BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries today, 11/8/12.



Thursday, November 8, 31st Week in Ordinary Time

BLESSED JOHN DUNS SCOTUS (b Scotland 1266, d Cologne 1308), Franciscan, Scholastic Theologian
Benedict XVI has two major texts on today's saint - first his letter to commemorate the 7th centenary of his death in 2008
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_letters/documents/hf_ben-xvi_apl_20081028_duns-scoto...
and his catechesis on July 7, 2010, in the cycle on the great medieval thinkers of the Catholic faith
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20100707...
One of the most influential thinkers of the Middle Ages, Duns Scotus taught in Oxford, Paris, and Cologne, where he died.
His ideas on the Immaculate Conception were adopted by Pius IX when he proclaimed the dogma more than five centuries later,
in 1854. The 'Doctor Subtilis'. was beatified in 1993 by John Paul II.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110812.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- H.E. Mons. Giuseppe Lazzarotto, Apostolic Nuncio to Israel and Cyprus, and Apostolic Delegate
in Jerusalem and Palestine

= H.E. Mons. Antonio Franco, Apostolic Nuncio

= H.E. Mons. Michael Louis Fitzgerald, Apostolic Nuncio

- Participants of the Plenary Session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Address in English.

The Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog released the Vatican greeting this year to the Hindus
of the world on the occasion of their major holiday Diwali or Deepavali, the so-called Festival of Lights
which will be celebrated on November 13.

The Pope's condolences for
the victims of Guatemala earthquake
Translated from

November 8, 2012

The Vatican Press Office released the text of the Holy Father's telegram of condolences and sympathy for the victims of the earthquake in Guatemala yesterday. The text has been translated from Spanish.

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Most Excellent Mons. RODOLFO VALENZUELA NÚÑEZ
Bishop of Vera Paz
President of the Bishops' Conference of Guatemala
GUATEMALA

I was deeply saddened to learn the news about the earthquake that has claimed numerous victims as well as great material damage in your beloved country.

I wish to extend to all its sons and daughters my spiritual closeness, as I offer my fervent prayers for the eternal rest of those who passed away and appeal to the Almighty that he may bestow his comfort on those who have been affected by this enormous misfortune and inspire fraternal brotherhood in facing this adversity.

At the same time, I affectionately encourage the Christian communities, civilian institutions and men of good will to provide effective assistance to the victims in a spirit of generosity and solicitous charity.

With these sentiments, as I invoke the loving protection of Our Lady of the Rosary, I impart a comforting Apostolic Blessing as a sign of my affection for the beloved people of Guatemala, who a e always in my heart.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

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The next Archbishop of Canterbury
- Justin Welby, who has been Bishop of Durham since November last year, has been chosen as the new Archbishop of Canterbury, according to reports in the British press today. After weeks of silence, Lambeth Palace (the official residence of the spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion worldwide) should finally make the nomination of 56 year old Welby, official. The new archbishop will replace Rowan Williams whose resignation comes into effect in December.

According to the press, Downing Street has already been informed of the name of the new head of the Church of England. and a spokesman for the Birtish prime minister said the government expects an official announcement to be made very soon.

Benedict XVI to Academy of Sciences:
'Science shows ever more clearly
that the universe is not chaos
but an ordered complexity that
inspires contemplation of the Creator'

November 8, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI today addressed the annual plenary session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, reflecting on the current theory of complexity and analogy inherent in all physical and biological systems. The speech was delivered in English

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Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

I greet the members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on the occasion of this Plenary Assembly, and I express my gratitude to your President, Professor Werner Arber, for his kind words of greeting in your name. I am also pleased to salute Bishop Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo, your Chancellor, and to thank him for his important work on your behalf.

The present plenary session, on “Complexity and Analogy in Science: Theoretical, Methodological and Epistemological Aspects”, touches on an important subject which opens up a variety of perspectives pointing towards a new vision of the unity of the sciences.

Indeed, the significant discoveries and advances of recent years invite us to consider the great analogy of physics and biology which is clearly manifested every time that we achieve a deeper understanding of the natural order.

If it is true that some of the new notions obtained in this way can also allow us to draw conclusions about processes of earlier times, this extrapolation points further to the great unity of nature in the complex structure of the cosmos and to the mystery of man’s place within it.

The complexity and greatness of contemporary science in all that it enables man to know about nature has direct repercussions for human beings. Only man can constantly expand his knowledge of truth and order it wisely for his good and that of his environment.

In your discussions, you have sought to examine, on the one hand, the ongoing dialectic of the constant expansion of scientific research, methods and specializations and, on the other, the quest for a comprehensive vision of this universe in which human beings, endowed with intelligence and freedom, are called to understand, love, live and work.

In our time the availability of powerful instruments of research and the potential for highly complicated and precise experiments have enabled the natural sciences to approach the very foundations of corporeal reality as such, even if they do not manage to understand completely its unifying structure and ultimate unity.

The unending succession and the patient integration of various theories, where results once achieved serve in turn as the presuppositions for new research, testify both to the unity of the scientific process and to the constant impetus of scientists towards a more appropriate understanding of the truth of nature and a more inclusive vision of it.

We may think here, for example, of the efforts of science and technology to reduce the various forms of energy to one elementary fundamental force, which now seems to be better expressed in the emerging approach of complexity as a basis for explanatory models. If this fundamental force no longer seems so simple, this challenges researchers to elaborate a broader formulation capable of embracing both the simplest and the most complex systems.

Such an interdisciplinary approach to complexity also shows that the sciences are not intellectual worlds disconnected from one another and from reality but rather that they are interconnected and directed to the study of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality in its undoubted complexity.

Such a vision has fruitful points of contact with the view of the universe taken by Christian philosophy and theology, with its notion of participated being, in which each individual creature, possessed of its proper perfection, also shares in a specific nature and this within an ordered cosmos originating in God’s creative Word.

It is precisely this inbuilt “logical” and “analogical” organization of nature that encourages scientific research and draws the human mind to discover the horizontal co-participation between beings and the transcendental participation by the First Being.

The universe is not chaos or the result of chaos, rather, it appears ever more clearly as an ordered complexity which allows us to rise, through comparative analysis and analogy, from specialization towards a more universalizing viewpoint and vice versa.

While the very first moments of the cosmos and life still elude scientific observation, science nonetheless finds itself pondering a vast set of processes which reveals an order of evident constants and correspondences and serves as essential components of permanent creation.

It is within this broader context that I would note how fruitful the use of analogy has proved for philosophy and theology, not simply as a tool of horizontal analysis of nature’s realities, but also as a stimulus to creative thinking on a higher transcendental plane.

Precisely because of the notion of creation, Christian thought has employed analogy not only for the investigation of worldly realities, but also as a means of rising from the created order to the contemplation of its Creator, with due regard for the principle that God’s transcendence implies that every similarity with his creatures necessarily entails a greater dissimilarity: Whereas the structure of the creature is that of 'being' by participation, that of God is that of 'being' by essence, Esse subsistens.

In the great human enterprise of striving to unlock the mysteries of man and the universe, I am convinced of the urgent need for continued dialogue and cooperation between the worlds of science and of faith in the building of a culture of respect for man, for human dignity and freedom, for the future of our human family and for the long-term sustainable development of our planet.

Without this necessary interplay, the great questions of humanity leave the domain of reason and truth, and are abandoned to the irrational, to myth, or to indifference, with great damage to humanity itself, to world peace and to our ultimate destiny.

Dear friends, as I conclude these reflections, I would like to draw your attention to the Year of Faith which the Church is celebrating in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council.

In thanking you for the Academy’s specific contribution to strengthening the relationship between reason and faith, I assure you of my close interest in your activities and my prayers for you and your families. Upon all of you I invoke Almighty God’s blessings of wisdom, joy and peace.

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The Academy itself presented this statement about the premises of this year's plenary conference theme:

Complexity and analogy in science:
Theoretical, methodological and epistemological aspects

In the past decades scientific investigations have been quite successful by reductionistic research approaches. But scientists are ever more aware that their specific knowledge obtained so far will have to become integrated into a more holistic understanding of the reality of nature, which shows ever higher degrees of complexity and analogy.

Evidence of this can be found, for example, in micro and macro physics as well as in biological systems. The Council presumes that most of our Academicians will be able to contribute with their personal view and experience to the proposed topic. This can offer a welcome occasion to learn from one another and to outline promising approaches for future scientific investigations.

The concept of complexity in science has many different meanings with regard to theoretical, methodological and epistemological aspects, while its basic meaning remains stable.

It is, first of all, the theory of nonlinear complex systems, which is used with regard to physics and quantum systems as well as to cellular organisms and the brain. The aim of the Plenary Session is to explore the important concept of complexity in science in general and in different scientific disciplines.

Are the concepts used analogous, or can a phenomenon be, for instance, complex from the biological point of view, but not from the physical one? Shall our practice just ignore problems we cannot currently handle – or can science render apparently complex systems in simple underlying theories?

Furthermore, is there a difference between complex and complicated such that some complex systems are not actually complicated even though all complicated systems are indeed complex? In general, complexity has become an important area of research in several disciplines in the last decades. For instance, the complexity and the ensuing unpredictability of weather systems has been known for a long time.

In systemic approaches to fully understand functions and evolution of life, one may have to consider each individual organism as a complex system of biological functions, then each ecosystem as a complex system of mutually interactive organisms belonging to different species, and finally, the entire living world together with its different habitats as a large planetary system

Here is the English text of the message from the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog to the Hindus of the world on the occasion of their celebration of the festival of lights (Diwali or Deepavali) on November 13.

Diwali means 'garland of lights' but also 'awareness of the inner light". The Hindu world's most important holiday is celebrated at the start of the Lunar New Year and commemorates, on the religious and mythical levels, significant events representing triumphs by the Hindu gods. Over five millennia, it has accumulated traditions and customs akin to Christmas traditions and customs in the Christian world. Anyone who has ever been in India at Diwali finds it an awesome and unforgettable experience.

MESSAGE FOR THE FEAST OF DIWALI IN 2012

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Christians and Hindus: Forming the young generations into peacemakers

Dear Hindu Friends,

1. The Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue sends its warmest greetings and congratulations on the occasion of this year’s Deepavali celebrations. May fellowship and fraternity shine forth more and more in your families and communities.

2. At this point in time in human history, when various negative forces threaten the legitimate aspirations in many regions of the world for peaceful co-existence, we would like to use this cherished tradition of sharing with you a reflection to explore the responsibility that Hindus, Christians and others have in doing everything possible to form all people, especially the young generation, into peace-makers.

3. Peace is not merely absence of war, nor is it a pact or treaty which ensures a tranquil life; rather, it is being complete and intact, a restoration of harmony (cf.BENEDICT XVI, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, 9) and a fruit of charity. Parents, teachers, elders, religious and political leaders, peace-workers, those in the world of communications and all those who have the cause of peace at heart are called to educate the young generation, and are called to foster such wholeness.

4. To form young men and women into people of peace and builders of peace is an urgent summons to collective engagement and common action. If peace is to be authentic and enduring, it must be built on the pillars of truth, justice, love and freedom (cf.JOHN XXIII, Pacem in Terris, 35), and all young men and women need to be taught above all to act truthfully and justly in love and freedom. Furthermore, in all education for peace, cultural differences ought surely to be treated as a richness rather than a threat or danger.

5. The family is the first school of peace and the parents the primary educators for peace. By their example and teachings, they have the unique privilege of forming their children in values that are essential for peaceful living: mutual trust, respect, understanding, listening, sharing, caring and forgiving.

In schools, colleges and universities, as young people mature by relating, studying and working with others from different religions and cultures, their teachers and others responsible for their training have the noble task of ensuring an education that respects and celebrates the innate dignity of all human beings and promotes friendship, justice, peace and cooperation for integral human development.

With spiritual and moral values as the bedrock of education, it becomes their ethical imperative also to caution the students against ideologies that cause discord and division.

While states and individual leaders in the social, political and cultural fields, generally have their own important roles to play in strengthening the education of the young, religious leaders in particular, by reason of their vocation to be spiritual and moral leaders, must continue to inspire the young generation to walk the path of peace and to become messengers of peace.

Since all means of communication greatly shape the way people think, feel and act, those involved in these fields must, to the utmost possible extent, contribute to promoting thoughts, words, and works of peace.

Indeed, young people themselves ought to live up to the ideals they set for others, by employing their freedom responsibly and by promoting cordial relationships for a culture of peace.

6. Evidently, the wholeness which peace conveys will shape a more fraternal world and a “new kind of fraternity” among people in which “a shared sense of the greatness of each person” will prevail. (cf. BENEDICT XVI, Apostolic Journey to Lebanon, Meeting with Members of the Government, Institutions of the Republic, the Diplomatic Corps, Religious leaders and Representatives from the world of culture, 15 September 2012).

7. May all of us seek, always and everywhere, to adhere to the moral and religious imperative to inspire the young as they strive to become peace-makers.Wish you all a Blessed Deepavali!

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President
Fr. Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, M.C.C.J, Secretary

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Maverick Vaticanista Antonio Socci, who has written many excellent articles about the Church and Benedict XVI over the years, in between which he has also published stories (more like his idiosyncratic personal opinions) which none of his fellow Vaticanistas have picked up - such as that in September 2011 about Benedict XVI planning to resign when he turned 85, or Socci's long-standing insistence that there was a 'fourth secret' revealed by Our Lady at Fatima which the Vatican has been suppressing and even denying that it exists at all - has once again put forward as fact his own personal speculation about a papal pardon for convicted document thief Paolo Gabriele. A speculation that, unusually, Andrea Tornielli sought on the same day to shoot down...

So the Pope sent Gabriele a book of Psalms -
that doesn't mean clemency from his sentence
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from the Italian service of

November 8, 2012

Benedict XVI has supposedly forgiven - i.e., granted clemency - to his ex-valet and now convicted thief Paolo Gabriele for pilfering the Pope's private documents and providing them to journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi for publication.

That's according to newsman and author Antonio Socci, in an article today for Libero, the newspaper he writes for regularly.

After recalling that Gabriele had sent a letter of apology to the Pope through the three-man cardinals' commission that investigated Vatileaks administratively for the Pope, Socci writes:

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"When the secretary of the commission, Fr. Martiniani, delivered the handwritten letter to the Pope - in which Gabriele reportedly says he is aware of having offended the Pope and betraying his trust, for which he asked forgiveness - Benedict XVI responded by sending Gabriele a book of Psalms that he had cited in his letter.

The book carries the Pope's signature with an apostolic blessing personally addressed to Gabriele, as well as the seal of the Pope's personal secretariat. It was brought directly from Castel Gandolfo (where the Pope was in residence last summer) into the hands of Gabriele. The Pontiff also showed concern for the situation of the ex-valet's family.

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Socci goes on to say that "All this was a premise for the papal clemency that was expected after the court verdict".

Socci claims that sending the book was a concrete sign of the Pope's forgiveness. [I don't think anyone doubts that the Pope has forgiven Gabriele - that goes without saying. But forgiving someone because he has offended you personally is not equivalent to granting papal clemency from a legitimate court verdict! Besides, the Pope cannot forgive him in behalf of all the other persons he directly and indirectly offended by his presumptuously hubristic actions.]

On the other hand, Socci claims that a papal clemency has not been announced only because Cardinal Bertone has opposed it, on the ground that Gabriele had not apologized to his other victims [of whom Bertone is far and away the person cast most negatively by the documents].

In this respect, Socci underscores the harshness of a statement released by the Secretariat of State on October 25 when Gabriele went back to the Vatican Police headquarters to begin serving his prison term of 18 months. He adds the wish that "the goodness and wisdom of the Holy Father will ultimately prevail... as an example for the world. Padre Pio used to say, 'God wishes our misery to be the throne for his mercy'."

However, it is difficult to imagine that the October 25 statement could have been released without the approval of the Holy Father, even as it is questionable to suppose that the failure to announce a papal clemency for Gabriele did not depend on the Pope's will at all, since such a decision is his alone and is exclusive to him.

Moreover, by implying that Benedict XVI has no will of his own, that he would be influenced even in exercising any of his sole exclusive prerogatives, Socci is buying into Gabriele's patently fallacious delusion that this Pope is not just misinformed and uninformed about what's happening in the Vatican but is thereby being manipulated by his subordinates.

In addition, what does it say of the Pope's respect for the judicial system if he simply decides to set aside the Vatican court's verdict with a decree of clemency? John Paul II did not ask the Italian authorities to grant clemency to Ali Agca even if he did forgive him personally. To begin with, why on earth did all those covering this dreadful episode assume from the start that Benedict XVI would be less respectful of the criminal justice system and simply allow Gabriele to get off scot-free?

How can someone like Socci. who can be so right and persuasive about certain things, be so wrong and misguided in others?

P.S. Here's what ASCA reports about this non-story:

Christian forgiveness must not be
confused with executive clemency


VATICAN CITY, Nov. 8 (Translated from ASCA) - Reliable Vatican sources told ASCA today that Christian forgiveness must not be confused with executive clemency (in this case, specifically, papal clemency) which could reduce or set aside a judicial verdict.

This was their comment on a story in Libero claiming that the Pope had already exercised a pardon or clemency in the case of convicted document thief Paolo Gabriele because he sent him a book of Psalms with his signed Apostolic Blessing.

"Pardon is a duty that Christians are called on to exercise towards others, but it does not mean that the offender should not make reparation nor that he can thereby escape being penalized. Forgiveness is not equivalent to granting legal clemency, which, in the Vatican, is the exclusive prerogative of the Pope," the sources pointed out.

P.S. Actually, Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi must also be faulted because in his many press briefings before and after Paolo Gabriele's trial, he kept volunteering that papal clemency was almost certain and that it would come soon. It turns out he is completely wrong, and he had no business to assume it based on his own personal opinion, as it seems. Again, he might have been semantically confusing forgiveness by the Pope, which goes without saying, with a pardon in the sense of exempting Gabriele from the penal consequences of his actions. But the difference is not semantic - it is real, actual and significant.

On the historiography of Vatican-II:
A second book by Mons. Marchetto
by Cardinal Raffaele Farina
Emeritus Archivist-Librarian of the Holy Roman Church
Translated from the 11/8/12 issue of


Editor's Note: Yesterday afternoon, Nov. 7, a new book by Archbishop Agostino Marchetto, entitled Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II. Per la sua corretta ermeneutica (The Second Vatican Council: For its correct interpretation) (Vatican City, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2012, 386 pp), was presented at the Sala Pietro di Cortona in Rome's City Hall.

Participating in the roundtable discussion were Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar for Rome; Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant'Egidio Community and a cabinet minister in the government of Prime Minister Mario Monti; and Cardinal Raffaele Farina, emeritus Librarian-Archivist of the Holy Roman Church, whose presentation we publish herewith:

I first met Mons. Marchetto in Munich at the first and only international congress organized so far by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, from Sept. 16-10, 1086. The theme of the congress was "Falschungen in Mittelalter" (Falsifications in the Middle Ages), and the opening remarks were delivered by Umberto Eco on 'The typology of falsification'.

At the time, Eco was basking in the worldwide success of his first novel, Il nome della Rosa, published in 1980, which was a sort of sublimation of falsification.

Mons. Marchetto arrived in Munich from Madagascar where he had been Apostolic Nuncio for a year, his first diplomatic assignment for the Holy See. The title of his paper in Munich was "The 'fate' of a falsification: Is the spirit of the Pseudo-Isidore hovering over the new Code of Canon Law?" A title which was subtly provocative, suggesting a style of writing and discourse which is not absent from the book we present tonight.

The book is clearly divided into two parts: a brief one about the reception of Vatican II, and a more ample section regarding the hermeneutic - or key to interpreting - Vatican II.

This hermeneutic, after having been examined in the two conciliar Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI, and in some private sources, is identified and described in three categories: the hermeneutic of rupture, the hermeneutic of rupture according to the traditionalists, and the hermeneutic of reform in continuity.

This close examination of the reception of the Council ['reception' in this sense refers to how the teachings of the Council, collectively and individually, have been perceived by the public and those within the Church herself, and whether these teachings have been accepted or rejected based on that perception] = with the exception of the six final presentations in the book which were previously unpublished - anthologizes his writings about the Council in 28 articles published between 1998 and 2011.

In 2005, Mons. Marchetti had published an analogous volume entitled Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II: Contrappunto per la sua storia (The Second Vatican Council: Counterpoint to its history. that collected 48 articles he had written about Vatican II from 1990-1998,

It was about historiography, as Marchetto rightly notes on Page 300 of the new book, which is a continuation - altogether, 35 years covering the story of how the Council has been reported in the media and in books. There are 52 articles in the new book, most of them Mons. Marchetto's reviews of books or major articles about Vatican II.

Without going into other formal details, let me get into the substance of the book by quoting Benedict XVI. On December 22, 2005, on the occasion of his first Christmas address as Pope to the Roman Curia, he gave an address that reviewed the events of 2005 within the Church. In it, he devoted a considerable part to the subject of Vatican II and its correct interpretation.

Mons. Marchetto's book follows the structure of the Pope's presentation, distributing his material according to a distinction between reception and hermeneutic, and then classifying current opinions as he reviewed them, according to the hermeneutic of rupture [in the progressivist 'spirit of Vatican II'[, the hermeneutic of rupture in the traditionalist sense, and the hermeneutic of continuity, or more precisely, as Benedict XVI first formulated it, the hermeneutic of reform as renewal in continuity.

The term 'reform' carries a very strong weight which I would distinguish from renewal. Reform has to do with 'the purity and integrity of doctrine, without attenuation or distortion' in the words of John XXIII and cited by Benedict XVI.

The distinction between reform and aggiornamento (updating) ( a term used by both John XIII and Paul VI) was clearly made by Paul VI when he spoke of the need for the Church, before anything else, to reform herself internally, to return to her origins in some way, and consequently - not necessarily in the temporal sense alone - to present herself to the world in a way that would be adequate to confront various situations.

Taking the Council itself and its two Popes as a point of reference, one can identify, although not with absolute precision, a logical and consistent use of the terms aggiornamento, reform and renewal.

One can define aggiornamento as the desire of the Church to make herself credible to those who are not in the Church, whereas reform is her intention to make herself credible to herself, to her members.

Aggiornamento has to do with elements linked to time and space, and to the institution - an adjustment to different times and different places or contexts. Reform has to do with elements that are more substantial and more specific - it proposes internal purification of the individual Catholic as well as of the community, seeking to come closer to the ideal of the early Church, liberating the Church from the incrustations she acquired over time and space.

And so, renewal of the Church consists in the double dynamic of aggiornamento which is external, and reform which is internal, which - although sometimes conditioned by its evolution in time - is always coordinated and guided by the inscrutable action of the Holy Spirit which animates, guards and leads the Church.

After Vatican II, the Church moved from aggiornamento - the effort to make herself credible to the world (as John XXIII did), to reform - to make herself credible to her own members first. The latter was the patient work undertaken by Paul VI = before the Church can make herself credible to 'others' throughaggiornamento, she had first to be credible to her members, by reforming as needed.

This is the process of renewal - restauratio et renovatio universae Ecclesiae - that is never completed, for the Church, consisting of reform and aggiornamento.

I wish also to recall something obvious from the texts of the Conciliar Popes. Benedict XVI speaks of the correct hermeneutic for the Council, namely the right way of reading its texts and of applying them.

But if we consider the application of the Council as it has occurred so far and as it is at present, we face a picture that is more complex and variegated than simply a reading of the texts, and one that is conditioned by events of the global village which necessarily involve even those who do not wish to be involved, much less take responsibility for unforeseen consequences.

'Operative' texts of the Council which have had inadequate or weak applicatory regulation, or which have not had any at all, have created a series of problems and serious situations which have been and continue to be oppressive for the Church.

The conclusion of Vatican II in 1965, the initial dissemination of its texts and their initial application from 1965 to 1975 coincided unfortunately with the general student uprisings of 1968 and the specific ones in the pontifical universities and faculties starting in 1978.

The strong emotive and often explosive charge inherent in the protests contaminated the processes of applying the teachings of the Council. But we can cite other events and other situations which similarly affected the reception of the Council negatively, not everywhere, obviously, and not in the same way or with the same intensity.

What I wish to underscore is the ever-more relevant importance in our time of the management aspect, that indispensable ability to govern, and of the right preparation for those who are in positions of management.

Giovanni Falcone [1939-1992, an Italian magistrate who spent most of his professional life trying to curb the power of the Mafia in Sicily and was eventually killed by the Mafia] once observed, "If you are attentive to substance but not to form, then you will end up not giving a damn about either form or substance".

If it is true, as it is, that in presenting the doctrine of the Church, we must do in accordance with the demand of the times, then we must pay attention to the way in which we do it, to how the Church governs, to the proper preparation of the persons in managerial and administrative positions, so that whatever was established by the Council and the Church are executed precisely in a time and manner that has been previously established.

Mons. Marchetto's reviews of writings about Vatican II, as I said, occupy the major part of the book. They are typical of his style which does not follow the usual form of first going through a systematic description of what the book or article contains followed by specific positive and critical comments.

In general, Marchetto goes straight into his specific criticism, citing the page and the questioned content. To those who are familiar with the subject, he offers a mine - I would call it a factory, because mines can be exhausted - of historico-critical material, especially on the story of the reception of Vatican II and of its hermeneutic.

He concludes the book with half a dozen previously unpublished essays that one reads with great interest as they are rich in content and original perceptions. The author's imprint is clearly scene in his precise choice of themes, the clarity of his discourse which is free of attenuations or of any ambiguity. There is also an interview and a collection of press clippings that can serve as a preparation for the book itself. I ask you to read them first because I believe they will help in a fuller understanding of the entire book.

Let me give a small sampling of the riches in this book. It comes from a long review (pp 180-192) of a book by John O'Malley, What happened at Vatican II (Italian edition published in 2010).

Marchetto dwells on Chapter i, on the terminology used and analyzed by the author, who refers to 'the spirit of the Council'. The indeterminacy of the word 'spirit' can be concretized and becomes verifiable only when one pays attention to the style of the Council itself, the uniqueness of its literary form and its language, and drawing the consequences therefrom.

"Examining the 'letter' (the form and terminology of the texts)," O'Malley says, "one can arrive at its 'spirit'". Certainly, Marchetto says, if one means that this 'spirit' is that of the documents, we can agree.

But if this 'spirit' "sets apart Vatican II from all other ecumenical Councils, and considers it 'unique'," without considering the doctrinal-dogmatic-pastoral-disciplinary continuity of the extraordinary Magisterium of all the Councils, but rather affirms a rupture with everything that preceded it, we cannot possibly share O'Malley's thinking.

My own hope is that Mons. Marchetto will soon give us a book that is systematic, complete and exhaustive about the history of Vatican -II.

I thought Cardinal Farina did an effective and necessary job of 'defining' and distinguishing the terms aggiornamento, reform and renewal, especially of characterizing Benedict XVI's idea of renewal in continuity as being a synthesis of aggiornamento and reform, so that the Church renews herself continually )Ecclesia semper riformando) both in internal purification and in how she presents herself to the world.

P.S. I was struck by an observation made above by Cardinal Farina:

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'Operative' texts of the Council which have had inadequate or weak applicatory regulation, or which have not had any at all, have created a series of problems and serious situations which have been and continue to be oppressive for the Church.

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It struck me for the first time that a most obvious deficiency by the powers-that-be at the Vatican after Vatican-II was the failure to issue 'implementing norms' for each of the 16 documents, in the same way, to take the most obvious example, that the CDF has issued implementing norms for John Paul II's motu proprio that transferred competence over sex abuses committed by priests to the CDF, and further implementing norms later on its own guidelines on how to deal with such abuses at the local and diocesan levels.

It was incumbent on the Church leadership to lay down such implementing norms after Vatican-II - it would have pre-empted the open-ended laissez-faire interpretations imposed by the progressivists on public opinion by their sheer dominance of the media.

Why was it not done? Probably because it was not done at previous ecumenical councils. But one very obvious fact of aggiornamento which the hierarchy failed to take seriously was the new and crushingly effective power of the new media in shaping public opinion in the global village - and failing to adjust to that reality, as it continues to be inadequately adjusted to it! No institution can allow the media to shape its message for the public, because it will always be a distorted or, at best, incomplete message. If the Church has an important message to make, she must go out ahead of everyone to transmit that message as promptly and as effectively as it can, using the very technology of media to her advantage.

A secondary oversight was that it was most unrealistic to expect bishops and priests. much less the faithful in general, to grasp on their own what Vatican-II really meant to say through its texts. Churchspeak, no matter how well-intended, is never easy to read, and in the case of Vatican-II, its participants had made it known that some language was left ambiguous in order to get a consensus vote on a specific document. It was the duty of the hierarchy to immediately clarify those ambiguities in implementing norms that should have used mandatory terms unequivocally. For instance, if implementing norms had been issued based on Sacrosanctum concilium, then all the liberal mis-interpretations may have been avoided or at least minimized. Because then, it would have been made clear that the use of Latin was not completely banned, that the local language was not meant to completely replace it, that appropriate music was to be used and Gregorian chant encouraged, and who knows, it might have been pointed out that the New Mass does not invalidate the traditional Mass.

I am not familiar enough with the Catechism of the Catholic Church , but I gather from what I have read about it and from the specific sections I have had to look up over the past seven years, that it quotes liberally from Vatican-II in laying down the doctrine of the Church. Perhaps someone should systematize those quotations into a "practical and correct guide to understanding Vatican-II", to begin with. Or maybe someone somewhere is already working on such an undertaking, supplementing it with Benedict XVI's always illuminating reflections on Vatican-II.



From a Portuguese blog, Fratres in unum.com, to which I was led through Carlota, who writes and translates from Spanish and Portuguese for Beatrice's site, a most interesting and quite surprising excerpt from Prof. Roberto De Mattei's 2011 history of Vatican-II, written from an orthodox centrist point of view...

What the future Council Fathers
expected of Vatican II when
they were asked in 1959:
Moderate reforms, condemnation of Communism,
and new dogmas about the Virgin Mary
by Roberto De Mattei
from 'Il Concilio Vaticano II: Una storia mai scritta'

In the summer of 1959, responses started arriving in Rome from the bishops of the world and the superiors of religious orders and of Catholic universities, to the solicitations of their thoughts regarding the upcoming Second Vatican Council by Cardinal Domenico Tardini (then Vatican Secretary of State).

Sifting through the immense mass of material began in September and was completed by January 1960. Those close to 3,000 letters make up the material in the eight volumes of the Acta et documenta concilio Vaticano II apparando” [1].

A careful analysis of the material now allows the historian - as, at the time, it allowed the Pope, the Curia, and the Council's Preparatory Commission - to get an overview of the thinking of the worldwide Church hierarchy on the eve of the Council.

The wishes expressed by the future Council Fathers, considered altogether, were not about a radical turnaround, much less a revolution within the Church [2]. While it is true that the anti-Roman tendencies of some bishops appeared clearly in the responses of people like Cardinal Alfrink [3], Archbishop of Utrecht, in general, the future Council participants were interested in moderate 'reform' within the line of tradition.

Majority of the suggestions advocated a condemnation of modern evils, both internal and external to the Church, but above all, of Communism, as well as new doctrinal 'definitions' particularly with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The British bishops, for instance, wished the Council to denounce the evils of contemporary society, and submitted no proposals for any radical reform [4]. The same with the French bishops who were even then considered the most progressivist, yet what many of them wanted was a condemnation of Marxism and Communism, while a consistent minority sought the declaration of a dogma that would define the mediation of Mary [5].

As for the Belgian bishops, Claude Soetens who analyzed their suggestions, underscored the "rather deceptive nature" of their recommendations "which were hardly suggestive of a true renewal of the Church", confirming the impression that these 1959 responses were different from the attitudes they subsequently took during the Council itself [6].

The Italian bishops, who were the most numerous, wanted the Council to proclaim the dogma of the 'universal mediation of the Blessed Virgin Mary' [7]. A second dogma which they wanted declared was about the Kingship of Jesus to counteract an already dominant secularism [8]. Many wanted the Council to condemn doctrinal errors [9], 91 wanted a reiteration of the Church's condemnation of Communism, 57 expressed their objection to existentialist atheism, 47 against moral relativism, 31 against materialism, 24 against modernism [9].

Among the thousands of letters received from around the world, Communism was referred to as the most serious error that the Council ought to denounce. [And yet, what I have always felt to be an egregious 'defect' of the Council was the deliberate decision to avoid any mention of Communism at all. This has been explained as a choice made in order to facilitate behind-the-scenes negotiations of the Church with the Communist regimes to minimize or alleviate the persecution of Church pastors and faithful behind the Iron Curtain. However meritorious the reason for this deliberate choice, Vatican II thus 'perpetrates' a falsification of history by failing to name the most obvious contemporary threat to human dignity and to Christian principles.]

In the report that summarized the responses, which was later elaborated by the Secretariat of the Preparatory Commissions, Communism also figured as the first error that the Council ought to condemn. [11]

It is interesting to point out to an analogy between the wishes of the Council Fathers and the Cahiers de Doleance [Notebooks of Complaints) published in France for the Estates=General meeting of 1789. Before the French Revolution, none of the 'notebooks' proposed subverting the bases of the ancien regime, namely the monarchy and the Church.

"None of the Cahiers proposed that the Estates-General should have the purpose of negating all pre-existent power and to re-create this ex novo"," the historian Armando Saitta underxcores. [12] What they were asking for was a moderate reform of these institutions and not their subversion, which resulted when the Estates-General did meet.

Likewise in the case of Vatican II, Fr. O'Malley concluded in his book, What Happened at Vatican II, "in general, the answers wanted to reinforce the status quo, condemn modern evils, within and outside the Church, and other doctrinal definitions especially regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary" [13]

But the Council did not heed the recommendations presented to the Preparatory Commission, choosing instead to push the claims of a minority who succeeded from the beginning, in taking control of the Council and orient its decision. This is the irrefutable conclusion from an analysis of historical facts.

NOTES:
[1] The 'votes' were collated in the Acta et documenta Concilio Oecumenico Vaticano II apparando — Series I (Antepraeparatoria), cit.. Of the 2594 future Council Fathers, 1988 sent their responses, namely 77% (cf. E. FOUILLOUX), ‹‹ La fase ante-preparatoria (1959-1960) ››, cit., pp. 112-113).

[2] For a global analysis of the votes, see À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit.,and Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 101-177. Regarding the Italian bishops, cf MAURO VELATI, 'I consila et vota dei vescovi italiani', in À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit., pp. 83-97; ROBERTO MOROZZO DELLA ROCCA, "I voti dei vescovi italiani per il Concilio", in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 119-137.

[3] AD, I-II, pp. 509-516. Bernard Jan Alfrink (1900-1987), Dutch, ordained in 1924, Archbishop of Utrecht starting 1955, created cardinal in 1960, member of the Preparatory Commission and the Presidential Council of Vatican II. Cf. FABRIZIO DE SANTIS, Alfrink, il cardinale d’Olanda, Longanesi, Milão, 1969; TON H. M. VAN SCHAIK, Alfrink, Een biografie, Authos, Amesterdão, 1997. And on the role of Alfrink in the Council, cf. Actes et Acteurs, pp. 522-553.

[4] Cf. SOLANGE DAYRAS, ‹‹ Les voeux de l’episcopat britannique. Reflets d’une église minoritaire ›› , in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, pp. 139-153.

[5] CFf. YVES-MARIE HILAIRE, ‹‹ Les voeux des évêques français après l’annonce du Concile ››, in Le deuxième Concile du Vatican, p. 102 (pp. 101-117).

[6] Cf. C. SOETENS, ‹‹ Les vota des évêques belges en vue du Concile ››, in À la veille du Concile Vatican II, cit., p. 49 (pp. 38-52).

[7] Cf. R. MOROZZO DELLA ROCCA, ‹‹ I vota dei vescovi italiani ›› , cit., p. 127.

[8] Cf. ibid.

[9] Cf. ibid., pp. 119-137.

[10] G. TURBANTI, ‹‹ Il problema do comunismo al Concilio Vaticano II ›› , in Vatican II in Moscow, p. 149 (pp. 147-187).

[11] Ibid., p. 150. Specially notorious are the votes that came from the Catholic universities, as for instance, the Ateneo de Propaganda Fide of Rome, which presented a long study in depth by Fr. Cornelio Fabro on the origin and nature of contemporary atheism. (Cf. De atheismo positivo seu constructivo ut irreligiositatis nostri temporis fundamenta, AD, I-I/1, pp. 452-463).

[12] ARMANDO SAITTA, Constituenti e Costituizioni della Francia rivoluzionaria e liberale (1789-1875), Giuffrè, Milão, 1975, p. 3.

[13] J. W. O’MALLEY, S.J., Introduction to Vatican II: Did anything happen?, cit., p. 4

Friday, Nov. 9, 31st Week in Ordinary Time

The facade; the baldachin over the main altar; and the Cathedra.
FEAST OF THE DEDICATION OF THE LATERAN CATHEDRAL
'Sacrosancta Lateranensis ecclesia omnium urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput'
[Most Holy Lateran Church, of all the churches in the city and the world, the mother and head.]
Dedicated to John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano is the Cathedral church of Rome,
the seat of the Bishop of Rome. Its official name is Archibasilica Sanctissimi Salvatoris(Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour).
The present building was built in 1646 on the site of a 4th-century church built by Constantine. It is the oldest among the four
major basilicas of Rome, and as the seat of the Bishop of Rome, it may be considered the parish church of all the world's Catholics.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/110912.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

= H.E. Mirko V. Jeliƒ, Ambassador of Serbia, who presented his credentials

- H.E. Mons. Alain Paul Lebeaupin, Apostolic Nuncio to the European Union

= Participants of the 81st General Assembly of the Interpol. Address in English, French and Spanish.

The Office of Papal Liturgical Celebrations releaeed the calendar of liturgical events for the Holy Fahter
for the rest of November 2012 through January 2013.



Lest I forget, look up
www.nationalreview.com/articles/332978/sifting-through-wreckage-george...
for the social-cultural consequences of the recent US elections. (I stll cannot bear to face the nightmare
so I am constitutionally unable to post this item.)


I don't know if the people in charge of the Vatican website are aware of it, but for more than a week now, one or more links in the daily bulletin do not work. It is very annoying since there is no way around it.

Interpol, a bastion of international security

Pope Benedict praises Interpol as
a 'bastion of international security'

November 9, 2012

Security was tight around Vatican City State Friday morning, with access streets closed down and Italy’s state police deployed on each corner as top Interpol officials sped by in unmarked cars surrounded by a security motorcade on their way to meet the Pope.

Based in Lyons, France, the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), is spread across 190 countries. First founded in 1923, it aims to coordinate cooperation between police forces on an international level to combat and prevent cross border crime.

The world’s largest international police organization has been holding its general assembly in Rome and made history on Thursday by electing top French police Chief Mireille Ballestrazzi, known for her fight against organised crime in Corsica, as its first female president.




On Friday, delegates were received by Pope Benedict XVI, who praised their perseverance and dedication in their work. He also dwelt on the changing face of crime, with particular emphasis on terrorism and organised crime, describing them as “gravest forms of criminal activities” in today's globalised world.

The Pope also deplored the trafficking of humans, of human organs, of drugs and weapons, all of which he said “reintroduce a form of barbarism which denies man and his dignity”.

While stopping these forms of crime is important, Pope Benedict said prevention also involves understanding the social ills that produce such crime. “Exclusion and deprivation which persist in the population...are a vehicle for the spread of violence and hatred”.

Here is the Pope's full address, which was delivered in English, French and Spanish:

---

He began in English:

Distinguished Authorities,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am pleased to welcome you as you conclude the General Assembly of Interpol, which has brought together here in Rome representatives of police and security agencies, along with political and institutional delegates of its 190 member states, that have included Vatican City State since 2008.

I greet all those present, and through you I wish to offer my cordial greetings to the distinguished leaders of your countries and their citizens, for whose security you labour with professionalism and a spirit of service.

In particular, I greet the Ministers and the members of Government, and the Italian Minister of Internal Affairs who has just spoken, as well as the President of Interpol and the Secretary General, whom I thank for his address to us just now.

In these days of study and discussion you have focused your attention on the development of international cooperation in the struggle against crime. It is important to strengthen collaboration and the exchange of expertise at a time when, at a global level, we see a widening of the sources of violence provoked by trans-national entities which hinder the progress of humanity.

Among these we include the evolution of criminal violence which is a particularly troubling aspect for the future of the world. No less important is the fact that the task of reflection brings together politicians responsible for security and justice, as well as judicial bodies and the forces of law and order, in such a way that each one, in his respective sphere, can offer an effective contribution to the service of constructive exchange.

Indeed, political authorities, with the help of institutions of law and order, can more easily identify the most significant emerging risks to society and, as a consequence, will be able to give adequate legislative and operational direction to combating crime.

In our own day, the human family suffers owing to numerous violations of justice and law, which in not a few instances is seen in outbursts of violence and of criminal acts.

Thus, it is necessary to safeguard individuals and communities by a constant, renewed determination, and by adequate means. In this regard, the function of Interpol, which we may define as a bastion of international security, enjoys an important place in the realization of the common good, because a just society needs order and a respect for the rule of law to achieve a peaceful and tranquil coexistence in society.

I know that some of you at times carry out your work in extremely dangerous conditions, and that you risk your lives to protect the lives of others and to facilitate the construction of a peaceful society.

He continued in French:
We are aware that today violence manifests itself in new forms. At the end of the Cold War between the two blocs of the East and the West, great hopes were born, especially where a form of institutionalized political violence had been halted by peaceful movements which reaffirmed the freedom of all peoples.

At the same time, even as some forms of violence seemed to have diminished, especially the number of military conflicts, others developed, such as criminal violence which is responsible every year for a large part of violent deaths in the world.

Today, this phenomenon is so dangerous that it constitutes a serious factor in the destabilization of society, and often severely tries the supremacy of the State itself.

The Church and the Holy See encourage everyone who are employed in combatting this scourge of violence and crime, in the present reality which is more and more a global village.

The most serious forms of criminal violence can be identified in terrorism and organized crime. Terrorism, one of the most brutal forms of violence, sows hatred, death,desire for vengeance.

This phenomenon, which arises from a subversive strategy typical of some extremist organizations bent on destruction and murder, has been transformed into a dark network of political complicities, using sophisticated technical means, considerable financial resources, and elaborating their plans on a grand scale (cf. ‘Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No, 513).

For its part, organized crime proliferates in the places of daily life, often acting and striking in darkness, outside all regulation. It carries out its business through numerous illicit and immoral activities, such as human trafficking - a modern form of slavery - and the traffic in goods and substances such as drugs, arms, counterfeit merchandise, and even those medicines used largely by the poor, drugs which kill instead of cure.

This illicit commerce becomes even more execrable when it concerns the human organs of innocent victims - they undergo the tragedies and outrages which we thought to have gone for always after the tragedies of the 20th century but which, unfortunately, has reappeared through violence generated by the criminal activities of unscrupulous persons and organizations.

These crimes shatter the moral barriers progressively erected by civilization and propose a new form of barbarism which negates man and his dignity.

In Spanish:
Dear friends, meeting you today, agents of the international police, gives me the occasion to confirm once more that violence is always unacceptable in its various forms of terrorism and delinquency, because it deeply wounds human dignity and constitutes and offense against all mankind.

It is thus a duty to repress crime in the area of moral and juridical regulation, because actions against delinquency must always be carried out with respect for human rights and the principles of a state of law.

Indeed, the battle against violence must aim precisely at preventing crime and defending society, but also the repentance and correction of the delinquent who is still a human being, subject of inalienable rights, and as such, must not be excluded from society, but regenerated.

At the same time, international collaboration against delinquency cannot be limited only to police operations. It is essential that necessary repressive action must be accompanied by a valiant and lucid analysis of the motivations that underlie these unacceptable criminal actions.

It is necessary to pay special attention to factors of social exclusion and of indigence which persist among the people and constitute a means for violence and hatred. Just as necessary is some compromise on the political and pedagogical level to resolve the problems which nourish violence and the conditions that favor it, so that they do not arise or develop.

As such, response to violence and delinquency cannot simply be delegated to the forces of order, but demands the participation of all those elements that can possibly impact this phenomenon.

To defeat violence is a task that must imply not just the institutions and organisms concerned, but society as a whole: families, educational centers, among them religious schools and entities, the means of social communications and all citizens. Every one has his specific part in the responsibility for a future of justice and peace.

He resumed in English:
I renew to the authorities and all the staff of Interpol my gratitude for your work, which is not always easy and not always understood in its proper purpose.

I cannot finish without acknowledging the assistance which Interpol offers to the Gendarmes of Vatican City State, especially during my international journeys.

May the all-powerful and merciful God enlighten you as you carry out your responsibilities; may he sustain you in your service to society; and may he protect you, your co-workers and your families.

His closing words were in Arabic:
أَشُكْرُكُمْ عَلَى حُضورِكُمْ، الرَّبُّ يُبَارِكُكُمْ [Thank you for coming and may the Lord bless all of you!].

---

Pope Benedict greets the outgoing president of Interpol, Koo Boon Hu of South Korea, and the incoming president, Michelle Ballestrazzi of France, the organization's first woman president.

Inevitably, of course, I have to come up for air - I cannot just bury my head in the sand because that does not change reality at all. So let me allow two of my favorite commentators to state the consequences of America's collective folly = almost a willful national suicide, the willingness of half the country to stifle all that's true and good and beautiful about the American dream - on Nov. 6, 2012, a day that shall surely live in infamy infinitely worse than anything Pearl Harbor wrought.

A watershed election:
A Weimar election?
By James V. Schall, S.J.

November 8, 2012

The 2012 presidential election will be analyzed to death. Then, it will be commented on for years or decades to come. Before the election, we heard various hypotheses about its import: “The year 2012 will see the last ‘free’ election.” It will reveal a deeply divided people, divided over the most fundamental issues of right and wrong.

It is a “Weimar Election.” That was the vote of the Germans in the 1930s about who would rule the country. They did not read the party leader carefully or watch what he did.

“The majority in the country is not ‘white’ but ‘brown.’” They dance to a different tune. “No real unified Catholic vote exists.” Some even think that Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, The Lord of the World, describes what next to expect.

The notion that some things, especially the important ones, should not fall within the jurisdiction of the state is no longer to be taken for granted. The state, with its main duties, the taking care of everyone, defines what is important from now on.

One might say that our people coldly looked the Leviathan in its eyes. They did not flinch as he brought them into his body. These are dramatic observations, no doubt. We now wait to see what happens next. We have established who is in power. We will not pass this way again.

And in establishing who is to rule us, we reveal our own souls. The liberty to do whatever we want that Aristotle spoke of while describing democracies is now firmly rooted among us. No real opposition will be tolerated. Liberty means doing what the state demands.

Generally speaking, we prefer a political system, the result of which is that either candidate could rule reasonably well. The vital principals of the regime would remain intact, even with disagreement. In Australia, a citizen has to pay a fine if he does not vote. This is a dubious law. It is much better to give a citizen the freedom to vote or not to vote. After all, when it comes to the crunch, a mandatory voting law doubtfully fares better than a less rigid one. A democracy can in theory produce a wiser ruler than other systems. But in practice it can do the opposite even if everyone votes freely with no worry about being fined.

This election was not an election between two candidates whose vision of reality is the same or even reconcilable. The election was about whether a “new” idea of the state would replace the basic principles of the Founding of the country. Most of the directions of this “new” state — its nature and roots — were already described by Plato and Aristotle, but they knew them as disorders.

The moral and political tendencies were visible in the first term for everyone to see. Now there is little reason to think such policies will not be carried out. The courts and the House may still be something of a counter balance, as well as the relative autonomy of the individual states. We can expect any new Supreme Court justice will be appointed by the same ideology that won the election. No one will ask if there are standards and principles that stand behind all government, including democratic ones.

We may need to be preparing for more direct persecution for religious doctrines and prudential norms. The state in effect has now consolidated its responsibility for all aspects of our lives from before conception to “helping” us to the cemeteries as expeditiously and conveniently as possible.

The Church will be deeply divided; those who voted for the President will now claim that they have been “protecting” the Church all along. But, in exchange, the Church will need to “downplay” (read, stop) its strident opposition to the now widely approved “rights” that justify these actions.

It will only be necessary on a few outmoded doctrines about sex to change things. In any case, those who gets any assistance from the state must conform to all the laws and mandates of the state, including ones that go against objective standards or subjective conscience.

The Acton Institute recently published a small book entitled After the Welfare State. This election tells us that there is not going to be anything after the welfare state. Once it is set up, there is no going back short of revolution, and revolutions usually produce something worse.

Government redistribution of wealth must now be the central moral feature of our society. Somebody is always responsible and that is the government. Government will define who gets what and who pays for it. Thus, ever increasing percentages of the citizens of the country will be directly dependent on the government.

This is what this government has strived for. It prevents much dissent if all livelihood originates from the state. The state is not only in the business of distributing wealth but in the business of informing us what we must do or hold to receive this largess.

Little discussion of producing wealth comes up because the new state realizes that its security depends not on production but on distribution. It is perfectly comfortable with shortages as they generate more power for the state.

The churches will have nothing to say outside church walls. Every religious institution will be required to deal with the public according to standards specified by the government. There will be no active dissent.

Religion has long been looked at by modern politicians and philosophers as the cause of societal turmoil. The goal would be to establish a bureau or cabinet level secretary of religion in charge of forming acceptable dogmas and distributing what goods the government thinks the churches need. There will be a “parliament” of religion in which all legal religious bodies will be represented as equals, whatever they hold in private about themselves

Doctrinal or liturgical differences can go on so long as Church leaders and members accept the government definitions of anything outside the walls of the Church. The older notions of charity and truth claimed by the churches as justifications for their activities will be absorbed by state institutions.

In effect, we will have a new syncretic religion that can hold whatever it wants inside the churches, but all the other human things—education, aid, health, beauty — will be supplied by the state so that it will be seen as doing everything the older religions thought they were doing.

In the end, I must ask myself: “Will these things come to pass?” Many of them have already come to pass. What is left is the completion of the state as the sole provider of moral, economic, cultural, and even religious goods.

We have just witnessed a watershed election. The earliest years of the 21st century are rapidly seeing the logic of political and philosophical ideas that, in their origins, were deviations from the truth. We witness not merely a voluntary acceptance of these ideas in the political order through election, but also an abdication of serious reasoning about them in the public order.




Sifting through the wreckage
Yes, Virginia, things changed.

November 8, 2012

The most inane insta-pundit commentary had it that the 2012 election “hadn’t really changed anything,” what with President Obama still in the White House, the House still in Republican hands, and the Senate still controlled by Democrats.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that a great deal changed, somewhere around 11 p.m. EST on Tuesday, November 7, when Ohio was declared for the president and the race was effectively over. To wit:

Obamacare, the governmental takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy, is now set in legislative concrete, and the progressive campaign to turn ever-larger numbers of citizens into wards of the state has been given a tremendous boost — with electoral consequences as far as the eye can see.

A war in the Middle East is now almost certain, and sooner rather than later; as if the previous three and a half years of fecklessness were not enough, the cast of mind manifest in the administration’s abdication of responsibility in Benghazi will have likely convinced a critical mass of the Israeli leadership that they have no choice but to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in self-defense.

The economic chaos resulting from military conflict in the Persian Gulf (and beyond) will further deepen the European fiscal crisis while making an already weak American economic recovery even more anemic.

The children and grandchildren of November 6’s voters have been condemned to bear the burden of what is certainly an unpayable mountain of debt, and may be an unserviceable amount of debt, which in either case will be an enormous drag on the economy, even as it mortgages America’s strategic options in Asia to the holders of U.S. government bonds in Beijing.

The American culture war has been markedly intensified, as those who booed God, celebrated an unfettered abortion license, canonized Sandra Fluke, and sacramentalized sodomy at the Democratic National Convention will have been emboldened to advance the cause of lifestyle libertinism through coercive state power, thus deepening the danger of what a noted Bavarian theologian calls the “dictatorship of relativism.”

Religious freedom and civil society are now in greater jeopardy than ever, as what was already the most secularist and statist administration in history will, unfettered by reelection concerns, accelerate its efforts to bring free voluntary associations to heel as de facto extensions of the state.

Nothing changed? In a pig’s eye.

Europeans understood this, immediately, even if large swaths of the American punditocracy didn’t. One e-mail from Poland, the morning after the election, expressed real fear for the future (as well my correspondent might, given President Obama’s craven whisperings to Dimitry Medvedev that a reelected administration would pull the final plug on missile defense in Europe, as Vladimir Putin has long sought).

Another, from London, suggested that Obama’s reelection was a cataclysm for America similar to Henry VIII’s break with Rome: a politico-cultural-economic game-changer the effects of which would be felt for centuries.

A Scottish friend (correctly) foresaw serious trouble for the Catholic Church in the United States, to which he had long looked for models of leadership in handling aggressive secularism.

None of this was surprising, however. Five weeks before Election Day, I had lunch with the head of state of one of America’s closest European allies. When I asked him how our politics looked to him from a distance of some 3,500 miles, he replied, more in sorrow than in anger, “America is missing greatness.”

Americans dubious of what they style “foreign entanglements,” who would otherwise shrug off such an observation, might think twice about it in light of a second Obama administration. For my luncheon host was not simply referring to a lack of American leadership abroad; he was, in a single, poignant phrase, speaking of a national will to diminishment that seemed to him evident in both the astonishing possibility that a failed president would be reelected and the equally surprising inability of that president’s opponents to make a compelling case for change.

And here, too, is something for Republican strategists to ponder while sifting through the wreckage. Mitt Romney made himself a better candidate throughout 2012, and for one brief, electric moment at the first debate, he seemed like a leader with vision, passion, and wit.

But a recovery of American greatness — cultural, political, economic, diplomatic, and military greatness — was not the driving theme of the Romney campaign. Not knowing Mitt Romney personally, I can’t say whether this obviously decent and successful man simply lacked the understanding necessary to make the case for true American renewal, as distinct from the faux hope-and-change mantra that had seduced so many in 2008.

But whatever Romney’s personal inclinations, many Republican campaign managers and consultants always seemed afraid of scaring the horses. Obama would be beaten, they insisted, on grounds of competence, not by a campaign that called the country to recognize that it need not settle for mediocrity, a campaign that summoned America to new heights of achievement.

The themes for such a campaign were not difficult to imagine; they could have been built around a recasting of FDR’s four freedoms.

Freedom of religion: No government bureaucrat in Washington is going to tell your religious community how to conduct its affairs.

Freedom from fear: A Romney administration will not tolerate the burning of American embassies and the torture and murder of our diplomats by the thugs of al-Qaeda and their jihadist allies.

Freedom for excellence and accomplishment: Unshackling American ingenuity from the restraints of government interference will unleash new wealth-creating and wealth-distributing energies, even as that liberation empowers the poor to lead lives of self-responsibility through honest and dignified work.

And freedom from unpayable debt: Your children and grandchildren must not be buried beneath a sludge pile of extravagance sluicing out of a national capital (and an administration) addicted to throwing oceans of money at problems.

Would it have worked? Who knows? But the issues would have been sharpened; the fake issues (“war on women,” “tax breaks for the rich,” etc.) might have been marginalized; and a lot more energy — real political energy, not just energies bent on denying Obama a second term — might have been unleashed.

The countercase, it must be admitted, has something to be said for it. Not the countercase of the culture-wars-averse campaign consultants, but a countercase that would run something like this (and that illustrates another great change, not initiated on election day but confirmed by the results):

Whatever the clumsiness of Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark, the hard fact of the matter is that a critical mass of Americans are now so dependent on government (either directly or through public-sector unions) that any appeal to a larger national vision, much less a vision of personal responsibility, is impossible.

So try to make the case that a Romney alternative to Obama will fix things without fundamentally altering the relationship between individual citizens (and families) and the post–New Deal, post–Great Society American welfare state.

There is, in hard truth, something here. That half the country was prepared to reelect a manifestly failed president whose personal incapacities, like the incapacities of the bloated governmental bureaucracies over which he presided, were on full display in the weeks before the election, and in venues ranging from North Africa to Staten Island, is a very disturbing “indicator,” as the pollsters like to say.

That a goodly proportion of that half of America seemed susceptible to the Obama campaign’s class warfare is also disturbing.

But perhaps most disturbing of all is the exit-poll data showing that a healthy majority of the electorate believed Obama more capable than Romney of handling foreign crises: and this, after the lethal fiasco of Benghazi, itself the embodiment of an ideologically driven pusillanimity in foreign policy that has been on display since the president’s apologize-for-America tour at the beginning of his first term.

“Missing greatness,” it turns out, is not just a function of who’s in charge. It’s a result of democratic citizens’ not paying attention. Or worse, it’s the result of citizens’ suffering such severe ideological glaucoma that they cannot see what is in front of them.

What has obviously changed, in other words, is American political culture: and it is hard to make a case that that change has been for the better.

Shortly after Ohio sealed the deal on Election Night, a friend (who earlier in the evening had said that she was having a hard time recognizing the country she grew up in) sent me an e-mail with a salient Tocqueville quote:

---

In the United States, the majority rules in the name of the people. This majority is chiefly composed of peaceful citizens who by taste or interest sincerely desire the good of the country. . . . If republican principles are to perish in America, they will succumb only after a long social travail, frequently interrupted, often resumed; they will seem to be reborn several times, and they will disappear without return only when an entirely new people has taken the place of the one that exists in our day.

---

So let’s spare ourselves the Bertolt Brecht bromide about a displeased government getting itself a new people, which is precisely the opposite of the point here, and ponder the serious question raised by Tocqueville, and put in more contemporary terms by another of my day-after-the-election e-mail correspondents, a former senior White House official:

---

Is it time 1) to conclude that what began in 1992 has provided 26 years of confirmatory evidence that the American experiment in ordered liberty has given way, decisively and irrevocably, to a crass and stupid commercial (and sexualized) culture, under a technical-administrative state, guided by the view that man is the measure of all things, and 2) to consider a refocusing of political efforts to the local level, which has its own problems of corruption, stupidity, and loss of tradition and virtue, but in some cases may permit of a politics in some measure noble and worthy?

---

Unwilling to go quite that far into the Slough of Despond, I nonetheless recognize (and commend) the seriousness of the questions posed by these two friends.

For while the surface manifestations of national politics (the presidency, control of the houses of Congress) may look “the same” to the less lucid elements of the punditocracy, the question of whether we have become, if not “an entirely new people” (pace Tocqueville’s warning), then a deeply divided people, one large part of which is now wedded to government in ways that gravely erode civic virtue, surely must be part of the post-2012 conversation.

And even if our cultural slide into a cheerful Gomorrah is not, as my second correspondent suggested, “irrevocable,” the effects of the culture of the imperial autonomous (and government-subsidized) Self on our politics must be reckoned with, as Republicans, conservatives, and all those who felt a real emptiness settling upon them at 11 p.m. EST on Tuesday night think through the economic reconstruction, the restoration of fiscal sanity, and the exercise of global responsibility that must be part of a post-Obama America, now unhappily deferred until at least January 2017.

It takes a certain kind of people, living certain indispensable virtues, to make the market and democracy work so that justice, prosperity, and human flourishing are the net results of freedom. That elementary truth — recognized by the Founders, ignored by the newly reelected administration, and avoided by libertarians and Republican campaign consultants — has to be at the center of the conversation about the American future, and about playing good defense during the next four challenging years.

I did not see any earlier story on Cardinal Filone's initiative reported here so I must check it out, but this is an editorial commentary from an Italian online news journal operated by Media World, Europe's leading online consumer network.

Towards a thaw in
Vatican-China relations?
Translated from

November 9, 2012

In recent days, the Vatican made a surprising move: It has proposed creating a bilateral commission between the Holy See and the People's Republic of China to deal with the vast areas of contention between the two states. [Does it not say something of the Vatican's intangible international clout that the world's tiniest state - in terms of size and population - deals on equal terms, so to say, with the world's most populous state and soon to be its leading economic power?]

The idea, formally launched by the Prefect of Propaganda Fide [the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, which supervises the China question for the Church since China is considered mission territory], Cardinal Fernando Filoni, immediately met the ostracism of the hardline anti-Beijing wing in the Church hierarchy, if only because such a prospect would pose this problem: How to create a bilateral commission between two entities that do not formally recognize each other and do not have diplomatic relations? It is resolved by creating two commissions [????] provisionally, but it is clear that there is another alternative which does not exclude diplomatic initiatives.

Cardinal Filoni's innovative proposal significantly found agreement from the Archbishop of HongKong, Cardinal John Tong Hon, who has thus demonstrated that he has a less intransigent view of Beijing than his predecessor, Cardinal Zen. Such that the Church in China is no longer behind a barricade, if Beijing accepts a more structured means of dialog [other than the behind-the-scenes ad hoc ways in which it has gone on so far].

But the real novelty is that the more sensitive and informed Vatican antennae have sensed an interest on the part of China. In fact, the Beijing functionaries who are involved in 'religious questions' have made it known that they find Cardinal Filoni's idea 'interesting'.

Officializing a turning point of this kind, which would open new scenarios on the autonomy of the Church in China - and therefore on other 'autonomies' - will certainly not take place during the current Chinese Communist Party congress. Afterwards perhaps?

A nicely-timed story from China complements this commentary:


Shanghai’s detained auxiliary bishop
gives inspiring testimony of faith
by Gerard O’Connell

November 9, 2012


File photos from UCANews shows St. Ignatius Church in Shanghai where Bishop Ma was ordained bishop last July, and the bishop in happier times.

Thaddeus Ma Daqin has been confined to Sheshan seminary, on the outskirts of Shanghai, since July 7 - the day he was ordained bishop. Effectively under house arrest for 125 days already, he is being punished for announcing at his ordination Mass his intention to abandon the Catholic Patriotic Association (CPA) – the body created by the communist authorities to control the Church, and devote himself full time to his pastoral ministry.

The Chinese authorities considered his decision as a serious challenge to their system of control over the Church. They had him taken away on the evening of his ordination and since then he has been confined to the seminary, effectively under house arrest.

Isolated from the world – the seminarians have not been allowed back, though some Catholics sometimes manage to see him, Bishop Ma does not have freedom of movement and little freedom of speech, except for his blog. {It really is surprising that the Chinese are allowing this. One would have thought they would deny the detainee any Internet access at all!] He is not allowed wear the robes or insignia of a bishop. The authorities want to break his spirit and get him to recant.

Cardinal Zen has called for his liberation. Cardinal Tong has asked for dialogue with the Government to resolve this problem, and urged world political leaders to give attention to his plight. The Vatican’s Cardinal Filoni has denounced the fact that Ma has been “segregated and deprived of (his) liberties” and emphasized the need for top-level Sino-Vatican dialogue to resolve this and other problems.

On November 3, Bishop Ma, published on his blog the following moving testimony on his own “Faith of a child”. UCA News has edited and translated it from Chinese into English.

---

The faith of a child
By Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqin

I am gratified that my parents died early.

My father passed when I was studying my second year of theology. I spent the whole winter break on his sickbed. Since I entered the seminary, we had less chance to talk, unlike when I was a child and he used to tell me lots of stories. He became quieter once I learnt to study and read. Then when he was seriously ill, without much strength to speak, it was my turn to sit near his bed and quietly keep him company.

I had to report back to the seminary when the new semester began. If I had written to the rector, telling him about my father, I am sure he would have let me stay home a while longer. But when I thought of those seminarians travelling so far from other provinces, I realized it was not fair for me, someone from the local diocese, to extend my holiday.

My father asked me to stay home as long as I could, and I dashed to get back to the seminary the evening before classes resumed. The next morning came the call from my family: my father had passed at 4 am. I rushed back home to find his body wrapped in white cloth.

My mother suffered from a rare type of leukemia and had been relying on both Chinese and western medication for over 10 years. Just as I was assigned to Nanqiao parish near Fengxian, her health suddenly deteriorated. The doctor told us she had three months to live. It was not easy for me to travel from Fengxian, which is on the outskirts of Shanghai, back to the city center to visit my mother.

Meanwhile, I caught a fever and was hospitalized with an atypical pneumonia; they wanted to check if it was SARS. My mother and I were sent to different hospitals, but we managed to talk on the phone.

“Daqin, it matters not,” she told me. “Although the cross God gave us was heavy, we must be able to bear it. The merciful God would not give us a cross that we cannot carry.” She lived three more months, and passed away on the feast of Christ the King.

I am the youngest of three. My parents did not want to see me suffer and would bear anything for me. All good parents in the world do that, don’t they? And do the children recognize their filial responsibility to take care of their parents only when they have passed?

My mother supported me when I decided to go to the seminary but my father vigorously objected. There was only one reason for his objection: his father, his younger brother and he himself were all jailed because of their Catholic faith. He did not wish to see his beloved son suffering the same hardship.

But I persisted. I got admitted to Sheshan, which was at that time the largest seminary in the country. For certain reasons, the seminary is temporarily suspended at the moment. Seminarians from various dioceses who were studying theology and philosophy here have been transferred.

Still, it is a sacred place in my heart and, I believe, in many others’ hearts too. Located at the world famous pilgrimage site of Sheshan, it is God’s great gift to Shanghai and the China Church.

The other day I was alone in my room, making rosary beads and praying for the deceased during this month of the Holy Souls in Purgatory, when some of the others set off for the cathedral to attend a diaconal ordination.

I thought of my parents and something occurred to me: I felt very grateful that they have passed away so early, because they do not have to worry for me. They were honest and sincere all through their life but they have suffered one political movement after another. Only the people of their generation can truly appreciate the struggles they have gone through.

If they were still alive today, I don’t know how nervous and worried about me they would be! Even when Catholics started coming to see me after August, their first words were often “have you been beaten up?” and then, mostly likely, “you look thin and gaunt.”

Sometimes, what you experience in a few days, weeks or months could be more than what you have for your whole life. Witnessing the dynamics among people and the vicissitudes, you grow to become mature, and you grow to become old gradually.

Even though “drinking tea” [a metaphor for being summoned by government officials] many times and being warned not to have any illusions, my thoughts are free.

I have been asked: why did I not leave? It is because of what my father said to me when I insisted on entering the seminary and preparing for priesthood. “If you are determined to go, do not come back and do not give up when you are half-way through,” he said. I did not hesitate to answer “of course!”

I have kept this promise until today. I am going to keep it until the day I grow old, if God wishes me live to an old age.

This is a very small promise that a son made to his father. Is such a promise the faith of a humble and frail son?

---

Saturday, Nov. 10, 31st Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Leo the Great

Raphael's 'Leo the Great Meets Attila the Hun', 1541, Vatican fresco. The Apostles Peter and Paul are shown above the figure of the Pope, left.
ST. LEO THE GREAT (b. ca 400, Pope 440-461), Doctor of the Church (Doctor of Doctrine)
Born to a noble Tuscan family, he came to a position of importance in the imperial court. When he was 40, he was
sent by the emperor to settle a dispute between the two highest officials in Gaul. During the mission, Pope Sixtus II
died and he was unanimously elected by the people to succeed him. As Pope, he was responsible for the first
administrative consolidation of the Church, distinguishing himself in four other critical areas: He controlled a number
of prevalent heresies in his time; at the Council of Chalcedon, he definitively declared the dual nature of Christ;
he defended Rome from barbarian attacks and is remembered for meeting Attila the Hun and keeping him from
invading Rome; and for the spiritual depth of his pastoral care, with a call to holiness embodied in his great sermons.
(In recent days, Benedict XVI has been compared to him for the content and power of his sermons.)
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111012.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

= Mons. Richard William Smith, Archbishop of Edmonton (Canada),and President of the Conference of
Catholic Bishops of Canada, along with his Vice President,
- Mons. Paul André Durocher, Archbishop of Gatineau.

- Participants of a meeting sponsored by the Associazione Italiana Santa Cecilia. Address in Italian.

The Vatican released the following texts:
- Benedict XVI's Apostolic Letter motu proprio Latina Lingua to institute the Pontificia Academia
Latinatatis. Texts in Latin and Italian. (The Pope named Prof. Ivan Dionigi as President of the new academy, and Rev. Roberto Spadaro, SDB, as its secretary.)

- The Holy Father's letter naming Cardinal Carlos Amigo Vallejo, OFM, emeritus Archbishop of Sevilla (Spain),
as his special envoy to the concluding celebrations of the fifth centenary of the arrival in Puerto Rico
of its first bishop. The rites will take place in San Juan de Puerto Rico on November 19.

Light verdict for Sciarpelletti
for obstructing investigation
of Vatileaks justice
From various Italian media sources

Also today, the Vatican released the Vatican court's verdict on Claudio Sciarpelletti, the computer specialist tried for his role in Vatileaks.

He was convicted not for the original charge of aiding and abetting Paolo Gabriele in his theft of papal documents but for obstructing the investigation of the Vatileaks episode by making contradictory statements about his relations with Gabriele.

He was sentenced to two months in prison, reduced from four months because he has no previous criminal record. The sentence is also 'suspended' for five years, meaning he will not have to spend time in jail unless he commits a crime during that period. His lawyer said he will appeal the verdict.

Gabriele took the stand to say it was he who passed on to Sciarpelletti the documents found in an envelope marked with Gabriele's name that was found in the Sciarpelletti's desk, as part of the former valet's efforts over the months to to get the computer technician's opinion on the 'malaise' in the Vatican.

In his final pre-trial version of how the documents came into his possession, Sciarpelletti claimed that the envelop was given to him by a Mons. W (subsequently identified in court as his boss at the Secretariat of State, Mons. Carlo Maria Polvani) to be passed on to Gabriele.

Sciarpelletti claimed that a second envelop found in his desk, the existence of which had not previously been made public, was given to him to be passed to Gabriele by a Mons. X - identified in court today as Mons. Paolo Pennelacchi, formerly deputy director of the Vatican Press Office under Joaquin Navarro-Valls, and now an official in the Secretariat of State.

On the witness stand, he claimed instead that he does not now remember exactly who gave him the two envelops. [Did anyone ask Sciarpelletti the obvious question - Why did he not deliver the envelops to whoever he was supposed to give them to? Fr. Lombardi claimed in a news briefing afterwards that it was normal for Sciarpelletti to carry letters from one person or department to another in the Secretariat of State, and that any envelop given to him by Mon. Pennelacchi was to be considered in that light.] The contents of the second envelop were not revealed, but in any case, the judge ruled the matter irrelevant to Sciarpelletti's trial.

On the witness stand, Mons. Polvani swore solemnly that he had never "manufactured, taken away, transferred ot passed on any document covered by official secrecy". He added: "For me, such actions are totally unthinkable, I swear upon my baptism and my priesthood".

He also denied that he was part of an anti-Ratzinger fringe at the Vatican. [He had been identified as such, along with his uncle, Mons. Carlo Maria Vigano, as among the movers of an anti-Ratzinger bloc in the Vatican in a widely-cited 2010 article by the French priest Abbe Claude Barthes, reputed for his familiarity with the Vatican and the Church hierarchy.]

He presented a history of his family and its services to the Church as 'evidence' that he could not possibly do anything to harm the Church. [A family history that unfortunately now includes his uncle's infamous lettersto the Pope and Cardinal Bertone pettily denouncing various individuals that he considered enemies for alleged acts of financial malfeasance.].

Polvani also thanked his superiors at the Secretariat of State as well as the Vatican Police for 'not having manifested any doubts about his loyalty' since the Vatileaks episode unfolded. [A compelling argument! Unless, the cynic in me thinks, the official attitude is to keep him off his guard until he tips his hand. On the other hand, he may be genuinely made of better stuff than his uncle.]

The former Latinitas Foundation has now been replaced by the Pontifical Latin Academy (Pontificia Academia Latinitatis).

Pope Benedict establishes
new Pontifical Academy for Latin

November 10, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday issued the Motu Proprio Latina Lingua, which establishes the new Pontifical Academy for Latin. The Academy is meant to promote the knowledge and study of the Latin language and Latin literature, from classical times to the present day.

“The Latin language has always been held in high regard by the Catholic Church and the Roman pontiffs,” writes Pope Benedict.

He pointed out Latin and Greek were used in the early Church, being the universal languages of the time, and since then the Church has made Latin “her own language.”

The Holy Father writes, “After the demise of the Roman Empire, the Church of Rome not only continued to make use of the Latin language, but also became in a way its guardian and promoter, both in theology and liturgy, and in formation and the transmission of knowledge.”

Pope Benedict said a good understanding of Latin is more necessary than ever in the Church, due to its importance in studying Theology, Liturgy, Patristics, and Canon Law.

He said a “superficial” knowledge of Latin can be detrimental to the philosophical and theological training of future priests.

However, the Academy is also meant to serve the wider society: “in our own times…there is a renewed interest in the Latin language and classical culture, and not only on those continents that have their cultural roots from the Greco-Roman heritage,” Pope Benedict writes. “Such interest is all the more significant because it involves not only the academic world, but also young people and scholars from very diverse nations and traditions.”

The new Pontifical Academy will be under the Pontifical Council for Culture, and replace the Latinitas Foundation under the Secretariat of State established by Pope Paul VI. The President of the Academy will be Professor Ivano Dionigi, while the Secretary will be Father Roberto Spataro, S.D.B.

Its mandate includes producing publications, hosting conferences and seminars, and promoting Latin in the new media.


Here is a translation of the Motu Proprio from its Italian version:

---

1. The Latin language has always been held in the highest consideration by the Catholic Church and by the Roman Pontiffs, who have assiduously promoted knowledge of it and its diffusion, having made it their own language, capable of universally transmitting the message of the Gospel, as it was authoritatively stated by the Apostolic Constitution Veterum sapientia of my predecessor, blessed John Paul II.

In fact, since Pentecost, the Church has spoken and prayed in all the languages of man. And yet, the Christian communities of the first centuries widely used Greek and Latin, the language of universal communication in the world they inhabited, thanks to which the novelty of the Word of Christ encountered the legacy of Hellenistic-Roman culture.

After the disappearance of the Roman Empire in the West, the Church of Rome continued not just to avail itself of the Latin language, but became in a way its guardian and promoter, in the theological and liturgical fields as well as in the formation and transmission of knowledge.

2. Even in our time, knowledge of the Latin language and culture have proven to be more necessary than ever for the study of those sources from which numerous ecclesiastical disciplines draw, as for example, in theology, liturgy, patristics and canon law, as the Second Vatican Council points out (cfr Decr. Optatam totius, 13).

Moreover, precisely in order to show the universal attitude of the Church, the liturgical books of the Roman rite in their typical form are in Latin, as are the most important documents of the Pontifical Magisterium and the most solemn acts of the Roman Pontiffs.

3. In contemporary culture, one notes, however - in the context of a generalized weakening of humanistic studies - the danger of an ever more superficial knowledge of Latin which one can find even in the philosophical and theological studies of future priests.

On the other hand, in our world in which science and technology play such a major part, one finds a renewed interest in Latin culture and language, not just in the continents who have their cultural roots in the Greco-Roman legacy.

Such interest appears even more significant because it involves not just academic and institutional circles, but even young people and scholars coming from widely different nations and traditions.

4. It therefore appears urgent to sustain the commitment for better knowledge and more competent use of the Latin language, both in the ecclesial field as in the much vaster world of culture. To bring such effort into high relief and resonance, it is even more opportune to adopt didactic methods adequate to new conditions and promote a network of relationships among academic institutions and scholars, in order to properly appreciate the rich and multiform patrimony of Latin civilization.

To contribute to the achievement of such goals, following the footsteps of my venerated predecessors, today I institute with this Motu Proprio the Pontifical Academy for Latin, under the Pontifical Council for Culture. It will be led by a President, aided by a Secretary, both named by me, and by an Academic Council.

The Fondazione Latinitas, constituted by Pope Paul VI with the chirograph Romani Sermonis on June 1970, is now extinct. I order the present Apostolic Letter in the form of a Motu Proprio, with which I approve, ad experimentum, for a five-year period, the accompanying Statute, to be published in L'Osservatore Romano.

Given in Rome at St. Peter's
on November 10, 2012
Memorial of St. Leo the Great
in the 8th year of the Pontificate

---

In its Sunday issue (11/11/12), L'Osservatore Romano has s 2-page spread on the new Latin Academy, including the Latin and Italian texts of the Motu Proprio, and the accompanying statutes.
There is also an essay by Patristics scholar and 2011 Ratzinger Prize winner Manlio Simonetti about his experiences with Latin, as someone who was part of the last generations in Europe to have had the advantage of what used to be called 'a classical education'. I will translate it as soon as I can. There is also a lengthy interview with the first president of the new academy, entitled 'Those classics that are more relevant than we are' which will require translation as well, but meanwhile, here is a brief biography about him featured in the OR spread.

About Ivano Dionigi,
president of the Latin Academy

Born in Pesaro and now a Bolognese by adoption, Ivano Dionigi progressed from being a researcher to professor at the University of Bologna until 1990, when he was named as extraordinary professor of the Chair for Latin literature at the Universita Ca’Foscari in Venice. Since November 1, 1997, he has held the premier Chair in Latin Literature, succeeding Alfonso Traina, at the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Bologna.

His most recent researches have been devoted to a study of the fortunes of the literary classics in modern and contemporary Italian literature and culture, and in an intense activity to propagate classical culture, which he has been doing through the study center ‘La permanenza del Classico’ which he founded in 1999. Since 2009, he has been the rector of the Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna.

The OR in its online sampling of its current issue presents this precis of Dionigi's interview:

Interviewed by our newspaper, Ivano Dionigi, rector of the University of Bologna and president of the new Pontifical Latin Academy, said:

---

Why Latin? Why Greek and the classics? For three reasons, essentially:

The first is to safdeguard the patrimony of our culture. Our cultural destiny is at stake.

Secondly, Greek and Latin help us to speak well.

Third, they help us to think well - it is their most advantageous legacy. They are at the same time the foundation of the present while being antagonistic to the present. [Or is it the present that is antagonistic to the classics?]

I won't dwell on the theme of our identitarianroots because they afre evident.

---

Asked about the priorities in his new job, he said:

---

Above all, two. The first is to renew the obligatory teaching of Latin in seminaries; and second, to create bridges at all levels - between research that is focused on Christian tradition and that which was classic and pagan, beween universities, and in a dissemination of Latin at high levels.

We must capitalize on this great patrimony as best we can. We can always use cultural mediators, a 'small flock' who are capable of transmitting and translating Latin, and act as a ferment for others.

---

Thus is born an institution that will seek to bring new lifeblood to the Latin language and culture, which, as Manlio Simonetti writes in his commentary, had seen a progressive decline through the centuries.

Pope tells Italian choirs that
church music helps the faithful
to welcome the Word of God

November 10, 2012




Pope Benedict on Saturday greeted members of the Italian Association of Santa Cecilia, which is made up of members of church choirs from across the country. They are meeting in Rome during a two-day convention Nov. 10-11.

Noting that this is the Year of Faith, the Holy Father spoke to the choristers about the role sacred music can play in promoting the faith, and working for the New Evangelization.

“If, in fact, faith always comes from the Word of God – a listening, of course, which is not only through our senses, but which also passes to the mind and heart – there is no doubt that music and especially singing can give the recitation of psalms and biblical canticles greater communicative power,” the Pope said.

Pope Benedict spoke about how St. Augustine was moved by the Ambrosian Chant he encountered in Milan.

“[Augustine] did not approve of the pursuit of a mere pleasure of the senses during sung liturgies,” the Pope explained. “But he recognized that well-constructed music and singing can help to welcome the Word of God.”

Quoting the Vatican II document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, Pope Benedict said the purpose of sacred music “is the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful.”




'Ambrose baptizes Augustine', 1217 icon, Archaeological Museum, Cvidale del Friuli.

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

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

I welcome you with great joy on the occasion of the pilgrimage organized by the Associazione Italiana Santa Ceciclia, to which my praise goes, along with a heartfelt greeting to the president, whom I thank for his kind words, and to all his co-workers.

I affectionately greet you all, who belong to the numerous Scholae Cantorum in every part of Italy. I am very happy to meet you, and to learn - as we have been reminded - that tomorrow you will be taking part at the Eucharistic celebration presided by Cardinal Arch-Priest Angelo Comastri, offering your service of praising God in song.

Your meeting this year coincides intentionally with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. And I note with pleasure that the Associazione Santa Cecilia wishes thereby to call your attention to the teaching of the Conciliar constitution on the liturgy, especially that in Chapter 6, which deals with sacred music.

For this anniversary of the Council, as you all know, I have wanted for the whole Church a special Year of Faith to promote a deeper knowledge of the faith among all baptized persons and a common commitment for the New Evangelization.

Thus, in meeting you, I wish to briefly underscore how sacred music, first of all, favors thew faith and cooperates in the New Evangelization.

About faith, one spontaneously thinks of the personal experience of St. Augustine, one of the great Fathers of the Church, who lived in the 4th-5th century after Christ, to whose conversion his listening to the psalms and hymns in the liturgies presided by St. Ambrose certainly contributed in a most relevant way,

Indeed, if faith is always born from listening to the Word of God - a listening, naturally, that is not just of the senses, but passes to the mind and heart - there is no doubt that music, and above all, song, can confer on the recitation of the psalms and the Biblical canticles a greater communicative power.

Among the charisms of St. Ambrose was that of an outstanding musical sensitivity and ability. Once he was ordained Bishop of Milan, he placed this gift in the service of the faith and evangelization.

The testimony of Augustine, who at that time was a professor in Milan in search of God, in search of faith, regarding this is very significant. In Book 10 of the Confessions, his autobiography, he writes: "When my mind goes back to the tears that songs in church had wrested from me in the first steps of my re-won faith, and of the emotion that is stirred in me even now not by song but by the words5 that are sung - if sung with limpid voices and the most appropriate modulation - I recognize all over the great usefulness of this practice" (33,50).

The experience of the Ambrosian years was so strong that Augustine carried impressions in his memory and often cited them in his works. Indeed, he wrote a book on music, itself, De Musica. He said he did not approve, during sung liturgies, the search of mere sensual pleasure, but he recognized that music and song well performed can help to welcome the Word of God and to feel healthy emotion.

May this testimony of Augustine help us to understand why the liturgical constitution Sacrosanctum concilium, in line with the tradition of the Church, teaches that "sacred song, united with words, is a necessary and integral part of solemn liturgy" (No. 112).

Why 'necessary and integral'? Certainly not purely for esthetic reasons, in a superficial sense, but because it cooperates, precisely because of its beauty, to nourish and express the faith, and therefore, to the glory of God and the sanctification of the faithful, who are the ultimate recipients of sacred music" (cfr ibid.).

Because of this, I wish to thank you for the valuable service that you render: music which is performed not just as an accessory or an external adornment of liturgy, but is liturgy itself. You help the entire Assembly to praise God, to make his Word skin deeply into the heart. With song, you pray and make others pray, and you take part in the song and prayer of liturgy which embraces all of Creation in glorifying the Creator.

The second aspect that I propose for your reflection is the relationship between sacred song and the new evangelization. The Conciliar constitution on the liturgy recalls the importance of sacred music in the missio ad gentes and exhorts us to appreciate the musical traditions of peoples (cfr No. 119).

But in the very countries that were evangelized early, like Italy - with a great tradition that is her very own, which is our Western culture - sacred music can and does have a relevant task to promote the rediscovery of God and a renewed closeness to the Christian message and the mysteries of the faith.

Let us think of the famous experience of Paul Claudel, the French poet, who was converted while listening to the chanting of the Magnificat during Christmas Vespers in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris: "At that moment", he wrote, "the event occurred that dominates my life. I believed with a strength of adhesion so great, with such an elevation of my whole being, with such powerful conviction with a certainty that left no doubt at all that afterwards, no reasoning, no circumstance of my agitated life, could shake my faith nor touch it".

But without citing illustrious personages, we can think of how many persons have been touched in the depth of their spirit by listening to sacred music: and even more of those who have felt re-drawn towards God by the beauty of liturgical music, as Claudel was.

In this, dear friends, you have an important role: Strive to improve the quality of liturgical song without fear of recovering and appreciating the great musical tradition of the Church, which has in Gregorian chant and polyphony two of the highest of musical expressions, as Vatican II affirmed (cfr Sacrosanctum Concilium, 116).

I would like to underscore that the active participation of the People of God in the liturgy does not just consist of speaking, but also of listening, in accepting the Word with the senses and with the spirit, which also goes for sacred music. You who have the gift of song can make the hearts of so many people sing during liturgical celebrations.

Dear friends, I hope that in Italy, liturgical music may strive ever higher in order to praise the Lord worthily and to show how the Church is the place in which beauty is at home. Thank you once more to everyone for this meeting. Thank you.

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The Church will not give up
its defense of marriage

November 10, 2012

In recent days there have been three worrying events concerning legislation on marriage.

In Spain, the Constitutional Court has refused an appeal that challenged the existing law, which excludes all reference to the difference between a man and a woman and simply mentions spouse A and B; this remains then the situation.

In France, the Government has presented a bill for the transformation of marriage, so as to include same-sex marriage.

In the United States, some of the referendums held on the same day as the presidential elections in various States have, for the first time, delivered an outcome favourable to same-sex marriages.

It is therefore clear that in western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union. It is nothing new. This we had already realised.

Nevertheless, the matter does not cease to amaze: Because we should be asking if this really corresponds to the feelings of the people, and because the logic of it cannot have a far-sighted outlook for the common good.

Not only the Catholic Church is saying this; it was pointed out clearly by the Chief Rabbi of France in a well-reasoned statement. It is not, in fact, a question of avoiding unfair discrimination for homosexuals, since this must and can be guaranteed in other ways.

It is a question of admitting that a husband and a wife are publicly recognised as such; and that children who come into the world can know, and say they have, a father and a mother. In short, preserving a vision of the human person and of human relationships where there is a public acknowledgement of monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilisation.

If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry? It is not expected, then, that the Church will give up proposing that society recognise a specific place [and EXCLUSIVE PLACE!] for marriage between a man and a woman.

This editorial has since elicited headlines in the Anglophone media of the type 'Vatican digs in on traditional marriage' - as if the Church were anywhere near abandoning its position, or even 'evolving' on it!

********************************************************************

P.S. By coincidence, I came across this today. If any contemporary Pope ever said anything similar, I can't even imagine the vituperation that would come down on him from liberal Catholics and the secularists of the world who also dominate the media. But this is Pope St. Gregory the Great in the 6th century (thbough I imagine that even someone like Pius XII could have said it in his time without unduly raising any hackles). It's a measure of how far the seemingly dominant mentality about homosexual practices has 'devolved' into what it is today...

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Saint Gregory the Great on the symbolism of the fire and brimstone that God used to punish the sodomites: “Brimstone calls to mind the foul odors of the flesh, as Sacred Scripture itself confirms when it speaks of the rain of fire and brimstone poured by the Lord upon Sodom. He had decided to punish in it the crimes of the flesh, and the very type of punishment emphasized the shame of that crime, since brimstone exhales stench and fire burns. It was therefore just, that the sodomites, burning with perverse desires that originated from the foul odor of flesh, should perish at the same time by fire and brimstone so that through this just chastisement they might realize the evil perpetrated under the impulse of a perverse desire.” (St. Gregory the Great, Commento morale a Giobbe, XIV, 23, vol. II, p. 371, Ibid., p. 7) /DIM]

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Forgive this belated post about the formal announcement o = an event I had anticipated in the 'almanac' on Nov. 9 -I had been hoping to post this item here with the Pope's official message of congratulations to the next Archbishop of Canterbury. For some reason, that has not yet come, and so far, the Vatican haas only announced the reaction of Cardinal Koch, president of the Pontifical Council formChristian Unity. I do not know what the protocol is with these messages, but I find the delay perplexing since the Pope's message to the newly-elected Coptic Orthodox Pope last week was immediately announced...

The next Archbishop of Canterbury
supports ordaining women bishops
and is 'evolving' on same-sex marriage
by Robert Barr


LONDON, Nov, 9 (AP) - A former oil executive with experience in conflict resolution has been chosen to lead a global Anglican Communion riven by sharply divided views on gay people and their place in the church.

Prime Minister David Cameron announced Friday that Justin Welby, 56, a fast-rising priest with only a year's experience as a bishop, had been picked to succeed Rowan Williams as archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Church of England and spiritual leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans.

Welby, the 105th holder of a post that stretches back to the 6th century, will take over after Williams retires in December.

Welby said he felt privileged, and astonished, to be chosen to lead the church at "a time of spiritual hunger."

"It's something I never expected," Welby told reporters, saying he had been "overwhelmed and surprised" to be offered the job.

"My initial reaction was 'Oh no,'" he said.

Welby said he supported the ordination of women as bishops, and indicated his thinking on same-sex marriage—which he has opposed—was evolving.

"We must have no truck with any form of homophobia in any part of the church," he said, adding that he planned to "listen to the voice of the LGBT communities and examine my own thinking."

Cameron welcomed the selection of Welby, who was chosen by a church commission and formally approved by Queen Elizabeth II.

"The Church of England plays an important role in our society, not just as the established church, but in the provision of education, help for the deprived and in furthering social justice," Cameron said. "I look forward to working with the Archbishop in all of these areas and I wish him success in his new role."

Welby, appointed last year as bishop of Durham, worked for 11 years in the oil industry, rising to treasurer of Enterprise Oil, before deciding he was called to the priesthood.

Even before formally becoming archbishop, Welby could face a test of his mediation skills later this month when the church's governing General Synod votes on allowing women to serve as bishops. Welby supports that change, but the latest proposed compromise has drawn fire from activists on both sides of the issue—either as being too weak or going too far.

He was recently appointed to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which is examining possible reforms of the industry, and he serves as ethical adviser to the Association of Corporate Treasurers.

Welby has denounced multi-million executive pay packages in big British companies as "obscene" and has said the Occupy movement "reflects a deep-seated sense that something is wrong."

His views on corporate responsibility, he has said, "came out of working in an extractive industry often in developing countries where ethical questions were very frequent."

Before seeking ordination, Welby spent six years with French oil company Elf Aquitaine and then as treasurer of exploration company Enterprise Oil in 1984. He resigned in 1989 to study for the priesthood.

"During my time there I came to realize there was a gap between what I thought, believed and felt was right in my non-work life and what went on at work," he said.

Following ordination in 1993 he was a parish priest for nine years before moving to Coventry Cathedral, as co-director of international ministry. In 2005, he became co-director of the cathedral's conflict reconciliation ministry in Africa, where he had experience in the oil industry.

He has spoken of having to "establish relationships with killers and with the families of their victims, with arms smugglers, corrupt officials and more."

In 2007 he was appointed dean of Liverpool Cathedral, Britain's largest church. He caused a bit of controversy there by allowing the tune of John Lennon's "Imagine" to be played on the cathedral bells.

Welby was schooled at Eton College and Cambridge University. His mother was a private secretary to Winston Churchill. But his father went to the United States during Prohibition and became a bootlegger, the Mail on Sunday newspaper quoted Welby as saying.

Welby and his wife, Caroline, have two sons and three daughters. Their first child, a 7-month-old girl, was killed in a traffic accident in 1983.

Nov. 11, 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

ST. MARTIN DE TOURS (born Hungary 316?-d France 397)
Bishop and Confessor, Patron of France
Son of a Hungarian soldier in the Roman Empire, he grew up in the area that is now Pavia, Italy,
and joined the cavalry at 15. At 18, he had his famous dream of giving half his cloak to a beggar
who turned up later as Christ wearing it. He was baptized, and two years later, he left the army
to be a 'soldier for Christ'. In Tours, France, he became a disciple of Hilary of Poitiers. He went
into exile and back with Hilary, establishing the first French monastery on their return. He was
active in preaching against the various heresies of his time. He was named bishop by popular
acclaim on Hilary's death, and continued to fight paganism and heresies. In the 7th century,
his cult was taken up by Clovis, who founded what became the Merovingian dynasty. His shrine
became a popular stop on the pilgrimage route to the Shrine of St. James in Compostela, Spain,
and he has remained one of the most popular of European saints. Martin Luther, who was baptized
on his feast day, was named for him.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111112.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Sunday Angelus = Before the prayers, the Holy Father reflected on the two widows that are the subject of a Reading
and the Gospel passage this Sunday, as examples of faith expressed in lvoe of God and their neighbor. Afterwards,
he recalled the beatification in Spoleto yesterday of Maria Luisa Prosperi, a 19th century Benedictine abbess.
He also noted that today the Church in Italy observes a day of thanksgiving, with this year's theme from
Psalm 37: "Trust in the LORD and do good that you may dwell in the land and live secure".

Concert for the Holy Father- In the afternoon, he will attend a concert in his honor at the Sistine Chapel
during which the Sistine Chapel choir will perform the Holy Year Mass composed by his brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger,
for the Holy Year 2000.

ANGELUS TODAY




The tale of two Biblical widows:
Models of faith and charity
Adapted from

Nov. 11, 2012

The faithful braved wind and rain on Sunday to hear Pope Benedict XVI recite the Angelus prayer from the Papal Apartments overlooking St Peter’s Square. Looking down on a sea of people, the Holy Father reflected on Sunday’s Mass readings, each recounting the faith of two widows - one in the Old Testament who shares her food with a prophet, and the other in the New Testament who gives her last two coins as an offering to God.

The First Reading from the Book of Kings tells the story of a woman who despite being very poor gives the Prophet Elijah food and drink when she has hardly any for herself and her son. The Gospel Reading from St Mark shows the charity of a woman who puts all the money she has into the temple treasury.

The Pope said both widows provide us with a valuable lesson about faith. Widows and orphans, said the Pope, are particularly special to God because they have lost the support of loved ones but God remains as their spouse or parent.

The Holy Father also noted that no one is so poor that they cannot donate something, These women, he said are examples of the inseparable bond of faith and charity.

In English, the Pope said: “In today’s Gospel, the poor widow gives everything she possesses to the Temple. May her unconditional offering inspire us to rely on God alone, while attributing to everything else its due place and proper worth.”

Following the prayers, the Pope Benedict recalled that today marks the Day of Thanksgiving in Italy, to acknowledge the providential hand of God who looks after his children.



Here is a translation of the Pope's remarks:

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Dear brothers and sisters:

The Liturgy of the Word this Sunday presents us with two models of faith in the person of two widows. They are presented in parallel: one from the First Book of Kings (17,10-16), the other in the Gospel of Mark (12,41-44).

Both these women were very poor, and precisely in their condition, they demonstrate their great faith in God. The first widow appears in the cycle of accounts about the prophet Elijah. During a time of famine, he receives from the Lord a command to go to the region near Sidon, outside Israel, in pagan territory.

There, he meets a widow from whom he asks a bit of bread and something to drink. The woman tells him that she only has a handful of flour and a drop of oil left, but since the prophet promises that if she listens to him, she will never lack for flour and oil, she listens to him, and is properly rewarded.

The second widow, from the Gospels, was observed by Jesus in the temple of Jerusalem as she was by the treasury, where the faithful left their offerings. He notes that the woman places two coins into the box. He calls his disciples and tells them that the woman's offering was better than that from the rich, "for they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood" (Mk 12,44).

From these two Biblical episodes, wisely brought together, we can receive a valuable teaching about faith. Faith is the interior attitude of one who bases his life on God, on his Word, and trusts completely in him.

In antiquity, widowhood was in itself a condition of grave need. That is why, in the Bible, widows and orphans are persons whom God cares for in a special way - they have lost their earthly supports, but God remains their Spouse, their Parent.

Still Scripture says that the objective condition of need, in this case, being a widow, is not enough: God always asks our free adherence to faith which is expressed in love for him and for our neighbor. No one is so poor as to be unable to give something.

Indeed, both these widows demonstrate their faith by carrying out an act of charity - one towards the prophet, the other by almsgiving. Thus they attest to the inseparable unity of faith and charity, as there is between love of God and love of neighbor - as we were reminded by the Gospel last Sunday.

Pope St. Leo the Great, whose memorial we celebrated yesterday, On the scales of divine justice, the quantity of offering is not measured, but the weight of hearts. The widow int eh Gospel deposited in the temple treasury two small coins that surpassed all the offerings by the rich. No gesture of goodness is devoid of sense in the eyes of God, no mercy remains unrewarded" (Sermo de jejunio dec. mens., 90, 3).

The Virgin Mary is the perfect example of someone who offers all of herself, trusting in God. With this faith, she tells the Angel, "Here I am" and welcomes the will of the Lord. May she help each of us in this Year of Faith to reinforce our faith in God and in his Word.

After the prayers, he said:
Yesterday, in Spoleto, Maria Luisa Prosperi, a nun and abbess of the Benedictine convent in Trevi, who lived in the first half of the 19th century, was proclaimed Blessed.

Along with the entire Benedictine family and the diocesan community of Spoleto-Norcia, let us praise the Lord for this daughter who united herself in a singular way with the Passion of Christ.

Italy celebrates today the Day of Thanksgiving. In the context of the Year of Faith, the theme of the day - "Trust in the Lord and do good that you may dwell in the land and live secure" (Ps 37,3). - recalls the need for a lifestyle rooted in faith, in order to acknowledge with gratitude the creative and provident hand of God who nourishes his children. A greeting and best wishes to all farmers!

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Concert for the Pope features
Mass composed by his brother
Translated from the Italian service of

November 11, 2012

As part of the 2012 international Festival of Sacred Music in Rome, its 11th edition, a very special concert for the Holy Father will be held this afternoon at the Sistine Chapel offered by his brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, who won the Musica Sacra Prize from the festival sponsors in 2010.

The concert will feature the Mass composed by Mons. Ratzinger in 2000 to mark the Great Jubilee and will be performed by the Sistine Chapel Choir directed by Fr. Massimo Palombella. Gabriella Ceraso interviewed Fr. Palombella about the work and its composer.

FR. PALOMBELLA: [Georg Ratzinger] is a complete musician who has mastered the technique of musical direction, the technique of choral singing, and the conpositional aspects of sacred music - in short, everything.

One understands from the music he has composed that he is very familiar with all the great works and has synthesized this knowledge into his own. The Holy Year Mass is in the late Romantic style, with influences from Beethoven and Wagner. It remains rooted in tradition but also amplifies it.

Music is an expression of the spirit, Pope Benedict XVI has often said. In this context, what does this Mass communicate to us?
It seeks to express the faith of the Church in the present culture, which is ultimately the objective of evangelization. We must speak to man today and the culture of today, not in terms of yesterday.

Is it a complete Mass?
It does not have the Credo. So for this Year of Faith, we shall execute the Credo from Palestrina's 'Mass for Pope Marcellus'.

We will start the concert with Gregorian chant, to remind us of the origins of sacred music. Then there will be Georg Ratzinger's Mass with Palestrina's Credo. We shall then perform a eucharistic motet that I composed, and we will close with 'Tu es Petrus' by Colin Mawby. The last two represent contemporary music, while the first part of the concert represent traditional anchors of sacred music.

As the pontifical choir, the Sistine Chapel choir must be open to cultural confrontation and exchange if it is help in evangelization and if it is not to be just a museum piece.

On Benedict XVI's
fourth encyclical

-
VATICAN CITY, Nov. 11 (Translated from ANSA) - Benedict XVI's fourth encyclical on the theological virtue of faith will be focused on the Paschal mystery - primarily a reflection on the death and resurrection of Jesus as the central belief of the Christian faith.

The Holy Father completed his manuscript in Castel Gandolfo last summer and is now undergoing translation in various languages. It is expected to be released early next year as one of the main features of this Year of Faith.

The uniqueness of Christianity:
12 objections answered
by Peter Kreeft

From 'Fundamentals of the Faith'


Ronald Knox once quipped that “the study of comparative religions is the best way to become comparatively religious.” The reason, as G. K. Chesterton says, is that, according to most “scholars” of comparative religion, “Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.”

But any Christian who does apologetics must think about comparative religions because the most popular of all objections against the claims of Christianity today comes from this field.

The objection is not that Christianity is not true but that it is not the truth; not that it is a false religion but that it is only a religion. The world is a big place, the objector reasons; “different strokes for different folks”. How insufferably narrow-minded to claim that Christianity is the one true religion! God just has to be more open-minded than that.

This is the single most common objection to the Faith today, for “today” worships not God but equality.

It fears being right where others are wrong more than it fears being wrong.

It worships democracy and resents the fact that God is an absolute monarch.

It has changed the meaning of the word honor from being respected because you are superior in some way, to being accepted because you are not superior in any way but just like us.

The one unanswerable insult, the absolutely worst name you can possibly call a person in today’s society, is “fanatic”, especially “religious fanatic”.

If you confess at a fashionable cocktail party that you are plotting to overthrow the government, or that you are a PLO terrorist or a KGB spy, or that you molest porcupines or bite bats’ heads off, you will soon attract a buzzing, fascinated, sympathetic circle of listeners. But if you confess that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, you will find yourself suddenly alone, with a distinct chill in the air.

Here are twelve of the commonest forms of this objection, the odium of elitism, with answers to each.

1. “All religions are the same, deep down.”
That is simply factually untrue. No one ever makes this claim unless he is (1) abysmally ignorant of what the different religions of the world actually teach or (2) intellectually irresponsible in understanding these teachings in the vaguest and woolliest way or (3) morally irresponsible in being indifferent to them.

The objector’s implicit assumption is that the distinctive teachings of the world’s religions are unimportant, that the essential business of religion is not truth but something else: transformation of consciousness, or sharing and caring or culture and comfort, or something of that sort — not conversion but conversation.

Christianity teaches many things no other religion teaches, and some of them directly contradict those others. If Christianity isn’t true, why be a Christian?

By Catholic standards, the religions of the world can be ranked by how much truth they teach.

- Catholicism is first, with Orthodoxy equal except for the one issue of papal authority.
- Then comes Protestantism and any “separated brethren” who keep the Christian essentials as found in Scripture.
- Third comes traditional Judaism, which worships the same God but not via Christ.
- Fourth is Islam, greatest of the theistic heresies.
- Fifth, Hinduism, a mystical pantheism;
- Sixth, Buddhism, a pantheism without a theos;
- Seventh, modern Judaism, Unitarianism, Confucianism, Modernism, and secular humanism, none of which have either mysticism or supernatural religion but only ethics;
- Eighth, idolarity; and
- Ninth, Satanism.

To collapse these nine levels [and saying all religions are the same, or that they are all paths to the same goal] is like thinking the earth is flat.

2. “But the essence of religion is the same at any rate: all religions agree at least in being religious.

What is this essence of religion anyway? I challenge anyone to define it broadly enough to include Confucianism, Buddhism, and modern Reform Judaism, but narrowly enough to exclude Platonism, atheistic Marxism, and Nazism.

The unproved and unprovable assumption of this second objection is that the essence of religion is a kind of lowest common denominator or common factor. Perhaps the common factor is a weak and watery thing rather than an essential thing. Perhaps it does not exist at all. No one has ever produced it.

3. “But if you compare the Sermon on the Mount, Buddha’s Dhammapada, Lao-tzu’s Tao-te-ching, Confucius’ Analects, the Bhagavad Gita, the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Dialogues of Plato, you it: a real, profound, and strong agreement.”

Yes, but this is ethics, not religion. The objector is assuming that the essence of religion is ethics. It is not. Everyone has an ethic, not everyone has a religion. Tell an atheist that ethics equals religion. He will be rightly insulted, for you would be calling him either religious if he is ethical, or unethical because he is nonreligious.

Ethics may be the first step in religion but it is not the last. As C.S. Lewis says, “The road to the Promised Land runs past Mount Sinai.”

4. “Speaking of mountains reminds me of my favorite analogy. Many roads lead up the single mountain of religion to God at the top. It is provincial, narrow-minded, and blind to deny the validity of other roads than yours.”

The unproved assumption of this very common mountain analogy is that the roads go up, not down; that man makes the roads, not God; that religion is man’s search for God, not God’s search for man. C. S. Lewis says this sounds like “the mouse’s search for the cat”.

Christianity is not a system of man’s search for God but a story of God’s search for man. True religion is not like a cloud of incense wafting up from special spirits into the nostrils of a waiting God, but like a Father’s hand thrust downward to rescue the fallen. Throughout the Bible, man-made religion fails. There is no human way up the mountain, only a divine way down. “No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.”

If we made the roads, it would indeed be arrogant to claim that any one road is the only valid one, for all human things are equal, at least in all being human, finite, and mixtures of good and bad. If we made the roads, it would be as stupid to absolutize one of them as to absolutize one art form, one political system, or one way of skinning a cat.

But if God made the road, we must find out whether he made many or one. If he made only one, then the shoe is on the other foot: it is humility, not arrogance, to accept this one road from God, and it is arrogance, not humility, to insist that our manmade roads are as good as God’s God-made one.

But which assumption is true? Even if the pluralistic one is true, not all religions are equal, for then one religion is worse and more arrogant than all others, for it centers on one who claimed, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man can come to the Father but by me.”

5. “Still, it fosters religious imperialism to insist that your way is the only way. You’re on a power trip.”

No, we believe not because we want to, because we are imperialistic, or because we invented it [Christianity], but because Christ taught it. It isn’t our way, it’s his way, that’s the only way. We’re just being faithful to him and to what he said. The objector’s assumption is that we can make religion whatever we want it to be.

6. “If the one-way doctrine comes from Christ, not from you, then he must have been arrogant.”

How ironic to think Jesus is arrogant! No sin excited his anger more than the arrogance and bigotry of religious leaders. No man was ever more merciful, meek, loving, and compassionate.

The objector is always assuming the thing to be proved: that Christ is just one among many religious founders, human teachers. But he claimed to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life; if that claim is not true, he is not one among many religious sages but one among many lunatics. If the claim is true, then again he is not one among many religious sages, but the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

7. “Do you want to revive the Inquisition? Don’t you value religious tolerance? Do you object to giving other religions equal rights?”

The Inquisition failed to distinguish the heresy from the heretic and tried to eliminate both by force or fire. The objector makes the same mistake in reverse: he refuses to condemn either. The state has no business defining and condemning heresy, of course, but the believer must do it -i f not through the Church, then by himself. For to believe x is to condemn non-x as false. If you don’t believe non-x is false, then you don’t really believe x is true.

8. “I’m surprised at this intolerance. I thought Christianity was the religion of love.”

It is. It is also the religion of truth. The objector is separating two divine attributes. We dp not. We are “speaking the truth in love”.

9. “But all God expects of us is sincerity.”

How do you know what God expects of us? Have you listened to God’s revelation? Isn’t it dangerous to assume without question or doubt that God must do exactly what you would do if you were God? Suppose sincerity were not enough; suppose truth was needed too. Is that unthinkable? In every other area of life we need truth. Is sincerity enough for a surgeon? An explorer? Don’t we need accurate road maps of reality?

The objector’s implicit assumption here is that there is no objective truth in religion, only subjective sincerity, so that no one can ever be both sincere and wrong; that the spirit does not have objective roads like the body and the mind, which lead to distinct destinations: the body’s physical roads lead to different cities and the mind’s logical roads lead to different conclusions. True sincerity wants to know the truth.

10. “Are non-Christians all damned then?”

No. Father Feeny was excommunicated by the Catholic Church for teaching that “outside the Church, [there is] no salvation” meant outside the visible Church. God does not punish pagans unjustly. He does not punish them for not believing in a Jesus they never heard of, through no fault of their own (invincible ignorance).

But God, who is just, punishes them for sinning against the God they do know through nature and conscience (see Rom 1-2). There are no innocent pagans, and there are no innocent Christians either. All have sinned against God and against conscience. All need a Savior. Christ is the Savior.

11. “But surely there’s a little good in the worst of us and a little bad in the best of us. There’s good and bad everywhere, inside the Church and outside.”

True. What follows from that fact? That we need no Savior? That there are many Saviors? That contradictory religions can all be true? That none is true? None of these implied conclusions has the remotest logical connection with the admitted premise.

There is a little good in the worst of us, but there’s also a little bad in the best of us; more, there’s sin, separation from God, in all of us; and the best of us, the saints, are the first to admit it.

The universal sin Saint Paul pinpoints in Romans 1:18 is to suppress the truth. We all sin against the truth we know and refuse it when it condemns us or threatens our self-sufficiency or complacency. We all rationalize. Our duty is plain to us — to be totally honest — and none of us does his duty perfectly. We have no excuse of invincible ignorance.

12. “But isn’t God unjust to judge the whole world by Christian standards?”

God judges justly. “All who sinned without [knowing] the [Mosaic] law will also perish without the law, and all who have sinned under the law will be judged by the law” (Rom 2:12). Even pagans show “that what the law requires is written on their hearts” (Rom 2:15). If we honestly consult our hearts, we will find two truths: that we know what we ought to do and be, and that we fail to do and be that.

Fundamentalists, faithful to the clear one-way teaching of Christ, often conclude from this that pagans, Buddhists, etc., cannot be saved. Liberals, who emphasize God’s mercy, cannot bring themselves to believe that the mass of men are doomed to hell, and they ignore, deny, nuance, or water down Christ’s own claims to uniqueness.

The Church has found a third way, implied in the New Testament texts. On the one hand, no one can be saved except through Christ. On the other hand, Christ is not only the incarnate Jewish man but also the eternal, pre=existent word of God, “which enlightens every man who comes into the world” (Jn 1:9).

So Socrates was able to know Christ [???? Or is it "if Socrates had a chance to know Christ...???? He lived 500 years before Christ!] as word of God, as eternal Truth; and if the fundamental option of his deepest heart was to reach out to him as Truth, in faith and hope and love, however imperfectly known this Christ was to Socrates, Socrates could have been saved by Christ too.

We are not saved by knowledge but by faith. Scripture nowhere says how explicit the intellectual content of faith has to be. But it does clearly say who the one Savior is.

The Second Vatican Council took a position on comparative religions that distinguished Catholicism from both Modernist relativism and Fundamentalist exclusivism. It taught that on the one hand there is much deep wisdom and value in other religions and that the Christian should respect them and learn from them. But, on the other hand, the claims of Christ and his Church can never be lessened, compromised, or relativized. We may add to our religious education by studying other religions but never subtract from it.

Monday, Nov. 12, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time
Memorial of St. Josaphat

St. Josaphat (b Lithuania 1584, d Russia, 1623
Bishop and Martyr, Patron Saint of the Ukraine
Born around the time that the Church of Ruthenia split, with some
Orthodox returning to communion with Rome (Uniates), he grew up
a Uniate, with a reputation for holiness even as a boy. He became
a Basilian priest, well-schooled and ardent in preaching the Catholic
faith. After heading many monasteries, he became Bishop of Vitebsk
at age 38. His preaching converted many orthodox to Catholicism,
including Ignatius, Patriarch of Moscow, and a descendant of the
Paleologue emperors. He was murdered by a mob in Vitebsk who
supported a dissident hierarchy that had developed against him.
Lying in state, his body had the odor of sanctity and was incorrupt
when it was exhumed five years later. His remains were later taken
to Rome where he is buried in St. Peter's Basilica. Hos body was
exposed intact in 1797. In 1867, he became the first Eastern saint
to be canonized in the Latin rite.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/111212.cfm


WITH THE HOLY FATHER TODAY

The Holy Father visited the 'Viva gli Anziani' (Long live the elderly) family house of the Sant'Egidio
Community in Rome to highlight the observance of the European Year for Active Aging and Solidarity among
Generations. Address in Italian.

The Vatican announced that the Pope has named Mons. Fortunato Nwachukwu of Nigeria, who has been
Protocol Chief at the Secretariat of State since 2007, to be the Apostolic Nuncio to Nicaragua, also
elevating him to the rabk of Archbishop.