BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

It took me a few days to get around to it, but I finally straightened out the unexpected page change a few days ago - My 'almanac' post for 8/31, without my realizing it, posted four times for some reason, and I never checked the preceding page when I came back Friday evening to find the post at the top of a new page. After getting rid of the extra psts, the first entries on this page moved 'up' to the preceding page.




CARDINAL CARLO MARIA MARTINI, S.J. (1927-2012)

From left, The cardinal with B16 in May 2005; on his 80th birthday in Jerusalem (Feb 2007); next 2 photos taken 2009-2010 after he retired to a Jesuit home in Gallarate, near Milan;llast 3 photos taken 2011-2012.


Vatican newspaper's tribute:
'Generous servant of the Gospel
and of the Church', says Benedict XVI
Translated from the 9/2/12 issue of




The 9/2/12 issue of L'Osservatore Romano features on Page 1 the Holy Father's telegram of condolence, and a similar telegram from Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone in the name of the Roman Curia.

A full-page spread in the inside pages includes the following studiously neutral account of his life and work, a story about condolences from the leaders of other Christian confessions, and the homage of the Archdiocese of Milan to someone who was their pastor for 22 years.


On Friday, August 31, the Jesuit Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, emeritus Archbishop of Milan, died in Gallarate. When, on August 30, his health condition took a turn for the worse, Cardinal Angelo Scola, Archbishop of Milan, invited all the people of the diocese and "all who held him dear" to pray for him, in testimony of the great popular affection which had always accompanied him.

Born on February 15, 1927 in Turin, Carlo Maria Martini was ordained a priest on July 13, 1952. He was named metropolitan Archbishop of Milan on December 29, 1979, by John Paul II who ordained him a bishop on January 6, 1980, and made him a cardinal on February 2, 1983.

Having resigned as Archbishop of Milan on July 11, 2002, at which time he revealed that he had Parkinson's disease, he chose to live most of the year in the Holy Land to pursue his Biblical studies. In 2008, he returned to Italy for good for medical care as his ailment advanced. He chose to reside at the Aloisianum, a Jesuit retirement home in Gallarate near Milan.

His funeral rites will be celebrated on Monday, September 3, at 4 pm in the Cathedral of Milan, where he will be buried. He was to lie in state at the Duomo starting Saturday morning.

The way that Cardinal Martini faced Parkinson's disease, with serenity, courage and great faith, was the last lesson he taught, almost a synthesis of his life of rigorous commitment to study - he was one of the last professors of the Pontifical Biblical Institute to hold his classes in Latin - and his pastoral activity, which began when he was named Archbishop of Milan, the world's largest diocese in terms of population.

Immediately following the news of his death, testimonials of affection and esteem have been profuse and unanimous, underscoring the moral authority acquired by the cardinal thanks to a style of dialog that was addressed to everyone.

During his pastoral ministry, he promoted numerous initiatives inn the archdiocese, along with widely read books.

Among the most emblematic episodes of his episcopate, one recalls the surrender of weapons to him by some terrorists of the Brigate Rosse, an acknowledgment of his noble authoritativeness which derived not just from his academic prestige as a Biblical scholar and from his role as Archbishop. But it was an authoritativeness that he always lived with simplicity - 'humbly' was an expression he often used - which was highlighted by a constant dialog with the secular world through what he called 'the cathedra of non-believers', visits to the poor and those in prison, and his attention to individual problems as well as the greater horizon of the universal Church.

Significant in this respect was his episcopal motto which he took from the Regula pastoralis of St. Gregory the Great: "Pro veritate adversa diligere" [For the sake of the truth, choose even unfavorable situations] - an expression to which he was faithful all his life, ever ready to choose and love even situations that were far from easy. As he said, in a 1980s interview, "God is all, and one can ask him everything".

Also significant was his decision to spend his retirement in Jerusalem, in the land where Jesus had lived, in order to pray and resume his Biblical studies, but also as a sign of his special relationship with Judaism.

Then having to return to Italy for appropriate care of his ailment as it progressed. Two rooms at the Jesuit Aloisianum in Gallarate, which he insisted should simply be marked Fr. Carlo Maria Martini.

In recent years, his activities were increasingly limited because of difficulty in moving about, and lately, after it became almost impossible to communicate directly. He had to use a small amplifier as well as the aid of his caretakers.

Despite all this, he was able to come to the Archbishop's residence in Milan last June 2 to meet with Benedict XVI when he was there for the World Encounter of Families. [In a much better state of health, he had visited him at the Vatican in April 2011, when the Pope was deciding on who to appoint as the next Archbishop of Milan.]

Many times, Benedict XVI has paid tribute to Cardinal Martini, even when as Prof. Joseph Ratzinger, he had appreciated the work of Fr. Martini as a consummate textual commentator on the Scriptures and the the only Catholic member of the scientific committee on the Greek New Testament, which has been the critical reference for all of the New Testament translations to various languages.

Born in Turin as the second son of Leonardo Martini and Olga Maggia, he was baptized one week after he was born in the parish of the Immaculate Conception. Educated by the Jesuits at their Social Institute in Turin, he considered the Bible and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola as his inspiration all his life.

He joined the Society of Jesus on Sept. 25, 1944, when he was 17, and undertook his novitiate in Cuneo. He studied philosophy at the Jesuit institute in Gallarate, where he was to spend his final years, and theology at the Theological Faculty of Chieri, where he was ordained a priest on July 13, 1962, by Cardinal Maurilio Fossati, Archbisohop of Turin.

In 1958, he obtained his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University with the thesis, "The historical problem of the Resurrection in recent studies", published in 1959.

After teaching in the Theological Faculty of Chieri, he returned to Rome for further studies in 1966, where he obtained a doctorate in Biblical studies, summa cum laude, at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, with a dissertation on "the problems of reviewing Codex B in the light of the Bodmer papyrus XIV".

[As the work has not been translated to English, I gather that it is a study of Codex B of the so-called Codex Vaticanus which contains the complete text of the Septuagint except for a few minor omissions from the Old Testament. The Codex was believed to be the work of three different scribes designated A, B and C, hence the designations Codex A, b and C. The Bodmer Papyri are a series of 52 papyri found in Egypt in 1952 and purchased by a Swiss, Martin Bodmer. Interestingly, the text commented on by Martini comes from Papyrus XIV-XV (P75), which is believed to contain the world's oldest known written fragment from the Gospel of Luke, the earliest known Lord's Prayer, and one of the oldest written fragments from the Gospel of John. At the time of his research, these papyri were found with the entire collection at the Bodmer Library near Geneva, but in 2007, the two papyri were acquired by an Atlanta busienssman, Frank Hanna II, who presented them to Benedict XVI as a donation to the Vatican.]

He became dean of the Faculty of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute, of which he became rector from 1969-1978, when he was appointed Rector Magnificus of the Pontifical Gregorian University, the Jesuit university.

Among his many scientific studies, the most outstanding were an annotated Italian translation of the Acts of the Apostles (1970), his studies on the origins of the Church anthologized in La Parola di Dio (1980), and the critical edition of the Greek New Testament (4th ed., rev, 1993) which he worked on with other Biblical experts in the aforementioned study commission.

He became a popular preacher of spiritual exercises, which was the basis of several books. He also published Life of Moses, Life of Jesus, Paschal Existence (1979), and Israel: Holy Root (1993).

In 1978, he was asked by Paul VI to lead the Lenten spiritual exercises for the Roman Curia. On December 29, 1979, John Paul II named him Archbishop of Milan and personally consecrated him as bishop on the Solemnity of the Epiphany in 1980.

Martini formally took his post on February 10, and his first characteristic initiative as Archbishop was to start the Scuola della Parola (School of the Word), that would allow the faithful to know Sacred Scripture better through the method of the lectio divina.

In November 1986, at a diocesan convention in Assago on the theme 'Becoming neighbors to each other', he launched the project of Schools of Formation for social and Political Commitment.

In October 1987, he started a series of meetings called "Questions about the faith" aimed for persons in search of religion.

His letters, discourses and other interventions from 1981-1994 were anthologized in 15 volumes, and another anthology of later texts was published last year in the book Le ragioni del credere (Reasons to believe).

The achievements of Cardinal Martini - who became during his 22 years as Archbishop of Milan, one of the most prominent and esteemed personalities of the Catholic Church - went beyond the confines of the archdiocese.

He was a member of the Council of the General Secretariat of the Bishops; Synod from 1980-1990, and from 1994-2001, he was president of the Council of European Episcopal Conferences. In 2000, he was named an honorary member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

[Very strange, but perhaps intentionally, there is not a single line in this tribute to the fact that he was the leading papabile representing Church progressivists in the Conclave of 2005. Nor for that matter, of the ideological content of his writings and preachings.

For all of his prolific literary output, I find it equally strange that in the past seven years when I have had occasion to follow media reporting about Cardinal Martini, I have not seen any news report or commentary citing from any of his previous books (much less from his scholarly work) but only from whatever his latest seemingly anti-Magisterium pronouncement was, including those published in his later books.

In a way, I agree with one Italian comentator who said today that the media 'instrumentalized' Martini all these decades as some sort of battering ram for their own ideas, by pitting him in direct Magisterial competition, as it were, first with John Paul II, and then with Benedict XVI. But on the other hand, he never refuted nor objected to how the MSM described him, although he could have done so with one statement.

Instead, he appeared to play along with them, underscoring the fact that he thought his role was to be able to point out things for the Pope - whether it was John Paul II or Benedict XVI - things that he thought were important for the Church. He could have done so in private, not in highly hyped media statements that tended to confuse the faithful precisely because he set himself openly against what the Popes were saying.]

The Pope and his ex-students
dispute the Enlightenment view that man
is no longer subject to anyone or anything
Translated from the 9/2/12 issue of


The Ratzinger Schuelerkreis spent the second day of their annual reunion-seminar in Castel Gandolfo on Saturday kn the presence of Benedict XVI in the Sala della Rocca of at the Apostolic Residence.

The reunion began Thursday afternoon, , August 30, at the Mariopolis Center of the town, where they held their first sessions. Since he became Pope, Benedict XVI has participated in the full day of discussions that follows the presentations made by the seminar's resource persons.

The theme for this year's seminar was ecumenism and the relationship among the Christian churches.

During a break in the Saturday morning session, one of the alumni, Mons. Barthelemy Adoukonou, secretary of the Pontifical Council, said, "This morning we dwelt on how we can get beyond the Enlightenment view on the basis of faith and ecumenical dialog.... in particular, how the Enlightenment sought to impose its own interpretation of salvation and justification."

[Adoukonou is from Benin and was a protege of the late Cardinal Bernard Gantin. In 1977, he was celebrating with Prof. Ratzinger and his sitr Maria his successful defense of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Regensburg, when the news was formally announced that the Professor had been named Archbishop of Munich and Freising by Paul VI. Coincidentally, both Gantin and Ratzinger were to be made cardinal three months later, Gantin would go on to become Dean of the College of Cardinals, and upon his retirement toBenin at age 80, Cardinal Ratzinger would be elected to succeed him as Dean.]

"For the Enlightenment thinkers," Adoukonou explained, "man's redemption meant that he had become free of every authority, and can therefore not be subject to any authority, not even that of the Church".

"Today, we must certainly repent for the things that provoked division in the Church, but we should also make sure that man today must acknowledge the absoluteness of God so that our time becomes more favorable for the faith".

Adoukonou said the Enlightenment had "believed it had negated faith, rejecting the sacraments and miracles and even Christology, along with authority, in the conviction that no one can impose anything on anyone".

The discussants agreed on the need "to present the Absolute to man, so he can turn back to God as the source of life and love...We can bear witness that with God, everything is possible, the Absolute is all for man because he is all love".

The seminar was to conclude Saturday afternoon. On Sunday morning, the Pope will celebrate Mass with the Schuelerkreis whose members will also be present for the Angelus.

Sept. 2, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

BLESSED JEAN FRANCOIS BURTE & COMPANIONS, Martyrs of the French Revolution (d 1792, Paris)
Burte was one of hundreds of clergy who were martyrs of the French Revolution. Though their martyrdom spans a period
of several years, they stand together in the Church’s memory because they all gave their lives for the same principle.
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy (1791) required all priests to take an oath which amounted to a denial of the faith.
Each of these men refused and was executed. Jean Francois Burté became a Franciscan at 16; later. he became guardian
of the large Conventual friary in Paris until he was arrested and held in the convent of the Carmelites. Burte and 184 others-
including several bishops and many religious and diocesan priests — were massacred at the Carmelite house in Paris on
September 2, 1792. They were beatified in 1926. (Regrettably, I still have not found any image for Blessed Burte even
from French online sites).
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090212.cfm


WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY

Mass with the Schuelerkreis - The Pope celebrated Mass at 8 a.m. at the Mariopolis Center of Castel Gandolfo
with his former doctoral students.

Sunday Angelus - Speaking to the faithful, the Pope reflected on the Law of God which has largely become,
for both Jews and Christians, a mere accessory rather than the most important thing in life, as men have
replaced God's Word with 'false religiosities'. As Jesus told the Pharisees in today's Gospel, citing
the prophet Isaiah: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain
do they worship me" and telling them, "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition".

CARDINAL CARLO MARIA MARTINI, S.J. (1927-2012)

From left, with B16 in May 2005; on his 80th birthday in Jerusalem (Feb 2007); next 2 photos taken 2009-2010 after he retired to a Jesuit home in Gallarate, near Milan;last 3 photos taken 2011-2012.


It was not surprising that the major Italian newspapers paid major tribute to Cardinal Martini on his death - after all, he had been their hero for more than three decades, since he first presented himself as a liberal voice against the Magisterium of the Church. But Corriere della Sera, for which he wrote a twice-monthly column in the final years of his life, has also stirred up all the embers of that conflict by publishing an interview with the Cardinal, recorded a few weeks before he died, in which he seemed to see nothing good in the institutional Church and to have completely ignored whatever Benedict XVI has done to engage the Church in an internal purification... As I have not had the time to read through the interview, here is BBC's account of it, which I can only call 'gloating' - as if to say, "Look, he's addressing this incorrigible, unregenerate Church even in death!"! - in the certainty that, with the cardinal not even buried yet, no one at the Vatican would dare make any statement in response.

So against my best hopes, MSM is not passing off the opportunity to use the cardinal's death - and his own unilaterally negative view of the Church - for a bonus round of Church-bashing and Benedict-bashing!


In his last interview given in August,
Cardinal Martini said the Church was
'200 years behind the times' and urged
radical change, starting with the Pope

September 2, 2012


Cardinal Martini lying in state in Milan Cathedral.

Italian Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini has described the Roman Catholic Church as being "200 years behind" the times. The cardinal died on Friday, aged 85.

The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera has published his last interview, recorded in August, in which he said: "The Church is tired... our prayer rooms are empty." [Surely, he must have read about WYD Madrid, or even the Mass at the last World Meeting of Families in Milan! Churches in the West have been less than full since secularism overtook even the most Catholic of countries, and even back in the 1990s in his book-length interviews, Joseph Ratzinger was realistic enough to see the foreseeable future of the Church as a 'creative minority', but the participation of the young in WYD appears to be one indication that, as Benedict XVI said in his iaugural homily, "The Church is young, the Church is alive".]

Martini, once tipped as a future Pope, urged the Church to recognise its errors and to embark on a radical path of change, beginning with the Pope.

[Perhaps we should see it as the obstinate insistence of an 85-year-old man stuck in his ideological niche, but the cardinal spoke in this interview as if he had not been reading at all what Benedict VXI has been saying and doing as Pope. As if Benedict XVI has not been singlemindedly intent on purifying and renewing the Church internally. As if Benedict XVI has not been setting the example himself for all this. I hope readers are discerning enough. If he had not died, I - along with other Catholics who follow what Benedict XVI is doing - would be most outraged at this last message. As for the Church being 200 years out of date, surely the cardinal did not think that Vatican II accomplished nothing at all in this respect!]

Thousands of people have been filing past his coffin at Milan's cathedral, where he was archbishop for more than 20 years.

The cardinal, who had retired from the post in 2002, suffering from Parkinson's Disease, is to be buried on Monday.

Martini, a popular figure with liberal stances on many issues [or perhaps more rightly, 'a popular figure with the media because of his liberal stances on many issues'], commanded great respect from both Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict XVI.

The cardinal - a member of the Jesuit religious order - was often critical in his writings and comments on Church teaching, says the BBC's David Willey in Rome.

He was a courageous and outspoken figure during the years he headed Europe's largest Catholic diocese, our correspondent says.

Cardinal Martini gave his last interview to a fellow Jesuit priest, Georg Sporschill, and to a journalist at the beginning of August when he knew his death was approaching.

Cardinal Martini was a renowned academic and biblical scholar, as well as a prolific author of popular books on religion.

But it is highly unusual for a leading member of the Catholic hierarchy openly to challenge Church teaching - or rather to criticise the way in which the Church often expresses its teaching with negatives and prohibitions rather than encouragement to believers. [Excuse me, BBC, how many times has Benedict XVI said - and shown by example - that the Catholic faith must be taught in a positive way, by pointing out how it is true, good and beautiful, and not in terms of saying NO!]

Pope Benedict is now faced with a difficult choice: whether or not to attend Cardinal Martini's funeral in Milan on Monday - which many leading Catholics say would be a powerful affirmation of Church unity. [There was never a question of 'choice', but of common sense and long-standing practice. When was the last time a Pope ever travelled anywhere for the funeral of a cardinal? Why should an exception be made for Martini? When Poland's Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski died in 1981 - he who had been Karol Wojtyla's mentor and dubbed at the time as Primate of the Millennium for his uncompromising stand against the Communist regime in Poland during the Cold War - did anyone say John Paul II ought to have travelled to Warsaw for his funeral? Not to compare apples and oranges, but surely if one must assign rankings for the overall significance of a cardinal in the life of the Church, not many would dispute that Wyszinski, who was also papabile in his time, far outranks Martini even though none of that would matter for Benedict XVI, who has given unsolicited public tribute to Martini on many occasions, even after the latter's harshest statements against the official Magisterium. And what 'Church unity' would be affirmed by such a trip, which would rather seem to be a concrete sign validating the propriety of an eminent Prince of the Church openly disputing the Magisterium of the Church!]

In 2008, the cardinal had returned to Italy from Jerusalem, where he had settled on retirement in 2002 to continue his biblical studies.

Catholics lacked confidence in the Church, he said in the interview. "Our culture has grown old, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up, our religious rites and the vestments we wear are pompous."

Unless the Church adopted a more generous attitude towards divorced persons, it will lose the allegiance of future generations, the cardinal added. The question, he said, is not whether divorced couples can receive holy communion, but how the Church can help complex family situations. [Again, how many times has Benedict XVI said the same thing about this issue, except he has been more direct in telling couples concerned, "You can still be part of the Church, even if you cannot receive Communion - there is always spiritual communion".]

And the advice he leaves behind to conquer the tiredness of the Church was a "radical transformation, beginning with the Pope and his bishops".

"The child sex scandals oblige us to undertake a journey of transformation," Cardinal Martini says, referring to the child sex abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church in the past few years. [Yeah, right! And has Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI not led, almost singlehandedly since 2001, in radically overturning the situation of 'filth' in the Church? What transformation does Benedict XVI need apart from the transfiguration effected by the Holy Spirit in those whom he causes to be elected Pope? Both Leo the Great and Gregory the Great could not have found anything to reproach Benedict XVI with!]

He was not afraid, our correspondent adds, to speak his mind on matters that the Vatican sometimes considered taboo, including the use of condoms to fight AIDS and the role of women in the Church. [And why would he be afraid? He said he considered himself to be the 'ante-Pope', precursor of Popes, who could tell them what he thought they ought to do. It's the easiest thing in the world to speak out against the Church, because the dominant means of communication amplify and disseminate the message for you, as they did with Martini's various heterodox messages, and hail you as the 'anti-Pope'. But as a Cardinal of the Church, did he not have the obligation of communion with the Successor of Peter, or failing that, the duty to avoid any situation that could cause confusion for the faithful? Is that not the first duty of a bishop? When the highly-publicized cardinal frequently advocated positions different from that the Church officially says, was that not just improper conduct. but one that was harmful to the Church?]

In 2008, for example, he criticised the Church's prohibition of birth control, saying the stance had likely driven many faithful away, and publicly stated in 2006 that condoms could "in some situations, be a lesser evil".

Corriere Della Sera plans to give a copy of his last book entitled Speak From The Heart to all its readers. [I am going to reserve my comment about the cardinal's books until much later, at a respectful distance from the moment.]

P.S. I have no intention at all of reproducing any of the hagiographical stories in the Italian media about their hero, but I have identified a few articles that need translation - one by Giuliano Ferrara, who as a non-Catholic, presents a disinterested view of Martini's heteredoxy, and one by Antonio Socci, who says openly that the cardinal revelled in the role given to him by the media, never objected to it, and openly frequented and courted progressivist secular circles. A third one clarifies that the cardinal's choice not to be fed through a nasogastric tube, given that his illness was terminal anyway, was not an endorsement of euthanasia, as the liberal media have sought to do, but entirely in keeping with what the Catechism says

Here first is Ferrara, who presents his conclusions about Cardinal Martini as a journalist who is also a 'devout atheist' enthusiastically supportive of Church orthodoxy in all things ethical and moral. (Even if I have not forgotten, nor can overlook, his uncharcteristically cockamamie idea months ago that Benedict XVI should resign the Papacy to make way for someone of his own choice as Pope - no way I can rationalize such idiocy, or egregious lapse of intellectual judgment.].

The Jesuit
by Giuliano Ferrara
Translated from

August 31, 2012

With Cardinal Martini, it is not that a great heart has passed away, nor even a pastor. Above all, he was a failed reformer, a theologian of indifferentism and relativism who tailored his intellectual means to whatever was needed to promote his ideas.

Let us see what Ignatius of Loyola says in his Spiritual Exercises: "It is therefore necessary to make oneself indifferent to all things created, as far as everything that is left to our free will and is not prohibited, such that, on our part, we shall no longer prefer health over sickness, wealth over poverty, honor over dishonor, a long life nopt a short one, and so on, in everything else. But we must only desire and choose that which will lead us best to the end for which we were created".

This Jesuitic 'indifference' is a theologically vertiginous concept that could also be a mystic take-off of blinding beauty and modernity.

In applying such indifferentism, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was a loyal oppositor to the Ratzingerian Magisterium and to the overall trajectory of the Church under John Paul II and his successor.

One understood this in a lucent and tremendous way when the emeritus Archbishop of Milan, ex-rector of the Gregorian and of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, brought forth his conclusive argument for three decades of opposing the Magisterium of two Popes: "Christian relativism also exists".

Jesuitic indifferentism and relativism are twin modalities of conceiving life in general, and Christian life in particular. Ignatius's dictum to "desire and choose only that which will lead us best to the end for which we were created" is the root - in its own way sublime - of Ignatius's idea of "every way to find the will of God", and the reason for the suspicion of crypto-Machiavellianism ['The end justifies the means'] which has always attached to the Society of Jesus. [Not by chance that the adjective 'jesuitic' was coined for their logic!]

In everything that has to do with human freedom, except the precriptions and prohibitions against absolute evil, Jesuits have manifested that this field of relativistic indifference can and must be conquered, as an analytical and discreet mentality open to the variations of time and to the hope that every variation and novelty is supposed to contain.

Such indifffrerentism is Christian relativism. It does not take account of the nexus between reason and faith - that rational complex of ethical and political witness to mundane reality ('all things created'), which has been the nucleus of papal teachings in the tempestuous history of the Church following Vatican II.

In a rather deceptive, careless and sentimental way, the departed cardinal was always presented as someone with a big heart, humanitarian in every fibrillation, devoted to everyone other than himself [but apparently not to the Popes], and a thousand other para-philosophical equivocations. All of them pseudo-Pascalian manipulations, except the intention to render homage to a man of the Church and of God who for more than two decades had exercised the functions of a pastor of souls, but who was not in fact one.

The poster image of the great all-comprehending priest, who sees his closeness to the poor and lowly as a proof of love for the incarnate God - which is true but does not explain anything of the prelate's personality - was in fact a poster image, equivalent to sending a flying kiss to the world of contemporary spirituality, while claiming to divest the Church not so much of her monopoly but even her own reading of the Christian faith, which he thought 'opinion-makers', even those lacking all modesty, were more entitled to do.

Martini was a failed reformer. He introduced an element of radical contradiction into the ecclesial establishment. He wished to relaunch Vatican-II, doubling its progressivist reach with his 'new' premises which tormented Paul VI and led his successors to compose a rational theological, liturgical and pastoral response.

In full adherence to the anti-Syllabus spirit, certain that the crusade of the 19th century Church against indifferentism and relativism had brought incommensurable damage to the People of God and to the 'true doctrine', Martini did not think it was possible to have a critically aware relationship with the contemporary Christian called upon to live and bear witness to his faith.[???]

He had the intellectual means that he could tailor to fit any need, he knew what he had to do to orchestrate his ideas and implant them into the fabric of the Church, and thus, he was often called an anti-Pope, or as he preferred, an ante-Pope. [Actually, he did not need to implant his ideas - they had already taken root long before he came to 'pastoral' prominence, because they were the usual laundry list of liberal goals to remake the Church as they want her to be. What he did was to provide the dissidents and progressivists with a figurehead distinguished enough in the Church hierarchy (not an outcast like Hans Kueng) that he could continually keep their ideas in high profile, which apparently, he was only too glad to do.]

But he was loyal. He said what he had to say, always - or almost always - with deference [To whom? Certainly not to the Popes, of whom he thought himself their precursor-guide!] In his pastoral letter 'Il lembo del mantello' (The edge of the cloak), he extolled a young TV newsman for his performance in talk shows. I think he was mistaken. [I.m sorry. I really can't quite figure out this last paragraph, especially since I am unfamiliar with the pastoral letter cited. ]

Ferrara had a P.S. of sorts today, as follows:

I wanted to write the usual piece, in anticipation of the funeral tomorrow of Cardinal Martini, who was never my ecclesiastical cup of tea. I said to myself, "Go on, Giuliano, take the opportunity and use all the many generics and stuff that have appeared in all the journals in tribute to him, and do what you have to do - attack the sterile and hypocritical compunction of all the Martinian eulogists of doubt, of dialog, of listening, believers and atheists alike who are so devoted when it has to do with wafting incense for a Prince of the Church who served their ideological necessities. But why do I have to?

9/3/12
P.S. As it turns out, Ferrara did write a full column completing the above paragraph, for the 9/3/12 issue of IL FOGLIO. I will translate ASAP.

Of course, the obligatory hypocrisy that comes with the death of any VIP, no matter how negatively you felt about him when he was alive, plays a great part in my decision to refrain from posting any eulogies here, even from eminent churchmen like Cardinal Bagnasco. I think the OR biographical essay said far more objectively positive things about the cardinal than anything I have read so far, so I am glad the Vatican newspaper had the good judgment to do what it did (even if the article never mentioned that he had been a papabile).

The lack of substantive background about the late cardinal in most of the MSM stories tends to prove my hypothesis that those who hyped him the most were hardly interested in his entire career to acquant themselves enough with what he actually achieved, other than providing them with propaganda points against the Church.

In which connection, Andrea Tornielli had a good piece in La Stampa in which he points out that despite all the hype of his liberal supporters in the media, Martini was never reslly a viable candidate in the Conclave of 2005 if only because he was afflicted with Parkinson's, the same disease that ended the life of John Paul II. That, in fact, the only strong candidate by the time the cardinals headed into the Sistine Chapel was Joseph Ratzinger (whom no one in the Italian media even recognized as 'papabile').

The proof of this was that Martini is thought to have received no more than 9 votes at the first ballot, and by the second ballot, his fellow Jesuit, Cardinal Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was polling far ahead of him. Various accounts since then tried to portray him as the kingmaker in that Conclave, by 'releasing' his supporters to vote for Ratzinger. But assuming Benedict XVI was elected by 87 votes (lowest estimate) or 112 (the highest), surely in a contest which came down to only two contenders, 9 delegates is hardly substantial. Besides, he may have 'released' his voters but that does not mean they would have voted for Ratzinger - it is more likely they gave their votes to the other Jesuit whom liberal or liberal-tending cardinals perceived to be their only other chance for anybody-but-Ratzinger!

Then there's the other story, resurrected again this time, that after the third ballot, Martini apparently thought that Ratzinger and Bergoglio would go into deadlock and reportedly said, "Tomorrow, we'll have a different story altogether", which was interpreted to mean, "If we have a deadlock, we start anew with a compromise candidate" (as the Conclaves of 1978 had done). As it happened, Joseph Ratzinger was decisively elected on the fourth ballot.

P.P.S. i have decided to post the Socci article in a separate box.

A belated post...

Pope takes steps to promote Latin -
will promote Latinitas Foundation
to the status of a Pontifical Academy
by Andrea Tornielli

August 30, 2012

“Foveatur lingua latina” - foster the Latin language. Pope Benedict XVI is keen to foster people’s knowledge of the language of Cicero, Augustine and Erasmus of Rotterdam, not just in the Catholic Church but also in civil society and in schools.

Indeed he is about to publish a motu proprio to establish the new Pontificia Academia Latinitatis (Pontifical Latin Academy). So far, the Vatican body in charge of keeping the ancient language alive has been the Latinitas foundation, under the aegis of the Vatican Secretariat of State, but the new academy will now replace it.

Other than publishing Latinitas magazine and organising the “Certamen Vaticanum” - an international Latin poetry and prose competition - over the years, the foundation has also been in charge of translating modern words into Latin.

The imminent establishment of the new pontifical academy which will add to the eleven existing academies – including the most famous ones representing science and life – has been confirmed in a letter sent by the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, to Fr. Romano Nicolini, an Italian priest who is massively in favour of reintroducing Latin lessons in junior high schools.

Ravasi recalled that the Academy’s initiative was “put forward by the Holy Father” and promoted by the Vatican dicastery for culture: its members will include “eminent academics of various nationalities, whose aim it will be to promote the use and knowledge of the Latin language in both ecclesiastical and civil contexts, including schools.”

The cardinal concluded the letter by saying that the initiative was a way of responding to “the numerous requests we have been receiving from all across the world.”

Fifty years ago, on the eve of the Second Vatican Council, John XXIII promulgated the apostolic constitution Veterum sapientia (Old wisdom) establishing Latin as the eternal language of the Church and stressing its importance, asking Catholic schools and universities to brink it back to life if it were ever abandoned or neglected. [COLORE=#0026FF[Apropos, one must cite the OR's parenthetical information in Cardinal Martini's biodata, that he was the last professor at the Pontifical Biblical Institute to insist on giving his classes in Latin! I have to check out what he thought about the use of Latin after Vatican-II.]

The Second Vatican Council maintained Latin in certain parts of the Mass [and actively encouraged the use of Latin, but the post-conciliar liturgical reform apparently removed all trace of it from common use.

And so, whereas half a century ago prelates from all over the world were able to communicate in Caesar’s language and faithful came into contact with it weekly, today Latin is not faring too well in the Catholic Church. Instead, it is being promoted in other lay spheres, which are interested in keeping it alive.

Academics are hard at work in the Holy See, coming up with neologisms to translate papal encyclicals and official documents. Translating Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical Caritas in veritate(July 2009) on social emergencies and the economic and financial crisis, into Latin, was no easy task.

Some of the choices made by the Holy See’s Latin experts were criticised by the influential Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, which questioned the use of the forms “delocalizatio”, “anticonceptio” and “sterilizatio”, but approved “plenior libertas” for liberalisation and “fanaticus furor” for fanaticism. Some of the stranger translations included the term “fontes alterius generis” for alternative energy sources and “fontes energiae qui non renovantur” for non renewable energy sources.

The Pope’s idea to establish a new Pontifical Academy is an important sign of renewed focus on the significance of Latin. Fr. Nicolini - who distributed 10,000 copies of a free introductory booklet to the Latin language in middle schools and is sending out an appeal for it to be included again in school curriculums – stated: “Latin teaches us to show respect for beautiful things and it also teaches us to value our roots.” [Not to mention the value of acquiring the discipline associated with learning such a highly-declined language as Latin!]

One of the men in charge of updating the Latin glossary which will make it possible to communicate even today in the language spoke by Cicero, is 47 year old Fr. Roberto Spataro, Professor of Ancient Christian Literature and Secretary of the Pontificium Institutum Altioris latinitatis (known today as the Faculty of Christian and Classical Letters) founded by Paul VI in what is currently the Salesian Pontifical University of Rome.

“How would I translate “poison pen letter writer”? I knew that question was coming… Well, I would translate it as: “Domesticus delator” (domestic informer) or “Intestinus proditor” (internal traitor", the priest said. [Spadaro seems to associate 'poison pen letter writer' only with Vatileaks! Whereas 'poison letters come just as much from outside as from within any institution or social group.]

He also explained how Latin neologisms are born: “There are two schools of thought. The first is what we may call the Anglo-Saxon school of thought, which holds that before a neologism is created, we need to sieve through all the texts that have been written in Latin – and not just classical Latin - throughout the centuries. The other school of thought, which for the sake of ease I will call Latin, holds that we can be freer in creating a circumlocution that properly conveys the idea and meaning of a modern word, whilst maintaining the flavour of classical Ciceronian Latin.”

Spataro belongs to the second school of thought and invites us “to leaf through the latest edition of the Lexicon recentis latinitatis [Dictionary of recent Latinisms], edited by Fr. Cleto Pavanetto, a distinguished Salesian Latin expert, and published in 2003, with 15.000 Latin translations of modern terms.”

For example, photocopy is translated as “exemplar luce expressum”, a banknote is “charta nummária”, basket-ball is “follis canistrīque ludus”, best seller is “liber máxime divénditus”, blue-jeans are “bracae línteae caerúleae” and a goal is a “retis violátio”. Hot pants become “brevíssimae bracae femíneae”, VAT is translated as “fiscāle prétii additamentum”, a mountain bike is a “bírota montāna” and a parachute is an “umbrella descensória”.

But the Lexicon lacks translations of internet terms. “Indeed it doesn’t, – Fr. Spataro explained – but over the last nine years, new expressions have been coined by those who write and speak Latin. So the internet is called “inter rete” and an e-mail address is referred to as “inscriptio cursus electronici”.

NB: According to Wikipedia, in most of Europe, high schools which prepare students for university still offer Latin as a mandatory or optional course. In Italy, Latin is compulsory in these schools, and about one-third of Italians who finish high school have had at least five years of Latin.

---

The Latinitas Foundation was established in 1976 by Pope Paul VI with the Pontifical Chirograph Romani sermonis and it has the following objectives:
1) to promote the study of the Latin language, classical literature and Medieval Latin;
2) to promote the increased use of the Latin language by publishing texts in Latin and other suitable means.

Among its principal activities are:
- the journal Latinitas, founded in 1953. Latinitas is written completely in Latin and is published four times a year. It deals with cultural topics in the areas of literature, philology, history, the sciences and other disciplines. Particular attention is given to the Diarium Latinum which deals with current issues in a journalistic style;
- the Certamen Vaticanum, an international Latin poetry and prose competition, also established in 1953. Prizes are awarded to the winners towards the end of the year;
- the organization of intensive Latin language courses according to the so-called natural method, i.e. the teaching of Latin by speaking Latin;
- the organization of congresses, conferences and debates on Latin culture;
- the promotion of the Lexicon recentis Latinitatis, an important dictionary of neologisms: it contains over 15,000 words. Experts from all over the world have contributed to this work;

- the Feriae Latinae. [I believe this is a facility where interested persons may spend their holidays taking Latin courses.]

---

The Pope's homily to the Schuelerkreis:
'We do not possess the truth -
it is we who belong to the truth'
Translated from the Italian service of

Sept. 2, 2012

The traditional annual seminar of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis ended this morning with a Mass celebrated by the Pope at the Centro Mariopoli of Castel Gandolfo, where, except for the Saturday sessions attended by the Pope, the seminar was held from August 30-Sept. 1.

This year, the ex-doctoral students of Prof. Joseph Ratzinger from various German universities considered the subject, "Results and ecumenical questions in the dialog with Lutheranism and Anglicanism".

Sergio Centofanti reports on the Pope's homily:

The Pope began by reflecting on a passage in Deuteronomy, where it says that Israel, alone among all peoples, had received the Law from God himself, a law, he said that gives true wisdom, a gift to rejoice about, and not the product of man's genius that can be cause for triumphalism.

The Church, which he described as "Israel that bas become universal", can only rejoice in the gift of Christ, who is the essential nucleus of the Law - the Law made flesh - as God's love for men.

"We have received the wisdom that is Truth, we know how to live and how to die, because Christ is life and truth. There is no room for triumphalism, but only for joy and gratitude over the gift we have received, something we did not create".

He decried that over time, human practices were added on to God's gift, masking the wisdom of God. And that these addenda could lead the Church to triumphalism, to praising herself. That at such a stage, we can only see what man himself has created, we no longer find joy in the faith, and we no longer dare to say that God taught us the truth, he has taught us what it means to be a man.

He observed that today, the concepts of truth and intolerance are almost fused together - when to say that one has the truth has become synonymous to intolerance. And that Christians no longer dare to believe or even speak the truth.

In fact, he said, "it is true that no one can say, 'I possess the truth', because it is we who belong to the Truth which is a living entity. But we don't own it, because it is Truth that gets hold of us. And we stay with the Truth only if we allow ourselves to be led and urged on by it"

"I believe we ought to learn anew this idea of 'not possessing the truth', just as one cannot really claim 'I have children', because they are a gift of God as well as a responsibility. And we cannot say, 'I possess the truth', which is Christ himself, who came to us, and in the Eucharist, comes within us to cleanse us of our misery, of our selfishness which has made Christianity seem like nothing more than a system of practices... We must learn anew to let ourselves be led by the truth, so that through us, Truth can shine once more for the salvation of the world".

The Pope also reflected on a passage from the Letter of St. James, in which the Apostle calls on Christians to put the Word into practice and not merely listen to it. "This is an exhortation not to over-emphasize the intellectual dimension of faith and of theology. I often fear when I read so many intelligent things written these days that theology has become just an intellectual game that does not compenetrate our lives, and therefore, does not introduce us to the truth. And so this is an invitation to us who are theologians - not just to listen to the truth but to let ourselves be forged by the truth and guided by it".

Earlier, some Schuelerkreis members had said that one of the moments they most anticipated in their annual reunion with their former Professor was the overview of the Church that he would give them before the seminar began, initially from his vantage as Prefect of the CDF, and now as Pope....

Schuelerkreis president:
In his overview of the Church,
the Pope spoke to us even about Vatileaks
by Salvatore Izzo


Castel Gandolfo, Sept, 2 (Translated from AGI)- Speaking to his former students about the situation of the Church today, "Benedict XVI spoke to us frankly about Vatileaks, with great serenity. He remains firm in his ministry - he is not fragile, by any means, and he says he continues to work normally".

Fr. Stephan Horn, the Salvatorian priest who has been president of the Schuelerkreis and organizes the annual seminars, said this in an interview with Vatican Radio's German service.

He also said that Benedict XVI was particularly struck by the joy in the faith that he found in Benin and in Mexico, while observing that in Cuba, "perhaps society is unable to freely express the sentiments in their heart".

Horn said Benedict XVI derives the greatest joy from the joy of the faithful themselves, as he did from the World Meeting of Families in Milan.

About the just-concluded 35th annual reunion-seminar, Horn said, "We all had the impression that this was one of the best ever".

ANGELUS TODAY



Speaking to the faithful in Castel Gandolfo, Pope Benedict today reflected on the Law of God which has largely become, for both Jews and Christians, a mere accessory rather than the most important thing in life, as men have replaced God's Word with 'false religiosities'.

He recalls that Jesus told the Pharisees in today's Gospel, citing the prophet Isaiah: "This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me," and telling them, "You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition".



Here is a full translation of the Pope's Angelus reflection:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

In this Sunday's Liturgy of the Word, the theme is the Law of God, his commandment: an essential element of the Jewish religion as well as of Christianity, which finds its full completion in Love (cfr Rm 13,10).

The Law of God is his Word that leads man along his journey through life, makes him free of the slavery of selfishness and introduces him to the 'land' of true freedom and of life. That is why, in the Bible, the Law is never seen as a weight, or an oppressive limitation, but as the Lord's most precious gift, the testimonial of his paternal love, of hi will be to be close to his people, of being their Ally and writing a story of love with them.

Thus, the pious Israelite prayed, "In your statutes I take delight;n will never forget your word... Lead me in the path of your commandments, for that is my delight" (Ps 119, 16,35).

In the Old testament, he who, in the name of God, conveys the Law to the people is Moses, After the long wandering in the desert, on the threshold of the Promised Land, he proclaimed: "Now therefore, Israel, hear the statutes and ordinances I am teaching you to observe, that you may live, and may enter in and take possession of the land which the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you" (Dt 1,4).

Here is the problem: When people are settled and have become the repository of the Law, they are tempted to place their certainty and their joy in something which is no longer the Word of the Lord - in goods, in power, in other 'divinities' who are, in fact, vain - they are idols.

Of course, the Law of God remains, but is no longer the most important thing, no longer the rule of life - rather, it becomes an outer garment, a covering, even as man's life follows other paths, other rules, selfish interests pursued by individuals or by groups.

Thus religion loses its authentic sense which is to live while listening to God in order to do his will - which is the truth of our being - and thus, to live well, in true freedom. Instead, religion is reduced to practices of secondary importance that serve to satisfy the human need to feel oneself doing right by God.

This is a serious danger for every religion, that Jesus already encountered in his time, but which, unfortunately, can be found even in Christianity. The words of Jesus in today's Gospel to the scribes and the Pharisees should make even us reflect.

Jesus takes the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips,but their hearts are far from me; In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts’" (Mk 7, 6-7; cfr Is 29,13). He concludes: "You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition” (Mk 7,8).

Even the Apostle James, in his Letter, warns against the danger of false religiosity. He writes Christians: "Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves" (Jm 1,22).

May the Virgin Mary, whom we now address in prayer, help us listen with an open and sincere heart to the Word of God so that he may guide our thoughts, our decisions and our actions every day.

In English, he said:

I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus. The Gospel of today’s liturgy spurs all of us to a greater harmony between the faith we treasure in our hearts and our outward behaviour. By God’s grace, may we be purified inside and out, so as to live integrally our commitment to Christ and to his message. God bless all of you!.

---

Monday, September 3, 22nd Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. GREGORY THE GREAT

ST. POPE GREGORY THE GREAT (Italy, ca 540-624)
Civilian Prefect of Rome, Monk and Abbot, Papal Deacon and Envoy, Pope (590-604), Doctor of the Church
In 2008, Benedict XVI devoted two Wednesday catecheses to his great predecessor
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080528...
Gregory's parents Gordian and Sylvia, Roman patricians of the Anicia clan and devout Christians, are both venerated as saints. A great-great-grand-uncle was Pope Felix III (483-492) and one of his immediate predecessors Agapetus (535-536) was also from his clan. Gregory is generally considered to have established the medieval Papacy and propagated medieval spirituality as embodied in St. Benedict. He is well-known for his writings, which were more prolific than those of any of his predecessors as Pope [and probably not matched by any other Pope until Benedict XVI] but his most important works were written as Pope. In The Rule for Pastors written at the start of his Pontificate, he described the ideal bishop as teacher and guide of his flock. In Book 2 of his Dialogs, he wrote about the 'Life and Miracles of St. Benedict of Nursia' who had died when Gregory was a child; the work became the primary historical source for Benedict's biography. His homilies continue to be quoted today and some 860 of letters he wrote as Pope were conserved. Gregory started life in the footsteps of his father as a Roman administrator, becoming Prefect of Rome when he was 32. After a few years, he left civilian life to become a monk, converting the family home into a monastery. After he was ordained, he was named one of the Pope's seven deacons for Rome, but in 679, Pelagius II named him his ambassador to the imperial court in Constantinople, which by then was the capital of the Roman Empire. He served there for six years, then chose to return to his monastery where he became abbot. But in 590, he was elected Pope by acclamation to succeed Pelagius. At the time, the papacy had little influence outside Italy. Gregory sought from the start to reaffirm the primacy of Rome as his predecessor Leo the Great had done. He considered evangelization of Europe's pagan lands a priority, and in this context, he sent a mission to England led by the future St. Augustine of Canterbury. Gregory also required all his bishops to engage in systematic assistance to the poor, an activity which was responsible for reestablishing the prestige and influence of the papacy in Italy against the distant imperial rule in Constantinople. His papacy was also characterized by his tireless efforts at peacemaking with pagan monarchs. He revitalized the liturgy, introducing the use of prayers in the Canon of the Mass that vary according to the liturgical season. The so-called Tridentine Mass of 1570, adopted after the Council of Trent, in effect, simply formalized the rubrics of the Mass as it had been celebrated since the time of Pope Gregory, and 'Gregorian rite' is still interchangeably used as a term for the Tridentine Mass. Around 800, when a system of notation was devised for the plainsong used in liturgy, it came to be called Gregorian chant although he had died two centuries earlier. As Benedict XVI has pointed out, "Gregory remained a simple monk at heart.. and wanted to be simply servus servorum Dei, servant of the servants of God". He coined the phrase, which has become one of the 'titles' for the Supreme Pontiff. It manifested "his way of living and acting, convinced that a bishop should, above all, imitate the humility of God and follow Christ in this way".
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090312.cfm


AT THE APOSTOLIC PALACE TODAY


The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Carlo Cafarra, Archbishop of Bologna

- 11 bishops from Colombia on ad-limina visit


ONE YEAR AGO TODAY ...
The Vatican released its response to the criticisms in the Cloyne Report, as demanded by the Irish Foreign Minister
when he summoned the Apostolic Nuncio after publication of the report in July. The response occasioned a mini-resurgence
of the Cloyne-triggered three-week Irish national hysteria From July 13-Aug. 2.

CARDINAL CARLO MARIA MARTINI, S.J. (1927-2012)

From left, with B16 in May 2005; on his 80th birthday in Jerusalem (Feb 2007); next 2 photos taken 2009-2010 after he retired to a Jesuit home in Gallarate, near Milan;last 3 photos taken 2011-2012.


NB: Photos and information added to the RV article come from the site of the Archdiocese of Milan.

The funeral of Cardinal Martini


Right photo: Banner hanging from the facade of the Duomo cites the Psalm that the cardinal wanted inscribed on his tombstone, which was quoted by Benedict XVI in his message today.


Milan bids goodbye
to its longtime cardinal
Adapted from

Sept. 3, 2012

Though not present in person, Pope Benedict XVI led those who paid tribute today to Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini before he was buried on Monday afternoon [beneath the Altar of the Cross of San Carlo Borromeo in the Milan Cathedral.]

The Pope's message was read before the funeral Mass by Cardinal Angelo Comastri, Arch-Priest of St. Peter's Basilica, whom he had sent as his personal representative to the rite.

[Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti led government officials present.]

Some 200,000 persons visited the Cathedral during the weekend as the cardinal lay in state on an open catafalque, to pay their last respects to a man who had marked the history of the Ambrosian diocese in the latter part of the past century. A great Jesuit scholar, teacher and pastor, he led the Archdiocese of Milan, the world's largest diocese in terms of population, for more than two decades, from 1980 to his retirement in 2002.

On Monday, when the cathedral doors opened before the funeral Mass, people were already queued in great numbers, waiting and hoping for a spot inside of the church – though large viewing screens had been set up in the square for those whom the basilica could not accommodate. [The Archdiocese said 6,000 people were in the Cathedral, and another 15,000 in Cathedral Square.]

The Liturgy – which was broadcast live nationwide - was presided by the current Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Angelo Scola.

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

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

At this time, I wish to express my closeness, in prayer and affection, to the entire Archdiocese of Milan, to the Society of Jesus, to the family and all those who esteemed and loved Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and have come to see him off on his last journey.

"Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path" (Ps 119,105):The words of the Psalmist could summarize the entire existence of this generous and faithful Pastor of the Church.

He was a man of God, who not only studied Sacred Scripture, but loved it intensely, made it the light of his life, so that everything might be 'ad majorem Dei gloriam', for the greater glory of God.

Because of this, he was able to teach believers as well as those in search of Truth that the only Word that is worthy to be heeded, accepted and followed is that of God, because he shows us all the way of truth and of love.

He had a great openness of spirit, never refusing encounter and dialog with everyone, responding concretely to the Apostle's invitation "to always be ready to respond to whoever asks you the reason for the hope that is in you" (1Pt 3,15).

He had a spirit of profound pastoral charity, in line with his episcopal motto, Pro veritate adversa diligere (For the sake of truth, embrace adversity); attentive to every situation, especially the most difficult; lovingly close to whoever was at a loss, in poverty or suffering.

In a homily during his long ministry in the service of this Ambrosian Archdiocese, he prayed: "We ask you, Lord, that you make us spring water for others, bread broken for our brothers, light for those who walk in darkness, life for those who are groping in the shadows of death. Lord, be life for the world, lead us to your Passover. Together we will walk towards you, we shall carry your cross, we shall savor the communion with your resurrection. With you, we shall walk towards the heavenly Jerusalem, towards the Father" (Homily, March 29, 1980).

May the Lord, who led Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini through all his life, welcome this tireless servant of the Gospel and the Church to the heavenly Jerusalem.

To all present and all who mourn his passing, I offer the comfort of my benediction.

From Castel Gandolfo
September 3, 2012

---

As it did in announcing his death last Friday, AP had a terse report on his funeral today, which doesn't mean it did not pack as much liberal innuendo as it could, starting with the headline:

Italy hails cardinal
who wanted the Church to change


ROME, Sept. 3 (AP) - From politicians to the Pope, to rank-and-file Catholics and non-believers, Italy is bidding farewell to Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, a rare liberal voice among top churchmen who died last week after battling Parkinson's disease.

By the time his funeral began Monday in Milan, where he long served as archbishop, some 150,000 people passed by Martini's remains in the city's cathedral in tribute. Milan Cardinal Angelo Scola noted that admirers included many non-Catholics. [The Archdiocese's figure was 200,000.]

Pope Benedict XVI sent a message, read at the funeral, praising Martini's "great openness of spirit."

Martini had encouraged discussing divisive Church issues including homosexuality and priestly celibacy. In an interview published posthumously, Martini criticized the church as being `200 years behind the times' and urged radical change.

Jews praised his efforts to improve Catholic-Jewish relations.

One of the unpleasant aspects in the whole Italian media exploitation (I can find no better, more appropriate word) of Cardinal Martini's death is that many commentators, when not indulging in their "Imagine if he had become Pope!" fantasies, have taken to comparing Benedict XVI and the cardinal. I find it an unseemly and unwarranted exercise, for the simple reason that Benedict XVI was elected Pope, and the cardinal was not. That's all one has to say. Punto e basta! And when a man becomes Pope, he becomes sui generis. No point in comparisons, not even to his predecessors.

A one-on-one comparison - as if they were two boxers getting set for a championship fight - might have been appropriate when they were both cardinals and playing on the same field, but despite the many parallels in the lives of the Bavarian and Torinese cardinals, both born in 1927, very few did that then, because very few thought Joseph Ratzinger was even in the running, whereas the wishful thinking of the media was that the time was ripe for their 'champion' in the hierarchy to ascend from being John Paul II's 'ante-Pope' to full-fledged Pope himself.

IMHO, if such a mano-a-mano comparison had been done on the eve of the Conclave, JR would have had the distinct edge in every objective category - academic career, professional recognition, books published and their readership reach, ecclesial milestones, influence within the Church, etc. All, that is, except for favor in the media, because where JR had been built up by the media, since he came to the CDF in 1981, as the Grand Inquisitor and the Big Bad Ogre defending the faith, at about the same time, the new Archbishop of Milan soon became the darling of the media for articulating all their pet liberal causes against the Church - an Italian Hans Kueng, but with far greater cachet, being a cardinal and pastor of the world's largest diocese.

I thought the most interesting story today was this one by Andrea Tornielli. One sees the late cardinal in a new light:

It turns out that Cardinal Martini's
much-applauded 'lectures for non-believers'
in Milan were inspired by Joseph Ratzinger's
'Introduction to Christianity'
And, of course, as Pope, Benedict XVI has universalized
the idea into the Courtyard of the Gentiles
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

September 3, 2012

And what if Carlo Maria Martini's 'Cathedra for non-Believers' had been inspired unknowingly by Joseph Ratzinger? Reading some notes by the Jesuit cardinal who was buried today, one would say Yes, it was.

Martini first wrote about this in 1977, in a book honoring the Bavarian cardinal [It would have been the volume commemorating his 70th birthday],and he said so once again for Il Sole 24 Ore shortly after the Bavarian became Pope.

As he recalls, toward the end of the 1960s, Martini found himself in retreat somewhere in Germany's Black Forest preparing for a conversation with a group of Italian priests.

"I expected to get many questions, contestations, various difficulties. I was looking for a book that could help me lay down my ideas clearly and calmly. That's how I found myself with a copy of the German edition of Joseph Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity, which had been published recently (1968)".

"I still remember the pleasure I had in reading those pages. It helped me clear up my ideas, to pacify my heart, and to emerge from confusion... I still have the notes I made then. In particular, it was that reading that gave me the theme 'Perhaps it's true' [about Christianity] that could be an approach for the non-believer, which later led me to realize the 'lectures for non-believers'."

In his book, Ratzinger presented the reasonableness of believing, in the particular light of modern questioning and unbelief. An approach he has never abandoned.

In 2001, when he was Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger said in the interview-book God and the world: "The nature of faith is not such that starting from a specific moment, one can say, 'I have it, even if others don't'... Faith remains a continuing journey."

He points out that it is also healthy because in this way, it does not run the risk of being transformed into a manipulable ideology. With the consequent danger of making one incapable of sharing the
thinking and suffering of a brother who still doubts and questions.

"Faith can only mature to the degree that it is able to endure and can take responsibility, in every phase of existence, for the anguish and the power of unbelief, and can withstand it enough so that faith continues to be accessible even in another time".

This is an approach, unlike many set cliches, that was common to both Martini and Ratzinger. The Bavarian who became Pope has not changed - just consider the Courtyard of the Gentiles, the initiative he undertook to engage non-believers in dialog.

CARDINAL CARLO MARIA MARTINI, S.J. (1927-2012)

From left, with B16 in May 2005; on his 80th birthday in Jerusalem (Feb 2007); next 2 photos taken 2009-2010 after he retired to a Jesuit home in Gallarate, near Milan;last 3 photos taken 2011-2012.


The writer of this article is a senior editor at Avvenire, and one wonders why he did not write this for that newspaper (perhaps the bishops' conference have a compunction against publishing anything 'politically incorrect', especially as it concerns a prominent cardinal)... In its own way, this is a 'the-emperor-is-naked' tale, somewhat salutary at a time when the media myth-making machine is in full gear burnishing their golden legend of 'the man who could have been Pope'.

The truth is Cardinal Martini
was never an alternative -
nor a problem to the Popes he served
by Davide Rondoni
Translated from

September 3, 2012

Some 'radicaloid' circles saw him as the standard bearer of an 'ethicist' Church that does not exist. He was popular in the most elite salons, and maybe he spent too much time looking at the mirror. But one thing is sure - he was never a real 'problem' for Papa Wojtyla nor for Papa Ratzinger.

[Certainly not to them, personally, but a problem for the Church, because of the cumulative effect on those of the faithful who were able to follow the cardinal's various pronouncements of liberal positions that were at variance, to say the least, with the Magisterium of the Church. Yes, he wished to provoke discussion, but this necessarily sowed confusion. Bishops are supposed to teach, not to confuse, the faithful.]

Only someone who has no idea of the history of the Church would be eager to underscore differences or divisions between the late cardinal and the part of the Church represented by Papa Ratzinger - after all they were cordial friends, and Benedict XVI was elected Pope, presumably with Cardinal Martini's vote and that of his supporters. [So we are back to the Conclave and the apparently now-accepted account of it by the anonymous cardinal who broke his vow of secrecy to supposedly reveal the details of the voting that took place in the Sistine Chapel. According to whom Cardinal Martini, for all the hype in the Italian media, got only nine votes on the first ballot, and decided by the third ballot to 'release' his voters to Cardinal Ratzinger. He may have told them to do so, but would they not have voted instead for the Jesuit cardinal from Argentina, who was thought to be a younger and healthy liberal alternative to the ailing Martini?]

Only some anachronistic anti-clerical could maintain that Martini represented a true alternative in thinking and in pastoral approach to Popes Wojtyla and Ratzinger. Just consider the story of famous battling theologians in the history of the Church, like Abelard and Bernard of Clairvaux, to have an idea of what an alternative truly means.

They quarrelled over how to know God, not over methods of assisted reproduction, ethical questions of life and death, or social issues which are the main concerns of the radicaloid writers who dominate the pages of our major newspapers.

Cardinal Martini was never an alternative. He did not have the power to be one - which is not a defect, but simply a fact. If Papa Wojtyla had not appointed him to head the largest diocese in the world, he would have remained a brilliant but fairly unknown Biblical scholar.

If he had been an alternative [as in alternative or even parallel Magisterium???], why would John Paul II have offered him what is arguably the second most important cathedra in the world after Rome? The Polish Pope was sure that he could not cause any serious problems from Milan. In fact, there were none.

Especially for men of the Church like Wojtyla and Ratzinger who do not have an 'ethicist' idea of the Church, that which is so dear to the heart of Cardinal Martini's admirers, who, because of the Cardinal's liberal [and ultimately anti-Catholic] openness to contemporary ethical criteria [or lack thereof], considered him close to them - the modernists, the enlightened ones. They never seemed to realize that the game was lost, from the start. Simply because ethics was not 'the game'.

It wasn't about having two opposing ethical ideas - though the secular media loved to peal the celebratory bells whenever Cardinal Martini said something for public consumption, even as they claimed that he had chosen obscurity since his retirement. [How could he be obscure when every two weeks, he was given a whole page by Corriere della Sera to answer letters soliciting his thoughts on every subject?]

The simple fact is that both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have reproposed in different but syntonic ways a Church that is not founded on ethics or morality but on the event that God came to earth as man.

An editorial in a leading newspaper denounced Benedict's first encyclical because of this. The idea of a God-centered Church is resisted strongly, in the Church and out of it, by those who wish to confine the Christian message only to the narrow field of ethics, bioethics or philology.

Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have reclaimed the idea of Church as the People of God, as an event in human history that is marked by bearing witness to the Gospel in all areas of existence, from charity to science and politics. A Church that speaks to the world about Christ and embodies him through her presence in history. A Church that most certainly will not be defined by political or ethical oscillations that are inevitable in history, but only by her testimony to Jesus.

But we have never seen anything written about Jesus by the cardinal's mediatically powerful friends and supporters, those who have used him all these years in order to reinforce to their readers their idea of the limited ethicist Church. Has any of them ever said that the cardinal made them discover Jesus? They had no use for his faith, which was always clear and limpid. They see the Church only as a springboard for ethical and moral debates.

Martini could never have been an alternative for a Church that is reduced to Biblical philology or even to being the ethical conscience of the world, simply because he did not have an alternative idea of the Church. [And that, Mr. Rondoni, is most disingenuous of you! Especially in the light of the cardinal's posthumously published interview with its intended demolition of the institutional Church! Surely he knew the media would seek to belabor his points - ad infinitum, if they could - using his words to demonize the Church 'authoritatively', and only too happy, because they are even more censorious of the Church than he was, to perpetrate his puzzling and quite uncharitable example of seeing nothing but bad in the Church and her leaders, starting with the Pope!

But he has just given them fresh ammunition, from the grave, as it were, and he did not have to. It's not the cardinal's denunciations I mind (except when he says that purification should begin with the Pope himself!) since we are all sinners, but the fact that he simply ignores everything that Benedict XVI has been doing singlehandedly to engage the whole Church in a purification that will enable a clean start in order that the Church will never cease to be 'ecclesia semper riformanda'. Then there's the secondary insult to Benedict as if he were a moron who has absolutely no idea that there is evil in the Church and is content to just let things be, or is so out of touch with the Church as not to be aware of its urgent problems! Dear Lord, the good cardinal and the villainous valet are wearing the same blinders!]

Of course, he had updated some arguments for his positions, but he had also certainly caused disquiet among many believers. To consider that one believes or not depending on the position of the Magisterium on artificial reproduction or the like, means reducing Our Lord and the Church to a caricature. It means thinking that ethics is more important than grace - and certainly Cardinal Martini could not have thought so.

Secularists and enemies of the Church prefer to think of God as some kind of an understanding father-in-law. And to think of faith as nothing more than an enormous scruple which keeps one from living life to the full.

All such concepts - which Martini certainly did not think, but he made others think of them, in a typical defect of the intellectual who is not a pastor - do not represent an alternative experience of the Church. They are merely secondary. Of course, their diffusion and persistence weaken the ecclesial fabric, which is what happened in the archdiocese of Milan during the years Martini was its pastor, but they do not represent a substantial alternative for the practice of the faith, no matter how much they are hyped by the superficial media who also happen to be committed to weakening the Church. [In fact, they are niche issues addressed to special-interest groups - they directly concern only those priests who want to marry, the women who want to be priests, couples who choose to use new reproductive technologies, homosexuals who want to marry each other, etc, along with their rabid supporters who pride themselves in being avant-garde and 'enlightened' unlike the obscurantist Church that is 200 years behind the times! Would anyone dare to say they represent a significant fraction at all of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics?]

We know that Jesuits have always had the tendency - and the charism - to act as 'prompters' to the powerful. So they have to be well- accepted in the best circles. Even Prime Minister Mario Monti has said so, "Cardinal Martini was my beacon and my counselor," he wrote in Corriere della Sera. I don't recall hearing anything like that from any Italian political leader in the past 30 years.

Imagine the uproar if someone like Ferdinando Casini [president of the lower house of the Italian parliament] or Silvio Berlusconi had said, "I have been inspired by Cardinal Ruini" [who was widely accused by Italy's secularists and leftists to have 'interfered' too much in Italian politics by promoting Catholic teaching in social issues, especially those that become subjects of referenda].

One would have to say that the true 'power' of Martini was not within the Church but outside it. Where power is earthly and moves the media, banks, and ministries. His articles and discourses showed that he (and his imitators) had that typical concern that Charles Peguy saw as a Christian defect: not to give the fashionable salons any reason to smile condescendingly on them.

The 'in' people - who have real power - liked Cardinal Martini. And he knew it (I think he may even have suffered it), even if he was good at striking the right balance between admonition and assurance. One who says of himself, "I am the ante-Pope" accepts that he is not a true alternative, but merely confirms a disproportionate self-pride that is typically 'jesuitic'. And in this sense, I had a soft spot for him, as for a rather timid but awkward boy.

His sponsors and powerful followers self-describe as 'modern', 'advanced', 'enlightened'. But history is strange, and sometimes, as those who study it without blinders know, it is those who call themselves 'modern' who stay behind, not having understood the real direction of events.

Cardinal Martini was a great man of faith. Perhaps he would have done better not to stay too long in front of the mirror held up to him by those who really did not love him and could not have cared less about his limpid and profound faith, but used him as the battering ram for old battles that they must constantly refight.


Rondoni is saying what appeared obvious to even a casual observer like me, who think I have enough basic information to make my conclusions - that Cardinal Martini was shamelessly used by the enemies of the Church to strike against the Church herself, and that he allowed himself to be used. Not that he was weak or naive, but because he truly wanted the platform and the bully pulpit that they made him a gift of, in order to promote his thinking on what Rondoni calls the 'secondary' matters - those that interest contemporary society but do not substantially have to do with the essentials of the faith. I am not sure that a bishop - who has the primary duty to teach - should comparmentalize his faith.

So someone like me, in my outrage at some of Martini's 'socially relevant' statements that seemed like breast=beating at the expense of the institutional Church, did overlook the fact that he was not questioning any basic tenet of Christianity [though I think he did have some 'new' views about the Resurrection - I must check that out] but how the Church interprets Christianity in evaluating contemporary trends which the Magisterium sees as contradictory to Christian values, but which he, Martini, did not. Of course, he was also very careful to frame all his statements not as definitive positions but as openness to such positions ("We should consider..."). Which, in effect, does recommend such positions!]

And if you want to read directly in English the typical hagiography and myth-making attendant to the cardinal's death, read the commentary by Catherine Pepinster, editor of the UK's Tablet [aka 'the poison pill'], published in today's Guardian:
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2012/sep/03/out-date-catholic-church-cardinal...
which starts with a flight of fancy that has been shot down repeatedly for the wishful thinking that it always was, remembering, from the supposed secret account of the Conclave, that the good cardinal never got more than the 9 votes out of 115 he initially got.

Maybe they should fantasize about what-might-have-been if Cardinal Bergoglio had been elected, as he turned out to be the only other candidate who got a considerable number of votes. If he did get as many as 40 votes in any one ballot before the final one, then I would conclude that was the number of progressivist cardinals who took part in the Conclave of 2005. Considering all the 'traditionalist' actions that Cardinal Bergoglio has been doing in Argentina since then, I think they read him wrong, and thought that because he was Jesuit, he would naturally fit into the Martini mold, or at least, that he was a viable anybody-but-Ratzinger candidate that they could vote for in conscience.

I have translated the Antonio Socci article I referred to earlier, and its in-your-face iconoclasm will be a back-to-earth jolt after Ms. Pepinster's airy-hairy nonsense.

I am not a Martinian, I am Catholic -
and what I can do for the eternal
repose of the late Cardinal
by Antonio Socci
Translated from

Sept. 2, 2012

Seeing the flood of rave eulogies and slavering enthusiasm in yesterday's newspapers, I was reminded of the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus said, "Woe unto you if all men say nothing but good about you" (Lk 6,24-26).
 
The true disciples of Jesus are, in fact, a sign of contradiction. "If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you...If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you" (Jn 16,18-20).

Then Jesus spoke to his disciples about this beatitude: "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day! Behold, your reward will be great in heaven" (Lk 6, 20-23). [In this respect, the detractors of Benedict XVI have been earning him a load of blessings!]

One thing is sure. Cardinal Martini was always borne aloft in triumph by the mass media around the world, for three decades, and those who wafted him the most incense were those who are most anti-Catholic and most hostile to Jesus and his Church.

Does anyone object to say that it all happened against his will? But the facts say that Martini always sought the applause of the world, he always caressed the Power of the dominant mentality, of the ideological causes advocated by the secular newspapers, for which he gained their encomiums and applause.

He was an assiduous and most honored guest in the most liberal media salons almost to his final days.

Or did you think he rejected the exploitative enthusiasm of the media that for years had acclaimed him as the Anti-Pope, as the counter-Pope to John Paul II and then to Benedict XVI? That did not seem so to me.

And yet, he could easily have done so with firm and clear words as Don Lorenzo Milani did when the progressivist media and the intellectual and political left said of him, "He is one of us!" He answered, indignantly: "What do you mean I am one of you? I am a priest. That's all!" [Don Lorenzo Milani, 1923-1967, was an Italian priest who became nationally known for pioneering new and effective methods of teaching children in the poorest regions of the country, and later for taking up the cause of conscientious objectors.]

When they tried to use him against the Church, he replied bluntly: "But tell me one thing in which I think the same as you do! One thing!... This Church is the Church of the sacraments. L'Espresso will not give me absolution of my sins! And can they give me the Mass and communion? They must realize that they are in no condition to judge or criticize the Church. They are not qualified to do so."

More: "It took me 22 years to leave the social class that writes and reads L'Espresso and Le Monde. They should snub me, say that I am naive and a demagogue, not honor me as one of them. Because I am not... The only thing that matters is God, man's only task is to bea and to adore God. Everything else is rubbish".

We would have wanted to hear similar words from the Cardinal, but we never did. Never. Instead, we kept hearing other words which were disconcerting and confusing to us ordinary Catholics. Words in which he made himself the prompt counterpoint to the teachings of the Pope and the Church.

So much so that yesterday, Repubblica could eulogize him with headlines such as, "He never condemned euthanasia", "From dialog with Islam to saying YES to condoms".

Everything that ideological trends imposed found in Martini a dialogue-ready and possibilistic interlocutor: "It is not bad that two persons, even if they are homosexual, have a stable relationship that the State promotes".

Of course, it is legitimate for anyone to express such views. But by a cardinal of the Holy Roman Church? Is there not a scandalous contradiction? Does loyalty not impose any obligation?

When a cardinal says, "I would be happy to be Catholic, and equally happy that the other is evangelical or Muslim", is he not proclaiming the equivalence of all religions? [Or he may simply be stating the principle of relgiious freedom!]

Does anyone remember any pronouncement by the Cardinal that was not politically correct? Or does anyone remember that he ever made an ardent plea in defense of persecuted Christians?

I don't. The cardinal preferred to chat if up with Scalfari [the presumptuous and arrogant editor of Repubblica, who is an atheist but nonetheless writes and acts as if he, more than anyone else in the world, ought to be Pope, since everyone else is beneath him], who underscores that "He (Martini) never did anything to convert me". I believe him. In fact, Scalfari was only too happy to be seconded by Martini in his philosophical whims.

In his second Letter to Timothy, St. Paul, enjoining his disciple to preach a healthy doctrine, predicts: "For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teacher and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths" (2Tm 4,3-4).

In the last interview he gave, in criticizing the Church, Martini asked where are those "who have ardor for the Church... people with faith like the centurion, enthusiastic as John the Baptist, who dare to do new thins like Paul, who are faithful like Mary Magdalene?"

Evidently, he didn't see them among his own followers, but there are so many in the Church. Too bad that he fought many of them, in some cases, even bringing them before his diocesan tribunal. Quite the example of the intolerance of tolerants.

Martini also incredibly signed a Preface to a book by Vito Mancuso [best-selling lay theologian and would-be architect of a new Church altogether] in which, according to La Civlta Cattolica, Mancuso "gets to reject or, at the very least, to drain of significance a dozen dogmas of the Catholic Church".

But the cardinal called the book 'a courageous presentation' and epxressed the wish that "it should be read and meditated by many". Mancuso, of course, called Martini his 'spiritual father'.

So, to demolish the dogmas of the faith does not faze Martini at all. But when two journalists - in defense of the Church - criticized some Catho-progressivist intelelctuals, Martino called them before the Milan Inquisition and asked to abjure thair criticism.

What a paradox! The only case, after Vatican II, of subjecting lay Catholics to an inquisition for simple historiographic theses carries the signature of the progressivist cardinal. “The cardinal of dialog”, as Corriere and Repubblica call him. [But was this not dialog for dialog's sake, such as favored by the Sant'Egidio Community and their model in matters of 'peace and brother hood', the United Nations? Was there ever dialog to do constructive things together based on principles held in common by opposing camps, as Benedict XVI advocates? And did Repubblica or other MSM ever call Joseph Ratzinger the 'cardinal of dialog' when, in fact, he had so many newsworthy - and fortunately reported as such - encounters with representatives of other religions and public debates with prominent secularists like Juergen Habermas and - forgive me for mentioning him in the same breath - the odious Paolo Arcais da Flores. Surely, no one has a monopoly of dialog.]

The newspapers were usually admiring of his sayings. I must confess that I found these terribly banal. For instance, “The need for struggle and commitment emerges, without letting oneself be overcome by defeatism”. He sounds like Giorgio Napolitano. [That's unkind to President Napolitano, all of whose messages and addresses that had anything to do with the Church have been well-crafted in terms of language, and better yet, sincere!]

Thank God that in the Church there are so many true masters of spirituality and love of Christ. [Which is not to say that Cardinal Martini was not a master of spirituality and love of Christ. It was the aspect of him that his adulators in the MSM completely ignored.]

The other media refrain is on Martini’s Biblical erudition. Which is of course true. But sometimes God shows a certain sense of humor. On Friday, the day Martini died, the liturgy proposed a Reading that seemed to be a demolition of erudition and of the cardinal’s ‘Cathedra of non-believers’ where Massimo Cacciari [secular philosopher and former mayor of Venice] and his like pontificated.

St. Paul wrote that Christ had sent him “to preach the gospel, and not with the wisdom of human eloquence, so that the cross of Christ might not be emptied of its meaning. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. It Is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the learning of the learned I will set aside. Where is the wise one? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since… it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation [on the Cross]… to save those who have faith, the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (1Cor 1, 17-25).

And the Gospel was that of the ten virgins, in which Jesus, overturning worldly criteria, proclaims they were wise who had kept the faith to the end and ‘foolish’ those who had lost it. I hope the cardinal kept his faith to the end. [That is a gratuitous comment, Martini's faith was never in question, only his heterodox pastoral outreach, if we may call it that.] The enthusiasm of Scalfari, Dario Fo, Il Manifesto, Cacciari and company are useless if not aggravating before the Judge of the Universe.

I, as the Church teaches, will have Masses said for the Cardinal, and I will earn whatever indulgences I can so that the Lord may have mercy on him, It is the only mercy that we sinners truly need.

Caveat: Socci has written many good, even great, pieces that I have found congenial, and it seemed he was always a Ratzingerian. But he also leads those who insist there was a 'fourth secret of Fatima' that the Church is holding back, and inexplicably - almost irrationally - floated the canard in September 2011 about Benedict XVI contemplating resignation when he turned 85.

Tuesday, Sept. 4, 22nd Week in Ordinary TimE


Benedict XVI venerated the saint's incorrupt body when he visited Viterbo in Sept. 2009.
ST. ROSA DI VITERBO (Italy, 1233-1251), Virgin, Franciscan lay sister
Rosa achieved sainthood in only 18 years of life. While still very young, she began a life of penance in her parents’ house. She was as generous to the poor as she was strict with herself. At the age of 10 she became a Secular Franciscan and soon began preaching in the streets about sin and the sufferings of Jesus. Viterbo, her native city, was then in revolt against the Pope. When Rosa took the Pope’s side against the emperor, she and her family were exiled from the city. When the Pope’s side won in Viterbo, Rosa was allowed to return. Her attempt at age 15 to found a religious community failed, and she returned to a life of prayer and penance in her father’s home, where she died in 1251. Rosa was canonized in 1457. Her feast has been celebrated in Viterbo with a procession on the eve of the feast featuring a monumental lighted tower (called the 'macchina di Santa Rosa') topped by her image. A more detailed account of her life was posted in the PASTORAL VISITS thread
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=859...
when the Holy Father visited Viterbo.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090412.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for the Holy Father.

The Press Office said it will hold a news briefing on the papal visit to Lebanon on Tuesday, Sept. 11.

It also finally published the text of Benedict XVI's extemporaneous homily delivered in German at
the concluding Mass he celebrated for the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis on Sunday morning. Will post as
soon as translated. (Much of it was reported in the Vatican Radio news item I posted on Sunday,
but paraphrases never do justice to the Holy Father's thought, much less ro how he expresses himself.)






- Paolo Gabriele is back in Italian media headlines, as is his accomplice, Gianluigi Nuzzi, because on a TV program last night, Nuzzi played the entire interview he did back in May with a camouflaged, voice-altered Gabriele which he had only played in part then. Not that the viewer found out anything new, other than more of Gabriele's sanctimony and his direct statements about having been inspired by the Holy Ghost.

The surprise - which makes me more outraged - is that he also cited the double murder-suicide involving a Swiss Guard commandant, his wife and a younger Swiss Guard years ago, as well as the Orlandi case 30 years ago, as examples of what he thinks is wrong with the Vatican - "Serious crimes like this can happen, and overnight, the Vatican gives an explanation that does not answer anything". Both cases, of course, took place before Benedict XVI became Pope.

Gabriele's other mantra is that "Benedict XVI really wants to clean up, but he is being blocked from doing so", this time implying that the Pope is utterly helpless against obstructive elements in the Church!

If you have ever had occasion to deal with simple-minded folk who believe that they are actually unrecognized geniuses, you will know that it is impossible to divest them of any of their certainties. No reasonable arguments will work with them, especially if, as in the case of Gabriele, he is convinced he was chosen to be the channel of the Holy Spirit. (Yes, he, not the Pope who was elected, as all good Catholics believe, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Oh no, the "Dove' appears to have preferred this time to channel himself to a self-confessed 'crow'!)

- BTW, an awkward translation of the posthumously published Martini interview can be found on
cathcon.blogspot.com/2012/09/cardinal-martini-speaks-to-church-f...
If I find the time, I will do a translation. It's good to have it on the record.

Andrea Tornielli notes somewhere that the cardinal wasn't saying anything he wasn't already saying back in 1993. That is not the point. Whether it was in 1993 or 2012, he is talking as if the Pope (John Paul II or Benedict XVI) was not aware of the urgent problems of the Church, many of them because of priests and bishops who have turned into bureaucrats and powermongers instead of servants of the People of God.

In reiterating his sweeping denunciations just a few weeks before his death, he failed to even acknowledge what Benedict XVI has been doing - even with the child-abuse issue. For a man of God, I find the cardinal's completely one-sided view of what he calls 'the institutional Church' most uncharitable. And to virtually preach to Benedict XVI that the renewal must begin with him, the Pope himself, is simply unconscionable.

This is perhaps one of the best pieces of news today, the more so because it is truly unexpected. God bless the Muslims who decided to oppose the rank injustice heaped by their blasphemy laws against this defenseless girl. And even if young Rimsah is still in jail and in danger of being given the death sentence, one must hope that public denunciation now of her main accuser for having planted evidence to get her arrested will make the court set her free. Let us pray for Rimsah and all those who suffer simply for being Christian, and for Rimsah's Muslim protectors that they may not be cowed back from their courageous decision.

Senior Pakistani cleric comes to Rimsah's aid:
Says he will guarantee the safety of this
'daughter of the nation' once she is released
by Jon Boone


ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 4 - The Christian girl who was allegedly framed for blasphemy by her local mullah has been hailed as a "daughter of the nation" by one of Pakistan's most senior Islamic clerics, who also vowed to guarantee her safety if she is eventually released from prison.

The heavyweight support for Rimsha Masih from the chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, a grouping of Islamic clerics, is being seen as a remarkable turn of events in a country where individuals accused of insulting Islam are almost never helped by powerful public figures.

In a fiery press conference at a central Islamabad hotel, Hafiz Mohammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi, flanked by other senior clerics, demanded all the organs of the Pakistani state come together to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest last month of a girl who it is claimed has Down's syndrome.

He also lambasted Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti, the imam from the Mehrabadi slum neighbourhood on the edge of Islamabad, who was accused over the weekend of tampering with evidence in order to ensure the girl's conviction.

"Our heads are bowed with shame for what Chishti did," Ashrafi said.

He later said Chishti was merely the front man for other individuals "behind the scene" who wanted to stoke local antagonism against the Christian minority in the area in order to force them to flee.

"I have known for the last three months that some people in this area wanted the Christian community to leave so they could build a madrasa there," he said.

Ashrafi said he would divulge more information about the people behind the alleged effort to construct an Islamic seminary on the properties vacated by the Christians at a later date.

The cleric, who has in the past been associated with the Defence of Pakistan Council, which includes members of banned militant groups, was speaking hours after a judge's decision to further delay a bail hearing for Rimsha until later in the week.

Lawyers acting for Malik Hammad, a man from Rimsha's neighbourhood who claims to have caught her carrying away the charred remains of a book that included verses from the Qur'an, said they could not conduct a trial because the Punjab Bar Association was holding a one-day strike.

However, the case against Chishti continued to grow after two more witnesses recorded statements implicating the mullah in a plot to strengthen the case against Rimsha.

The imam was accused late last week by his own deputy, Hafiz Mohammad Zubair, who told police that after Chishti was presented with the burnt refuse spotted by Malik he added two pages from the Qur'an.

"I asked him what he was doing and he said this is the evidence against them and this is how we can get them out from this area," Zubair told a Pakistani television station.

It is the first time in a blasphemy case that someone has ever been arrested for fabricating evidence – although it remains unclear why it took more than two weeks for Zubair to come forward with the incriminating statement.

Gabriel Francis, a lawyer at Pakistan's supreme court, said the atmosphere of fear surrounding the blasphemy law probably deterred him.

"It is very hard to come forward when in previous cases a governor and a minister were killed for speaking out," he said, referring to Shahbaz Bhatti, a former minorities minister, and Salman Taseer, the former governor of the Punjab. Both men were assassinated last year after they infuriated extremists by publicly criticising the blasphemy laws.

On Sunday, Ashrafi said he had been moved to speak out after reading reports that Rimsha had Down's syndrome, a condition that also affects Ashrafi's 15-year-old son. He said the Ulema Council would guarantee Rimsha's security from vigilantes or extremists if she was released.

"It would be against the honour of the country to send someone out of Pakistan due to non-provision of security at government level," a joint statement by the Ulema Council and the Pakistan Interfaith League said.

However, Ashrafi said there was no need to change or repeal the law – despite campaign groups claiming it is wide open to abuse and allows people to be sentenced to life imprisonment on the basis of threadbare evidence that is often never challenged in court.

"There is no problem with the law – only the implementation of the law is the problem," he said.

On the 5th centenary of the Reformation:
Will Catholics and Protestants
exchange 'mea culpa' for offenses
committed on both sides?
Translated and adapted from the Italian service of


Sept. 4, 2012

There is an idea being whispered about in Rome, but it is something that has been well rooted in the German-speaking world, especially after Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Germany last year, when he tailored his program to focus more on Catholic relations with the Lutherans, indicating a desire for more than just ecumenical dialog.

And so, in the aftermath of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis's 2012 seminar in Castel Gandolfo, a remark made to Vatican Radio by Fr. Stephan Horn, president of the Schuelerkreis, caught a lot of attention.

He said that in the context of the seminar theme on ecumenical questions in the dialog with Lutherans and Anglicans, the seminar participants discussed the forthcoming fifth centenary of the Reformation in 2017, and that it could feature a mutual 'mea culpa' on the part of Catholics and Protestants "to drain away old poisons and bring spiritual peace after long conflict".

"The Holy Father has always thought that a purification of memory was necessary in this respect," Horn said. "History cannot be annulled, but its interpretation can be changed, the way facts are judged." He said historians agree about this, especially those who have studied the Council of Trent, which launched the Counter-Reformation.

Many initiatives have already been programmed for 2017, he pointed out, but this reciprocal 'mea culpa' could be the crowning feature, and one that would be fittingly realized under a German Pope.

Let it not be forgotten that in 1999, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, asked the International Theological Commission to lay down the theological groundwork for the 'purification of memory' that John Paul II intended be a major feature of the Jubilee Year celebrations of 2000, closing the second millennium of Christianity.

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From the Introduction:

The Bull of Indiction of the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, Incarnationis mysterium (November 29, 1998), includes the purification of memory among the signs “which may help people to live the exceptional grace of the Jubilee with greater fervor.”

This purification aims at liberating personal and communal conscience from all forms of resentment and violence that are the legacy of past faults, through a renewed historical and theological evaluation of such events.

This should lead - if done correctly - to a corresponding recognition of guilt and contribute to the path of reconciliation. Such a process can have a significant effect on the present, precisely because the consequences of past faults still make themselves felt and can persist as tensions in the present.

The purification of memory is thus “an act of courage and humility in recognizing the wrongs done by those who have borne or bear the name of Christian.”

It is based on the conviction that because of “the bond which unites us to one another in the Mystical Body, all of us, though not personally responsible and without encroaching on the judgement of God, who alone knows every heart, bear the burden of the errors and faults of those who have gone before us.”

John Paul II adds: “As the successor of Peter, I ask that in this year of mercy the Church, strong in the holiness which she receives from her Lord, should kneel before God and implore forgiveness for the past and present sins of her sons and daughters.”

In reiterating that “Christians are invited to acknowledge, before God and before those offended by their actions, the faults which they have committed,” the Pope concludes, “Let them do so without seeking anything in return, but strengthened only by ‘the love of God which has been poured into our hearts’(Rom 5:5).”

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The actual prayers for forgiveness led by John Paul II in the liturgy of March 12, 2000, and the causes for which forgiveness was sought, maybe found on
http://www.sacredheart.edu/pages/12654_pope_john_paul_ii_asks_for_forgiveness_march_12_2000_.cfm

Cardinal Ratzinger led the second prayer regarding the confession of sins committed in the service of the truth:

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Let us pray that each one of us, looking to the Lord Jesus, meek and humble of heart, will recognize that even men of the Church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.

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I suppose in view of the most notorious crimes of the medieval Inquisition (which was not all evil, BTW), it was appropriate that this particular prayer was led by the Prefect of the successor office to the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

Wednesday, Sept. 5, 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

BLESSED TERESA OF CALCUTTA (b Macedonia 1910, d India 1997) - Founder, Missionaries of Charity, 1979 Nobel Peace Prize Winner
In 2010, the world marked what would have been her 100th birthday. Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu was born to Albanian parents in Skopje, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire. She joined the Loreto Sisters of Dublin as a teenager, and at age 18, she was sent to the Loreto novitiate in Darjeeling, India, where she chose the name Teresa and taught at a high-school for upper-class children. Surrounded by the overwhelming poverty of many Indians, she says she heard an inner call one day to 'follow Christ into the slums and serve him among the poorest of the poor'. She left the Loreto community, took a nursing course for several months, and got permission to start a new religious community. She chose to work in Calcutta (Kolkata) where she opened a school for poor children in a slum area, while visiting her neighbors to know their needs. Before long, volunteers joined her work, some of them former students, and became the core of her religious community founded in 1950. They carried out their work with contributions in food, clothing, supplies, and use of buildings. In 1952, the city gave her a hostel which became a home for the dying destitute. As her order expanded, services were extended to orphans, abandoned children, alcoholics, and street people. And for the next four decades, she took her mission worldwide. soliciting material support for the work of her sisters and inviting the world to see Jesus in the poorest of the poor. Her order has become global, a she herself was considered a living saint and was one of the most famous persons on the globe by the time she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. She died of natural causes on Sept. 5, 1997. John Paul II, who met her several times, waived protocol and started the cause for her beatification immediately, and beatified her in October 19, 2003. She is buried in the Mother Teresa Center in Calcutta.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090512.cfm


WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY


General Audience - The Pope resumed his catecheses on prayer, and reflected on the theme of prayer
in the opening section of the Apocalypse.

In the afternoon, he will meet with
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (regular meeting).


Forgive me for a line that was here all day today while I was gone, about "No events announced for the Holy Father today" right after the two events he did have today! I was rushing out this morning and did not bother to check how this post looked after I punched 'Reply', and I ought to know better than to take these things for granted. I'll try to be more careful.

GENERAL AUDIENCE
Sept. 5, 2012




'Prayer must begin with praise
of God for his gift of Christ'


Pope Benedict XVI held his weekly General Audience at the Aula Paolo VI in the Vatican today, during which he continued his reflections on Christian prayer.

The Pope flew by helicopter from Castel Gandolfo for the GA for the first time this summer. The Pope's catechesis was focused on the theme of prayer at the start of the Book of Revelation - also known as the Apocalypse. Here is how he synthesized the lesson in English:

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Today we consider the theme of prayer as found at the start of the Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse. In some ways, it is a difficult book, but it contains many riches. Even the opening verses of the Book contain a great deal: they tell us that prayer means, above all, listening to the God who speaks to us.

Today, amid the din of so many useless words, many people have lost the habit of listening, even to God’s word. The opening lines of the Apocalypse teach us that prayer is not just more words, asking God to grant our various needs, but rather it must begin as praise to God for his love, and for his gift of Jesus Christ, who has brought us strength, hope and salvation.

We are to welcome Jesus into our lives, to proclaim our "Yes!" to Christ and to nourish and deepen our Christian living. Constant prayer will reveal to us the meaning of God’s presence in our lives and in history.

Prayer with others, liturgical prayer in particular, will deepen our awareness of the crucified and risen Jesus in our midst. Thus, the more we know, love and follow Christ, the more we will want to meet him in prayer, for he is the peace, hope and strength of our lives.

He went on to greet English-speaking pilgrims:
I am pleased to welcome all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present today, including those from England, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States. I am especially pleased to welcome the group of Missionary Sisters Servants of the Holy Spirit as well as the young men and women of the Focolare Movement who have been participating in this year’s Genfest in Budapest.

Dear young people, you have taken to heart Christ’s call to promote unity in the human family by courageously building bridges. I therefore encourage you: be strong in your Catholic faith; and let the simple joy, the pure love, and the profound peace that come from the encounter with Jesus Christ make you radiant witnesses of the Good News before the young people of your own lands. God bless all of you abundantly!

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In August, Pope Benedict held his General Audiences at Castel Gandolfo. The return to the Vatican today comes just over a week before the Pope’s scheduled departure for Lebanon, from September 14th to 16th.




Here is a full translation of the catechesis:

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Dear brothers and sisters,

Today, after the interruption of the summer holiday, we resume the audiences at the Vatican, continuing in the 'school of prayer' that I have been living with you in these Wednesday catecheses.

I wish to speak today about prayer in the Book of the Apocalypse which, as you know, is the last book of the Old Testament. It is a difficult book, but it contains great wealth.

It brings us in contact with the living and palpitating prayer of the Christian community assembled "on the day of the Lord" (Ap 1,10); in fact, this is the basic feature on which the text develops.

A reader presents to the assembly a message entrusted by the Lord to the evangelist John. The reader and the assembly constitute, so to speak, the two protagonists in the development of the book. It is a festive address directed to them from the beginning: "Blessed is the one who reads aloud and blessed are those who listen to this prophetic message" (1,3).

From the constant dialog between them comes forth a symphony of prayer which develops with a great variety of forms to the conclusion of the book. Listening to the reader who presents the message, listening and observing the assembly which reacts to it, their prayer tends to become ours.

The first part of the Apocalypse (1,3-3,22) presents three successive phases in the attitude of the praying assembly. The first (1,4-8) is a dialog which develops - the only case in the New Testament - between the assembly that has just gathered and the reader who addresses them with a benedictory greeting: "Grace to you and peace" (1,4).

The reader proceeds, underlining the provenance of this greeting: It comes from the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are involved together in carrying forward the creative and salvific project for mankind.

The assembly listens, and when they hear Jesus Christ mentioned, they react with what is almost a jolt of joy, and they answer with enthusiasm, raising the following prayer of praise: "To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom, priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen." (1,5b-6),

The assembly, wrapped in Christ's love, feels freed from the bonds of sin and proclaims itself the 'kingdom' of Christ which belongs totally to him. They acknowledge the great mission that has been entrusted to them in Baptism to bring the presence of God to the world.

They conclude their hymn of praise by looking directly to Jesus once more, and with growing enthusiasm, acknowledge that he has 'the glory and the power' to save mankind.

The final Amen concludes the hymn of praise to Christ. The first four verses contain a great wealth of indications for us; they tell us that our prayer must be, above all, listening to God who speaks to us.

Submerged in words like these, we realize we have not been accustomed to hear them, and above all, to place ourselves in an interior and exterior disposition of silence in order to be attentive to what God wants to tell us.

These verses also teach us that our prayer, often only of request, must instead be, above all, praise of God for his love, for his gift of Jesus Christ who has brought us strength, hope and salvation.

A new intervention by the reader then reminds the assembly, which is gripped by their love for Christ, of the commitment to grasp his presence in their own lives. He says: "Behold, he is coming amid the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him. All the peoples of the earth will lament him" (1,7a).

After ascending to heaven in a 'cloud', symbol of transcendence (cfr Acts 1,9),, Jesus Christ returns as he had ascended to heaven (cfr Acts 1,11b). At that time, all peoples will acknowledge him and, as John exhorts in the fourth Gospel, "they will look upon him whom they have pierced" (19,37).

They will think about their own sins, the cause of his crucifixion, and like those who had been direct witnesses of it on Calvary, they will be 'beating their breasts' (Lk 23,48), asking forgiveness, so they can follow him in life and prepare for full communion with him after his final return.

The assembly reflects on this message, and says, "Yes, Amen" (Ap 1,7b). With their Yes, they are expressing their full acceptance of what has been communicated to them and ask that this may indeed become reality. It is the prayer of an assembly which meditates on the love of God manifested supremely on the Cross and which asks to live as befits disciples of Christ.

And God's responseis, “'I am the Alpha and the Omega', says the Lord God,'“the one who is and who was and who is to come, the almighty' (1,8). God, who reveals himself as the beginning and end of history, accepts and takes to heart the assembly's request. He was, is and will be present and active with his love in human affairs, in the present, in the future, as in the past, until man reaches the final goal. This is the promise of God.

And here we find another important element: constant prayer awakens in us a sense of the presence of the Lord in our life. His is a presence that sustains us, guides us, and gives us great hope even in the midst of the darkness of some human events.

Moreover, every prayer, even in the most radical solitude, is never an isolation, never sterile, but it is the vital lymph that nourishes an ever more committed and consistent Christian life.

The second phase of the assembly's prayer (1,9-22) further deepens the relationship with Jesus Christ: the Lord shows himself, he speaks, he acts, and the community, ever more closer to him, listens, reacts and welcomes him.

In the message presented by the reader, St. John recounts his own personal experience of encountering Christ: he finds himself on the island of Patmos "because I proclaimed God’s word and gave testimony to Jesus" (1,9) "on the Lord’s day", Sunday, on which the Resurrection is celebrated.

St. John is 'caught up in spirit' (1,10a). The Holy Spirit pervades and renews him, expanding his capacity to welcome Jesus, who asks him to write down his messages,

The prayer of the assembly that is listening gradually assumes a contemplative attitude, to the rhythm of the verbs 'see' and 'look': thus, it contemplates what the reader is proposing, interiorizing it and making it theirs.

John hears "a voice as loud as a trumpet" (1,10b),: the voice asks him to send a message "to the seven Churches" (1,11) found in Asia Minor, and through them, to all the Churches in all times, united with their Pastors.

The expression 'like a trumpet' taken from the Book of Exodus (cfr 20,18) recalls the divine manifestation to Moses on Mount Sinai and indicates the voice of God who speaks form heaven, from his transcendence.

Here it is attributed to the risen Jesus Christ, who speaks from the glory of the Father, with the voice of God, to the praying assembly. Turning "to see whose voice it was that spoke to me" (1,12), John sees "seven gold lampstands and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man" (1,12-13), terms referring to Jesus himself that are particularly familiar to John.

The golden lampstands with the candles lit indicate the Church in every age that is in an attitude of prayer in the Liturgy: the Risen Jesus, the 'Son of man', is in their midst, who, dressed in the robes of the High Priest in the Old Testament, carries out his priestly function of mediator with the Father.

In John's symbolic message, what follows is a luminous manifestation of the Risen Jesus, with the characteristics of Hod himself as they recur in the Old Testament. "The hair of his head was as white as white wool or as snow" (1,14), symbol of the eternity of God (cfr Dt 7,9) and of the resurrection.

A second symbol is that of fire, which in the Old Testament often refers to God to show two of his characteristics. The first is the jealous intensity of his love which animates his covenant with man (cfr Dt 4,24). It is this same burning intensity of love that is seen in the Risen Jesus: "His eyes were like a fiery flame" (Ap 1,14a).

The second is the unstoppable ability to triumph over evil like a 'devouring flame' (Dt 9,3). And so, even 'the feet' of Jesus, on the way to confront and destroy evil, have the incandescence of 'polished brass refined in a furnace' (Ap 1,15).

Jesus's voice, 'like the sound of rushing water' (1,15c), has the impressive rumble "of the glory of the God of Israel'moving towards Jerusalem, as the prophet Ezekiel said (cfr 43,2).

Three other symbolic elements follow which shows what the Risen Jesus is doing for his Church: he holds it firmly in his right hand, he speaks with the penetrating force of a sharp sword, and he shows the splendor of his divinity: "His face shone like the sun at its brightest" (Ap 1,16).

John is so overtaken by this stupendous experience of the Risen One that "he fell down at his feet as though dead".

After this experience of Revelation, the Apostle sees the Lord Jesus before him who speaks to him, reassures him, places one hand on his head, discloses himself as the one who had been crucified and resurrected, and gives him the responsibility of transmitting his message to the Churches (cfr Ap 1,17-18).

So beautiful was this God before him that John faints and falls as though dead! Jesus is the friend of life, and he places his hand on his head. And so he is, even for us. We are friends of Jesus.

The revelation of the Risen God, the Risen Christ, is not tremendous, but his encounter with John is. Even the assembly lives with John this special moment of light before the Lord, but one united with the daily encounter with Jesus, experiencing the richness of contact with the Lord that fills every space of existence.

In the third and last phase of this first part of the Apocalypse (Ap 2-3), the reader proposes to the assembly a sevenfold message in which Jesus speaks in the first person. Addressing the seven Churches of Asia Minor around Ephesus, Jesus enters right away into the situation of each Church, pointing out their lights and shadows, and pressing upon them an urgent appeal: "Repent!" (2,4,16; 3,19c); "Do the works you did at first" (2,5); "Hold fast to what you have" (3,11); "Be earnest, therefore, and repent" (3,19b).

These words of Jesus, heeded with faith, begin to take effect immediately: the Church in prayer, welcoming the Word of the Lord, is transformed. All the Churches should put themselves in the attitude of earnest listening to the Lord, opening up to the Spirit as Jesus asks insistently, repeating this command seven times: “Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2,7.11.17.29; 3,6.13.22).

The assembly listens to the message and receives a stimulus for repentance, conversion, perseverance, growing in love, orientation for the journey.

Dear friends, the Apocalypse presents us with a community united in prayer, because it is precisely in prayer that we become increasingly aware of the presence of Jesus with us and in us. The more and the better we pray with constancy, with intensity, the more we assimilate ourselves to him, and he truly enters into our live, and guides it, giving it peace and joy.

And the more we know, love and follow Jesus, the more we feel the need to pause in prayer with him, receiving serenity, hope and strength for our life. Thank you for your attention.

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Pope calls on African laity
to be committed to realizing
the 'continent of hope'

September 5, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI has sent a message to participants at the Pan-African Congress for the Laity taking place in Yaoundé, Cameroon.

The six-day meeting, under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, is intended to be "an event of hope in the evangelising mission and to help rediscover the beauty of being Christians in the African Continent". Linda Bordoni has this report:

Africa is close to the heart of Benedict XVI. He has visited the continent twice (Cameroon and Angola in March 2009, and Benin in November 2011), called for a second special assembly for Africa by the Synod of Bishops, which he formally summarized for the Church in the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Africae Munus.

In his message to the 300 participants of the Yaoundé Congress, the Pope stressed how the Church looks to Africa as the “Continent of Hope” with its wealth of spiritual resources which are part of traditional African Values.

“The love for life and for the family, a sense of joy and sharing, the enthusiasm of living the faith, all values that I have seen during my travels in Africa, and that are still etched in my heart, " he said, calling on Africans to "Never let the dark and nihilistic relativist mentality that affects various parts of the world, open a breach in your reality".

The delegates represent lay associations, ecclesial Movements and new communities.

Mons. Scicluna on tackling
accountability in the Church

Sept. 5, 2012

The “most tragic wound” in the Church and in society today is the abuse of power in all its forms: that theme is at the heart of a two- day conference that took place Sept. 4-5 at St Mary’s University College in Twickenham near London.

Bringing together theologians, psychologists, sociologists and other leading experts in the field, the meeting on "Overcoming abuse in Church and society" aimed to go beyond the sex abuse crisis and examine the broader context of power abuse that allowed such criminal activity to flourish.

One of the key speakers at the conference, entitled ‘Redeeming power: overcoming abuse in Church and society’, was Mons. Charles Scicluna, promoter of justice at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He told Vatican Radio’s Philippa Hitchen that empowerment and accountability are two of the keys to resolving the problems of abusive behaviour. He also says this week’s meeting was a significant step foollowing the encounter organised last February at the Gregorian University in Rome…

“Then, it was the hierarchy that had the opportunity to reflect on this most tragic wound in the Church and in society, (while) this is an important moment to move from the hierarchy to the theologians. I think that slowly, slowly, we’re getting towards a response which is truly ecclesial – we’re in this together, in suffering the wound and trying to respond to it - I think that’s a very important aspect that I bring away from the conference, to share concerns."

He adds that the response has necessarily to be interdisciplinary: “We need the input from psychology, sociology, psychiatry, we need the human sciences to not only diagnose, but also to have a prognosis and also an efficient therapy….”.

Mgr Scicluna notes we have a wealth of reflection from Pope Benedict himself on this subject, including his reflections during an address to the Roman Curia in 2010.

“He talked about the vision of Hildegard of Bingen, who will be declared a Doctor of the Church next month, and how the Church suffers because of our sins, but also the duty to go forward, to put the most awkward questions - how did we get to this situation and what can we do about it?”

Mons, Scicluna also explored two concepts which he says “need to enter into our vocabulary: the first is empowerment of people, not only to be on the receiving end, but also they should be proactive, not only in response but in prevention. The other is accountability – I realise there is no specific word in Italian - but I think the psychology and theology of it has to be developed in that we are accountable not only to God but to each other and to our peers in how we respond to difficult questions including sin and crime.”

Asked about the huge challenge of encouraging accountability within the hierarchical structures of the Catholic Church, Mgr Scicluna says “I think that is a challenge we have to take on, and I think the Holy Father is doing that by his example and by the way he addresses this question when he talks to priests, bishops and laity. I think that the moment we feel we are on the same page and we give a response together, then we are not only doing the right thing but also showing a good example.”

Father Schall has a respectful but very essential response to the no-holds-barred critique of the Catholic Church in the interview given by his fellow Jesuit, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, three weeks before he died and published posthumously by Corriere della Sera.

What is a Church for our times?
By James V. Schall, S.J.

Sept. 5, 2012

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, former archbishop of Milan, died this past week, God rest his soul, and an Italian newspaper published a final interview in which Martini said the Church is "200 years out-of-date." One can speculate what he meant by that — probably some sort of accommodation to “modern” life.

The Church, I suspect, was “out-of-date” the day it was founded, if "out-of-date" refers to something that is not just like everything else about us. The early Church found certain things in the Roman and Greek worlds it could accept and others it could not.

The Church has long taught that no new revelation can be expected after the death of the last Apostle. This is a sober thought in a world that longs for something “new” but refuses to look at the “newness” of the “good news.”

Basically, we were given everything we needed to know — or, better, that God wanted us to know — from the Church’s beginning. The task of the Church was primarily to keep in existence, essentially unchanged, the content of what was given over to her for safe-keeping. Logically, this understanding would make the Church a couple of thousand years out-of-date.

The Church exists to tell us of our personal supernatural destiny and how it is to be achieved, in Christ, in whatever society or culture that it encounters. The Church is a “body,” the Body of Christ. Its members belong to one another because they achieve the same end by the proper means, if they will.

Catholics do have a notion of the “development” of doctrine, which means the Church does not change and that the ways it expresses itself might become clearer, provided nothing substantial about what has been handed on is undermined or discarded.

The Church, though including finite human persons, does not exist as the result of a human initiative and planning. Even when the Apostles were told to “go forth and teach all nations,” it was quite clear that they themselves had no great plan. But it was clear that the Lord did have one for them to carry out.

If we look at this “plan” today, we have to wonder what it was and is. We wonder if it was “successful,” if it achieved and is achieving what the Lord wanted of it. We sense the plan is still operative, still in full force. It will not go away.

Certainly not all nations have been “taught,” or even properly contacted. Much opposition to the Church is found everywhere, in every time. Yet, we are loathe to maintain that the plan has failed. We suspect rather that a bigger plan was envisioned than any of those about which we had any idea. We hear of a plan “from the foundation of the world,” the very order that seems to be implicit in the notion of creation. The Holy Spirit, we are told, will be with us all days.

In a famous response to an objection in his Treatise on Law, Aquinas remarked that “although grace is more efficacious than nature, yet nature is more essential to man, and therefore more enduring” (I-II, 94, 6, ad 2).

The general question was whether the “law of nature can be blotted out from the hearts of men.” The objector thought that, since sin could blot out grace, it would even be more likely to blot out nature since grace is more efficacious than nature.

Aquinas granted that sin could blot out grace if we let it, such is its risk. But it could not wholly blot out our nature or the principles of right and wrong. In effect, this response means, to our question, that sin does interfere with the efficacy of God’s grace, though it cannot avoid God’s making His own response to our sinful ways to bring good even out of them. Grace can more easily be rejected by the way we choose to live. Nature keeps reminding us that our actions can contradict and judge us when we live in disorder of soul.

Thus we cannot so easily rid ourselves of the issue of right and wrong in the way we live and speak. Even here, however, we can go a surprisingly long way to blot out natural law and reason. We can do this blotting out particularly through accepting customs and positive laws that are designed to measure our actions in pursuit of our happiness.

In this context, the Church exists as a guarantee or remedy that the natural law itself retains its clarity and truth among us. We in fact live in a time when many of the basic principles of natural law are specifically rejected in positive civil laws and decrees in the name of a freedom to make ourselves to be what we want to be, whatever to the contrary God wants us to be. Given a choice between our own man-made conception of the human good and that of God’s understanding, we do well to follow the latter.

Benedict XVI pointed out in Spe Salvi that the alternate world we are constructing with our freedom, by rejecting secondary principles of natural law and grace, is a kind of this-worldly parody on the end for which we were in fact created and to which we are pointed in our very being. There is one little hitch here.

What we are ultimately invited to become is not something we can figure out by ourselves. We must receive what we are as a gift. Yet, on receiving it, we will be sure that it is really what we are intended to be even in our own particularity.

To maintain this gift status will be for many a denial of actual human nature. What is enduring in human nature is not only some sense of purpose or need for salvation in our being, but also the experiential realization that the human condition in any time and place manifests the same disorders in different configurations.

This state, what Christians call our fallen condition, will often seem to be our essential nature. We will thus seek to incorporate sinfulness into our lives in such a way that it becomes what man is and is supposed to do.

The Church does not exist to deny this presence and abidingness of what we call original sin among us. It does exist to explain it and to provide a means whereby we might reach the purpose of our creation in spite of sin. This path was given to us in divine revelation. But this cannot be accomplished without our active participation in the means provided for us to deal with sin. These means exist through the Church.

We often hear that the Church stresses “negative” things. The fact that it primarily emphasizes love, mercy, and forgiveness is often overlooked because the sinful side of our being is so graphic and upsetting of good order.

So, what is a Church “for our times”? Surely, it is a Church in which the same things given to the Apostles are still central, still taught, still preached, and still lived out in our daily lives.

The Church is not a couple of centuries behind our times. Rather it is ahead of our times in the sense that eternity and eternal life are ahead of our times.

In this sense, we are not ahead or behind any time. We are each given a certain amount of time during which we decide, through our actions and thoughts, how ultimately we want to be. We are given freedom to accomplish this purpose. This exercise of freedom is the one thing God will not interfere with, except in the sense of presenting to us a plan of salvation that best corresponds to what we are.