BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

In the preceding page, an Acton commentary on the mislabelling of Benedict XVI as 'the green Pope'.





The fractured wrist
brought us back
Ratzinger the man
Translated from

August 6, 2009


In Castel Gandolfo at his last Angelus remarks, the Pope referred once more to his 'small injury' to thank all the faithful "for the spiritual nearness which they have shown" since his accident.

One must admit that the broken wrist, as painful and inconvenient as it is, has had some value: to bring us back Benedict XVI as he truly is. [Not necessary for Benaddicts who always see him as Benedict XVI-Joseph Ratzinger, Pope and man.]

We sort of needed this. In the past few months, between media criticisms and outright attacks, and more generally, in the way news about the Pope has been reported, the personality of Benedict XVI has been obscured.

Now, in a way, Benedict XVI as Joseph Ratzinger is back in the public eye.

The man who stumbled in the dark, hurt himself, and chose not to wake up anyone. Who wanted to be treated like any other patient at the hospital and waited his turn for his X-rays and for surgery.

Anonymous Patient 917 who apologized to the doctors for causing such an uproar. Who, upon leaving the hospital, assured the newsmen and the public, "I'm fine, thank you".

The Pope who blesses with his right forearm bound up in a cast. Who jokes about it in public.

"He has not lost his serenity and good spirits," Fr. Lombardi has repeatedly assured us.

And yet, the injury certainly caused him to miss out on some excursions during his holiday, and may have slowed down his timetable to complete Part 2 of JESUS OF NAZARETH.

But leave it to the Pope to see the injury as having a higher purpose: "Perhaps the Lord wanted to teach me to be more patient and humble".

It could well be so. But I should think that the broken wrist has been even more helpful to us - who have been too mired in analyses and 'educated' criticisms - in reminding us how much Benedict XVI-Joseph Ratzinger, with his Christian humility and patience, is a supreme example for everyone.

Benedict XVI's new call against
the modern devil of relativism
by RENATO FARINA
Translated from

August 6, 2009


Benedict XVI, despite his enchanting smile and seraphic voice, can also be caustic.

Yesterday, he said the name of the devil again, declaring war on him.

The devil is called 'the dictatorship of relativism', a term that synthesizes the danger, one which he first used publicly one hour before he entered the Conclave from which he would emerge as Pope.

It was Monday, April 18, 2005. In St. Peter's Basilica, Joseph Ratzinger as Dean of the College of Cardinals, delivered the homily at the Mass pro eligendo Pontefice. He neither painted a rosy picture nor praised the state of the Church.

Instead he said that the world was dominated by this diabolical ideology, the dictatorship of relativism.

It was a way of saying - "Don't elect me, I am not suitable, I am too severe (to be Pope)".

And what exactly is this post-modern Beelzebub? Not pluralism - the fact that there are so many conflicting views of the world, so many philosophies, so many claims to having the key to the universe. No, that's not the dictatorship of relativism.

Rather, it is the imposition of a Single Thought, according to which man cannot know the truth, man cannot be 'capax Dei', capable of knowing God, in St. Augustine's phrase - because every response to any question about meaning is subjective, without authentically penetrating the substance of things.

In short, the Only Truth, according to today's Zeitgeist, is that truth does not exist, and that even if it exists, we cannot know it nor communicate it.

Against which, Benedict XVI answers, God is Love, God is Love in Truth. And he can be known through reason, he can be experienced with all of one's being.

After four years, Papa Ratzinger says the battle against the devil is far from won. The dictatorship of relativism continues to reign.

But there is a point in the universe where it cannot impose itself. The Church. And he, the Pope, has no intention of yielding.

Mocked by some as isolated with only the proverbial four cats to listen to him, he has issued once more - an 82-year-old man with a broken wrist - the battle cry against what he considers the monster that would devour hope, this relativistic tyranny that would refuse to give reason authentic freedom.

It is quite clear: science and research appear to have total license today, according to the relativist ideology, to mutilate embryos for research, without any limitations, in the name of trying to conquer death.

But what role can reason play in unrestricted freedom devoid of ethical principles, when the relativists say reason is ultimately powerless to arrive at any truth? Thus asks the Pope, who is also a great intellectual.

It sounds mad, indeed, that after centuries during which the Church was considered an enemy of reason, now it must be the Pope who exalts and promotes it as man's tool and ally in his quest for God.

Yesterday, the Pope spoke the example of the famed Cure d'Ars, St. Jean Marie Vianney, on the 150th anniversary of his death.

The Pope pointed out that today's society is similar to French society at the time of the French Revolution, and that in fact, the Christian faith faces more complex challenges than those that confronted France after 1789.

He said, "If in his (Vianney's) time there was the 'dictatorship of rationalism', in today's age, there is a 'dictatorship of relativism' in many areas. Both are inadequate responses to man's rightful demand to use his own reason to the full as a distinctive and constitutive element of his own identity".

From his window in Castel Gandolfo, during his Wednesday general audience, the Pope noted that "our time, certainly very different from those in which he lived, (is) marked in many ways by the same fundamental human and spiritual challenges".

Vianney lived from 1786-1959. But "far from reducing the figure of St. Jean Marie Vianney to an example, admirable as it is, of 19th-century denotional spirituality, it is necessary to grasp the prophetic power that marked his human and spiritual personality... (in) post-revolutionary France, which experienced a kind of 'dictatorship of rationalism' intended to annul the very presence of priests and of the Church in society".

In Vianney's time, rationalism reigned. The prevailing political and cultural power accused the Church of being an association of charlatans who exploited sentiment and the gullibility of ignorant masses.

Actually, the extremist representatives of the so-called Enlightenment were not advocating reason but rationalism, an ideology. Rationalism is to reason as lung disease is to the lungs. And lung disease stifles breathing, in the same way that rationalism stifles reason.

Papa Ratzinger sees in the Cure d'Ars the hero of true resistance. "He lived, first of all, during his youth, in heroic clandestinity, walking miles at night in order to take part in Holy Mass. Later, as priest, he distinguished himself by singular and fruitful pastoral creativity, intended to show that the reigning rationalism was in fact far from able to satisfy the authentic needs of man and thus, definitively, not livable".

The authentic needs of man were not met by 19th-century rationalism any more than they are by today's relativism which also translates to "it is forbidden to forbid".

The Pope concluded:

"Rationalism was inadequate because it did not take into account human limitations and claimed to elevate reason alone as the measure for all things, transforming it into a goddess.

"Contemporary relativism diminishes reason because it has come to affirm that the human being can know nothing with certainty beyond what science can know positively.

"But today, like then, the man 'who is a mendicant for meaning and fulfillment' is in constant search for exhaustive answers to the fundamental questions that present themselves ceaselessly".

The expression "mendicant for meaning and fulfillment' comes from Don Luigi Giussani [founder of Comunione e Liberazione'] whose figure stands out as one of the sources for the Magisterium of this Pope.

Let us see if the Pope's defense of reason in the name of faith will awaken some intellectual honesty in the torpor of August.

Here's a Catholic action initiative that is well along the lines of Caritas in veritate but was started 100 years ago:


Pope greets a 100-year-old
Catholic rural coop bank
by Salvatore Izzo
Translated from



Castel Gandolfo, August 5 (AGI) - Before the General Audience on Wednesday, Benedict XVI received the officials of the Banca di Credito Cooerativo (BCC) of Palestrina, accompanied by their bishop, Mons. Domenico Sigalini.

[Palestrina which was the pre-Christian era Etruscan center of Praeneste, is located 35 kilometers east of Rome, in the province of Lazio.]

The BCC was founded as the 'Cassa Rurale Cooperativa Cattolica di Prestiti e Risparmio' (Catholic Cooperative Rural Bank for Savings and Loans) on January 10, 1909, at the offices of the Circolo Giovanile Cattolico (Catholic Youth Circle) of Palestrina.

Among the 28 founding stockholders, predominantly farmers, there were also some artisans and two priests.

BCC president Marcello Cola told the Pope: "The BCC of Palestrina, like most of the cooperatives founded between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th, was born as a Catholic initiative when the Church was starting to develop various initiatives in the social, administrative and political areas."

"BCC activity quickly grew in the region not only as a credit instrument but as an important resource for farmers, who developed their holdings significantly after each of the two world wars."

"Today," Cola concluded, "the BCC focuses on the promotion of the individual and invests in human capital - in its stockholders, its clients and its many collaborators in various sectors."

On the occasion of its centenary, the BCC of Palestrina donated to the Diocese a precious ostensorium as well as 300 chasubles for use during Eucharistic concelebrations at the Cathedral.

The Pope blessed the gifts at the end of the brief private audience.

One of the BCC officials, who runs a prosperous shirt-making business, presented the Pope with a linen shirt marked B-XVI.

Friday, August 7

ST. GAETANO [Cayetano, Cajetan] (Italy, 1480-1557]
Confessor, Co-Founder of the Theatine order



OR today.

No papal news in this issue except for Rinuncia e Nomine.
On Page 1, an editorial commentary on Caritas in veritate
by an Italian official who was a UN Undersecretary says
the encyclical goes beyond the modern notion of the nation-state
born with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia; Iran opposition carry
on after Ahmadinejad's swearing-in; Hillary Clinton in Africa;
UN secretary-general renews appeal for release of Burmese
freedom icon Aung San Suu Kyi one week before her sentencing;
and Europe's central bank keeps the prime rate at 0.5%, lowest
ever, since signs of a possible recovery are quite fragile.
In the inside pages, two stories on Pope Paul VI - the homily
yesterday by the Bishop of Albano in Castel Gandolfo to mark
the 31st anniversary of the Pontiff's death on the Feast of
the Transfiguration, and an essay on the Pope's February 1969
address to the parish priests of Rome on the role of priests
in contemporary society.


No events scheduled for the Holy Father today.

Haven't had a chance to check out the sources cited yet, but here's a brief bulletin.

Report: Pope won’t visit Germany
next year, German bishops say
By Jana Randow



FRANKFURT, Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- German-born Pope Benedict XVI won’t visit Germany next year to celebrate the 20th anniversary of reunification of east and west after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the newspaper Bild reported, citing the German Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Pope had been invited, it said.



Here's the BILD report:



Great disappointment:
The Pope isn't coming to Germany in 2010
Translated from



Pope Benedict XVI is not coming to Germany next year. The German Bishops' Conference said Thursday through the KNA news agency in Bonn that Pope's travel plans for 2010 do not include Germany.


"It's been delayed but that does not mean it won't happen," said spokesman Matthias Kopp. [In German, the statement is a nice play on words, "Aufgeschoben ist aber nicht aufgehoben“.]

In the past few months there has been much speculation that the Pope would make a state visit to Berlin for the 20th anniversary of German reunification.

The chairman of the German bishops' conference (DBK), Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, has invited the Pope to his diocese, Freiburg, as did other bishops in east Germany (Erfurt and Goerlitz).

Benedict XVI has visited Germany twice - for World Youth Day in Cologne in 2005, and to his Bavarian homeland in 2006.

There have been no definite foreign travels announced for 2010, but an Asian visit has been speculated, since it is the only continent he has not yet visited as Pope.

Also speculated is a possible trip to Great Britain for the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman, as well as Ireland.



Unfortunately, I can't check out the original KNA report because it's a subscription-only service.

I had been hoping for a significant English article about CIV that I could post todat on the first month anniversary of the encyclical. A blogger alerted me to this article for a monthly magazine which makes soem good points, mostly at the expense of George Weigel for what I continue to think was an uncharacteristic rush to judgment - mostly negative - on the encyclical. He has since sort of made up for that, of course, by a more typical sober column that I also posted here.


Is the Pope capitalist?
No, he is simply Catholic
By Stuart Reid

For the issue of Sept. 1, 2009



Hilaire Belloc said, “Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe.” As far as Catholics such as George Weigel and his neocon pals are concerned, however, that is so Old Europe. To them it makes much more sense to say, “America is the Faith and the Faith is America.”

From the Faith of America comes the Weigelian Church, which preaches liberal capitalism, pre-emptive war, the Little Way of Sarah Palin, global democratic revolution, and faith and works.

Walker Percy saw this Church coming in Love in the Ruins. He called it the American Catholic Church. One of its major feast days was Property Rights Sunday, during which the ACC would display a blue banner showing Christ holding the American home (with white picket fence) in His hands.

The ACC would probably not have liked the Pope’s new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate — Love in Truth — any more than George Weigel does. Caritas runs to 30,000 words and is a summary of Catholic teaching on such matters as economics, trade, and employment.

It is, in other words — at least as far as the media is concerned — a politically charged document. And since Weigel is one of America’s most politically charged Catholic thinkers — known, especially, for his strong support of George W. Bush — his views on the encyclical had been eagerly awaited. [What does his support of W have to do with his views on the encyclical????]

In some quarters, George Weigel is seen as a guardian of orthodoxy, a hammer of the dissenting liberals who question papal teaching on such matters as contraception, abortion, and marriage — the “cafeteria Catholics” who pick what they like from the Catholic menu and turn their noses up at the rest.

Now suddenly, in his reaction to Caritas at National Review Online, Weigel has himself become a dissenting Catholic. He was not pleased that, for example, the encyclical says more about wealth redistribution than wealth creation and spoke of its “clotted and muddled” language and “confused sentimentality.”

Caritas was disjointed, he declared, the work of so many hands that “the net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.”

With respect? Quack, quack. What irked Weigel especially, I suspect, is that Caritas in Veritate lavishes great praise on the Pope Paul VI’s 1967 social encyclical Populorum Progressio, which was denounced as “souped-up Marxism” by the Wall Street Journal. [Also, I continue to believe, because Benedict XVI did not focus on John Paul II's social encyclicals, which for B16's purposes were less relevant to CIV than Paul VI's PP.]

For some right-wing Catholics that verdict became de fide, along with National Review’s gag — “Mater, Si, Magistra, No” — on the publication of John XXIII’s equally progressive social encyclical Mater et Magistra in 1961. ['Progressive' meaning 'socialist' or 'socialist-tending' rather than pro-capitalist?]

But conservatives in the 1960s should really not have troubled their shaggy little heads with the Church’s apparent “lurch to the left.” The fact is that capitalist ideology — as it has emerged in modern times — has never been embraced by the Church, and it should come as no surprise that it is not now being embraced by Benedict.

The historian Eamon Duffy summed up Catholic social teaching nicely when he wrote of Pope Pius XI (no lefty he), “he loathed the greed of capitalist society, ‘the unquenchable thirst for temporal possessions,’ and thought that liberal capitalism shared with communism ‘satanic optimism’ about human progress.”

It is possible that the great foe of communism Whitaker Chambers would have agreed with Pius. On Christmas Eve 1958, in a letter to his friend William F. Buckley Jr., he wrote, “capitalism is not, and by its essential nature cannot conceivably be, conservative. This is particularly true of capitalism in the United States, which knew no Middle Ages; which was born, in so far as it was ideological, in the Enlightenment.”

“Conservatism,” he added, “is alien to the very nature of capitalism whose love of life and growth is perpetual change … conservatism and capitalism are mutually exclusive manifestations, and antipathetic at root.”

One of the things to remember about the Catholic Church, perhaps, is that it is Christian and therefore not inclined to look with great favor on Mammon. It seeks a way of pursuing the good life, even the prosperous life, that does not involve denial of God or — a key point in Benedict’s encyclical — the abandonment of life at any stage of its development.

Not easy, of course, but, though Weigel contemptuously dismisses the idea, there is a Catholic third way between capitalism and socialism, not the one seen by Benedict’s co-religionist Tony Blair — that took us into Iraq and fed us to marketing men, with their spread sheets, Polish nannies, and suits without ties — but by such people as G.K. Chesterton, the Southern Agrarians, and Konrad Adenaeur, whose political principles were based on Catholic social teaching and who led West Germany into her Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle).

Maybe this third way will never play in Peoria or in Stratford-upon-Avon. Still, it pleases me that Caritas in Veritate will have answered at least one important question: Is the Pope capitalist? He is not. Neither is he socialist, of course, far less a liberal. What is he, then? The Pope is Catholic.


I find it sad that Catholics who consider themselves politically conservative should be split into 'regular' conservatives, I suppose one might call them, such as Mr. Reid, and those who have been labelled 'neo-cons' ['neo-' because they advocate a 'new conservatism' or are lately come to conservatism? - and which conservatism: Catholic orthodoxy or political conservatism?] like Weigel and Michael Novak.

The latter has written at least three essays tending to question the Pope, to say the least, on aspects of the encyclical. The first one was in First Things, 'The Pope of Caritopolois' which was posted here, in which, surprisingly, he says "The Catholic tradition — even the wise Pope Benedict — still seems to put too much stress upon caritas, virtue, justice, and good intentions, and not nearly enough on methods for defeating human sin in all its devious and persistent forms". To which my immediate reaction was: But what methods are there except what Christ taught????? Love and abandonment to God in prayer! Which, of course, this Pope, like other Popes before him, ceaselessly preaches.

The two others were longer essays for the Italian newspaper Libero, the first of which was entitled "But I prefer John Paul II's Centesimus Annus', and the second, more recently, entitled 'So much charity, less truth'.

(For context, Centesimus Annus was John Paul II's take on social and economic issues in the world following the collapse of Communism-Marxism, so by its nature, it was bound to be 'anti-socialist' and consequently 'pro-capitalist'. But again, that is to interpret papal encyclicals according to conventional categories of thought!)

In fairness to Novak, the headline writer chose to use in both cases an actual line from the essays taken out of context, and Novak also tries to bend over backwards to make a 'softening' statement after articulating a criticism (but I find such effort condescending rather than deferential to the Pope).

Novak did have one positive reaction - the brief essay he submitted to the Catholic Thing forum, also posted here at the time.

In any case, I find it objectionable that Catholic writers of whatever ideological shade should use the Pope in any way to wage war against those who have politically/ideologically opposed views.


An initial reaction to Reid's article by someone who appears to be more formally rooted in the affairs of the Church reinforces the distressing nature of the intra-Catholic 'ideological wars'.

Surprise, the Pope is Catholic
by Daniel Nichols



I had been planning on writing at length on Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, but Stuart Reid has written so well on it in The American Conservative that I will just link to his succinct and eloquent essay here.

I will only add that I am much gratified and not a little bewildered by the Catholic neoconservatives’ reaction to it. Gratified, because I have been saying for years that they are not interested in conforming their thought to the mind of the Church, but only in bending it to fit their ideology, a sort of romantic free market fundamentalism wedded to belligerent nationalism. Conservative Catholics have generally taken issue or even mocked that contention, but here are Novak and Weigel proving my point beyond dispute.

I heard Novak on the radio dismissing Populorum Progressio - Paul VI’s encyclical, which Benedict was commemorating - as the Church’s “pinkest encyclical”. And he has since criticized the Pope for putting “too much stress upon caritas, virtue, justice and good intentions and not nearly enough on defeating human sin”.

A vicar of Christ is overemphasizing Divine Love? That sort of leaves one speechless, and never mind that Mr Novak’s strategy for “defeating human sin” in the past has included preemptive war. And never mind that the market controls which the neocons find so offensive are precisely geared to defeating the human sins engendered by the market.

And Weigel really went overboard in attacking the encyclical, which he “respectfully” likened to a “duck-billed platypus”. He then proceeded to instruct the faithful on what parts of Caritas they should ignore.

Which is bewildering. The strategy of co-opting the Church’s social teaching, in selecting isolated passages from isolated encyclicals to prove their contentions while ignoring all that counters them, has served the neoconservatives so well in the past that one can only wonder what has changed them.

Not that an honest reading of the Church’s teachings did not contradict them at nearly every point; I suspect that only the willing were deceived. But once again it is evident that, as Mr Reid says, the Pope is not a capitalist. Nor is he a socialist or a liberal or a conservative. Surprise, the Pope is Catholic.

I hope I will be excused for enjoying my intellectual opponents making fools of themselves. I will try not to take inordinate pleasure in the spectacle. But it will be a struggle.

Along the paths of man:
Cardinal Canizares presents CIV
at a summer course in Spain
Translated from
the 8/8/09 issue of



"There is no economy without people, nor is there true development unless man in his wholeness is taken into account".

Cardinal Antonio Canizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, said in Aranjuez, Spain, yesterday at a summer course on economy at King Juan Carlos University.

Canizares, who was Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of Spain until he was named to the Curia last year, lectured on "The Person and the Economy", starting from the premise that in the present context, "it is the question of God that is in play".

He proposed an analysis of society in which the Church "must be present, placing God at the center of everything", referring to Pope Benedict's third encyclical, Caritas in veritate, whose very title, he said, was 'courageous, significant and stimulating'.

The Pope's encyclical, he said, confronts social issues in order to offer "the light of the Gospel of which the Church is the bearer" and does so 40 years after the publication of Paul VI's Populorum progressio.

Thus, "at the complex crossroads in which humanity finds itself today, in a full-blown global economic crisis, Caritas in veritate proposes 'a new path for mankind'... (providing) a singular contribution to the world today".

Stressing that this was not just a social encyclical, the cardinal noted how the Pope 'entered' not only into the roots of the financial-economic crisis but also into the day-to-day lives of families and individuals, not limiting himself to theoretical principles nor offering technical solutions, but inviting those concerned to always consider the actual needs of individuals.

With man as the center of attention, therefore, financial instruments alone will not overcome the global recession. Rather, man must trust in 'the power of love' - on that nearness to one's fellowmen that is not simply almsgiving, but solidarity, free generosity, sharing.

Indeed, the Church does not have any technical solutions to offer, but "its mission is truth in the name of a society built to the measure of man... (since) the truth about man insures that there is hope for mankind in the future".

Referring to the Pope's meeting last month with US President Barack Obama, the cardinal pointed out that the defense of life was a major topic, since practices contrary to human dignity are "the maximum expression of a materialistic view of the world".

Against such a view, he said, "the Church looks to the future with hope". He then went on to review past interventions on the subject by Benedict XVI before he became Pope.

As early as the 1950s and 1960s, he said, then Prof. Joseph Ratzinger already spoke and wrote about "recovering the authentic concept of Christian brotherhood, one of the key themes of the encyclical, and of which he never lost sight."

Canizares said that Benedict XVI has never been "an abstract thinker, but one very much in the world" who has always been able to conciliate faith and reason as a response to the problems of modernity, advocating full integral human development as necessary for the authentic progress of peoples.

"He has always sought to respond to the great problems of mankind and morality by offering the light of faith as the instrument of salvation."

As Archbishop of Munich-Freising, he recalled, Ratzinger first undertook a study of Europe in which he advocated "the defense of democracy and of the rule of law" along with "the need not to relegate the faith to an exclusively private sphere".

For this reason, the cardinal concluded, "there is no economy without
people, without resolving the question of man, without the truth of man who needs Jesus Christ, and without a sense of the common good."

Responding to newsmen's questions before he gave his lecture, Canizares also referred to the encyclical, particularly its section on the defense of life.

He said "laws should protect defenseless beings but today, they are used instead to eliminate the weak, the innocent and the defenseless. Medicine itself exists to cure persons, not to eliminate them".

He noted that the present economic conjuction also indicates an anthropological crisis, as the Pope points out in the encyclical, because "it is man himself and one's view of man" that is at stake - and so "the crisis is also cultural social, and moral, a crisis of humanity itself."



'Caritas in veritate':
It transcends the concept
of the modern nation-state
by Giandomenico Picco
Former Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations
Translated from
the 8/7/09 issue of



The modern nation-state, which was born with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and took form with the American and French Revolutions, has always had a secret weapon: the concept of individual/national identity.

American historian Arthur Schlesinger has said that our intellect is not structured to be able to imagine the multiple possibilities of the future.

Indeed, it would have been difficult to imagine globalization as it has developed in the past few decades. It has changed the concept of 'neighbor', in the sense of anyone who could have a positive or negative impact on the life of every person.

Today, in fact, the activities of those who live on other continents can and do influence our personal day-to-day, whereas when I was a child, my idea of 'neighbor' was Carinthia in Austria, Slovenia which was then Yugoslavia, and the Veneto.

Caritas in veritate underlines that globalization "makes us neighbors, but not brothers".

In my experiences with peoples at war or living with terrorism, the concept of communication and dialog, of coexistence and even friendship - no matter how different various cultures are - appeared to be and was realizable.

But I must admit that the concept of brotherhood never figured among the objectives of any negotiation, official or otherwise. And the encylical explains it thus: reason is capable of establishing 'coexistence' but not 'brotherhood'.

In the eyes - the only part of the face I could see - of the masked Lebanese who placed a hood over my head while he drove me through the streets of Beirut at night, I sought some element of human commonality.

Some words of the encylical, words very dear to Pope Benedict XVI, would have been helpful to me then: "Religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentic human face" (No. 56).

In Caritas in veritate, I found the seeds of a vision for a future international order which conform to my own reading of reality and of my own multicultural personal history as someone from a border area that was always involved in mediating conflicts.

The reference to the limitations of State in a globalized world (cfr No. 24) and even more, the statement that "it is not necessary that the State has the same characteristics everywhere" (No. 41), open the doors to a concept of the nation-state that I would call post-Westphalian.

In the system that I see emerging, every protagonist is stronger, and at the same time, weaker, than thirty years ago, as an effect of inter-relations and interdependeces that were unthinkable before then.

The possibility that every experience of nationhood has a duration independent of others after which it exhausts itself is plausible: for some nation=states, that experience may be coming to an end.

The Pope makes a reference to a world political authority that does not yet exist, but also to the role of individuals and non-government organizations, unelected, as protagonists in the emerging international society.

Are they perhaps the first germinating elements of a direct democracy in a global society in which the individual has instruments as never before to communicate his own will and opinions?

The encyclical encourages the concept of the 'responsibility to protect' (No, 67) the citizens of every nation from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, even if individual states are unable to do it themselves: this is the new frontier of international law that goes beyong Westphalia. [A concept well articulated by Benedict XVI in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in April 2008, but then, that speech never got the attention and study that it merited - and continues to merit.]

Even more important in the encyclical's indications for a future world order is the appeal to free ourselves of those ideologies "which simplify reality, often in an artificial way" (No, 22).

That is a hope that encounters strong resistance today in many parts of the world because of the fear that the new complexities of a globalized world arouse in many.

Fundamentalisms of varying extraction are unfortunately present in many nations, and with them, the arrogance of ignorace continues to sow the seeds of confrontation and conflict.

The number of variables that the managers of the world must take into account has grown a lot in the last twenty years, and the temptation to find refuge in simplistic theories is nourished by ancestral sentiments.

The encyclical responds to this: "Hope encourages reason and gives it the power to orient the will" (No. 34). Thus, the need to generate hope.

Benedict XVI also hopes for a reform of the United Nations system and of international economic and financial institutions. And I hope that this can be accomplished not only at the numerical level.

For example, a much enlarged Security Council would be a modest reform but it could also result in further lessening its efficacy. The proper objective of reform should be the method of work employed by the various organisms of the United Nations.

"The unity of the human family does not in itself annul persons, peoples and cultures, but makes them more transparent to each other, better united in their legitimate diversities" (No. 53), the Pope states in the encyclical, perhaps with the subtext of reading identities differently.

Globalization is slowly undermining what Amartya Sen calls 'the illusion of choiceless identity', which has been the secret of the nation-state.

The emergence of multiple identities, in my opinion, will not simply change the international system but the nation-state itself, thus making more realizable the concept of a human family.

Then, perhaps, we will have leaders who will know how to be leaders even without an enemy to rally their followers against.


This is a good occasion to translate a couple more front-page commentaries on CIV that have been published in OR in the past week:


Like a lightning bolt
through the malaise of society
by Xavier Darcos
Member, Institute of France
French Minister of Labor and Social Relations
Translated from
the 8/3-8/4/09 issue of



Addressing a disoriented world, non-egalitarian and traumatized by the spasms of a global crisis, the encyclical Caritas in Veritate arrived at the right time, like a lightning bolt ripping through dark clouds.

It allows Benedict XVI to spell out anew the doctrine of the Church in the face of the social realities today which have been based on the cynical laws of profit and unregulated economic interdependence.

It proclaims that other ways are possible and necessary. From the very sources of the Christian message, it draws hope for innovative orientations and solutions.

Benedict XVI celebrates love, the cardinal virtue of the faith - the impulse of the spirit towards other,s 'the master way of the social dostrine of the Church".

He places himself in the stream of light cast by Leo XIII's Rerum novarum to Paul VI's Populorum progressio.

The Pope first of all reaffirms what is fundamental in Christianity - love, sharing, justice - as a remedy for the selfish tactics of each-one-for-himself.

He reminds us that the Gospel opens the path towards a society of freedom and equality. And that "a Christianity of love without truth would be more or less interchangeable with a pool of good sentiments, helpful for social cohesion, but of little relevance."

John Paul II made an impression on the public because of the spiritual struggle that he embodied against Soviet and Stalinist Marxism. But he, too, criticized the generalized anomie that capitalism had drifted to.

With the same impulse, Benedict XVI draws a severe balance sheet of the criminal drifts that globalization has taken, thanks to financing based on quick profits for a few.

His analyses are precise, documented and ample. They show the alienation of a humanity that has been devastated by insupportable inequalities among men, societies and nations.

Such a balance sheet, made even gloomier by the present crisis, demands a redefinition of development that is not reduced to simple continuous economic growth. The Pope stigmatizes the evident failures in their various visible forms.

The process of development requires a guide: truth.

"Love in truth' - 'the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity". Otherwise, "social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation".

Let us open our eyes: voracious progress, based on material and speculative resources, has failed. The world is devouring itself, as Chronos devours his own children. The Church proposes another choice: 'integral development' which assures shared humanistic emancipation.

Growth is beneficial, globalization does not necessarily generate catastrophe, technology in itself is not perverse - but these brute forces should be subordinated to an ethic.

In a world without compass, there are promising experiences that have started to establish new relations among men. Benedict XVI asks that such attempts be generalized, in order to explore the ways of giving, of gratuitousness, of redistribution.

He condemns the vacuity of a relativism which deprives men, in some way, of any sense to their collective life. Thus he blames the two dangers that threaten culture: an eclecticism in which everything is as good as another, without references nor hierarchy; and the uniformization of lifestyles.

In the face of the failure of 'having' and the chaos of 'being', Benedict XVI calls for a new alliance between faith and reason, between divine light and human intelligence.

Even if "she has no technical solutions to offer", the Church has 'a mission of truth to fulfill' towards "a society built in the measure of man, of his dignity, of his vocation".

Because if one goes beyond appearances, the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of a physical and material order. Rather, it resides more than anything in the lack of brotherhood among men and among peoples: "A society which is ever more globalized makes us neighbors but not brothers".

The Pope has launched an appeal in order that this crisis may oblige us to reconsider our itinerary, in view of the fact that while global wealth has grown, the disparities have also increased.

Such a magma which erodes values, has led to a depreciation of life in its specificity, to discourage natality, to suppress religious freedom, to terrorize spirituality, to put a brake on confidence and on expansion.

All it takes is that men become aware of being part of one single family, which means a recovery of uncommon values: of giving, of rejecting the market as an instrument of domination, of abandoning the culture of hedonism, of an equitable distribution of resources, cooperation, and the like.

The Pope's thinking reveals the incubus of mankind drunk on the Promethean claim to being able to 're-create' man himself by availing of the wonders of technology such as cloning, genetic manipulation, eugenics.

The source of these deviations is one and the same: dehumanization. Thus, wherever we live and whatever degree of responsibility we have, each of us must reconcile ourselves with love and forgiveness, reject the superfluous, be generous to our neighbor, work for justice and peace.

Such conduct is a moral demand that has become a condition for survival.

Reading this encyclical, which is permeated with magnificent spiritual fervor, one does not get the impression of an abstract meditation or a prayer. Rarely has a Pope looked at reality so closely in order to analyze its evils in depth and to propose, with pragmatism and lucidity, the most useful antidotes.

May his message be understood and heeded!


Two Popes and the Transfiguration
by Fr. Robert Imbelli
Translated from
the 8/5/09 issue of



The Transfiguration - one of the religious feast days that is most theologically rich - reveals the true face of Christ, beloved Son of the Father, and the destiny to which the disciples and all men are called, revealing the truth about Christ and all mankind, as St. mark narrates: "After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them" (Mk 9,2).

Some Fathers of the Church have interpreted the words 'after six days' as an announcement of the fulfillment of creation. The creation of Adam and Eve by God is thus fulfilled in the revelation of the true man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, in whom the glory of God physically dwells.

Moreover, the progressive education of mankind by God, through the patient pedagogy of the Torah and the Prophets, also culminates in the Son of God. That is why Moses and Elijah appear wrapped in light whose source is Christ. Their testimony was an anticipation of the glory fully revealed in Christ, their words an echo of the Word of God become human in Jesus.

In Caritas in veritate, Pope Benedict XVI writes: "Only if we are aware of our calling, as individuals and as a community, to be part of God's fmaily as his sons and daughters, will we be able to generate a new vision and muster new energy in the service of a truly integral humanism" (No 78).

This theme, so dear to Paul VI, inspires the social doctrine of the Church and impels us to work for integral human development. Drawing from Paul VI's Populorum progressio, Benedict XVI's encyclical underscores that "the truth of development consists in its completeness: if it does not involve the whole man and every man, it is not true development" (No. 18).

Integral humanism exalts the dignity of every person from conception to natural death. It recognizes the material and spiritual needs of the human family. It promotes social justice and attributes the highest place to the common good.

It knows that service to the common good demands concrete and effective solidarity at every level. it acknowledges that the destiny of mankind is collective and that its ultimate end is the communion of saints who live with God for eternity.

A truly integral humanism contemplates mankind and all creation ultimately transfigured in Christ. In this light, one may celebrate the Transfiguration as a feast in which the Church proclaims its vision of integral humanism.

Contemplating the beauty of Christ transfigured makes his disciples desire that the world may be enveloped in the light of his transfiguration and act audaciously according to this holy desire.

But the Transfiguration also reveals 'the price of ddiscipleship' (Dietrich Bonhoeffer). In the narration of St. Luke, Moses and Elijah speak to Jesus "of his exodus, that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem" (Lk 9,31).

The full weight of Jesus's love, his caritas in veritate, would be manifested only in the Paschal mystery. The new transfigured life can be obtained only through the death of the old Adam in us, so that we may be reborn to the newness of the transfigured life.

To faithfully live the journey of faith, we need a renewed commitment to follow the transfigured Christ. The Christian vision of integral humanism should be incarnated in an integral spirituality in which prayer and action, truth and love, individual responsibility and social justice, together form a seamless whole.

Caritas in veritate is permeated by the conviction that spiritual discipline and constant conversion are necessary: "Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God's providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if 'hearts of stone' are to be transformed into 'hearts of flesh' [Ez 36,26) , rendering life on earth 'divine' and thus more worthy of humanity" (No. 79).

Paul VI manifested this mystery in his life. The image of the transfigured Lord energized the heart of his spirituality and his hopes for the Church and mankind. It was a wonderful grace of Providence that this Pope died on the evening of the feast, on August 6, 1978.

Among the last words we heard from Paul VI, on the month of the Transfiguration, were perhaps those from the second Letter of Peter (1, 17-19), which constitute a testimony from this great Pope.

Jesus "received honor and glory from God the Father when a voice of majestic glory came: 'This is my Son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased'. We heard this voice descend from heaven while we were with him on that holy mountain. And we also heard, very solidly, the words of the prophets, to which you would do well to pay attention as to a lamp that shines in a dark place until day comes and the morning star rises in our hearts".

Benedict XVI and The Year for Priests
by Kenneth Baker, S.J.
Editorial

August-September 2009


On March 16 in a talk to the Congregation of the Clergy Pope Benedict XVI announced that he was declaring a “Year for Priests” to begin on June 19, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, and to end on June 19, 2010. This special year dedicated to the priesthood affects all of us who have been ordained for service in the Church.

The Pope lists two main purposes for the Year for Priests: 1) “to encourage priests in striving for spiritual perfection on which, above all, the effectiveness of their ministry depends”; and 2) to make clear to all “the importance of the priest’s role and mission in the Church and in contemporary society.”

Bishops rule the Church but it is priests who do most of the work. Priests are appointed by the bishop to be his representatives in parishes and in many other works of the diocese.

It is common knowledge among priests that, if the bishop mandates something and the pastors do not support it, very little will be done. An example of this is a special collection that the pastors do not support. If they do not promote it, it will bring in very little money.

Priests have taken a big hit since Vatican II, especially with regard to the sex abuse scandals in the USA and elsewhere. A few traitors among us, abusing children and teenagers, have tarnished the reputation of all of us.

It will take time and sacrificial service on the part of priests to restore the good will and good reputation which priests once enjoyed. At the present time there are many who suspect all of us of being a danger to children, even though the guilty ones were small in number percentage-wise and the vast majority of priests are faithful, chaste servants of the Lord.

Benedict says that the priest’s mission is carried out in the Church. That mission, he says, is ecclesial, communal, hierarchical and doctrinal. These characteristics are what make his mission authentic and guarantee its spiritual effectiveness.

The Pope goes on to say that we priests “proclaim Jesus of Nazareth Lord and Christ, Crucified and Risen, Sovereign of time and history, in the glad certainty that this truth coincides with the deepest expectations of the human heart.”

The Pope says that every priest must be well aware that he is not preaching himself to the people. Rather, “every priest must be well aware that he is bringing to the world Another, God himself.”

Then he makes a startling statement that every priest should meditate on when he says, “God is the only treasure which ultimately people desire to find in a priest.”

This attitude is surely present in the minds of pious Catholics from Eastern Europe and South America who kiss the hand of a priest when they meet him. In this way they show reverence for the hands that hold the Body of Christ, that baptize, that are raised in absolution over the sinner in the sacrament of penance.

I welcome the “Year for Priests” as an opportunity to stress the importance of the priest in the Church and the world. Without the priest there is no Church, no Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, no Eucharist, no forgiveness of sins.

Because we are all sinners and are in need of forgiveness and salvation, we all need priests. They are beacons of hope in a despairing world. Imagine what your life would be like if there were no priests available to provide the sacraments and to preach the Word of God.

In order to be effective instruments of Christ, priests must strive for spiritual perfection — they must strive for intimate union which Christ in a life of constant prayer and self sacrifice. For no one can give what he does not have. If the priest does not have Christ in his heart and mind, he cannot communicate him to others.

It is essential for us priests to listen to our Holy Father, the Vicar of Christ. He is asking us during this “Year for Priests” to rededicate ourselves to Christ Jesus, to strive to be saints, and to be generous in making ourselves available to the people of God.



Although the title of this piece does not indicate it, the following is really an unusual reflection by Damian Thompson on the Holy Father's personal attitude about welcoming Anglicans who are ready to 'cross the Tiber'.


We should throw a lifeline
to struggling Anglicans
by Damian Thompson

7 August 2009


A few months ago I witnessed a little miracle: an Anglican friend of mine was received into the Church. It was a miracle because this particular friend had been adamant that he would not become a "Roman", despite his love of traditional Catholic liturgy.

There were many factors in his change of heart, but two words explain why he suddenly took the plunge: Pope Benedict.

At the centre of my friend's Christianity is public worship, and (so far as I can judge from many conversations with him) the main reason he did not leave the Church of England is that he could not accept the claims of a Church which did not get its worship right.

His objection was not to Vatican II, but to a casual approach to the celebration of Mass that made it harder to believe in the unique universal status of the Roman Church.

And then along came Benedict XVI. I don't want to imply that Pope John Paul II did not care about worship - he regularly denounced liturgical abuses - but it did seem to observers inside and outside the Church that nothing much ever happened.

In contrast, the present Holy Father has made clear that bishops and priests must restore solemnity to the liturgy as a matter of urgency. And, although the fine print of Summorum Pontificum is still ignored by bishops all over the world, there is no doubt that Pope Benedict has liberated the older form of the Roman Rite.

Is it a coincidence that the Benedictine reform of the liturgy is occurring just as the Anglican Communion falls into irrevocable schism?

It wouldn't surprise me if Joseph Ratzinger, an old friend of conservative Anglicans, saw both processes as providential. His liturgical renewal could perhaps be seen as a spring-cleaning before visitors arrive.

For, make no mistake about it, Pope Benedict XVI wants Anglicans to "come over" in large numbers. Such conversions represent the fruit, rather than the failure, of the ecumenical project (though one should add that the Pope also wishes to deepen solidarity with non-Catholics who have no plans to covert).

But what form should the reception of former Anglicans take? There is no easy answer to this question, just as there was no easy way to incorporate Eastern Orthodox dissidents into the Roman communion at various points in the Church's history (though it happened).

Whenever Catholic-minded members of other Churches or denominations break away from the mainstream, the Vatican finds itself tangled up in arguments: about Holy Orders, corporate versus individual reception, married priests and Rites of worship. It can take many decades, if not centuries, for things to settle down.

But the long-term benefits can be remarkable, as the recent foundation of arguably the world's most exciting Catholic university by the Eastern-Rite Church in Ukraine demonstrates.

The main thing is not to miss a heaven-sent opportunity. It's widely believed, among conservative Catholics and Anglicans, that the Church in England and Wales did not do enough to welcome refugees from the Church of England after the vote for women priests in 1992.

On reflection, though, perhaps the time was not right. The Bishops of England and Wales were not well disposed to "misogynist" traditionalists, as they were unfairly characterised; the standard of English Catholic liturgy was at an all-time low; and Anglo-Catholicism, though divided and unhappy, still had the stomach for a fight.

Now Anglo-Catholicism has fallen apart. Liberal High Churchmen have quietly abandoned their opposition to women priests, ditching their principles but keeping their chasubles; they include most of the practising gay clergy who were such a stumbling block in the 1990s.

Conservative Anglo-Catholics, meanwhile, no longer identify with a C of E that treats them like batty aunts to be locked in the attic when the first woman bishop arrives, as she will soon. The question is how best to escape.

As for our Catholic bishops, there is now more sympathy for the Anglo-Catholic dilemma. The appointment of Archbishop Vincent Nichols to Westminster is significant; for, although he has never been a "traditionalist", nor has he ever been at the heart of the dialogue between liberal Catholics and liberal Anglicans that has wasted so much time since the ordination of women priests made reunion impossible.

As a young Westminster bishop, he unobtrusively cleared the path to Rome of at least one Anglican priest; there is no reason to think that he will not do the same again.

But the crucial change is that the present Pope, unlike his predecessor, is an admirer of the conservative Anglo-Catholic tradition - and open to the idea that doctrinally orthodox Anglicans should convert together, bringing with them spiritual gifts.

He is aware that the practical obstacles to such a move (or series of moves) are immense. But he will not be dissuaded by a Catholic ecumenical lobby that, even now, pays court to liberal Anglicans.

Hence the emergence of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as the main negotiating body with Anglo-Catholics. The CDF isn't impressed by ecumenical flattery and it's hard-headed enough to realise that groups seeking union with Rome may have a messy ecclesial history.

The Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), for example, is an independent sect headed by Archbishop John Hepworth, a twice-married ex-Catholic priest, and you can't get much messier than that.

There's not the slightest prospect of Hepworth exercising episcopal ministry in the Church - but he and all his bishops have solemnly signed the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a prelude to possible corporate reunion.

And that's what really matters to the CDF: the knowledge that the TAC is now unequivocally orthodox in all its doctrines. Vatican ecumenists may be impressed by the cultural Catholicism of the Archbishop of Canterbury; but the Congregation closest to the Holy Father knows that Dr Williams would not sign the Catechism in a million years, because he rejects many of its teachings.

No one knows what will happen next. We're in the very early stages of a historic but drawn-out realignment. Much depends on whether Forward in Faith, the forlorn pressure group of traditional Anglo-Catholics, follows its gut instincts and accepts the Magisterium in full.

Catholics should surely hope that it does; for how can we echo Jesus's prayer in St John's Gospel, "that they may be one", if we turn away Christians on whom the truth has dawned?

Saturday, August 8

ST. DOMINIC (DOMINGO DE GUZMAN)
(b. Spain 1170, d. Italy 1221)
Founder of the Order of Preachers



OR today.

No papal news in this issue. Page 1 stories: Arafat's Fatah party meets in Bethlehem to seek
a new leadership for peace; more protests in Tehran and corresponding police action; Washington
sees positive developments in Lebanon; tensions remain high between Russia and Georgia; the US
Senate approves Sonia Sotomayor's nomination as an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court;
and an editorial commentary on the welter of tax levies and speculative 'bubblets' in Europe and
the US - working in opposite directions - towards economic recovery. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi thinks
it is impossible for the experts themselves to predict the immediate future based on any moves taken,
and they would do well to read CIV before taking any more.



No events scheduled for the Holy Father today.

About time some bishops become militant about this! Not just about prompt, open expression of support for the Pope, which very few cardinals and bishops think to do when the occasion presents itself, as it has so often in the past several months, but also about the open defiance of the Pope - to me inexplicable, except out of sheer selfishness and an almost diabolical commitment to an erroneous post-conciliar ideology of rupture. Can they still consider themselves to be 'men of God'?

(I have yet to post an account of the unbelievable opposition being mounted by the Archbishop of Cagliari - whom Pope Benedict XVI visited last September - not just against any celebration of the traditional Mass in his diocese, but even against participation in a proposed convention on the traditional Mass with invited speakers from other parts of Italy and from Spain....

P.S. I see Rorate caeli posted an update of the Cagliari scandal yesterday. Please read.
rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/



Cardinal Ouellet calls out brother bishops
for their lack of support for the Pope
by John-Henry Westen





PHOENIX, August 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a short but stunning talk before some 90 Bishops, eight Cardinals and 1000 Knights, the Primate of Canada, Quebec City Archbishop Marc Cardinal Ouellet, addressed the subject of unity at the 127th annual Supreme Convention of the Knights of Columbus last night.

Ouellet spoke of the "hard winter" Pope Benedict XVI had to "suffer" this past year as he was "harshly criticized both within and outside the Church and was not adequately defended by those who share his ministry."

The two biggest controversies that sparked criticism of the Pope in recent months from the liberal, mainstream media, and even from some in the Church hierarchy, were the lifting of the excommunications of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X, and the Pope's remarks against the use of condoms.

Although Cardinal Ouellet mentioned by name only the Pope's "effort to bring back the schismatic group of the Lefebvrists to full communion," he noted the Pope was criticized "for this and various other reasons."

Only one other controversy - that of the condom comments - caused an international outcry against the Pope, even from some within the Church.

AIDS "is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems," the Pontiff said to reporters aboard the papal plane on March 17 this year.

The comments were followed by heavy criticism from world leaders, including Catholic leaders, and even veiled criticism from bishops in Portugal, Germany, and Canada. Two cardinals, one retired and one active, were among those who were unsupportive.

While there were various cardinals and bishops who defended the Holy Father on the matter, the defense of the Pope was far from widespread.

"At every level of leadership in the Church, unity with Peter and solidarity with him has not been a great achievement in this past year," said Ouellet in his address.

In a rousing call for unity with the Pope and also an affirmation of his teaching authority, Cardinal Ouellet said: "It is fully time to take action and stand with our Holy Father who is himself so admirably peaceful and coherent in fulfilling all his duties. We are greatly blessed by the quality of his teaching."

The Quebec Cardinal congratulated the Knights on their theme for the convention: "We stand with Peter in Solidarity with Our Bishops and Priests."

"Let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us all to give stronger witness to our loving loyalty to the Church and its Chief Shepherd, successor of Peter," he said. "Unity in the Church is the key to the realization of its mission."

The Primate of Canada pointed to dire hardships in the Church as the fruit of disunity with the Pope. "When there is a lack of unity within the Church we quickly see a decline in vocations and in Church attendance and disintegration of family life," he said.

Concluding, Cardinal Ouellet said: "Let us stand with Peter's successor, our Pope, at this challenging time courageously taking up our Christian duty of building unity and solidarity everywhere."

To watch the Cardinal's full address begin at 24 minutes in this video (place mouse in bottom of video window and video controls will show):
www.catholictv.com/shows/default.aspx?seriesID=136&vid...


This reminds me that I have been remiss in posting reports about the annual KofC convention. OR today has an account of Cardinal Levada's opening address to the Knights. I will try to make up.

In any case, Cardinal Ouellet proves himself once more to be Benedict XVI's highest-ranking loyal disciple in North America (two others would be Fr. Augustine di Noia, now #2 at the Congregation for Divine Worship, and Fr. Fessio, publisher of Ignatius Press and recently fired a second time from Ave Maria University).]

Benedict XVI's tribute
to St. Dominic
Translated from
the Italian service of



Today the Church celebrates the liturgical feast of St. Domingo de Guzman, whom the Pope called a 'model' for the Church at last Sunday's Angelus.

Founder of the Order of Preachers (OP), better known as the Dominicans, Dominic was born near Burgos, Spain, in 1170. After a life entirely spent in announcing the Gospel and charity towards the weakest, he died in Bologna in 1221.

In 1234, he was canonized by Gregory IX who said of him: "He was a man who followed in everything and for everyone the apostles' way of life".

Today, the Dominican order has more than 600 houses and 6000 priests around the world.

Alessandro Gisotti reports further:

"He opened his mouth only to speak with God in prayer or to speak of God". In this traditional saying handed down through the centuries, we find the key to the humble but extraordinary life of St. Domingo de Guzman.

A preacher who was capable of conjoining faith and reason, love adn truth. As an adolescent, as he studied theology, he came in contact with the miseries caused by continuous wars and famine. He decided then to sell off all superfluous possessions to help the poor.

Indeed, the grace which he most insistently asked of God was that of ardent charity. After finishing his studies, he was sent to preach the Gospel to the peoples of southern France which was then prey to Cathar heretics.

The urgent need to bring the Word of God to the center of every Christian's life, so ardently underscored by St. Dominic, has not lost its relevance.

Here is the exhortation made by Benedict XVI at the opening of the Bishops' Synod General Assembly last year on the Word of God:

"We are aware of all that is necessary in order to place the Word of God at the center of our life, to accept Christ as our only Redeemer, as the Kingdom of God in person, in order that his light may illumine every field of mankind: from the family to the school, to culture, to work, to free time and other sectors of society and our life".

A Word that must be proclaimed along all the roads of the world. St. Dominic, faithful to his motto 'Preach and walk', did so tirelessly.

After two missionary trips to Denmark, Innocent II called him to preach against the Albigensian heretics in the south of France, where he engaged himself in defeating the heresy and conquering as many souls as he could.

Most devoted to the Virgin Mary, he taught the faithful to meditate on the mysteries of the Incarnation. Over the years, the number of friends around Dominic continued to grow, leading him to decide that he would give a stable and organized form to preaching.

On December 22, 1216, Honorius II officially gave his approval to the Order of Preachers. The missionary zeal of Dominic and his followers re-echoed the statement St. Paul had said of himself: "Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel!"

It is a duty that is no less urgent today, as Benedict XVI said: "It becomes indispensable for Christians in every continent to be ready to respond to whoever asks them the reason for the hope that they have (cfr 1 Pt 3,16), announcing with joy the Word of God and living the Gospel without compromises" (Oct. 5, 2005).

A man of prayer and study, Dominic was committed fervently to the fruitful dialog of faith and reason. An effort that culminated in the work of his spiritual son, Thomas Aquinas. Not by chance, Dominic sent his preacher-friars to study in Paris and Bologna, the premier universities of the Middle Ages.

The same intuition about faith and reason is particularly present in the Magisterium of Benedict XVI:

"The dialog between faith and reason, if carried on with sincerity and rigor, offers the possiblity of perceiving, in a most effective and convincing way, the reasonableness of faith in God - not in any God but in the God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ - as well as to show that in Jesus Christ one finds the fulfillment of every authentic human aspiration".

Exhausted by his apostolic work and by his penitences, Dominic died on August 8, 1221, in his beloved convent in Bologna. To his friars who surrounded him with filial devotion and admiration, he left this testament: "Have charity, keep your humility, and gather the treasures of holy poverty".

Here is part of a wide-ranging interview with the president of the Vietnam bishops' conference published in the July issue of 30 GIORNI - the part that has to do with a possible papal visit.



Vietnam bishop 'almost sure'
the Pope will visit Vietnam next year:
Interview with Mons. Pierre Nguyen
by GIANNI VALENTE
Translated from






Pierre Nguyên Van Nhon, Bishop of the Diocese of Dà Lat, is almost sure of it: 2010 will mark the first visit to Vietnam by any Pope.

The president of the Vietnamese bishops' conference, a poised man who is not given to fatuous ecclesial speculation, lists the circumstances which, in his opinion, make a visit by Benedict XVI to his country highly probable.

"It would be good for everyone," he says. "For us Catholics who would be confirmed and comforted in our faith. But even for the government which is not opposed to such a visit. A visit by the Pope would be a sign to the world that Vietnam accepts diversity and freedom".

The formal occasion for such a visit has also been specified: 2010 will mark the 50th anniversary of teh Catholic hierarchy in Vietnam, established by John XXIII by a decree on November 24, 1960, as well as the 350th anniversary of the first two apostolic vicariates in the country.

"All of this has been discussed [presumably with the government as well - and many times over. So, God willing..."


If the Pope comes to Vietnam, what reality would he face at this moment in your history?
MONS NGUYEN: How the global economic recession weighs on the most intimate details of people's lives.

Ninety percent of Vietnamese work in the countryside, but in this economic crisis, the products of the soul no longer bring enough to live on. And so, people are leaving the countryside and flocking to the cities.

They leave their families, their affections, their habits. As emigrants, so many remain confused before the new problems they must face.

In a short period, some two million migrants have arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) - among them some 100,000 Catholics - and they all feel themselves in a situation of abandonment and fragility. Many end up not going to Church any more. They find themselves unable to pray even. And that's just one of the effects of this crisis.

...

(I will post the rest of the interview when translated in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread).

Here are details on the Vietnamese government's interest in a visit by the Pope, from Sandro Magister's recent article on the possible Vietnam visit:

Just before departing for Rome [for the Vietnamese bishops' ad limina visit last June], the archbishop of Hanoi, Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet, received a 'suggestion' to invite the Pope from Hanoi's office for religious affairs. Kiet is secretary of the Vietnamese episcopal conference.

It is likely that the official invitation will be presented to Benedict XVI by the president of Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Triet, during his audience at the Vatican next December. This will be the second time one of the country's authorities has met with the Pope since reunification under communist rule in 1975. The previous visit was made on January 25, 2007, by prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

Next November, moreover, a delegation will go to Rome, created by the Vietnamese government in agreement with Vatican authorities, for the express purpose of discussing the establishment of diplomatic relations.

I missed this entry by Bruno Mastroianni on July 29, following the Vespers in Aosta and the Angelus at Les Combes.


Benedict XVI says
God helps man to use his reason
Translated from




Benedict XVI speaking to more than 6,000 persons for the noon Angelus last Sunday at Les Combes got good play in the Italian media for it.

His praise of grandparents as 'repositories and witnesses of life's fundamental values' grasped one of the signs of a society that is increasingly longer-living, while families are experiencing a full educational emergency.

Less reported was the Pope's homily the preceding Friday at Vespers in the Cathedral of Aosta. In the city that gave birth to St. Anselm (whose 900th death anniversary is marked this year), the Pope spoke extemporaneously of the primacy of God and his 'true power' which is forgiving.

Benedict XVI underscored that without God, man has no compass, and said so in the very cathedral that was the first seat of St. Anselm, the 'Doctor magnificus', father of a school that spread erudition and study in all Europe. The saint, to whom faith and openness to the truth of God are the true guarantees for the correct use of reason.

His famous dictum - "that about whom it is not possible to think there is anything greater" - was not an exercise for philosophers but a simple idea to make it understood that God, even if we ignore him, is an inescapable reference point of man's intellect.

There is almost a millennium between Anselm and Joseph Ratzinger. But the question remains the same: mankind, despite all kinds of rational enlightenment and scientisms, is more keenly aware than ever of the difficulty of going anywhere without a compass.

On that Friday in Aosta, the Pope gave us the orientation: "We must bring anew to this world the reality of God, make him known and make him present."

From this, the first to profit would be reason.

Sunday, August 9

ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS
(Edith Stein) (Germany, 1891-1942)
Jewish writer, Carmelite nun, Martyr



OR today.

No papal news in today's issue. Page 1 stories: Terrorist bombs
kill dozens of Shiite pilgrims in Iraq; Hamas arrests Fatah officials
in Gaza; a commentary on who really represents the Palestinians;
US unemployment rate down from 9.5% to 9.4%;and a recent lecture
at Notre Dame University by Mons. Angelo Amato, prefect of the
Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, on the 'Christian
apostasy' in Europe.



THE POPE'S DAY
Angelus today - The Holy Father remembers the saints in this week's liturgy,
all martyrs except St. Clare, and speaking of today's saint, Edith Stein, who
was gassed in Auschwitz, he calls the Nazi concentration camps an example
of hell on earth when man forgets God.

ANGELUS TODAY



Pope calls Nazi camps
extreme symbols of evil



CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, Aug. 9 (AP) -Pope Benedict XVI says that Nazi concentration camps were "extreme symbols of evil" and hell on earth.

The Pontiff says concentration camps are a symbol of the "hell that comes to earth when man forgets God and replaces him, usurping his right to decide what is right and what is wrong, to give life and death."

The German-born Benedict was forced to join the Hitler Youth, and on Sunday was remembering two saints who had died in concentration camps.

He was speaking to pilgrims gathered at the Castel Gandolfo papal retreat for Sunday's traditional Angelus prayer.







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

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

Like last Sunday, today as well - in the context of the Year for Priests that we are celebrating - let us stop to meditate on the saints whom the liturgy commemorates this week.

With the exception of St. Clare of Assisi, Virgin, ardent with divine love in her daily oblation of prayer and ordinary life, the others are martyrs, two of them killed in the Auschwitz lager: St. Teresa Benedetta della Croce - Edith Stein, who was born in the Jewish faith and conquered by Christ as an adult, became a Carmelite nun and sealed her life with martyrdom; and St. Maximilian Kolbe, a son of Poland and of St. Francis, great apostle of Mary Immaculate.

Then there are splendid martyrs from the Church of Rome, like St. Poncianus, Pope; St. Hippolytus, priest; and St. Lawrence, deacon. What marvelous models of sainthood the Church offers us!

These saints are witnesses to that love 'unto the end' which does not mind the evil it receives but fights it with good (cfr 1 Cor 13,4-9). From them, we can learn - especially we priests - the evangelical heroism that impels us, without fearing anything, to give our life for the salvation of souls. Love conquers death!

All saints, but especially the martyrs, are witnesses for God who is Love: Deus caritas est. The Nazi concentration camps, like every extermination camp, can be considered extreme symbols of evil, of the hell that opens on earth when man forgets God and substitutes himself, usurping God's right to decide what is good and what is bad, to give life and death.

Unfortunately, however, this sad phenomenon is not limited to concentration camps. But the camps are the culminating point of an ample and widespread reality, often without fixed boundaries.

The saints whom we have mentioned briefly allow us to reflect on the profound differences that exist between atheistic humanism and Christian humanism - an antithesis that traverses all history, but which, at the end of the second millennium, has reached a crucial point in contemporary nihilism, as the great writers and thinkers have perceived, and as events have amply demonstrated.

On the one hand, there are philosophies and ideologies, but also modes of thinking and behavior, which are seen as alternatives to God, in such a way as to transform man himself into a god, who makes arbitrariness his system of behavior.

On the other hand, we have the saints, who, by practising the Gospel of love, give reason to their hope. They show the true face of God, who is love, and at the same time, the true face of man, who is created in the divine image and likeness.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray to the Virgin Mary, so that she may help us all - we priests, first of all - to be holy like these heroic witnesses to faith and to total dedication to the point of martyrdom.

This is the only way to offer a credible and exhaustive response to the human and spiritual circumstances arising from the profound crisis of the contemporary world: the way of love in truth.


In his plurilingual greetings, he referred to the Gospel today. He said this in English:

I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors gathered for this Angelus prayer.

The readings from today’s Mass invite us to put our faith in Jesus, the "bread of life" who offers himself to us in the Eucharist and promises us eternal joy in the house of the Father.

During these summer holidays, may you and your families respond to the Lord’s invitation by actively participating in the Eucharistic sacrifice and through generous acts of charity. Upon all of you I invoke his blessings of joy and peace!


To Polish-speaking pilgrims, he expressed his spiritual closeness to them as they undertake pilgrimages in the month of August to Marian shrines including that of Our Lady of Czestochowa.

---

So, a papal Motu Proprio need not always deal with Church matters. It can be as mundane as this:


With a Motu proprio,
Pope reforms labor practices
in Vatican city state



VATICAN CITY, August 9 (Translated from Apcom) - Incentives for motherhood and for families with many children, as well as equal treatment for men and women who reach retirement age (raised from 65 to 67) are among the novelties in the Vatican's new 'labor rights'.

After long preparation by Vatican officials, Pope Benedict XVI signed last July 7 a Motu proprio ('Venti anni orsono' - Twenty years ago) in which he also reforms the Vatican labor office (known by its Italian acronym ULSA).

The document has been distributed to the 4,600 citizen-residents of Vatican city state - includes ecclesiastics, religious and laymen.

The tribunal once charged with ruling on disputes between administration and personnel - which have dramatically diminished over the years - has been converted to an office to "promote and consolidate the working community in teh Holy See".

"The new Vatican standards go even beyond aligning for the most part with recent labor initiatives adopted in Italy - from a bonus for every child born to an upward revision of benefits for nuclear families, especially those with many children, with lower incomes or with handicapped members, as well as bonuses for day care centers and allowances to purchase schoolbooks," said ULSA director Massimo Bufacchi in an interview with L'Osservatore Romano.

"For example, in providing for parenthood incentives, it would grant special funds for those who may need to go to a foreign country to adopt a child," he said.

The Vatican has no day care centers to help its working mothers, but Bufacchi explains that "Our working mothers have been able to make day care arrangements with their own families or other convenient places near their home, but now, the new rules will give them a bonus for this benefit." (Only 19% of Vatican employees are female.)


As for older employees, there has never been a gender difference in the retirement age for Vatican personnel, but from 2010 onwards, new employees will be eligible to retire at 67 not at 65."

Benedict XVI: Intent on uprooting
remaining traces of Nazism
by SALVATORE IZZO







VATICAN CITY, Aug. 9 (Translated from AGI) - Just as Papa Wojtyla saw his ascent to the papacy as an opportunity to call on Poles to recover their dignity that had been trampled on by the Communist regime, so it seems the German Pope feels called on to uproot any remaining traces of Nazism.

He confirmed this again today at the Angelus by linking the Nazi concentration camps to the nihilism in contemporary society - reinforcing at the same time the new alarm he sounded last Wednesday at the General Audience against the 'dictatorship of relativism' which exalts individual freedom as the ultimate right and does not respect the sacredness of life.

"The Nazi camps, like very extermination camp, can be considered extreme symbols of evil, of the hell which opens on earth when man forgets God and substitutes himself, usurping God's right to decide what is good and bad, the right over life and death," Benedict XVI said today, remembering the two Auschwitz martyrs canonized by his predecessor, Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "this sad phenomenon is not limited to the concentration camps. These camps are rather the culminating point of an ample and widespread reality, often without fixed boundaries".

[Izzo quotes more from the Pope's Angelus discourse today, translated in full two posts above.]

In the past several months, Benedict XVI has had many occasions to denounce the ideology that resulted in the Shoah and the Second World War, but also caused so much suffering for the German nation.

"The Shoah leads mankind to reflect on the unforeseeable power of evil when it conquers the heart of man", he said at the General Audience of Jan. 28, 2009.

"The cry of the Holocaust victims still echoes in our hearts, a cry that rises against every act of injustice and violence. It is the cry of Abel which rises to the Almighty", he said during his visit to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on May 11.

And to indicate how dehumanizing was the folly of Nazism, he exclaimed, "Try as one might, one can never take away the name of a fellow human being".

All this, of course, Benedict had previously acknowledged lucidly during his trip to Poland in May 2006, when at Auschwitz-Birkenau, he reiterated the Psalmist's cry to a God who appeared 'silent and absent'.

Three years later, on leaving Israel after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he recalled the emotion of "that visit three years ago to the death camp of Auschwitz, where so many Jews - mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, friends - were brutally exterminated under a Godless regime which propagated an ideology of anti-Semitism and hate".

"That horrifying chapter of history," he said, "should never be forgotten nor denied".

The Pope has also spoken of Nazism from his personal experience. "Our life was marked by suffering under Nazism and the war", he said on January 17, during a concert honoring his brother Georg on his 85th birthday.

The Ratzingers were victims, like many others in Germany, of the Nazi death machine against "the sick and the defective". A cousin, who was about the age of Joseph and Georg, but born with Downs syndrome, was taken away from his parents' house - on the basis of a Nazi law that prohibited handicapped children from living with their parents - and never seen again. Despite the vigorous protests of his family, the Nazi agents were inflexible. Much later, the family was simply informed that the boy had died.

Barely a month after the January concert, meeting with the Pontifical Academy for Life which had held a symposium on the new frontiers in genetics, the Pope forcefully denounced any return to forms of eugenics and euthanasia that the world had known since the days of ancient Rome, where handicapped babies were tossed to their death from the Tarpe rocks, down to the infamous annals of Nazi Germany.

In today's society, he said to the scientists then, "there is a tendency to favor a person's operational capacity, his efficiency, perfection and physical beauty, to the detriment of other dimensions of existence which are considered unworthy of life".

"This weakens the respect that is due to every human being, even in the presence of a developmental defect or a genetic deformity that may manifest itself during his lifetime, while penalizing, sometimes from their conception, those children whose lives are deemed not worthy to be lived".

The Pope likewise recalled German suffering during the Nazi regime during his trip to Africa in March.

Arriving in Angola, which is only a few years away from the end of a 27-year-long civil war, he said, "I come from a country where peace and brotherhood are dear to the hearts of all citizens, particularly those, like me, who have known war and the division of brothers belonging to the same nation because of a devastating and inhuman ideology which, under the guise of dreams and illusions, imposed a yoke of oppression on human beings".

In his homily at the Chrismal Mass of Maundy Thursday this year, the Pontiff revealed his apprehensions about the return of the specter of Nazism in other forms: such as the exaltation of individual freedom which dominates contemporary culture, with its roots in a dangerous vision of man, that of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophy inspired Nazism.

The Pope's denunciation drew from the observation that 'prevailing opinion' is often "the criterion against which we measure ourselves" and asks "Do we not perhaps remain, when all is said and done, mired in the superficiality in which people today are generally caught up?"

Thus any cultural abomination, starting with the justification of eugenics, risks 'passing' into today's mentality without anyone trying to impede it.

"Nietzsche scoffed at humility and obedience as the virtues of slaves, a source of repression," he pointed out. "He replaced them with pride and man’s absolute freedom".

Finally, he returned to warn against 'evil teachers' in his homily at the Easter Vigil - "people who spread around themselves an atmosphere like a stagnant pool of stale or even poisoned water".



Italian Jewish organization
welcomes Pope's words
against Nazism




ROME, Aug. 9 (Translated from ANSA) - "The Pope's words today appear as an even more unequivocal and conclusive condemnation of the Shoah and any other form of genocide and persecution", said Renzo Gattegna, president of the Unione delle Comunita Ebraiche Italiana (UCEI) (Union of Italian Jewish Communities).

"The words take on a particular significance because they were not said, as on other occasions, because of contingent facts, but rather as a profound historical and theological reflection," he added.

[He is saying in other words that the Pope was not speaking 'defensively' but 'unprovoked' - as though the Pope needs any provocation to share his reflections on fundamental questions. And as though Benedict XVI/Joseph Ratzinger had been any less unequivocal and conclusive in his views about Nazism and the Jews!]

"Benedict XVI has already expressed himself last spring with clarity and firmness - reiterated with his visit to Israel and his commitment to visit teh Rome Synagogue - when he spoke to belie and delegitimize the positions expressed by those who want to deny the Shoah or minimize the gravity of the attempt to totally exterminate the Jewish people," Gattegna said.

He concluded: "His statements today should put an end to various theories or interpretations [presumably about Benedict XVI's personal beliefs about Nazism, anti-Semitism and the Jews].


I suppose we must welcome Mr. Gattegna's unsolicited commendation, and trust he made it in good faith, while dismissing the least suspicion that he is in any way patronizing of the Pope. But I fear that other Jews may not share his conclusion that this should close the book about the doubts they express at every possible occasion on the Pope's own good faith with respect to the Jews.

Monday, August 10

ST. LAWRENCE (b. Spain 225, d. Rome 258)
Deacon and Martyr



- No OR today.

- No events scheduled for the Holy Father.

- No announcements from the Vatican.

You can tell it's the summer doldrums for papal news and commentary when Sandro Magister has to stretch as he does in this article, trying to find a common thread to tie in three 'disparate' themes - each of which, after all, deserves to be commented upon on its own.

His title and subtitle for this item shows the stretch:
August on Mount Tabor, for Saints and Sinners
On the Pope's agenda for this summer, three realities leap to the foreground:
the example of the Curé of Ars, the sacrament of confession, the feast of the Transfiguration.
Here's how and why.

A matter-of-fact title, I think, is much more suitable. Also, to begin with, both St. Jean Vianney and the Transfiguration were topical, and the emphasis on the confession goes with the veneration of Vianney who was best known for spending most of his day hearing confessions! Not to mention that the Pope has underscored this neglected sacrament often in the past four years. So it was far from random or coincidental that the themes have come up!


Summer themes: St. Jean Vianney,
confession, and the Transfiguration




ROME, August 10, 2009 – In recent days, the Pope and the Pope's newspaper have given strong and coordinated emphasis to a saint, a sacrament, and a liturgical feast that are usually downplayed or overlooked.

The saint is John Mary Vianney, the Curé of Ars.

The sacrament is that of the forgiveness of sins.

The feast is the one on August 6, of the Transfiguration of Jesus on Mount Tabor, one of the twelve major feasts on the Byzantine calendar, but ignored by most in the Latin Church.


1. THE HOLY CURÉ D'ARS


Benedict XVI dedicated the entire catechesis on Wednesday, August 5 to the Curé of Ars, at the 150th anniversary of the saint's death.

Papa Ratzinger intended to present him as a model above all for priests, for whom he has proclaimed a special Year for Priests. A model that is not confined to the past, but endowed with extraordinary prophetic power.

This is how Benedict XVI explains the enduring relevance of the holy Curé of Ars, even in the present age of the "dictatorship of relativism":

---

Far from reducing the figure of St. John Mary Vianney to an example, as admirable as it may be, of 19th century devotional spirituality, it is necessary on the contrary to grasp the prophetic power that marks his human and priestly personality with the greatest relevance.

In post-revolutionary France, which was experiencing a sort of 'dictatorship of rationalism' aimed at eliminating the very presence of priests and of the Church from society, he lived first of all – during his youth – an heroic concealment, traveling for kilometers at night in order to participate in the holy Mass.

Afterward – as a priest – he distinguished himself by a singular and fruitful pastoral creativity, capable of demonstrating that the reigning rationalism of the time was in reality far from satisfying the authentic needs of man, and therefore absolutely unlivable.

Dear brothers and sisters, 150 years after the death of the holy Curé of Ars, the challenges of today's society are no less demanding, on the contrary, they have become more complex.

If back then there was the 'dictatorship of rationalism', in the present era a sort of 'dictatorship of relativism' can be seen in many circles. Both appear to be inadequate answers to man's just demand to use his own reason fully as a distinctive and constitutive element of his identity.

Rationalism was inadequate because it does not take human limitations into account, and it presumes to elevate reason alone as the measure of all things, transforming it into a goddess; contemporary relativism destroys reason, because in fact it goes so far as to affirm that the human being cannot know anything with certainty beyond the field of positive science.

But today, like back then, man 'begging for meaning and fulfillment' goes in constant search of exhaustive answers to the fundamental questions that he does not cease to pose to himself.

---

But in what did the sanctity of this "anonymous priest from a remote village in the south of France" shine the most?

Above all in seeing him celebrate the Mass and hear confession, Benedict XVI answers. The life of the holy Curé d'Ars was completely dedicated to the Eucharist and to the sacrament of forgiveness. He lived "between the altar and the confessional."

There is an audacity in proposing such a model today. But the fact that this coincides with the heart of the Christian faith, and not with one of its marginal aspects, is confirmed by an article published in L'Osservatore Romano on the same day as the pope's catechesis on the holy Curé of Ars.


2. THE SACRAMENT OF FORGIVENESS


The article concerned another saint - one of the most illustrious Fathers of the Church, the bishop of Milan in the fourth century, St. Ambrose. The author, theologian Inos Biffi, a leading expert on the Fathers and on medieval theology, begins this way:

"According to St. Ambrose, the merciful Christ or the mercy that comes from him is the reason why God created the world, and man in particular. Forgiveness is the first and last word about the world and about its history."

And further on:

"The most astonishing and most revealing text of Ambrose's theology of mercy as the substance and motive of creation can be read at the end of his commentary on the six days of creation: 'The Lord our God', he writes, 'created heaven, and I do not read that he rested. He created earth, and I do not read that he rested. He created the sun, the moon, the stars, and even then I do not read that he rested. But I read that he created man and that at this point he rested, having a being whose sins he could forgive' (Hexameron VI, IX, 10, 76).

"Man was created by God from the beginning as a being 'to be forgiven'. For this reason, there is rejoicing in heaven wherever mercy is exercised: creation reaches its end and its glory.

"St. Ambrose would not cease to evoke this divine plan, which would appear as the reason for which the Church and its ministers must be signs of pity. More than all the other Fathers of the Church, he felt the power of the grace that recreates, and through which guilt is absolved."

And how does God's forgiveness reached the repentant sinner, if not in the liturgical, sacramental act?

On the same page of L'Osservatore Romano as Inos Biffi's article on St. Ambrose the "merciful confessor," there is another article in which art historian Timothy Verdon illustrates a masterpiece of liturgical art: the marvelous mosaic in the apse of the basilica of Sant'Apollinare in Classe, built in the 6th century in Ravenna.



3. THE FEAST OF THE TRANSFIGURATION

The mosaic depicts the Transfiguration. But in the place of Jesus is the jeweled cross. Beneath the cross is the bishop and martyr Apollinaris, dressed in Mass vestments and hands raised in a gesture of prayer, surrounded by the sheep of his flock. Further below is the altar of the actual celebration.

The earthly liturgy and heavenly liturgy are one and the same, in the light of the transfigured Christ. The significance of the actions of the earthly liturgy is given by the images standing above it:

"The anonymous artist has thus overlaid the meaning of the 'dazzling white garment' in the Gospel account with the significance of the successive 'exodus' – the death of Jesus, which is already a 'raising up' – in the single image of the jeweled cross, and this serves as the key to interpreting the community identity in the liturgical context, the revelation of a future 'transfiguration' of the praying people through the mystery present in the bread and wine changed into the body and blood of Christ."

And more on the Transfiguration: A front-page commentary in OR on August 5, written by American theologian Robert Imbelli [I posted a full translation of this article on this thread, cross-posted also in the CIV thread] also adopts the Transfiguration as the key to interpreting the encyclical Caritas in Veritate, and therefore the ultimate meaning of man and the cosmos.

The commentary begins like this:

"The Transfiguration, one of the most theologically rich feasts, reveals the true face of the Lord, the beloved Son of the Father, and the destiny to which the disciples and all men are called, revealing the truth of Christ and of all humanity, as St. Mark recounts: 'After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John and led them up a high mountain apart by themselves. And he was transfigured before them' (9:2).

"Some Fathers of the Church have understood the words 'after six days' as an announcement of the fulfillment of creation. That is, the creation of Adam and Eve by God is fulfilled in the revelation of the true man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ, in whom the glory of God dwells bodily...

"In this light, therefore, the Transfiguration can be celebrated as the feast in which the Church proclaims its vision of comprehensive humanism. Contemplating the beauty of the transfigured Christ makes the disciples desire that the entire world be enveloped by the transfigured light, and act boldly according to this holy desire."

Imbelli cites this passage from Caritas in Veritate:

---

Development requires attention to the spiritual life, a serious consideration of the experiences of trust in God, spiritual fellowship in Christ, reliance upon God's providence and mercy, love and forgiveness, self-denial, acceptance of others, justice and peace. All this is essential if 'hearts of stone' are to be transformed into 'hearts of flesh' (Ezek 36:26), rendering life on earth 'divine' and thus more worthy of humanity.

---

And immediately after this he writes:
"Paul VI demonstrated this mystery in his life. The image of the transfigured Lord energized the heart of his spirituality and his hope for the Church and humanity. It is a marvelous grace of Providence that this Pope died on the evening of the feast, August 6, 1978."

The cause of beatification is underway for the "servant of God" Paul VI, another great figure often undervalued and misunderstood, especially for his encyclical Humanae Vitae. He is remembered each year on the feast of the Transfiguration, the day of his death.

In Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI writes of him:

"Pope Paul VI illuminated the great theme of the development of peoples with the splendour of truth and the gentle light of Christ's charity. [...] Motivated by the wish to make Christ's love fully visible to contemporary men and women, Paul VI addressed important ethical questions robustly, without yielding to the cultural weaknesses of his time."

Just as the Curé d'Ars did against the "dictatorship of rationalism" of his time - offering the forgiveness of God in the light of the Transfiguration.