effort, some will to do right by others, not just to blindly follow one's impulses in bars or malls: Hedonism and consumerism go hand-in-glove - and they only appear harmless if you ignore abortion clinics, broken homes, sweatshops and harsh manual labor. Which we all do when our attention is engaged with publicity about consumer products and politicians.

Well, I’m awake, thanks in large measure to Catholic social doctrine which serves the Lord's purpose by giving us a glaring light to see the world in which we live - to see the abortions and the sweatshops and the human trafficking of poor and vulnerable people.

Mons. Koch to lecture to
the 2010 Schuelerkreis seminar
Translated from

July 9, 2010


Everything is ready at Castel Gandolfo for the 2010 annual reunion and seminar for Benedict XVI and his Ratzinger Schuelerkreis on August 27-29 (Friday to Sunday). In fact, there will be new attendees this year in the person of young theologians who have been studying the theology of Joseph Ratzinger. [Actually, these new-generation theologians were first invited to the Schuelerkreis summer seminar in 2008, according to the Schuelerkreis annals which also includes photos of their attendance in 2008 and 2009]

After dedicating the annual seminar to Islam, creation and evolution, and Church mission in recent years, the topic this year is 'The hermeneutic of Vatican II'. Namely, the great debate in the post-Conciliar decades on whether the Council represented a rupture in the history of the Church rather than a renewal in continuity [as its great convoker, Blessed John XXIII, himself made clear he expected it to be, in his address opening the Council].

The Pope will attend all of Day 1 of the seminar with his former students and the young theologians, and will be listening to two lectures by Mons. Kurt Koch, the new President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

An interesting and demanding initial assignment for the Swiss prelate, who was Bishop of Basel and president of the Swiss bishops conference since 2006.

Koch studied theology in Lucerne and Munich [the same university where Joseph Ratzinger earned his doctorate in theology twenty years earlier], and in 1989, he was given the chair of Dogmatics and Liturgy in Lucerne's faculty of theology, later becoming dean of the faculty, and eventually rector.

He was named Bishop of Basel in 1995 by John Paul II and was a member of the Swiss bishops' ecumenical commission. He was vice president of the Swiss bishops' conference for nine years before becoming president in 2006.

Since 2002, he has been a member of the Pontifical Council he now heads, with concurrent membership in its ancillary, the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism.


The only two pictures I have found online so far showing Mons. Koch with Benedict XVI: Left, at the Pope's consultation meeting with selected bishops before publishing Summorum Pontificum' photo from Cardinal O'Malley's blog; and right photo, during the Holy Father's trip to the Holy Land last year (Mons. Koch is at extreme right).


[Additional info from Wikipedia (all the facts cited here are supported by appropriate references):

When a group of Swiss intellectuals and theologians called for John Paul's resignation on 20 May 2004, Koch described the act as "disgusting and disloyal" especially since it was done on the Pope's 84th birthday. In 2006, he voiced his disagreement with opposition to building Muslim minarets in Switzerland (a ban supported by the Swiss in a 2009 referendum), but also asked for greater religious freedom for Christians in Muslim countries.

In June 2007, he was among the selected group of bishops from around the world invited to the Vatican to meet with Benedict XVI before he published his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. (What Wikipedia does not mention is that subsequently, Koch wrote an eight-page pastoral letter to refute actual and potential objections to SP.)

He also defended the clarification by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith regarding the expression "subsistit in" used in Lumen Gentium, while acknowledging that the document could appear confusing or hurtful to Protestants and ecumenical Catholics. He pointed out that that document and its diverse reception showed the differences between the ecumenical goals of Catholics and the Orthodox and that of Protestants.]

Like his predecessor at Christian Unity, Cardinal Walter Kasper, Koch is a theologian who has lived all his life in an environment where Catholics are in the minority compared to Lutherans adn members of the other 'reformed Churches'.

Prof. Stephan Horn, who has organized the Schuelerkreis annual meetings for some time, says that the choice of the annual seminar theme is always made with the approval of their former teacher.


Il Foglio carried a Page 1 story earlier this week about the Schuelerkreis seminar:


In the classroom with B16:
This year, to discuss
'The hermeneutic of Vatican II'
Translated from

July 6, 2010


The more sophisticated among Vatican watchers say that to truly know Joseph Ratzinger, one must listen to his former students, the so-called Ratzinger Schuelerkreis, who have been attending an annual seminar reunion with him since 1977.

With his ex-students, the Pontiff feels 'rather like the young Jesus among the doctors in the Temple', said Fr. Martin Trimpe to Gianni Valente, who wrote the book Ratzinger Professore published in 2008. Trimpe was a student of Prof. Ratzinger in Tuebingen and Regensburg.

He says that when he attends the seminar sessions, the Pope "nibbles at his pencil, moves his legs restlessly under the table, and seems inflamed with the the same passion and curiosity he had as a young seminarian in Freising".

A passion, he says, that is clearly joyful: "He loves being with his former students because he experiences a sort of theological joy!"

So it was for years. And so it has continued to be even when Prof. Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. It was no secret that he had long looked forward to retiring from his long service at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, expecting to retire to Bavaria, away from the din of Rome and the intricacies of the Curia, to resume the life of a scholar.

But "after the great John Paul II, the cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord", he said to the world shortly after he was chosen Pope in April 200.

Which meant an 'adjustment' but not an abandonment of his dream. By all accounts, Benedict XVI makes time daily to catch up on his reading and to write. Especially so in summer, when he has more time at his disposal.

Even the choice of seminar topics reveals the 'private' Ratzinger. In the first Schuelerkreis seminar held after his election, the topic was the concept of God in Islam. [This was September 2005, a full year before he would deliver the seminal Regensburg lecture!]

Shortly afterwards, one of the attendees, Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fessio [president of Ignatius Press, which publishes most of the Ratzinger/Benedict XVI books in the USA], disclosed in an interview what the Pope had said about Islam. There was a minor controversy that prefigured the grand furor over the Regensburg lecture the following year.

In 2006 and 2007, the topic was 'Creation and Evolution', after which, for the first time in 30 years, the Schuelerkreis published the documents of the seminar in book form.

In 2008, it was about Jesus and the Gospels, almost like a re-examination of what he wrote in JESUS OF NAZARETH, with the input of ranking German Biblical scholars, including non-Catholic ones.

Last year, it was about the mission of the Church. Which was perhaps an appropriate prelude to this year's discussion on "The hermeneutic of Vatican II', which has been substantially the leitmotif of Joseph Ratzinger'e entire theological career since he took part in the Council as an official theological consultant.

The topic also reopens the question - Is Joseph Ratzinger an advocate of the reforms proposed by the Council or is he the 'castigator' of all the misinterpretations and abuses that followed the Council? [But the two functions are complementary, not mutually exclusive, and he is both!]

During the council, Prof. Ratzinger was definitely on the side of the reform-minded wing. But as he later told Vittorio Messori, "It was not I who changed, but they" [referring to his former colleagues like Hans Kueng et al who believe that Vatican II gave birth to a new Church, and who accused him of 'turning conservative'].

As if to say that true reform in the Church, as intended by Vatican II, does not consist of the questionable changes set in motion by his former colleagues, not changes which cut off all links to the past and open the Church unconditionally to secularism!

Benedict XVI sees the reform of Vatican II as renewal of the Church in continuity with its Tradition.

At Castel Gandolfo this summer, two representatives of Central European theology [the school of thought most closely identified with the progressivist interpretation of Vatican II] will be present: Kurt Koch, the Pope's new 'minister for ecumenism', and Christoph Schoenborn, the headline-making Archbishop of Vienna.


Photos of the 2009 Castel Gandolfo seminar
from the website of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedikt XVI Stiftung:



NB: The English service of ZENIT posted a story today, July 9, about the Pope's vacation in Castel Gandolfo. It is almost a straight verbatim translation of Marco Ansaldo's story in Repubblica on 7/7 [a story I translated the same day on this thread, in the preceding page] without any acknowledgment at all to Ansaldo or Repubblica. That's an appalling professional No-No I did not expect to see in ZENIT, which is the news agency of the Legionaries of Christ, and is usually properly professional (other than choosing not to report earlier on the LC's problems, until after the visitation].

Ticket info for the visit
will be released soon

July 9, 2010


Ticket information about the Pope's visit to the UK should be released soon, says Lord Patten, in charge of organising the trip.

He said there should also be transparency about costs to the taxpayer, as latest figures suggested the four-day trip could reach £12m.

Lord Patten, himself a Roman Catholic, has been in Birmingham visiting Cofton Park where a Mass will be held.

He confirmed the city is the best place in the West Midlands for the visit.

It was thought that Pope Benedict XVI would hold an open-air mass at Coventry airport in September, but he will now be coming to Birmingham.

He will use Cofton Park for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, who is buried nearby.

Lord Patten said he supports the Church's decision to switch venues.

"Having seen Cofton Park today, having been to where Cardinal Newman is buried just around the corner, and then having gone up to Birmingham Oratory where he lived for so long and wrote so many extraordinary works, I think it's undoubtedly the right decision," he said.

"It won't hold as many people as theoretically you could have got into Coventry Airport, but I think it will be a great experience for those who are able to get tickets for the Mass."

Earlier this week, it was revealed the cost to taxpayers for the visit could rise to £12m - up to £4m higher than previous figures - and does not include policing costs.

The trip will also cost the Catholic church £7m.



UK trip could be Benedict XVI's
most historically significant
By Edward Pentin


ROME, JULY 8, 2010 (Zenit.org).- For all the concerns over protests and security, Benedict XVI’s state visit to Britain could well be one of his most successful and historically significant to date.

The apostolic voyage, which the Holy Father is said to be eagerly looking forward to, begins Thursday, Sept. 16, with a reception given by Queen Elizabeth II at Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh, her official Scottish residence.

Later that day, the Pope travels to Glasgow where he will celebrate an open-air Mass in Bellahouston Park, 175 acres of parkland and ornamental gardens three miles from the city center. A large crowd is expected, since 30% of Glasgow’s population is Catholic and that most of Britain’s Catholics live in the north.

After a full day in Scotland, the Pope will then fly to London in the evening. His first engagement the following morning will be at St. Mary’s College in Twickenham, southwest London.

St. Mary's is one of Britain’s few Catholic universities, reputed to be the oldest in the country and renowned for its teacher training courses. There the Pope will meet with many youngsters from Catholic schools and, according to Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster, will “reflect on the role of the Church in education” and share his vision for learning. He is also scheduled to hold a meeting there with leaders of different faiths.

That evening he has what Archbishop Nichols describes as “three quite remarkable events” lined up in central London. The first is a visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Anglican primate’s official residence, Lambeth Palace.

The second is a keynote speech to the United Kingdom’s political and cultural leaders in Westminster Hall. One of the most important buildings in London, adjoining the Houses of Parliament, it has been used since medieval times as a place for banquets and gatherings. But perhaps most famously it is the place where St. Thomas More, the patron saint of politicians who is greatly admired by Benedict XVI, was tried and condemned to death.

The Pope will then pay a visit to nearby Westminster Abbey, the resting place of British monarchs and other important national figures as well as the traditional place of coronation. There he will join leaders of the country’s other Christian confessions for evening prayer.

And in what promises to be a historic photo-opportunity, both he and the Archbishop of Canterbury will pray together at the tomb of St. Edward the Confessor, the English monarch and patron saint of the Royal Family, who built the first Westminster Abbey.

The following day, Saturday, Sept. 18, he’ll journey to the Catholic Westminster Cathedral, about half a mile from the Abbey, where he is to celebrate Mass and meet the U.K.’s prime minister, deputy Prime Minster, and the leader of the opposition.

A visit to a residential home for the elderly and a prayer vigil in Hyde Park is scheduled in the afternoon and evening.

Then on Sunday, Benedict XVI will fly by helicopter to Cofton Park near Birmingham where he will celebrate the beatification of the Venerable Cardinal John Henry Newman, also a figure he greatly admires. The park is just a short distance away from Cardinal Newman’s burial place in Rednal.

According to Vatican sources, the British government is keen that the Pope address policy issues convergent with the Holy See such as tackling poverty and safeguarding the environment. But Benedict XVI is also likely to bring up some important concerns that tend to be sidelined in British public life such as protection of the unborn, the family and other life issues.

“He will speak about these in a delicate way,” said one official, “and he will probably also do the same with the bishops.” However, he is not expected to directly address Britain’s recent controversial equality legislation as he voiced his concerns earlier this year, and will generally steer away from directly entering into politics.

Although the visit will be a state one, Vatican officials are viewing it primarily in terms of its pastoral significance, and as “very important” for the country as a whole, not only for the Church.

Britain has become one of Europe’s most secular countries -- at least among its media elites -- with a history of anti-Catholic prejudice dating back to the Reformation.

But Vatican officials are not very concerned about planned protests. “They are possible,” said one official, “but the moment he arrives, things change very perceptibly.”

He recalled that similar vociferous demonstrations were planned in Turkey, but everything changed when the Holy Father arrived there in 2006.

Another official sees this as a particular gift of Benedict XVI. ”Every place he’s gone to, the media has been hostile in advance and then absolutely disarmed,” he said. “When people see him up close, they see he’s transparent, that he’s a holy man, and what you see is what you get, even though he’s extraordinarily shy.”


Blessed Newman

The beatification of Cardinal Newman, the 19th-century theologian who is considered by many to have anticipated the Second Vatican Council, could mark a significant step in helping to draw a line under the controversies of the post-conciliar period.

That’s according to the world’s leading Newman scholar, Father Ian Ker. He pointed out that Paul VI was also keen for Newman to be elevated to the altars because Newman “stood for exactly what the reformers stood for -- those reformers who were in continuity rather than ‘rupture’ with the past and with tradition.”

Father Ker, professor of theology at the University of Oxford, has long battled with some dissenting Catholics who have tried to claim Newman as their own, using the theologian’s famous remark that he would drink “to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards” to justify their own dissent.

But he insists that Newman was “simply stating the Catholic position, the same as that of St. Thomas Aquinas: that ultimately we have to obey our consciences even if they are erroneous.” [Something sounds wrong there!]

As Catholics, he said, “we are obliged to try to correct our consciences, but if we fail to and can’t, then we just have to go by the best of our lights. That’s basic teaching.”

[Ker was more informative about the 'conscience' quote in an Oct. 2008 ZENIT interview that I have looked up - in which he said:

---

As to the oft repeated claim by liberals that Newman thought so-called 'conscientious dissent' from Church teachings was possible because he said he would toast the Pope but his conscience first, the context where that famous remark occurs is Newman's response to Gladstone's claim that the definition of papal infallibility meant that Englsih Catholics could no longer be regarded as loyal subjects since they now had to obey whatever orders the Pope might give them. Newman, for example, would say that a bishop or priest ordered by the Pope to cover up the abuse of a child has the right to refuse to obey such an order. But Newman was only referring to papal orders not papal teachings.

---

Father Ker would most like to see Newman made a doctor of the Church. “That will be significant because it will indicate to people that he was orthodox, that he is a teacher of the Church,” he said. “Personally, I think he’s the great doctor of the conciliar period in which we’re living, a towering figure.”

Asked if such a step would finally put an end to the false interpretations of the Council, Father Ker said: “I hope so. He did anticipate the Second Vatican Council but in all his anticipation, he was always very careful to keep a moderate balance. He never went over the top.”

Another positive outcome of the beatification, he believes, will be that more ordinary people will begin praying to the great theologian, which could lead to the second miracle required for his canonization.

“Very often what happens, apparently,” said Father Ker, “is that canonization follows quite quickly after beatification, presumably because people then start to pray in earnest [o the new Blessed].”

He should know. It was after Deacon Jack Sullivan saw Father Ker on television appealing to viewers to pray to Newman for a first miracle that Sullivan prayed to the 19th-century theologian for his back to be healed.

That miraculous healing has directly led to the beatification that will take place on Sept. 19.


CARDINAL NEWMAN ON CONSCIENCE

I am so disturbed about Pentin's strange-sounding quotation from Fr. Ker about Newman's remark on conscience that I went back to Cardinal Ratzinger's famous tribute on the first centenary of Newman's death in 1990 that is brief but densely rich in what he tells us about Newman and conscience.
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19900428_ratzinger-newman...

---

...For us at that time, Newman's teaching on conscience became an important foundation for theological personalism, which was drawing us all in its sway. Our image of the human being as well as our image of the Church was permeated by this point of departure.

We had experienced the claim of a totalitarian party, which understood itself as the fulfilment of history and which negated the conscience of the individual. One of its leaders had said: "I have no conscience. My conscience is Adolf Hitler". The appalling devastation of humanity that followed was before our eyes.

So it was liberating and essential for us to know that the "we" of the Church does not rest on a cancellation of conscience, but that, exactly the opposite, it can only develop from conscience.
Precisely because Newman interpreted the existence of the human being from conscience, that is, from the relationship between God and the soul, was it clear that this personalism is not individualism, and that being bound by conscience does not mean being free to make random choices - the exact opposite is the case.

It was from Newman that we learned to understand the primacy of the Pope. Freedom of conscience, Newman told us, is not identical with the right "to dispense with conscience, to ignore a Lawgiver and Judge, to be independent of unseen obligations".

Thus, conscience in its true sense is the bedrock of Papal authority; its power comes from revelation that completes natural conscience, which is imperfectly enlightened, and "the championship of the Moral Law and of conscience is its raison d'être".

I certainly need not explicitly mention that this teaching on conscience has become ever more important for me in the continued development of the Church and the world. Ever more I see how it first opens in the context of the biography of the Cardinal, which is only to be understood in connection with the drama of his century and so speaks to us.

Newman had become a convert as a man of conscience; it was his conscience that led him out of the old ties and securities into the world of Catholicism, which was difficult and strange for him. But this way of conscience is everything except a way of self-sufficient subjectivity: it is a way of obedience to objective truth...

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
April 28, 1990

---

None of that says we should follow our conscience even if it is wrong. Catholics have a duty to develop an informed conscience - informed by the truths of the faith - and not rely on 'erroneous' conscience which is one's own idea of what one ought to do even if it does not conform to the truths of the faith!

To better understand Cardinal Ratzinger's reflections on Newman, one must read Cardinal Newman's letter to the Duke of Norfolk
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/anglicans/volume2/gladstone/section5.html
which ends with the statement that has so often been misused because it is cited without the context of everything that preceded it:

---

Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing) I shall drink — to the Pope, if you please — still, to Conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

---

The voluble Newman had earlier summarized the points he was making about conscience in the letter, thus:

---

1. First, I am using the word "conscience" in the high sense in which I have already explained it — not as a fancy or an opinion, but as a dutiful obedience to what claims to be a divine voice, speaking within us; and that this is the view properly to be taken of it, I shall not attempt to prove here, but shall assume it as a first principle.

2. Secondly, I observe that conscience is not a judgment upon any speculative truth, any abstract doctrine, but bears immediately on conduct, on something to be done or not done.

"Conscience," says St. Thomas, "is the practical judgment or dictate of reason, by which we judge what hic et nunc [here and now] is to be done as being good, or to be avoided as evil." Hence conscience cannot come into direct collision with the Church's or the Pope's infallibility which is engaged in general propositions, and in the condemnation of particular and given errors.

3. Next, I observe that, conscience being a practical dictate, a collision is possible between it and the Pope's authority only when the Pope legislates, or gives particular orders, and the like. A Pope is not infallible in his laws, nor in his commands, nor in his acts of state, nor in his administration, nor in his public policy.

His fourth point is rather complex, but it is here where he says something of what Pentin quotes from Fr. Ker, but Newman makes it clear he is referring to obeying orders from the Pope, not his teaching, which is the teaching of the Church:
... the broad proposition, that conscience is ever to be obeyed whether it tells truly or erroneously, and that, whether the error is the fault of the person thus erring or not...

If in a particular case it [conscience] is to be taken as a sacred and sovereign monitor, its dictate, in order to prevail against the voice of the Pope, must follow upon serious thought, prayer, and all available means of arriving at a right judgment on the matter in question.

---

Interestingly, Newman leads into his disquisition on conscience by referring first to Natural Law, quoting Thomas Aquinas:

---

"The natural law," says St. Thomas, "is an impression of the Divine Light in us, a participation of the eternal law in the rational creature." This law, as apprehended in the minds of individual men, is called "conscience"; and though it may suffer refraction in passing into the intellectual medium of each, it is not therefore so affected as to lose its character of being the Divine Law, but still has, as such, the prerogative of commanding obedience.

On another occasion, he said of conscience:

Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with oneself; but it is a messenger from Him…

---

This has now gone far afield from an initial post about the UK visit, but in a way the following commentary
www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?entry_id=3098
is related to the above considerations on conscience. The commentary is by James Martin, SJ, editor of the habitually dissident Jesuit magazine America, who goes on at length - replete with typical Jesuitic casuistry - about 'fear of dissent in the Church' taking off from what was elaborately set up to be a supposed off-the-record address by a South African bishop who attacks the Church for instilling fear by discouraging dissent ('Off-the-record, but promptly posted online!) What a hoot from a magazine that has traded all these decades in its open dissent to the Church doctrine as preached by the modern Popes, to espouse instead its ideas about a supposed Vatican-II 'new Church'!

As if the Church had no right to criticize and denounce dissent against the Magisterium and Tradition, and as if the contemporary Church has ever censored any Catholic publication that do not require the Church's formal imprimatur! As if, in fact, all the contemporary dissenters against the Church Magisterium - America and National Catholic reporter and all their ilk who claim to be the only ones acting in the 'spirit-of-Vatican-II' - have not been free all this time to say the most outrageous things against the true Church and the Pope!

Can we have some down-to-earth honesty at least, Fr. Martin, instead of your usual mealy-mouthed sanctimony?

BTW, Father Z also goes on at length to criticize Bishop Dowling's denunciation of what he calls Benedict XVI's 'restorationism', claiming that Bishop Slattery wearing the cappa magna for the Wachington Mass to celebrate B16's anniversary last April was an example of out-of-place triumphalism!. To which Fr. Z says, "What about the miter and ring and pectoral cross that you wear as a bishop? Are they also examples of triumphalism?"

Dissent against the doctrine and practices of the faith is such a slippery slope heading straight to error, but I suppose dissent - strident, constant dissent - makes the dissenter feel heroic, presuming himself to be morally and intellectually superior, especially if he's standing up to a 2000-year-old institution. So it becomes an addiction dissenters can't get enough of, they come to be dependent on the 'high' it gives them. That's the overwhelming sense I get whenever I happen to read any of the posturings by the dissenters in America and NCReporter.


Sorry, but I saw another news report today that shows what the liberal establishment does to persecute Catholics who simply profess their faith - and it happened right in the good ol' USA, 'land of the free and home of the brave"!
www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-il-uofill-instructor,0,72035...
Can you read, Father Martin? Has anything comparable ever happened to any of your breed of dissenters?

In effect, a professor of Catholicism was fired from the University of Illinois because some of his students claimed he was engaging in 'hate speech' when he wrote in an e-mail to students an explanation for why the Church opposes homosexual acts: "Natural Moral Law says that morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same." In what way can that statement of fact, based on natural moral law, be construed at all as 'hate speech'???? On the other hand, the act of firing him - for stating a fact that he has every right to say as a teacher of Introduction to Catholicism - is in itself the worst of all hate crimes, punishing someone cruelly for simply stating what he believes in a completely non-hostile way!... I tell you, anti-Church bigots can be the most ubiquitous occasions of sin for a Catholic!

Saturday, July 10, 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Second from left: The saint's incorrupt body.
ST VERONICA GIULIANI (Italy, 1660-1727), Poor Clare Nun, Mystic, Abbess
Daughter of a wealthy Umbrian family, Ursula Giuliani grew up having divine visions starting at age 3 - they would continue
throughout her life. Their dying mother dedicated each of her five daughters to the Wounds of Christ. Ursula joined the
Poor Clares at age 17, taking the name Veronica to commemorate the Passion of Christ. She did menial jobs in the kitchen,
infirmary and sacristy before she became portress. After 14 years, she was made mistress of novices. Three years later,
at age 37, she received the stigmata - first the imprint of the Crown of Thorns on her forehead, and then the five wounds
of the Crucifixion. For this, her bishop suspended her from duty and subjected her to the most rigorous of investigations
to verify the authenticity of the wounds. Eventually, she was restored to her office, but she discouraged her own novices
from getting 'caught up' in mysticism. When she was 56, she was made abbess against her wishes, but she proved to be a
very practical and efficient administrator. She died on Good Friday at age 67. Canonized in 1839, her body has remained
incorrupt and is ensrhined in her monastery at Citta del Castello. Her confessor had ordered Veronica to keep a record of
her spiritual life. She did so for 30 years, and her writings were eventually published as Tesoro Nascosto (Hidden
Treasure) from 1825-1928, encompassing 14 volumes.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/nab/071010.shtml


No papal stories in today's OR.
Page 1 stories: After 6 months, Haiti has not emerged from the most serious consequences of the earthquake;
on the eve of a multinational meeting to advance universal literacy in Africa, UNESCO says 32 million children
in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to education; another UN report says at least 50,000 persons die annually
as a result of exposure to poisons in industrial wastes; and an editorial commentary on new advances in abortion
technologies and relentless promotion of abortion in the secularized West. In the inside pages, a report on how
bureaucratic red tape has prevented a structural restoration of the chapel housing the Holy Shroud of Turin after
the fire that gutted it 20 years ago.


The Vatican today released its financial statement for 2009 at the conclusion of a two-day
meeting by the cardinals' council charged with administrative and economic oversight of
the Holy See.

Masses will flock to
Birmingham for the Pope

Saturday 10th July 2010


Thousands of people will line the streets of Birmingham when Pope Benedict XVI visits the city in September.

It has been revealed he will be bringing two Popemobiles to the UK and it is hoped he will be using one on his journey through the city on September 19.

Lord Chris Patten met with council officers and police chiefs yesterday to discuss the final details of the event.

It is expected to cost taxpayers up to £12 million.

The Pope will hold an open-air Mass for the Beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Lord Patten, the former Governor of Hong Kong, was last month appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee the whole four-day visit.

There will be 70,000 free tickets for distribution by the Catholic Church – 100,000 fewer than if the event had been held at Coventry Airport as originally planned.

Lord Patten said:

“There will always be people disappointed.There would be if we had two or three times the amount of tickets but there has to be a decision about whether it is about the amount of people attending or the quality of the event.

“I’ve had people sending letters who were at the event in 1982 who talk about trudging four kilometres over fields through the middle of the night and they didn’t see him. That is not what we want to happen.”

Pope Benedict will visit Birmingham on the fourth day of his visit after Masses in Scotland and London.

He will arrive at Cofton Park, Rednal, on September 19, for the Mass at 10am. He will then make his way to the Oratory in Hagley Road before continuing to Oscott College in Sutton Coldfield, the town where Cardinal Newman lived. Cardinal Newman died in Edgbaston and was buried in Rednal.

Lord Patten said he wanted to make the Pope's isit to the principal Newman sites as much a part of the event as the Mass.


To file under the heading, DO WE REALLY CARE? HECK, NO!

Prince Charles set to
snub Pope's visit
by John Hooper in Rome

Friday 9 July 2010



Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall met with the Pope last year at the Vatican.

The Prince of Wales is not scheduled to meet Pope Benedict during the Pontiff's historic four-day trip to Britain this autumn, according to sources close to the organisers of the visit.

They said at least one invitation – and possibly two – had been extended informally to the prince, but his name did not figure on the latest draft of the itinerary.

A Clarence House spokesman denied that the prince had wanted a one-to-one meeting or that he felt excluded. He noted that it was an official visit, hosted by the Queen, adding that the prince had an audience with the Pope at the Vatican in April 2009. The absence is nevertheless striking and unexpected, especially given Charles's interest in matters of faith. [It would also be simple courtesy towards a guest of state, since he is the heir to the throne.]

The Pope's visit, from 16 to 19 September, will be only the second by a Pope to Britain, and the first state visit. When John Paul II came 28 years ago it was on a pastoral visit at the invitation of the local bishops and not – as on this occasion – as a guest of the government and the Queen.

The Pope is expected to begin his engagements by calling on the monarch at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh. The original intention on the Catholic side, two sources confirmed, had been that Charles would be present.

One noted that he planned to be on holiday in Scotland when the Pope's plane touched down. Yet, according to another source, only the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will greet the Pontiff.

The prince was also invited to an inter-faith event scheduled for 17 September at St Mary's University College, Twickenham, south-west London. It was felt that this would particularly appeal to his interests. One source said the prince had declined, while another merely confirmed that his name did not appear on the latest guest list.

In Rome the Pope's spokesman, Father Federico Lombardi, stressed that a detailed schedule had yet to be published. He said: "This week we released an outline draft of the itinerary."

A source said it was quite possible the Holy See had not played any direct part in discussions with Clarence House.

The prince's relationship with the Vatican is coloured by his divorce, and marriage to the divorced wife of a Catholic. But his private life did not stand in his way when he and his wife spent 15 minutes with Benedict in the Pope's study.

The prince went on to hold much longer talks with the Vatican's secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and other senior officials. The discussion included "the human promotion and development of peoples, environmental protection, and the importance of inter-cultural and inter-religious dialogue for furthering peace and justice in the world".

It was Charles's first audience at the Vatican since his divorce from the Princess of Wales in 1996, and marked an important step in turning the former Camilla Parker Bowles into a royal consort.

This should be read in conjunction with Bruno Mastroianni's reminder (with statistics) in the preceding page of this thread, of all the daily works of charity that the Church performs around the world through its schools, health care and social assistance facilities.


Why the media assault
on the Church
With all of her problems she perseveres
and can't lose because Christ said she couldn't
by David Hartline

July 10, 2010

COLUMBUS, OH (Catholic Online) - The New York Times's full-fledged assault against the Catholic Church has many mystified and angered, some of whom haven't exactly been on the A-list of orthodox minded Catholics such as Ken Woodward, the former Religion Editor of Newsweek magazine.

Woodward has said that Times Editor Bill Keller often referred to himself as a "collapsed Catholic." Why now, many have wondered, and why has a noted and respected writer [How exactly did she gain that reputation?] like Laurie Goodstein taken part in such an odious display of yellow journalism?

Perhaps it is because the Church hasn't crumbled edespite the devastation of the Abuse Scandal. Perhaps it is because unlike so many churches that have changed their doctrine, the Catholic Church remains true to the teachings of Christ, the Apostles and the 264 subsequent popes since St Peter.

Perhaps it is because Pope Benedict XVI still uses the term, "The Dictatorship of Relativism" that so angers the Catholic Left. The first example of this being the theologically liberal lightning-rod Father Richard O'Brien - who, during CBS News's live coverage of the last Conclave Mass, presided over by then Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, stated that it is safe to say he would not become Pontiff.

Father McBrien went on to say, responding to the 'dictatorship of relativism' charge, that if the cardinal was elected, "Catholics would head to the margins of the Church".

In my book, The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism, I note that in addition to the young embracing the teachings of the Church along with her devotions, the Church has experienced an uptick in vocations in the US and an onslaught of vocations in Asia and Africa.

These seminarians and young priests share little in common with the dissidents that often taught at Catholic seminaries in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, these young men have raised the ire of dissidents as well as those in the Church, including the hierarchy, who are influenced by those misguided souls from the Spirit of 1968.

Has the New York Times written about these young priests and seminarians? Has the New York Times written about the growing number of young women in orthodox minded new Catholic orders like the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist or the Nashville Dominicans who wear the habit and joyfully take part in devotions that many of the older pants suit sisters long ago left behind?

In the case of the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist, their biggest problem is in twelve short years they have outgrown their motherhouse, something they didn't foresee happening for decades.

No, the New York Times has not written about these events. [Nor even of the multitude of concrete works of charity that the Church does daily around the world, as Bruno Mastroianni presents them in overview, ibn his column for Formiche referred to above.] Instead, they have seen fit to excoriate Pope Benedict XVI, a man they once praised for his active role in attacking the Abuse Scandal when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Many of the articles are so devoid of facts that they read like a desktop publication one sees when isiting a leftist college campus or an urban politically left-wing enclave.

The New York Times has seen fit to write favorably about liberal Protestant churches, their leftist voice on politics and liberal theological positions on doctrine, even though their respective memberships are in statistical freefall.

When the presiding Episcopal Bishop of the United States, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said Episcopalians were more intelligent than Catholics because they were environmentally conscious - as opposed to pro-life Catholics, the New York Times and much of their mainstream media counterparts passed over it. Only the burgeoning Catholic blogosphere cried foul over these remarks.

In 1934, the future Bishop Fulton Sheen in his book Life of a Galilean outlined the state of religion in the western world - in which modernism was taking hold of some Catholic thinkers, but especially so in many Protestant seminaries.

GK Chesterton (who met and was quite impressed with then Father Sheen) spoke of this phenomenon even earlier. In 1907, Pope Pius X spoke extensively on the disastrous consequences of modernism. Yet, like Pope Benedict XVI today, Pope Pius X was treated with scorn and derision by the self-appointed intelligentsia, as most of the modern Pontiffs have been.

The embattled Pope Paul VI warned against rampant sexual promiscuity and abortion in his famous encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, that fateful year when Europe and America experienced cultural upheaval by forces that were united in their ibntention to destroy religion's place in the modern world.

Perhaps it is because the Church has survived that upheaval that angers liberals like the New York Times. Those rebelling against God have always stated they know better than God - all the way back to Lucifer, who said "I will not serve."

Cabals of ambulance-chasing attorneys (many of whom are open about their hatred of the Church) have crisscrossed the nation claiming to help victims of the Abuse Scandal.

Have any of them spent time any time helping those who were sexually abused by employees of the big city school systems? There are certainly more victims in these institutions than victims of atholic priests. But it's easier for them to concentrate on priest victims, because they have seen how easy it is to win jury verdicts for great sums to be paid as damages by dioceses....

The Church is gaining in the world, and unlike the dismantling taking place in many liberal Protestant churches, no such white flag is being raised from atop St Peter's in Vatican City....

Recently the Times of London ran a column by a writer who said she believes abortion is murder. - BUT that it was an act vital for women to assert their rights! This is what the new militant atheism and militant secularism are all about - an open rebellion against God. The diatribes against Pope Benedict XVI, the Catholic Church, and the Evangelicals churches which adhere to classical Christian doctrine constitute part of the secular drive against God.

David J Hartline has worked for 20 years as a Catholic school teacher, coach, principal and diocesan administrator. Frustrated because the good was not being reported, Hartline wrote The Tide is Turning Toward Catholicism which chronicles the many positive developments occurring in the Church.

Vatican posts $5.2 million loss
in 2009 but donations were up
by Nicole Winfield


Vatican City, July 10 (AP) -- The Vatican said Saturday it had posted its third straight financial loss, registering a euro4.1 million ($5.2 million) deficit for 2009.

The financial report released Saturday by the Holy See's press office listed revenues of euro 250.18 million against expenses of euro 254.28 million. Most of the expenses went to support Pope Benedict XVI's activities and the Holy See's offices, especially Vatican Radio, the report said.

In 2008, the Vatican was euro 900,000 in the red; a year earlier it posted a euro 9.06 million deficit.

The report said the separate administration of the Vatican City state was particularly hit by the economic crisis as well as by high costs to improve the Vatican's telecommunications system, restore its cultural treasures, and ensure security.

However cost-cutting allowed the tiny state to record a loss of only euro 7.81 million, less than half the euro 15.3 million it lost in 2008.

The Vatican said annual donations from churches worldwide, the so-called Peter's Pence, were up in 2009, with Catholics donating $82.52 million last year. In 2008, the faithful gave $75.8 million and $79.8 million in 2007. Leading donors were from the U.S., Italy and France.

The Pope uses the fund to help churches in poor countries and other charitable causes. In addition, the Vatican's bank, the Institute for Religious Works IOR), gave the Pope an additional euro 50 million in 2009 for his charities.

The Vatican has published the annual report since 1981, when Pope John Paul II ordered financial disclosure as part of his efforts to debunk the idea that the Vatican is rich.

Up until two years ago, the report was released on the same day a senior Vatican cardinal held a news conference to explain the financial picture.

Asked why such briefings are no longer scheduled, a Vatican official said they had been stopped because journalists asked "uncomfortable" questions. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue with the media. [And here I was thinking naively that Winfield for once was not putting in a quick jab!]

When Joaquin Navarro-Valls signed up in 2006 to be a columnist for La Repubblica, one had hoped he might write something weekly. Instead, he has written only occasionally, but when he does, what he says about Benedict XVI is doubly interesting, because it is refracted through the prism of his intimate knowledge of the Vatican gaiend from 20 years of working closely with John Paul II for over 20 years.


Benedict XVI's pastoral
ministry of intelligence
by JOAQUÍN NAVARRO-VALLS
Translated from

July 6, 2010

Many commentators, for obvious reasons, have concentrated their attention on an apparent 'discontinuity' between the long Pontificate of John Paul II and that of Benedict XVI.

Clearly, no two Pontificates can be equal, although the legacy of the past always falls squarely on the shoulders of the one man, who for 2,000 years has been destined to carry the burden of the Church for a certain time. That is why it is difficult, not to say impossible, to make appropriate comparisons.

Hoewever, each Pope's biography help us to understand the individual Pope. With Benedict XVI, one cannot ignore his long academic career and his extraordinary theological and intellectual course as Archbishop of Munich and then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when he was a close collaborator and intimate friend of John Paul II.

Thinking back to his intense career before he even became Pope, one must also remember all the difficulties he met along the way, confronting issues that had earlier not emerged so clearly as they do now: the crisis of the West, which has taken more and more the attributes of a devastating cultural relativism, to which has been added the difficult management of ecumenical relations in a rapidly-changing international context, and now, the internal problems of the Church, made worse by the vicious attacks on the priesthood, the pedophile scandal and the crisis in vocations.

Despite all this, Benedict XVI has shown himself perfectly able to comprehend and interpret the risks and challenges facing the Church today with far-sighted lucidity, never letting his guard down and providing secure leadership for Christianity.

His Magisterium can be summarized under three aspects:

The first is the wise and cultured interpretation that he has given, since his first homily as Pope in April 2005, to apostolic function.

In his homily upon taking possession of St. John Lateran, for instance, tne new Pope took the time to explain the significance of the ancient religious symbols before him - so remote from the mentality of today, but essential in order to understand the abiding faith of Christians.

He was thus performing a double operation: On the one hand, he did not aim to imitate John Paul II in his way of establishing an immediate relationship with the congregation. But on the other hand, he was placing his intelligence, his knowledge and his extraordinary theological wisdom in the service of the universal Church.

After John Paul II had returned the public presence of religion to modern-day practice in a way suitable to the times, Benedict XVI now re-proposes brilliantly the permanent and solid meanings of the truth about our faith.

Papa Ratzinger's thought is aimed at opening up the world to human religiosity, to a mature and rational consciousness of it.

These ends, like the two Pontificates themselves, are complementary.

Benedict XVI has been mapping out his apostolic style, in an increasingly clear way, as a pastoral ministry of intelligence. The expression was used by Benedict XVI himself to explain the criteria he has been following in presenting the Christian faith to the world.

An acute way to understand such ministry are the great universal catecheses that he has been giving during the Wednesday General audiences, in which he paints word portraits of the most important Christian figures in the history of the Church, starting with the Apostles.

The example may not be as apparent but it is nonetheless just as emblematic of the supreme importance to his intellectual vision of the
ratio fidei, the reason of the faith, or the role of reason in religion.

And in the now classic Regensburg lecture, he highlighted the very close bond between a detailed reading of Christianity and the profound roots of inter-religious and ecumenical dialog. It is an effort that he makes continually, as he did once more on his recent trip to Cyprus.

To paraphrase the medieval theologian Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, much loved by this Pope, one can say that according to Benedict XVI, faith has absolute primacy in defining the essence of Christianity - that only through believing in Christ is it possible to enter the ultimate inexhaustible mystery of truth.

The dialog among various confessions, united in a cultural front against non-believers, is made possible hrough the existence of a single rational horizon shared by them in common. Thus, faith always needs reason, in order to comprehend its truth and to make the intentions of believers effectively known to non-believers, as well as to those who doubt or who think differently.

The most effective aspect of this personal approach is the demanding argumentation on human rights. As he had previously done when he was a cardinal, with the atheist philosopher Juergen Habermas or in contexts as different as Oxford and New York, the Pope has argued that reason allows every man to grasp the dignity of the human being regardless of his culture or tradition or origin.

The argument leads basically to the fact that ethics is the final goal of any rational dialog among cultures.

In recent months, a new aspect of his Magisterium has been added to the two earlier aspects, to 0intelligence and ecumenism. That aspect is his reflection on moral evil.

In effect, in the face of the mediatic inflation of the scandals about pedophile priests, Benedict XVI has neither been defensive nor evasive.

Rather, the obvious presence of evil within the Church as in all of society has given him the opportunity to bring the theological question of sin into the center of the public debate.

From this point of view, his intellectual Magisterium and his wise perception of problems have proven to be an unparalleled resource that has enabled him to deal with the shame and humiliation to the Church brought on by the 'scandals', with great practical resolution and mature wisdom.

Because the crimes that gave rise to the scandals require not just mercy and penitence, but a precise assignment of responsibilities, appropriately severe punishment, and inflexible rigor.

"Forgiveness does not replace justice," Benedict XVI has said rightly. it is not difficult to recognize the great equlibrium that the Pope has sought between the opposing tendencies to forgive and to punish.

The Christian faith, in fact, throughout its long experience, has always called for an integral and careful evaluation of the inexhaustible mystery of evil, which like good, is an insuppressible tendency of the human being because it is rooted in the human heart itself.


From one Spaniard to another: Senor Restan masterfully ties together what has happened in the past week.

Benedict XVI:
The flight of the eagle
Translated from

7/9/10


I will always remember a comment made by a friend, hardly a conservative, who told me in the mid-1990S, "Razinger flies like an eagle, while his critics seem like rats".

They were the difficult years when the Prefect of the Doctrine for the Faith was doing all he could to comnbat a secularized theology that enjoyed great press.

We could say, with Ecclesiastes, that there is nothing new under the sun. Yes, there can be. Or at least, we see it better now.

One could say that the first half of 2010 was a veritable rack of torture for Benedict XVI, but he has used it as an opportunity to teach anew what Christianity is, an occasion to return to the sources of faith and to regenerate the Christian people.

There has been no respite for the Pope: his historical letter to the Catholics of Ireland; his apostolic visits to Malta, Portugal and Cyprus; his meeting with abuse victims in Malta; his leadership acclaimed by a popular rally in St. Peter's Square on May 16; his new emphasis on dialog and mission; the unforgettable conclusion of the Year for Priests; his new appointments to the Roman Curia and to important bishoprics ...

All this amidst all the muck that the most powerful media on earth have sought to pile on, in which he himself has often been the direct target - he, Benedict XVI, this Pope who is an unusual blend of intelligence and humility, of passion and serenity, a man who loves and trusts the living Tradition of the Church so much that he does not fear the disquieting questions posed by the present.

This week, the New York Times mounted its nth attack, outrageously ideological and full of deceitful constructions and coarse lies, against a man who chooses not to defend himself, against the Peter of the third millennium who does not quake at the persecutions but cries at the betrayal by men of the Church themselves.

Not just for the horrible sins against minors (against which he has launched a formidable operation of cleaning up and transparency) but for the immense damage to a faith they have contaminated and deformed, if not gutted.

Also this week, a miserable mimic of the New York Times, our own rancid El Pais, launched its own editorial pap concocted from wild lies. Though it is true that a certain part of the MSM have come to treat Peter as little more than garbage, one does expect a certain level of professionalism from the 'reputable' newspapers. What a naive hope!

But the misunderstanding and hate do not just come from outside the Church. La Repubblica boasted of an article by the so-called theologian Vito Mancuso, who launched total anathema against the Church of Benedict XVI as a den of evil, even as he sang the praises of an imagined community that is completely spiritual and spotless, democratic and self-governing, the new beginning for true Christianity. [I have avoided referring at all to this Mancuso nut, who is the culmination of all things wrong with liberal Catholics, who want nothing of the Church as it has been during two millennia but think their mere say-so will in itself 'create' the Church of their personal fancy, and annul everything they do not like about the Church as it is. But there you have it - Repubblica seems to have consecrated him co-Pope in their alternative universe along with founder-editorialist Eugenio Scalfari. Neither the New York Times, nor other Anglophone MSM, has anyone as outrageous, venomous and arrogant as these two self-proclaimed anti-Popes.]

On the other hand, there are those who murmur among themselves and wonder perversely why this Pope keeps his sword sheathed, why he does not sally forth actively against his enemies; who thinks and prays a lot, they say, but fails to use historical forces to defend the great legacy of Catholicism; who does not seem to understand that Peter's mission is to launch all-out war against the enemy in a new Battle of Solferino [the last battle in which reigning monarchs personally led their armies - Napoleon III of France and Vittorio Emmanuele of Sardinia defeated Franz Joseph II of Austria in 1859 in the Second Italian War for Independence].

But does this mean the Pope is alone, as so many analysts, even well-meaning ones, conclude so facilely? Not at all. First, because Benedict XVI has a unique genius, but he is not an asteroid from outer space. He is the product of his culture and his time, of the Church in the 20th century that maintained a vital, intellectual and emotional current nourished by the Spirit through those difficult decades.

He certainly does not lack associates with whom he lives a daily life of healthy affection and freedom, co-workers who are both loyal and frank, and who know as he does, that the response to these difficult times does not consist in prefabricated plans nor astute maneuvering.

The best response is the genuine daily conversion of Christians, even though this may sound strange to so many priests from both the right and the left.

Moreover, as on so many occasions throughout history, Peter has a special connection to the faithful, the 'simple' folk who are held in contempt by self-proclaimed 'adult Catholics' on both extremes.

Like the homeless woman who greeted him at the Caritas hostel in Rome's Stazione Termini: "Dear Holy Father, may God give you the strength to remain serene, strong and full of hope, as we are".

Or the lady who wrote Avvenire to say it is not she who supports the Pope, but he who supports her, simply by carrying out his daily duties.

Or the Sicilian family who, just 15 minutes after getting to St. Peter's Square last May 16, had to leave in a rush so as not to miss the train back home. Long enough to carry with them the Pope's message: "Let us move ahead together trustingly on this path, and may the trials that the Lord allows urge us to a more radical and consistent witness to our faith".

Just as he does with the regular folk, the Pope is just as tireless in seeking peace and communion in the episcopal college, doing so with admirable and unequalled mastery.

Let us not forget the letter he wrote to all the bishops of the world last year, after the dust-up over his having lifted the excommunication from the four Lefebvrian bishops - a letter that was almost breath-taking for its evangelical purity and authenticity.

Recently, we saw how he sought to re-establish confidence in the College of Cardinals by bringing together Cardinals Sodano and Schoenborn, or how he availed of the sad experience undergone by the former Bishop of Augsburg to paternally admonish the other German bishops, reminding them that "in a time of conflicts and uncertainties, the world expects of Christians a common witness that is inspired by our encounter with the risen Lord".

Last Sunday in Sulmona, paying tribute to Pietro del Morrone, the hapless Pope Celestine V, the Pope reminded the faithful that Jesus expects his disciples to announce the Gospel calmly, clearly and courageously - even in times of persecution - without yielding to the tempations of fashion nor to violence and imposition by force.

Afterwards, he told the young people of Sulmona that "faith and prayer do not resolve problems but they allow us to face them in an enlightened way and with new strength, in a way that is worthy of man".

He asked them to trust in the future because "if we look at the history of the Church, it is rich in the figures of saints who... enlightened by faith, were able to find creative solutions, always new, to respond to concrete human needs, throughout the centuries".

The young people were enchanted with their Pope. But, of course, it's not as if any of this means anything to the sages at the New York Times!

HAPPY NAME DAY ONCE AGAIN

TO OUR BELOVED HOLY FATHER!

July 11, Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time


ST. BENEDICT (BENEDETTO DA NURSIA) (Italy, 480-547), Father of Western Monasticism, Co-Patron of Europe


No papal stories in today's issue of OR.
Page 1 stories: At least 102 villagers killed by a Taliban suicide bomber in northwest Pakistan; European nations await results on 'stress test' by the European central bank on 91 banks to be known July 23; a story to recall the anniversary of the July 11-12, 1995 massacre committed by Serbo-Bosnian forces of 8,000 Serbian Muslims in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia; the total solar eclipse today on Easter Island off the Pacific coast of Ecuador which will last more than 5 minutes; and the case presented by Italy and nine other European countries seeking a reversal of a European Human Rights Court ruling last year against public display of the Crucifix in Italian schools.


THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus on the Feast of St. Benedict - On the first Angelus of his current summer vacation, the Holy Father
pays tribute to the patron of Europe and 'patron of my Pontificate'.

ANGELUS TODAY

In his first vacation Angelus this summer, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the parable of the Good Samaritan in today's Gospel, saying that for Christians, our 'neighbor' is anyone in need, especially those who are most marginalised.

He also paid tribute to St. Benedict whom the liturgy commemorates today, calling him 'the great patron of my Pontificate'.

And finally, the world's parish priest reminded the faithful to use their summer holiday to renew both body and spirit.

This is what he said in English:

---

I am happy to greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus prayer. Today’s Liturgy reminds us that to be Christians means to be faithful to the words and example of Jesus, especially by living a life of love of God and neighbour.

May the Lord give us grace and courage so that we may always respond generously, as good Samaritans, to the needs of all who suffer, near and far. I wish you all a pleasant stay in Castel Gandolfo and Rome and a blessed Sunday!

---

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

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

As you see, I have left Rome to spend the summer in Castel Gandolfo. I thank God for giving me this opportunity to rest. I address a heartfelt greeting to the dear residents of this beautiful little city, to which I always return gladly.

The Gospel this Sunday opens with a question from a doctor of the law to Jesus: "Master, what should I do to inherit eternal life?" (Lk 10,25).

Knowing that his questioner was an expert in Sacred Scriptures, the Lord asked the man himself to answer, who then, in fact, formulates his answer perfectly by citing the two principal commandments: love God with all your heart, mind and powers; and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Then the doctor of the law asks, almost in self-justification: "And who is my neighbor?" (Lk 10,29). This time, Jesus responds, with the famous parable of the Good Samaritan (cfr Lk 10,30-37), that it is for us to make ourselves 'neighbor' to whoever needs help.

Indeed, the Samaritan takes responsibility for the condition of an unknown man, whom bandits had left half dead on the highway - even as a priest and a Levite had simply walked on past him, perhaps thinking that contact with blood, according to a religious precept, would contaminate them.

The parable should lead us to change our mentality in order to be in accordance with the logic of Christ, which is the logic of charity: God is love, and to worship him means to serve our brothers with sincere and generous love.

This evangelical narrative offers us the 'standard of measure', namely, the 'universality of love directed towards the needy whom one encounters 'by chance' (cfr Lk 10,31).

Alongside this universal rule, there is also a specifically ecclesial demand: that "in the Church itself, insofar as it is a family, no member should suffer out of need" (ibid.) The program of the Christian, learning from the teaching of Jesus, is 'a heart that sees' where love is needed, and acts accordingly (cfr ivi,31).

Dear friends, I also wish to recall that today, the Church commemorates St. Benedict of Nursia - the great patron of my Pontificate - father and legislator of Western monasticism. As St. Gregory the Great wrote, "he was a man with a blessed life - by name and by grace" (Dialogi, II, 1: Bibliotheca Gregorii Magni IV, Roma 2000, p. 136).

"He wrote a Rule for monks - the mirror of a Magisterium incarnated in his person: in fact, the saint could absolutely not have been able to teach differently from how he lived" (Ivi, II, XXXVI: cit., p. 208).

Pope Paul VI proclaimed St. Benedict Patron of Europe on October 11, 1964, recognizing the wondrous work that he had carried out in the formation of European civilization.

Let us entrust our journey of faith to the Virgin Mary, especially during this season of holidays, so that our hearts may never lose sight of the Word of God and of our brothers in difficulty.

---

St. Benedict's Feast Day today, commemorating him as founder and Patron of Western monasticism, is one of five name days associated with Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI throughout the liturgical year - March 19 and May 1 for St. Joseph, and March 21 (death anniversary) and July 11 for St. Benedict, plus, as the Holy Father himself reminded us last year when he visited Padre Pio's shrine, June 21, feast of St. Aloysius Gonzaga (Alois is the Pope's second baptismal name). Not to mention that, providentially, in one of my favorite coincidences, April 17 is the liturgical feast day of St. Benedict Joseph Labre, that remarkable 18th-century French-born 'mendicant saint' of Rome.

Anyway, it's a good occasion to 'dust off' Benedict XVI's first General Audience as Pope on April 27, 2005, when he explained why he chose Benedict to be his papal name:



Reflection on why he chose
to be called Benedict

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I am pleased to welcome you and I address a cordial greeting to all of you present here, as well as to those who are following us via radio and television.

As I already expressed in the Sistine Chapel at my first Meeting with the Cardinals last Wednesday, mixed feelings fill my heart during these days when I am beginning my Petrine Ministry: amazement and gratitude to God who first of all surprised me by calling me to succeed the Apostle Peter; inner apprehension at the immensity of the task and the responsibility which have been entrusted to me.

However, the certainty of the help of God, of his Most Holy Mother, the Virgin Mary, and of the Patron Saints, gives me serenity and joy. I also find support in the spiritual closeness of the entire People of God who, as I had an opportunity to say last Sunday, I continue to ask to accompany me with their persistent prayers.



After the holy death of my Venerable Predecessor John Paul II, the traditional Wednesday General Audiences are resuming today. Thus, we are returning to normality.

At this first Meeting, I would like to begin by reflecting on the name that I chose on becoming Bishop of Rome and universal Pastor of the Church.


Three Benedicts.

I wanted to be called Benedict XVI in order to create a spiritual bond with Benedict XV, who steered the Church through the period of turmoil caused by the First World War. He was a courageous and authentic prophet of peace and strove with brave courage first of all to avert the tragedy of the war and then to limit its harmful consequences.

Treading in his footsteps, I would like to place my ministry at the service of reconciliation and harmony between persons and peoples, since I am profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is first and foremost a gift of God, a precious but unfortunately fragile gift to pray for, safeguard and build up, day after day, with the help of all.

The name "Benedict" also calls to mind the extraordinary figure of the great "Patriarch of Western Monasticism", St Benedict of Norcia, Co-Patron of Europe, together with Sts Cyril and Methodius, and the women Saints, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein.

The gradual expansion of the Benedictine Order that he founded had an enormous influence on the spread of Christianity across the Continent. St Benedict is therefore deeply venerated, also in Germany and particularly in Bavaria, my birthplace; he is a fundamental reference point for European unity and a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of his culture and civilization.

We are familiar with the recommendation that this Father of Western Monasticism left to his monks in his Rule: "Prefer nothing to the love of Christ" (Rule 72: 11; cf. 4: 21). At the beginning of my service as Successor of Peter, I ask St Benedict to help us keep Christ firmly at the heart of our lives. May Christ always have pride of place in our thoughts and in all our activities!

I think back with affection to my Venerable Predecessor John Paul II, to whom we are indebted for his extraordinary spiritual heritage.

"Our Christian communities", he wrote in his Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, "must become genuine "schools' of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly "falls in love'" (n. 33).

This is what Pope John Paul II did. He sought to put these instructions into practice himself, commenting on the Psalms of Lauds and Vespers at the most recent of his Wednesday Catecheses.

Just as at the beginning of his Pontificate John Paul II wanted to continue the reflections on the Christian virtues that his Predecessor had begun (cf. L'Osservatore Romano English edition, General Audience of 25 October 1978, p. 5), I also intend to continue in the coming months the reflections that he had prepared on the second part of the Psalms and Canticles which comprise Vespers. Next Wednesday, therefore, I will take up his Catecheses where he left off, after his General Audience last 26 January.

Dear Friends, thank you again for your visit, and thank you for the affection with which you surround me. I cordially reciprocate these sentiments with a special Blessing, which I impart to all of you here, to your relatives and to all your loved ones.

---

An excellent brief summation of the life of St. Benedict and his twin sister St. Scholastica, based on Pope St. Gregory the Great's famous account, can be found on
www.roca.org/OA/5/5k.htm

Perhaps the title of this piece is a bit presumptuous because the Lutherans are, after all, the first of all the churches and ecclesial commmunities that arose from the Reformation. Obviously there are Protestant individuals and groups, perhaps entire community congregations even, that have come to the point that led traditional Anglicans to actively seek communion with Rome and that Anglicanorum coetibus has now facilitated. But it's too early to say that a couple of priests, no matter how eminent, who have decided to 'cross the Tiber', are the harbinger swallows of an imminent season of conversion in the Lutheran world!


Are Lutherans next? Some now seek
full communion with the Catholic Church
By Deacon Keith Fournier

7/11/2010

---

With full awareness, therefore, at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome which Peter bathed in his blood, Peter's current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty.
- Benedict XVI
April 20, 2005
From his first message as Pope
at the Sistine Chapel Mass
with the College of Cardinals
the day after his election

---

CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) - On Tuesday, Peter Kemmether, a married 62-year-old father of four children was ordained to the Holy Priesthood by Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller. Fr. Peter was granted a dispensation from the canonical discipline of celibacy attached to priestly ordination.

He had been a Protestant Pastor who came into the full communion of the Catholic Church as the fruit of a sincere search for the fullness of the Christian faith.

On June 6, 2010, I read a story in the Philadelphia Inquirer entitled "The Priest and his Mrs." concerning now Fr. Philip Johnson, a Lutheran Pastor for 19 years, who followed a similar path. He was ordained for the Diocese of Camden with the same exception, under the sponsorship and invitation of Bishop Joseph Galante.

Catholics are becoming aware of the former Anglican and Episcopal ministers who have followed the same journey home. Fewer Catholics are aware of the marvelous welcome the Church has extended to many more through the historic apostolic constitution approved by Pope Benedict XI.

I have written extensively about this and recently shared my joy with our readers at the ordination of lifelong friend and pro-life hero Fr. Paul Schenck, whose ordination I had the privilege of attending last month. You can read my account here.

I am in a dialogue with Archbishop Irl A. Gladfelter, CSP, the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, a group of Lutherans who have embraced the Catholic Catechism and the teaching of the Magisterium. They are humbly knocking at the door of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith seeking a way into full communion. You can read about this amazing group here.

I am working on a fuller story of their journey. Some have said that their smallness and placement on "the fringes" of the Lutheran community makes them less representative. I recall that those were the same comments made about the "Traditional Anglican Communion" in their early efforts. They became the prophetic vehicle the Holy Spirit used to open up an historic breakthrough.

To be Catholic is to enter into the prayer of Jesus for the Unity of His Church. In Pope Benedict XVI's first Papal message he signaled his commitment to this unity:

---

Nourished and sustained by the Eucharist, Catholics cannot but feel encouraged to strive for the full unity for which Christ expressed so ardent a hope in the Upper Room.

The Successor of Peter knows that he must make himself especially responsible for his Divine Master's supreme aspiration. Indeed, he is entrusted with the task of strengthening his brethren (cf. Lk 22: 32).

With full awareness, therefore, at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome which Peter bathed in his blood, Peter's current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty.

---

He has placed the commitment to the full communion of the Church at the forefront of his Papacy. This is evident in his love, respect and repeated overtures toward our Orthodox brethren, whom we recognize as a Church and whose priesthood and Sacraments we also recognize.

However, this love is also evident in his outreach to the separated Christians of the Reformation communities of the West. On the 4th anniversary of the death of his predecessor, John Paul II, Pope Benedict reminded us of John Paul's passionate commitment to the full communion of the Church. That teaching is summarized in the Encyclical Letter "May they be One" (Ut Unum Sint).

The teaching of the Church is rooted in an ecclesiology of communion. John Paul II wrote:

---

It happens for example that, in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, Christians of one confession no longer consider other Christians as enemies or strangers but see them as brothers and sisters.

Again, the very expression "separated brethren" tends to be replaced today by expressions which more readily evoke the deep communion linked to the baptismal character which the Spirit fosters in spite of historical and canonical divisions.

Today we speak of "other Christians", "others who have received Baptism", and "Christians of other Communities". The Directory for the Application of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism refers to the Communities to which these Christians belong as "Churches and Ecclesial Communities that are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.

---

...
The broadening of vocabulary is indicative of a significant change in attitudes" There is an increased awareness that we all belong to Christ."(#42)

John Paul also wrote:

---

Relations between Christians are not aimed merely at mutual knowledge, common prayer and dialog. They presuppose and from now on call for every possible form of practical cooperation at all levels: pastoral, cultural and social, as well as that of witnessing to the Gospel message. Cooperation among all Christians vividly expresses that bond which already unites them, and it sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant.

---

This cooperation based on our common faith is not only filled with fraternal communion, but is a manifestation of Christ himself. Moreover, ecumenical cooperation is a true school of ecumenism, a dynamic road to unity. Unity of action leads to the full unity of faith:

---

Through such cooperation, all believers in Christ are able to learn easily how they can understand each other better and esteem each other more, and how the road to the unity of Christians may be made smooth. In the eyes of the world, cooperation among Christians becomes a form of common Christian witness and a means of evangelization which benefits all involved. (#40)

---

I embrace the Catholic claim that the fullness of truth is found within the Catholic Church and carry a burden to see the prayer of Jesus recorded in St. John, Chapter 17, answered. There is a connection.

Into a world that is fractured, divided, wounded, filled with "sides" and "camps" at enmity with one another, the Church is called to proclaim, by both word and deed, the unifying love of a living God.

The heart of the "Gospel" is the message that in and through Jesus Christ, authentic unity with God - and through Him, in the Spirit, with one another - is not only possible but is the plan of God for the entire human race. The Church is the way. It was not the Lord's plan that she be divided. It is His Plan that she be restored to full communion....

Are Lutherans next? We shall see. However, the Holy Spirit is clearly at work. We should welcome these wonderful stories as they increase, and pray for the plan of the Lord for the full communion of all Christians to unfold.

Monday, July 12, 14th Week in Ordinary Time

I have been unable to find individual images online. hence these generic pictures.
SAINTS JOHN JONES (1530-1598) and JOHN WALL (1620-1679), Franciscans and Martyrs
Jones, who was Welsh, and Wall, who was English, both became Franciscans after years as being diocesan priests. They lived a century apart, but their biographies
were similar. Both went abroad for some time and returned to England to serve in secret during times of great anti-Catholic persecution. Both were eventually arrested,
imprisoned and executed - hanged, drawn and quartered according to the practice of those days. They are among the 40 men and women of England and Wales who
were martyred between 1535 and 1679, and were canonized together in October 1970. The Feast of the 40 Martyrs is celebrated on Oct. 25.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/071210.shtml

No OR today.


The Holy Father has named Maronite missionary Antonio Chouweifaty of Lebanon as a Promoter of Justice
for the Tribunal of the Rota Romana (canonical court that adjudicates marriage annulments).

Good follow-up story from Malta, as well as the first photo released of the Pope meeting an abuse victim - an official Vatican photograph given to one of the men who met the Pope in Malta on April 18.


Malta archbishop follows through
with 'abuse victims'
by Herman Grech

July 11, 2010


LA VALLETTA - The men allegedly abused by clergymen were last week invited to the Archbishop's residence for a private meeting in another bridge-building exercise.

The "emotional" gathering took place last Wednesday in Attard as the Curia tries to drive the message home that it is seriously tackling the paedophilia claims against four priests who once served at a St Venera orphanage.


Lawrence Grech with the Holy Father on April 18.

Lawrence Grech, one of the alleged victims, told The Sunday Times after the meeting: "All of us are finally happy about the way our case is being tackled - even though I strongly believe our appeals were only heeded because of media pressure."

The 37-year-old added he had no reason, however, to doubt the integrity of Archbishop Paul Cremona, who presented each of the seven men with the official photographs taken with Pope Benedict XVI during their meeting with him when the Pontiff visited Malta last April.

Joseph Magro, another former resident of St Joseph Home, said the abuse case was not mentioned during last Wednesday's meeting with the Archbishop, though Mgr Cremona at one point did remark that "good was coming out of the bad".

The alleged victims had repeatedly accused the Church and especially its Response Team of doing its utmost to dismiss their claims as mere fabrications.

"Things have changed since Mgr Charles Scicluna, (the Vatican's Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) got involved in the case. There's certainly been a change in attitude from the Maltese Church," Mr Magro said. Still, he is not very hopeful of the outcome of Tuesday's meeting with the Response Team.

"I'm happy I relayed my experiences to Mgr Scicluna but I'm not optimistic or interested in a meeting with a Response Team which has asked me to testify after seven years. But I will go because I have to do my duty."

Thirteen men in total have claimed they were abused during their time in a St Venera orphanage some 20 years ago. They first made their case public in 2003, but the matter is still pending before the court and the Curia's Response Team, which was set up to investigate abuse cases.

Mgr Scicluna is expected to wrap up his inquiry by the end of summer. Should it be established that the priests committed abuse, they could be defrocked. Sources said the court case could also be concluded by the end of the year.

The Benedict XVI news 'lists' online today are still predominantly stuck on last week's news - the Vatican's 2009 financial statement ['Vatican in the red three years in a row but donaitons up' appears to be the line], the Vatican names the Pope's delegate to overhaul the Legionaries of Christ, and Prince Charles not attending any of the papal events in September. The most preposterous headline on the latter was "Pope 'too busy' to meet with Charles"! Nonetheless, this blog from The New Statesman seems to be a more informed account.

How Charles wrote himself
out of the Papal visit
Did the Prince sulkily refuse to meet Benedict because he wasn't put on par with his mother?
And if so, what does that tell us about the heir to the throne?
by James Macintyre

10 July 2010 22:27

Prince Charles has caused anger in London and Rome after declining an invitation from the Pope to attend an inter-faith in the UK event allegedly after being denied a one-to-one audience on a par with the Queen, sources have revealed.

Previously, the Guardian has touched on the fact that the Pope will not meet Charles, and the Mail on Sunday's take will be that it is a "snub" on behalf of the Pope. What is clear is that -- as it stands -- the Prince of Wales will now play no part in the Papal visit in September. The key question, though, is why.

It is because -- to the dismay of some close to the visit's planning -- he actually turned down an invitation from the Vatican to attend an inter-faith event at St. Mary's University teacher training college in Twickenham on 17 September, despite the Prince's proclaimed interest in inter-faith issues.

The Prince's refusal to attend came after Clarence House apparently sought a private meeting with the Pope of the sort his mother, the Queen, will enjoy when they lunch together at Holyrood House in Edinburgh at the start of the Papal trip.

Sources say that there was no room for Benedict XVI to hold another one to one meeting with a royal and that Clarence House has formally declined the Pope's invitation to the inter-faith event.

When I called Clarence House, a spokeswoman said that the Prince's agenda is only made public two weeks in advance. Intriguingly, Charles's office referred the matter to Buckingham Palace.

The extraordinary behaviour by the heir to the throne will cause speculation that he was more concerned with being seen on the same level as the Queen than meeting the Pope. Relations between Clarence House and Buckingham Palace are notoriously poor.

If it is true, as one source put it, that Charles "threw his toys out the pram" over the Papal visit, then this should be seen in the context of the bizarre self-obsession that appears to govern Clarence House.

Charles has proved time and again that he has a pitiful concept of his role, with his willingness to swing in and out of politics like a hammer in a tea-shop.

Many observers will conclude that, if he wants to be king it is high time he put his duties before himself.

Magister's title for this piece is
Defenders of Tradition want the infallible Church back:
They are pleading with the Pope to condemn ex cathedra the errors of Vatican Council II.
A new book by Romano Amerio is giving new force to their request.
But Benedict XVI doesn't agree.
I believe it is unnecessarily hyperbolic and sweeping, and moreover, it does not, in fact, represent what the article itself says. It is also a flagrant misrepresentation of what the Pope can or cannot do about what an ecumenical council says officially, so I will go with a headline that represents what the article actually says.


Some defenders of Catholic tradition
want definitive clarity on
ambiguous Vatican II statements



ROME, July 12, 2010 – A new volume by Romano Amerio is out in Italian bookstores, the third of the author's "opera omnia" being published by Lindau.

Amerio, who died in 1997 at the age of 92 in Lugano, Switzerland, was one of the greatest Christian intellectuals of the twentieth century.

A philologist and philosopher of the first rank, Amerio became known all over the world for his book first published in 1985 and translated into multiple languages, Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century.

That book, precisely because of the ideas it supports, earned Amerio ostracism in practically the entire Catholic world - an ostracism rrconsidered only recently, thanks in part to the re-publication of Iota Unum.

Amerio dedicated half a century to writing Iota Unum. The third volume of his "opera omnia" covers a much longer span, from 1935 to 1996. It is entitled Zibaldone, and – like the work of the same name by the poet Giacomo Leopardi – it is a collection of brief thoughts, aphorisms, stories, citations from classics, moral dialogues and commentaries on events of the day.

With its more than seven hundred thoughts, "Zibaldone" is a sort of intellectual autobiography, in which the questions raised in Iota Unum are naturally present.

As in this entry dated May 2, 1995:

---

The self-demolition of the Church deplored by Paul VI in the famous speech at the Lombard Seminary on September 11, 1974, is becoming clearer by the day.

Even during the council itself, Cardinal Heenan (Primate of England) complained that the bishops had ceased exercising the office of the magisterium, but comforted himself with the observation that this office was fully preserved in the Roman pontificate.

The observation was and is false. Today the episcopal magisterium has ceased, and that of the pope as well. Today the magisterium is exercised by theologians who have shaped all of the opinions of the Christian people, and have disqualified the dogma of the faith.

I heard an astonishing demonstration of this while listening to the theologian of Radio Maria last night. With boldness and great tranquility, he denied articles of the faith.

He taught [...] that the pagans to whom the Gospel is not proclaimed, if they follow the dictates of natural justice and try to seek God with sincerity, will go to the beatific vision. This modern doctrine goes back to the ancient Church, but it was always condemned as error.

But the ancient theologians, while upholding firmly the dogma of the faith, nevertheless were aware of all of the difficulty that dogma can encounter, and tried to overcome it with profound argumentation.

Some modern theologians, however, do not perceive the intrinsic difficulties of dogma, but run straight to the lectio facilior [easy reading], sweeping all the doctrinal decrees of the magisterium under the rug.

And they do not realize that by doing this they negate the value of baptism and the entire supernatural order, our whole religion.

Rejection of the magisterium is widespread on other points as well. Hell, the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the immutability of God, the historicity of Christ, the unlawfulness of sodomy, the sacred and indissoluble nature of matrimony, the natural law, the primacy of the divine are other arguments in which the magisterium of the theologians has eliminated the magisterium of the Church.

This arrogance of the theologians is the most visible phenomenon of self-demolition.

---

[Doubtless, Amerio was too sweeping in using the word 'eliminate' to define the destructive work wrought by the 'spirit of Vatican II' theologians, whose views did manage to predominate - to an extent that would have killed Paul VI with mortal anguish if he had been aware of it when, in 1972, he deplored the 'fumes of Satan' infiltrating the Church.

Amerio perhaps failed to count on theologians like Joseph Ratzinger who see Vatican II as renewal in continuity with Tradition and have kept the Church's Magisterium intact and very much alive. In fact, on all the specific dogmatic issues mentioned, Benedict XVI has consistently and frequently upheld the Church's traditional teaching.]

From this strongly critical analysis, which he also applied to Vatican Council II, Amerio drew what Enrico Maria Radaelli, his faithful disciple and editor of the opera omnia, calls the "great dilemma at the heart of Christianity today" - whether there has been continuity or rupture in the magisterium of the Church before and after Vatican II. If it was a rupture that amounts to a "loss of truth," the Church would be lost as well.

[I disagree that it remains a 'dilemma' at all. Yes, it is still very much an issue because the 'spiritists' are not giving up without a pitched last-ditch stand. But in the Church under Benedict XVI, it is no longer a dilemma at all. 'Renewal in continuity with Tradition' is very much the conventional perspective today on Vatican II.]

Amerio never went so far as to support this outcome. Not only was he always an obedient son of the Church. He knew by faith that, in spite of everything, the Church cannot lose truth and therefore itself, because it is assisted indefectibly "by the two great oaths of Our Lord" 'The gates of hell shall not prevail against it' (Matthew 16:18) and 'I will be with you all days, until the end of the ages' (Matthew 28:20)."

But it was Amerio's conviction – and Radaelli explains this well in his extensive afterword to Zibaldone – that this protection guaranteed to the Church by Christ applies only to ex cathedra dogmatic definitions of the magisterium, not to the uncertain, fleeting, debatable "pastoral" teachings of Vatican Council II and of the following decades.

Precisely this, in fact, in the view of Amerio and Radaelli, is the cause of the crisis in the conciliar and postconciliar Church, a crisis that has brought it extremely close to its "impossible but also almost accomplished" perdition - the intention to give up on an imperative magisterium, on dogmatic definitions "unequivocal in language, certain in content, compulsory in form, as one would expect that at least the teachings of a council would be."

The result, according to Amerio and Radaelli, is that Vatican Council II is full of vague, equivocal assertions that can be interpreted in different ways, some of them even in definite opposition with the previous Magisterium of the Church. [????]

This ambiguous pastoral language is believed to have paved the way for a Church that today is "overrun by thousands of doctrines and hundreds of thousands of nefarious customs" - including in art, music, liturgy.

What should be done to remedy this disaster? Radaelli's proposal goes beyond the one made recently – on the basis of equally harsh critical judgments – by another respected scholar of the Catholic tradition, Thomist theologian Brunero Gherardini, 85, canon of the basilica of Saint Peter, professor emeritus of the Pontifical Lateran University, and editor of the magazine Divinitas.

Monsignor Gherardini advanced his proposal in a book released in Rome last year, entitled: Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II. Un discorso da fare [The subtitle translates diomatically as 'An argument that needs to be made']

The book concludes with a "Plea to the Holy Father" - to have the documents of the Council re-examined, in order to clarify once and for all "if, in what sense, and to what extent" Vatican II is or is not in continuity with the previous magisterium of the Church.

Gherardini's book is introduced by two prefaces: one by Albert Malcolm Ranjith, archbishop of Colombo and former secretary of the Vatican congregation for divine worship, and the other by Mario Olivieri, bishop of Savona. The latter writes that he joins toto corde (with all his heart) in the plea to the Holy Father.

In his afterword to Amerio's Zibaldone, Professor Radaelli welcomes Monsignor Gherardini's proposal, but "only as a helpful first step in purifying the air from many, too many misunderstandings."

Clarifying the meaning of the conciliar documents, in fact, is not enough in Radaelli's judgment, if such a clarification is then offered to the Church with the same ineffective style of pastoral "teaching" that entered into use with the council, suggestive rather than imperative. [But if the clarification is made by the Pope ex cathedra, then it ceases to be merely 'pastoral' teaching and becomes part of the Magisterium.]

If abandoning the principle of authority and "discussionism" have been the afflictions of the conciliar and postconciliar Church, Radaelli writes that healing them requires doing the opposite.

The upper hierarchy of the Church must close the discussion with a dogmatic proclamation "ex cathedra," infallible and obligatory. It must strike with anathema those who do not obey, and bless those who obey. [Surely, Romerio - and Radaelli - knew/knows that only the Pope can do all that. 'The upper hierarchy' cannot independently make a dogmatic proclamation not asserted first by the Pope!]

And what does Radaelli expect the supreme cathedra of the Church to decree? Just like Amerio, he is convinced that in at least three cases there has been "an abysmal rupture of continuity" between Vatican II and the previous magisterium:

- Where the council affirms that the Church of Christ "subsists in" the Catholic Church instead of saying that it "is" the Catholic Church;

- Where it asserts that "Christians worship the same God worshiped by the Jews and Muslims"; and

- in the declaration on religious freedom "Dignitatis Humanae."

In Benedict XVI, both Gherardini and Amerio-Radaelli see a friendly Pope. But there is no chance that he will grant their requests. [i.e., he will not declare Vatican II in error on those points, but he will continue trying to affirm that Vatican-II texts must be interpreted as renewal in continuity with Tradition.]

On the contrary, both on the whole and on some controversial points, Papa Ratzinger has already made it known that he does not at all share their positions.

For example, in the summer of 2007 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made a statement on the continuity of meaning between the formulas "is" and "subsists in," affirming that "the Second Vatican Council neither changed nor intended to change [the previous doctrine on the Church], rather it developed, deepened and more fully explained it". [That clarification is very definitive and ex cathedra - and continuing to split hairs whether Vatican II should have left the verb 'est' instead of 'subsistit' is insubstantial except to Latin language purists.]

As for the declaration on religious freedom Dignitatis Humanae, Benedict XVI himself has explained that, if it departed from previous "contingent" indications of the magisterium, it did so precisely to "recover the deepest patrimony of the Church."

Benedict XVI defended the orthodoxy of Dignitatis Humanae in his landmark address to the Vatican curia on the first Christmas of his pontificate, precisely to maintain that there is no rupture between Vatican Council II and the previous magisterium of the Church, but "reform in continuity."

[He has also expressed himself rather forcefully on 'the God of Jesus Christ' and the God prayed to by Muslims, in his remarks to the first Schuelerkreis seminar in Castel Gandolfo in 2005 and on other occasions after that.]

Papa Ratzinger has not yet convinced the Lefebvrists, who remain in a state of schism on this crucial point [and a couple of other Vatican-II specifics]. Nor, going by Radelli and Gherardini, other Catholics who are "absolutely obedient in Christ."


Clearly, bred-in-the-bone traditionalists should take a cue from Benedict XVI who upholds Vatican II, not just because he participated in it, but because the teachings of an ecumenical Council are just as much part of the Church Magisterium as Scriptures, received Tradition (including the Fathers of the Church], and the ex-cathedra teachings of the Popes.

Therefore, he cannot legislate anything, or say anything ex cathedra, that directly contradicts whatever is stated in the 16 official Vatican II documents. He can only interpret the ambiguities in a way that shows continuity with Tradition, as he has done whenever the occasion arises. And he is uniquely in a position to do that because he did take part in the Council and the stormy debates behind the language eventually adapted.

All the Council histories point out that the language ambiguities found in these documents were deliberately decided on, in order to arrive at a consensus between the 'conservative' and 'progressive' Fathers.

That is why the post-Conciliar ideological battle that ensued was really a battle on the correct interpretation of the Vatican II documents, not just on specific points, but on the entire 'spirit' of the Council itself.

I have not yet found a suitable brief and clear discussion on the Magisterium and its various levels, but in this respect, Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church proclaimed by Vatican II,
www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium...
is very clear about the teaching authority of the Pope. It is worth quoting, especially because dissenting bishops and theologians seem not to have read it at all, the way they have set themselves up to be fully equivalent to the Successor of Peter in declaring and imposing their own personal beliefs on the universal Church.

---

From Paragraph 25 of Lumen Gentium:

Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matters of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent.

This religious submission of mind and will must be shown in a special way to the authentic magisterium of the Roman Pontiff, even when he is not speaking ex cathedra; that is, it must be shown in such a way that his supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him are sincerely adhered to, according to his manifest mind and will.

His mind and will in the matter may be known either from the character of the documents, from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or from his manner of speaking.

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ's doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.(40*)

[G]This is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church, whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith.[41*) [This reaffirms teh Magisterium of an ecumenical council, e.g., Vatican II itself.]

And this infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed His Church to be endowed in defining doctrine of faith and morals, extends as far as the deposit of Revelation extends, which must be religiously guarded and faithfully expounded.

And this is the infallibility which the Roman Pontiff, the head of the college of bishops, enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith,(166) by a definitive act he proclaims a doctrine of faith or morals.(42*)

And therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly styled irreformable, since they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, promised to him in blessed Peter, and therefore they need no approval of others, nor do they allow an appeal to any other judgment.

For then the Roman Pontiff is not pronouncing judgment as a private person, but as the supreme teacher of the universal Church, in whom the charism of infallibility of the Church itself is individually present, he is expounding or defending a doctrine of Catholic faith.(43*)

The infallibility promised to the Church resides also in the body of Bishops, when that body exercises the supreme magisterium with the successor of Peter. To these definitions the assent of the Church can never be wanting, on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit, by which the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in unity of faith.(44*)

But when either the Roman Pontiff or the Body of Bishops together with him defines a judgment, they pronounce it in accordance with Revelation itself, which all are obliged to abide by and be in conformity with, that is, the Revelation which as written or orally handed down is transmitted in its entirety through the legitimate succession of bishops and especially in care of the Roman Pontiff himself, and which under the guiding light of the Spirit of truth is religiously preserved and faithfully expounded in the Church.(45*)

---

It has been infuriating that 'spiritists' bandy about 'lack of collegiality' as a universal pretext for any opposition to the Papal Magisterium - and completely ignore the requisite 'in communion with the Roman Pontiff' that consistently accompanies the term 'collegiality' in the Vatican II documents.

I very much hope that as soon as the Holy Father winds up his catecheses on the great Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, he will start a cycle on the systematic interpretation of Vatican II. Perhaps the one great oversight by Paul VI in the immediate post-Conciliar period was NOT to undertake a systematic review of what Vatican-II decided and how those decisions must be interpreted - especially since they included an overnight drastic revision of the Mass in a way uunprecedented in tehChurch's history. Issues regarding Vatican-II have only ever been tackled sporadically and partially whenever one of them is the center of controversy*.

I think it is urgent that before the first half-century anniversary in 2015 of the conclusion of Vatican-II, the outstanding issues related to it must be systematically ventilated and clarified by Benedict XVI, than whom the Church cannot have a better guide on Vatican II now or ever again!


*P.S. In a way, the Catechism of the Catholic Church already spells out the Church's orthodox interpretation of all the points made in the Vatican II documents, because the project was undertaken as one of the outcomes of the 1985 special Bishops' Synod called by John Paul II to review what Vatican II actually taught. Without the Catechism, much of what that Synod discussed would be nothing more than acvhival material. [The idea for such a catechism, as George Weigel points out in his biography of John Paul II, came from Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston.]

But the Catechism is a very broad and complex reference, in very formal language, that does not lend itself to topical discussions pegged to current events. And the Vatican-II references are necessarily diffused throughout the text.

On the other hand, a series of catecheses by Benedict XVI on what Vatican-II actually said and what it meant will focus public attention on the individual issues that remain a bone of contention fought over by extremists on both sides.

Yes, it will spur the 'spiritists' to new flights of invective, but Benedict XVI will have anticipated and preempted all their attempted ripostes in the catecheses themselves. And their invective cannot prevail against the moderation and good sense of this Pope's teaching.

Two stories in the Catholic media that only came out today because they are about a news event that took place on Saturday nonetheless deserve to be read because they show a more comprehensive summary of the Vatican financial statements for 2009 than earlier reports did. Also, one news agency report had said 'most of the Vatican expenses went to support the Pope's activities' without any attempt to support the lie!


Major renovations, sluggish economy
keep Vatican budgets in the red
By Carol Glatz


VATICAN CITY, July 12 (CNS) -- Major renovations, infrastructure upgrades and a sluggish global economy left the Vatican City State budget in the red; however, donations to the Pope were up from recent years.

The 2009 fiscal period marked the third year in a row that Vatican expenses outpaced revenues.

The budget of Vatican City State, which includes the Vatican Museums and post office, ended 2009 with a deficit of $9.8 million, the Vatican said in notes on the budget released July 10.

The separate budget of the Holy See, which includes the offices of the Roman Curia, finished 2009 with a registered deficit of more than $5.15 million.

The figures were released in early July after a three-day meeting of a council of cardinals charged with reviewing the Vatican budgets.

In explaining the city-state's deficit, the council's press statement mentioned that the Vatican Museums had opened new exhibition spaces and had extended visiting hours, which means the payroll grew.

Vatican City is also launching a major overhaul of its telecommunications infrastructure in which a high-speed fiber optic network will be installed over some 250 miles.

Building, maintenance and restoration work on the colonnade in St. Peter's Square and on the basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major required substantial expenditures, the release said.

In addition, "the costs sustained for security inside Vatican City State" and for the major renovation of the Vatican Library, which should open in September, added to the deficit, it said.

The budget of the Holy See saw $319.6 million in outlays and $314.4 million in revenues including $62.8 million from the Institute for the Works of Religion, otherwise known as the Vatican bank.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican Press office, told journalists July 12 that the institute was just one of a number of foundations that donates money to fund religious activity of the Holy See.

It was the first time the budgetary council publicly listed the institute as a contributor, even though it is a regular donor, he said. It was the highest donor among foundations last year, he added.

The budget of the Holy See includes the Vatican Secretariat of State and its diplomatic missions around the world, Vatican congregations and pontifical councils, the Holy See's investment portfolio and properties, as well as the Vatican's newspaper, radio, publishing house and television production center.

Among expenditures for the Holy See, the most substantial item is the wages of its 2,762 employees. Vatican City State covered the payroll of 1,891 people last year and about 4,587 former employees received pensions from the Vatican.

The Vatican statement included a report on two special sources of income: the Peter's Pence collection, which is used by the pope for charity and emergency assistance; and the contributions of dioceses around the world made to support Vatican operations.

In 2009, Peter's Pence collected $82.5 million, nearly $7 million more than 2008.

Catholics in the United States were the top contributors to Peter's Pence, followed by Catholics in Italy and Germany, it said. But the Vatican added that in relation to their small Catholic populations, the Catholic communities of South Korea and Japan sent significant donations.

The contributions of dioceses amounted to just over $31.5 million, an increase of $2.3 million from the 2008 figure, the Vatican said. Dioceses in the United States gave the most, followed by dioceses in Germany, the Vatican said. [I think that says something significant about the Church in Germany - for all its reduced numbers, the remaining members still have contributed more than any other country except the United States (which has some 60 million Catholics against Germany's 25 milli0n(those who state Catholic membership for tqax purposes).]


Here's the Vatican account:

HOLY SEE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR 2009


VATICAN CITY, 10 JUL 2010 (VIS) - The forty-fifth meeting of the Council of Cardinals for the Study of Organisational and Economic Problems of the Holy See was held in the Vatican from 7 to 9 July, under the presidency of Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B.

A communique published this afternoon explains that the Holy See consolidated financial statements for 2009, presented to the cardinals during the meeting by Archbishop Velasio De Paolis C.S., president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, show a deficit of 4,102,156 euro, the difference between an income of 250,182,364 euro and outgoings of 254,284,520 euro.

The outgoings are due above all to the ordinary and extraordinary expenses of the dicasteries and offices of the Holy See, which employ 2,762 people of whom 766 are ecclesiastics, 344 religious and 1,652 lay people.

The meeting also examined the consolidated financial statements of the Governorate of Vatican City State for 2009, which show a deficit of 7,815,183 euro. This represents an improvement with respect to last year which showed a loss of more than 15 million euro. A total of 1,891 people work under the jurisdiction of the Governorate.

The communique highlights "the considerable economic and financial burden of protecting, evaluating and restoring the artistic heritage of the Holy See (major restoration work on the Colonnade of St. Peter's Square, and work on the papal basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls and St. Mary Major).

Equally high costs were sustained for the internal security of Vatican City State and for important restructuring work in the Vatican Apostolic Library, which is due to reopen this September".

Finally the consolidated financial statements of Peter's Pence were also presented. This fund consists of offers made to the Holy Father by the particular Churches, especially for the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, and contributions by institutes of consecrated life, societies of apostolic life, foundations and various members of the faithful. In 2009 a total of 65,688,141 euro was raised, an increase with respect to last year.

"The largest contributions [for Peter's Pence] in 2009 came from Catholics in the United States, Italy and France. Particularly significant, considering the number of Catholics, were the contributions from Korea and Japan".

The dioceses, depending on their resources and in keeping with canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law, donated 25,066,541 euro. The largest donations came from dioceses in the United States, followed by those of Germany.

The communique concludes by noting that the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) donated some 50 million euros for the activities of the Holy Father.


I do not know why VIS did not simply translate the Press Communique on Saturday, which was far more informative. Since it did not, here is the full translation - and I must admit I should have translated it on Saturday! - because as usual with most news, it is best to go to the original statement


THE FULL COMMUNIQUE
FROM THE VATICAN
Translated from

July 10, 2010

---

On Wednesday to Friday, July 7-9, the 45th meeting took place of the Council of Cardinals for the STUdy of Organizational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, presided over by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, SDB.

Taking part were Cardinals Roger Mahony of Los Angeles (USA), Antonio Maria Rouco Varela of Madrid, Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, Wilfrid Fox Napier of Durban (South Africa), Anthony Olubunmi Okogie of Lagos (Nigeria), Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne of Lima (Perù), George Pell of Sydney (Australia), Marc Ouellet of Québec (Canada), Agostino Vallini of Roma, Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino of Caracas (Venezuela), Nicholas Cheong Jinsuk of Seoul (South Korea), and Odilo Pedro Scherer of São Paulo (Brazil).

The Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See was represented by its president, Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, C.S.; its secretary, Mons. Vincenzo Di Mauro, and its general auditor, Dott. Stefano Fralleoni.

The Governatorate of Vatican City State and the Administration of the Holy See Patrimony (APSA) were represented by Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo and Mons. Carlo Maria Vigano, president and secretary general of the Governatorate, and by Cardinal Attilio Nicora and Mons. Domenico Calcagno, president and secretary-general, respectively of APSA.

At the invitation of the Secretary of State, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, director of Vatican Radio, and Dott. Alberto Gasbarri, coordinator of papal trips, presented reports affecting their respective competencies.

The Council of Cardinals discussed the following reports:

- Consolidated Financial Statement of the Holy See for 2009

- Financial Statement of the Governatorate of Vatican City State for 2009

- Peter's Pence and contributions raised in 2009 (according to Can. 1271 of the Code of Canon Law).

Mons. De Paolis discussed the statement for the Holy See which registered 250,182,364 euros in revenue, and expenses of 254,284,520 euros, with a deficit of 4,102,156 euros, in 2009.

The expenses were largely for to the ordinary and extraordinary expenses of the dicasteries and organisms of the Holy See whose specific activities contribute to the pastoral care exercised by the Supreme Pontiff over the universal Church.

These expenses included the entire communications system of the Holy See, particularly that of Vatican Radio.

The Vatican employs a total of 2,762 persons, of whom 766 are priests, 344 religious (261 men and 83 women), and 1,652 laymen (1,201 men and 451 women).

Mons. Di Paolis then presented the statement for the Governatorate which manages the territory of Vatican City State and its institutions and structures, in support of the Holy See.

Like other states, Vatican state continued to be affected by the international economic and financial crisis, closing 2009 with a total deficit of 7,815,183 euros. This represents an improvement of almost 7.5 million from the deficit incurred in 2008, much of it achieved by cost-cutting and substantial recovery from investment losses in 2008.

The activities of the Governatorate are independent of contributions from the Holy See or other institutions in that it provides for its own administrative costs from its direct revenues [mostly from the Vatican Museums and the Vatican Post Office].

The Governatorate employes 1,891 persons, including 38 male religious, 27 female religious,1,543 laymen and 283 laywomen.

In 2009, the Governatorate along with the Holy See, undertook a porject study for an integrated communications infrastructure system for telephone, Internet and video.

Continuing commitments from previous years, it has also provided for the protection and appreciation of the Vatican's artistic patrimony, particularly the Vatican Museums, where it has expanded the areas for exposition as well as museum hours.

Equally important is the economic and financial commitment for the protection, appreciation and restoration of the Holy See's artistic patrimony - including major restoration work of all the architectonic components of the Colonnade in St. Peter's Square; and restorations in the papal basilicas of San Giovanni in laterano, Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo fuori le Mura.

Just as relevant were the costs for security within Vatican City State and the major renovation of the Vatican Apostolic Library which will reopen in September after three years of work.

Mons. Di Paolis then presented the situation of the Holy See's pension funds, which has been paying benefits to 4,587 individuals as of 12/31/2009.

The above financial statements were all duly audited, verified and certified.

Separately presented was the activity regarding Peter's Pence, consisting of all the contributions made to the Holy Father by the local Churches around the world, culminating annually on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul; by institutes of consecrated life and societies of apostolic life, by various foundations, and by individual Catholics.

The total in 2009 was $82,529,417 - an increase over the contributions made in 2008. The major contributions in 2009 came from the Catholics of the United States, Italy and France [Now, that's another surprise!], and, in relation to their Catholic population, from Korea and Japan.

In support of the central structure of the Church, the local bishops, attesting to their link of unity and charity with Rome, contributed, $31,516,029. The contribution from each diocese depends on what it can afford, and is made under Canon 1271 of the Code of Canon Law. The major contributions came from the United States, followed by Germany.

Not included in these statements is the 0.008 share of Italian tax revenues that goes annually to the Church in Italy - not to the Holy See - under the terms of the Lateran Pacts, to support the ecclesial and charitable activities of the local churches. [The Italian bishops' conference, which administers the fund, also uses part of it to help poor dioceses and charities around the world.]

Donations from other institutions includes the 50 million euros donated by IOR for the religious and charitable activities of the Holy Father.

At the end of the three-day meeting, the Council members expressed their gratitude to all those who, often anonymously and generously, sustain the apostolic and charitable ministry of the Holy Father in the service of the universal Church.

---

This report comes from a Mexico City newspaper, so one imagines the writer had a direct source from the LC. The picture of the Pope's letter to De Paolis is from Milenio, while the pictures of De Paolis with the Pope are from the website of Regnum Christi, the LC lay movement.


Pope's delegate had first meeting
with Legionaries leaders on Saturday
by Eugenia Jimenez
Translated from

July 12, 2010



Pope Benedict XVI's personal delegate to the Legionaries of Christ, the troubled Congregation founded by the Mexican Fr. Marcial Maciel, met Saturday with the Superior and General Council of the order, and explained to them that the Pope has asked him to reform the LC constitutions to get started on the path of renewal, and to call an Extraordinary Chapter General of the order to approve the new statutes.

In his letter appointing De Paolis, the Pope urges a profound review of the congregation's specific charism.

The meeting took place at the Legionaries' Center for Higher Studies in Rome. De Paolis presented two letters to the present LC hierarchy.



The first was a copy of the Pope's appointment letter dated June 16, which expresses the hope that the LC must be patient through the difficult moments to come and that these events should not hinder them in carrying out their vocations properly.

The other letter was De Paolis's first letter to the LC, warning them that some individuals and their past deeds pose a radical danger to the congregation itself, but that the Pope wishes them not to lose heart, to face what they must face, and to leave the past behind.

He says that the renewal urged on by the Pope means "having a clear awareness of the situation and to identify sharply the causes that have led to the present bad state and internal suffering" of the congregation.

De Paolis says the Pope hopes for a Chapter-General meeting to approve a new text of the order's Constitutions. He reiterates that the renewal is intended "not to hinder vocation but to return to a consideration of what it basically means" to be a priest.

It is understandable, he noted, "that some are going through difficult times and may already have thought of taking a different path". He continued:

"The priestly vocation is too serious to be decided on during a time of disorientation. It is necessary to recover serenity of the mind and spirit and to make such a decision with the help of God.

"We must be patient. Let us undertake the way of renewal with humility and faith. Let us consider anew together the meaning of religious consecration in the light of the congregation's specific charism. Let us review the constitutions to which you vowed yourselves with a view to ridding it of the elements that obscure that charism".

The Pope's letter to De Paolis emphasizes the 'sincere zeal' and the "fervent religious life of a great many members of the Congregation, as well as the necessity and urgency of a profound review of its mission".

After the meeting, De Paolis concelebrated Mass with the LC leaders. In his homily, he spoke of the need for 'reconstruction, for a restructuring' and a "profound examination of conscience - not to brood constantly on the past but in full awareness of the present".

He called on the Legionaries "to overcome the shadows which oppress, and the difficulties arising from our human frailties and weaknesses, because the mystery of God is far greater than our human weakness. When God enters into our frailties, he purifies us. He comes into our lives to purify us, which can liberate unsuspected energies in us."

Meanwhile, Fr. Alvaro Corcuera, who heads the LC, sent a letter to the congregation members and those of its lay arm. Regnum Christi, informing them that "the present LC leadership will continue exercising their functions until the Vatican publishes the decree" spelling out the mission of Mons. De Paolis.


I've posted a separate story about Mons. De Paolis in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread, from, of all places, the Regnum Christi site.

This is probably the best story I have read to date about CIV. What beautiful suprises the young have for us, especially if they have someone to guide and inspire them... Kudos to the teacher, Mr. Clarke, and to ZENIT for a great enterprise story.



Encyclicals are for everybody:
High school seniors challenged
with 'Caritas in Veritate'
By Karna Swanson


SAN MARCOS, California, JULY 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- When Benedict XVI published his latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, few high school students probably thought it was something they would be able to read and understand.

Kevin Clarke, a theology teacher at St. Joseph Academy in San Marcos, however, knew differently. [Who knew they even thought theology in a California high school?]

He gave his seniors the not-so-easy task of not only reading the encyclical, but of synthesizing its teaching and applying its principles to current events.

In this interview with ZENIT, Clarke explains how the students exceeded his expectations in their ability to grasp the principles of the encyclical, and the importance Caritas in Veritate will have in their lives as they enter college and then into the professional world.


Could you explain your Caritas in Veritate project for your 12th grade morality class?
Before we got to the projects, we built up to them through a close read of the encyclical. The students were given nightly readings from Caritas in Veritate, from which they were to prepare discussion points for the following day’s class. They read and discussed the whole encyclical over a period of two weeks. Students were graded based on their participation in class dialogue.

In class, they discussed and debated in a very orderly manner. During daily discussions, to ensure major points were covered, I would ask questions to guide them to important principles related to the major themes of the encyclical.

Having that foundation, for their projects they were then to pick a social justice topic related to the encyclical (such as technocracy, the environment, bioethics, and so on), synthesize the Pope's teaching on authentic human development, and then show how the encyclical applies to their topic.

Why did you assign this project?
I assigned the project for several primary reasons. First of all, many in the media cast this encyclical in a couple of false ways. In one extreme were those who stated that the Pope had bequeathed a totally irrelevant social encyclical, inaccessible to all non-theologians.

Other opportunists in the media have been latching onto Caritas in Veritate to prove that Catholicism has become, under "the green Pope," a religion of environmentalism. These misconceptions vanish easily upon reading the text itself.

Secondly, I wanted them to see (for themselves and that they may show their peers) just how pro-life this encyclical is and just how pro-life social justice is supposed to be. To work for authentic human development in the world, there is but one path: the path that respects all human life.

This is true human ecology, as the Pope has said. All means of development will continue to fall tragically short as long as abortion on demand and universal access to contraception remains a "value" of Western economic aid.

Thirdly, speaking of social justice, I wanted to teach social justice the right way, the Catholic way. So often, ideas of social justice and economic equity when expressed in the classroom become means of fostering the very attitudes Benedict XVI cautions against.

These include too much faith in political institutions to save man from his miseries (cf. CV, 11); solidarity without subsidiarity, or vice versa (cf. CV, 58); and even worse, liberation theology, a salvation through political revolution movement that this Pontiff has tirelessly opposed for decades.

Ultimately, I wanted the students to see that their Papa had written a letter to the world, inclusive of them, and so it had something to say for their lives. And indeed, they will be entering into various fields of study next year in college. So these are invaluable principles they will hopefully take into whichever field they enter, and in so doing transform the world.

What problems did the students have (if any) in understanding it?
The students struggled a bit with the depths of Trinitarian theology found in paragraphs 53 and 54. There were also some challenging economic principles here and there, such as microfinance and pawn broking. But they cut through the concepts of subsidiarity and solidarity like warm butter.

At the end of the discussions, the students admitted that while they initially thought the reading would be mundane or tedious, they actually really enjoyed it more and more as we went along. They realized that while this was a “human development” encyclical, it encompasses just about every issue that moves them.

How did the students do?
They did amazingly! They kept up with the reading. They engaged in the classroom discussions. They learned quite a bit and I'm quite proud of them.

While the students found the reading challenging, they did not find it inaccessible. They saw that if they can read and understand this, heads of state have no excuse.

With regard to the question of the environment, Caritas in Veritate gives a true Catholic perspective on what "green" should be. A true reverence for the environment has reverence for man at its core (cf. No. 51). If anything, this shows how tragically inadequate the culture's environmentalism measures against the Catholic view of the environment.

And I have found that among students especially, there is a sincere love for the Pope. Knowing that this was a letter to them from their “Papa,” they took his words to heart.

Was there a particular take on the encyclical from a student that surprised you?
Here are some of the quotes from the students:

Rebecca Ryland: “One of the most striking aspects of development in the present day is the important question of respect for life, which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples” (No. 28). Authentic human development is one of Pope Benedict's most prominent themes in the encyclical. One generally thinks of human development in purely economic and social terms, but the Pope is referring to the spiritual and intellectual improvement of each person, as well as to the financial and political improvement of mankind as a whole. As stated in the quote above, respect for all human life is inseparable from true development".

Kari Hill: "The market today revolves around the one man trying to make it big quickly. Where is the fraternity in this man's life? […] The financial ties between the classes are mutually affected by each other. Again, in order for there to be prosperity, charity is required".

Theresa Chadwick: "In order for society to thrive, one must support life. Abortion and euthanasia might seem the most obvious topics, but [Pope Benedict] is referring to a larger picture including contraception, stem cell research, in-vitro fertilization, and sterilization. […] Many people think that 'true development' means greater wealth and power, but what people must start to learn is that it is referring to a much more precious development -- spiritual development"/

Will you do this again?
I would most certainly do this again. And I would echo the recommendation of one of my seniors, Theresa Chadwick, who stated in her paper: "Catholic schools, all around the United States, should without a doubt put this encyclical in their curriculum. Young Catholics cannot escape the realities of the modern business world and must learn now about these realities and how to live a moral life within that world."

I would encourage other teachers to follow Theresa’s advice. If a school has a goal such as the formation of the whole person or that the student become a virtuous and responsible member of society, then I would encourage such a school to turn to Caritas in Veritate.

It could fit into the high school curriculum in so many ways -- in a morality class, a social justice class, an economics class. Challenge the students, and then watch them rise to the occasion.

Pope calls on Holy Land Catholics
to be examples of 'loving union'


The website of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which encompasses the Catholic Church in Cyprus, published today the Holy Father's letter after the apostolic visit to Cyprus from June 4-6 last month. The letter was dated June 7.

---

To His Beatitude Fouad Twal
Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem

I am writing to thank you sincerely for the warm welcome I received from you and from the flock entrusted to your care during my recent Apostolic Visit to the Republic of Cyprus.

It was with great personal satisfaction that I was able to see at first hand how, under your attentive pastoral care, many Cypriot Latins of ancient origin have remained faithful to their rich heritage. Please extend to them my fatherly prayers and good wishes for their health and prosperity.

At the same time, it was most gratifying to learn of how the numbers of the Catholic community have swelled by Latin residents and immigrants from other continents, including Europe, Africa and Asia.

It is my fervent prayer that all the Latin Catholics in the Holy Land, with their respective languages, customs and traditions, will strive to collaborate happily as brothers and sisters and become a shining example of the unbreakable bonds of loving union which are true marks of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

To you and to the faithful entrusted to your care I willingly impart my Apostolic Blessing as a pledge of grace and peace in the Lord.

From the Vatican, 7 June 2010

---