BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries today, 4/10/12.




April 10, Tuesday in the Octave of Easter

ST. MADDALENA DI CANOSSA (Italy, 1774-1835),Founder, Daughters of Charity and Sons of Charity
She was a descendant of Countess Matilda of Canossa, who in the late 12th century, famously brought together Pope Gregory VII
and the German King Henry IV at her castle in central Italy. Maddalena herself was born in Verona and joined the Carmelites when
she was 15. But she left them later because she thought she could carry her apostolate for the poor better if she had no restrictions.
The rich noblewoman worked to help the poor and the sick, as well as delinquent and abandoned girls. Soon, she started taking girls
into her home, then she opened a school to provide them with practical education and religious training. She left her palatial home in
1808 to dedicate herself completely to her apostolate. This led her to found the Congregation of the Daughters of Charity dedicated
especially to the educational and spiritual needs of women. She established her congregation in several cities in Italy, and then
started the Congregation of the Sons of Charity. Eventually, the Canossians dedicated themselves to missionary activity, celebrating
150 years of missionary work in 2010. Today, some 5,000 Canossian religious are found all over the world carrying on their founder's
mission. Mother Maddalena was canonized in 1988.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041012.cfm


No bulletins from the Vatican today.
Vatican Radio reports that the Holy Father will fly into the Vatican tomorrow morning, Wednesday,
for the General Audience, and then fly back to Castel Gandolfo.


No OR today.

I've just wasted time trying to buy online access to an interview that Peter Seewald gave the Passauer Neue Presse which now has a paywall - after seven years during which I had free access to whenever they published something about the Holy Father or his brother... And for some reason, I keep being asked to 'make the correct entry' for my credit-card number. I don't have the luxury of wasting more time on figuring out why so I'll make do with a brief story about the interview...


Peter Seewald says that already
Benedict XVI counts among
the great Popes in history


MUNICH, April 10 (Translated from kath.net/KAP) - Munich publicist Peter Seewald says Benedict XVI is already 'one of the great Popes in the history of the papacy'.

He has dedicated himself to an inner renewal of the Church, and possesses the intellectual and spiritual ability to provide the world an anchor, said Seewald in an interview published today in the Passauer Neue Presse. Seewald has published three book-length interviews with Joseph Ratzinger (two as cardinal and one as Pope).

Seewald also pointed out that Benedict XVI is the last Pope to have taken part in the Second Vatican Council from 1962-1965, and so "in some way, he represents the Council today".

He said new research has shown that the contribution made by then theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, as theological consultant to Cologne's Cardinal Josef Frings, was far greater than what has been known so far.

Seewald said the Bavarian professor priest made decisive contributions to two major Vatican-II texts - Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, and Dei verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Revelation.

However, he said, Joseph Ratzinger was not an iconoclast. "For him, the Catholic way is not to aggravate conflicts but to defuse them".

Now, as Pope, Seewald, says, Benedict XVI has the mission to "make Vatican-II 'weatherproof'". As a centrist, he said, the Pope would always decide for 'what is truly good as against a lesser good'.

Seewald also commented on the Holy Father's much-commented address to German Catholics in Freiburg last September about a 'demondanization' of the Church [the German term Entweltlichung - giving up worldliness - is much more direct).

He said that Prof. Ratzinger had first used the term back in 1958 to mean "turning away from power, from Mammon, from cronyism, from false appearances, from deception and self-deception".

For the young Ratzinger, Seewald said, s"Entweltlichung meant far more recourse to the spiritual - the preservation of the spiritual resources of mankind which are vital for survival. But this does not mean turning one's back on the social and political issues that touch on the lives of the faithful".





Brother Georg says reform of the liturgy
is a focal point for Benedict XVI
But the Pope's policy of leading by example
doesn't seem to work on many priests and bishops

April 10, 2012

No one knows Pope Benedict XVI better than his own brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger. In fact, this man is the only person living who has known and loved the present Pope since the very moment of his birth, on 16 April 1927. They have shared a life together – even to the point of being ordained priests at the same liturgy.

Benedict XVI himself has said of Georg: “[from] the beginning of my life, my brother has always been for me not only a companion, but a trustworthy guide … he has been a point of orientation and reference … [h]e has always shown me the path to take, even in difficult situations.”

For this reason, Georg Ratzinger’s recently published book, My Brother, the Pope, is a must for all those who wish to know more about those early “experiences that shaped some of the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI” (as George Weigel put it in his review of the work).

Not only does it paint an intimate portrait of the Ratzinger family, and of Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood and early life, My Brother, the Pope also reveals, in quite a candid way, Georg Ratzinger's unique view as to what Pope Benedict XVI’s most pressing goals are as the successor of St Peter.

I bought a copy of My Brother, the Pope on Holy Saturday, and dipped into it over Easter Sunday – it is absolutely fascinating! The book consists of a series of reflections by Georg Ratzinger, who himself has had a successful clerical and musical career.

His reminiscences and musings are mainly given as answers - sometimes very long ones - to questions posed by the Church historian, Michael Hesemann. Published in German late last year, My Brother, the Pope has been available to English readers since March 2012. (For those who can get to London, it is currently on sale at St Pauls bookshop.)

Georg Ratzinger’s words paint a vivid picture of the childhood he shared with his brother and the rest of the Ratzinger family – a childhood that the Pope himself has already touched upon his own autobiography (written as Cardinal Ratzinger), Milestones: Memoirs 1927 – 1977.

Georg, though, goes into much more detail concerning the simple day-to-day Bavarian life that he and his family enjoyed in the years prior to the Second World War. He also provides a glimpse into a Catholic world that was unashamedly joyful and liturgically awe-inspiring.

These were the days before the Modernist devotees of the so-called “spirit of Vatican II” had managed to purge the Church’s liturgy of its joy, colour, excitement and tradition. It was a time when Catholicism was proud of its God-given heritage.

The Pope’s father, also called Joseph, was a policeman – a job that often meant transfers from one town or village to another. The older Joseph Ratzinger was a particularly devout man, who also sang in church choirs, and who detested the Nazis when they appeared on the scene in 1930s Germany.

Georg mentions in his book that he, his mother, and siblings were often worried about his father’s safety – it seems that being a rural policeman was a hazardous occupation at that time. Everyday, the Ratzinger children and their mother, Maria, would pray for Joseph Ratzinger senior’s safe return home, especially if he was out working a night shift.

Here is part of what the Pope’s brother recalls about those times of family prayer:

---

From our parents we learned what it means to have a firm grasp of faith in God. Every day we prayed together, and in fact before and after each meal (we ate our breakfast, dinner, and supper together).

The main prayer time was after the midday dinner, when the particular concerns of the family were expressed. Part of it was a prayer to Saint Dismas, the “good thief”, a former criminal who was crucified together with Jesus on Mount Calvary, repented on the cross, and begged the Lord for mercy. We prayed to him, the patron of repentant thieves, to protect Father from professional troubles.

…Father often worked at night, and then it could happen that he was held up, for whatever reasons, and came home later. Then, naturally, we children and Mother were anxious and prayed that nothing had happened to him …

When we were children, our parents also put us to bed and prayed our evening prayers with us. They used a special form of blessing and repeated it three times [one for each child] … This was followed by a rather expansive blessing. Once I asked my father what it meant, but all he used to say to me was, "I do not know exactly either. My father and mother used to pray this prayer at my bedside."

---

The Ratzingers would also pray the Rosary most days at home, though went to church to pray it during October, the month of the Holy Rosary. The two boys, Georg and Joseph, also attended – and served at – the 6.00am daily Mass in their local church.

There is a beautiful passage in My Brother, the Pope, which describes the thrill both boys felt when attending the early morning Rorate Masses during Advent:

---

After we started school, we used to attend these Masses in the early morning, before classes began. Outside it was still night, everything was dark, and the people often shivered in the cold. Yet the warm glow of the sanctuary compensated for the early rising and the walk through the snow and ice. The dark church illuminated by candles and tapers, which were often brought by the faithful and provided not only light but a little warmth … These Rorate Masses were wonderful signposts leading us to Christmas.

---

In his book, Georg Ratzinger describes the wonderful liturgies and devotions that meant so much to the faithful before many were swept away by the post-Conciliar changes, or “reforms”.

In describing the piety that surrounded the Ratzinger family’s celebration of Christmas, he revealed that the Pope “still has the little family manger scene with the tuff stones from Tittmoning; it is set up at Christmastime in the dining room of his apartment in the Apostolic Palace.”

My Brother, the Pope also contains several passages that describe those ancient Catholic traditions of Bavaria that helped the people to celebrate Easter, Candlemas and the May devotions, as well as other festivals and saints days.

Reflecting on the post-Easter Vigil (held on Holy Saturday morning in those days) “celebration of the Resurrection”, Georg Ratzinger paints a wonderful portrait of the sheer joy that seemed more present in pre-Vatican II liturgies:

---

…[T]he church was darkened; all the church windows were draped with black cloth. Then the pastor, in festive vestments and cope, sang “Christ is risen” three times, to which the choir responded, the third time, “Alleluia!” Actually the priests are supposed to sing each time in a higher key, but most pastors could not distinguish the keys, since they were not that musical, either. Someone stood at each window to let the drapes fall as soon as the pastor intoned the third “Christ is risen.”

In Aschau, my brother and I did that, too, for a time. Then spring sunshine poured into the church and created a Paschal mood. Finally, another procession took place, during which the church choir sang an Easter motet … This procession with the Most Blessed Sacrament under the “heaven”, as we called the baldachin, with lots of incense, was always a very festive occasion, which contributed to bringing the good news of the Resurrection deep into the hearts of believers.

---

Another tradition that Georg Ratzinger mentions in his book is the "Mount of Olives devotion" that was usually held on Thursdays throughout Lent. This act of worship involved a long sermon, silence, prayer and music. As Mgr Ratzinger recounts, “In the midst of that silence, the large church bell then rang, which lent an impressive tone to the whole thing.”

He goes on to describe how these devotions could be rather humorous a times:

---

In Dorfen, where I served for four years as an assistant pastor (from 1953 to 1957), there was a Baroque Mount of Olives. Christ was depicted as praying on it. During the devotion, the sacristan then used a crank to lower from the ceiling an angel that was hanging on a rope, with chalice in his hand, so as to strengthen Jesus for his future suffering and death.

Back then, in the Baroque period, as we know, they liked to stage things graphically like that. But it sometimes happened that the crank did not work, and the angel literally plummeted from heaven. But in spite of that, these Mount of Olives devotions were always a beautiful and moving way to celebrate Lent.

---

Needless to say, there are many fascinating and important insights into Pope Benedict XVI’s early life in My Brother, the Pope – so why dwell in this post only on these liturgical memories from Georg and Joseph Ratzinger’s childhood and young adulthood?

The answer is simply that, as Mgr Georg Ratzinger himself reveals - in answer to a question by Hesemann - towards the end of his book, the “focal point” of his brother’s pontificate is his desire to see “the liturgy ... celebrated worthily and that it be celebrated correctly.”

If we consider Joseph Ratzinger’s seminal work on worship in the Roman Rite, The Spirit of the Liturgy, then it won't surprise many to know that, according to his brother at least, liturgical reform is at the heart of this present Pope’s mission.

He truly wishes to lead a reform of the so-called reforms initiated by those who claimed to speak for Vatican II. As Georg Ratzinger says: “There are so many priests who think they have to add something [to the liturgy] here and change something there. So my brother wants an orderly, good liturgy that moves people interiorly and is understood as a call from God.”

Pope Benedict XVI has already liberated the ancient liturgy of the Roman Rite from its unjust imprisonment with the publication of his Motu Proprio, Summorum Pontificum.

Liturgically speaking, he has also led by example in many ways – always celebrating his Masses facing a large crucifix, introducing a better English translation of the Mass, insisting on Gregorian chants and beautiful sacred music, and reviving some of the papal ceremonial's older traditions.

But will this type of gradual reform be effective, especially as far too many Church leaders just seem to be ignoring the Pope's efforts? Isn’t it time now for the Holy Father to start using the office that God has given to him as a means of imposing liturgical reform on the Church? Isn’t it time for him to use that unique authority that Our Lord gave to Peter?

The Pope knows that the people of God desire to worship the Lord through beautiful liturgy - those traditions which sustained our ancestors remain popular amongst the faithful. In that sense, I am sure that he will do more to help us rediscover our liturgical heritage.

Pope Benedict XVI's pontificate will - in one way or another - help Latin-rite Catholics worship God in that ageless spirit which is both splendid and truly worthy of the faith of our fathers.




Here's another publicity item for the book from Ignatius Press...

One of the rarest fraternal
relationships ever written about

Brotherly love is not uncommon, but the over-80-year-old bond between Monsignor Georg Ratzinger and his brother Joseph – Pope Benedict XVI – is of one of the rarest and most fascinating fraternal relationships ever written about.

In My Brother the Pope, available March 1 in English from Ignatius Press, Msgr. Ratzinger provides German writer Michael Hesemann with the only living witness to the early days and formation of brothers who were ordained as Catholic priests together on the same day in 1951 – after surviving Nazi Germany and World War II.

Msgr. Ratzinger and Pope Benedict XVI – or Georg and Joseph in their early days – mere sons of an ordinary hard-working policeman and faithful Catholic who married a devout woman he met through taking out a print advertisement, are seen as never before.

“(Msgr. Ratzinger) draws the picture of a family that grew so strong through the practice of its deep faith that it could withstand all the storms of that time, even those of the godless Nazi regime,” Hesemann writes in the book’s introduction.

Noted author and Papal biographer George Weigel calls My Brother the Pope “an evocative portrait that sheds new light on the experiences that shaped some of the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI.”

Hesemann, whose idea it was to acquire Monsignor Ratzinger’s detailed memoirs about his brother and their unique bond, says of My Brother the Pope, “The Ratzinger family secret is now available to the entire world.” [The 'secret' of family togetherness being a deeply felt and actively practised Catholic faith.]

Msgr. Ratzinger tells Hesemann of the brothers’ early lives, when they were forced to become part of the Hitler Youth and drafted into the army of the Third Reich. My Brother the Pope also provides an intimate look into the Ratzinger family, and the tight knit and devotional Catholic home life that produced not one – but two vocations to priesthood.

“Often on Sundays we attended Mass twice, once as servers and another time with our family, for instance, the early Mass at 6:00 and the main parish Mass at 8:00 or 8:30,” Msgr. Ratzinger tells Hesemann. “Then, in the afternoon at 2:00, there were devotions, on feast days a Vespers service. This piety, which was lived and put into practice, defined our whole life, even though today I celebrate only one Mass and refrain from going to a second one. Nevertheless, it was imparted to us as children in the cradle, so to speak, and we remained faithful to it throughout our lives. I am convinced that the lack of this traditional piety in many families is also a reason why there are too few priestly vocations today.”

In My Brother the Pope, Monsignor Ratzinger not only shares – for the first time – a unique depiction of his brother with stories never heard before, but readers will encounter the man, the best friend, who continues to serve as a confidante and guide to the Holy Father to this day in the midst of his Papacy.

“From the beginning of my life,” Pope Benedict said, “my brother has always been for me not only a companion, but a trustworthy guide. For me he has been a point of orientation and of reference with the clarity and determination of his decisions. He has always shown me the path to take, even in difficult situations.”

The Ratzinger brothers celebrated the 60th anniversary of their ordinations to the priesthood last year, and the book includes many pages of black and white and color photos that illustrate the lifelong, lasting friendship the Pope and his brother have enjoyed. They continue to vacation together, and talk to each other daily.

“Not just a fascinating book but a unique one, as well,” said Fr. Benedict Groeschel, of My Brother the Pope. “We are granted an intimate look at the life of one beloved brother through the eyes of another.”

A Spanish edition of My Brother the Pope is available from Liguori Publications.

Thanks to a lead from Lella's blog

this announcement from one of the German lay groups in support of Benedict XVI.

For the Pope's 85th birthday:
'85 balloons for the Pope - Sign of hope'

---

On the occasion of Pope Benedict XVI's 85th birthday, the 'Deutschland pro Papa' (Germany for the Pope) initiative will launch "85 Balloons for Benedict - Sign of Hope".

Under the patronage of the Pope's brother, former Regensburg Domkapellmeister, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, 85 huge yellow-and-white balloons will be released from the Papsthuegel {Pope's hill) in Regensburg on Sunday, April 15, at noon. [The Papsthuegel is the artificial hill built on Islinger field outside Regensburg in September 2006 as a setting for the altar-stage used for the Papal Mass during the Pope's apostolic visit to Bavaria.]

The Holy Father has visited his homeland three times since he became Pope. His last visit in September 2011 was under the motto "Where God is, there the future is". The Pope called anew for New Evangelization of a world which is no longer God-friendly, if not outright Godless.

'Deutschland pro Papa' (DpP) is responding to his call. For the April 15 event, each birhtday balloon will carry a brief letter of Christian encouragement, with sunflower seeds to represent hope and growth - hope for a new life, that is firmly rooted in the faith, in which it will grow.

The balloons will carry these signs of hope, and everyone who finds a balloon after it lands is asked to plant the seeds. Even if the finder is not religious, a seed is always a sign of hope.

Finders are then requested to send DpP pictures of the sunflowers they have grown to be published on the DpP website.

The first 85 persons who arrive at the Papsthuegel on April 15 will each get a balloon to release when the clock strikes 12. Afterwards, the assembly will pray the Regina caeli.

Let us carry together, along with the Holy Father, the hope of the Good News of Jesus, through symbolic sunflowers throughout the world as a sign of joy and confidence in a better peaceful future.

For the Deutschland pro Papa Initiative:
Sabine Benedikta Beschmann
First Chairman

---

Wednesday, April 11, Octave of Easter

ST. STANISLAW SZCZEPANOWSKI [Stanislaus of Szczepanow] (Poland, 1039-1079)
Bishop and Martyr, Patron of Poland
Born near Cracow, Stanislaw was appointed preacher and archdeacon for the Bishop of Cracow upon his ordination.
When he became bishop himself, he quickly became influential in the politics of the time (Cracow was the capital
of Poland then). He started opposing King Boleslaw II for waging unjust wars and for his personal immoral acts.
The king appeared to relent and become penitent for a time, but soon returned to his old ways. This time, Stanislaw
excommunicated him. The enraged king ordered him killed, and when his ministers refused to do so, he killed the
bishop himself, then had him hacked to pieces and thrown into a lake. Tradition says that the body miraculously
reintegrated; his remains are kept in Cracow's Wawel Cathedral. The king was forced to flee Poland after the murder,
and some say he retired in penance to a Benedictine abbey. The cult of Stanislaw began immediately upon his death.
He was canonized in 1253. In the following centuries, he became a symbol of Polish unity. Starting in the 13th
century, all the Kings of Poland were crowned before his tomb, and in periods of crisis and dismemberment, Poles
like to say they will be reintegrated again just as Stanislaw's body was.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041012.cfm


WITH THE POPE TODAY

The Holy Father today flew back to the Vatican to hold the General Audience in St. Peter's Square,
where he dedicated his catechesis to the significance of Christ's Resurrection. After the GA, he flew
back to Castel Gandolfo where he has been resting after his trip to Mexico and Cuba and the Holy Week
events that followed shortly afterwards.




Pope mourns the death
of Puerto Rican cardinal
Luis Aponte Martinez, 89
Translated from

April 11, 2012
The Holy Father has sent a telegram of condolence for the death yesterday of Cardinal Luis Aponte Martínez, emeritus Archbishop of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The telegram (in Spanish) was sent to the current Archbishop of San Juan, Mons. Roberto Octavio González Nieves, O.F.M. Here is a translation of the telegram:

---

MONS. ROBERTO OCTAVIO GONZÀLEZ NIEVES, O.F.M.
Archbishop of San Juan de Puerto Rico

I am profoundly saddened by the death of the beloved Cardinal Luis Aponte Martines, emeritus Archbishop of your archdiocese after an illness that he lived through with great serenity.

I express my heartfelt condolence to you, to the family of the departed, and to all the beloved people of Puerto Rico. I join you all in imploring the mercy of the heavenly Father for this zealous Pastor who served his people with such charity and simplicity.

He carried out a generous and intense episcopal ministry in Pnce, adn then as Archbishop of San Juan. He took part in the Second Vaticna Council, and implanted in his Church the Council's dispositions, in witness of his great love for God and the Church, as well as his great dedication to proclaiming the Gospel.

In these time of sorrow, I impart with affection to you all the comfort of an Apostolic Blessing as a sign of faith and hope in the Risen Lord.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

---

I'm using the banner of a blog called 'Sentire cum Ecclesia' because it expresses very well the idea that dissident bishops and priests seem not to take into account at all, persisting in pushing their selfish and self-centered ideas on 'how to make the Church better'. Well, it won't get better, until each of them looks into their conscience and learn once more to think with the Church... One must point out that 'always proposing, never imposing' refers to the Christian attitude towards non-Christians and non-believers, but Christians, particularly Catholics - once they have accepted the faith or are born into and catechized properly in the faith - are obliged to take on all the teachings of the faith without picking and choosing - in that way, the faith is 'imposed' on them by the very fact of accepting the faith.

Based on the story below from the Vatican Insider, the Irish media today focused their headline on "Silenced priest sent to monastery to reflect on situation' leaving the impression that it was the Vatican who ordered this, instead of the priest's superior.

Dissident Irish priests' group
raises a stir about 'silencing'
of one of their founders
Fr. Flannery is disciplined by the Superior-General
of the Redemptorist order to which he belongs
in response to CDF concerns about his published views
but the Irish MSM and his group blame 'the Vatican'
by Gerard O'Connell

April 10, 2012

The Association of Irish Priests (ACP) – which represents about a third of all the priests in Ireland – says it is “disturbed” at the silencing of Father Tony Flannery, one of its founder members. The ACP issued a press statement on the afternoon of Easter Monday, April 9, expressing its “extreme unease and disquiet” at this development.

Its statement came after various Irish media, including The Irish Catholic (April 5) and The Irish Times (April 9), had already reported that the Vatican had imposed the silencing.

While the ACP statement gave few details of what had actually happened, Vatican Insider has learned from informed sources that in mid-March Fr. Flannery, 65, a member of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, popularly known as “The Redemptorists”, was summoned to Rome for a meeting with his Superior General, Father Michael Brehl.

This happened about a week before the Vatican released the Summary Report of the Findings of the Visitation to the Irish Church ordered by Pope Benedict XVI following the sexual abuse of minors by priests’ scandal.

In Rome, Fr. Flannery learned that Fr. Brehl, his Canadian Superior General, had earlier been summoned to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), where, according to sources, its prefect, Cardinal William Levada, had informed him that the CDF had concerns about the “orthodoxy” of certain views expressed by Fr.Flannery in articles that he had written for the magazine “Reality”. The monthly magazine is published by the Irish Redemptorists, and has a circulation of around 6,500.

In particular, the CDF was concerned about the orthodoxy of what Fr. Flannery had written regarding contraception, the possibility of married priests in Ireland, and the ordination of women as priests.

The CDF also seems to have problems regarding his leadership role in the Association of Irish Priests, which today has 820 of the 3,400 Irish priests as members, and would like him to withdraw from that.

Sources say the Superior General told Fr. Flannery that he cannot write or speak on any of the above-mentioned subjects. Furthermore, he has asked the Irish priest to go to a monastery for about six weeks to pray and reflect on all this. At the end of that period, he hopes Fr. Flannery will return “to think with the Church” (“sentire cum Ecclesia”). [Obviously, the Redemptorist SG agreed with Cardinal Levada. I am all for freedom of expression, but dissidents should express their dissent with the Church in other media, not use Catholic media to do so! There's a great variety of secular media with far greater readership and following than Catholic media that are only too willing and happy to publicize Cathoklic dissenters. Unlike any other kind of publication, Catholic publications must be consistent with the Church's teaching, i.e., they must respect and preserve the Catholic identity, not accommodate opinions harmful to it. That is the reason pbulications purporting to be Catholic require a 'nihil obstat'.]

Vatican Insider has learned too that the editor of the magazine “Reality”, Fr.Gerard Moloney, also a Redemptorist priest, has been instructed not to write on the abovementioned topics. Moreover, the magazine “Reality” must henceforth be reviewed by a theologian before publication.

Cardinal Levada wants the Superior General of the Redemptorists to report back to him by the end of July to assure him that Fr. Flannery’s situation has been resolved. Vatican Insider has tried to contact the Superior General to have his comments on this whole matter but he had left Rome, and could not be reached at the time of writing.

On the other hand, the ACP, in its statement, commented on what has happened. It said “such an approach, in its individual focus on Fr. Flannery and inevitably by implication on the members of the Association, is an extremely ill-advised intervention in the present pastoral context in Ireland”.

[The question is whether Fr. Flannery and his editor are following their Superior-General's orders, and apparently, they did - or at least, the articles stopped appearing, and Fr. Flannery has not been heard from himself. If so, then the ACP should pick the bone with them, and with the Redemptorist Superior-General, not with the Vatican. If Flannery and Moloney chose to disobey, that's another matter.

Aren't priests in a religious order supposed to be subject to the orders of their Superior-General? Surely, each order has provisions for dealing with insubordination. And obviously, the diocesan priests in the ACP are also under the authority of their respective bishops, so they are really in disobedience to their superiors.

Are there no canonical provisions to punish insubordination, to begin with - quite apart from the fact of openly advocating views that do not conform to what the Church teaches and practices? The Church is necessarily hierarchical and will never be a democracy because matters of faith are not to be decided by perceived 'popular will', not even by popular vote! If a priest willingly and openly places himself in opposition to the Church, then he ought to leave the priesthood, IMHO!]

The ACP affirmed “in the strongest possible terms” its “confidence in and solidarity with Fr Flannery” and stated clearly that it believed that “this intervention is unfair, unwarranted and unwise.”

It said the issues that have been raised by the Association since its foundation less than two years ago, and by Fr. Flannery as part of the leadership team, “are not an attack on or a rejection of the fundamental teachings of the Church. Rather they are an important reflection by an association of over 800 Irish priests - who have given long service to the Catholic Church in Ireland - on issues surfacing in parishes all over the country.”

The ACP rejected its depiction by “some reactionary fringe groups” as “a small coterie of radical priests with a radical agenda” and said it has “protested vehemently against that unfair depiction.”

“We are and we wish to remain at the very heart of the Church, committed to putting into place the reforms of the Second Vatican Council”, the Association stated firmly.

In this light, it said, “We wish to register our extreme unease and disquiet at the present development, not least the secrecy surrounding such interventions and the questions about due process and freedom of conscience that such interventions surface.”

The ACP said it believes that at this critical juncture in history “this form of intervention – what Archbishop Martin recently called ‘heresy hunting’ - is of no service to the Irish Catholic Church and may have the unintended effect of exacerbating a growing perception of a significant ‘disconnect’ between the Irish Church and Rome”. [They are assuming, with such arrogant presumption, that they, the ACP, represent the Irish Church.]

One source told Vatican Insider that the ACP statement only cited a part of Archbishop Martin’s comment. He had actually said: “I’m not saying that we’re going out heresy-hunting, but what we should be doing is carrying on a dialogue with the theological community, sharpening the reflection in areas that really go beyond what is acceptable in the realm of Catholic theology.”

The ACP actually took advantage of the national almost anachronistic hysteria in Ireland against the Church on account of the sex abuses committed by Irish clergy and the inaction or cover-up by their bishops in order to launch their association in 2010 and advocate their liberal reforms (contraception, married priests women priests) which, contrary to their statement, were never proposed by Vatican II.

One obvious question comes to mind which I ought to have mentioned earlier: has the CDF initiated any similar action with Irish bishops who have dissident ACP priests in their jurisdiction? It seems unfair to single out Flannery - even if he may be the most prominent ACP member - and say nothing, at least publicly, of the diocesan priests and other members of religious orders who belong to the ACP.

The task of purifying the Irish Church - each diocese, religious order, parish, seminary and Catholic institution - does not refer only to reparation for clerical sex abuses and episcopal cover-ups, but to the more general question of religious discipline, i.e., following orthodox Catholic teaching and practice, which the ACP members obviously are not doing. In terms of numbers alone (900 compared to 400), the ACP is already far more 'significant' than the Austrian Pfarrer-Initiative. And being Anglophone, they necessarily command a wider worldwide media coverage than their Austrian counterpart since English is the international lingua franca.



4/12/12
P.S. On the same issue, Paolo Rodari has written another one of his pieces about Church affairs (which are, to me, ambivalent at best, and at worst, sympathetic to dissenters) in this commentary about the ACP case, in which he not only reports a violent reaction from a ranking Redemptorist opposing the CDF action, but also credits the CDF's particular vigilance over the Flannery case as being one of the first concrete results of the appointment of Mons. Charles Brown as Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland... All in all, by his presentation, he has lent himself to being used as the propaganda mouthpiece for the dissident Irish priests. The extent of the fisking that I found necessary indicates how severe I find Rodari's bias to be.

The vain attempts of the CDF to re-evangelize Ireland
and quell the insurgency of 900 dissident priests
by Paolo Rodari
Translated from

April 11, 2012

NB: The headline actually says '900 dissident Redemptorists' - that's habitual journalistic sloppiness - but obviously, the ACP is not made up only of Redemptorists, and Ireland certainly cannot have 900 Redemptorists, considering that there are only an estimated 5,300 Redemptorists in the 77 countries of the world where they are represented.

The words directed by Pope Benedict XVI on Maundy Thursday to 'disobedient' Austrian priests - those of the Pfarrer Initiative, which since June 2011, has gathered almost 400 signatures online supporting their demand to abolish priestly celibacy and other substantial reforms in the life of the Church, and has found support in Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Switzerland - have not been without consequence.

[First, I do not see why Rodari should have used quotation marks with 'disobedient', because the priests are disobedient, and their manifesto is precisely entitled 'Call to Disobedience'. Using the quotation marks would make out the Holy Father to be untruthful in his characterization of the priests.

2) The Austrian priests have not 'found support' in the other countries mentioned. Rather, their initiative is similar to that raised by priests in those countries for some time.

3) Since the events connected with dissident Irish priests described below by Rodari took place weeks before the Maundy Thursday homily, they cannot be the 'consequences' of the homily. It's the other way around: the Holy Father decided to speak openly about an issue that the Church must confront, and that obviously, it has been trying to confront behind the scenes through various means - all ineffectual so far, unfortunately.]

On the one hand, the Pope's words have given vigor and new energy to those faithful and priests who do not think that the Church should adopt reforms that are discontinuous with her tradition.

Among these is the parish priest of Stuetzenhofen, north of Vienna, Fr. Gerhard Swierzek, who, after the Archbishop of Vienna and primate of the Austrian Church, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, had overriden him to accept the election of a practising homosexual to the pastoral council of his parish, decided to resign as parish priest. [Must check this out, as this is the first I have read about it.]

On the other hand, Papa Ratzinger's words have caused the Vatican's watchdogs of the faith to close ranks: Specifically, the news was made known at this time that Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has decided to 'silence' one of the leaders of the Irish dissident priests [belonging to the Association of Catholic Priests, ACP]. [It reinforces my journalistic reservations about Rodari even more that nowhere in the article does he ever mention the name of the association!... Note his use of the term 'watchdogs' - he could have used 'custodians' or 'guardians', but no, he uses a term that recalls his detractors' favorite and obviously denigratory term for Cardinal Ratzinger as a Rottweiler... And finally, just because the news of the action against Flannery happened to be made public after the Holy Father's homily does not mean that the 'closing ranks' at the CDF only took place after the homily - on the contrary, the CDF had taken action weeks earlier. Rodari's lack of logic, or even common sense, just to 'reinforce' whatever hypothesis he is advocating, can be appalling! ]

In fact, the CDF has asked Fr. Tony Flannery, a Redemptorist from Limerick - who, for some time, in the wake of the Austrian initiative [The ACP should bridle at this suggestion that their movement is simply a 'me too' follow-up to the Austrians!], has led an association of some 900 priests who support women priests, do not share the Vatican's view on contraception [It's not the 'Vatican's view' - it's the Church's teaching!], and denounce the gravity of sexual abuses in the Church [One would think it was a general pervasive condition instead of being the transgressions of a tiny fraction of priests and bishops. But see how a journalist can betray his sympathies by his very choice of words to describe any situation?] - to 'stop it!'

It was the Superior of the Redemptorists, Fr. Adrian Egan, who said a few hours ago that the Holy See had sent Flannery a bare and crude threat to "stop publishing his opinions and writing in the Redemptorist magazine, and to keep away from (expressing himself on) radio and TV". [Does anyone see a threat, let alone one that is 'bare and crude' in the order as stated?]

[Since O'Connell's article had correctly identified the Redemptorist Superior-General as Fr. Brehl, I had to check out who Fr. Egan is, whom Rodari erroneously - perhaps deliberately - cites as 'the Superior of the Redemptorists'. Egan is, in fact, only the superior of the Redemptorist monastery in Limerick, therefore, presumably, Flannery's immediate superior. This misrepresentation on the part of Rodari is plain and simple dishonest journalism! A veteran journalist like Rodari does not 'mis-state' a fact by accident. His intention is to make it appear that the order itself had nothing to do with the disciplinary measure against Flannery, when in fact, it had to be handed down to Flannery by the Superior-General of the Redemptorists, as O'Connell reported earlier, at the request of the CDF, to be sure, but also, in accordance with canonical protocol. Brehl was acting in communion with the Church, unlike Egan and his fellow dissidents.]]

Fr. Egan - he does not hide the fact - is on Flannery's side. He said he was "dismayed, appalled, stunned, and enormously disappointed by the action of the Vatican". [Actually, the discipline described is similar to that which Cardinal Ratzinger, as CDF Prefect, had imposed on Catholic theologians who published unorthodox Christian doctrine, for instance, Leonardo Boff, whose discipline was to stop publishing articles or books or speaking publicly about his questioned teachings for at least a year. We are not told what time period was given Flannery,]

He said that 'hundreds of faithful' felt the way he did, and that today, the situation is tragic in the churches of 'half of Europe' because 'agents of orthodoxy' from the Vatican are circulating to verify - "with the nitpicking fussiness of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI" - every statement made by priests that is not in line with Church doctrine. [Now, that is outright and ludicrous paranoia. The entire staff of the CDF numbers about 50, with more than enough desk work to occupy them. What 'agents' could the Vatican possibly send out to spy and snoop on dissident priests - and when has it ever done so, anyway?]

According to him, these 'agents' evaluate those who are not following the right path and report them right away to Rome which promptly carries out acts of 'repression'. And Rodari just listens to this and reports it without challenge? What cases of 'repression' can Egan cite?]

The dispute between Flannery and the Holy See has existed for some time. When the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny last June accused the Vatican of minimizing the 'rapes and tortures' suffered by Irish children at the hands of priests - Kenny based his accusation on the report on the Cloyne report which, he claims [very wrongly!] proved the attempt of the Vatican to block any investigation of sexual offenses by priests - Flannery came out openly in support of Kenny, not masking his irritation at the Vatican.

"I am happy about the Prime Minister's statements," he said. "Many priests and faithful in Ireland are frustrated at the way that the Vatican has carried out its business here". [First of all, the problems of the Irish Church are primarily the responsibility of her bishops. The Vatican does not have a direct hand at all in their affairs. The infamous letter by a now-dead Nuncio to the Irish bishops expressing reservations about mandatory reporting for its implications in canonical law was a simple a statement of opinion, and could in no way be interpreted as a directive to the Irish bishops, who, in any case, followed their own counsel.]

Beyond his positions on priestly celibacy, comm8union for remarried Catholic divorcees, and in general on sexual morality, many in the Vatican object to Flannery's accusations that the Vatican has deliberately covered up the sex abuses committed by priests.

These charges hurt because Flannery's position is shared in some way by some Irish bishops and seems to be taking root more and more among Irish Catholics.

A significant voice among them is the Archbishop of Dublin, Mons. Diarmuid Martin who served in the Roman Curia from 1986 to 2001 as under-secretary and then secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Martin has said in recent months that the Roman Curia did little, very little, to combat the problem of pedophilia. {Did he actually say that? I don't remember reading it, but if so, how dare he? Is he discounting totally what them-Cardinal Ratzinger and the CDF have been doing since 2001 to concretely deal with this issue?]

He was praised for those words by the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd [who detests anything remotely connected with the Church unless it's someone, like Martin, who plays to the public and makes appropriate noises denouncing the Church, in which case, he's a hero deserving of a monument!][/DIM who wrote of him, "Martin, who has always been on the side of the victims, is an outsider". [You'd think that Benedict XVI, who spoke out in 2005 against the 'filth' in the Church on the part of those who are supposed to be representatives of Christ, years before anyone ever heard Martin speak out about abusive priests, has not been on the side of the victims at all.]

She means he is an outsider in a Church hierarchy in which two names stand out negatively - Cardinal Bernard Law, ex-Archbishop of Boston who after the eruption of the priest scandals in his diocese transferred to Rome as Arch-Priest of Santa Maria Maggiore [sic! - 'transferred to Rome', transitive and active, rather than 'was transferred to Rome', intransitive and passive. Rodari makes it appear as if Law's transfer was self-assigned, rather than offered to him by now-Blessed John Paul II]; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, ex-Secretary of State "who defended the notorious pedophile and father of illegitimate children Marcial Maciel Degollado", founder of the Legionaries of Christ. [Rodari does not attribute the quotation about Sodano, which one assumes, comes from Dowd. In any case, both Law and Sodano are no longer in the Roman Curia, so Rodari is being disingenuous in citing them as examples of the Church hierarchy to be contrasted, as it were, in all their evil blackness with the lilywhite Martin!

The Vatican's action against Flannery appears to be an initiative of Mons. Charles Brown, an American and former staff member of the CDF whom Benedict XVI named Nuncio to Ireland, with the delicate mission of softening the conflict between the Holy See and the Irish government, while reporting to the Vatican what is happening in the Irish Church.

Brown's appointment was apparently in full awareness of what John Paul II's biographer George Weigel wrote recently about Ireland: "It is mission territory, as the United States once was. In 1921, an Irishman, Michael Joseph Curley, who became Archbishop of Baltimore, at a time when anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudices were very strong. For this reason, it is not strange that now an American, like Brown, has crossed the Atlantic Ocean to become Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland".

The intimidation of Flannery seems to be the first significant step in Ireland by the American who has been sent to the land of St. Patrick. [Why would Rodari use the term 'intimidation of Flannery' instead of the more neutral 'CDF action against Flannery'???? An order to cease and desist from carrying out activities which are deemed harmful to the Church is not necessarily intimidation. Rodari himself, or his source, Egan, has not reported any "...or else" that came with the order that would make it a threat!

MORE IMPORTANTLY, A GOOD REPORTER WOULD HAVE TRIED TO FIND OUT WHERE IS FLANNERY, WHAT IS HE DOING ABOUT THE DISCIPLINARY ORDER, AND DOES HE HAVE ANYTHING TO SAY. NEITHER O'CONNELL NOR RODARI - NOR ANY OF THE IRISH MSM REPORTS I HAVE SEEN SO FAR - HAS DONE THAT, BUT IT WOULD SEEM TO BE THE MOST OBVIOUS THING FOR A REPORTER TO FOLLOW UP - AND FOR A THINKING READER TO ASK!

Two important issues remain unanswered by all the huffing and puffing done by O'Connell and Rodari in their respective articles:

1) What is the CDF doing about disciplining the dissident diocesan priests in Ireland? Is it doing these through their bishops? Why can't it do something similar in Austria and other coutnries with significant dissident-priest movements? [As against simply dissident priests who are unorganized.]

2) The questions I raised about Flannery that any reader would ask automatically.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/04/2012 13:20]

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY

Benedict XVI flew in by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo for his weekly General Audience, attended by an estimated 40,000 today.

Before the audience, Pope Benedict blessed a mosaic representing the Holy Family. It will be brought to Milan for the World Meeting of Families which begins on May 30th.






The Holy Father dedicated his catechesis during this morning's General Audience in St. Peter's Square to the transformation which Jesus's Resurrection brought about in His disciples, also reflecting on the meaning that Easter has for Christians today.

In English, he said:

---

Our General Audience today is marked by the spiritual joy of Easter, born of the Christ’s victory over sin and death. When the risen Lord appeared to the disciples in the Upper Room and showed them his saving wounds, their lives were changed.

With the gift of the Holy Spirit, Christ gave them the peace which the world cannot give (cf. Jn 14:27) and sent them forth to bring that peace to the world. The mission of the disciples inaugurates the journey of the Church, the People of the New Covenant, called to bear witness in every age to the truth of the resurrection and the new life which it brings.

Today too, the Lord enters our hearts and our homes with his gifts of joy and peace, life and hope. Like the disciples on the way to Emmaus, may we recognize his presence among us in his word and in the breaking of the bread.

During this Easter season, let us resolve to walk in the company of the risen Christ and allow our lives to be transformed by faith in him and by the power of his resurrection.

---

In the main catechesis, he said that Christian faith in the Risen One "transforms our lives; it frees them from fear, gives them firm hope, and infuses them with something that provides existence with full meaning: the love of God".

Benedict XVI explained how on the evening of the day of the Resurrection the disciples were at home behind locked doors, full of fear and doubt at the recollection of the passion of their Lord. "This situation of anguish changed radically when Jesus arrived. He entered through the closed doors, was among them and brought them peace", peace which "for the community became source of joy, certainty of victory, trusting reliance on God".

After His greeting, Jesus showed His wounds to the disciples, "signs of what had befallen and would never be cancelled. His glorious humanity remained 'wounded'. The gesture had the aim of confirming the new reality of the Resurrection.

"The Christ Who returned among His followers was a real person, the same Jesus Who three days earlier had been nailed to the cross. Thus, in the shining light of Easter, in the meeting with the Risen One, the disciples came to understand the salvific meaning of His passion and death. Then sadness and fear became overwhelming joy".

Jesus greeted them again: "Peace be with you". Yet this, the Pope explained, was not just a greeting, "it was a gift, the gift the Risen One made to His friends.

At the same time it was a commission: the peace which Christ had bought with His blood was for them, but it was also for everyone else, and the disciples would have to carry it throughout the world". Jesus "had completed His mission in the world, now it was up to them to to sow faith in people's hearts".

However, the Lord knew that His followers were still afraid. "For this reason He breathed upon them and regenerated them in His Spirit. This gesture was the sign of the new creation. With the gift of the Holy Spirit which came from the Risen Christ, a new world began".

"Today too the Risen One enters our homes and hearts, although sometimes the doors are closed", the Pope said, "He enters bringing joy and peace, life and hope, gifts we need for our human and spiritual rebirth".

Only He can put an end to division, enmity, rancour, envy, mistrust and indifference. Only He can give meaning to the lives of those who are weary, sad and without hope.

This was the experience of the two disciples who were walking to Emmaus, full of foreboding at the recent death of their Master. Jesus came up to them and accompanied them without being recognised, explaining the meaning of Sacred Scripture to help them understand His salvific mission.

Later they asked Jesus to stay with them and recognised him as He blessed and broke the bread. "This episode", said the Holy Father, "shows us two privileged 'places' in which we can meet the Risen One Who transforms our lives: ... the Word and the Eucharist".

The disciples of Emmaus returned to Jerusalem to join the others. "Their enthusiasm for the faith was reborn, their love for the community and their need to communicate the good news. The Master rose and with Him all life resurges. Bearing witness to this event became an irrepressible need for them".

For Christians, Easter must be a time for the joyful and enthusiastic rediscovery of the sources of the faith. "This means following the same path as that along which Jesus directed the two disciples of Emmaus, through the rediscovery of the Word of God and the Eucharist. The culmination of this journey, then as now, is Eucharistic communion. In communion Jesus nourishes us with His Body and His Blood, becoming present in our lives, making us new and animating us with the power of the Holy Spirit".

In conclusion the Holy Father invited Christians to remain faithful to the Risen One Who "living and true, is always present among us, Who walks with us to guide our lives", and Who "has the power to give life, to make us reborn as children of God, capable of believing and loving".



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

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

After the solemn celebrations of Easter, our meeting today is pervaded with spiritual joy. Even if the skies are grey, we carry in our hearts the joy of Easter, the certainty of the Resurrection of Christ who triumphed definitively over sin and death.

First of all, I renew to each of you a heartfelt Easter wish: In all homes and in all hearts may the joyous announcement of the Resurrection of Christ resound in every heart for a rebirth of hope.

In this catechesis, I wish to show the transformation that Jesus's Pasch caused in his disciples. Let us start from the evening after the Resurrection. The disciples were locked in their homes for fear of the Jews (cfr Jn 20,19).

Fear grips their heart and keeps them from going forth to meet others, to meet life itself. The Master is no longer around. The remembrance of his Passion nourishes their uncertainty. But Jesus has his people at heart and is about to fulfill the promise that he had made to them during the Last Supper: "I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you" (Jn 14,18), and he says that to us, too, even in grey times: "I will not leave you orphans".

This situation of anxiety among the disciples changes radically with the arrival of Jesus. He passes through the closed doors, he is in their midst, and reassuringly wishes them peace: "Peace be with you" (Jn 20,19b).

It is a common greeting which now acquires a new meaning because it results in an interior change: It is the Easter greeting, which causes the disciples to overcome all their fears.

The peace that Jesus brings is the gift of salvation that he had promised his disciples during his farewell: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid" (Jn 14,27).

On this day of Resurrection, he gives peace in fullness and it becomes for the community a source of joy, certainty of victory, security in reliance upon God. "Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid" (Jn 14,1), he tells us, as well.

After this greeting, Jesus shows his disciples the wounds on his hands and his side (cfr Jn 20,20), a sign of what had happened and which would never be cancelled: his glorious humanity remains 'wounded'.

This gesture has the purpose of confirming the new reality of the Resurrection: The Christ who is now among his people is a real person, the same Jesus who three days earlier had been nailed to the Cross.

Thus it is that in the dazzling light of Easter, in the meeting with the Risen One, the disciples grasp the salvific significance of his passion and death. Therefore, they go from sorrow and fear to joy.

Sorrow and Jesus's wounds themselves become a source of joy. This joy arises in their hearts because they 'saw the Lord' (Jn 20,20). He says to them once more: "Peace be with you" (v 21).

It is evident that from now on, ti is no longer just a greeting. It is a gift, a gift that the Risen One wishes to make to his friends, but at the same time it is also a mandate: This peace, acquired by Christ with his blood, is for them but also for everyone, and the disciples should bring it to the whole world.

Indeed, he adds: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (ibid.). The risen Jesus has returned among his disciples in order to send them out. He has completed his work in the world - now it falls on them to sow the faith in the hearts of men so that the Father may be known and loved, and bring together all his children who are dispersed.

But Jesus knows that there is still fear among his people, that there will always be fear. That is why he performs the gesture of breathing on them, regenerating them in his Spirit (cfr Jn 20,22). This gesture is the sign of the new creation.

With the gift of the Spirit that comes from the risen Christ, a new world begins. Sending off the disciples on mission inaugurates the journey through the world of the people of the New Covenant, people who believe in him and in his work of salvation, people who will testify to the truth of the Resurrection.

This novelty of a new life that does not die, which is brought by Easter, is to be disseminated everywhere, so that the thorns of sin that wound the heart of man can be replaced by the seeds of Grace, of the presence of God, and his love which triumphs over sin and death.

Dear friends, even today, the Risen One enters our homes and hearts, even if at times the doors are closed. He enters to give us joy and peace, life and hope, gifts that we need for our human and spiritual rebirth.

Only he can turn away that sepulchral stone that man often places on his own feelings, his own relationships, his own behaviors - stones that ratify death, divisions, enmities, rancors, envy, suspicions, indifference.

Only he, the Living One, can give meaning to existence and can allow those who are tried and sad, disheartened and devoid of hope to carry on.

It was the experience of the two disciples who on Easter day were walking from Jerusalem towards Emmaus (cfr Lk 24,13-35). They were talking about Jesus, but their 'sad faces' (cfr v 17) expressed their dashed hopes, uncertainty and melancholy.

They had left their homes to follow Jesus and his friends, and they had discovered a new reality in which forgiveness and love were no longer just words but touched concretely on existence. Jesus of Nazareth had made everything new, he had transformed their life. But now he was dead and everything seemed over.

Suddenly, however, it was no longer two but three persons who were walking together. Jesus had come alongside the two disciples and was walking with them, but they were incapable of recognizing him.

Of course, they had already heard the rumors of his Resurrection, and in fact, referred to these: "Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive" (vv 22-23).

And yet all this was not enough to convince them because "him they did not see" (v. 24) [although they went to the tomb to see for themselves].

Thus Jesus, patiently, "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures" (v 27). The Risen One explained Sacred Scripture to the disciples, offering them the fundamental key to reading them, namely, he himself and his Paschal mystery. It is he to whom the Scriptures are a testimonial (cfr Jn 4,39-37).

The sense of everything, of the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms, suddenly opened up and became clear to their eyes. Jesus had opened their minds to the intelligence of the Scriptures (cfr Lk 24,45).

Meanwhile, they had reached the village, probably the home of one of the two disciples. Their unknown travelling companion "gave the impression that he was going on farther" (v 28), but he stayed because they urged him, “Stay with us".

"While he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them" (v 30). The reference to the gestures by Jesus at the Last Supper is evident. "With that, their eyes were opened and they recognized him" (v 31)

The presence of Jesus, first with his words, and then in the act of breaking bread, made it possible for the disciples to recognize him, and they could feel anew what they had already felt when they were walking with him: “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (v 32).

This episode shows us two 'privileged' places where we can meet the Risen One who transforms our life: listening to the Word, in communion with Christ, and breaking the Bread. Two 'places' profoundly united to each other because "Word and Eucharist belong to each other so intimately that one cannot be understood without the other: the Word of God sacramentally becomes flesh in the Eucharistic event" (Post-Synodal Apost. Exhort, Verbum Domini, 54-55).

After the meeting in Emmaus, the two disciples "set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, 'The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!'" (vv 33-34).

In Jerusalem, they listened to the news of Jesus's resurrection, and in turn, they recounted their own experience, inflamed with love for the Risen One, who had opened their hearts to an uncontainable joy.

They were, as St. Peter would say, given "a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (cfr 1Pt 1,3). In fact, the enthusiasm for the faith is reborn in them, their love for the community, the need to communicate the Good News.

The Master has risen and with him, all of life is resurrected. To testify to this event becomes for them an irrepressible need.

Dear friends, may Eastertime be for all of us the right occasion to rediscover with joy and enthusiasm the springs of faith, the presence of the Risen One among us.

It means fulfilling the same itinerary as Jesus caused the two disciples at Emmaus to follow - through the rediscovery of the Word of God and of the Eucharist. That is, to go with the Lord and allow our eyes to be opened to the true meaning of Scripture and of his presence in breaking the bread.

Thus, the culmination of the journey, then as now, is Eucharistic Communion. In Communion, Jesus nourishes us with his Body and Blood, to be present in our lives, to make us new, inspired by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In conclusion, the experience of the disciples invites us to reflect on the meaning of Easter for us. Let us allow ourselves to meet the risen Jesus. Alive and real, he is always present among us, he walks with us to guide our lives, to open our eyes.

Let us trust the Risen One who has the power to give life, to make us be reborn as children of God, able to believe and to love. Faith in him transforms our life, liberates it of fear, gives firm hope, inspires it with that which gives full meaning to existence - the love of God. Thank you.

---

The Holy Father appears well-rested from the photos - I didn't wake up in time to watch the EWTN telecast of the GA this morning but he seems to be in fine form, Deo gratias.

A book for the Pope's 85th birthday
Translated from the 4/10-4/11 issue of


Benedikt XVI — Prominente über den Papst (Benedict XVI: Famous people speak about the Pope) is the title of a book presented to the Pontiff on Angel's Monday, April 9 in Castel Gandolfo after the Regina calei prayers, by Edmund Stoiber, who was Minister President of Bavaria from 1993-2007.



We publish herewith a translation [in Italian, from the German] of the Preface of Mons. Georg gaenswein, Beendict XVI's private secretary, who wrote one of the testimonials and edited the book published by Media Maria Verlag of Germany.

NB: As this book was conceived for the German market, the prominent personalities who give their testimonials in the book are all German.

---

Twenty persons speak out
about Pope Benedict XVI
Foreword
by Georg Gaenswein

On April 19, 2005, three days after his 78th birthday, cardinals assembled in Conclave in the Sistine Chapel elected the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, to be the head of the Catholic Church. He chose to be called Benedict XVI.

On April 16, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI will turn 85 and will then be completing seven years of his Pontificate.

This book - which some readers may find rather sweeping and 'promotional' - was not meant to be anything showy or sensational, but simply a modest birthday gift for the Holy Father.

Twenty personalities from the Church, politics, culture, economy and sports each agreed to write a short contribution expressing their personal view of the person and work of the Pontiff.

As diverse as the biographies and activities of the authors are their experiences and perspectives from which emerge a portrait of the Supreme Pastor of the Church.

Appropriately, not just Catholics have expressed themselves but also evangelical Christians. They do not hide their religious faith, nor do they fear to indicate certain desiderata from their own personal viewpoints.

Every contribution is like a piece in a mosaic which ultimately contributes to a multicolored image in which it is possible to identify the essential contours of Pope Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

The titles of the various essays follow a thread and offer a panoramic view of the contents. The presentations are such that the reader will not just take note of the book but become truly immersed in what it says. And I cannot but invite you from the heart to do so. It is certainly worth reading.

It might be superfluous to note but for reasons of correctness, it must be underscored expressly that this work is not anything obliging produced by commission 'from the top'.

The writers were not given any instructions - everyone had full freedom to say what they wished. Nor was there any censorship at all. Each one wrote what he had in his mind and in his heart, and each naturally takes responsibility for what he says.

But one thing that they all had in common was the sincere desire to do justice to Pope Benedict, but without blinders. Moreover, there was no room here for 'political correctness'.

Stated positively, what served as an orientation for the authors was 'that initial goodwill without which there can be no understanding', to use the words of the Holy Father in his Foreword to Jesus of Nazareth, Volume 1.

All the contributors did feel themselves committed to such a request by conviction and by inclination.

The authors wish the Holy Father, on his 85th birthday, health in body and in spirit, and the abundant blessings of God in everything he does: Beatissimo Pater, ad multos annos, ad multos et felicissimos annos!

---

Thursday, April 12, Octave of Easter

ST. TERESA DE LOS ANDES (Chile, 1900-1920), Virgin, Carmelite nun
Chile's first saint was born Juanita Fernandez Solar to a wealthy and very Catholic family in Santiago the capital. After her First Communion
at 6, she received Communion daily. After reading the biography of St. Therese of Lisieux, she decided she wanted to be like her and devote
herself to prayer and sacrifice. She entered the Carmelite convent at age 19, then contracted typhus. She died shortly after she took her
vows. During her brief time in the convent, she wrote letters expressing her thoughts. In one of them, she wrote "Christ, so foolish in his
love, has driven me madly in love". John Paul II beatified her when he visited Chile in 1987 and canonized her in Rome six years later.
[Cardinal Bertone, who was in Chile after the 2010 earthquake, visited her shrine in the Andes on her feast day.]
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041212.cfm


No events announced today for the Holy Father.
But L'Osservatore Romano reports that the Pope will be returning to the Vatican tomorrow from Castel Gandolfo,
one day earlier than planned, to be in Rome when his brother Georg arrives from Regensburg to be with him
on his 85th birthday.


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

- It was announced that the Pontifical Biblical Commission, an agency of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will hold its annual plenary session on April 16-20 at the Vatican's Domus Cantae Marthae, to be presided by Cardinal William Levada, its president ex officio. The commission will resume its consideration of the topic, "Inspiration and Truth in the Bible".

- A news conference will be held on April 17 to present an International Study Conference on "Constantine the Great: At the Roots of Europe", organized by the Pontifical Commission on Historical Sciences, to be held at the Vatican on April 18-21, to mark the 1700th anniversary of the Battle of Ponte Milvio and the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity.




- I have added a maddening article by Paolo Rodari on the dissident Irish priest story as a post-script to my earlier post on this page of Gerard O'Connell's story. It's maddening as a case study of reporter's bias by one of the leading Italian Vaticanistas, which also raises many questions about priestly dissidence these days and the tendentious way it is reported, even by reporters like O'Connell and Rodari, whom one would expect to be sympathetic to Catholic orthodoxy.

- One year ago today, CNA created an overnight kerfuffle by carelessly reporting that YOUCAT, the abridged Catholic catechism prepared primarily for WYD 2011, said the Church now approved contraception. It was all an unbelievable tale of unforgivable journalistic confusion, carelessness, and misdirection on the part of CNA, and wrong translation from the original German in the Italian edition of YOUCAT, which was promptly corrected. But not before the misleading CNA story had been picked up by the secular media and trumpeted as a change in the Church's position on contraception. Strangely, CNA got away virtually unscathed for that mix-up that it never even appropriately apologized for.. The tale is much too involved to recapitulate in a few sentences, so if you'd like to be reminded of the snafu, you may go back to Page 203 of this thread.
http://benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=203&#idm110551746

This blog entry by Fr. Filippo Di Giacomo in L'Unita - formerly the organ of the Italian Communist Party, but in recent years, simply a center-left newspaper - turns out to be extremely fiskable. It is a rather cavalier and cursory attempt to 'describe' the Church under Benedict XVI in comparison to the Church he inherited, but being cursory is no way to evaluate anything properly. Worse, the writer ends up making sweeping and questionable generalizations without bothering to substantiate them... He does one good service, though - recalling the famous 2005 Via Crucis meditation and prayer of Cardinal Ratzinger regarding the Church and the men who are supposed to serve Christ... Incidentally, Di Giacomo's blog has the same name as Sandro Magister's blog in L'Espresso (Settimo Cielo means 'seventh heaven'].

Taking account of the post-Wojtyla Church -
and what Benedict XVI has done with it
Translsted from
SETTIMO CIELO
Blog by Filippo Di Giacomo

April 12, 2012

The first line on Page 1 of a good Vaticanista's manual would contain a fundamental rule: A Pontificate must be judged by the quality and activity of the cardinals and the bishops named by the Pope in question.

As an application of that unwritten golden rule, some serene spirit, a few days after the election of Benedict XVI, rightly asked why a College of Cardinals named almost completely by John Paul II should have chosen as Pope the one cardinal, out of the 114 electors, who had been named by Paul VI.

Flashback earlier to the evening of March 25, 2005, Good Friday, several days before the end of the human and mortal story of Karol Wojtyla.

Some words by Joseph Ratzinger - leaping out from the Via Crucis meditations at the Roman Colosseum to Catholics around the world thanks to Mondovision and the mass media - were later to be recalled as an 'electoral manifesto' that the Catholic hierarch6y and the local Churches had expected to hear from a new Pope.

Let us remember what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote then: [DiGiacomo only cites some lines from the Meditation on the Ninth Station , but I have chosen to quote the entire Meditation and Prayer. The words continue to be stunningly powerful.]

---

MEDITATION

What can the third fall of Jesus under the Cross say to us? We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church?

How often is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves, without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so many empty words!

How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him! How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to raise us up whenever we fall!

All this is present in his Passion. His betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8: 25).

PRAYER

Lord, your Church often seems like a boat about to sink, a boat taking in water on every side. In your field we see more weeds than wheat. The soiled garments and face of your Church throw us into confusion.

Yet it is we ourselves who have soiled them! It is we who betray you time and time again, after all our lofty words and grand gestures.

Have mercy on your Church; within her too, Adam continues to fall. When we fall, we drag you down to earth, and Satan laughs, for he hopes that you will not be able to rise from that fall; he hopes that being dragged down in the fall of your Church, you will remain prostrate and overpowered. But you will rise again. You stood up, you arose and you can also raise us up. Save and sanctify your Church. Save and sanctify us all.

---

For many months, many had looked forward to a positive fallout at the ecclesiastical level of Cardinal Ratzinger's election, that it would have caused at the diocesan level a positive shuffling of cards and a decided improvement in the choice of future bishops.

In short, it could have been an opportunity to bring up the question of the bulimia for power (often, almost to the point of simony) among Wojtylians of both the right and the left. One that would restore to the Congregation for Bishops the mechanisms for nominating bishops which, during the long Pontificate of John Paul II, had been improperly expropriated and monopolized by the enterprising presidents of some bishops' conferences.

With just such a 'sweep of the broom', Pope Benedict XVI would have certainly opened a new season of renewal and new presences in the Church. If and when someone will have the time and desire to speak of the Church that Papa Ratzinger inherited, perhaps he will be forced to start from an analysis of the clear watershed which, for over almost two decades divided the left and right wings of the Wojtylian episcopate - a factional war on a global scale which began between 1993 and 1995, at the start of the long decline of John Paul II's Pontificate and which has since extended throughout the Catholic world. [Wait! Does not the 'left-right' division goes all the way back to Vatican II!]

Not forgetting that before the German, Austrian, Dutch, Belgian and Irish bishops, it had been the Polish episcopate that first 'tilted' [Di Giacomo uses the English term 'tilt' but I do not quite grasp what he means since the case he cites was not in any way an expression of priestly dissidence in Poland] with the unfortunate incident of the succession to the See of Warsaw in January 2007. [The Wielgus case, in which neither the Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, Polish himself nor the Polish bishops' conference, equally responsible for recommending a short list of appropriate and qualified nominees to the Pope for an episcopal vacancy, appeared to be aware at all of well-circulated rumors that their nominee for the Primate episcopal seat of Poland had a dossier of outright collaboration with the previous Communist regime to spy on his fellow priests and bishops. Nor did the Secretariat of State, to whom the Nuncios report, nor the Congregation for Bishops, then under Cardinal Giovnani Battista Re, himself former #2 man at SecState, have any clue at all about this history of collaboration.

This was much more egregious than the similar failure in 2010 of both SecState and the Congregation for Bishops, still under Cardinal Re at the time, to vet Mons. Richard Williamson of the FSSPX - whose flaky opinions about the Holocaust certainly do not rise to the objective level of 'offense' represented by the actual years of collaboration to which Mons. Wielgus admitted eventually.

In both cases, SecState and Bishops - not to mention Cardinal Castrillon of the Ecclesia Dei, he who prided himself before then of being very computer-savvy - seemed to be entirely ignorant of Williamson's published negationist statements (not widely known, but publicized at the time they were made in the early 1990s). I think they simply did not think it was necessary to do any background check on the four Lefebvrian bishops whose excommunications were lifted, beyond what they already had in their dossiers since 1988, so they probably did not do any checking at all before the Vatican announced that the Pope was lifting the excommmunications.

Not that Williamson's cuckoo opinions had anything to do with why he was excommunicated to begin with. But that not-so-simple oversight - or taking things for granted - was parlayed by the world media and all the Pope's detractors, not to mention the Jews, into a massive cause celebre that became the pretext for a general siege of the Church equalled only by the resurgence of the scandal over abusive priests the following year.]

In fact, starting from April 19, 2005, along with the fresh wind of a new Pontificate, the fog of the past Wojtylism has continued to hover over the Church, along with the impression that Benedict XVI - a Pope whom cynics in the Curia had dismissed as 'expired goods' from the day of his election because of his age - has been systematically denied collaboration and loyalty on the part of some important organs of the Vatican system.

[That's a sweeping statement that cannot be made lightly without being substantiated and without naming names. It is possible that in the first six years, before Benedict XVI was able to make the Roman Curia - at least the #1 and #2 men in each dicastery - his own chosen men (he waited courteously until the Wojtyla-appointed Curial heads reached retirement age before putting in his own men), there may have been some obstructionism, and that there may still be this obstructionism and even outright disloyalty among lower-level Curial staff, such as made evident by the Vatileaks episode at SecState.

But can DiGiacomo mention a single instance of Curial omission or commission that resulted in any significant 'obstruction' of any important initiative that Benedict XVI has had? From recent reports, there seem to have been attempts to oppose Benedict XVI's initiatives for total financial transparency at the Vatican, but the Pope has promulgated and amended Vatican law as needed and named persons of his confidence to ensure such transparency.

No, the obvious obstruction in this Pontificate has been at the level of dissident bishops, not a few of whom are Italian bishops, unfortunately, and mostly with regard to liturgy, and perhaps to a lesser extent, how to deal with abusive priests in their respective churches. I am disappointed that Fr. DiGiacomo is not more circumspect in his statements.

And so, even the nomination of bishops continues to be the usual competition among candidates who are spiritually poor but rich in means, especially profane (i.e., worldly) means. [Another highly loaded and sweeping statement from DiGiacomo which he ought to substantiate. It certainly is not borne out by the exceptional nominations made of US bishops - that being a situation I personally am more aware of than, say, appointments made in Brazil - under Benedict XVI. Dolan of New York, Chaput of Philadelphia, Gomez of Los Angeles, Wenski of Miami, Lori of Baltimore, to mention just six, off the top of my head: Would anyone say they were spiritually poor or that they gained their nomination because they deployed any material means at all? Or, in the case of some Italian bishops whose personal histories are more widely known, can DiGiacomo say that, for instance, of Mons. Moraglia, the new Patriarch of Venice; or Cardinal Scola who does command more personal and institutional resources than most bishops but whose ecclesial and personal qualifications no one has questioned; Cardinal Bagnasco, whom the Pope picked from being the usually unheralded Military Ordinary for Italy's armed forces, to be Archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops' conference; Mons. Cesare Nosiglia, a theologian like Moraglia, Scola, and Bagnasco, who was an auxiliary bishop of Rome for a long time and then bishop of Vicenza before Benedict XVI named him Archbishop of Turin; or Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, who for years, was secretary-general of the Italian bishops' conference, before the Pope named him Archbishop of Florence?

In fact, the so-called Ratzingerian bishops, named by Benedict not least because they think about the Church and with the Church as he does, have been the subject of more than a few excellent analytical pieces in both the Italian and Anglophone press. Moreover, the statement is an insult to Cardinal Marc Ouellet, hand-picked by Benedict XVI to head Bishops after Cardinal Re retired. Ouellet is yet another outstanding theologian and Ratzingerian, whose spiritual virtues have never been questioned, and whom most Vatican observers probably consider among the top five papabile today.]

Between old and new simonists {Churchmen who use their position to gain wealth - in the past by 'selling' indulgences or sacraments), who could end up in criminal court (as will take place on April 17 in L'Aquila) [I have no idea what the case is - I need to check it out], among the clergy who gravitate around the Roman system, the old always die out slowly, and the new is always being kept from being born. [The situation among Roman priests is something else. I have not read enough of how it was during the 15 years that Cardinal Ruini was the Pope's Vicar in Rome (first of John Paul II, then of Benedict XVI) but a few 'scandal' stories have sprouted here and there under Cardinal Vallini as Vicar, which seem not to go anywhere at all. Apparently, nothing has been 'big' enough to merit more than fleeting attention from those who cover the religion beat for Italian newspapers. According to the latest figures I could find (dating back to 2004), Rome had 1219 diocesan priests of its own; 2331 priests from other dioceses; 5072 priests belonging to religious orders, and 140 Opus Dei priests. Obviously, no other territory in the world has so many priests, but this world is just as obviously severely under-reported.]

In his Maundy Thursday Chrismal homily, on April 5, Benedict XVI referred to 'the often tragic situation in the Church today'. Tragic, true, but one in which Catholics no longer wish to look on passively. [And how, pray tell, are they manifesting that exactly???]

"Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era," the Pope went on, "can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit."

In other times, these words would have referred to the great religious orders (that are on the way to extinction) [Really? Let's see - Benedictines, Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, to name the oldest ones - are they on the way to extinction? It may be news to them!], or some other ecclesial entity that can be evaluated through the number of 'vocations' it attracts.

This time, however the words are addressed to the very womb of the Church - all lay baptized Catholics. Are these words that are dictated by Vatican empiricism or the nth prophecy handed down by Benedict XVI to world and a Church of the foreseeable future?

If the Holy Spirit prevails, then we shall see beautiful things.

All in all, a rather limp and almost incoherent essay by Di Giacomo who certainly can do much better!

Hoist on his own petard?
Dissident priests turn the tables on Schoenborn
and praise him for disobeying Church law
when he upheld the election of a practising
homosexual to a parish pastoral council
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

April 12, 2012

Peter Paul Kaspar, chaplain of the Academy of Artists of Linz, Austria, and one of the leaders of the dissident priests' movement Pfarrer-Initiative, has written an open letter to the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn praising him for having upheld the election of a practising homosexual to the parish council of Stuetzenhofen in his diocese.

Kaspar presented Schoenborn's action as an example of 'disobedience - or better, obedience to your own conscience not to the law laid down by Rome".

It will be recalled that last Maundy Thursday, to everyone's surprise, Pope Benedict XVI in his homily at the Chrismal Mass, referred to the Call to Disobedience signed by some 400 Austrian parish priests.

To the dissenters, who have been demanding drastic reforms such as abolishing priestly celibacy and the ordination of women, the Pope said disobedience was not the right way to reform the Church because this would mean transforming the Church "according to our own desires and ideas".

The Pontiff's words were welcomed by Cardinal Schoenborn, but also by the leader of the Pfarrer-Initiative, who said that althogu he and his followers disagree with the Pope's statement that women priests, for instance, were an impossibility in the Church, he thought the homily was the signal for the start of dialog. [That is, of course, spin, and downright hypocritical. What is there to dialog about? The Church will not change its positions. Are they now saying they can be talked out of their demands? Yeah, right!]

Now Fr. Kaspar has sent this open letter to Schoenborn who had earlier reproached the dissidents for having launched their Call to Disobedience at Pentecost last year.

"The fact that you asked us to reconsider the title of our appeal, instead of disputing its contents," Kaspar wrote, "says much to us of how you understand authority: You referred to the obedience that we owe God, to his teaching, and to our conscience, rather to you personally and to your office".

[Two points about what Kaspar says Schoenborn told them: 1) He did not dispute the contents, only complained about the title! That's just about as milquetoastish as Schoenborn's habitual mien - I was always uneasy about that effete faux-choirboy look - and hardly the firm and decisive position a bishop should take when enforcing dogma or discipline. 2) To tell dissidents against Church teaching that they must be obedient 'to God, to his teaching and to your conscience' is virtually telling them "Go ahead and do your thing, with my blessing" because the dissident will naturally consider his position to be obedient to all three!]

Then Kaspar goes on to speak of the case of Florian Stangl. "You," he wrote Schoenborn, "recently asked to meet a gay parishioner who was elected to a pastoral council by a large majority, but (whose election) would not be accepted by the parish priest because he was cohabiting with a male companion in a registered (same-sex) union. Nevertheless, you upheld his election".

"It is possible", Kaspar continues, "that you will now be accused by a Roman canonical tribunal. But you obviously had time to think this through before you decided to sustain his 'disobedience' [to the parish priest]. At the same time, you also exposed to ridicule the parish priest who had sought to invalidate Stangl's election."

"In any case", the dissident priest concludes, "we consider your decision a positive example of the fact that a bishop in authority is obeying his own conscience even if the Church or Roman law say something else. We approve your own 'disobedience' as a gratifying example of responsibility - in the literal sense - of a 'conscientious' public official".

Although Kaspar refers to the possibility of a canonical proceeding against Schoenborn, no such thing is being considered at the Vatican [because the matter involves a lay person in a lay position, and is therefore not subject to canon law]., But it is possible that Schoenborn will be asked by the Vatican [By which office? The CDF? The Congregation for Bishops? The Apostolic Segnatura?] to explain clearly the reason for the decision he took about Stangl. [The earlier stories about the Stangl case said that the elections to the pastoral council were irregular, to begin with, because the candidates failed to sign a statement before voting, pledging their adherence to the teachings of the Church (which considers the practice of homosexual acts as a sin), as apparently required by the statutes regarding pastoral councils.]

This is the first tribute I have seen so far in the media for the Pope's double anniversary coming up within the next week. It is complimentary but unfortunately, quite cursory. It reads like something the writer had to to 'whip up' for a deadline much as she would any other news story and it shows because it is quite thin and scant for the vastness of the subject matter, and she has recourse to his most recent statements to fill it up. Nonetheless, she obviously appreciates the man and his work, and - a rarity in MSM - correctly minimizes the relevance of the daily reporting on the Vatican in the overall context of of this Pope's mission and objectives. And for that, I thank and commend her most sincerely. And ANSA, the premier Italian news agency, for running the story. I just hope they will eventually run something substantial to match the subject.

Benedict XVI at 85:
Theologian and reformer, he is resolute in governing the Church
with transparency and vigilant over the legacy of Vatican-II
by Giovanna Chirri


VATICAN CITY, April 12 (Translated from ANSA) - A theologian who, upon becoming Pope, assumed with determination the task of being a reformer.

But who, in his daily governance of the Church, never loses sight of the objective: to return faith in Christ to the center of Church life and to the life of secularized man.

The 85th birthday of Joseph Ratzinger on April 16, quite near the seventh anniversary of his election as Pope on April 19, comes at a time when the German Pope, having reinforced the Church with his firm fight against priestly pedophilia and financial reforms which are starting to bear fruit, is focused on a new and great adventure: a reflection on the Second Vatican Council which will animate the Year of Faith he has decreed from October 2012 to November 2013, in order to usher in a new season for Christianity and the Catholic Church in the world.

That Council which the Lefebvrian traditionalists - to whom Benedict XVI had extended a hand shortly after becoming Pope in an attempt to heal the rupture they caused in 1988 - persist in rejecting. Such that last March, the the Vatican sent them a letter that seemed to be an ultimatum for a definitive answer [to the formula for reconciliation proposed by the Vatican].

For the 85-year-old Pope - who in recent weeks has been described in some media as frail and perhaps even ready to resign - this is the direction to keep, independent of the often negative reporting about the Church, like Vatileaks and other 'scandals', financial or otherwise, suggested now and again by the media.

Even as the reporting on the Vatican reaches new lows, the Ratzingerian line remains that of transparency- ready, if need be, to order an internal ivnestigation as the Vatican did to investigate charges of corruptiona nd financial wrongdoing made by the former Secretary of the Governatorate, now the apostolic nuncio to the United States.

The intentions and determination of Benedict XVI emerge clearly in his most recent consistory and most recent public discourses. especially during his trip to Latin America and his various homilies during Holy Week.

The 'crisis of the faith',along with the need for a 'joyous' witness to Christianity, animated the cardinals' pre-consistory meeting with the Pope for reflection and prayer last February.

On his apostolic visit to Mexico and Cuba last month, he underscored the theme of religious freedom and the public role of the Church.

Then there were the great discourses during Holy Week, especially on Maundy Thursday, when the Pope called on all priests to be fulltime priests, renouncing so-called 'self-realization' goals in order to fully serve the Church and the faithful by bearing witness to the faith with their own lives. Significantly, he condemned acts of disobedience for the sake of reform, saying that "obedience is the premise for every true renewal".

"Anyone who considers the history of the post-conciliar era," the Pope said at the Chrismal Mass, "can recognize the process of true renewal, which often took unexpected forms in living movements and made almost tangible the inexhaustible vitality of holy Church, the presence and effectiveness of the Holy Spirit" and from which "fresh currents of life burst forth".

During the Easter Vigil, he reflected on modern man who is tempted by the great potential of his own abilities to remain within his own small personal horizon, inviting him to illuminate his life with the light of God.

The Pope's Holy Week reflections summarize the perspectives for the eighth year of his Pontificate beyond the narrow context of petty reporting on the Vatican.

They explain the strength of this 85-year-old who, as a cardinal, was never concerned with participating in palace intrigue nor building a power base, nor even of influencing any groups within the Church and outside it.

As Pope, he has had to deal with counter-offensives from those whose attitudes he never shared, but they have not made him change course - to live Christianity as it is meant to be and to communicate it to others.

Who knows what surprises are forthcoming from the ex-theological consultant to Vatican-II in his revisitation of the Council's legacy in the context of the Year of Faith?

The following is a serendipitous companion piece to the above. It reflects the new and genuine fruits of Vatican II as 'renewal in continuity with Tradition', which Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has always advocated, and the dying gasps - hopefully - of the Church progressivists who hijacked the message of Vatican II for almost five decades. Hendershott and White are co-authors of a forthcoming book entitled Beyond the Catholic Culture Wars.

Traditional Catholicism appears
to be winning in the USA
There were 467 new priestly ordinations in the U.S. last year,
and Boston's seminary had to turn away applicants.
By ANNE HENDERSHOTT AND CHRISTOPHER WHITE

April 12, 2012

In his Holy Thursday homily at St. Peter's Basilica on April 5, Pope Benedict XVI denounced calls from some Catholics for optional celibacy among priests and for women's ordination. The Pope said that "true renewal" comes only through the "joy of faith" and "radicalism of obedience."

And renewal is coming. After the 2002 scandal about sexual abuse by clergy, progressive Catholics were predicting the end of the celibate male priesthood in books like "Full Pews and Empty Altars" and "The Death of Priesthood." Yet today the number of priestly ordinations is steadily increasing.

A new seminary is to be built near Charlotte, N.C., and the archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has expanded its facilities to accommodate the surge in priestly candidates.

Boston's Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley recently told the National Catholic Register that when he arrived in 2003 to lead that archdiocese he was advised to close the seminary. Now there are 70 men in Boston studying to be priests, and the seminary has had to turn away candidates for lack of space.

According to the Vatican's Central Office of Church Statistics, there were more than 5,000 more Catholic priests world-wide in 2009 than there were in 1999. This is welcome news for a growing Catholic population that has suffered through a real shortage of priests.

The situation in the U.S. is still tenuous. The number of American Catholics has grown to 77.7 million, up from 50 million in 1980. But the priest-to-parishioner ratio has changed for the worse. In 1965, there was one priest for every 780 American parishioners. By 1985, there was one priest for every 900 Catholics, and by 2011 there was one for every 2,000. In dioceses where there are few ordinations, such as New York's Rochester and Albany, people know this shortage well.

Still, the future is encouraging. There were 467 new priestly ordinations in the U.S. last year, according to a survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, up from 442 a decade ago.

While some of the highest numbers of new priests are in the Catholic-majority cities of Newark, N.J., and Philadelphia, ordinations in Washington, D.C. (18 last year) and Chicago (26) also are booming. The biggest gains are not only in traditional Catholic strongholds. In Lincoln, Neb., Catholics constitute only 16% of the population yet have some of the strongest numbers of ordinations. In 2011, there were 10 men ordained as priests in Lincoln.

What explains the trend? Nearly 20 years ago, Archbishop Elden Curtiss, then leader of the Omaha, Neb., diocese, suggested that when dioceses are unambiguous and allow a minimum of dissent about the male, celibate priesthood, more candidates answer the call to the priesthood.

Our preliminary research on the correlates of priestly ordinations reveals that the dioceses with the largest numbers of new priests are led by courageous bishops with faithful and inspirational vocations offices.

Leadership and adherence to church doctrine certainly distinguish the bishop of Lincoln, the Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz. He made national news in 1996 when he stated that members of dissident Catholic groups including Call to Action and Catholics for Choice had automatically excommunicated themselves from the church.

Cardinal Francis George, the longtime leader of the Chicago archdiocese, once gave a homily that startled the faithful by pronouncing liberal Catholicism "an exhausted project . . . parasitical on a substance that no longer exists."

Declaring that Catholics are at a "turning point" in the life of the Church in this country, the cardinal concluded that the bishops must stand as a "reality check for the apostolic faith."

Such forthright defense of the faith and doctrine stands in clear contrast to the emphasis of an earlier generation of Catholic theologians and historians. Many boomer priests and scholars were shaped by what they believed was an "unfulfilled promise" of Vatican II to embrace modernity.

Claiming that the only salvation for the church would be to ordain women, remove the celibacy requirement and empower the laity, theologians such as Paul Lakeland, a Fairfield University professor and former Jesuit priest, have demanded that much of the teaching authority of the bishops and priests be transferred to the laity.

This aging generation of progressives continues to lobby Church leaders to change Catholic teachings on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage and women's ordination. But it is being replaced by younger men and women who are attracted to the Church because of the very timelessness of its teachings.

They are attracted to the philosophy, the art, the literature and the theology that make Catholicism counter-cultural. They are drawn to the beauty of the liturgy and the Church's commitment to the dignity of the individual. They want to be contributors to that commitment — alongside faithful and courageous bishops who ask them to make sacrifices. It is time for Catholics to celebrate their arrival.

Ms. Hendershott is distinguished visiting professor at the King's College in New York. Mr. White is the international director of operations with the World Youth Alliance.

Nothing could be more welcome for the Year of Faith and the 50th anniversary of Vatican-II than for the Lefebvrians to soften their adamantine rejection of Vatican II - at least, some aspects of its teaching - and agree to return to the Roman fold while keeping open their reservations about the points the dispute, as other traditionalist groups (offshoots of the FSSPX) have done. Perhaps it is the best gift one could wish for Benedict XVI on his forthcoming double jubilee... Let us pray...

Lefebvrians to give their final
answer to the Vatican shortly:
What it means for Benedict XVI's Papacy
By Alessandro Speciale


VATICAN CITY, April 11 (RNS)- When Pope Benedict XVI chose in 2009 to lift the excommunications of four bishops from a conservative schismatic group, few would have thought the news would generate headlines worldwide.

But Benedict's gesture received outsized attention when one of the four bishops, Richard Williamson, did a television interview and denied that millions of Jews had died in gas chambers at Nazi death camps. Not only were Jews outraged, but so were more than a few Catholics. [It must be noted that the TV interview was recorded in November 2008 by a Swedish TV channel which did not use it until, having received advance notice that the Pope was to lift the FSSPX excommunications, the channel chose to air it as as 'special' on the eve of the announcement from the Vatican. The behind-the-scenes account of this collusion involved some well-connected professional anti-Catholic propagandists in France.]

As the Vatican worked to reassure Jews that Williamson's views were not its own, steps were underway to achieve the real goal of Benedict's move: full reconciliation with the traditionalist group, known as the Fraternal Society of St. Pius X (FSSPX), and an end to the most significant schism within the Roman Catholic Church in a half century. [It has never been formally called a schism, just 'schismatic', because the Lefebvrians have not established a separate Church.]

Now, after more than two years of secret negotiations, the FSSPX is due in mid-April to give its response to the Vatican's final offer for reconciliation, which was delivered last September.

Regardless of whether the group accepts the Pope's olive branch -- and his insistence that FSSPX give some sort of recognition to the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) -- the outcome is bound to have a profound impact on Benedict's papacy and on the larger Catholic Church.

While the group remains small, with around 500 priests and a few thousand followers more like tens of thousands; some estimates even have them at close to a million] around the world, the issues at play are at the core of the Catholic Church's identity in the modern world. And success or failure could impact Benedict's legacy.

The FSSPX rejects most of the reforms of Vatican II, which revolutionized Catholic doctrine on everything[/COLORE} from relations with other Christian churches to interfaith dialogue to the role of rank-and-file lay Catholics. [That's a mis-statement. No doctrine was revolutionized or changed. What Vatican II did was to add a few modernizing pastoral concepts to better make the Church relate to the modern world: an active pursuit of 1) ecumenism (to reunify all the Christian churches and communities), 2) inter-religious dialog especially with the other major world religions, 3) religious freedom (the Catholic Church continues her mission to evangelize men to Christ, but recognizes it cannot and should not impose the faith which must be freely and reasonably accepted), and 4) more collegiality among bishops without sacrificing the principle of being in communion with the Pope.

These are the four points that the Lefebvrians dispute the most - it is what they emphasized when the doctrinal talks with the Vatican started in October 2009 but which they then gradually changed to a rejection of all of Vatican II, although their founder, Mons. Marcel Lefebvre, who took part in the Council as a bishop and signed all its documents freely, did not break with the Vatican till 1988 over his insistence on ordaining his own bishops against the instructions of John Paul II.]

The Lefebvrists (as the group is known after its founder, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre) charge that the Catholic Church turned its back on centuries of traditions and precepts, and is now too accommodating toward the modern world.

But for Benedict, reconciliation with the SSPX is not just a matter of doctrine.

"Pope Benedict has staked a lot on his attempt to heal this breach; it will be one of the things that will mark his pontificate," said Antoine-Marie Izoard, a French Vatican analyst with the I.Media news agency.

Nevertheless, warns the Rev. Nicola Bux, a consultant at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the pope's gamble should not be read in "political" terms of left vs. right.

"He has worked with patience and meekness, as a Christian would, believing that this division can be overcome," Bux said.

In fact, Benedict has dealt with the Lefebvrist issue for decades. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict tried to avoid the group's formal split with Rome in 1988. In 2007 Benedict reinstated the ancient Latin Mass that is still cherished by the Lefebvrists, saying it could exist together with the modern Vatican II Mass.

Benedict's conciliatory moves toward the FSSPX have been received with suspicion -- and sometimes bitter resentment -- by many in the Catholic Church who fear that some of the Vatican II reforms could be put in doubt if an agreement is reached with the traditionalists.

The Pope, who has often said Vatican II should be viewed in "continuity" with Church history, took the criticisms personally. In an unusually personal letter addressed to all Catholic bishops in March 2009, he complained of having been "treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint," for his "gesture of mercy" towards the FSSPX bishops. [That's a very unfair and rather narrow reading of that historic letter, unprecedented in the Papacy, and very reminiscent of St. Paul's epistles to the early Christian communities and their leaders. Speciale presents it as a reaction of personal pique from a Pope who does not have a vain streak in his bones.]

Having invested so much, both personally and publicly, in reconciliation with the Lefebvrists, Benedict has so far received mixed messages from the group.

In a sermon last November, their leader, Bishop Bernard Fellay, said that the SSPX felt "obliged to reject" the Vatican's offer, citing doctrinal reasons. In recent months, he's signaled that his position may have mellowed, but the group has clearly stated that it will not accept Vatican II reforms -- even as it was one of the original conditions for reconciliation set out by Benedict himself.

According to Gianni Gennari, a theologian and former priest, even the Pope himself is now disillusioned with the Lefebvrists. [With all due respect, how does Gennari know exactly what the Pope thinks? That's the kind of opinion that journalists should challenge because it means nothing; and if they can't, they ought to refrain from quoting it.]

"He held out his hand," Gennari said. "Now he wants to make it clear that it is them who do not want an agreement."

It is truly frustrating to read professional Vaticanistas like Speciale who continually and habitually mis-state the basic premises and background of the FSSPX split by oversimplifying them to the point of misrepresentation. This often leaves the reader ignorant of major points that are essential to understanding the situation being reported.

4/13/12
P.S. There was this item in the French Catholic daily La Croix yssterday...


FSSPX response due in the next few days;
Lefebvrians say they will not make any
announcement till they hear back from Rome
by CÉLINE HOYEAU
Translated from

April 12, 2012


FSSPX priests on a pilgrimage to St. Peter's in 2005.

The FSPPX expects to submit its response to the Vatican in the next few days to the formula of reconciliation proposed to them by Rome after two years of doctrinal discussions.

Last September 14, the Holy See proposed to the FSSPX, separated from Rome since 1988, a Doctrinal preamble implying acceptance "of the doctrinal principles and criteria for interpreting Catholic doctrine that are necesary to guarantee faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Church" in order to return to full communion in the Church.

The FSSPX gave a first response in January which the Holy See considered 'insufficient' at a meeting on March 16 at the Vatican between Cardinal William Levada, Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Mons. Bernard Fellay, Superior-General of the FSSPX, who was asked to 'clarify the positions' of the FSSPX.

Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican press director, said then that the Vatican expected to get back an answer 'in a month'.

Questioned on April 12 by La Croix, Abbe Alain Lorans, FSSPX spokesman, said, "Mons. Fellay will not say anything about this subject [the new response] until he gets a response from the Holy See". implying that Rome will make the announcement of the final decision.

[The Italian news agency TM News also reports the above statement by Lorans but adds that he also told them that the new FSSPX response "does not substantially modify the first response" and that "Things will become clear in the next few days".]

What are the possibilities? If the Lefebvrians sign an agreement, the Holy See will propose to them their own canonical status in the form of a personal prelature, as the Opus Dei have. But before establishing such a prelature, Canon 294 of the Code of Canon Law provides that the Holy See must consult "the bishops' conferences concerned". [In the case of the FSSPX, mainly those of France and Switzerland, where the fraternity has its headquarters.] [But a personal prelature is supposed to be independent of territory, and would cover all the FSSPX members wherever they are. Why do the bishops have to be consulted?]

The matter is complicated by tensions within the FSSPX, where a faction flatly opposes any agreement with Rome. If any of the four FSSPX bishops refuse to sign on, it is possible they may once again be excommunicated.

"If they say No, they must explain why, and in any case, their refusal to sign would bring doctrinal issues which no longer have to do with schism but with heresy," said Fr. Laurent Touze, vice-dean at the University of Santa Croce in Rome.

What seems to be the atmosphere at the FSSPX? Various sources claim that agreement appears to be 'on the way'. In Rome and at Econe, the FSSPX seat, the prevailing idea seems to be that "if the FSSPX does not sign on now, it will never sign on".

Well aware of the tensions within the FSSPX, Mons. Fellay chose to speak about obedience in his Maundy Thursday homily [when the Holy Father had spoken on disobedience, referring to the Austrian dissident priests]: "One takes on certain habits of independence until one is no longer aware of it and one wants to as one pleases. There are faults that have been the result of the situation in which we find ourselves and about which we must be vigilant".

In the case of the French dioceses, an agreement between the FSSPX and Rome will probably rouse a great deal of reaction and incomprehension.

"I fear triumphalism on the part of the Lefebvrians", says a young priest who comes from the traditionalist ranks.

Many priests hostile to the Lefebvrians see themselves like the older son in the parable of the prodigal son, especially as they think that the prodigal is not coming back "with head humbled in an attitude of seeking forgiveness".

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/04/2012 15:53]

Has any 'new ecclesial movement' as defined and encouraged by Vatican II ever given the Church so much trouble as the Madrid-born Neocatechumenal Way?

Back in 2005, early in Benedict XVI's papacy, they were admonished by him to refrain from innovations in the Mass which are not in keeping with the approved Latin rite, almost as a condition for the Vatican to give final approval to their statutes as a movement. But despite a much-publicized approval of their 'catechetical guide' to initiate new members last January 20, they have apparently persisted in their innovations to the Novus Ordo.

On his www.chiesa site today,
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350217?eng=y
Sandro Magister tells an almost incredible take in which it would seem that both the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Pontifical Council for the Laity were ready to grant the movement full permission to indulge their version of the Mass last January 20 - until the Pope read their proposed decree and said "NO! This cannot be" and asked the CDF to investigate the Neo-Catechumenal rite and report to him about it.

I find it hard to understand 1) the persistent disobedience of the Neocats and their insistence on 'inventing' their own Mass to set them apart from all other Catholics - which violates the universality of the Latin-rite Mass (they certainly are not among the pre-Council of Trent rites that were in existence for at least 200 years and therefore qualified to be kept on, alongside the post-Reformation Tridentine Mass!]; and

2) that the two dicasteries mentioned should have even thought to approve the Neocat liturgical innovations at all. Did both Cardinal Canizares of CDW - the 'little Ratzinger' - and Cardinal Rylko at Laity (whose #2 man is Benedict XVI's former longtime secretary, Mons. Josef Clemens) suffer a severe mental lapse? And how is it that Mons. Clemens could not have warned Benedict XVI about what his off-the-track boss was intending to do???? Unfortunately, Magister does not bother to explain these, to say the least, 'oddities' which so forcefully beg the question!

I will proceed to translate Magister's blog which sort of updates the above-cited article, and the more important article that he appends to it...

Friday, April 13, Octave of Easter

ST. MARTIN I (b Italy ?, d Crimea, 655), Pope and Martyr
The last of the martyr Popes, he had been the papal legate to Constantinople before he was elected Pope in 649 at a time when the Patriarch of Constantinople was more powerful than the Bishop of Rome. However, he was elected without the approval of the Byzantine court. He immediately called a Council at the Lateran to affirm orthodox Catholic teaching against the heretical Monothelites who claimed Christ only had a divine will. This angered the Byzantine emperor who had ordered that the subject not be discussed at all. He sent his soldiers to Rome to bring Martin to Constantinople, where he was jailed and subjected to all sorts of indignities. He was condemned for treason without being allowed to defend himself, then exiled to the Crimea where he spent at least two years of extreme deprivation and isolation until he died. He is remembered for having asserted the right of the Church to proclaim its doctrine in the face of imperial opposition.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041312.cfm


No bulletins so far from the Vatican.
The Holy Father is expected to return to the Vatican today from Castel Gandolfo.




Here's the item I could find about the Viennese parish priest who has resigned because Cardinal Schoenborn overruled him over the election of a practising homosexual to his parish's pastoral council. The resignation was referred to in an earlier post about this page, reporting one of the dissident priest leaders praising Schoenborn in an open letter for his 'disobedience' to the Church in upholding Stangl's election:

Viennese parish priest asks to be reassigned
after Schoenborn takes the side of
a practising homosexual in parish issue
Translated from


A Catholic priest in Vienna left his parish after Cardinal Christoph Schönborn decided to overrule his decision to exclude an active homosexual from a parish council. Father Gerhard Swierzek decided not to accept Florian Stangl in the parish council because the man is openly engaged in a same-sex union. Cardinal Schönborn met with Stangl and his partner, and subsequently upheld his election the pastoral council.

Father Swierzek thereupon asked his superiors to give him a different pastoral assignment. He said that he could not remain in a parish where the people “wanted to do what they want at any price.”

The pastor expressed dismay that Cardinal Schönborn had met with Stangl and his partner, but not with Father Swierzek himself, to discuss the matter.

Papal milestones next week
prompt celebration and speculation
By Francis X. Rocca


VATICAN CITY, April 12 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's 85th birthday, April 16, and the seventh anniversary of his election, April 19, are obviously occasions for wishing the Pope well and reflecting on the events of his reign thus far.

Inevitably, however, these milestones also prompt speculation about what Vatican officials and observers refer to diplomatically as "papal transition."

Pope Benedict, after all, is already the sixth-oldest Pope since the 1400s, when records became available. It has been almost two years since he told a German interviewer, "My forces are diminishing" and that, when it comes to public appearances, "I wonder whether I can make it even from a purely physical point of view."

Last fall, the Pope stopped walking in processions up the main aisle of St. Peter's and started riding a mobile platform instead; in March, it was revealed that he sometimes walks with a cane.

The Pope's schedule grew lighter last year, as he stopped meeting one-on-one with most visiting bishops. During this year's Holy Week liturgies, television viewers around the world could see unmistakable signs of fatigue on the pontiff's face.

While none of this suggests that the Pope does not have years of life ahead of him, a number of commentators have asked in print, and many more have done so off the record, if he might be getting ready to step down. [I personally think all the speculation is intended only to generate headlines and fuel further speculation, rather than a genuine conviction on the part of the speculators that this Pope is contemplating to resign at all, lacking any valid reason or force majeure.]

Pope Benedict himself has said that a Pope might have an "obligation to resign" once he "is no longer physically, psychologically, and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office."

Americans may be especially inclined toward such speculation at the moment, encouraged by last month's English release of the 2010 Italian movie "We Have a Pope," in which a fictional pontiff flees from the demands of office.

As tempting as filmmakers and journalists might find so dramatic a scenario, the evidence for it is less persuasive when seen in proper context.

Consider, for example, that the public first saw Pope Benedict walking with a cane as he was about to board a plane for a 14-hour flight to Mexico, the first stop on a six-day trip that also took him to Cuba. [And he was never seen using the cane again during the trip itself.]

Less than 78 hours after returning from Havana to Rome, the presumably still-jet-lagged Pope was offering Palm Sunday Mass in St. Peter's Square, the first celebration in his busiest week of the liturgical year.

No clear-eyed observer can deny that Pope Benedict is unusually robust for his age. He is reportedly at work on the third volume of his bestselling "Jesus of Nazareth" series and is presumed to be writing at least one encyclical: on the theological virtue of faith, to follow his works on charity ("Deus Caritas Est") and hope ("Spe Salvi").

The Pope will be traveling to Lebanon this September, and the Vatican has done nothing to discourage the widespread assumption that he will follow established papal precedent by attending World Youth Day celebrations next summer in Rio de Janeiro.

As the Pope told former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, also 85, at a meeting in Havana in March: "Yes, I'm old, but I can still carry out my duties."

Pope Benedict's vitality is strikingly clear when one compares his physical and mental state with that of his predecessor. The current Pontiff is already older than Blessed John Paul II was when he died in 2005, after a long struggle with Parkinson's disease and other ailments.

The contrast between the two men is especially significant when one considers that Blessed John Paul seriously considered resigning on at least two occasions, his 75th and 80th birthdays, according to books by his former personal secretary and the postulator for his canonization.

The postulator, Msgr. Slawomir Oder, has written that Blessed John Paul sought the guidance of experts as he pondered resignation, "consulting in particular then-Cardinal (Joseph) Ratzinger," now Pope Benedict.

Whatever Cardinal Ratzinger may have advised, Blessed John Paul finally decided that it was, in his own words, his "duty to continue to carry out the job for which Christ the Lord has called me, as long as he, in the mysterious designs of his providence, will want."

If a leader as traditional as Pope Benedict does not consider Blessed John Paul's example a binding precedent, he clearly sees it as an inspiring standard for his own conduct. Concluding his homily at Blessed John Paul's beatification Mass last May, Pope Benedict paid a personal tribute to his predecessor's "witness in suffering."

"The Lord gradually stripped him of everything," Pope Benedict recalled, "yet he remained ever a 'rock', as Christ desired. ... In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church."

[In the only videotaped English language interview he ever gave, Cardinal Ratzinger told EWTN's Raymond Arroyo back in 2004, who asked him about his repeated attempts to resign from the CDF, that seeing how John Paul II was carrying on despite his illness, it was out of the question for him to insist on quitting!]


Bavarians going to Rome
to greet the Pope on
his 85th birthday Monday
by Petr Jerabek
Translated from

April 13, 2012

MUNICH, April 13 - If you are Pope, you cannot just decide to visit your homeland even when you are celebrating a major birthday anniversary.

And so, a significant delegation from Bavaria will be going instead to the Vatican to greet Pope Benedict XVI on his 85th birthday this Monday.

The delegation will be led by Bavarian Minister-President Horst Seehofer (CSU) with his entire cabinet, representatives of the German and Bavarian Parliaments and from the places where Joseph Ratzinger has lived in Bavaria, along with Bavaria's famous Gebirgsschuetzen (Mountain Guards) and Trachtler (women in folk costumes).

Actually, Joseph Ratzinger has not been very keen on birthday celebrations because he was raised in a very Catholic household where name days were more important.

Indeed, his private Secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, said that the Pope asked him to spare him any big fuss, saying "I don't want any large celebration on my 85th birthday".

Next Monday, says Gaenswein, will be a regular work day but "heavily 'cushioned' with Bavarian features".

The guests from Bavaria will attend a Mass celebrated by the Pope in the Apostolic Palace on Monday morning. Then, the Pope will meet privately with the bishops of Bavaria and President Seehofer, before meeting with the entire delegation.

Also present will be the Pope's older brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, who was to arrive in Rome Friday. He told a German news agency that he would not be bringing a gift, but "I simply wish that his health will continue to hold out well".

On April 20, the Leipziger Gewandhaus Orchestra, under the musical direction of Riccardo Chailly, will present a concert to honor the Pope at the Aula Paolo VI, featuring Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy's Symphony Cantata 'Lobgesang' (Song of Praise), which will be streamed live on the Gewandhaus's website. Minister President Stanislaw Tillich of Saxony will accompany the orchestra to Rome.

The Pope has already received a birthday present. A book edited by his secretary, Mons. Gaenswein, in which 20 prominent Germans contribute their thoughts about the person and the work of Benedict XVI. The book was formally presented to the Pope last Monday by Bavaria's former Minister President Edmund Stoiber.

The Pope must wait till August for the gift from the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, when various groups will treat the Pope to an evening of Bavarian music, dancing and other folk traditions at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo.



April 13, 2012

AVVENIRE, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, is coming out with a special on Benedict XVI on Monday, April 16, nad has opened a window for readers to post birthday and papal anniversary wishes for the Pope at the ff link:
http://www.avvenire.it/Chiesa/Pagine/compleanno-papa.aspx

On Monday, April 16, Joseph Ratzinger.Benedict XVI - 'simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord", as he called himself shortly after his election to the Chair of Peter - will turn 85.

It is a day of celebration for the Church, for Catholics and for so many who have learned to appreciate a pastor who is gentle but firm, and a man who wins people over by the clarity of his thinking and the kindness of his personality.

To honor the Pope's birthday, many initiatives have been announced. Avvenire, too, wishes to express the gratitude and affection of so many Italians with a special edition which will be in newsstands and in the parish churches on Sunday, April 15.

Visitors to www.avvenire.it can send their birthday greetings to the Holy Father with a brief text in the window provided for the purpose.
http://www.avvenire.it/Chiesa/Pagine/compleanno-papa.aspx

And there is another, imminent occasion for joy: April 19 will be the seventh anniversary of the Pontificate of Papa Ratzinger - a father to all, and a Pontiff that is ever more loved around the world.

Sunday after Easter, eighth day of the Octave, was earlier observed as the Sunday of St. Thomas the Apostle, commemorating his contact with the Risen Christ, but it is now marked as Divine Mercy Sunday.

Easter is an eight-day feast -
and it is fitting that
it ends on Divine Mercy Sunday
by Robert Allard

April 10, 2012

Since the Second Vatican Council and the Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year, the Church has been emphasizing the importance of celebrating the entire eight days of Easter as solemnities, the highest form of celebration possible.

Still, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of many to emphasize that the celebration of Easter spans a full eight days—from Easter Sunday to the following Sunday, Divine Mercy Sunday. This eight day period is called the Octave of Easter, ending on Octave Day. How can we begin to bring light to accepting that Easter is, in fact, an eight-day feast?

In fact, for many years prior to the Second Vatican Council, there had been an incorrect movement to suppress the importance of the First Sunday after Easter. Some missals had gone so far as nicknaming that Sunday, “Low Sunday,” incorrectly contrasting it with Easter Sunday.

But now, because of various Church documents, traditions, and more recent revelations that Our Lord has given through St. Faustina, such dynamism is helping Christ’s Church recover the solemnity of the fullness of Easter.

From the Old Testament, we learn first about the importance of extended celebrations. Many of the most important feasts that our ancestors celebrated, spanned anywhere from seven to ten days. The feast that most resembles the eight-day celebration of Easter is the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkoth).

We learn, too, from the Gospel account of this feast, that the last day is also very important. For John tells us: “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me; let him drink who believes in me. Scripture has it: From within him rivers of living water shall flow’” (Jn 7:37-38).

The Gospel accounts that are read on Easter Sunday (cf. Jn 20:1-9), and the following Sunday (cf. Jn 20:19-31), span a one-day and an eight-day period. The Gospel that is read on Easter Sunday recalls the Resurrection that occurred on that morning; the first part of the Gospel for the following Sunday, the Octave Day of Easter, recalls what happened on the evening of that day. The last part of that second Sunday’s Gospel recalls what happened on the next Sunday. This perfectly ties in the important events on the day of the Resurrection and the next Sunday.

On Easter Sunday, we focus on the Resurrection. On the following Sunday, we focus on the first instruction that Jesus gives to his Church through his Apostles, when he miraculously walks through the door in the upper room, and institutes the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Let’s recall these words in the first part of that Gospel, where Jesus institutes this sacrament: “Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’”

Jesus’s last act before his death was the institution of the Holy Eucharist. The Lord gives us the Sacrament of his body and blood. Then, his very first act after his Resurrection, is the institution of the sacrament to prepare us for this Eucharist by the washing away of our sins. This was not accidental, nor was the event with St. Thomas on the following Sunday.

Have we failed to see this important connection? After years of study about the feast that Jesus requested to be established on the Sunday after Easter as the “Feast of Mercy,” we can easily see his reasoning. Aren’t the Sacraments of Confession and the Eucharist, in fact, the Sacraments of Divine Mercy?

At this point in time, and after years of asking why would Jesus want the Feast of Mercy on this Sunday, it is much easier just to believe in everything that Jesus said about it, and start working to correct the misconceptions. Blessed Pope John Paul II did say, in 1997, that he had fulfilled the will of Christ by establishing the Feast of Divine Mercy. So, let’s see what Christ’s will is.


Middle photo is from the Divine Mercy Shrine near Cracow, Poland. St. Faustina Kowalska, who was canonized by John Paul II, and the Blessed Pope himself, wo instituted Divine Mercy Sunday, are the principal patrons of the Divine Mercy devotion.

First of all, let’s look at the Divine Mercy image that Jesus wants to be venerated on the Feast of Mercy. It is the image of Jesus walking into the upper room on the day of the Resurrection, and again walking into the following Sunday, when he showed his wounds to Thomas.

We can see, in the image, the events that occurred in the Gospels, both for Easter Sunday and the following Sunday. But we also have the underlying lesson of the last part of the Gospel in the words: “Jesus, I trust in you,” which Christ insisted be placed on the image. Wasn’t that entire scenario with St. Thomas to get us to “trust in Jesus” without seeing him?

Jesus indicated to St. Faustina: “The two rays denote blood and water. The pale ray stands for the water, which makes souls righteous. The red ray stands for the blood, which is the life of souls. These two rays issued forth from the very depths of my tender mercy when my agonized heart was opened by a lance on the cross…. Happy is the one who will dwell in their shelter, for the just hand of God shall not lay hold of him” (Diary of St. Faustina, §299).

The red ray represents the Eucharist, our life blood; the paler ray represents the water washing away sin in Baptism. So, too, does the Church teach: the blood and water, which gushed forth from the heart of Christ, are the sacraments being poured forth from the merits and sufferings of the passion of Jesus.

In the oldest liturgical document in existence — attributed to the Apostles, The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles — where the Apostles were setting the feasts for the new Church, St. Thomas writes: “After eight days (following the Resurrection feast), let there be another feast observed with honor, the eighth day itself, on which he gave me, Thomas, who was hard of belief, full assurance, by showing me the print of the nails and the wound made in his side by the spear.”

One of the greatest Doctors of the Church, St Gregory of Nazianzus, declares that the Octave Day of Easter is as great a feast as Easter itself, yet without ever taking anything away from the greatness of the Resurrection Day itself. This Octave Day is the fulfillment of what Easter is all about—the perfect life in eternity, a second creation more admirable and greater than the first.

Looking at the promise that Jesus made for the Feast of Mercy, Jesus said: “The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain the complete forgiveness of sins and punishment. On that day are opened all the divine floodgates through which graces flow. Let no soul fear to draw near to me, even though its sins be as scarlet” (Diary §699).

Isn’t this the grace that St. Gregory was referring to: “perfect life in eternity”? When we are first baptized, all of our sins and punishment are washed away. If we were to die immediately after Baptism, we would go straight to heaven. Isn’t this the Easter gift that Jesus wants us all to have on his Feast of Divine Mercy? If Easter is the world’s greatest feast, then shouldn’t the world’s greatest feast offer us the world’s greatest gift, a renewal of Baptismal grace?

If God wants to set aside one day as a special feast, then who can argue with that? We must not fail to remember that God did just that for the Day of Atonement, as recorded in the Old Testament. The Lord told Moses: “And this shall be an everlasting statute unto you, to make an atonement for the children of Israel for all their sins, once a year… This is to be a lasting ordinance for you…. Because on this day, atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins” (Lev 16:29-34; 23: 26-28).

The Day of Atonement was the last day of the biggest feast, lasting ten days. It was for God’s people, an annual preparation for his judgment. It was the only day out of the whole year that the high priest could enter into the Holy of Holies.

Today, this feast is called Yom Kippur, but the Jews no longer offer blood sacrifices. God no longer accepts them. The Second Vatican Council was looking for a match for this feast, but couldn’t find one. Is there any doubt that the Feast of Mercy, now called Divine Mercy Sunday, is this fulfillment?

Is it not fitting that Jesus would offer this incredible gift on the grand finale of the world’s greatest feast? Recall his words on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me; let him drink who believes in me. Scripture has it: ‘From within him rivers of living water shall flow.’” Notice the words, “rivers of living water,” and “who believes in me.” Nothing is by chance. Those words were specifically chosen by Jesus.

Is there any doubt that it was all ordained by God? Was it an accident that St. Thomas wasn’t there on that first Sunday, but was actually there on the following Sunday? Was it an accident that Blessed Pope John Paul II died on the vigil of Divine Mercy Sunday, just five years afte r establishing the feast for the universal Church? Was it an accident that the readings that had already been in place for that Sunday were already perfect for a Feast of Divine Mercy?

In light of the fact that everything about the Feast of Mercy is perfection, that the message of Divine Mercy prepares the world for the second coming of Christ, and that the world is in great need of mercy, don’t you think that it is about time that we get serious about this feast? Isn’t this Feast of Divine Mercy an annual preparation for our judgment today?

The Church has officially realized the promises of Jesus by adding the plenary indulgence for Divine Mercy Sunday. Wouldn’t it make perfect sense to utilize the promises of this most incredible feast to entice all of the Easter-only, and fallen-away, Catholics to come back to the practice of their faith? What better gift could we offer to them then the complete forgiveness of all sins and punishment? This great feast is the celebration of what every human heart desires: the Divine Mercy of God himself!

US bishops issue call to action
in defense of religious liberty
Strong lay involvement urged to fight threats
to First Freedom at all levels of government and abroad


WASHINGTON, April 12 — The U.S. bishops have issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and urged laity to work to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights.

They outlined their position in “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” a document developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), approved for publication by the USCCB Administrative Committee March 13, and published in English and Spanish April 12.

The document can be found at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-libe...

“We have been staunch defenders of religious liberty in the past. We have a solemn duty to discharge that duty today,” the bishops said in the document, “… for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad.”

The document lists concerns that prompt the bishops to act now.Among concerns are:

• The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing all employers, including religious organizations, to provide and pay for coverage of employees’ contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs even when they have moral objections to them. Another concern is HHS’s defining which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit protection of their religious liberty.

• Driving Catholic foster care and adoption services out of business. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities adoption or foster care services out of business by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.

• Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services. Despite years of excellent performance by the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require USCCB to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching.

Religious institutions should not be disqualified from a government contract based on religious belief, and they do not lose their religious identity or liberty upon entering such contracts. Recently, a federal court judge in Massachusetts turned religious liberty on its head when he declared that such a disqualification is required by the First Amendment—that the government violates religious liberty by allowing Catholic organizations to participate in contracts in a manner consistent with their beliefs on contraception and abortion.

The statement lists other examples such as laws punishing charity to undocumented immigrants; a proposal to restructure Catholic parish corporations to limit the bishop’s role; and a state university’s excluding a religious student group because it limits leadership positions to those who share the group’s religion.

Other topics include the history and deep resonance of Catholic and American visions of religious freedom, the recent tactic of reducing freedom of religion to freedom of worship, the distinction between conscientious objection to a just law, and civil disobedience of an unjust law, the primacy of religious freedom among civil liberties, the need for active vigilance in protecting that freedom, and concern for religious liberty among interfaith and ecumenical groups and across partisan lines.

The bishops decry limiting religious freedom to the sanctuary.

“Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans,” they said. “Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith?”

“This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue,” they said.

The bishops highlighted religious freedom abroad.

“Our obligation at home is to defend religious liberty robustly, but we cannot overlook the much graver plight that religious believers, most of them Christian, face around the world,” they said. “The age of martyrdom has not passed. Assassinations, bombings of churches, torching of orphanages — these are only the most violent attacks Christians have suffered because of their faith in Jesus Christ. More systematic denials of basic human rights are found in the laws of several countries, and also in acts of persecution by adherents of other faiths.”

The document ends with a call to action.

“What we ask is nothing more than that our God-given right to religious liberty be respected. We ask nothing less than that the Constitution and laws of the United States, which recognize that right, be respected.”

They specifically addressed several groups: the laity, those in public office, heads of Catholic charitable agencies, priests, experts in communication, and urged each to employ the gifts and talents of its members for religious liberty.

The bishops called for “A Fortnight for Freedom,” the two-week period from June 21 to July 4—beginning with the feasts of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher and ending with Independence Day — to focus “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” for religious liberty.

They also asked that, later in the year, the feast of Christ the King be “a day specifically employed by bishops and priests to preach about religious liberty, both here and abroad.”

Members of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty include Archbishop-designate William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman; and Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington; Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap, of Philadelphia; Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta; Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul–Minneapolis; Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi, of Mobile, Alabama: Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle; Bishop John O. Barres of Allentown, Pennsylvania; Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas; Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix; Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois.

Consultants include Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton. California; Bishop Joseph P. McFadden of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa and Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne–South Bend, Indiana.

Last call for the Lefebvrians
If they reject the Vatican formula, it will be schism.
But Rome will do everything to avoid the irreparable.
An Australian theologian explains how reconciliation is possible.


ROME, April 13, 2012 – The Vatican expects to get in the next few days the response of the FSSPX to its 'last call' for the Lefebvrians to return to the Roman fold.

Predictions swing between optimism and pessimism. The current 'match' between the Holy See and the traditionalist movement founded by French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre began when on January 21, 2009 Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of the four bishops that Lefebvre had ordained illegitimately in 1988.

It then proceeded through eight meetings in Rome between theologians of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and theologians of the FSSPX from October 2009 to April 2011. On Sept. 14, 2011, the CDF handed the Lefebvrians a 'Doctrinal Preamble' as "a fundamental basis for achieving full reconciliation" with Rome.

The next round was a partial acceptance of the Preamble by the FSSPX, which the Vatican considered 'inadequate' to effect the reconciliation.

Up to then was what we might call the regulation game, which went into overtime with the Vatican's demand on March 15 for clarifications to the inadequate response. The Vatican signalled it was time to end the match. That's the response being awaited these days.

What exactly are the doctrinal issues involved in this division? And why is there a rift between the Lefebvrians and the Vatican over some teachings of Vatican II, whereas other Catholics belonging to opposite currents continue to be in the church, undisturbed, although they also reject principal parts of Vatican II? [The polar opposites to the Lefebvrians in terms of dissent would be the progressivists who constantly and erroneously invoke the so-called 'spirit of Vatican-II' - but they certainly do not 'reject principal parts of Vatican II' as much as they reject principal parts of traditional doctrine upheld by Vatican-II, which is worse. This is aggravated by the fact that they freely cite Vatican-II in a general way - without bothering to look at the documents, much less citing any specific parts of the Vatican-II documents - to justify their progressivist views. In short, they have been exploiting their 'the spirit of Vatican-II' falsely and dishonestly - while completely ignoring what the texts actually say - in order to 'legitimize' their dissent. This has been most obvious in the case of all the liturgical liberties and abuses that have been visited on the Novus Ordo Mass, but extends most alarmingly to such as the dissident Irish Association of Catholic Priests' recent statement ascribing to Vatican-II the radical reforms they demand such as the abolition of priestly celibacy and allowing women priests.]

These are the two questions that give rise to the commentary by Australian theologian John R. T. Lamont reproduced below. He follows them with three linked questions, none of which can be answered exhaustively. But they at least allow a fresh look at the controversy, revealing some unexpected aspects, which, far from being prejudicial against the positions taken by the FSSPX, can even seem to make their arguments understandable.

Lamont, who has a degree in philosophy from Oxford and in theology from Ottawa Unviersity where he studied with the great Dominican theologian Jean-Marie Tillard, lives in Australia and teaches at Sydney;s Catholic institute as well as the University of Notre Dame, with an archdiocesan permit to teach theology. He has published various books and essays in theological as well as general journals such as First Things.

The latest issue of the international magazine Divinitas edited by Mons. Bruno Gherardini carries a Lamont article on how to interpret Vatican II teaching on religious freedom, entitled "Pour une lecture pieuse de Vatican II au sujet de la liberté religieuse", Divinitas vol. 55, 2012/1, pp. 70-92.

The following commentary was written by Lamont especially for www.chiesa.

A THEOLOGIAN'S QUESTIONS
by John R.T. Lamont

In a communiqué of March 16th 2012, the Holy See announced that Bishop Bernard Fellay, Superior-General of the Society of St. Pius X, FSSPX, was informed that the Society's response to the Doctrinal Preamble presented to them by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was judged to be "not sufficient to overcome the doctrinal problems that are at the basis of the rift between the Holy See and the aforesaid Society" (in the original French of the press release, "n’est pas suffisante pour surmonter les problèmes doctrinaux qui sont à la base de la fracture entre le Saint-Siège et ladite Fraternité.")

The press release does not make clear whether this judgment is made on the part of the CDF and approved by the Pope, or whether the judgment is by the Pope himself. [One must assume that the CDF statement was approved by the Pope, or it would not have been released; but even by protocol, the Pope's personal opinion should not be brought into question at this point. To begin with, he did not take part in the doctrinal discussions.]

The evaluation was the latest step in a process of discussion on doctrinal issues between the CDF and the FSSPX. The nature and seriousness of this judgment raises important questions for a Catholic theologian; the purpose of this article is to ask these questions.

The secrecy of the doctrinal talks in question makes comment on the judgment difficult. The reason for this secrecy is hard to grasp because the topics of discussion do not concern practical details of a canonical settlement – which would clearly have benefited from confidentiality – but matters of faith and doctrine, that concern not only the parties involved but all believing Catholics.

[Surely Lamont is practical enough to know that in a 24/7 news environment, publicizing the contents of each session would have made the talks a circus, serving no purpose except to indulge the curiosity of some theologians, who were probably the only ones to have an active interest in the minutiae of the talks - and in the process, perpetrating the erroneous opinions and interpretations of fact that the MSM generally do when reporting on religious matters! The general public, even Catholics in particular, are not interested so much in how the sausage is made, only the end product: Did the Vatican theologians manage to answer satisfactorily the FSSPX objections to ecumenism, the role of the Church in the modern world, religious freedom and inter-religious dialog, and episcopal collegiality as defined by Vatican-II? It is not as if theological debates are like a tennis match in which the attention of the general public would be riveted on each volley! Those details can and will be made public at a later date - and are less important for now than whether the two sides reached any reasonable level of agreement.]

However, enough has been publicly stated about the position of the FSSPX to permit an evaluation of the situation. There are two things that need to be considered here: the rift between the Holy See and the FSSPX that has been produced by the doctrinal problems in question, and the nature of the doctrinal problems themselves.

In a response to a study of the doctrinal authority of the Second Vatican Council by Bp. Fernando Ocáriz, Fr. Jean-Michel Gleize FSSPX has listed the elements of that council that the FSSPX find unacceptable.

---

On at least four points, the teachings of the Second Vatican Council are obviously in logical contradiction to the pronouncements of the previous traditional Magisterium, so that it is impossible to interpret them in keeping with the other teachings already contained in the earlier documents of the Church’s Magisterium. Vatican II has thus broken the unity of the Magisterium, to the same extent to which it has broken the unity of its object.

These four points are as follows:
- The doctrine on religious liberty, as it is expressed in no. 2 of the Declaration 'Dignitatis humanae,' contradicts the teachings of Gregory XVI in 'Mirari vos' and of Pius IX in 'Quanta cura' as well as those of Pope Leo XIII in 'Immortale Dei' and those of Pope Pius XI in 'Quas primas.'

- The doctrine on the Church, as it is expressed in no. 8 of the Constitution 'Lumen gentium,' contradicts the teachings of Pope Pius XII in 'Mystici corporis' and 'Humani generis.'

- The doctrine on ecumenism, as it is expressed in no. 8 of 'Lumen gentium' and no. 3 of the Decree 'Unitatis redintegratio,' contradicts the teachings of Pope Pius IX in propositions 16 and 17 of the 'Syllabus,' those of Leo XIII in 'Satis cognitum,' and those of Pope Pius XI in 'Mortalium animos.'

- The doctrine on collegiality, as it is expressed in no. 22 of the Constitution 'Lumen gentium,' including no. 3 of the 'Nota praevia' [Explanatory Note], contradicts the teachings of the First Vatican Council on the uniqueness of the subject of supreme power in the Church, in the Constitution 'Pastor aeternus'.

---

Fr. Gleize participated in the doctrinal discussions between the FSSPX and the Roman authorities, as did Bp. Ocáriz himself. We may reasonably take his statement as a description of the doctrinal points upon which the FSSPX will not compromise, and that are taken by the Holy See to inevitably give rise to a rift.

The first question that occurs to a theologian concerning the FSSPX position concerns the issue of the authority of the Second Vatican Council.

The article by Bp. Ocáriz discussed by Fr. Gleize, which was published in the December 2nd 2011 issue of L'Osservatore Romano [I posted the Vatican's own translation of that important document the same day on Page 267 of this threadhttp://benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=267
seems to claim that a rejection of the authority of Vatican II is the basis for the rift referred to by the Holy See. But for anyone familiar with both the theological position of the FSSPX and the climate of theological opinion in the Catholic Church, this claim is hard to understand.

The points mentioned by Fr. Gleize are only four of the voluminous teachings of Vatican II. The FSSPX does not reject Vatican II in its entirety: on the contrary, Bishop Fellay has stated that the society accepts 95% of its teachings. This means that the FSSPX is more loyal to the teachings of Vatican II than much of the clergy and hierarchy of the Catholic Church. [Fr. Lamont ignores that the FSSPX statements after the doctrinal discussions began noticeably to give the impression that they rejected all of Vatican-II and that they think the Church ought to scrap its teachings altogether! This was so marked that everytime they made such a statement, I had to remark about their, to me, inexplicable shift from questioning just those four points that were the specific agenda for the doctrinal discussions, to a general denunciation of Vatican-II. Even if they did it for propaganda purposes, it was a very dishonest ploy. In my own way, I have tried to follow and post all relevant available reports and commentary on the CDF-FSSPX talks on this Forum promptly, so I am not making these comments off the top of my head, but from contemporaneous 'documentation' of the talks as reported in the media. If this were a blog, it would be easy to get an instant round-up of everything posted here regarding the FSSPX and the doctrinal talks.]

Consider the following assertions of that council:

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Dei Verbum 11:
"Holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles (see John 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:19-20, 3:15-16), holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself. In composing the sacred books, God chose men and while employed by Him they made use of their powers and abilities, so that with Him acting in them and through them, they, as true authors, consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted."

Dei Verbum 19:
"The four Gospels just named, whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ, while living among men, really did and taught for their eternal salvation until the day He was taken up into heaven (see Acts 1:1)."

Lumen gentium 3:
"As often as the sacrifice of the cross in which Christ our Passover was sacrificed, is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried on."

Lumen gentium 8:
"But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element."

Lumen gentium 10:
"Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity."

Lumen gentium 14:
"Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture and Tradition, it teaches that the Church, now sojourning on earth as an exile, is necessary for salvation. Christ, present to us in His Body, which is the Church, is the one Mediator and the unique way of salvation. In explicit terms He Himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church."

Gaudium et spes 48:
"By their very nature, the institution of matrimony itself and conjugal love are ordained for the procreation and education of children, and find in them their ultimate crown."

Gaudium et spes 51:
"Therefore from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care while abortion and infanticide are unspeakable crimes."

---

The vast majority of theologians in Catholic institutions in Europe, North America, and Australasia would reject most or all of these teachings. These theologians are followed by the majority of religious orders and a substantial part of the bishops in these areas. [That's a pretty sweeping denunciation of the extent of doctrinal dissent within the Church! I may have harbored a general impression of the sort, but for someone - a theologian with some apparent reputation - to articulate it in that way makes the situation far more appalling than I thought it was!]

It would be difficult, for example, to find a Jesuit teaching theology in any Jesuit institution who would accept a single one of them. [Say it isn't so, Father Schall!] The texts above are only a selection from the teachings of Vatican II that are rejected by these groups; they could be extended to many times the number.

Such teachings however form part of the 95% of Vatican II that the FSSPX accepts. Unlike the 5% of that council rejected by the FSSPX, however, the teachings given above are central to Catholic faith and morals, and include some of the fundamental teachings of Christ himself.

The first question that the communiqué of the Holy See raises for a theologian is thus: Why does the rejection by the FSSPX of a small part of the teachings of Vatican II give rise to a rift between that Society and the Holy See, while the rejection of more numerous and important teachings of Vatican II by other groups in the Church leave these groups in good standing and possessed of full canonical status?
[IMHO, because the progressivist dissidents have chosen - cleverly - to fight their battle within the Church, and to do so while always keeping just within the hairline border that separates dissent from heresy, and never having the courage to declare themselves out of communion with the Church of Rome, whereas the FSSPX, since 1988, did so without hesitation. In my own simple, common-sense approach, I have posed the question a number of times on this forum and the PRF, but in layman's terms: In what way does the dissent of the FSSPX who, at least, respect everything about the Church before Vatican-II, differ from that of the Vatican-II 'spiritists' who freely ignore many traditional Church teachings that Vatican II upholds explicitly, while citing their own self-defined 'spirit of Vatican II' to justify their dissident views? Obviously, the latter dissent is far worse, except that its Churchmen exponents (bishops and priests) have not 'formalized' their dissent so far in a coherent organized way, as the FSSPX did. ]

Rejection of the authority of Vatican II by the FSSPX cannot be the answer to this question; the FSSPX in fact shows more respect for the authority of Vatican II than most of the religious orders in the Church.

It is relevant that the texts of Vatican II that are rejected by the FSSPX are accepted by the groups within the Church that reject other teachings of that council. One might then suppose that it is these specific texts – on religious liberty, the Church, ecumenism, and collegiality – that are the problem.

The rift between the Holy See and the FSSPX arises because the Society rejects these particular elements of Vatican II, not because of an intention on the part of the Holy See to defend Vatican II as a whole. [DUH!]

The rift does not arise with the groups outside the Society that reject far more of Vatican II, because these groups accept these particular elements. But if this is the case, the first question simply reoccurs with greater force. [The rift does arise with the progressivists but the latter have never 'formalized' their dissent, as the FSSPX did. The distinction is specious and objectionable even to a simple layman like me - but the Church has its reasons for the way it calibrates its treatment of dissent within the Church. If even a fine theologian and finer Churchman as Benedict XVI has not thought it fit to castigate any of the dissenters (priests and bishops) within the Church other than individual theologians who have published their near-heretical or outright heretical dissent as 'Catholic theologians', there must be a specific canonical reason why he has not done so. And I'm sure if I had the chance to use a fine-toothed comb through his previous writings, I will find the proper justification there. Perhaps that is why he has now spoken out publicly against the Austrian Pfarrer-Initiative because their movement, like the Irish ACP (one of whose leaders appears to have been given canonical discipline), is approaching the openly-declared schismatic state in which the FSSPX found itself in 1988.]

If the rift between the Holy See and the FSSPX does not arise from rejection of the authority of the Second Vatican Council by the Society, it could be the case that the rift arises from the doctrinal position of the FSSPX in itself.

There are after all two sides to the position of the FSSPX on Vatican II. One side is the claim that certain statements of Vatican II are false and should not be accepted; this is the side that refuses the authority of the council. The other side is the positive description of the doctrines that should be accepted in the place of these supposedly false statements. This latter side is the more important aspect of the debate between the FSSPX and the Roman authorities.

After all, the purpose for the existence of magisterial teachings is to communicate true doctrines to Catholics, and their authority over Catholics stems from this purpose. This side of the FSSPX's position consists in positions on the doctrines that Catholics should believe, positions that do not in themselves make claims about the content or authority of Vatican II.

We must consider whether these positions can give rise to a rift between the Holy See and the FSSPX.

In judging the doctrinal position of the FSSPX, it must be remembered that there is an essential difference between the position of the FSSPX on Vatican II and the position of those elements within the Church who reject the teachings from "Dei Verbum," "Lumen gentium," and "Gaudium et spes" listed above. The latter group simply holds that certain doctrines of the Catholic Church are not true. They reject Catholic teaching, full stop.

The FSSPX, on the other hand, does not claim that the teaching of the Catholic Church is false. Instead, it claims that some of the assertions of Vatican II contradict other magisterial teachings that have greater authority, and hence that accepting the doctrines of the Catholic Church requires accepting these more authoritative teachings and rejecting the small proportion of errors in Vatican II. It asserts that the actual teaching of the Catholic Church is to be found in the earlier and more authoritative statements.

The positive doctrinal position of the FSSPX, then, consists in upholding the teachings of part magisterial pronouncements. The most important of the pronouncements in question are listed by Fr. Gleize: Gregory XVI's encyclical "Mirari vos," Pius IX's encyclical "Quanta cura" and his "Syllabus," Leo XIII's encyclicals "Immortale Dei" and "Satis cognitum," Pius XI's encyclicals "Quas primas" and "Mortalium animos," Pius XII's encyclicals "Mystici corporis" and "Humani generis," and the First Vatican Council's Constitution "Pastor aeternus." These are all magisterial pronouncements of great authority, and in some cases they include infallible dogmatic definitions – which is not the case with the Second Vatican Council itself.

This raises the second question concerning the position of the Holy See on the FSSPX that suggests itself to a theologian: how can there be any objection to the FSSPX upholding the truth of magisterial pronouncements of great authority?

This question really answers itself. There can be no such objection. If the position of the FSSPX on doctrine itself is to be judged objectionable, it must be claimed that this position is not what these magisterial pronouncements actually teach, and hence that the FSSPX falsifies the meaning of these pronouncements.

This claim is not easy to sustain, because when these earlier pronouncements were promulgated, they gave rise to a very substantial body of theological work that aimed at their interpretation. The meaning that the FSSPX ascribes to them is derived from this body of work, and corresponds to how these pronouncements were understood at the time they were made.

This fact gives more point and urgency to the third question that occurs to a theologian: what do these pronouncements actually teach, if it is not what the FSSPX say that they teach?

The answer that many will offer is that the real meanings of these pronouncements are given by, or are at least in harmony with, the texts of the Second Vatican Council that the FSSPX rejects. We can accept this answer as true, but that will not help in answering the question. The texts of Vatican II do not offer much explanation of the meaning of these previous pronouncements. [But all objective individuals who have looked at the Vatican II texts with an expert eye - including Benedict XVI - appear to be all in agreement that the Vatican-II documents are faulty in that respect. They lack precise definition in many important aspects, and those who took part in the Council say that the ambiguity was built in as a method of compromise between the polar opposites of the Council - the liberals and the conservatives, for want of better terms - in order to get all the Council Fathers to sign on to the 16 Vatican-II documents. As Mons. Lefebvre did. And I must admit that I have not had the time to research how he later rationalized his broader rejection of Vatican-II quite apart from his obvious disgust for the 'replacement' of the Tridentine Mass with the Novus Ordo, which had been his movement's first great casus belli.]

For example, Dignitatis humanae simply states that its teaching "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion and toward the one Church of Christ." This offers no explanation of the content of this doctrine. [I am not sure that a Conciliar text should necessarily include an 'explanation' of what it says, especially when, as in this case it says it 'leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine...' - a doctrine that has been more than substantially explained in subsequent pre- and post-Vatican-II Magisterium.]

The inadequacy of this answer leads to the fourth question, which is: what is the authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church on the points that are in dispute between the FSSPX and the Holy See?

No doubt the doctrinal discussions between these two parties involved an examination of this question, but the confidentiality of these discussions leaves the rest of the Church in the dark on this subject. [With all due respect to Lamont, the matter has not been settled until the Vatican decides the outcome of the doctrinal discussions and whether it accepts the FSSPX reading of the outcome. Of course, this will all come to light, but right now, it is premature.]

Without an answer to this fourth question, there is no prospect of an answer to the fifth question, which is: why do the doctrinal positions of the FSSPX give rise to a rift between the Society and the Holy See?

But this fifth question, significant as it is, does not have the importance of the fourth question. The nature of the teaching of the Catholic Church on religious freedom, ecumenism, the Church, and collegiality, is of great importance to all Catholics. The questions raised by the discussions between the Holy See and the FSSPX thus concern the whole Church, not merely the parties to the discussion. {The last two questions posed by Lamont are completely gratuitous, because they assume that the Vatican was never going to explain to the faithful the essential substance of the talks to resolve the differences over Vatican II. Lamont under-estimates the will of Benedict XVI for transparency in everything, especially doctrinal questions. He must wait, like the rest of us, for the answers to unfold at the right time and in the right way.]


P.S. I have just seen an article by Jean-Marie Guenois in the 4/13/12 issue of Le Figaro in which he claims that the Vatican and the FSSPX are 'on the verge of signing an agreement". (I will translate later, as I have to do some urgent errands this morning.)

Saturday, April 14, Octave of Easter

BLESSED PEDRO GONZALEZ (popularly, SAN TELMO) (Spain, born ca 1190, died 1246), Dominican, Preacher, Patron saint of sailors
One day in the early 13th century, Pedro Gonzalez rode his horse into the Spanish city of Astorga in the 13th century to take up an important post secured him by a bishop-uncle at the cathedral. The animal stumbled and fell, leaving him in the mud and onlookers amused. Humbled, he re-examined his life and started down a new path. He became a Dominican priest and proved to be a most effective preacher. He spent much of his time as court chaplain and confessor to the King of Leon, attempting to exert positive influence on the behavior of members of the court. After King Ferdinand III and his troops defeated the Moors at Cordoba, Peter was successful in restraining the soldiers from pillaging and persuaded the king to treat the defeated Moors with compassion. After leaving the court, Peter devoted the remainder of his life to preaching in Galicia and the coastal areas of northwest Spain and northern Portugal, where he developed a special mission for Spanish and Portuguese seamen. He died in 1246 and was beatified in 1741, He is buried in the cathedral of Tui, Galicia. While he was never formally canonized, he has been venerated in the Hispanic world as San Telmo (a contraction of of Santo Elmo, Spanish for Erasmus), after a 3rd-century martyr-bishop who was known as the patron saint of sailors). Today, ‘San Telmo’ is commonly associated with the district of Buenos Aires named after him, where the tango was born.
Readings for today’s Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041412.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Vatican released the text of a letter written by the Holy Father to teh Bishop of Trier, Germany, for
the 500th anniversary of the initial exposition in Trier of a relic believed to have been the Sacred Tunic
of Christ that the Roman centurions had tossed coins for.

Vatican Press Director Fr. Federico Lombardi issued a statement on recent allegations in the Italian media
regarding Vatican involvement in the disappearance of a teenage girl in 1983. He details all the cooperation
that the Vatican has given Italian authorities investigating the event, and says they are welcome to ask
again, but there is no further information to be given. He also pointed out that the late John Paul II
had followed the investigation closely and had communicated with the family of the abducted teenager.

The Vatican also announced that the Holy Father has named a new Apostolic Nuncio to Azerbaijan, and has
named five clerics to be members of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood.