Google+
 

BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
Autore
Stampa | Notifica email    
16/01/2011 23:33
OFFLINE
Post: 21.943
Post: 4.572
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master







See preceding page for earlier posts today, 1/16/11.





Another sign of a strong Papacy:
Benedict XVI names a Protestant
to head the Vatican's Science Academy

by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from

January 16, 2011

Pope Benedict has named a Protestant - the Swiss Werner Arber, a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine - to head the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It is a bit of news that augurs well for the health of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, whom this and other decisions in recent weeks show to be in no way intimidated nor closed in on himself as those who are prejudiced would persist in depicting him.

Without in any way encroaching on the great shadow cast by Papa Wojtyla, whose beatification in record time Benedict announced day before yesterday, and without bringing up complex questions like the umprecedented new financial measures he promulgated on December 30 - though both are important markers of progress - we can also cite two other recent actions this Pope has taken in the ecumenical field, which allow us to give the right context to the novelty of having a Protestant president for a pontifical academy.

On the first day of the year. Benedict announced his convocation of a third inter-religious day of prayer in Assisi next October on the 25th anniversary of the first event, and yesterday he instituted the first Personal Ordinariate to accommodate Anglicans who are joining the Catholic Church, and naming as the first Ordinary - equivalent in rank to a diocesan bishop - a married ex-Anglican bishop, now a Catholic priest.

Getting back to the Calvinist president of the Academy of Sciences, in order to understand this unprecedented decision, we must recall the conviction often expressed by Cardinal Ratzinger that "even outside the Catholic Church, there are many true Christians, and many who are truly Christian".

But there is a more specific reason, focused on the fact that the new Academy president is a physician: Cardinal Ratzinger also maintained on important occasions that Christians of every denomination "must atrive to render common witness on the great moral questions".

Papa Ratzinger is confident that in Werner Arber, a Reformed Evangelical, he has an ally for this 'common witness' in the increasingly contested field of bioethics.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 05:57]
17/01/2011 05:53
OFFLINE
Post: 21.944
Post: 4.573
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


The first great 'dictionary'
of Benedict XVI's teachings

by Massimo Introvigne
Translated from

January 15, 2011



Pedro Jesús Lasanta, a Spanish diocesan priest and author of many works on the Magisterium, has offered us an extraordinary work. His Diccionario doctrinal de Benedicto XVI: Cinco años de pontificado (Doctrinal dictionary of Benedict XVI: Five years of his Pontificate)(Editorial Horizonte, Logroño 2010) is an encyclopedia of the first five years of Benedict XVI.

Except for a brief introduction, This truly monumental work - 1,580 pages - does not contain any comment by the compiler. The alphabetized subjects, from 'Abandonment to the will of God' to 'Volunteer work', passing through themes like "the Rosary', 'organ donation', 'ecology', 'homosexuality' or 'jails', correspond to a compilation in chronological order of passages from Benedict XVI's texts and discourses.

In all, there are 5,161 citations, numbered from 1 to 5,161 for faster reference. The most important topics are subdivided into sub-themes. For example, the theme 'Prayer' is subdivided into 'The action of the Holy Spirit on the soul', 'The importance and necessity of prayer', and 'Components oand expressions of the spirit in prayer".

The work is valuable as an immediate and practical reference on the teaching of Benedict XVI on hundreds of topics that he has touched upon in the first five years of his Pontificate. Obviously, an encyclopedic dictionary of this kind cannot be 'summarized'.

But one can try to cite, at least by way of exa,ple, some theme or some central concern which, so to speak, governs the hierarchy of topics. Under 'Relativism', there are 22 citations.

One might recall that on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, in his homily for the Mass pro eligendo Pontefice before the Conclave opened which he celebrated as Dean of the College of Cardinals, had first introduced the phrase 'dictatorship of relativism' that quickly became famous.

"How many winds of doctrine", said he, "have we known in recent decades, how many ideological currents, how many ways of thinking. The small boat of the thought of many Christians has often been tossed about by these waves - flung from one extreme to another: from Marxism to liberalism, even to libertinism; from collectivism to radical individualism; from atheism to a vague religious mysticism; from agnosticism to syncretism and so forth... "

"Today, having a clear faith based on the Creed of the Church is often labeled as fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, that is, letting oneself be 'tossed here and there, carried about by every wind of doctrine', seems the only attitude that can cope with modern times. We are building a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists solely of one's own ego and desires".

In Don Lasanta's dictionary, which does not cite texts by Cardinal rAtzinger before he became Pope, to which he previously dedicated a similarly monumental work, we can appreciate how the Pope has frequently returned to the core of his April 18, 2005 homily.

The theme is central in all of his Magisterium. Through any means including violence, and with an enormous propaganda apparatus which threatens to crush any opposition, the proponents of relativism today continue to seek to impose the new dogma according to which truth does not exist - that only opinions and desires do. It is a world in which everything is considered right, and therefore nothing is.

Worse, even reason no longer exists, at least not in the classic sense, which, as the Pope reminds us, comes from the Greek legacy which was nurtured and defined by Christianity as an instrument capable of recognizing reality and its truth.

What remains today is a reason that is instrumentalized, which is no longer measured by what is true but by what is useful. The errors and horrors of modernity have shown this instrumentalized reason as a violent reason.

If the unit of measure is not what is real but that which 'succeeds', then the 'reason that has reason' is that which wins out, which shouts the loudest and which eliminates the opposition because it has more power or money, because it has a stronger army or bombs that are more powerful.

The passages in the Dictionary that are dedicated to religions, to religious freedom, to inter-religios dialog, confirm how Benedict has dedicated his Pontificate to fighting both fundamentalism, in which a hypertrophy of faith leads to an elimination of reason, and to laicism or secularism, where the hypertrophy of reason eliminates faith.

In both cases, the human experience is diminished and ultimately fails, and history is stained by blood generated by a violence that no one is able to control any more.

In theory, others [besides the Ctholic Church] have the task of defending reason. But the corrosive action of relativism is such that today, reason finds few friends and defenders. And here is where Benedict XVI enters the arena in the name of reason, with the teachings cited in the sections undr 'Reason" and 'Rationalism'.

Indeed, without natural truths, there cannot be the possibility of being open to supernatural truths. If reason, which first became rationalism and then relativism, refuses to recognize that truth exists, then it will not recogzine any truths at all, much less, truths of a religious nature.

The Pope of faith as well as reason, Benedict XVI has transmitted to us, in his first five years alone, a Magisterium that is infinitely rich. Don Lasanta's work, which one hopes will soon have an Italian edition, gives us within one volume a measure of this richness.


Here is an earlier review of the book by another Spanish diocesan priest (it is remarkable and unusual not just how many books are written about Benedict XVI in Spain but how many diocesan priests are writing these books!) Fr. Morado holds a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University and writes a blog called 'Puerta de Damasco' (The Damascus Gate) for the excellent Spanish Catholic website Infocatolica.

May there be more years -
and volumes - of these teachings
from our present Pope!

by Guillermo Juan Morado

November 9, 2010


Pedro Jesús Lasanta is a priest in Logroño, with doctorates in canon law, theology and civil law, who is the author of many other books published by Horizonte.

His Diccionario doctrinal de Benedicto XVI is an ambitious work which seeks to bring the Holy Father's teachings in a convenient way to the wider public. The various topics - from 'abandonment' to 'volunteer work' - assemble a selection of texts from the Pope about these specific topics: altogether 5,161 passages of varying lengths from Benedict XVI's texts,

The general index, at the start of the book, has a complete list of these topics. The analytic Index (pp 1451-1575) assembles at the end the epigraphs of every citation made.

Father Lasanta has done what many of us would have wanted to do: To elaborate an ample dossier that gathers the teachings of this Pope on several subjects. A desirable task, without a doubt, but which would daunt most of us before being able to undertake it.

The author of this 'dictionary' has faced the challenge competently and successfully. Each selected citation has the date and origin or occasion for the text, making clear if it comes from an address, a homily, an encyclcial, etc.

It provides a tool that is most useful for study purposes as well as a guide for pastoral activity. It is true that the papal texts are easily accessible on the Vatican website, but without the aid of something like this Dictionary, it is almost impossible to recall what Benedict XVI has said or written about a topic and how often.

Ultimately, without taking anything from Fr. Lasanta's effort, the greatness of this Dictionary reflects the greatness of the Pope's thinking - which is mature and profound, which unites beauty of words with the certainty of expressing well and intelligibly the content of the faith.

One can only congratulate the author of this initiative. One can only hope that successive volumes of this Dictionary will assemble many more years of teaching by our current Pope!


THE RATZINGER 'WORK':
Beyond the 'Collected Works'


Unfortunately, I have not been able to keep up with the books coming out about Benedict XVI even if I limited it only to those written in the ew languages that I can read.

But one assumes the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis is doing that, as it has done for everything he wrote for publication - articles included, and in all languages - until he became Pope. That is available in DAS WERK (The Work), published by the Schuelerkreis in September 2009.



- DAS WERK is a 448-page bibliography that also provides a summary of the content of each book or article. It is edited by Vincenz Schnur, who studied under Prof. Ratzinger in Tuebingen. Available only in German, the book sells for about 60 euro. Two other recent publications by the Schuelerkreis are:

- GESPRAECH UEBER JESUS, published in 2010, which presents the texts and discussions of the 2008 Schulerkreis seminar in Castel Gandolfo about the person of Jesus of Nazareth, with German Biblical scholars Martin Hengel and Peter Stuhlmacher as resource persons. The seminar took place while Benedict XVI was completing Vol. 2 of his Jesus book. The Schuelerkreis book is said to serve as a hinge between the two volumes of JON.

- EIN UNBEKANNTER RATZINGER, published in 2010, written by Hansjuergen Vermeyen, another SK member and a theologian who has written several books including biographies of St. Anselm of Canterbury and Karl Rahner. He writes about Joseph Ratzinger's unabridged 1955 Habilitation dissertation as the key to his theology and his work in the Second Vatican Council.

- Also illuistrated above is JOSEPH RATZINGER/BENEDIKT XVI: Die Entwicklung seines Denkens (The development of his thought), an earlier book by Verweyen, published in 2007.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 13:32]
17/01/2011 14:35
OFFLINE
Post: 21.945
Post: 4.574
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Monday, January 17

Illustration, second from Left: The Torment of St. Anthony, Michelangelo. 1487.
ST. ANTHONY THE GREAT (Anthony Abbot) (Egypt, 251-356)
Coptic monk and abbot, Father of Monasticism
Just as St. Jerome wrote the biography of Anthony's great contemporary, St. Paul the Hermit, St. Athanasius wrote Anthony's,
which led to spreading the concept of monasticism in Europe. Born to wealthy parents, he decided at age 34 to give up all his
wealth and live an ascetic life. He was the first to do this in the wilderness, spending 13 years in the desert the first time
around. He would return to such solitude in later periods of his life, once as long as 20 years, where hw was said to have
fought monumental battles with the devil. The 'temptations of St. Anthony' became the subject for many paintings through the
centuries. With his reputation for prayer and personal mortification, he attracted many people to him for spiritual healing and
guidance. At age 54, he founded a monastery for which he drew rules based on 'ora et labora' anticipating the famous Rule of
Benedict of Norcia centuries later. In his 70s, Athanasius enlisted him to defend the faith against the Arian heresy. He
attended the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 325 A.D. to present this defense. He visited Paul the Hermit one year before
the latter's death, and buried him later. He himself died at age 105 in his beloved monastery (still an active one, it is located
in the Eastern Desert of Egypt, about 100 miles southeast of Cairo; extreme right photo in the panel).

Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011711.shtml


PAPAL EVENTS TODAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Madame Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)

- The community of the Pontificio Istituto Ecclesiastico Polacco in Rome on teh 100th anniversary of its foundation.
Address in Italian.

- Members of the Neo-Catechumenal Way. Address in Italian.



One year ago today, Benedict XVI visited the Great Synagogue of Rome, his third visit to a synagogue.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 16:09]
17/01/2011 14:59
OFFLINE
Post: 21.946
Post: 4.575
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Rome scrambles to prepare
for 2 million pilgrims



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 16 (AP) – Crowd control experts were rushing to ready Rome for an estimated 2 million pilgrims for Pope John Paul II's beatification on May 1, when the city will be thronged with Easter week tourists.

No tickets or invitations will be necessary — as many faithful who want to be there to see the Polish-born Pontiff beatified, the last formal step before possible sainthood, can come, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Saturday.

"We don't give estimates" of the size of the crowds who will come, said Benedettini. But Italian news reports say authorities in Rome were planning for 2 million pilgrims.

With St. Peter's Square and the boulevard leading from the Tiber to the Vatican able to hold a few hundred thousand people, large video screens are expected to be set up in nearby streets so the spillover crowd can watch the ceremony led by Pope Benedict XVI.

The last turnout so big in Rome was the 3 million mourners for John Paul's funeral and other ceremonies following his death in April 2005 after he struggled for years with Parkinson's disease.

Even the more popular ceremonies in his papacy didn't come near to drawing so many faithful. When an ailing John Paul beatified Mother Teresa in 2003 in St. Peter's Square, 300,000 pilgrims attended. Padre Pio's sainthood ceremony, led by John Paul in June 2002, saw about 200,000 faithful swelter the square in one of the larger turnouts in his 26-year-long papacy.

In 2000, about 700,000 young Catholics streamed into Rome for church World Youth Day events stretched out over several days at locations throughout the city as well as at the Vatican.

La Stampa, an Italian daily, said the national civil protection agency personnel hope to rein in any chaos by meeting pilgrims' buses and channeling the faithful down selected streets to the square.

Easter falls on April 24, meaning Rome's hotels will be brimming with Easter week tourists, when many students are on school break and families pour into Italy, so organizers might look to Romans to open their homes to pilgrims.

May 1 is also national labor day, and traditional May Day concerts near the Basilica of St. John in Lateran usually draw hundreds of thousands of young people from throughout Italy to enjoy the free music.

On Friday, Benedict set the date for beatification after declaring that a French nun's recovery from Parkinson's disease was the miracle needed for John Paul to be beatified. A second miracle, attributed to John Paul's intercession after the beatification ceremony, will be needed for the widely popular Pontiff to be formally honored with sainthood.

Once he is beatified, John Paul will be given the title "blessed" and can be publicly venerated.

Veneration is the word commonly used to refer to that worship given to saints, either directly or through images or relics, which is different in kind from the divine worship given to God only, according to reference work, the Catholic Encyclopaedic Dictionary.

John Paul's entombed remains, currently in the grotto underneath St. Peter's Basilica, will be moved upstairs to a chapel just inside a main entrance for easier access by throngs of admirers.


A cursory and belated wrap-up of Poland's reaction to the news... I have not had the time to look up any English sources in Poland itself.

Polish leaders hail JPII beatification



WARSAW, January 16 (AFP) - Leading Poles including former President Lech Walesa last Friday hailed the Vatican decision to beatify the late Polish-born Pope John Paul II on May 1.

“I am doubly happy. Firstly, because a man who was a living saint will officially become a saint. Our Pope did great things,” anti-communist Solidarity trade union founder Walesa told AFP.

“Without him, there would have been no Solidarity in Poland. It was the Polish Pope and Solidarity that contributed to the disappearance of communism in Europe in the 20th century,” he said.

Historians agree that the 1978 election of Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla to the papacy inspired the rise of Poland’s 10-million strong anti-communist Solidarity movement in 1980.

By 1989, under Walesa’s leadership, Solidarity negotiated a peaceful end to communism in Poland, making it the first country in the Soviet bloc to eschew the system.

By 1991, the Soviet Union crumbled putting an end to the bipolar world of the Cold War.

“It’s possible that our great friend, once he becomes a saint, will help us from on high to solve our problems in Poland, Europe and the world,” Walesa said last Friday.

In the southern city of Krakow Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the late Pope’s former personal secretary and one of his closest friends for 40 years, said Poland was “overjoyed”.

“Speaking in the name of the diocese, in the name of Krakow and, I think, in the name of all of Poland, I’m overjoyed,” Mgr Dziwisz told reporters in the city where John Paul II served as a cardinal.

“I want to express my great gratitude to the Holy Father for the decree necessary for this beatification,” Mgr Dziwisz said.

John Paul II is to be beatified on May 1 – a key step on the path to sainthood – the Vatican announced last Friday after his successor Pope Benedict XVI signed an official decree.

“Personally, I’m overwhelmed by it, even though I knew him since almost my youth (...) When the news arrived, I felt overwhelmed that John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, will be beatified and canonised.”

“It’s an incredible feeling: I’ve understood how a husband whose wife has been canonised must feel,” Mgr Dziwisz added.

The process of beatification is usually lengthy, but calls for John Paul to be canonised came immediately after his death in April 2005 at the Vatican, at the age of 84.

Pope Benedict himself will conduct the ceremony in St Peter’s Basilica, according to Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.

May 1 falls this year on the first Sunday after Easter, which is the Feast of the Divine Mercy, a devotion promoted by John Paul II.

Italian media had suggested the beatification ceremony would take place on Sunday, April 3, the day after the sixth anniversary of John Paul’s death.

But Lombardi said that the date fell during Lent, traditionally a period of penitence for the Church as it commemorates the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert, and “was not the ideal time” for a “joyous” ceremony.

Works are under way in St Peter’s Basilica to make space for Pope John Paul II’s tomb. As is traditional, the Pope’s remains will be moved up from the crypt to the nave of the basilica after he is beatified.

Preparations are being made in the Chapel of St Sebastian, on the right-hand side of the nave, between the Chapel of Michelangelo’s Pietà and the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament.

The ex-pontiff’s body “will not be displayed, it will be placed in a tomb closed by a simple marble tombstone with the words: Beatus Ioannes Paulus II,” (Blessed John Paul II), Lombardi said.

The beatification follows the announcement last week that the Congregation of the Causes for Saints had approved the Polish Pope’s first miracle. The commission confirmed that French nun Marie Simon-Pierre was miraculously cured of Parkinson’s disease through the intercession of John Paul II.


The following CNS story is dated January 14 but it was not posted until today since CNS does not register any activity at all on weekends...


For many, beatification announcement
confirms long-held sentiment

By Carol Zimmermann


WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (CNS) -- The news of Pope John Paul II's upcoming beatification was welcomed by many as a confirmation of something they already felt from the moment the shouts of "Santo subito!" ("Sainthood now!") reverberated through St. Peter's Square at the Pontiff's funeral.

Many in the crowd were young people who had a special affinity to Pope John Paul, whose pontificate started and ended with a special greeting to young people. During his installation ceremony in 1978, the newly named Pope told young people: "You are the future of the world, you are the hope of the church, you are my hope."

And his last words, reportedly delivered hours before his death, were also to youths, in response to the thousands of young people praying and singing in St. Peter's Square.

"I sought you and now you have come to me. ... I thank you," said the Pontiff, who died April 2, 2005 at age 84.

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, founder and CEO of Canada's Salt and Light Television, said it was no coincidence that he heard the news of the Pontiff's beatification while attending a meeting in Spain for the upcoming World Youth Day.

"A thunderous, sustained, standing ovation followed the announcement," he said in a Jan. 14 statement.

The priest, national director for World Youth Day 2002 in Toronto, said the date for the beatification, May 1, is also no coincidence. Not only is it Divine Mercy Sunday, but it is also the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, known as "May Day" on secular calendars.

"Communists and socialists around the world commemorate May Day with marches, speeches and festivals," he said, adding that it was fitting that "the man who was a unique instrument and messenger in bringing down the Iron Curtain and the deadly reign of communism and godlessness will be declared blessed" that day.

Father Rosica said the announcement is "the formal confirmation of what many of us always knew as we experienced the Holy Father in action throughout his pontificate" particularly among youths, noting that one of the Pope's gifts to the Church was his establishment of World Youth Day.

Tim Massie, the chief public affairs officer and adjunct professor of communication and religious studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., called the news of Pope John Paul II's upcoming beatification a "morale boost" especially for Catholics in the United States "where sex abuse scandals, financial crises and disagreements with church hierarchy have dramatically affected parishes, dioceses and the faithful in the pews."

Because of the Pope's extensive travels in the United States, he said, "there are literally millions of people who were touched by his charisma and holiness."

The Pope visited the United States seven times and in each visit urged Catholics to use their freedom responsibly and to preserve the sacredness and value of human life.

In an e-mail to Catholic News Service, Massie said the "general public already considers John Paul II a saint and those who saw him, listened to him, prayed with him, already believed they met a saint -- not a future saint, but someone who, like Mother Teresa, lived out the Gospel message in his everyday life."

Michele Dillon, who chairs the department of sociology at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, said she believes most American Catholics will welcome John Paul II's beatification.

She described him as the "first cosmopolitan pope for a cosmopolitan age, and his warm, energetic, and telegenic personality served him well on his many trips to all parts of the globe."

Dillon remarked that it would "be interesting to see whether his beatification, at this time of uncertain commitment among the faithful, will reignite a new spark of Church engagement especially among the generation who as teenagers turned out in force" for World Youth Day events.

Dennis Doyle, University of Dayton religious studies professor, noted that many U.S. Catholics didn't understand the Pope and wondered how he "could be liberal on social issues but yet so conservative on church issues. He was consistent in a way that was difficult for some people in the U.S. to understand."

"But ultimately, he is being beatified because he was loved throughout the world and is recognized iconically as a holy person," he added.

Tony Melendez, the armless guitarist whose embrace by Pope John Paul electrified an audience during the Pope's 1987 visit to Los Angeles, said he had always considered his encounters with the Pontiff "like I got to meet a living saint."

Melendez, in a phone interview with CNS while en route to his Missouri home, said he got to see Pope John Paul six more times, including a private audience at the Vatican about a year and a half after the 1987 U.S. pastoral visit.

"He remembered me," Melendez remarked. "And he said, 'Oh! My friend from Los Angeles!' without me saying anything. He hugged my head after I was (done) playing a song. ... To me, he was a wonderful man who did great things."

Told of the May 1 beatification date, Melendez said, "If I can be there, I want to go. I'll make some time to go. He was a living saint, in my heart."


Vatican officials and Catholics
on the street talk about John Paul II

By Cindy Wooden



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 14 (CNS) -- Vatican officials, Catholic leaders around the world and ordinary people on the streets and in St. Peter's Square were more pleased than surprised by news that Pope John Paul II will be beatified May 1.

Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, retired prefect of the Congregation for Saints' Causes, said, "finally" more than once during a brief conversation Jan. 14 just minutes after Pope Benedict XVI signed a decree recognizing the miracle needed to beatify Pope John Paul.

"This is what the whole world was waiting for," said Cardinal Saraiva Martins, who was the head of the saints congregation when Pope John Paul died and when his sainthood cause was opened.

"I can't help being happy. This is the crowning moment of a work I began," he said.

The cardinal said the written work of Pope John Paul is so vast and the time before his beatification so short that the best "spiritual preparation" Catholics could make would be to "thank God for Pope John Paul's example of holiness and recommit ourselves to follow his example."

Carl Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, said Pope John Paul's upcoming beatification is a "call to each of us to emulate his personal holiness."

Anderson, who stood in St. Peter's Square on the day of Pope John Paul's funeral as many shouted "Santo subito!" ("Sainthood now!"), said there were many who were ready to have him beatified that very day.

In an e-mail to Catholic News Service, Anderson called the upcoming beatification a great opportunity for the world to focus on the Pope's message of human dignity.

"He led by example, caring for the poor, the intellectually and physically disabled, the unborn, the oppressed. He forgave those who did him harm, and he broke down barriers. He had great respect even for those who differed with him religiously. In short, Pope John Paul is a model the world needs," he said.

Anderson said the beatification is not a recognition of the Pope's "successful papacy or a thank-you for his good work" but a call for each person to "imitate the holiness, the love of God and neighbor that this man exhibited throughout his life."

Jim Nicholson, a former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, who also attended Pope John Paul's funeral, said the vast crowd that day was a testament to the Pope's exceptional qualities "of leadership and hope."

In a phone call from his Washington law office, Nicholson told CNS he was "extremely pleased" for the Pontiff, whom he frequently described as a "hope-filled freedom fighter." During his 2001-2005 role as ambassador, he got to know Pope John Paul pontiff personally and said he greatly admired his "adherence to hope, faith and prayer, coupled with courage and clever actions."

Jim Young, a Presbyterian from Ohio, was in St. Peter's Square when the beatification announcement was made. He said his only real reaction was that he'd better make sure he found some Pope John Paul souvenirs because "I'm related to a bunch of Polish Catholics who were already convinced he's a saint."

Giovanni Caponi, one of the souvenir-sellers who has a stand on the boulevard leading to St. Peter's Square, said the news will be good for business.

From a sales point of view, "John Paul is our most popular figure. No one greater exists. He's No. 1," said Caponi, who described himself as a nonbeliever.

Kaitlin Benedict, a 21-year-old Catholic from Eden, N.Y., said she thought the decision to beatify Pope John Paul just over six years after his death "is a little fast. I was surprised. Usually these things take decades and now they're just changing up tradition. But if they feel so strongly ...," she said, her voice trailing off.

Brigida Jones, a 26-year-old Australian from Melbourne, said Pope John Paul "was probably one of our best Popes; he was a people's Pope."

The young woman said, "I think he did so much when he was alive, and you'd just see him on television and get this sense of peace -- obviously he was holy."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 20:55]
17/01/2011 17:12
OFFLINE
Post: 21.947
Post: 4.576
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




Mons. Negri prepares his diocese
to host Benedict XVI in June




ROME, JAN. 14, 2011 (Zenit.org).- The yearnings of the human heart find their answer in the witness given by Benedict XVI, according to an Italian prelate who will host the Pope for a June visit to his diocese.

Bishop Luigi Negri of San Marino-Montefeltro is making an appeal for a deepening in the faith in view of the pastoral visit that the Holy Father will make to San Marino next June 19.

The bishop announced that the definitive program of the visit will be published on the diocesan Web site in the coming days. It is a program, he said, "that certainly imposes sacrifices" on the Bishop of Rome.

Benedict XVI will arrive in San Marino early in the morning of June 19. After a visit to the institutions of the republic, he will concelebrate Mass in the Serravalle Stadium with all the bishops of Emilia-Romagna and with many others who, coming from Italian and foreign dioceses, have been invited to this event, and also with all the priests present.

The concelebration will end with the recitation of the Angelus. Both the Mass and the recitation of the Angelus will be broadcast live by the television of San Marino and by Italian Radio and Television (RAI).

In the afternoon, the Holy Father will go to diocesan headquarters at Pennabilli, and in the square in front of the cathedral he will meet with all the young people of the diocese.

"My spirit is overwhelmed with gratitude and a sense of great responsibility; let us prepare ourselves, my brothers, for this event of grace that Providence is offering us to enhance our faith," said Bishop Negri.

"We renew the fundamental experience of faith as communion with the Lord Jesus Christ in prayer; let us live ecclesial life with intensity and regularity, above all in the participation of the sacraments; let us live charity in encounters with our brothers, above all with those who are in need or actually in indigence," the 69-year-old bishop added.

The prelate called for a deepening in the "culture that is born of faith, above all in what concerns the ultimate mystery of the Church and in it the presence and function of the Holy Father."

"Above all, however," he encouraged, "let us live this event for which we are preparing as a proposal for all our brothers […] because the Pope is the highest witness on earth of Christian life, which is a true, good and beautiful life, and therefore is the life that is full of answers to the fundamental needs of the heart of every man."

The last trip of a Pope to this land was that of John Paul II on Aug. 29, 1982, on the occasion of his visit to all the dioceses of the pastoral region of Emilia-Romagna, initiated in Bologna on April 18 of the same year.


17/01/2011 20:53
OFFLINE
Post: 21.950
Post: 4.579
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master
Some reflections on Popes
and their personal holiness, etc



Of course, it is a human tendency to focus on John Paul II at this time because he is being beatified. But comments like those given by the prominent Catholics cited in the CNS stories above would give the impression that John Paul II is the only Pope in recent memory to have been recognized as holy in his lifetime, nor for that matter, the only Pope whose human virtues must be emulated.

It would be nice to for some to remind the world for a change that, of the Popes since the mid-19th century, Pius X has been canonized; Pius IX, Pius XI and John XIII have been beatified; and Pius XII, Paul VI and John Paul I are being 'processed' for beatification (it has been reported that a 'beatification miracle' is under study for both Pius XXII and John Paul I).

I feel bad about Leo XIII and Benedict XV who appear to have been left off from consideration, but I have no doubt both Popes could well be considered if their respective dioceses took the initiative.

And of course, the most obviously overlooked in all this is the present Pope himself, whose personal holiness is not questioned even by those among his worst critics who are well-informed, and who - I think no one would dispute it - is a living Doctor of the Church. Most importantly, he is the one individual who sets the example of shining Christian witness daily and publicly to the entire world.

I am not arguing that Popes should automatically be considered for sainthood. Popes have not always been inspirational figures, as history tells us abundantly. But the Church does appear to be blessed in the era of the modern papacy with Popes whose election may well have been the action of the Holy Spirit, each of whom was inspirational in his time.

Perhaps the Conclaves that elected each of the modern Popes were enlightened in their choice by the demands of the times when they made their choice, so that each historical period somehow got the right Pope. But certainly no one has characterized any of the modern Popes as rascals.

In fact, even the Popes who have been most anathematized by their detractors for misunderstood episodes - Pius IX with his denunciation of modern errors; Pius X who was such a champion of Tradition that the FSSPX is named after him; Pius XII with respect to the Holocaust; Paul VI and his perceived ambivalences over Vatican II, and Papa Wojtyla himself, whose record is considered by some to be 'clouded' by the shadow of the sex-abuse scandals and his friendship with Father Maciel - are faulted for not being 'perfect', not for being unholy.

Some have argued that Popes should not be considered for sainthood at all because they enjoy an unfair advantage over 'lesser mortals'. That seems so illogical, because by definition, the spiritual leader of the Church - officially the Vicar of Christ on earth - should be more worthy than any other priest to be the Vicar of Christ, and their election would seem to be proof that their peers in the Church thought so, as well. In this light, every Pope should be a candidate for sainthood! And if the individual Pope is indeed a holy man, why should he be discriminated against?

The argument that Popes have an unfair advantage is equally fallacious - there are so few of them as to make a difference. Cardinal Amato says that the Congregation of Saints has about 3,000 causes pending. Of those, we are aware of six modern Popes.

The best argument, of course, is to cite the hundreds of humble folk - priests, religious and laymen - whom the Church has beatified and canonized in the past several decades, to limit ourselves to recent memory. The Church is not responsible for the miracles that lead to the beatification and canonization of candidate saints nor for the timing of these miracles, which for the most part, determine the fate and timing of each individual cause.

The whole Church celebrates, or should, whenever any one candidate for sainthood - whether he was a great Pope as Karol Wojtyla was, or a dying Roman teenager like Chiara Badano who inspired those around her with the luminous strength of her faith - hurdles the formal requirement for a 'certified' miracle, because new blesseds and saints are not just examples of Christian witness as Christ wants each of us to be, but because the miracles associated with them - events that are inexplicable by science - are extraordinary signs of God that are visible and tangible to a world where many people deny the existence of God.


P.S. As I wrote this reflection when I cross-posted the JPII-beatification storeis in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread, I failed to note the synchronicity of Mons. Negri's observation in the story above about Benedict XVI's visit to San Marino-Montefeltro and the Pope's example of Christian witness as an appropriate point of spiritual preparation for his visit.





Beatification no surprise - but
still, a great day for the Church

By William Oddie

Monday, 17 January 2011

Nobody is surprised by the declaration that Pope John Paul is to be beatified on May 1. It is almost a beatification by public acclaim: the cries of “Santo Subito” that went up in the streets of Rome at his funeral were a sign that his heroic virtue had become universally understood, not merely in his manner of dying, but for many years before that.

The Catholic Herald and the Catholic Truth Society, to mark the 25th anniversary of his papacy in 2003, had jointly published a collection of essays (which I edited) under the title John Paul the Great.

When I read on Friday that his beatification had been announced, I reread what I had written then. I quote here the last paragraph of my introduction, simply as one contemporary example of what had by then become the general perception.

The Pope’s poor health had led to calls for his resignation; how could someone suffering so much be expected to lead the Church? That was the question. But it was precisely his courage in the face of suffering which was so inspiring, which gave his leadership of the Church such huge spiritual power. This is what I wrote; and I think it is an accurate indication of what nearly everyone had come to understand:

Be not afraid: it has become almost the watchword for his papacy: not because he has obsessively repeated it for others to follow, but because he has lived it out himself.

He is in constant pain; his hands shake with Parkinson’s disease; and still he does not spare himself. The older and more frail he becomes, the more his courage shines out, and the nearer his papal service comes to being a kind of living martyrdom.

The word “indomitable” springs to mind; and for an Englishman of my generation that will tend to be followed by the word “Churchillian”: for surely in the spiritual warfare of our age this is one of the great heroes of the faith, not merely a great warrior himself, but an inspirer in others of the great knightly virtues of honour and courage and constancy and persistence to the end.

In due course, it will be for the Church to declare if this has been the life of one of her saints: but certainly, by any human measure, his qualities have amounted to greatness of the highest order: it is surely very hard to believe that that will not be the verdict of history, too.

Pope Benedict has constantly referred to his greatness: he called him “the great Pope John Paul II” in his first address from the loggia of St Peter’s Church; he referred to him as “the Great” in his homily for the Mass of Repose, and has continued to refer to him in this way.

This has also been a growing custom among the faithful; in the US, the names of the John Paul the Great Catholic University and other educational establishments have reflected it.

But greatness is not necessarily holiness: here, though, they are inseparable. And now the Church has, indeed, declared herself. On May 1, the first stage towards his eventual canonisation will take place.

It is clear that the present Pope, who knew him so well, has given his cause a fair wind: but he has done no more than make possible what is very close to being a consensus fidelium.

In fact, he has done more! Judging from the reaction of some Catholics, Benedict XVI was in a no-win, damned-whatevere-you-do situation with respect to the beatification.

Some fault him for 'expediting and facilitating' his predecessor's cause, playing favorites, as it were. They think a more 'normal' time interval should have been observed, or that, like Pius XII's cause has been considerably held up because of a disute over his 'silence' on the Holocaust, so too should John Paul II's cause have been kept on hold, until questions about his knowledge of the sex-qabuse scandal and his friendship with Fr. Maciel are cleared up. (Again, given human nature which tends to suspect the worst instead of believing the best, such 'doubts' will never be cleared up to everyone's satisfaction, so inaction on account of doubts like this is never an advisable course. That is why a miracle or two is a sine qua non for sainthood - miracles do not depend on human activity or reason but entirely on divine manifestation.]

On the other hand, if Benedict XVI had treated the Wojtyla cause as just another cause that was in no way exceptional, in order to 'observe the proprieties' as the politically correct would have liked him to do, he would have interposed himself unnecessarily and unwisely against a widespread consensus fidelium such as Oddie decribes in his essay.

And Papa Wojtyla's cause was doubtless exceptional for all the reasons Oddie cites. A cause that deserved, at the very least, the same deference John Paul himself ahd shown when he expedited the cause for Mother Teresa.

With that formal precedent, and with the staggering evidence of the consensus fidelium in the magnitude and degree of the universal mourning that followed his predecessor's death, Benedict XVI would have been obliged to do what he did, even without the demands of 'Santo subito!', and by his own personal sense of what is right and what needs to be done.

Let us pray to John Paul II that, along with the other Popes in heaven, he may continue to watch over Benedict XVI and the Church, and intercede for God's grace and blessings in their behalf.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/01/2011 22:22]
18/01/2011 00:13
OFFLINE
Post: 21.951
Post: 4.580
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



A 'syllabus of errors' for the 21st century?
A document condemning mistaken interpretations of Vatican Council II -
as Pius IX condemned what he considered to be the errors of modernity -
has been requested by the German-born Bishop of Kazakhstan, at a recent conference in Rome.
Also prompting strong objections is Benedict XVI's announcement of an inter-religious meeting in Assisi.



ROME, January 14, 2011 – The announcement by Benedict XVI after the Angelus on New Year's Day, that he will go to Assisi next October for a new meeting for peace of the world's religious leaders, has re-ignited the controversy not only over the so-called "spirit of Assisi," but also over Vatican Council II and the post-council.

Professor Roberto de Mattei – who has just published a history of the Council which ends with the request that Benedict XVI promote "a new examination" of Vatican II documents in order to dispel the suspicion that they broke with traditional Church teaching – has joined a few other Catholic figures in signing an appeal to the Pope to reconsider his decision on an Assisi-III.

In order, they say, "not to re-ignite the syncretistic confusion" of the first Assisi meeting convened on October 27, 2986, by John Paul II in the city of Saint Francis.

Then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger did not go to that first meeting, of which he was critical. [That's not a fair presentation of what happened. I don't think he was part of the program at all, and he expressed his criticisms of Assisi-I publicly long after the event - when it also became known that he had reviewed the texts of what John Paul II intended to say in Assisi and suggested some changes which were apparently accepted by the Pope. In fact, we have now learned that Cardinal Ratzinger was not originally invited to Assisi-II in 2002, either, but that now-Cardinal Dsiwisz called himn the day before to say the Pope wanted him to join him on the train to Assisi. He did, but other than that, He did not play any part in the program.]

He did, however, take part in a repeat of it held also in Assisi on January 24, 2002, agreeing "in extremis" after being assured that the mistakes of the previous meeting would not be made again.

The main mistake fostered by the meeting in Assisi in 1986 was that of equating all religions as sources of salvation for humanity. [It was the impression given and reported by the media. But a reading of John Paul II's texts chows clearly he made all the necessary distinctions, including even the place for the common praying together in a multi-religious way. From the available reports, the more egregious mistake was that the Franciscan friars who organized the event for the Pope allowed pagan rituals - sucs as animistic slaughtering of chickens on a consecrated altar - to be performed inside the Church of St. Clare. Clearly, that was a very visible and unacceptable instance that seemed to signal religious syncretism.]

Against this error, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued in 2000 the declaration Dominus Iesus, reaffirming that mankind's only Savior is Jesus Christ. [Seeing as four years passed between Assisi-I and Dominus Iesus, that's quite a stretch! Dominus Iesus of 2000 was a document intended primarily to reaffirm the basic tenet of the Catholic faith on the Grand Jubilee Year celebrating the second millennium of Christianity.]

Even as Pope, Benedict XVI has not failed to warn against any confusion in this respect In a message to the bishop of Assisi dated September 2, 2006, he wrote:

In order not to misunderstand the meaning of what John Paul II wanted to accomplish in 1986, and what, in his own words, is described as the ‘spirit of Assisi’, it is important not to forget the attention that was paid at that time to prevent the inter-religious prayer meeting from being subjected to syncretistic interpretations founded upon a relativistic conception. [...]

For this reason, even when we gather together to pray for peace, this prayer must be carried out according to the distinct approach that is proper to each of the various religions.

This was the decision in 1986, and this decision cannot but remain valid today as well. The coming together of those who are different must not give the impression of a concession to that relativism that denies the very meaning of truth and the possibility of attaining it.

Visiting Assisi on June 17, 2007, he said in his homily:

The decision to celebrate this encounter in Assisi was suggested by the testimony of Francis as a man of peace, upon whom so many look favorably, even those of other cultural and religious persuasions.

At the same time, the light of the 'Poverello' upon that initiative was a guarantee of Christian authenticity, because his life and his message depend so visibly upon his choice of Christ, excluding a priori any temptation to religious indifferentism, which would have nothing to do with authentic religious dialogue. [...]

It could not be an evangelical or Franciscan attitude to fail to combine welcome, dialogue, and respect for all, with the certainty of faith that every Christian, like the saint of Assisi, must cultivate, proclaiming Christ as the way, truth, and life of man, the only Savior of the world.

Returning to the controversy over Vatican Council II, an important conference was held last December 16-18 in Rome, not far from the Basilica of Saint Peter, "for a correct hermeneutics of the Council in the light of Church Tradition."

The speakers focused on the 'pastoral' nature of Vatican II [as opposed to being 'doctrinal' - ie, to Council was called to determine how the Church should relate to the modern world through its pastoral activities, and not to define new doctrine!] and the abuses that have taken place in its name.

The speakers included Professor de Mattei and theologian Brunero Gherardini, 85, a canon of the Nasilica of Saint Peter, professor emeritus of the Pontifical Lateran University, and director of the journal of Thomistic theology Divinitas.

Gherardini is the author of a volume on Vatican Council II that concludes with an "Appeal to the Holy Father", asking him to submit the documents of the Council for reexamination, in order to clarify once and for all "if, in what sense, and to what extent" Vatican Council II is or is not in continuity with the previous magisterium of the Church. [Submit to whom, though? To the Bishops' Synod? To a new Council? To the Pope's own personal judgment? All three ways are problematic because advocates of the false 'spirit of Vatican II' will insist that an ecumenical council supersedes the Magisterium of an individual Pope - though other ecclesiologists have pointed out that like a Pope, a council cannot be considered 'infallible' unless it pronounces on dogma, and Vatican II proposed no new dogma, despite the spiritists' claim that it effectively built a new church!]

The preface to Gherardini's book was written by Albert Malcolm Ranjith, archbishop of Colombo and former secretary of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship, made a cardinal at the consistory last November.

Ranjith is one of the two bishops to whom www.chiesa recently dedicated the article entitled "Ratzinger's best pupils are in Sri Lanka and Kazakhstan'. And the second of these bishops, the auxiliary of Karaganda, Athanasius Schneider, was present at the conference in Rome from December 16-18, as a speaker.

The final portion of his presentation is presented below. He concludes with a request to the Pope for two specific remedies fto the post-Conciliar abses:

- Release of a "Syllabus" against the doctrinal errors of interpretation of Vatican Council II, and
- The appointment of bishops who are "holy, courageous and deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church."

Other speakers included Cardinal Velasio de Paolis, Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, Bishop Luigi Negri, and Monsignor Florian Kolfhaus of the Vatican Secretariat of State.

The audience included a large contingent of Franciscans of the Immaculate, a young religious congregation following in the footsteps of Saint Francis, bursting with vocations and decidedly orthodox in orientation - the polar opposite of the so-called "spirit of Assisi" [just as fallacious and damaging as the 'spirit of Vatican II'!]


THE CHALLENGE OF OPPOSING INTERPRETATIONS
by Athanasius Schneider

[. . .] For a correct interpretation of Vatican Council II, it is necessary to keep in mind the intention manifested in the conciliar documents themselves and in the specific words of the Popes who convened and presided over it, John XXIII and Paul VI. [Which the 'spiritists' have chosen to ignore completely all these dacades!]

Moreover, it is necessary to discover the common thread of the entire work of the Council, meaning its pastoral intention, which is salus animarum, the salvation of souls. This, in turn, depends on and is subordinate to the promotion of divine worship and of the glory of God - it depends on the primacy of God.

This primacy of God in life and in all the activity of the Church is manifested unequivocally by the fact that the constitution on the liturgy occupies, conceptually and chronologically, the first place in the vast work of the Council...

The characteristic of 'rupture' claimed in the interpretation of the conciliar texts is manifested in a more stereotypical and widespread way by hypothesizing an anthropocentric, secularist, or naturalistic shift of Vatican Council II with respect to the previous ecclesial tradition...

One of the best-known manifestations of such a mistaken interpretation has been, for example, so-called liberation theology and its subsequent pastoral practice which was devastating.

The contrast between liberation theology and its practice, on tHE one hand, and the Council, on the other, appears evident from the following conciliar teaching: "Christ, to be sure, gave His Church no proper mission in the political, economic or social order. The purpose which He set before her is a religious one" (cf. "Gaudium et Spes," 42)...

One interpretation of rupture with lighter doctrinal weight has been manifested in the pastoral-liturgical field... in the decline of the sacred and sublime character of the liturgy, and the introduction of more anthropocentric elements of expression.

This phenomenon can be seen in three liturgical practices that are fairly well known and widespread in almost all the parishes of the Catholic sphere:
- the almost complete disappearance of the use of the Latin language;
- the reception of the Eucharistic body of Christ directly in the hand while standingl and
- the celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice in the modality of a closed circle in which priest and people are constantly looking at each other.

This way of praying – where not everyone faces the same direction, which is a more natural corporal and symbolic expression that everyone is oriented toward God in public worship – contradicts the practice that Jesus himself and his apostles observed in public prayer, both in the temple and in the synagogue.

It also contradicts the unanimous testimony of the Fathers and of all the subsequent tradition of the Eastern and Western Church.

These three pastoral and liturgical practices glaringly at odds with the law of prayer maintained by generations of the Catholic faithful for at least one millennium, find no support in the conciliar texts, and even contradict both a specific text of the Council (on the Latin language: cf. "Sacrosanctum Concilium," 36 and 54) and the "mens," the true intention of the conciliar Fathers, as one finds in the proceedings of the Council...

In the hermeneutical uproar over contrasting interpretations, and in the confusion of pastoral and liturgical applications, what appears as the only authentic interpreter of the conciliar texts is the Council itself, together with the Pope.

One could make a comparison with the confused hermeneutical climate of the first centuries of the Church, caused by arbitrary biblical and doctrinal interpretations on the part of heterodox groups.

In his famous work De Praescriptione Haereticorum, Tertullian was able to counter the heretics of various tendencies with the fact that only the Church possesses the praescriptio, meaning only the Church is the legitimate proprietor of the faith, of the Word of God and of Tradition. The Church can use this to fend off the heretics in disputes over true interpretation.

Only the Church can say, according to Tertullian, "Ego sum heres Apostolorum," I am the heir of the apostles. By way of analogy, only the supreme magisterium of the Pope or of a future ecumenical council will be able to say: "Ego sum heres Concilii Vaticani II."

In recent decades there existed, and still exist today, groupings within the Church that are perpetrating an enormous abuse of the pastoral character of the Council and its texts - written with pastoral intention, since the Council did not want to present its own definitive or unalterable teachings.

From this pastoral nature of the texts, they are in principle open to supplementation and to further doctrinal clarifications. From the now decades-long experience of interpretations that are doctrinally and pastorally mistaken and contrary to the bimillennial continuity of the doctrine and prayer of the faith, arise the necessity and urgency of a specific and authoritative intervention of the pontifical magisterium for an authentic interpretation of the conciliar texts, with supplementation and doctrinal clarifications - a sort of "Syllabus" of the errors in the interpretation of Vatican Council II.

There is need for a new Syllabus, this time directed not so much against the errors coming from outside of the Church, but against the errors circulated within the Church by supporters of the thesis of discontinuity and rupture, with its doctrinal, liturgical, and pastoral applications.

Such a Syllabus should consist of two parts: the part that points out the errors, and the positive part with proposals for clarification, completion, and doctrinal clarification...

Two groups stand out in support of the theory of rupture. One of these groups tries to "Protestantize" the life of the Church doctrinally, liturgically, and pastorally.

On the opposite side are those traditional groups which, in the name of tradition, reject the Council and exempt themselves from submission to the supreme living magisterium of the Church, from the visible head of the Church, the vicar of Christ on earth, submitting only to the invisible head of the Church, waiting for better times...

In essence, there have been two impediments preventing the true intention of the Council and its magisterium from bearing abundant and lasting fruit.

One was from outside of the Church, in the violent process of cultural and social revolution during the 1960s, which like every powerful social phenomenon penetrated inside the Church, infecting vast segments of persons and institutions with its spirit of rupture.

The other impediment was manifested in the lack of wise and intrepid pastors of the Church who could be quick to defend the purity and integrity of the faith and of liturgical and pastoral life, and not allow themselves to be influenced by flattery or fear [or by what is 'in fashion'!]

The Council of Trent affirmed in one of its last decrees on the general reform of the Church that "The holy synod, shaken by the many extremely serious evils that afflict the Church, cannot do other than recall that the thing most necessary for the Church of God is to select excellent and suitable pastors; all the more in that our Lord Jesus Christ will ask for an account of the blood of those sheep that should perish because of the bad governance of negligent pastors unmindful of their duty" (Session XXIV, Decree "de reformatione," can. 1).

The Council continued: "As for all those who for any reason have been authorized by the Holy See to intervene in the promotion of future prelates or those who take part in this in another way, the holy Council exhorts and admonishes them to remember above all that they can do nothing more useful for the glory of God and the salvation of the people than to devote themselves to choosing good and suitable pastors to govern the Church."

Therefore, besides the need for a Syllabus on the Council that shall have doctrinal value, there is likewise a need for more holy and courageous pastors deeply rooted in the tradition of the Church, who are free from the mentality of rupture, both in the doctrinal field and in the liturgical field.

These two elements constitute the indispensable condition so that doctrinal, liturgical, and pastoral confusion may diminish significantly, and so that the pastoral work of Vatican Council II may bear much lasting fruit in the spirit of Tradition, which connects us to the spirit that has reigned in every time, everywhere and in all true children of the Catholic Church, which is the only and the true Church of God on earth.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2011 00:14]
18/01/2011 12:44
OFFLINE
Post: 21.952
Post: 4.581
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Pope receives members of
Pontifical Polish Ecclesiastical Institute






VATICAN CITY, January 17 (VIS) - Benedict XVI received members of the Pontifical Polish Ecclesiastical Institute on Monday morning in a meeting marking its first centenary. The group was accompanied by Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education.

The Polish Institute, which trains Polish diocesan priests, was the result of an initiative by St. Joseph Sebastian Pelczar, then bishop of Przemysl, and its history began during the pontificate of St. Pius X. It was inaugurated on 13 November 1910 by Msgr. Sapieha, who later became cardinal archbishop of Krakow.

Throughout its existence the institute has enjoyed the benevolence and support of various Pontiffs, including Servant of God Paul VI and the Venerable John Paul II (who stayed at the Institute whenever he was in Rome before he became Pope].

"The celebration of the first centenary of this important institution", the Pope said, "invites us to a dutiful and respectful recollection of the people who founded it with faith, courage and vigour. At the same time, it is a call to show responsibility to continue its original aims, even today, adapting them as appropriate to new circumstances."

"Above all, it is necessary to remain committed to keeping the soul of the institute alive: its religious and ecclesial soul, which responds to the providential divine plan of offering Polish priests an appropriate atmosphere for study and fraternity during their period of formation in Rome".

The Holy Father then went on to encourage the students "to consider yourselves as 'living stones', an important part of a history which today requires a personal and incisive response from you, making your own generous contribution just as the unforgettable primate of Poland, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, did during the course of Vatican Council II".


Left photo: Cardinal Wyszinski with Mons. Wojtyla at the time of Vatican II; right photo, the heads of the Polish and German bishops' delegations meeting after their historic reconciliation.

"It was here in the Polish Institute that he was able to prepare the celebration of the Millennium of the Baptism of Poland with that historic message of reconciliation which Polish bishops addressed to the German prelates, and which contained the famous words: 'We forgive and we ask forgiveness'".

Pope Benedict went on: "The Church needs well-trained priests, rich in the wisdom acquired through friendship with the Lord Jesus, priests who constantly draw from the Eucharistic table and from the endless font of His Gospel. From these two irreplaceable sources, draw continual support and the inspiration necessary for your life and ministry, for a sincere love of Truth; a Truth into which today you are called to delve through study and academic research, and which tomorrow you will share with many.

"The search for Truth", he added, "for you priests who are enjoying this unique Roman experience, is stimulated and enriched by your proximity to the Apostolic See which has the task of offering specific and universal service to Catholic communion in truth and charity.

"Remaining close to Peter, in the heart of the Church, means gratefully recognising that we are part of a centuries-old and fruitful history of salvation which, by multiform grace, has touched you and in which you are called to play an active role so that, like a flourishing tree, it may always brings forth its precious fruit".

The Holy Father concluded his remarks: "May your love and devotion for the figure of Peter encourage you generously to serve the communion of the entire Catholic Church, and of your particular Churches, so that, like one great family, everyone may learn to recognise in Jesus, Way, Truth and Life, the face of the merciful Father, Who does not want any of His children to be lost".



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2011 23:07]
18/01/2011 13:33
OFFLINE
Post: 21.953
Post: 4.582
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Pope receives Neocatechumenal
leaders and representatives





17 JAN 2011 (RV) - Pope Benedict XVI received the leadership of the Neocatechumenal Way at the Aula Paolo VI on Monday, along with many of its seminarians and member families.

The Neocatechumenal Way began in the poor suburbs of Madrid in the 1960s, when a young Spanish artist, Francesco “Kiko” Arguello, along with laywoman Crmen Hernandez, began to preach the Gospel to people in the slums of Palomeras Altas.

The Neocatechumenate grew and expanded rapidly, as 'an itinerary for the rediscovery of the power and grace of baptism among Christian families' in the rapidly secularizing climate of the contemporary world.

The Way, as it is known colloquially, has since acquired a strong missionary orientation. Many Neocatechumenal families offer to travel to foreign lands to preach the Gospel through the establishment of new Communities of the Neocatechumenate.

In his remarks to the group on Monday, Pope Benedict praised these hundreds of “families in mission”, for their willingness to forego the comforts of friends and familiar surroundings in order to help parishes in difficulty throughout the world.

The Holy Father also thanked the more than 2000 men in formation for the priesthood in the Way's Redemptoris Mater seminaries here in Rome and throughout the world, saying they are an eloquent sign of the fruit that can be borne of the rediscovery of Baptismal grace.









Neocatechumenal Way gets Vatican approval of
its catechism, along with instructions from Pope

By Alan Holdren

Vatican City, Jan 17, 2011 (CNA/EWTN News).- On a day already meant to be celebratory for the Neocatechumenal Way, the Holy See gave the movement more reason to cheer as it announced its approval of the community's series of teachings.

The Pope praised the community, but also gave them explicit instructions to work with local priests to carry out their mission.

Way members met in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall on Jan. 17 to witness the Pope bless families and priests as he sent them out to their new posts. Members and supporters of the Way, as well as people from its missions, initiatives and seminaries all over the world packed the venue to capacity.

The Neocatechumenal Way, an international religious community that bases its activity around "post-baptismal" Christian formation in parishes, was founded more than 40 years ago by Kiko Arguello and Carmen Hernandez. Both founders were in Rome for the audience.

Playing his guitar and accompanied by an orchestra and choir, Kiko welcomed Pope Benedict to the audience hall by leading the crowd of thousands in song.

As they all prepared for the papal audience, the president of the Pontifical Council for Laity, Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko, made the announcement that the catecheses, or teachings, of the Neocatechumenal Way had been officially approved by the Church.

The cardinal called it a “much awaited” and “very important” day for the community and its catechists.

“The Neocatechumenal Way,” Cardinal Rylko said, “acts according to the proposed writings of the founders ... which will have the title of Catechetical Directory of the Neo-Catechumenal Way,” he announced to thunderous applause.

The work to approve the teachings had already been done once. From 1997-2003, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) revised, modified and approved the teachings, which until that point had only been recorded from founder Kiko Arguello's talks.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, then prefect of the Vatican department, saw to it personally that the Way put things on paper.

With the nod from the CDF and conditional approval for a normal five-year "trial period," full recognition of the Way by the Holy See came in 2008. Some remained unconvinced of the doctrinal approval, however, since no one had ever seen the official okay from the doctrine department.

Questions continued to come up about whether certain modifications of liturgical practices proper to the community had been approved by the Vatican. There was confusion about how the Way treats communion, why lay people were asked to preach and what reasons were behind the practice of Way members celebrating Mass "privately" on Saturday evenings.

The prompting led co-founder Kiko Arguello to request that the Vatican's doctrine department confirm their approval of the Way's methods.

Cardinal Rylko said he was authorized to make that announcement to the audience hall this morning. He explained that "so as to give greater security to the actions of the Neo-Catechumenal Way and to offer doctrinal guarantees to all the pastors of the Church," the CDF revisited the 13 volumes of teachings and approved them as the "Catechetical Directory of the Way."

The Pontifical Council for Laity, of which the cardinal is head, authenticated the doctrinal approval and archived the decree on Dec. 26, 2010, he said.

"Your catecheses have thereby received an important seal from the Church," he told them. "It is a compass, a sure compass according to which you will be able to walk."

The cardinal also thanked them on behalf of the Church for "the grand and important work" of "promoting post-baptismal Christian initiation in the Church."

Kiko Arguello, the group's cofounder, told journalists in a press conference following the audience that the new approval “is important because it gives us a guarantee that the theological, exegetical, liturgical formation” that the Way uses is recognized by the Church as “making a Christian.”

Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Siedlce, Poland—who was at the press conference as an apparent sign of solidarity—said that he has seen positive effects of the Way's catechesis in his diocese. Now that they can come with their word and "with this book," bishops will know that “this is no deception, not a fictitious thing,” he said.

If they believe the instruction they receive, bishops will give their “people a reality that can transform them,” the Polish bishop added.

Arguello added later that the announcement is "marvelous" because the decree approves the teachings for official proclamation. "It has been revised by the Holy See and completed. It's correct."

"This is from the Church!" he exclaimed.

But the Way still encounters bumps in the road when it comes to its relationships with local pastors, a fact that Arguello alluded to in his next statement.

The directory, he said, "will be very important because now a parish priest who says something, we can say, 'Look father what it says here on page 427, this was approved by the Church'."

"It's a great strength. It gives us a great strength."

The Pope familiarized himself with the community originally as an priest in 1973 in Germany and has long been at their side to guide them to full recognition in the Church. He sees something special in their work, and while being well aware of complaints against them, he continues to encourage them to continue their work while forming better relationships with priests.

"With these seals of ecclesial approval," said the Pope during the morning audience, "the Lord today confirms this precious tool which is the Way and again entrusts it to you so that, in filial obedience to the Holy See and the pastors of the Church, you may contribute with renewed energy and ardour to the radical and joyful rediscovery of the gift of Baptism, and offer your own original contribution to the cause of new evangelization."

The Church recognizes a "particular gift" of the Way to "insert itself" in the Body of the Church, he said.

"In this light," the Pope said, "I exhort you always to seek profound communion with pastors, and with all members of the particular Churches, and of the very different ecclesial contexts in which you are called to work.

"Fraternal communion between the disciples of Jesus is, in fact, the first and greatest witness to the name of Jesus Christ."

The influence of the group took an additional leap forward during the audience. Pope Benedict blessed the 230 Way families being sent out into the world on mission.

The Way's mission families had previously numbered around 600.

A couple from Spain with 10 children and another baby on the way were delegated to greet the Pope in representation of the many other mission families present. Their destination was to be the Ukraine, where they will work to evangelize in a local community.

The Pope handed an additional 13 priests a silver cross to go out and do the same.

These hundreds join over a million others around the world who carry out the Way's mission.

Asked at the press conference what the Way might do to counter some of the resistance it has found in the world, Arguello said that they will continue their work and do their best to improve understanding of who they are.

It's not something that you can just understand after "a half-hour talk," rather it's something you have to make people experience, said the co-founder.

For this purpose, the community has been hosting encounters with bishops and priests around the world to explain what they do.

Arguello reported success through past encounters with more than 200 bishops on the island of Santo Domingo and another 78 in India. On Jan. 26, they'll be meeting with more than 200 bishops from places including the U.S., Canada and Australia who "truly wish to know the way."

"What we do is make them truly know the Way."


Over the years, the Neocatechumenals have been involved in harsh controversies with local dioceses, most notably in the Holy Land, in Baltimore, and lately in Japan, because of their tendency to 'isolate' themselves from their host diocese and because some of their practices - like Saturday evening Mass instead of Sunday, having lay people preach at Mass, and an unusual Commmunion rite - have tended to alienate local faithful. Here is the outcome of the complaint lodged by the Japanese bishops:

Vatican overrules Japanese bishops
in dispute with Neo-Catechumenals


January 10, 2011

The Vatican Secretariat of State has overruled the Japanese bishops’ decision to suspend the activities of the Neocatechumenal Way in the nation for five years.

A group of Japanese prelates met with Pope Benedict and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on December 13 to discuss their concerns about the lay movement. The prelates complained that the group’s activities are secretive and that its activities, including its manner of celebrating the sacred liturgy, harm the unity among the faithful.

According to a Neocatechumenal Way spokesman, the Secretariat of State has made the following decisions:

- Suspension of the Neocatechumenal Way in Japan for five years - as attempted by the country’s episcopal conference-- is not admissible
- Dialogue between the bishops of Japan and the Neocatechumenal Way must be taken up again as soon as possible with the help of a competent delegate who loves the Way and respects the problems of the bishops
- If necessary, the latter must give concrete indications to the Way for each of its own dioceses, avoiding pronouncements of the episcopal conference
- The Secretariat of State will be in charge of giving the necessary instructions and will address, in contact with the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the questions referring to the presence of the Way in Japan.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2011 01:20]
18/01/2011 15:19
OFFLINE
Post: 21.954
Post: 4.583
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Tuesday, January 18

ST. CARLO DA SEZZE (Charles of Sezze) (Italy, 1613-1670)
Lay Franciscan, Mystic, Writer
Born near Rome, the young Giancarlo dreamed of becoming a missionary to India,
inspired by the mission of Fr. Junipero Serra in the Americas. but God had other
plans for him and he ended up a lay Franciscan brother. A simple soul, he was
assigned to various priories around Rome, serving as doorman, gardener, porter.
Through it all, he served the sick and the needy by collecting alms and feeding
them. His confessors urged him to write about his spiritual life, and though
unlettered, he left many writings including his autobiography, The Grandeurs
of the Mercies of God
. It is said that at Mass one day, at the Elevation, a ray
of light struck him in the chest and left a wound on the same spot where Christ
had been pierced by a lance. After he died, the wound took on the shape of a
Cross, which was the basis for his beatification. In life, he was known for his
spiritual counsel and for miracles of healing and multiplication of food. As he
lay dying, Pope Clement IX is said to have called him to his side for counsel.
He was canonized in 1959.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/today.shtml



OR today.

At the Angelus and to the members of the Neo-Catechumenal Way,
the Pope underscores the importance of mission in the life of the Church
'Mankind is one single family'
He joins the faithful in joy over the coming beatification of John Paul II
Other papal stories in this issue: The Holy Father's meeting yesterday with the director-general of UNESCO, Mme. Irina Bokova, and his address to the Pontifical Polish Institute in Rome on their 100th anniversary. Page 1 international news: Former dictator 'Baby Doc' Duvalier returns to Haiti after a 25-year exile in France; and interim Tunisian government unable to quell protest demonstrations. In the inside pages, the text of Cardinal Gianfranco Raavsi's lecture yesterday at La Sapienza University on 'Open doors between places of worship and the public square' to mark the Day of Jewish-Christian Dialog.


No events announced for the Holy Father today.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2011 15:20]
18/01/2011 19:14
OFFLINE
Post: 21.956
Post: 4.585
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




The extraordinary and enduring friendship between John Paul II and Benedict XVI provides the already rich drama of the late Pope's cause for canonization with a unique dimension unheard of in centuries [if ever, since no enterprising journalist or historian has yet cited a precedent], in the history of the Church's formal recognition of persons who lived in closest imitation of Christ. With his usual insight, Jose Luis Restan sees that...


A friendship beyond flesh and blood
Translated from

January 17, 2011

"You do not have to write the letter at all, for I want to have you to the end", John Paul II told Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as the latter approached his 75th birthday and would therefore have to present a mandatory letter of resignation from active service upon reaching canonical retirement age.

"That was the great and undeserved benevolence he showed me from the very beginning... He had placed a great, very cordial, and profound trust in me. As the guarantee, so to speak, that we would travel the right course in the faith", Benedict XVI recalls in the recent interview book Light of the World.

And so it was until their final handclasp when Papa Wojtyla could no longer speak [on the eve of his death]. This was a friendship for the history books that deserves to be recalled now that we know that John Paul I will be proclaimed Blessed on May 1.

It was a unity, as the Apostle Paul said, that was not born of flesh and blood, but from their mutual faith. There were so many historical and personal differences that could have divided them.

One was Polish, a man of action, the other German, a methodical intellectual. The first was an extrovert and gifted with a sense of theater for grand gestures, the other reserved and mild-mannered.

But Wojtyla sought to have Ratzinger with him almost from the start of his Pontificate. They knew about each other from Vatican II [though they did not meet at the time] but they got to know each other in Munich during the talks (not always easy) between the German and Polish bishops to seal a historic reconciliation. And when the German cardinal finally agreed to come to Rome in 1982, the Polish Pope made it clear he wanted him nearby to the end.

Personal confidences by Popes are rare [at least until Light of the World!] but John Paul II wrote that Cardinal Ratzinger was more than just a close collaborator but a trusted friend.

Something united them that went beyond any differences: they were both anchored doubly in the Tradition of the Church and in the world they lived in, a world full of tensions in which wide margins of Christianity on both the right and the left were retreating visibly from the great patrimony of the faith.

But neither one stepped back nor were daunted by the harshness of the times, nor did they resign themselves to facile lamentation of the evils of the time and the torments of a Church still seeking to digest the contents of Vatican II.

Both were men acting freely who had forged their intelligence and the courage of their faith in defying the totalitarian monsters of Nazism and Communism. Both loved beauty as an expression of God's truth and his tender love for man - Wojtyla through the heater and poetry, Ratzinger through music.

Finally, the two shared the mission of revitalizing the tired body of the Church and to bring it into true missionary dialog with the modern world - because that was the great cause of Vatican II, and for their interpretation of it in continuity with Tradition, they both suffered incomprehensions and equivocations from all sides.

This does not mean they agreed about everything, and each knew his place. John Paul II's overwhelming personality and charisma were unique, and on more than one occasion, Ratzinger expressed admiration for that impulsion, as well as for the simple and direct way in which Papa Wojtyla addressed the thorniest issues.

But he has also described the great patience of the Polish Pope, his willingness to listen, and his humility about accepting contrary opinion. One can imagine their conversations over almost a quarter-century [when they met twice a week, conversing in German], surveying the broad horizons and weighty problems of teh Church!

"Sometimes, we disagreed, but I never disobeyed him", the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith says in the interview book Salt of the earth.

This beautiful friendship needs to be put forward because there have been recent efforts that are stupid but poisonous claiming a rupture between their Pontificates.

It is true that Benedict XVI has had to take care of questions left pending, as no doubt the next Pope will when his time comes. A Pontificate is never a finished work, but only one stage in the Church's pilgrimage through time. And this is an essential claim of modesty that Papa Ratzinger does not fail to mention.

It is also true that circumstances change with growing speed. The Berlin Wall is no longer there, but nihilism has grown in Europe. Liberation theology is no longer a force anywhere, but the global crisis has generated new anthropological challenges. And the fury of Islamist extremist terrorism has erupted in all its violent crudity, along with the rise of anti-Christian persecution in places like India, Pakistan, China and Africa.

The tremendous shake-up that the first part of John Paul II's Pontificate represented was not always translated into constructive channels nor lasting instruction. These are things that only the perspective of time and that the wisdom provided by the Holy Spirit will allow us to discern.

For instance, the distinct way in which Benedict XVI has addressed the tragedy caused by priestly offenses against minors has much to do with this experience at the CDF, where he had to deal with the bitter consequences of ill-advised decisions made by some bishops about these offenses and the offenders, but also with what modern psychology has to say about the pathology of pedophilia. And, of course, by his own particular intelligence. All this produced a sorrowful maturation in him.

But this does not mean that John Paul II was negligently complacent in this regard. He faced the issue squarely when the scandal erupted in the United States [by assigning the primary responsibility for dealing with them to Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF}, starting a process that his successor has been able to pursue in depth.

Some had thought that Benedict XVI would play politics and deliberately slow down the process of beatification for John Paul II if only to avoid inevitable accusations on the past of the media, or even as a way to personally distance himself, as it were, in view of doubts that have been expressed about some of Karol Wojtyla's personal traits [specifically, the argument that his 'indifferencee' to the sex abuse scandal and his friendship with Fr. Maciel cast doubt on his personal holiness].

One has to be blind to think that Benedict XVI would allow himself to be intimidated or influenced by such considerations and the malevolence of some who now praise him after having maligned him in the past and who could just as easily switch again. [For instance, the vitriol from some writers one had previously thought to be diehard 'Ratzingerians' over the next Assisi meeting is simply astounding and incomprehensible for anyone who claims to know and admire the Holy Father!]

The cries of 'Santo subito' have now been partially fulfilled six years later - enough time for the Church to minutely scrutinize every turn in the life of Karol Wojtyla (including, for instance, the letters he exchanged with his old friend Wanda) and to verify the various wonders that the Lord worked in the world through his life.

It was right to proceed so scrupulously so that the verdict of the Church about his personal holiness does not just arise from the passionate belief of the faithful but from the Church's own exigencies for certainty.

"Let us be happy", Benedict XVI said when he added his own personal announcement of the beatification after the Sunday Angelus. One would have to be sick not to rejoice.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/01/2012 14:22]
18/01/2011 21:21
OFFLINE
Post: 21.957
Post: 4.586
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Benedict XVI's endlessly recurring
'Ninth Station' of the Cross


When this news first came online yesterday from Irish media, I decided against posting it: The headline was identical to the AP sotry today - 'Vatican told Irisn bishops not to report abuse', so I immediately checked the body of the report to find out when this warning was given and by whom.

The date was 1997, and the source of the story was identified as a yet-unpublished part of the Murphy Report, but there was no indication who in 'the Vatican' gave the warning and under what circumstances. Lacking these pertinent facts, I decided not to post until there was a clearer news report. Today's news reports are now explicit, and I have indicated the relevant data in the otherwise misleading headline.

How conveniently 'nifty and pat' that the MSM have found a new reason to revive the 'sex abuse scandal' in 2011, right on the heels of the announcement of John Paul II's beatification! A fresh opportunity for detractors to tar not just the Church and Benedict XVI all over, but the soon-to-be Blessed John Paul II as well.


(In 1997) the Vatican (Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland)
warned Irish bishops not to report abuse to the police

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK



DUBLIN, January 18 (AP) – A newly revealed 1997 letter from the Vatican warned Ireland's Catholic bishops not to report all suspected child-abuse cases to police — a disclosure that victims groups described as "the smoking gun" needed to show that the Vatican enforced a worldwide culture of cover-up.

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican's rejection of a 1996 Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests following Ireland's first wave of publicly disclosed lawsuits.

The letter undermines persistent Vatican claims, particularly when seeking to defend itself in U.S. lawsuits, that the Church in Rome never instructed local bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police.

It instead emphasizes the Church's right to handle all child-abuse allegations, and determine punishments in-house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Signed by the late Archbishop Luciano Storero, Pope John Paul II's diplomat to Ireland, the letter instructs Irish bishops that their new policy of making the reporting of suspected crimes mandatory "gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and canonical nature."

Storero wrote that canon law — which required abuse allegations and punishments to be handled within the Church — "must be meticulously followed."

He warned that any bishops who tried to impose punishments outside the confines of canon law would face the "highly embarrassing" position of having their actions overturned on appeal in Rome.

Catholic officials in Ireland and the Vatican declined AP requests to comment on the letter, which RTE said it received from an Irish bishop.

Child-abuse activists in Ireland said the 1997 letter should demonstrate, once and for all, that the protection of pedophile priests from criminal investigation was not only sanctioned by Vatican leaders but ordered by them.

"The letter is of huge international significance, because it shows that the Vatican's intention is to prevent reporting of abuse to criminal authorities. And if that instruction applied here, it applied everywhere," said Colm O'Gorman, director of the Irish chapter of human rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Joelle Casteix, a director of U.S. advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, described the letter as "the smoking gun we've been looking for."

Casteix said it was certain to be cited by victims' lawyers seeking to pin responsibility directly on the Vatican rather than local dioceses. She said investigators long have sought such a document showing Vatican pressure on a group of bishops "thwarting any kind of justice for victims."

"We now have evidence that the Vatican deliberately intervened to order bishops not to turn pedophile priests over to law enforcement," she said. "And for civil lawsuits, this letter shows what victims have been saying for dozens and dozens of years: What happened to them involved a concerted cover-up that went all the way to the top."


{????] To this day, the Vatican has not endorsed any of the Irish church's three major policy documents since 1996 on safeguarding children from clerical abuse.

Irish taxpayers, rather than the church, have paid most of the euro1.5 billion ($2 billion) to more than 14,000 abuse claimants dating back to the 1940s
. [????]

In his 2010 pastoral letter to Ireland's Catholics condemning pedophiles in the ranks, Pope Benedict XVI faulted bishops for failing to follow canon law and offered no explicit endorsement of Irish child-protection efforts by the Irish church or state. Benedict was widely criticized in Ireland for failing to admit any Vatican role in covering up the truth.

O'Gorman — who was raped repeatedly by an Irish priest in the 1980s when he was an altar boy and was among the first victims to speak out in the mid-1990s — said evidence is mounting that some Irish bishops continued to follow the 1997 Vatican instructions and withheld reports of crimes against children as recently as 2008.

Two state-commissioned reports published in 2009 — into the Dublin Archdiocese and workhouse-style Catholic institutions for children — unveiled decades of cover-ups of abuse involving tens of thousands of Irish children since the 1930s.

A third major state-ordered investigation into Catholic abuse cover-ups, concerning the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne, is expected to be published within the next few months documenting the concealment of crimes as recently as 2008.

Irish Church leaders didn't begin telling police about suspected pedophile priests until the mid-1990s after the first major scandal — of a priest, Brendan Smyth, who had raped dozens of children while the church transferred him to parishes in Dublin, Belfast, Rhode Island and North Dakota — triggered the collapse of the entire Irish government. That national shock, in turn, inspired the first victims to begin suing the Church publicly.

In January 1996, Irish bishops published a groundbreaking policy document spelling out their newfound determination to report all suspected abuse cases to police.

But in his January 1997 letter seen Tuesday by the AP, Storero told the bishops that a senior church panel in Rome, the Congregation for the Clergy, had decided that the Irish church's policy of "mandatory" reporting of abuse claims conflicted with canon law.

Storero emphasized in the letter that the Irish church's policy was not recognized by the Vatican and was "merely a study document."

Storero warned that bishops who followed the Irish child-protection policy and reported a priest's suspected crimes to police ran the risk of having their in-house punishments of the priest overturned by the Congregation for the Clergy.


The 2009 Dublin Archdiocese report found that this actually happened in the case of Tony Walsh, one of Dublin's most notorious pedophiles, who used his role as an Elvis impersonator in a popular "All Priests Show" to get closer to kids.

Walsh in 1993 was kicked out of the priesthood by a secret Dublin church court — but successfully appealed the punishment to a Vatican court, which reinstated him to the priesthood in 1994. [Storero's letter was in 1997, so it could not have applied to the Walsh case!]

He raped a boy in a pub restroom at his grandfather's funeral wake that year. Walsh since has received a series of prison sentences, most recently a 12-year term imposed last month. Investigators estimate he raped or molested more than 100 children.

Storero's 1997 letter, originally obtained by RTE religious affairs program "Would You Believe?", said the Congregation for the Clergy was pursuing "a global study" of sexual-abuse policies and would establish worldwide child-protection policies "at the appropriate time."

Today, the Vatican's child-protection policies remain in legal limbo. [An unfair statement, because the Vatican has - rightly - left it to the local bishops to devise their own child protection programs as they have in the US, the UK, Germany, and yes, even Ireland.]

The Vatican does advise bishops worldwide to report crimes to police — in a legally nonbinding lay guide on its Web site. This recourse is omitted from the official legal advice provided by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and updated last summer. That powerful policymaking body continues to stress the secrecy of canon law. [As well it should - in much the same way that civil law protects the reputation of the accused and presumes their innocence before they have been tried in court. Why should priests be exmept from presumption of innocence, when even terrorists who kill people in plain sight of dozens of witnesses and recorded on video surveillance continue to be 'presumed innocent' till they are tried and found guilty?]

The central message of Storero's letter was reported secondhand in the 2009 Dublin Archdiocese report. The letter itself, marked "strictly confidential," has never been published before.


My reaction, yesterday as today, is that the timing of this disclosure cannot have been simply coincidental to the news of John Paul II's beatification. Especially now that it turns out the vaunted 'smoking gun' letter came from the Nuncio to Ireland at the time. By definition, the Nuncio is the Pope's personal ambassador to the country of assignment, but functionally, he is directly under the Secretariat of State.

Predisposed detractors of the Church - and of John paul II's beatification, in particular - will immediately rush to judgment and point to it as 'evidence' that the late Pope was, at the very least, cavalier in his attitude towards sex abuses by priests.

Of course, the bare facts - as disclosed so far in a unilateral context - raise obvious questions: Would a Nuncio write such a letter without the express knowledge of the Pope, or would he do it simply on instruction from his immediate boss, the Secretary of State, who in 1997 was Cardinal Angelo Sodano? In turn, would Cardinal Sodano take such matters into his hands unilaterally - perhaps with the assent or knowledge of the then prefects of teh Congregations for Bishops and for the Clergy - without running it through John Paul II?
And would Cardinal Ratzinger, who, in 1997, had no direct involvement with sex offenses by priests, have necessarily known that Storero had written such a letter?

Unfortunately for all of us, Storero is gone. Will Cardinal Sodano take this opportunity to speak out now about his role in all this - including the murky circumstances concerning his reported involvement in the handling of the two Austrian bishops accused of sexual abuse and of the Maciel case?

The collateral consideration in all this is that Sodano and Cardinal Leonardo Sandri (now prefect for Oriental Churches), who was his deputy Secretary of State from 2000-2005, both explicitly refused to testify about John Paul II to the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood on the ground that they felt it was much too soon to consider his cause for beatification! Potentially, that could be damaging, especially in the eyes of conspiracy theorists.


The NYT at least
presents the Vatican side


P.S. The New York Times, in an article written by -who else?, the infamous Laurie Goodstein -
www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/world/europe/19vatican.html?_r=3&src=twt&twt...
pretty much follows the 'Gotcha!' approach and tone of the AP story, and cites the usual bitter anti-Church critics, but it does include the following statements from the Vatican side, which is the right and fair thing to do:



Jeffrey S. Lena, a lawyer for the Vatican, said in a statement that the letter “has been deeply misunderstood.”

He said that its primary purpose was to ensure that bishops used proper canonical procedures to discipline their priests so that the punishments were not overturned on technical grounds.

He said the letter was also intended to question the validity of the Irish bishops’ policies, because they were issued merely as a “study document.”

Mr. Lena added, “In stark contrast to news reports, the letter nowhere instructed Irish bishops to disregard civil law reporting requirements.” [And as pointed out in many previous reports on this issue, such requirements were not enacted in Ireland until recently, I think las late as 2008 or 2009.]

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that the letter represented an approach to sexual abuse cases shaped by a particular Vatican office, the Congregation for the Clergy, before 2001.

That year, Pope John Paul II charged the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then led by the future Pope Benedict, with handling such cases.

“It refers to a situation that we’ve now moved beyond,” Father Lombardi said. “That approach has been surpassed, including its ideas about collaborating with civil authorities.”

He played down the idea that the letter was a smoking gun. “It’s not new,” he said. “They’ve known about it in Ireland for some time."

[Obviously, the bishops knew about it, since it was submitted to the Murphy Commission! They could just as well not have submitted it if they had any intent to deceive!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/01/2011 01:50]
19/01/2011 00:35
OFFLINE
Post: 21.958
Post: 4.587
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




In the following article, Luigi Accattoli expands on a reflection he published earlier in Corriere della Sera (see top post on this page)...


New year, 'new' Pope
Benedict XVI's activism ranges from beatifying his predecessor
to naming a Protestant president for the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

By Luigi Accattoli
Translated from

January 18, 2011

2011 could not have begun better for Pope Benedict: from the launching of the new laws on Vatican banking and finances (comparable in importance to the new rules on dealing with pedophile priests) to the convocation of a fourth world inter-religious meeting in Assisi; from the announcement of Papa Wojtyla's beatification to the creation of the first Anglo-Catholic Ordinariate, and to the nomination of a Protestant to head the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

These are five major moves in the context of Benedict's own internal reform of the Church, his Pontificate's continuity with that of his predecessor, and his efforts to promote meaningful ecumenism.

Some of them are circumstantial, and some are strategic, but all are comprehensible and can be appreciated even by public opinion.

Together, they send a signal that from the viewpoint of governance – and of the Pope's personal initiative – the Benedictine Pontificate is undertaking its best season yet.

The new framework for financial dealings within the Vatican – which will be capped by the nomination of Cardinal Attilio Nicora as president of the new Financial Information Authority to supervise financial and banking activities – will ensure that all financial structures in the Vatican, including the Vatican bank IOR, will be protected against the ever-present temptation of using Vatican institutions to launder moneyand/or to knowingly or unknowingly finance terrorist activities.

As Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said, the new laws are designed “to avoid any errors which can so easily be depicted by the media as 'Vatican scandals'." One might say that moralization in this sector has been a more dificult challenge that that regarding sexual abuses. But finally it has begun.

Papa Ratzinger's intent to clean up even in this sector is confirmed by his choice of Cardinal Nicora as a guarantee that the new laws will be applied: He has been the most rigorous among those who were asked to review the overall situation preparatory to promulgating the reforms.

On the first day of 2011, the Pope also announced that he was inviting other religious leaders to a fourth Assisi Day to pray for world peace, on the 25th anniversary of the first one, and following similar initiatives taken by John Paul II subsequently – first in 1993 during the war in Bosnia, and then in 2002, after the rerrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 in the USA. [Previous reports about Assisi have failed to include the 1993 prayer day for Bosnia, and I did not know enough to notice!]

This announcement immediately prompted 'concerns' and even protests from the traditionalist wing of the Church (at least in Italy), who do not understand how the rigorous Papa Ratzinger could follow the example set by his predecessor to whom this inter-religious meetings were so important.

I see in the return to Assisi an important signal that the theologian Pope wishes to send to the world regarding the fragility of peace on earth, which today is more than ever undermined by conflicts with a religious motivation. And also, another signal of continuity with preceding Pontificates.

Just as he has taken to carrying the 'papal cross' that characterized the Popes ebfore Vatican II, Benedict XVI is also being loyal to the legacies of the conciliar Popes: Assisi, like his visits to synagogues and mosques, are among such legacies.

And so we come to the great shadow cast by Papa Wojtyla, On Friday, January 14, Benedict XVI authorized the decree on his beatification, which will take place on May 1 – a decision reached in record time compared to any other 'proclamation' by the Church of Christian exemplarity in the modern era.

It seems even more brief for a Pope who 'reigned' for 26 years and about whom a veritable mountain of documents and 'acts' had to be scrutinized.

But even in this, there is a justification of continuity. The Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, pointed out that in the past ten centuries, there are no precedents of a Pope beatified by his immediate successor.

In this way, Benedict XVI, who was the late Pope's principal collaborator on doctrinal matters for 23 years, is also protecting John Paul II's legacy from the most naïve but nonetheless bothersome accusations of discontinuity with Tradition.

And so we come to the last two decisions we mentioned – both in the name of ecumenism. On Saturday, January 15, Benedict XVI instituted a Personal ordinariate in England and Wales for disaffected Anglicans joining the Catholic church, and named as its first Ordinary - a rank equivalent to that of a diocesan bishop - the former Anglican Archbishop of Richborough, Keith Newton, married and father of three children. Newton. 58, and two other former bishops, weer re-ordained as Catholic priests that same day in London's Westminster Cathedral..

It is a remarkable fact, both in terms of Catholic rapprochement with the Anglican world, and as a further expression of liturgical and canonical plurifomity within the Catholic Church [analogous to the retention by the Eastern Churches of their ancient canonical and liturgical practices].

And made all the more significant because this previously unthinkable step was taken by a Pope who, before his election, was perceived to be an enemy of ecumenism as well as of any pluriformity within the Church [obviously by those ignorant of his extensive knowledge of other churches and religions, particularly Judaism, Orthodox Christianity, the Oriental Christian Churches, Anglicanism and Lutheranism].
Also on January 15, Benedict XVI named a Protestant, the Swiss physician Werner Arber, who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize in medicine, to be president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. This decision is unprecedented for the Pontifical Academies and Commissions.

To understand the spirit of this decision, it must be recalled that Cardinal Ratzinger has often observed how “Outside the Catholic Church, there are so many true Christians, and many of them are truly Christian”.

But the more specific reason is due to the fact that Arber is a physician. Cardinal Ratzinger said on several occasions, as in a 1997 book on The Church, ecumenism and politics, that “Christians of all denominations must strive to render common witness together on the great moral questions”.

Benedict hopes to find in Dr. Arber an imporant ally in giving common witness on the increasingly heated issues involving bioethics and issues of life and death.

So, in an assortment of seemingly small and evidently major news items over the past two weeks, we have looked at five emblematic developments that speak very well of the health of this Pontificate as it completes its fifth full year and begins its sixth on April 19. It looks to be more active than ever and very much future-oriented.


...And many thought he would be a 'transitional' Pope, by which they meant a 'stopgap', from whom no great things could or should be expected. As if someone gifted with as many graces as God has endowed him with could ever be a transitional anything!
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2011 01:18]
19/01/2011 13:55
OFFLINE
Post: 21.959
Post: 4.588
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


One must thank John Allen for promptly placing the 1997 letter in the right context!

Is the 1997 'Vatican' letter
on abuse a 'smoking gun'?


January 19, 2011

A January 1997 letter from the papal ambassador to Ireland, communicating the opinion of the Vatican’s Congregation for Clergy about a set of proposed Irish policies on priestly sexual abuse, confirms that in the late 1990s the Vatican was ambivalent about requirements that bishops be required to report abuse to police and civil prosecutors.

In light of recent Vatican pledges of transparency, the letter is certainly a public relations embarrassment. As a “smoking gun” proving a Vatican-orchestrated cover-up, however, the letter may fall short.

Signed by then-nuncio to Ireland Archbishop Luciano Storero, the letter was revealed Monday night by Irish broadcaster RTE, just ahead of a Vatican-sponsored Apostolic Visitation of the Irish church.

In it, Storero, who died in 2000, writes that the Congregation for the Clergy had concluded that a “mandatory reporting” policy, proposed by a draft 1996 set of policies considered by the Irish bishops, “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature.”

That line has fueled charges that the Vatican effectively tied the hands of bishops, preventing them from turning over abuse cases to civil authorities.

American attorney Jeffrey Anderson asserted in a statement yesterday that the 1997 letter “severely undermines claims of Church hierarchy that officials in Rome were not part of a conspiracy to suppress evidence of sexual assaults by Catholic priests,” and that it is “merely a foreshadowing of additional ‘smoking guns’ secretly vaulted away in the bowels of the Vatican fortress in Rome.”

The Survivors’ Network of those Abused by Priests said, “A key Roman Catholic figure basically tells bishops that church policy trumps criminal laws and that church officials, not secular officials, get to quietly handle child molesters “in house.’”


There are three bits of context, however, which complicate efforts to tout the letter as a smoking gun.

First, the letter warns the Irish bishops that if they were to adopt policies which violate the Church’s Code of Canon Law, cases in which they remove abusers from the priesthood could be overturned on procedural grounds. Were that to happen, the letter says, “the results could be highly embarrassing and detrimental.”

In other words, a main concern of the letter is to ensure that when a bishop takes action against an abuser, his edict should stick – suggesting a fairly tough line on abuse, rather than a drive to cover it up.

Second, the letter does not directly forbid bishops from reporting abusers to police and prosecutors. Instead, it communicates the judgment of one Vatican office that mandatory reporting policies raise concerns. It’s not a policy directive, in other words, but an expression of opinion.

Though the letter does not spell out what the “moral and canonical” concerns were, many observers say a strong fear at the time in the Vatican was that such policies might intrude on the seal of the confessional.

The implication would be that as long as bishops protected the sanctity of the confessional, there was nothing to prevent them from cooperating with civil authorities. That's more or less the position today espoused by Vatican officials.

Third, the Congregation for the Clergy at the time was under the direction of Colombian Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, whose reservations about bishops reporting their priests to civil authorities have been already well documented.

In another celebrated case which generated headlines last year, Castrillón wrote to a French bishop in September 2001 congratulating him for refusing to denounce a priest.

When that 2001 letter came to light, Vatican spokespersons conceded that it revealed a debate among senior Vatican officials about how aggressive the Church ought to be in streamlining procedures for sex abuse cases – a debate, spokespersons said, which Castrillón Hoyos eventually lost to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI.

In that light, the 1997 letter seems less a statement of Vatican policy than an expression of what would eventually be the losing side in an internal Vatican power struggle.

In a statement released late on Tuesday, American attorney Jeffrey Lena, who represents the Vatican in sex abuse cases in American courts, said the 1997 letter “has been deeply misunderstood.”

In fact, Lena said, its main purpose “was to help ensure that bishops who discipline their priests for sexual abuse did so in a manner that would ensure that the priest not avoid punishment based upon technical grounds.”

Further, Lena said, “the letter nowhere instructed Irish Bishops to disregard civil law reporting requirements.”


In a similar vein, the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, said the letter “correctly insists on the importance that canonical legislation be respected, precisely so that guilty parties not have a basis to appeal.”

The “moral and canonical concerns” mentioned in the letter, Lombardi said, concern the sacrament of confession.

Indirectly, Lombardi also said that the 1997 letter was written before the late Pope John Paul II put Ratzinger in charge of the Vatican’s response to the sexual abuse crisis in 2001, a decision which Vatican-watchers regarded as a defeat for the more ambivalent line associated with Castrillón Hoyos. [Not the least, a sign that John Paul II clearly appreciated the magnitude and implications of the US scandal that erupted at the time - even if his previous mindset was conditioned by his experience in Poland where 'sex abuse' charges were routinely used by the Communists to discedit priests - and immediately moved to do something drastic at the Vatican level. How can he not be credited for placing the problem in the hands of Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF? He could have simply directed the Congregation for the Clergy to be more stringent - but he chose the unequivocal way of simply taking the issue out of their hands!]

Of course, this story has sucked out the oxygen from all other news about the Vatican today, and a snapshot just now of the start of Yahoo's running catalog of news headlines online shows that...




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/01/2011 01:49]
19/01/2011 15:01
OFFLINE
Post: 21.960
Post: 4.589
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master



Wednesday, January 19

ST. FABIAN (d. 250), POPE AND MARTYR
Fabian was a Roman layman who came into the city from his farm one day in 236, as clergy and people were preparing
to elect a new Pope. Eusebius, historian of the early Church, says a dove flew in and settled on the head of Fabian.
This sign united the votes of clergy and laity and he was chosen unanimously. He led the Church for 14 years and was
one of the first martyrs killed during the persecution of Decius in 250 AD. He is credited with having Christianized
Gaul (now France), sending out seven trusted bishops to do this. St. Cyprian wrote That Fabian was an 'incomparable'
man whose glory in death matched the holiness and purity of his life. He was buried in the catacombs of St. Callistus;
his gravestone, broken into four by time, bears the Greek words, “Fabian, bishop, martyr.”
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/011911.shtml



No papal stories or photos in today's OR. Even the front-page news is generic - China and the USA 'so close and yet so far apart', regarding the current visit to Washington of President Hu Jintao; protests go on in Tunisia despite ouster and flight of the dictator who was president for 23 years; Israel's Labor Pqarty leaves the coalition government of Prime Minister Netanyahu; and a UN report on growing investments in poorer countries by the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. In the inside pages, two excellent itnerviews: one with the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as the Week for Prayer gets underway; and with Cardinal Josef Tomko, emeritus prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, on his 35-year friendship with John Paul II.


PAPAL EVENTS TODAY

General Audience - The Holy Father devoted his catechesis today to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity
which culminates on January 24, Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul.




The Holy Father has nominated the president and members of the new Financial Information Authority.

The President is Cardinal Attilio Nicora, who is also president of APSA (the Administration of the Patrimony of teh Holy See). And the members of the Executive Council are Prof. Claudio Bianchi; Prof. Avv. Marcello Condemi; Prof. Giuseppe Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto; and Dott. Cesare Testa.





FIVE YEARS & NINE MONTHS TODAY, AND COUNTING....

AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER!

We can never love you enough.




[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2012 17:13]
19/01/2011 16:18
OFFLINE
Post: 21.961
Post: 4.590
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


Vatican Radio has released the text of remarks made by Fr. Federico Lombardi....

About the 1997 letter from Apostolic Nuncio
in Dublin to Irish bishops

by Fr. Federico Lombardi

January 19, 2011


In the course of a recent television programme in Ireland, mention was made of a letter written in 1997 by Archbishop Luciano Storero, then apostolic nuncio to Ireland, to members of the country's episcopal conference.

That letter has been given biased treatment by some media outlets, who have presented it as proof of an instruction, from the Vatican, to cover up cases of sexual abuse of minors.

The letter – written on the basis of indications received from the Congregation for the Clergy – concerns a document produced by an advisory committee of the Irish bishops, highlighting certain problematic aspects therein and indicating the need for a deeper examination which also takes account of similar situations in other countries, and which had to be conducted through dialogue and collaboration with the episcopal conferences of the countries concerned.

In the first place, it must be noted that the letter does not in any way suggest that national laws must not be followed.

Furthermore, the letter rightly emphasises the importance of always respecting canonical legislation, precisely in order to ensure that guilty parties do not have justified grounds for an appeal and thus producing a result contrary to the one desired.

Finally, it must be stated that the letter was written prior to the norms of 2001 which unified responsibility in this field under the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a move which has certainly led to clearer guidelines and more effective procedures.




1/20/11
P.S. When the AP first broke this story on Jan. 18, it also posted a photograph of the letter in its usual newsphoto format that I could not blow ub reasonably to readable proportions. They have now posted a larger-scale format which I am able to blow up...



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/01/2011 13:14]
19/01/2011 18:14
OFFLINE
Post: 21.962
Post: 4.591
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY:
On the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity






Pope outlines four pillars
of Christian Unity



19 JAN 2011 (RV) - “No one should go hungry, nobody should be poor in the Christian community”, said Pope Benedict XVI Wednesday, underlining that one of the four pillars of unity is fellowship and sharing as seen in the early Christian communities of Jerusalem.

In a general audience dedicated entirely to the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, the Pope expressed “vivid regret” for the obstacles that still remain on the journey towards full communion in Christ, once again underlining that prayer is the cornerstone of all ecumenical efforts, “the Lord must assist us on this journey, he must still help us a lot, because alone we can do nothing”.

Speaking to a crowded Paul VI audience hall, the Pope traced what he described as the “four pillars” of Christian unity, starting from the witness of early communities of Jerusalem as set out in the Acts of the Apostles, from which this year's theme was taken; “They devoted themselves to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”....

(The full text of the catechesis is translated below).





Here is a translation of the Holy Father's catechesis:




Dear brothers and sisters,

We are celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, in which all who believe in Christ are asked to join in prayer to bear witness to the profound bond that exists among them and to invoke the gift of full communion.

It is providential that, in the journey to build unity, prayer should be placed at the center: This reminds us, yet again, that unity cannot simply be the product of human effort - it is above all a gift of God which entails growing in our communion with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

The Second Vatican Council said: "These prayers in common are doubtless a very effective means to invoke the grace of unity and constitute an authentic manifestation of the links through which Catholics continue to be united with their separated brothers: 'For where two or three are gathered together in my name (says the Lord), there am I in the midst of them'
" (Mt 18,20)(Decr. Unitatis Redintegratio, 8).

The way towards the visible unity of all Christians resides in prayer, because fundamentally, we do not 'build' this unity - it is God who 'builds' it, it comes from him, from the Trinitarian mystery, from the unity of the Father with the Son in the dialog of love that is the Holy Spirit; and our ecumenical task should open itself to divine action, it should become a daily invocation of God's help. The Church is his, not ours.

The theme chosen this year for the Week of Prayer refers to the experience of the first Christian community in Jerusalem, as described in the Acts of the Apostles. We heard the text - "They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers"
(Acts 2,42).

We must consider that at the Pentecost, the Holy Spirit had descended on persons of diverse languages and cultures. This means that, from the very beginning, the Church embraced people of diverse origins, but despite these differences, the Spirit created one body only.

Pentecost as the beginning of the Church marks the extension of the Covenant of God to all creatures, to all peoples and to all times, so that all of creation may journey towards its true objective - to be the place of unity and love.

In the passage cited from the Acts of the Apostles, four characteristics defined the first Christian community of Jerusalem as a place of unity and love - and St. Luke did not mean to describe only a thing of the past.

He offers it to us as a model, as a norm for the Church today, because these four characteristics should always constitute the life of the Church.

The first characteristic: to be united and firm in listening to the teachings of the Apostles, then in fraternal communion, in the breaking of bread, and in prayer.

As I said, these four elements are still the pillars of living for every Christian commmunity, and also constitute the only solid foundation for progress in the quest for the visible unity of the Church.

First of all is listening to the teaching of the Apostles, namely, listening to the witness that they render of their mission, and of the life, death and resurrection of our Lord. It is what St. Paul simply calls 'the Gospel'.

The first Christians received the Gospel from the mouths of the Apostles - they were united in listening to it and in proclaiming it, because, as St. Paul affirms, "It (the Gospel) is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes"
(Rom 1,16).

Even today, the community of believers recognizes in that reference to the teaching of the Apostles the standard of their own faith: every effort to construct unity among all Christians thus must pass through a deepening of our fidelity to the depositum fidei transmitted to us by the Apostles.

Firmness in faith is the foundation of our communion - it is the foundation of Christian unity.

The second element is fraternal communion. At the time of the first Christian community, as it is in our day, this is the most tangible expression, especially for the outside world, of unity among the disciples of the Lord.

We read in the Acts of the Apostles that the first Christians had 'all things in common', and that those who had property and possessions sold them to share with the needy (cfr Acts 2,44-45). In the history fof the Church, this sharing of possessions has found ever new modalities of expression.

One of these, which is quite particular, is that of fraternal and friendly relations among Christians of diverse confessions. The history of the ecumenical movement has been marked by difficulties and uncertainties, but it is also a story of brotherhood, cooperation, human and spiritual sharing, which has significantly changed relationships among believers in our Lord Jesus: We are all committed to continue along this road.

The second element, communion, is first of all, communion with God through faith. But communion with God creates communion among ourselves and is epxressed necessarily in that concrete communion described in the Acts of the Apostles, namely, sharing.

No one in the Christian community should be hungry, no one should be poor: this is a fundamental obligation. Communion with God, realized as fraternal communion, is concretely expressed in social commitment, in Christian charity, in justice.

The third element: in the life of the first Christian community of Jerusalem, the breaking of bread was an essential moment, during which the Lord himself becomes present in his unique sacrifice on the Cros, giving himself completely for the life of his friends: "This is my body, offered in sacrifice for you... This is the chalice of my blood...that was shed for you".

"The Church lives on the Eucharist. This truth does not simply epxress a daily experience of the faith, but encloses in synthesis the nucleus of the Church's mystery"
(John Paul II, Enc. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 1).

Communion in the sacrifice of Christ is the peak of our union with God and therefore represents the fullness of unity among the disciples of Christ, their full communion with each other.

During this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, regret is particularly acute for the impossiblity of sharing the same Eucharistic table, a sign that we are still far from realizing that unity for which Christ prayed.

This sad experience, which also confers a penitential dimension to our prayer, must motivate an even more generous commitment on the part of everyone so that, once the obstacles to full communion have been removed, that day will come in which it will be possible for all of us to gather together at the Lord's table, to break the Eucharistic bread togehter, and to drink from the same chalice.

Finally, prayer - or as St. Luke says, prayers - constitute the fourth characteristic of the primitive Church of Jerusalem described in the Acts of the Apostles.

Prayer was always the constant attitude of the disciples of Christ - it accompanied their daily life in obedience to the will of God, as the words of the apostle Paul attest, who wrote in his first Letter to the Thessalonians: "Rejoice always, pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus"
. (1 Ts 5,16-18l cfr Eph 6,18)

Christian prayer, participation in the prayer of Jesus, is by its nature a filial experience, as we are told in the words of the Our Father, the prayer of the family - the 'we' of the people of God, of brothers and sisters - speaking to our common Father.

To place oneself in the attitude of prayer also means opening ourselves to brotherhood. Only as the collective 'we' can we say 'Our Father'. Therefore, let us open ourselves to brotherhood which comes from being children of the one heavenly Father, and to dispose ourselves for forgiveness and reconciliation.

Dear brothers and sisters, as disciples of the Lord, we have a common responsibility to the world - we must render a common service. Like the first Christian community of Jerusalem, starting from that which we already share, we must offer strong witness, spiritually based and sustained by reason, of the one God who revealed himself and speaks to us in Christ, as the bearers of a message that orients and illuminates the way for man in our time, who is often without clear and valid reference points.

It is therefore important to grow daily in reciprocal love, striving to overcome those barriers that still exist among Christians; to feel that there is a true interior unity among all who follow the Lord; to work together as much as we can to resolve the questions that remain open; and above all, to be aware that in this itinerary, the Lord must assist us, he must help us a lot, because without him, by ourselves, without 'remaining in him', we cannot do anything
(cfr Jn 15,5).

Dear friends, once more it is in prayer that we find ourselves united, particularly this week, together with all those who confess their faith in Jesus Christ, Son of God.

Let us persevere in prayer - we are men of prayer - imploring God for the gift of unity, so that his plan of salvation and reconciliation may be fulfilled for the whole world. Thank you.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/01/2011 13:26]
19/01/2011 19:40
OFFLINE
Post: 21.963
Post: 4.592
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




LOTW has now sold 1 million copies
in its various translations



VATICAN CITY, January 19 (Translated from ASCA) - Light of the World, Benedict XVI's book-lenth interview with journalist peter Seewald, has now sold about a million copies in its various editions, according to the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, in its January 20 issue, which has a series of articles about the book, including an essay by editor Giovanni Maria Vian on the history of papal interviews since Leo XIII.

In the article on the book sales, the OR writes; "On the basis of the translations already published, total sales so far are around one million."

Referring to its sales in Italy alone, "the first 50,000 copies of the Italian edition quickly sold out, and a second edition - essentially to fill up reservations that had been made with bookstores - was issued a few days after the first printing."

The article notes that "this is not just an interesting marketing fact. It is also a sign of the desire for answers and stable reference points that people have in our time... A need that allows us to read in the number of zeroes found after the first-month sales - 100,000 in English, 80,000 in French, 200,000 in the original German - as in itself a sign of the times".


I would have posted a translation of the OR article itself on which the above was based, but OR has not posted it online. It has posted two longer articles - the essay by editor Giovanni Maria Vian about all known papal interviews given by the Popes since Leo XIII, and an interview with the head of the Vatican publishing house, who also discusses the forthcoming JESUS OF NAZARETH- Volume 2. I will post both as soon as I have translated.

19/01/2011 20:56
OFFLINE
Post: 21.964
Post: 4.593
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master


I had set this aside to translate earlier, but it got pushed down in the endless shuffle of prioritizing, so this post is delayed. it is a much needed corrective for much of the polemics that unnecessarily attend John {aul II's coming beatification.


'Holiness occurs within history':
Benedict XVI defies many critics
in beatifying John Paul II

by Lucio Brunelli
Translated from

January 17, 2011

It was John Paul II ten years ago who explained the meaning of beatifying a Pope. He did so at the ceremony when he beatified two Popes who were very different from each other and, in fact, often held up as opposites: John XXIII and Pius IX.

The first was the Pope of the major Conciliar opening to modernity; the second, the Pope of the Syllabus that condemned the 'errors of modernity'.

John Paul II, proclaiming them Blessed on September 3, 2000, in the same ceremony, explained: "Holiness occurs within history, and no saint is exempt from the limitations and conditioning inherent in our humanity. In beatifying one of her children, the Church does not celebrate any specific historical options achieved by him or her, but rather singles him out in order for his virtues to be emulated and so that he may be venerated in praise of the divine grace which shines from him".

In the same way, Benedict XVI, in beatifying his predecessor so soon, does not mean to celebrate every decision in John Paul II's Pontificate, but rather, the 'heroic' way in which the servant of God Karol Wojtyla lived and bore witness to Christian virtues. Testimony confirmed by his widespread reputation for holiness at the popular level, and sealed by the sign of a miracle duly investigated and certified by the Church.

There is a great lesson of faith and of realism in the capacity of the Church to distinguish the acts of a Pontificate from the holienss of the man who sits on Peter's Chair.

What makes Papa Wojtyla great in the eyes of faith was not primarily his battle to liberate eastern Europe from Communism. Ronald Reagan had a historical role equal to or even greater than the Pope's role, but he is not thereby offered to Catholics as an example to emulate.

The popular perception of the Polish Pope's holiness is in fact linked, above everything else, to the image of the suffering Pope embracing the Cross of Christ: the man who was once called 'the athlete of God', an excellent sportsman, was now a helpless figure, his face and his voice deformed by illness - and yet he lived this experience in a spirit of total abandonment to God, and because of such abandonment, he became in a way more tender and even more capable of embracing all of mankind.

And thus he entered into the hearts of those who up till then had admired him only as a great historical personage and not for what he was, the Vicar of Christ on earth. [One wonders how different the discourse might be over his personal virtues and personal holiness,if he had not survived an assassination attempt and become the victim of one of the most degenerative of diseases. But obviously, he had the life God meant him to have - and to which he submitted obediently and well - in imitation of Christ.]

It is this personal witness given by John Paul II - "in praise of the divine grace that shines through his virtues' - which Benedict XVI is proclaiming in beatifying his predecessor. It is this Christian witness which will linger over time, a witness that consoles and sustains the faith of the simple folk.

About everything else, historians, both secular and Catholic, will continue to dispute at length. For instance, between now and May 1, one can predict that malicious articles will be appearing in the inernational media that will question Papa Wojtyla's public support for the Leguonaries of Christ, whose founder led a scandalous double life (that it fell to the present Pope as Cardinal Ratzinger to investigate, defying 'silences' and possible connivance in high places).

Others will try to demonstrate that the Polish Pope was so completely focused towards the world that he failed to take note as he should have of the 'filth' within the house of God itself, through the scourge of pedophile priests and questionable financial deals taking place within the Vatican bank IOR.

Perhaps one day, when comparing the two Pontificates, history will conclude that the reformatory actions of Benedict XVI are more decisive and providential for the Church.

But all these considerations only confirm what John Paul II said ten years ago: That when the Church beatifies one of her children who happened to be Pope as well, she does not sanctify every decision he made as Pope, but simply acknowledges with gratitude the work of God made manifest in his life.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2011 20:56]
20/01/2011 00:12
OFFLINE
Post: 21.965
Post: 4.594
Registrato il: 28/08/2005
Registrato il: 20/01/2009
Administratore
Utente Master




BENEDICT XVI'S GREAT SECULAR DISCOURSES:
Theological discussions for university students

Translated from the Italian service of




19 JAN 2011 (RV) - A cycle of three theological readings based on the great secular discourses of Benedict XVI in Regensburg, Paris and London begins tomorrow at the Vicariate of Rome headquarters at the Lateran.

Spnnsored by the Dicoessan Office for Pastoral Ministry in the Universities, the first discussion based on the Regensburg lecture takes place tomorrow evening. The two subsequent discussions will take place on the succeeding Thursdays.

Discussants for tomorrow's event include Mons. Enrico Dal Covolo,SDB, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University; Francesco D'Agostino, professor at the University of Rome in Tor Vergata; and Girgio Israel, professor at La Sapienza University.

Marina Tomarro interviewed Prof. Cesare Mirabelli, emeritus president of Italy's Constitutional Court, who will moderate the discussions.

PROF. MIRABELLI: The basic idea is not just to read through but to exame in depth the contents of these three major addresses by Benedict XVI and to do so in a way that will attract the scientific and academic world to consider these discourses seriously. Our discussions will take off from theological reflections.

The initiative also promotes the inclusion of theological culture into the university culture - a perspective that is lacking in our country, and which I believe would be very positive.

Is there a common thread running through these discourses?
Of course. The occasion for each one was different. The lecture at the University of Regensburg was in a fully academic context, made even more special because it was at a university where the Pope had been a theology professor, and the theme was a profound analysis of .
the relationship between faith and reason.

The Pope argues that reason should not be limited to what is experimentable, and he advocates that reason should be open to a much broader conception. That speech was probably the basis for all the others.

The second discussion evening will be devoted to his addrees in Paris, relating the search for God by the medieval monks to the development of European culture as we know it. And the third one, in London, was about the relationship between ethics and civilian authority.

In general, what they have in common is to give back to the religious element a spirit of freedom in the search for truth, and the place that it rightly has in the life of the individual and in social life.

Who is the primary audience for these meetings?
First of all, the university community. For some time now in Rome, there has been common work done not just among the state universities and the private ones, but also with the Catholic universities. Rome is like a great basin of university students, and it is valuable to make them aware of these discourses.

Nonetheless, the meetings are open to everyone, including the political and institutional world, in order to help develop the right commitment not only in educational matters, but also in the social, political and economic sectors.

Besides, the university itself cannot live within its own world - it must be able to relate to the world in which it finds itself.


Further information fronm the SIR report I first posted about this event last December 16:

On the Regensburg lecture, the evening seminar is entitled "The question of God today: the God of faith and the God of philosophers". Speakers will be Mons. Enrico Del Covolo, SDB, rector of the Pontifical Lateran University; Prof. Francesco D'Agostino, University of Rome at Tor Vergata; and Prof. Giorgio Israel, of La Sapienza University.

On the Bernardins address, the evening is entitled "European culture: Origins and prospects". The speakers are Mons. Sergio Lanza. Assistant Ecclesiastic-General of the Universita Cattolica Sacro Cuore; Prof. Giuseppe Dalla Torre, rector of Rome's LUMSA (Libera Universita Santissima Maria Assunta)' and Prof. Alessandro Ferrara, of the University of Rome Tor Vergata).

On the Westminster address, the evening is entitled "Secularity is not neutrality: A new way for integral human development". The speakers are Mons. Mario Toso, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; Prof. Lorenzo Ornaghi, rector of the Universita Cattolica Sacro Cuore in Milan; and Prof. Antonio Marzano, President of Italy's National Council for the Economy.

Nuova Discussione
 | 
Rispondi
Cerca nel forum

Feed | Forum | Bacheca | Album | Utenti | Cerca | Login | Registrati | Amministra
Crea forum gratis, gestisci la tua comunità! Iscriviti a FreeForumZone
FreeForumZone [v.6.1] - Leggendo la pagina si accettano regolamento e privacy
Tutti gli orari sono GMT+01:00. Adesso sono le 11:21. Versione: Stampabile | Mobile
Copyright © 2000-2024 FFZ srl - www.freeforumzone.com