BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

Before anything else, I must admit that I have used the word 'casuistic' in the past and on this Forum, to refer to someone or some view which seems to be reasonable but is actually deceptive. And perhaps the first time I used it, I was referring to the prevailing argumentation used by the seemingly ubiquitous progressivist ideologues of the contemporary Jesuit order, those who have strayed far from St. Ignatius's teaching to 'sentire cum Ecclesia' - feel as one with the Church - and its corollary, the Jesuits' fourth vow which is 'obedience to the Pope', far more honored in the breach, especially after Vatican II. The casuists are best represented by the Jesuits who write for America, the order's magazine in the United States.

Wikipedia says about casuistry:

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Casuistry is reasoning used to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new instances. The term is also commonly used as a pejorative to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning (alleging implicitly the inconsistent—or outright specious—misapplication of rule to instance), especially in relation to moral questions (see sophistry).

The agreed meaning of "casuistry" is in flux. The term can be used either to describe a presumably acceptable form of reasoning or a form of reasoning that is inherently unsound and deceptive. Most or all philosophical dictionaries list the neutral sense as the first or only definition. On the other hand, the Oxford English Dictionary states that the word "often (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty." Its textual references, except for certain technical usages, are consistently pejorative ("Casuistry‥destroys by Distinctions and Exceptions, all Morality, and effaces the essential Difference between Right and Wrong").

Most online dictionaries list a pejorative meaning as the primary definition before a neutral one, though Merriam-Webster lists the neutral one first. In journalistic usage, the pejorative use is ubiquitous and examples of the neutral usage are not found.

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I have always used the adjective pejoratively because I have never had to use it in a philosophical sense, only to express my dislike of seemingly reasonable but deceptive arguments.

Now we have the first Jesuit Pope in history - and a French sociologist reads his fledgling Pontificate in terms of the Pope's personal style, and his statements in his July 28 in-flight interview, in the light of classic Jesuit casuistry. Perhaps some Jesuit has done it before him, but I have not come across any such analysis so far. Though I must say that I find Mr. Bobineau's applications of the casuist theory to the Pope's actual actions quite unconvincing, as valid as his initial premise is. Nonetheless, it is useful to keep the theory in mind when looking at what Pope Francis does. Thanks to Beatrice who found this article translated in an Italian weekly news roundup, and failing to get the original article from Le Monde, re-translated it back to French for the followers of her website.

Pope Francis is no revolutionary:
He is just being Jesuit, and
his method is classic casuistry
by Olivier Bobineau

August 2, 2013
Translated from Beatrice's re-translation

Pope Francis has given his first news conference on the airplane that took him from Rio de Janeiro to Rome the night of July 28-29.

Since coming to the pontifical throne, he has offered a totally different image of his function as Pope compared to Benedict XVI. His style is new - non-professorial language [Excuse me!, Benedict's was never 'professorial' in his pastoral discourses, and even his necessary 'professorial' texts like the lectio magistralis in Regensburg are in language understandable to the ordinary literate person.], spontaneous expression [What? His predecessors never expressed themselves spontaneously???], simplification of protocol [I don't think he has really simplified protocol pr se, in relation to how others are treated,\, but what he has done is to break with traditional practices regarding the person of the Pope himself that previous Popes before him have followed without question because, after all, there is nothing inherently wrong or objectionable to the practices)- such as his choice to keep on wearing black pants instead of white under the white papal cassock, or eschewing the papal red shoes as being a sign of royalty (according to his sister in a recent interview for a German book - which is a strange statement to make because the red shoes have never stood for anything but the blood of martyrs, e.g., St. Peter was crucified with his feet up), and his disdain of the ceremonial mozzetta and stole worn over choir dress, which Popes have worn when receiving official guests or performing official non-liturgical functions. This I do not understand at all, because as a cardinal, he dutifully wore the ceremonial mozzetta over choir dress to the Sistine Chapel for the Conclave sessions. But now, as Pope, he has decided not to follow the dress code, and it remains to be seen how many cardinals, bishops and priests will follow his example and dress as they please. It is the obvious self-conscious self-assertiveness of his stylistic choices that bothers me because it is tied in with the question of humility. He has chosen to assert his personal preferences over traditional practices which are not harmful or extravagant in any way, and which the Church has followed for centuries, simply because he wants to emphasize the message that he is 'different' from the Popes that preceded him - he is simpler, more humble, more modest, more sympathetic to 'small' people, more genuinely living the Gospel compared to his predecessors. I feel awful making such observations about the Pope, but his insistent self-distinction demands a common-sense rejoinder that media would normally be making if they were not all besotted with him. None of the other Popes in my lifetime called attention to themselves the way Pope Francis does, in new ways every day, as he re-invents the papacy to his image. And the world watches mesmerized.

Above all, he shows a much closer proximity to the people, starting with the poorest and the most vulnerable, not to mention the young people in Rio, who appreciated the change in tone..

[Let me just address each of these fondly held popular fallacies one by one:
1) Just because Francis cites 'the poor' so often does not mean that he is any closer to them than his immediate predecessors were. They did not make a big to-do about their concern for the poor because it was always simply part of what the Church does, and they concretized their concern through the many charities and social services that the Church and her agencies render around the world to those who are most in need, especially in the contemporary era. In the past four and a half months, have donations to Catholic charities increased dramatically, or has the World Bank or the IMF condoned the international debt for any of the poorest nations because we have a new Pope?

Ultimately, the Pope and the Church can only exhort secular institutions and agencies by word and deed, but for the most part, the deeds have to come from the Church herself through her institutions and agencies. Yet, when Benedict XVI, who has royalties from his writings at his disposal to spend as he pleases (half of it goes to support the research and scholarships undertaken by the foundations in his name, and half is disposable for charitable and social causes), made personal contributions to such causes, did he ever get any credit for it? It really does not matter if he did not, because he gave of his own not to get credit for his giving. I raise this just as a point of fairness.
2) As for the much-photographed interactions of Pope Francis with handicapped and disabled persons, the archives are rife with photographs of his predecessors - even the seemingly aloof Paul VI - showing the same compassion and concern when the occasion arose. I could never understand why Francis reaching out to a Down's child or to a paralytic was treated with such awestruck wonder by the media - as if no Pope had ever done that before. Of course, no one had gone down a Popemobile to reach out to select individuals as Francis has done, or ask them to join him on the Popemobile, but none of his predecessors, not even Papa Wojtyla who was often described as theatrical, had Francis's innate showmanship that apparently no one ever suspected before he became Pope.
3) It is a fallacy to conclude in any way that the young people in Rio 'appreciated the change of tone', as the writer claims. WYD pilgrims are highly motivated Catholics, they do not come to WYD casually, and they have shown the same enthusiasm for Benedict XVI over three WYDS as they did for the father of WYD, John Paul II, and as they did in Rio for Pope Francis. They are Catholics celebrating with their Pope, whoever he is.]

All the world acknowledges that the Successor of Peter is about to work major changes in the Catholic Church. Among other things, popular affection has already dubbed him 'the good Pope Francis', recalling the label for 'the good John XXIII' (il Papa buono) who brought the winds of reform to the Church with the Second Vatican Council. [As much as I loved John XXIII, I do not think he was pleased with the tag, which implies that, compared to him, other Popes were 'cattivo' (bad).]

Our point of view is opposed to this way of thinking. One cannot expect any major change in the structure of the Church. But the Pope's new style and its public expressions evoke a very ancient method of theological argumentation which was developed specifically by the Jesuits - casuistry.

Conceived as a form of argumentation, casuistry is a rhetorical art which takes into account a particular case and relevant jurisprudence on the one hand, in confrontation with a set of general principles on the other.

The Jesuits adopted it in the 16th century to combat the Protestant Reformation. The intention was to effect a 'mass conversion' to the 'true religion', without betraying - too much - its spirit. [Aha! So there's the first casuistic compromise!}

Jesuit casuistry rests on four pillars (4P) - proximity, pragmatism, principle and...performance.

Pope Francis, the first Jesuit to become Pope, knows how to get these to work in our society through the media.

Proximity, to begin with. Casuistry teaches that one must prove empathy and solidarity in particular cases, namely with those who appear small (insignificant), marginalized, in order to bring them towards what is more general, towards the center, through successive steps.

Francis has done just that, by simplifying papal protocol, living modestly in a hotel, and making himself accessible to the people. [Just because he lives in a hotel does not mean that his lifestyle is any more modest than the Popes who lived in the austere papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace. Francis himself has said the papal apartment is not at all luxurious. And living at Santa Marta does not necessarily make him more accessible to 'the people' - only to those who have legitimate reason to be inside or to visit Santa Marta. On the other hand, Romans have been deprived of the comforting and reassuring view of the papal apartment at night with the lights on to show the Pope is in residence and is in his study or his bedroom just behind those third-floor windows of the Apostolic Palace.

On the plane, he reiterated what he told some Jesuit schoolchildren that he chooses not to live in the Apostolic Palace because psychologically, he cannot 'live alone', denying that the motivation was to show austerity. And that should put an end to the ridiculous myth that not living in the Apostolic Palace would somehow liberate him, or any Pope, from the pressures of those who would want to influence him, but it won't, we know it won't! As for being unable to 'live alone', what about all those legendary years in Buenos Aires when he was said to have lived in a two-room apartment by himself, doing his own cooking even? And is it not strange for a holy man to claim he cannot 'live alone'? But the adoring media has simply accepted this statement unconditionally, no questions asked, not even the most obvious. ]

Solidarity with those who are abandoned. He demonstrated this when he cast a wreath of flowers into the sea off Lampedusa to commemorate the hundreds of aspiring migrants who died at sea. [I've held my mouth on Lampedusa too long, but the problem is not that no one mourned the deaths of those unfortunate refugees at all, as he reproached the world for its 'global indifference'. because it is not indifference, but sheer helplessness on the part of the watching world to do anything about these forced migrations and the resulting tragedies, beyond perhaps contributing to a fund for refugees, which does nothing about the root causes for the forced migrations.

And the dramatic 'gesture' of going to Lampedusa simply made everyone forget how many times Benedict XVI addressed the problem of refugees coming to Italy, except that he called directly on the Italian government to temper its legal requirements with compassion and grant at least temporary asylum to the refugees until their status could be straightened out. Which is basically the policy that the Italian government, despite all its manifold problems with its own citizenry, has been seeking to do. Significantly, Pope Francis did not even want any Italian government representative to be on Lampedusa for his visit. Yet these are all relevant data that ought not to have been ignored in the global rush to hail yet another dramatic and unprecedented act by the new Pope.]

Solidarity with the most humble, and a theatrical coup when he decides not to attend a classical music concert at the Vatican to mark the Year of Faith last June 23, saying: "I am not a Renaissance prince who listens to classical music instead of working". [if he really did say that, which the Vatican has not denied, what does it make of all us humble music-lovers who stand in line for hours to get the cheapest tickets to the opera or a concert? The beauty of music, or any fine art, for that matter, is that you do not have to be a Renaissance prince to enjoy and appreciate it. It was a surprisingly sanctimonious statement for a Pope to make, the more so because his predecessor was often honored by various groups and entities (including the President of Italy) with concerts to mark special occasions. Was Benedict XVI a slacker then, and making believe he was a Renaissance prince, all those times he attended concerts at the Vatican, which were always scheduled after working hours and never lasted longer than an hour?

If any other Pope had said the statement attributed to Pope Francis, he would have been castigated for, at the very least, making such a gratuitous and rather inappropriate statement, but I don't think any other Pope in modern times would have even thought to say it. If Bobineau thinks that the remark shows solidarity with the 'most humble' in whose life concerts have no place, then that is a false example. If they had the means and the exposure, the most humble, too, would listen to good music.]

He asks not just young people but also journalists to help him in the sense of 'empathy' and 'to work together for the good of society". [Like other Popes never asked people before to work together for the good of society! But this has become standard 'Francis treatment' by the media - nothing he says and does can be too commonplace or banal not to merit awestruck wonder, where the media hardly took notice when such things were said or done by previous Popes, especially Francis's immediate predecessor.]

Another pillar of casuistry is pragmatism. Being oriented towards concrete action, acting in the midst of people, placing practice ahead of theory - that is exactly what Pope Francis does when he underscores his simplicity and his desire to go out in the field even at the risk of creating incidents like those at WYD Rio. [It is pragmatic to ignore security concerns and deliberately invite being mobbed? Who is being gratified in these mob scenes??? What did the travelling Popes before Francis do but go out into the field, precisely, in various parts of the world, without ostentatiously playing to the crowd? Where do we draw the line between a VIP making himself accessible. and grandstanding to earn public acclamation [as if the Pope already did not have that in great excess)? If I may make a daring and perhaps even impudent, assumption, I get the impression - because no one has yet reported otherwise - that Cardinal Bergoglio was no crowd-drawer at any time in his career, and that the crowds and acclamation he got as Pope from the beginning were a new experience for him, an experience he obviously enjoys and savors, and wants to have more of. And his public is only too happy to give it to him in an orgy of mutual gratification. And why not, one might ask? Beeause self-gratification, even if in this case, it also means gratifying the adoring public, does not quite jibe with humility. ]

Pragmatism too in that he knows that with more than seven million followers on Twitter, 'Pope Courage', "Man of the Year' for the Italian edition of Vanity Fair, he has surpassed the Dalai Lama who was heretofore the most popular spiritual leader on the social networks. [So where's the pragmatism there, unless Bobineau thinks pragmatism means smugness, or to say it better, overwhelming confidence, since the Pope knows he has a Twitter base he can build upon to promote the message of Christ through the Internet.]

Pragmatism, finally, when he concerns himself with the Vatican bank, launching a full field investigation of IOR, and formulating the statement, "Do not be tempted by money - St. Peter did not have a bank account". [I don't think that particular exhortation, from one of his morning homilettes, was directed at IOR, but at the faithful in general. IOR was created for a purpose - to raise funds for the Pope's charities. No one has said so far that in all the decades of its existence, it has failed to do that. To do so, it has to earn money, and it does that by investing deposits made to it in order to profit both the depositors and the IOR itself. After all the cleaning up done under Benedict XVI, it seems the only remaining problem left at IOR is how to ensure that none of its depositors are using its facilities to launder dirty money. One would think that by now IOR would have properly vetted all 22,000 of its depositors and started to get rid of the undesirables!

For some reason, Bobineau's idea of 'pragmatism' seems to be any concrete action that will resonate with the public and gain its acclamation. That's not pragmatism, but demagoguery. Is that how the Jesuits define 'pragmatism' then?]

The third pillar: going back to original principles. Same-sex 'marriage' and abortion? In his inflight news conference, the Pope replied drily: "You know what the position of the Church is". The role of women? "The Church is feminine", underscoring the primacy of Mary over the institution. [Really???? I thought what he said was that Mary was more important than the Apostles, not that she is more important than the Church, which I don't believe the Church has ever taught! Francis himself has reiterated that you cannot be with Christ unless you are with the Church.] The Pope has not deviated from what the Fathers of the Church wrote.

Ordaining women priests? He replied: "John Paul II has closed that door". Perhaps, but given that no word in the Gospel prohibits that women be given a pre-eminent place in the community of faithful, then why not open this door? [Wishful thinking, Mr. Bobineau. If Jesus had meant women to be priests, he would have commanded the Twelve after the Resurrection to take in among them Mary Magdalene and the two other faithful Marys as their equals in function. He did not. Why didn't Jesus open the door then? In fact, other than Mary, I do not think the women disciples were mentioned again explicitly in the Gospels after they had informed the Apostles of the Lord's Resurrection. Was this a chauvinistic omission on the part of the evangelists?

Homosexuality? He thinks, referring explicitly to the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church prepared by his two predecessots, that one must not marginalize these persons who must be integrated into society". [A gratuitous statement because the Church has not marginalized homosexuals - to declare that homosexual acts are sinful is no more marginalizing them as to declare that murder is sinful marginalizes murderers.]

Nonetheless, he fails to underscore that the same citation declares that "homosexual acts are considered serious depravity" that are 'intrinsically disordered" and "contrary to natural law". And that even if homosexuals should be "welcomed with respect, compassion and sensitivity", "...in any case, they cannot be approved". [Mr. Bobineau is guilty of deliberate distortion here: In the last clause, "...in any case, they cannot be approved", the antecedent for 'they' is 'homosexual acts', not homosexuals. In the Catechism itself, this statement is made in the paragraph about homosexual acts, which precedes the paragraph about homosexuals themselves, containing the two other clauses cited by Bobineau in the same sentence.]

A priori, the present Pope has done nothing other than to inscribe himself in continuity with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, perpetuating the traditional principles of Christian morality.

A posteriori, two indications may signify a return to the moral conservatism pre-Vatican II. [And what is wrong with that? Look where post-Vatican II (or rather, spirit-of-Vatican-II) laissez-faire morality has left us! And there is no such thing as moral conservatism. Either something is moral or it is not - the criteria for Catholic morality will not change with the times. It's not that we must 'conserve' Catholic morality - it's simply that we must observe it.]

The first indication: Francis regularly reminds the faithful in his homilies of the importance of battling 'the devil', thus going back 50 years in time. [What? Bobineau thinks that it is no longer important for Catholics to fight the devil? When was that ever outmoded, except to progressivists who do not believe in evil, because to them, everything is relative, and therefore, there can be something positive in anything, however, intrinsically evil!]

Second indication: His foray against the [so=called] gay lobby. [About which Francis once told some Italian bishops, "It'a true, there is a gay lobby", and then at the inflight news conference, he says. "If there are gays in the Vatican, I have not seen any ID card that says so". A flippant reply which no one challenged, if only because it is meaningless. If what he meant was, "No one has identified to me who are the homosexuals in the Curia", then he should have said so.]

Behind this attack on the influence of homosexuals is 'the' model for lobbies in the Catholic consciousness: Freemasonry. Today, Francis, in the fourth month of his Pontificate, has put back the Masons in the public consciousness, even if the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law does not name them, nor does the Catechism of 1992. [I obviously missed ii, if the Pope has brought up the subject of Freemasonry at all!]

Does the Successor of Peter have trouble masking his nostalgia for a moral order that has disappeared in Europe but not in South America? [Considering that all the most important Latin American nations have legislated abortion and same-sex 'marriage', how are they any better off than Europe???]

The problem arises - the more so because his communication seems so effective - in accordance with the last pillar of casuistry: performance. As a good casuist, will he be able to convert to his vision of the Church those observers and faithful who have been increasingly enthusiastic about him?

On my part, I would await the promised reforms before making a judgment.


Just for the record, here is what the 1992 Catechism, in its reised version, says about homosexuality.

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2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained.

Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

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The August 8 issue of L'Osservatore Romano carries a belated tribute to Pope Paul VI to commemorate
the 35th anniversary of his death in Castel Gandolfo on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1978.

Mysticism and modernity
by Patrice Mahieu
Translated from the 8/8/13 issue of


Editor's Note: We publish our translation of an article in La Croix last June 29-30. The author, a monk at the Benedictine abbey of Solemnes in France, has written two books about Paul VI, Paul VI, maître spirituel (Fayard-Le Sarment) and Paul VI et les orthodoxes (Les Éditions du Cerf).

On June 30, 1963, for the last time in the history of the Catholic Church, the coronation of a Pope took place in St. Peter's Square. Paul VI, elected Pope on June 31, received the triple tiara offered to him by the faithful of his former Archdiocese, Milan.

The new Pontiff has been well prepared by three decades of working in the Roman Curia and nine years as Archbishop of Milan, the largest Catholic diocese in the world.

But the key to reading his Pontificate should perhaps be sought above all in its mystical dimension.

Following the sample of St. Augustine, his principal spiritual master, even the youthful writings of Giovanni Battista Montini were marked by an impetuous nostalgia for God, joined to the exultancy and wonder of what he had already been allowed to discover: "Life is you - God, who are like a beatifying lamp over the shadows of our stuttering existence".

In fact, Paul VI was a mystic who possessed the language of his axperience: "As one blinded by the sun, I close my eyes before the infinite mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, and all I harbor in my heart is the impression of oceanic beatitude".

Love for the Church was the unifying factor of his existence: "I seem to have lived for her and only for her", implying two exigencies, the renewal and reform of the Church, and the personal conversion of her members.

It is the second demand that makes the first one possible. From the personal commitment to follow Christ and the spiritual and moral energy this requires, comes the possibility for the Church to manifest herself as Christ wanted: one, holy, with everyone oriented towards that perfection that he has called for and made possible.

Two lines of force of the Montini Pontificate derived From the authenticity of this course of conversion, which he proposed in is programmatic encyclical, Ecclesiam suam: a dialog with the world on life and salvation, and renewed efforts towards the full unity of Christians.

For Paul VI, a Church that lives its mystery more profoundly with the same impulse of love that unites her to the Lord, could give herself to the world in order to place the latter in vital contact with the Gospel: "The Church should dialog with the world in which she lives. The Church must give the word, the Church must give the msssage, the Church must converse with the world. If errors need to be denounced, the Church nonetheless must be characterized by a current of affection and admiration for the modern world. With such a bond of confidence, evangelization, inspired by total faithfulness to Christ, can be accepted by the contemporary mind. Indeed, no one is extraneous to the heart of the Church. No one must be indifferent to her ministry".

In this movement of internal renewal which makes the presence and the action of God more legible in the Church, Paul VI felt acutely the need for unity among the disciples of Christ. His Pontificate was totally committed in this respect, especially in the search for total communion with the Orthodox Churches.

His friendship with Patriarch Atenagoras was one of the more luminous features of his Roman ministry. Even as a secret official committee of two Catholics and two Orthodox had just concluded their report in 1971, stating that a concelebration between Paul VI and Athenagoras was possible, Paul VI wrote to the Patriarch: "Between our Church and the venerable Orthodox Churches, there already exists almost total communion. The Spirit has allowed us in recent years to recover a vivid consciousness of this fact. He has placed in our hearts the firm desire to do everything possible to hasten that much desired day on which, at the end of a concelebration, we can take communion together from the same chalice of the Lord".

The purification of the Church and her members, the spiritual tension of evangelization, humility and dialog with the world, the ecclesiology of sister Churches that allows looking forward to full communion between the Church of the West and the Churches of the East - do not these fundamental axes of the Monitni Pontificate echo in the words and orientations of Pope Francis?

Their fruitfulness will depend in large part on the commitment of all concerned to a truly spiritual course, in which the primacy given to accepting the will of God would allow daring decisions to be made that are open to the breath of the Holy Spirit.

For example, is it unrealistic to think that the Orthodox Churches could agree to accept Rome as the center of unity, and that Rome, taking the example of (undivided) Christianity's first millennium, would concretely put in place a differently modulated ministry of unity. In truth, the intuitions of Paul VI have not lost their relevance.

Friday, August 9, 2013, 18th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. THERESIA BENEDIKTA VOM KREUZ (Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) (b Breslau 1891, d Auschwitz 1942)
Virgin, Philosopher-Writer, Carmelite Nun, Martyr, Co-Patron of Europe
Born to a prominent Jewish family in the German border region of Silesia (now part of Poland), she was a very gifted child who, however, turned atheist at age 14. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Freiburg in 1916, as a protege of leading phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, going on to teach at the same university as his assistant, along with Martin Heidegger (with whom she edited Husserl's works for publication). Reading the autobiography of Teresa de Avila while on holiday in 1921 led her to convert to Catholicism in 1922. She left the university world to teach at a Dominican school in Speyer, where she translated Thomas Aquinas's De veritate, acquainted herself with Catholic philosophy, and abandoned phenomenology for Thomism. In 1932, she became a lecturer in pedagogy in Muenster, but anti-Semitic laws passed the following year forced her to resign. She entered the Carmelite monastery in Cologne in 1933 and took her final vows in 1938. During these years, she wrote her book on metaphysic,s Finite and Eternal Being. She was sent to the Carmelite convent in Echt, Netherlands, shortly after her final vows because of the growing Nazi threat. In Echt, she wrote Science of the Cross (Studies on St. John of the Cross). Her writings fill 17 volumes, many of them translated to English. When the Dutch bishops denounced Nazism in a pastoral letter in July 1942, the Nazis retaliated in August by rounding up all Jewish converts to Catholicism along with other Jews. Edith and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed on August 9, just seven days after they left Holland. John Paul II beatified her in Cologne in 1987, canonized her in 1998, and named her a co-patron of Europe in 1999. Some Jews have questioned her classification as a martyr because they claim she was killed as a Jew, but the Church points out that she was arrested and killed because she had converted.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/080913.cfm


No bulletins so far from the Vatican.



One year ago...

No events were announced Benedict XVI on this day.

But I posted this piece written by Vittorio Messori as a Preface to a book on the reform of the Vatican-II liturgical reform by Rome-based liturgist Don Nicola Bux... The arguments sound even more urgent now, when Pope Francis has expressed his preference for 'emancipated' liturgy and supported the Congregation for Religious Orders in taking away from the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate their right to say the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, in direct contradiction of Benedicgt XVI's Summorum Pontificum that libralized use of the traditional Mass.



Vittorio Messori makes one of the best presentations of the problem with the post-Vatican II liturgical reform, how it came to be imposed in the wrong ways by the clergy, and how the patience and prudence of Benedict XVI is setting it right....

Benedict XVI's reform of
the misdirected liturgical reform:
Restoring the Catholic world view
Preface to

by Vittorio Messori

August 9, 2012

The “liturgical crisis” that followed the Second Vatican Council caused a schism, with many excommunications latae sententiae; it provoked unease, polemics, suspicions, and reciprocal accusations. And perhaps it was one of the factors — one, I say, not the only —that brought about the hemorrhaging of practicing faithful, even of those who attended Mass only on the major feasts. it might seem strange, but such a tempest has not diminished but, rather, increased my confidence in the Church.

I will try to explain what I mean, speaking in the first person, returning thus to a personal experience. Some would regard this approach as immodest, but others would see it as the simplest way of being clear and to the point.

It happens to be the case that despite my age I have only a very slight recollection of the “old” form of the Church’s worship. I grew up in an agnostic household and was educated in secular schools; I discovered the Gospel — and began furtively to enter churches as a believer and no longer as a mere tourist — just before the liturgical reform went into force, which for me meant only “the Mass in Italian”.

In sum, I caught the tail-end of history. Only a few months later, I would find the altars reversed and some new kitschy piece of junk made of aluminum or plastic brought in to replace the “triumphalism” of the old altars, often signed by masters, adorned with gold and precious marble.

But already for some time I had see — with surprise, in my neophyte innocence — guitars in place of organs; the jeans of the assistant pastor showing underneath robes that were intended to give the appearance of “poverty”[ “social” preaching, perhaps with some discussion; the abolition of what they called “devotional accretions”, such as making the Sign of the Cross with holy water, kneelers, candles, incense.

I even witnessed the occasional disappearance of statues of popular saints; the confessionals, too, were removed, and some, as became the fashion, were transformed into liquor cabinets in designer houses.

Everything was done by clerics, who were incessantly talking about “democracy in the Church”, affirming that this was reclaimed by a “People of God”, whom no one, however, had bothered to consult.

The people, you know, are sovereign; they must be respected, indeed, venerated, but only if they accept the views that are dictated by the political, social, or even religious ruling class. If they do not agree with those who have the power to determine the line to be taken, they must be reeducated according to the vision of the triumphant ideology of the moment.

For me, who had just knocked at the door of the Church, gladly welcoming stabilitas — which is so attractive and consoling to those who have known only the world’s precariousness — that destruction of a patrimony of millennia took me by surprise and seemed to me more anachronistic than modern.

It seemed to me that the priests were harming their own people, who, as far as I knew, had not asked for any of this, had not organized into committees for reform, had not signed petitions or blocked streets or railways to bring an end to Latin (a “classist language”, but only according to the intellectual demagogues) or to have the priest facing them the whole Mass or to have political chit-chat during the liturgy or to condemn pious practices as alienating, which instead were precious inasmuch as they were a bond with the older generation.

There was a revolt on the part of certain groups of faithful — who were immediately silenced, however, and treated by the Catholic media as incorrigibly nostalgic, perhaps a little fascist — united under the motto that came from France: "On nous change la réligion" (They are changing our religion).

In other words, although it was pushed by the champions of “democracy”, the liturgical reform (here I am abstracting from the content and am speaking only of the method) was not at all “democratic”. The faithful at that time were not consulted, and the faithful of the past were rejected. Is tradition not perhaps, as has been said, the “democracy of the dead”? Is tradition not letting our brothers who have preceded us speak?

Before judging its merits, let me repeat, it must be said that this reform came down from the clergy; the decision was handed down to the “People of God” from above, being thought out, realized, and imposed on those who had not asked for it or who had accepted it only reluctantly.

There were some among the disoriented faithful who “voted with their feet”, that is to say, they decided to do other things on Sunday rather than attend a liturgy they felt was no longer theirs.

But, as a novice in Catholic matters, there was another reason for my stupor. Not having had particular religious interests “previously”, and being a stranger to the life of the Church, I knew that the Second Vatican Council was in progress from some newspaper headlines but did not bother to read the articles.

So I knew nothing about the work and the long debates, with clashes between opposing schools, that led to Sacrosanctum concilium, the Constitution on the Liturgy, which was, among other things, the first document produced by those deliberations.

Along with the other conciliar acts, I read the text “afterward”, when faith had suddenly irrupted into my life. I read it, and, as I said, I was left surprised: the revolution I saw in ecclesial practice did not seem to have much to do with the prudent reformism recommended by the Council fathers.

I read such things as: “Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites”. I found no recommendation to reverse the orientation of the altar; there was nothing to justify the iconoclasm of certain clergy —which was a boon for the antique shops — who sold off everything so as to make the churches as bare and unadorned as garages. It was the space for the participating assembly, for encounter and discussion, not for alienating worship or - horror of horrors! — for an insult to the misery of the proletariat with its shining gold and art exhibits.

In short, I could not put the contrasts together: the fanatics of the ecclesial democracy were undemocratic: imposing their own ideas on the “People of God” without concern for what the “People” thought, isolating and ridiculing the dissidents. And the fanatics of “fidelity to the Council” — and they were almost always the same people — did not do what the Council said to do or even did what it recommended not to do.

Decades have passed since then, and what has taken place in the meantime is well known by those who follow the life of the Church. What troubled many often saddened me, too, but it did not, as I said at the beginning, touch my confidence in the Church. It has not touched that confidence because the abuses, the misunderstandings, the exaggerations, the pastoral mistakes were those, as is always the case, of the sons of the Church, not of the Church herself.

Thus, if we consider the authentic Magisterium, even in the dark years of chaos and confusion, it never substantially strayed from the guiding principle of et-et: renewal and tradition, innovation and continuity, attention to history and awareness of the Eternal, understanding the rite and the mystery of the Sacred, communal sense and attention to the individual, inculturation and catholicity. And, in regard to the summit, the Eucharist: certainly it is a fraternal meal; but just as certainly, it is the spiritual renewal of Christ’s sacrifice.

The conciliar document on the liturgy — the real one, not the mythical one — is an exhortation to reform (Ecclesia semper reformanda), but there is no revolutionary tone in it, insofar as it finds its inspiration in the considered and, at the same time, open teaching of that great Pope who was Pius XII.

After Scripture, Pius XII is the most cited source (more than two hundred references) of Vatican II, which, according to the black legend, intended to oppose the very Church he represented.

In the many official documents that followed the Council, there is sometimes a pastoral imprudence, especially in an excess of trust in a clergy who took advantage of it, but there is no concession on principles: the abuses were often tolerated in practice but condemned — and it is this that counts in the end — at the magisterial level.

Variations in doctrine were not responsible for the worst of what was done but, rather, “indults” that were exploited. It is because of such considerations — for what it is worth — that I and many others were not demoralized even in the most turbulent moments and years: a confidence prevailed that the pastoral misjudgments of which I spoke would be corrected, that the ecclesial antibodies would, as always, react, that the “Petrine principle” would prevail in the end.

It was, in other words, a confidence that times would come like those described — with obligatory realism but also with great hope — by Father Nicola Bux in this book.

The recent past has been what it has been; the damage has been massive; some of the rearguard of the old ideologies of “progressivism” still boldly proclaim their slogans; but nothing is lost, because the principles are very clear; they have not been scratched.

The problem is certainly not the Council but, if anything, its deformation: the way out of the crisis is in returning to the letter, and to the spirit, of its documents.

The author of the pages that follow reminds us that there is work to be done to help many minds that — perhaps without even knowing it —have been led astray. We must help them recover what the Germans call die katholische Weltanschauung, the Catholic world view.

It is not by chance that I use the German, as everyone knows where that Shepherd comes from who did not expect ascension to the papacy to be woven into his story as a patient and “humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord”. If I underscore the reference to patience, it is because it is one of the interpretive keys to the magisterium of Benedict XVI, as this book will also underscore.

These are pages that Don Nicola Bux was well equipped to write and for which we should be grateful to him. He is a professor of theology and liturgy with important teaching positions, and he has a special knowledge of the liturgy of the Christian East.

It is precisely this, among other things, that permits him to show yet another contradiction of the extreme innovators: “Comparative studies show that the Roman liturgy in its preconciliar form was much closer to the Eastern liturgy than its current form.”

In sum, certain fanatical apostles of ecumenism have, in fact, made the problem of encounter and dialogue worse, distancing themselves from those ancient and glorious Greek, Slav, Armenian, Copt, and other Eastern Churches, in trying to please the members of the official Protestant tradition.

The latter, five centuries after the Reformation, seems near to extinction and often is represented only by some theologian with almost no popular following. In some cases, it finds itself on the shores of agnosticism and atheism or on those of pentecostals and charismatics belonging to the infinity of groups and sects where everyone invents his rites according to current tastes in a chaos that it would be completely inappropriate to call liturgical.

The plan of the author of these pages is guided by the desire to explain — confuting misunderstandings and errors — the motivations and the content of the motu proprio Summorum pontificum through which Pope Benedict, while conserving a single rite for the celebration of the Mass, has permitted two forms of that rite: the ordinary form — the one that came out of the liturgical reform; and the extraordinary form, according to the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII.

To give shape to his plan, Don Bux was able to draw, not only on his formation as a scholar, but also on the knowledge of the problems, people, and schools that he acquired in his experience working on commissions and in offices of the Roman Curia. So he has firsthand experience and is not just a specialist and a professor.

Nevertheless, he understands that it is not possible to deal with the controversial question about the “return to the Latin Mass” (we put it this way to simplify) without taking account of the theological and liturgical perspective of Joseph Ratzinger and, then, the question of Christian and Catholic worship in general.

That is the origin of this book — small and dense — which unites history and the present, theology and current events, and can help those who “already know” about these things to go into them more deeply and reflectively; and it can help the layman, who “does not know”, to understand the importance, the development, the beauty of this mysterious object that is, for him, the liturgy, which also, even if he is not practicing, involves him or those close to him at important moments in life.

As he himself says, with respectful and affectionate solidarity, the theological and pastoral perspective of Don Bux is the same as that of Joseph Ratzinger, whom he looks upon today as a master, also in respect to two indispensable Christian virtues: patience, as we have already pointed out, and prudence.

It is a prudence in which there is a place for renewal, but never forgetting the tradition, for which change does not interrupt continuity. Ecclesia non facit saltus (The Church does not make leaps). Vatican II is heard and applied as it merits to be, but in its true intention, that of aggiornamento and of deepening, without discontinuity with the whole history of Catholic doctrine.

These pages also help us to recover that sacred reality expressed by the liturgy: in liturgical action, understanding, in the Enlightenment sense, is not enough; thus, the translations into the vernacular are not enough: it is necessary to rediscover that the liturgy is, first of all, the place of encounter with the living God.

Father Bux, who knows the “world” well, reminds us that there is a mentality that needs to be changed. He thinks that the conditions for this are present: today it is often the young people who find, with awe that becomes passion, the riches with which the Church’s treasure chest is full.

It is these young people who crowded around the Polish Pope, the great charismatic, and who now crowd around this Bavarian Pope, in whom — beneath the courteous and gentle manner — they intuit the wise project of “restoration” that Joseph Ratzinger has always understood in its noble and necessary sense: the restoration of the Domus Dei after one of the many tempests of its history.

A project that has been meditated upon for many years and that Benedict XVI is now carrying out with courage and patience, because in him, as Don Bux notes, “the patience of love” is at work — love for God and for his Church, certainly, but also for postmodern man, to help him rediscover in liturgical worship the encounter with him who has called himself “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”.

Riccardo Cascioli, editor of La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, wis probably the only journalist who has looked back to Pope Fracnis's highly ballyhooed trip to Lampedusa one month ago, and he wrote this eye-opening article to mark the anniversary....

Lampedusa: Has anything changed
one month after the Pope's
headline-making visit?
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from

August 6, 2013

The other night on Lampedusa, 250 immigrants arrived, who had been rescued at sea by the Italian Coast Guard. On Saturday afternoon, in the Sicilian Channel, the Coast Guard rescued a boat with 98 Somalians on board, who said they lost three women during the corssing and buried them at sea. The night before that, another 176 immigrants were rescued off Lampedusa by the Coast Buard.

The season of debarcations in Lampedusa is peaking - it has been some time since such an influx was last registered - and the hospitality centers in Lampedusa (equipped to handle only 500 persons at a time, in an island that has a total of only 5,000 inhabitants are full to bursting.

But you would be hard put to find any news of these developments in the newspapers and on TV newscasts. [Especially considering how they melodramatized Pope Francis's visit to the island one month ago yesterday, and milked it to the last drop of pathos they could get: "Oh, what unprecedented compassion from a Pope! It puts us all to shame - we are Cains responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Abels". That lasted one day.

To think that just four weeks ago, everyone was there to be moved by the words and presence of Pope Francis in lampedusa, for calling attention to the human tragedy associated with Lampedusa. Big headlines, endless coverage on TV, leftist politicians gloating, rather pathetically, that now they could freely demand, "Let every immigrant come in - the Pope wants it".

It does not matter if the Pope never said so. Rather, he posed questions such as God asked after the first human sins were committed: "Adam, where are you?", "Cain, where is your brother?", and explained that certain situations had been caused by the rejection of God. [Which does not apply at all to the Muslim lands from which these refugees come from, where Allah is a constant 'presence'. Muslims are, in general, more religiously conscientious and disciplined about practising their faith than Christians are, starting with the fact that they stop everything wherever they are to make their prayers facing Mecca five times a day, where many Catholics today can't even be bothered to go to Mass on Sundays.]

It seems years since the Pope was in Lampedusa. Neither the newsmen nor the politicians have really stopped to pay attention to the human tragedy that is playing out every day for these boat people. At least not until the next great tragedy. Then the song-and-dance routine will resume to make headlines for a day or two, and the Class B politicians will again present themselves as paladins for the poor and the exploited.

[Who is exploiting whom in this situation? Human traffickers exploiting people whom they charge a fortune to send across the Mediterranean in rickety boats? Migrants gaming the system to see if they can enter Europe 'easily' by the back door despite the risks entailed? Bleeding-heart politicians exploiting the boat people by using them as pawns in their petty power games?

I go back to the example set by the United States in resettling all the boat people who fled Vietnam and the rest of Indochina after the Communist takeover that ended the Vietnam War. Having been in large part responsible for their plight, the US at least took the morai and social responsibility to bring these boat people in an orderly fashion to the United States where they could build new lives, in what was a largely successful enterprise to deal with the problem.

That situation is light years different in morality from the current problem of illegals flooding the US from Mexico who are actually encouraged by their government to do so. Many US bishops, typified by the Hispanic Bishop of San Francisco, think it is the duty of the US government to welcome each of these illegal immigrants, thereby short-circuiting immigration laws that are being dutifully followed by visa applicants who must wait years before their number comes up.

Compassion must be tempered by justice, just as justice must be tempered by compassion. This cannot be a one-way deal. Render unto Caesar - the law, which is fair and equitable - what is Caesar's. Encouraging illegal aliens to make chaos of the law, i.e., to commit crime openly, is not even Christian. and cannot be rationalized by claiming that it is exercising compassion. This seems such an obvious rule of thumb for anyone with common sense, but it seems that common sense itself has been bled out of the bleeding-heart bishops, priests and liberals, who think every country should just throw open its borders and allow anyone and everyone to come in. With no thought about the injustice that it represents for the country's legal citizens who have a right to be helped by their government before illegal aliens are. It is not their fault that conditions are bad in Mexico ro in North Africa. Why should they pay the price for it?]

It demonstrates that few really care about these poor migrants, about their wounded humanity and their suffering, their pain, their poverty. They are only props for political calculation and interests. [The fact is there are statistics to show that not all of them are 'poor' migrants, that not a few are criminals or drug lords deliberately infiltrated into Italy to carry out their nefarious business, and who have succeeded in setting up themselves and their criminal operations in Italy's larger cities.]

Otherwise, some initiative - Italian or international - would have been thought about and put into action, at least giving some orientation towards a political solution of the immigration problem, which is mainly that of clandestine immigration.

There would have been proper appreciation of the work of the Italian military who in recent years have saved thousands upon thousands of lives in the Mediterranean. [Did the Pope remember to acknowledge their work? I checked back to re-read his homily in Lampedusa - he thanked the Lampedusans and those volunteers and security personnel who work directly for the refugees, he even thought 'with affection' of the Muslim refugees who were about to begin Ramadan, but not a word for the Coast Guard, who are the true Good Samaritans of the sea.

I really ought not to have gone back and re-read that homily - I cringe about it even more now than I did the first time. Because most of what he said in lampedusa were dramatic words, good words, and right words, but for the wrong occasion and for the wrong circumstances! It all reads so strangely inappropriate. Yet Pope Francis is an intelligent man, and more than that, a holy man. Who am I to fault him in any way?

I wrestle with this dilemma almost every time I read about his latest statement or latest feat. But I did feel quite relieved when Fr. Schall* quoted a rather severe criticism of the Pope to point out - subtly and not bluntly as I do - the danger inherent, in this case, in the Pope's advocacy of compassion and mercy.

I justify my remarks 'criticizing' the Pope because I am not disputing him being the Pope and the spiritual leader of all Christians - I am disputing some of the things he says, and some of the ways he chooses to do things. The only precedent for this in my experience was my bitterness with Paul VI for letting loose the post Vatican-II liturgical chaos. I certainly never thought on the night of March 13 that the new Pope would or could ever be vulnerable to criticism of any kind.

In the face of this new wave of debarcations, one must reiterate that everything possible must be done to prevent more of these accidents at sea. Beyond the duty to come to the help of anyone who is in danger, the only possible way to avoid these tragedies in the Mediterranean is to find ways to keep the migrants from leaving their countries: by agreements with the government of their home countries, an agrement with the High Commissioner for Refugees to carry out screening processes in the countries of origin (to determine who have a right to seek political asylum, and who don't), political and economic interventions in the countries of origin [Oh, easy to say, but such interventions would necessarily involve overhauling the governments and economies of those countries - and tell me, when and where that has ever been done, least of all, to ease life for the few thousands of potential boat people out of the millions living in North Africa! That's just as futile as castigating - excuse me, the Pope was actually asking the Lord's forgiveness for them - "those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies".

These are just some of the possible initiatives for confronting this problem seriously. But Prime Minister Enrico Letta's 'government of action' and the presidents of the Houses of Parliament have more important things to worry about.

*It's worth re-posting Fr. Schall's comment and citation here because the citation was precisely about the Pope's Lampedusa foray:

---

Pope Francis’s use of empathy and sentiment to call our attention to suffering and injustice has its dangers. As Theodore Dalrymple wrote after the Pope’s recent visit to the Island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean: “By elevating feeling over thought, by making compassion the measure of all things, the Pope was able to evade the complexities of the situation, in effect indulging in one of the characteristic views of our time - moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of a generous sentiment, without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy.”

---

Doing things on impulse can be good or bad, beneficial or otherwise, depending on what motivates the impulse. While Pope Francis undoubtedly made a most dramatic and, in the eyes of many, starting with him, a highly symbolic decision that his first official trip as Pope would be to the Italian island of Lampedusa, the motivations for it seemed rather muddled.

The first stated one was to commemorate all those who died at sea in attempting to cross from North Africa to Europe on unsafe boats. And no one could possibly question that. But then what?

The Pope went beyond just invoking the parable of the good Samaritan who stopped to help the victim of highway bandits, but called down on the world God's reproach to Cain after he had murdered his brother, "What have you done to your brother?"

Neither Gospel allusion applies exactly to the problem of undocumented migrants fleeing Africa for a variety of reasons to enter Europe literally by forcing their way in. The world at large is not responsible for the situations in the refugees' homelands that they are seeking to flee at the risk of losing their lives at sea. Nor is the world at large responsible for the refugees' decision to do so.

And Italy has borne the brunt of the illegals for years, not just from Africa across the Mediterranean, but from Albania and even Turkey across the Adriatic. That the Pope explicitly did not want any Italian government representative to be in Lampedusa was particularly incomprehensible.

It is the Italian government, more than any other institution, that is responsible for dealing with thousands of illegal immigrants, providing them with the bare necessities as soon as they step on Italian soil and having to do so until the legal system sorts out what is to be done with them - who can be admitted to stay, who must be sent back to where they came from.

I noted at the time that the Pope did not even think to ask the two Curial heads most directly concerned with any Church activities to help the refugees, both also being particularly qualified for what they have to do by virtue of their nationalities - the African Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of Cor Unum, and the Italian Cardinal Antonio Meglio, president of the Pontifical Council for Migrants and Refugees.

But maybe the Pope did go to Lampedusa just to honor the dead, commiserate with the refugees, and thank the Lampedusans for all their sacrifices and hospitality in the past decade to the boat people who have swept up on their shores. And to say a penitential Mass for a world that, in its global indifference, has lost all sense of compassion and cannot even weep for the less fortunate!

In short, it was a purely spiritual mission that was seemingly oblivious to the concrete problems faced by the political authorities who must deal with the consequences. But that was not the way the media played it up, of course. In their eyes, this was Francis's big play, his opening gambit, to underscore his solidarity with the poor and the suffering - something, alas, that his predecessors apparently never even thought to do - even if, on the scale of the world's many problems, migrants attempting to bypass immigration laws would hardly count among the neediest.

Is it any wonder that Lampedusa ended up not even lasting seven days in the news? - in the absence of any concrete developments to resolve or alleviate the refugee influx, nor make it easier for the political authorities to do what they have to do - tempering justice with compassion, as Benedict XVI asked them to do on many occasions.

The other papal event pre-Rio that ended up getting short shrift in the media was Pope Francis's first encyclical. The reason for the abbreviated attention span granted to it by the media - a Pope's first encyclical is always one of the most important news events of his Pontificate - is obvious.

The encyclical was so clearly Benedict XVI's work, at least 90 percent of it, that even Pope Francis's staunchest rah-rah boys in the media could not very well keep up the song-and-dance of praising an excellent encyclical which even the Pope admits was largely the work of his predecessor. First, it ruins their narrative of the pluperfect Pope - that he had to use the work of his oh-so-inferior predecessor [the media's take on Benedict, not Francis's] for his first encyclical; and second, God forbid that in praising Francis's first encyclical, they would be thought to be praising Benedict in any way! So, double estoppel there. Better just to stop writing about it. As almost everyone did. No first encyclical after World War II has ever received such short shrift! Which is, of course, most unfair to both Pope Francis and the emeritus Pope.
`
I must reiterate here that I will always be eternally grateful to Pope Francis for having devoted his first words to the world after his election to asking all to say a prayer for Benedict XVI, and then for the genuine humility to use Benedict's work for his first encyclical (even acknowledging it openly before the encyclical came out, even as his spokesman, Fr. Lombardi, sought to deny the words he had volunteered to some bishops from the Puglia region).

He has also expressed many affectionate sentiments and words of praise for Benedict XVI on various occasions, even though, as a Benaddict, I am rather put off by the fact that he refers to him as 'el viejo' (the old man) in a telephone conversation with his friend in Argentina, and then, to the newsmen on board the plane, he said having Benedict XVI in the Vatican was like having a wise grandpa living at home. And I am put off because Benedict is only 10 years older than him!

P.S. Aug. 10, 2013
Without meaning to, just now, I came across the article by Theodore Dalrymple which Fr. Schall cited. It deserves to be read in full:

Pope Francis on Lampedusa:
No clarity about moral responsibility
The beginning of morality is to think well -
generosity of spirit is not enough
by Theodore Dalrymple

A British blogsite
July 22, 2013

One of the consequences of living in an information age is that we are made instantly, and constantly, aware of the disasters around the world, both natural and man-made, and of the enormous suffering that they cause. There are no more far-away lands of which to know nothing, to quote Neville Chamberlain, a man whom nobody would describe as wicked but yet who is the most despised of British Prime Ministers. We are all citizens of the world now.

Knowledge of suffering seems to place upon us an obligation of compassion that is greater than we can possibly bear. We respond in one of two ways: to claim a level of feeling that is greater than we actually can or do feel, in which case we become humbugs; or we harden our hearts and become like Pharaoh.

The compassion center in our brain, if such exists (and some neuroscientists claimed to have found the empathy center), is overwhelmed and worn out. A visitor to Mussolini once emerged from his visit exclaiming ‘Too many spats! Too many spats!’; our compassion center, in like fashion, cries ‘Too many famines! Too many civil wars!’ And so we retire to cultivate our garden.

Pope Francis chose Lampedusa recently as his first place to visit outside Rome after his election to the papacy. Lampedusa is an Italian island of 8 square miles with a permanent population of 6000, which so far this year has received 7800 migrants trying to reach Europe across the Mediterranean from sub-Saharan and North Africa, that is to say more than 1000 a month.

When the Pope officiated at Mass on the island’s sports field, there were 10,000 in the congregation, two thirds more than the permanent population, suggesting that the migrants stay a few months at least on Lampedusa. How far the 4000 non-inhabitants of Lampedusa (many of them presumably non-Catholics) attended the mass for religious reasons, and how many for political advantage, may be guessed at but not known.

In effect the island has been transformed into a refugee camp, not necessarily with the approval or agreement of the original inhabitants. This was a fait accompli imposed upon them by political, historical and geographical circumstances.

Estimates suggest that about 100 migrants a month for the past twenty years have drowned during their clandestine passage across the Mediterranean towards Europe. This being the case, no one could possibly say that the migrants decided on the journey in a whimsical or light-hearted fashion.

The attraction of Europe or the repulsion of their homelands, or both, must be very powerful for so many people to risk so high a chance of so pathetic a death.

The Pope said that all his compassion went to the immigrants who had died at sea ‘in these boats that, instead of bringing hope of a better life, brought them to death,’ and this was right and proper. Surely someone must be lacking in both imagination and feeling not to sorrow for these poor people.

Compassionate fellow-feeling, however, can soon become self-indulgent and lead to spiritual pride. It imparts an inner glow, like a shot of whiskey on a cold day, but like whiskey it can prevent the clear-headedness which we need at least as much as we need warmth of heart. Pascal said that the beginning of morality was to think well; generosity of spirit is not enough.

In his homily, the Pope decried what he called ‘the globalization of indifference’ to the suffering of which the tragedy of the drowned was a manifestation and a consequence. Our culture of comfort, he said, has made us indifferent to the sufferings of others; we have forgotten how to cry on their behalf.

He made reference to the play of Lope de Vega in which a tyrant is killed by the inhabitants of a town called Fuente Ovejuna, no one owning up to the killing and everyone saying that it was Fuente Ovejuna that killed him. The West, said the Pope, was like Fuente Ovejuna, for when asked who was to blame for the deaths of these migrants, it answered, ‘Everyone and no one!’

He continued, ‘Today also this question emerges: who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters? No one! We each reply: it was not I, I wasn’t here, it was someone else.’

The Pope also called for ‘those who take the socio-economic decisions in anonymity that open the way to tragedies such as these to come out of hiding.’

With all due respect, I think this is very loose thinking indeed of a kind that the last Pope would not have permitted himself. The analogy between the two situations, the murder of the tyrant in Fuente Ovejuna and the death by drowning of thousands of migrants, is weak to the point of non-existence. After all, someone in Fuente Ovejuna did kill the tyrant; no one in the west drowned the migrants. Is the Pope then saying that Europe’s refusal to allow in all who want to come is the moral equivalent of actually wielding the knife?

By elevating feeling over thought, by making compassion the measure of all things, the Pope was able to evade the complexities of the situation, in effect indulging in one of the characteristic vices of our time, moral exhibitionism, which is the espousal of generous sentiment without the pain of having to think of the costs to other people of the implied (but unstated) morally-appropriate policy.

This imprecision allowed him to evade the vexed question as to exactly how many of the suffering of Africa, and elsewhere, Europe was supposed to admit and subsidize (and by Europe I mean, of course, the European taxpayer, who might have problems of his own).

I was reminded of a discussion in my French family in which one brother-in-law complained to another of the ungenerous attitude of the French state towards immigrants from the Third World. ‘Well,’ said the other, ‘you have room enough. Why don’t you take ten Malians?’ To this there was no reply except that it was a low blow: though to me it seemed a perfectly reasonable response.

The Pope’s use of a term such as ‘those who take the socio-economic decisions in anonymity’ was strong on connotation but weak on denotation, itself a sign of intellectual evasion. Who, exactly, were ‘those’ people? Wall Street hedge fund managers, the International Monetary Fund, opponents of free trade, African dictators?

Was he saying that the whole world economic system was to blame for the migration across the Mediterranean, that the existence of borders was illegitimate, that Denmark (for example) was rich because Swaziland was poor, that if only Losotho were brought up to the level of Liechtenstein (or, of course, if Liechtenstein were brought down to the level of Lesotho) no one would drown in the Mediterranean?

There was something for everyone’s conspiracy theory in his words; but whatever else they meant, we were to understand that he was on the side of the little man, not the big, itself a metonym for virtuous sentiment.

The only specific group whom the Pope denounced were the traffickers in people, those who arrange passage of the migrants in return for money and who are utterly indifferent to their safety; but this denunciation hardly required moral courage because such people have no defenders.

Warmth of feeling cannot be the sole guide to our responses to the dilemmas that the world constantly puts in our path. There was, for example, a sudden influx of Congolese refugees into the city in which I worked as a doctor. Within a short time a ‘community’ grew up and in three or four years the Congolese population of the city went from zero to half a per cent of the entire population.

I had quite a few Congolese patients and although the regulations stated that they were to be treated only in emergencies I could hardly refuse them other treatment, and did not. I soon found that I was giving them advice on all sorts of non-medical matters. I liked them as people; often they had suffered terribly; most of them were determined to do their best in their new country.

In many ways they were admirable (admirable people often emerge from the most terrible circumstances). It helped our relations that I had once crossed the Congo in the days when it was Zaire and that I knew something of the country’s history; to meet someone for whom the Congo was not merely a name, if even that, must have been a relief to them in their isolation.

Despite my sympathy for them (how much better their children behaved than the spoilt brats of the local population!), and the fact that I was willing to break some bureaucratic rules on their behalf, I did not think that the government could very well throw wide open the doors of the country to the Congo and let all who wished come, although there was no reason to suppose that those who would be excluded would be any worse human beings than those who were admitted.

There was injustice in this, for some would benefit and others would suffer merely by chance and not by merit or demerit. But to right this injustice would be worse than not to right it: hence the tragedy. The nature of human existence inevitably creates conflict between desiderata.

That is one of the reasons why the kingdom of the Pope’s master could not possibly be of this world. And the absence of the tragic sense in the Pope’s remarks allowed him to wallow in a pleasing warm bath of sentiment without distraction by complex and unpleasant realities. Perhaps this will earn him applause in the short run; but in the long run he does not serve his flock by such over-simplifications.

I was surprised at the extensive entry in Wikipedia about Theodore Dalrymple, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Dalrymple
which is the pseudonym of A. M. Daniels, English writer and retired prison doctor and psychiatrist. He worked in a number of Sub-Saharan African countries as well as in the east end of London. Before his retirement in 2005, he worked in City Hospital, Birmingham and Winson Green Prison in inner-city Birmingham, England.

Daniels is a contributing editor to City Journal, published by the Manhattan Institute. His work frequently appears in The British Medical Journal, The Times, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator, The Salisbury Review, and Axess magasin. He is the author of a number of books, including Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass, Our Culture, What's Left of It, and Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality - all anthologies of essays he has written over the years.. (The Wikipedia entry contains much more about the breadth and depth of his writings. This is obviously no inconsequential thinker, which explains why someone like Fr. Schall cites him without needing to identify who he is!]

Now available from Ignatius Press:

The Second Vatican Council:
The Four Constitutions
Introductory Essay by Pope Benedict XVI


This collection includes the four constitutions of the Second Vatican Council, the most popular and key documents for understanding the Council itself, its decrees, and its declarations.

Few events in the history of the modern Catholic Church have been as far-reaching as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). And few have been as controversial. No one denies great changes have come about since the close of the Council. Have the changes been all good, all bad, or a mixture of both? To what extent were the changes, for good or ill, the result of the Council itself?

Some have criticized the Council for not going far enough, though they maintain that the "spirit of Vatican II" supports their rejection of many firmly established Catholic beliefs and practices. Others claim the Council went too far and abandoned certain fundamental Catholic tenets in the name of "updating" the Church.

The popes of the Council-John XXII and Paul VI-and their successors who also participated in the Council -John Paul I, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI - have insisted that the Council itself was the work of the Holy Spirit. They have aggressively criticized misinterpretations and distortions of it. They insist that the Council be understood in fundamental continuity with the Church's Tradition, even while deepening the Church's self-understanding and calling for authentic reforms and renewal of Catholic life.

Readers can learn for themselves what the Second Vatican Council taught using this highly accessible collection of its basic texts.

This book uses the Catholic Truth Society translation and features:

- The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium,
introduced by Cardinal Francis Arinze.
- The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, introduced by Cardinal Paul Poupard.
- The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, introduced by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM, Cap.
- The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes,
introduced by Cardinal Angelo Scola.

Four major aspects of the Church's life - the Sacred Liturgy, the mystery of the Church herself, the Word of God, and the Church in the world as it is today - are explored. No twenty-first-century Catholic should be without these four foundational texts in this superb translation.

The collection also includes a general introduction by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco, as well as an address given by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in 2005, explaining how best to understand the Second Vatican Council in the history of the Church.

St. Joseph, 'blessed spouse of Mary'
by FR. DAVID VINCENT MECONI, S.J.

August 2013 Editorial

August is a month of transitions. It is when we honor our Lady’s Glorious Assumption and her Coronation as Queen of heaven and earth.

It is also the month most families begin to worry about school supplies, new schedules, and the stresses of having summer come to a close. August also witnesses the vows of many men and women religious as well as the entrance of new novices into their communities. It is when our diocesan seminarians report for duty. And this just in: August has recently outpaced June as the top month for weddings. It is truly a time of change and hopeful expectation.

To contemplate our Lady’s role in heaven this month is to recall how she intercedes for all of us in all of these various circumstances here on earth. As we all pray for our new classes of religious and seminarians, for schoolchildren’s safety all around the world, and for all this month brings, I am grateful that St. Joseph now has a more a visible — at least, a more audible — part of our daily worship.

For behind Mary’s tender care of Christ stood Joseph, that “just man” extolled in the scriptures. Joseph was no doubt the first one to whom Mary revealed her Immaculate Heart, trusting his strong silence as a place where her most intimate secrets and hopes for this new mystery inside of her would be safe.

On June 20 of this year, the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments declared that the name of St. Joseph “blessed spouse” of Mary, was to be added to the canon of the Mass, added to Eucharistic Prayers II, III, and IV of the Roman Missal. (One wonders why Rome could not have made this decision last year when the new {and expensive} Missals were being printed, as this was a change already being talked about at the beginning of Emeritus Benedict’s pontificate.) [And as I noted at the time, it would have been most fitting and proper that this liturgical change was promulgated by a man named Joseph at Baptism....]

As a universal and mandatory change, we should now hear at every Mass:

---

Have mercy on us all, we pray,
that with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God,
and Blessed Joseph her spouse,
with the blessed Apostles,
and all the Saints who have pleased you
throughout the ages…

---

The Vatican decree can be found here:
www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20130501_san-giuseppe...
The exact English phrase has not been established by our bishops yet.

The Latin in Eucharistic Prayer II is: “ut cum beáta Dei Genetríce Vírgine María, beáto Ioseph, eius Sponso, beátis Apóstoli.” In Eucharistic Prayer III, it reads: “cum beatíssima Vírgine, Dei Genetríce, María, cum beáto Ioseph, eius Sponso, cum beátis Apóstolis.” In Eucharistic Prayer IV, it reads: “cum beáta Vírgine, Dei Genetríce, María, cum beáto Ioseph, eius Sponso, cum Apóstolis.”

The Congregation for Divine Worship, working with native speaking bishops in each language, will soon publish the vernacular; I do think, however, we can be fairly sure “with Blessed Joseph, her spouse” will stand.

Regardless of the final wording, this is the perfect time to call upon St. Joseph’s intercession.

As our government forces conscientious Catholics to pay for atrocities against our faith and rights, we invoke St. Joseph the Patron of the Unborn.

As so many dads today struggle to understand their role and their importance, we invoke St. Joseph the Patron of Fathers.

When our land is debating the rights of those who have crossed our borders without the proper documentation, we invoke St. Joseph the Patron of All Immigrants.

We also invoke him as the Patron of Workers and of a Happy Death, two everyday occurrences that stand in constant need of consecration and constant intercession.

Finally, at each Mass, we now vocalize the nuptial holiness between man and woman that Mary and Joseph represent in the Holy Family.

Admittedly, scripture and sacred tradition do not tell us too much about Joseph. Yet, all we need to know is that the heart of his life beats between Mary and Jesus, how he found his truest self between our Lady and her God.

Perhaps, we imagine him a bit older, realizing only later, that his life would matter only as he chose to serve these two, Mother and Son, God and man, divinity and humanity, heaven and earth. He would be called to spend his final years here. Instead of hardening his heart because he was not the ultimate focus of either his bride-to-be, or his adopted son, he learned the beauty of surrendering to the only true Father. Through these two, Joseph learned the glories of self-gift and the dignity of surrender.

In those early days, while Christ grew inside of our Lady, she alone could realize how only love can touch what is most intimate within each of us. Only that interiority could have enabled Mary to trust that Joseph would take care of her; that he would not expose her to the law but, instead, would spend his life reverencing her, and the new life within her.

For when real poverty finally reaches the core of who one is, one finally knows the same trust which enabled Mary to say “yes.” Is this not the same trust of the Father which her Son would translate into his own willingness to suffer for his beloved?

Joseph was present for neither the Annunciation nor the Crucifixion, but between them he lived, and for them he too gave his life in the way the Father asked.

At every Mass, we now ask St. Joseph, if for only a second, to show us this way. He intercedes now more explicitly for Christ’s Church, showing us how we, too, should never divide heaven and earth, God and man, Mother and Child. He provides us with an example of intimacy and abandonment, of commitment and freedom, of silence and strength.

Because of Mary’s vow to the Father to allow the Christ to be formed in her, Joseph’s entire life changed. He was shaped more by Mary’s promise than by any of his own choices. Out of the selfless love he was given for this woman, Joseph freely received the grace to overcome his initial confusion and possible bitterness. His heart was changed because of the faith she had in their God.

Like many of us, he looked toward Mary to lead and, even though he may not have understood exactly what was occurring, he trusted her enough to say, “Let it be done to me” as well.

Other changes from the Vatican mark these latter days of summer as well. As you read this, Holy Father Francis will have completed his first World Youth Day by returning to his native South America for the first time to inspire the next generation of saints in Christ’s Church.

Scholars will have had time to examine the latest encyclical, Lumen Fidei. This is the first to be “the work of four hands,” rounding out Benedict’s desire to write on all three of the theological virtues— Deus Caritas Est on charity, Spe Salvi on hope, and now Lumen Fidei (the Light of Faith) brings us more deeply into the mystery of divine trust.

Finally, we now await the canonizations of two Blessed Popes, John XXIII and John Paul II.

By any account, but especially for an institution usually criticized for stagnation and inaction, this is a maelstrom of activity, only confirming that Christ’s Church continues to grow in her witness to the world.

Some clergy may have given scandal and terrible witness these past few decades, but the Church carries on under the unassailable protection of God’s Holy Spirit. We continue to preach the Gospel, to teach “in and out of season,” and to hold up exemplary and saintly lives for all to emulate.

Behind all of this activity and this growth is a silent and just protector, a man who watches over Mary and her child. That is why Joseph is the Patron of our Universal—Catholic—Church.

St. Joseph, pray for us.

Saturday, August 10, 2013 18th Week in Ordinary Time
FEAST OF ST. LAWRENCE

Lawrence was a favorite subject of painters. Top panel, from left, by Del Sarto, 1517, Ordination of Lawrence, Fra Angelico, 1435; by Giotto, 1325; statue at the Lateran in Rome; Trial of Lawrence, Fra Angelico, 1435; from a medieval fresco; and terra cotta relief of Saints Stephen and Lawrence, Donatello, 1435. His unusual martyrdom is depicted in the lower panel: left, detail from the painting recently attributed hastily to Caravaggio, and right, Bernini's famous sculpture, 1615.
SAN LORENZO DA ROMA (St. Lawrence of Rome) (b Spain ~225, d Rome 258), Deacon and Martyr
Little is known for certain about this saint, who is one of the most venerated of the martyrs to Roman persecution. Even St. Augustine could only draw from tradition about Lawrence, according to which he was born in Huesca, Spain, and came to Rome where he was ordained a deacon by Pope Sixtus V in 257. He was placed in charge of the administration of Church goods and caring for the poor. In the persecutions under Emperor Valerian, Sixtus V was one of the first to be beheaded. Lawrence himself was arrested and asked to turn over all the treasures of the Church. He is famously said to have indicated the poor of Rome in his charge and said, "These are the treasures of the Church". He was sentenced to death by burning on a gridiron - the purported artifact is venerated today in the Roman church of San Lorenzo in Lucina, while the stone on which his corpse was laid is in his shrine of San Lorenzo fuori le Mure, one of the minor basilicas of Rome. Another legend associated with Lawrence is that the Holy Grail from the Last Supper had been among the Church treasures in his custody, When the persecutions began, he is said to have sent the prescious relic to his family in Spain for safekeeping. It is the chalice now venerated in the Cathedral of Valencia, and which both John Paul II and Benedict XVI used when they said Mass in that city. Perhaps the greatest memorial to the saint is the monastery-palace of San Lorenzo del Escorial, one of the most magnificent of Renaissance architectural complexes, built by Philip II to commemorate a battle he won on the feast day of St. Lawrence. Benedict XVI venerated St. Lawrence in his Roman basilica on Nov. 30, 2008. In his homily, he quoted Pope St. Leo the Great who preached about Lawrence: "The Lord wished to exalt his glorious name in all the world, that from East to West, in the vivid brilliance of the light radiated by the greatest of deacons, the same glory that came to Jerusalem from Stephen also came to Rome thanks to Lawrence's merit." Fittingly, Stephen's tomb is located in St. Lawrence's basilica.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081013.cfm


No events announced for the Holy Father today.
The Vatican released the text of Pope Francis's letter to Cardinal Andre Backis, emeritus Archbishop of Vilnius, naming him his special representative to the formal events marking the 1025th anniversary of the Christianization of Russia to tke place in Kiev (Ukraine) on August 17-18.


One year ago...
It was also a 'no offcial event' day for Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. Nothing 'topical' will come up till tomorrow, August 11, Feast of St. Clare. However, the feast of St. Lawrence today provides the occasion to look back to Benedict XVI's pastoral visit to the Basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mure in 2008, and his homage to San Lorenzo on the 1750th anniversary of his martyrdom.


PASTORAL VISIT TO
SAN LORENZO FUORI LE MURA

November 30, 2008



At 9 a.m. today, the First Sunday of Advent and the Feast of St. Andrew, the Holy Father arrived for a pastoral visit to the parish of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura in the north sector of Rome, on the occasion of the 1750th year of the martyrdom of the sainted deacon and as part of his pastoral visits as Bishop of Rome.

He celebrated Holy Mass starting at 9:45 a.m., following a tribute from the parish priest, Fr. Bruno Mustacchio, O.F.M. Cap.

At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, the Holy Father prayed at the tomb of St, Lawrence, located below the high altar along with that of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen.

He then met the members of the Lawrentian Jubilee Committee and the community of the Capuchins who are in charge of the parish and the Campo Verano cemetery adjoining the church.

He then descended to the crypt chapel to pray at the tomb of Blessed Pius IX. Leaving the Basilica, he also prayed at the tomb of former Italian Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi, who is pending beatification.

---

THE HOLY FATHER'S HO

Dear brothers and sisters:
With the first Sunday of Advent today, we enter that period of four weeks that starts the liturgical year and which directly prepares us for the feast of the Nativity, commemorating the incarnation of Christ in history.

The spiritual message of Advent, however, is more profound, because it projects us towards the glorious return of the Lord at the end of history.

Adventus is a Latin word, which can be translated as arrival, coming, presence. In the language of the ancient world, it was a technical term which referred to the arrival of a functionary, particularly that of a visit by the king or the emperor to the provinces, but it could also be used to mean the appearance of a divinity emerging from his hidden dwelling and thus manifesting his divine power: his presence was solemnly celebrated in [an act of] worship.

In adopting the term Advent, Christians meant to express the special relation that united them with the crucified and resurrected Christ. He is the King, who, having entered this poor province called earth, made a gift to us of his visit; who, after his resurrection and ascension to heaven, nonetheless wanted to stay with us - we perceive his mysterious presence in our liturgical assembly.

In celebrating the Mass, we are proclaiming, in fact, that He has not retreated from the world and he has not left us, and even if we cannot see and touch him as we do can do with material and sensory realities, He is nevertheless with us and among us.

Indeed, he is in us, because he can draw towards him and communicate his own life to every believer who opens his heart to him.

Advent therefore means remembering the first coming of the Lord in the flesh, while thinking now of his definitive return. At the same time, it means acknowledging that Christ present among us makes himself our travelling companion in the life of the Church which celebrates his mystery.

This awareness, dear brothers and sisters, nourished by listening to the Word of God, should help us see the world with different eyes, to interpret the single events of life and history as words addressed to us by God, as signs of his love which assure us of his nearness in every situation.

This awareness, in particular, should prepare us to welcome him when "once again he returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom shall have no end", as we will proclaim soon in the Credo.

In this perspective, Advent becomes for all Christians a time of waiting and hope, a favored time for listening and reflection if we allow ourselves to be guided by the liturgy which invites us to go forward to meet the coming Lord.

"Come Lord Jesus" - that ardent invocation of the first Christian community should become, dear friends, our constant aspiration as well, the aspiration of the Church in every age, which yearns and prepares for the encounter with her Lord.

"Come today, Lord - help us, enlighten us, grant us peace, help us defeat violence. Come Lord, we pray to you especially during these weeks. Let your face shine on us and we shall be saved."

Thus we prayed earlier with the responsorial Psalm. And the prophet Isaiah revealed to us, in the first Reading, that the face of our Lord is that of a kind and merciful Father, who cares for us in every circumstance because we are his handiwork: "You LORD are our father, our redeemer..." (63,16).

Our God is a father ready to forgive all sinners who repent and to welcome those who believe in his mercy (cfr Is 64,4). We were estranged from him because of sin, falling into the dominion of death, but he took pity on us, and of his own initiative, without any merit on our part, he decided to come to us, sending his only Son as our Redeemer.

Before such a great mystery of love, our gratitude rises spontaneously, and our invocation is more confident: "Show us your mercy, Lord, today, in our time, in all parts of the world, and grant us your salvation" (cfr Canto al Vangelo).

Dear brothers and sisters, the thought of the presence of Christ and of his certain return at the end of time, is even more significant in this, your Basilica, next to the monumental cemetery of Verano, where so many of our dear departed repose, awaiting the resurrection.

How many times funeral liturgies have been celebrated here! How many times the words have resounded full of consolation: "In Christ your Son, our savior, may the hope of blessed resurrection shine on us, and as we are saddened by the thought of certain death, we are comforted by the promise of future immortality" (cfr Preface for the Dead I).

But this monumental Basilica of yours, which leads us to think of the primitive church ordered built by the Emperor Constantine which was subsequently transformed to what it is today, speaks to us above all of the glorious martyr St. Lawrence, arch-deacon of Pope Sixtus II, and his trustee in the administration of the assets of the Church.

I came to celebrate the Holy Eucharist today to join you in rendering homage during a singular event, the occasion of the Lawrentian Jubilee Year, declared to commemorate 1750 years since the birth in heaven of the holy Deacon.

History confirms how glorious the name of this saint is, at whose tomb we are gathered. His solicitude for the poor, the generous service he rendered to the Church of Rome in the field of social assistance and charity, his loyalty to the Pope, who inspired him to want to follow him in the supreme trial of martyrdom and the heroic testimony by blood, which he shed just a few days later, are universally known.


The Pope before the (framed) slab of blood-stained marble on which St. Lawrence is believed to have lain after dhrung his torture.

St. Leo the Great, in a beautiful homily, commented on the atrocious martyrdom of this 'illustrious hero': "The flames could not conquer the charity of Christ; and the fire which burned him was weaker than that which blazed within him".

He added: "The Lord wished to exalt his glorious name in all the world, that from East to West, in the vivid brilliance of the light radiated by the greatest of deacons, the same glory that came to Jerusalem from Stephen also came to Rome thanks to Lawrence's merit" (Homily 55,4: PL 54,486).

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the death of the Servant of God Pius XII, and this recalls to us an event that was particularly dramatic in the pluricentennial history of your Basilica. It took place during the Second World War, when on July 19, 1943, a violent bombardment inflicted very serious damages on the Church and on the entire neighborhood, sowing death and destruction.


At the memorial to Pius XII's wartime visit after the neighbrohood was bombed in 1943.

Never can that generous gesture by my venerated predecessor be erased from historical memory, in coming immediately to the aid and comfort of the people who had been so severely struck, meeting them among still-smoking ruins.

Neither can I forget that this Basilica also houses the remains of two other great personages.


The Pope at the sarcophagus of Pius IX, and before the tomb of Alcide De Gasperi.

In the hypogeum [underground crypt], the mortal remains of Blessed Pius IX have been placed for the veneration of the faithful; and in the atrium is the tomb of Alcide De Gasperi, a wise and fair-minded leader for Italy in the difficult years of postwar reconstruction, who was, at the same time, an illustrious statesman who was capable of looking at Europe with wide-ranging Christian vision.

While we are gathered together in prayer, I am pleased to greet you all with affection, starting with the Cardinal Vicar; the Vice Regent, who is also the Abbot of the Basilica; the Auxiliary Bishop of the North Sector; and your parish priest, Fr. Bruno Mustacchio, whom I thank for the kind words he addressed to me before the start of the Mass.

I greet the Minister General of the Capuchin Order and the brothers of the Community who have been carrying out their service with seal and dedication - welcoming the numerous pilgrims, assisting the pwoer in charity, and testifying to hope in the resurrected Christ to all who visit the cemetery of Verano. I wish to assure you of my appreciation, and above all, of remembrance in my prayers.

I also greet the various groups involved in catechesis, liturgy and charity; the members of the two polyphonic choirs, and the local and regional branches of the Third Franciscan Order.

I particularly appreciate the fact that for many years now, this parish has been home to the 'diocesan missionary laboratory' to educate the parish communities in missionary awareness, and I gladly join you in hoping that this initiative in our Diocese may contribute to inspire a courageous pastoral missionary activity, which will bring the message of God's merciful love to every corner of Rome, involving above all the young people and families.

Finally, I wish to extend my greeting to all the inhabitants of this quarter, especially the aged, the sick, the people who are alone and in difficulty. I pray for each and everyone in this Holy Mass.

Dear brothers and sisters, at the start of Advent, what better message to draw from St. Lawrence than that of sanctity? He repeats to us that sanctity - that is, walking forward to Christ who is always coming to visit us, is never out of fashion, but, with the passing of time, it shines more luminously and shows the perennial tendency of man to reach out to God.

Therefore, may this jubilee commemoration be an occasion for your parish community for a renewed adherence to Christ, for a greater examination in depth of your sense of belonging to his Mystical Body which is the Church, and for a constant commitment to evangelization through charity.

May St. Lawrence, heroic witness to the crucified and resurrected Christ, be for each one an example of obedient adherence to the divine will, in order that, as we heard the apostle Paul remind the Corinthians, we too can live in a way that we may be found 'irreproachable' on the day of the coming of the Lord (cfr 1 Cor 1,7-9).

To prepare ourselves for the advent of Christ is also the exhortation we gather from today's Gospel: "Be watchful", Jesus tells us in the brief parable of the master who leaves home but does not know when he will return (cfr Mk 13,33-37).

To be watchful means to follow the Lord, to choose what he chose, love as he loved, conform our own life to his. To be watchful means to pass every moment of our time within the horizon of his love without allowing ourselves to be beaten by the inevitable difficulties and problems of daily life.

That is what St. Lawrence did. This we should do, and let us ask the Lord to give us the grace so that Advent may be a stimulus for everyone to walk in this direction.

May we be guided and accompanied by the intercession of the humble Virgin of Nazareth, Mary, chosen by God to become the Mother of the Redeemer; by St. Andrew, whose feast we celebrate today; and by St. Lawrence, example of intrepid Christian faithfulness unto martyrdom. Amen.

---

The 'Segretariola' of Francis,
the Pope who wants to do it all himself
Bergoglio's personal team is a minuscule but highly active parallel curia
in which he makes all the decisions. Including the appointment mishaps
of Mons. Ricca and Francesca Chaouqui
by Sandro Magister
English translation also provided by


ROME, August 8, 2013 – Francis is in no hurry to reform the curia, and some of his big electors are starting to get impatient. "We wanted someone with good managerial skills and leadership skills, and so far that hasn't been as obvious," the cardinal of New York, Timothy Dolan, complained in an interview a few days ago. [Perhaps they should have asked him first. Pope Francis volunteered in one of his informal but recorded chats with some visitors that "I have no management skills" and so, he is leaving it up to the Council of eight cardinals he has chosen to provide the management - at least, its guidance, obviously.]

But pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio certainly does not like the curia the way it is. [Even if he said in that plane interview that what surprised him most as Pope was to find how many 'good, good, good' men, even saints, there are in the Curia, and that he wants to do justice to them???

And in fact he often and intentionally does without it. The latest chirograph signed "Francis," that of July 18 which instituted a commission of eight experts to rethink the organization of the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See, was made known to the Vatican secretariat of state only as a done deal. [So, to take a concrete example, when Benedict XVI decided he was revoking Cardinal Bertone's summary dismissal of Cardinal Tettamanzi from heading the board of the Toniolo Institute, did he first call Bertone to say, "You know, what you did was inappropriate, so I shall revoke it"? No, he said so to Cardinal Tettamanzi himself when the latter came to present him with facts disputing Bertone's account of his alleged mismanagement at the Toniolo. Everyone always made so much of Benedict being German - the way they make so much now of Francis being a Jesuit - but when it suits the media narrative, all of a sudden, Benedict lacks all those positive traits like efficiency, resolve and firm will attributed to Germans, which they willingly attributed to him as the 'severe and disciplinary' Prefect of the CDF.]

This means that in the little office of pope Bergoglio on the second floor of the Casa di Santa Marta, where he has chosen to reside, many things are decided and done that never even pass through the majestic curial offices of the first and third loggia of the Apostolic Palace, a few steps away from the now-deserted pontifical apartment. [It is obviously a fallacious,illogical and absurd urban myth that just because the papal apartment is in the same building as the Scretariat of State, that means anyone from SecState is free to go in and out of the Pope's study, stand over him and seek to influence him while he studies dossiers and makes decisions! And that conversely, if the Pope lives in anotehr building, he would not be subject to such 'pressure'. When intelligent reporters like Magister, Andrea Tornielli and John Allen report this presumed 'pressure' resulting from locational proximity to the Pope, have they even stopped to imagine how it could ever be physically possible without the Pope's full collusion? But no Pope in his right mind would ever stand for any such interference! Least of all a very private person like Benedict XVI!]

The secretariat of state continues its routine work, but much more at work is another secretariat, minuscule but highly active, which in direct service to the pope attends to the matters that he wants to resolve himself, without any interference whatsoever. [Which implies that previous Popes, including Benedict XVI, tolerated interference in matters they wanted to resolve themselves! Which is obviously a fallacy, and is insulting to Francis's predecessors.]

A century ago, under the reign of Pius X, it was called the “segretariola." Pope Giuseppe Sarto had come to a very negative judgment about the curia at the time, but even after he had reorganized it he was very careful to protect the little personal secretariat with which he had surrounded himself immediately after his election in 1903.

With the current pope, the son of Piedmontese emigrants, the Venetian Pius X has many traits in common. He was also born to a poor family, and continued to dedicate himself even as pope to the help of the poor. He was dearly loved by people of humble conditions. He led a simple and austere life. He had a good-natured disposition, not devoid of irony. He had a profound spiritual life and was later proclaimed a saint. He had a tremendous capacity for work, which he extended into the nighttime hours. He did a great many things on his own, keeping the curia in the dark about them. [Was that not a favorite accusation against Benedict XVI, by types like Marco Politi, who claimed he was isolated and chose to decide everything by himself??? He could not have been both 'isolated in his ivory tower' as well as 'interfered with' by any Tom, Dick and Harry who wanted to thwart his intentions! It's strange for someone like Magister to cast his historical memory backwards a hundred years to Pius X and ignore the immediately preceding Pontificate to this one!]

It comes as no surprise that the "segretariola" of Pius X was very soon the target of tenacious opposition. It was suspected of influencing the pope, guiding his decisions. And these suspicions were also shared by directors of the curia whom Pius X admired, like then-substitute secretary of state Giacomo Della Chiesa, the future Benedict XV, about whom the pope used to say: "He's a hunchback but he marches in line."

In fact, none of the secretaries of pope Sarto, once he had gone to heaven, was rewarded by subsequent pontiffs. One of them even ended his days voluntarily isolated in a hermitage, on the mountain above Camaldoli.

The black legend loomed over them until when, a century later, the documents of that "sacred table" were discovered in a storage closet of the Vatican offices, and two talented scholars, Alejandro M. Dieguez and Sergio Pagano, the latter now prefect of the Vatican archive, published between 2003 and 2006 a complete inventory of them and an anthology in two large volumes.

From this it was clear that those industrious secretaries were not to blame, because everything was desired, decided, and even written personally by the indefatigable pope Sarto. As seems to be happening today as well, with pope Bergoglio.

The first to join the "segretariola" of Pius X was Fr. Giovanni Bressan, his secretary before he became pope, when he was bishop in Mantua and then patriarch in Venice. Immediately afterward pope Sarto called to his side two other Venetian priests whom he knew well, Francesco Gasoni and Giuseppe Pescini. And then a priest from Como, Attilio Bianchi, nephew of Blessed Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, the founder of the missionaries who take their name from him.

To these four Pius X finally added, "because of his extensive experience in this regard," Monsignor Vincenzo Maria Ungherini, who had been the second secretary of Leo XIII, his predecessor as pope.

Here as well the similarities with today are strong. In the "segretariola" of Pope Francis there appears in fact, and for the same reasons as then, the second secretary of his predecessor Benedict XVI, the Maltese Alfred Xuereb.

Nonetheless, the man in closest contact with the pope is not him but a priest of Buenos Aires, Fabián Pedacchio Leaniz, who came to Rome and the curia in 2007 as an official of the congregation for bishops, at the joint behest of his archbishop at the time, Bergoglio, and of then-prefect of the congregation Giovanni Battista Re, the "very dear" cardinal whom Bergoglio thanked most warmly in his first encounter with the college of cardinals after his election as pope. [I will refrain from commenting on the potential implications of the Pope's closeness to Cardinal Re, who was one of Benedict XVI's most implacable foes from the Old Guard of the previous Pontificate. Before he was named by John Paul II to Bishops, Re was very powerful in the Vatican as #3 man at SecState, in tandem with Cardinal Sodano. He was head of Bishops when that Congregation failed, in episode three years apart, to carry out due diligence in vetting both Mons. Wielgus and Williamson for the Pope, with the disastrous PR consequences we now know.].

Today Fr. Fabian, 49, is a permanent resident at Santa Marta, where he works on a very full-time basis in the service of Pope Francis. He is an expert in canon law and was secretary of the association of Argentine canonists. He loves opera music, the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the films of Pedro Almodovar. In soccer his favorite team is not the same as Bergoglio's San Lorenzo, but the more trophied Rio Plata.

In addition to Fr. Fabián, in the circle of the pope's close collaborators is another Argentine from Buenos Aires, Monsignor Guillermo Javier Karcher, a pontifical master of ceremonies but above all assigned to protocol, the office of the secretariat of state through which all of the documents of the Holy See pass.

And then there is an Italian, Monsignor Assunto "Tino" Scotti, 58, from Bergamo, supervisor of the section of general affairs of the secretariat of state and dean of the camera apostolica, the institute that administers the assets of the Holy See during the interregnum between one pope and another, with the cardinal camerlengo. It is Monsignor Scotti who selects and supervises the fortunate people who are admitted, morning after morning, to the pope's Mass, in the chapel of the Casa di Santa Marta. [So, the Pope has called on the services of two experienced Curial officials. Indeed, never having been in the Curia himself, how could he do without any such aides to guide him through the labyrinth?]

To each his task. But like Pius X, Pope Francis as well is not the type who likes to delegate. In Buenos Aires he worked alone at a small and very organized desk. In the adjoining offices he had a secretariat, but this did not even handle his appointments: he was the one who set them down in his own planner. A planner that he never let out of his sight and even wanted to have with him when as pope he boarded the airplane for Rio de Janeiro, in the briefcase seen in the photo published around the world.

From the "sacred table" of Pius X ,all of the letters went out with the signature of one of his secretaries, and all written in the third person: "The Holy Father desires…" "The Holy Father wants…" "The Holy Father obliges me to communicate to you…" But then it was seen that on the original drafts the handwriting was entirely and solely that of the pope. There was no decision, big or small, that did not come down personally from him.

With Bergoglio as well this seems to be the case. With the advantages and risks that every monocratic authority runs. During his first months as pope, the most serious mishap into which Francis has stumbled has been the appointment of the prelate of the IOR, the Vatican "bank," in the person of Monsignor Battista Ricca.

An appointment strongly backed by the pope himself, [who was kept] entirely in the dark about the scandalous past of this figure, every documented trace of which was made to disappear [from Ricca's official dossier in the Vatican].

After L'Espresso uncovered the scandal on the basis of indisputable testimonies and documents that disappeared in Rome but were kept at the Vatican nunciature in Montevideo, the Pope wanted to verify the truth himself.

He put his his "segretariola" into action to tell him about and deliver to him all of the evidence in the case. [And? What did they find? No one has said, especially not the Pope when he had the occasion to do so at that inflight newscon!]

In the interview on the return flight from Rio, his harshest words were directed against the "lobbies," remarking twice that "there was nothing" about the scandal in the "preliminary" investigation on Ricca that they had shown him in the curia. [But why did he not say that he did have the post-appointment accusations investigated? (And none of the newsmen on the plane asked the obvious question: "But did you order an investigation after the reports came out about Ricca's unbecoming conduct?" Yet twice during his answer to the one question about Ricca, the Pope underscored that 'investigatio previa' contained nothing damaging to Ricca. Is it not disningeuous not to reveal what the later investigation showed? If the subsequent investigation had shown that the accusations raised against Ricca were nothing but pure slander, without any basis in fact, does anyone think the Pope would not have said so? If Magister and journalists in Uruguay claim that the accusations against Ricca are well-documented at the Nunciature and in the city offices fo Montevideo, are they to be ignored just because the Pope has decided Ricca is his man to police the IOR, and basta! This omission is so glaring and deafening that it becomes even more strange that no journalist on that plane - or any other journalist who read the Pope's words - has pursued the lead. (Actually, it is all of a piece with the fact that when the reports about Ricca first surfaced, no one but Magister lifted a finger to look into their veracity.) And now, even Magister, it seems, has given up, and resigned himself to the permanency of the Pope's fair-haired boy at the IOR. This is a crying anomaly and blatant injustice: Because Francis is not Benedict XVI, he gets a pass from everyone for a blatant disregard of the truth - or at least, of the perception that something is wrong with this appointment of someone whose past leaves him open to blackmail and other sorts of pressure. And yet in his position, he is acting on behalf of the Pope!!]

In the same interview, Francis asserted that he was a Jesuit in his heart. Pius X was another thing, but there is a pragmatic shrewdness that seems to link these two popes together.

In order to prepare for the reform of the curia, pope Sarto secretly supported the publication of a book of denunciation and proposal, released anonymously by a fictitious publisher, that met with substantial public success. In reality, that book had been written by a trusted monsignor of the secretariat of state, Giovanni Pierantozzi, had been printed by the Vatican publishing house, and had been reviewed before publication by the pope himself in December of 1903.

One hundred and ten years later, pope Bergoglio as well is up against a curia that needs to be rebuilt from the foundation. And perhaps he may have wanted to do something similar to his holy predecessor when last July 18 he appointed among the eight experts of the newly created commission for the reorganization of the economic-administrative offices of the Holy See, with right of access to the most confidential documents, an expert in public communication, the 30-year-old Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui.

It is a shame, however, that no one told the pope that this self-assured Italian-Egyptian young woman indeed boasts of her friendships with various cardinals in the curia, but also has a direct connection with Gianluigi Nuzzi, the receiver of the documents stolen from Benedict XVI by his unfaithful butler, and is an assiduous informant for the website dagospia.com, the most popular source in Italy for gossip and slander about the Vatican. [So, one must conclude that Chaoqui stays, like Ricca. Shouldn't Magister try to uncover who in the Curia recommended Chaoqui to be on that elite board, who prepared her CV for the Pope's review, and did anyone in that 'segretariola' ever vet the candidate, or did they simply rely on the probably csrefully-scrubbed CV provided to the Pope? Francis may want to do everything hismelf, but even Superman availed of the help of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen for practical matters!]


NB: I have used the English translation provided by www.chiesa, as is, including the failure to capitalize the P in Pope or the names of Vatican offices, and other stylistic idiosyncracies of the site. In the past, when I chose to translate Magister myself in the articles he wrote about Benedict XVI, I did not follow those idiosyncracies.

________

I've finally found two posts that present the issue over the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate who have been placed under apostolic supervision by the Vatican and expressly forbidden to say the Extraordinary Form of the Mass without permission from 'competent authorities' (unnamed).

The Vatican crackdown on the FFI
with the Pope's OK is troubling
by Donald R. McClarey

July 31, 2013

I have not been among those who have had concerns about Pope Francis. This, however, gives me pause:

The decree installs an apostolic commissioner – in the person of the Capuchin Fidenzio Volpi – at the head of all the communities of the congregation of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

And this in itself is cause for astonishment. Because the Franciscans of the Immaculate are one of the most flourishing religious communities born in the Catholic Church in recent decades, with male and female branches, with many young vocations, spread over several continents and with a mission in Argentina as well.

They want to be faithful to tradition, in full respect for the magisterium of the Church. So much so that in their communities they celebrate Masses both in the ancient rite and in the modern rite, as moreover do hundreds of religious communities around the world – the Benedictines of Norcia, to give just one example – applying the spirit and the letter of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum of Benedict XVI.

But precisely this was contested by a core group of internal dissidents [said to be about six FFI members in the United States, where this order started], who appealed to the Vatican authorities complaining of the excessive propensity of their congregation to celebrate the Mass in the ancient rite, with the effect of creating exclusion and opposition within the communities, of undermining internal unity and, worse, of weakening the more general “sentire cum Ecclesia.”

The Vatican authorities [the Congregation for Religious, specifically] responded by sending an apostolic visitor one year ago. And now comes the appointment of the commissioner.

But what is most astonishing are the last five lines of the decree of July 11:

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In addition to the above, the Holy Father Francis has directed that every religious of the congregation of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate is required to celebrate the liturgy according to the ordinary rite and that, if the occasion should arise, the use of the extraordinary form (Vetus Ordo) must be explicitly authorized by the competent authorities, for every religious and/or community that makes the request.

---

The astonishment stems from the fact that what is decreed contradicts the dispositions given by Benedict XVI, which for the celebration of the Mass in the ancient rite “sine populo” demand no previous request for authorization whatsoever.

Of all the orders that Pope Francis could crack down on, he chose one of the most orthodox and flourishing? The attitude towards the ancient rite of the Mass that seems to be contained in the decree is vastly disheartening.

McClarey updated the post on August 8, as follows:

The decision to appoint a commissioner to oversee the Congregation of Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate and the need for the order to obtain authorisation before it can celebrate Mass according to the Old Rite has sparked a heated debate. Traditionalist blogs and websites have voiced disagreements over this.

Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi says the decision does not go against Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio but is exclusively to do with existing tensions within the Institute. Vatican Insider asked Fr. Alessandro Apollonio, the Procurator General of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate to answer some questions regarding the decision.

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Why did the Vatican decide to send an apostolic visitor to your Institute?
Because a few of the friars who don’t agree with the founding Father and Minister general’s style asked for it. They also disagree with his eagerness to promote the Vetus Ordo within the Institute, alongside the Novus Ordo, in accordance with the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum and the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae.”

To what extent did the issue of the use of the old missal influence the decision to send an apostolic visitor?
It had a big influence on the decision because the group of friars I mentioned before accused the founding Father of imposing the Vetus Ordo on the whole Institute. Although the accusation is completely unfounded, people believed it and our attempts to prove it was false proved futile. This false accusation has spread like an oil slick, with various newspapers and news agencies passing it on. This has seriously harmed the good name of the Institute’s founding Father.”

Traditionalist blogs and websites have reacted to this news – and to the decision that prior authorisation will have to be obtained before the Institute can celebrate Mass according to the Old Rite – by saying that these decisions disavow Benedict XVI’s Motu Proprio. Do you agree with this interpretation? What can you say about these decisions?
Fr. Lombardi has clearly stated that the decisions taken regarding our Institute are not a disavowal of the Motu Proprio. However, we are still waiting for an authentic interpretation of the Holy See’s liturgical provisions for our Institute.

For example, it is still unclear who exactly the “competent authorities” who will give the aforementioned authorization, are. Will it be the commissioner, the Congregation for Religious, the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, the local ordinary, one of these or all of these?

We hope this is just a temporary disciplinary provision and that we will soon be given authorisation to celebrate according to the Vetus Ordo also, as we have always done. Without all the current restrictions which – unless a better reason can be given – deprive us of the universal right granted to us in the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum and the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae.”

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I think this has been handled in an incredibly ham-fisted manner, and I hope that Pope Francis will act to correct what appears to be a manifest injustice to one of the orders that is a light to the Church.

What the posts do not mention is that the decree against the FFI was issued by the Prefect and Secretary of the Congregation for the Religious - Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz and Fr. Francisco Carballo, respectively.

Since March 13, 2013, Braz de Aviz has not even tried to mask his hostility to Benedict XVI, who appointed him to his job, and whom he has indirectly attacked for the CDF judgment against the dissident LCWR sisters - even if this has been sustained by Pope Francis - and against whom he has now taken another indirect blow by openly contradicting a key provision of Summorum Pontificum.

What Fr. Lombardi failed to address - and what no one bothered to even bring up - was that a papal motu proprio, or any provision thereof, cannot be rescinded (even if only for a particular case) unless by another papal act. As I understand it, Pope Francis would have had to issue a motu proprio amending the SP provision that the Congregation for the Religious has unilaterally violated in order to make the latter action valid.

Sandro Magister promptly commented on the Vatican crackdown against the FFI in this article
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350567?eng=y
in which he called the development "Francis's first direct contradiction of Benedict".

For more about the FFI, visit their website
www.marymediatrix.com/

August 11, 2013, 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. CLARE

ST. CHIARA (CLARE) D'ASSISI (Italy, 1194-1253), Virgin, Founder of the Poor Clares (Second Order of St. Francis)
Like Francis, her contemporary and eventual mentor, Clare was born to a noble family, but at age 15, she refused an arranged marriage, and at 18, escaped home to be given asylum, along with her sister Agnes, by Francis's friars. After putting them first in the care of Benedictine convents, Francis installed them in the San Damiano church which he had rebuilt, where other women joined them in a life of great poverty according to the Franciscan Rule, dedicated to prayer and serving the poor, the sick and travelers. They owned nothing and subsisted on daily contributions. She was to defend this decision for 'absolute poverty in joyous imitation of Christ' even against the order of Popes who thought their rules were too rigid. Francis made her abbess when she was 21, an office she carried out till her death, but the order itself, first called the Order of Poor Ladies, was not formally recognized until 1253. Two days later she died, having suffered from poor health the last 27 years of her life. It was said that Clare would come back from prayer with her her face so radiant it dazzled those around her. Until he died, Francis and Clare gave each other spiritual support and encouragement, and she took care of him during his last illness. She was canonized in 1255, just two years after her death. A basilica in her honor was built in 1260, to which her remains were transferred and venerated to this day. In 1263, her order was formally renamed the Order of St. Clare by Pope Urban IV.

Last year, today formally ended the celebration of the Year of St. Clare in the Diocese of Assisi marking the saint's conversion and consecration.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081113.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY
Sunday Angelus - Pope Francis reflected on today's Gospel passage from St. Luke about the desire to meet Jesus and along with him, "all his brethren and his companions along the way". After the prayers, he reiterated his greeting to expressed in his message released last week to the Muslims of the world on the occasion of the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan later this week.


One year ago...
Benedict XVI was honored at Castel Gandolfo with a concert offered by the Caritas of Regensburg, which is marking its 90th anniversary. The concert featured German cellist Thomas Beckmann, founder of the association 'Gemeinsam gegen Kalte' (Together against the cold), which helps homeless people.

The Vatican released the text of the message that the Holy Father sent in March 2012 to the Bishop of Assisi, Mons. Domenico Sorrentino, for the Year of Clare celebrations.

On the occasion of
the Year of St. Clare,
a message from the Pope -
especially for young people
Translated from

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To my Venerated Brother
Domenico Sorrentino
Bishop of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino

With joy I have learned that in this diocese, as among the Franciscans and Clarissians around the world, St. Clare is being remembered with a Clarian Year on the eighth centenary of her 'conversion' and consecration.

This event, which has been dated to some time between 1211 and 1212, completed, so to speak, the 'female aspect' of the grace that the community of Assisi had received with the conversion of the son of Peter of Bernardone.

Just as it had happened with St. Francis, Clare's decision contained the seed of a new sisterhood, the Order of St. Clare, which has become a robust tree, and in the fecund silence of cloisters, continues to sow the good seed of the Gospel and to serve the cause of God's Kingdom.

This happy circumstance urges us to turn in our minds to Assisi, to reflect with you, venerated Brother, and the community entrusted to you, and likewise, with the sons of St. Francis and the daughters of St. Clare, on the significance of this anniversary.

Indeed, it speaks to our generation and is fascinating, especially to young people, to whom my affectionate thoughts go on this World Youth Day, which customarily the local churches celebrate on Palm Sunday.

About her radical choice in favor of Christ, the saint herself in her Testament, speaks of it as a 'conversion' (cfr. FF 2825). It is from this that I wish to start, in a way taking up from the thread of the discourse I made about the conversion of St. Francis when I had the joy of visiting your diocese on June 17, 2007.

The story of Clare's conversion revolves around the liturgy of Palm Sunday. Her biographer writes:

"The solemn day of the Palms was approaching, when the young woman went to the man of God (Francis) to ask him about converting - when and how she ought to go about it. Francis ordered that on Palm Sunday, elegant and appropriately adorned, she should come to the Mass amidst the people, and then, the following night, that she should leave the city, converting worldly joy into the grief of Passion Sunday.

"Thus, on that Sunday, with other ladies, the young woman, resplendent in festive dress, entered the church. There, in worthy presage, even as her friends ran forth to receive their palms, Clare remained prudently still, and the Bishop, descending the steps, came to her and placed a palm frond in her hands" (Legenda Sanctae Clarae virginis, 7: FF 3168).

It had been six years since the young Francis had undertaken the way of sanctity. In the words from the Crucified Lord at San Damiano - "Go, Francis, repair my house" - and in embracing lepers, the suffering face of Christ, he had found his vocation.

That led to that liberating gesture of 'stripping' himself of all his worldly goods in the presence of Bishop Guido. Between the idolatry of money proposed to him by his earthly father, and the love of God that promised to fill his heart, he had no doubts, and he declared vigorously: "From this moment on, I can freely say, 'our father, who art in heaven', instead of father Pietro di Bernardone" (Vita Seconda, 12: FF 597).

Francis's decision had disconcerted the city. The first years of his new life were marked by difficulties, disappointments and incomprehension. But many had started to reflect. Including the girl Clare, then adolescent, who was couched by Francis's witness.

Endowed with an outstanding religious sense, she would be conquered by the existential turning point of the man who had once been Assisi's king of feasting. Shee found a way to meet him and allowed herself to be infected with his ardor for Christ.

The biographer describes St. Francis instructing his new disciple: "the father Francis exhorted her to renounce the world, demonstrating in vivid words, that hope in the world is arid and can only bring disillusion, and instilled into her ears the words of marriage to Christ" (Vita Sanctae Clarae Virginis, 5: FF 3164).

According St. Clare's Testament, even before he received other young women to his community, Francis had prophesied the journey that awaited his first spiritual daughter and her future sisters. Indeed, as he worked on the restoration of the church of San Damiano, where the Crucified Lord had spoken to him, he announced that the church would be inhabited by "women who would glorify God with the saintly tenor of their lives" (cfr. FF 2826; cfr. Tommaso da Celano, Vita seconda, 13: FF 599).

The original Crucifix from San Damiano is now found in the Basilica of St. Clare in Assisi. The eyes of the crucified Christ which had so fascinated Francis had become a 'mirror' for Clare. It is not by chance that the idea of a mirror became very dear to her, as she would write in her fourth letter to Agnes of Prague: "Look at this mirror every day, oh Queen, spouse of Jesus Christ, and in it continually scrutinize your own face" (FF 2902).

In the years that she met with Francis often to learn the way of God from him, Clare was an attractive young woman. But the Poverello of Assisi showed her a superior beauty that cannot be measured by the mirror of vanity, but develops in a life of authentic love, in the footsteps of the Crucified Jesus.

God is true Beauty! The heart of Clare was illumined with this splendor, and it gave her the courage to have her tresses cut off to begin her life of penitence. For her, as for Francis, this decision brought a lot of difficulties. While some of her family members did not take long to understand her decision - her mother Ortolana and two of her sisters almost immediately followed her example - others reacted violently.

Her escape from home on the night between Palm Sunday and Holy Monday, was somewhat adventurous. In the following days, her family sought her out in all the places where Francis may have given her refuge, and they attempted, sometimes with force. to make her turn back on her decision.

But Clare was prepared for this battle. Even as Francis was her guide, she also received paternal support from Bishop Guido, as more than one indication suggests. This was the same Bishop who had approached her on Palm Sunday to give her a palm frond, almost like a blessing for the courageous action she was about to take.

Without the support of Bishop Guido, it is difficult to imagine how the plan thought of by Francis and carried out by Clare could have been carried out, both in the consecration she made of herself at the church of Porziuncola in the presence of Francis and his brothers, as well as the hospitality that she received in the following days at the Monastery of San Paolo delle Abbadesse and in the community of Sant'Angelo in Panzo, before she finally settled in San Damiano.

Clare's example, like that of Francis, demonstrates a special ecclesial characteristic - an enlightened Pastor and two children of the Church who trust his discernment. Institution and individual charism worked together stupendously.

Love for the Church and obedience to her, which is so marked in Franciscan-Clarian spirituality, have their roots in this beautiful experience born from the Christian community of Assisi, which not only generated Francis and his 'plantlet' in the faith, but also accompanied them on their road to saintliness.

Francis had good reason to suggest that Clare make her escape at the start of Holy Week. All of Christian life - and therefore, even the consecrated life - is the fruit of the Paschal mystery as a participation in the death and resurrection of Christ.

In the liturgy of Palm Sunday, sorrow and glory are interwoven as a theme that will continue to be developed in the succeeding days, through the darkness of the Passion up to the light of Easter.

Clare, in making her choice, relived that mystery. We might say that she received the 'program' of her life on Palm Sunday. She then entered into the drama of the Passion, in cutting off her hair, symbolically renouncing herself to be the spouse of Christ in humility and poverty. Francis and his brothers now became her family.

But soon, sisters would arrive, even from afar, although the first seedlings, as with Francis, sprouted from Assisi itself. The saint would remain forever linked to her city, proving herself in many difficult circumstances, as when her prayers saved Assisi from violence and devastation.

At that time, she said to her sisters: "From this city, dearest daughters, we have been receiving many benefits every day. It would be very impious if we did not lend her help in the way we can when she needs it" (Legenda Sanctae Clarae Virginis 23: FF 3203).

In its profoundest meaning, the 'conversion' of Clare is a conversion to love. She would no longer be wearing the fine garments of Assisi's nobility, but rather the elegance of a soul that gave itself over to the praise of God and the gift of herself.

In the small space of the convent in San Damiano, in the school of Jesus in the Eucharist, contemplated with spousal affection, day after day, a sisterhood developed that was regulated by love of God and by prayer, by concern and service to others.

It is in this context of profound faith and great humanity that Clare became a definitive interpreter of the Franciscan ideal, claiming the 'privilege' of poverty - namely, the renunciation of possessing anything even in community - which left perplexed the very Supreme Pontiff who ultimately recognized the heroism of her saintliness.

How can we not propose Clare, along with Francis, to the attention of our young people today? The time that separates us from the life of these two saints has not diminished their fascination. On the contrary, we can see the relevance of their example in comparison with the illusions and delusions that often mark our youth today.

Never before have young people been made to dream of the thousand attractions of a life in which everything seems possible and legitimate. And yet, how much dissatisfaction there is! How many times has the search for happiness and realization led them down ways that lead to artificial Paradises, such as that of drugs and unrestrained sexuality.

And the present situation where it is difficult to find dignified employment and to start a family that is united and happy, adds more clouds to their horizon.

But we do not lack for young people even in our day who accept the invitation to entrust themselves to Christ and to face the journey of life with courage, responsibility and hope, and who even decide to leave everything to render total service to him and their brothers.

The story of Clare, along with that of Francis, is an invitation to reflect on the sense of existence and to find in God the secret of true joy. They provide concrete proof that whoever fulfills the will of God and trusts in him not only does not lose anything but finds the true treasure that gives sense to everything.

To you, venerated Brother, to the Church that has the honor of having given birth to Francis and Clare, to the Clarissians who daily demonstrate the beauty and fecundity of contemplative life in supporting the journey of all the People of God, to the Franciscans of all the world, to so many young people who are searching and who need the light, I address this brief reflection. I hope that it can contribute to an even greater rediscovery of these two luminous figures in the firmament of the Church.

With a special thought for the daughters of St. Clare in the Protomonastery, of their other convents in Assisi and the rest of the world, I impart to all my Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican
April 1, 2012
Palm Sunday

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On this day last year. Benedict XVI was honored with one of those concerts dismissed by Pope Francis recently as an activity for Renaissance princes who had nothing better to do...


For some reason, there were no newsphotos at the time of this event...2013 P.S.I still could not find any earlier today using the usual image search for 'Concert benedict XVI Castel Gandolfo 8/11/12', but when I changed the search command to German, I did find the photographs reproduced here now from a newspaper in Duesseldorf, the concert cellist's home city.

Caritas of Regensburg offers
a concert for the Holy Father
Translated from

August 11. 2012

At 6 p.m. on Saturday, August 11, a concert was offered in honor of the Holy Father at the internal courtyard of the Apostolic Residence in Castel Gandolfo, by Caritas of Regensburg which marks its 90th anniversary this year, featuring cellist Thomas Beckmann, founder of the German association 'Gemeinsam gegen die Kalte' (Together against the cold) for helping the homeless.



In honor of God and for the joy of men" was the title of the event, with Beckmann accompanied on the piano by his wife Kayoko Matsushita and by Yuko Kasahara, with vocal parts sung by the Vokalensemble Cantico of Regensburg, under director Edeltraud Appl.

The program included pieces by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643); Gottfried August Homilius (1714-1785); Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706); Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827); Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924); Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (1809-1847); Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901); Maurice Ravel (1875-1937); Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736) and Franz Lehrndorfer (born 1928).



At the end of the concert, the Holy Father delivered the following remarks, translated here from German:

---

Venerated brothers,
Dear friends:

At the end of this beautiful cycle of vocal and instrumental music, I can only say a most heartfelt Vergelt'ss Gott (Thank you) to the musicians. With this evening's program, you have given us an impression of the multiplicity of musical creation and the world of harmony.

Music is not just a succession of sounds - it has rhythm and is at once cohesion and harmony, with structure and depth. We enjoyed this wonderfully in the polyphonic choruses that we heard so expressively from the Vokalensemble Cantico directed my Madame Edeltraut Appl, and in the wonderful instrumental pieces that we heard from Thomas Beckmann, his wife Kayoko and Mr. Kasahara. We were all totally gripped by the warm sounds and the full range of timbres of the cello.

Music is an expression of the spirit, man's interior space that was created for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is not by chance that music often accompanies our prayer. It makes our senses and our spirit resound when we encounter God in prayer.

Today, we commemorate St. Clare in the liturgy. A hymn to the saint says: "Light came to you from God's clarity. You gave it space, it grew in you, and you radiated it to the world. Make our hearts bright".

This is the basic attitude that fulfills man and gives him peace: openness to godly claritas, the enlightening beauty and vital force of the Creator, that animates us and allows us to surpass ourselves. Tonight, we have wonderfully encountered this claritas to enlighten us.

It is therefore a rightful consequence that artists, out of their profound experience of beauty, are engaged in doing good, to help and support those who are in need. They pass on the good that they have been gifted with, radiating this to the world.

Thus, man grows, he becomes enlightened, and he becomes aware of the presence and the work of his Creator. This we can confirm in Herr Beckmann and all who are engaged with him in the work of 'Gemeinsam gegen die Kalte', which is not an externally imposed mission, but something that comes from the music within us, that overcomes the coldness in us and opens our heart.

From the heart, I wish you all from the heart continuing success in your musical work for years to come and God's rich blessing for your charitable mission. I thank all the performers once more for this beautiful evening. May we all be under God's blessing! I impart to you my Apostolic blessing.

My heartfelt thanks! Good night.

---

Back to making up for time lost... This time, it's an unaccountably slow PC that takes forever to load anything for some reason I cannot detect, since I have run all the security checks against viruses, cookies, etc., as well as disk cleaning and disk optimization, to no avail, and I haven't the time to bring my PC to a repair shop...

Yesterday, Monday, Pope Francis had no activities nor messages - he stopped saying the morning Masses for invited guests at Santa Marta in early July, and there is no announcement I know of as to whether he will resume them. But even without a formal announcement other than that there will be no general audiences in August, it is obvious that he, too, is 'taking a vacation' this month, except for the Angelus appointments and Mass on the Feast of the Assumption later this week). With Benedict XVI (and probably with John Paul II, too - I have not checked), GAs were only cancelled in July, the official vacation month for the Pope; in recent years, Benedict held the August GAs either at Castel Gandolfo or in St. Peter's Square.

Monday, August 12, 2013, 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Center illustrations, Martini's altarpiece, 1328; and Donatello's lifesize statue of Louis, 1523.
ST. LOUIS DE TOULOUSE (France, 1274-1297), Franciscan and Bishop
A nephew of France's crusader King Louis IX who would become France's only canonised king, Louis was born just 4 years after the king's death, to Charles of Anjou, who would become King Charles II of Naples. His mother descended from the family of Hungary's St. Elizabeth. Small wonder that the boy early showed piety in prayer and corporal works of mercy. At age 14, however, he and two of his brothers were given up by their father as hostages for his freedom when he was defeated by the King of Aragon in the battle that followed the so-called Sicilian Vespers. The brothers were raised in the court of Aragon in the care of Franciscans for 7 years. At age 20, Louis left the court and went to Rome where he took the Franciscan vows. Soon after, he was named Bishop of Toulouse in his native France. He continued to wear his Franciscan robes and immediately won hearts because he gave most of his income to the poor and made it a point to sit at least 25 needy people at his table every day. But the work exhausted him and at age 23, he succumbed to typhoid fever. That same year, his great-uncle, Louis IX, was canonized. He himself was canonized in 1317 just 20 years after his death. Several years later, his younger brother Robert, to whom he had ceded all his secular titles and rights, commissioned Simone Martini to execute an altarpiece to commemorate his brother alongside their illustrious relative Louis IX. The mission, county and city of San Luis Obispo (St. Louis the Bishop) in California were named by the Spanish missionaries after him.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081213.cfm

No events announced for Pope Francis today.


One year ago...

At the Sunday Angelus, Benedict XVI commented on today's Gospel in which the Jews dispute that Jesus could be the Son of God - since they all knew him as the son of Mary and Joseph - saying that one has to believein the divinity of Jesus in order to hunger for him as the Bread of Life. After the Angelus recitation, he asked the faithful to pray for the victims of torrential rains in China and the Philippines and the recent earthquake in Iran.



ANGELUS TODAY
August 12, 2012



Here is a translation of the Pope's Angelus remarks, an off-the-beaten-track reflection on the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves - not focusing on the miracle itself, but on its wider symbolism for Jesus as the Bread of Life:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

The readings from Chapter 6 of the Gospel of John, which accompany us in the liturgy these Sundays, has led us to reflect on the multiplication of the loaves, with which the Lord fed a crowd of 5,000, and the invitation Jesus addressed to those who had eaten that they had to strive for the bread that remains with them forever.

Jesus wanted to help them understand the profound meaning of the miracle which he had performed in satisfying their physical hunger, to prepare them to accept the announcement that he himself is the Bread descended from heaven (cfr Jn 6,41) who provides the definitive satisfaction.

Even the Jewish people, during their long journey in the desert, had eaten bread that came down from heaven - manna - which had kept them alive until they arrived in the Promised Land.

Now, Jesus speaks of himself as the true bread descended from heaven, who is able to maintain life not just for a time and for a stage in the journey, but for always. He is the food that gives eternal life, because he is God's only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, who came to give man life in its fullness, to introduce man to God's own life.

In Jewish thinking, it was clear that the true bread from heaven that nourished Israel was the Law, the Word of God. The People of Israel acknowledged with clarity that the Torah was the fundamental and lasting gift of Moses, and that the fundamental element that distinguished her from other peoples was to know the will of God and therefore the right way to live.

Now Jesus, in manifesting himself as the Bread from heaven, gives testimony that he is the Word of God in person, the Word Incarnate, through whom man could be nourished by the Will of God (cfr Jn 4,35) who orients and sustains existence.

Therefore, to doubt the divinity of Jesus, as the Jews did in today's Gospel account, means opposing the work of God. Indeed, the Jews said: "He is the son of Joseph! We know his father and his mother!" (cfr Jn 6,42). They could not go beyond his earthly origins and therefore refused to accept him as the Word of God made flesh.

St. Augustine, in his Commentary on the Gospel of John, explains it this way: "They were far removed from the celestial bread, and were incapable of hungering for it. The mouth of their heart was sick...Indeed, this Bread demands the hunger of man's inner self. We must ask ourselves if we truly feel this hunger, hunger for the Word of God, hunger to know the true meaning of life. Only he who is drawn to God the Father, who listens to him and allows himself to be instructed by him can believe in Jesus, can meet him and be nourished by him, and thus find true life, the way of life, justice, truth and love"

St. Augustine adds: "The Lord... affirms he is the bread descended from heaven, exhorting us to believe in him... To eat the living Bread, in fact, means believing in him. He who believes, eats. Invisibly, he is sated, and just as invisibly, he is reborn to a more profound and truer life, he is reborn within - he becomes a new man in his most intimate self" (ibidem).

Invoking the Most Blessed Mary, let us ask her to lead us to the encounter with Jesus so that our friendship with him may be ever more intense. Let us ask her to introduce us to the full communion o0f love with her Son, the living Bread descended from heaven, so that we many be renewed by him in the intimacy of our being.

After the prayers, he said this:
My thoughts go, at this time, to the Asian peoples, especially in the Philippines and the People's Republic of China who have been struck severely by violent rains, as well as the people in northwest Iran, who were struck by a violent earthquake.

These events claimed numerous deaths and injuries, thousands of homeless and tremendous damages. I invite you to join me in prayer for those who have lost their lives and for all the persons tried by these devastating calamities. Let these brothers not lack our solidarity and support.

In English, he said:
I am pleased to greet the English-speaking pilgrims gathered for this Angelus prayer.

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

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

---

Tuesday, August 13, 2013 ,19th Week in Ordinary Time

SAINTS PONTIANUS, Pope, & HIPPOLYTUS, Priest and Theologian (d Sardinia 235), Martyrs
The Church commemorates a Pope and the man who considered himself the anti-Pope to him on the same day, because they both died as martyrs in the mines of Sardinia, to which they had been exiled with other Church leaders by the Emperor Maximiminus Thrax. Their bodies were brought back to Rome by Pope Fabian, to be buried in the Catacombs of St. Callistus. Pontianus was Pope from 230-235 and presided at a Council that confirmed the excommunication of Origen of Alexandria. Much more is known about Hippolytus, a priest who considered himself holier than the three Popes in his lifetime and was, in effect, in schism with the Church. In fact, he had himself elected Pope by his followers to protest the election of Pontianus. He believed that the Church must be uncompromisngly separate from the world, and therefore condemned the Popes as too 'lenient' and thereby heretical. Apparently, he reconciled himself to the Church and to Pontian while in exile. He is highly revered in the Orthodox world for his writings, which are considered the fullest source of current knowledge about Roman liturgy and the structure of the Church in the second and third centuries. A famous 13th century altarpiece depicts a legend claiming that Hippolytus died by having his limbs tied to horses, tearing him apart as they ran.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081313.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for the Holy Father.


One year ago...

No events for Benedict XVI either. But the Vatican did release, as scheduled, the Vatican prosecutor's summation of the investigation of the Pope's ex-valet Paolo Gabriele for his role in Vatileaks, and a Vatican magistrate has ruled he will stand trial for aggravated theft, along with an IT specialist in the Secretariat of State, accused of 'aiding and abetting' Gabriele after the fact.


P.S. 2013 Gabriele and Vatileaks kept the media's Vatican pot boiling through the dog days of summer last year but this was the first significant 'development' in what was then an ongoing investigation... I have chosen to re-post here Andrea Tornielli's extensive commentary on the Vatican report - which I subsequently translated in full - because it recalls the highlights thus far at the time of this most lamentable episode...

The first 'truths'
known about Vatileaks
Translated from

August 13, 2012

At noon today, the Holy See Press Office published the entire text of the case summation and judicial decision to try Paolo Gabriele, 46, for aggravated theft in the Vatileaks case.

Gabriele confessed that he copied confidential documents from the Pope's private study and having personally delivered them in the course of several meetings to Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, who first used some of the documents on two broadcasts of his weekly TV program "The Untocuhables' on the private TV channel La7, and then more than 200 documents in a book entitled Sua Santita: Le carte segrete di Beneditto XVI (Private papers of Benedict XVI).

The first news was the existence of a second accused person - a copmputer specialist at the Secretariat of State, Claudio Sciarpelletti, who is accused only of 'aiding and abetting' Gabriele He was arrested and detained only for a day on May 25, after Vatican police found in his office desk an envelop addressed to Gabriele, containing documents regarding investigations conducted by the Vatican police (which documents were in Nuzzi's book), and for having given contradictory versions about his relationship with Gabriele.

Another revelation has to do with someone Gabriele calls his 'spiritual father', referred to only by the initial B in today's reports, to whom the ex-valet provided a boxful of documents that were presumably duplicates of those Gabriele provided to Nuzzi. However, the priest told investigators that he eventually decided to destroy all the documents because of the gravity of the situation and the 'sensitive nature' of the material.

At the same time, however, Gabriele claims that the priest advised him initially to deny any responsibility for the leaks unless it was the Holy Father himself who asked him directly.

Equally interesting is what the reports say about Gabriele's account of the motivations that led him to reach out to Nuzzi. He claimed he was greatly impressed by Nuzzi's book on the IOR, Vaticano s.p.a., (which was based on a private archive of IOR documents kept by a Mons. Dardozzi working within IOR, and discloses the activities of IOR in the past 30 years including the infamous Banco Ambrosiano collapse that cost the Vatican $250 million in restitution to affected clents.)

He thereafter found out through the Internet that Nuzzi would be hosting a program to be called 'The Untouchables'. He found the address of the place where the program was being produced, and got in touch with Nuzzi. There followed a series of meetings between them in an apartment at Nuzzi's disposition on via Angelica near the Vatican. The eventual interview on 'The Untouchables' with the 'disguised' self-confessed 'mole' with tech-altered voice - Gabriele himself - was also filmed in that apartment.

The Vatican investigation has ended only insofar as the decision to try Gabriele for aggravated theft and Sciarpelletti for aiding and abetting, but will continue in terms of more serious crimes (crimes against the State, crimes against the authorities of the State, calmuny; defamation; conspiracy to commit crime; violation of sccrecy)against persons variously involved in Vatileaks.

Another surprising revelation is that in the search of Gabriele's apartment on May 23, Vatican police found not just copies of the private documents he had 'pilfered' but also a check for 100,000 euros made out to Benedict XVI representing a donation to the Pope's charities by the Catholic University of San Antonio di Guadalupe, dated March 26, 2012.

Also found were a gold nugget also presented to the Pope as a gift, and a 1591 translation of the Aeneid by Annibal Caro, printed in Venice in 1581.

Also revealed by the Vatican reports today was that Gabriele was examined by two psychiatric experts, who although they reached different conclusions as to Gabriele's awareness of and responsibiloity for his crime, provide a disturbing psytchological profile of the ex-valet, marked by his 'extreme suggestability'. The investigating magistrate decided that despite the psychological problems, Gabriele was prosecutable.

It was also interesting how various witnesses - among them, Mons. Georg Gaenswein - spoke about the good reputation of Gabriele, particularly his religiosity, which made his crime that much more surprising.

But the ex-valet insisted that his only intention was to help the Pope, whom he believed "was not fully informed of what was happening in the Vatican". [Strange that a simple-minded man could think that about a Pope as aware and well-informed as Joseph Ratzinger has always kept himself. But then supposedly 'intelligent' men like Marco Politi continually underrate and denigrate Benedict XVI for the same reason!... And yet again, one must point out that the most 'incriminating' (the Bertone 'power grab' letters) of the documents Gabriele laid his hands on, over a period of two years, were not news at all, but had already been reported widely. Everything else is either trivial, petty or marginal curia. What did he think he was revealing that the Pope - and anyone who follows the Vaticanistas' reporting - did not already know? Nuzzi must have done such a great 'kiss-up' job on Gabriele every time they met to keep him motivated to provide more documents. Gabriele explains the apparent 'randomness' of the dpcuments he copied, saying that he never rummaged inside the desks in the Pope's study, only took hold of whatever was lying in front of him.]

It is clear from the references in today's reports to persons identified only by capital letters that there are other persons variously involved in Vatileaks. But nothing emerges in today's reports that hints at the possibility of any moral masterminds who might have influenced in some way the actions of Gabriele.

Ongoing investigations will likely focus on this aspect, while the report of the three-man cardinals' commission could shed light on the Vatican environment in which Vatileaks became possible.

Another observation, from the media standpoint: In the trial instruction and in the excerpts released from the interrogation of Gabriele, the references made to the media outlets for Vatileaks are always and only about Nuzzi, his broadcatss on La7, and his book, without any refernce at al to the newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano, which first published the Vigano letters, and other subsequent letters that were then part of Nuzzi's book.


I've finally read through the prosecutor's case summation and the investigating magistrate's exposition leading up to his decision to send Paolo Gabriele to trial for aggravated theft in the Vatileaks case, and though not being generally patient with legal documents, I must say I was happily surprised by the compelling presentations which not only present the facts that the investigation of Gabriele uncovered, but also the steps and reasons thereof that were meticulously followed in the investigation, and the applicable Vatican law at each step. [The process and argumentation alone of determining the psychological state of Gabriele is most instructive and quite fascinating!] No one could ever call this kind of work 'whitewash' of any kind. And frankly, it's much more interesting reading than the pedestrian documents that Gabriele managed to get out to Nuzzi for publication!

And while I share the widespread disappointment that the investigations carried out so far have not gone beyond Gabriele, the judicial inquiry is far from over and may yet bring to light new names. I had assumed that 60 days would have been more than enough time to get to the ground-zero-rock-bottom of this entire tawdry episode but the meticulousness - Fr. Lombardi was right to use the word - of the investigators demands they take the time they need to prove potential accusations of crimes far more serious than just 'aggravated theft'...

John Allen's 'instanalysis' on the Vatican statements
ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/qa-vatican%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98butler-did-it%E2%80...
offers nothing new by way of information nor anything but the predictable in terms of pedestrian analysis, especially the line that any way you look at it, this is all bad for the Vatican, and the perennial suspicion that the Vatican will always do what it can to exclude the involvement of any senior prelates or even, God forbid, cardinals. How about giving the Vatican under Benedict XVI, at the very least, the benefit of the doubt in this case, especially since it has been made clear the investigation is far from over?

And if I may be forgiven for pointing it out, Allen mistakenly translates a statement by Paolo Gabriele as:
"Moreover, I always felt a certain intelligence acting in my interest", when clearly what Gabriele said, using the English word 'intelligence' (as in secret service work) itself, according to the Vatican transcript, was textually: "Oltre agli interessi personali, fra i quali quello per l’intelligence, ritenevo che il Sommo Pontefice non fosse correttamente informato" (Besides my personal interests [in Vatican affairs], among them that for 'intelligence', I thought that the Supreme Pontiff was not correctly informed".

It is here Gabriele goes on to say: "Seeing evil and corruption everywhere in the Church,... I was sure that a shock, even one in the media, would serve to bring back the Church on the right track... In some way, I thought that in the Church this was the role of the Holy Spirit, by whom I felt in some way infiltrated". [DELUSIONAL, DELUSIONAL, DELUSIONAL!]

I think one of the psychiatric experts who evaluated him said it best: "The cognitive elements emerging from (Gabriele's) clinical testing and interrogation delineate a personality organization characterized by an incomplete and unstable identity, suggestibility, sentiments of grandiosity, a rigid and altered moral ideal according to his own personal idea of justice, as well as a pervasive need to be appreciated and esteemed".

How tragic that a major scandal - in the eyes of the public, at least, and the Vaticanistas who frame the public narrative, and one that is oh-so-gratuitous because it really revealed nothing new, or particularly scandalous, for that matter - developed from the grandiloquent delusional actions of a simple-minded man!

PPS - This may seem like a quibble, but i dislike inaccuracies, especially if they are repeatedly used, as in the description of Paolo Gabriele as 'the Pope's butler', or in the Italian media. his 'maggiordomo'. Although Gabriele served meals in the papal household, he was never properly a butler or a majordomo, which would imply he had seniority or supervision over the Pope's Memores Domini housekeepers, which he did not. So I now draw some satisfaction from the fact that the Vatican judicial reports yesterday describe Gabriele only as 'aiutante di camera'('chamber aide', literally, or valet, to be more idiomatic), never as 'maggiordomo'. But still theEnglish headlines read 'butler' or 'majordomo', without even qualifying the description with 'EX-'. Surely, he ceased to occupy his position the moment he was arrested for a crime that meant a personal betrayal of the man he was sworn to serve (in a required Vatican oath of office)!

The lie of ‘Hitler’s Pope’
is collapsing little by little
A new book shows how Pius XII protected Italian Jews,
especially those in Rome, from Nazi persecution
Two English Bridgettines exemplified how Jews were not merely hidden in religious houses-
they were also nurtured and profoundly respected as Jews
By WILLIAM ODDIE

August 9, 2013

Joanna Bogle has written prolifically and devotedly on a wide variety of subjects, always defending and proclaiming the values of the Catholic Church and aimed at nourishing in her readers the capacity to live the Catholic life; and her writings are undoubtedly an important part of what led recently to her deserved elevation to the rank of Dame of the Order of St Gregory.

I have just read another of her books, shortly to be published by Gracewing, which everyone should read when it is published later this month: Courage and Conviction, the story of how two English Bridgettine sisters, Mother Riccarda Hambrough and Mother Katherine Flanagan, sheltered Jews in their convents during the German occupation of Rome. This account is invaluable, as a vivid insight into one small part of the much wider effort by religious houses and other Catholic institutions throughout Rome and the whole of Italy to shelter Jews from the Germans after the fall of Mussolini in 1943.

On the general question of Pius XII’s part in the shelter of Jews throughout Italy, Dame Joanna’s book is a useful guide, especially in the face of the persistent propaganda attempting to show that Pius XII was, to quote a particularly disgusting book title, “Hitler’s Pope”.

As she points out, the majority of Italian Jews – some 80 percent – survived the Second World War, during the years when, across Europe 80 per cent of Jews died. She quotes J Lichten’s book A Question of Moral Judgement: Pius XII and the Jews, one among many accounts of what until recently was widely known and accepted by everyone (especially by leading Jews like Golda Meir), that

---

“The Pope sent out the order that religious buildings were to give refuge to Jews, even at the price of great personal sacrifice on the part of their occupants; he released monasteries and convents from the cloister rule forbidding entry into these religious houses to all but a few specified outsiders, so that they could be used as hiding places. Thousands of Jews – the figures run from 4,000 to 7,000 – were hidden, fed, clothed, and bedded in the 180 known places of refuge in Vatican City, churches and basilicas, Church administrative buildings, and parish houses. Unknown numbers of Jews were sheltered in Castel Gandolfo, the site of the Pope’s summer residence [according to Rabbi David Dalin, at least 3,000 found refuge there], private homes, hospitals, and nursing institutions; and the Pope took personal responsibility for the care of the children of Jews deported from Italy.”

---

As Dame Joanna points out, the scale of the rescue operation was huge. In the City of Rome itself 155 convents and monasteries sheltered around 5,000 Jews. Sixty Jews lived for nine months at the Gregorian University, and a considerable number in the cellar of the Pontifical biblical institute. One could go on at wearying length.

The story of the English Bridgettines, Mother Riccarda Hambrough and Mother Katherine Flanagan, is one small and typically courageous part of the huge operation that Pius set under way. What emerges vividly is not only the vital part played by the Pope himself; but the indispensable part played by the faith and courage of so many individual Catholics who obeyed his call.

Mother Riccarda hid about 60 Italian Jews from the Nazis in her Rome convent, the Casa di Santa Brigida. She was baptised at St Mary Magdalene’s, Brighton, at the age of four after her parents converted to the Catholic faith. She was guided towards the Bridgettine Order by Fr Benedict Williamson, who was the parish priest of St Gregory’s Parish, Earlsfield, between 1909 and 1915. Sister Katherine Flanagan, too, was guided by Fr Williamson and also joined the Bridgettine sisters.

What is striking is the way in which, as far as possible, the Sisters made it possible for those they sheltered, not simply to cower in hiding, but to live normal and dignified lives.

One refugee remembered that they had asked for refuge, but without saying at first they were Jews. They went to Mass, copying what the Catholics did. They were soon told that “we must live our own beliefs, that we should not feel any need to pretend, and that we must live and pray as Jews”.

The same refugee told Dame Joanna last year (this book is not a scissors and paste job), that “I was even able to continue my education: a lady professor, a Jewish lady, came in and gave me lessons. She taught me Latin. We studied Tacitus and I became really engrossed in it. It was particularly important for me because earlier the Jews had been kicked out of all the schools, and I could have missed out on the chance of an education. But because of this tutoring, when the Allies arrived and we were liberated, I hadn’t missed a year of my schooling”.

The present Mother superior of St Birgitta’s, Mother Thekla, who knew Mother Riccarda well, remembers that she was “was truly very beautiful. She was a wonderful person — an angel on the earth. And she was humble—she had this spirit of service, of simply wanting to serve and help people”. This is an inspiring story, simply but powerfully told.

“Above all”, remembers Mother Thekla, “[Mother Riccarda] had a profound respect for these Jewish guests. It was important not to let them feel humiliated by their situation—they were vulnerable, and it was crucial to let them know that they were welcome and that the sisters wanted to help them in any way they could.”

By concentrating on the Bridgettines in Rome, Dame Joanna has vividly brought to life a microcosm of what was happening wherever there was German occupation after the fall of Mussolini. Multiply this account by a thousand, and you have some idea of what the Catholic Church in Italy, directly inspired by the Pope himself, believed it had a vocation to accomplish.

By no means all Jewish writers today have uncritically accepted the torrent of anti-Pius propaganda, the contents of which over recent decades have generally been assumed by the secular media (and even by some Catholics) to be well-founded.

As Rabbi David Dalin has written in a lengthy and important article, well worth reading carefully and in full, though Pius has had his defenders recently, "…. it is the books vilifying the Pope that have received most of the attention, particularly Hitler’s Pope, a widely reviewed volume marketed with the announcement that Pius XII was 'the most dangerous churchman in modern history', without whom “Hitler might never have . . . been able to press forward.” [This is the substance of the anti-Pius XII black myth - devoutly perpetrated by militant Jews and even more militant anti-Church 'intelligentsia' - that lays the ultimate blame for the Holocaust on him not on Hitler!]

The “silence” of the Pope is becoming more and more firmly established as settled opinion in the American media: “Pius XII’s elevation of Catholic self-interest over Catholic conscience was the lowest point in modern Catholic history,” the New York Times remarked, almost in passing, in a review last month of Carroll’s Constantine’s Sword.

Curiously, nearly everyone pressing this line today — from the ex-seminarians John Cornwell and Garry Wills to the ex-priest James Carroll — is a lapsed or angry Catholic.

For Jewish leaders of a previous generation, the campaign against Pius XII would have been a source of shock. During and after the war, many well-known Jews – Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, Moshe Sharett, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, and innumerable others — publicly expressed their gratitude to Pius.

In his 1967 book Three Popes and the Jews, the diplomat Pinchas Lapide (who served as Israeli consul in Milan and interviewed Italian Holocaust survivors) declared Pius XII “was instrumental in saving at least 700,000, but probably as many as 860,000 Jews from certain death at Nazi hands.”

In the end, that truth will once again become generally accepted. When it is, Joanna Bogle’s important new book will have played its part.

Thanks to Beatrice for the image!

An offensive piece came out prominently in La Repubblica on August 8 by that newspaper's new attack dog, Paolo Rodari, on his third or fourth newspaper in eight years, in which he rails against 'traditionalists, ultra-conservatives and even sedevancantists' whom he accuses of 'anathematizing' the Pope as the object of their ire, and proliferating their attacks against Pope Francis in the blogosphere and are thus 'demeaning the Papacy'.

What a strange reaction! After all, not even John Paul II, except maybe after he died, ever had the near-unanimous alltime popularity of Pope Francis! Don't the Pope's sycophants in the media not listen to him at all - with his repeated calls for 'mercy' towards all? Why are his sycopahnts being so merciless with anyone who does not share their fanatic idolatry of the Pope?

Indeed, why would anyone even bother to notice the 'traditionalists' whom for years media have scorned anyway as being too few and therefore too insignificant to matter? Why do they matter all of a sudden just because some have criticized certain decisions by the Pope such as the crackdown on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate?

Two Italian bloggers often called 'traditionalist' have responded in different ways. First, here is Francesco Colafemmina whose blog title 'Fides et Forma' translates into 'Faith and beauty' which he says constitute an indissoluble union for approaching the Lord = the via pulchritudine often cited by Benedict XVI, than whom there is no better exponent. Colafemmina's declared objective for the blog is to revive discussion on the relationship among sacred art and architecture, the Catholic faith and the bimillennial Tradition of the Church. That has necessarily included appreciation for the traditional Mass.

The FFI question and
'Vaticanopinionism' in
the time of Pope Francis
by Francesco Colafemmina
Translated from his blog

August 10, 2013

Yes, we immediately understood that it would be an uphill battle. But what is disconcerting is the banality of this obscurantist climate that is being created as the internal consensus around Pope Francis keeps growing.

It was the imposition of administrative discipline on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate that caused a full cup to overflow - not that of the world that is picturesquely and politically defined as 'traditionalist', but those among Pope Francis's 'fans' who are far more intransigent and devoted than those of Benedict XVI or John Paul II.

They have been prompt to read - rightly or wrongly - in every move of the new Pontificate an initiative necessary to unburden the Church, as it were, of the 'failed' Ratzingerian management, a 'failure' that they discern, at the very least, in the 'lack of consensus' under the previous Pontificate. [Consensus among whom? The faithful? The Church hierarchy? The Curia?]

It is useless to deny that everyone is enthusiastic about the new Pope. And even the slightest wince at this or that gesture, this or that statement, of the Pope - even while one keeps ethe respect and affection that is due him - now means to condemn oneself to being 'burned at the stake' by the media. [A pathetic and ridiculous example was that article written a few days ago by Paolo Rodari in La Repubblica....)

It would seem that the unconditional approval for the new Pontiff constitutes the 'act of faith' for the contemporary Catholic. That is undeniable.

Even as there are those who still pretend to see a continuity of thought and close connections between the current Pope and his predecessor - everyone seems to be aware that, since that night in March 2013, with Pope Francis, "nothing will be as it was before", to
paraphrase a statement issued by the Great oriental Masonic Lodge of Italy the night he was elected Pope. [But Pope Francis cannot be held responsible for anything intemperate that the Masons or any other groups chose to say that day!]

Now, whether it is preventive criticism or perhaps just sheer prejudice on the part of some Catholic commentators who have been tagged dismissively as 'traditionalists' or 'close to traditionalist circles' - as though traditionalism were a contagious disease or an extremist category like Taliban, Red Bridge or fascist - hostility against them in the media has become a matter of fact. Just as much as the hostility (at times to the point of disgust) expressed by persons like Enco Bianchi, Vito Mancuso and Hans Kueng against Benedict XVI, was taken for granted.

I am not saying that it is legitimate to behave like that trio of anti-Benedict dissidents, but I would first address a question of methodology to the Italian Vaticanistas who have changed - perhaps without knowing it into Vaticanopinionistas, newsmen who, instead of just informing the public objectively about facts in the Vatican, carry over their personal opinions into their news reporting, sometimes exceeding in zeal the information officers of the Holy See itself.-

Why is it that until a few months ago, no one in the media criticized - or to use a Franciscan term, spat at, the 'dissidents', the critics and the enemies of Pope Benedict, whereas now there is some sort of inoxidable media shield that is promptly raised and deployed to defend Pope Francis, always and in any way whatsoever, on land, on the seas and in the skies, to use a military simile.

Perhaps a too simplistic question. So I will proceed to the next one: In the administrative discipline imposed on the FFI, why is there a collective lifting of shields against writers Gnocchi and Palmaro and Professor De Mattei for their defense of the FFI?

They are intellectuals against whom a vigorous antipathy has been growing from those who form the Pope's media shield - a shield that now includes even 'ex-traditionalists' like Massimo Introvigne, who has become the Sibylline prophet of Catholic conservatives whom one might call "maanchista' [from the Italian words 'Ma anche', which means 'but also'. I am still trying to figure out how different is having the 'but also' attitude from the more familiar 'et-et' statement of Catholic inclusivity, which is additive rather than exclusive. .]

I think the question is not as they put it, "Why are these traditionalists - ugly, dirty, evil people - instrumentalizing the case of the FFI and inciting a revolt against Rome?" but rather:

On the basis of what ecclesial logic does celebration of the traditional Mass constitute a threat to 'sentire cum ecclesia'?

Why would the Mass according to the missal of John XXIII constitute a transgression of the 'equilibrium of religious life' in a congregation like the FFI?

What act of the Pontifical Magisterium teaches that the celebration of Mass according to the older Missal is a potential danger for any community of religious? On what 'jurisprudence' is the Holy See sanction against the FFI based?

But when they lament that the usual sordid 'traditionalists' - a label that makes me more nauseated the more it is used as synonymous to 'the enemy who is full of himself, an egotist, arrogant and vainglorious, or in short, 'pelagian' - criticizes a decision of the Holy See, it almost seems as though all those grandiose analysts and all the Vaticanistas who, in good faith or bad, happily played up all the presumed deficiencies, problems and presumed crookedness of the Curia under Benedict XVI, do not seem to realize that the Curia under Francis, at least so far, remains the same as before!

And that therefore, if errors and crookedness were being committed until a few months ago, why can they not be happening even now - with the same people?

From this follows the next question: Besides a new Pope and his personal style, his gestures, his words and his wardrobe, what has really changed in the Vatican, and why should we await any future changes with joyful expectation?

By what faith or providential promise or crystal ball reading should we imagine that the future will necessarily be better than the past?

And so I get to the last of my questions: Prophet Introvigne and my friend Andrea Tornielli have sought from the very start to identify the positive 'fruits of Pope Francis' - in terms of conversions, confessions, new returns to the flock, thanks to the words and special gestures of the new Pope, etc. etc. That by these fruits, we ought to recognize the miraculous gifts of a new Pope who already has brought the sweet breezes of springtime to the Church.

I am struck that for them, this evangelical logic is valid for Pope Francis but is completely ignored in the case of the FFI. And allow me to say that even one soul saved for always is more important in God's eyes than any clamorous media success.

In terms of vocations inspired by the FFI, have not the spiritual and pastoral fruits of this congregation been evident to veryone for years? And is it not therefore evident that in the face of a constant increase in vocations for teh FFI, the presence and the actions of a tiny group of internal dissidents - be they just 6 or even 30 ffriars, could be seen by the analyst as marginal?

Why should 'good fruits' be only those that the media consensus attributes to the figure of the Pope, while ignoring the good fruits of the FFI as though these were simply accessories?

Why is it that on the FFI question, it has become necessary to defend the Holy See 'to the death' if need be, the Roman Curia, the same that just a few months ago was the principal target of the media, and is still the same but no longer the target?

I doubt that anyone in the media will wish to answer these questions. In any case, allow me to offer two possible general answers they might give, shared, I believe, by those most avid to invoke modern 'bonfires of the Inquisition' (called auto-da-fe, or acts of faith) for the squalid 'world of the traditionalists'.

The first is the more radical and also the more sincere: Today we are living in a new atmosphere, one that has obliterated Pope Benedict and his 'steps backward', his failed attempts to respond to the crisis of the Church through a recovery of her past.

This new climate denies not just the existence of Benedict's 'questionable experiments' [though they criticize them!] but even that there are any discordant voices coming from within the Church. Today, even while we have gone beyond the polarity traditionalism/progressivism, we feel more disposed to a re-evaluation of the 'progressivist' message of the 1970s because it had a a social dimension that must be recovered.

Traditionalism and all its analogous forms of expression are images of a defunct Catholicism, one that is embalmed, that is self-referential, without any social or spiritual interest other than to safeguard en bloc decrepit forms of religiosity and of Christian life. And therefore, they must be marginalized, deprived of credibility, ghettoized... or placed under administrative discipline.

The second response is a rhetorical hypocrisy that masks the first response under the veil of Christian convenience, under the mantle that this is the 'way of the Spirit' which we must follow without protest or argument or using our brain in any way: The good lies in the new course of action at the Vatican which is that desired by the Holy Spirit - even if the Curia remains the same - and we must follow what the Spirit tells us, of course.

On the other hand, the evil lies in the blogosphere of the spirtually worldly who are ever ready to instrumentalize events in order to attack our beloved Pope.

It is clear that we are facing nothing more than an ideological encounter, involving nothing of faith or spirituality. What is important is to have the last word or to impose a new vision independent of the final goal that should always be the salvation of souls and the glory of God.

But the latter are concepts that have now been superseded by mundane political logic. For centuries, politics has required a small minority to attack, to use as scapegoats. How relevant today are the words of Benedict XVI in his March 2009 letter to the bishops of the world:

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At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown [he meant the FSSPX]; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.

---

It goes without saying that if the Pope, the Church and the Vaticanopinonists think otherwise of some group(s), then there will be a mutual exchange of unlimited consensus....

The following viewpoint by Catholic historian Roberto De Mattei, one of the traditionalist intellectuals denounced by Rodari in his article, is even more tendentious than Colafemmina's, but it is a counterweight of sorts to the unconditional and completely acritical celebration of Pope Francis that dominates media and the blogosphere today... It is the account of an interview with him that was published in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, and which he reproduces on the site Corrispondenza Romana for which he regularly writes commentaries.


The People’s Pope:
A closer look
Interview by Matteo Matzuzzi for Il Foglio
Translated from

August 12, 2013

Black shoes rather than red, black briefcase containing his razor and breviary, a Popemobile that is not bulletproof: "We have been reduced to judging a Pope by such elements, or by an inflight news conference rather than by magisterial statements," Church historian Roberto De Mattei tells Il Foglio, expressing his concern over the fact that the Roman Pontiff is becoming 'a personality for magazines and talk shows'.

"Today, everything has become superficial, gestural acts in which the ultimate meaning of things is being sought. Neglecting content and substance, we are discussing 'form' which ends up being the substance itself." [Or, as John Allen put it, the Pope himself has become the message.]

"One simply has to compare," says De Mattei, "how the media reported on the Pope's first encyclical and that inflight news conference. Paradoxically, far more play and emphasis was given to the news conference than to the encyclical, and yet, what an abyss there is between the two!" [But De Mattei fails to note that, in practical terms, as I had occasion to note earlier, the media could not possibly afford to say about Lumen fidei more than the minimum they could get away with, since it is so obviously Benedict XVI's work almost entirely, and even they could not make believe it was Francis's encyclical and therefore praise it as if it was his work, because in doing so, they would, God forbid!, be praising Benedict in effect! Thus we have the rare phenomenon of the first encyclical by a Pope in the modern era - by the most popular Pope there ever was - ending up as a three-day wonder, for all the major importance usually attached to first encyclicals. Which is very unfair to the two Popes involved and to the encyclical itself, which, I hope, is selling well.

De Mattei is not impressed by the 90-minute chat that Francis had with newsmen on board the plane that carried them back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro after a week during which Pope Francis met with the pilgrims of WYD but also with the 'least and the poorest' in a Rio slum.

"The media ought to be reporting on the acts of governance of the Pope even if there have not been many so far," says De Mattei. [But they have been zealously reporting every small detail of anything the Pope has said or done as something exceptional and unprecedented in the history of the Church, so you can't fault the media for that. Similarly, how could they not play up the Pope's news conference with his spontaneous answers to anything they asked (even if, as usual, no one dared ask obvious follow=up questions)? If John Paul II had even been half as casual with his answers as Pope Francis was, we would have heard so from Angela Ambrogetti who edited a book containing transcripts of JP2's on-board news conferences.]

"Popes express themselves through their encyclicals and motu proprio [which are apostolic letters, really]. The Pope's words on the plane were direct but they were personal opinions expressed off the cuff and totally devoid of any magisterial value," De Mattei observes. "Of course, they are interesting because they help build the image, but as papal statements, they remain marginal".

He cites the example of the Pope's statements about gays and about Mary whom the Pope said was "more important than the apostles, than bishops, priests and deacons". [Actually, the Pope said "more important than the Church" which sounds strange as theology, but a Francis-adulating commentator claims he was merely repeating what the Church Fathers have said. Knowing little about what the Church Fathers wrote, other than citations made by Benedict XVI, I must check out that claim.]

De Mattei thinks these are delicate and important issues that can be dealt with "only withoin a magiosgerial discourse and not reduced to a boutade. Quips may be significant but they are of no magisterial value". [I am sure Pope Francis did not think his statements had any magisgerial value at all, but he surely knew their tremendous news value!]

Off-the-cuff remarks that can be easily misunderstood are OK with ordinary people but problematic when coming from the Vicar of Christ. "Reading the commentary on what Papa Bergoglio said about gays [Note that the Pope chose to use the word 'gay' and never used the word 'homosexual', but then our pluperfect Pope is also hip] - including that by the Catholic philosopher Giovanni Reale in Corriere della Sera - one might have thought the Church was on the verge of a doctrinal change! But if one reads the entire transcript of that news conference, the Pope himself said that his position was based on Catholic doctrine itself".

It all depends, De Mattei says, on where the emphasis is placed, but in the media narrative about the Argentine Pope, the emphasis is on change. A change in style, and a revolution in gestures and language which, De Mattei says, end up "becoming even deeper than anything on the doctrinal plane'.

Form expresses content, or so it should. The problem arises "when the content is lost, set aside, mislaid or misdirected. Then the discussion is all about form that is empty. If you ignore the history of the Papacy, then the Pope's red shoes become a frivolity."

But in all this, De Mattei says, the mass media are 'a bit at fault' [A bit? They are largely at fault!] "It doesn't much interest me whether a Pope rides a Fiat 500 or a Mercedes. But if I found myself in front of a Pius X, it doesn't matter if he wore rags".

The point is something else, he says, namely, "the reduction of the position of the Pope to mere gestures" without caring too much about substance.

"Yet Francis is not unprepared nor ingenuous," he notes. "He has thought out everything he does and has chosen to convey his message more through gestures than with words, and more with his personal words than through magisterial statements". [Which is why I remarked once that for all his criticism of men of the Church being 'self-referential', he himself has been unusually self-referential even in his homilies and major discourses!]

But De Mattei fears that with respect to the media, "The Pope is playing with fire, that he thinks he will succeed in exercising dominance over the world of communications. But that's being ingenuous. Maybe the Bishop of Rome over-estimates his political abilities to relate to the reality of communications today". [No, the Vicar of Christ trusts that the Holy Spirit will always sustain him.]

De Mattei says that "In today's world, we need the spirit of the supernatural rather than political or mediatic calculations. My fear is that by presenting himself as an ordinary man like everybody else, he will end up being one. But he is the Vicar of Christ, a fact that cannot be understated. Red shoes and the sedia gestatoria have the merit of expressing - though in a way that many may find objectionable - the sacred value pertaining to the Vicar of Christ".

But if the Pope were "to go about wearing 'clergyman' attire, as he did when he was Bishop of Buenos Aires, what message would that give?" [But I don't think Francis would ever do that as Pope, unless it were for some incognito enterprise. White cassock and unadorned sash over black pants and black shoes, as he wears now, would seem to be the minimum dress code for him. However, I am still bothered that as a cardinal going into the Conclave, he had no problem wearing full choir dress and ceremonial mozzetta, and then a day later, as Pope, he decides to do away with them. There is a symbolic reason for every liturgical vestment prescribed by th Church for centuries, not just habit or aesthetics. ]

The fundamental point that must not be misunderstood is that the Pontiff c cc"is not just a man like all of us, and this 'humanization' of the Papacy can lead to forgetting the divine and metaphysical basis for the office". [I don't think the bedrock Catholic is ever likely to forget that! It's the superficial and 'lite' Catholics who do.]

De Mattei believes that the consequence of such a process of desacralization is the elimination of the Magisterial barrier: "When the words of the Pope become those of the common man, then all criticism becomes legitimate. When truth is reduced to opinion, when the content of the Magisterium is mislaid, when the Pope no longer talks of non-negotiable principles, then everything becomes subject to dispute". [Everything has always been subject to dispute by dissidents within the Church, regardless!]

"This is a process that can lead the Church to protestantize itself, " he goes on. [But since Vatican II, that is exactly what many church jurisdictions, especially in the Western world, have done - carrying out ethical, doctrinal, liturgical and architectural changes that have tended to eliminate those features that distinguish Catholicism from the Protestant sects. The Novus Ordo itself was the successful initiative of those who openly declared they wanted to protestantize the liturgy in a misguided expression of the ecumenical spirit. Of course, Benedict XVI has shown that the Ordinary Form, when celebrated with the appropriate solemnity and attention to liturgical detail, can be an experience just as spiritually edifying and rewarding as the traditional Mass.]

On the question of "a poor Church that is close to 'the least among the faithful' and missionary to the peripheries of existence", De Mattei expresses his perplexity: "I have been quite struck by the fact that a Pope who harks back to Francis of Assisi as a model for Christian living, who repeatedly warns against spiritual worldliness and advocates simplicity and sobriety, fully backed the decision of the Congregation for the Religious under Brazilian Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz in cracking down on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate".

Because, he says, "If there is any religious congregation which lives the evangelical spirit fully, it is the FFI. It is disconcerting when one thinks that even as evangelical simplicity is continuously preached, the Roman Curia with its structures has remained unchanged. [But all that is supposed to change = or everything 'bad' about it, at any rate. The reform has not really begun, and the Pope has said it will take time.] The axe is falling on people like the FFI - the smallest, the least, those who have been faithful to tradition. If the Pope wants to be close to 'the least' of the faithful, he does not have to go far. He simply has to look at the many communities of the faithful who remain tenaciously attached to the Magiserium, to the perennial morality of the Church. To those who have been maltreated by their bishops, by the dicasteries of the Curia, who have been isolated and demonized for decades. It is a false concept to seek out the farther reaches while forgetting those who are near".

De Mattei emphasizes that he is not questioning Pope Francis's concern for the peripheries, for those farthest from the Cgurch, "But it must be remembered that the way to get to the farther reaches passes through those who are nearer, and there are no shortcuts. Today, the closer objects of concern are those Catholics strongly linked to tradition. They are among those who need mercy and tenderness - as the Pope said in Rio - from the Church".

[Well, that is a valid point of view. For some reason, when the Pope says 'the least and the poorest', people only think of the materially deprived. (Members of religious communities who profess poverty, chastity and obedience are equally deprived.) Lately, the Pope has clarified that the deprived also include those who are spiritually needful, which is, I believe, what Jesus meant, e.g., rich people compared to whom it would be easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for them to reach the Kingdom of God. Or religious congregations that seek to lead evangelical lives and are inexplicably mistreated. For that, priests do not need to go far afield to find them, who are as much in need of their ministry as the materially poor people of the parish. That is why I have always been most uncomfortable about Catholic bleeding hearts who seem to think that the Church of Christ must discriminate against those who are 'not poor' just because they are 'not poor'. As though the Gospel - and God's love and mercy - do not apply to them as well.]

Wednesday, August 14, 2013, 19th Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. MAXIMILIAN KOLBE

ST. MAXIMILIAN MARIA KOLBE (Poland, 1894-1941), Franciscan, Missionary, Martyr
Born Rajmund Kolbe in Russian-occupied Poland to working-class parents who were both Franciscan lay tertiaries, a vision of Mary at age 12 shaped his life: She asked him to choose a white crown for purity or a red crown for martyrdom, and he chose both. His father, who joined the Polish independence movement, would be hanged by the Russians as a traitor in 1914, and his mother would become a Benedictine nun. He entered the Franciscan seminary in Lvov (now part of the Ukraine) at 14, became a novice at 16, taking the name of Maximilian Maria, then went to Rome in 1912, staying till 1919, to study philosophy and theology. In 1917, he and six friends founded the Militia Immaculatae (Crusade of Mary Immaculate) devoted to the conversion of sinners, opposition to freemasonry, spread of the Miraculous Medal, and devotion to Mary in general. He was ordained at age 24, then returned to Poland in 1919 to teach history at the Krakow seminary. He took a year off to be treated for tuberculosis. Then in 1922, he started publishing a missionary magazine, Knight of the Immaculate, to fight religious apathy. At its peak, it had a circulation of about a million. In 1927, he started the monastery of Niepokalanow, the City of the Immaculate, on land near Warsaw that was given to him by a Polish prince. By 1929, it had a junior seminary, and in 1935, a daily newspaper, The Little Daily, which printed 1137,000 on weekdays and 225,000 on Sundays and holidays. In 1930, he and four friars went to Japan, and within a month, they were publishing the Knight in Japanese. In 1931, he established a monastery similar to Niepokalanow in Nagasaki on the sheltered side of a mountain which would survive the nuclear bombing in 1945. He went on to India where he founded a third Niepokalanow house but it did not survive for lack of manpower. Due to poor health, he returned to Poland in 1936. In 1938, Niepokalanow started its own radio station. By 1939, the monastery housed an 800-men community, the largest in the world at the time, and was completely self-sufficient with its own health and firefighting facilities. [That he accomplished all he did - as a Franciscan who had to beg for all the material resources he needed - is in itself a miracle of faith.] Kolbe was arrested along with several brothers in September 1939 after the Nazis invaded Poland, but they were released after three months. In Niepokalanow, they housed 3,000 Polish refugees, two-thirds of them Jewish, and continued publication including anti-Nazi materials. This led to suppression of the monastery and Kolbe's second arrest in February 1941. He was transferred to Auschwitz in May, where he was assigned to a work group with particularly abusive guards. He survived a vicious beating when the guards left him for dead. In July, after a prisoner escape, the Nazis picked out 10 men to execute in retribution. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of a married man with young children. The ten men were isolated and left to starve to death. Kolbe kept their spirits up with prayer and singing. When he was the last of the 10 still alive, he was killed with an injection of carbolic acid. It was the eve of the Assumption. He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982. John Paul II called him 'the patron saint of our difficult century'.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/081413.cfm

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No new bulletins so far from the Vatican.

But there was a belated bulletin on an audience that the Pope granted yesterday to the national football teams of Italy
and Argentina who will play an exhibition match in his honor today at Rome's Olympic Stadium. He addressed the players
in Italian and Spanish.


Pope to celebrate Assumption
tomorrow in Castel Gandolfo

August 14, 2013

Pope Francis has so far spent most of his summer continuing to reside at the Domus Santa Maria – a change from his predecessors, who routinely spent the month of August at Castel Gandolfo.

On Thursday, though, the Holy Father will be travelling by helicopter to the Popes’ summer residence, where he will take part in celebrations for Ferragosto – the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

His first stop will be a private visit to the Immaculate Conception Convent of cloistered Poor Clare sisters. It will be the Pope’s second visit to the nuns.

Afterwards, the Holy Father will be welcomed by the town’s pastor, and then celebrate Mass for the local residents in Castel Gandalfo’s Piazza della Libertà. The Mass will conclude with the traditional recitation of the Angelus.

Pope Francis will be staying in town for lunch, followed by a strictly private visit to the parish house of San Tommaso da Villanova.

After a full day in Castel Gandolfo, the Holy Father will return to the Vatican.




One year ago today, eve of the Assumption, there were no events for Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. But on Wednesday, August 13, 2008, he had an abbreviated General Audience in Castel Gandolfo, right after he returned from a two-week sojourn in Bressanone, his favorite summer vacation place with his siblings when he was a cardinal. It was a special summer for him because he was in Sydney July 12-21 for WYD 2008, returned to Castel Gandolfo. and stayed a week before leaving for Bressanone.



GA at Castel Gandolfo:
The Pope pays tribute to
Edith Stein and Maximilian Kolbe
August 13, 2008

The Holy Father had an abbreviated General Audience today, addressing the faithful from the balcony overlooking the inner courtyard of the Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo. More than 4,000 pilgrims turned up for the catechesis.

His catechesis was the length of his usual Angelus messages. Before the Pope left for WYD Sydney, in late July he had opened a new catechetical cycle on St. Paul. At this GA, he spoke of two saints who wre both martyred in Auschwitz - Eidth Stein and Maximilian Kolbe.

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Having returned from Bressanone where I was able to spend a restful period, I am glad to meet with you and greet you, dear inhabitants of Castel Gandolfo, and you, pilgrims who have come to visit me today.

I would like once again to thank all those who welcomed me and looked after me during my stay in the mountains. They were days of serene relaxation during which I continuously commended to the Lord all those who entrust themselves to my prayer.

Those who write to me asking me to pray for them are truly numerous. They tell me of their joys but also their worries, their plans and their family and work problems, the expectations and hopes that they carry in their hearts, together with their apprehensions connected with the uncertainties that humanity is living at the present time. I can assure them that I remember each and every one, especially during the daily celebration of Holy Mass and the recitation of the Rosary.

I know well that the principal service I can render to the Church and to humanity is, precisely, prayer, for in praying I confidently place in the Lord's hands the ministry that he himself has entrusted to me, together with the future of the entire ecclesial and civil communities.

Those who pray never lose hope, even when they find themselves in a difficult and even humanly hopeless plight. Sacred Scripture teaches us this and Church history bears witness to this.

In fact, how many examples we could cite of situations in which it was precisely prayer that sustained the journey of Saints and of the Christian people!

Among the testimonies of our epoch I would like to mention the examples of two Saints whom we are commemorating in these days: Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, whose feast we celebrated on 9 August, and Maximilian Mary Kolbe, whom we will commemorate tomorrow, on 14 August, the eve of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Both ended their earthly life with martyrdom in the concentration camp of Auschwitz. Their lives might seem to have been a defeat, but it is precisely in their martyrdom that the brightness of Love which dispels the gloom of selfishness and hatred shines forth.

The following words are attributed to St Maximilian Kolbe, who is said to have spoken them when the Nazi persecution was raging: "Hatred is not a creative force: only love is creative". And heroic proof of his love was the generous offering he made of himself in exchange for a fellow prisoner, an offer that culminated in his death in the starvation bunker on 14 August 1941.

On 6 August the following year, three days before her tragic end, Edith Stein approaching some Sisters in the monastery of Echt, in the Netherlands, said to them: "I am ready for anything. Jesus is also here in our midst. Thus far I have been able to pray very well and I have said with all my heart: 'Ave, Crux, spes unica' (Welcome, Cross, the only hope!)".

Witnesses who managed to escape the terrible massacre recounted that while Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, dressed in the Carmelite habit, was making her way, consciously, toward death, she distinguished herself by her conduct full of peace, her serene attitude and her calm behaviour, attentive to the needs of all.

Prayer was the secret of this Saint, Co-Patroness of Europe, who, "Even after she found the truth in the peace of the contemplative life, she was to live to the full the mystery of the Cross" (Apostolic Letter Spes Aedificandi).

"Hail Mary!" was the last prayer on the lips of St Maximilian Mary Kolbe, as he offered his arm to the person who was about to kill him with an injection of phenolic acid. It is moving to note how humble and trusting recourse to Our Lady is always a source of courage and serenity.

While we prepare to celebrate the Solemnity of the Assumption, which is one of the best-loved Marian feasts in the Christian tradition, let us renew our entrustment to her who from Heaven watches over us with motherly love at every moment.

In fact, we say this in the familiar prayer of the Hail Mary, asking her to pray for us "now and at the hour of our death".

To special groups
I am happy to welcome the young Irish pilgrims from Kildare and Leighlin who are with us this morning. My warm greeting also goes to the Heisei Youth Group from Japan. Upon all the English-speaking pilgrims, including those from Guam, Canada and the United States, I cordially invoke God's Blessings of joy and peace.

Lastly, I greet the young people, the sick and the newlyweds. Dear friends, may the light of Christ always illuminate your lives and make them bear fruits of good.

Thank you all. Again, I wish you a good week. Have a good Feast of the Assumption.

---

It was the second time Benedict XVI held a summer GA in Castel Gandolfo, the first having been on the eve of his departure for WYD Cologne in August 2005. John Paul II also had a few GAs in Castel Gandolfo. In the latter years of his Pontificate, Benedict XVI's summr GAs in Castel Gandolfo took place at the main entrance to the Apostolic Palace which faces the main square of the town.

I am sure many of the general observations made in this article apply also to earlier WYDs. Just because someone comes to WYD as a pilgrim does not necessarily mean he/she will behave like a model Catholic. The writer's points are very well-taken. I just wish he had written what he perceived to be Pope Francis's effect on the pilgrims, how his presence and message were received, with a few concrete examples, not as a mass phenomenon. Was there anything similar to the ubiquitous chant, "ES-TA ES - LA JUVENTUD DEL PAPA!" (We are the Pope's young people) at Madrid WYD? And what was the take-home message they got from him other than that he is a superstar Pope?...

The downside of Rio
Amid the rock concerts and screaming crowds,
the call of Christ and his Church were,
at times, nearly drowned out.
By Connor Malloy

August 11, 2013

“Who’s the Church?” - “We are!”

“Where’s the church?” - “Right here!”

“And?” “Everywhere!”

The “youth animator” at the center for English-speaking pilgrims in Rio de Janeiro was revving up the crowd of young adults, no small feat considering it was 9 o’clock in the morning.

It was the Friday of World Youth Day, and attendees had flooded city buses, streets, and cafés with WYD-related backpacks, clothing, and the all-important dangling ID lanyards.

Pope Francis had his hero’s welcome the night before on Copacabana Beach, and less than 12 hours later the pilgrims were back for another round of morning catechesis, this time with Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, archbishop of Boston.

This kind of morning wake-up call had been common throughout WYD. Middle-aged Christian rock musicians coaxed the young audience to stand up, sing, dance, hug each other, and shout praise to the Lord. “Let’s make some noise!” It seemed to have its effect. The target audience enjoyed it. During the slower tunes — which bordered on love songs in tone but emphasized communion with Christ — some of the young women would sway with eyes closed; they knew every word.

The animator hastily read an academic-sounding introduction for Cardinal O’Malley while the crowd, having grown used to this format over the previous three days, chatted while shifting for comfortable sitting positions — the cardinal’s background and accomplishments didn’t seem too important.

But, as if on cue, all applauded, most stood, and Cardinal O’Malley had the attention of 5,000 pilgrims from around the world.

Cardinal O’Malley’s catechesis, on “mission,” aimed at connecting the New Evangelization to the mission of all believers. It was an overwhelming, strong talk, and his plea to “avoid the trap of the hookup culture” received respectable applause.

But for all of its insight and courageous urging to keep the faith amid a culture that doesn’t understand the moral foundations of the Church, I had the impression his talk did not have its desired effect on its audience.

Before long, heads started dropping and eyelids started drooping. An audience distracted by its surroundings and coming down from the caffeinated enthusiasm of the animator seemed mostly inattentive to what O’Malley was saying.

It certainly was not the cardinal’s fault—the same thing had happened during Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s catechesis two days earlier. But this episode epitomized, for me, the World Youth Day conundrum. There may have been three million on Copacabana Beach for the closing Mass, but how many were engaged, actively participating?

During WYD’s opening liturgy, led by Rio Archbishop Orani Tempesta four days earlier, hordes of pilgrims were wandering around, popping in at food tents and taking pictures of Copacabana Palace during the Consecration. It was beyond easy to take one’s eyes off the ball, and this identity crisis—between being a pilgrim and being a tourist—presented a constant struggle.

Will the distractions continue when pilgrims are no longer pilgrims, back in their daily surroundings where they are meant to be evangelizers sharing the mission? I have little doubt that many of the Catholics who got themselves down to Brazil for WYD are serious about the faith.

Again and again, however, incidents such as the obvious detachment of the audience during O’Malley’s and Dolan’s talks and the distractions during the beach Masses continuously raised two questions: Are we serious about the faith? And, what faith are we spreading?

A roundtable panel featuring students from universities in Australia, Lebanon, Africa, Spain, Brazil and the US revealed similarly distressing undertones. The talk was entitled “Being young in today’s world,” and the majority of the student representatives, to strong applause in the half-filled auditorium, emphasized the Church as the people, that the people make the Church alive.

The general dissatisfaction with the institutional hierarchy was palpable. Only the US delegate, a student from Marquette, mentioned the importance of communion with the bishop of Rome and of Church tradition. Her contributions were met with nothing but silence.

When contemplating the emerging Catholic youth, the target audience of WYD 2013, one has to ask, with what they have already witnessed in their lives from cultural, domestic, economic, and social perspectives—from Hollywood, secularism, capitalism, and the iPhone—how much of a role does Catholicism really play in their everyday lives? And what kind of Catholicism is it, anyway? Because from what I saw in Rio, for many there is a wink-wink, “do as I say not as I do” mentality about the Catholic faith.

On the tram to view the Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain one very early morning, I overheard two college students with WYD backpacks sharing stories in English about their Rio exploits the previous night. One of them did not go back to his lodgings alone. This tram conversation reminded me of an anecdote in A Dictatorship of Relativism? A Symposium in Response to Cardinal Ratzinger’s Last Homily, edited by Jeffrey M. Perl.

One author relates that after a 2000 gathering of young people in Rome to see John Paul II, “mounds of used condoms were reportedly found scattered on the grounds — a most eloquent monument to relativism.” In Rio it dawned on me that it isn’t atheistic secularization, Islam, or the federal government sinking Catholicism’s moral authority: it’s Catholics themselves.

While it is undeniable that WYD has produced enthusiasm for and solidarity in the Faith among many of the young people who have attended the events over the last several decades, what I saw in Rio with these few examples was, perhaps, the realization of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s warning on April 18, 2005: “We are building towards a dictatorship of relativism that does not recognize anything as definitive and whose ultimate goal consists of one’s own ego and desires.” He doesn’t say “the world” is building towards it, but “we are.”

The dictatorship of relativism, the great disease agent of secularism, has penetrated the Church’s beloved young people. It blossomed after they ignobly ushered the prophetic Pope Benedict off stage right at his resignation [???? They did? Or is this a symbolic deduction from the mass phenomenon of instant Benedict amnesia that developed with instant Francis-mania?] while lavishing praise on Francis in a dangerous reboot of the John Paul superstar era — love the man, ignore the message. Could the ironic generation even grasp the irony?

To be sure, many have heeded the motto from WYD Madrid in 2011, proclaimed by Benedict XVI himself, “Do not be ashamed of the Lord!” Lives have certainly been altered. Anyone who claims the Church is on decline better remove Catholicism’s date of death from its tombstone.

But the Church would be the first to say numbers don’t always tell the whole story, even though many proudly pointed to the pictures of three million [a number that has been disputed and corrected down to 1.5 million at best by disinterested crowd-estimate experts] on Copacabana as testimony.

“Swim against the tide” is how Pope Francis has said it, but each of us need to look precisely at that murky tide and admit we might not like what we see. The tide might even contain those who claim to be Catholic but whose thinking and choices are anything but.

Do we have the strength to swim against that? “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners,” said Jesus (Mk 2:17). In his address “Conscience and Truth,” published in the book On Conscience, Cardinal Ratzinger says that Jesus is “ineffective with ‘the righteous’ because they are not aware of any need for forgiveness and conversion.”

When we Catholics appear more like the Pharisees — the opposition to the Logos, the villains of the Gospels — that might precisely be the moment of our own metanoia. And realizing that, we can then turn the tide.

Atop Corcovado Mountain, when reading the history of Christ the Redeemer statue, I learned the original design had Christ holding a cross in one hand and a globe in the other. The cardinal archbishop at the time, however, ordered that the statue’s arms be outstretched, hands open. He explained that the statue of Christ symbolized the cross, and Rio, the globe.

Considered in this light, the name of the statue [Cristo Redentor - Christ the Redeemer] takes on an even more profound and timely meaning: the world is in constant need of Christ’s redeeming love. The world, as symbolized by the city of Rio, will always be tainted by its own sin, its own corruption. A powerful city deep down in need of healing.

To avoid the ever-present, penetrating gaze of the towering Redeemer takes much effort when one is down below. Yet it actually feels more difficult just to surrender to those outstretched arms. How can One’s love be so great?

It was Justice Anthony Kennedy who offered this insight in the Supreme Court’s 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey ruling: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

As a stand-alone quote, it reads like the English translation of relativism’s coat of arms. That it was written by a Catholic is the real mystery, but it is also the trademark of “chameleon Catholicism”—and the only dogma some will follow.

Acknowledging that rampant relativism is fuelling the cultural train is only a start. Weeding it out from the ranks of the very institution capable of destroying it is the real challenge.

That young pilgrims may have confused WYD with a rock concert is understandable. The question is, can we trust them to see the substance beyond the fluff, the Incarnation beyond the entertainment?

Chances are these pilgrims love challenges; we must challenge them to swim against the tide of relativism that exists even within the Church itself, and to surrender themselves to Christ’s redeeming love.



Maybe I have not looked enough, but from what I have seen in the daily headline summaries posted online by various Catholic sites, there was very little commentary after WYD Rio - compared to the unexpected flood of glowing press for Benedict XVI after WYD Madrid (and after WYD Sydney and WYD Cologne earlier).

But I also felt that the post-WYD inflight news conference by the Pope was almost guaranteed to drive WYD Rio off the headlines instantly, as it did. Tactically perhaps, not the best PR decision for our media-savvy Pope. Media has a narrow attention span and they can't deal with two major stories with the same headliner personality simultaneously, so a relatively quick Rio oblivion was the price to pay for the spate of headlines from the papal news conference.

And even in that, because of the media focus on the 'gay' statements, so many more interesting parts of the news conference were hardly ever reported. And how many media outlets, let alone MSM, would have even thought to post a translation of the newscon transcript?

And how serendipitous is it that in searching for the Pope's catechesis on the two best known martry saints of Auschwitz, I came across a spate of post-WYD Sydney material that make remarkable reading even now... Prepare for a lengthy treat. These are all lifted from my posts at the time in PAPA RATZINGER FORUM...



[C]In the absence so far of a truly good appreciation of Benedict XVI post-WYD in the Australian press, forgive me for re-posting a recent article which is the kind of writing one hopes to find more often in MSM, by someone who can buck MSM's prevailing herd mentality. I have also added two other articles written for WYD but significantly relevant beyond WYD.[/C

The young lead the way
by Christopher Pearson

July 12, 2008

Christopher Pearson is an Australian journalist who writes for The Australian. He is currently a member of the Council of the National Museum of Australia and a member of the Board of the government-owned SBS television station. He served as a speech writer to former Prime Minister John Howard, Kevin Rudd's immediate predecessor.

Pearson writes commentaries and articles that cover a wide variety of cross- cultural & religious matters pertaining to Australian society. He has on occasion turned his pen toward more more international issues such as Global Warming, a matter over which he is highly critical. After this article, Pearson also wrote 'Pell war: a cardinal shame' unmasking the machinations of anti-Church elements led by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to try to steal the thunder from WYD and the Pope with drummed-up stories on priestly offenses..

FOR some of the pilgrims to World Youth Day, the new friendships they strike up will be the highlights of the event. For others, it will be the travel or events on the program such as the choral workshops or more inspiring preaching than they're used to at home.

But for most, the presence of the Pope is the main attraction.

Three years ago it would have been hard to credit. At that time Benedict XVI was generally regarded as a reserved, rather formal figure; a scholar rather than a pastor. However, even his fiercer critics now concede he has grown in the office and that the PanzerKardinal formerly charged with enforcing theological orthodoxy has come to project great personal warmth.

It was thought that he could never compete with the theatrical panache and crowd-pulling capacity of John Paul II. It turns out that Benedict is a mesmerising speaker who takes the trouble to convey complex ideas using simple language. His weekly Wednesday audiences regularly draw even larger numbers than those of his predecessor.

He has other attributes that particularly attract young people, irrespective of whether they're Catholics. Like the Dalai Lama, his presence is such that the courtesy title "His Holiness" doesn't generally strike them as misplaced. He's also grandfatherly without being in the least condescending, interested in them and constantly assuring them that they're capable of great things.

The Pope understands the constants in human nature. He knows that each rising generation - however defensive about admitting the fact - has a kind of spiritual hunger, the need for a sense of the numinous. It is widely regarded by neuro-scientists as hardwired in the brain, though most of them deplore the fact.

In part, it's wanting a sturdy worldview to underpin the intimations of order and beauty in nature. In part, it's craving reassurance that suffering and death are not what they seem.

Religious hope springs eternal. In Australia, for example, the current crop is without doubt the most inadequately catechised in seven generations, but they'll turn up in droves to see and hear him.

Bizarre new age cults may have become so popular that some sections of Australian Catholicism are reinventing themselves along pagan lines and junking core beliefs and traditions in the quest for relevance.

Yet CDs of monks singing Gregorian plainchant turn up regularly at the top of the charts, because the music reaches the hearts of thousands who've scarcely darkened a church door.

The Pope recognises that most young people still aspire to lead a moral life, to be faithful spouses, loving parents, to enjoy the trust and affection of their friends and workmates. He sees them as more often capable than their elders of rising above the snares of consumerism. They're apt to pay closer attention to his warnings about selfishness and his encouragement of high ideals.

Another thing the Pope instinctively grasps is that man is a ritual animal. Unlike many modern clerics, he sees that rituals that are supposed to enact supernatural truths have a radically different character from the rites of ordinary sociability.

A fortnight ago, in a live-streamed sermon to the Eucharistic Congress in Canada, he startled many of the clergy present by flatly contradicting what they'd been teaching since the late 1960s. He said: "The mass is not a meal among friends. It is a mystery of the covenant."

The fundamental problem in Catholicism's 40 years in the wilderness has been the erosion of a sense of the sacred. As the church itself began to lose confidence in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, it began to look for less demanding and more contemporary ways of construing the mass.

Belief in a bloodless but nonetheless material re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary and the mysterious transubstantiation of the bread and wine were thought too much to expect of baby boomers and in any case an alarmingly large percentage of clergy had come, more or less openly, to doubt it all.

A community meal, a function where the congregation's presence is seen as in itself incarnating the body of Christ, seemed so much more modern and plausible, planing down the supernatural to mere metaphor. The Pope calls these self-preoccupied celebrations, devoid of their proper focus, "parish tea-party liturgies".

American commentator Amy Welborn, has referred to them in comparably scathing terms as manifestations of "The Church of Aren't We Fabulous!".

The Pope has no objection to tea parties, of course, but in their proper place, rather than around a high altar. His principal reforms in the past three years have been concentrated on the liturgy and church music.

Many of the World Youth Day pilgrims will be young or youngish people who've grown up in bleak, modern churches devoid of careful ritual or the canon of sacred music. They know from the Catholic blogosphere that he's trying to recover the sacramental theology, along with the beauty and inspiration, that traditionally characterised worship and it's a project a lot of them consciously support.

Before turning to some of the recent reforms, there are a few points to be made about the overall project. To liberal-minded clerics, the prospect of young Catholics who are keen as mustard about the classic Latin rite or the "reform of the reform" push, who want the newer rite celebrated with greater solemnity and traditional music, can seem very threatening.

They're inclined to assume that the kids have signed on to a package deal involving a wholesale rejection of the Second Vatican Council, doubts about the legitimacy of any Pope since Pius XII, a return to the aridity of 1910-style Thomism, political ultra-conservatism and much else besides.

In fact, one of the noteworthy things about the youthful devotees of the old rite - who in Australia border on being the majority of its adherents - is that they mostly come without the cultural and ideological baggage associated with older die-hard traditionalists.

Many say they come for the sake of a more reverent atmosphere, or for the ritual silences that aid concentration or just for a mass done strictly by the book, with no novelties or abuses. That is to say, they take the liturgy itself as a given but that's all. A higher percentage were home-schooled but very few of them, for example, are likely conscripts to the right wing of the NSW Liberal Party, let alone neo-Hansonites in the making.

Gradually the Pope has been restoring Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony to pride of place in papal liturgies in Rome, despite the uncooperative attitude of the Sistine Chapel Choir. Distinguished composers of the recent past, such as Bruckner and Messiaen, are also restored to favour.

It would be nice to be able to announce that the era of soft Italian pop and 1960s kitsch is almost over. Alas it's not true, because the leading exponents are well entrenched. However, the Pope's own standards, especially those that can be observed on television broadcasts, set the overall tone for the rest of the church.

WYD tends to bring out the very worst in baby boomer musicians and liturgists hell-bent on designing celebrations according to their own preferences and, in a sense, in their own image. A great many lapses of taste and judgment are par for the course, usually justified on the grounds that "it's what young people want".

Whatever the compromises in store at Randwick racecourse, there is one recent reform in papal liturgies that will provide an edifying example next Sunday. The Pope has long argued that, for the laity, receiving communion kneeling rather than standing and on the tongue rather than in the hand is more fitting and conducive to devotion.

It will come as news to most Australian Catholics but the older practice is still normative. On the feast of Corpus Christi, some weeks back, his new master of ceremonies announced that it would once more be the normal mode in which the Pope would personally administer the sacrament.

At Randwick, we can expect to see a kneeler for Benedict's communicants and a precedent set for the millions who will be watching the broadcast.

[And certainly none of us anticipated the introduction at Randswick [site of the Prayer Vigil and Closing Mass] of those stunning moments of silence after the homily and Communion! I timed them during the Mass replays - each lasted at least two minutes long, not the perfunctory 15 seconds usually given to such public 'moments of silence'.

The innovation builds on the highly successful conversion by Pope Benedict in Cologne of the WYD vigil, which used to be what the MSM call a Catholic Woodstock - a fun-and-music fest - into a Eucharistic vigil. Hundreds of thousands of young people together can and do fall silent as an expression of worship and focus on the Lord. [The word that immediately comes to my mind is the Italian word for meditation, 'raccoglimento' - which is literally a gathering together of oneself, with the logical connotation of then offering it up to God.]

Nor would I call the resulting liturgy we experienced in Randwick 'compromise' at all, but rather an illustrative and felicitously successful synthesis of what Benedict XVI meant in Summorum Pontificum by a mutual enrichment of the two forms of the Roman rite. A much more seamless synthesis, I thought, than the New York Masses of the papal visit, as admirable as those were. Plus, Randwick also featured the incorporation of Latin for the more familiar prayers (including the Angelus after the Mass).

One Stateside blogger has noted that even the Mass parts sung by the choir consciously used the Latin words alongside the English. This was a feature that had also struck me forcefully - and happily - in the Mass parts sung at the much-maligned Nationals Stadium Mass in Washington (but no one else seemed to notice that, in the all-but-unanimous sweeping dismissal of its American-musical-history eclecticism).

Also, except for a questionable 'blues' number by a female singer during Communion, there was no concession at all to pop music in the Randwick Mass. No room within the Mass (rightly, I thought) even for the WYD08 anthem, 'Receive the power' - which is, after all, meant to be a pop 'mating call' (in the general sense) among WYD participants, not a sacred song.



Here is a secular view on a particularly regrettable if not reprehensible aspect of secularism which he calls by its right name - sectarianism, and puts a few Catholic-bashing Australian journalists in their place.

The sorry sport of Pope bashing
by Gerard Henderson

July 15, 2008

Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded not-for-profit current affairs forum devoted to encouraging debate and discussion. The Institute conducts about 60 policy forums a year on a wide range of issues with national and international figures as featured speakers.

The new sectarianism is quite different from the old sectarianism. Yet it is real enough. From European settlement in 1788 until about the mid 1960s, Australia was afflicted with a prevailing distrust of Catholics - many were of Irish descent - who formed the nation's largest minority. In those days sectarianism was essentially driven by Protestants.

Not any more. As the visit of Pope Benedict demonstrates, the non-Catholic Christian churches have either been welcoming to the Pope or indifferent in his presence.

Nowadays sectarianism in Western democracies is fuelled by what Michael Burleigh terms the "sneering secularists". In his book Sacred Causes Burleigh writes that "much of the European liberal elite regard religious people as if they come from Mars" except when they advance such left-liberal fashionable causes as nuclear disarmament.

The sneering secularists in our midst oppose all the Judeo-Christian beliefs. However, Catholicism cops much of the ridicule because it is universal and the strongest of the Christian faiths.

In Australia the sneering secularists - a combination of proselytising atheists and Green Left Weekly reading leftists - have indicated their opposition to the Pope on the occasion of his visit to Australia for World Youth Day. Hence the formation of the NoToPope Coalition.

So far the award for the leading sneerer goes to The Age columnist Catherine Deveny. Writing on June 18, she declared: "It's official. The Catholic Church is fully sick. And so is George Pell."

Apparently this was some kind of joke. She depicted World Youth Day as a "week of prayer, trust exercises and rosary bead trading". And Deveny went on to advise that, since the Pope will be celebrating Mass at Randwick racecourse, "all the Bernadettes and Gerards will be able to chill out with The Main Dude". It is inconceivable that The Age would have run a similar article mocking Islam and slagging off all the Aishas and Muhammads.

Although a professing agnostic, I was brought up a Catholic and attended a Catholic school where I received a fine education. Like all organisations, it had its strengths and weaknesses. Yet I retain admiration for the priests involved in my upbringing. Most were fine, intelligent men who gave up material pleasures - including sex and family life - for the God in which they believed. I readily acknowledge that some of the cleverest men and women I have met, or read about, were believers in one of the great religions. They do not warrant mockery.

On the occasion of World Youth Day, the sneering secularists have been given succour by disillusioned and former Catholics who are very strong in the media, especially the ABC.

Last year I sent Jane Connors, the manager of ABC Radio National, a note suggesting that it was somewhat imbalanced for Stephen Crittenden to line up three critics of Cardinal George Pell to take the only interview slots on one program of The Religion Report. All Connors wanted to know in her reply was whether this was a formal complaint. I responded in the negative.

Complaining to the ABC's audience and consumer affairs department is a waste of time since it upholds (in whole or in part) a mere 4 per cent of complaints compared with the Press Council's 47 per cent. And there the matter rested.

It seems that Crittenden set some kind of precedent for the ABC. Last week Lateline began a campaign against Pell concerning his handling of a complaint of Anthony Jones who, at the age of 29, was sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest, Terence Goodall.

Last Tuesday Pell admitted that he had made a mistake in the manner in which he handled the case. That evening Lateline interviewed a Canberra lawyer, Jason Parkinson, and the American journalist Robert Blair Kaiser. Both were critical of Pell. The former Catholic priest Paul Collins was also heard on Lateline that night. So was the academic Mark Findlay. They were also critical of the cardinal. Apparently Lateline could not find anyone who would put an alternative view.

The likes of Goodall deserve to be condemned. It is a matter of record that Pell stood him down from priestly activity in early 2003. Goodall was convicted in the District Court after pleading guilty to indecent assault, following a trial which was reported in the media at the time.

Such crimes should not diminish the good that priests, brothers and sisters - and bishops - have done over the years. The Canberra Times columnist Jack Waterford is a critic of contemporary Catholicism. Yet, in a column on June 26, he conceded that the stigma ignited by a few offenders had cast a grossly unfair burden on up to 80,000 Catholics who signed up for religious duties in Australia over the past century.

If you only listened to the sneering secularists you would get the impression that Catholicism is somehow responsible for high birth rates and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In fact, population growth is highest in the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa where the Catholic Church is not strong. Likewise, there is no correlation between the spread of HIV/AIDS and the strength of Catholicism.

It is welcome that the Pope has said sorry for the sexual abuse perpetuated by some Catholic priests and brothers. But it is appropriate for others to say a warm thank you for what the Catholic religious have done in educating the young, looking after the sick and caring for the dying here and overseas.

You will not hear such praise from the sneering secularists. Nor will you find a school or hospice in a foreign land that is run by the Green Left Weekly or the New Left Review.



Lest there be rock: Benedict
by Tracey Rowland

July 11, 2008

Rowland is dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne and the author of Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.

SOME people have described World Youth Day events as Woodstock for Catholics, and to some degree this is true. There is usually a lot of sleeping on the ground and getting rained on while listening to music, making friends and even falling in love.

What will Pope Benedict XVI, successor of St Peter, the "vicar of Christ" and the head of the Vatican state, make of this? It is well known that when it comes to liturgy, he has no time for happy-clappy masses.

He teaches that dumbing down the liturgy so that people can better relate to it is a form of apostasy, analogous to the Hebrews' worship of the golden calf.

For Pope Benedict, the liturgy is about the worship of God, not self-worship or the worship of the parish or school community. While he has nothing against building up the emotional bonds between members of a parish, he recommends that this be done at barbecues, picnics or nights at the pub, not in the middle of Mass.

In his pre-papal works, Benedict wrote that rock music had no place in a liturgical context, that rock concerts were pseudo-liturgies that lifted people out of themselves but gave them a counterfeit mystical experience that didn't link them to God.

In scholarly essays he compares contemporary rock music to the music of the Dionysiac cults in ancient Greece, as does the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who is not a Catholic, but shares the Pope's concerns about this musical form. Scruton argues that rock music arrests people in a state of adolescent psychological immaturity.

Some Christians, particularly evangelical Protestants, take the view that there is nothing wrong with rock music per se, just that the lyrics can be a bit crude. This has given rise to Christian rock bands that substitute biblical lyrics for explicit sexual references. Benedict and Scruton argue that there is something wrong with the form of the music itself, quite apart from the lyrics.

Critics of Benedict say he is a middle-class Bavarian snob who plays the piano, was raised on a diet of Beethoven and Mozart and needs to broaden his cultural horizons. Whatever one makes of the criticism, it is true that Benedict has had a very strong classical education with an emphasis on languages, history, literature and music and has been immersed in the world of European high culture and the great European universities.

In our postmodern times, members of generation Y tend to be open to an expansion of their own cultural horizons and find Catholic high culture fascinating. They are like children in an attic, rummaging through old boxes and finding treasures. Benedict is like a venerable grandfather who recounts the milestones in the family history and talks about things other people are too scared to mention.

In his homilies he presents youth with the historical and cultural capital they need to make sense of their place in history, including their place in the history of the church. He helps to meet their need to establish their own identity. It's impossible for them to do this if they live in a twilight zone cut free from historical moorings.

However, if Benedict is right that rock festivals are a symptom of a universal human need for an experience of self-transcendence, then the Catholic church needs to rediscover its own ways of meeting this need.

Benedict's prescription is a combination of rigorous catechesis, which presents the Christian vision in its synthetic totality, with elevated liturgy, and of course, plenty of opportunities to meet other young Catholics and realise that one isn't the last surviving practising member of the church on the planet.

World Youth Day engenders a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself, of being a member of a vast universal family that transcends all national boundaries. The spiritual highs come not from drugs but from meeting people who are brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the world. Email addresses are exchanged, along with pilgrim memorabilia.

There is Christ's saying that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, you don't get in if you are sitting around like Eeyore on a bad day, bored with life and feeling sorry for yourself.

While rock music might be off the agenda, at least at the official events with Benedict, there is nonetheless some common ground to be found with the spiritually lost generation of Woodstock.

While Benedict would not agree that one can find the answers blowing in the wind, he would probably empathise with the lyrics of Bob Dylan's Forever Young: May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true, may you always know the truth, and see the light surrounding you, may you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, and may you stay forever young.

Perhaps one of the unpredictable consequences of WYD/SYD is that for a week at least we might all remember how it felt to be young and idealistic, and we might put aside our own personal psychological baggage and allow ourselves to be awed by the presence of someone who, (even if we don't think he is the successor of St Peter, or the vicar of Christ) is a person of great wisdom and warmth that transcends denominational boundaries.

Continuing the 'reviews' lookback to WYD Sydney in 2008......



Here is a great post-WYD editorial from .

Hallelujah and Thank You to whoever wrote it - he/she just very simply gets it - the message of WYD and the Pope's participation - and gets it right, as the secular media rarely do; and to The Australian editors for taking such an unequivocal stand in the face of the 'secularist sneering' of the Australian intellectual establishment.

Pilgrims renew an ancient faith
Editorial

July 21, 2008

We salute World Youth Day's organisers for bringing such an exciting, uplifting event Down Under.

Regardless of belief, the questions Pope Benedict XVI put to 400,000 attentive mass-goers at Randwick are pertinent to all Australians.

“What will you leave to the next generation?” the 264th successor of St Peter asked yesterday. “Are you building your lives on firm foundations, building something that will endure? ... What legacy will you leave to young people yet to come? What difference will you make?”

While deeply special to Catholics, who comprise more than a quarter of our nation, and to Sydneysiders who welcomed the pilgrims with warmth and generosity, World Youth Day belonged to all Australians.

Like the 2000 Olympics, it stands proud as one of our great successes of the early 21st century - well-organised on a vast scale, secure and happy. We salute Cardinal George Pell for his vision and courage in securing it and Bishop Anthony Fisher and Danny Casey for making it work.

Inevitably, major international events bring inconveniences, but Sydneysiders, overwhelmingly, were good-natured in coping with the practical challenges like road closures, transport and security that had some media in an unnecessary frenzy early on. Perhaps the pilgrims' cheerful friendliness and good behaviour brought out the best in the locals, and vice versa.

Even more than the Olympics, World Youth Day brought tens of thousands of visitors to other Australian cities, towns and the bush. From Broome to the Tasmanian forests, Cairns to Melbourne, which hosted 25,000 pilgrims, the Days in the Diocese that preceded the main event gave pilgrims from different countries close contact with Australian parishes and families, forming enriching friendships.

By design, World Youth Day draws in as many participants as possible, and it remains a living memorial to the late, great Pope John Paul II, who understood instinctively why young people would respond to it.

His successor, the quieter, gentle and scholarly Joseph Alois Ratzinger, 81, stepped up easily to the role as star of the week, just as in Cologne three years ago.

As Cardinal Pell said yesterday, the John Paul II generation - young and old - is proud to be faithful sons and daughters of Pope Benedict.

Never was this more evident than during the spectacular boat-a-cade and motorcades, as throngs of flag-waving youngsters, with red and yellow backpacks, chanting “Benedetto” packed every turn.

The insights that mark this Vicar of Christ as a strong theologian were evident throughout.

In his opening remarks at Barangaroo on Thursday, he posed important questions about freedom and tolerance becoming separated from truth: “This is fuelled by the notion, widely held today, that there are no absolute truths to guide our lives. Relativism, by indiscriminately giving value to practically everything, has made `experience' all important. Yet, experiences, detached from any consideration of what is good or true, can lead, not to genuine freedom, but to moral or intellectual confusion, to a lowering of standards, to a loss of self-respect, and even to despair.”

If the Pope had a co-star, it was the city of Sydney, at its very best in wintry sunshine. It's doubtful that any other pilgrim walk has offered vistas to match those from the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Those who packed into the opening Mass at Barangaroo, at which Cardinal Pell delivered the sermon of his life on salvation and hope, will never forget the striking, outdoor Cathedral that materialised between the waterfront sunset and the CBD, lighting up at dusk.

And while Australia remains young in terms of Christian heritage, the Stations of the Cross at the city's most striking sights made as moving, intense a religious experience as any centuries-old shrine in Europe. Viewed by an audience of about 500 million, it will help define Sydney for many around the globe and prompt some to venture to Australia.

World Youth Day also displayed Australia's indigenous culture, especially performance and art, to the wider world. Indigenous dancers and actors brought richness and colour to all of the major events, and the home-grown paraclete, Marjorie's Bird - the work of Melville island artist Marjorie Liddy - had a beauty and clarity that should make it an enduring symbol of the Holy Spirit in Australia.

For young Catholics who came from 177 countries, some with the odds stacked against them, like those from Burma, Pope Benedict encouraged them to keep the faith: “From the forlorn child in a Darfur camp, or a troubled teenager, or an anxious parent in any suburb, or perhaps even now from the depth of your own heart, there emerges the same human cry for recognition, for belonging, for unity,” he said. “Who satisfies that essential human yearning to be one, to be immersed in communion, to be built up, to be led to truth?”

Looking out on the vast congregation of more than 400,000 yesterday, Cardinal Pell reflected that the scene manifested the church as young and alive with evangelical energy, proclaiming an ancient message. Too often, as he noted, it is “weighed down and burdened with the sins and failings of her children, too often she appears disfigured and discouraged.”

No words of sorrow and regret can repair the hurts that many feel as a result of sexual abuse by clergy. But the Pontiff's apology in St Mary's on Saturday morning, like those of Australian bishops before him, was full and sincere.

The cathedral's forefathers would have been profoundly shocked to think that some among the clergy could fall so low that their fiendish abuse of minors would warrant a papal apology on such an occasion as the dedication of a new altar containing the relics of heroic saints such as Thomas A'Beckett and Oliver Plunkett.

In front of the seminarians, however, the priests of tomorrow, was the appropriate time and place for it to be made.

As the Pope and pilgrims fly home and Sydney returns to normal, it remains to be seen how much, if at all, the event has awakened a sense of the spiritual in Australians.

Even if they do not embrace Catholicism, or any particular religion, adults who have tasted some of life's triumphs and disasters, would concur with the Pope's vision of the world being improved by overcoming “interior emptiness, an unnamed fear, a quiet sense of despair”.

The key, in his view, is a love that is “not greedy or self-seeking, but pure, faithful and genuinely free, open to others, respectful of their dignity, seeking their good, radiating joy and beauty”.

Such love, he said, liberates from shallowness, apathy and self-absorption which “deaden our souls and poison our relationships”.

As it looks forward to WYD 2011, Madrid is a lucky city. It will be a long, long time before Australia sees a week like World Youth Day again.



United by faith,
surrounded by beauty
by Father Raymond J. de Souza

Published: Thursday, July 24, 2008



SYDNEY, Australia -'It was beautiful!" More than anything else, that's what I heard from the pilgrims who came here last week for World Youth Day (WYD), the massive Catholic pilgrimage which Toronto hosted in 2002.

I was struck by that, because the great success of Sydney 2008 could have given rise to any number of adjectives -- it was enormous, it was exciting, it was emotional, it was inspiring, it was transforming, it was exhausting. Yet repeatedly people chose to describe it as beautiful.

It was. There was the natural beauty of the Sydney Harbour, used to great effect for some of the set-piece events -- the opening Mass, the papal arrival and the dramatic presentation of the Stations of the Cross. The early sunset of the Sydney winter added an evocative celestial glow.

There was also the beauty of Sydney's architectural wonders -- the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House and St. Mary's Cathedral-- as well as the downtown parks and waterways.

One of the popular places of prayer was a new painting -- very contemporary, very Australian -- of the Madonna and Child in the cathedral.

There was the beauty, too, of the liturgy, evidence that Pope Benedict's lead is being followed in reawakening the beauty of the Catholic tradition. There were the young people, too, who in their wholesomeness and enthusiasm were beautiful to behold -- even after a long march and overnight campout.

All of which is a reminder that in the history of philosophy, particularly medieval philosophy, beauty was considered to be, alongside truth and goodness, one of the necessary attributes of reality. Something that was as it was supposed to be would be true, beautiful and good. Truth, beauty and goodness would attract us to that which was real and, eventually, to that which was most real, the source of all being, all reality, God.

Today, we usually associate the things of God with the moral life -- goodness. If we say someone is "godly" we usually mean that he is morally good and lives the virtues. Truth, too, is associated with discovering God, as we can see in the debates about what faith and reason, religion and science can tell us about what is most real.

Beauty is neglected. We consider beauty to be so subjective -- it is in the eye of the beholder -- that it can only tell us something about ourselves, and nothing about reality as it is. Beauty so conceived leads us only inward, not beyond ourselves to the transcendent.

Yet beauty retains its power. Consider natural wonders. Saint Augustine asked of them: "Who made these beautiful changing things if not one who is beautiful and changeth not?"

Man-made beauty, too, can be an encounter with the transcendent. Such is the purpose of great art and music. A WYD highlight was the Sydney Symphony performing Beethoven's Missa Solemnis at the Opera House. The music and the physical setting -- both the Opera House and the Harbour -- did not provide an argument about God, or an example of the goodness of divine providence, but rather an encounter with beauty which points beyond itself. Authentic beauty is a meeting with reality and the God who is most real.

"Life is not just a succession of events or experiences, helpful though many of them are," said Pope Benedict last week. "It is a search for the true, the good and the beautiful. It is to this end that we make our choices; it is for this that we exercise our freedom; it is in this -- in truth, in goodness and in beauty -- that we find happiness and joy. Do not be fooled by those who see you as just another consumer in a market of undifferentiated possibilities, where choice itself becomes the good, novelty usurps beauty and subjective experience displaces truth."

In contrasting novelty and beauty, Benedict was indicating that beauty has an enduring quality. World Youth Day is a new thing, and it abounds in novelties -- papal text messages, a dedicated social networking site and blogging pilgrims this time round.

In Sydney we discovered that beauty is still valid and compelling for a new generation. Where arguments may fail and goodness may be lacking, the encounter of beautiful things may draw us onward to God.

The young pilgrims cheered the symphony quite unlike the usual crowds at the Opera House. The maestro appeared quite overwhelmed. They were cheering him to be sure, but also something greater -- the One who made such beautiful music possible, and the One for whom it was performed.



A fair dinkum Pope
Editorial

Thu, 24 Jul 2008

Sydney certainly knows how to throw a party.

The extraordinary scenes played out on the city's streets over the course of the World Youth Day week, and relayed on television screens for huge world audiences, or reported in newspapers or on radio bulletins, have been in some respects reminiscent of the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

In other ways they have surpassed them. For this was a party quite unlike any other: five days and nights of peace, love and Christianity, enjoyed by young pilgrims from around the world; no alcohol, little trouble, barely even a hint of disorder.

To cap it all, the crowd at Sunday morning's Mass at Randwick Racecourse swelled to an estimated 350,000.

So it had been during a week of festivities for the faithful presided over by Pope Benedict XVI and labelled by some the Church's version of Woodstock.

The music was certainly there, with more than 165 concerts staged; but so were the prayer meetings, the Masses, the addresses by other Catholic luminaries, the staging of the Stations of the Cross - said to have been televised to an audience of 500 million - and the centre-stage role of the Pope himself.

In the wash-up to this remarkable gathering, perhaps aided and abetted by the sort of relaxed friendliness and ambience that so becomes our Australian cousins, it is being said that in Sydney the Pope began, finally, to reveal the hallmarks of his papacy.

To date, he has been, possibly unfairly, characterised by the most pronounced public qualities of his former self: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a cool and austere intellectual German theologian - and an arch-conservative one at that.

But in the company of so many tens of thousands of smiling young pilgrims, and blessed by five days of clement Sydney winter sun, he reportedly showed a sense of humour and common humanity, allied to a genuine personal warmth. There were even flashes of charisma.

In the vernacular of the land, the Pope seemed to become, if not a superstar, a fair dinkum good bloke.

But World Youth Day 2008 was not simply a prayer party. There were serious matters for the Pontiff to attend to, not least the legacy of sexual abuse which he has inherited. Such "misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation", he said.

He was "deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured", and said that those responsible for "these evils" must be brought to justice.

For some, understandably, this apology will not have gone far enough; for others it went further than the Pope appeared to have gone before, but if the 81-year-old Pope was intent on addressing the sins of the past, he also had his sights clearly on the future - and the challenges and problems facing the young people who had gathered to hear him.

In the homily of the Randwick Mass he alluded to the cults of individualism and consumerism, calling for his audience to instead embrace the "underground river" of Christian values that would help provide firm foundations.

At a more secular level he called on world faiths and religions to unite in combating "sinister and indiscriminate violence".

And his farewell from Australia was marked by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's announcement of a resident ambassador to the Holy See in Rome, in the form of former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer - denoting a deepening of Australia's relationship with the Vatican.

"It will," said Mr Rudd, "allow Australia to expand dialogue with the Vatican in areas including human rights, political and religious freedom, food security, arms control, refugees and people trafficking."

To this he might have added issues that continue to worry many Catholics and non-Catholics alike: contraception, especially in the Third World, the celibacy of the priesthood, the role of women in the Church, and so on. [Typically secular POV, which does not recognize that every religion has - or should have - certain non-negotiable principles, open to question by many certainly, including not a few Catholics, but for all that, not mutable at all. And Rudd, raised a Catholic, has the common sense to keep that in mind.]

Those are issues that will continue to be debated, including by many of the young people present in Sydney.

Whatever one's personal views or faith, and how they impact on these matters, there can be less debate about the significance of the World Youth Day 2008: for vast numbers of young people from greatly differing cultures and backgrounds, there are common values to be found in the Church and its teachings.

In a world that so often sees itself as hopelessly fractured, driven by difference and intolerance, rather than compassion and hope, that in itself is cause for celebration.



Before he took it on himself to pick out the highlights of Pope Benedict XVI's discourses in Sydney (which he published in his Chiesa rubric two days ago, as posted in the SYDNEY thread of this Forum), Sandro Magister was interviewed by an online journal during which he sang the praises of the Holy Father unequivocally as he generally does.

The Pope who enchants the youth
by bringing them the essence
of the Christian faith
An interview with Sandro Magister
Translated from
www. ilsussidiario.net
July 21, 2008

To say weighty things which are understandable even to simple people, to the point of calling the entire Bible the great love story between God and man culminating in Mary's Yes to the angel: this blend of intellectual profundity and communicative clarity is what veteran Vatican reporter Sandro Magister identifies as the originality of this Pope, who in Sydney proved once more that he can enchant hundreds of thousands of younpeople.

Benedict XVI began his participation in last week's World Youth Day speaking of a world that is threatened by an idea of human freedom that is detached from reality. He said this referring to creation, the world God created, but also to the threats to human life by human acts like abortion. It seemed like a synthesis almost of disparate elements and subjects
It is with such a chain of arguments that Benedict XVI has effectively answered a recurrent objection. Both the secular world and a part of the Catholic world have criticized the preaching of the Catholic hierarchy, particularly the Pope, for being too insistent on the issues of defense of life and the family, and not paying enough attention, in their opinion, to emergencies like the environment and that which one might call the social ecology.

The Pope has shown that these different fields are absolutely linked - one cannot be consistent by defending one in preference to the other.

What is the foundation of this synthesis in the Pope's reasoning?
It is the plan of creation that he shows and illustrates in his preaching - with man as the summit of creation. Man is in the image of God, and is therefore the quintessence of creation as a whole.

And thus defending human life already encompassesa the inescapable commitment to defend all other aspects of creation.

The Pope made time in Sydney to meet the representatives of other Christian confessions and non-Christian religions. He spoke of a 'critical juncture' in the ecumenical dialog. What did he mean?
Many commentators have interpreted this as a reference to the situation of the Anglican Communion. But reading the Pope's address in its entirety, his reference to a 'critical juncture' was more general: he was expressing his concern for the tendency to find fault with those doctrines that each Christian confession professes as the basis for its identity.

Thus the Pope has denounced a current of thinking that is quite widespread, according to which, in order to arrive at Christian reunification, doctrinal differences must be set aside - or at least, considered secondary - as if these don't count enough. Whereas he underscores that one cannot conceive of ecumenical dialog that is not an ecumenism of truth. This insistence on truth is really the hallmark of this Pontificate, and these days have confirmed it yet again.

Madrid has been chosen to host the next WYD - a significant choice in view of the situation in Spain...
This choice was already in the air, and it was predictable that after holding WYD in a place far from Europe, it would come back some place nearer. Certainly, the choice of Madrid in particular implies a new challenge and appeal to old Europe, which may be considered Christianity's firstborn in the world, but where the Church now finds itself in remarkable difficulties. Spain in particular is emblematic of the problems that the Church is facing in Europe and in the West, in general.

Yet another time, the Pope has belied - if indeed there was still need to - the image of a professor Pope who is remote from the sensibility of the youth. What is the secret of Benedict XVI's communicative ability which always amazes?
This ability to communicate with young people is part of his ability in general to communicate with all people of whatever age and whatever cultural background. Every day simply confirms more that this is a Pope who was not made only for the academies but who is able to say weighty things to simple people in simple words.

Of course, these words are very rich and dense in significance, certainly not 'easy' in the unfavorable sense, But he is able to say important things to persons who do not need to have academic degrees to be able to listen to him and understand him. And it is true that this Pope always surprises anew in this regard. The stakes are much higher with young people, but he always carries it off.

His very choice of the Holy Spirit as the focus for this WYD already meant he would speak to them of difficult concepts. The Holy Spirit is not an easy subject...
The two major addresses were frankly of an astounding density. The address at the vigil, dedicated specially to the Holy Spirit - the 'forgotten person' of the Trinity, as he said - was truly a catechism lesson of great depth, in which he did not hesitate to cite St. Augustine, and following his example, develop a lesson on the importance and meaning of the Holy Spirit.

Then he spoke of the sacraments of Christian initiation in a way that we can call mystagogic: he made clear how the Sacraments are the way to come closer - and in ever greater depth - to the fact of Christianity.

And he did this very simply before a seemingly endless crowd of young people, saying these things as if he were speaking face to face with each one of them, without once descending in the least to linguistic compromises or dumbing it down to engage their attention.

In your opinion, what do you think was the highest point of Benedict XVI's communicative power at WYD?
The Angelus message, clearly written at one go by the Pope, which was an effective exposition so amazing that it even left me speechless. He put together the Old and New Testaments through the perspective of Our Lady's Yes to the angel of the Annunciation, presenting the Old Testament as the story of a long courtship, of a love story between man and God, and the New Testament as the marriage which crowns it, after Mary says Yes to his proposal.

And then he added that if this were like any other story, we could say 'and they lived happily ever after', but he points out that on the contrary, the story does not end there, it only starts with Mary's Yes, and is a story that continues to demand our commitment day after day.

A Pope who can express his ideas that way is certainly not the cut-and-dried professor that everyone - arbitrarily - expected he would be.



Doesn't all that bring back a flood of euphorious nostalgia and overwhelming love for the Pope of our everlasting affections?

I did not see this earlier, but I'm glad to find out I'm not the only one who thought the Pope's inflight news conference was totally counter-productive because it drove out WYD Rio from the front pages and from public attention - to focus on silly and fruitless speculation that this Pope might'change' Catholic teaching about homosexuality. Fr. De Souza cites other such egregious and recent PR errors by the Vatican...

Jamming the papal message
Vatican communications mishaps may be hampering
Pope Francis’s capacity to evangelize at full effectiveness.
by FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA

August 5, 2013

Pope Francis had a smashingly successful first foreign visit to Rio for World Youth Day. Sadly, most of the world missed it. Even worse — it was largely the Church’s own fault. [Not 'the Church' - the Vatican, specifically its communication panjandrums. But the Pope also should have realized that giving the news confrence he did was bound to eclipse anything else in the news, including WYD.]

It’s called stepping on your own story, and it has been a big problem this year. It started with the shoes. You remember all the press attention paid back in March to what shoes Pope Francis would wear? It was not just a harmless irrelevance.

An ironclad rule of communications is that you can only write/broadcast/blog about one thing at a time. So if you are talking about the papal shoes, you cannot at the same time be talking about what it means to wear the shoes of the fisherman.

If there are relevant matters you want covered, and the press is reporting irrelevancies, it is harmful — an error of omission, as it
were.

This is well understood by any professional in communications. Sometimes it is the only thing they understand, as in the infamous case of Jo Moore, an official in Tony Blair’s administration who was pilloried for advising, on Sept. 11 itself, that “it is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.” Moore knew the rule, even in service of an ignoble end.

The Rio trip began and ended with the World Youth Day story — a marvelous story of evangelical witness in the largest Catholic country in the world — being not only stepped on, but veritably trampled to death.

It began before the Pope got off the ground. Departure stories were dominated by the Pope’s hand baggage rather than the message he hoped to carry.

Then came the disastrous motorcade. For two days, the only images in the secular media — where the vast majority of Catholics get all their news about the Church — were of the Holy Father in the back of a car being jostled by the crowds. [Well, they couldn't exactly jostle him, as he was sitting inside the car, a regular Fiat minivan. But they did jostle the car.]

Francis enjoyed himself, but it caused pain to his Brazilian hosts, who were mortified that the whole world might think that they could not organize a simple motorcade. It is not the Vatican’s fault that the driver took a wrong turn, but in planning such trips, the more innovations that are introduced — putting the Pope in a Fiat, adding a new route at the last minute — the more potential irrelevancies arise, and, consequently, there was next to nothing reported in the secular press about what the Pope said upon arrival or even on his important visit to the Marian shrine of Aparecida. The motorcade mishap ran over the story.

Catholic news online makes available everything the Pope does and says, but that is not where most people get their news. And when the story is not only stepped on, but stomped to death, even the Catholic world online is overwhelmed.

That’s what happened with the Holy Father’s interview on the papal flight back from Rio. It was not his intention to completely overwhelm all reporting on Rio with a discussion about the Church supposedly changing her teaching on homosexuality, but that is what happened.

So complete was the communications fiasco that Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York had to go on NBC's Today show, literally on the fly, to clarify that the Church had not altered her millennial teaching on chastity.

Cardinal Dolan is one of the Church’s most effective communicators. He should have been on Today in evangelical overdrive after the great triumph of World Youth Day, not playing defense on a papal interview.

Another aspect of the papal interview that got much attention was Francis’ remark that, while he reaffirmed Blessed John Paul’s teaching on the impossibility of women being ordained priests, the Church lacked an adequate “theology of women.”

It is unwise to put a pope in a position where extemporaneous remarks are incomplete, in this case neglecting that the very same John Paul provided precisely that theology in the encyclical on Mary (Redemptoris Mater), the apostolic letter on the dignity of women (Mulieris Dignitatem) and his eponymous "Letter to Women." [Thank you, Fr. De Souza, for pointing out something none of the bravissimi Vaticanistas - nor any the militant feminists salivating over a 'ground-breaking' theology of women by Pope Francis, nor the army of armchair commentators hailing the Pope's opening to women as if he were Susan B. Anthony or one of the early suffragettes, or Pope Frnacis himself, to begin with - seemed to be aware of. I don't recall anybody else pointing this out in any of the reports and commentaries I have read, but maybe I do not read enough.]

The Church should have learned this lesson after the papal trip to Africa in 2009. Commenting on AIDS aboard the papal flight, Benedict XVI said that condoms not only were not the solution to AIDS, but could make the problem worse.

The rest of the Africa trip may well have not occurred — it was all condoms, all the time. [In the Western media, yes, but not in the African media where they appreciate the sincere concern of the Church for the peoples of Africa as human beings not as objects of exploitation, and where not a few countries have had the actual experience of condoms making the AIDS problem worse by providing a false sense of security and a consequent over-reliance on it as the only acceptable AIDS prevention measure because it is 'convenient' and 'allows' everyone to have sex as they please.]

Clearly stung by that, Benedict returned to the topic in his next interview book, Light of the World, with similar results. It was all condoms, all the time, "The Sequel." [In this case, it was the fault, the most grievous fault, of L'Osseervatore Romano which chose - dumbly and quite inexplicably - to feature the condom excerpt in its weekend preview of the book, not just co-opting the news of the book launch itself, but also making a terrible and unforgivable translation error that made it appear Benedict XVI was changing Church policy about the use of condoms by married couples. And B16 did not 'return' to the subject of condoms as a delayed reaction to the big Africa todo-, but because Peter Seewald asked it as a relevant question about a significsnt and continuing social issue.]

Two important papal initiatives were lost to the larger potential audience by poor communications management.

The problem extends even to news that the Vatican entirely controls, as was the case earlier this month.

On July 5, Pope Francis was joined by Benedict XVI for their first public ceremony together, the dedication of a new statue of St. Michael the Archangel as protector of the Vatican city state.

That itself — because of the unique picture — would have been a major news story with an evangelical dimension, namely that God gives us the protection of the angels and the intercession of the saints.

Yet the Holy Father’s first encyclical was released on the same day. So the Vatican had two stories to promote on that day, when either one would have sufficed.

Then even the encyclical was kicked to the margins with the news that John Paul II would be canonized. A third story. Then yet another shoe dropped — Francis had decided to canonize John XXIII, waiving the requirement for the necessary miracle.

Four stories? On one day? All of them good news stories that should not be buried, least of all by each other.

Imagine another scenario instead. The John XXIII decision is announced on the 50th anniversary of his death, June 3, 2013, with the canonization date set for the end of the Year of Faith. The encyclical Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) takes the spotlight at the end of June. July is left for World Youth Day. The statue dedication is held over the summer on Sept. 29, the feast of the archangels, giving a supernatural complement to the Holy Father’s governance reforms then under way. John Paul’s canonization is announced on his feast day, Oct. 22, with the date set for the following Divine Mercy Sunday. Each would have had a day of prominence in the secular press and then several days more reaching people in Catholic media.

Effective communications is part of evangelization and mission. Pope Francis is gifted at both. He was evangelizing and being a missionary in his aerial press conference. Yet perhaps his message would have been clearer if he had said nothing, for what he had already said all week long was the story in need of being held up, not stepped upon.