BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

The Washington Post page editor gave this article the title "Can Pope Francis finish the job that Benedict began?" - which the article does not question at all! Two other objections: First, it has become tiresome for editors and commentators to hammer on any imagined 'discontinuity' between Benedict and Francis on matters of faith and morals, the two areas of Church discipline on which Popes are considered infallible (i.e., the Holy Ghost protects them from making decisions and statements that would harm the faith). It is obvious that their personal styles are very different - but that does not translate into doctrinal discontinuity. Second, what 'job' begun by a Pope is ever really completed? Beginnings can be made, and progress registered, but 'completion' is never really to be expected because the Church, as Benedict XVI often reminded us, is 'semper riformanda' - it must always be reforming... That said, I am frankly surprised and happy that the Post used an article like this, which is most laudatory of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI...

Pope Francis carries on the Church's
fight against abusive priests
by Fr. Robert Gahl

May 7, 2013

The author is Associate Professor of Ethics at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.

In October of 1999, at the end of a meeting of departmental chiefs in the Vatican, I confronted Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and challenged him. The meeting was meant to discuss available options for dealing with the already-burgeoning international crisis of sexual abuse. Everyone in that room aimed for justice, especially for the victims, but also for the accused.

Ratzinger was leading the curial push to decisively deal with perpetrators who were still a threat because of some weak-minded administrators and their policy to move criminals first to treatment and then back into ministry.

I had been invited by the Congregation for Clergy to present an ethical analysis of the extrajudicial, administrative practices used by the Church to prosecute cases of clerical sexual abuse.

At that meeting, I highlighted the risks of violating the natural right to a fair trial. The cardinals expressed differences of opinion regarding their concern for the rights of the accused and the terrible wounds of the victims who had been abused by those whom they had held in sacred trust. Despite his gentleness, Ratzinger demonstrated deep determination to satisfy justice.

Ratzinger did not aim for a middle place between the competing interests of the victims and of the accused, but to ascertain the truth, reach a verdict, and impose a just penalty, all while doing everything possible to heal the victims and repair the damage done to the church and society.

After noting my concern for judicial due process, he indicated his unshakeable commitment to do everything possible to root out abusive clergy, fully cognizant that he could be criticized by canon lawyers for eliminating traditional steps in ecclesiastical trials designed to protect the rights of the accused.

That moment in 1999 was an emergency. The problem was even worse than it appeared. First under John Paul, Ratzinger drafted new norms, extended statutes of limitations, and even offered dispensations from the retroactive statutes of limitations in the case of the most grievous crimes committed against minors.

Once elected Pope, Benedict continued the reform.
- He revised the Church’s penal law and sharpened its teeth to make sure that no criminal could evade sanction.
- He created tribunals, met with victims and purified the ranks of clergy from those who might hurt the young.
= He held judicial trials and removed more than a 1,000 from the priesthood and several from the episcopacy.
- Towards the end of his papacy, in 2010, Benedict again reformed Church law to empower a tribunal to hear cases brought against bishops and cardinals.

Benedict is rightly known for uplifting men and women of good will by preaching that God is love and Jesus is divine Logos incarnate. But Benedict also taught about the dark side of humanity.

“Evil,” he once stated, “draws its power from indecision and concern for what other people think.” He had experienced the malignancy of the Nazi regime and reconfirmed his commitment to sweep out the filth from the Bride of Christ.

Upon retirement, Benedict explained that he no longer enjoyed the needed vigor, of body and spirit, to govern the Church. He stepped aside so that a younger man might continue the task and follow through with reform of church governance.

Now, the world observes the eloquent gestures in these first few weeks of Pope Francis, while wondering whether the new Pope will continue Benedict’s reform. Francis has already shown the world the Christ-like characteristics that the cardinals, inspired by the Holy Spirit, had been seeking for the new Pope. [Which is not to say that Benedict XVI does not have 'Christ-like' characteristics!]

In his third tweet, Pope Francis stated: “True power is service. The pope must serve all people, especially the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.”

And when archbishop in Buenos Aires, Bergoglio commented on the responsibility of bishops regarding priests who have committed sexual abuse. “You must never look away.” he said. “You cannot be in a position of power and use it to destroy the life of another person.” It would be a mistake, he added, to put the Church’s reputation first, in a “corporate spirit … to avoid damaging the image of the institution.”

After meeting for the first time with Archbishop Mueller, the head of the Vatican’s office responsible for prosecuting culpable clerics, whether priests, bishops, or even cardinals, Francis publicly confirmed his commitment to continue Benedict’s efforts to protect minors, assist victims of abuse, prosecute criminals according to due process, and to help bishops’ conferences around the world to implement the “necessary directives in this area that is so important for the church’s witness and credibility.”

Cardinals have confided that when deliberating in the Sistine Chapel, they were looking for a Pope who could lead a reform of the Vatican while continuing Benedict’s policy of zero tolerance for sexual abuse.

Benedict’s new laws specify how to satisfy justice and guarantee accountability within the Church by bringing to trial even the highest ranking clerics accused of abuse of power, whether by sexual or financial crimes.

In a mystical apparition, Jesus told St. Francis of Assisi to repair his church. All signs point to a Pope Francis ready to keep cleaning the house of God.

I'm almost offended by the emerging trend - so it seems - to underscore the continuity between Benedict XVI and Francis. which because ought not to be in question at all to anyone who understands the Church, apostolic succession, and the essence of the Petrine ministry. However, obviously, many don't, even (or especially) among the most prominent and outspoken of Vatican reporters and those who feel called upon and somehow qualified to comment about the affairs of the Church from a purely secular point of view.

So perhaps, one should welcome this trending genre of Pope-mania literature, were it not that many, like this article, even with the best of intentions, end up becoming overly defensive about Benedict XVI, or even worse, apologetic (not because he was wrong or did wrong, but because his virtues have been generally ignored in the media chorus about Pope Francis's excellences, usually presented as superiorities over Benedict XVI. This comparison game was execrable, untenable and unfair when the standard of comparison was John Paul II - it is equally so in the Benedict-Francis 'match-up'.

I myself have been constrained to fisk articles, or at least, comment on them when the aggravation becomes so insupportable that one has to say, "But Benedict XVI said and did such-and-such as Pope, and even long before he became Pope, that Pope Francis is now being hailed for saying and doing as if no Pope had said or done the same thing before". Pope Francis is obviously not at fault here - only his self-recruited rah-rah brigades who think somehow, in a most un-Christian way, that they cannot praise Francis without denigrating Benedict, explicitly or implicitly (but transparently so). In fact, they have resolutely refused to follow the very gracious lead of Pope Francis who has been unfailingly thoughtful for his predecessor.]

Benedict and Francis:
A lesson in apostolic continuity
The differences between the two men give witness
to the different gifts of the same Holy Spirit
by William L. Patenaude

Issue of May 2013

When Pope Francis visited his predecessor at Castel Gandolfo in March, he said to Benedict XVI that “we are brothers.” This image nicely frames the differences between them.[????] It underscores that the election of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was not a rupture in the Church (as some suggest) but an unexpected [Why unexpected? The system of electing the Popes has proven remarkably efficient over the past seven centuries at least, in preserving the continuity of the Church] lesson in apostolic continuity.

Specifically, both men have illuminated from different perspectives the relation between the primacy of God’s offering of grace in the liturgy of the altar and subsequent encounters of man and neighbor in the liturgies of love in everyday life.

While Pope Benedict most often stressed the encounter of God with man —which then calls for and makes possible authentic encounters with neighbor — Pope Francis has stressed man’s interactions with each other, which allows us to bring Christ to a world despairing in atheistic politics and individual spiritualities.

These and other forms of despair are well known to both men. Joseph Ratzinger witnessed it in the rise and fall of Nazi Germany and the brutality of Communist and other explicitly secular regimes. Jorge Bergoglio witnessed it in the poverty and politics of Argentina. He has also echoed Benedict XVI’s concern over a “dictatorship of relativism.”

Providentially, both men share particular theological remedies for all this. In his autobiography Milestones, Ratzinger calls attention to the writings of theologians like Henri de Lubac—the twentieth century Jesuit who is also appreciated by Pope Francis. [As if that therefore 'legitimizes' Joseph Ratzinger's interest in De Lubac, whom, BTW, he came to work with during Vatican II and afterwards in Communio.]

Ratzinger recalls his delight in de Lubac’s expression of Catholicism as a “social faith, conceived and lived as a we—a faith that, precisely as such and according to its nature, was also hope, affecting history as a whole, and not only the promise of a private blissfulness to individuals.”

Today, Pope Francis is demonstrating the power of these words. He has offered stunning visuals [???? What, no Pope before him ever aroused enthusiasm among the faithful?] that have captivated international audiences. And he exhorts the faithful to love likewise.

In his March 27th General Audience, he said that “following and accompanying Christ, staying with him, demands ‘coming out of ourselves’, requires us to be outgoing; to come out of ourselves, out of a dreary way of living faith that has become a habit, out of the temptation to withdraw into our own plans which end by shutting out God’s creative action.”

Some who cheer these words groaned eight years ago when the College of Cardinals elected Joseph Ratzinger to succeed Pope John Paul II. [And yet, no one could have better provided continuity with the Pope he worked with for 23 years, to the point that in the last decade of John Paul's Pontificate, Cardinal Ratzinger was being referred to in the Anglophone MSM (Time magazine and the Washington Post) as 'co-Pope' and 'John Paul III'! Actually, no one questioned the doctrinal continuity. What they were openly skeptical about was how - if ever - Benedict XVi could hope to 'fill the giant shoes he has to fill'! Then, as now, all these detractors willfully ignore all of Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's objectively exceptional virtues and sterling qualities even compared to his 'santo subito' predecessor and now, with his 'santo gia' successor.]

Those who complained the loudest seemed unaware that a young Fr. Ratzinger had been criticized by theological advisors for harboring a “dangerous modernism” or that he had been an advisor at the Second Vatican Council. [They were not 'unaware' - they simply chose to deliberately ignore very well-known facts that had been out there for decades, for anyone who could see, hear or read.]

Given such unfamiliarity, it was no wonder that Pope Benedict XVI surprised a great many when he began speaking of love, charity, and the vibrant relationships of grace that are necessary to improve the way we run our economies and steward our ecosystems.

Pope Benedict rooted such goals in the historical continuity of the Church’s unchanging teachings—such as the proclamation that God is love. In doing so he stressed the reality of objective truth. He underscored that this truth cannot be separated from love or beauty because the truth of which he spoke is the Source of all love — it is the Truth that created the human soul and so can stir it like nothing else.

The Pope emeritus routinely stressed that the central arena for this stirring is the intersection of divinity and humanity that occurs in the Church’s liturgies, especially in the celebration of the Eucharist.

This liturgical emphasis can be found especially in how he unpacked statements from the Second Vatican Council. (For more on Ratzinger/Benedict XVI and the Second Vatican Council, see Tracey Rowland’s piece in CWR, “Benedict XVI and the End of the ‘Virtual Council.’”)

In seeking to guide the Church’s reception of the Council, one of Benedict XVI’s goals was unity within the Church and among all Christians. He did so, of course, remaining true to the apostolic teachings that had been handed to him for his care, teaching, and delivery to his successor.

Pope Benedict appears to have modeled his efforts for unification on St. Bonaventure, who in the thirteenth century took the reigns of a fragmented Franciscan Order, which held a rather exuberant faction that championed a new age of the Holy Spirit, one that had no need of the Cross. Bonaventure sought not a mere academic correction to this error but a pastoral offering of full communion for those who were flaunting orthodoxy.

Pope Benedict did much the same. He was often opening doors for those who stood outside the Church and he encouraged the faithful to do likewise. Hence came his urging for a New Evangelization—for teaching and reminding the world of the presence of God among them.

In his call to evangelize, Pope Benedict appreciated the value of humanity’s cultural differences and how these differences intersect with ecclesial expressions, especially the Mass. Grace, after all, seeks to encounter every age and place. While mindful of such diversity, Pope Benedict was nevertheless confidant that liturgical celebrations required certain elements—like beauty—that point one to the transcendent.

In his 2007 exhortation on the Eucharist, Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict noted that the beauty of the liturgy is “a sublime expression of God's glory and, in a certain sense, a glimpse of heaven on earth. ... Beauty, then, is not mere decoration, but rather an essential element of the liturgical action, since it is an attribute of God himself and his revelation.”

Benedict XVI routinely connected this “glimpse of heaven on earth” with our everyday lives. Further in this exhortation he notes that “[t]he Christian laity, by virtue of their Baptism and Confirmation, and strengthened by the Eucharist, are called to live out the radical newness brought by Christ wherever they find themselves. They should cultivate a desire that the Eucharist have an ever deeper effect on their daily lives, making them convincing witnesses in the workplace and in society at large.”

These words are uniquely emphasized today by Pope Francis: “From the beauty of all these liturgical things,” he preached at his first Chrism Mass, “which is not so much about trappings and fine fabrics than about the glory of our God resplendent in his people, alive and strengthened, we turn now to a consideration of activity, action.” [But the 'trappings and the fabrics' of liturgy express man's glorification of God which complement the good deeds he does to others.]

Thus the images of Cardinal Bergoglio riding mass transit alongside tired commuters and of Pope Francis intimately embracing a child with cerebral palsy become powerful signs of what happens when Christ’s Eucharistic grace is allowed access to a fallen world. [What, Cardinal Ratzinger never walked to work every day for 23 years as CDF Prefect, or rode a bike to work when he was a university professor? Benedict VXI never ever embraced a handicapped person??? It is maddening when even someone who has the good intention of 'correcting' the current image of Benedict as the 'anti-Francis' ends up himself describing Benedict in the terms used by his detractors!]]

Of course, some can (and do) wrongly champion a Pelagian view that such actions by themselves will guarantee earthy peace and the salvation of souls. On the other hand, those who dismiss or criticize the attention that Pope Francis has received for inserting himself into the everyday are missing the evangelizing force of grace. [Who but the malicious and the un-Christian have done that???]

Shortly before his election to the papacy, Cardinal Bergoglio offered these observations as discussion points for his brother cardinals:

---

The Church is called to come out from itself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographical, but also existential: those of the mystery of sin, of suffering, of injustice, those of ignorance and of the absence of faith, those of thought, those of every form of misery. ... When the Church does not come out from itself to evangelize it becomes self-referential and gets sick (one thinks of the woman hunched over upon herself in the Gospel). The evils that, in the passing of time, afflict the ecclesiastical institutions have a root in self-referentiality, in a sort of theological narcissism. In Revelation, Jesus says that he is standing at the threshold and calling. Evidently the text refers to the fact that he stands outside the door and knocks to enter. . . But at times I think that Jesus may be knocking from the inside, that we may let him out. The self-referential Church presumes to keep Jesus Christ within itself and not let him out.

---

[This is not the time but I do mean to express my own humble critique of many assumptions in that much-praised manifesto!]

This image of an inwardly oriented Church that “keeps Jesus Christ within itself” chides those who would accept the Eucharistic presence of Christ with little desire to then go forth to announce the Gospel. Indeed, this lack of evangelical zeal fails to heed what Pope Benedict taught: that the faithful are to “live out the radical newness brought by Christ wherever they find themselves.” [It is hard to imagine any Catholic who genuinely receives the grace of the Eucharist keeping that grace to himself and not sharing it with others in any way he can! That is one of the obvious and objectionable fallacies I find in the phrase "keeping in Jesus within itself", which is a contradiction in terms. And which treats Jesus as if he were an object that anyone could exclusively possess!]

In his doctoral study of St. Bonaventure, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger concluded that a Church that seeks peace in the future is “obliged to love in the present.” Throughout his pastoral and academic career, Joseph Ratzinger taught and lived this loving in the present - mindful always that to do so requires God’s grace, especially that which comes to us in the Eucharist. [There you are!]

Pope Francis—who begins his days celebrating Mass with the community in which he lives—has also brought to life this loving in the present: He does so by dramatically emphasizing the external reach of the Church in the liturgies of everyday life [but doesn't every Catholic priest do that, or is supposed to, anyway, in the daily Mass he offers????] even if he does prefer simpler liturgies of the altar (which seems fitting given that, as a Jesuit, he has taken a vow of poverty) [and the great majority of priests around the world do say the simplest liturgies for their daily offering in persona Christi. As did all the Popes before Francis, except their daily Masses were not chronicled at all by Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano. Not even Blessed John Paul's celebrated but private morning Masses which were attended not infrequently but discreetly by heads of state and other VIPs, along with other privileged faithful who were invited to these Masses.

These differences are not a break in pontifical teachings nor do they snub Benedict XVI. Rather, they give witness to true apostolic continuity—to the different gifts of the same Spirit—whenever Pope Francis instinctively lives out his older brother’s call to first experience the grace of God and then joyfully offer it to everyone else. [Which is not to say, I hope, that in Benedict it was just a call, whereas with Francis it becomes experience! You see the dangers of trying to force this 'continuity-discontinuity' meme???? If Cardinal Scola or Cardinal Ouellet = both considered 'Ratzingerian' in the best sense - had been elected Pope, I wonder if we would be getting this degree of witting and unwitting Benedict-bashing that has become the common sport these days.]

Speaking of serendipitous synchronicity (Jung's preferred word for 'coincidence'), a lookback feature I meant to post for May 9 was this unusually rich article - written exactly one year ago by the author of the article in the post above... I found the article, a treat then, and it is still is, very much so...



St. Bonaventure, Benedict XVI,
and the New Evangelization
by William L. Patenaude

May 9, 2012

The timing and intent of Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a “New Evangelization” have as much to do with his theological and pastoral pedigree as they do with the state of affairs in which the Church lives.

His early contributions to the topics of revelation, human history, and the relation between the two — which brought the young Joseph Ratzinger both praise and charges of championing “dangerous modernism” — today assist the Church in engaging modern ills with the enduring truths of the Gospel.

Of course, with a mind as expansive as Pope Benedict’s, no one event, or even a series of them, can be said to be “the” development that defines him. Certainly, his upbringing in Catholic Bavaria, his forced participation in World War II as a teenager, and his days among bomb-damaged seminary buildings studying St. Augustine, Henri de Lubac, Romano Guardini, Martin Buber, and so many others all influenced who the man is today. Still, not every encounter with the past has equal influence.

In the mid-1950s, Father Joseph Ratzinger began work on his second doctoral thesis — a standard requirement of the German theological academy. The study would introduce him to a dramatic moment in Church history, when rumors of the world’s end and the coming of a new age clashed with Christian orthodoxy.

The players in this drama were Joachim of Fiore, an eccentric 12th-century Italian abbot; St. Bonaventure, a 13th-century leader of the Franciscan Order; and an overly idealistic group of Franciscans known as Spiritualists.

Ratzinger concluded that Joachim, Bonaventure, and the events of the 13th century brought to the Church a “new theory of scriptural exegesis which emphasizes the historical character” of Scripture. This new theory was, notably, “in contrast to the exegesis of the Fathers and the Scholastics which had been more clearly directed to the unchangeable and the enduring.”

In finding value in such a view, Ratzinger aligned himself with a school of theologians that sought fresh approaches to orthodox Christian theology.

Evidence for this new view of revelation came from available notes from lectures by Bonaventure given in response to the followers of Joachim, the mystic whose writings had enthralled a troubled Europe. This attraction came, in large part, from how Joachim wove worldly activity into salvation history, and the particular way in which he structured this interplay with biblically-inspired numerical schemes.

For instance, Joachim’s numerology broke ranks with a long-held Augustinian view of time that divided world history into seven ages. For Augustine, these seven ages corresponded to the six days of creation — with the cosmic clock now ticking in the sixth age (which dawned on the first Easter) while moving towards the seventh age (which would bring the eternal Sabbath rest).

Joachim saw history in a Trinitarian light, which encouraged his readers to envision an age of the Father, corresponding to the Old Testament; an age of the Son, corresponding with the New Testament; and a yet-to-come new age of the Holy Spirit, which would complete the process of revelation. For some of Joachim’s followers, this new age would be one of spiritual awakening — of a new reality with no need of the Cross.

Joachim’s death in 1202 and an ecclesial condemnation in 1215 didn’t diminish his following. Quite the opposite occurred. Because Joachim seemed to imply that the year 1260 would herald the Second Coming, soldiers, kings, and clerics of the age couldn’t help but wonder if the world was indeed ending.

Were Muslim invasions signs of the Apocalypse? Were the growing mendicant orders proof that God was preparing a people for the eschaton? And if so, how should one respond to — or work to bring about — this coming of a new age?

With this heightened expectancy, and for reasons related to Trinitarian dogma, 13th-century theologians denounced Joachim’s writings. But for some Franciscans, Joachim had merely stated the obvious: History as it had been known since the time of the Apostles had come to an end with the coming of Francis.

Joachimist elements within the Franciscans became known as the Spiritualists, and they found themselves at odds with just about everyone else in their order and the Church.

In 1257 — three years before what many thought would be the Second Coming — the deeply divided order elected Bonaventure of Bagnoregio as their Minister General. In his new role, Bonaventure was given the task of steering the entirety of his flock to orthodoxy — which he accomplished.

Indeed, as a pastor, he intervened with sensitivity to the range of expressions and beliefs within the order. As a leader entrusted to protect the work of his beloved Francis, he deftly negotiated ecclesial suspicions and Spiritualist fervor by discarding what had been condemned and retaining those elements of Joachim that had value.

As Ratzinger will demonstrate, Bonaventure found much in Joachim worth salvaging.

For instance, we learn that Bonaventure employed a division of world-history that had similarities to Joachim’s. Ratzinger found this particularly important because in adopting some of what Joachim suggested, Bonaventure not only provided the Spiritualists a road home, he also shifted Christianity’s theology of history from an Augustinian view, which fixed Christ at “the end of the ages” to a new interpretation with Christ firmly in “the center of the ages.”

Ratzinger tells us that, thanks to Joachim, the placement of Christ at the midpoint of history allows Bonaventure to emphasize the “historical character” of engaging Scripture because, while all ages relate to the center, all ages are different.

This is where Ratzinger received criticism for holding a “dangerous modernism,” which he writes about in his memoirs, Milestones. The exact charge by one of his advisors — and supported by other theologians — was this: In championing Bonaventure’s historical character of biblical exegesis, Ratzinger would open the door to “the subjectivization of the concept of revelation.” That is, the meaning of revelation would be reinterpreted by each generation to the point of irrelevance to the human person.

This is, of course, not what Ratzinger proposed, and after polite revisions and a heated battle among his advisors, Ratzinger’s doctoral thesis on Bonaventure was accepted. He was free to present his findings to the wider, ecclesial world. [Actually, the revision was more than just 'polite' - it was quite drastic. As he explains it in pp. 108-112 of Milestones, he was forced to discard the first two parts, in which, among other things, he discusses the concept of 'revelation' at the time of Bonaventure compared to the current idea of revelation, and to rework the third part - Bonaventure's theology of history - and resubmit it as his dissertation. It was approved. The entire dissertation as he originally wrote it is published for the first time (Sept. 2009, the month Benedict XVI visited Bagnoregio) in the Collected Writings of Joseph Ratzinger and is entitled "Understanding Revelation and the theology of history in St. Bonvaenture".]



For the future pontiff, Bonaventure’s appreciation of Joachim’s dynamic theology of history seemed an obvious reality for the medieval Church, and it should to us. By the 12th century, it was clear that history had not been idly waiting for the Second Coming, nor was the Church. History was in motion. It was unpredictable, bloody, and brought to humanity new realities — some of them surprisingly wonderful, but many replete with loneliness and desolation and, thus, always in need of Christ.

At the end of his thesis, Ratzinger makes a statement that may very well define his pontificate. He notes that while for Bonaventure it is true that for now “the breath of a new age is blowing, an age in which the desire for the glory of the other world is shaped by a deep love of this earth on which we live,” what remains vital for both Augustine and Bonaventure, irrespective of their differences, is the pastoral exhortation that Christians must attend to the needs of the here and now — “that the Church which hopes for peace in the future is, nonetheless, obliged to live in the present.”

Thus, the central reality of the Church is the point of contact between revelation and our individual and communal moments of the present. Joachim and his followers, however, offered a tempting, and false, alternative path — one that still has its adherents.

In the 1970s, Ratzinger wrote in his opus on eschatology that “the hope aroused by Joachim’s teaching was first taken up by a segment of the Franciscan Order, but subsequently underwent increasing secularization until eventually it was turned into political utopia. The goal of the utopian vision remained embedded in Western consciousness, stimulating a quest for its own realization and preparing the way for that interest in concrete utopias which has been such a determinative element in political thought since the 19th century.”

This is not the only reference to Joachim one finds in Ratzinger’s later writings. His work on eschatology will return to Joachim, and many of his texts, talks, and homilies will raise the specter of the paradise-is-in-our-reach worldview that Joachimist thought unleashed.

To counter the resulting Western hope for better living through chemistry, economics, and political revolutions, Pope Benedict, like Bonaventure, offers Christ’s unchanging Gospel of love. In Caritas in Veritate, his third and most-recent encyclical to the Church, the Holy Father writes that “the Church’s social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the new problems that are constantly emerging.”

Indeed, when one examines Ratzinger’s post-Vatican II commentary on revelation or his pontifical homilies and encyclicals, one repeatedly finds him insisting that the unchanging light of Church doctrines — which participate in and shine forth from the unchanging light of revelation — has the power to elevate whatever that the Church encounters.

For Benedict XVI, then, evangelization is what takes place when revelation slips through history. Like a ship’s bow cutting the seas, revelation lifts and aerates. It also divides, because revelation offers a choice — it offers an encounter with a Person, and, should we wish, we need not stay and get to know Him.

In announcing the upcoming Year of Faith — which is inherently linked with New Evangelization — the Holy Father notes that “one thing that will be of decisive importance in this Year is retracing the history of our faith, marked as it is by the unfathomable mystery of the interweaving of holiness and sin. While the former highlights the great contribution that men and women have made to the growth and development of the community through the witness of their lives, the latter must provoke in each person a sincere and continuing work of conversion in order to experience the mercy of the Father which is held out to everyone.”

In other words, the call to New Evangelization is not a new reality for the Church. Rather, it reminds the Church of its command from Christ to offer eternal truths, to struggle and give witness to these truths, and, thus, to sacramentally embrace the ills of any age with divine doctrines — and to do so not with idyllic plans for a happy tomorrow, but with the Cross of sacrifice and by loving in the present.

Pope Benedict repeatedly reminds us that Christian love, when authentic, is sacramental because it offers transformative hope and meaning. Whether the Pontiff speaks of eros and agape, global economics or global ecologies, or he attempts to shift the anthropological understanding of marriage, life, and death, he offers what might be called sacramental social doctrines — teachings that in themselves foster necessary shifts in what he has called our inner attitudes.

In transforming these attitudes, people and cultures can live, love, work, buy, and sell with a greater concern for their neighbors, their labor force, and their ecosystems.

In offering the Christian proclamation that God is love, men and women can grow to understand that marriage is not a societal celebration of sentimental or biological urges. Rather, marriage exists for reasons that transcend the happy couple. It is meant for the conception, nurturing, and protection of future generations, all in the particular, gender-inclusive bond of love between a woman and a man. Reacquainting the modern world with such truths — and doing so firmly and with charity — is one facet of New Evangelization.

What New Evangelization is not, the Pontiff has expressed quite clearly, is the fruit of human planning. It is not the ushering in of a new, worldly Christian kingdom — the collapse of Christendom should have taught us this. And it is certainly not a Joachimist fervor that denies the Cross, or ignores the will of the God who mounted it.

Indeed, the New Evangelization is a pastoral response to a world that grew up Christian, learned about history as progress from Joachimist worldviews, and now suffers angst without the life source of Joachim’s original foundation — Jesus Christ.

The New Evangelization is also a reminder to many of the faithful, especially in the West, that the Church of 2050 will, outwardly, look unlike the Church of 1950.

In laying out his thoughts on New Evangelization in 2000, Cardinal Ratzinger speaks with Bonaventurian force when he teaches that

---

...new evangelization cannot mean: immediately attracting the large masses that have distanced themselves from the Church by using new and more refined methods. No — this is not what new evangelization promises. New evangelization means: never being satisfied with the fact that from the grain of mustard seed, the great tree of the Universal Church grew; never thinking that the fact that different birds may find place among its branches can suffice — rather, it means to dare, once again and with the humility of the small grain, to leave up to God the when and how it will grow (Mark 4:26-29).

---

While checking out the Herder catalog to get an image of the volume on Bonaventure in the Collected Writings (Gesammelte Schriften), I also learned that Volume 7, putting together all of Joseph Ratzinger's writings on the Second Vatican Council, will be published in September, in time for the 50th anniversary of the Council opening and the Year of Faith that Benedict XVI has convoked to mark its observance.


When the 35-year-old Prof Ratzinger signed on in 1962 to be Cardinal Josef Frings's theological consultant for Vatican-II, he could not have imagined he would one day be the third of three participants in that Council to become Pope - after Giovanni Battista Montini, at the time Archbishop of Milan after a career in the Vatican Secretariat of State, who would be elected Pope in 1963 and preside over the rest of the Council; and Karol Wojtyla, then a very young Archbishop of Cracow. But whereas the first two were Council Fathers, he was but a theological expert (peritus) on the sidelines.

Those who persist in imagining that the Vatican is a cesspool of dirty finances and corruption despite Benedict XVI'x revolutionary moves towards financial transparency in all Vatican organisms, including IOR, probably chose to ignore this news yesterday from the Vatican, as most MSM did.

As this communique shows, the Vatican has gone a long way since December 2010 when Benedict XVI signed the Vatican's internal law on financial transparency to implement the former Pope's unprecedented but mostly unheralded (and certainly, uncelebrated) revolution, by which for the first time in history, he opened up the offices of the Vatican to inspection by an external authority, in this case the European Union's Moneyval which evaluates and certifies states for their compliance with international standards of financial transparency.

This is a signal historical fact that, unfortunately, none of the cardinals who took part in the 2013 Conclave appeared to have appreciated or even acknowledged at all, in their media-driven obsession against the imagined evils of IOR, a major player in the Moneyval inspection and which passed muster in the first report issued July 2012 towards the inclusion of the Vatican in the 'white list' of states deemed compliant with international standards of financial transparency. In fact, failure to appreciate the implications of Benedict XVI's revolutionary move and the persisting negative image of IOR, even within the Vatican itself, were reflected in Pope Francis's unfortunate jibe against IOR during a recent homily.

Vatican's AIF signs with counterpart
in US Treasury for common effort against
money laundering and financing terrorism

May 8, 2013

The Financial Intelligence Authority of the Holy See and Vatican City State (Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria - AIF), signed a Memorandum of Understanding today in Washington, D.C., with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), its U.S. counterpart at the U.S. Department of Treasury, to strengthen its efforts to fight money laundering and terrorism financing globally.

The Memorandum was signed by René Brülhart, Director of AIF, and Jennifer Shasky Calvery, director of FinCEN, and will foster bi-lateral cooperation in the exchange of financial information.

«This is a clear indication the Holy See and the Vatican City State take international responsibilities to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism very seriously, and that we are cooperating at the highest levels», said Brülhart. «The Vatican has shown that it is a credible partner internationally and has made a clear commitment in the exchange of information in this fight».

AIF was established in 2010 and became operational in April 2011. It is the competent authority of the Holy See and Vatican City State for financial intelligence and for supervision and regulation in the prevention and countering of money laundering and financing of terrorism.

AIF is currently in discussions with various Financial Intelligence Units (FIUs) of other countries and jurisdictions, including European countries, about entering into Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) to strengthen bilateral cooperation to fight Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing.

To date, AIF has already signed MoUs with the FIUs of Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, and now of the U.S., which plays a leading role in combating money laundering.

AIF is currently in discussions with more than 20 other FIUs, and expects several MoUs to be signed in the course of the year.

Very apropos, this time last year, Andrea Tornielli had this report, indicating some of the stumbling blocks put in Benedict XVI's way in his financial reform:



The Vatican and financial transparency:
Moneyval draft report objects to redefined role
of the new AIF and undue influence by Secretariat
of State in regulation of fiscal affairs
by ANDREA TORNIELLI
Translated from the Italian service of

May 8, 2012

VATICAN CITY - The draft of a Moneyval report, considered to be 'top secret', has arrived at the Vatican, with the initial observations of the inspectors who visited the Vatican two months ago preparatory to deciding whether the Vatican qualifies to go on the 'white list' of nations deemed to have adequate protections against money laundering.

But in addition to positive evaluation of steps that have already been taken by the Vatican, the draft, which is to be discussed by Moneyal with Vatican authorities, also points out some problems.

Among these, a redefinition of the role and tasks of the AIF (Authority for Financial Information) established in December 2010 in an amended law on financial transparency which went into effect last January. This means the road is not yet clear for the Vatican to join the 'white list' by July this year as previously expected.

The draft contains the individual opinions by the members of the Moneyval inspection team which have yet to be synthesized. A clarificatory meeting will take place May 14-16 in Strasbourg between Moneyval officials and a Vatican delegation.

But there is no doubt that a new round of controversy within the Vatican will be spurred by the Moneyval observation that the redefinition of AIF's role and functions was 'a step backward' and the related observation about the undue 'political' influence of the Secretariat of State on the supposedly autonomous AIF,

It will be recalled that an internal memo divulged by Il Fatto Quotidiano among its Vatileaks 'scoops' in February reflected the 'perplexity' of Cardinal Attilio Nicora, named by Benedict XVI to head the AIF, at certain paragraphs of the new Vatican law on financial transparency.

Vatican Law No. 127 signed by Benedict XVI on December 30, 2010, which created the AIF, to oversee all activities relative to 'Vatican finances', was drafted by lawyer Marcello Condemi, who had drafted similar norms for the Italian government.

Subsequently, in response to Moneyval requirements that the Vatican law should follow 'the recommendations of the GAFI' (Financial Action Group of the International Monetary Fund), the Secretariat of State and the Vatican Governatorate had at first asked Condemi to make the necessary revisions, but apparently, because of the short notice, they asked another group of experts to do it.

The result was Emergency Decree No. 59 which went into effect on January 25, 2012, becoming 'ordinary law with full effect' on April 2.

Sources told Vatican Insider that the Moneyval draft specifically contests Paragraph 41 of the decree regarding the exchange of written information "on the condition of reciprocity" between the AIF and their counterparts in other states.

One Moneyval inspector considered this 'a backward step", and he is the same one who objects to what he considers the 'political weight' and responsibility taken on by the Secretariat of State in the revised law.

This law, now in effect, had introduced changes regarding the anti-laundering efforts, by specifying the competencies of various Vatican authorities, starting with the AIF, but recognizing the role of other juridical entities in the Vatican such as the Gendarmerie and the Vatican courts, none of which were mentioned in the original law.

The current law also specifies that AIF supervision should be regulated by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State - the only entity authorized to emanate laws.[In the first place, if the AIF is to be 'regulated' by another entity, it is no longer autonomous, which is the whole point of its supervisory function; and in the second place, isn't the Pope, as monarch-sovereign of Vatican City-State, the only one authorized to issue laws in the Vatican, which does not have a legislature???]

Hpwever, under the revised law the AIF retains the relative power to issue regulations on financial activities that would be current as well as binding. The AIF's power to investigate relevant affairs is also explicitly acknowledged (it was not in the first law).

Nonetheless, Cardinal Nicora argued that the revised law curbs the power and the autonomy of the AIF, as did the president of the IOR, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.

Jeffrey Lena, the American lawyer who has looked after certain legal matters for the Vatican in the past 12 years, told Vatican Insider that "speculation on individual opinions expressed in the draft report are premature. The meetings in Strasbourg will help clarify the apprehensions of the inspectors and to decide whether the language of the report meets international criteria".

He pointed out that Moneyval itself acknowledges this is merely a provisional and inconclusive report. "The focal point is not which particular agency in the Vatican is 'strong' or 'weak' but whether the entire system is capable of making technical decisions and put in place mechanisms to promote internal and external cooperation that will prevent money laundering activities".

As for the supposed 'political' weight brought to bear by the Secretariat of State, Lena comments: "I think that whoever interprets the 'political' involvement and commitment of the Secretariat of State {in this matter) as come kind of interference is simply reading the law wrongly. The sections of the law regarding the execution of 'memoranda of understanding', the exchange of information among security agencies, or the responsibility of the Secretariat of State in setting policy, are not just appropriate but in line with international standards. That's what matters".

In effect, the Moneyval draft that has been circulating inside the Vatican reflects the internal debate about the evolution of the financial transparency law in the past several months.

Meanwhile, there are the meetings in Strasbourg next week and the Moneyval session in July before this issue can come to a conclusion.

2013 P.S. The July 2012 report, widely anticipated by MSM to be negative for the Vatican, was in fact positive on most of the key criteria used by Moneyval. And the AIF's signing of MoUs with many states since then is further proof of progress in establishing and promoting financial transparency at the Vatican.

But the general indifference to (or ignorance of) Benedict's financial revolution at the Vatican is surely one of the most serious and deliberate injustices to his Pontificate. For centuries, historians and chroniclers have been denouncing the Vatican for its 'secrecy', and when a Pope finally had the wisdom to lay bare the financial operations of the Holy See to what amounts to public inspection by an international authority, he does not even get any credit for it. And that's an understatement. History will set this injustice right,because such a correction is unfortunately unimaginable in the current atmosphere when few people can see anything positive about the Pontificate of Benedict XVI.

Friday, May 10, Sixth Week in Easter

ST. JUAN DE AVILA (Spain, 1500-1569), Priest, Apostolic Preacher, Author and Mystic, Doctor of the Church
Very much in the news about the Church since 2011 when it was first reported that Benedict XVI might proclaim him a Doctor of the Church at the WYD celebration in Madrid, the saint was born Juan de Ávila [De Avila is his family name, and not an honorific of place, therefore the English translation 'John of Avila' is wrong; the real 'John of Avila' is better known as the great mystic and Doctor of the Church, Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross, who was from Avila] - in Almodóvar del Campo, near Toledo (Spain) in 1500, of Jewish 'converso' descent. Before becoming a priest, he studied philosophy at the University of Salamanca, and later at the University of Alcala, where one of his teachers was the future Saint Domingo de Silos. From the beginning, he was a powerful preacher and came to be known as the Apostle of Andalusia because he evangelized in the region as the Church launched the Counter-Reformation. He was a strong advocate for the reform of the clergy and his writings were very influential in the Council of Trent. Juan de Avila linked the priesthood closely to the Eucharist and regarded holiness as the preeminent quality of a priest - conformity to Christ as Good Shepherd and High Priest. To this end, he recommended painstaking selection of candidates followed by rigorous spiritual and intellectual formation within a community. He was a friend of San Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross ) (1542-1591) and a spiritual adviser to St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), St Francisco Borja (Francis Borgia()1510-1572), and St Pedro Alcantara (1499-1562). His collected works were first published in 1618 and soon translated into other languages. His best known works are the "Audi Fili", translated to English as early as 1620, considered one of the best tracts on Christian perfection, and his "Spiritual Letters" to his disciples, Though he was beatified in 1893, he was not canonized until 1970, when he also became the patron of Spanish diocesan clergy. He is one of the Spanish saints named as patrons of WYD 2011, along with Blessed John Paul II. At WYD 2011 in Madrid, Benedict XVI announced indeed that he would proclaim Juan de Avila a Doctor of the Church, who would be the fourth Spaniard to earn this distinction (after Isidro de Sevilla, Teresa de Avila and Juan de la Cruz). Along with Hildegarde von Bingen, Juan de Avila was formally proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by Benedict XVI at a Solemn Mass in St. Peter's Square on Oct. 7, 2012.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051013.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with
- His Holiness Tawadros II, Coptic Orthodox Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark in Egypt,
with his delegation. Address in Italian.

= Cardinal Péter Erdő, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest (Hungary), president of the Council of Episcopal
Conferences of Europe, with other Council officials including
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, vice-president.

- Seven more bishops of Italy's Piedmont region (Group 2) on ad-limina visit.




On October 7, 2012, Benedict XVI availed of the opening Mass for the Special Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization to proclaim saints Juan de Avila and Hildegarde von Bingen Doctors of the Church, the 34th and 35th to be so honored, and the fourth Spaniard and fourth woman, respectively, to be counted in that number. The Holy Father's wide-ranging homily focused at one point on the Church's continuing call to holiness, in its mission of evangelization. Here is that excerpt...

---

The Church exists to evangelize. Faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ’s command, his disciples went out to the whole world to announce the Good News, spreading Christian communities everywhere. With time, these became well-organized churches with many faithful.

At various times in history, divine providence has given birth to a renewed dynamism in Church’s evangelizing activity. We need only think of the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxon peoples or the Slavs, or the transmission of the faith on the continent of America, or the missionary undertakings among the peoples of Africa, Asia and Oceania.

It is against this dynamic background that I like to look at the two radiant figures that I have just proclaimed Doctors of the Church, Saint Juan de Avila and Saint Hildegarde von Bingen.

Even in our own times, the Holy Spirit has nurtured in the Church a new effort to announce the Good News, a pastoral and spiritual dynamism which found a more universal expression and its most authoritative impulse in the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

Such renewed evangelical dynamism produces a beneficent influence on the two specific “branches” developed by it, that is, on the one hand the missio ad gentes or announcement of the Gospel to those who do not yet know Jesus Christ and his message of salvation, and on the other the New Evangelization, directed principally at those who, though baptized, have drifted away from the Church and live without reference to the Christian life.

The Synodal Assembly which opens today is dedicated to this new evangelization, to help these people encounter the Lord, who alone fills existence with deep meaning and peace; and to favour the rediscovery of the faith, that source of grace which brings joy and hope to personal, family and social life.

Obviously, such a special focus must not diminish either missionary efforts in the strict sense or the ordinary activity of evangelization in our Christian communities, as these are three aspects of the one reality of evangelization which complement and enrich each other...

One of the important ideas of the renewed impulse that the Second Vatican Council gave to evangelization is that of the universal call to holiness, which in itself concerns all Christians]/G] (cf. Lumen Gentium, 39-42).

[G[The saints are the true actors in evangelization in all its expressions. In a special way they are even pioneers and bringers of the new evangelization: with their intercession and the example of lives attentive to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they show the beauty of the Gospel to those who are indifferent or even hostile, and they invite, as it were tepid believers, to live with the joy of faith, hope and charity, to rediscover the taste for the word of God and for the sacraments, especially for the bread of life, the Eucharist.

Holy men and women bloom among the generous missionaries who announce the Good News to non-Christians, in the past in mission countries and now in any place where there are non-Christians. Holiness is not confined by cultural, social, political or religious barriers. Its language, that of love and truth, is understandable to all people of good will and it draws them to Jesus Christ, the inexhaustible source of new life.

At this point, let us pause for a moment to appreciate the two saints who today have been added to the elect number of Doctors of the Church.

Saint Juan de Avila lived in the sixteenth century. A profound expert on the sacred Scriptures, he was gifted with an ardent missionary spirit. He knew how to penetrate in a uniquely profound way the mysteries of the redemption worked by Christ for humanity.

A man of God, he united constant prayer to apostolic action. He dedicated himself to preaching and to the more frequent practice of the sacraments, concentrating his commitment on improving the formation of candidates for the priesthood, of religious and of lay people, with a view to a fruitful reform of the Church.

Saint Hildegard von Bingen, an important female figure of the twelfth century, offered her precious contribution to the growth of the Church of her time, employing the gifts received from God and showing herself to be a woman of brilliant intelligence, deep sensitivity and recognized spiritual authority.

The Lord granted her a prophetic spirit and fervent capacity to discern the signs of the times. Hildegard nurtured an evident love of creation, and was learned in medicine, poetry and music. Above all, she maintained a great and faithful love for Christ and the Church.

This summary of the ideal in Christian life, expressed in the call to holiness, draws us to look with humility at the fragility, even sin, of many Christians, as individuals and communities, which is a great obstacle to evangelization and to recognizing the force of God that, in faith, meets human weakness.

Thus, we cannot speak about the new evangelization without a sincere desire for conversion. The best path to the new evangelization is to let ourselves be reconciled with God and with each other (cf. 2 Cor 5:20).

Solemnly purified, Christians can regain a legitimate pride in their dignity as children of God, created in his image and redeemed by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and they can experience his joy in order to share it with everyone, both near and far...

---

I also chose the following item (which I had first re-posted on May 12, 2012) as a lookback feature today, for no other reason than to remind us, Benaddicts or not, how there were actually a few in the MSM who were able to temporarily cast aside their long-held biases about Joseph Ratzinger to look at him objectively and even sympathetically at the time he became Pope and shortly thereafter. Perhaps Jeff Israely of TIME magazine is a good example of these sort-term converts (John Allen was another) who soon reverted to their original hostility, their true sentiment, and also out of sheer conformism to the rest of the media herd.

---

Beatrice on her website

revived a December 2005 article by Jeff Israely written when TIME magazine chose Benedict XVI - not as their Man of the Year (the honor went jointly to singer Bono and to Bill and Melinda Gates for their philanthropic work) - but 'European Newsmaker of the Year'. This was among the earliest articles I posted during our first month at PAPA RATZINGER FORUM, on Page 5 of the NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT thread.

As Beatrice points out, nothing can be subtracted from what Israely thought at the time - obviously after six years, there is much more that is unprecedented and positive to add to it. The wonder is to see how far Israely has since distanced himself from what he thought in December 2005 (and when he wrote the text for the late Gianni Giansanti's wonderful picture book entitled The Dawn of a Papacy) to his increasingly critical and biting positions about this Pope, in whom he now sees nothing positive at all.

It is always puzzling how journalists today seem to think that readers share their own personal selective amnesia about positions they have taken in the past and have come to overturn. How does Israely reconcile his views today with what he wrote in 2005? Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not changed, nor have his positions as a Christian and as a man of the Church which have always been clear and firm. It is very pertinent to bring up Israely's December 2005 article now to mark the seventh anniversary of Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

A man on a mission
by Jeff Israely

December 18, 2005



The man who would become Pope Benedict XVI began the year behind a desk. Granted, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was no ordinary shuffler of Vatican papers; indeed, he had long been celebrated by Church conservatives as the architect of Pope John Paul II's doctrinal policy and vilified by progressives as the Panzerkardinal who defended Catholic orthodoxy with the impenetrability of a tank.

Yet Ratzinger's quotidian reality was essentially that of an exalted Catholic Church bureaucrat. Working the day shift at Church headquarters for 23 years meant studying and safeguarding the Gospels, not preaching it. [He preached enough, too! There are a considerable number of significant homilies he delivered in those years that were reported and eventually published in any number of anthologies of his writings. Not to mention his weekly Masses at the Campo Teutonico chapel in the Vatican where he preached every Thursday for 23 years as long as he was in Rome.]

On March 31, Ratzinger was in his Vatican office when the phone rang with bad news. John Paul's long and brave battle with failing health looked to be nearing its end, and as the dean of the College of Cardinals, it would be Ratzinger's duty to formally notify his brother Cardinals once the Pope had died.

Ratzinger hurried into a black Mercedes and was driven from the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, around the one-lane road behind St. Peter's Basilica, to the elevator that would bring him up to the Pope's private quarters.

It was around noon when the Cardinal approached the Holy Father's bedside. John Paul's condition had deteriorated that morning. The same throat infection that had twice sent him to Gemelli hospital had begun to spread through his body.

Apart from his curial position, Ratzinger was there as one of the Pope's dearest friends, and Vatican insiders have quietly speculated about this final encounter between the two men. Some, according to Vatican sources, actually believe the Pope prophesied to Ratzinger that the German would be his successor. Whatever form the conversation took, the Church administrator was indeed chosen three weeks later by his brother Cardinals to succeed John Paul II.

The new Pope has stepped onto the world stage with grace, warmth and an understated clout, qualities that make him our choice for European Newsmaker of the Year. A man often described as methodical and contemplative — even downright shy — has created a charisma all his own, one that seems to defy our turn-up-the-volume, look-at-me times.

At 78, Benedict is the archetype of the quiet, lifelong believer who suddenly sees it is his turn to speak up, a rejuvenated old soul surprisingly well-equipped for his final mission. [Why surprisingly? No surprise at all to those who were acquainted with his CV even in its most cursory form! From childhood, almost, Joseph Ratzinger was always an exceptional human being, whom God had endowed with many gifts and graces, and who excelled at every task he was given. Perhaps it was only because he was never driven by personal ambition nor sought the limelight in any way that most Vatican veterans discounted the possibility he would ever be a contender for the Papacy. Although of course, they cited the more obvious reasons such as his age, on top of the negative, completely unsympathetic image that the media had built of him for almost two decades - as a literal attack dog (rottweiler), or alternatively, an armored tank (Panzer) with no human personality behind the beast or machine he was made out to be!]

Father Joseph Fessio, who has known the Pope since the 1970s, said his former professor "actually seems healthier, younger, more radiant, more at peace" since assuming the papal throne.

Yet Ratzinger's peaceful countenance belies an energetic soul. The new Pope is a man on a mission, determined to reassert Catholic orthodoxy in the face of the challenge of modern times, and to make the Church once again a central part of the life of Europe, a geographical entity once coterminous with Christendom but now the most secular place on earth.

Ratzinger's public image may be more cuddly than many expected it would be, but his beliefs have not budged. He has made it clear that traditional Church teachings on abortion, female clergy and homosexuality will not be challenged so long as he's in charge.

After the release of a new Vatican document that would prohibit any person who was openly gay — even if celibate — from becoming a priest, the writer Andrew Sullivan, a gay Catholic, said Benedict "has identified a group of people and said, regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God. It isn't what they do that he is concerned with. It's who they are."

Yet away from the most controversial issues, the Pope has shown an ability to preach eloquently about the core issues of modern existence — good and evil, charity and consumerism, and the slippery slope of instantaneous self-fulfillment.

Ratzinger, says a top aide to a progressive European Cardinal, "has a brilliant way of summing up a concept in a single sentence. He can clean off the window of modern history, and give you a clear vision of what's wrong with our society."

The new Pope's mission is the same one that has driven him since he was ordained in his native Bavaria. But Ratzinger's essential beliefs were rarely seen more clearly than during — and after — his predecessor's final hours.

On the evening of April 1, a veteran aide to Ratzinger recounted how, that morning, his boss had gathered together employees in the doctrinal office for a reciting of the rosary, and then informed them of his visit to see John Paul. "I've never seen him that emotional," the Vatican official said. Ten days later, it fell to Ratzinger to lead the service for John Paul's funeral.

It may have been the most-watched such ceremony in human history, with over 1 million faithful and dozens of world leaders jammed in and around St. Peter's Square, and tens of millions more watching on television. [Which is why I have always pointed out that no Pope before Benedict XVI ever had such massive worldwide exposure before he became Pope - and all men of goodwill who watched that funeral Mass could not have come away unmoved by Cardinal Ratzinger's humble manner and powerful homily paying tribute to his predecessor's exceptional Christian witness. In other words, more people had an extraordinary preview of the next Pope and his mettle than any other in history, so he was hardly entirely an unknown individual to them when he ended up being the Pope.]

Ratzinger was a study in serenity, guiding the elaborate liturgy with poise, and delivering a moving, plainspoken homily. It was the first public proof to the faithful — and to voting Cardinals — that he was a man who could shepherd a worldwide flock.

In the days that followed, Ratzinger was called upon to lead a series of closed-door, pre-conclave meetings with his fellow Cardinals, who would later speak of his attentiveness and multilingual skills, and even a sense of humor.

For the good of the Church, there could be no angling for the papacy while he was called upon to be the sole pilot for an institution that momentarily had no one in charge. Rather, there was an assumption of responsibility.

"After John Paul died," a Rome-based Cardinal recalled recently, "Ratzinger seemed to be carrying the entire Church on his shoulders."

Hours before the voting was to begin, he gave his last speech as Cardinal, an impassioned defense of orthodoxy in which he denounced "the dictatorship of relativism." The next day, he was Pope.

Beaming from the loggia above a drizzly St. Peter's Square, Papa Benedetto XVI told the world that the Cardinals had elected "a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."

He quickly got down to business. Benedict fast-tracked John Paul's road toward sainthood, named his own successor in the doctrinal office and prepared his first encyclical (due out around Christmas).

In August, he visited his native Germany for World Youth Day, where he made a historic visit to the Cologne synagogue, spoke out forcefully against terrorism in a meeting with German Muslim leaders, and won over some 1 million young people — many of whom had originally signed up to see their beloved John Paul.

It was then, perhaps, that the world appreciated that the new head of the Catholic Church would not be a mere caretaker.

Benedict's public appeal comes from a manner that is always composed. His voice has a singsong cadence and his smile lights up his aging face.

He doesn't mince words. "True revolution can only come from God," he told the youth gathering in Cologne.

The new Pope has managed to fill John Paul's shoes without trying to match his oversized magnetism, and in so doing has revealed a side of his character that perhaps he didn't even know he had.

Angelo Cardinal Scola of Venice, who has known Ratzinger since 1971, says the papacy has brought out the best in his mentor. Ratzinger, Scola told Time, "has the gift to be able to speak, at the same time, to the most simple and the most cultured of people. In 35 years, every single time I have seen or heard him, I have learned something new."

The new Pope himself seems ready to learn [Strange description to use for a lifelong scholar!] Over the summer, he met in a one-month span with the leaders of the ultratraditionalist Lefebvrites and then with Hans Küng, a Swiss-born progressive theologian who has loudly disagreed with much of Cardinal Ratzinger's doctrine. He showed no sign of giving ground on either flank, but he listened.

At October's Synod of Bishops, he introduced the first-ever open discussion period, and took part in it. "That the Pope himself spoke up was evidence that he wants a direct and immediate dialogue with his brother Bishops — a precious sign of a healthy collegiality," says Scola, whom Benedict picked to preside over the three-week-long meeting.

And he reaches out, above all, to his flock. Benedict has already produced a series of penetrating homilies, using language that often doesn't quite sound like it should come from a Pope. In a passage on sin, he wrote of the temptation to "think that bargaining a little with evil, reserving some freedom against God, is good, perhaps even necessary. But if we look at the world, it is not so. Evil always poisons." His predecessor's poetic touch made the world take notice. Benedict will connect by the power of his prose.

But for all his learning and his sense of mission, the great surprise of Benedict's papacy so far — at least to those who didn't personally know him — has been a quiet humanity.

At the end of a general audience in August, the Pope had set aside time for a long line of the ill and elderly to personally greet him. [He always did that -it was SOP already even with Paul VI and John Paul II.]. A girl, perhaps 9 or 10 years old, approached, holding her mother's hand and gripping a teddy bear. Her hair was cut short and her face was puffy from medication. The Pope looked straight in the little girl's eager eyes, and brushed his hand with a blessing across her forehead. And then, without missing a beat, he reached over and blessed the teddy bear in the same way. [In memory of all the teddy bears 'Pepperl' has ever loved!]

Among those for whom doctrine is key, Benedict's unshakable convictions will earn him both fans and foes. For those of us less sure of our faith — and even those with none at all — the new Pope reminds us, simply, that a missionary's work is never done.

---

2013 P.S. Hard to believe, but Israely's tribute almost sounds like the panegyrics over Pope Francis these days, doesn't it? The media and assorted commentators have been free to indulge in soaring hyperbole about Pope Francis, not just because they may be genuinely raving in their praise of him, but because before March 13, 2005, he was a blank page to them, on whom they have been free to compose epics and eulogies without worrying about any prior statements they may have cast in stone about him as they did with someone we know! Already, we can imagine that the paeans when Pope Francis becomes Man of the Year on every imaginable list in the world will cast in the shade anything the media had ever written about John Paul II. What is the word for greater than the greatest? I'm not being mean-spirited about Pope Francis, God bless him!, but I am about the media and the chatterati. Just being realistic.]

Trust the UK's Tablet to proudly and defiantly unfurl the pitifully-frayed banner of Catholic progressivist dissent upheld by its most outspoken paladin and their cultural hero...Sorry for the many interpellations - HK is far more fiskable than even John Allen - but you can just omit reading the blue to ignore my remarks. BTW, Mr. Kueng, all springs turn to winter inevitably - it's called the cycle of mortal life. Only eternal life is a perpetual spring.

Don’t let spring turn to winter:
Power and poverty
by Hans Küng

Issue of May 11, 2013

Who could have imagined what has happened in the last weeks? When I decided, some months ago, to resign all of my official duties on the occasion of my eighty-fifth birthday, I assumed that in my lifetime I would never see fulfilled my decades-long dream that – after all the setbacks following the Second Vatican Council – the Catholic Church would once again experience the kind of rejuvenation that it did under Pope John XXIII.

[That's revisionism! What rejuvenation? The perceived 'rejuvenation' was nothing more than the projection of universal expectations that had been built around the Second Vatican Council convoked by the Blessed Pope who, unfortunately, only lived through its opening session - when whatever work had been done was more or less tentative, awaiting the consensus that would lead to consolidate the 16 Conciliar documents three years later. And, as it turned out, the chaos resulting from the free=wheeling and undisciplined interpretation of Vatican II was not so much a 'springtime' for the Church, as much as a spring break orgy of 'anything-goes' such as college students indulge in. Except that many of the 'students' chose not to go back to school - in the Western world, churches became empty, priests by the thousands sought to be laicized so they could marry, vocations plummeted, theologians of 'liberation' brought more Marx than Christ into their work, and the Church was shaken by tempests of dissent rather than opening to a springtime of renewal.

But consider what John XXIII actually did outside the great historical act of calling Vatican II? Among other things, he consolidated Church tradition, issuing in 1962 what was to be the last edition of the Roman Missal in the traditional rite before it was displaced by the Novus Ordo in 1969-70 and seemingly consigned thereafter to oblivion and disuse... Kueng also deliberately ignores the Blessed Pope's opening remarks to the Council:.....]

And now my theological companion of many decades, Joseph Ratzinger – both of us are now 85 [Lost track of time, HK?? Both of you are now 86!]– suddenly announced his resignation of his papal office effective from the end of February. And, on 19 March (his name day and my birthday), a new Pope with the surprising and programmatic name Francis assumed this office.

Has Jorge Mario Bergoglio considered why no Pope has dared to choose the name of Francis until now? At any rate, the Argentinian was aware that with the name Francis he was connecting himself with Francis of Assisi – the thirteenth-century downshifter who had been the fun-loving, worldly son of a rich textile merchant in Assisi until the age of 24, when he gave up his family, wealth and career, even giving his splendid clothes back to his father.

It is astonishing how, from the first minute of his inauguration, Pope Francis chose a new style: unlike his predecessor, he wears no mitre with gold and jewels, no ermine-trimmed cape, no made-to-measure red shoes or headgear, uses no magnificent throne [That is not true. He has used Leo XIII's beautiful chair more than once - it's a chair not a throne; Peter's chair is a cathedra. And as to made-to-measure shoes, what's wrong with them? Francis now has his papal black shoes made to measure by his shoemaker in Buenos Aires, if we are to believe the PR flaks. Not that Italian shoemakers would not be calling over themselves to offer him their handcrafted shoes, as they did to his predecessors.]

It is astonishing, too, that the new Pope deliberately abstains from solemn gestures [Excuse me, what's wrong with solemn gestures - and what is the opposite of 'solemn'? Frivolous, common, commonplace, casual?] and high-flown rhetoric [Whose rhetoric was high-flown? Benedict's? Tell that to the millions who bought even his encyclicals and apostolic exhortations, for God's sake (double-entendre intended], and speaks in the language of the people, as lay preachers can. [Since when have lay preachers been the ideal? The greatest preachers in the history of the Church were priests and bishops, who went on to become saints, and at least two Popes - Leo the Great and Benedict XVI.]

And it is astonishing how the new Pope emphasizes his humanity: he asked for the prayers of the people before he gave them his blessing. [Oh yes, he invented the wheel, too! All Popes ask for the prayers of the faithful. What did Benedict XVI say? "The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with insufficient instruments comforts me, and above all, I entrust myself to your prayers. In the joy of the Risen Lord, confident of his unfailing help, let us move forward. The Lord will help us, and Mary, His Most Holy Mother, will be on our side". That was, of course, before he gave his first blessing Urbi et Orbi!]

He settled his own hotel bill like anybody else; showed his friendliness to the cardinals in the coach travelling to their shared residence and at the official goodbye; and on Maundy Thursday washed the feet of young prisoners, including those of a young Muslim girl. This is a Pope who demonstrates that he is a man with his feet on the ground. [And Benedict, the great realist and acknowledged great analyst of today's reality, did not!]

All this would have pleased Francis of Assisi and is the opposite of what Pope Innocent III (1198–1216) represented in his time [Whatever Kueng means by that, St. Francis never had anything but respect and veneration for the Pope - I don't think he ever set himself up to be holier-than-thou-or-anyone. He just did his thing, as did those who shared his ideals. He could have forced his father to give up his life of wealth - he apparently did not. He knew to live and let live. The Rule was for his order, not for the whole world. He certainly did not seek to impose it on the Pope!]

In 1209, Francis and 11 friars minor travelled to Rome in order to lay before Pope Innocent their short Rule consisting entirely of quotations from the Bible, and to ask for papal approval for their way of life, preaching as lay preachers “according to the form of the Holy Gospel” and living in poverty.

Innocent III, the Duke of Segni, who was only 37 when he was elected pope, was a born ruler – he was a theologian educated in Paris, a shrewd lawyer, a clever speaker, a capable administrator and a sophisticated diplomat. No pope before him or since had as much power. ['Power' (authority is the more appropriate word) that St. Francis obviously respected and did not begrudge him! St. Francis always knew his place - that, too, is humility.]

The revolution from the top initiated by Gregory VII in the eleventh century, known as the Gregorian Reform, was completed by Innocent. [So if it was praiseworthy with Gregory, how does it become a demerit for Innocent?] Instead of the title of “Successor of St Peter” he preferred the title of “Vicar of Christ”, as used by every bishop or priest until the twelfth century. [I so distrust Kueng that one must check out this claim.]

The Pope, unlike in the first millennium and never acknowledged in the apostolic Churches of the East, has since then acted as – until today. [Excuse me, Mr. Theologian-Great Scholar Kueng! Wasn't there something called the Great Schism, and five centuries later, the Reformation, so it has been over a thousand years that no Pope has ever been "the absolute ruler, law-giver and judge of Christianity"! Besides, you are greatly misrepresenting St. Francis, who never had anything but the utmost respect and regard for Innocent III and the Church, and he was explicit about it. He asked to be allowed to set up a new order in poverty, but he never asked that the whole world should pauperize, let alone the Church. If everybody became beggars, who would we beg from?]

But the triumphal pontificate of Innocent III proved itself to be not only the high point of the papacy but also the turning point. Already in his time, there were signs of decay which, in part up until in our own time, have remained features of the Roman Curia system: nepotism and favouritism granted to relatives, acquisitiveness, corruption and dubious financial dealings. [But these are human failings that have never been absent In the Church, insofar as she is constituted by and must work through human beings. Not in the undivided Church of the first millennium, nor in the various reform offshoots of the one Church at any time, except perhaps during the idealistic period of inception for each of the offshoots.]

By the end of the twelfth century, however, powerful non-conformist penitent and mendicant movements, such as the Cathars and Waldensians, were emerging. But popes and bishops acted against these dangerous currents by banning lay preaching, condemning “heretics” by the Inquisition and even by the Albigensian Crusades.

Yet it was Innocent III himself who tried to integrate into the Church evangelical, apostolic mendicant orders during all the eradication campaigns against obstinate “heretics” such as the Cathars. [They were heretics, not "heretics"!] Even Innocent knew that an urgent reform of the Church was needed, and it was for this reform that he called the Fourth Lateran Council. So after a long admonition, he gave Francis of Assisi permission to preach.

As for the ideal of absolute poverty required by the Rule, the Pope first sought to know the will of God in prayer. On the basis of a dream in which a small, insignificant member of an order saved the papal Lateran Basilica from collapsing – so it was told – the Pope finally allowed the Rule of Francis of Assisi. He let this be known in the consistory of cardinals but never had it committed to paper. [If he did not, who cares? he approved it! Otherwise, the Franciscan orders might never have been.]

In fact, Francis of Assisi represented the alternative to the Roman system. What would have happened if Innocent and his ilk had once again taken the Gospel seriously? Even if they had understood it spiritually rather than literally, Francis’s evangelical demands meant – and still mean – an immense challenge to the centralised, legalised, politicised and clericalised system of power which took over the cause of Christ in Rome since the eleventh century. [Oh come now! I can't believe Kung is serious with this naïve view! Surely, if any order had 'taken over' the Papacy and the Vatican, it would have inevitably become "centralized, legalized, politicized and clericalized" - as the Franciscan orders themselves turned out internally, within the century after Francis died (and as I believe they have been quite afflicted with in the past few decades). That is why they needed someone like Bonaventure to put things right again. Administrations are inevitably 'centralized, legalized, politicized and clericalized', because that is what they are, and the larger, the more so. Which is why it makes no sense for anyone to expect a Pope in modern times to direct the bureaucracy; his task is spiritual, not political or administrative

Innocent III was probably the only Pope who, because of his unusual characteristics, could have directed the Church along a completely different path, and this would have saved the papacies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries schism and exile, and the Church in the sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation.

Obviously, this would have meant a paradigm shift for the Catholic Church in the thirteenth century, a shift which instead of splitting the Church would have renewed it, and at the same time reconciled the Churches of East and West. [That's a whole lot of speculation and conjecture which makes it appear that a Pope, even one as powerful as Kueng makes out Innocent to be, can by himself affect human history! (OK, maybe the infamous Alexander Borgia did when he 'divided' the world into two for Spain and Portugal to conquer in the name of Christ.) Still, a Pope has no divisions and, especially in the modern world, could not possibly prevail against the temporal might of political leaders. John Paul II's fight against Communism would never have succeeded if Reagan and Thatcher, with the real and substantial might of the US, the UK and NATO, had not been equally committed to the same goal! Just as not even his passionate desire to see Cuba liberated = a tiny island, all told, not a continent - got nowhere because the temporal powers=that-be have chosen not to do anything about it.]

Thus, the early Christian basic concerns of Francis of Assisi [they may have been his concerns but he was humble enough and realistic enough not to expect the whole world and the Pope to follow his lead. First, he had to make it work within the order itself] remain even today questions for the Catholic Church, and now for a Pope who, indicating his intentions, has called himself Francis. [Hey, Mr. Kueng, what did St. Benedict represent? Six or seven centuries before St. Francis, he instituted Western monasticism in its pristine form - not just the monastic triple vow but also the life ethic of 'ora et labora'. The name and the antecedents that Joseph Ratzinger took were hardly unworthy. Benedict is not a lesser saint than Francis, and vice-versa. Besides, I don't think there ever was an overview of Benedictine monasticism and what it meant for the salvation of Christianity and Western civilization more inspiring and fertile, more elegant and unforgettable, as Benedict XVI's lectio magistralis of September 2008 in Paris! By contrast, this essay by Hans Kueng, meant to be in praise of the two Francises, reads more like a sophomore's classroom assignment in theme writing tossed off with little preparation or care.]

It is above all about the three basic concerns of the Franciscan ideal which have to be taken seriously today: it is about paupertas or poverty, about umilitas or humility, and about simplicitas, or simplicity. This probably explains why no previous Pope has dared to take the name of Francis: the expectations seem to be too high. [That is all bullshit. The papal name a Pope chooses is not the be-all and end-all of his Pontificate. Both Pius V and Pius X took a name that is hardly 'programmatic' in the way that Benedict and Francis are, but that didn't keep the first from being an exceptionally great Pope nor both from becoming saints. Nor did the artificial construct of 'John Paul' (we used to joke the next Pope would be called 'George Ringo') get in the way of the holiness of both John Pauls and the great achievements of the second (whom Kueng openly detests and despises for having disciplined him!) Anyway,if Mr. Kueng is so anxious for Popes to live the Franciscan ideal, what about he himself? Poverty? Who knows, maybe he donates all his considerable book royalties and speaking fees to charity. Simplicity? As a university professor in his 30s, we are told his taste in cars ran to Alfa Romeos. Humility? I don't even know why he dares say the word!]

That raises a second question: What does it mean for a Pope today if he bravely takes the name of Francis? Of course the character of Francis of Assisi must not be idealised – he could be single-minded and eccentric, and he had his weaknesses, too. He is not the absolute standard. [Apparently, HK shares the popular view that ignores Francis's zealous imitation of Christ, who is, of course, the absolute standard, but alter Christus is not bad at all - an appellative much more significant than just being Il Poverello, the poor one.]

But his early Christian concerns must be taken seriously even if they need not be literally implemented but rather translated into modern times by the Pope and Church. [And no modern Pope before Francis cared about these 'early Christian concerns'???]

Paupertas, or poverty: The Church in the spirit of Innocent III meant a Church of wealth, pomp and circumstance, acquisitiveness and financial scandal. In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis means a Church of transparent financial policies and modest frugality. A Church which concerns itself above all with the poor, the weak, the marginalised. [NO! The Church must be concerned with everyone alike, spiritually. Often, the rich and powerful are far more in need of God than 'the poor' - remember the camel and the needle's eye! Yes, in addition to providing spiritual sustenance, the Church must also help the materially needy as best as she can - but she is already doing that. In the past century and at present, the Catholic Church has been the largest ongoing social-charitable caregiver worldwide, which does not mobilize only when there is an emergency but is there day to day! And guess, Mr. Kueng, where the much-maligned IOR's earnings go!]

A Church which does not pile up wealth and capital but instead actively fights poverty [NO! That is not her job - that's for governments to do; the Church can supplement with health and education services, but she was never meant to be the breadwinneer as well as nursemaid for everyone! Did Jesus say 'no one must be poor'? Whatever the ultimate theological meaning is, he did say, "The poor you will always have among you". I choose to see it as the ultimate realism.] and which offers its staff exemplary conditions of employment [Fair and equitable, yes, as all employment must be, but 'exemplary'? How can a 'poor Church' = and really most local churches are poor - also be the 'exemplary' employer? In fact, in most parishes, 'staff' is voluntary and unpaid. No one comes to work for the Church with expectations of a cushy job and lucrative pay.]

Humilitas, or humility: The Church in the spirit of Pope Innocent means a Church of power and domination, bureaucracy and discrimination, repression and Inquisition. In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis means a Church of humanity, dialogue, brother and sisterhood, and hospitality for non-conformists too; it means the unpretentious service of its leaders [What is unpretentious service, anyway? Proclaiming constantly that you are serving the poor? Even if you are serving the poor, you don't beat your breasts and call attention to it - the Church does not, in her various daily activities of serving the poor] and social solidarity, a community which does not exclude new religious forces and ideas from the Church but rather allows them to flourish. [But not if these 'forces' openly work to raze and replace the foundations of the Church, as if these had not been laid down by Christ himself. But that is the supreme arrogance of the dissenters who are pushing their own selfish agenda, not God's. Thank God Pope Francis has started setting them straight about that. He couldn't have been clearer in his address to the women religious = but it's obvious Kueng wrote this article before the Pope gave that address. How would he have written this paragraph about allowing 'new religious forces and ideas to flourish'?]

Simplicitas, or simplicity: The Church in the spirit of Pope Innocent means a Church of dogmatic immovability, moralistic censure and legal hedging, a Church of canon law regulating everything [Canon law, which is the law of the Church, must regulate the things it does regulate, which does not mean 'everything', because it applies mostly to what men of the Church may and may not do, although some of it also applies to civilians found in breach of canon law regarding the sacraments] a Church of all-knowing scholastics and of fear. [And when was the last time that such a description applied to the Church? Certainly not since, say, Leo XIII, even If he revived Thomism (scholasticism) as a philosophical and theological discipline, and what is wrong with that? Seminarians and priests could do with being better grounded in philosophy and theology, which are supposed to be their primary academic disciplines. As for fear, my generation of Catholics was still educated in the 'fear of God' which is the only healthy fear there is.

In contrast, a Church in the spirit of Francis of Assisi means a Church of Good News and of joy, a theology based purely on the Gospel, a Church that listens to people instead of indoctrinating from on high, [and that's the Church that we know from Benedict XVI! Except that listening to people does not mean letting them tell the Church what to believe and what to do! As B16 has said again and again, in the Magisterium, YES IS YES, AND NO IS NO. Period.] a Church that does not only teach but constantly learns anew. [???Learns what anew??? Surely not new doctrine, much less new practices that would contradict the deposit of faith!]

In the light of the concerns and approaches of Francis of Assisi, basic options and policies can be formulated today for a Catholic Church whose façade still glitters at great Roman occasions but whose inner structure proves itself to be rotten and fragile in the daily life of parishes in many lands, which is why many people have left it, in spirit and often also in fact. [My point, precisely, about all the sanctimonious Vatican- and Benedict-bashing before and since the 2013 Conclave: Why don't the local Churches take responsibility for their part of any mess in the Church? It is they who directly interact with the faithful, through whom the faithful get their daily sense of what the Church is all about - not from Vatileaks and all the implications it has been loaded with, which truly interested only the navel=gazers covering the Vatican and the conformists within the Church who think the media herd must always be right - there are your spiritual narcissists, Pope Francis, your 'self-referential' churchmen whose true concern is the 'image' constructed of the Church, not the essence of the faith which is escaping more and more Catholics, starting with them! Yes, 'the Curia' is to blame - but all self-absorbed curias, diocesan and parochial, beside whom the foibles and failings of the Roman Curia are picayune.

While no reasonable person will expect that all reforms can be effected by one man overnight, a shift would be possible in five years: this was shown by the Lorraine Pope Leo IX (1049–54) who prepared Gregory VII’s reforms, and in the twentieth century by the Italian John XXIII (1958–63) who called the Second Vatican Council. [I don't know anything about Leo IX, but those like Kueng and his ilk perverted John XXIII's idea of Vatican II in the 40 years after the Council, and one can imagine the Blessed Pope's chagrin at what they did to it. Speaking about what can be done in a few years, Benedict XVI put a halt to that 40-year post-Conciliar anarchy in the Church with the resolve he announced on December 22, 2005, to turn the Church back into the correct mode of renewal in continuity that John XXIII had intended Vatican II to be. In this article, Kueng is exhaling one of the dying gasps of that progressivism that ruined the first four decades after Vatican II.]

But today the direction should be made clear again: not a restoration to pre-council times as there was under Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI [Be consistent now, HK, pre-Council also included the five short years of John XXIII, and I somehow think it is blasphemy for you and your ilk to keep citing that Bleased Pope to 'sanctify' your agenda] but instead considered, planned and well-communicated steps to reform along the lines of the Second Vatican Council. [[Well, we shall see, won't we, what Pope Francis meant by the 'beautiful Council that must not be turned back'! Does he mean Kueng's Council (and the Council of the Media, as B16 put it so well), or John XXIII's, as implemented by Benedict XVI? We don't really have much to go by from Cardinal Bergoglio's past, except that he seems not to agree with the finer, generally ignored points of Sacrosanctum concilium about the use of Latin and sacred music, and that he seemed to have no problems with syncretism (participating gladly in Jewish rites) as somehow part of ecumenism and inter-religious dialog.]

But won’t reform of the Church meet with serious opposition? Doubtless, Pope Francis will awaken powerful hostility, above all in the powerhouse of the Roman Curia, opposition which is difficult to withstand. [What powerhouse? Whoever they are, 'they' did not manage to stop B16 from pursuing renewal of the faith in continuity with the good and glorious Tradition of the Church, even if 'they' managed to stir quite a sandstorm with Vatileaks. And whoever 'they' are, they are nothing better than bureaucrats whom surely someone like Pope Francis should easily subdue, which is apparently what his electors elected him to do - conquer the Curia, and the crises of the faith will resolve instantly. Those in power in the Vatican are not likely to abandon the power that has been accumulated since the Middle Ages. [What power, dammit! It's the local Curias who wield the actual power, not the 2000 souls in the Vatican who can only act through the locals, since surely no one could be so naïve as to buy Kueng's tired mantra - so generic and so unsubstantiated - that 2000 men could possibly wield any actual power whatsoever on 1.2 billion Catholics! Even the Pope only has spiritual and moral authority over his worldwide flock, and in that, he is widely defied by the likes of Kueng and other dissident Catholics.]

Francis of Assisi also experienced the force of such curial pressures. He, who wanted to free himself of everything by living in poverty, clung more and more closely to “Holy Mother Church”. Rather than be in confrontation with the hierarchy, he wanted to be obedient to Pope and Curia, [Since the statement does not sound ironical at all, is that an endorsement of Christian obedience, Mr Kueng? - I am shocked!] living in imitation of Jesus: in a life of poverty, in lay preaching. [Have you yourself been following the Franciscan ideal, hmmm???]

He and his followers even had themselves tonsured in order to enter the clerical state. [ In fact, this made preaching easier but on the other it encouraged the clericalisation of the young community which included more and more priests. So it is not surprising that the Franciscan community became increasingly integrated into the Roman system. Francis’s last years were overshadowed by the tensions between the original ideals of Jesuss’ followers and the adaptation of his community to the existing type of monastic life.

On 3 October 1226, aged only 44, Francis died as poor as he had lived. Just 10 years previously, Pope Innocent III died completely unexpectedly at the age of 56, one year after the Fourth Lateran Council. On 16 June 1216, Innocent’s body was found in the Cathedral of Perugia: this Pope who had known how to increase the power, property and wealth of the Holy See like no other before him was found deserted by all, completely naked, robbed by his own servants. It was like trumpet call signalling the transition from papal world domination [Innocent III exercised world domination???? Wherever he is, he must be saying, "Who, me?"] to papal powerlessness.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century there was Innocent III reigning in glory; at the end of the century, there was the megalomaniac Boniface VIII (1294–1303) arrested by the French; and then the 70-year-long exile in Avignon and the western Schism with two and finally three popes. [So if HK sees Benedict XVI as Innocent III in his analogy, he surely cannot see Pope Francis as analogous to the first of the little-known Popes who succeeded Innocent III in the subsequent 'degradation' of the Papacy as he describes it! If Pope Francis is to be the great reformer of the Papacy after a succession of 'bad Popes', his analogy does not hold at all] But I've come not to expect logic from Kueng = he seems to think he is exempt from it.]

Barely two decades after St. Francis’s death, the rapidly spreading Franciscan movement in Italy seemed to be almost completely domesticated by the Roman Church so that it quickly became a normal order at the service of papal politics, and even became a tool of the Inquisition. [Why blame 'the Roman Church' alone for this? Surely, the men who made up the order must bear responsibility for failing to keep it as their founder intended! Same illogic here as in the working hypothesis of Kueng and the cardinal electors of 2013 - that only Benedict XVI and his Curia were responsible for all the ills of the Church Pope Francis inherited. With Benedict gone, it appears even Pope Francis can live with the Curia he inherited and can take his time about making any changes - so can the Curia be so bad, after all?]

If, then, it was possible that Francis of Assisi and his followers were finally domesticated by the Roman system, then obviously it cannot be excluded, that a Pope Francis could also be trapped in the Roman system which he is supposed to be reforming. [No, really? How could that ever come to pass? Going by all the hallelujahs, Pope Francis is the WonderPope whose very presence has miraculously cured - or poured balm, to use the imagery of an LCRW fanatic - on all the ills supposedly left behind by his incompetent and clueless predecessor! To the point no one is even talking about any ills now!]

Pope Francis: [is the term] a paradox? Is it possible that a Pope and a Francis, obviously opposites, can ever be reconciled? {Kueng uses the word 'Pope' as though it meant 'devil', forgetting all the praise he nevertheless conceded to Innocent. If Innocent and Francis lived in symbiosis, it is because they complemented each other - they were not open foes or rivals at anything.]

Only by an evangelically minded reforming Pope. [i.e., John Paul II and Benedict XVI - the Popes Kueng anathemizes - were not evangelically minded and not reforming. Gosh, why ever did they launch the New Evangelization, which as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Bergoglio welcomed and supported?]

To conclude, I have a final question: What is to be done if our expectations of reform are dashed? The time is past when Pope and bishops could rely on the obedience of the faithful. A certain mysticism of obedience was also introduced by the eleventh-century Gregorian Reform: obeying God means obeying the Church and that means obeying the Pope and vice versa.

Since that time, it has been drummed into Catholics that the obedience of all Christians to the Pope is a cardinal virtue; commanding and enforcing obedience – by whatever means – has become the Roman style. [Oh, but compare the leniency of the 'Roman style' with the enforcement style of the autonomous Orthodox Churches whose leaders and ruling Synods are virtual autocrats, and where doctrinal and ritual discipline are strictly observed by the faithful! Does Kueng think Patriarch Kyrill, for instance, would tolerate an LCRW in the Russian Church?]

But the medieval equation of “obedience to God - to the Church - to the Pope” patently contradicts the word of Peter and the other apostles before the High Council in Jerusalem: “Man must obey God rather than any human authority”. [Yes, but taken out of context, as I am sure Kueng is doing, Peter's words can be taken to mean that every individual is free to say he is obeying God when he is following his own will - this is the infamous 'primacy of individual conscience' among the progressivists. That is why, in the Church, the Magisterium, which arises from Revelation and Tradition, is considered the authentic interpretation of the Word of God.]

And after all that build-up, here is Kueng's real agenda - which it always was - which also sounds like an ultimatum to the new Pope. With Kueng's know--it-all smugness and finger=wagging at Francis. perhaps the cardinal should have elected him Pope:

We should then in no way fall into resigned acceptance. Instead, faced with a lack of impulse towards reform from the hierarchy, we must take the offensive, pressing for reform from the bottom up. If Pope Francis tackles reforms, he will find he has the wide approval of people far beyond the Catholic Church. [Why should the Pope make any decisions based on the widest possible consensus? The Church is not a political party seeking to remain in power, nor is the Church a democracy - she follows her only leader, Christ, whose Word is not subject to popular vote. That is why he warned that his followers would always be 'a sign of contradiction' in the world. And at least twice in recent days, Pope Francis has reiterated Benedict XVI's exhortation that Catholics must not be afraid to 'go against the current'. No faith worthy of the word should seek and win the consensus of public opinion, but simply abide by its principles, upholding and defending them, to the death if need be, not taking the path of least resistance.]

However, if he allows things to continue as they are, without clearing the log-jam of reforms now in progress, such as that of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, then the call of “Time for outrage! Indignez-vous!” will ring out more and more in the Catholic Church, provoking reforms from the bottom up. These would be implemented without the approval of the hierarchy and frequently even in spite of the hierarchy’s attempts at circumvention.

In the worst case – as I wrote before the recent papal election – the Catholic Church will experience a new Ice Age instead of a spring and will run the risk of dwindling into a barely relevant large sect. [Oh no, Mr. Kueng - or is it still Rev. Fr. Kueng, a title he seems never to have used, in favor of 'Herr Professor Doktor' - Joseph Ratzinger was far ahead of you and far more discerning, obviously, in his prediction that Catholicism would be renewed in the contemporary world from 'small creative minorities' of faithful who believe and authentically live the Christian message, not from any 'barely relevant large sect' that is not exactly 'barely relevant' because they would have fallen in lockstep with the rest of the world and are therefore indistinguishable from them.]

So, there you have it, Pope Francis, you have been forewarned by the pre-eminent guru and sage of the politically correct, - he who all but screams, "I should be Pope! I have all the answers": "Dr Hans Küng, honorary president of the Global Ethic Foundation (whose) most recent book was We Can save the Catholic Church! Can we save the Catholic Church?", to quote from the Tablet's tagline for him. He obviously counts Pope Francis among the 'we' in his title, as in 'We are Church'.

P.S. For much-needed balance - and a gust of fresh air to clear out the stink of sulphur - you might want to review Benedict XVI's account of the life and work of Francis of Assisi in his catecheses of January 10 and January 27, 2010, and his various texts during his pastoral visit to Assisi in 2007.

Saturday, May 11, Sixth Week in Easter

ST. IGNAZIO DA LACONI (Sardinia, 1701-1791), Capuchin
One of the many 'begging' Capuchins who have become saints, Ignazio was born the second of seven children of peasant parents in Sardinia. During a serious illness, he vowed to become a Capuchin if he recovered. He regained his health but ignored the promise. A riding accident prompted him to renew the pledge, which he acted on this time - he was 20. His humility, self-denial and charity led to his appointment as the official beggar for the friars in Cagliari. He fulfilled that task for 40 years; he was blind the last two years. While on his begging rounds, Ignatius would instruct children, visit the sick and gently urge sinners to repent. The people of Cagliari were inspired by his kindness and his faithfulness to his work. Although he was in poor health since childhood, he lived to be 80. Many miracles were attributed to him after his death. He was beatified in 1940 and canonized in 1951.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051113.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met today with

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

- Cardinal Antonio Maria Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants
and Itinerants.




One year ago on May 11...
Benedict XVI met with seven US bishops from Florida (Region XIV) on ad-limina visit and the national directors of the Pontificie Opere Missionarie (Pontifical Missionary Works) around the world.

In the afternoon, he met with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano at Aula Paolo VI. just before a concert offered by the latter to mark the seventh anniversary of Benedict XVI's Pontificate. Riccardo Muti conducted the Orchestra and Chorus of the Rome Opera House in a performacne of Vivaldi's 'Magnificat' and Verdi's 'Stabat Mater' and 'Te Deum' from his Quattro Sacri Pezzi (Four Sacred Pieces).

And on May 11, 2010, Benedict XVI began an apostolic visit to Portugal.


Enroute to Lisbon, he answered newsmen's questions in what would become one of his most quoted in-flight Q&As. Typically, his answers showed his historical, philosophical, and pastoral overview of the major issues brought up in the questions:

IN HIS OWN WORDS:
What the Pope said inflight today

May 10, 2011

"Forgiveness is no substitute for justice" when it comes to resolving the scandal of the sexual abuse of minors by clergy.

This was Pope Benedict’s answer to journalists today, during the traditional mid-flight press conference on his way to Portugal.

Here is the English translation of the transcript of that brief news conference:

---

What message will you bring to Portugal, a deeply Catholic country in the past, and a bearer of faith in the secular world of today. How can the faith be announced in a context which is indifferent, and sometimes hostile, to the church?
First of all, good morning to all of you. I hope we will all have a good trip, despite the famous ash cloud which we are above right now.

In terms of Portugal, first of all, I have feelings of joy and gratitude for everything this country has done and is doing in the world and in history, the deep humanity of this people which I have come to know through a past visit and so many Portuguese friends.

I would say it is true that Portugal has been a great force for the Catholic faith, and it has carried that faith to every part of the world.

A courageous, intelligent, creative faith, it has known how to create great cultures, we see this in Brazil, in Portugal itself, but also the presence of the Portuguese spirit in Africa and Asia.

On the other hand, this presence of secularism is not entirely new. The dialectic between secularism and faith has a long history in Portugal. By the seventeenth century, there was already a strong current of the Enlightenment. We need only think of names such as Pombal.

In these centuries, Portugal lived this dialectic which today naturally has been radicalized and is reflected in all of the signs of the current European spirit.

This seems to me a challenge, but also a great possibility. In these centuries, the dialectic between the Enlightenment, secularism and faith always had people who wanted to build bridges and to create a dialogue. Unfortunately, the dominant tendency was to see a contradiction and to see one as excluding the other.

Today we can see this is false. We have to find a synthesis and be able to dialogue. In the multi-cultural situation we’re all in, it’s clear that a European culture which aims to be solely rationalist, without any sense of the transcendent dimension, would not be in a position to dialogue with the other great cultures of humanity – all of which have this sense of the transcendent dimension, which is a dimension of the human person.

To think that there’s a pure reason, even a historic reason, which exists entirely in itself, is an error, and we are discovering this more and more. It touches only a part of the human person expressed in a given historic situation, and is not reason as such.

Reason as such is open to transcendence, and only in the meeting between transcendent reality, faith and history is human life fully realized.

I think the mission of Europe in this situation is to find a path to this dialogue, to integrate faith, rationality, and modernity in a single anthropological vision of the concrete human person and render that vision for the future of humanity.

For that reason, I think the task and mission of Europe in this situation is to find this dialogue, to integrate faith and reason in a single modern anthropological vision of the concrete human person and thus also render it communicable to other human cultures.

So I would say that the presence of secularism is a normal thing, but the separation, the opposition between faith and secularism is anomalous. The great challenge of this moment is that the two meet, so they may find their true identity. It is a mission for Europe and a human necessity in our time.

Thank you, Holy Father. Continuing on the theme of Europe, the economic crisis has recently gotten a lot worse in Europe, especially in Portugal. Some European leaders think the future of the European Union is at risk. What lessons should we learn from this crisis, including at the ethical and moral level? What are the keys for consolidating the unity and cooperation of the European nations in the future?
I would say that this economic crisis, with its undeniable moral component, is a case of applying and making concrete what I said earlier, that is of two separate cultural currents meeting, otherwise we will not find a path to the future.

Here, too, I believe there is a false dualism. There is an economic positivism that thinks it is possible to realize itself without an ethical component, a market that regulates itself according to its own economic strength, by a positivistic and pragmatic reasoning of the economy. Ethics is something different, something extraneous.

In reality, we can see today that a pure economic pragmatism which ignores the reality of the human person, who is inherently ethical, has no positive ending, but creates irresolvable problems. This is the moment to recognize that ethics is not something exterior, but rather interior to all forms of rationality, including economic reason.

On the other hand, we also have to confess the Catholic-Christian faith often has been overly individualistic. It left the concrete things of the economy to the world, thinking only of individual salvation and its religious aspects, without recognizing that these imply a global responsibility and a responsibility for the world. So here too we must enter into a concrete dialogue.

I tried to do as much in my encyclical Caritas in veritate, and the whole tradition of the social teaching of the Church moves in this sense, broadening the ethical aspect of the faith from the individual to a responsibility for the world, to a reason that is perforated by ethics.

On the other hand the most recent events on the markets, in the last two or three years, have amply shown us that the ethical dimension is an internal one and that it must enter into economic action, because man is an one. A healthy anthropology that takes everything into account. Only in this way will we solve the problem. Only in this way will Europe deliver and succeed in its mission.



Thank you. Now we come to Fatima, which will be the spiritual culmination of this trip. Holy Father, what meaning do the apparitions of Fatima have for us today? When you presented the Third Secret of Fatima in a press conference at the Vatican Press Office in June 2000, many of us and other colleagues asked if the message of the secret could be extended, beyond the assassination attempt against John Paul II to other sufferings of the popes. Could the context of that vision also be extended to the suffering of the church today, for the sins of the sexual abuse of minors?
First of all, I want to express my joy to go to Fatima, to pray before Our Lady of Fatima, and to experience the presence of the faith there, where from the little ones a new force of the faith was born, and which is not limited to the little ones, but has a message for the whole world and all epochs of history, and touches history in its present and illuminates this history.

In 2000, during the presentation, I said there is a supernatural impulse which does not come from the individual imagination but from the reality of the Virgin Mary, from the supernatural, that impulse which enters into a subject, and is expressed according to the possibilities of the subject.

The subject is determined by his or her historic, personal, temperamental, situation. Therefore, supernatural impulse is translated according to the subject’s possibilities to see, imagine or express it.

But in these expressions, formed by the subject, a content is hidden, that goes beyond, goes deeper. Only in the passage of time is the true depth, that was clothed in this vision, revealed to us, only then is it possible for concrete people.

Here too, beyond this great vision of the suffering Pope, which we can initially circumscribe to John Paul II, other realities are indicated which over time will develop and become clear.

Thus it is true that beyond the moment indicated in the vision, one speaks about and sees the necessity of suffering by the Church, which is focused on the person of the Pope, but the Pope stands for the church, and therefore sufferings of the Church are announced.

The Lord told us that the Church will always be suffering in various ways, up to the end of the world. The important point is that the message, the answer of Fatima, it not substantially addressed to particular devotions, but is the fundamental response: permanent conversion, penance, prayer, and the three cardinal virtues: faith, hope and charity.

Here we see the true, fundamental response the Church must give, which each of us individually must give, in this situation.

In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church do not only come from outside; rather the sufferings of the Church come from within, from the sins that exist in the Church.

This too has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way: the greatest persecution of the Church does not come from enemies on the outside, but is born from the sin within the church, the Church therefore has a deep need to re-learn penance, to accept purification, to learn on one hand forgiveness but also the need for justice.

Forgiveness is not a substitute for justice. In short, we have to re-learn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance, and the theological virtues.

That is how we respond, and we need to be realistic in expecting that evil will always attack, from within and from outside, but the forces of good are also always present, and finally the Lord is stronger than evil, and the Virgin Mary is for us the visible maternal guarantee that the will of God is always the last word in history.

---

Besides the arrival ceremony at Lisbon airport, the official welcome ceremony took place at Lisbon's 16th-century Monastery of Los Jeronimos, where the infamous Constitution of Europe - omitting any mention of the continent's Christian roots - had been signed in 2009.



Later, the Pope paid a courtesy call to the President of Portugal at the Presidential Palace, and in an unusual gesture, greeted and addressed the entire Palace staff. His first day in Portugal was crowned by a Mass in Lisbon's largest square, attended by at least 300,000.


And to end the first day of the visit, he greeted thousands of young people who had gathered outside the Apostolic Nunciature to serenade him and wish him 'Good night'.

Allow me to re-post my reaction to how the media reported Benedict XVI's remarks on sexual abuses by priests in his inflight Q&A enroute to Lisbon on May 11, 2010. The points I bring up have characterized their aversion from the start to acknowledge Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's pioneering and essential leadership in fighting this scourge of the Church. :

May 12, 2010
How MSM has slanted its reporting
about Benedict XVI's fight
against 'filth' in the Church

The Pope's first day in Portugal was definitely one of the most memorable of his 15 international trips so far. Popular participation in all the events demonstrated yet again the strong residual - if not fundamental - formative influence of Catholicism on generations of Portuguese. An influence that in some ways resists the Euro-conforming homogenizing secularization of Portuguese society. [The beautiful, intensely participated Mass was made even more exceptionally memorable by the backdrop of river and distant hills. It was a spectacular tableau in more ways than one.]

My biggest frustration is the way MSM has chosen to depict the Holy Father's words from his inflight news conference. Their reports and headlines all make three fallacious points:

1. That Benedict XVI is saying these things ('sins of the Church' and 'attacks from within') for the first time.

What were the March 2009 Letter to the Bishops of the World or the March 21 Pastoral Letter to Irish Catholics, to name the two most seminal documents but that?]

And what has he been telling bishops visiting him ad limina but that - the Austrians, the Swiss, the Irish, to name a few - at various occasions since he became Pope?

What has he been saying in various homilies every chance he gets? In an off-the-cuff lectio divina to Roman seminarians last year, he first used St. Paul's admonition to the Corinthians against 'biting and devouring each other' to the point of destroying themselves.

The facile headline-making conclusion agreed upon by MSM - in almost identical wordings in their respective reports - on the Pope's words yesterday simply indicate that they have not been listening or reading this Pope. Or, more likely, they only hear and read what they want to when they want to.

2. That the statements inflight yesterday were 'the most thorough admission of guilt' by the Pope. Again, the same arguments apply.

3. That until now, 'the Vatican has blamed the media for the current crisis' and now the Pope 'admits that the Church itself is to blame'. What a dishonest way to try and turn the tables!

No one in the Vatican has ever blamed the media for anything other than one-sided, disproportionate, and often false or tendentiously accusatory reporting of the issue, the latter especially in the case of allegations regarding the Pope himself personally.

The Vatican Press Office, which is the only agency that speaks for the Holy See, has only ever rebutted media reports that directly impugned Cardinal Ratzinger/Benedict XVI.

No, the MSM are simply trying to reinforce their storyline during this current phase of the 'scandal'.

What happened was that they did not expect the Pope's letter to the Irish Catholics to be so comprehensive and direct that they chose to drop it like a hot potato since it didn't serve their purpose - the letter made it painfully clear that this Pope is acutely aware of the problem and is trying to do something constructive about it, but "Hey, wait a minute, that's not what we in the media have been saying, so let's pretend he never wrote it!"

How long did their reporting of the Irish Letter last? A couple of days - and then, they decided instead to go after him personally.

One week after the letter was published - and immediately became a forgotten entity in the media - came the first stories about Munich, followed within a few days by the Murphy case in Milwaukee, and the Kiesle case in Oakland... All the while, they were wallowing in sanctimony and saying, "Why is the Pope silent about all this?" When everything that had to be said about pervert priests and the harm they have done and are doing to their victims and to the Church had been said in the Irish Letter - that no one, even in all the stories yesterday, ever once referred to again!

Then everyone seized on a widely mistranslated term used by Cardinal Sodano in a statement of tribute and support for the Pope to say that 'the Vatican' considers the news reporting on priestly abuse as nothing more than 'petty gossip".

And even a learned and eminent man like Cardinal Schoenborn, who knows Italian and who should know better, in any case, picks it up and bounces it back to the media with an even worse spin - that it was an insult to the victims!

So now, with the entirely gratuitous help of someone like Schoenborn, the MSM have even more reason to beat their breasts "Me Tarzan, you monkeys!' and gloat that they have been the shining knights in armor against a wicked Church and Pope who have refused to admit their sins until - TA-DAH! - brought to their knees all of a sudden, as evidenced by Benedict XVI's statements on the plane yesterday.

I haven't stopped barfing, excuse me, since yesterday!


P.S. A most important circumstance that no one has noted - certainly not in MSM, and hardly ever from what I have seen among Catholic writers - is the fact that Benedict XVI on his own volition decreed the Year for Priests in 2009-2010. One of his motivations was obviously the presence of filth in the Church which he refers to very discreetly as the third category of priests that the Year for Priests is aimed at. The letter announcing the Year for Priests to his brother priests is very much worth re-reading.

---

He opens with this:

On the forthcoming Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Friday 19 June 2009 – a day traditionally devoted to prayer for the sanctification of the clergy – I have decided to inaugurate a “Year for Priests” in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the “dies natalis” of Jean Marie Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests worldwide.

This Year, meant to deepen the commitment of all priests to interior renewal for the sake of a stronger and more incisive witness to the Gospel in today’s world, will conclude on the same Solemnity in 2010. "The priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus”, the saintly Curé of Ars would often say.

This touching expression makes us reflect, first of all, with heartfelt gratitude on the immense gift which priests represent, not only for the Church, but also for humanity itself. I think of all those priests who quietly present Christ’s words and actions each day to the faithful and to the whole world, striving to be one with the Lord in their thoughts and their will, their sentiments and their style of life.

How can I not pay tribute to their apostolic labours, their tireless and hidden service, their universal charity? And how can I not praise the courageous fidelity of so many priests who, even amid difficulties and incomprehension, remain faithful to their vocation as “friends of Christ”, whom he has called by name, chosen and sent?...

I also think of the countless situations of suffering endured by many priests, either because they themselves share in the manifold human experience of pain or because they encounter misunderstanding from the very persons to whom they minister. How can we not also think of all those priests who are offended in their dignity, obstructed in their mission and persecuted, even at times to offering the supreme testimony of their own blood?

There are also, sad to say, situations which can never be sufficiently deplored where the Church herself suffers as a consequence of infidelity on the part of some of her ministers. Then it is the world which finds grounds for scandal and rejection. What is most helpful to the Church in such cases is not only a frank and complete acknowledgment of the weaknesses of her ministers, but also a joyful and renewed realization of the greatness of God’s gift, embodied in the splendid example of generous pastors, religious afire with love for God and for souls, and insightful, patient spiritual guides. Here the teaching and example of Saint Jean Marie Vianney can serve as a significant point of reference for us all...

Referring to how the saint observed chastity, he said:
His chastity, too, was that demanded of a priest for his ministry. It could be said that it was a chastity suited to one who must daily touch the Eucharist, who contemplates it blissfully and with that same bliss offers it to his flock. It was said of him that “he radiated chastity”; the faithful would see this when he turned and gazed at the tabernacle with loving eyes”.

He ended by saying:
To the Most Holy Virgin I entrust this Year for Priests. I ask her to awaken in the heart of every priest a generous and renewed commitment to the ideal of complete self-oblation to Christ and the Church which inspired the thoughts and actions of the saintly Curé of Ars.

It was his fervent prayer life and his impassioned love of Christ Crucified that enabled Jean Maryie Vianney to grow daily in his total self-oblation to God and the Church.

May his example lead all priests to offer that witness of unity with their Bishop, with one another and with the lay faithful, which today, as ever, is so necessary.

Despite all the evil present in our world, the words which Christ spoke to his Apostles in the Upper Room continue to inspire us: “In the world you have tribulation; but take courage, I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).

---

May 12, 2013, Sixth Week in Easter

In most of the world, Catholics celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension today, Sunday, instead of last Thursday, 40 days after Easter, as the Church always celebrated it before the post-Vatican-II liturgical reforms which also overhauled the liturgical calendar and allowed the observance of some major religious holidays on the following Sunday if the day itself falls on a weekday. Today, only a handful of countries - many of the names surprising - not only continue to celebrate Ascension Thursday properly, but in some of them, the day is also a national public holiday: Austria. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. In the list, only Austria, France and Luxembourg were traditionally Catholic. Some dioceses in the USA also celebrate Ascension on Thursday.
The saint of the day:

ST. PANCRATIUS (Pancras) (b Phrygia ca 290, d Rome 304), Martyr
Little is known about this early Christian boy martyr who, however, quickly became one of the most popular saints in his time, with a basilica erected by a Pope over his tomb as early as the fourth century. Located on the Gianiculum hill overlooking the Vatican, it continues to be a popular pilgrimage site, especially for those looking for a job. Pancratius was born in Phrygia (now in present-day Turkey) to noble pagan parents, but was brought to Rome by an uncle when he was orphaned early. In Rome, he was exposed to Christians and chose to be baptized, after which he became a zealous exponent of the faith. During the wave ov persecutions by the emperor Diocletian, he refused to denounce his faith, for which he was beheaded. He was only 14. A cult quickly developed at the tomb where he was buried, with many miracles reported. Since then, he has been one of Rome's most popular local saints/ In the English-speaking world, he is best known because one of London's major train stations, St. Pancras, is named for him. When Augustine of Canterbury (a Benedictine) came to England, he named the first church he erected after Pancras.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051213.cfm

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis celebrated his first Mass to canonize the Church's newest saints - 802 in all, the largest mass canonization in modern times. They are:
- ANTONIO PRIMALDO and 799 COMPANIONS (d 1480), Italian martyrs, killed by Muslim invaders in Otranto, southeastern Italy, for refusing to give up their faith;
- LAURA DI SANTA CATERINA DA SIENA MONTOYA Y UPEGUI (1874-1949), Virgin, Founder of the Congregation of Missionary Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of St. Catherine of Siena - she is Colombia's first saint; and
- MARIA GUADALUPE GARCÍA ZAVALA (1878-1963) of Mexico, Virgin, co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Saint Marguerite Mary and of the Poor.

Benedict XVI announced the decrees for the canonization of these new saints and the date for the canonization on February 11, 2013, in a consistory which he ended with his bombshell announcement that he was renouncing the Pontificate effective 8 p.m. on February 28.

Before the Regina caeli prayers at the end of the Mass, Pope Francis also recalled the beatification yesterday in Rome of
- LUIGI NOVARESE (1814-1984), priest and founder of the Volunteer Centers for the Suffering and Silent Workers of the Cross.
NB: Novarese was a 'bureaucrat' in the Vatican Secretariat of State from 1942-1970. He began establishing his charitable centers in 1950. It might have been edifying for Pope Francis to point that out. Curial service is obviously not all careerism and corruption.

He also greeted the participants of the annual March for Life, and reiterated the Church's commitment to the defense and protection of life from conception to its natural end.

In the homily and in his pre-Regina caeli remarks, the Argentine Pope for the first time used Spanish in public, in the parts referring to the two new saints from Colombia and Mexico. But for some reason, the Pope made no reference today to the Ascension, a reference he also omitted in his daily homily at Santa Marta on Ascension Thursday itself.

Vatican Radio's English translation of the homily:
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/12/pope_francis_celebrates_mass,_proclaims_new_saints_%28full_text%29/en1-691365
en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/12/pope_francis:_regina_caeli_%28full_text%29/en...





In May 2010, the main event of Benedict XVI's second day in Lisbon before leaving for Fatima in the afternoon was his address to the leaders of the culture and science community at the Centro Cultural de Belem, though it was not as heralded as his similar addresses to the secular world in Regensburg, Paris, London, and Berlin,

May 12, 2010
MEETING WITH PORTUGAL'S
'WORLD OF CULTURE'
Centro Cultural Belem

'Be navigators of truth, beauty, goodness'


Lisbon, May 12, 2010 - Striking modern architecture close to the waterfront was the backdrop for Pope Benedict’s encounter with the World of Culture on the second morning of his Apostolic visit to Portugal .

The Belem Cultural Centre, built to host Portugal's presidency of the European Union in 1992, is also an arts complex with the city's largest auditorium.




And in this auditorium Pope Benedict XVI was greeted by all present with unusual cheering from this kind of highbrow audience An audience which included representatives from the entire diplomatic corps on Portuguese soil.

Also present were representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Hindu community as well as members of the Portuguese Evangelical Alliance, and of the Ishmaelite Community.

The Holy Father was welcomed by the President of the Commission for Culture of the Portuguese Bishop’s conference, Bishop Manuel de Clemente, who willll also be acting as his host as Bishop of Porto on the final day of this four day apostolic journey .

A Bishop recently presented with the prestigious Pessoa award for his contribution to culture in Portugal, a significant gesture given the Church in Portugal was once distant from culture because of past anti-clericalism.

But another Manuel was there to greet the Pope, acting as dean for the cultural world in Portugal. A famous film director whose surname is de Oliveira, who will be presenting his latest work at the forthcoming Cannes festival.

For once perhaps the Pope could listen to the wise words of someone older than he. Now 102, de Oliveira is a Jesuit-educated Catholic. And while religion takes centre stage in his films, he admits to never having read anything the Holy Father has written.

When he spoke he highlighted how from the beginning arts and religion have been linked to Christianity; “The roots of Europe and Portugal, whether we like it or not, are Christian - he mentioned -and have inspired a wealth of artistic masterpieces”.


Oliveira makes another auspicious model of longevity, and looking exceptionally well, too, for 102..

And at the end of his brief speech Benedict XVI got up from his chair to shake his hands and the film director bowed as he presented a gift from the world of culture, a silver box in the shape of an egg with a porcelain dove inside, symbolic of peace and of the Holy Spirit.

The Pope responded giving his address in Portuguese, thanking him personally for his kind words, for having given him a glimpse of the concerns and mood of the soul of Portugal in this turbulent period of the life of society. Here is the English translation of the Pope's address:

---

Dear Brother Bishops,
Distinguished Authorities,
Eminent representatives of the arts and sciences,
Dear friends,

I am very pleased to meet you, men and women devoted to research and expansion in the various fields of knowledge, and worthy representatives of the rich world of culture in Portugal.

I take this occasion to express my deep esteem and appreciation of you and your work. The Government, represented here by the Minister for Culture, to whom I extend my respectful and warm greetings, gives praiseworthy support to the national priorities of the world of culture.

I am grateful to all those who have made this meeting possible, particularly the Cultural Commission of the Bishops’ Conference and its President, Bishop Manuel Clemente, whom I thank for his kind words of welcome and his presentation of the multifaceted reality of Portuguese culture, represented here by some of its most distinguished leaders.

Their sentiments and expectations have been expressed by film director Manoel de Oliveira, a man venerable in years and in professional activity, to whom I extend my affectionate greetings and esteem. I also thank him for his kind words, which have given a glimpse of the concerns and the mood of the soul of Portugal in this turbulent period of the life of society.

Today’s culture is in fact permeated by a “tension” which at times takes the form of a “conflict” between the present and tradition. The dynamic movement of society gives absolute value to the present, isolating it from the cultural legacy of the past, without attempting to trace a path for the future.

This emphasis on the “present” as a source of inspiration for the meaning of life, both individual and social, nonetheless clashes with the powerful cultural tradition of the Portuguese people, deeply marked by the millenary influence of Christianity and by a sense of global responsibility.

This came to the fore in the adventure of the Discoveries and in the missionary zeal which shared the gift of faith with other peoples. The Christian ideal of universality and fraternity inspired this common adventure, even though influences from the Enlightenment and laicism also made themselves felt.

This tradition gave rise to what could be called a “wisdom”, that is to say, an understanding of life and history which included a corpus of ethical values and an “ideal” to be realized by Portugal, which has always sought to establish relations with the rest of the world.

The Church appears as the champion of a healthy and lofty tradition, whose rich contribution she sets at the service of society. Society continues to respect and appreciate her service to the common good but distances itself from that “wisdom” which is part of her legacy.

This “conflict” between tradition and the present finds expression in the crisis of truth, yet only truth can provide direction and trace the path of a fulfilled existence both for individuals and for a people.

Indeed, a people no longer conscious of its own truth ends up by being lost in the maze of time and history, deprived of clearly defined values and lacking great and clearly formulated goals.

Dear friends, much still needs to be learned about the form in which the Church takes her place in the world, helping society to understand that the proclamation of truth is a service which she offers to society, and opening new horizons for the future, horizons of grandeur and dignity.

The Church, in effect, has “a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. […] Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development.

For this reason the Church searches for truth, proclaims it tirelessly and recognizes it wherever it is manifested. This mission of truth is something that the Church can never renounce” (Caritas in Veritate, 9).

For a society made up mainly of Catholics, and whose culture has been profoundly marked by Christianity, the search for truth apart from Christ proves dramatic. For Christians, Truth is divine; it is the eternal “Logos” which found human expression in Jesus Christ, who could objectively state: “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6).

The Church, in her adherence to the eternal character of truth, is in the process of learning how to live with respect for other “truths” and for the truth of others. Through this respect, open to dialogue, new doors can be opened to the transmission of truth.

“The Church – wrote Pope Paul VI – must enter into dialogue with the world in which she lives. The Church becomes word, she becomes message, she becomes dialogue” (Ecclesiam Suam, 67).

Dialogue, without ambiguity and marked by respect for those taking part, is a priority in today’s world, and the Church does not intend to withdraw from it.

A testimony to this is the Holy See’s presence in several international organizations, as for example her presence at the Council of Europe’s North-South Centre, established 20 years ago here in Lisbon, which is focused on intercultural dialogue with a view to promoting cooperation between Europe, the southern Mediterranean and Africa, and building a global citizenship based on human rights and civic responsibility, independent of ethnic origin or political allegiance, and respectful of religious beliefs.

Given the reality of cultural diversity, people need not only to accept the existence of the culture of others, but also to aspire to be enriched by it and to offer to it whatever they possess that is good, true and beautiful.

Ours is a time which calls for the best of our efforts, prophetic courage and a renewed capacity to “point out new worlds to the world”, to use the words of your national poet (Luís de Camões, Os Lusíades, II, 45).

You who are representatives of culture in all its forms, forgers of thought and opinion, “thanks to your talent, have the opportunity to speak to the heart of humanity, to touch individual and collective sensibilities, to call forth dreams and hopes, to broaden the horizons of knowledge and of human engagement. […] Do not be afraid to approach the first and last source of beauty, to enter into dialogue with believers, with those who, like yourselves, consider that they are pilgrims in this world and in history towards infinite Beauty!” (Address to Artists, 21 November 2009).

Precisely so as “to place the modern world in contact with the life-giving and perennial energies of the Gospel” (John XXIII, Apostolic Constitution Humanae Salutis, 3), the Second Vatican Council was convened.

There, the Church, on the basis of a renewed awareness of the Catholic tradition, took seriously and discerned, transformed and overcame the fundamental critiques that gave rise to the modern world, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

In this way the Church herself accepted and refashioned the best of the requirements of modernity by transcending them on the one hand, and on the other by avoiding their errors and dead ends.

The Council laid the foundation for an authentic Catholic renewal and for a new civilization – “the civilization of love” – as an evangelical service to man and society.

Dear friends, the Church considers that her most important mission in today’s culture is to keep alive the search for truth, and consequently for God; to bring people to look beyond penultimate realities and to seek those that are ultimate.

I invite you to deepen your knowledge of God as he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ for our complete fulfilment. Produce beautiful things, but above all make your lives places of beauty.

May Our Lady of Belém intercede for you, she who has been venerated down through the centuries by navigators, and is venerated today by the navigators of Goodness, Truth and Beauty.

---

Pope urges Portugal
to rediscover Christian roots
By NICOLE WINFIELD


LISBON, Portugal, May 12, 2010 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI recalled Portugal's glorious past as a country of adventurers and missionaries who spread Catholicism around the globe in urging a rediscovery of its Christian heritage Wednesday — a key theme of his message to an increasingly secularized Europe.

Benedict met with members of Portugal's cultural elite on the second day of his visit, a day after making his most explicit admission of the Church's own guilt in the clerical abuse scandal. Later Wednesday, he arrives in Fatima, the heart of the trip, to pray at the famous shrine beloved by Pope John Paul II.

Like many countries in western Europe, Portugal has strayed far from its Catholic roots, passing laws in recent years allowing abortion on demand and divorce, even when one of the spouses is opposed.

Earlier this year, Parliament passed a bill seeking to make the country the sixth in Europe allowing same-sex couples to marry. The country's President must now decide whether to approve or veto the legislation.

The German-born Benedict has made clear his dissatisfaction with such trends in Europe and has made it a priority of his papacy to remind Europeans that Christianity forms a basis of much of their culture and identity, and that they shouldn't try to do without God in their lives. Over a five-year-papacy, nine of Benedict's 15 foreign trips have been in Europe.

In a speech to Portuguese artists, scientists and intellectuals, Benedict warned that if Christians ignore their faith "they end up lost in the labyrinth of time and history, deprived of clearly defined values and grand ambitions."

"For a society largely created by Catholics and whose culture was profoundly marked by Christianity, the attempt to find truth without Jesus Christ is dramatic," he said.

He recalled the sense of adventure that marked Portugal's colonial past, when its explorers and missionaries brought Catholicism to Africa, Asia and South America, saying they did so with a "sense of global responsibility."

He lamented that today there is increasingly a sense of tension and conflict between current trends in culture and the traditions of the past, and urged Portugal's cultural elite in particular to use their influence to promote a renewed appreciation of Christianity.

Benedict met later with Portugal's Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates, who in recent years has been a driving force behind the efforts to introduce abortion on demand and same-sex marriage.

Socrates said he told the Pontiff that church institutions played an important role in Portugal, especially in welfare programs for the needy.

"The link between the state and the church has been very important in efforts to address social concerns," Socrates told reporters.

Later Wednesday, Benedict heads to Fatima, the site where three Portuguese shepherd children reported having visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917. The shrine draws millions of pilgrims a year and was a favorite of John Paul, who made his third and final visit in 2000 when he beatified two of the three shepherds.

During that visit, the Vatican revealed the so-called third secret of Fatima, the third part of the message the Virgin allegedly told the children on May 13, 1917: a description of the May 13, 1981, assassination attempt on John Paul.

Struck by the coincidence of the dates, John Paul believed the Virgin intervened to spare his life after a Turkish gunman fired on him in St. Peter's Square. In gratitude, he gave the bullet extracted from his wound to the Fatima shrine, and it now adorns the crown of a statue of the Virgin where Benedict will pray Wednesday evening.

En route to Portugal on Tuesday, Benedict was asked if the suffering of the Pope contained in the third secret could be extended to encompass the suffering of the Church today concerning the clerical abuse scandal.

Benedict affirmed it could, arguing that the Fatima message doesn't respond to a particular situation or time but offers a "fundamental response" to the constant need for penance and prayer.

"In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the Pope or the Church don't come just from outside the Church," he told reporters on board the papal airplane. "The suffering of the Church also comes from within the Church, because sin exists in the Church. This, too, has always been known, but today we see it in a really terrifying way."

[In no way can his statement be made to read that he is blaming the Church alone - more precisely, some persons who make up the Church - for the problem, as all the media reports have it.]

Departure for Fatima:
affectionate crowds for the Pope

Salvatore Izzo at AGI filed this story about the Pope's departure from Lisbon and arrival in Fatima with the kind of detail that, for some reason, other reporters think unimportant (since they never report it):

LISBON, May 12, 2010 (Translated from AGI) - One last crowd experience for Benedict XVI before leaving Lisbon, as he was greeted by a huge crowd that had gathered around the Apostolic Nunciature when he left this afternoon for the airport and the brief helicopter flight to Fatima.

First, the Pope showed himself at a balcony of the Nunciature to greet, thank and bless the crowd who responded with uncontainable enthusiasm.

Then to a new outburst of applause and affectionate chanting of his name, he emerged onto the street where he shook hands with all the staff of the Nunciature before getting into the Popemobile which took him to Portela airport.

Along the route to the airport, he was hailed by thousands more of faithful who had waited hours to see him pass by.

All Lisbon seems to have gone all out to show their affection for the Pope. For practically the whole six kilometers between the city center and the airport, the Popemobile passed through ranks of onlookers on both sides of the highway.

Images taken by the Portuguse state TV RTP were impressive - documenting the tens of thousands of people lining the Pope's route.

At Portela, the Pope boarded a Portufuese military helicopter for the quick hop to Fatima, only 110 kms. from Lisbon.

The Pope requested that the chopper fly by the giant statue of Christ the King, built 50 years ago and modelled on Rio de Janeiro's famous mountaintop statue.

The Shrine of Christ the King is in Almada, across the Tagus river from Lisbon, in the diocese of Setubal. A great crowd had assembled in the esplanade adjoining the Shrine to greet the Pope as his chopper made the flyby.

For days now, the statue has had a giant picture of the Pope on one side, with a giant vertical streamer reading 'Obrigado' (Thank you) on the other.

When the Pope's helicopter landed in Fatima at 4:20 p.m., the bells at the Shrine and all other churches in the diocese rang out to greet him.

After getting off the helicopter, the Pope had photographs taken with the military crew and then greeted the local authorities who welcomed him led by the Bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Mons, Antonio Marto; the Governor of Santarem province sonia Sanfona; tje president of the Municipal Council of Ourem, Paolo Fonseca, tne president of the Fatima council, Natalio Reis, and other authorities from teh civilian, military and police.

He then got into the Popemobile for the 5-km trip to the Shrine. And once again, as in Lisbon, the roadsides along the route were filled with uninterrupted ranks of pilgrims.


View of Fatima - the central tower of the Basilica of Our Lady (old basilica) stands out.
Vast crowd cheers Pope's
arrival in Fatima
By Daniel Silva



FATIMA, Portugal, May 12 (AFP) — Pope Benedict XVI arrived Wednesday at Fatima, one of Christianity's most popular shrines, cheered by tens of thousands of flag-waving pilgrims.

The 83-year old pontiff took a 30-minute helicopter ride from Lisbon before climbing into his Popemobile and heading for Fatima's Chapel of Apparitions, where the Pope was to pray before making an address to priests.

Benedict, the third Pope to visit Fatima, toured the shrine's vast esplanade, which turned into a sea of colour as the huge crowd waved yellow and white Vatican flags and hats, as well as the red and green of Portugal.

Chants of "Viva o Papa" rang round the crowd as the Popemobile reached the Chapel, built on the site where three shepherd children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary in 1917.

Benedict sank to his knees before a statue of the Virgin topped with a gold and silver crown in which John Paul II placed a bullet taken from his body following the failed assassination attempt in 1981.

Reciting a special prayer in remembrance of his predecessor, Benedict said "It is a profound consolation to know that you are crowned not only with the silver and gold of our joys and hopes, but also with the 'bullet' of our anxieties and sufferings."

Benedict's personal pilgrimage to the shrine, 120 kilometres (72 miles) northeast of Lisbon, is being billed by the Church as the highlight of his four-day visit and a giant outdoor Mass has been planned for as many as 500,000 people on Thursday....

The first event in Fatima was the Pope's visit to the Chapel of the Apparitions, when he offered a Golden Rose to the image of Our Lad. The chapel was built over the site where the Blessed Mother first appeared to the three children. It is a third of the way on the left side of the Esplanade, facing the Basilica, shown right from its right colonnade. The second event - Vespers and consecration of the priests and religious to the Virgin Mary - was held in the Basilica of the Most Holy Trinity.
VISIT TO THE CHAPEL OF THE APPARITIONS
AND OFFERING THE GOLDEN ROSE







PRAYER TO OUR LADY OF FATIMA
by BENEDICT XVI

---

Our Lady
and Mother of all men and women,
here I am as a son
who comes to visit his Mother
in the company of
a multitude or brothers and sisters.
As Successor of Peter,
to whom has been entrusted
the mission of presiding in charity
in the Church of Christ
and to confirm all in the faith
and in hope,
I wish to present
to your Immaculate Heart
the joys and the hopes
as well as the problems and sufferings
of each of your sons and daughters
who are here in Cova di Iria
or who are with us from afar.

Most loving Mother,
console each one by name,
by face, and by his own story,
and look on everyone
with the maternal benevolence
that flows from the heart of God-Love himself.

I entrust and consecrate each and everyone to you,
Most Blessed Mother,
Mother of God and our Mother.

Choir and assembly: We sing to you and acclaim you, Mary! (v. 1)

The Venerable Pope John Paul II
who visited you here three times in Fatima,
and thanked that 'invisible hand'
which kept him from death
in the assassination attempt on May 13th
in St. Peter's Square almost 30 years ago,
offered to the Shrine of Fatima
the bullet which wounded him seriously,
which has been placed
on your crown as Queen of Peace.

It is a profound comfort
to know that you are crowned
not only with the silver and gold
of our joys and hopes,
but also with the 'bullet'
of our problems and sufferings.

I am thankful, beloved Mother,
for the prayers and sacrifices
that the three shepherd children
of Fatima offered for the Pope,
guided by the sentiments
that you inspired in them
in your apparitions.

I also thank all who, every day,
pray for the Successor of Peter
and his intentions
so that the Pope may be strong in faith,
daring in hope, and zealous in love.

Choir and assembly: We sing to you and acclaim you, Mary! (v. 2)

Mother beloved by all of us,
I offer to you here in your Shrine at Fatima,
the Golden Rose I brought from Rome
as a tribute of gratitude from the Pope
for the wonders that the Almighty
has done through you
in therts of so many who come as pilgrims
to this your maternal home.

I am sure that the Shepherds of Fatima -
Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta,
and the Servant of God Lucia of Jesus -
are with us in this time
of supplication andf rejoicing.

Choir and assembly: We sing to you and acclaim you, Mary! (v. 5)

---

The MSM hardly ever write about the issue, but at least one excellent book (above) has been written about it by David Pierre, who writes for the conservative but secular Media Research Council based in Washington, and whose blog on the MRC's NEWSBUSTERS site pecializes in calling attention to any miscarriage of justice in what has become a lucrative lawyering industry in the USA to prosecute priests accused of sex offenses against children and minors. Here is one such story written by a respected member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, a Jewish lady who won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2001 - at the height of the denunciations of US priests for sexual abuses - on the basis of 10 excellent articles, four of which were about false allegations against priests.

The trials of Father MacRae
He was convicted when it was obligatory — as it remains today =
to give credence to every accuser charging a priest with molestation.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

May 12, 2013

Last Christmas Eve, his 18th behind bars, Catholic priest Gordon MacRae offered Mass in his cell at the New Hampshire state penitentiary. A quarter-ounce of unfermented wine and the host had been provided for the occasion, celebrated with the priest's cellmate in attendance. Sentenced to 33½-67 years following his 1994 conviction for sexual assault against a teenage male, Father MacRae has just turned 60.

The path that led inexorably to that conviction would have been familiar to witnesses of the manufactured sex-abuse prosecutions that swept the nation in the 1980s and early 1990s and left an extraordinary number of ruined lives in its wake.

Here once more, in the MacRae case, was a set of charges built by a determined sex-abuse investigator and an atmosphere in which accusation was, in effect, all the proof required to bring a guilty verdict. But now there was another factor: huge financial payouts for victims' claims.

That a great many of the accusations against the priests were amply documented, that they involved the crimes of true predators all too often hidden or ignored, no one can doubt.

Neither should anyone doubt the ripe opportunities there were for fraudulent abuse claims filed in the hope of a large payoff. Busy civil attorneys—working on behalf of clients suddenly alive to the possibilities of a molestation claim, or open to suggestions that they remembered having been molested—could and did reap handsome rewards for themselves and their clients.

The Diocese of Manchester, where Father MacRae had served, had by 2004 paid out $22,210,400 in settlements to those who had accused its priests of abuse.

The paydays did not come without effort. Thomas Grover — a man with a long record of violence, theft and drug offenses on whose claims the state built its case against Father MacRae — would receive direction for his testimony at the criminal trial. A conviction at the priest's criminal trial would be a crucial determinant of success—that is, of the potential for reward—in Mr. Grover's planned civil suit.

The 27-year-old accuser found that direction from a counselor at an agency recommended by his civil attorney. During Mr. Grover's testimony, this therapist could be seen (though not by the jury) standing in the back of the courtroom. There, courtroom observers noted, and it is a report the state disputes, she would periodically place her finger at eye level and slowly move it down her right cheek—a pantomime of weeping. Soon thereafter Mr. Grover would begin to cry loudly, and at length.

Thomas Grover's allegations were scarcely more credible than those of the 5- and 6-year-olds coaxed into accusations during the prosecutions of the day-care workers — children who spoke of being molested in graveyards and secret rooms.

The accuser's complaints against Father MacRae were similarly rich, among them allegations that few prosecutors would put before a jury. In a pretrial deposition, Mr. Grover alleged that Father MacRae had "chased me through a cemetery" and had tried to corner him there. Also, that Father MacRae had a gun and was "telling me over and over again that he would hurt me, kill me if I tried to tell anybody." The priest had, moreover, chased him down the highway in his car.

Though jurors would hear none of these allegations, which spoke volumes about the character of this case, there was still the problem, for the prosecutors, of the spectacular claims Mr. Grover made in court — charges central to the case.

Among them, that he had been sexually assaulted by Father MacRae when he was 15 during five successive counseling sessions. Why, after the first horrifying attack, had Mr. Grover willingly returned for four more sessions, in each of which he had been forcibly molested? Because, he explained, he had come to each new meeting with no memory of the previous attack. In addition, Mr. Grover said, he had experienced "out of body" episodes that had blocked his recollection.

In all, not the sort of testimony that would bolster a prosecutor's confidence, and there was more of the kind, replete with the accuser's changing stories. Not to mention a considerable history of forgery, assault, theft and drug use that entered the court record, at least in part, despite the judge's ruling that such facts were irrelevant.

In mid-trial, the state was moved to offer Father MacRae an enticing plea deal: one to three years for an admission of guilt. The priest refused it, as he had turned down two previous offers, insisting on his innocence.

Still, the jury trial would end with a conviction in September 1994, and a sentence equivalent to a life term handed down by Judge Arthur Brennan. That would not be all.

The state threatened a new prosecution on additional charges unless the priest pleaded guilty to those, in exchange for no added prison time. Without funds and unable to hire a new lawyer, already facing a crushing sentence and certain, given the climate in which he would face a second trial, that he could only be convicted, Father MacRae accepted the deal.

In due course there would be the civil settlement: $195,000 for Mr. Grover and his attorneys. The payday — which the plaintiff had told the court he sought only to meet expenses for therapy — became an occasion for ecstatic celebration by Mr. Grover and friends. The party's high point, captured by photographs now in possession of Father MacRae's lawyers, shows the celebrants dancing around, waving stacks of $50 bills fresh from the bank.

The prospect of financial reward for anyone coming forward with accusations was no secret to teenage males in Keene, N.H., in the early 1990s. Some of them were members of that marginal society, in and out of trouble with the law, it fell to Father MacRae to counsel.

Steven Wollschlager, who had been one of them—he would himself serve time for felony robbery—recalled that period of the 1990s in a 2008 statement to Father MacRae's legal team. That it might not be in the best interest of a man with his own past legal troubles to give testimony undermining a high-profile state prosecution did not, apparently, deter him.

"All the kids were aware," Mr. Wollschlager recalled, "that the Church was giving out large sums of money to keep the allegations from becoming public."

This knowledge, Mr. Wollschlager said, fed the interest of local teens in joining the allegations. It was in this context that Detective James McLaughlin, sex-crimes investigator for the Keene police department, would turn his attention to the priest and play a key role in the effort to build a case against him.

The full history of how Father MacRae came to be charged was reported on these pages in "A Priest's Story," April 27-28, 2005.

Mr. Wollschlager recalled that in 1994 Mr. McLaughlin summoned him to a meeting. As a young man, Mr. Wollschlager said, he had received counseling from Father MacRae. The main subject of the meeting with the detective was lawsuits and money and the priest.

"All I had to do is make up a story," Mr. Wollschlager said, and he too "could receive a large amount of money." The detective "reminded me of my young child and girlfriend," Mr. Wollschlager attests, and told him "that life would be easier for us."

Eventually lured by the promise, Mr. Wollschlager said, he invented some claims of abuse. But summoned to a grand-jury hearing, he balked, telling an official that he refused to testify. He explains, in his statement, "I could not bring myself to give perjured testimony against MacRae, who had only tried to help me." Asked for response to this charge, Mr. McLaughlin says it is "a fabrication."

Along with the lure of financial settlements, the MacRae case was driven by that other potent force—the fevered atmosphere in which charges were built, the presumption of innocence buried. An atmosphere in which it was unthinkable — it still is today — not to credit as truthful every accuser charging a Catholic priest with molestation.

There is no clearer testament to the times than the public statement in September 1993 issued by Father MacRae's own diocese in Manchester well before the trial began: "The Church is a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae as well as the individuals." Diocesan officials had evidently found it inconvenient to dally while due process took its course.

A New Hampshire superior court will shortly deliver its decision on a habeas corpus petition seeking Father MacRae's immediate release on grounds of newly discovered evidence. The petition was submitted by Robert Rosenthal, an appellate attorney with long experience in cases of this kind. In the event that the petition is rejected, Father MacRae's attorneys say they will appeal.

Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents. Some who had been witnesses or otherwise involved still maintain vivid memories of the process.

Debra Collett, the former clinical director at Derby Lodge, a rehabilitation center that Mr. Grover had attended in 1987, said in a signed statement for Father MacRae's current legal team that she had been subject to "coercion and intimidation, veiled and more forward threats" during the police investigation because "they could not get me to say what they wanted to hear."

Namely, that Mr. Grover had complained to her of molestation by Father MacRae. He had not—though he had accused many others, as she would point out. Thomas Grover, she said, had claimed to have been molested by so many people that the staff wondered whether "he was going for some sexual abuse victim world record."

For Father MacRae's part, he has no difficulty imagining any possibility — fitting for a man with encyclopedic command of the process that has brought him to this pass: every detail, every date, every hard fact. Still after nearly two decades this prisoner of the state remains, against all probability, staunch in spirit, strong in the faith that the wheels of justice turn, however slowly.

Monday, May 13, Seventh Week of Easter
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

Mass celebrated in Fatima in May 2010 by Benedict XVI drew the largest crowd ever gathered at the shrine for a single event - at least half a million, most of whom had been there the night before for a candlelight procession and prayer vigil with the Pope.
Reading for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051313.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with

- H.E. Juan Manuel Santos Calderón, President of the Republic of Colombia, and his delegation

- Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, his deputy Mons. Angelo Becciu, and the editors of
the Annuario Pontificio 2013 and the companion volume Anuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, which present,
respectively, a directory of prelates in the Church from the Pope to the parish level, and a compendium
of worldwide statistics about the Catholic Church. This edition represents statistics from the calendar
year 2011 and directory information as of the time Pope Francis was elected. The number of Catholics worldwide
rose from 1.196 billion in 2010 to 1.214 billion in 2011, an increase of 1.5% compared to the relative increase
of 1.23% in the general population.
Normally, the yearbook is issued in March, but because of Benedict XVI's resignation and the imminence of a new Pope, it was delayed to include those changes in the current edition, which incidentally, lists Benedict XVI not just in the listing of all the Supreme Pontiffs of the Church but also in the listing of prelates for the Diocese of Rome, with the title "Supreme Pontiff Emeritus".

- Ten bishops from the Puglia region of Italy on ad-limina visit.

Thirty-two years ago today, on May 13 1981...

Blessed John Paul II survived an assassination attempt by the Communist-hired Turkish gunman Ali Agca.



One year ago...
Benedict XVI undertook a pastoral visit to Arezzo and Sansepolcro in Tuscany. As his last stop, he was to have
visited the Franciscan sanctuary of La Verna, where St. Francis had received the stigmata, but strong winds and
heavy rains made it unsafe for his helicopter to make the trip to the mountain shrine.


On May 13, 2011...
The Vatican Press Office released the text of the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae regarding the implementation
of the 2007 Summorum Pontificum, thus 're-trenching' the traditional Mass into the daily life of the Church.




And in May 2010, May 13, Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, and 10th anniversary at the time of the beatification by John Paul II of the two younger Fatima visionaries Francisco and Jacinta, was the most important day of Benedict XVI's pastoral visit to Portugal.

Huge crowds gather for
Pope's Mass in Fatima
by Catherine Jouault





FATIMA, Portugal, May 13 (AFP) – Hundreds of thousands of people attended a giant mass with Pope Benedict XVI in Portugal Thursday in what the Church said was a massive show of support for his handling of the paedophile priest crisis.

The Fatima sanctuary's huge esplanade was full to overflowing and Church organisers said half a million people attended the outdoor mass, a greater number than joined Benedict's popular predecessor John Paul II here in 2000.

"As far the crisis and scandals are concerned, I think that the people wanted to show that they can distinguish between exceptions and the vast majority of their priests," Portuguese epispocal spokesman Manuel Morujao said.

Benedict himself appeared buoyed by the crowd, telling them of the "great hope which burns in my own heart, and which here, in Fatima, can be palpably felt."





The 83-year-old German Pontiff has often cut a dour, professorial figure when compared to his media-savvy Polish predecessor, but five years into his papacy he has proved a huge draw since his arrival in Portugal on Tuesday. [What is this ridiculous selective amnesia that MSM have about Benedict XVI? They always think it is the first time he says anything significant on whatever subject when he is the world's most prolific major theologian in terms of books, articles and documents. And they always seem to forget that he has always drawn huge crowds as Pope - in the Vatican or elsewhere. Why do they always seem to be surprised, or worse, to pretend it is the first time??? And when did Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI ever ever 'cut a dour professional figure' outside of the malicious imagination of the media????]

"I have come to Fatima to pray, in union with Mary and so many pilgrims, for our human family, afflicted as it is by various ills and sufferings," Benedict declared in his homily.

His Church has been engulfed in a series of unfolding sex abuse scandals amid allegations that the Vatican had wilfully protected paedophile priests from prosecution in several European countries and the United States. [Yada, yada, yada...]

A rock festival atmosphere unfolded ahead of the Pope's arrival for mass as flags flew, pilgrims climbed on statues of saints to get a view and the obligatory queues formed for toilets.

Thursday's Mass was the high point of a four-day visit to Portugal and rain fell on thousands who spent the night on the esplanade in sleeping bags -- and a lucky few under tents -- to make sure they got a place.

"People need something that gives them hope, there are many problems in the world and it is not surprising that there are so many people here," said Maria Caldeira, 66, wearing a transparent blue plastic raincoat against intermittent showers.

Earlier, the Pontiff blessed and kissed two swaddled babies thrust at him through the open window of his Popemobile, before stoking the crowd's enthusiasm by circling the esplanade on his way to the altar, smiling and waving to the massed ranks of flag and hat-waving pilgrims. [But circling the crowds in the Popemobile is SOP even in St. Peter's Square - not to stoke enthusiasm but to give everyone a chance to see the Pope closer, a papal act of consideration for the time and effort most of the pilgrims have taken to be there at all!]

Morujao said several factors were responsible for the massive turnout but mainly "the fact that the image given of the Pope has been unfair".

"I think that Christians wanted to send a message to say that the Pope, and this one in particular, is very much loved, and to say also that shyness is not a fault, but part of character."

The two-hour ceremony marked the 93rd anniversary of the Virgin Mary's reported apparitions to three shepherd children. The incident in 1917 led to the founding of the pilgrimage site, now one of Christianity's biggest.

A statue of Our Lady of Fatima, perched atop a bed of white roses and borne by soldiers, took centre stage behind a procession of bishops before the Mass began. Pilgrims threw rose petals at the statue as it passed by.

The late John Paul II credited the Virgin with deflecting an assassin's bullet in 1981 and placed a bullet taken from his body in the crown of the statue during a visit of thanksgiving the following year.

Official figures for John Paul II's last of three visits here in 2000 put that turnout at 400,000.

"According to what I've heard from several people used to making these estimations, including someone at the paramilitary police, there are around half-a-million people. Therefore more than in 2000," said Morujao.

[NB: The Portuguese newspapers, citing police figures, report that half a million pilgrims arrived in Fatima for the Feast Day of Our Lady and the Pope's visit - a record number for Fatima. Already last night, they turned out in those numbers for the candlelight procession, as they did again today for the Mass.]

Benedict has used his visit to warn Portugal of the consequences of increasing secularism in a country set to legalise gay marriage next week.

Nearly 90 percent of Portuguese are Catholic but only about 20 percent are practising.

He also issued a rallying call to priests, telling them on Wednesday to "take a firm stand" for their vocation.

The Pope said en route to Portugal that the problems the Church was facing came not ['not only' is the exact quote!] from its enemies, but from sin within the institution itself. And he said that justice for the victims of abuse must be a priority.

As it is the only English translation available of the Vatican communique on the latest statistical data about the Catholic Church worldwide, I am using an adapted version of the report that appears in RV's English service (which, it seems remains populated by seemingly unsupervised amateurs).

Latest statistics about the Church
Africa and Asia continue to show growth in the number of faithful and in vocations
but Europe and the Americas continue to decline, except in deacons

Adapted from the English service of

May 13, 2013

The number of Catholics globally remains largely unchanged at 1.214 billion, rising only slightly higher than global population growth for the 2010/2011 period.

The number of priests (religious and diocesan) has grown, largely thanks to a rise in vocations in Asia and Africa which has helped balance the continued decline in Europe (-9% in the last decade).

The same cannot be said for the number of professed women religious which dropped by 10% over the past decade. But, perhaps the most surprising statistic revealed was the boom in vocations to the permanent diaconate, particularly in Europe and the US, where numbers have increased by over 40% in the past decade.

The figures are found in the Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae,and the better known 2013 Pontifical Yearbook, which is the international directory of the Catholic Church.

[It lists all the popes to date and all officials of the Holy See's departments. It also gives complete lists, with contact information, of the cardinals and Catholic bishops throughout the world, the dioceses (with statistics about each), the departments of the Roman Curia, the Holy See's diplomatic missions abroad, the embassies accredited to the Holy See, the headquarters of religious institutes (again with statistics on each), certain academic institutions, and other similar information. The index includes, along with all the names in the body of the book, those of all priests who have been granted the title of "Monsignor".]

The two books were presented to the Holy Father Monday morning by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and his deputy for General Affairs Archbishop Angelo Becciu. Both books are edited by Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, head of the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Church, with Prof. Enrico Nenna and other collaborators.

The Holy Father expressed his gratitude for the tribute [What tribute? These are annual compendia of Church statistics and personnel, which is always presented first to the Pope before it is released], showing a keen interest in the figures illustrated therein and expressing deep gratitude to all those who have contributed to the new edition of the two yearbooks.

The data recorded reveals new statistics relating to the life of the Catholic Church in the world, in the course of 2012 and until the election of Pope Francis. [DIM=8pt][No, the Vatican communique clearly says the statistics are for calendar year 2011, and anyone familiar with the Annuario, as the RV staff ought to be, knows that the current edition can only report complete statistics for the penultimate completed calendar year, since statistical collection for a calendar year theoretically takes place during the successive calendar year.=, e.g., the 2013 edition reports 2011 data whose collection took place and was completed in 2012. This RV report also mxes up its references to the two voulmes which are distinct in that the pontifical yearbook is a directory of names, functions and addresses, whereas the statistical yearbook has all the statistical data.][/DIM]

In 2011, 11 new Episcopal Sees, 2 Personal Ordinariates, 1 Apostolic Vicariate and 1 Apostolic Prefecture were erected; 1 Territorial Prelature was elevated to the rank of Diocese and 2 Apostolic Exarchates to Eparchies.

The number of Catholics worldwide rose from 1.196 billion in 2010 to 1.214 billion in 2011, an increase of 1.5% and since this growth is only slightly higher than that of the Earth's population (1.23%), the presence of Catholics in the world remains essentially unchanged (17.5%).

Territorial analysis of changes from 2010 to 2011 show an increase of 4.3% of Catholics in Africa, which only had a general population increase of 2.3%. Asia also registered an increase in the number of Catholics that was higher than that of the general population (2.0% versus 1.2%).

The percentage of Catholics in America and Europe remained stable, in line with population growth (0.3%). In 2011, the total number of baptized Catholics distributed across the continents was: 16.0% in Africa, 48.8% in the Americas, 10.9% in Asia, 23.5% in Europe and 0.8% in Oceania.

The number of bishops in the world increased, from 5,104 in 2010 to 5,132 in 2011, with a relative increase of 0.55%. The increase particularly involved Oceania (4.6%) and Africa (+1.0%), while Asia and Europe are slightly above the global average. America did not register any changes.

Given these different dynamics, however, the distribution of Bishops across the various continents remained largely stable over the 2010-2011 period, with America and Europe continuing to represent nearly 70 percent of the total.

Globally, the presence of the diocesan and religious priests has increased over time, growing in the last decade from 405,067 units as of December 31, 2001, to 413,418 as of December 31, 2011 (+2.1%). This evolution was not, however, uniform in different geographical areas.

The dynamics of the number of priests in Africa and Asia is somewhat comforting, with a +39.5% and +32.0% respectively (and with an increase of over 3,000 units [the RV report uses the term 'units' - these are not units, these are actual persons - priests, in fact!]for the two continents, in 2011 alone), while America remains stationary with an around an average of 122,000 total units [Why can't they just be called 'priests'? It's not as if each 'unit' could possibly be two-individuals-in-one or even a 'trinity'!]] Europe, in contrast to the global average, has seen a decrease of more than 9% [in the total number of priests] in the past decade.

Permanent deacons are booming both globally and in each region, from a total of more than 29,000 in 2001 to about 41,000 units ]In this case, call them 'deacons', OK?] a decade later, with a variation of more than 40%. Europe and America registered both the most numerically significant and vibrant trend.

In fact, the European deacons, little more than 9,000 units in 2001, were almost 14,000 in 2011, an increase of over 43%. In America the number grew from 19,100 units in 2001 to more than 26,000 in 2011. These two continents, alone, account for 97.4% of the global total, with the remaining 2.6% split between Africa, Asia and Oceania.

Professed religious males who are not priests numbered over 55,000 units in 2011, with Africa and Asia registering increases of +18.5% and +44.9%, respectively. In 2011 these two continents together accounted for over 36% of the total (compared to less than 28% in 2001). In contrast, the numbers registered in Europe (-18%), America (-3.6%) and Oceania (-21.9%) dropped by almost 8 percentage points over the last decade.

A strong downward trend was observed in data for professed women religious, with a decrease of 10% from 2001 to 2011. From 792,000 in 2001, the number in 2011 was just over 713,000. The decline was registered in Europe, America and Oceania (-22% in Europe, -21% in Oceania and -17% in America).

In Africa and Asia, however, there has been a sustained increase,by more than 28% in Africa, and 18% in Asia. Consequently, the percentage represented by professed religious women in Africa and Asia increased from 24.4% to about 33% of the global total, while their numbers in Europe and America dropped from 74% of the global total to 66% respectively by a total of 74% to 66%.

Candidates for diocesan and religious priesthood increased by 7,5% globally, from 112,244 in 2001 to 120,616 in 2011. Africa (+30.9%) and Asia (+29.4%) showed a lively growth, but Europe and America recorded a decline of 21.7% and of 1.9%, respectively.

---

I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine.

After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendour that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand: pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!'. And we saw in an immense light that is God: ‘something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it' a Bishop dressed in White ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father'. Other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark; before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow, he prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way; having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other Bishops, Priests, men and women Religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.

Tuy-3-1-1944

Vatican translation of 'The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria, Fatima, on 13 July 1917'

---

The controversy over the 'third secret':
Objections and responses
by Fr. Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R.
Appendix D from his book 'Fatima For Today'

May 13, 2013

The Third Secret has been dealt with in two chapters in this book. Chapter 8 presented the content of the Third Secret as Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta saw it revealed to them. Chapter 16 presented how Sister Lucia wrote the Third Secret on a separate manuscript and then placed it in a sealed envelope. The chapter also traces what popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II did after reading it.

The Third Secret was first made public at the Beatification Mass of Francisco and Jacinta Marto on May 13, 2000, in the Cova da Iria where the secret was originally revealed to the three children on July 13, 1917. Unfortunately, controversy created by certain objections surrounded the Third Secret almost from the moment it became public. We will look at each main objection separately, and offer a response to each.

Objection: The original Third Secret was written on one sheet of paper.

Many clerics who were familiar with the original text, including bishops who worked with popes John XXIII and Paul VI, said that the Third Secret was written on a single sheet of paper (e.g., Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who read the Third Secret with Pope John XXIII). [1]

The controversy came about when on June 26, 2000, the Vatican released a copy of Sister Lucia's handwritten text in a four-page format. [2] Though there are several possible ways a single sheet of paper can be turned into more than one page (written on both sides, folded and written on multiple sides, etc.) or copied onto more than one page, some critics said that the Vatican copy could not have been made from the authentic text and that some other document exists that contains the real Third Secret.

The Vatican copy of Sister Lucia's handwritten manuscript appears in the document The Message of Fatima prepared by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In the introduction, the secretary of the Congregation at the time, Archbishop Bertone, stated: "There is only one manuscript, which is here reproduced photostatically."

Sister Lucia herself confirmed the validity of the Vatican text. Archbishop Bertone and Bishop Seraphim de Sousa of Leiria met with Sister Lucia at her Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, on April 27, 2000. The Archbishop presented two envelopes to Sister Lucia.

The first or outer envelope contained the second envelope, which held the Third Secret. Touching it with her fingers, Sister Lucia said, "This is my letter." Then, while reading it, she said, "This is my writing." [3] When asked if this document was the one and only Third Secret, Sister Lucia answered, "Yes, this is the Third Secret, and I never wrote any other." [4]

We have additional proof from Sister Lucia that the photocopy of the Third Secret was authentic. She met again with Archbishop Bertone on November 17, 2001. A communique about that meeting carried this most important point:

---

With reference to the third part of the secret of Fatima, [Sister Lucia] affirmed that she had attentively read and meditated upon the booklet published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith [The Message of Fatima] and confirmed everything that was written there. To whoever imagines that some part of the secret has been hidden, she replied: "everything has been published; no secret remains."

those who speak and write of new revelations, she said: "There is no truth in this. If I had received new revelations, I would have told no one, but I would have communicated them directly to the Holy Father." [5]

---

Objection: The text of the Third Secret released by the Vatican contains no words attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The message of the Third Secret was not conveyed in words by our Lady, but in the various visions the children saw. Our Lady spoke simply by her actions, as when she prevented the fire from the flaming sword of the angel from touching the earth and consuming it. Archbishop Bertone explained:

---

The part of the text where the Virgin [supposedly] speaks in the first person wasn't censored, for the simple reason that it never existed. The text these people talk about just doesn't exist. I am not toeing some party line here. I'm basing my statement on Sister Lucia's own direct confirmation that the Third Secret is none other than [what was contained in] the text that was published in the year 2000. [6]

---

Objection: The Vatican's copy of the Third Secret contains no information about a nuclear holocaust, a great apostasy, or the satanic infiltration of the Catholic Church.

This objection is largely the result of the disappointment that some people felt when the Third Secret was finally revealed. Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) predicted this disappointment. "A careful reading of the [Third Secret]", he wrote, "will probably prove disappointing or surprising after all the speculation it has stirred. No great mystery is revealed; nor is the future unveiled." [7]

The years of waiting for the revelation of the Third Secret combined with the discretion of the Vatican built up in many people's minds the idea that the Third Secret predicted some catastrophe, like a nuclear war, a world-wide natural disaster or a great tribulation within the Church.

Some people even developed a "conspiracy mentality", in which they assumed the faithful were not being told the truth about what was going to happen in the Church and in the world. Some critics have accused Vatican officials of publishing a fraudulent Third Secret or of withholding important information.

The problem here is that no one has ever seen any other Third Secret of Fatima than the one that has already been released to the public. The burden of proof lies with the critics. They must produce another document or at least reliable witnesses who have seen and read it. At this point none have come forward.

There is one final authority who should be quoted. He is Archbishop Loris Capovilla, who once served as private secretary to Pope John XXIII. He had read the Third Secret along with Pope John XXIII and actually held the manuscript in his hands. Certain people have claimed that he had said there were "two texts" of the Third Secret. However, Archbishop Capovilla made the following clear and definitive statement:

---

There are not two truths from Fatima, nor is there any fourth secret. The text which I read in 1959 is the same that was distributed by the Vatican. . . . I have had enough of these conspiracy theories. It just isn't true. I read it, I presented it to the Pope and we resealed the envelope. [8]

---

As for the doomsday predictions, we know that a terrible world-wide natural catastrophe or a nuclear war could happen, but that would be the result of our sins. This is why we must heed our Lady's message for prayer and penance.

We also know that with the spread of secularism and religious indifference, many Catholics are no longer practicing their faith. But again, the remedy for this is prayer, penance and a fervent Christian life, as our Lady requested at Fatima.

As for any triumph of Satan over the Church, this is impossible. Jesus himself said so when he told Saint Peter: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it" (Mt 16: 18). It will not be Satan who will conquer, but Jesus with his Immaculate Mother who will crush the head of the serpent.

Objection: The text released by the Vatican is not written in the form of a letter.

Some of the clerics who lived at the time the Third Secret was written mentioned it in terms of a letter, but this was not an emphatic point they were making. The photocopy of the original manuscript released by the Holy See does not have a formal address to the Bishop, however it does have a certain likeness to a letter. The document begins with a title like those in Lucia's memoirs and has a kind of introduction that makes reference to the Bishop:[QUOTE][title] The third part of the secret revealed at the Cova da Iria-Fatima, on 13 July 1917.

[introduction] I write in obedience to you, my God, who command me to do so through his Excellency the Bishop of Leiria and through your Most Holy Mother and mine. [9]<

Tuesday, May 14, Seventh Week of Easter
FEAST OF ST. MATTHIAS, APOSTLE

ST. MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE (d. 80 AD)
Little is known about the man whom the Apostles chose after the first Pentecost to replace Judas Iscariot.
"They nominated two men: Joseph Barabbas and Matthias. They prayed and drew lots. The choice fell upon
Matthias, who was added to the Eleven". Even Benedict XVI, in his catechesis on the Apostles could not say
more than what the Acts of the Apostles reported, and mentioned Matthias only in his catechesis on Judas
Iscariot on Oct. 18, 2006. Matthias is thought to have preached beyond Judea, and some believe he was
martyred in what is now Georgia in the Caucasus. He was added to the Church's list of saints only in the
11th century.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051413.cfm

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No official events announced for Pope Francis.

A news conference presided by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture,
was held about the participation of the Holy See for the first time in Venice's Biennial Festival of Art,
which will be held for the 53rd time from June 1-November 30 this year. This participation was first announced
in 2011 with the approval of Benedict XVI. Cardinal Ravasi said the theme of the Vatican pavilion at the
international exhibit will be Creation as the Bible recounts it. Participating artists were asked to
create works on 'creation, un-creation and re-creation'.

April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month in the United States, but probably only the Catholic Church observes it conscientiously. As part of the US bishops' comprehensive child protection program, in place since the early 2000s, the USSCB has been publishing, around this time of year, an annual report on the status of the program in turns of children under its protection, participating dioceses and number of new abuse allegations against Catholic clergy. Here is a news summary of the 2012 report:

US bishops' annual compliance audit shows
continuing decline in abuse allegations
Safe environment programs reach 99 percent of targeted audience.
Auditors recommend expansion of audits into parishes.

May 9, 2013

WASHINGTON — The annual audit of diocesan compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People found a continuing drop in the number of allegations, number of victims and number of offenders reported in 2012.

The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), which gathered data for the report, found "the fewest allegations and victims reported since the data collection for the annual reports began in 2004."

Most allegations reported last year were from the 1970s and 1980s with many of the alleged offenders already deceased or removed from ministry in the priesthood. [This has been the international pattern of abuse allegations against Catholic clergy - offenses peaked in the two decades that followed Vatican II, when many men of the Church interpreted the Church's 'opening to the world' as a free pass to do as they please in everything from doctrine and morals to their personal lifestyle.]

StoneBridge Business Partners, which conducts the audits, said law enforcement found six credible cases among 34 allegations of abuse of minors in 2012 itself. Credibility of 15 of the allegations was still under investigation. Law enforcement found 12 allegations to be unfounded or unable to be proven, and one a boundary violation.

Almost all dioceses were found compliant with the audit. Three were found non-compliant with one article of the Charter.
- The Diocese of Lake Charles, Louisiana, was faulted because its review board had not met in several years. (The diocese had no allegations during that time).
- The Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, was faulted because auditors could not determine if parishes provided safe environment training to religious education students and volunteer teachers.
- The Diocese of Baker, Oregon, was faulted because students did not receive safe environment training while a new program was being developed. The diocese has since begun training.

The report can be found at www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/child-and-youth-protection/upload/annual-report-on-the-implementation-of-the-charter-for-the-protection-of-children-and-young-people-...

The annual report has two parts. The first is the compliance report of StoneBridge, which conducted on-site audits of 71 dioceses and eparchies and reviewed documentation submitted by 118 others. The Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, and five Eastern rite dioceses, known as eparchies, refused to be audited.

The second part is the "2012 Survey of Allegations and Costs," conducted by CARA.The Lincoln Diocese refused to cooperate with the survey, and the Eparchy of Our Lady of Lebanon of Los Angeles did not respond by the cut-off date.

The StoneBridge audit, in addition to finding most dioceses Charter compliant, reported that "over 99 percent of clerics and over 96 percent of employees and volunteers were trained" in safe environment programs.

"In addition, over 4.6 million children received safe environment training. Background evaluations were conducted on over 99 percent of clerics; 98 percent of educators; 96 percent of employees; and 96 percent of volunteers."

StoneBridge cited limitations, including "the unwillingness of most dioceses and eparchies to allow us to conduct parish audits during their on-site audits." It said that "the auditors must rely solely on the information provided by the diocese or eparchy, instead of observing the program firsthand."

Another limitation is staff turnover in diocesan child abuse prevention programs. As a result, "records are often lost, and successors to the position are often placed in key roles without formal orientation," StoneBridge reported.

Al J. Notzon, III, chairman of the National Review Board (NRB), which oversees the audits, echoed StoneBridge concerns in a letter to Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Notzon highlighted the importance of good record-keeping "and the great significance of involving parishes in the audit process."

"Abuse happened in the parishes where our children learn and live their young, growing faith," Notzon said. "From the NRB's perspective, parish participation in the audit process is an essential next step in what 'makes the Charter real' for laity in those parishes. What we have come to see is that protecting children from sexual abuse is a race without a finish and more rather than less effort is necessary to keep this sacred responsibility front and center."

Cardinal Dolan in a preface to the report commended clergy, employees and volunteers trained in safe environment.

"At the same time we also renew our steadfast resolution never to lessen our common commitment to protect children and young people entrusted to our pastoral care," he said. "We seek with equal determination to promote healing and reconciliation for those harmed in the past, and to assure that our audits continue to be credible and maintain accountability in our shared promise to protect and our pledge to heal."

In data gathering from dioceses, CARA noted there were 397 allegations, most of them from decades past, against 313 priests or deacons, by 390 individuals. About 84 percent of the victims were male. Half were between 10 and 14 when the abuse began. An estimated 17 percent were between 15 and17, and 19 percent were under age 10.

Dioceses and eparchies that responded to the survey reported costs related to allegations at $112,966,427 in 2012. Expenses covered settlements, attorney fees, therapy for victims and support for offenders. The total amount expended for dioceses, eparchies and religious orders was $148,338,437. Dioceses and religious orders also spent $26,583,087 for child protection programs.

For perspective, let me re-post a quick summary of the situation in the United States at the time the US bishops launched their comprehensive program against abuse of minors and for child protection:

---

The Nature and Scope of the Problem of Sexual Abuse of Minors by Catholic Priests and Deacons in the United States was the study commissioned in 2002 by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops "to provide the first-ever complete accounting, or census, of the number of priests, deacons and religious against whom allegations of child sexual abuse were made and of the incidents alleged to have occurred between 1950-2002."

The study was conducted by the John Jay College of Criminology in New York City. The full report can be found on usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/

Some general data from the report:
o 195 dioceses and 140 religious communities were surveyed;
7 dioceses and 30 communities did not respond to the survey.

o From the responses, a total of 4,392 priests, deacons and religious were identified to have been accused of such offenses.

o They represented 3-6% of priests in the dioceses and 1-3% in the communities. The overall percentage of accused in terms of all priests and religious in the US was 4%.

o 75% of the alleged incidents took place between 1960-1984.

o Reporting to the police resulted in an investigation in almost all cases. 384 of the 4,392 accused were criminally charged. Overall only 8.7% of those accused ended up being charged.

o Of the 384 charged, 252 were convicted - a 66% conviction rate. Some of them had more than one conviction on different counts. Those convicted represented only 5.7% of the total that had been accused.
[That number is very significant, because it indicates that some 94% of accusations were not actionable. (It tells us that the overwhelming majority of accusations cannot stand up enough to be prosecuted, though that doesn't mean they did not all merit accusation.]

o As a percentage of the estimated 102,120 priests that served cumulatively in the United States during the study period 1950-2002, the 252 convicted priests represent 0.24% (one-fourth of one percent).

o As of 2002 (before all the massive costs since then imposed by subsequent court rulings), the cost to the dioceses and communities between 1950-2002 was estimated at about $573 million - $501 million for victim compensation and treatment, and the rest for priest treatment and legal fees. Insurance paid about $289 million of the costs for victim compensation and treatment.

---

And for further perspective, this observation I posted some time in 2010 when a report was released on the situation in the Netherlands:

---

The number of victims in the Netherlands from 1945-2010 is said to be between 10,000-20,000, at the hands of 800 priests. That averages to 50-100 victims per accused priest!

And even if we take the low estimate, compare 10,000 victims in a country that has at most 5 million Catholics today, with the 10,667 victims reported in the survey of US abuses by priests against minors for the period from 1950-2002, in a country that has about 60 million Catholics.

It comes out to one abuse victim for every 500 Dutch Catholics (and 1 for every 250, if we take the higher figure of 20,000 victims) - compared to 1 abuse victim for every 30,000 US Catholics.... In fact, no other country comes close to the Netherlands in this respect. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any information online as to the number of Dutch priests and male religious, so I have no idea of the proportion of priests that the 800 accused represent.

In the USA, the 10,667 complaints were were made against 4,392 priests and religious, representing about 4% of all priests and religious in the US for the period studied. Almost all of the complaints were investigated by the police, but only 384 ended up being charged in court, with 252 convicted.

Ireland's record is almost 'stellar' compared to the Netherlands. The total number of sex abuse complaints from roughly 1962-2005 were a 'mere' 469 complaints in the Dioceses of Ferns, Dublin and Cloyne (130, 320 and 19, respectively) against a total of 86 priests and religious, plus 320 sexual-abuse complaints in the large Ryan study of overall abuses committed in 200 Irish Catholic schools from 1914-2000 (800 were accused but these included lay personnel of the schools) for a grand total of 830 complaints (=890 victims) between 1914-2005. 890 victims in the context of the present Irish population of 4.8 million averages to one victim for every 5,400 Irishmen, six times the proportion in the USA.

---

Sorry for being absent due to unforeseen circumstances... I will post my 'almanac entries] for both May 15 and 16, to begin with...

Wednesday, May 15, Seventh Week of Easter

SAN ISIDRO LABRADOR (Isidore the Farmer) (Spain, 1070-1130), Confessor, Patron of Farmers
Our saint was born poor, and all his life, he worked on the estate of a wealthy Madrid landowner, along with his wife who would herself be canonized as Santa Maria de la Cabeza.
He was well-known for his piety, going to Mass everyday before starting work, often coming late. But his colleagues said an angel did the work for him while he was away, and
later, his master would claim seeing two angels alongside Isidro as he plowed the land. Despite his own poverty, he was known to help other poor, miraculously coming up with
food to share. More than 400 miracles were presented for his canonization. Among them, that he saved his own son from drowning in a deep well and that he brought back his
master's dead daughter to life. In 1212, almost a century after he died, his exhumed body was found to be incorrupt. He became the patron of Madrid from then on. He was
canonized in 1622 along with three other great Spanish saints - Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco Javier (Francis Xavier), and Teresa of Avila - along with the Italian Filippo (Philip) Neri.
In 1960, John XXIII proclaimed him patron of farmers and day laborers. He is one of the most popular saints in the Hispanic world. In the Philippines alone, countless farming
communities venerate him as patron saint, and his feast day is observed as a very colorful harvest festival celebrating the fruits of the earth. A major agricultural fair named
for him is held every year in Seville, Spain. He and his wife were among the patron saints of WYD 2011 in Madrid.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051513.cfm

WEDNESDAY, 5/15/13, AT THE VATICAN

General Audience - Pope Francis, continuing his catecheses on the articles of faith in the Credo, spoke
of the Holy Spirit as our guide to Truth, pointing out hoe Benedict XVI often denounced relativism which
claims that there is no definite truth, that it Is what we want it to be or what the consensus is.
Vatican Radio's English translation of the catechesis:
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/05/15/audience:_do_not_be_%E2%80%98part-time%E2%80%99_christians/en1-692235
Later, in his greeting to Italian-speaking pilgrims, he said he would be visiting Cagliari, capital of Sardinia,
probably in September, to pay homage to its patroness, the Madonna di Bonaria, from whom Buenos Aires, his
home city, owes its name. He said Sardinian soldiers had brought the faith to Argentina and wanted to name
its principal city after the Madonna of Bonaria (Buenos Aires is the idiomatic Spanish translation for Bonaria - good atmosphere ).


Thursday, May 16, Sixth Week in Easter

ST. MARGHERITA DA CORTONA (Italy, 1247-1297), Franciscan Tertiary
When Pope Benedict XVI was in the Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro diocese on May 14, 2012, he mentioned this homegrown
saint of Cortona. A medieval Magdalene, she was for 17 years the concubine of a nobleman, with whom she had a son,
who would later become a Franciscan friar. Her conversion came after her lover was murdered. At age 30, she joined
the Franciscan lay order and devoted herself to helping the sick. She established a hospital for the poor and started
a congregation of tertiaries to work as nurses. She lived the last years of her life as a contemplative in a hilltop
cell where tradition says she had mystical experiences. She was canonized in 1728.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/051613.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met with
= Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, President of Caritas Internationalis, and the Caritas executive committee

- Incoming Ambassadors from Kyrgyzstan, Antigua=Barbuda, Luxembourg and Botswanas, who presented their credentials.

- Seven more bishops from the southeastern Italian region of Puglia, on ad-limina visit.

The Vatican released the text of Pope Francis's message to Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan on the commemoration
of the 1700th anniversary of the Edict of Constantine, now hailed as the first document on religious freedom.




One year ago...
Benedict XVI began a new section of his catecheses on Christian prayer which began a year earlier, by focusing on prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, which make up a great part of the New Testament. After the GA, he had a private audience for Mons. Gerhard Mueller, Bishop of Regensburg, who attended the plenary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which he was one of only four diocesan bishop members (the others are all cardinals). [Later in the year, the Holy Father would name him Prefect of the Congregation, following the retirement of Cardinal William Levada. And in the afternoon, Benedict XVI attended a screening of the film 'MARIA DI NAZARET', an Italian-German co-production, at the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace.

2013 P.S. Coincidentally, Benedict XVI's catechesis stressed the role of the Holy Spirit in Christian life, a theme that Pope Francis undertook this week both in his GA catechesis and in his morning homilies.


GENERAL AUDIENCE OF MAY 16, 2012




'No human cry is
not heard by God'

Continuing his catechesis on Christian prayer, Pope Benedict today turned to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, whose letters show us that “in reality there is no human cry that is not heard by God” and that “prayer does not exempt us from trial and suffering”, “but allows us to live and cope with a new force, with the same confidence of Jesus”.

For St Paul, he said, "prayer is above all the work of the Holy Spirit within our hearts, the fruit of God’s presence within us. The Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness, teaching us to pray to the Father through the Son."

Here is a translation of the full catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

In the last catecheses, we reflected on prayer in the Acts of the Apostles. Today I wish to start speaking about prayer in the Letters of St. Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles.

First of all, I wish to note that it is not by chance that his Letters are introduced by and close with expressions of prayer: at the start, thanksgiving and praise, and at the end, a wish that the grace of God may guide the journey of the community to whom the letter is written.

The contents of the Apostle's letter develops between his opening formulation: "First, I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ" (Rm 1,8),and the final wish: "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you" (1Cor 16,23),.

St. Paul's prayer is manifested in a great richness of forms that go from thanksgiving to benediction, from praise to request and intercession, from hymn to supplication. A variety of expressions that demonstrate how prayer involves and penetrates every situation in life, be it personal, or that of the community that it concerns.

A first element that the Apostle wants us to understand is that prayer should not be seen simply as a good work done by us towards God, as an action of ours. It is, first of all, a gift, a fruit of the living and vitalizing presence of the Father and Jesus Christ in us.

In the Letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings" (8,26).

And we know that what the Apostle says is true: "We do not know how to pray as we ought". We want to pray, but God is distant. We do not have the words, the language, to speak with God, not even the thought. We can only open ourselves up, place our time at God's disposition, wait for him to help us to enter into a true dialog with him.

The Apostle says that it is precisely this lack of words, this absence of words, and yet the desire to enter into a contact with God, that is prayer, prayer that the Holy Spirit not just understands but that he brings and interprets to God. Our very weakness becomes, through the Holy Spirit, true prayer, true contact with God. The Holy Spirit is almost the interpreter who makes us and God understand what we want to say.

In prayer we experience, more than in other dimensions of existence, our weakness, our poverty, our being creatures - because we are faced with the omnipotence and transcendence of God. The more we progress in listening to God and in dialog with him, so that prayer becomes the daily breath of our spirit, the more we also perceive a sense of our limitations, not just in front of the concrete situations of every day, but in our very relationship with the Lord.

Thus the need to trust grows in us, to entrust ourselves ever more to him. We understand that "we do not know how to pray as we ought" (8,26). And it is the Holy Spirit who helps us in our inability, he enlightens our mind and warms our heart, guiding us in addressing ourselves to God.

For St. Paul, prayer is, above all, the working of the Holy Spirit in our humanness, and by taking charge of our weakness, he transforms us from men bound to material realities into spiritual men.

In the First letter to the Corinthians, Pail says: "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God. And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms" (2,12-13). By inhabiting our human frailty, the Holy Spirit changes us, intercedes for us, and leads us towards the highness of God (cfr Rm 8,26).

With the presence of the Holy Spirit our union with Christ is realized, because it is the Spirit of the Son of God, in which we have been made his children.

St. Paul speaks of the Spirit of Christ (cfr Rm 8,9) and not just of the Spirit of God. It is obvious: If Christ is the Son of God, his Spirit is also the Spirit of God, and so, if the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ had become very close to us in the Son of God and Son of man, the Spirit of God also becomes the human spirit. Thus we can enter into the communion with the Spirit.

It is like saying that not just God the Father became visible in the incarnation of the Son, but the Spirit of God manifested itself in the life and actions of Jesus, of Jesus Christ who lived and was crucified, died and resurrected.

The Apostle points out that "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1Cor 12,3). Thus, the Spirit orients our heart toward Jesus Christ, such that "yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me" (cfr Gal 2,20).

In his Catecheses on the Sacraments, St. Ambrose states, reflecting on the Eucharist: "Whoever is inebriated in the Holy Spirit is rooted in Christ" (5, 3, 17: PL 16, 450).

I would like now to show three consequences in our Christian life when we allow, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of Christ to work in us as the interior principle of all our actions.

First of all, with prayer inspired by the Holy Spirit, we are in a condition to abandon and overcome every form of fear or slavery, living the authentic freedom of the children of God.

Without the prayer that daily nourishes our being in Christ, in an intimacy that grows progressively, we find ourselves in the condition described by St. Paul in the Letter to the Romans: we do not do the good we want, but we do the evil we do not want (cfr Rm 7,19).

This is the expression of the human being's alienation, the destruction of our freedom: through the circumstances of being who we are by virtue of original sin, we want the good that we do not do, and we do what we do not want to do, evil.

The Apostle wants us to understand that it is not our will that liberates us from these conditions, not even the Laws, but the Holy Spirit. And since "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2Cor 3,17), in prayer we experience the freedom given by the Spirit: an authentic freedom, which is freedom from evil and sin for good and for life, for God.

The freedom of the Spirit, St. Paul continues, is never to be identified with libertinage, nor with the possibility of choosing evil, but with "the fruit of the Spirit (which) is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5,22).

This is true freedom: to be able to truly follow the desire for good, for true joy, for communion with God, and not to be oppressed by circumstances which ask us to go in other directions.

A second consequence that we can experience in our life when we allow the Spirit of Christ to work in us is that the relationship with God becomes so profound that it cannot be undermined by any reality or situation.

We can also understand then that prayer does not liberate us from trials and sufferings, but makes us able to live them in union with Christ, with his sufferings, in the hope of participating also in his glory (cfr Rm 8, 17).

Many times, in our prayer, we ask God to be liberated of physical and spiritual ailments, and we do so with great confidence. Nonetheless, we often have the impression that we have not been heard, and we therefore risk discouragement and failing to persevere.

In fact, there is no human cry that is not heard by God, and it is precisely in constant and faithful prayer that we understand with St. Paul that "the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us" (Rm 8,18).

Prayer does not exempt us from trials and sufferings, but, St. Paul says, "we also groan within ourselves as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies" (Rm 8,23). He says that prayer does not exempt us from suffering but allows us to live this suffering and confront it with new strength, with the same trust as Jesus had, when, according to the Letter to the Hebrews, "In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (5,7).

The answer of God the Father to the Son, to his loud cries and tears, was not to liberate him from his sufferings, from the Cross, from death, but a fulfillment which was much greater, a response that was far more profound. Through the Cross and death, God responded with the Resurrection of his Son, with new life.

Prayer animated by the Holy Spirit brings us, too, to live every day the journey of life with its trials and sufferings, in full hope and trust in God who answers us as he answered his Son.

Thirdly, the prayer of the believer is also open to the dimensions of all mankind and of creation, taking upon himself "creation's eager expectation of the revelation to the children of God" (Rm 8,19).

This means that prayer, sustained by the Spirit of Christ that speaks within our own intimacy, never remains closed in on itself, it is never just a prayer for me, but opens up to sharing the sufferings of our time, the suffering of others.
]
It becomes an intercession for others, therefore a liberation from myself, a channel of hope for all creation, expression of that "love of God poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us" (cfr Rm 5,5). This is the very sign itself of true prayer, when it does not end with ourselves, but opens up to others and therefore, frees us, and helps towards the redemption of the world.

Dear brothers and sisters, St. Paul teaches us that our prayer must open us to the presence of the Holy Spirit, who prays in us with 'inexpressible groanings', in order to bring us to adhere to God with all our heart and all our being.

The Spirit of Christ becomes the strength of our 'weak' prayer, the light of our 'extinguished' prayer, the fire of our 'arid' prayer, giving us true interior freedom, teaching us to live by confronting the trials of existence, in the certainty that we are not alone, opening us to the horizons of mankind and creation 'groaning in labor pains even until now" (Rm 8,22). Thank you.

---

- Two items among many I must not fail to note on this thread (I will post the appropriate articles):
- The conviction of Philadelphia doctor Gosnell for the deliberate were born alive after he failed to kill them in the womb, and the manslaughter of a woman who came for an abortion and whom he over-anesthesized to death. For almost 20 years, Gosnell performed abortions in a clinic that was left deliberately uninspected by the state (in order, they said, not to discourage poor women from seeking abortion) and which violated all the minimal standards for health facilities and personnel. Worse, all these abortions were done beyond the 22 weeks gestational age 'allowed' for abortion by Philadelphia. And worst of all was the way Gosnell and his assistants killed the babies who somehow managed to survive in-utero destruction. They were either submerged in a jar of embalming fluid to end their life, or their spinal cords were snipped by cutting their necks with scissors. Medieval torturers could not have imagined anything more barbaric and totally inhuman. [The so-called 'partial birth abortion' approved by the likes of Barack Obama is even more gruesome because it involves cracking the baby's skull before it can come out of the womb.]

- In some ways equally barbaric - because of its unkind implications for Benedict XVI, and the very gratuitousness of the remarks made - Cardinal Schoenborn, Archbishop of Vienna, said in London earlier this week that a couple of 'supernatural' events before and during the 2013 Conclave convinced him the Holy Spirit himself had chosen Cardinal Bergoglio to be the next Pope. [And somehow, in what one must presume the absence of such 'supernatural' signs in 2005, Benedict XVI was not? (because if there had been such signs, at least in the eyes of Schoenborn, he would surely have mentioned it this time!). So what are we to make of the fact that neither Schoenborn nor any other cardinal apparently did not notice any 'supernatural sign' by the Holy Spirit in 2005 that Cardinal Bergoglio was his choice then? You see how these gratuitous sycophantic remarks on the part of the 2013 cardinal-electors, of which Schoenborn's was typical, lend themselves to a reductio ad absurdum.

What a lamentable lack of 'delicadeza' [that great Spanish word that connotes decorum, propriety, consideration and good taste] on the part of Schoenborn, who has really gone out of his way to diss Benedict XVI since the Conclave through his fawning raves about Pope Francis! Even if he does genuinely think that Francis far 'outclasses' Benedict XVI in everything - one gathers that from the language Schoenborn uses to describe the new Pope - it is very unseemly behavior for the president of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation. At least, shut up for now, then resign your position, so you can speak as you please.]

Of course, being away meant missing these series of photos posted by Beatrice on her site, saying they were originally posted by our own Gloria on this Forum (though I cannot seem to find the post). Anyway, the series shows Pope Francis waiting outside the entrance to the Mater Ecclesiae residence as the car with Benedict XVI gets to the residence - Mons. Gaenswein helps him out of the as Pope Francis approaches the car, the two men greet each other, and then walk into the residence. The photo released by the Vatican on 5/2 was apparently taken shortly after the Pope Francis, Benedict XVI and Mons. Gaenswein had passed beyond the door.










BTW, a number of sites have now shown tourist photographs taken from the dome of St. Peter's Basilica with a great view of Mater Ecclesiae. Before that, Aqua e-mailed me some photos she had taken last year at the Vatican, showing three she took at random from the dome, without being aware until retrospectively that the pictures included Mater Ecclesiae. Here's an excellent view taken by one of Beatrice's readers who was in Rome recently.

Here's an excellent view taken by one of Beatrice's readers who was in Rome recently.

Glad you appreciate the view. I am Beatrice's reader and I am just back from Rome