BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

Speaking of 'country priests', one of the more interesting - but basically tainted -immediate reactions to the Pope's letter to Scalfari came from the Richard Dawkins of Italy, mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi who is considered the ringleader and principal spokesman for Italy's atheists and a best-selling author... He has perhaps written as many cruel things about Benedict XVI as Scalfari has done, but now he almost regrets not having Benedict around, and here speaks dismissively of Pope Francis, sometimes downright offensively as he used to write about Pope Benedict... One must not discount a 'sour grapes' attitude because the Pope wrote to Scalfari, not to him.

'Scalfari is wrong: Pope Francis
is nothing but a country priest'
Translated from


ROME, Sept. 11 - On the subject of dialog between believers and non-believers, mathematician atheist Piergiorgio Odifreddi does not think Pope Francis is a worthy interlocutor.

Odifreddi thinks that Benedict XVI as a theologian would be far more exhaustive in the argument ['Would be'? How many times over did he prove that during the past many decades???], since he considers Bergoglio "nothing but a country priest... who has not changed the product, just its marketing".

"It was a mistake on the part of Scalfari to address Pope Francis," he said. "He is the person least qualified to respond, Bergoglio is nothing but a country priest - that we know by now. Not like Ratzinger, who set up the Court of the Gentiles under the Pontificfal Council for Culture to facilitate the dialog between believers and non-believers". [Well, thanks for bringing up the Court of the Gentiles, which Scalfari never even acknowledges. But Francis is the Pope, and to dismiss him contemptuously this way is just as offensive and reprehensible as Scalfari having dismissed Benedict XVI altogether as an incompetent lightweight mind who had no business being Pope!]

Mathematician, logician, scientific researcher, Odifreddi (who has just come out with a new book published by Rizzoli) told ANSA that "Francis is perfect from the media point of view, but in this case, he is called on to answer questions of a theoretical nature".

In the Pope's letter published in Repubblica today, where he replies to Scalfari's questions on faith and reason [See, Scalfari absurdly pretends that this topic has never been discussed by the Popes, egregiously ignoring John Paul II's encyclical Fides et ratio and the whole burden of Joseph Ratzinger's constant exposition of the 'reasons for our faith', as St. Peter said Christians always ought to be able to do. And he probably was out on Mars when Benedict XVI gave the Regensburg lecture and has never even read it!], Odifreddi notes that the Pope [and Catholic teaching] claim that faith means believing in Jesus Christ, which means that all those who believe in other divinities are all non-believers, from the Hindus to the Taoists. I find that a rather banal statement".

"Bergoglio also says that non-believers must obey their own conscience. It's embarassing to hear this, because he presumes that conscience will tell everyone what the Pope says conscience tells us, whereas conscience is a social and cultural product. In some places, newborn babies are put to death following the conscience of the community". [IMHO, Odifreddi also confuses his terms, which is unforgivable for a scientist. What he refers to as a social and cultural product is a 'collective consciousness' of what is acceptable, which is not 'conscience', which is by nature personal and individual. And, of course, since he obviously does not believe that abortion is killing unborn babies, he uses a far-fetched example like killing newborn babies for this 'collective consciousness' rather than abortion.

Odifreddi says of Pope Francis, "We should leave him to do his work, which is producing spectacles, and not ask him questions to which we can only get embarassing answers".

"Scalfari ought to have posed those questions when Benedict XVi was Pope - and the answers would have been detailed and well-articulated, not disappointing and not up to the mark," he continues. [But then, Scalfari considered Benedict so far beneath him in intellect, if anyone could even delude himself that way! And now, all of a sudden, he finds his perfect intellectual match in Pope Francis. Great!]

"Many people have allowed themselves to be swayed by Pope Francfis's style, but when he speaks, he shows how much his thinking is very much backward compared to Ratzinger". [Not 'backward', surely, just on a different level!]

"When Bergoglio was elected, the cardinal of New York said, 'Do not expect a change in the product, only in the marketing'. So now, Pope Francis writes to a newspaper, but the tune he carries is still Gregorian chant".

The predications of
the parish priest of Santa Marta
by Piergiorgio Odifreddi
Translated and adapted from

Sept. 11, 2011

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Pope Francis has written a letter to Eugenio Scalfari who had addressed to him some questions regarding faith. Of curse, after six months of his Pontificate, we know that Jorge Mario Bergoglio is a pleasant and mediagenic parish priest, but not a theologian or a thinker. [He has never pretended to be either of those.]

That is to say, he is exactly the right person to attract simple folk with simple gestures, but the wrong one to respond profoundly to profound questions.

Although he presents it as 'an open dialog with non-believers', his letter is more properly 'a dialog between deaf people'. Above all, for his fundamental fault that he confuses 'faith' and 'Christianity'. [No, he does not. For a Christian, faith is Chrtianity!] It seems that for him, the two terms are synonymous, and that he cannot even imagine abstract concepts of divinity such as Spinoza's 'Deus- sive natura', or the Logos of the stoics, ir even just the Yahweh (Jehovah) of the Jews. Indeed, when he speaks of the latter, he limits himself to praise their perseverance in their faith even during the Shoah.

For Bergoglio, the only God is Jesus Christ [Well, that's a typical mis-statement of the Christian belief in the Trinity of the One God] - as we are told in the epistles of St. Paul, who never met him [Yes, he did! On the road to Damascus] or in the Gospel of John, which, as Scalfari notes is allegorical compared to the three synoptic Gospels, which is saying everything. [I.e., if it is allegorical, nothing can be considered factual? - But John has more than enough factual stories to tell, some of them not found in the other Gospels.]

Not a word on the historicity of Jesus, which evidently, even a non-believer must take for granted. Not a word about his supposed miracles, especially not about the Resurrection "without which the faith would be in vain". [Benedict XVI wrote three books to establish the historicity of the Jesus of faith, so Francis did not need to re-invent the wheel for Scalfari, who loves to display his chapter-and-verse erudition about, it seems, everything that has to do with Christianity, but persists in demeaning it - and Christ. He claims he is totally fascinated by the teachings of Jesus and even his figure, but does not believe he is God, because, to begin with, Scalfari does not believe in God at all. Obviously, when an 'intellectual' claims he is fascinated by any subject, to the point of being an expert in it the better to demolish it, there has to be something worthwhile about the subject or why devote yourself to it at all? IMHO, it's a futile and delusional attempt - like Dawkins's and Odifreddi's and all the other God-deniers - to show that they are far greater thinkers than all the sublime and saintly minds that have characterized the history of Christianity throughout history starting with St. Paul; that what Voltaire, Kant, Spinoza, all their deities of the Enlightenment failed to do, i.e., wipe out the very belief in God, they will succeed in doing.]

And nothing about the dogmas that fundamentally characterize Catholicism compared to the other Christian denominations: precisely those aspects one would expect to be confronted when addressing non-believers.

Instead, after having asserted that the faith does not propose absolute truths, on the basis of some word play according to which he says "Truth is relationship", Bergoglio affirms that "truth makes the believer humble". And that "God is reality with a capital R, who is revealed to us by Jesus", as if these were not the archetypal triumphalistic assertions (two of them) of a truth that is claimed to be absolute. [I thought the Pope ought to have consulted some Jesuit rhetorical master for his obviously 'non sequitur' argument that 'absolute truth does not exist', only to reaffirm the absolute truths that Christians believe in. Or are they somehow relative truths or partial truths in the context of trying to relate to the world out there that does not believe in God, much less that Jesus is God!]

On this basis, Bergoglio claims to have 'walked part of the way together with the non-believer'. In reality, with the small 'r', he has simply repeated one of those parish priest's homilies that he dispenses everyday from Casa Santa Marta.

Good for those who wish to be lulled by the familiar music of the magic flutist, but certainly useless for those who truly want to confront the argument on faith and reason with matched weapons. But for this, we need anybody but Bergoglio - "Give us back Ratzinger!", one could say.

---

In his blog Settimo Cielo on Sept. 12, 2013, Sandro Magister comments on Pope Francis's letter to Eugenio Scalfari, and the latter's ticled-to-the-marrow response, in which he claims, among many sweeping statements, that Pope Francis's statement about conscience - deliberately misappropriated and exploited by Scalfari to mean an acknowledgment of 'the primacy of conscience' over any other authority as secular liberals like Scalfari mean it, shows "an openness to modern culture... such as has never been seen from the Chair of Peter".

Leaving aside the brazen falseness of that statement - and its implied (actually feigned) ignorance of what all the modern Popes have written about modern culture -which none of them condemned in toto - Magister takes exception to the statement as it applies in particular to the subject of conscience, pointing out that Scalfari completely ignores the fact that "on the subject of conscience, Benedict XVI has said much more".

Indeed, as Fr. Vincent Twomey emphasized in his book BENEDICT XVI: Conscience of Our Age (2007) and shorter essays,

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Conscience, it seems to me, is a central theme that runs through his [Ratzinger's] entire theological endeavor, helping to give his writings that inner consistency which, despite the breadth of topics he covers, despite the fragmentary nature of his work, and despite developments within his writings, marks all his thought.

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Interestingly, in his brief rejoinder to Scalfari's hyperbolic dishonesty, Magister chooses to quote not just what Benedict XVI told the Roman Curia in December 2010 about Blessed John Henry Newman and his idea of conscience (the same excerpt I cited in my first reaction to Scalfari's bold lie), but also from the homily delivered by then Archbishop Ratzinger at the Cathedral of Munich four days after the death of Paul VI in 1978. (The homily was revived by L'Osservatore Romano last June to mark the 50th anniversary of Paul VI's election to the Papacy, and I posted a translation of it on Page 406 of this thread.) This is the excerpt Magister chose:

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"None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord" (Rom 14,7-8). These words from today's Reading literally marked his life. He gave new meaning to authority as service, carrying it as a suffering. He felt no pleasure in power, in position, in a career that had 'succeeded', precisely because authority was a responsibility that he bore. "It will lead you where you do not want to go" - that, to him, became hugely credible.

Paul VI carried out his service for the faith. From this derived both his firmness as well as readiness to compromise. For this, he had to accept criticisms, and even some comments after his death have not been lacking in bad taste.

But a Pope who does not undergo criticisms today fails in his task towards our time. Paul VI resisted telecracy and demoscopy, the two dictatorial tendencies of our time. He could do so because success and approval were not his parameters, rather his conscience, measured by the truth, by his faith.

That is why on many occasions, he sought compromise: faith leaves much that is open to an ample range of decisions, and only imposes love as the criterion, which is a duty to everyone and thus implies and imposes much respect.

Also because of this, he could be inflexible and decisive when the essential tradition of the Church was in play. In him, firmness did not derive from the insensibility of someone whose path is dictated by pleasure in power and despising others, but from the depth of his faith which made him able to bear all oppositions.

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We can well speculate why Magister chose to recall this eulogy - which, for me, was remarkable primarily in that, back in 1978, in looking over Paul VI's Petrine ministry (and the fact that twice he had considered resigning), Joseph Ratzinger seemed to have anticipated exactly what his own life would be as Pope (with much more opprobrium heaped on him in eight years than in Paul VI's 15-year Pontificate) - not that anyone, himself least of all, ever thought in 1978 he would ever become Pope.

What I would like to add to Magister's reaction to Scalfari is my outrage at the intellectual dishonesty of someone like Scalfari, who has 'condescended' to preach liberal secularism ex cathedra, as it were, all these decades, and whose personal insults to Benedict XVI [Francesco Colafemmina in his blog Forma et Fides compiled just a few samples earlier this week - I should translate and post them here] completely disregard all standards of elementary decency and good taste.

The intellectual dishonesty of not bothering to read - or at least, feigning never having read - what Joseph Ratzinger has written, but confining himself to denouncing him on the basis of public statements he has made as cardinal and as Pope that directly counter any of Scalfari's liberal causes. He betrays this dishonesty most egregiously in his fawning reply to Pope Francis. {IMHO, at the heart of his hatred for Joseph Ratzinger - no other word can describe his attitude - is a gnawing, festering envy of his adversary's universally acknowledged intellect and superior mind, and Scalfari's chagrin that after all these decades of pontificating from both L'Espresso and La Repubblica - and being consecrated the 'secular Pope' by his ilk - not even Wikipedia describes him as an 'intellectual' but only as a 'journalist'. And do not let his benign bearded look deceive you. Pardon my bitching!]

On the subject of conscience, alone, for example, the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia published a book containing two addresses delivered by Cardinal Ratzinger to keynote the annual conference of the National Catholic Bioethics Center in the USA in 1984 and again in 1991. The first was on Bishops, Truth and Morality, and the second on Conscience and Truth.

Though written seven years apart, the common thread in both was the importance of conscience, its fundamental relation to truth, and its exercise in particular circumstances. As the blurb for the book says, "Ratzinger's reflections show that contemporary debates over the nature of conscience have deep historical and philosophical roots. He says that a person is bound to act in accord with his conscience, but he makes it clear that there must be reliable, proven sources for the judgment of conscience in moral issues, other than the subjective reflections of each individual" and rightly relates these reflections to the cardinal's pre-Conclave homily warning in 2005 of the dictatorship of relativism.

Here is the text of the 1991 keynote address:

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CONSCIENCE AND TRUTH
by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Presented at the 10th Workshop for Bishops
February 1991, Dallas, Texas

In the contemporary discussion on what constitutes the essence of morality and how it can be recognized, the question of conscience has become paramount especially in the field of Catholic moral theology.

This discussion centers on the concepts of freedom and norm, autonomy and heteronomy, self-determination and external determination by authority. Conscience appears here as the bulwark of freedom in contrast to the encroachments of authority on existence.

In the course of this, two notions of the Catholic are set in opposition to each other. One is a renewed understanding of the Catholic essence which expounds Christian faith from the basis of freedom and as the very principle of freedom itself.

The other is a superseded, "pre-conciliar" model which subjects Christian existence to authority, regulating life even into its most intimate preserves, and thereby attempts to maintain control over people's lives.

Morality of conscience and morality of authority as two opposing models, appear to be locked in struggle with each other. Accordingly, the freedom of the Christian would be rescued by appeal to the classical principle of moral tradition that conscience is the highest norm which man is to follow even in opposition to authority.

Authority in this case, the Magisterium, may well speak of matters moral, but only in the sense of presenting conscience with material for its own deliberation. Conscience would retain, however, the final word. Some authors reduce conscience in this its aspect of final arbiter to the formula: conscience is infallible.

Nonetheless, at this point, a contradiction can arise. It is of course undisputed that one must follow a certain conscience or at least not act against it. But whether the judgment of conscience or what one takes to be such, is always right, indeed whether it is infallible, is another question.

For if this were the case, it would mean that there is no truth — at least not in moral and religious matters, which is to say, in the areas which constitute the very pillars of our existence.

For judgments of conscience can contradict each other. Thus there could be at best the subject's own truth, which would be reduced to the subject's sincerity. No door or window would lead from the subject into the broader world of being and human solidarity.

Whoever thinks this through will come to the realization that no real freedom exists then and that the supposed pronouncements of conscience are but the reflection of social circumstances. This should necessarily lead to the conclusion that placing freedom in opposition to authority overlooks something. There must be something deeper, if freedom and, therefore, human existence are to have meaning.

1. A Conversation On The Erroneous Conscience And First Inferences
It has become apparent that the question of conscience leads in fact to the core of the moral problem and thus to the question of man's existence itself. I would now like to pursue this question not in the form of a strictly conceptual and therefore unavoidably abstract presentation, but by way of narrative, as one might say today, by relating, to begin with, the story of my own encounter with this problem.

I first became aware of the question with all its urgency in the beginning of my academic teaching. In the course of a dispute, a senior colleague, who was keenly aware of the plight to being Christian in our times, expressed the opinion that one should actually be grateful to God that He allows there to be so many unbelievers in good conscience. For if their eyes were opened and they became believers, they would not be capable, in this world of ours, of bearing the burden of faith with all its moral obligations. But as it is, since they can go another way in good conscience, they can reach salvation.

What shocked me about this assertion was not in the first place the idea of an erroneous conscience given by God Himself in order to save men by means of such artfulness — the idea, so to speak, of a blindness sent by God for the salvation of those in question.

What disturbed me was the notion that it harbored, that faith is a burden which can hardly be borne and which no doubt was intended only for stronger natures—faith almost as a kind of punishment, in any case, an imposition not easily coped with.

According to this view, faith would not make salvation easier but harder. Being happy would mean not being burdened with having to believe or having to submit to the moral yoke of the faith of the Catholic church.

The erroneous conscience, which makes life easier and marks a more human course, would then be a real grace, the normal way to salvation. Untruth, keeping truth at bay, would be better for man than truth.

It would not be the truth that would set him free, but rather he would have to be freed from the truth. Man would be more at home in the dark than in the light. Faith would not be the good gift of the good God but instead an affliction.

If this were the state of affairs, how could faith give rise to joy? Who would have the courage to pass faith on to others? Would it not be better to spare them the truth or even keep them from it?

In the last few decades, notions of this sort have discernibly crippled the disposition to evangelize. The one who sees the faith as a heavy burden or as a moral imposition is unable to invite others to believe. Rather he lets them be, in the putative freedom of their good consciences.

The one who spoke in this manner was a sincere believer, and, I would say, a strict Catholic who performed his moral duty with care and conviction. But he expressed a form of experience of faith which is disquieting. Its propagation could only be fatal to the faith.

The almost traumatic aversion many have to what they hold to be "pre-conciliar" Catholicism is rooted, I am convinced, in the encounter with such a faith seen only as encumbrance.

In this regard, to be sure, some very basic questions arise. Can such a faith actually be an encounter with truth? Is the truth about God and man so sad and difficult, or does truth not lie in the overcoming of such legalism? Does it not lie in freedom? But where does freedom lead? What course does it chart for us?

At the conclusion, we shall come back to these fundamental problems of Christian existence today but before we do that, we must return to the core of our topic, namely, the matter of conscience.

As I said, what unsettled me in the argument just recounted was first of all the caricature of faith I perceived in it. In a second course of reflection, it occurred to me further that the concept of conscience which it implied must also be wrong.

The erroneous conscience, by sheltering the person from the exacting demands of truth, saves him ...—thus went the argument.

Conscience appeared here not as a window through which one can see outward to that common truth which founds and sustains us all, and so makes possible through the common recognition of truth, the community of needs and responsibilities.

Conscience here does not mean man's openness to the ground of his being [the ontological level], the power of perception for what is highest and most essential. Rather, it appears as subjectivity's protective shell into which man can escape and there hide from reality.

Liberalism's idea of conscience was in fact presupposed here. Conscience does not open the way to the redemptive road to truth which either does not exist or, if it does, is too demanding. It is the faculty which dispenses from truth. It thereby becomes the justification for subjectivity, which should not like to have itself called into question.

Similarly, it becomes the justification for social conformity. As mediating value between the different subjectivities, social conformity is intended to make living together possible. The obligation to seek the truth ceases, as do any doubts about the general inclination of society and what it has become accustomed to. Being convinced of oneself, as well as conforming to others, are sufficient. Man is reduced to his superficial conviction and the less depth he has, the better for him.

What I was only dimly aware of in this conversation became glaringly clear a little later in a dispute among colleagues about the justifying power of the erroneous conscience. Objecting to this thesis, someone countered that if this were so then the Nazi SS would be justified and we should seek them in heaven since they carried out all their atrocities with fanatic conviction and complete certainty of conscience. Another responded with utmost assurance that of course this was indeed the case.

There is no doubting the fact that Hitler and his accomplices who were deeply convinced of their cause, could not have acted otherwise. Therefore, the objective terribleness of their deeds notwithstanding, they acted morally, subjectively speaking. Since they followed their albeit mistaken consciences, one would have to recognize their conduct as moral and, as a result, should not doubt their eternal salvation.

Since that conversation, I knew with complete certainty that something was wrong with the theory of the justifying power of the subjective conscience, that, in other words, a concept of conscience which leads to such conclusions must be false. For, subjective conviction and the lack of doubts and scruples which follow therefrom do not justify man.

Some thirty years later, in the terse words of the psychologist, Albert Gorres, I found summarized the perceptions I was trying to articulate. The elaboration of these insights forms the heart of this address.

Gorres shows that the feeling of guilt, the capacity to recognize guilt, belongs essentially to the spiritual make-up of man. This feeling of guilt disturbs the false calm of conscience and could be called conscience's complaint against my self-satisfied existence. It is as necessary for man as the physical pain which signifies disturbances of normal bodily functioning.

Whoever is no longer capable of perceiving guilt is spiritually ill, a "living corpse, a dramatic character's mask," as Gorres says. "Monsters, among other brutes, are the ones without guilt feelings. Perhaps Hitler did not have any, or Himmler, or Stalin. Maybe Mafia bosses do not have any guilt feelings either, or maybe their remains are just well hidden in the cellar. Even aborted guilt feelings ... All men need guilt feelings."

By the way, a look into Sacred Scripture should have precluded such diagnoses and such a theory of justification by the errant conscience. In Psalm 19:12-13, we find the ever worth pondering passage: "But who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from my unknown faults." That is not Old Testament objectivism, but profoundest human wisdom.

No longer seeing one's guilt, the falling silent of conscience in so many areas, is an even more dangerous sickness of the soul than the guilt which one still recognizes as such. He who no longer notices that killing is a sin has fallen farther than the one who still recognizes the shamefulness of his actions, because the former is further removed form the truth and conversion.

Not without reason does the self-righteous man in the encounter with Jesus appear as the one who is really lost. If the tax collector with all his undisputed sins stands more justified before God than the Pharisee with all his undeniably good works (Lk 18:9-14), this is not because the sins of the tax collector were not sins or the good deeds of the Pharisee not good deeds. Nor does it mean that the good that man does is not good before God, or the evil not evil, or at least not particularly important.

The reason for this paradoxical judgment of God is shown precisely from our question. The Pharisee no longer knows that he too has guilt. He has a completely clear conscience. But this silence of conscience makes him impenetrable to God and men, while the cry of conscience which plagues the tax collector makes him capable of truth and love.

Jesus can move sinners. Not hiding behind the screen of their erroneous consciences, they have not become unreachable for the change which God expects of them, and of us. He is ineffective with the "righteous," because they are not aware of any need for forgiveness and conversion. Their consciences no longer accuse them but justify them.

We find something similar in Saint Paul who tells us that the pagans, even without the law, knew quite well what God expected of them (Rom 2:1- 16). The whole theory of salvation through ignorance breaks apart with this verse.

There is present in man the truth that is not to be repulsed, that one truth of the creator which in the revelation of salvation history has also been put in writing.

Man can see the truth of God from the fact of his creaturehood. Not to see it is guilt. It is not seen because man does not want to see it. The "no" of the will which hinders recognition is guilt. The fact that the signal lamp does not shine is the consequence of a deliberate looking away from that which we do not wish to see.

At this point in our reflections, it is possible to draw some initial conclusions with a view toward answering the question regarding the essence of conscience. We can now say: it will not do to identify man's conscience with the self-consciousness of the I, with its subjective certainty about itself and its moral behavior.

On the one hand, this consciousness may be a mere reflection of the social surroundings and the opinions in vogue. On the other hand, it might also derive from a lack of self-criticism, a deficiency in listening to the depth of one's own soul.

This diagnosis is confirmed by what has come to light since the fall of Marxist systems in eastern Europe. The noblest and keenest minds of the liberated peoples speak of an enormous spiritual devastation which appeared in the years of the intellectual deformation. They speak of a blunting of the moral sense which is more significant loss and danger than the economic damage which was done. The new patriarch of Moscow stressed this poignantly in the summer of 1990.

The power of perception of people who lived in a system of deception was darkened. The society lost the capacity for mercy, and human feelings were forsaken. A whole generation was lost for the good, lost for humane needs.

"We must lead society back to the eternal moral values," that is to say, open ears almost gone deaf, so that once again the promptings of God might be heard in human hearts. Error, the "erring" conscience, is only at first convenient. But then the silencing of conscience leads to the dehumanization of the world and to moral danger, if one does not work against it.

To put it differently, the identification of conscience with superficial consciousness, the reduction of man to his subjectivity, does not liberate but enslaves. It makes us totally dependent on the prevailing opinions and debases these with every passing day.

Whoever equates conscience with superficial conviction, identifies conscience with a pseudo-rational certainty, a certainty which in fact has been woven from self-righteousness, conformity and lethargy. Conscience is degraded to a mechanism for rationalization while it should represent the transparency of the subject for the divine and thus constitute the very dignity and greatness of man. Conscience's reduction to subjective certitude betokens at the same time a retreat from truth.

When the psalmist in anticipation of Jesus's view of sin and justice pleads for liberation from unconscious guilt, he points to the following relation. Certainly, one must follow an erroneous conscience. But the departure from truth which took place beforehand and now takes its revenge is the actual guilt which first lulls man into false security and then abandons him in the trackless waste.

2. Newman And Socrates: Guides To Conscience
At this juncture, I would like to make a temporary digression. Before we attempt to formulate reasonable answers to the questions regarding the essence of conscience, we must first widen the basis of our considerations somewhat, going beyond the personal which has thus far constituted our point of departure.

To be sure, my purpose is not to try to develop a scholarly study on the history of theories of conscience, a subject on which different contributions have appeared just recently. I would prefer rather to stay with our approach thus far of example and narrative.

A first glance should be directed to Cardinal Newman, whose life and work could be designated a single great commentary on the question of conscience. Nor should Newman be treated in a technical way. The given framework does not permit us to weigh the particulars of Newman's concept of conscience.

I would simply like to try to indicate the place of conscience in the whole of Newman's life and thought. The insights gained from this will hopefully sharpen our view of present problems and establish the link to history, that is, both to the great witnesses of conscience and to the origin of the Christian doctrine of living according to conscience.

When the subject of Newman and conscience is raised, the famous sentence form his letter to the Duke of Norfolk immediately comes to mind: "Certainly, if I am obliged to bring religion into after-dinner toasts, (which indeed does not seem quite the thing), I shall drink—to the Pope, if you please,—still to conscience first and to the Pope afterwards."

In contrast to the statements of Gladstone, Newman sought to make a clear avowal of the papacy. And in contrast to mistaken forms of ultra-Montanism, Newman embraced an interpretation of the papacy which is only then correctly conceived when it is viewed together with the primacy of conscience, a papacy not put in opposition to the primacy of conscience but based on it and guaranteeing it.

Modern man, who presupposes the opposition of authority to subjectivity, has difficulty understanding this. For him, conscience stands on the side of subjectivity and is the expression of the freedom of the subject. Authority, on the other hand, appears to him as the constraint on, threat to and even the negation of, freedom. So then we must go deeper to recover a vision in which this kind of opposition does not obtain.

For Newman, the middle term which establishes the connection between authority and subjectivity is truth. I do not hesitate to say that truth is the central thought of Newman's intellectual grappling.

Conscience is central for him because truth stands in the middle. To put it differently, the centrality of the concept conscience for Newman, is linked to the prior centrality of the concept truth and can only be understood from this vantage point.

The dominance of the idea of conscience in Newman does not signify that he, in the nineteenth century and in contrast to "objectivistic" neo-scholasticism, espoused a philosophy or theology of subjectivity. Certainly, the subject finds in Newman an attention which it had not received in Catholic theology perhaps since Saint Augustine.

But it is an attention in the line of Augustine and not in that of the subjectivist philosophy of the modern age. On the occasion of his elevation to cardinal, Newman declared that most of his life was a struggle against the spirit of liberalism in religion. We might add, also against Christian subjectivism, as he found it in the Evangelical movement of his time and which admittedly had provided him the first step on his lifelong road to conversion.

Conscience for Newman does not mean that the subject is the standard vis-a-vis the claims of authority in a truthless world, a world which lives from the compromise between the claims of the subject and the claims of the social order.

Much more than that, conscience signifies the perceptible and demanding presence of the voice of truth in the subject himself. It is the overcoming of mere subjectivity in the encounter of the interiority of man with the truth from God.

The verse Newman composed in 1833 in Sicily is characteristic: "I loved to choose and see my path but now, lead thou me on!" Newman's conversion to Catholicism was not for him a matter of personal taste or of subjective, spiritual need.

He expressed himself on this even in 1844, on the threshold, so to speak of his conversion: "No one can have a more unfavorable view than I of the present state of Roman Catholics."

Newman was much more taken by the necessity to obey recognized truth than his own preferences, that is to say, even against his own sensitivity and bonds of friendship and ties due to similar backgrounds.

It seems to me characteristic of Newman that he emphasized truth's priority over goodness in the order of virtues. Or, to put it in a way which is more understandable for us, he emphasized truth's priority over consensus, over the accommodation of groups.

I would say, when we are speaking of a man of conscience, we mean one who looks at things this way. A man of conscience, is one who never acquires tolerance, well-being, success, public standing, and approval on the part of prevailing opinion, at the expense of truth.

In this regard, Newman is related to Britain's other great witness of conscience, Thomas More, for whom conscience was not at all an expression of subjective stubbornness or obstinate heroism. He numbered himself, in fact, among those fainthearted martyrs who only after faltering and much questioning succeed in mustering up obedience to conscience, mustering up obedience to the truth which must stand higher than any human tribunal or any type of personal taste.

Thus two standards become apparent for ascertaining the presence of a real voice or conscience. First, conscience is not identical to personal wishes and taste. Secondly, conscience cannot be reduced to social advantage, to group consensus or to the demands of political and social power.

Let us take a side-look now at the situation of our day. The individual may not achieve his advancement or well-being at the cost of betraying what he recognizes to be true, nor may humanity. Here we come in contact with the really critical issue of the modern age.

The concept of truth has been virtually given up and replaced by the concept of progress. Progress itself "is" truth. But through this seeming exaltation, progress loses its direction and becomes nullified. For if no direction exists, everything can just as well be regress as progress.

Einstein's relativity theory properly concerns the physical cosmos. But it seems to me to describe exactly the situation of the intellectual/spiritual world of our time. Relativity theory states there are no fixed systems of reference in the universe. When we declare a system to be a reference point from which we try to measure a whole, it is we who do the determining. Only in such a way can we attain any results at all. But the determination could always have been done differently.

What we said about the physical cosmos is reflected in the second "Copernican revolution" regarding our basic relationship to reality. The truth as such, the absolute, the very reference point of thinking, is no longer visible.

For this reason, precisely in the spiritual sense, there is no longer "up or down." There are no directions in a world without fixed measuring points. What we view to be direction is not based on a standard which is true in itself but on our decision and finally on considerations of expediency.

In such a relativistic context, so-called teleological or consequentialist ethics ultimately becomes nihilistic, even if it fails to see this. And what is called conscience in such a worldview is, on deeper reflection, but a euphemistic way of saying that there is no such thing as an actual conscience, conscience understood as a "co-knowing" with the truth. Each person determines his own standards. And, needless to say, in general relativity, no one can be of much help to the other, much less prescribe behavior to him.

At this point, the whole radicality of today's dispute over ethics and conscience, its center, becomes plain. It seems to me that the parallel in the history of thought is the quarrel between Socrates-Plato and the sophists, in which the fateful decision between two fundamental positions has been rehearsed.

There is, on the one hand, the position of confidence in man's capacity for truth. On the other, there is a worldview in which man alone sets standards for himself.

The fact that Socrates, the pagan, could become in a certain respect the prophet of Jesus Christ has its roots in this fundamental question. Socrates'S taking up of this question bestowed on the way of philosophizing inspired by him a kind of salvation-historical privilege and made it an appropriate vessel for the Christian Logos. For with the Christian Logos we are dealing with liberation through truth and to truth.

If you isolate Socrates'S dispute from the accidents of the time and take into account his use of other arguments and terminology, you begin to see how closely this is the same dilemma we face today.

Giving up the idea of man's capacity for truth leads first to pure formalism in the use of words and concepts. Again, the loss of content, then and now, leads to a pure formalism of judgment. In many places today, for example, no one bothers any longer to ask what a person thinks. The verdict on someone's thinking is ready at hand as long as you can assign it to its corresponding, formal category: conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary.

Assignment to a formal scheme suffices to render unnecessary coming to terms with the content. The same thing can be seen in more concentrated form, in art. What a work of art says is indifferent. It can glorify God or the devil. The sole standard is that of formal, technical mastery.

We now have arrived at the heart of the matter. Where contents no longer count, where pure praxeology takes over, technique becomes the highest criterion. This means, though, that power becomes the preeminent category whether revolutionary or reactionary.

This is precisely the distorted form of being like God of which the account of the fall speaks. The way of mere technical skill, the way of sheer power, is imitation of an idol and not expression of one's being made in the image and likeness of God.

What characterizes man as man is not that he asks about the "can" but about the "should" and that he opens himself to the voice and demands of truth. It seems to me that this was the final meaning of the Socratic search and it is the profoundest element in the witness of all martyrs.

They attest to the fact that man's capacity for truth is a limit on all power and a guarantee of man's likeness to God. It is precisely in this way that the martyrs are the great witnesses of conscience, of that capability given to man to perceive the "should" beyond the "can" and thereby render possible real progress, real ascent.

3. Systematic Consequences: The Two Levels Of Conscience
A. Anamnesis
After all these ramblings through intellectual history, it is finally time to arrive at some conclusions, that is to formulate a concept of conscience.

The medieval tradition was right, I believe, in according two levels to the concept of conscience. These levels, though they can be well distinguished, must be continually referred to each other. It seems to me that many unacceptable theses regarding conscience are the result of neglecting either the difference or the connection between the two.

Mainstream scholasticism expressed these two levels in the concepts synderesis and conscientia. The word synderesis (synteresis) came into the medieval tradition of conscience from the stoic doctrine of the microcosm. It remained unclear in its exact meaning and for this reason became a hindrance to a careful development of this essential aspect of the whole question of conscience.

I would like, therefore, without entering into philosophical disputes, to replace this problematic word with the much more clearly defined Platonic concept of anamnesis. It is not only linguistically clearer and philosophically deeper and purer, but anamnesis above all also harmonizes with key motifs of biblical thought and the anthropology derived therefrom.

The word anamnesis should be taken to mean exactly what Paul expressed in the second chapter of his Letter to the Romans: "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness ..." (2:14 ff.).

The same thought is strikingly amplified in the great monastic rule of Saint Basil. Here we read: "The love of God is not founded on a discipline imposed on us from outside, but is constitutively established in us as the capacity and necessity of our rational nature."

Basil speaks in terms of "the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us," an expression which was to become important in medieval mysticism. In the spirit of Johannine theology, Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments.

For this reason, the spark of love which has been put into us by the Creator, means this: "We have received interiorly beforehand the capacity and disposition for observing all divine commandments ... These are not something imposed from without."

Referring everything back to its simple core, Augustine adds: "We could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us."

This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine.

From its origin, man's being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being,is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents.

It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: "That's it! That is what my nature points to and seeks."

The possibility for, and right to "mission" rest on this anamnesis of the creator which is identical to the ground of our existence. The Gospel may, indeed, must be proclaimed to the pagans because they themselves are yearning for it in the hidden recesses of their souls (cf. Is 42:4).

Mission is vindicated then when those addressed recognize in the encounter with the word of the Gospel that this indeed is what they have been waiting for. In this sense, Paul can say: the Gentiles are a law to themselves — not in the sense of modern liberal notions of autonomy which preclude transcendence of the subject, but in the much deeper sense that nothing belongs less to me than I myself. My own I is the site of the profoundest surpassing of self and contact with Him from whom I came and toward Whom I am going.

In these sentences, Paul expresses the experience which he had as missionary to the Gentiles and which Israel may have experienced before him in dealings with the "god-fearing."

Israel could have experienced among the Gentiles what the ambassadors of Jesus Christ found reconfirmed. Their proclamation answered an expectation. Their proclamation encountered an antecedent basic knowledge of the essential constants of the will of God which came to be written down in the commandments, which can be found in all cultures and which can be all the more clearly elucidated the less an overbearing cultural bias distorts this primordial knowledge.

The more man lives in the "fear of the Lord" — consider the story of Cornelius (especially Acts 10:34-35) — the more concretely and clearly effective this anamnesis becomes.

Again, let us take a formulation of Saint Basil. The love of God which is concrete in the commandments, is not imposed on us from without, the Church Father emphasizes, but has been implanted in us beforehand. The sense for the good has been stamped upon us, Augustine puts it.

We can now appreciate Newman's toast first to conscience and then to the Pope. The Pope cannot impose commandments on faithful Catholics because he wants to or finds it expedient. Such a modern, voluntaristic concept of authority can only distort the true theological meaning of the papacy.

The true nature of the Petrine office has become so incomprehensible in the modern age no doubt because we only think of authority in terms which do not allow for bridges between subject and object.

Accordingly, everything which does not come from the subject is thought to be externally imposed. But the situation is really quite different according to the anthropology of conscience which through these reflections we have hopefully appreciated.

The anamnesis instilled in our being needs, one might say, assistance from without so that it can become aware of itself. But this "from without" is not something set in opposition to anamnesis but ordered to it.

It has maieutic function [the Socratic mode of inquiry, which aims to bring a person's latent ideas into clear consciousness], imposes nothing foreign, but brings to fruition what is proper to anamnesis, namely its interior openness to the truth.

When we are dealing with the question of faith and Church whose radius extends from the redeeming Logos over the gift of creation, we must, however, take into account yet another dimension which is especially developed in the Johannine writings.

John is familiar with the anamnesis of the new "we" which is granted to us in the incorporation into Christ (one Body, i.e., one "I" with Him). In remembering, they knew him, so the Gospel has it in a number of places.

The original encounter with Jesus gave the disciples what all generations thereafter receive in their foundational encounter with the Lord in Baptism and the Eucharist, namely, the new anamnesis of faith which unfolds, similarly to the anamnesis of creation, in constant dialogue between within and without.

In contrast to the presumption of Gnostic teachers who wanted to convince the faithful that their naive faith must be understood and applied much differently, John could say: you do not need such instruction, for as anointed ones (i.e., baptized) you know everything (cf. 1 Jn 2:20).

This does not mean a factual omniscience on the part of the faithful. It does signify, however, the sureness of the Christian memory. This Christian memory, to be sure, is always learning, but proceeding from its sacramental identity, it also distinguishes from within between what is a genuine unfolding of its recollection and what is its destruction or falsification.

In the crisis of the Church today, the power of this recollection and the truth of the apostolic word is experienced in an entirely new way where much more so than hierarchical direction, it is the power of memory of the simple faith which leads to the discernment of spirits.

One can only comprehend the primacy of the Pope and its correlation to Christian conscience in this connection. The true sense of this teaching authority of the Pope consists in his being the advocate of the Christian memory.

The Pope does not impose from without. Rather, he elucidates the Christian memory and defends it. For this reason the toast to conscience indeed must precede the toast to the Pope because without conscience there would not be a papacy.

All power that the papacy has is power of conscience. It is service to the double memory upon which the faith is based and which again and again must be purified, expanded and defended against the destruction of memory which is threatened by a subjectivity forgetful of its own foundation as well as by the pressures of social and cultural conformity.

B) Conscientia
Having considered this first, essentially ontological level of the concept of conscience, we must now turn to its second level, that of judgment and decision which the medieval tradition designates with the single word conscientia, conscience.

Presumably this terminological tradition has not insignificantly contributed to the diminution of the concept of conscience. Thomas, for example, only designates this second level as conscientia. For him it stands to reason that conscience is not a habitus, that is a lasting ontic quality of man, but actus, an event in execution.

Thomas of course assumes as given, the ontological foundation of anamnesis (synderesis). He describes anamnesis as an inner repugnance to evil and an attraction to the good. The act of conscience applies this basic knowledge to the particular situation.

It is divided according to Thomas into three elements: recognizing (recognoscere), bearing witness (testificare), and finally, judging (judicare). One might speak of an interaction between a function of control and a function of decision.

Thomas sees this sequence according to the Aristotelian model of deductive reasoning. But he is careful to emphasize what is peculiar to this knowledge of moral actions whose conclusions do not come from mere knowing or thinking.

Whether something is recognized or not, depends too on the will which can block the way to recognition or lead to it. It is dependent, that is to say, on an already formed moral character which can either continue to deform or be further purified.

On this level, the level of judgment (conscientia in the narrower sense), it can be said that even the erroneous conscience binds. This statement is completely intelligible from the rational tradition of scholasticism. No one may act against his convictions, as Saint Paul had already said (Rom 14:23).

But the fact that the conviction a person has come to certainly binds in the moment of acting, does not signify a canonization of subjectivity. It is never wrong to follow the convictions one has arrived at — in fact, one must do so.

But it can very well be wrong to have come to such askew convictions in the first place, by having stifled the protest of the anamnesis of being. The guilt lies then in a different place, much deeper — not in the present act, not in the present judgment of conscience, but in the neglect of my being which made me deaf to the internal promptings of truth.

For this reason, criminals of conviction like Hitler and Stalin are guilty. These crass examples should not serve to put us at ease but should rouse us to take seriously the earnestness of the plea: "Free me from my unknown guilt" (Ps 19:13).

Epilogue: Conscience and Grace
At the end, there remains the question with which we began. Is not the truth, at least as the faith of the Church shows it to us, too lofty and difficult for man?

Taking into consideration everything we have said, we can respond as follows. Certainly the high road to truth and goodness is not a comfortable one. It challenges man. Nevertheless, retreat into self, however comfortable, does not redeem. The self withers away and becomes lost.

But in ascending the heights of the good, man discovers more and more the beauty which lies in the arduousness of truth which constitutes redemption for him. We would dissolve Christianity into moralism if no message which surpasses our own actions became discernible.

Without many words an image from the Greek world can show this to us. In it we can observe simultaneously both how the anamnesis of the creator extends from within us outward toward the redeemer and how everyone may see him as redeemer, because he answers our own innermost expectations.

I am speaking of the story of the expiation of the sin of matricide of Orestes. He had committed the murder as an act of conscience. This is designated by the mythological language of obedience to the command of the god Apollo. B

ut he now finds himself hounded by the furies or erinyes who are to be seen as mythological personifications of conscience which, from a deeper wellspring of recollection, reproach Orestes, declaring that his decision of conscience, his obedience to the "saying of the gods" was in reality guilt.

The whole tragedy of man comes to light in this dispute of the "gods," that is to say, in this conflict of conscience. In the holy court, the white stone of Athena leads to Orestes's acquittal, his sanctification in the power of which the erinyes are transformed into emends, spirits of reconciliation. Atonement has transformed the world.

The myth, while representing the transition from a system of blood vengeance to the right order of community, signifies much more than just that. Hans Usr Von Balthasar expressed this "more" as follows: "...Calming grace always assists in the establishing of justice, not the old graceless justice of the Erinyes period, but that which is full of grace..."

This myth speaks to us of the human longing that conscience's objectively just indictment and the attendant destructive, interior distress it causes in man, not be the last word. It thus speaks of an authority of grace, a power of expiation which allows the guilt to vanish and makes truth at last truly redemptive.

It is the longing for a truth which doesn't just make demands of us but also transforms us through expiation and pardon. Through these, as Aeschylus puts it, "guilt is washed away" and our being is transformed from within, beyond our own capability. This is the real innovation of Christianity.

The Logos, the truth in person, is also the atonement, the transforming forgiveness above and beyond our capability and incapability. Therein lies the real novelty upon which the larger Christian memory is founded and which indeed, at the same time, constitutes the deeper answer to what the anamnesis of the creator expects of us.

Where this center of the Christian anamnesis is not sufficiently expressed and appreciated, truth becomes a yoke which is too heavy for our shoulders and from which we must seek to free ourselves. But the freedom gained thereby is empty. It leads into the desolate land of nothingness and disintegrates of itself.

Yet the yoke of truth in fact became "easy" (Mt 11:30) when the Truth came, loved us, and consumed our guilt in the fire of his love. Only when we know and experience this from within, will we be free to hear the message of conscience with joy and without fear.

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As I have often said, reading through an essay by Joseph Ratzinger, such as the above, or the Regensburg lecture, just to cite two examples, is the equivalent of earning credits for a college course, because he gives you so much relevant information, so many fresh insights, and so many points to ponder and discuss, without ever ever dispensing platitudes or slogans and not descending to soundbites to make his points. And of course, he does this, too, in a non-academic and very pastoral manner, in all his magisterial statements. And always, always, he gives us food for the heart, for the mind and for the spirit. God bless Benedict XVI!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/09/2013 15:20]

One year ago...


This post properly belongs with yesterday's lookback on Day 1 of Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Lebanon, but it was a major event by itself - the principal reason for the trip to Lebanon, so I feel it deserves a post by itself.

PAPAL VISIT TO LEBANON - Day 1
Signing of the Apostolic Exhortation
'Ecclesia in Medio Oriente'




Benedict XVI's exhortation:
'Churches of the Middle East, fear not!'
By Van Meguerditchian and Wassim Mroueh




HARISSA, Lebanon, Sept. 14 - Pope Benedict XVI signed the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops Friday, urging Christians in the region to be brave and remain loyal to their beliefs and values.

“Churches of the Middle East, fear not, for the Lord is truly with you, to the close of the age.

“Fear not, because the universal Church walks at your side and is humanly and spiritually close to you,” the Pope said in his homily during a liturgy at Harissa’s Saint Paul Basilica.

“In light of today’s Feast, and in view of a fruitful application of the Exhortation, I urge all of you to fear not, to stand firm in truth and in purity of faith,” Benedict said.

“This is the language of the cross, exalted and glorious!”

The Pope then signed the Exhortation, which includes recommendations made to the Christians of the region during the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, which convened in the Vatican in October 2010.

“By its biblical and pastoral orientation ... and its summons to dialogue, the Exhortation points out a path for rediscovering what is essential: Being a follower of Christ even in difficult and sometimes painful situations, which may lead to the temptation to ignore or to forget the exaltation of the cross,” the Pope said.

The Pontiff said that the Exhortation encourages “genuine” dialogue among different religions based on the faith in one God.

“The Exhortation shows openness to authentic inter-religious dialogue based on faith in the one God, the Creator. It also seeks to contribute to an ecumenism full of human, spiritual and charitable fervor, in evangelical truth and love,” he said.

Pope Benedict – who arrived for a three-day visit to Lebanon Friday – said that the synod discussed all aspects of the situation of Christians in the Middle East.

“In examining the present situation of the Church in the Middle East, the synod fathers reflected on the joys and struggles, the fears and hopes of Christ’s disciples in these lands,” the pope said.

“In this way, the entire Church was able to hear the troubled cry and see the desperate faces of many men and women who experience grave human and material difficulties, who live amid powerful tensions in fear and uncertainty,” he added.

The gathering was attended by President Michel Sleiman and a wide array of bishops as well as Druze and Sunni religious figures.

Delivering a speech at the beginning of the Mass, Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios Lahham III voiced support for the Catholic Church in the Vatican, saying the world was in need of a unified Church strong enough to carry the principles of love, hope and truth.

Addressing the pope, Lahham said: “You carry a message to Lebanon, the country that is a message in itself, as your predecessor said,” in reference to late Pope John Paul II, who famously described Lebanon as a unique example of coexistence in the region.

Lahham also thanked the Vatican for its support to the Palestinian cause.


Here is the Vatican's English translation of the Pope's homily, which was delivered in French, the language is using for all his public discourses in Lebanon:

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I thank Patriarch Gregorios Laham for his words of welcome, and the Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, Archbishop Nikola Eterović, for his introduction.

My warm greetings go to the Patriarchs, to all the Eastern and Latin Bishops assembled in this beautiful Cathedral of Saint Paul, and to the members of the Special Council of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East.

I am also gratified by the presence of the Orthodox, Muslim and Druze delegations, as well as those from the world of culture and from civil society. I greet with affection the beloved Greek Melkite community with gratitude for your welcome.

Your presence makes my signing of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente all the more solemn; it testifies that this document, while addressed to the universal Church, has a particular importance for the entire Middle East.

Providentially, this event takes place on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a celebration originating in the East in 335, following the dedication of the Basilica of the Resurrection built over Golgotha and our Lord’s tomb by the Emperor Constantine the Great, whom you venerate as saint.

A month from now we will celebrate the seventeen-hundredth anniversary of the appearance to Constantine of the Chi-Rho, radiant in the symbolic night of his unbelief and accompanied by the words: “In this sign you will conquer!” Later, Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, and gave his name to Constantinople.

It seems to me that the Post-Synodal Exhortation can be read and understood in the light of this Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and more particularly in the light of the Chi-Rho, the two first letters of the Greek word “Christos”.

Reading it in this way leads to renewed appreciation of the identity of each baptized person and of the Church, and is at the same time a summons to witness in and through communion. Are not Christian communion and witness grounded in the Paschal Mystery, in the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Christ? Is it not there that they find their fulfilment? There is an inseparable bond between the cross and the resurrection which Christians must never forget.

Without this bond, to exalt the cross would mean to justify suffering and death, seeing them merely as our inevitable fate. For Christians, to exalt the cross means to be united to the totality of God’s unconditional love for mankind. It means making an act of faith!

To exalt the cross, against the backdrop of the resurrection, means to desire to experience and to show the totality of this love. It means making an act of love!

To exalt the cross means to be a committed herald of fraternal and ecclesial communion, the source of authentic Christian witness. It means making an act of hope!

In examining the present situation of the Church in the Middle East, the Synod Fathers reflected on the joys and struggles, the fears and hopes of Christ’s disciples in these lands. In this way, the entire Church was able to hear the troubled cry and see the desperate faces of many men and women who experience grave human and material difficulties, who live amid powerful tensions in fear and uncertainty, who desire to follow Christ – the One who gives meaning to their existence – yet often find themselves prevented from doing so.

That is why I wanted the First Letter of Saint Peter to serve as the framework of the document. At the same time, the Church was able to admire all that is beautiful and noble in the Churches in these lands.

How can we fail to thank God at every moment for all of you (cf. 1 Th 1:2; Part One of the Post-Synodal Exhortation), dear Christians of the Middle East! How can we fail to praise him for your courage and faith? How can we fail to thank him for the flame of his infinite love which you continue to keep alive and burning in these places which were the first to welcome his incarnate Son? How can we fail to praise and thank him for your efforts to build ecclesial and fraternal communion, and for the human solidarity which you constantly show to all God’s children?

Ecclesia in Medio Oriente makes it possible to rethink the present in order to look to the future with the eyes of Christ. By its biblical and pastoral orientation, its invitation to deeper spiritual and ecclesiological reflection, its call for liturgical and catechetical renewal, and its summons to dialogue, the Exhortation points out a path for rediscovering what is essential: being a follower of Christ even in difficult and sometimes painful situations which may lead to the temptation to ignore or to forget the exaltation of the cross.

It is here and now that we are called to celebrate the victory of love over hate, forgiveness over revenge, service over domination, humility over pride, and unity over division.

In the light of today’s Feast, and in view of a fruitful application of the Exhortation, I urge all of you to fear not, to stand firm in truth and in purity of faith.

This is the language of the cross, exalted and glorious! This is the “folly” of the cross: a folly capable of changing our sufferings into a declaration of love for God and mercy for our neighbour; a folly capable of transforming those who suffer because of their faith and identity into vessels of clay ready to be filled to overflowing by divine gifts more precious than gold (cf. 2 Cor 4:7-18).

This is more than simply picturesque language: it is a pressing appeal to act concretely in a way which configures us ever more fully to Christ, in a way which helps the different Churches to reflect the beauty of the first community of believers (cf. Acts 2:41-47: Part Two of the Exhortation); in a way like that of the Emperor Constantine, who could bear witness and bring Christians forth from discrimination to enable them openly and freely to live their faith in Christ crucified, dead and risen for the salvation of all.

Ecclesia in Medio Oriente provides some elements that are helpful for a personal and communal examination of conscience, and an objective evaluation of the commitment and desire for holiness of each one of Christ’s disciples.

The Exhortation shows openness to authentic inter-religious dialogue based on faith in the one God, the Creator. It also seeks to contribute to an ecumenism full of human, spiritual and charitable fervour, in evangelical truth and love, drawing its strength from the commandment of the risen Lord: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:19-20).

The Exhortation as a whole is meant to help each of the Lord’s disciples to live fully and to pass on faithfully to others what he or she has become by Baptism: a child of light, sharing in God’s own light, a lamp newly lit amid the troubled darkness of this world, so that the light may shine in the darkness (cf. Jn 1:4f. and 2 Cor 4:1-6).

The document seeks to help purify the faith from all that disfigures it, from everything that can obscure the splendour of Christ’s light. For communion is true fidelity to Christ, and Christian witness is the radiance of the paschal mystery which gives full meaning to the cross, exalted and glorious. As his followers, “we proclaim Christ crucified … the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:23-24; cf. Part Three of the Exhortation).

“Fear not, little flock” (Lk 12:32) and remember the promise made to Constantine: “In this sign you will conquer!”

Churches of the Middle East, fear not, for the Lord is truly with you, to the close of the age! Fear not, because the universal Church walks at your side and is humanly and spiritually close to you!

It is with this hope and this word of encouragement to be active heralds of the faith by your communion and witness, that on Sunday I will entrust the Post-Synodal Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente to my venerable brother Patriarchs, Archbishops and Bishops, and to all priests, deacons, men and women religious, the seminarians and all the lay faithful.

“Be of good cheer!” (Jn 16:33) Through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Theotókos, I invoke God’s abundant gifts upon all of you with great affection! God grant that all the peoples of the Middle East may live in peace, fraternity and religious freedom! May God bless all of you!

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Apostolic exhortation
for the Middle East : A summary


The Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente was elaborated by Pope Benedict XVI on the basis of the 44 final Propositions of the Special Assembly for the Middle East which was held by the Bishops' Synod in the Vatican in Oct. 2010, on the theme "The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and witness" ["The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul"] (Acts 4,32).

In the introduction, the Pope invites the Catholic Church in the Middle East to revive communion, to seek dialogue with Jews and Muslims, and to promote the rites of the Eastern Churches.

The first part of the document focuses on the contribution of Christians who live in the Middle East. The positions of the Holy See on the various conflicts in the region and on the status of Jerusalem and the Holy Places, it says, are well known. The Pope calls for conversion to interior peace linked to justice, and for forgiveness - overriding all distinctions of race, sex and class.

The next chapter addresses the issue of ecumenical unity, describing it as a form of mosaic which requires significant effort in the reinforcement of Christian witness. The Pope encourages a communion understood as recognition and respect for others. He encourages theology and ecumenical Commissions to speak with one voice on important moral questions like the family, sexuality, bioethics, freedom, justice and peace.

Under the heading “Inter-religious dialogue”, the document recalls the historical and spiritual links that Christians have with Jews and Muslims. This dialogue, it states, is not dictated by pragmatic considerations of a political or social order, but on the theological foundations of faith.

Regarding Christian-Jewish dialogue, the Pope invites Christians to condemn the unjustifiable persecutions of the past. With regard to Muslims, he says it is regrettable how doctrinal differences have been used as a pretext by both Christians and Muslims to justify, in the name of religion, acts of intolerance, discrimination, marginalization and persecution.

The document then addresses the presence of Christians in the Middle East, saying they have the right and the duty to participate fully in civil life. The Pope affirms the right to religious liberty and to publicly manifest one's belief and its symbols, without putting one's own life or personal freedom in danger.

The document then considers secularization and the violent fundamentalism that claims to have a religious origin. Secularism denies the citizen the right to publicly express his or her religion. A healthy secularity, on the other hand, means distinction and collaboration between politics and religion, characterized by mutual respect.

The Pope also faces the question of the Christian exodus from the Middle East under the chapter on Migrants. He asks political and religious leaders to avoid policies and strategies tending towards a monochromatic Middle East which does not reflect its human and historical reality.

This chapter makes an appeal on behalf of immigrant workers in the MIddle EAst who often experience situations of discrimination and injustice.

Part II of the Apostolic Exhortation addresses some of the principal categories that constitute the Catholic Church: Patriarchs, bishops, priests and seminarians, those called to the consecrated life, and the laity – whom the Pope invites to overcome divisions and subjective interpretations of Christian life.

Benedict XVI also addresses the family and its identity as a domestic Church; and the role of women in the Middle East whose voices, he says, must be heard with equal respect as men. Addressing young people and children, the Pope exhorts them not to be afraid or ashamed of being Christians and to respect other believers, Jews and Muslims.

Part III of the document is entitled: “The Word of God, soul and source of communion and witness” and suggests proclaiming a Year of the Bible and an annual Bible Week.

In this chapter the Pope encourages the development of new communication and educational structures.

In the chapter on Liturgy and sacramental life, the Pope says he hopes for an ecumenical agreement between the Catholic Church and the Churches with which it is in theological dialogue on the mutual recognition of Baptism, and for more frequent practice of the sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation.

Regarding prayer and pilgrimages, the Pope asks that the faithful have free access to holy places and that biblical pilgrimage returns to its original motivations of penitence and the search for God.

The chapter dedicated to evangelization and charity encourages an evangelization that looks to both the ecumenical and inter-religious dimensions and calls for a renewed missionary spirit in a multi-cultural and pluri-religious context, hoping that the Year of Faith will provide a particular stimulus.

Benedict XVI concludes the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation by asking that political and religious authorities not only alleviate the suffering of all those who live in the Middle East, but also eliminate the causes of this suffering, and do all in their power to enable peace to prevail.

At the same time, the Catholic faithful are exhorted to give a courageous and common witness that, the Pope says, is “difficult… but exhilarating”.

Sept. 15, 2013, 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF OUR LADY OF SORROWS

MATER DOLOROSA - OUR LADY OF SORROWS
Illustrations, from left: Greek icon, undated; Mater Dolorosa, El Greco, 1565; Pieta, Michelangelo, 1496; Pieta, William Bouguereau, 2876; Mater Dolorosa, Carlo Dolci, 1650; Our Lady of Sorrows, prayer card.
For a while there were two feasts in honor of the Sorrowful Mother: one going back to the 15th century, the other to the 17th century. For a while both were celebrated by the universal Church: one on the Friday before Palm Sunday, the other in September. The principal biblical references to Mary's sorrows are in Luke 2:35 and John 19:26-27. The Lucan passage is Simeon's prediction about a sword piercing Mary's soul; the Johannine passage relates Jesus's words to Mary and to the beloved disciple. Many early Church writers interpret the sword as Mary's sorrows, especially as she saw Jesus die on the cross. Thus, the two passages are brought together as prediction and fulfillment. St. Ambrose saw Mary as a sorrowful yet powerful figure at the cross. Mary stood fearlessly at the cross while others fled. Mary looked on her Son's wounds with pity, but saw in them the salvation of the world. As Jesus hung on the cross, Mary did not fear to be killed but offered herself to her persecutors.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091513.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Sunday Angelus - Pope Francis reflected on the three parables of mercy recounted by St. Luke in today's Gospel,
saying they all spoke of the joy of God in forgiving sinners. After the prayers, he recalled the beatification
yesterday in Argentina of Gabriel Brochero (1840-1914), country priest who tirelessly visited his flock house to house,
travelling the mountains on a mule, preaching the Kingdom of God and encouraging spiritual exercises.
[Once again, Vatican Radio has failed to provide an English translation of the Pope's remarks. I wish they would be less arbitrary about providing translations..]



One year ago...


Day 2 of the Apostolic Visit to Lebanon

---

Saturday, Sept. 15

NB: #1 (Harissa) is also the location of the Apostolic Nunciature.

Day 2
Outreach to Lebanon's civilian leaders
and leaders of the Muslim communities
Presidential Palace, Baabda


The Presidential Palace in Baabda is surrounded by military posts and the Defense Ministry building. In this mountain town southwest of Beirut are found most of the important government
buildings of Lebanon, as well as many embassies, consulates, banks and business headquarters. It was the capital of the mountain state of Lebanon during the Ottoman Empire.



The Pope arrives at the presidential palace in Baabda to a shower of petals and yellow-and-white confetti, for a series of meetings with Lebanon's political leaders,
civliian society and the leaders of the country's Muslim communities.


Two grandchildren of the President welcome the Pope with a cake decorated with Lebanese flags; and the Pope and the President during their private meeting.

Benedict XVI says multi-faith Lebanon
should be a model for the Middle East
by Philip Pullella and Tom Heneghan


BEIRUT. Sept. 15 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict urged multi-faith Lebanon on Saturday to be a model of peace and religious coexistence for the Middle East, which he called a turbulent region that "seems to endure interminable birth pangs".

The Pope, on the second day of a visit clouded by war in neighboring Syria and protests across the Muslim world, told a gathering of Lebanese political, religious and cultural leaders that religious freedom was a basic right for all people.

Christianity and Islam have lived together in Lebanon for centuries, he said, sometimes within one family. "If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society?" he asked.

"Lebanon is called, now more than ever, to be an example," he said, inviting his audience "to testify with courage, in season and out of season, wherever you find yourselves, that God wants peace, that God entrusts peace to us".

Lebanon - torn apart by a 1975-1990 sectarian civil war - is a religious mosaic of over four million people whose Muslim majority includes Sunnis, Shi'ites and Alawites. Christians, over one-third of the population, are divided into more than a dozen churches, six of them linked to the Vatican.

The German-born pontiff, 85, delivered his speech in French at the presidential palace after meeting President Michel Suleiman, a Maronite Christian, Sunni Prime Minister Najib Mikati and parliamentary speaker Nabih Berri, a Shi'ite.

Outside the palace, a Muslim onlooker named Amira Chabchoul said: "We came to support the Pope and also get support from him, because our experience has been that when we listen to him, we are touched and we are helped in our lives."

On Friday hundreds of protesters against an anti-Islam film dodged gunfire and teargas to hurl stones at security forces in Lebanon's Tripoli where one demonstrator was killed and two injured. Protesters chanted "We don't want the Pope" and "No more insults (to Islam)".

In his remarks, Suleiman said the Syrian people should be able to "attain what they desire in terms of reform, freedom, democracy ... through the appropriate dialogue and political means, away from any form of violence and coercion".

Benedict began his visit on Friday with a call for an end to all arms supplies to Syria, where the tiny Christian minority fears reprisals if Islamists come to power at the end of the bloody insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

He also described the Arab Spring movement as a "cry for freedom" that was a positive development as long as it ensured tolerance for all religions.

Coptic Christians, about 10 percent of Egypt's population, have come under repeated attack by Islamists since the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak. They worry the new government will strengthen Islamic law in the new constitution.

In Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, hardline Salafis have brought a new religious intolerance against fellow Muslims such as Sufis, whose shrines they are destroying as heretical.

Benedict avoided mentioning specific cases, but spelled out clearly the moral reasoning against violence and radicalism.

"If we want peace, let us defend life," he said. "This approach leads us to reject not only war and terrorism, but every assault on innocent human life."

Before his speech, Benedict held a private meeting with leaders of the Sunni, Shi'ite and Alawite Muslim communities and of the Druze, an offshoot of Shi'ism with other influences.

All main religious groups, including the militant Shi'ite Hezbollah movement, assured the Vatican in advance of their support for the trip and their representatives have attended several of the Pope's events with other faith leaders.

Once again, an Arab news agency has the better story compared to the Reuters report, though I must thank Pullella and Heneghan for not bringing up Regensburg!...

Pope urges Mideast Christians and Muslims
to forge a harmonious society


Beirut, Sept. 15 (Al-Arabiya News) - Balloons and white doves were released in the air as Pope Benedict XVI reached the entrance of Lebanon’s Presidential Palace on Saturday, in a visit to meet leaders of Lebanon's Muslim communities.

On the steps of the palace, in the Beirut suburb of Baabda, the Pope first met with President Michel Sleiman and his wife.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and the Parliament Speaker also arrived with their families to greet the Pope, as well as the leader of Lebanon's Druze (muslim) community, Walid Jumblatt.

The Pope was met with crowds of supporters, in their thousands, waving Lebanese and Vatican flags to welcome the Pontiff.

The visit is aimed in part at bridging the gap between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East.

Pope Benedict said on Saturday that mankind should reject vengeance and instead pardon the offences of others, as he urged the Middle East’s Christians and Muslims to forge a harmonious society.

Those who desire to live in peace must have a change of heart, and that involves “rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them and, not least, forgiveness,” he said.

“Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace,” he added in an address on the second day of his three-day visit to Lebanon.

The Pontiff issued his call in a speech to Lebanon’s political and religious leaders as well as the diplomatic corps after meeting with them at the presidential palace on the second day of his three-day visit to Lebanon.

To that end, cultural, social and religious differences should lead to a new kind of fraternity “wherein what rightly unites us is a shared sense of the greatness of each person and the gift which others are to themselves, to those around them and to all humanity.”

“Verbal and physical violence must be rejected, for these are always an assault on human dignity, both of the perpetrator and the victim.”

He noted that Christians and Muslims have lived side by side in the Middle East for centuries and that there is room for a pluralistic society.

“It is not uncommon to see the two religions within the same family. If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society?

“The particular character of the Middle East consists in the centuries-old mix of diverse elements. Admittedly, they have fought one another, sadly that is also true. A pluralistic society can only exist on the basis of mutual respect, the desire to know the other and continuous dialogue.”

Central to that, the freedom “to profess and practice one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life.”

His address focused on the universal yearning of humanity for peace and how that can only come about through community, comprised of individual persons, whose aspirations and rights to a fulfilling life must be respected.

The encounter has been particularly poignant coming after several days of deadly violence as Muslims have protested against a U.S.-made film that mocks Islam.

Crowds stood behind a security barrier adorned with Lebanese and Vatican flags. Several triumphal arches extended from one side of the street to the other.

A statement by Baabda Presidential Palace said Sleiman “urges all citizens to gather starting 8 a.m. [Saturday] along the street leading to the Presidential Palace through which the Popemobile carrying the great visitor will pass, in order to catch a glimpse of [the Pope] and receive his blessing.”

Lebanon is a multi-faith country in which Muslims make up about 65 percent of the population and Christians the balance. The Pope came to bring a message of peace and reconciliation to it and to the wider Middle East, which have been torn by violence, often sectarian, over the years.

“Why did God choose these lands? Why is their life so turbulent,” he asked.

“God chose these lands, I think, to be an example, to bear witness before the world that every man and woman has the possibility of concretely realizing his or her longing for peace and reconciliation. This aspiration is part of God’s eternal plan and he has impressed it deep within the human heart.”

The Pope said the conditions for building and consolidating peace must be grounded in the dignity of

The Pontiff, who arrived on Friday for a three-day visit, praised Lebanon as an example of “coexistence and respectful dialogue between Christians and their brethren of other religions” when he arrived at the airport.

Without referring expressly to the unrest, the pope warned that the country’s “equilibrium” is “extremely delicate.”

Lebanon has the largest Christian minority in the Middle East — forming around 40 percent of the country’s 4 million citizens. Even before this week’s anti-Western attacks, the country’s complex balance of religious and political groups was threatened by neighboring Syria’s descent into civil war.

Lebanon has an unwritten but rigorously followed tradition that the three top jobs are always reserved for members of those respective faith communities.

Thousands of people, mostly Christians and including many children, lined the road leading to the palace in bright but pleasant sunshine, hoping to catch a glimpse of the pope.

Lebanese and Vatican flags fluttered, and there was a festive atmosphere on the streets.

Zeina Khoury, a Maronite who lives nearby, said she, her husband and two children got up at 6:00 am to make sure they could find a place along the route.

"This is a blessing for Lebanon," she said. The Pope's visit is "important because it can bring us peace and because it reminds us of the importance of living together."

"I brought my children to see the Pope ... because it could be the only chance they will ever have in their life."

Here is the official Vatican translation of the Pope's address:

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Mr President,
Representatives of the Parliamentary, Governmental,
Institutional and Political Authorities of Lebanon,
Chiefs of Diplomatic Missions,
Your Beatitudes,
Religious Leaders,
Brother Bishops,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,

سَلامي أُعطيكُم [My peace I give to you!] (Jn 14:27)

With these words of Christ Jesus, I greet you and I thank you for your presence and your warm welcome. Mr President, I am grateful to you not only for your cordial words of welcome but also for having allowed this meeting to take place.

With you, I have just planted a cedar of Lebanon, the symbol of your beautiful country. In looking at this sapling, and thinking of the care which it will need in order to grow and stretch forth its majestic branches, I think of this country and its future, the Lebanese people and their hopes, and all the people of this region which seems to endure interminable birth pangs.

I have asked God to bless you, to bless Lebanon and all who dwell in these lands which saw the birth of great religions and noble cultures.

Why did God choose these lands? Why is their life so turbulent? God chose these lands, I think, to be an example, to bear witness before the world that every man and woman has the possibility of concretely realizing his or her longing for peace and reconciliation!

This aspiration is part of God’s eternal plan and he has impressed it deep within the human heart. So I would like to speak to you about peace, echoing Jesus’s invocation: سَلامي أُعطيكُم [My peace I give to you].

The wealth of any country is found primarily in its inhabitants. The country’s future depends on them, individually and collectively, as does its capacity to work for peace. A commitment to peace is possible only in a unified society.

Unity, on the other hand, is not the same as uniformity. Social cohesion requires unstinting respect for the dignity of each person and the responsible participation of all in contributing the best of their talents and abilities.

The energy needed to build and consolidate peace also demands that we constantly return to the wellsprings of our humanity. Our human dignity is inseparable from the sacredness of life as the gift of the Creator.

In God’s plan, each person is unique and irreplaceable. A person comes into this world in a family, which is the first locus of humanization, and above all the first school of peace. To build peace, we need to look to the family, supporting it and facilitating its task, and in this way promoting an overall culture of life.

The effectiveness of our commitment to peace depends on our understanding of human life. If we want peace, let us defend life! This approach leads us to reject not only war and terrorism, but every assault on innocent human life, on men and women as creatures willed by God.

Wherever the truth of human nature is ignored or denied, it becomes impossible to respect that grammar which is the natural law inscribed in the human heart (cf. Message for the 2007 World Day of Peace, 3).

The grandeur and the raison d’être of each person are found in God alone. The unconditional acknowledgement of the dignity of every human being, of each one of us, and of the sacredness of human life, is linked to the responsibility which we all have before God. We must combine our efforts, then, to develop a sound vision of man, respectful of the unity and integrity of the human person. Without this, it is impossible to build true peace.

While more evident in countries which are experiencing armed conflict – those wars so full of futility and horror – there are assaults on the integrity and the lives of individuals taking place in other countries too.

Unemployment, poverty, corruption, a variety of addictions, exploitation, different forms of trafficking, and terrorism not only cause unacceptable suffering to their victims but also a great impoverishment of human potential.

We run the risk of being enslaved by an economic and financial mindset which would subordinate “being” to “having”! The destruction of a single human life is a loss for humanity as a whole.

Mankind is one great family for which all of us are responsible. By questioning, directly or indirectly, or even before the law, the inalienable value of each person and the natural foundation of the family, some ideologies undermine the foundations of society.

We need to be conscious of these attacks on our efforts to build harmonious coexistence. Only effective solidarity can act as an antidote, solidarity that rejects whatever obstructs respect for each human being, solidarity that supports policies and initiatives aimed at bringing peoples together in an honest and just manner. It is heartening to see examples of cooperation and authentic dialogue bearing fruit in new forms of coexistence.

A better quality of life and integral development are only possible when wealth and competences are shared in a spirit of respect for the identity of each individual. But this kind of cooperative, serene and animated way of life is impossible without trust in others, whoever they may be.

Nowadays, our cultural, social and religious differences should lead us to a new kind of fraternity wherein what rightly unites us is a shared sense of the greatness of each person and the gift which others are to themselves, to those around them and to all humanity. This is the path to peace! This is the commitment demanded of us! This is the approach which ought to guide political and economic decisions at every level and on a global scale!

In order to make possible a future of peace for coming generations, our first task is to educate for peace in order to build a culture of peace. Education, whether it takes place in the family or at school, must be primarily an education in those spiritual values which give the wisdom and traditions of each culture their ultimate meaning and power.

The human spirit has an innate yearning for beauty, goodness and truth. This is a reflection of the divine, God’s mark on each person! This common aspiration is the basis for a sound and correct notion of morality, which is always centred on the person.

Yet men and women can turn towards goodness only of their own free will, for “human dignity requires them to act out of a conscious and free choice, as moved in a personal way from within, and not by their own blind impulses or by exterior constraint” (Gaudium et Spes, 17).

The goal of education is to guide and support the development of the freedom to make right decisions, which may run counter to widespread opinions, the fashions of the moment, or forms of political and religious ideology. This is the price of building a culture of peace!

Evidently, verbal and physical violence must be rejected, for these are always an assault on human dignity, both of the perpetrator and the victim. Emphasizing peacemaking and its positive effect for the common good also creates interest in peace.

As history shows, peaceful actions have a significant effect on local, national and international life. Education for peace will form men and women who are generous and upright, attentive to all, especially those most in need.

Thoughts of peace, words of peace and acts of peace create an atmosphere of respect, honesty and cordiality, where faults and offences can be truthfully acknowledged as a means of advancing together on the path of reconciliation. May political and religious leaders reflect on this!

We need to be very conscious that evil is not some nameless, impersonal and deterministic force at work in the world. Evil, the devil, works in and through human freedom, through the use of our freedom. It seeks an ally in man. Evil needs man in order to act.

Having broken the first commandment, love of God, it then goes on to distort the second, love of neighbour. Love of neighbour disappears, yielding to falsehood, envy, hatred and death. But it is possible for us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21).

It is to this conversion of heart that we are called. Without it, all our coveted human “liberations” prove disappointing, for they are curtailed by our human narrowness, harshness, intolerance, favouritism and desire for revenge.

A profound transformation of mind and heart is needed to recover a degree of clarity of vision and impartiality, and the profound meaning of the concepts of justice and the common good.

A new and freer way of looking at these realities will enable us to evaluate and challenge those human systems which lead to impasses, and to move forward with due care not to repeat past mistakes with their devastating consequences.

The conversion demanded of us can also be exhilarating, since it creates possibilities by appealing to the countless resources present in the hearts of all those men and women who desire to live in peace and are prepared to work for peace.

True, it is quite demanding: it involves rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them, and, not least, forgiveness. Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace (cf. Rom 12:16b,18).

Only in this way can there be growth in understanding and harmony between cultures and religions, and in genuine mutual esteem and respect for the rights of all.

In Lebanon, Christianity and Islam have lived side by side for centuries. It is not uncommon to see the two religions within the same family. If this is possible within the same family, why should it not be possible at the level of the whole of society?

The particular character of the Middle East consists in the centuries-old mix of diverse elements. Admittedly, they have fought one another, sadly that is also true. A pluralistic society can only exist on the basis of mutual respect, the desire to know the other, and continuous dialogue.

Such dialogue is only possible when the parties are conscious of the existence of values which are common to all great cultures because they are rooted in the nature of the human person. This substratum of values expresses man’s true humanity. These values are inseparable from the rights of each and every human being.

By upholding their existence, the different religions make a decisive contribution. It cannot be forgotten that religious freedom is the basic right on which many other rights depend.

The freedom to profess and practise one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life.

What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them. Without openness to transcendence, which makes it possible to find answers to their deepest questions about the meaning of life and morally upright conduct, men and women become incapable of acting justly and working for peace.

Religious freedom has a social and political dimension which is indispensable for peace! It promotes a harmonious life for individuals and communities by a shared commitment to noble causes and by the pursuit of truth, which does not impose itself by violence but rather “by the force of its own truth” (Dignitatis Humanae, 1): the Truth which is in God.

A lived faith leads invariably to love. Authentic faith does not lead to death. The peacemaker is humble and just. Thus believers today have an essential role, that of bearing witness to the peace which comes from God and is a gift bestowed on all of us in our personal, family, social, political and economic life (cf. Mt 5:9; Heb 12:14).

The failure of upright men and women to act must not permit evil to triumph. It is worse still to do nothing.

These few reflections on peace, society, the dignity of the person, the values of family life, dialogue and solidarity, must not remain a simple statement of ideals. They can and must be lived out.

We are in Lebanon, and it is here that they must be lived out. Lebanon is called, now more than ever, to be an example.

And so I invite you, politicians, diplomats, religious leaders, men and women of the world of culture, to testify with courage, in season and out of season, wherever you find yourselves, that God wants peace, that God entrusts peace to us. سَلامي أُعطيكُم [My peace I give to you] (Jn 14:27) says Christ! May God bless you! Thank you![

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WOW! Benedict XVI is exemplary in preaching the Christian message as a universal one, underscoring the common values shared by all men under natural law, but not shying away from pointing to Jesus Christ and to God, even in a speech that is meant to be secular.



The concluding event on Day 2 of the visit to Lebanon - a meeting with young people in Bkerke - was an extraordinary event that deserves a separate post.

Besotted with Benedict XVI and jubilant over the way the Lebanon visit was going, but I was enchanted with this event last year...

BENEDICT IN LEBANON - Day 2
Meeting with young people
of Lebanon and the Middle East
Maronite Patriarchate, Bkerke



Bkerke overlooks the city of Beirut.






Benedict XVI calls on young
Middle Eastern Christians:
'Stay and make peace'
by Francis X. Rocca


BKERKE, Lebanon, Sept. 15 (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI urged young Christians in the Middle East not to flee violence and economic insecurity through emigration, but to draw strength from their faith and make peace in their troubled region.

The Pope spoke to some 20,000 young people from several Middle Eastern countries gathered outside the residence of the Maronite patriarch in Bkerke.

The crowd began to form hours before Pope Benedict arrived in the popemobile a little after 6 p.m. As they waited, the young people sang, including a song: "From Rome you came to Lebanon, bringing the peace with you. We came from all over just to tell you that you are the one who is holding us together."

Pope Benedict began his remarks with a direct plea to young Middle East Christians, whose population is diminishing across the region, not to abandon their homelands.

"Not even unemployment and uncertainty should lead you to taste the bitter sweetness of emigration, which involves an uprooting and a separation for the sake of an uncertain future," he said. "You are meant to be protagonists of your country's future and to take your place in society and in the church."

Warning against escapism, the Pope urged his listeners not to "take refuge in parallel worlds like those, for example, of the various narcotics or the bleak world of pornography."

He acknowledged that online social networks are interesting, but said they "can quite easily lead to addiction and confusion between the real and the virtual." He called money a "tyrannical idol which blinds to the point of stifling the person at the heart."

Offering encouragement, the Pope invoked the inspiration of the first Christians, inhabitants of the Middle East who "lived in troubled times and their faith was the source of their courage and their witness."

"Courageously resist everything opposed to life: abortion, violence, rejection of and contempt for others, injustice and war," Pope Benedict said. "In this way you will spread peace all around you."

Toward the end of his remarks, the Pope offered a word of thanks to the Muslims in attendance, urging them to work with their Christian contemporaries to build up the region.

"Muslims and Christians, Islam and Christianity, can live side by side without hatred, with respect for the beliefs of each person, so as to build together a free and humane society," the Pope said.

Among the groups performing at the service was a mixed Muslim-Christian choir from the northern city of Tripoli, where the previous day a protest against an American-made anti-Muslim film had led to clashes that left at least one dead and 25 wounded.

Pope Benedict also acknowledged the presence of young Christians from neighboring Syria, where civil war has left thousands dead and displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees since March 2011.

"The Pope is saddened by your sufferings and your grief," he said, his first public reference to the Syrian conflict since he arrived in Lebanon. "It is time for Muslims and Christians to come together so as to put an end to violence and war."














Here is the Vatican translation of the Pope's address:

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Your Beatitude, Brother Bishops, Dear Friends,

“May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord” (2 Pet 1:2). The words from the Second Letter of Saint Peter that we have just heard express a desire which I have long felt.

Thank you for your warm welcome! I thank you most kindly for your presence in such great numbers this evening! I am grateful to His Beatitude Patriarch Bechara Boutros Raï for his words of welcome, to Archbishop Georges Bou-Jaoudé of Tripoli, the President of the Council for the Lay Apostolate in Lebanon, to Archbishop Elie Haddad of Saïdā of the Greek Melkites, Vice President of the same Council, and to the two young people who greeted me in the name of all present.

سَلامي أُعطيكُم – My peace I give to you! (Jn 14:27), Christ Jesus says to us.

Dear friends, you are living today in this part of the world which witnessed the birth of Jesus and the growth of Christianity. It is a great honour! It is also a summons to fidelity, to love of this region and, above all, to your calling to be witnesses and messengers of the joy of Christ.

The faith handed down from the Apostles leads to complete freedom and joy, as the many Saints and Blesseds of this country have shown. Their message lights up the universal Church. It can light up your lives as well. Many of the Apostles and saints lived in troubled times and their faith was the source of their courage and their witness. Find in their example and intercession the inspiration and support that you need!

I am aware of the difficulties which you face daily on account of instability and lack of security, your difficulties in finding employment and your sense of being alone and on the margins. In a constantly changing world you are faced with many serious challenges.

But not even unemployment and uncertainty should lead you to taste the bitter sweetness of emigration, which involves an uprooting and a separation for the sake of an uncertain future. You are meant to be protagonists of your country’s future and to take your place in society and in the Church.

You have a special place in my heart and in the whole Church, because the Church is always young! The Church trusts you. She counts on you! Be young in the Church! Be young with the Church! The Church needs your enthusiasm and your creativity!

Youth is the time when we aspire to great ideals, when we study and train for our future work. All this is important and it takes time. Seek beauty and strive for goodness! Bear witness to the grandeur and the dignity of your body which “is for the Lord” (1 Cor 6:13b).

Be thoughtful, upright and pure of heart! In the words of Blessed John Paul II, I say to you: “Do not be afraid! Open the doors of your minds and hearts to Christ!” An encounter with Jesus “gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (Deus Caritas Est, 1).

In Christ you will find the strength and courage to advance along the paths of life, and to overcome difficulties and suffering. In him you will find the source of joy. Christ says to you: سَلامي أُعطيكُم – My peace I give to you! (Jn 14:27). This is the true revolution brought by Christ: that of love.

The frustrations of the present moment must not lead you to take refuge in parallel worlds like those, for example, of the various narcotics or the bleak world of pornography. As for social networks, they are interesting but they can quite easily lead to addiction and confusion between the real and the virtual.

Look for relationships of genuine, uplifting friendship. Find ways to give meaning and depth to your lives; fight superficiality and mindless consumption! You face another temptation, too: that of money, the tyrannical idol which blinds to the point of stifling the person at the heart.

The examples being held up all around you are not always the best. Many people have forgotten Christ’s warning that one cannot serve both God and mammon (cf. Lk 16:13).

Seek out good teachers, spiritual masters, who will be able to guide you along the path to maturity, leaving behind all that is illusory, garish and deceptive.

Bring the love of Christ to everyone! How? By turning unreservedly to God the Father, who is the measure of everything that is right, true and good.

Meditate on God’s word! Discover how relevant and real the Gospel can be. Pray! Prayer and the sacraments are the sure and effective means to be a Christian and to live “rooted and built up in Christ, and established in the faith” (Col 2:7).

The Year of Faith, which is about to begin, will be a time to rediscover the treasure of the faith which you received at Baptism. You can grow in knowledge and understanding of this treasure by studying the Catechism, so that your faith can be both living and lived. You will then become witnesses to others of the love of Christ.

in him, all men and women are our brothers and sisters. The universal brotherhood which he inaugurated on the cross lights up in a resplendent and challenging way the revolution of love. “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:35). This is the legacy of Jesus and the sign of the Christian. This is the true revolution of love!

Christ asks you, then, to do as he did: to be completely open to others, even if they belong to a different cultural, religious or national group. Making space for them, respecting them, being good to them, making them ever more rich in humanity and firm in the peace of the Lord.

I know that many among you take part in various activities sponsored by parishes, schools, movements and associations. It is a fine thing to be engaged with and for others. Experiencing together moments of friendship and joy enables us to resist the onset of division, which must always be rejected!

Brotherhood is a foretaste of heaven! The vocation of Christ’s disciples is to be “leaven” in the lump, as Saint Paul says: “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Gal 5:9).

Be heralds of the Gospel of life and life’s authentic values. Courageously resist everything opposed to life: abortion, violence, rejection of and contempt for others, injustice and war. In this way you will spread peace all around you.

Are not “peacemakers” those whom in the end we admire the most? Is it not a world of peace that, deep down, we want for ourselves and for others? سَلامي أُعطيكُم – My peace I give to you! (Jn 14:27), Jesus says.

He overcame evil not with more evil, but by taking evil upon himself and destroying it completely on the cross through a love lived to the very end.

Truly discovering God’s forgiveness and mercy always enables us to begin a new life. It is not easy to forgive. But God’s forgiveness grants the power of conversion, and the joy of being able to forgive in turn. Forgiveness and reconciliation are the paths of peace; they open up a future.

Dear friends, a number of you are surely asking in a more or less conscious way: What is it that God expects of me? What is his plan for me? Wouldn’t I like to proclaim to the world the grandeur of his love in the priesthood, in the consecrated life or in marriage? Might not Christ be calling me to follow him more closely?

Think about these questions with confidence and trust. Take time to reflect on them and ask for enlightenment. Respond to his invitation by offering yourselves daily to the Lord, for he calls you to be his friends. Strive to follow Christ wholeheartedly and generously, for out of love he redeemed us and gave his life for each one of us. You will come to know inconceivable joy and fulfilment! To answer Christ’s call to each of us: that is the secret of true peace.

Yesterday I signed the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente. This letter is also addressed to you, dear young people, as it is to the entire People of God. Read it carefully and meditate upon it so as to put it into practice.

To help you, I remind you of the words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians: “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written in your hearts, to be known and read by all men; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” (2 Cor 3:2-3).

Dear friends, you too can be a living letter of Christ. This letter will not be written with pen and paper, but with the witness of your lives and your faith. In this way, with courage and enthusiasm, you will enable those around you to understand that God wants the happiness of all without distinction and that Christians are his servants and his faithful witnesses.

Young people of Lebanon, you are the hope and the future of your country. You are Lebanon, a land of welcome, of openness, with a remarkable power of adaptation. At this moment, we cannot forget those millions of individuals who make up the Lebanese diaspora and maintain solid bonds with their land of origin. Young people of Lebanon, be welcoming and open, as Christ asks you and as your country teaches you.

I should like now to greet the young Muslims who are with us this evening. I thank you for your presence, which is so important. Together with the young Christians, you are the future of this fine country and of the Middle East in general. Seek to build it up together! And when you are older, continue to live in unity and harmony with Christians. For the beauty of Lebanon is found in this fine symbiosis.

It is vital that the Middle East in general, looking at you, should understand that Muslims and Christians, Islam and Christianity, can live side by side without hatred, with respect for the beliefs of each person, so as to build together a free and humane society.

I understand, too, that present among us there are some young people from Syria. I want to say how much I admire your courage. Tell your families and friends back home that the Pope has not forgotten you. Tell those around you that the Pope is saddened by your sufferings and your griefs. He does not forget Syria in his prayers and concerns, he does not forget those in the Middle East who are suffering. It is time for Muslims and Christians to come together so as to put an end to violence and war.

In conclusion, let us turn to Mary, the Mother of the Lord, our Lady of Lebanon. From the heights of Mount Harissa she protects and accompanies you with a mother’s love. She watches over all the Lebanese people and over the many pilgrims who come from all directions to entrust to her their joys and their sorrows!

This evening, let us once more entrust to the Virgin Mary and to Blessed John Paul II, who came here before me, your own lives and the lives of all the young people of Lebanon and the countries of the region, particularly those suffering from violence or from loneliness, those in need of strength and consolation.

May God bless you all! And now together, let us lift up our prayer to Mary:
السّلامُ عَلَيكِ يا مَرْيَم... (Hail Mary …)

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Afternoon and evening views of the youth meeting.


Pope speaks to the youth
about Christian exodus
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.


BEIRUT, Sept. 15 - In a speech to at least 20,000 Lebanese youth tonight, both Christians and Muslims, Pope Benedict XVI tackled the elephant in the room during his fourth trip to the Middle East: Despite decades of papal appeals, so far nothing has stopped a steep decline in the region’s native Christian population.
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The Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, Foaud Twal, recently warned that the Holy Land is on the brink of becoming a “spiritual Disneyland,” full of glittering spiritual attractions but empty of flesh-and-blood Christians. Many observers wonder if a similar fate awaits the entire region.

Tonight, Benedict addressed those concerns, almost pleading with Lebanon's Christian youth not to taste the “bitter sweetness” of emigration.

“I am aware of the difficulties which you face daily on account of instability and lack of security, your difficulties in finding employment and your sense of being alone and on the margins,” the pope said.

But those frustrations, he said, should not prompt them to choose “an uprooting and a separation for the sake of an uncertain future.”

“You are meant to be protagonists of your country’s future, and to take your place in society and in the Church,” he said, speaking in French as he has throughout the trip.

Popes and other Church leaders have issued similar calls many times, but to date they’ve had little appreciable impact in arresting the demographic decline, which some experts call a “Christian exodus.”

According to statistics provided during the Vatican’s 2010 Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, roughly 20 percent of the region was made up of Christians in the early 20th century, while today the Christian share stands at 5 percent. According to one projection, its native Arab Christian population could be cut in half again by 2020.

The Middle East is generally defined [in terms of Church jurisdiction], as consisting of seventeen states and territories: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Syria, Turkey, Palestinian Territories, and Yemen.

According to statistics given during the Vatican’s 2010 Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, there are 20 million Christians in the region, of whom 12 million are natives and roughly eight million are recent arrivals, mostly foreign “guest workers.”

To be sure, alongside the exodus is a boom in new Christians. Saudi Arabia alone is now home to what the Vatican believes to be 1.25 million Catholics, mostly foreign nationals from places such as the Philippines and India, working in domestic services and the oil industry. Others, however, are Westerners employed in high-end occupations.

Even the well-heeled Westerners often face serious restrictions on their ability to practice Christianity openly. One recently described the situation as living in a “gilded catacomb.”

The threats facing Arab Christians are, if anything, even more serious and, to some, seemingly intractable. They include:
- General political and economic stagnation
- Insecurity about the future, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring
- An endemic sense of second class citizenship, which is linked to Islamic fundamentalism in many places, and aggravated by Israeli security policies in the Holy Land
- In some cases, explicit anti-Christian persecution

Many of those conditions afflict the general population too, but Christians are often better positioned to leave – in part because they’re sometimes more educated and prosperous, thanks largely to the church's extensive school system in the region, and in part because they have access to networks of support in the West.

In Iraq, the country’s estimated 1.5 million Christians prior to the First Gulf War in 1991 have been reduced to perhaps 400,000 today, and many observers believe similarly dramatic declines may be in store both in Egypt and in Syria.

Benedict XVI heard plaintive references to these dynamics tonight, despite the fact that Christians remain a strong presence in Lebanon, and compared to the rest of the region, the country is presently relatively stable.

Archbishop Georges Bou-Jaoude of Tripoli told the Pope in a brief welcoming address that young people in the country “live in anxiety and fear,” seeing their nation “progressively emptied of its Christian presence.”

Lebanese youth, Bou-Jaoude said, fear rising fundamentalism and the region’s seeming inability “to reconcile itself with modernity.”

Two young people struck similar notes, telling the Pope they watch fellow Christians sell their land and move on, and would like to do something to stop it.

Benedict suggested turning to the great saints of the Church.

“Many of the Apostles and saints lived in troubled times and their faith was the source of their courage and their witness. Find in their example and intercession the inspiration and support that you need,” he said.

The cause of keeping Christians in the Middle East also got a boost from an unexpected source earlier today.

During a meeting between Benedict XVI and leaders of Lebanon’s four major Islamic communities, Mufti Mohammad Rachid Kabbani, a Sunni, told the pope that Muslims “absolutely do not want Christians to leave the Middle East.”

The meeting took place behind closed doors, but a Vatican spokesperson later briefed reporters on its contents.

Tonight Benedict tried to spread Kabbani’s sentiment, asking the Muslims in his crowd “to continue to live unity and harmony with Christians,” calling it a “fine symbiosis.”

“It is vital that the Middle East in general, looking at you, should understand that Muslims and Christians, Islam and Christianity, can live side by side without hatred, with respect for the beliefs of each person, so as to build together a free and humane society,” he said.

Throughout Benedict’s itinerary, Muslim clerics and dignitaries have appeared alongside the Pope, often mixing freely with the Catholic prelates and other Christian leaders who join them in the VIP sections.

Beyond the plea to stay home, Benedict also urged Lebanese youth to pray and celebrate the sacraments, to “fight superficiality and mindless consumption,” to avoid drugs and pornography, and to work to end “abortion, violence, contempt for others, [and] injustice and war.”

Benedict also reached out to Syrian refugees in the crowd, telling them that “the Pope has not forgotten you” and asking Muslims and Christians to come together “to put an end to violence and war” in the country.

The youth rally was held in a large square outside the palace of the patriarch of the Maronite church, the largest of the seven Eastern churches which make up the bulk of Lebanon's Catholic population.

Tomorrow Benedict XVI wraps up his three-day trip to Lebanon with a large open-air Mass on Beirut’s waterfront, followed by an ecumenical meeting hosted by the city’s Syrian Catholic basilica.

Monday, September 16, 24th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. CYPRIAN OF CARTHAGE (d Carthage [modern-day Tunis] 258), Bishop, Writer, Martyr, Father of the Church
Born to wealthy pagan parents, he was highly educated and a famous orator and teacher. He became a Christian as an adult, receiving his catechesis
from the future St. Caecelius; distributed his wealth to the poor, and vowed himself to chastity before being baptized. He was ordained a priest in 247,
and two years later, he was chosen Bishop of Carthage against his will. Almost immediately, he had to conduct his ministry in hiding after the Decian
persecution began in 250. Many Christians abandoned the Church easily during the persecutions, and their subsequent reinstatement after persecutions
eased, caused great controversies in the third century. Cyprian opposed a rival bishop who simply accepted everyone back without any canonical penance.
He led the opposition, supported by all North African bishops, to Pope Stephen I's decree that on the validity of baptism by heretics if the ritual was
done properly; Cyprian insisted baptism was not valid outside the Church. During a plague in Carthage, he urged Christians to help everyone, including
their enemies and persecutors. He supported Pope St. Cornelius against the anti-Pope Novatian. As a Christian writer (mostly in the form of pastoral
letters) in North Africa, he was considered second only to Tertullian, until Augustine eclipsed them both. During Valerian's persecutions, he was exiled
in 257, then brought back to Carthage where he was sentenced to beheading by sword. He died a martyr as had Pope Stephen I and his successor
Sixtus II in Rome.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091613.cfm


WITH THE POPE TODAY

At 9:45 a.m., Pope Francis left Casa Santa Marta by car for the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano
where at 10 a.m., he met with the bishops and clergy of Rome. He spoke to them informally for about two hours
and answered questions.
Vatican Radio's English service has only brief excerpts from the Pope's remarks today:
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/09/16/pope_francis_to_rome_priests:_never_settle_for_simple_administration/en1-728989

Later at the Vatican, he met with
-Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (regular meeting)



One year ago...
Final day, Apostolic Visit to Lebanon


Three years ago today...


Benedict XVI began an apostolic visit to the United Kingdom, which was also a state visit. Up to the day
of his arrival, British media were chock-full of the direst predictions about the visit, but starting with
the popular welcome down Edinburgh's High Mile that morning, once again, this greatly 'mis-underestimated'
Pope proved all the Cassandras wrong. The visit, during which he beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman,
was one of the most memorable of his apostolic visits abroad.



Sept. 16, 2012
The Papal Mass on the final day of the apostolic visit to Lebanon was one of the most impressive of such events for the simple reason that in a small country where Christians are only a fraction of the population, it attracted a crowd of Massgoers far greater than those who came to Benedict XVI's Masses in similar open-air venues in places like Paris and Lisbon. The final day of the visit also included Beendict's visits to the patriarchal houses of the major Oriental churches based in Lebanon...

Day 3
HOLY MASS, PRESENTATION OF
'ECCLESIA IN MEDIO ORIENTE' AND ANGELUS
Beirut Waterfront




Pope appeals for peace
at huge Beirut seafront Mass

Sept. 16, 2012




Hundreds of thousands of worshippers attended a seafront Mass in Beirut on the concluding day of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Lebanon.

The Pope appealed for leaders in the Middle East to work for peace and reconciliation and urged those at the service to "be peacemakers".

He also renewed his call for a end to the violence in neighbouring Syria.

The Pope's visit has also coincided with anti-US protests across the region over a film deemed insulting to Islam.

It is the first papal trip to Lebanon since John Paul II went there in 1997.

An estimated 350,000 worshippers gathered for the waterfront Mass. [Organizers had expected a maximum 75,000.]They waved flags and cheered as the Pope made his way through the crowd in his bullet-proof popemobile.

During the service, he urged Christians throughout the Middle East to do their part to end "the grim trail of death and destruction" in the region.

Calling again for peace in Syria, he said: "I appeal to the Arab countries, that, as brothers, they might propose workable solutions respecting the dignity, the rights and the religion of every human person."

Christians from around Lebanon, as well as Syria, Iraq and further afield, travelled to see him speak in what must have been a very thrilling day, the BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says.

On Saturday the Pontiff met Lebanese political leaders at the presidential palace near Beirut.

Lebanon's politicians are bitterly divided over the conflict in neighbouring Syria, but the Pope met leaders from across the spectrum, including the Shia Muslim movement Hezbollah.

Addressing an audience of government officials, foreign diplomats and religious leaders, he called for the "fundamental right" of religious freedom to be observed.

Earlier in his visit, the Pope condemned religious fundamentalism and called on all religious leaders in the Middle East "to do everything possible to uproot this threat".

Controversy over a film deemed to be offensive to the Prophet Mohammed has provoked protests throughout the region since the Pope's arrival in Lebanon.

The film, Innocence of Muslims, is believed to have been made by a Coptic Christian in the US, and related unrest has led to the death of, among others, the US ambassador to Libya.

The Pope also addressed a gathering of thousands of young people on Saturday, and urged them to stay in Lebanon "and take your place in society and in the Church".

The number of Christians in the region has been greatly reduced in recent years due to political upheaval and economic pressures.

Pope decries Syria ‘horror’
at open-air Mass in Beirut


BEIRUT, Sept. 16 (AP) - — Pope Benedict XVI made a sweeping appeal Sunday for peace in Syria and the Middle East, decrying the violence “which generates so much suffering.”

Speaking at an open-air Mass before a huge crowd, he urged the international community and Arab countries in particular to find a solution to end the conflict in neighboring Syria.

“Why so much horror? Why so many dead,” Benedict said, lamenting that “the first victims are women and children.”

With pilgrims from across the Middle East in the crowd he said Christians must do their part to end the “grim trail of death and destruction” in the region.

“I appeal to you all to be peacemakers,” Benedict said.

Benedict spoke from an altar built on land reclaimed with debris from Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, pressing ahead with his call for peace and reconciliation between Christians and Muslims.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said local organizers put the crowd at some 350,000 people.

Benedict said that justice and peace are needed in building “a fraternal society, for building fellowship.”

The 85-year pope, wearing green vestments, appeared to be holding up well in the Mediterranean heat.

Helicopters flew overhead and soldiers set up roadblocks and patrolled streets in downtown Beirut.

The crowd cheered and waved tiny Vatican and Lebanese flags as Benedict arrived in his bullet-proof popemobile at the Mass site on the Beirut waterfront.

Benedict has been appealing for tolerance and religious freedom.

The papal visit comes amid soaring sectarian tensions in the region, exacerbated by the conflict in Syria, which is in the throes of an 18-month-old civil war. At a meeting with young people Saturday evening, the Pope said he admired the courage of Syrian youth and that he did not forget their suffering.

Representatives from Lebanon’s many mostly religious groups attended.

Patriarch Bechara al-Rai, head of the Maronite Catholic Church, told the pope shortly before the Mass started, “Your visit is a safety valve at a time when Christians feel the instability and are faithfully resisting to confirm they are deep-rooted in this land despite the major challenges.”

Many Christians in the Middle East are uneasy at the Arab Spring, which has led to the strengthening of Islamist groups in most countries that have experienced uprisings.

Nawaf al-Moussawi, a representative of the Shiite Islamist militant group Hezbollah who attended the Mass, told Lebanon’s leading LBC TV: “Our message is that we want to work together for a Middle East and a region where religions and sects live on the basis of justice that lead to peace.

“What we complain about in the region today is that we are suffering from the injustice of colonial policies,” al-Moussawi added in an apparent reference to U.S. policies. “We only see its fleets.” Hezbollah is allied with Syria, which blames an alleged Western and Arab conspiracy for its woes.

The U.S. considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Spokesman Lombardi declined to say what the Vatican’s position is on the group.







Here is the official English translation of the Pope's homily:

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!” (Eph 1:3).

Blessed be God on this day when I have the joy of being here with you, in Lebanon, to consign to the Bishops of the region my Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente!

I offer heartfelt thanks to His Beatitude Bechara Boutros Raï for his kind words of welcome. I greet the other Patriarchs and Bishops of the Eastern Churches, the Latin Bishops of the neighbouring regions, and the Cardinals and Bishops who have come from other countries.

I greet all of you with great affection, dear brothers and sisters from Lebanon and from throughout this beloved region of the Middle East, as you join with the Successor of Peter in celebrating Jesus Christ crucified, dead and risen.

My respectful greeting goes also to the President of the Republic, to the Lebanese authorities, and to the leaders and followers of the other religious traditions who have elected to be present this morning.

On this Sunday when the Gospel asks us about the true identity of Jesus, we find ourselves transported with the disciples to the road leading to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. Jesus asks them: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29).

The moment he chose to ask this question is not insignificant. Jesus was facing a decisive turning-point in his life. He was going up to Jerusalem, to the place where the central events of our salvation would take place: his crucifixion and resurrection. In Jerusalem too, following these events, the Church would be born.

And at this decisive moment, Jesus first asks his disciples: “Who do men say that I am?” (Mk 8:27). They give very different answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets!

Today, as down the centuries, those who encounter Jesus along their own way give their own answers. These are approaches which can be helpful in finding the way to truth. But while not necessarily false, they remain insufficient, for they do not go to the heart of who Jesus is. Only those willing to follow him on his path, to live in fellowship with him in the community of his disciples, can truly know who he is.

Finally, Peter, who had dwelt with Jesus for some time, gives his answer: “You are the Christ” (Mk 8:29). It is the right answer, of course, but it is still not enough, since Jesus feels the need to clarify it.

He realizes that people could use this answer to advance agendas which are not his, to raise false temporal hopes in his regard. He does not let himself be confined to the attributes of the human saviour which many were expecting.

By telling his disciples that he must suffer and be put to death, and then rise again, Jesus wants to make them understand his true identity. He is a Messiah who suffers, a Messiah who serves, and not some triumphant political saviour. He is the Servant who obeys his Father’s will, even to giving up his life. This had already been foretold by the prophet Isaiah in today’s first reading.

Jesus thus contradicts the expectations of many. What he says is shocking and disturbing. We can understand the reaction of Peter who rebukes him, refusing to accept that his Master should suffer and die! Jesus is stern with Peter; he makes him realize that anyone who would be his disciple must become a servant, just as he became Servant.

Following Jesus means taking up one’s cross and walking in his footsteps, along a difficult path which leads not to earthly power or glory but, if necessary, to self-abandonment, to losing one’s life for Christ and the Gospel in order to save it.

We are assured that this is the way to the resurrection, to true and definitive life with God. Choosing to walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, who made himself the Servant of all, requires drawing ever closer to him, attentively listening to his word and drawing from it the inspiration for all that we do.

In promulgating the Year of Faith, which is due to begin next 11 October, I wanted each member of the faithful to renew his or her commitment to undertaking this path of sincere conversion. Throughout this Year, then, I strongly encourage you to reflect more deeply on the faith, to appropriate it ever more consciously and to grow in fidelity to Christ Jesus and his Gospel.

Brothers and sisters, the path on which Jesus wishes to guide us is a path of hope for all. Jesus’s glory was revealed at the very time when, in his humanity, he seemed weakest, particularly through the incarnation and on the cross. This is how God shows his love; he becomes our servant and gives himself to us. Is this not an amazing mystery, one which is at times difficult to accept? The Apostle Peter himself would only come to understand it later.

In today’s second reading, Saint James tells us to what extent our walking in the footsteps of Jesus, if it is to be authentic, demands concrete actions. “I, by my works, will show you my faith” (Jms 2:18).

It is an imperative task of the Church to serve and of Christians to be true servants in the image of Jesus. Service is a foundational element of the identity of Christ’s followers (cf. Jn 13:15-17). The vocation of the Church and of each Christian is to serve others, as the Lord himself did, freely and impartially.

Consequently, in a world where violence constantly leaves behind its grim trail of death and destruction, to serve justice and peace is urgently necessary for building a fraternal society, for building fellowship!

Dear brothers and sisters, I pray in particular that the Lord will grant to this region of the Middle East servants of peace and reconciliation, so that all people can live in peace and with dignity. This is an essential testimony which Christians must render here, in cooperation with all people of good will. I appeal to all of you to be peacemakers, wherever you find yourselves.

Service must also be at the heart of the life of the Christian community itself. Every ministry, every position of responsibility in the Church, is first and foremost a service to God and to our brothers and sisters. This is the spirit which should guide the baptized among themselves, and find particular expression in an effective commitment to serving the poor, the outcast and the suffering, so that the inalienable dignity of each person may be safeguarded.

Dear brothers and sisters who are suffering physically or spiritually, your sufferings are not in vain! Christ the Servant wished to be close to the suffering. He is always close to you. Along your own path, may you always find brothers and sisters who are concrete signs of his loving presence which will never forsake you! Remain ever hopeful because of Christ!

And may all of you, my brothers and sisters who have come to take part in this celebration, strive to be ever more fully conformed to the Lord Jesus, who became the Servant of all for the life of the world. May God bless Lebanon; may he bless all the peoples of this beloved region of the Middle East, and may he grant them the gift of his peace. Amen.

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At the end of the Mass, before the Angelus, the Holy Faher formally consigned his Apostolic Exhortation to the Patriarchs and Bishops of the Middle East:

---

Your Beatitudes, Your Eminences,
Dear Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The liturgical celebration in which we have just taken part was an opportunity to thank the Lord for the gift of the Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops, held in October 2010 on the theme: The Catholic Church in the Middle East: Communion and Witness. “Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul” (Acts 4:32).

I would like to thank all the Synod Fathers for their contribution. My gratitude also goes to the Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, Archbishop Eterović, for the work achieved and for his words on your behalf.

Having signed the post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, I am pleased now to present it to all the local churches through you, the Patriarchs and Bishops, both Eastern and Latin, of the Middle East.

With the consigning of this document there now begins its study and appropriation by all the members of the Church, pastors, consecrated persons and lay people, so that everyone will find new joy in the pursuit of his or her mission, encouraged and fortified to put into action the message of communion and witness understood in the various human, doctrinal, ecclesiological, spiritual and pastoral aspects of this Exhortation.

Dear brothers and sisters of Lebanon and the Middle East, I hope that this Exhortation will be a guide to follow the various and complex paths where Christ goes before you.

May communion in faith, hope and charity be strengthened in your countries and in every community so as to make credible your witness to the Triune God, who has drawn close to each one of us.

Dear Church in the Middle East, draw from the source of salvation which became a reality in this unique and beloved land! Follow in the footsteps of your fathers in faith, who by tenacity and fidelity opened up the way for humanity to respond to the revelation of God!

Among the wonderful diversity of saints who flourished in your land, look for examples and intercessors who will inspire your response to the Lord's call to walk towards the heavenly Jerusalem, where God will wipe away every one of our tears (cf. Rev 21:4)!

May fraternal communion be a support for you in your daily life and the sign of the universal brotherhood which Jesus, the firstborn of many, came to bring! Thus, in this region which saw his actions and heard his words, may the Gospel continue to resonate as it did 2,000 years ago, and may it be lived today and for ever! Thank you.

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Finally, his message before leading the Angelus:

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Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Let us turn now to Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Lebanon. Let us ask her to intercede with her divine Son for you and, more particularly, for the people of Syria and the neighbouring countries, imploring the gift of peace.

You know all too well the tragedy of the conflicts and the violence which generates so much suffering. Sadly, the din of weapons continues to make itself heard, along with the cry of the widow and the orphan. Violence and hatred invade people’s lives, and the first victims are women and children.

Why so much horror? Why so many dead? I appeal to the international community! I appeal to the Arab countries that, as brothers, they might propose workable solutions respecting the dignity, the rights and the religion of every human person!

Those who wish to build peace must cease to see in the other an evil to be eliminated. It is not easy to see in the other a person to be respected and loved, and yet this is necessary if peace is to be built, if fraternity is desired (cf. 1 Jn 2:10-11; 1 Pet 3:8-12).

May God grant to your country, to Syria and to the Middle East the gift of peaceful hearts, the silencing of weapons and the cessation of all violence! May men understand that they are all brothers!

Mary, our Mother, understands our concern and our needs. Together with the Patriarchs and Bishops present, I place the Middle East under her maternal protection (cf. Propositio 44).

May we, with God’s help, be converted so as to work ardently to establish the peace that is necessary for harmonious coexistence among brothers, whatever their origins and religious convictions.

We now pray: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae… etc.

---

Needless to say, the most impressive datum of the day was the number of people who came to the Pope's Mass. Organizers expected 75,000, and 350,000 came. That is a colossal number for a Mass in the Middle East, even given that about half of the Lebanese are Christian. By comparison, consider that 250,000 turned up for the Pope's 2007 Mass in Paris, capital of the country that was once called 'the oldest daughter of the Church', and some 280,000, for the Pope's 2010 Mass in Lisbon, capital of what was once one of the staunchest of Catholic nations. Lebanon has a fraction of the population of either France or Portugal. (We can't compare with the attendance in New York, and Washington, where the papal Masses were held in baseball stadia with a fixed capacity of 50,000-70,000. I suppose one might measure the UK's secularity by the fairly low draw of 70,000 in Glasgow and the 120,000 in Birmingham for the Newman beatification Mass, since in both cases, the venue was open parkland.)

The Mass, of course, was beautiful as it always with the the Pope, but most of the music was excellent. The Gloria had a setting that started out truly gloriously, with wonderful polyphony in parts, even if the soloist did not particularly shine, and the Responsorial PSalm was intoned beautifully by a cantor in Arabic fashion.

One must be grateful to the Lebanese, for what seemed to be total involvement in the Pope's visit. The sight of Muslim schoolgirls lining the Pope's route, some even holding up a poster of the Pope, was quite special.

And whatever may be said about the rivalry and disunity among the various Oriental Catholic Churches in Lebanon, the visit was a good opportunity for the rest of the Catholic Church to know something more about them and their leaders.

John Allen has devoted a long article decrying that the Holy Father never once referred to that 'problem' in all his speeches. But why should he? The program for his visit and all the arrangements were a collaboration among these churches, with the government, for which he was appropriately thankful, and which, to all appearances, was quite a success, because the entire program went off without a hitch. If he had anything to say to hem about this problem, he could say it to them in private - after all, he made it a point to visit each of the four major patriarchal headquarters.

President Sleiman wore his Christianity proudly, attending each of the public papal events - not just at the airport and the presidential palace, where he hosted all those meetings between the Pope and Lebanon's civilian and relgious leaders, but even at the signing of the Exhortation, at the youth rally, and at the Mass this morning.

It was a lovely visit to a lovely country with a seemingly resilient population, and for a few days at least, it did focus world attention on the Pope's appeal for peace in the region, at a time of renewed anti-Western tension in the Muslim world.

Watching the coverage of the youth assembly in Bkerke before the Pope arrived, I could not help thinking of the late Cardinal Martini's words about the Church being old and tired - he did specify Europe, but the Church is not just Europe (and the cardinal seemed to ignore all the young Europeans who have turned up in great and enthiusastic numbers at the WYD celebrations), in contrast to Benedict XVI's ringing declaration at his inaugural Mass that "the Church is young and alive" - which he would reiterate to the assembly in stronger, more stirring terms.

It was poignant to watch the Holy Father walking those long corridors in the Presidential Palace using his walking stick most naturally (think of it as the papal staff without the top), not really leaning on it, but more, I think, to make sure he keeps his balance and that he does have it on hand if he actually needed it for support. He also seemed to be walking more slowly than he used to. I find that his age affects him most in his speaking - it costs him some effort and you can hear it when he starts to sound hoarse. But he always 'youthens' when he is around young people, as he did last night.

One year ago...


Day 3
Ecumenical Encounter
Syro-Catholic Monastery of Charfet
Sept. 16, 2012

After the Mass at the Beirut waterfront, the Holy Father returned to the Apostolic Nunciature in Harissa, where he lunched with his delegation from Rome. In the afternoon, after making his farewells at the Nunciature, he had another important appointment before proceeding to the airport for the flight home - a meeting with the non-Catholic leaders of Lebanon.

Here is the official English translation of his address to them:

---

Your Holiness, Your Beatitude,
Venerable Patriarchs,
Dear Brother Bishops,
Dear Representatives of other Churches and Protestant Communities,
Brothers and Sisters,

It is with great joy that I meet with you, in this monastery of Our Lady of Deliverance of Charfet, a place of great importance for the Syrian Catholic Church in Lebanon and the entire Middle East.

I thank His Beatitude Ignace Youssef Younan, Syrian Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, for his warm words of welcome.

I fraternally greet each one of you, who represent the diversity of the Church in the East, and in particular His Beatitude Ignace IV Hazim, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East and His Holiness Mar Ignatius I Zakke Iwas, Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch and all the East.

Your presence brings great solemnity to this meeting. I thank you with all my heart for being here with us. My thoughts also go to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt and to the Ethiopian Orthodox who have had the recent sadness of losing their respective Patriarchs. I wish to assure them of my fraternal closeness and of my prayers.

Allow me to acknowledge here the testimony of faith shown by the Syrian Antiochene Church in the course of its glorious history, a testimony to an ardent love for Christ, which has caused it to write some heroic pages of this history, right up to the present, by remaining committed to the faith even to the point of martyrdom.

I encourage this Church to be for the peoples of the region a sign of the peace that comes from God as well as a light that keeps their hope alive. I extend this encouragement to all the Churches and ecclesial communities present in the region.

Dear brothers, our encounter this evening is an eloquent sign of our profound desire to respond to the call of Christ, “that all may be one” (Jn 17:21).

In these unstable times, so inclined to the violence which your region knows so well, it is even more necessary that Christ’s disciples give an authentic witness to their unity, so that the world may believe in their message of love, peace and reconciliation. This is a message that all Christians, and we in particular, have been commissioned to hand on to the world, a message of inestimable value in the present context of the Middle East.

Let us work without ceasing so that the love of Christ may lead us little by little into full communion with each other. In this regard, by means of common prayer and mutual commitment, we must constantly return to our one Lord and Saviour. For, as I wrote in the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente which I have the pleasure of consigning to you, “Jesus draws into unity those who believe in and love him; he gives them the Spirit of his Father as well as Mary, his mother” (n. 15).

I entrust each one of you and all the members of your Churches and ecclesial communities to the Virgin Mary. May she intercede with her Son for us, so that we may be delivered from every evil and from all forms of violence, and so that the Middle East may at last know a time of reconciliation and peace.

May the words of Jesus that I have so often cited during this journey, سَلامي أُعطيكُم - My peace I give to you! (Jn 14, 27), be for all of us the common sign that we will give in the name of Christ to the peoples of this beloved region, which longs to see those words fulfilled! Thank you!

---

Day 3
Departure Ceremony
Hariri International Airport, Beirut

Pope Benedict XVI ended his apostolic visit to Lebanon Sunday evening with a departure address that expressed everything that was special about this visit that has been so auspicious in the most inauspicious of times.

Here is the official translation of the address, delivered to the President of Lebanon and other govenrment officials, and the Patriarchs of the Oriental Churches based in Beirut:

---

Mr President,
Messrs President of the Parliament and of the Council of Ministers,
Your Beatitudes, my brother Bishops,
Civil and religious authorities, dear Friends,

As the moment to depart draws near, I leave Lebanon with regret. I thank you for your words, Mr President, and for promoting along with the Government whose representatives I salute, the organization of the various events during my stay with you, assisted in a special way by the efficiency of the various services of the Republic and the private sector.

I thank, too, Patriarch Bechara Boutros Raï, and all the Patriarchs present, as well as the Eastern and Latin Bishops, priests, deacons, men and women religious, seminarians and faithful who came to receive me.

In visiting you, it was as if Peter himself had come to you and you received him with the cordiality which characterizes your Churches and your culture.

My special thanks go to the entire Lebanese people who form a beautiful and rich mosaic and who have shown the Successor of Peter their enthusiasm by the efforts, both general and specific, of each community. I cordially thank our venerable sister Churches and the Protestant communities.

I thank in particular representatives of the Muslim communities. Through my stay here, I have noticed how much your presence has contributed to the success of my journey. In these troubled times, the Arab world and indeed the entire world will have seen Christians and Muslims united in celebrating peace.

It is a tradition in the Middle East to receive a guest with consideration and respect as you have done. I thank you all. But, to that consideration and respect, you added something else, which can be compared to one of those renowned oriental spices which enriches the taste of food: your warmth and your affection, which make me wish to return. I thank you for that especially. May God bless you for it!

During my all too brief stay, motivated principally by the signature and consigning of the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, I have been able to meet various elements of your society.

There were moments that were more official in character, others that were more intimate, moments of great religious importance and of fervent prayer, and others marked by the enthusiasm of young people. I give thanks to God for granting these occasions, for these meaningful encounters which I was able to have, and for the prayer offered by all and for all in Lebanon and the Middle East, whatever their origins or religious beliefs.

In his wisdom, Solomon asked Hiram of Tyre to build a house for the name of God, a sanctuary for all eternity (cf. Sir 47:13). And Hiram, whom I mentioned at my arrival, sent wood taken from the cedars of Lebanon (cf. 1 Kg 5:22). Cedar furnishings adorned the interior of the Temple, with garlands of sculpted flowers (cf. 1 Kg 6:18). Lebanon was present in the sanctuary of God.

May the Lebanon of today, and her inhabitants, also dwell in the sanctuary of God! May Lebanon continue to be a place where men and women can live in harmony and peace with each other, in order to give the world not only a witness to the presence of God, the primary theme of this past Synod, but also a witness to the communion between people, the second theme of the Synod, whatever their political, social, or religious standpoint.

I pray to God for Lebanon, that she may live in peace and courageously resist all that could destroy or undermine that peace. I hope that Lebanon will continue to permit the plurality of religious traditions and not listen to the voices of those who wish to prevent it.

I hope that Lebanon will fortify the communion among all her inhabitants, whatever their community or religion, that she will resolutely reject all that could lead to disunity, and with determination choose brotherhood. These are blossoms pleasing to God, virtues that are possible and that merit consolidation by becoming more deeply rooted.

The Virgin Mary, venerated with devotion and tenderness by the faithful of the religious confessions here present, is a sure model for going forward in hope along the path of a lived and authentic brotherhood.

Lebanon understood this well when, some time ago, she proclaimed 25 March as a holiday, thus allowing everyone to live more deeply their unity in serenity. May the Virgin Mary, whose ancient shrines are so numerous in your country, continue to accompany and inspire you!

May God bless Lebanon and all the Lebanese! May he never cease to draw them to himself so as to offer them a share in his eternal life! May he fill them with his joy, his peace and his light! May God bless all the Middle East!

Upon all of you, I affectionately invoke abundant divine blessings. لِيُبَارِك الربُّ جميعَكُم – God bless you all!

---

The first and final words, and the theme of this visit:
1
I hope they leave this billboard on the mountainside!



DEO GRATIAS once again for a perfect apostolic visit and for the gift of Benedict XVI himself, who grows infinitely dearer everyday as he grows in the grace of God. May God and all his saints and angels continue to watch over him and keep him safe, well and ever joyous.

Monday, Sept. 17, 24th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. ROBERTO BELLARMINO [Robert Bellarmine] (Italy, 1542-1621), Jesuit, Cardinal, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Feb. 23, 2011 to this great Jesuit theologian wjo was one of the great figures of the Counter-Reformation.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110223...
Roberto Bellarmino was born in Montepulciano near Siena, and was ordained in the Jesuit order in 1570. Educated at the Collegio Romano, the University of Padua and the University of Louvain in Belgium, he later taught theology in Louvain and then at the Collegio Romano in the period following the Council of Trent. His most famous work, Controversiae, sought to address the issues raised by Protestant theology from a dispassionate historical and theological perspective, but his most popular work remained his brief catechism of Christian doctrine. He also served as spiritual father to the Jesuit students of the Collegio Romano, including Saint Luigi (Aloysius) Gonzaga. Bellarmine was created a Cardinal by Pope Clement VIII, and made Archbishop of Capua, where he spent three years in preaching and pastoral activity before being recalled to Rome and the service of the Holy See. In his later years, he composed a number of works of spirituality which reflect his deep Ignatian formation, with its stress on meditation on the mysteries of Christ and the loving imitation of the Lord. He is buried in the Jesuit home church of Gesu. He was canonised in 1930 alongside his pupil Luigi Gonzaga. Strangely he was not beatified until 3 centuries after his death: Pius XI beatified him in 1923, canonized him in 1930, and proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1931.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091713.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY
No events announced for the Holy Father.

The Press Office released the program for his pastoral visit to Assisi on October 4, in which he will be visiting all the shrines in the city that are associated with St. Francis and St. Clare. In between, he will visit a hospital for sick and disabled children, and meet with the needy beneficiaries of the local Caritas and have lunch with them later; the diocesan clergy, religious, seminarians and pastoral councils; and the young people of Umbria. The central event will be a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis.

Noteworthy today was that the Pope has accepted the resignation of Mons. Robert Zollitsch as Archbishop of Freiburg upon reaching canonical retirement age. He was president of the German bishops' conference.




One year ago...

Rest day for Benedict XVI after his three-day visit to Lebanon, which highlighted for the world the plight of Christians in the Middle East in the context of decades-long conflicts that have taken their toll on all the citizens of the region. Fittingly, Providence willed this to be Benedict XVI's last trip abroad as Pope. A visit that was so multi-faceted and one that was welcomed by everybody - even Hezbollah in Beirut put up their own welcome arches and billboards for him. For once, there were no negative voices about it...


Sept. 17, 2012

The commentaries are coming in fast and nicely afurious, at least in the Italian media, to the Pope's visit to Lebanon, so I will have to pick only the most interesting and substantial ones to translate.. Here firet is one from Fr. Camisasca, the Superior-General of the Missionaries of San Carlo Borromeo, the priestly arm of Comunione e Liberazione.

Benedict XVI, 'Lion of the Church'
by Massimo Camisasca
Translated from

Sept. 17, 2012

The more time passes with this Pontificate, the more I am convinced of the similarity between Benedict XVI and that great 5th-century Pope and Father of the Church, Leo the Great.

Both Popes have passed and will pass into history for their simple but profound preaching that is able to reveal the permanent quality of the Christian mysteries.

Like Leo the Great, Benedict XVI will pass into history for having sought to put a halt to barbarism. Leo the Great, beyond what did take place historically, did not simply stop with halting Attila at the gates of Rome. He laid down the premises for the positive inclusion of new elements [the positive potential of harnessing barbaric forces?] in the Church's itinerary.

In the same way, Benedict XVI is seeking to stop the forces of evil and to give new energy to the positive factors of history. It is not therefore accidental that he is fighting this battle on two fundamental fronts: by unveiling the true face of God, and by affirming the true task of reason.

First, the true face of God. Against intolerance, Pope Benedict continues to emphasize, since his first encyclical, that God is love, he who seeks out man, who wants to renew him by forgiving him and continually creating communion with him on earth.

His battlecry against fundamentalism, which marked the start as well as the entire course of his just completed visit to Lebanon, is emblematic from this viewpoint.

In the footsteps of St. Augustine, Joseph Ratzinger has fought every attempt to identify faith with politics, and sees all the evil that can come from affirmations today of a God who is invoked for - and thus sought to be identified with - wars, and ultimately, with death.

On the other hand, the Pope is firmly aware that respect for one another's identity is necessary in order to live together peacefully. Nothing could be more contrary to that than a supposed tolerance that would reduce to insignificance the contribution that faith has made to human history.

That is why he says: "When one denies or rejects God, then that is like killing man. When God is excluded from society, not just from the hearts of men, then the premise is laid for hatred, violence, war, destruction. When reason pretends to be the instrument for man's affirmation to be the lord of history against God, the history of the death of mankind begins".

That is also why the Pope proposes Lebanon - a land where coexistence and reciprocal respect are still possible [and largely practised] - as an example for all of the Middle East. An example, however, that both the West as well as the intolerant sectors of Islam have sought to destroy. [I'm not sure how 'the West' has sought to destroy Lebanon - after all, its multicultural, multi-faith society was well-established during its colonial years under France. And it's certainly in the interests of the West today to keep Lebanon's unique pluralism alive.]

All these are reasons why Benedict XVI tirelessly seeks dialog with those communities who are most open to the reasons for living together peacefully and for common edification of society.

Islam occupies a very relevant part of the worldwide political scene, especially after the end of the Cold War. It is capable of offering entire populations the reasons for living and for opposing untimely deaths imposed by wars and violence. It can also offer work and important affective bonds.

But like every human reality, it carries in itself contradictions and wounds. And so we see millions of Muslims disputing the promises of happiness offered by capitalism and seeking a way that is more respectful of man and of the existence of God.

At the same time, however, we see important fringes of the Muslim world that are nonetheless capable of influencing the Muslim majorities in entire nations by preaching violence and unleashing wars and mass assassinations.

The future of the world depends on such a tragic context - within which we must see the preaching and the work of Pope Benedict XVI, for whom the trip to Lebanon was a particularly significant event.

P.S. Fr. Camisasca is not the first commentator to have compared Benedict XVI to Leo the Great. I believe Sandro Magister and Fr. Schall have done so on various occasions. OK, so contemporary Islamist extremism would be the equivalent of Attila the Hun, who, like Islam, was intent on conquering the West and thus dominating the world. It occurred to me to wonder what, in Pope Leo's time, would have been the equivalent of the hostile media and dissident Catholics that are the bane of Benedict's Pontificate. A quick read of the Wikipedia entry on the great Pope shows he did have to deal with the continuing rivaly from Constantinople, with a few outright heresies, which he firmly handled in various ways, and with willful bishops to whom, by then many papal powers had been delegated. And how he dealt with that problem appears to have been his major achievement. (The story with Attila the Hun is apparently more hagiographic than factual - it has not been established exactly what other factors contributed to Attila backing off in 452 after that famous meeting, but he did come back in 455 to sack Rome, though Leo's influence suppressed arson and murders.)

---

The significance of Leo's pontificate lies in his assertion of the universal jurisdiction of the Roman bishop, as expressed in his letters, and still more in his 96 extant orations. This assertion is commonly referred to as the doctrine of Petrine supremacy.

According to Leo and several Church Fathers, as well as certain interpretations of the Scriptures, the Church is built upon Peter, in pursuance of the promise of Matthew 16:16–19. Peter participates in everything which is Christ's; what the other apostles have in common with him they have through him. What is true of Peter is true also of his successors. Every other bishop is charged with the care of his particular flock, the Roman pontiff with that of the whole Church. Other bishops are his assistants in this great task.

---

I'd say any dissident in the Church today who thinks the Pope has too much power, or worse, that every bishop has as much power as the Pope, ought to review his history of Leo the Great - and the Gospel, because Christ was unequivocal in handing the keys of the Kingdom to Peter alone!

I can't help note that there still has to be any commentary in the Catholic Anglophone media or the Catholic Anglophone blogosphere about the Lebanon trip, other than John Allen's running commentary while covering the visit - whose last 'analysis' was devoted to faulting Benedict XVI in a most unwarranted way for failing to publicly address the problem of inter-sect rivalry among the major Catholic Eastern Churches based in Lebanon. [Surely, any such internal problems are hardly material for a Pope to discuss in public during an apostolic visit, and surely, he would have addressed any such problems privately with the Church leaders themselves!]... CNS and CNA did cover the trip, thank God, even if it fell on a weekend as the Pope's trips usually do, perhaps because it was a trip to Lebanon, as they did not think it fit to assign any reporter to work the weekend of the Pope's visit to Milan for the World Meeting of Families.


I must interpose the delayed reportage by Giacomo Galeazzi in La Stampa/Vatican Insider of the Papal Mass in Lebanon, which is better than the run-of-the-mill accounts of yesterday's Mass and picks out the highlights from the statements made by the Pope on his third and final day in Lebanon.

Seeking 'practical solutions'
for the Syrian conflict, etc
by Giacomo Galeazzi
Translated from the Italian service of

Sept. 17, 2012

Like Papa Wojtyla during the Cold War, so Benedict XVI stands in the forefront, this time against Islamist escalation. The new 'Church of silence' speaks through him.

"Bring peace to a violent Middle East" - He is entrusting to Christians what seems to be a 'mission impossible'. [Of course, he wasn't placing the entire burden on them, but they have to set the Christian example, against all odds. He has repeatedly called on the international community and the leaders of the region to do what they can as responsible public authorities to seek a workable solution that can lead to 'a lasting stable peace'. That seems to be the more 'impossible' mission, for which neither the Church nor the Pope can offer concrete solutions! Christ did not come as a political Messiah nor did he intend his Church to be.]

Benedict XVI celebrated Mass with 300 patriarchs and bishops on Beirut's waterfront in three languages (Arabic, French and Latin). Seventy-five thousand faithful were expected to attend - 400,000 came [Galeazzi's figure is above the 350,000 given by the Vatican, citing local authorities].

Not content with the mega-screens, the Massgoers sought to get as close as they could to the altar, and many suffered from the day's suffocating heat.

And from the Pope's pulpit, a cry for freedom: "Dignity and rights for all men. They understand they are all brothers under God".

Benedict XVI encouraged the oppressed minorities in the countries with overwhelming Muslim majorities: "Your sufferings are not in vain. Christ is close to those who suffer - he is present beside you and will not abandon you".

Even in the most ephemeral traces, Beirut is the symbol of the contradictions and coexistence of opposites. Not far from the military standing guard for the Mass were the weekend visitors coming to enjoy a swim in the Mediterranean. In the mass media and in the streets, tragic tones and light ones alternate during these days full o new tension.

The Pope, at the Angelus, noted the continuing 'din of weapons' and called on the international community to 'stop the hatred'. From the Arab countries he asked for respect for human dignity and religious freedom because "whoever wants to build peace must stop to see in the other an evil to be eliminated".

It is indispensable, he said, that "everyone can live peacefully and with dignity". This the "essential testimony that Christians must give here, collaborating with all men of good will", Benedict XVI said, echoing words said years ago by John Paul II visiting Lebanon.

To stop the bloodbath in Syria, 'practical solutions' are needed. And so, he turned over to the patriarchs and bishops, and through them, to all Christians in the Middle East, the text of the document that he signed shortly upon arriving in Beirut Friday, which he called "a road map for the future' of Christians in the Middle East.

On Saturday, he gave copies of this Apostolic Exhortation on the Middle East to the civilian and religious leaders he met at the Presidential Palace, including the four leaders of the Sunni, Shiite, Alawite and Druze Muslim communities in Lebanon.

The message is clear: There can be no future without 'the silence of the weapons and the cessation of all violence". And so, it is up to Christians "to draw from the original lifeblood of salvation that was realized in this very land".

"Fraternal communion and the example of the saints" are helpful, he said, speaking on the waterfront which is a landfill area built up with the rubble from the destruction of the 15-year-long civil war in Lebanon which also gave birth to the present institutional system that ensures representation in all the branches of government for all the religious and ethnic groups in the Lebanese population.

"The vocation of the Church and of Christians is to serve, as Jesus did, freely and for all, without distinction", the Pope underscored, decrying what he called today's 'procession of deaths'.

In his farewell address at the airport, he cited Solomon, that man needs to construct "a shrine to God for eternity", whatever one's origin or faith - namely, "a space in which men can live harmoniously, protected from all destructiveness".

P.S. On his blog, Galeazzi has a piece entitled 'Benedict of the Orient', in which he says the Holy Father's example was the model for the final statements made by the Greek Catholic patriarchs who met in Canada last week.

And now, Restan...

Friend of God,
friend to men
Translated from

Sept. 17, 2012

A long line of seasoned men, well on in age, with garments indicating their respective traditions. Each of them came up to the Pope, very close, face to face, to receive from his hands a copy of his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente.

Benedict XVI takes time for each of them, looks them fraternally in the eye, clasps their hands, and exchanges words with them that will never be reported.

These are the Patriarchs and bishops of some of the most ancient Christian sees who proudly and jealously conserve their respective churches' memory of martyrdom and glory - along with the presidents of the bishops' conferences of other Middle Eastern nations, including Turkey and Iran, nations in which the Christian faith today is as tiny and threatened as the proverbial mustard seed in the Gospel stories.

The Pope was not giving out a guide on how to be Christian in the Middle East and not to die while being so. It is not a strategic plan for a desperate undertaking, but the outlook, full of wisdom and passion, of the pastors themselves of peoples who have been long and sorely tested - an outlook, an embrace and an invitation, all of it urgent: Stay in the land of your fathers, be witnesses for the Crucified One, build together with your compatriots a peace based on justice and reconciliation.

Shortly before this presentation, an apotheosis of songs and waving flags gave way to the fervent depth of the Eucharistic celebration. And once more, as he did twenty centuries ago, Peter spoke. Not the instinctive fisherman who was as prompt to speak a truth he could not comprehend as he was to protest indignantly against the Master's words that he was going to his death.

Today, Peter knows, through the experiences of sorrow and love, that "to decide to follow Jesus is to take his Cross, in order to accompany him on his way, an arduous way, which is not that of power or earthly glory, but which leads necessarily to a renunciation of oneself, to loss one's life for Christ and the Gospel in order to gain it".

The Gospel yesterday says that Jesus explained himself to his own disciples "with all clarity" - the same clarity that Benedict XVI deployed during his 48 hours on Lebanese soil.

The Christians of the Middle East cannot entertain vain illusions. It will not be the Western powers, nor the communications media, nor even the typical astuteness associated with the region, that will assure them o a future. Like Jesus, they can only put their trust in God who called them to this particular mission in company with the universal Church. That Church which only the Pope, with his personal sacrifice, his clarity, and his patent faith, is able to embody these days.

He came to Beirut on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, an inconvenient reminder for many. In the Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa, upon signing the document summarizing the conclusions of the 2010 Synodal Assembly on the Middle East, he expressed aloud the tragedy of our Middle Eastern brothers:

"[Through the Synodal assembly] the entire Church was able to hear the troubled cry and see the desperate faces of many men and women who experience grave human and material difficulties, who live amid powerful tensions in fear and uncertainty, who desire to follow Christ – the One who gives meaning to their existence – yet often find themselves prevented from doing so".

Many were brought to tears upon hearing the Successor of Peter affirm that this is not a time for defeat (so easy to say amid the shortcomings of the world] but the time "to celebrate the victory of love over hatred, of forgiveness over vengeance, of service over domination, of unity over division".

That is the language of the glorious Cross, the Pope underscored, the folly of the Cross "capable of changing our sufferings into a declaration of love for God and mercy for our neighbour; a folly capable of transforming those who suffer because of their faith and identity into vessels of clay ready to be filled to overflowing by divine gifts more precious than gold".

Gathered around the Pope were bishops who had come from hermetic Iran, from remote Armenia, from an uneasy Egypt in transition, from martyred Iraq, from Syria which is being exsanguinated, and from Jerusalem, the mother Church.

Along with them, in respectful silence and with friendly faces, the religious leaders of the Sunni, Shiite, Alawite and Druze Muslims of Lebanon. Old and well-known faces to their Christian neighbors, rarely in comfortable situations, perhaps, but here they were, agreeing with the gentle but firm words of the Bishop of Rome: Build the peace, do not let the poison of violence contaminate your religiosity, unmask the lies of fundamentalism.

To the political leaders and the representatives of Beirut's civilian society, Benedict XVI called strongly for respect of religious freedom. "The freedom to profess and practise one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life".

What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them. Without openness to transcendence, which makes it possible to find answers to their deepest questions about the meaning of life and morally upright conduct, men and women become incapable of acting justly and working for peace.

And he notes that mere tolerance is not enough, that it does not eliminate discriminations but even reaffirms them at times. He also warned against the falsity of coexistence based on marginalizing man's religious openness, without which he cannot find answers to his heart's questions about the sense of life and how to live life correctly, and without which he becomes incapable of acting with justice or of committing himself for the sake of peace.

In multi-faith Lebanon, crossroads for centuries between the East and the West, Benedict XVI dwelt on one of his essential themes: Living together, a good life, for all peoples, cannot be sustained either under fundamentalism which is militantly working for Islamic domination, nor under the aggressive secularism which has manifested itself openly in the European democracies.

What is needed is a new understanding and appreciation of religious freedom and its social and political projections - in which, perhaps, Lebanon could prove to be a good laboratory to test it out.

The meeting with youth representatives of Lebanon and the entire Middle East was a cause for special joy to the Pope. The young people were the carnal demonstration of the two central messages in his visit: Christians must not fear the future but involve themselves in building it, and civilian friendship between Christians and Muslims is possible and is a platform on which to build a new type of communal coexistence in the Middle East.

We cannot forget that just as tens of thousands of young Christians and Muslims were applauding the Pope, Islamist-instigated violence was spreading throughout the Middle East. It will require a great educational effort and actual coexistence so that the seed sown by the Pope may germinate, but there is no other way.

Let us return to our opening scene. After the clear papal statements heard in Lebanon, these patriarchs and bishops had to return home - to places where many Christians are tempted to 'castle up' in an effort at some security, rather than to work at coexistence, which may be difficult, or to face the challenge of being actors in the history of these days which have the potential eruptiveness of a volcano.

The people who lined up before the Pope are heirs to a millenary history of heroic witness, of countless sufferings and they bear on their faces and in their spirit the scars of their peoples.

"Fear not, little flock", Benedict XVI enjoined them earlier. But this was not just about sentiments. Peter came to mark out a mission and a pathway. With much to be done: to strengthen unity and the common witness, to abandon attitudes that are merely defensive, to improve the formation of lay faithful [and of the clergy!], to take risks on inter-faith dialog, which is always difficult - but which can also bear much fruit) - with ordinary Muslims, "the Islam of the people", as Cardinal Angelo Scola likes to call them.

Cedars and olives marked the stages of this beautiful visit - the majesty and freshness of a presence which brought much promise to this land, and the oil of welcome, of friendship and of sharing.

Both need to be watered and cared for with wisdom and patience. As Benedict XVI has done without calculations nor reservations. He came as a friend of God and a friend to all men, and everyone ought to have recognized that, in the midst of our daily informational apathy and paralysis, something truly new happened in Lebanon.

Sandro Magister has also popsted his commentary, with its English translation on
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350326?eng=y
I will post my translation later, for the record.

A shoutout from Sollers

Meanwhile, an unusual video-tribute on the blog pf Philippe Sollers, the French writer, novelist and critic whose reviews of Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH-2 I translated and posted for the Forum, and who is a most unlikely 'fan' of the Pope, of any Pope, having been one of the leaders of the French intellectual movement of the 1960s on the eve of the 1968 counterculture revolution. He is married to atheist philosopher Julia Kristeva, who represented the non-believers at Benedict XVI's Assisi assembly in October last year.

Sollers runs a brief videoclip taken from the Pope's arrival in Beirut and the Mass yesterday with the following message:

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Viva Benedict XVI in Beirut! Shame on all murderers, whoever they are!
Courage, old man, as you guide your boat through the unrestrained ocean of human folly!

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One year ago...



This visit was so unclouded and so felicitous throughout that even before Benedict XVI had left Lebanon, the 'opositive reviews' were out...

How did the trip go?
Fr. Lombardi is obviously happy,
having been worried earlier!

Sept. 16, 2012

Vatican Press Office director Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, assessed the papal visit in an interview with Vatican Radio's Tracey McClure before leaving Lebanon.

As the Holy Father prepares to leave Lebanon Sunday, could you give us your impressions of the trip?
My impression is obviously very positive, especially if I compare it with the attitude with which I came. I was worried: Will the Pope succeed in giving his message? Will people listen to him? Now we have positive answers to all these questions.

What we have seen here in Beirut, in Lebanon, was a wonderful encounter between the Pope and the Lebanese, different parts of this complex society, Catholics of different rites, but also Muslims of different communities.

The presence of the President of the Republic at all public moments of this trip, was a sign of the participation of the entire land in this historical visit.

I think the Pope was right to come, and with courage, and to say “Yes, I am a pilgrim of peace and my presence will signify that we don’t fear what happens around us, we announce the love of God: peace for all men and women of the world”.

In his Homily on Sunday’s Gospel in which Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, Pope Benedict said that episode marked a turning point in Jesus’s life. In a certain sense, the Middle East is also marking a turning point today. – What was Pope Benedict inviting Christians here to do?
The Pope has given encouragement, he has confirmed principles we already knew, he has not provided new words or new solutions. But this is not his duty.

He is Peter who encourages us and reinforces the foundations of the Faith for Christians. He has come to confirm all Catholics, all Christians, in their Faith and in their hope – particularly in their hope. That is what he has done.

He has not given specific solutions to specific problems. The document he leaves here, the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, is an important basis for reflection and discernment for the Christian communities to seek concrete measures and solutions to their pastoral problems. It offers a way for them to engage themselves in the life of society, and so on.

There are many concrete things to do, but these are more the responsibility of the local communities and of the local faithful. The Pope gives directions, and encouragement for all. Work now begins to translate the document into action and into concrete solutions for the many problems.

Sometimes the Church in the Middle East is seen as being somewhat distant from the lay faithful and young people. At the youth gathering Saturday in Bkerke, the young people asked for more help from church leaders to aid them in staying in these lands. How is the Church in Rome cooperating with churches here in that sense?
I think we cannot take responsibility away from those who have responsibility. That is really the local communities, the Catholic communities of the different rites, they have to find a way.

The Pope said yesterday evening to the Patriarchs and the Bishops: please work well on catechesis, that is, on educating young people in the Faith, and adults too, because that’s what they need. The Faith has to be something that engages reason, the heart, the mind, and the entire person. But you have to help people by educating them and catechesis is important.

In this regard, the Pope returned to the theme of the Year of Faith as an occasion to involve the entire community and the Church in this direction. And internationally, we have to seek concrete initiatives of solidarity.

I know many local Churches in Italy too that are engaged in collaborative efforts with local communities in the Holy Land, in Lebanon, and in other parts of the world. It is not a question of centralising the organization of assistance, but it’s a question of concrete solidarity between different local communities in different parts of the world – and it can be very effective because it means more to people than big principles or declarations.

Pope Benedict made an appeal for Syria – one of many times he has called for an end to the violence there. How heavily does this tragic conflict weigh on the Holy Father, and indeed, all of the recent violence we’ve seen across the region?
The conflicts and deaths touch the Holy Father, and everyone else, very profoundly. Sometimes we don’t see a solution, and no one until now has found a solution to the Syrian problem. We try to do what each of us can: sometimes through prayer, sometimes giving advice, and sometimes through appeals.

The Pope has also said we must stop the arms trade and the importation of weapons. He continuously invites people to dialogue because Christians, not only in Syria but throughout the Middle East, are in a position to mediate, in a certain sense, because they are not a power that people fear, they are a minority.

Christians have no influence over weapons and power. In this sense they can invite the different sides in the conflict to come together and dialogue, to understand each other and to reconciliation. This is one of the aspects of the vocation of the Christian communities in the Middle East and this also regards the Christians in Syria.

But we don’t have concrete solutions for all these problems. I also think the Christians who came here from Syria during these days, felt the love of the Pope. His presence has encouraged them in this difficult time.

Speaking at his Angelus on Sunday the Pope called on Arab countries and on the international community to intervene to somehow stop the violence…
This is obvious because we know that conflicts in one country often reflect conflicts elsewhere, among major powers and nations with their specific interests. In this sense, the will of the entire international community to go in the direction of peace will also surely help extinguish tensions in different countries.

The unpredictable Jose Manuel Vidal blows red-hot and unequivocal today in his assessment of he trip - and of the Holy Father:

The miracle of the courageous Pope
by José Manuel Vidal
Translated from

Sept, 16, 2012

Extraordinary. A miracle. A dream come true. The Pope's visit to Lebanon, just as we thought before it began, was a complete success.

He went into the lion's den and came out unharmed and something like a thaumaturge. He came to the edge of hell and was not even singed. The white cassock imprints character and makes miracles.

The frail but valiant Pope - wise, gentle, reserved and sincere - has reaped a new triumph that is pastoral, mediatic, spiritual and even political.

Even at the Vatican, the Pope has shown himself vigorous and has [for now, at least!] silenced those voices which, for their own interests, had been gossiping that he no longer governs, if he ever did; that his reign had begun to give way to the rule of subordinates and the chaos of the various frogs and crows who hatched the mess that was Vatileaks. [That isn't quite how Politi and his ilk put it - they claim he is both unable and uninterested in governing, and the subordinates who are supposed to govern for him are, alas, incompetent.]

To the rest of the world, Benedict XVI has once again presented himself as a global referee, being the great moral authority in a globalized world that has no examples to follow. And in a world without leaders of global weight, the figure of the Pope looms like a giant. [How true! Just as in the death throes of European Communism, John Paul II loomed large alongside political giant Ronald Reagan and his British counterpart, Margaret Thatcher.]

In Lebanon - a miracle of equilibrium between races, languages and religions - the prestige of the Pope has been consolidated. His presence there may have helped damp down the local flames of Muslim rage blamed on a blasphemous video produced by a California man [reportedly an Egyptian Copt, not Israeli as earlier reported, so one more score for the Muslims to settle with Christians. And also, as 'small' as the protest was in the Lebanese Tripoli, it did claim one death.].

In the past three days, Benedict XVI has seemed like a prophet of peace, sent by God, a messenger from heaven to a Middle East incessantly convulsed by wars and assorted violence.

By his very presence, he has animated the Christian minorities, many of them virtually under siege in the Middle East, and filled them with pride. And he called on them to be messengers of peace and servants of reconciliation, of fraternal dialog and of practical ecumenism. To join efforts with no time to spare. To respect Muslims and other religions. To create a united front among all believers [and non-believers of good will!]

The valiant Pope, pride of all Christians, has seduced and gained the hearts of the Muslims in Lebanon. Who has left his imprint in Lebanon - with the cedar he planted as a symbol. And with words directed at neighboring Syria like messenger doves, seeking to help that troubled nation find peace once again.

Andrea Tornielli is equally admiring but less on helium...

The Pope in Lebanon:
Messenger of peace
and fine diplomat
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

Sept. 16, 2012

Beyond his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation - a message of hope for a view of religion that should never be violent - Benedict XVI showed on his trip to Lebanon a capacity to interpret politically the interconnections within the entire Middle Eastern and North African region.

Before his trip, his co-workers insisted on many occasions that the Pope is not a political leader, and a reading of the six major addresses he delivered in Lebanon may give the impression that, because he was arriving at the Middle East powderkeg at a time of maximum tensions, Benedict XVI had chosen to address himself above all to the Christian communities, limiting himself to generic appeals for peaceful coexistence among religions.

But if one looks more closely at his words, especially those he said off the cuff during the in-flight session with reporters, and at Angelus today, one perceives the outline of a precise judgment.

In the interview, the Pope referred to the so-called Arab spring, saying that "the desire for more democracy and more freedom" was positive, with the caveat that "from the history of revolutions, we know that while the demand for freedom that is so important and positive, there is always the danger of forgetting a fundamental aspect of freedom, which is tolerance of the other". [In another of his prolix commentaries during the Lebanon visit, John Allen makes much of the fact that one bishop expressed himself openly suspicious of the 'Arab spring' in front of Benedict, interpreting it as 'correcting the Pope gently'. Did he really expect the Pope to diss the 'Arab spring' directly? That would have been considered by the Muslims to be almost as offensive as they found the Paleologue quotation in the Regensburg lecture - at a time when the Muslim reaction to the 'blasphemous film' [that had been falsely touted by Obama as the immediate reason for the assassination of the US ambassador to Libya and three other embassy officials on the 11th anniversary of 9/11], recalls the demos against the Pope himself because of Regensburg! Besides, his caveat to his 'positive' comment said everything without sounding censorious or negatively critical.]

In the same Q&A, when he was asked about the situation in Syria, Benedict XVI replied that one has to begin by stopping the arms trade, that other nations should stop sending arms to Syria, saying that exporting weapons was 'a grave sin'. [P.S. 2013 When Pope Francis referred to the arms trade in a recent Angelus as a major problem driving conflicts today, it was hailed as yet another of his 'original' contributions to the ongoing dialectic of war and peace, with no reference whatsoever to Benedict XVI in the news reports, not even by Vatican Radio. And yet, this was one of the issues raised by the Vatican permanent observer to the UN at the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council a few days after the Lebanon trip. In fact, his address summarized to the UN Benedict XVI's salient points about the conflicts in the Middle East, especially the civil war in Syria.]

At the Angelus, in praying "specially for the residents of Syria and neighboring countries", he said: "Sadly, the din of weapons continues to make itself heard, along with the cry of the widow and the orphan. Violence and hatred invade people’s lives, and the first victims are women and children. Why so much horror? Why so many dead? I appeal to the international community! I appeal to the Arab countries that, as brothers, they might propose workable solutions respecting the dignity, the rights and the religion of every human person!"

By placing the emphasis on violence, on the horror of war, on the dead, rather than on the need for democracy and freedom that emerged with the 'Arab spring', the Pope expressed the Holy See's realistic approach to the Syrian crisis.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the uprisings led to the rise to power of historic Islamist (extremist) parties that seem to be stabilizing factors for now.

But the situations differ from country to country, and even if it is evident to everyone, including the Vatican, that the downfall of the Assad regime is just a matter of time, Papa Ratzinger was careful not to legitimize or bless the uprising against Assad by resorting to the rhetoric of 'the springtime of the Arab peoples', showing that he has doubts about what could happen with a change of government, or even about the external forces supporting and arming the anti-Assad rebels.

His appeal to the international community to propose 'practical solutions' that can pout an end to the spiral of violence has been the most 'political' message so far from a religious leader whose very presence in a Middle East in flames, spoke before - and perhaps, even more, than his words.

His approach is far from a way of distancing himself from the sufferings and real problems of the Middle Eastern people,s but, quite the contrary, it proves that in analyzing crises, he is not content with simply applying simple slogans to complex situations.


I had not thought about it before, but the Pope's very presence in Lebanon was indeed a message in itself - not just for the Christians of the Middle Eats, and not that he was courageous for entering the gates of hell on earth (he is pragmatic enough to know that the various security agencies involved in guaranteeing his safety while in Lebanon would never given him the green light unless they were absolutely sure that the risks were low and controllable) - but simply because it focused the world, especially the leaders of the region, on his words for a change.

One always assumes that the rest of the world necessarily learns about it when he makes his tireless appeals for peace and an end to hatred and violence in his Angelus messages and his Urbi et Orbi messages. But the news agencies report these appeals in a few short sentences, and although they make these stories available to their subscribers and anyone who searches online, I doubt that the news-briefing officers of national leaders would even bother to include those items in their news summaries, much less highlight them. One must assume that most of the time, such papal appeals do not get to the attention of those persons and institutions they are addressed to.

But his presence in a country - this time, a country that represents the one region on earth that is an ever-boiling cauldron of the worst evils that lead to mass violence and deaths - is of a different order and magnitude altogether. He was genuine Page 1 news, and it focused attention on him and every word that he said, in a way that could not be missed by those concerned.

Besides being the supreme moral authority on earth, Benedict XVI has the advantage of not being suspect politically, because he has no vested interests other than the good of everyone. He is not supporting Assad like Putin, he is not desperately seeking re-election like Obama, he is not playing footsie with Iran like China, he is not desperate to keep trading privileges in the region like France, he has no political ambitions for regional hegemony like Turkey. He is truly both sans peur et sans reproche, the ideal knight to do battle.

What does Pope Francis really mean
by all the provocative things he says?

Sept. 17, 2013

I wrote on Saturday that Pope Francis seems to delight in saying controversial things that hint at (but don't announce) a change in an unpopular aspect of Catholic teaching. This thrills the liberal media and forces conservative Catholics to rush out "explanations" that deny that Francis has said anything new.

Well, now he's done it again. This is from Reuters:

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Pope Francis on Monday called for "another way" of treating divorcees who remarry – a thorny issue since Catholics who wed a second time are currently not allowed to receive Holy Communion at Mass.

Catholic faithful should "feel at home" in parishes and those who have remarried should be treated with "justice", the pope was quoted as saying by Romasette, the local newspaper for the diocese of Rome.
"Our duty is to find another way in justice," he said.

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Meaning…? One new way of treating divorced and remarried Catholics would be to allow them to receive Holy Communion, as happens unofficially in many parishes, but the Pope doesn't say that such a gesture is on the cards.

[And is it justice to exempt remarried Catholic divorcees twice over from rules that other Catholics try to follow, namely, the sanctity of marriage and the canonical punishment for those who violate it by remarrying without the annulment of their first marriage (in effect, for the Church, they are also bigamists)? I find this is a very bothersome burr. Do Catholics ostracize remarried divorcees at all? I don't think any but the most anal personalities in a parish would care whether some parishioners are unable to receive communion. Nor do I think the majority of such remarried divorcees are bothered about it themselves, if only because they probably did not make a habit of communion in their earlier life, so why is it now such a deprivation? Did they ever hear of spiritual communion, such as we resort to when we do not take communion because we have not gone to confession for weeks or because we just feel unworthy?]

Likewise, on his journey back from Brazil, Francis told journalists: “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.” [I don't recall that he said the last two sentences as quoted, although that was the sense of what he said. But who is marginalizing who? Are Catholics marginalizing gays at all? Noooo! On the contrary, it is the gays and all their 'enlightened' cheerleaders in secular society - together they are legion - who are bent on marginalizing (through derision and opprobrium) Christians who disapprove of homosexual acts, much less same-sex 'marriage'!

And the Pope should not worry about integrating homosexuals into society. Why would they need 'integration' - which sounds condescending- when they already seem to exercise de facto hegemony in the cultural and political life of the Western societies? Perhaps we should all read up on the sexual-cultural mores of decadent Rome on the cusp of the empire's collapse! So does the Pope think that by excluding homosexuals from entering the seminary as Benedict XVI instructed, the Church is 'marginalizing' them?]

That indicates that the Pope accepts the reality of celibate gay priests. [But don't we all? Being homosexual is not the issue here - it's the practice of homosexual acts, which are clearly unnatural and therefore taboo and sinful according to Catholic teaching. Priests, homosexual and heterosexual, make a vow of celibacy. Imagine where the progressivist Catholic laissez-faire espousal of abolishing celibacy for priests would lead - inevitably to espousing that homosexual priests 'marry' men! P.S. I just read this 'headline' in PewSitter, "Married priests would be very expensive, especially when they divorce" - it's the same extension ad absurdum of the perverse persuasion that would allow married priests and actively homosexual priests. Since they can marry, they can also divorce, right? ]

Does it also mean that celibate gay men can be ordained, as in theory they cannot at the moment? We don't know. And for lay homosexuals, what sort of "integration" did Francis have in mind?

Also, atheists in heaven. The Pope said in May that they could be let in if they'd followed their consciences, and added later that God would "forgive" their unbelief. This is stretching Catholic doctrine to its absolute limit and perhaps a bit beyond. A Vatican spokesman promptly rowed back, insisting that people who do not believe in God "cannot be saved". Which wasn't what the Pope had said.

Gays, divorcees and atheists are understandably confused about these messages from the See of Peter. [Are they confused? Or are they just lapping it all up. perhaps celebrating prematurely that here is a Pope after their own heart who will change the rules of the game in their favor.?] So are devout heterosexual Catholics. Me, too.

Pope Francis seems to be indicating a direction of travel without saying how far – if at all – the Catholic Church is prepared to move. Strange times.


More than one observer has noted that this Pope has deliberately avoided making any direct unequivocal statements about the 'non-negotiable principles' that Benedict XVI ceaselessly upheld and articulated. Because he does not want to antagonize anyone. But you cannot please everyone. Jesus did not try to do that. He said what he had to say - his listeners either followed him or turned away.

Last week, Bishop Tobin of New Hampshire incurred the wrath of a Francis idolator in the National Ctholic REporter because the bishop said he was disappointed that Francis has so far not spoken out against abortion or the other social issues. To the point that the offended Francis fan wrote the Nuncio in the USA that he should never recommend persons like Tobin to be bishops! Now it's a 'crime' to criticize the Pope when he is Francis, but no one minded when Benedict XVI was openly defied by bishops who think collegiality means sophomoric dissent against the Pope when it suits them, or that bishops can band together 'collegially' against the Pope if they wished to.

Pope Francis spoke to the priests of Rome for more than 2 hours Monday morning - all of it impromptu. So far, a full transcript of what he said has not been released, but based on some statements reported by RomaSette, the diocesan online newspaper of Rome, a Jesuit blogger has an entry today that starts:

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What does the Pope mean when he "told priests they should welcome couples that live together"?
What does Pope Francis mean when he speaks about accompanying people? When he speaks about going "out to the 'existential peripheries'”?

He insists that "the truth factor is crucial here. 'The truth must always be told,' not just in the dogmatic sense of the word but in the sense of 'love and God’s fullness'. The priest must 'accompany' people."

I do not believe the Holy Father is speaking in contradiction of Catholic teaching on marriage and divorce, nor is he recommending the Gospel be compromised...

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The first comment to the blog was this:

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"I think that is what the Pope is saying,..." The major problem of the papacy, summarized in this one, simple clause.

Whatever the Holy father says seems to be confusing, contradictory, so much so that we need to parse the words, jump through hoops, squint and look sideways just to understand him...or *think* we understand him. Can't we just get some clear statements for a change? Or is that something Jesuits take a vow against?

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Now, this Pope can be very clear when he wants to, so when he fudges, one must think it is deliberate. 'Ridateci Ratzinger', as Odifreddi would say - give us back Ratzinger, who never fudged any statement or position in his life. Not his 'style'. Didn't make him zoom to the phenomenal peaks of 'popularity' inhabited by his successor, either.

And on his blog today, Sandro Magister points out that the Pope made two comments during the 2-hour-plus session which have not been reported by Vatican Radio, the OR or RomaSette.

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The first was serious and cutting, the second ironical.

In formulating one of the 5 questions posed to the Pope and speaking of the centrality of ministering to the poor, a priest made a positive reference to liberation theology and to the accommodating positions towards this theology of the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Mueller.

But at this point, Pope Francis did not let him finish his question, saying: "That is what Mueller thinks, that is what he thinks". {So, was the Pope disavowing any 'sympathy' at all for Liberation Theology - which variant, I wonder, or does he find all LT objectionable?]. And this just after Leonardo Boff just claimed they were in constant contact about it? Does this explain why the much heralded meeting with Gustavo Gutierrez last Thursday took place without any bang at all? A CNA story claims the meeting was "at the insistence of Mueller". Really? Since when is an archbishop able to impose on a Pope if the latter is unqilling? More about this later.]

The second was an arrow aimed at the outgoing Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. The Pope smiled when a priest said something sarcastic [Magister calls it 'irony' it's clearly sarcasm] about those who believe that the Church is "one, holy, Catholic and Salesian". The Pope added: "One, holy, Catholic and Salesian, as Cardinal Bertone would say".

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Now, Pope Francis is getting daily rave reviews for calling and writing just about anybody he wants to call and write, and for his informal style, but is it proper to make such remarks about his subordinates in public, and to a gathering of priests? Magister respectfully does not pose the question, but it's his obvious intention in making the post.

And to attribute the not-even-clever quotation to Bertone just because he is Salesian is unkind, if only because I don't think the cardinal ever said that, even in jest. Also, one would think 'the Pope of the poor' would identify with the Salesians (Don Bosco's order) whose dominant ethic is educating poor children and fitting them out for life, for a Christian life. An order that has always and ever only worked with those who live in the geographical and existential 'peripheries'.

Anyway, when the full transcript of the lovefest with the Roman clergy is released, brace yourself for many more "What the Pope really mean to say was this..." The last time a Pope met the Roman clergy before this was a few months ago, and he gave them a 45-minute extemporaneous but as always, 'print=ready', first-hand overview of Vatican-II. I hope he didn't cast those pearls before unappareciative swine.

Monday, Sept. 17, 24th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. ROBERTO BELLARMINO [Robert Bellarmine] (Italy, 1542-1621), Jesuit, Cardinal, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on Feb. 23, 2011 to this great Jesuit theologian wjo was one of the great figures of the Counter-Reformation.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110223...
Roberto Bellarmino was born in Montepulciano near Siena, and was ordained in the Jesuit order in 1570. Educated at the Collegio Romano, the University of Padua and the University of Louvain in Belgium, he later taught theology in Louvain and then at the Collegio Romano in the period following the Council of Trent. His most famous work, Controversiae, sought to address the issues raised by Protestant theology from a dispassionate historical and theological perspective, but his most popular work remained his brief catechism of Christian doctrine. He also served as spiritual father to the Jesuit students of the Collegio Romano, including Saint Luigi (Aloysius) Gonzaga. Bellarmine was created a Cardinal by Pope Clement VIII, and made Archbishop of Capua, where he spent three years in preaching and pastoral activity before being recalled to Rome and the service of the Holy See. In his later years, he composed a number of works of spirituality which reflect his deep Ignatian formation, with its stress on meditation on the mysteries of Christ and the loving imitation of the Lord. He is buried in the Jesuit home church of Gesu. He was canonised in 1930 alongside his pupil Luigi Gonzaga. Strangely he was not beatified until 3 centuries after his death: Pius XI beatified him in 1923, canonized him in 1930, and proclaimed him a Doctor of the Church in 1931.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091713.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis.

The Press Office released the program for The Pope's pastoral visit to Assisi on October 4, feast day of St. Francis, co-patron of Italy. He will be visiting all the shrines that are associated with St. Francis and St. Clare in Assisi. In between, he will visit a hospital for sick and disabled children, meet with the needy beneficiaries of the local Caritas and have lunch with them later, with the diocesan clergy, religious, seminarians and pastoral councils, and with the young peopel of Umbria. The central event will be a Mass at the Basilica of St. Francis.

Noteworthy today was that the Pope has accepted the resignation of Mons. Robert Zollitsch as Archbishop of Freiburg upon reaching canonical retirement age. He was president of the German bishops' conference.




One year ago...

Rest day for Benedict XVI after his three-day visit to Lebanon which highlighted for the world the plight of Christians in the Middle East in the context of decades-long conflicts that have taken their toll on all the citizens of the region. Fittingly, Providence willed this to be Benedict XVI's last trip abroad as Pope. A visit that was so multi-faceted and one that was welcomed by everybody - even Hezbollah in Beirut put up their own welcome arches and billboards for him. For once, there were no negative voices about it...


Sept. 17, 2012

The commentaries are coming in fast and nicely furious, at least in the Italian media, to the Pope's visit to Lebanon, so I will have to pick only the most interesting and substantial ones to translate.. Here firet is one from Fr. Camisasca, the Superior-General of the Missionaries of San Carlo Borromeo, the priestly arm of Comunione e Liberazione.

Benedict XVI, 'Lion of the Church'
by Massimo Camisasca
Translated from

Sept. 17, 2012

The more time passes with this Pontificate, the more I am convinced of the similarity between Benedict XVI and that great 5th-century Pope and Father of the Church, Leo the Great.

Both Popes have passed and will pass into history for their simple but profound preaching that is able to reveal the permanent quality of the Christian mysteries.

Like Leo the Great, Benedict XVI will pass into history for having sought to put a halt to barbarism. Leo the Great, beyond what did take place historically, did not simply stop with halting Attila at the gates of Rome. He laid down the premises for the positive inclusion of new elements [the positive potential of harnessing barbaric forces?] in the Church's itinerary.

In the same way, Benedict XVI is seeking to stop the forces of evil and to give new energy to the positive factors of history. It is not therefore accidental that he is fighting this battle on two fundamental fronts: by unveiling the true face of God, and by affirming the true task of reason.

First, the true face of God. Against intolerance, Pope Benedict continues to emphasize, since his first encyclical, that God is love, he who seeks out man, who wants to renew him by forgiving him and continually creating communion with him on earth.

His battlecry against fundamentalism, which marked the start as well as the entire course of his just completed visit to Lebanon, is emblematic from this viewpoint.

In the footsteps of St. Augustine, Joseph Ratzinger has fought every attempt to identify faith with politics, and sees all the evil that can come from affirmations today of a God who is invoked for - and thus sought to be identified with - wars, and ultimately, with death.

On the other hand, the Pope is firmly aware that respect for one another's identity is necessary in order to live together peacefully. Nothing could be more contrary to that than a supposed tolerance that would reduce to insignificance the contribution that faith has made to human history.

That is why he says: "When one denies or rejects God, then that is like killing man. When God is excluded from society, not just from the hearts of men, then the premise is laid for hatred, violence, war, destruction. When reason pretends to be the instrument for man's affirmation to be the lord of history against God, the history of the death of mankind begins".

That is also why the Pope proposes Lebanon - a land where coexistence and reciprocal respect are still possible [and largely practised] - as an example for all of the Middle East. An example, however, that both the West as well as the intolerant sectors of Islam have sought to destroy. [I'm not sure how 'the West' has sought to destroy Lebanon - after all, its multicultural, multi-faith society was well-established during its colonial years under France. And it's certainly in the interests of the West today to keep Lebanon's unique pluralism alive.]

All these are reasons why Benedict XVI tirelessly seeks dialog with those communities who are most open to the reasons for living together peacefully and for common edification of society.

Islam occupies a very relevant part of the worldwide political scene, especially after the end of the Cold War. It is capable of offering entire populations the reasons for living and for opposing untimely deaths imposed by wars and violence. It can also offer work and important affective bonds.

But like every human reality, it carries in itself contradictions and wounds. And so we see millions of Muslims disputing the promises of happiness offered by capitalism and seeking a way that is more respectful of man and of the existence of God.

At the same time, however, we see important fringes of the Muslim world that are nonetheless capable of influencing the Muslim majorities in entire nations by preaching violence and unleashing wars and mass assassinations.

The future of the world depends on such a tragic context - within which we must see the preaching and the work of Pope Benedict XVI, for whom the trip to Lebanon was a particularly significant event.

P.S. Fr. Camisasca is not the first commentator to have compared Benedict XVI to Leo the Great. I believe Sandro Magister and Fr. Schall have done so on various occasions. OK, so contemporary Islamist extremism would be the equivalent of Attila the Hun, who, like Islam, was intent on conquering the West and thus dominating the world. It occurred to me to wonder what, in Pope Leo's time, would have been the equivalent of the hostile media and dissident Catholics that are the bane of Benedict's Pontificate. A quick read of the Wikipedia entry on the great Pope shows he did have to deal with the continuing rivaly from Constantinople, with a few outright heresies, which he firmly handled in various ways, and with willful bishops to whom, by then many papal powers had been delegated. And how he dealt with that problem appears to have been his major achievement. (The story with Attila the Hun is apparently more hagiographic than factual - it has not been established exactly what other factors contributed to Attila backing off in 452 after that famous meeting, but he did come back in 455 to sack Rome, though Leo's influence suppressed arson and murders.)

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The significance of Leo's pontificate lies in his assertion of the universal jurisdiction of the Roman bishop, as expressed in his letters, and still more in his 96 extant orations. This assertion is commonly referred to as the doctrine of Petrine supremacy.

According to Leo and several Church Fathers, as well as certain interpretations of the Scriptures, the Church is built upon Peter, in pursuance of the promise of Matthew 16:16–19. Peter participates in everything which is Christ's; what the other apostles have in common with him they have through him. What is true of Peter is true also of his successors. Every other bishop is charged with the care of his particular flock, the Roman pontiff with that of the whole Church. Other bishops are his assistants in this great task.

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I'd say any dissident in the Church today who thinks the Pope has too much power, or worse, that every bishop has as much power as the Pope, ought to review his history of Leo the Great - and the Gospel, because Christ was unequivocal in handing the keys of the Kingdom to Peter alone!

I can't help note that there still has to be any commentary in the Catholic Anglophone media or the Catholic Anglophone blogosphere about the Lebanon trip, other than John Allen's running commentary while covering the visit - whose last 'analysis' was devoted to faulting Benedict XVI in a most unwarranted way for failing to publicly address the problem of inter-sect rivalry among the major Catholic Eastern Churches based in Lebanon. [Surely, any such internal problems are hardly material for a Pope to discuss in public during an apostolic visit, and surely, he would have addressed any such problems privately with the Church leaders themselves!]... CNS and CNA did cover the trip, thank God, even if it fell on a weekend as the Pope's trips usually do, perhaps because it was a trip to Lebanon, as they did not think it fit to assign any reporter to work the weekend of the Pope's visit to Milan for the World Meeting of Families.


I must interpose the delayed reportage by Giacomo Galeazzi in La Stampa/Vatican Insider of the Papal Mass in Lebanon, which is better than the run-of-the-mill accounts of yesterday's Mass and picks out the highlights from the statements made by the Pope on his third and final day in Lebanon.

Seeking 'practical solutions'
for the Syrian conflict, etc
by Giacomo Galeazzi
Translated from the Italian service of

Sept. 17, 2012

Like Papa Wojtyla during the Cold War, so Benedict XVI stands in the forefront, this time against Islamist escalation. The new 'Church of silence' speaks through him.

"Bring peace to a violent Middle East" - He is entrusting to Christians what seems to be a 'mission impossible'. [Of course, he wasn't placing the entire burden on them, but they have to set the Christian example, against all odds. He has repeatedly called on the international community and the leaders of the region to do what they can as responsible public authorities to seek a workable solution that can lead to 'a lasting stable peace'. That seems to be the more 'impossible' mission, for which neither the Church nor the Pope can offer concrete solutions! Christ did not come as a political Messiah nor did he intend his Church to be.]

Benedict XVI celebrated Mass with 300 patriarchs and bishops on Beirut's waterfront in three languages (Arabic, French and Latin). Seventy-five thousand faithful were expected to attend - 400,000 came [Galeazzi's figure is above the 350,000 given by the Vatican, citing local authorities].

Not content with the mega-screens, the Massgoers sought to get as close as they could to the altar, and many suffered from the day's suffocating heat.

And from the Pope's pulpit, a cry for freedom: "Dignity and rights for all men. They understand they are all brothers under God".

Benedict XVI encouraged the oppressed minorities in the countries with overwhelming Muslim majorities: "Your sufferings are not in vain. Christ is close to those who suffer - he is present beside you and will not abandon you".

Even in the most ephemeral traces, Beirut is the symbol of the contradictions and coexistence of opposites. Not far from the military standing guard for the Mass were the weekend visitors coming to enjoy a swim in the Mediterranean. In the mass media and in the streets, tragic tones and light ones alternate during these days full o new tension.

The Pope, at the Angelus, noted the continuing 'din of weapons' and called on the international community to 'stop the hatred'. From the Arab countries he asked for respect for human dignity and religious freedom because "whoever wants to build peace must stop to see in the other an evil to be eliminated".

It is indispensable, he said, that "everyone can live peacefully and with dignity". This the "essential testimony that Christians must give here, collaborating with all men of good will", Benedict XVI said, echoing words said years ago by John Paul II visiting Lebanon.

To stop the bloodbath in Syria, 'practical solutions' are needed. And so, he turned over to the patriarchs and bishops, and through them, to all Christians in the Middle East, the text of the document that he signed shortly upon arriving in Beirut Friday, which he called "a road map for the future' of Christians in the Middle East.

On Saturday, he gave copies of this Apostolic Exhortation on the Middle East to the civilian and religious leaders he met at the Presidential Palace, including the four leaders of the Sunni, Shiite, Alawite and Druze Muslim communities in Lebanon.

The message is clear: There can be no future without 'the silence of the weapons and the cessation of all violence". And so, it is up to Christians "to draw from the original lifeblood of salvation that was realized in this very land".

"Fraternal communion and the example of the saints" are helpful, he said, speaking on the waterfront which is a landfill area built up with the rubble from the destruction of the 15-year-long civil war in Lebanon which also gave birth to the present institutional system that ensures representation in all the branches of government for all the religious and ethnic groups in the Lebanese population.

"The vocation of the Church and of Christians is to serve, as Jesus did, freely and for all, without distinction", the Pope underscored, decrying what he called today's 'procession of deaths'.

In his farewell address at the airport, he cited Solomon, that man needs to construct "a shrine to God for eternity", whatever one's origin or faith - namely, "a space in which men can live harmoniously, protected from all destructiveness".

P.S. On his blog, Galeazzi has a piece entitled 'Benedict of the Orient', in which he says the Holy Father's example was the model for the final statements made by the Greek Catholic patriarchs who met in Canada last week.

And now, Restan...

Friend of God,
friend to men
Translated from

Sept. 17, 2012

A long line of seasoned men, well on in age, with garments indicating their respective traditions. Each of them came up to the Pope, very close, face to face, to receive from his hands a copy of his Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente.

Benedict XVI takes time for each of them, looks them fraternally in the eye, clasps their hands, and exchanges words with them that will never be reported.

These are the Patriarchs and bishops of some of the most ancient Christian sees who proudly and jealously conserve their respective churches' memory of martyrdom and glory - along with the presidents of the bishops' conferences of other Middle Eastern nations, including Turkey and Iran, nations in which the Christian faith today is as tiny and threatened as the proverbial mustard seed in the Gospel stories.

The Pope was not giving out a guide on how to be Christian in the Middle East and not to die while being so. It is not a strategic plan for a desperate undertaking, but the outlook, full of wisdom and passion, of the pastors themselves of peoples who have been long and sorely tested - an outlook, an embrace and an invitation, all of it urgent: Stay in the land of your fathers, be witnesses for the Crucified One, build together with your compatriots a peace based on justice and reconciliation.

Shortly before this presentation, an apotheosis of songs and waving flags gave way to the fervent depth of the Eucharistic celebration. And once more, as he did twenty centuries ago, Peter spoke. Not the instinctive fisherman who was as prompt to speak a truth he could not comprehend as he was to protest indignantly against the Master's words that he was going to his death.

Today, Peter knows, through the experiences of sorrow and love, that "to decide to follow Jesus is to take his Cross, in order to accompany him on his way, an arduous way, which is not that of power or earthly glory, but which leads necessarily to a renunciation of oneself, to loss one's life for Christ and the Gospel in order to gain it".

The Gospel yesterday says that Jesus explained himself to his own disciples "with all clarity" - the same clarity that Benedict XVI deployed during his 48 hours on Lebanese soil.

The Christians of the Middle East cannot entertain vain illusions. It will not be the Western powers, nor the communications media, nor even the typical astuteness associated with the region, that will assure them o a future. Like Jesus, they can only put their trust in God who called them to this particular mission in company with the universal Church. That Church which only the Pope, with his personal sacrifice, his clarity, and his patent faith, is able to embody these days.

He came to Beirut on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, an inconvenient reminder for many. In the Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa, upon signing the document summarizing the conclusions of the 2010 Synodal Assembly on the Middle East, he expressed aloud the tragedy of our Middle Eastern brothers:

"[Through the Synodal assembly] the entire Church was able to hear the troubled cry and see the desperate faces of many men and women who experience grave human and material difficulties, who live amid powerful tensions in fear and uncertainty, who desire to follow Christ – the One who gives meaning to their existence – yet often find themselves prevented from doing so".

Many were brought to tears upon hearing the Successor of Peter affirm that this is not a time for defeat (so easy to say amid the shortcomings of the world] but the time "to celebrate the victory of love over hatred, of forgiveness over vengeance, of service over domination, of unity over division".

That is the language of the glorious Cross, the Pope underscored, the folly of the Cross "capable of changing our sufferings into a declaration of love for God and mercy for our neighbour; a folly capable of transforming those who suffer because of their faith and identity into vessels of clay ready to be filled to overflowing by divine gifts more precious than gold".

Gathered around the Pope were bishops who had come from hermetic Iran, from remote Armenia, from an uneasy Egypt in transition, from martyred Iraq, from Syria which is being exsanguinated, and from Jerusalem, the mother Church.

Along with them, in respectful silence and with friendly faces, the religious leaders of the Sunni, Shiite, Alawite and Druze Muslims of Lebanon. Old and well-known faces to their Christian neighbors, rarely in comfortable situations, perhaps, but here they were, agreeing with the gentle but firm words of the Bishop of Rome: Build the peace, do not let the poison of violence contaminate your religiosity, unmask the lies of fundamentalism.

To the political leaders and the representatives of Beirut's civilian society, Benedict XVI called strongly for respect of religious freedom. "The freedom to profess and practise one’s religion without danger to life and liberty must be possible to everyone. The loss or attenuation of this freedom deprives the person of his or her sacred right to a spiritually integrated life".

What nowadays passes for tolerance does not eliminate cases of discrimination, and at times it even reinforces them. Without openness to transcendence, which makes it possible to find answers to their deepest questions about the meaning of life and morally upright conduct, men and women become incapable of acting justly and working for peace.

And he notes that mere tolerance is not enough, that it does not eliminate discriminations but even reaffirms them at times. He also warned against the falsity of coexistence based on marginalizing man's religious openness, without which he cannot find answers to his heart's questions about the sense of life and how to live life correctly, and without which he becomes incapable of acting with justice or of committing himself for the sake of peace.

In multi-faith Lebanon, crossroads for centuries between the East and the West, Benedict XVI dwelt on one of his essential themes: Living together, a good life, for all peoples, cannot be sustained either under fundamentalism which is militantly working for Islamic domination, nor under the aggressive secularism which has manifested itself openly in the European democracies.

What is needed is a new understanding and appreciation of religious freedom and its social and political projections - in which, perhaps, Lebanon could prove to be a good laboratory to test it out.

The meeting with youth representatives of Lebanon and the entire Middle East was a cause for special joy to the Pope. The young people were the carnal demonstration of the two central messages in his visit: Christians must not fear the future but involve themselves in building it, and civilian friendship between Christians and Muslims is possible and is a platform on which to build a new type of communal coexistence in the Middle East.

We cannot forget that just as tens of thousands of young Christians and Muslims were applauding the Pope, Islamist-instigated violence was spreading throughout the Middle East. It will require a great educational effort and actual coexistence so that the seed sown by the Pope may germinate, but there is no other way.

Let us return to our opening scene. After the clear papal statements heard in Lebanon, these patriarchs and bishops had to return home - to places where many Christians are tempted to 'castle up' in an effort at some security, rather than to work at coexistence, which may be difficult, or to face the challenge of being actors in the history of these days which have the potential eruptiveness of a volcano.

The people who lined up before the Pope are heirs to a millenary history of heroic witness, of countless sufferings and they bear on their faces and in their spirit the scars of their peoples.

"Fear not, little flock", Benedict XVI enjoined them earlier. But this was not just about sentiments. Peter came to mark out a mission and a pathway. With much to be done: to strengthen unity and the common witness, to abandon attitudes that are merely defensive, to improve the formation of lay faithful [and of the clergy!], to take risks on inter-faith dialog, which is always difficult - but which can also bear much fruit) - with ordinary Muslims, "the Islam of the people", as Cardinal Angelo Scola likes to call them.

Cedars and olives marked the stages of this beautiful visit - the majesty and freshness of a presence which brought much promise to this land, and the oil of welcome, of friendship and of sharing.

Both need to be watered and cared for with wisdom and patience. As Benedict XVI has done without calculations nor reservations. He came as a friend of God and a friend to all men, and everyone ought to have recognized that, in the midst of our daily informational apathy and paralysis, something truly new happened in Lebanon.

Sandro Magister has also popsted his commentary, with its English translation on
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350326?eng=y
I will post my translation later, for the record.

A shoutout from Sollers

Meanwhile, an unusual video-tribute on the blog pf Philippe Sollers, the French writer, novelist and critic whose reviews of Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH-2 I translated and posted for the Forum, and who is a most unlikely 'fan' of the Pope, of any Pope, having been one of the leaders of the French intellectual movement of the 1960s on the eve of the 1968 counterculture revolution. He is married to atheist philosopher Julia Kristeva, who represented the non-believers at Benedict XVI's Assisi assembly in October last year.

Sollers runs a brief videoclip taken from the Pope's arrival in Beirut and the Mass yesterday with the following message:

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Viva Benedict XVI in Beirut! Shame on all murderers, whoever they are!
Courage, old man, as you guide your boat through the unrestrained ocean of human folly!

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The almost-complete re-creation I have devoted in recent days of the coverage posted on this thread in 2012 of Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Lebanon is not just an exercise in nostalgia for an all-but-perfect trip, but it is my way of underscoring the signal importance of that visit - Benedict XVI's last as Pope - for those whose memory may be short, or for those who have been afflicted with Benedict amnesia as though nothing good or important had ever happened in his Pontificate (not that any of those types would be likely to visit this site)...



Sept. 17, 2012
The double issue of L'Osservatore Romano for Sept. 17-18, 2012, devotes 6 of its 12 pages to a coverage of the second part of the Holy Father's visit to Lebanon. The trip scheduling was such that it allowed the OR on Saturday, Sept. 15, to report on the Pope's arrival in Beirut. The Sunday issue, Sept. 16, carried the accounts of the signing of the Apostolic Exhortation on Friday afternoon, the visit to the Presidential Palace on Saturday afternoon and the Pope's address to Lebanese political, social, cultural and religious leaders, along with the diplomatic corps. Tomorrow's issue covers the Pope's lunch and address to the bishops of the Middle East and his meeting with young people in Bkerke Saturday evening, the Mass and Angelus on Sunday morning, with the consignment of the Apostolic Exhortation to the patriarchs and bishops of the Middle East, the ecumenical encounter in Charfet before going to the airport, and the departure ceremony. Most of the photos are, unfortunately, in black and white, and poorly resolved.

Page 1 of the Sept 17-18, 2012, OR issue leads off with the following editorial - and a beautiful photograph of the Pope:


Benedict XVI delivering his farewell address at Beirut airport on Sunday, Sept. 16.

The true face of the Church
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 9/17-9/18 issue of


Certainly, it was a journey of peace that Benedict XVI undertook to Lebanon. And the media in general observed that this was so. With positive comments that underscored the courage of the Pope.

But his visit to the region where Christianity was born and where it developed in its first centuries had a deeper sense that in some way summarized all the trips this Pope has made to show the true face of the Church.

His days in Lebanon will remain in the annals of the Pontificate for more than one reason. First of all, for the attention that the Holy See always, and now Benedict XVI, has given to the Middle East.

Suffice it to say that Benedict XVI has been to the region four times in the past six years, visiting Turkey, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Cyrpus, and now Lebanon. In order to support the Christians of the Middle East and to affirm the need for coexistence among religions.

The Pope's visit took on a particular significance in the Land of the Cedars, as President Michel Sleiman well understood, who decided to be present, way beyond what was expected of him, at all the public events of the visit.

Received with a warmth that was spontaneous, Benedict XVI was seen in person by so many Lebanese, if only for a fleeting moment, after patiently waiting along the streets of Beirut, where on the last day, they greeted him with olive branches. [And those who weren't there would surely have watched him on TV. Beirut residents also saw his smiling face for days on their streets and buildings ]

And the Pope returned their attention, sympathy and affection with his support for Lebanon, very important to this small modern nation with ancient Biblical roots, which has always been accustomed to many peoples living together in peace, in a history that has at times been tragic, but during its happier moments, has constituted an example for the whole region.

That is, in fact, how the Pope described Lebanon in his farewell speech at the Beirut airport, evoking the wood from the cedars of Lebanon that was destined for the most sacred place in God's Temple in Jerusalem.

Thus, Benedict XVI's wish is that even now, Lebanon should continue to be a space for harmony that bears witness to the existence of God and of communion among men, "whatever may be," he said, "their political, communitarian and religious sensibilities".

An exemplary mission in a region that has been battered for too long by violence and wars, the latest being the tragic conflict in Syria, which is never far from the thoughts and words of Benedict XVI

The Pope has left behind many things from his visit, and not only in Lebanon. Starting with the work-demanding document Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, born out of the special Synodal Assembly that the bishops of the world dedicated in 2010 to the problems of the Middle East.

A text, translated to Arabic along with the Vatican's other official languages, and personally handed by Benedict XVI not just to the representatives of the various Catholic communities in the Middle East, but also to the leaders of other Christian confessions and of Islam, Indeed, the heads of the four major Islamic sects in Lebanon listened to him with great respect and attention during their private meeting with him. [When they told him that it is in the interest of the Muslims themselves that the Christians of the Middle East remain in the lands of their birth and continue their contributions to their national societies.]

But from the brief visit to Lebanon one fact remains above all: A great many saw in this kindly man of God who has become transparent with age - anjd who undertook, with impressive courage, a trip he wished to make at all costs - the true face of the Church.

A face that Benedict XVI shows to everyone, explaining it somewhat in an impromptu comment to the Catholic patriarchs after their encounter with the youth representatives in Bkerke.

He said that the Christian identity can best be summed up in the open heart of Jesus.

Indeed, the Successor of Peter is not just Christ's Vicar on earth, but also the primary witness to Christ by his example.



And although I already posted the following item recently - in the wake of the general build-up in the media, most welcome and commendable, of Pope Francis's prayer vigil for peace in Syria - I shall post it again on the anniversary of the day it was actually delivered, right after Benedict XVI left Lebanon, simply because it put on the record, at the United Nations, what the Vstican position is, well articulated by Benedict XVI in Lebanon (as he did in earlier trips to the Holy Land and Cyprus), with regard to what is possible in the Middle East.



Vatican calls on the UN:
Make it a priority to care
for the innocent victims of war

Sept. 17, 2012

Less than 24 hours after Pope Benedict XVI’s heartfelt appeal to regional and global powers to stop the violence in Syria, the Vatican has redoubled its call for urgent aid to the innocent victims of the conflict particularly children.

Addressing the 21st Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the UN, Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi stated that the international community needs to make humanitarian assistance to all displaced people and other victims of bombardments and indiscriminate destruction, especially to children, a priority.

Archbishop Tomasi echoed the Holy Father’s call for an end to the importation of arms and he appealed to journalists to report on the situation “with fairness and complete information so that public opinion may more easily grasp the futility of violence”.

Below is the full statement of Archbishop Tomasi:

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Statement by His Excellency Archbishop Silvano M. Tomasi
Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations
and Other International Organizations in Geneva
21st Session of the Human Rights Council: Item 4 –
Interactive Dialogue with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry
on the Syrian Arab Republic
Geneva, 17 September 2012

Madam President,

The Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic and other sources of information document all too well the results of months of violence in that country:
- Thousands - somw estimate 30,000 - of victims who have lost their lives and many others who have been wounded;
- City neighbourhoods destroyed;
- More than a quarter of a million made refugees;
- 1.2 million internally displaced people;
- Classes cancelled indefinitely for tens of thousands of children.
[P.S. 2013 Since then, of course, the figures have multipled ine very category, and the UN estimated recently that in June 2013, the death toll in the Syrian civilw ar passed the 100,000-mark..]

Above all, social trust and civil conviviality have been broken. This violent conflict shows the futility of war as a means to resolve disagreements.

It is appropriate that this Council should adopt the perspective of the victims in its resolve to promote human rights and to uphold humanitarian law. Respect for the fundamental rights of the victims of this conflict is, in fact, the road that can lead to healing human relations and to peace, an indispensable prerequisite for negotiations and an effective response to the expectations of the people for a democratic new beginning.

The Holy See has been following the worsening of the conflict in Syria with great attention and deep concern given the risk of destabilization in the entire region and the total disregard of civilian population; it has reiterated its rejection of violence from whatever source it may come; and regrets the loss of so many human lives and family tragedies.

The voice of the Holy Father Benedict XVI, a pilgrim of peace in the area, has condemned without any ambiguity the use of violence: “Even though it seems hard to find solutions to the various problems that affect the region,” he said, “we cannot resign ourselves to violence and to the aggravation of tensions. The commitment to dialogue and to reconciliation must be a priority for all the parties concerned and must be supported by the international community.”

A stable peace in the Middle East is an important benefit for the whole world. With God’s gift of peace, local people can use their talents for the development and progress of their countries, enjoy their right to a decent life there, and avoid the misery and suffering of forced uprooting and exile.

Solidarity with the people of Syria and, by extension, to the whole of the Middle East, implies that the international community should put aside selfish interests, support the political process for a cessation of violence and for an orderly and inclusive participation of all groups in the management of the country as citizens of equal dignity and responsibility.

An additional requirement appears urgent to make solidarity effective and genuine: humanitarian assistance to all displaced people and other victims of bombardments and indiscriminate destruction, especially to children.

Then, to the importation of arms, the firm and common will for peace and the importation of ideas for reconciliation should be substituted.

Furthermore, journalists should report on this situation with fairness and complete information so that public opinion may more easily grasp the futility of violence and how in the long run it doesn’t benefit anyone. Media, too, can help build a culture of peace and point at the benefits of reconciliation.

The wave of protests, peaceful on the part of most of the participants, that have characterized what has been called the Arab Spring, stemmed from the deep desire, especially of younger people, for greater freedom, better employment, a real participation in public life. To frustrate these aspirations through the manipulation of power and forms of control will have a lasting damage and miss a historical opportunity for progress.

Madam President, the people of Syria and the Middle East deserve support and solidarity in their moment of need. The promotion of all human rights is an effective and indispensable strategy for the success of their struggle for peace and social conviviality.

Thank you, Madame President.

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It is good that the Vatican's observer at the UN should have reiterated the messages given by Benedict XVI in recent days about Syria, in particular, and the unending cycle of violence in the Middle East, on the other, in a formal way to the United Nations - and that included important points from the remarks given by the Pope at his inflight Q&A with journalists en route to Beirut. Every little push is needed (I say little because probably even far less people will get to read Mons. Tomasi's statement compared to the coverage merited and earned by the Pope's statements during his visit to Lebanon), but focusing on the plight of the innocent child victims of the Syrian war is absolutely urgent, and let us pray as much attention is given to them by international charitable organizations as they are giving to the hungry millions in the Horn of Africa.

More post-scripts from Lebanon:
Benedict XVI pays surprise visit
to Carmelite nuns of Harissa
Sept. 17, 2012


This story and the photos above are taken from an Italian site maintained by the Descalced Carmelites.

On Sunday, Sept. 16, towards the end of his apostolic visit to Lebanon, as the papal motorcade left the Apostolic Nunciature in Harissa for the last time, enroute to the ecumenical encounter in Charfet and then the airport, Benedict XVI made an unprogrammed stop at the Carmelite convent of the Mother of God (Theotokos) also located in Harissa.


Above, the Nunciature in Harissa located below the shrine of Our Lady pf Lebanon. Below, the Carmelite monastery along the main road leading from Harissa to Jounieh on the coast, north of Beirut.


John Paul II had visited the convent in 1997. This time, the nuns, of the Descalced Carmelites, were hoping that Benedict XVI would find some time for them, and so their joy was uncontainable when he did show up. Particularly happy was the superior, Mother Teresa de Jesus, a Spanish nun now over 90 years old, who had been one of the three founders of the convent 50 years ago.

The Pope led the nuns in a brief prayer at the convent chapel, they sang a hymn for him, and he presented them with a mosaic of Mary with the Baby Jesus.

After impatitng his Apostolic Blessing to them, the Pope blessed the first stone that will be laid for a mew Carmelite convent to be built in Cana, the place wher Jesus performed the first miracle of his ministry.

Years ago, in an article written for the magazine 30 Giorni, Mother Teresa de Jesus had written: "In the Church, our mother, we act as 'sentinels', being Descalced Carmelites, cloistered, contemplative, and on the margins, but not relegated. Our founding mother, St. Teresa de Jesus (of Avila), reminds us constantly of our role in the Church and the exigency of giving ourselves totally for those who are the defenders of the Church".

From the Papal Mass:
Faces of faith

Many thanks to Gloria for assembling all these photos on her photo gallery thread.







Left panel: Massgoers flock around the papal chair after the Mass to take photos.

A news post-script, not directly related to the Pope's visit was that about a massive protest march and rally by Hezbollah and other Muslim groups in Beirut on Monday afternoon, Sept. 17, 2012, to protest the now-infamous videoclip promoting an anti-Islam movie produced by a California immigrant (said to be an Egyptian Copt).

The relevance for us is that the Muslims in Beirut held off any such demonstrations until after the Pope had come and gone. They could have demonstrated Friday, the day he arrived, which Muslims worldwide had designated for omnibus protests to take place after their Friday prayers. But they did not, and we must be thankful to them for that. It showed that the respect they showed the Pope during his visit was genuine, and that for them, it was as if Regensburg had never happened (which, perhaps, also goes to show that, other than the mad imam of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, the Muslim 'masses' did not assimilate the poison that the mobs were fed during the artificial incendiary situation manufactured after the lecture)... One other thing, the Hezbollah protest mobilized 'tens of thousands' - no match for the 350,000 who came for the Papal Mass the day before, which says a lot!...The Washington Post story on the Hezbollah protest march said:

---

Hezbollah supporters were noticeably absent from the streets of Beirut and the group’s leaders did not call for public demonstrations last Friday, which was the day Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the country for a three-day visit. Hezbollah appears to have shown restraint in keeping its supporters off the streets until Monday in order not to disrupt the Pope’s visit, which ended on Sunday...

---

How ironic that a terrorist Muslim organization should show respect for the visiting Pope whereas protesters in London, Madrid and Berlin - even if they were fairly small groups - deliberately sought to sabotage the Pope's visit when he was in their countries.

Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013, 24th Week in Ordinary Time

Center photo: The saint's tomb in Osimo.
ST. GIUSEPPE DA COPERTINO (Joseph of Cupertino)(Italy, 1603-1663), Franciscan Mystic, Confessor
Born in Italy's southeastern region of Apulia (Puglia), Giuseppe was ill-tempered and dull-witted as a boy. After being rebuffed many times for lack of education, he was finally admitted to the Capuchin order, where he became known both for his learning disability and for his ecstasies in which we wandered about in a daze. He was assigned menial tasks in the kitchen and with the animals. It was said that since he could learn only one thing at a time, he lucked out and became a deacon when the question he was asked happened to be the one question he had studied. And that later, he lucked out again when the other candidates for priesthood in his 'class' did so well at exams that everyone else was passed. Two years after he was ordained a priest, during a procession for St. Francis, he astounded everyone with his first 'flight' - his ecstasy sent him soaring into the air where he hovered for some time over the procession. In his lifetime, more than 70 such flights would be documented, usually touched off by the simple mention of the name of Jesus or Mary. The most famous of these flights took place at the Vatican when he was overcome by being in the presence of the Vicar of Christ (Urban VIII at the time). His 'flights', along with healing powers, brought him such fame that people tore off pieces from his habit as relics, and eventually, the Vatican had to order him exiled and 'concealed' in various places, including the Sacro Convento in Assisi, where he remained for nine years. He continued to be sought out by prominent people. His final exile was to Osimo near Ancona, where he was prohibited from talking to anyone but his Bishop and superior, and if necessary, a doctor. He fell ill in August 1963, and had another ecstatic flight during the last Mass he celebrated, on the Feast of the Assumption. He died shortly thereafter. He was buried in the Church of St. Francis in Osimo, where a marble altar was erected to hold the g;ass urn containing his remains. He was canonized in 1767. He is the patron saint of pilots, astronauts, paratroopers and also of students.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/091813.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

At the General Audience held in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis reflected once more on the image of the Church
as Mother, saying that like all good mothers, she indicates the path to walk in life, always accompanies us in patience,
mercy and understanding, and places us in God’s hands. Afterwards, he reminded the faithful that the United Nations
observes the Itnernational Day for Peace on Sept. 21, and joined the Ecumenical Council of Churches in urging all
Christians never to tire in praying for peace.

Earlier, the Pope met with Mons. Konrad Krajewski, recently named papal Almoner, with his family. Until he was
named to this position, Mons, Krajewski, also named titular archbishop of Benevento, was one of the cerimonieri for
papal liturgies, and had been since the final years of John Paul II's Pontificate.


One year ago...
No events were announced for Benedict XVI, who returned to Castel Gandolfo for the rest of the summer after his trip to Lebanon. The Press Office released the list of bishops named by the Pope to take part as Synodal Fathers in the General Synodal Assembly on the New Evangelization to be held at the Vatican from Oct. 7-28.

On this day two years ago...
The Vatican released the text of the Holy Father's video-message to the German people on the eve
of his apostolic and state visit. The video was played on German TV the previous night.
www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId...



THE POPE'S PRE-VISIT
ADDRESS TO THE GERMAN PEOPLE
Sept. 17, 2011

On the eve of his Apostolic Visit to Germany on Sept. 22-25, the Holy Father recorded a video message at Castel Gandoilfo for the program 'Wort zum Sonntag' [A Word for Sunday'] of the German public channel ARD which was aired in Germany last night.

Here is a translation of the Pope's message:

---

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Beloved countrymen,

In a few days I will embark on a trip to Germany about which even now I am already thrilled. I am particularly glad to visit Berlin where there will be many meetings, and of course, the address to the Bundestag and the Mass that we shall celebrate at the Olympic Stadium.

A high point of the visit will be Erfurt. In the Augustinian monastery and in the Augustinian Church where Luther got started, I shall be meeting with representatives of the Evangelical Church of Germany. We shall pray together, listen to the Word of God, think and speak with each other.

We do not expect to come up with anything sensational. The truly important thing about the meeting is that we shall, in this place, listen to the Word of God and pray to him, and thus be with each other intimately to manifest true ecumenism.

Rather special to me is the visit to Eichsfeld, this little strip of land which, through all the aberrations of history, has remained Catholic; and then in southwestern Germany, to be in Freiburg, a large city with the many meetings scheduled there, especially a prayer vigil with young people, and the Mass which will conclude this trip.

All this is not religious tourism, much less a show. It is about the message found in the motto for these days: "Where God is, there the future is". It will be about the fact that God must once again come into our field of vision, God who has so often been absent, but of whom we all have so much need.

You will perhaps ask me, "First of all, is there a God? And if there is a God, is he concerned at all about us? Can we ever reach him?"

Now, it is true that we cannot put God on the table, we cannot touch him as if he were a utensil, nor is he something we can take into our hand like some object.

But we must develop again our capacity to perceive God, which is inherent in us. We can grasp something of the grandeur of God in the grandeur of the cosmos. We can employ technology in the world because the world is rationally constructed. In the great rationality of the world, we can grasp something of the Creative Spirit from which it came, and in the beauty of Creation, we can see something of the beauty, the grandeur and the goodness of God.

We can listen to the Words of eternal life in Sacred Scripture, which did not simply come from men, but from God,in which we hear his voice.

Finally, we see God as well in men who have been touched by God. And I refer not only to the great saints, from Paul to Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa, but especially to the many simple men and women about whom no one speaks. And yet when we meet them, they emanate something that is good, sincere and joyful which tells us, God is here, and that through them, he touches us.

That is why, in these days, let us strive to have God once more in our sight, so that we can be men from whom the light of hope comes into the world, the light that comes from God and helps us to live.

---

Pope addresses fellow Germans
on the eve of his visit




VATICAN CITY , Sept. 18, 2012 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI says he is looking forward to his upcoming trip to his homeland Germany, while stressing that God, not "spectacle," is the focus.

The main aim of his visit, from Thursday to next Sunday, will be to help "God to penetrate our field of vision," the Pope said late Saturday.

In a rare move, he made his comments on a German television programme that has been running for over 50 years in which a priest or pastor delivers a sermon.

Pope John Paul II appeared on the same religious show "Das Wort zum Sonntag" (The Word on Sunday) on the ARD channel in 1987.

"I am already thrilled at the prospect" of the visit, Benedict said at the start of his talk, which lasted just under four minutes and was recorded at the Vatican.

A key part of his trip will be a meeting with representatives of the German Protestant church in the Augustine monastery at Erfurt, where Martin Luther "started on his way," he added.

"We aren't expecting anything sensational. The important thing will be to think together in that place, to listen to the word of God and to pray," in the spirit of ecumenism.

It will be the third trip to Germany for Pope Benedict, the first German Pope in 500 years.

He was keen to stress that the crowds and spectacle that accompany such events are secondary.

"All this isn't about religious tourism and even less about a spectacle," he insisted.

Instead, the theme for his visit will be "where God is, there is the future."

"We must allow God to penetrate our field of vision," the Pope added.

The papal visit is already mired in controversy, with a number of theologians leading vocal criticism over the Vatican's antiquated attitudes. [This has been AFP's mantra tagline for its reporting on the visit so far.]

Benedict XVI will visit Berlin, Erfurt in the ex-German Democratic Republic, and Freiburg.

The 84-year old Pope will give 18 sermons and speeches during his 21st trip abroad.

The Vatican has not ruled out the possibility that the Pontiff will meet with victims of clerical sexual abuse.

AP filed a brief perfunctory report:
Pope says German trip
can help boost hope


CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy. Sept. 17, 2012 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI says his trip to his German homeland this week can help generate hope there.

Benedict expressed excitement over the four-day pilgrimage as he spoke in German at his summer residence Sunday in Castel Gandolfo near Rome.

He asked Germans to pray for him during the trip, which begins Thursday. Benedict says he can help them be "witnesses to hope and orientation for the future."

Some 100 German lawmakers plan to boycott Benedict's speech to Parliament. The Vatican's No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone promised Sunday that speech will be "very beautiful."

In a message broadcast on a German public television station, Benedict invited Germans to renew their faith.





I apologize for the delay - posting for Sept. 18 on Sept. 19, then having to catch up to Sept. 19. This time, I am plagued by a slow PC - when even scrolling up and down takes an eternity - aggravated by a Google Chrome that keeps crashing (arduous sessions like this with the PC are getting to be occasions of sin for me, because I cannot help myself from cursing out loud and frequently when these things happen. Especially since the situation has not improved despite disk optimization runs, file clean-up and all the virus checks possibLe). It's particularly maddening because my almanac posts and lookback features are usually a composite of material from various sources and/or separate earlier posts, and after having put together the elements of a new post, to have everything freeze on you before you can even save it is just hell. It means having to assemble the composites all over, as I have had to do now.]

Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013, 24th Week in Ordinary Time

From left: Traditional portrait of the saint; image venerated in New York City; center panel shows the silver statue of San Gennaro and the reliquary containing his blood; folk images of the saint.
ST GENNARO (Januarius) (Italy, d 305), Bishop and Martyr
Next to nothing is known about the life of this saint who was Bishop of Benevento near Naples, but his martyrdom is recounted in Roman Martyrology, saying that Gennaro, along which his deacon and lector, were beheaded under the Emperor Diocletian after behind imprisoned in chains. "The body of the bishop was brought to Naples, and there honourably interred in the church, where his holy blood is kept unto this day in a phial of glass, which being set near his head becomes liquid and bubbles up as though it were fresh." A longer account in the Breviary says that before his beheading, Gennaro was first thrown into a furnace but that the flames would not touch him, and then he and his companions were exposed to wild beasts in the amphitheater, also unsuccessfully, Accusing him of magic, the prosecutor ordered Gennaro and his companions beheaded. The prosecutor was smitten blind, Gennaro cured him, and 5,000 persons converted to Christ before the beheading was carried out. Legend says the bishop's body, and severed head, still dripping blood, were gathered up by an old man who wrapped them reverently in a cloth. A good woman of Naples dried up the blood with a sponge and filled a phial with the precious red liquid. When the bodies of the martyrs were brought to Naples, where since then, many miracles have been attributed to them, including saving the city and its surroundings from many eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius.The first recorded reference to the 'miracle of the blood' was in 1389. Neapolitans believe that Vesuvius will erupt at some point during a year in which the saint's blood fails to liquefy. Eighteen times a year, on the first Sunday of May and the octave that follows it, on Sept. 19, the saint's feast day, and on December 16, the reliquary containing the blood is exposed in the Cathedral of Naples, during which the officiating priest holds it up to demonstrate that the blood has liquefied. He is the patron Saint of Naples. In New York City, Italian immigrants set up the national shrine of San Gennaro in Little Italy, and his annual feast has turned into an 11-day street party with Masses, processions, and fairs galore. [For more about accounts of the liquefaction, including scientific hypotheses, see a full post I did on St. Gennaro in the PRF back in 2007
freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354746&p=16]
Readings for today's Mass:

AT THE VATICAN TODAY


Pope Francis met with

- H.E. Algirdas Butkevičius, Primo Minister of Lithuania, with his wife and delegationb.

- Cardinal Stanisław Ryłko, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

- Participants pf the Conference for New Bishops sponsored by the Congregation for Bishops and
the Congregation for Oriental Churches. Address in Italian.
Once again, Vatican Radio's English service does not provide a translation, only some paraphrases in this report:
http://en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/09/19/pope_to_new_bishops:_tend_the_flock_of_god/en1-729871
[Are they reverting permanently now to their 'Nah-we-can't-be-bothered' mode during Benedict XVI's Pontificate of rarely providing English translations other than those simultaneously released by the Press Office? Have the RV eager-Francis-beavers tired out so soon of what ought to be their duty anyway? - One they chose conspicuously not to comply with under Benedict XVI but seemed so happy to do in the first few months of this Pontificate... BTW, the Press Office has yet to release a transcript, partial or full, of the Pope's 2-hour chat with the Roman clergy last Monday.]

Meanwhile, America, the journal of the American Jesuits,
www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview
has published the English translation of an interview granted by Pope Francis to Fr. Antonio Spadaro, editor of the Rome-based Jesuit journal, La Civilta Cattolica (which for an explanation I still have not found anywhere is known to have its editorial content vetted by the Vatican Secretariat of State, a strange state of affairs that I did not think any Jesuit would ever have agreed to!).

EIGHT YEARS AND FiVE MONTHS AGO,

on April 19, 2005,

Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope.

OUR LOVE AND PRAYERS, YOUR HOLINESS!

AD MULTOS ANNOS!

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY...
September 19, 2010

Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman in Cofton Park, Birmingham.



One year ago...

GENERAL AUDIENCE
Sept. 19, 2012






Pope Benedict flew today from Castel Gandolfo to the Vatican for his Wednesday General Audience at the Aula Paolo VI, where as he does after each apostolic visit abroad, he reported on his recent trip to Lebanon.



Here is a translation of the Pope's report:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today I would like to briefly return, in my thoughts and heart, to those extraordinary days of my Apostolic journey to Lebanon. A trip that I had strongly wanted, despite the difficult circumstances, considering that a father should always be near his children when they encounter grave problems.

I was moved by a sincere desire to announce the peace that the risen Lord gave to his disciples and summarized in the words “My peace I give to you - سلامي أعطيكم" (Jn 14:27). The main aim of my journey was the signing and consignment of the Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente to the representatives of the Catholic communities of the Middle East, to other Churches and ecclesial communities as well as Muslim leaders.

It was a moving ecclesial event and, at the same time, a provident opportunity for dialogue lived in a complex but emblematic country for the entire region, because of its tradition of coexistence and fruitful cooperation between the different religious and social components.

In the face of the suffering and tragedies that continue in that area of ​​the Middle East, I expressed my heartfelt closeness to the legitimate aspirations of those dear people, bringing them a message of encouragement and peace.

I am thinking in particular of the terrible conflict that torments Syria, causing, in addition to thousands of deaths, a stream of refugees that pours into the region desperately seeking security and a future; neither have I forgotten the plight of Iraq.

During my visit, the people of Lebanon and the Middle East - Catholics, representatives of other Churches and Ecclesial Communities and of the various Muslim communities - enthusiastically and in a relaxed and constructive atmosphere, experienced the importance of mutual respect, understanding and brotherhood, which is a strong sign of hope for all humanity.

But it was the encounter with the Catholic faithful of Lebanon and the Middle East, present in their thousands, which aroused in me a feeling of deep gratitude for the ardor of their faith and their witness.

I thank the Lord for this precious gift, which gives hope for the future of the Church in those areas: youth, adults and families motivated by the strong desire to root their lives in Christ, to remain anchored to the Gospel, to walk together in the Church.

I renew my gratitude also to all who worked tirelessly for my visit: the Patriarchs and Bishops of Lebanon with their staff, the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops, consecrated persons and the lay faithful, which are a precious and meaningful reality in Lebanese society.

I was able to observe firsthand that the Lebanese Catholic communities, through their presence and their millennial commitment full of hope, offer a significant and valued contribution to the daily lives of all the inhabitants of the country.

My respect and gratitude go to the Lebanese authorities, institutions and associations, volunteers and all those who have offered their support in prayer. I cannot forget the warm welcome I received from the President of the Republic, Mr. Michel Sleiman, as well as the various components of the country and the people: it was a warm welcome, in line with the famous Lebanese hospitality.

Muslims welcomed me with great respect and sincere consideration. Their constant presence and participation gave me the opportunity to launch a call to dialogue and collaboration between Christianity and Islam: it seems to me that the time has come for us to give a decided and sincere witness together against the divisions and wars. The Catholics, who also came from neighboring countries, fervently expressed their deep affection for the Successor of Peter.

After the beautiful ceremony on my arrival at Beirut airport, the first meeting was of particular solemnity: the signing of the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, in the Greek-Catholic Basilica of St. Paul in Harissa.

On that occasion I invited Catholics in the Middle East to fix their gaze on Christ Crucified to find the strength, even in difficult and painful contexts, to celebrate the victory of love over hate, forgiveness over revenge and unity over division.

I assured them all that the universal Church is closer than ever, with affection and prayer, to the Church in the Middle East: they, despite being a "little flock", need not fear, knowing that the Lord is always with them. The Pope does not forget them.

On the second day of my Apostolic Journey I met the representatives of the institutions of the Republic and the world of culture, the diplomatic corps and religious leaders.

To them, among others, I pointed a way forward to promote a future of peace and solidarity: this means working so that cultural, social and religious differences result in a sincere dialogue, a new fraternity, united by a shared sense of the greatness and dignity of every person, whose life must always be defended and protected.

On the same day I had a meeting with the heads of the Muslim religious communities, which took place in a spirit of dialogue and mutual benevolence. I thank God for this meeting. The world today needs clear and strong signs of dialogue and cooperation, of which Lebanon has been and must continue to be an example to the Arab countries and the rest of the world.

In the afternoon, at the residence of the Maronite Patriarch, I was greeted by the irrepressible enthusiasm of thousands of young people from Lebanon and from neighboring countries, who gave rise to a moment of great celebration and prayer, that will remain unforgettable for many.

I pointed out their good fortune to live in that part of the world that saw Jesus, Crucified and Risen for our salvation, and saw the development of Christianity, exhorting them to fidelity and love for their land, despite the difficulties caused by the lack of stability and security.

In addition, I encouraged them to be firm in their faith, trusting in Christ, the source of our joy, and to deepen their personal relationship with Him in prayer, as well as to be open to the great ideals of life, family, friendship and solidarity.

Seeing young Christians and Muslims celebrate in great harmony, I encouraged them to build together the future of Lebanon and the Middle East and to oppose violence and war. Harmony and reconciliation must be stronger than the forces of death.

On Sunday morning, there was a very intense moment of great participation in the Holy Mass at the City Center Waterfront in Beirut, accompanied by evocative hymns and chants, which also characterized other celebrations.

In the presence of many bishops and a large crowd of faithful from all over the Middle East, I urged everyone to live and to witness their faith without fear, knowing that the vocation of the Christian and the Church is to bring the Gospel to all without distinction, following the example of Jesus in a context marked by bitter conflicts, I drew attention to the need to serve peace and justice by becoming instruments of reconciliation and builders of communion.

At the end of the Eucharistic celebration, I had the joy of presenting the Apostolic Exhortation which gathers the conclusions of the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East.

Through the Patriarchs and Eastern and Latin Bishops, priests, religious and laity, this Document wants to reach all the faithful of that dear land, to support them in their faith and communion and encourage them on the path of the much hoped for new evangelization.

In the afternoon, at the headquarters of the Syrian Catholic Patriarchate, I then had the joy of a fraternal ecumenical meeting with the Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox Patriarchs and representatives of those Churches, as well as other Ecclesial Communities.

Dear friends, the days spent in Lebanon were a wonderful manifestation of faith and religious feeling and a prophetic sign of peace. The multitude of believers from the entire Middle East, had the opportunity to reflect, to talk and especially to pray together, renewing their commitment to root their lives in Christ.

I am sure that the people of Lebanon, in its varied but well blended religious and social composition, will know how to witness with renewed impetus to the true peace that comes from faith in God.

I hope that the messages of peace and respect that I wanted to give, will help governments of the region to take decisive steps towards peace and a better understanding of the relationship between Christians and Muslims.

For my part, I continue to accompany these beloved people in prayer, so that they remain faithful to their commitments. To the maternal intercession of Mary, venerated in so many and ancient Lebanese shrines, I entrust the fruits of this pastoral visit, as well as the good intentions and the just aspirations of the entire Middle East.

---

Here is one of the best tributes to Benedict XVI written after the apostolic visit to Lebanon, an article indicated to us by Beatrice, whom I thank greatly...

Benedict XVI, the man who never backs off
In Lebanon, the presence alone of the Pope had a powerful psychological impact.
Reflections on the Pope's physical, intellectual and spiritual courage.
Translated from

September 18, 2012

The day after Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Lebanon, which I covered for La Vie, the phrase kept coming back like a leitmotiv to those whom I asked for their assessment - from the diplomat in the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the mother who came to the Papal Mass in Beirut held under a leaden sun: "He came, he was not afraid, he did not shy away".

Up to the very eve of the trip, fears had persisted about whether it was feasible at all. Benedict XVI's determination to make the trip was known, but the crucial question was that of security. With the civil war in Syria, and its repercussions on adjoining Lebanon, some did not believe he would make the trip at all until they saw him going down the airplane steps in Beirut.

The psychological reverberation of his trip is immense, in the current context of great tension in the region. The fact that the Pope had come in flesh and blood is a source of hope that is difficult to imagine in France.

In Lebanon, it was a national event, a true feast in this country, where men habitually live holding their breath for fear of the resurgence of any inter-community conflicts.

But the psychological relief also extended even to those who are in Lebanon for other reasons. I think of Editha, a Filipina Catholic who was at the Mass.

"I am a domestic servant for a Lebanese family. I am here to earn a living for my family. I have not seen my children for six years. May last child was only a year old when I had to leave. Coming to this Mass by the Pope is like balm for my heart".

Joseph Ratzinger has never been a man to back off. At the end of the 1950s, when his dissertation [to earn his Habilitation as a professor qualified to teach in German universities] was drastically cut down by a hostile professor and his professional career seemed in peril, he went around the obstacle by re-fashioning his work from a different angle that would render it impregnable to his adviser's challenge.

Since 1982, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he became, for the media, a negative symbol of the institutional Church. Others may have cracked under the constant burden this meant,but not he, who went on humbly carrying out his tasks without worrying about his image.

Since 2000, Joseph Ratzinger knew that his public image as one who sought to 're-frame' rebel theologians into orthodoxy was behind him, when his desk began to pile up with files about priests accused of committing sex offenses against minors and children.

Though it was also a time of omerta [silence imposed, Mafia-like, on criminal matters] - since those around John Paul II did not wish to expose figures like Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ - the cardinal prefect knew the Church was dealing with a ticking time-bomb.

He availed of a window of opportunity, as John Paul II drew closer to his final days, to sound the alarm in public about the 'filth' in the Church, particularly among some priests, denouncing this in the meditations he prepared for the Good Friday Way of the Cross in March 2005. Never before had a curial cardinal broken the taboo to point out what seemed to be a blind spot for the Church.

Nor did he back off when his peers elected him Pope at age 78. The global message of the cardinals to him was clear: "Joseph, you are apparently the only one who knows the extent of the damage. Please clean it up for all of us". The cardinals were not foolish - and Joseph applied himself to the task.

And so, he has not backed off either from the problems of the Middle East. To launch a Synodal Assembly on the Middle East was frankly not an easy task, considering the complexity of the Eastern Catholic Churches themselves which are divided, and the overall context of the region itself.

The Middle East was never really the theologian Ratzinger's domain. [But his lifelong appreciation for what Christianity owes Judaism and the unique bond that will always link the two religions has always set him apart, and has been a thread running through his ecclesiological and theological thinking]]

But what matters is that the Pope launched the dynamic of the 2010 Synodal assembly, which saw its culmination in Beirut this weekend.

His courage was physical, to begin with. His program, crammed into about 48 hours, was quite packed. During his public events, Benedict XVI had to endure the infernal heat of late summer in Beirut while under the permanent glare of TV lights.

He devoted individual attention to hundreds of prelates and laymen who lined up to greet him at each event. He was focused on what the leaders of Lebanon (secular as well as ecclesial) had to tell him at their private meetings during which every word he said could have unforeseen consequences.

At age 85, it was quite a feat. He has become visibly more frail, and now moves about more often with a cane to keep his balance, but those who had the opportunity to see him up close say that his memory and his sense of humor remain sparkling as ever.

In Lebanon, the Pope made public the text of his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, which he himself described as a road map for the future of Christians in the Middle East.

But in it, he does not hesitate to go against the grain and reproach the Christians of the region for certain faults. For instance, the text devotes a considerable part to tracing the Jewish origins of Christianity.

As we know, in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on everyone's mind all the time. To recall he importance of Judaism to the Christian faith was thus an act of courage in itself. It is proof that Rome, through the Pope, brings another point of view, and is willing to re-open some wounds in order to better heal them. One can doubtless see in this the essence of the Petrine ministry.

The other 'anti-demagogic' element of the Exhortation is Benedict XVI's position about secularism. In the Middle East, secularism is largely seen as a foil, an ailment of French origin which has contaminated the West and led it to break off its attachments to God (and which explains why the Western powers have no interest at all in the fate of the Middle Eastern Christians).

But Benedict XVI advocates the virtues of 'healthy secularity': "(It) means liberating faith from the weight of political considerations and enriching politics with the contributions of faith, while maintaining the necessary distance, clear distinction and indispensable collaboration between both... Such a secularity guarantees that politics can function without instrumentalizing religion, and gives religion the ability to live freely without being weighed down by politics dictated by special interests and sometimes hardly in conformity with - or even, directly opposed to - belief".-

This is a recommendation which, in the Middle East, strikes at the manifold confusions between religion and politics.

In Beirut, the Pope used unsettling words to appeal for peace, evoking the urgency for forgiveness and for the conversion of hearts in front of an audience of political and religious leaders:

---

We need to be very conscious that evil is not some nameless, impersonal and deterministic force at work in the world. Evil, the devil, works in and through human freedom, through the use of our freedom. It seeks an ally in man. Evil needs man in order to act... But it is possible for us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good. It is to this conversion of heart that we are called... True, it is quite demanding: it involves rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them, and, not least, forgiveness. Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace.

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Words that could well glide away like water on oilcloth in our postwar European societies where, in a long time, we have not known civil war, nor families decimated by bomb attacks, nor the fear of being abducted and disappearing without a trace (which continues to be very real in the Middle East today).

And in Lebanon? "Forgiveness is not that obvious for Lebanese or Syrians," commented Jesuit priest Samir Khalil Samir to me the day after the Pope left Beirut. "To accept that the murderer of someone in your family is a brother one ought to love and forgive is very difficult".

Forgiveness of offenses committed against you and your loved ones and the conversion of individual hearts constitute a truly great challenge [The Pope underscored, in the same address, "True, it is quite demanding..." but following Christ was never supposed to be an easy task], especially in the Mediterranean culture which is marked by subjection to one's religious or familial clan, by the logic of vendetta, and by so-called 'codes of honor'. The Lebanese, in particular, are imprisoned by a fundamental fear which is principally for their physical survival.

This 'particularly demanding conversion' is asked not only of those int he Middle East. It has resounded in everything this Pope ha ssaid over the past seven years. It will be at the heart of the coming Year of Faith which begins in a few weeks.

A prophet in Lebanon through his words and by his physical presence, Benedict XVI is more and more the Pope of interior freedom.

Here is one of the best tributes to Benedict XVI written after the apostolic visit to Lebanon, an article indicated to us by Beatrice, whom I thank greatly...

Benedict XVI, the man who never backs off
In Lebanon, the presence alone of the Pope had a powerful psychological impact.
Reflections on the Pope's physical, intellectual and spiritual courage.
Translated from

September 18, 2012

The day after Benedict XVI's apostolic visit to Lebanon, which I covered for La Vie, the phrase kept coming back like a leitmotiv to those whom I asked for their assessment - from the diplomat in the ecclesiastical hierarchy to the mother who came to the Papal Mass in Beirut held under a leaden sun: "He came, he was not afraid, he did not shy away".

Up to the very eve of the trip, fears had persisted about whether it was feasible at all. Benedict XVI's determination to make the trip was known, but the crucial question was that of security. With the civil war in Syria, and its repercussions on adjoining Lebanon, some did not believe he would make the trip at all until they saw him going down the airplane steps in Beirut.

The psychological reverberation of his trip is immense, in the current context of great tension in the region. The fact that the Pope had come in flesh and blood is a source of hope that is difficult to imagine in France.

In Lebanon, it was a national event, a true feast in this country, where men habitually live holding their breath for fear of the resurgence of any inter-community conflicts.

But the psychological relief also extended even to those who are in Lebanon for other reasons. I think of Editha, a Filipina Catholic who was at the Mass.

"I am a domestic servant for a Lebanese family. I am here to earn a living for my family. I have not seen my children for six years. May last child was only a year old when I had to leave. Coming to this Mass by the Pope is like balm for my heart".

Joseph Ratzinger has never been a man to back off. At the end of the 1950s, when his dissertation [to earn his Habilitation as a professor qualified to teach in German universities] was drastically cut down by a hostile professor and his professional career seemed in peril, he went around the obstacle by re-fashioning his work from a different angle that would render it impregnable to his adviser's challenge.

Since 1982, as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he became, for the media, a negative symbol of the institutional Church. Others may have cracked under the constant burden this meant,but not he, who went on humbly carrying out his tasks without worrying about his image.

Since 2000, Joseph Ratzinger knew that his public image as one who sought to 're-frame' rebel theologians into orthodoxy was behind him, when his desk began to pile up with files about priests accused of committing sex offenses against minors and children.

Though it was also a time of omerta [silence imposed, Mafia-like, on criminal matters] - since those around John Paul II did not wish to expose figures like Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legionaries of Christ - the cardinal prefect knew the Church was dealing with a ticking time-bomb.

He availed of a window of opportunity, as John Paul II drew closer to his final days, to sound the alarm in public about the 'filth' in the Church, particularly among some priests, denouncing this in the meditations he prepared for the Good Friday Way of the Cross in March 2005. Never before had a curial cardinal broken the taboo to point out what seemed to be a blind spot for the Church.

Nor did he back off when his peers elected him Pope at age 78. The global message of the cardinals to him was clear: "Joseph, you are apparently the only one who knows the extent of the damage. Please clean it up for all of us". The cardinals were not foolish - and Joseph applied himself to the task.

And so, he has not backed off either from the problems of the Middle East. To launch a Synodal Assembly on the Middle East was frankly not an easy task, considering the complexity of the Eastern Catholic Churches themselves which are divided, and the overall context of the region itself.

The Middle East was never really the theologian Ratzinger's domain. [But his lifelong appreciation for what Christianity owes Judaism and the unique bond that will always link the two religions has always set him apart, and has been a thread running through his ecclesiological and theological thinking]]

But what matters is that the Pope launched the dynamic of the 2010 Synodal assembly, which saw its culmination in Beirut this weekend.

His courage was physical, to begin with. His program, crammed into about 48 hours, was quite packed. During his public events, Benedict XVI had to endure the infernal heat of late summer in Beirut while under the permanent glare of TV lights.

He devoted individual attention to hundreds of prelates and laymen who lined up to greet him at each event. He was focused on what the leaders of Lebanon (secular as well as ecclesial) had to tell him at their private meetings during which every word he said could have unforeseen consequences.

At age 85, it was quite a feat. He has become visibly more frail, and now moves about more often with a cane to keep his balance, but those who had the opportunity to see him up close say that his memory and his sense of humor remain sparkling as ever.

In Lebanon, the Pope made public the text of his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, which he himself described as a road map for the future of Christians in the Middle East.

But in it, he does not hesitate to go against the grain and reproach the Christians of the region for certain faults. For instance, the text devotes a considerable part to tracing the Jewish origins of Christianity.

As we know, in the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is on everyone's mind all the time. To recall he importance of Judaism to the Christian faith was thus an act of courage in itself. It is proof that Rome, through the Pope, brings another point of view, and is willing to re-open some wounds in order to better heal them. One can doubtless see in this the essence of the Petrine ministry.

The other 'anti-demagogic' element of the Exhortation is Benedict XVI's position about secularism. In the Middle East, secularism is largely seen as a foil, an ailment of French origin which has contaminated the West and led it to break off its attachments to God (and which explains why the Western powers have no interest at all in the fate of the Middle Eastern Christians).

But Benedict XVI advocates the virtues of 'healthy secularity': "(It) means liberating faith from the weight of political considerations and enriching politics with the contributions of faith, while maintaining the necessary distance, clear distinction and indispensable collaboration between both... Such a secularity guarantees that politics can function without instrumentalizing religion, and gives religion the ability to live freely without being weighed down by politics dictated by special interests and sometimes hardly in conformity with - or even, directly opposed to - belief".-

This is a recommendation which, in the Middle East, strikes at the manifold confusions between religion and politics.

In Beirut, the Pope used unsettling words to appeal for peace, evoking the urgency for forgiveness and for the conversion of hearts in front of an audience of political and religious leaders:

---

We need to be very conscious that evil is not some nameless, impersonal and deterministic force at work in the world. Evil, the devil, works in and through human freedom, through the use of our freedom. It seeks an ally in man. Evil needs man in order to act... But it is possible for us not to be overcome by evil but to overcome evil with good. It is to this conversion of heart that we are called... True, it is quite demanding: it involves rejecting revenge, acknowledging one’s faults, accepting apologies without demanding them, and, not least, forgiveness. Only forgiveness, given and received, can lay lasting foundations for reconciliation and universal peace.

---

Words that could well glide away like water on oilcloth in our postwar European societies where, in a long time, we have not known civil war, nor families decimated by bomb attacks, nor the fear of being abducted and disappearing without a trace (which continues to be very real in the Middle East today).

And in Lebanon? "Forgiveness is not that obvious for Lebanese or Syrians," commented Jesuit priest Samir Khalil Samir to me the day after the Pope left Beirut. "To accept that the murderer of someone in your family is a brother one ought to love and forgive is very difficult".

Forgiveness of offenses committed against you and your loved ones and the conversion of individual hearts constitute a truly great challenge [The Pope underscored, in the same address, "True, it is quite demanding..." but following Christ was never supposed to be an easy task], especially in the Mediterranean culture which is marked by subjection to one's religious or familial clan, by the logic of vendetta, and by so-called 'codes of honor'. The Lebanese, in particular, are imprisoned by a fundamental fear which is principally for their physical survival.

This 'particularly demanding conversion' is asked not only of those int he Middle East. It has resounded in everything this Pope ha ssaid over the past seven years. It will be at the heart of the coming Year of Faith which begins in a few weeks.

A prophet in Lebanon through his words and by his physical presence, Benedict XVI is more and more the Pope of interior freedom.




Interestingly, one year later, Mercier would write a glowing tribute to Pope Francis to mark the first six months of his Pontificate, in which he praises the communications genius of the Argentine Pope who has matched his avowals of humility and simplicity with compelling gestures that have won him universal acclaim. Mercier calls it 'communications', but it is more than just communication, of course. but PR in its best and most effective sense.
Mercier, however, does not forget about Benedict XVI, to whom he dedicates a PS after the tribute to Francis's phenomenal gifts for communication:

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A reverse mirror image to the abundance of papal communication [by Francis], it is difficult not to think of the silence that Benedict XVI has imposed upon himself following his retirement. A silence which is proof of another way of being like Jesus - the Jesus who is silent in prayer, the Son who acts as much by his intercession to the Father as by the visible effect of his words and gestures. It is good to have two Popes who bear witness to these two ways in which Christ acted.

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Surprisingly, however, Mercier follows that essay with another one that analyzes whether Pope Francis is, in fact, exercising some degree of demagoguery in the exercise of his papal functions so far, "Le Pape, est-il demago?" (Is the Pope a demagogue?), in which he points out the many obvious queasy-making instances that one has remarked upon in this thread, when the Pope appears to be playing to the crowd (and that includes the media, who, for communications purposes, is his primary target.

In these instances, the emphasis, indeed, the sole focus, is clearly on himself, Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis, or perhaps even more narrowly, as just 'Francis', without the PP that other Popes use to identify themselves (because a Pope is Pope in the eyes of the world not because of his individual identity but because he is the Pope). The 'PP' is something Francis does not use at all, signing himself simply as 'FRANCISCUS', a single-name tag like Madonna or Cher that needs no qualifier because it can only mean one individual. This narcissistic streak in someone who is supposed to be humble truly bothers me (not that anyone cares) but apparently no one else, because absolutely no one has remarked upon it that I know of. And yet, it surfaces even in unlikely ways. I saved a snippet from a John Allen blog during the Rio WYD, in which Allen wrote, in an approving and indulgent context:

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The quote of the day (oft-repeated in both print and electronic media – and much commented on) is the Pope’s remark to young people of Argentina: “I feel caged”… Was he referring to the specific security situation that wouldn’t allow him to engage with the young people as spontaneously as he would have liked? Or was he speaking in more generic terms about the limitations imposed on him as Pope?

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Either way, his personal preferences were hardly a topic to bring up at WYD. In fact, has any Pope in living memory spoken so much about his personal preferences, or called so much attention to them, as Pope Francis does? But no one would even ask that, of course, about this septagenarian who is seemingly at home with the "Me generation" and its penchant for continually 'confessing' oneself openly. There, I've said more than I meant to say. Perhaps lightning will strike me now...

Dear friends:

I just wrote an email to Teresa Benedetta as some of you are asking news from her. I have no idea the reason of her absense. I hope she will be OK but I think she may just be overwhelmed.
If I have news they will be reported here.

God bless you!

Paparatzifan