BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Saturday, February 6

Left, Memorial to the martyrs in Nagasaki.
SAINTS PAULUS MIKI and COMPANIONS (d Nagasaki, 1597), Martyrs
After Francis Xavier brought Christianity to Japan in 1549, the faith grew so fast that by the end of the century, there were an estimated 300,000 Christians in Japan. However, the Japanese government feared the influence of the Jesuits, and persecution of Christians started soon afterwards. In 1597, Paulus (born around 1562), by then a Jesuit brother, along with two other Jesuit brothers, six Spanish Franciscan missionaries, and 17 Japanese laymen including 3 boys, were arrested and forced to march from Kyoto, the imperial capital, to Nagasaki, where they were put to death by crucifixion on what is now called Martyrs Hill, then stabbed in the heart to ensure death. Paulus is remembered for preaching his faith in Christ even from the Cross. He and his 25 fellow martyrs were canonized in 1862 - the first of many Japanese Christian martyrs. The faith would not return to Japan until 1880, when returning missionaries were surprised to find a thriving underground Christian community.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/today.shtml


OR today.

The Holy Father speaking to visiting Scottish bishops on euthanasia:
'The Church must defend the dignity of life without compromise'
No other papal stories in this issue. Encouraging news from Brazil: deforestation of the Amazon was down by 50% in 2009 compared to 2008.
However, the rainforest has already lost 17% of its cover and experts say that beyond 20% loss, its ecosystem will be changed irrevocably.
US says China will cooperate in trying to keep Iran from producing nuclear weapons; and the White House confirms Obama will meet the Dalai
Lama this month despite Chinese objections. In the inside pages, a striking historical 'memorandum' on previously published documents and
testimony that anti-Hitler Catholic groups in Germany had specifically asked Pius XII to avoid making any inflammatory statements in public
that would make the Nazis clamp down on Catholic groups and impede their resistance activities [at the time they were involved in the plot
by ranking German military officers to assassinate Hitler, and the resistance groups had asked Pius XII to speak to the British about supporting
the plot, which he did through the British representative in Rome]. Equally remarkable is Pius XII's address to the College of Cardinals in June
1945, when he describes in detail the history of Vatican relations with Nazi Germany - a document that has not received any attention so far
during all the historical 'reconstructions' and Pius XII polemics in recent years.



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- H.E. Alfonso Roberto Matta Fahsen, Ambassador of Guatemala, who presented his credentials

- Cardinal Michele Giordano, emeritus Archbishop of Naples

- Mons. Kurt Koch, Bishop of Basel (Switzerland)

- Officials and Staff of the Azienda Comunale Energia e Ambiente (ACEA), the department that has provided
energy, transport and other utilities to the city of Rome since 1909. Address in Italian.

And in the afternoon with

- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

Some local color on the Pope's coming visit to the UK. He won't be watching tennis - he'll be lodging in Wimbledon!


Priests and police welcome
Pope's visit to Wimbledon
By Craig Burnett

February 6, 2010


News that the Pope is set to stay in Wimbledon when he visits Britain later this year has been welcomed by the borough's Catholic community and police.

Pope Benedict XVI is expected to stay in the Apostolic Nunciature in Wimbledon Village, home of his representative in Britain, when he visits the country in September.

The trip will be the first state visit to Britain by a head of the Catholic Church. The last papal visit, in 1982, was in a less official pastoral capacity.

The Nunciature is the home of Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz, who acts as the Pope’s ambassador to Britain. It was also used by Pope John Paul II during his visit almost 30 years ago.

Father Francis Reid of Our Lady of the Assumption Church in Links Road, Tooting, said: “I think it’s great. It’s something very exciting for the Catholic community here.”

Fr Reid took part in a huge mass at Wembley Stadium during Pope John Paul II’s visit. He said the presence of the Pontiff was welcomed by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

He said: “It helped people reconnect with the faith, and helped people who weren’t connected in the first place.”

A large police operation is expected to deal with crowds flocking to see the Pope’s residence during the visit. Chief Superintendent Chris Bourlet, borough commander of Merton police, said: “It’s a great thing for the borough. The Met has got a lot of experience it will use to make sure his stay is successful.”

However, the Pope’s stay may also attract protestors after he attacked Britain’s equality laws in a recent speech. A campaign against his visit has been launched by the National Secular Society and is expected to attract support from gay rights groups, victims of clerical abuse, family planning organisations and pro-abortion activists.

A spokseman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown welcomed news of the trip. He said: "The Prime Minister is obviously delighted at the prospect of a visit from Pope Benedict XVI to Britain. It would be a moving and momentous occasion for the whole country and he would undoubtedly receive the warmest of welcomes."

The Shroud of Turin:
What John Paul II and Benedict XVI
have said about it
By John Thavis



VATICAN CITY, Feb. 5 (CNS) -- The Shroud of Turin, which many Christians believe to be the burial cloth of Jesus, goes on public display this spring, at a time when experts are debating new claims about the 14-foot-long piece of linen.

Pope Benedict XVI has already made plans to view the shroud during a one-day trip to the northern Italian city of Turin in early May. Many observers are wondering how the Pope will refer to the cloth: as a sign, an icon or -- as Pope John Paul II once characterized it -- a relic.

The Shroud's last showing was 10 years ago, when more than a million people lined up to see it in the cathedral of Turin in northern Italy. Officials are predicting similar crowds for the exposition April 10-May 23, and visitors are being urged to book their visits online at www.sindone.org.

The pilgrims come to witness with their own eyes what they may have read about or glimpsed on TV. Most go away impressed with what they see: a faint image of a bearded man who appears to have been whipped, crowned with thorns and crucified.

Carbon-14 tests in 1988 dated the cloth to the Middle Ages, and seemed to confirm the theory that the Shroud was a pious fraud. But since then, some experts have faulted the methodology of the testing, and said the tiny samples used may have been taken from areas of the cloth that were mended in medieval times.

The Shroud has also been chemically analyzed, electronically enhanced and computer-imaged. So far, no one has been able to fully explain how the image was transferred to the linen cloth, although experts have put forward theories ranging from enzyme reaction to solar imaging.

The Shroud has been studied from virtually every scientific angle in recent years. Its weave has been examined, pollen grains embedded in the cloth have been inspected, and red stains have been analyzed for hemoglobin properties.

One particular sub-category of debate focuses on enhanced images that, in the opinion of some scientists, reveal the impression of 1st-century Palestinian coins placed on the eyes of the shroud's figure.

The "jury" on the Shroud includes hundreds of experts, some of them self-appointed. They do not split neatly into believers and skeptics, however.

The latest controversy, in fact, involves a Vatican archivist who claims to have found evidence of writing on the shroud -- a hypothesis that has drawn sharp criticism from other Catholic scholars.


Dr. Frale's book on the Shroud was published in Italy on 9/21/09. Her 2007 book on the true history of the Knights Templar is considered authoritative.

The archivist, Barbara Frale, said in a new book that older photographs of the shroud reveal indications of what was essentially a written death notice for a "Jesus Nazarene." The text, she said, employs three languages used in 1st-century Jerusalem.

[An article on Frale's book was posted last November in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread]
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8593...

The book immediately prompted a Web site war in Italy. Several sites dedicated to the shroud ridiculed Frale's hypothesis, saying it bordered on Dan Brown-style fantasy.

Vatican Radio, however, featured an interview with Frale about her "important discovery." No doubt the world will hear more about this scholarly spat when the Shroud goes on display.

It will be the first public showing of the Shroud since it underwent a restoration in 2002, which removed repair patches and a large piece of linen of a later date.

To prepare for the exhibit, the Archdiocese of Turin has taken the unusual step of closing the cathedral for three months. It will take that long to set up the viewing area and the informational exhibit for visitors as they wait in line.

Pope Benedict's arrival is a big event for organizers of this year's shroud exposition. Many Catholics look to Rome for direction on how to evaluate the shroud, as Pope John Paul II discovered en route to Africa in 1989, when he called the shroud a "relic."

When excited reporters asked whether this meant it was the authentic burial cloth of Christ, the Polish Pope conferred with an aide before answering more cautiously: "The Church has never pronounced itself in this sense. It has always left the question open to all those who want to seek its authenticity. I think it is a relic."

Clearly, Pope John Paul was personally convinced, although when he went to see the Shroud in 1998 he carefully avoided using the term "relic."

Pope Benedict has long been cautious about the value of private signs, apparitions and revelations. But he seems to consider the Shroud of Turin in a different category.

In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger wrote that the Shroud was "a truly mysterious image, which no human artistry was capable of producing."

In his meditations on the Good Friday Way of the Cross in Rome shortly before his election as Pope in 2005, he wrote regarding the 11th station, "Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross": "The Shroud of Turin allows us to have an idea of the incredible cruelty of this procedure."

The Pope then offered a kind of prayer inspired by the figure of the Shroud: "Let us halt before this image of pain, before the suffering Son of God. Let us look upon him at times of presumptuousness and pleasure, in order to learn to respect limits and to see the superficiality of all merely material goods. Let us look upon him at times of trial and tribulation, and realize that it is then that we are closest to God."

This article is actually and surprisingly quite fair, though I have mixed thoughts about the headline. On the one hand, it could be read to imply belligerence, or at least, activism, on the part of the Pope as a foreign leader taking on the British Parliament (and therefore, 'interfering'). But it could also be an acknowledgment of Benedict XVI's unswerving resolve with regard to non-negotiable principles, which the Church sees as expressions of natural law.



Parliament in his sights:
The Pope and the Equality Bill
by Elena Curti

February 6, 2010


It began with a papal address in Rome and ended with a whimper in Westminster – when an attempt to change the law on equality as it affects religious organisations was abandoned. In between was a row that explains much about the place of Catholicism in contemporary Britain.

Most weeks should find at least one country’s bishops in Rome on their five-yearly ad limina visit. The highlight of their stay is their joint audience with the Pope and the exchange of formal greetings.

These meetings are rarely reported outside the religious media, but when Pope Benedict addressed the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales on Monday, a furious response from secularists and gay groups was unleashed and his remarks made front-page news.

The Pope had complained in trenchant terms to the bishops about “unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance to their beliefs”. This was widely seen as a comment on the Equality Bill currently going through Parliament.

It was reported as an “unprecedented” attack by one head of state on the affairs of another sovereign state, with the Pope portrayed as wading into party politics. But that interpretation alone does not explain the ferocity of some of the criticism.

Both the National Secular Society and the gay pressure group Stonewall have begun to mobilise support for protests when the Pope visits Britain later this year. Their reaction and that of the secular media to the Pope’s address tells us a great deal about the standing of the Catholic Church in Britain, the evolution of the Government’s equality agenda, current attitudes to lesbian and gay rights and relations between Church and State.

When he addressed the bishops, Pope Benedict was responding to matters highlighted by the bishops themselves in their diocesan reports. These reflected on the secularising trend in British society and attempts by the Government to constrain the Church’s activities in the name of equality and fairness.

Chief among these in recent years were the failed attempt to force religious schools to accept a quota of pupils from non-faith backgrounds in 2006 and Parliament’s approval of the Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORS) three years ago which obliged adoption agencies to consider same-sex couples as potential adopters.

As a consequence, most Catholic children’s societies either severed their formal relationship with the Church or discontinued their adoption work.

Also in the course of their tour of dicasteries, bishops made officials aware of their current battle with the Government over the Equality Bill. There can be no doubt that the Pope’s speech reflected concern in the Curia about the Equality Bill as part of a general trend in Britain towards curtailing religious freedom.

Advisers to the bishops’ conference identified problems with the Equality Bill at an early stage. They saw it as loosening the exemption in 2003’s Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, granted to religious organisations and entitling them to exclude individuals from certain posts on the grounds of sexual orientation. The exemption was inserted “so as to avoid conflicting with the strongly held religious convictions of a significant number of the religion’s followers”.

According to the National Secular Society, which sent a complaint to the European Commission’s Equal Opportunities Commissioner, it licensed discrimination by organised religion on the grounds of sexual orientation.

The Government had also heard reports that religious groups were using the exemption to exclude people from “non-religious” jobs such as finance directors and cleaners. It introduced an amendment to the Equality Bill stating that individuals could be excluded on the grounds of sexual orientation when “the employment wholly or mainly involves (a) leading or assisting in the observation of liturgical or ritualistic practices of the religion, or (b) promoting or explaining the doctrine of the religion (whether to followers of the religion or to others).”

The Churches insisted this new wording significantly narrowed the scope of the exemption. Peers [the House of Lords] agreed last week when they voted down the amendment.

Legal advisers to the Catholic bishops indicated that the amendment left them open to legal challenge. In a series of meetings, representatives of the bishops’ conference tried to persuade the Government’s equality office to leave the law as it stood. They argued that religious freedom needed to be enshrined in law so that it would be upheld when it came into conflict with other freedoms.

But their appeal fell on deaf ears. Among those presenting their case was their parliamentary coordinator, Richard Kornicki, a former senior civil servant at the Home Office.

“The growing problem is what happens when different rights come into conflict with each other. The Government has ignored the issue in the Equality Bill, and intends simply to leave it up to the courts to sort out the problems. That is irresponsible,” he said this week.

Mr Kornicki is also the chairman of trustees of the influential Thomas More Legal Centre. Its national director, Neil Addison, is a barrister who is a member of the new Catholic spokespersons’ bureau Catholic Voices, launched this week.

Mr Addison believes the Pope’s critics were particularly riled because he had framed his argument in terms they themselves liked to use.

“A free society demands recognition of free institutions and organisations like the Catholic Church for the right to their own identity. It goes contrary to the anti-­discrimination idea that we are all the same. The Pope was speaking up for diversity,” he told me.

Mr Addison accused the Government of hypocrisy over the Equality Bill, pointing out that political parties can reserve certain jobs for their supporters. “Why can’t the same principle apply to religions?” he asked.

But not all Catholics are supportive of the Church’s stand against the Equality Bill. [Surprise, surprise! DUH!!!] Some are members of a coalition known as the Cutting Edge Consortium (CEC) including the MP Clare Short and members of the Roman Catholic Caucus of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement.

In a statement on Tuesday, the CEC said it “strongly condemns Pope Benedict XVI’s unwarranted intrusion into the United Kingdom’s internal affairs, following his criticism of the UK’s Equality Bill”.

The statement went on: “The Vatican has sought constantly to undermine European and United Nations measures which promote equality and diversity through anti-­discriminatory policies and legislation.”

One member of the caucus and CEC, Martin Pendergast, claimed that among those “most hurt” by the Church’s battle over the Equality Bill were not gay Catholics but their parents.

Several of the people I talked to detected more than a whiff of anti-Catholicism in some of the reporting of Pope Benedict’s alleged interference in the affairs of a “Protestant” country.

A contributory factor to this mood may have been the Pope’s invitation to disaffected Anglicans to move en masse into the Catholic Church. Also cited is the evidence that Britons have become more tolerant of homosexuality and may therefore dislike the Church’s moral stance on the subject.

Last week, the British Social Attitudes Survey published a report that said around one third (36 per cent) of those surveyed thought that sex between two men or two women was wrong. In 1983 the figure was 62 per cent.

But the Pope’s supporters make a point of highlighting the “illiberalism” of those who maintain he is not entitled to express a view. Pope Benedict is, after all, a stakeholder in the debate. There are some who believe that the bishops have hitherto failed to put their case forcefully against secularist intolerance. But perhaps they have made a start.

Only last month, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster commented that secularists were “just as dogmatic as the worst religious believer and sometimes more stridently so”.

At least the battle over the Equality Bill seems to be over. The Minister for Women and Equality, Harriet Harman, indicated on Tuesday that there would be no attempt to reintroduce the contentious amendment. She said her intention had never been to change the existing law.

“We have never insisted on non-discrimination legislation applying to religious jobs such as being a vicar, a bishop, an imam or a rabbi,” she said. “However, when it comes to non-religious jobs, those organisations must comply with the law. We thought that it would be helpful for everyone involved to clarify the law, and that is what the amendment that we brought forward aimed to do. That amendment was rejected. So the law remains as it was.”

With the general election expected in May, the Government would risk losing the entire bill if it reintroduced the amendment and indulged in a time-consuming game of “parliamentary ping-pong” between the Commons and the Lords.

It is the outcome of that election which will determine whether the Church can expect more of the same or an entirely new political landscape and the prospect of wholly different pressure points by the time the Pope arrives in September.


[And if, as expected, the Labour Party loses its parliamentary majority for the first time in over a decade, a different government will be welcoming the Pope on his state visit, Harman and company will be on the sidelines, and who knows if the next government will want to touch the Equality Bill with a ten-foot pole!]


P.S. in the ISSUES thread, I posted an excellent brief on natural law and the Equality Bill, prepared by a Dominican brother in Blackfriars, Oxford.
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Benedict XVI calls on Guatemala
to protect the vulnerable





Vatican City, Feb 6, 2010 (CNA) - The Holy Father accepted the credentials of the new ambassador to the Holy See from Guatemala, Mr. Alfonso Roberto Matta Fahsen, on Saturday morning. In his message to the diplomat, the Pope addressed the importance of protecting the vulnerable in the country and reinforcing their strong values.

Pope Benedict referred to the centuries-long history of the Gospel in the country of Guatemala, throughout which the people have demonstrated a "very rooted faith in God," devotion for the Virgin and a "faithful love" for the Church and the Successor of Peter.

As he addressed the current environment of faith and life in the country, the Pope expressed his "affection and spiritual closeness" for those in Guatemala who suffer from malnutrition and poverty due to "climactic phenomena" that make drought more intense and destroy crops.

He recognized those institutions and individuals who dedicate themselves to alleviating the difficulties of those in need and expressed his gratitude to those who "are doing everything possible to mitigate the scarcity in broad sectors of the population," especially the "beloved children of the Church of Guatemala," including priests, religious and lay faithful.

Pope Benedict stressed the "basic right" of every person to adequate nutrition and vocalized the importance of providing more than material and administrative assistance. Working towards this goal requires "men and women with feelings of compassion and solidarity," which should be combined with charity.

"Working in this direction is promoting and dignifying the life of all, especially that of the most vulnerable and unprotected," Benedict XVI added, citing the effects of malnutrition on the mental and physical states of children.

The Holy Father encouraged Guatemelans to fight those things that "deteriorate the Guatemalan social fabric" including drug trafficking, violence, illiteracy and loss of moral references for new generations, by looking to the "numerous human and evangelical values" that bless the people of Guatemela such as love of the family, respect for elders, a sense of responsibility and trust in God.

Initiatives that are meant to "protect and increase this inestimable wealth," he said, must be creative to reverse the effects of poverty and "cooperate in the ‘dignification’ of all human beings."

The Holy Father also recognized the need to constantly work for "democratic strengthening and political stability” in the nation, which will in turn advance a "true, integral development of the person." He also praised Guatemela for its Constitution that protects life "from conception to natural death."

The Pope concluded by offering the "complete availability" of his collaborators to the ambassador's mission and prayed for the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Ambassador Matta Fahsen has been Guatemala's lead diplomat to Colombia, Russia, the Netherlands and Great Britain in the last 20 years and has seven children.



Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address, delivered in Spanish:

---

Mr. Ambassador,

1. I am happy to receive from you the letters accrediting you as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of guatemala to the Holy See.

I welcome you cordially as you begin the responsibility entrusted to you, even as I thank you for the kind words you addressed to me and the greeting that you conveyed on the part of His Excellency, Álvaro Colom Caballeros, President of Guatemala.

I ask you to convey back to him my best wishes for him and his government, along with my prayers for your country and its noble people.

2. Your Excellency knows well the attention that the Holy See has given to Guatemala, whose history has been fecundly permeated and enriched for centuries by the wisdom that comes from the Gospel.

Indeed, the Guatemalan people, with their variety of races and cultures, has a very rooted faith in God, an endearing devotion to the Most Blessed Mary and loyal love for the Pope and the Church.

This corrresponds to the close and continuous relations that your country has maintained for some time with the Holy See, particularly since the creation of the Apostolic Nunicature in Guatemala.

Let us hope that the 75th anniversary of this event in 2011 will give new impulse to the cooperation in your country between the State and the Church, based on the respect and autonomy of the distinct spheres which pertain to each, and that there may be progress in faithful and honest dialog for the common good of Guatemalan society, with special attention to the less fortunate.

3. In this context, I cannot forget those who suffer the consequences of climate phenomena which, even in your country, have contributed to drought and the loss of harvests, producing malnutrition and poverty.

This extreme situation recently led the national government to declare a state of public calamity and to solicit the help of the international community.

I wish to manifest my affection and spiritual closeness to those who suffer these serious setbacks, as well as acknowledgment of the institutions of your nation which strive with dedication for solutions to these serious problems.

One must also mention at this time the magnanimity of the cooperators and volunteers, and those of all whose efforts and sacrifices are trying to alleviate the pain, the hunger and the indigency of so many of their brothers.

Likewise, I wish to express my gratitude to those various organisms and agencies of international cooperation who are doing everything possible to mitigate the great need in large sectors of the population.

In particular, I am thinking of the beloved children of the Church in Guatemala - pastors, religious and faithful - who yet again are trying to imitate the evangelical model of the Good Samaritan, in assisting prodigiously those who are in need.

To achieve the goal that everyone may avail of the food they need is a basic right of each person, and as such, is a priority objective. Besides material resources and technical decisions, it also calls for men and women with sentiments of compassion and solidarity, who are oriented towards the achievement of this goal, demonstrating that charity which is the source of life, and which every human being needs.

To work for this goal is to promote and dignify the lives of everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable and defenseless, such as children who without adequate nourishment are compromised in their physical and psychological growth, and who are often employed in work that is inappropriate for their age, or immersed in tragedies that constitute a violation of their personal dignity and the rights that come with this (cf Message for the World Food Day 2007, 3).

4. The numerous human and evangelical values which are treasured in the hearts of your citizens, like love for the family, respect for elders, a sense of responsibility, and above all, trust in God, who revealed his face in Jesus Christ, and whom they invoke in the midst of tribulations, represent important reasons for hope.

From this copious spiritual patrimony can be drawn the strength necessary to counteract other factors which weaken the social fabric of Guatemala, such as drug trafficking, violence, emigration, insecurity, illiteracy, the sects, or the loss of moral references for the new generations.

Therefore, to the initiatives that are already under way in your nation to protect and add to this invaluable treasure, must be added new solutions "in the light of an integral vision of man, reflecting the various aspects of the human person, contemplated through a lens purified by charity" (Caritas in veritate, 32).

In such a decisive enterprise, the authorities of your nation can always count on the solicitous collaboration of the Church in her constant effort to open "new and creative paths" to respond to the desolating effects of poverty, and to cooperate in the dignification of every human being (cf. Concluding Document of the Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, Aparecida, 380-546).

5. I also wish to express my recognition of the actions being carried out in Guatemala to consolidate guarantees for a true state of law. This process must be accompanied by a firm determination, born from a personal conversion of the heart, to eliminate any form of corruption in public institutions and administration. and to reform justice in order to apply laws correctly and eradicate the feeling of impunity among those who exercise any form of violence and disregard the most essential human rights.

This work of democratic reinforcement and political stabilization must be constant - it is indispensable to be able to advance towards a true integral development of the person, which will have positive repercussions on all the sectors of society - economic, cultural, political, territorial or religious (cf. Caritas in veritate, 41).

6. In the cultural patrimony of your country, in the recent history of pacification of Guatemalan society, or in the juridical formulation of your laws, there are realities which determine the specific identity of a people and which could reflect beneficially on the political and social stability of Central America.

In this respect, worthy of mention is the clearsightedness with which the Constitution of Guatemala giarantees the defense and legal protection of human life from conception to its natural end.

I call on all the social agencies of your nation, particularly the people's representatives in the legislative institutions, to maintain and reinforce this basic element of the 'culture of life' which will contribute without a doubt to enlarging the moral patrimony of Guatemalans.

7. Mr. Ambassador, please be assured of the complete availability of my collaborators for the fruitful execution of your mission which begins today, even as I ask you to extend my best wishes to the authorities who have entrusted it to you, and to the beloved sons and daughers of Guatemala, for whose prosperity and peace I offer fervent prayers to the patroness of your blessed land.

---

Pope addresses Rome utilities company
on rethinking the economy





Vatican City, Feb 6, 2010 (CNA) - On Saturday at the Apostolic Palace, Pope Benedict met in audience with a group from a local Italian municipal agency.

Speaking to them, but also to the international community, Holy Father stressed the importance of "social responsibility" in the business environment “to promote the good of all.”

Meeting with directors and personnel of the Roman branch of ACEA, a company that specializes in providing energy and water services to Italy, the Holy Father expressed his hope that the development model that has brought the world to its present economic crisis would be rethought so that man with his “capacity to produce, innovate, think and build the future” is placed at the center.

It’s important, he continued, to increase consciousness for “the necessity of a broader ‘social responsibility’ in business, that strives to hold in just consideration the expectations and needs of workers, clients, producers and the entire community, and to pay special attention to the environment.”

“In this way,” added Pope Benedict, “the production of goods and services will not be tied exclusively to the search for economic profits, but also to the promotion of the good for all.”

The Holy Father praised ACEA for measures it has taken to protect and reduce the negative impact of their business activities on the environment. “But it is equally important to promote a human ecology that is intended to bring about work environments and interpersonal relations deserving of man.”

Pope Benedict XVI summed up his message by saying that “the protection of creation… implies also the protection of those sentiments of kindness, generosity, correctness and honesty that God has put in the heart of every human being, created in his ‘image and likeness.’”

He concluded by saying that it is through the example of Christ that we should act “to be able to grow in humanity and so realize a City with an always human face, in which each is considered a person, a spiritual being in relation with others.”

The Pope also thanked the agency for its efforts “in the illumination of the monuments that make Rome unique in the world,” among them St. Peter’s Basilica.


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

---

Your Eminence,
Dear friends of the Azienda Comunale Energia e Ambiente:

I am happy to be with you and I extend a cordial welcome to each of you. I greet Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi and I greet the President of ACEA, Giancarlo Cremonesi, whom I thank for the kind words with which he introduced our meeting and for the gifts you offered, particularly the beautiful volume on the applications in the world of business of the principles of the Encyclical Caritas in veritate, published by the Vatican publishing house and the UCID as part of the book series "Entrepreneurs for the Common Good".

I wish to express my sincere appreciation for such an editorial initiative, with the hope that it can be a reference in seeking solutions for the complex problems of the world in labor and the economy.

I also wish to express my pleasure at your project of coopration with the John Paul II Foundation for the Sahel [the countries in the transition zone between the Sahara desert of North Africa and the savannah country to the south], in trying to respond to the emergency in water and energy resources in their developing countries.

I have also seen with great interest your Charter of Values and Ethical Code which restate the principles of responsibility, transparency, correctness, and spirit of service and collaboration that ACEA invokes. This are the orientations which this enterprise wishes to recall upon which it has built its own image and reputation.

You recently concluded celebrating the first centenary of ACEA. Indeed, a hundred years have passed since thst September 20, 2009, whne the citizens of Rome, trhough a popular referendum, decided that public lighting and collective transportation should be municipalized.

From that day on, your enteprise has grown together with Rome in a long and fascinating course which has been rich in challenges and successes.

Just think of the how complex it is to guarantee essential services to ever wider sectors of the citizenry, to new neighborhoods that have often grown in a chaotic and abusive way, in a city that has been changing and expanding beyond measure.

Thus, in the course of years, we can state that the relationship between the Urbe and ACEA has become ever closer, above all because of the plurality of services that the company has supplied and continues to provide the city of Rome, sustaining and favoring its transformation into a modern metropolis.

The centennial celebration ended during a period of difficulties, characterized by a serious international crisis that has led the world to rethink a model of development based primarily on finance and profit, in order to refocus man's activity on his capacity to produce, to innovate, to think and to build the future.

As I underscored in the Encyclical Caritas in veritate, it is important to increase awareness of the necessity for a broader 'social responsibility' by business to properly consider the expectations and needs of their workers, customers, suppliers and the entire community, with particular attention to the environment (cfr No. 40).

This way, the production of goods and services will not be linked exclusively to the search for economic gain, but also to the promotion of good for everyone.

I am happy that the history of the past 100 years does not translate only in quantitative terms of greater competitiveness but also in a moral commitment to puruse the collective wellbeing.

In the spirit of service that characterizes ACEA, I wish to express my appreciation for what ACEA, thanks to the professional competence of its employees, has achieved in illuminating the monuments that make Rome unique in the world.

In this regard, I wish to recall with gratitude the concrete aid provided by ACEA during the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the founding of the State of Vatican City.

Numerous churches, starting with St. Peter's Basilica, are enhanced by skillful lighting which highlight what man has been able to realize to manfiest his faith in Christ, "the true light who enlightens every man" (Jn 1,9).

I have also appreciated the commitment of ACEA in protecting the enviroment through the sustainable management of natural resources, reduction of the environmental impact [of its activities], and respect for Creation.

However, it is equally important to promote a human ecology in which workplaces and interpersonal relations are made worthy of man.

In this respect, I wish to eraffirm what I said in the Message for World Peace Day this year about "the adoption of a development model based on the centrality of the human being, on the promotion and sharing of the common good, on resposibility, on the awareness of the need to change lifestyles" (No. 9).

In Rome, as in every large city, one can observe the effects of a culture which exasperates the concept of the individual: those who live all closed up in themselves, in their own problems, distracted by all the concerns that crowd the mind and make men incapable of the simple joys present in the life of everyone.

Taking care of Creation, a task entrusted by the Creator to mankind (cfr Gen 2,15), also implies taking care of those sentiments of goodness, generosity, correctness and honesty that God has placed in the heart of every man, who is created in his 'image and likeness' (cfr Gen 1,26).

Finally, I wish to address to those present an invitation to look to Christ, the perfect man, and to always take his actions as an example in order to grow in humanity and thus realize a city with an ever more human face, in which everyone is considered a person as a spiritual being related to every other.

Thanks to your commitment to inprove inter-personal relationships and the quality of work, Rome can continue its role as the beacon of civilization that has distinguished it for centuries.

As I renew my gratitude for your visit, I assure you of remembrance in my prayers for each of you and for your activities, and from the heart I bless you, along with those who are dear to you.

---

The Italian title for this article is 'L'ORIENTE SIA BENEDETTO' - 'benedetto', of course, meaning 'blessed' in Italian - some word play there with the Pope's name.


BLESSED BE THE EAST
by Sandro Magister
Translated from

Issue of February 11, 2010


Surprise: Benedict XVI's attachment to the Tradition of the Church, which draws so much criticism of him in the West, is his winning card in the East.

Relations between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches have never been as promising as since he became Pope.

There are at least two proofs: The first based in Constantinople, the other in Moscow [defined in tradition as, respectively, the 'second Rome' and the 'third Rome'].

The first proof is that with Benedict XVI, the Churches of the East have agreed to discuss something they had never dared in the past: the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. This is, in fact, the one true dividing wall between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.

It was this which produced the Great Schism a thousand years ago. It is not the Creed nor the sacraments that divide the two major branches of Christianity today. One simply has to see how much the Catholic Churches of the Eastern rite resemble their sister Orthodox churches – in everything, including married priests, except obedience to the Pope.

The stroke of genius that allowed both sides to face the question together can be traced to the start of Benedict XVI’s Pontificate. On the one hand, Papa Ratzinger, and on the other, Metropolitan Ioannis Zizoulias of Pergamon, a distinguished theologian and the mind behind Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, agreed that the discussion about the role of the Papacy in a unified Church should begin not from what it is today but from how it was in the first millennium, before the Great Schism, when the Eastern and Western Churches were still unified.

Indeed, even today, both sides [???] acknowledge a primacy of authority in the Bishop of Rome. Then wny not start from there? Why not pay renewed attention to the tradition of the first millennium?

So it was decided. First in Belgrade in 2006, and then in Ravenna in 2007, the delegate theologians from both sides proceeded to draft an agenda: how to study one by one the ways in which the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was exercised in those first centuries and arrive at a shared interpretation.

In 2008, on the island of Crete, they drew up a basic text on which to base the discussions. In October 2009, at Paphos in Cyprus, they started these discussions, and this September in Vienna, they will continue, and so on until they have completely examined all the items on the agenda.

Both the basic text and the outcome of initial discussions were kept very much under wraps. They were anyway, until January 25 when the site www.chiesa published the full basic text. (See Magister article posted at the bottom of Page 62 on this thread

[A move that was subsequently denounced by Cardinal Kasper as unauthorized; he also said the published text was one of the first drafts, and that the participants in the Mixed International Commission for Theological Dialog between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches had agreed that the text would not be made public.]

There is optimism about the prospects for this dialog. Benedict XVI announced recently that the joint discussions on the powers of the papacy would soon extend to the second millennium, which will be the more difficult part.

But soon there may even be an event of great impact on the rapprochement between the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Churches: a meeting between Benedict XVI and the Patriarch of Moscow Kirill who leads a church that makes up three-fourths of the total Orthodox population. [This is perhaps more wistful thinking than an objective evaluation of the state of mind in Moscow, where almost every week there is a public reference to the problem of the Uniates in Ukraine, former Orthodox faithful who decided to pledge their allegiance to the Bishop of Rome!]

Last autumn, for the first time in history, the Russian Orthodox Church published and praised a book of texts by a Pope – once the arch-enemy by definition of the Orthodox Churches. The Pope is, of course, Benedict XVI, and the texts were those that he has dedicated to the spiritual and cultural crisis of contemporary Europe.

In his Introduction to the book, Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who is in effect the foreign minister of the Patriarchate of Moscow, describes the Church of Rome and the Russian Orthodox Church as the two great bastions of Christian Europe, and the only ones capable of resisting and counteracting together the challenges of ‘militant secularism’.

For its part, the Vatican publishing house is planning to come out reciprocally with a volume of texts by Patriarch Kirill.

Sunday, February 7

ST. COLETTE (France, 1381-1447), Virgin, Founder of Colettine Poor Clares
Colette joined the Franciscan third order as a teenager and at age 21, became an anchoress [walled into a cell whose only opening is a window
facing the interior of a church]. After 4 years, in response to visions of St. Francis who urged reforms in his order, she joined the Poor Clares
to initiate a return to the primitive rules of the order. The Colettines lived in extreme poverty and perpetual fasting and abstinence. She went on
to found 17 monasteries following her reform, which took place during the Great Western Schism (1378-1417) when three men laid claim to the
Papacy. With St. Vicente Ferrer, the great Dominican theologian and missionary from Valencia, she worked to end the schism by persuading
two of the claimants to withdraw so that a new Pope could be elected, then getting the King of France to withdraw his support from the holdout,
Benedict XIII. (Ironically, as the Pope in Avignon, Benedict had authorized Colette's reform of the Poor Clares and her new monasteries; and
St. Vincent himself had been an avid supporter of this Pope.] It is said that all her life, Colette was plagued by demons who assailed her in
terrible physical forms, such as dragging corpses into her cell, but she was also eventually endowed with many graces including raising
the dead to life. She was canonized in 1807.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020710.shtml


OR today.

Benedict XVI to Rome's public utilities corporation:
'Businesses have a social responsibility'
The other papal news in this issue: The Pope's audience for the new ambassador from Guatemala. Other Page 1 stories: Stock markets everywhere take a beating in the past week based on grim prospects for the USA's international credit rating following Obama's record-busting budget and deficits; Iran claims for the nth time it is ready to reach an international agreement about its nuclear development program; and a review of the St. Augustine miniseries on Italian TV.


THE POPE'S DAY

Angelus today - In one of his masterful mini-homilies, the Holy Father tied together the readings
from today's Mass (from Isaiah, from Luke about Peter, and from St Paul) on how every man called
by God feels inadequate and unworthy but that in prayer, God sustains those who heed his call,
a lesson the Pope urges during this Year for Priests. He also took note that the Church in Italy marks
today its annual Day for Life, and gave a reminder that on Thursday, Feb. 11, Feast of Our Lady
of Lourdes, he will offer a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica for the sick and afflicted.

ANGELUS TODAY



In his mini-homily before the Angelus prayers today, the Holy Father tied together the readings from today's Mass (from Isaiah, from Luke about Peter, and from St Paul) on how every man called by God feels inadequate and unworthy but that in prayer, God sustains those who heed his call, a lesson the Pope urges during this Year for Priests.

He also took note that today, the Church in Italy marks its annual Day for Life, and gave a reminder that on Thursday, Feb. 11, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, he will offer a Mass at St. Peter's Basilica for the sick and afflicted.

Here is what he said in English today:

---

In the liturgy of today, the Gospel invites us, like the Apostles, to "put out into the deep", that is, to be brave and zealous in our following Jesus by being obedient to his will.

Like Saint Peter on the Lake of Gennesaret, we will discover that fidelity to the Lord leads to a deeper relationship with God and opens us to his gifts.

Let us overcome all fears and hesitation that we may rediscover how much God longs to bless us! Upon each of you and your loved ones at home, I invoke God’s abundant blessings.

---

Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words at Angelus today:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

Thie liturgy on this fifth Sunday in ordinary time presents us with the subject of divine calling.

In a majestic vision, Isaiah finds himself in the presence of the thrice-blessed Lord and is seized by great awe and a profound sentiment of his unworthiness. But a seraph purifies his lips with a burning coal and wipes out his sin. Feeling himself ready to respond to God's call, he exclaims: "Here I am, Lord. Command me!" (cfr Is 6,1-2.3-8).

The same succession of sentiments is presented in the episode of the miraculous catch of fish, narrated in today's Gospel. Asked by Jesus to cast their nets despite a catchless night, Simon Peter and the other disciples, trusting his word, obtain a super-abundant catch.

In the face of this miracle, Simon Peter does not throw his arms around Jesus to express his joy at that unexpected catch, but, as the evangelist Luke recounts, he falls on his knees to say, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" (cfr Lk 5,10).

Jesus reassures him [and the other disicples]: "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be fishers of men" (cfr Lk 5,10); and leaving everything, they followed him.

Even Paul, recalling that he had been a persecutor of the Church, professed himself unworthy to be called an apostle, but recognized that the grace of God had worked wonders in him, and notwithstanding his own limitations, had entrusted him with the task and the honor of preaching the Gospel (cfr 1 Cor 15,8-10).

In these three experiences, we see how an authentic encounter with God brings man to recognize his own poverty and inadequacy, his own limitations and his own sins.

But notwithstanding this fragility, the Lord, rich with mercy and forgiveness, transforms the life of the man he calls to follow him.

The humility shown by Isaiah, Peter and Paul invites all those who have received the gift of divine calling not to concentrate on their own limitations but to keep their gaze fixed on the Lord and his surprising mercy in order to convert the heart and go on, with joy, to 'leave everything' for him.

Indeed, he does not look at what is important to man: "Not as man sees does God see, because man sees the appearance but the LORD looks into the heart" (1 Sam 16,7), and transforms poor and weak men who have faith in him into intrepid apostles and announcers of salvation.

In this year for Priests, let us pray to the Master of Harvests so that he may send laborers for his harvest and so that those who hear the Lord's invitation to follow him may know, after the necessary discernment, to respond to him with generosity, not trusting in their own strengths, but opening themselves to the action of his grace.

I especially invite all priests to revive their generous availability to respond every day to the Lord's call with the same humility and faith as Isaiah, Peter and and Paul.

Let us entrust to the Blessed Virgin all vocations, particularly those for the religious and priestly life. May Mary inspire in each one the desire to pronounce his own Yes to the Lord with joy and full dedication.

After the Angelus prayers, he said this:

The Church in Italy observes the Day for Life today. I gladly join the Italian bishops in their message this year: "The force of life, a challenge to poverty".

In the current period of economic difficulty, the mechanisms that result in poverty and create strong social inequalities become even more tragic, causing harm and offense to life, striking above all at the weakest and most defenseless.

This situation therefore commits us to promote integral human development to overcome indigence and need, and above all, it reminds us that the goal of man is not wellbeing but God himself, and that human existence must be defended at every stage.

Indeed, no one is the master of his own life, but we are all called to take care of life and protect it, from the moment of conception to its natural extinction.

Even as I express my appreciation for those who directly work in the service of children, the sick and the aged, I affectionately greet the faithful of the Diocese of Rome who are gathered here today led by the Cardinal Vicar and some auxiliary bishops.

The Diocese of Rome dedicates special attention to the Day for Life, which it prolongs into a Week for Life and the Family. I hope for the success of this activity and I encourage the activities of the consultants, associations and movements, as well as the university professors, who are involved in the support of life and the family.

In this context, I wish to remind you that on February 11, memorial of the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes and World Day for the Sick, I will celebrate Mass for the sick in the morning at St. Peter's Basilica.

---

One of the themes struck by early reportage so far of the Pope's coming visit to the United Kingdom is evident by now: a comparison - a priori unfavorable - to John Paul II's visit in 1982. Not unexpected from the generally anti-Catholic, anti-Benedict XVI British (and Scottish) media. And that is the point with which this article in today's Sunday Times of London begin, even if the headline is rather lame.

If 'the Pope' refers to Benedict XVI, then it implies he has 'mass appeal', which the MSM, not only in the UK, have always disputed despite super-abundant proof to the contrary. On the other hand, the headline could mean 'the Pope' generically, which implies that Benedict is losing for the papacy the mass appeal that it had under John Paul II! Which is an oblique way of saying what articles like this really want to say, namely, this Pope has no mass appeal like his predecessor!

However, you may fast-forward to the end of the report where a prominent Catholic says it like it is! At least, something positive is reported.


Has the Pope lost his mass appeal?
by Gillian Harris and Julia Belgutay



On a warm June day in 1982, more than 300,000 people gathered in Bellahouston Park, in Glasgow to witness the appearance of a superstar.

The celebrity they craned to see on stage wasn’t a rock singer or a film star but John Paul II, the charismatic Pole who made history by becoming the first Pontiff to set foot on Scottish soil.

Mary McMillan, then a 16 year-old schoolgirl, was in the crowd with her mother and she remembers the excitement, cheering until she was hoarse and the unity among Catholics. “It was a great day,” she recalls. “Everyone was in a good mood and so thrilled to see the Pope. I’ll never forget it.”

Even a one-man “crusade” by Pastor Jack Glass, a born-again evangelical protestant preacher who turned up wearing a sandwich board proclaiming the Pope to be the anti-Christ, couldn’t spoil the occasion.

“People were laughing at him and offering him water, because it was hot, and something to eat. They were being nice, and that really annoyed him,” she said.

Outside the venue, tens of thousands of admirers who hadn’t got tickets lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the Holy Father as he passed slowly in his specially adapted popemobile.

There were people of all faiths and none in Glasgow and on the streets leading to Murrayfield, where the Pope addressed schoolchildren on the Edinburgh leg of his pastoral tour.

Afterwards it was widely agreed that the visit, with John Paul’s ecumenical appeal, went a long way to bring Catholics and Presbyterians closer. For a while there was renewed optimism that Scotland could break from its sectarian past.

This year the country is gearing up another papal visit. Pope Benedict XVI confirmed on Friday that he will come to Scotland in September at the start of a three-day tour of the UK. The invitation was extended by Gordon Brown during a private audience last February and the visit will be co-ordinated by Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary, who is a Catholic.

This weekend 11 members of the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland are in Rome for their 'ad limina' visit to the Holy See. The event, which takes place every five years, includes a trip to the tomb of the Apostles and individual presentations from each of the eight practising bishops to Pope Benedict on the state of the Scottish dioceses.

Ahead of the week-long visit, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, the leader of Scotland’s Catholics, said he was looking forward to updating the Pope on the work of the Church and, following last month’s announcement of a papal visit to Scotland, he said he would be assuring the Pope of a wonderful welcome to when he arrives in Scotland in September.

But with conflict among some Catholics over the Pope’s approach to issues such as Latin masses, contraception, homosexuality, faith schools and same sex adoption, the cheers may not be as loud as they were a third of a century ago. [I bet if one were to research the articles written before John Paul II's visit, the same reservations, mutatis mutandis, were probably expressed as well by non-Catholic secular writers who fail to grasp what the Pope - any Pope, but especially, whoever is the current Pope - represents to orthodox Catholics. Look at how the French media severely under-estimated this factor before the Pope's visit to Paris and Lourdes in 2008!]

These, and other issues, are examples of where the Vatican is now at odds with a growing section of the population. There is less deference and more of a willingness to speak out on social issues and, politically, much has changed since 1982.

Scotland is now devolved with a distinctive government and identity. Religious affiliation is at an all-time low, even within the Catholic church, which while claiming a membership of around 750,000, can motivate fewer than a third of that number through the doors of its chapels on a Sunday morning. As a result, there are considerably fewer priests in Scotland than there were 20 years ago.

The current Pope, a less immediately accessible figure than his predecessor, is unlikely to generate the same level of [S}adulation. [There's the misconception right there - as though the regard that the faithful have for the Pope were nothing more than the adulation that they have for any celebrity today. They fail to grasp that for orthodox Catholics, the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth - and inspires not adulation but veneration and esteem, along with love and affection.] Among some people and communities there may even be outright hostility.

Benedict’s intervention over Harriet Harman’s equality bill last week raised the profile of legislation that could radically alter the balance of rights and responsibilities that underpin British society.

In a meeting with Scottish bishops on Friday, he raised issues of sectarianism and euthanasia. A private bill on assisted suicide by Margo MacDonald, the independent MSP, is currently going through the Scottish Parliament.

The Pope is reported to have urged bishops to “grapple firmly with the challenges presented by the increasing tide of secularism in your country”.

“Support for euthanasia strikes at the very heart of the Christian understanding of the dignity of human life,” he said.

According to Damian Thompson, a commentator on the Catholic church in the UK, a number of high-ranking clergy are “apathetic” about his visit because they do not want to take on new ideas from the Vatican about styles of worship, an accusation the Church robustly denies.

“Many of the Scottish bishops are close to retirement and have been set in their routines for decades. They see the papal visit as simply being about making trouble for them,” Thompson said in his blog. “I’m told some would rather the Pope hadn’t included Scotland in the visit.”

A Church insider acknowledged there were divisions within the Church over the Pope’s views on liturgical exegesis, including Latin masses — he is in favour while many of his clergy are not.

In the wider world, interest centres around how big an attraction the Pope will be. Will he stop traffic like his predecessor or will his visit be more like that of a member of the royal family?

There are procedural differences from the 1982 visit, which have caused some criticism. Then, John Paul’s was a pastoral trip, organised and paid for by the Church.

Benedict’s is more of a state visit as a guest of the government, paid for by UK taxpayers. [It is officially billed as a state visit, and if that was the invitation extended to him by Gordon Brown, as it appears it was, he's not responsible for it, and certainly did nothing to solicit it!]

He will be treated as a visiting head of state, although the Vatican has declined a procession and state banquet in his honour in an attempt to minimise formal pomp and ceremony.

The Pope will be staying with his London ambassador in Wimbledon but is expected to meet the Queen at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

Patrick Harvey, the co-convener of the Green party at the Scottish Parliament, who has campaigned on gay issues, said he hoped the visit would not have a polarising effect on public opinion.

“He is a foreign head of state and heads of state don’t normally interfere with other country’s law-making,” he said. “If people want to enjoy his visit, I am sure that is a marvellous thing but there is a separate issue about whether religion should be trying to interfere with the democratic process.”

[The usual liberal self-righteousness: When others express an opinion contrary to theirs, suddenly freedom of expression is labelled 'interference'. The Pope expressed his opinion - which is nothing but the Church's unchanging position - on a bill that would infringe on religious freedom. That is a view that is shared by the majority in the British House of Lords which rejected the Equality Bill and by many other influential public figures in the UK.]

Keith Porteous Wood, the executive director of the National Secular Society, said he was concerned by the Pope’s comments in his address to Scotland’s bishops.

“The Pope’s increasing authoritarianism is now headed for Scotland where a new strictness in observing Catholic teachings will be required of the faithful,” he said. “His remarks that the creation of more Catholic schools will somehow challenge sectarianism is logically foolish, self-serving and a dangerous road down which to travel.” [One need not parse Mr. Wood's statements to see how silly and illogical he is!]

MacDonald said she was relaxed about the Pope’s visit and did not think the passage of her assisted suicide bill through Parliament would affect the welcome he will be given.

However, voices within the Church already seem to be seeking to manage expectations, pointing out that this is a different era and Benedict is a very different Pope from John Paul.

“Pope Benedict will be 83 when he visits. John Paul was 58, and he was a very young 58,” said Peter Kearney, a spokesman for the Church in Scotland. “He was also a dramatic departure from the past. He was a global media figure. Benedict is a philosopher and a theologian. He is a teacher.

“I completely and utterly refute any suggestion of apathy. Members of the Church are excited and engaged.”

[As much as one must be thankful that someone like Mr. Kearny speaks up, it sends the wrong message for 'a spokesman for the Church in Scotland', no less, to be so defensive about Pope Benedict! Just because he is a 'philosopher, theologian and teacher' does not rule out that he is a global media figure as much as John Paul II was. Because he is, as any Pope inevitably is, in the era of mass communications.]

According to James MacMillan, the Catholic composer , the perception that Benedict’s intellectual approach is less beguiling is wrong.

“His visit will be more low key, but no less important,” he said. “Among many Catholics there was huge excitement when he was elected. The secular media haven’t found a handle on this for a number of reasons, and those of us most enthusiastic about him are tired of being caricatured as reactionaries.

“Benedict’s papacy represents a re-finding of our Catholic soul. Gradually , faithful Catholics are being encourages to stand up to the bullying that goes with secular liberal orthodoxies.

"It is younger Catholics who are finding that strength and courage — the baby-boomers and 68ers in the church succumbed to a general confusion about what religion in the modern world could be. To be Catholic now is to be truly counter-cultural. Many find that scary. Others are excited by it.”

“Pope Benedict is a tremendous commentator on today’s society and we should be deeply honoured that he is coming to Scotland.”

For the faithful in Scotland the Pope’s visit is something to look forward to and protests will not detract from that.

Liz Leydon, the editor of the Scottish Catholic Observer, says: “The fact that we are already talking about it shows how important it is. The visit is still very much in the planning stages and the excitement is already building.”

BTW, the writers could have used the positive quotes earlier in the story. Consigning them to the end of the article is really labelling them 'less important' because a) they would be cut off in case the layout editor did not have enough space for the length of the article; and b) even if they do get printed, many readers will probably not get to the bottom of the report.


A separate commentary in today's Sunday Times is on the side of the Pope. harriet Harman is the Lbour government Equality Minister who filed the controversial Equality Bill which she has since withdrawn, three days after the Pope addressed teh bishops of England and Wales:


Look out – Harriet Harman is on a crazy crusade
by Dominic Lawson

February 7, 2010


It does not take much to stir the English into a spasm of anti-Catholicism. Front-page stories declaring that Pope Benedict XVI had called on his flock to oppose the government’s Equality Bill were enough to stir 15,000 people to add their signatures to the National Secular Society’s petition opposing the Pontiff’s forthcoming state visit to this country.

Even allowing for the centuries-old suspicion that the “left footers” represent some subversive papal army loyal to Rome rather than to the crown, this has been a wilful misinterpretation, not least on the part of the media.

The papal address to the Catholic bishops of England and Wales — the cause of the fury — did not once refer to the Equality Bill (which inter alia sought to tighten the rules governing religious organisations’ exemptions from anti-discrimination law). [Because of course, the Pope hardly ever makes specific references when he speaks of political issues.]

The relevant passage states: “Your country is well known for its firm commitment to equality of opportunity for all members of society. Yet as you have rightly pointed out, the effect of some of the legislation designed to achieve this goal has been to impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs.” And that’s it.

It seems most obviously to have been a reference to laws already passed, notably those that did not exempt Catholic adoption agencies from the “anti-discrimination” requirement to accept applications from homosexual couples — as a result of which many such agencies have closed rather than face prosecution.

There is, it is true, a continuous underlying conflict here: that between the demands of faith and those of secular authority, most vividly expressed in Matthew 22.21 (“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s”).

While Labour abandoned the idea of the state as all-virtuous in the economic sphere — it privatised businesses that even Margaret Thatcher balked at selling off — some of its leading figures have held firm to the view that it is possible through the enforcement power of the state to improve society’s moral character.

What constitutes that “better character” will also be decided by the state, of course, although it is never very clear from what its leaders’ superior moral wisdom derives, other than the very Judeao-Christian tradition whose influence they instinctively wish to relegate.

While Pope Benedict never mentioned the Equality Bill, or even Harriet Harman, it is clear that the deputy leader of the Labour party is one of the few revolutionary idealists left on the government front benches.

She still believes, like a St Paul’s girls’ school Robespierre, that the state will set us free from the tyranny of individual choice and the prejudices of faith and family. Her pet project, a bill that attempts to enforce “equality” via a legally binding so-called “socio-economic duty”, is now heading for the statute book. [As one understands from recent devevelopments, not so! The House of Lords rejected it, and Harman herself has withdrawn the bill from consideration in the House of Commons. And since it is doubtful that the Labour government will survive the next parliamentary elections, Harman will no longer be in the next government, whcih is unlikely to shill her bill!]

To read the full text of “The Equality Bill and other action to make equality a reality”, as distributed by something called the Government Equalities Office, is to enter the world according to Harriet. It all seems sweetly reasonable — until you start to think.

Its prime example of what “the equality duty could mean” is the following: “In respect of age, a local council putting extra park benches in local parks so older people can enjoy public spaces as well as younger people.”

One wonders what possessed those municipal authorities over the centuries to put benches in their parks. Clearly they had not been inspired by Harman’s Equality Bill to think of the needs of their elderly. Was it possible they were able to have such thoughts quite independently of government edicts? ...

The rest of the essay can be read on
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/dominic_lawson/article7017822.ece#cid=OTC-RSS&attr...

Andrea Tornielli has joined the speculation on a possible upcoming key appointment to the Roman Curia - but this time, it doesn't look like he has his usual inside track.

Who will replace Cardinal Kasper
at the council for Christian Unity?
Translated from

February 6, 2010


The Holy Father met today (Saturday) with the Archbishop of Basel, Switzerland, Mons. Kurt Koch. He could a candidate to replace Cardinal Walter Kasper as president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and president of the Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism.

One other name that has been mentioned is that of the Bishop of Regensburg, Mons Gerhard Mueller. So is that of the Archbishop of Chieti-Forte, Mons. Bruno Forte.


Why hasn't anyone brought up the possibility that the Holy Father may want to keep on Cardinal Kasper even after he turns 75? That is not unprecedented at all. Although they had their differences in the past [notably about Kasper's endorsement of the decision of the Church in Germany to provide abortion counseling in the 1990s and more generally, about his position that local Church takes precedence over the universal Church - I hope I summarized that one right], they appear to have worked very well together in the Curia, and Kasper has been an effective point man for the Pope in the ecumenical dialog, particularly with the Orthodox.

Would it be wise to changes horses in midstream, so to speak, at a critical time in the dialog with the Orthodox? When Kasper was named by John Paul II to this position, he had been secretary of the Council for several years and therefore, he already had the advantage of prior experience and ecumenical contacts.

And if the Pope were to accept Kasper's resignation when he turns 75, what is there that particularly qualifies the bishop of Basel, who was one of the more merciless critics of Summorum Pontificum? One got the idea, reading his statements then, that he is an unapologetic champion of Vatican II as a rupture with the past. Surely, someone who has little respect for the Tradition of the Catholic Church itself is not going to get much respect from the Orthodox who are big on Tradition! Even if one can argue that there could be an advantage for the Pope to keep an 'enemy' close at hand.

But surely, not at the expense of the bigger picture - what Benedict XVI himself singled out as a priority for his Pontificate the day after he was elected Pope.

Mueller and Forte have had considerable ecumenical experience in their respective national conferences, but just in passing, I have my reservations about Mons. Forte, who has also opposed Benedict XVI on Summorum Pontificum, despite various interviews in which he has expressed glowing admiration for him, and not that my opinion matters at all, but I get the impression that he is one of those media-savvy 'careerists' in the Church. I hope I am wrong.

This is a lengthy interview - and difficult (for me) because the discussion is quite technical, even if Gotti Tedeschi tries his best to reduce it to plain language. I am posting it for the record.


Six months since the encylical:
The impact of CIV so far
Translated from
the Italian service of

February 6, 2009


Just a bit over six months since the publication of Benedict XVI's encyclical Caritas in veritate, Prof. Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, recently named president of the Vatican bank IOR [and financial-economic commentator for L'Osservatore Romano] , gave an assessment of its impact so far. In this interview with Alessandro Gisotti, he describes how the encyclical has been received in the worlds of finance, business, politics and economic research - and the underlying problems connected with the current economic crisis.


GOTTI TEDESCHI: It has been received very well, with great satisfaction. But there is one consideration. Every time there has been a serious problem in the world - in this case, a great economic crisis that is affecting everyone: states, political institutions, financial and industrial institutions, families and citizens - everyone invokes the need for ethics, as they do now.

Unaninmously, ethics has become the element that is missing in the world when there are problems - and that is why many have hailed this Encyclical, why they praise this encyclical's importance and its call for the urgency of ethics, but everyone has also interpreted this in different ways.

As you know, the encylical calls for ethics at specific times and with extremely precise considerations. But ultimately, everyone who has not even necessarily read the encyclical, agrees that it calls for ethics. But in fact, we will see that when the crisis ends - if it is true that it is coming to an end, which I doubt - there will be less talk about ethics or the encyclical.

And in fact, too, it is puzzling why we always seem to see the lack of ethics in others, we talk about it, we give courses on ethics, we define what it is, set up instruments for ethics - an Ethics Bank, an Ethics Fund - but we forget that ethics is first of all to be lived rather than taught. Ethics has to be demonstrated, we must actually show what ethical behavior is.


About President Obama's recent interventions against the gigantism of the US banks and protesting superbonuses for their executives. Do you think the opportunities for change linked to the crisis have not been seized? Is there time still to recover the principles of social ethics in the economy?
First of all, I think it is exaggerated to blame the bankers and the financiers to have be at the origin of the crisis. They are not, although they then concurred to aggravate the crisis by trying to compensate for or mask the problems generated by the collapse of economic development, by using financial instruments.

So if I may be downright polemical myself, I would say that more than the bankers, those responsible were the government officials who stimulated, supported and justified the expansion of credit that was used to sustain a growth rate that turned out to be fictitious.

And now we face a greater problem which we will be hearing about for a long time. In technical terms, it is called 'averaging' which in plain language means 'deflating the debt'.

In the last 10 years, in Italy, in the US and throughout the Western world, the percentual impact of the total debt on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown from 200 to 300%, namely by about one-third. This artificial inflation of the public debt - the government's - differs with each country.

Deflating the debt will require 5-7 years in mature countries like the United Sattes and Western Europe before it returns to acceptable levels. This means that we are facing 5-7 years of making strategic economic and financial decisions which are far from exciting. In the sense that if we do not want to see some bankrupt states - and some small ones may be forced to declare it, as larger ones like Argentina did in the recent past - if we do not want to inflate the debt, or reduce it by accelerating inflation, which would penalize everyone; or without any opportunity for a shock as some economists and bankers recommend - and I don't see what that shock could be unless it was [some phenomenal advance] in biodechnology or a new Silicon Valley miracle - then there is only one way to reconstitute economic and financial equilibrium - and that is, through austerity.


So about this problem of an overstimulated and articial growth, the Pope says in the encyclical that there is no true growth if natality drops and there is no respect for life, pointing out that population growth cannot be considered as the first cause for underdevelopment. Can one say then that the crisis is the fruit of pumped-up growth that is no longer sustainable especially with low birth rates?
Yes. The true origin of the crisis - and of this, I personally have no doubt - is the drop in the birth rate in Western countries. In the 1970s, the theories by the so-called neo-Malthusians predicted that if the birth rate continued to grow as it did then - around 4-4.5% a year - then before 2000, millions of people would die of hunger in Asia, especially India.

The Pope did well a few Sundays ago to warn against depending on the economists and others who make a living by making long-term projections which lead to decisions that then have probably worse results than what they were supposed to guard against.

In the past 50-100 years, the great science fiction writers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells have predicted things much better than have economists.

So what has now happened when the Western world allowed its birth rate to collapse, whereas in the so-called developing and emergent countries - the Thrd World and the Fourth world - where people do not read books about the population bomb, they go on producing children naturally and have also improved their lives because of better healthcare, better nutrition and better living conditions?

In the West, the birth rate dropped from 4.5% in the mid-1970s to zero population growth (ZPG) today. ZPG does not mean they have stopped having children - it means that the replacement fertility rate averages out to two for each couple. and the birth rate equals the death rate.

And what happens when there is zero population growth [not counting immigration]? Theoretically, it means that the population should accept a certain austerity, linked to the fact that if less children are born, the social structure changes. With less children born, there are less young people to enter the world of productive labor, whereas there will be many more older people retiring at more cost to society.

In practice, if the population does not grow, the 'fixed' costs of the social and economic structure will increase - to what extent depends on the resulting disequilibrium in the age distribution and how much resources the country has.

But the fixed costs will rise: the costs of healthcare and the social costs. Not only that - it will not be possible to decrease taxes. In the past few decades, we have heard governments say they will decrease taxes but that has never happened [At least not in Europe. The United States, which has a current population growth rate of 1.1%, has had documented economic growth with tax cuts which stimulate business, especially small businesses, to provide more jobs]. And that's because ZPG does not allow lowering taxes without making costs rise exponentially.

Then there is another phenomenon that impacts on the economy as a result of the lack of population growth - that is the decrease in savings. Young people who do not work are unable to generate any savings; they do not form families and avoid doing so because they do not want the responsibility that goes with this, therefore there is no incentive for saving. There is less financial activity in the markets which are sustained by banking. Money (credit) costs more, and there is less of it. And so the system invented the so-called derivatives (trading in some other asset, index, event, value or condition, known as the underlying asset, rather than this asset itself).

The collapse of development in the Western world because of low natality has become a great concern. They have tried to compensate for this by development through increased financial activity, and by outsourcing - to transfer all production to Asia then export the products at lowe costs to us; as well by increased productivity. But productivity has its limits. There is a threshold beyond which it cannot increase.

How then can a country increase its GDP or keep it at an adequate level in an economy that is collapsing? In a household, you can try to do extraordinary things to get additional income, and you could send your wife to buy only from discount stores, but beyond that, your only option is to get into debt. Then the system will start to show growth because families are incurring debt.

And anyone can try to increase their own personal domestic product. If I have a home GDP of 100 and wish to increase it to 120-130, then I can do it as long as there is a bank that will lend me the 20-30%. But it will not be sustainable on a long term, because I must guarantee that I can pay it back.

Let me give a concrete example. In the past 10 years, the debt burden of American families, which was 68% of the GDP in 1998) rose to 98 percent of GDP in 2008 - that's 28-point increase. If you divide this over 10 years, you have an average 2.8% growth in debt due exclusively to debts driven by consumer spending.

In practice, that was the origin of the actual crisis, which led to the excesses in so-called subprime lending [making loans, especially for housing, to people who cannot afford to keep up mortgage payments and who would otherwise not get credit from regular banks].

All the apparent financial activity in derivatives, leveraging and artificial expansion of credit was to compensate for the lack of real economic growth due to a falling birth rate.


in the encyclical, Benedict XVI also insists on the need to guide globalization, with "a cultural orientation that is borh personal and communitarian", recommending "a better international order". Are these objectives that can be achieved soon in the world's political agenda?
Yes. For the Holy Father, the future is always linked to an addendum that we do not usually consider - namely, grace, which allows man to perform miracles, if one may say so.

But what is the problem really? We should not consider globalization as an end - it is a means, and a very timely means to globalize good, to globalize proven values that will allow man to have integral development.

Therefore above all, we must think of globalization is a means. To be effective, it must have a goal, like any other means. There is no means which is good by itself. A hospital or a clinic is not good by itself: it depends entirely on what those who manage it want it to be. So a means is never good or bad - by definition, it is neutral.

But to give meaning to how any means is used, one should have strong ideas, one should have strong thinking. If man is incapable of giving sense to an instrument with the dimensions and importance of globalization, then globalization itself will end up overwhelming thought. If thought cannot guide behavior, then behavior will influence thought.

But it is not easy because we are globalizing various cultures, very different cultures.

North America, from the cultural point of view, is Protestant American, very liberal, very open, very determined, but with a capacity for behavior which now and then surprises us Europeans, who are accustomed to asking ourselves whether we are doing good or evil, perhaps losing some time over this. Whereas they perhaps tend to overdo their activism, their decisiveness, only to regret it later. So the American model has its cultural view of how to do things which is not how Europeans do.

But then the European way is hardly supported by us Europeans anymore, since in many ways we have debased ourselves, we have debased the roots in which we once believed.

Europe at this time is in a completely different situation even with respect to the economic crisis. First of all, it is divided, and it has completely different views of how things are done. I read in the newspapers that Sarkozy said, "In immigration, we will not commit the same errors as the Italians have". That in itself tells us how difficult it is for Europe to achieve a uniform policy on immigration.

Now, let’s consider Asia. Just think that in Asia we have both China and India as the dominant nations. What religious culture does China have? I have a son who has lived in China for three yars now, as an economist, and once in a while, he helps me to understand the situation better.

Certainly you know that the economic behavior of any subject – banker, industrialist, politician, economist – does not only depend on the studies he has made, but is also a function of the education he received. And what is Chinese education? There is some Confucianism, a little Buddhism, a little Maoism mixed together. And what does it mean for them to tell the truth, keep their word, a sense of duty, a sense of obedience? Is it like ours? I don’t know.

But what is most preoccupying on the international scene is Africa – which we ex-colonialist Europe have always disdained. We have always considered Africa as something to use depanding on our need, but we also helped it to grow, because a great part of Africa’s intellectual growth is due to the fact that good European colonialism has given them so many values. And the nations that had been colonized were those that evolved first, without a doubt.

But now Africa is about to be conquered by the Chinese, as a source of both raw materials and labor. The African has become cheap labor for the Chinese. But do the Chinese have the same view of man as we do?

So this is the kind of big questions that the Pontiff is asking. That is why he is concerned about the process of globalization – what values are being globalized. Today there is only one great moral authority who continues to remind everyone and at all times of the value of man: the Pope, the head of the Holy, catholic and apostolic Roman Church. I know no other.


To sustain the development of the entire human family, Benedict XVI has referred to the principle of subsidiarity And to “the autonomy of intermediate bodies”, while denouncing forms of ‘paternalistic assitentialism’. Is he affirming a model or is there still much to do in managing international aid?
This assistential, paternalistic model he refers to does not help man to grow, it does not give him the motivation to develop, to strengthen himself, to make himself independent. It’s like the economy of ‘know why’ and ‘know how’ [Gotti Tedeschi uses the English words]. ‘Know why’: If he understands the why and learns to manage his life, he achieves things. If one only has ‘know how’, at most he can do what he has learned to know how. And this is essential in this reasoning.

The second point on subsidiarity. There are two types which the Pontiff delineates in the encyclical. The first is the individual’s subsidiarity relative to the State. The American situation is typical. For 15 years, American citizens have sustained with debt the growth of the GDP which was tottering. And the US has been through some complex times, as for instance after 9/11 – having to reconstruct its attitude towards terrorism, as the great guardians of mankind, and most likely increasing their expenses for defense. But someone has to pay these costs.

Thus the need for a growth in GDP. Strong expenditure for defense, for weapons, which after 9/11 rose by 14-15% annually, had to be sustained by a growth in the GDP. How to do this? The American way is to let the individual do it – put him in a position to do it – low taxes are attractive for a form of consumerism. After 10 years, American families have become poor, they have lost a large percentage of their liquid investments, a large part of the value of their homes – which they have not yet fully paid for. They have lost part of their retirement funds which are mostly private. Many have been in debt for two to three years, and are in risk of losing their jobs.
In effect, families have become subsidiaries to the requirements of the State. That’s negative subsidiarity.

It’s the opposite of the subsidiarity that should be a realization of John F. Kennedy’s ideal when he said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country”. Some decades later, we have seen what the citizen has done for his country: he has gone into debt, becoming more vulnerable and weak.

And there is a second dangerous subsidiarity, that of the Third world countries who are exploited, and once in a while even managed, in order to have the advantage over them – over their raw materials and labor – while forgetting them completely when these advantages are no longer manageable and exploitable.

These then are thw two subsidiarities that we are facing and seeing in the world today. Let us not forget that not only economic equilibrium is at stake, nor economic recovery, which will be long and difficult, but ‘what will the citizen have to do in all this’?

Let me give an example. Italy is a nation that has some large resources to back up a strategy to deal with the crisis – its small and medium businesses, the savings of the citizens. I fear that they may be forced to use these savings in consumption, whereas we know that savings represent a protection for the individual, his family and his options.

Instead of stimulating families and society to start believing again in the future and to produce children – we now have a birth rate below the replacement rate, and then get all bothered about immigration which we need because we have stopped having babies - we have created a negative economic context of negative growth, which means greater austerity. But we do not want to become austere below the lifestyle we have become used to, we do not want moderation, we are not seeking it, rather we are escaping it.


But the Pope uses subsidiarity in the positive sense….
The subsidiarity of the State towards the citizen. It ought to be the citizen, the family, to whom the rest is subsidiary, not vice-versa. But my impression is that everywhere, there are few nations – not even the great American nation which has always been a symbol of freedom - where the individual is not the subsidiary to growth, to the State’s need for growth in order to provide a growth in GDP.

Look at the USA 20 years ago and look at Asia today which is undergoing globalization. The USA is growing by 3 percent annually, Asia by 8,9 even 15 %. What does the economist of geopolitics say? That in 10 years, the USA’s GDP grew by 80 percent, Asia’s by 300%.

So who will wield power ten years from now? This problem is not simply a matter of economics, it is geopolitical. Competition among states is as basic as this: population constitutes wealth. The neo-Malthusians had predicted that there would be millions of deaths by hunger in China and India by now. Instead, China and India have entered the development cycle, they have become important players in the production, consumption and generation of financial riches, to the point that today, China holds 35-40% of the American public debt.

Therefore, not only have these two population giants developed and created welllbeing for their citizens which is gradually becoming widespread, but they are now sustaining our collapsing mature economies. Within 10 years, China will dominate the world. Is that good or bad?

The only problem is that whoever dominates the world economically also exports and spreads its own culture, its own thinking. So my question is: What is the Chinese culture that we will be importing ten years from now? What kind of thinking? What values?

Monday, February 8
Photos on extreme right: Poster for TV movie shown last year on RAI-TV by the producers of the Augustine miniseries; and an English biography of Bakhita.
ST JOSEPHINE BAHKITA (b Sudan ca 1869, d Italy 1947), Former slave, Canossian nun
Our saint of the day has the distinction of her biography cited in a papal encyclical. Here is what Benedict XVI said of her in Spe salvi: "She was born around 1869 — she herself did not know the precise date — in Darfur in Sudan. At the age of nine, she was kidnapped by slave-traders, beaten till she bled, and sold five times in the slave-markets of Sudan. Eventually she found herself working as a slave for the mother and the wife of a general, and there she was flogged every day till she bled; as a result of this she bore 144 scars throughout her life. Finally, in 1882, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the Italian consul Callisto Legnani, who returned to Italy as the Mahdists advanced. Here, after the terrifying 'masters' who had owned her up to that point, Bakhita came to know a totally different kind of 'master' — in Venetian dialect, which she was now learning, she used the name paron for the living God, the God of Jesus Christ. Up to that time she had known only masters who despised and maltreated her, or at best considered her a useful slave.

"Now, however, she heard that there is a paron above all masters, the Lord of all lords, and that this Lord is good, goodness in person. She came to know that this Lord even knew her, that he had created her — that he actually loved her. She too was loved, and by none other than the supreme Paron, before whom all other masters are themselves no more than lowly servants. She was known and loved and she was awaited. What is more, this master had himself accepted the destiny of being flogged and now he was waiting for her 'at the Father's right hand'.

"Now she had hope — no longer simply the modest hope of finding masters who would be less cruel, but the great hope: “I am definitively loved and whatever happens to me —I am awaited by this Love. And so my life is good.” Through the knowledge of this hope she was 'redeemed', no longer a slave, but a free child of God. She understood what Paul meant when he reminded the Ephesians that previously they were without hope and without God in the world —without hope because without God.

"Hence, when she was about to be taken back to Sudan, Bakhita refused; she did not wish to be separated again from her Paron. On 9 January 1890, she was baptized and confirmed and received her first Holy Communion from the hands of the Patriarch of Venice. On 8 December 1896, in Verona, she took her vows in the Congregation of the Canossian Sisters and from that time onwards, besides her work in the sacristy and in the porter's lodge at the convent, she made several journeys round Italy in order to promote the missions: the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people. The hope born in her which had 'redeemed' her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody." She died in 1947, and steps for her beatification began in 1959. She was canonized in 2000.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020810.shtml


No OR today.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Bishops of Romania on ad limina visit

- Participants in the Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
Address in Italian.

Once again, Jeff Israely indulges in the inappropriate colloquialism that he and John Allen, notably, love to use in reference to Benedict XVI. 1) An apostolic visit anywhere is no 'vacation'; and 2) When has the Holy Father failed to 'talk tough' - if by that Israely means confronting issues head on and calling things by name - on the essentials of the faith and its non-negotiable principles? You'd think by the headline that the Pope dares not 'talk tough' outside his turf! And 3) 'Talk tough' is the most inappropriate metaphor one could use when referring to the soft-spoken, exquisitely mannered Benedict XVI, unless you want to connote he is a 'bully', which is how the liberal media consider Catholic leaders who speak up unequivocally about their faith.



European Vacation: Pope talks tough
in his own backyard
By JEFF ISRAELY

February 7, 2009


John Paul II redefined papal travel by trekking to the most far-flung corners of the planet. In contrast, Benedict XVI, who was 20 years older than John Paul was at his papal election, sticks closer to home. Eight of his 14 foreign trips thus far have been in Europe, as are his next two: Portugal in May and Britain in September.

But his focus on Europe is not principally a health decision for the 82-year-old Benedict, who has seemed energized by his few jaunts to South America, Australia and Africa. Instead, the Pope sees his European forays as journeys to hostile territory where he must try to counter the prevailing forces of secularism sweeping the continent.

As if on cue, Benedict's announcement in a meeting with British bishops Monday that he would make his first papal trip to Britain this fall was immediately followed by criticism of an equal rights bill making its way through Parliament that could effectively force Catholic organizations out of the adoption business because they won't serve gay couples.

The Church has also complained about the law's requirement that religious organizations strictly abide by non-discrimination clauses in the staff they hire.

Benedict urged the Catholic leaders to oppose with "missionary zeal" the legislation that he says actually would "impose unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to act in accordance with their beliefs. In some respects it actually violates the natural law upon which the equality of all human beings is grounded and by which it is guaranteed."

Reaction was swift. British newspapers featured the story prominently, calling the comments an attack on equality rights.

"Some might like to see him cold-shouldered by the Queen and the government because of his outspoken statements," the Guardian said in an editorial, referring to Benedict's upcoming trip. "This won't happen. By then, after all, the Pope is likely to be protected from such religious discrimination by the very equalities legislation he now sees as a threat to justice and the natural order of things." [What does it say of the land of the Magna Charta today that the spiritual leader of the world's largest religion would need a questionable Equality Bill to protect him from religious discrimination? Doesn't the Guardian realize what it is saying???]

Meanwhile, the London-based National Secular Society said it would stage protests during the Pope's time in Britain. The organization also launched a "Make the Pope Pay" petition to deny public funding for the state visit, which the group estimates could cost upwards of $30 million.

Of course, the Pope might expect this kind of treatment in Britain. There has been a strain [A strain? More like a major family of particularly virulent virus] of anti-papal sentiment in England dating back to King Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church in the 16th century.

And when the famously conservative Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope in 2005, the British press let loose a barrage of criticism and sometimes tasteless jokes about him. But the clash between Britain and the Vatican is now shaping up more than ever as a battle of ideas.

The U.K. is home to a burgeoning atheist movement - led by the likes of Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling book The God Delusion - which sees the Pope as a symbol of antiquated doctrine and organized religion's intrusion into public discourse.

And Benedict will likely use the trip to shine a light on what he believes is a spreading prejudice in Europe against the devout and public pronouncements of faith. [Israely makes it appear as though anti-Christian sentiment in Europe were merely an opinion of Benedict XVI rather than objective fact!]

Austen Ivereigh, a well-known London-based Catholic commentator, who has just launched a committee to help promote the Pope's U.K. visit, says the trip is a chance for Benedict to flex his intellectual muscle. [Doesn't he do that every day in everything he says, often in a understated but nonetheless forceful way? He doesn't need a trip anywhere to do what he has done habitually since he learned to think! God save us from Benedict 'supporters' who can be so condescending to him!]]

"The Pope's mission when he comes to Britain will be to confront the rise of aggressive secularism and atheism on its own turf. And that turf is reason," says Ivereigh. "The Pope will challenge secularism by appealing to an English tradition of pluralism which he sees as being eclipsed by these laws."

Although details of the itinerary won't be known for months, there has been talk of a possible papal lecture at Oxford University.

Before his English autumn trip, however, Benedict will have some lecturing to do this spring in Portugal. This traditionally observant Catholic nation has rapidly moved to the forefront of progressive social causes with the initial approval by its Parliament last month of a bill legalizing gay marriage.

Final approval could coincide with the May arrival of Benedict, who has already referred to the bill as an "attack" on creation, which "strikes at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes."

After last month's vote, Prime Minister Jose Socrates declared that his generation was guilty of having mistreated gays, and can now help rectify that by joining a growing list of European countries where gays can legally marry, including Belgium, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands and Norway.

He declared: "This is a step that will seem completely natural in the near future, in the same way that gender equality, abortion rights and unmarried couples living together are normal now." [What a deluded man! Anything to be seen as politically correct! This spreading epidemic of recognizing gay 'marriage' is not so much about wanting to treat gays 'right' but in order not to be seen as 'backward' or 'non-progressive'.]

That is just what Benedict fears.

John Allen provides an informative up-to-date background - as well as the state of speculation - on a new consistory expected to be called this year by Pope Benedict XVI in order to name new cardinals.


Talk in Rome turns
to new cardinals in 2010

February 8, 2009


Despite a recent boomlet of conjecture about a consistory in late February or early March, the consensus in Rome these days seems to be that Pope Benedict XVI isn’t likely to create new cardinals until sometime later in 2010, perhaps as late as November.

Between now and then, several other major events loom on the Pope’s calendar: Trips to Malta in April, Portugal (Fatima) in May, Cyprus in June and the United Kingdom in September, as well as a Synod of Bishops for the Middle East in October.

As of today, there are a total of 182 cardinals, of whom 111 are under the age of 80 and hence eligible to vote for the next pope. In March, three more cardinals will turn 80, followed by one each in July and August, three more in September, and one each in October and November.

Hence if Benedict XVI waits until November, there would be at least 19 slots for new voting cardinals – presuming, as most do, that Benedict intends to honor the limit of 120 set by Pope Paul VI.

Two of the ten cardinals who will “age out” in coming months, by the way, are Americans: Theodore McCarrick of Washington and Adam Maida of Detroit, both now retired.

While Popes are free to make anyone they want a cardinal, in general the bulk of these nominations are fairly predictable, since there are certain jobs in the church with which a cardinal’s “red hat” is more or less automatically associated. Given that the last consistory came in November 2007, the list of these “cardinals in waiting” has become fairly long.

For the moment, that list among residential prelates would include:

• Archbishop Paolo Romeo, Palermo, Italy
• Archbishop Giuseppe Bettori, Florence, Italy
• Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, Brussels, Belgium
• Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Westminster, Great Britain
• Archbishop Timothy Dolan, New York
• Archbishop Donald Wuerl, Washington, D.C.
• Archbishop Orani João Tempesta, Rio de Janiero, Brazil
• Archbishop Braulio Rodríguez Plaza, Toledo, Spain
• Archbishop Carlos Osoro Sierra, Valencia, Spain
• Archbishop Juan José Asenjo Pelegrina, Seville, Spain
• Archbishop Francis Xavier Kriengsak Kovithavanij, Bangkok, Thailand
• Archbishop Joseph Ngô Quang Kiêt, Ha Noi, Vietnam
• Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
• Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz, Warsaw, Poland
• Archbishop Willem Jacobus Eijk, Utrecht, The Netherlands
• Archbishop Reinhard Marx, Munich and Freising, Germany

There’s also a slew of Vatican officials in a holding pattern to join the College of Cardinals, including:

• Archbishop Angelo Amato, Congregation for the Causes of Saints
• Archbishop Velasio De Paolis, Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See
• Archbishop Raymond Burke, Apostolic Signatura
• Archbishop Fortunato Baldelli, Apostolic Penitentiary
• Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, Pontifical Council for Culture
• Archbishop Antonio Maria Vegliò, Pontifical Council for Migrants and Itinerant Peoples
• Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers
• Archbishop Francesco Monterisi, Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Paul outside the Walls

Adding them all up, that’s twenty-four potential cardinals, all of whom hold positions that carry a reasonable expectation of one day becoming a cardinal.

That’s not even allowing for the possibility that Benedict XVI may want to bestow the red hat upon a deserving diocese that’s not traditionally had one, as he did last time by elevating Daniel Di Nardo of Houston.

Candidates this time around might include: Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Archbishop Albert Malcolm Ranjith is a longtime friend and collaborator of the Pope; perhaps the new Archbishop of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, as a gesture of solidarity to that devastated nation; or somewhere in Africa, as a recognition of the phenomenal growth on the faith on that continent.

The total of twenty-four also does not account for the likelihood that Benedict XVI will have to make some additional high-profile Vatican appointments throughout 2010, including successors to cardinals who are already past 75 but still in charge of important offices such as the Congregations for Bishops, Clergy and Religious, as well as the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity. If the new heads of these offices are not already cardinals, they too will claim a place in line.

Given the math, it seems likely that some of these “cardinals in waiting” may have to wait a bit more – for example, in a case in which the retired cardinal is still around and still active, or a case such as Spain in which naming three new cardinals at once might seem excessive.

In terms of the United States, three names may seem conspicuous by their absence from the list of “cardinals in waiting”: the recently appointed archbishops of Baltimore, Detroit and St. Louis, all three archdioceses which at one point or another were considered “red hat” assignments.

The consensus wisdom, however, is that since the United States is already over-represented in the College of Cardinals (the U.S. is only the fourth largest Catholic country in the world, but it has the second largest number of cardinals after the Italians), and given shifts in the Catholic population in America, those three dioceses may well no longer be led by cardinals.

If Benedict XVI feels he has to choose which new American cardinal to name first – New York or Washington – many observers believe it will be Dolan in New York. Strictly speaking, Wuerl in Washington has been in the queue longer, but New York is among that handful of “mega-dioceses” around the world – meaning large, highly visible dioceses, considered crucial for the country and the region – where the Vatican typically wants a cardinal to be at the helm.

Moreover, Washington is also an unusual case in that not just one, but two, emeritus cardinals are still in the background: McCarrick and William Baum, now 83. On the other hand, given Benedict XVI’s affection for the United States, it’s possible that the next consistory could include at least three Americans: Dolan, Wuerl, and Burke.

Benedict’s last consistory came in November 2007, when he named 18 new voting cardinals as well as five “honorary” cardinals, meaning figures already over the age of 80. The latter are sometimes the most interesting, if only because they’re the least predictable, not being tethered to any particular diocese or Vatican position.

One wild-card possibility this time around: Fr. Peter Hans Kolvenbach, the former Superior General of the Jesuits, who will be 82 on Nov. 30. It’s well known around Rome that Kolvenbach and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger enjoyed a close personal relationship, and given Benedict’s efforts to heal the perceived breach between the papacy and the church’s flagship religious order, this might be another way of extending an olive branch.

It’s a bit dicey, because Jesuits are not supposed to seek ecclesiastical honors, but of course John Paul II made various Jesuits cardinals, and Benedict XVI has included one Jesuit among the non-voting cardinals in each of his two consistories: Albert Vanhoye, former secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, in 2006, and Urbano Navarrete Cortés, former rector of the Gregorian University, in 2007.

Bruno Mastroianni on his blog refers to an item he wrote for the Milan-based monthly Italian news journal Formiche (which means 'ants', but I cannot find on their site an explanation for why they chose the name). The title of this little essay is based on a Zen metaphor that likens the truth to the moon in the sky. Words, in this case, are like a finger pointing to the truth - the moon - but one must look beyond the finger to the moon itself.




The finger and the moon
by Bruno Mastroianni

Issue of February 2010


That the Church has problems of communicating seems to be one of the few certainties today. And yet the inclusion of Church decisions in the waves of public discussion is taking on a repetitiveness such that it is impossible not to think something is not right [??? Mastroianni seems muddled here. Not right about the Church, or not right about how things are reported? ]

The fact however is that much of the analysis about what the Church is doing - both by its defenders as by its critics - have a common defect: to take it for granted that the media are the spokesmen for a culture that represents the reality of contemporary society.

Her detractors judge the Church incapable of adapting itself while her supporters see her as the paladin of values that can avert the collapse of Western society. Both take it for granted that the culture has a consistency that goes beyond the media environment. And that is why there is the widespread image of a Church constantly on the defensive.

This also gives rise to the so-called media blunders attributed to the Church - from Regensburg to the Lefebvrians by way of condoms in Africa and now the controversy over Pius XII.

In each case, the underlying issue has hardly ever been discussed (since any objective historian, scientist or appropriate expert would confirm the distance between the stridency of the public 'debate' and objective reality), but the focus has been on highlighting the extreme positions on both sides.

On the one hand, the Church and its positions; on the other, respect for other religions, international affairs, scientific progress, as though these were elements that make up the cornerstones of a compact dominant culture which the Church obstinately opposes.

Meanwhile, the real Church - through its supreme representative Benedict XVI - is following its own logic. But even reading the Pope's discourses, catecheses, encyclicals and messages, one cannot point to the least trace of a 'discourse in opposition', but rather a consistent presentation of positive messages on the meaning of life and men - messages as extraordinary as they are intelligent.

To those who listen to the Pope directly, he is focused on building the future of this world, rather than fighting past battles to defend something.

The truth is that the idea of a Church that is perforce in opposition to contemporary mentality is as thin as the paper on which are printed the editorials fomenting it.

To give the media too much credit, one risks of being like those obtuse persons focused on an idee fixe who are therefore completely oblivious to what is taking place around them.


On the other hand, to take Mastroianni's attitude - that the media do not matter all that much - is to ignore its incalculable collective impact in both direct and subliminal ways on the way people think, simply because media is ubiquitous and seems to permeate everything.

The problem is how to counteract or at least neutralize the dominant media so that the real messages of the Pope and the Church get through to the public, as well as - if not better than - the false and distorted view of the Church that her detractors consistently purvey.

Can Catholic media take on mainstream media in this respect? The battleground has expanded beyond traditional media to the new media. Thus far, the Catholic view has been overwhelmed in the MSM. And while there appears to be a great deal of positive Catholic activity on the Internet, these sites and sources are only as good as they have followers. Nonetheless, it is where Catholics can best take a stand, because in practice, one can advocate one's cause on the Internet without having to spend anything other than your subscription fee to your service provider.

But Internet communications, outside social networking, is like a burst of scattershot fired in the air - it may 'hit' someone or it may just fall by the wayside unperceived by anyone.

More importantly, the Church itself has to be able to target every single diocese and parish priest regularly with its messages, starting with the papal Magisterium. (And I do wish Mons. Celli's Pontifical Council for Social Communications is doing something about this - starting with compiling every available e-mail address of the world's dioceses and parishes for a mass mailing list.)

If every parish priest received a translation of the Pope's weekly catechesis and Angelus messages, to begin with, it would save them a lot of effort to simply pass it on to their congregations instead of trying to give a proper homily if they have little time to prepare one, as most of them probably do.

Doubtless, the Pope's presentations would come as a happy and welcome surprise to most Catholics who have probably not heard the basics of the faith expressed so simply and clearly, and applied to the contemporary situation, as the Pope does.

Such an effort may not work with bred-in-the-bone dissenters thoroughly sold on a misinterpretation of Vatican II, but it can confirm and reinforce the faith of orthodox priests who can then transmit it to their faithful.

To Pontifical Council for the Family:
Pope decries the violation
of children by some priests



Vatican City, Feb. 8 (dpa) - Pope Benedict XVI on Monday lamented how some members of the clergy have "violated" the "dignity" of children, rights that the Catholic Church has "over the centuries" promoted.



Benedict made the remarks in an address to participants of an assembly of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family. He also recalled the 20th anniversary of the approval of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

"The Church over the centuries, following the example of Christ, has promoted the dignity and rights of children," Benedict said.

"Unfortunately, in various cases some of her members, acting against this commitment, have violated these rights - actions which the Church does not and will not fail to deplore and condemn," Benedict added.

The pontiff's words come amid a series of scandals involving sexual abuse of children by priests, including in Ireland and Germany.

Benedict did not refer to any specific incidents, but spoke of "actions which the Church does not and will not fail to deplore and condemn."

"Jesus's harsh words against those who offend one of these little ones are an admonition to everyone never to lower the level of this respect and love," he said.

Benedict has summoned Irish bishops to the Vatican for a February 15-16 meeting to discuss the child sex abuse scandal that has shaken Ireland.

The talks follow a December meeting between the Pontiff and Ireland's two most senior Catholic churchmen, that took place in the wake of a shock government report which focused on the Dublin archdiocese, Ireland's biggest.

At the time Benedict said then he shared "the outrage, betrayal and shame," felt by so many of the faithful in Ireland over the "heinous crimes" catalogued in the report issued in late November.

In one case mentioned in the report, a priest admitted to sexually abusing over 100 children.

Four bishops have to date resigned following the report, which revealed that Church leaders did not report abuse to police in an apparent attempt to 'protect' the Church's reputation.

Reports from Germany on Saturday indicated that nearly 100 employees of the Catholic Church have been suspected of involvement is sexual abuse during the last 15 years.

The latest accusations came following revelations of abuse at four Jesuit-run schools in Germany during the 1970s and 80s.

The secretary of the German Bishops Conference, Hans Langendoerfer, said he was shocked by the revelations that showed "a dark face of the Church." [Did he really say that? He is 'shocked'? How disingenuous and hypocritical!]

Langendoerfer, who is a member of the Jesuit Order said the Church would "address the subject openly".





Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's address, delivered at noon today in the Sala Clementina of the Apostolic Palace:

---

Eminent Cardinals,
Venerated Brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Dear brothers and sisters:

At the start of the 19th Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family, I am happy to extend to you my cordial welcome.

This institutional occasion sees your Dicastery specially renewed not only by the Cardinal President and Secretary but with some cardinals and bishops named to the Executive Committee, and some new officials and member couples, as well as a number of new consultants.

As I thank those who have ended their service at the Pontifical Council and those who continue to lend it their valuable work, I invoke God's abundant gifts on all.

My grateful thanks go, particularly, to the late Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, who led your dicastery for 18 years with a passionate devotion to the cause of the family and of life in today's world.

And finally, I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Cardinal Ennio Antonelli for the kind words he addressed to me in your name, and for having illustrated the theme of this important assembly.

The present activities of the dicastery are linked to the Sixth World Encounter of Families celebrated in Mexico City last year, and the Seventh, planned to take place in Milan in 2012.

Even as I renew my acknowledgment to Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera for the generous involvement of his Archdiocese in the preparation and realization of the Encounter in 2009, I likewise express my affectionate gratitude to the Ambrosian Church and its pastor, Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, for their readiness to host the Seventh World Encounter of Families.

Beyond supervising such events, the Pontifical Council is also carrying out various initiatives to promote the growth of awareness about the fundamental value of the family for the life of the Church and of society.

Among these is the project 'Family as subject of evangelization' which intends to provide a collection of experiences worldwide in the various fields of the pastoral ministry of families so that they may serve as inspiration and encouragement for new initiatives; and the program 'Family as a resource for society' which would bring to the attention of public opinion the benefits that families bring to society, its cohesion and its development.

Another important task of the dicastery is the preparation of a vademecum (or handbook) of preparation for matrimony. My beloved predecessor, Venerable John Paul II, in the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio affirmed that such a preparation is "more than ever necessary in our day" and "consists of three principal periods: remote, proximal and immediate" (No. 66).

Citing such instructions, the Dicastery will conveniently delineate the profile of these three stages in the itinerary of formation and response to the conjugal vocation.

The remote preparation is for children, adolescents and youth, and involves the family, the parish and the school - places in which children are educated to understand life as a vocation of love, which is then specifically expressed through marriage or virginity for the Kingdom of Heaven - but is always a vocation of love.

In this stage, moreover, the meaning of sexuality should progressively emerge as the capacity for relationship and a positive energy to be integrated in authentic love.

Proximal preparation has to do with engaged couples and must be configured as an itinerary of faith and Christian life which leads to a deeper knowledge of the mystery of Christ and the Church, and of the meaning of grace and responsibility in matrimony (cfr Ibid.).

The duration and the ways of carrying this out will necessarily be diverse according to situations, possibilities and needs. But it is desirable to offer a course of catechesis and of experiences lived in the Christian community, with the participation of priests and various experts, in addition to the presence of animators, the assistance of exemplary Christian spouses, a dialog between the couple and among a group of engaged couples, in a climate of friendship and prayer.

Particular care must be taken so that on such occasions, the engaged couples review their own personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, especially by listening to the Word of God, availing of the Sacraments, and above all, participating in the Eucharist.

Only by placing Christ in the center of the couple's individual and shared existence will it be possible to live authentic love and give it to others: "Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing" (Jn 15,5).

Immediate preparation takes place close to the marriage itself. Beyond examination of the engaged couple, as required by Canon Law, it could include a catechesis on the rite of matrimony and its meaning, a spiritual retreat, and attention so that the celebration of the marriage may be perceived by the faithful, particularly those who are preparing for it, as a gift for the whole Church, a gift that contributes to her spiritual growth.

It would also be good if bishops could promote an exchange of the most significant experiences, offer stimuli for serious pastoral commitment in this important sector, and show special attention so that the vocation of marriage becomes a richness for the entire Christian community and. especially in the present context, a missionary and prophetic testimony.

Your Plenary Assembly is on the theme "The rights of children", chosen in reference to the 20th anniversary of the Convention approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1989.

The Church, throughout the centuries, following the example of Christ, has always promoted the protection of the dignity and rights of minors, and in many ways, has taken care of them.

Unfortunately, in various cases, some of her members, acting against such a commitment, have violated these rights - behavior that the Church has not failed and will never fail to deplore and condemn.

The tenderness and the teaching of Jesus, who considered children a model to be imitated in order to enter the Kingdom of God (cfr Mt 18,1-6; 19,13-13). have always constituted an urgent appeal to harbor towards them profound respect and solicitude. Jesus's harsh words against anyone who would scandalize any of these small children (cfr Mt 9.42) commit everyone never to lower the level of such respect and love.

That is why even the Convention on the Rights of Children was welcomed favorably by the Holy See, insofar as it contained positive statements on adoption, health care, education, care of the disabled, and the protection of children against violence, abandonment, and sexual and work exploitation.

The Convention, in its preamble, points to the family "as the natural environment for the growth and wellbeing of all its members, and especially, of children".

Well then, it is precisely the family, founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, which is the greatest help one can give children. They need to be loved by a mother and a father who love them, and they need to grow up and live together with both parents, because the maternal and paternal figures are complementary in the education of children and in constructing their personality and identity.

It is therefore important that everything possible is done to make them grow up in a united and stable family. To this end, we must exhort spouses never to lose sight of the profound reasons and sacredness of their conjugal pact, and to consolidate this by listening to the Word of God, prayer, constant dialog, reciprocal acceptance and mutual forgiveness.

A family atmosphere that is not peaceful, separation and divorce are not without consequences to children, whereas to sustain the family and promote its true good, its rights, its unity and stability, is the best way to protect the rights and authentic needs of minors.

Venerated and dear brothers, thank you for your visit. I am spiritually close to you and the work that you carry out in behalf of the family, and I impart the Apostolic Blessing to each of you and those who share in your valuable service to the Church.

---

The geopolitics of Benedict XVI:
Fundamental human rights and
sustainable economic development
by Franco Frattini
Minister of Foreign Relations
Republic of Italy
Translated from
the 2/8-2/9 issue of



Editor's Note: On Monday afternoon, Feb. 8, the book Quando il Papa pensa il mondo (When the Pope thinks about the world)(Rome, Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, 2009, 200 pp) in the series of Limes classics, was presented in Rome. Here is an excerpt from the presentation by the Italian Foreign Minister.




The subject for this meeting on "When the Pope thinks about the world' seems to have been chosen with perfect timing: just a few months since the publication of the encyclical Caritas in veritate and not long after after the publication of another text that is particularly dense in content, the Message for World Peace Day 2010 with the significant title, "If you wish to build the peace, safeguard Creation".

They represent two profound reflections which have a characteristic in common: they embrace man, society and the planet with a unitary overview.

It is a synthesis of great impetus which, with its strong call to ethics, to a return to traditional values, has obtained a very vast consensus, far beyond the confines of the Catholic world.

Since the magazine Limes calls our attention to geopolitics, I believe that a first reflection must be devoted to the meaning that this term could have for a Pope.

The Pope, by the very reason of his position as Universal Pastor, can understand the 'geopolitical' difficulties of states who collaborate or oppose each other in the temporal sphere. But certainly, his perspective as Universal Pastor is different.

I would recall on this occasion that last year we celebrated 80 years of the Lateran Pacts. What remains very actual about these Pacts is how farsighted Pius XI was in his decision to renounce any temporal claims in order to dedicate the Church completely to its spiritual mission at the level of the entire planet.

Thus, her mission has a different 'geopolitics' which we might define universal, as the last two texts of Benedict XVI remind us, and very effectively.

In the encyclical, the starting point is man and returns to him passing through a stringent and very critical analysis of today's society - that which produced the most serious economic crisis of all time - for having under-estimated the need for a correct balance between personal and collective interests, between the wellbeing of a relatively small slice of the world's population and the need for development of the entire planet, between financial markets exclusively focused on themselves and the social function of a market economy.

In the Message for World Peace Day, this strong appeal for ethics shifts from the social plane to that of the environment. With the same force and the same rigorous logic, the Pope reminds us that the entire planet is at risk if mankind does not act respectfully towards the environment as a whole.

This means, for instance, the correct use of the resources of the planet from which everyone should benefit, both in the geographic and spatial sense - the world's North as well as its South - and in the temporal sense: this generation and future generations have equal rights to be able to live the best way possible on this planet.

In Biblical terms, one could think that in a globalized world, the earth appears more and more like an Ark, and the Pope is urging us to find on this Ark that harmony that characterized the alliance with God that was reborn after the Universal Deluge.

If this is the vision that the Pope has for this world, I would like to underscore in the second part of my intervention those aspects of this 'planetary geopolitics' could easily be taken on by our geopolitics, that of a State whose positions, on many issues, have been traditionally near those of the Church.

I will limit myself to two examples which I believe to be the most characteristic as well as incisive: actions in favor of a person's fundamental rights, and those in favor of development, especially in Africa.

On the issue of a person's fundamental rights, there is ample consensus in civilian society and in the Italian political world. Democracy and human rights are essential components of our action in the world, as a reflection of that widespread sense of solidarity which permeates the national collectivity.

It is a peculiar element in Italian society that explains why movements adn other organizations, even those that are not Catholic-inspired - permanently dedicated to works of assistance and aid to the weakest strata of the population in Italy and other countries - should be so widespread among us, more than in other Western countries.

What I hasten to underscore on this occasion is, in the field of fundamental rights, the protection of freedom of worship - understood as free public expression, not limited to the private sphere, of one's own religious convictions.

In this sense, the Italian government has always shown a profound sensitivity to the fate of Christian minorities in every part of the world, exercising constant actions in their support.

To this end, I wish to recall that last June, after the news of violent persecutions against Christians in Pakistan, I personally launched in the European Union a special initiative on religious freedom.

And coming to a precise geographical area - even in consideration of the presence here of Cardinal Sandri [Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches], we are convinced that in the Middle East, stabilization will come about through the protection of the different Christian communities that have been historically present in the area and to whom - in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories - we have given our constant support.

In this regard, we are very interested in the Special Assembly of the Bishops' Synod which will assemble in Rome next October the Patriarchs and bishops of the Middle East, and for which I now offer my readiness to meet with the Synodal fathers.

As a government, we have placed the problems of the African continent and the fight against poverty at the top of our agenda, in the belief that all resources, public and private, should be mobilized with a view to an integrated approach which is the only development approach which can be successful in the long run.

Africa in fact is no longer just a problem - it now constitutes an opportunity. It has shown this, among others, by its response to the world economic crisis, which has proven to be by far better than that of other continents.

In this respect, Italy is promoting a true and properly innovative approach to development that is not exclusively focused on the volume of aid, but evaluates all factors that are able to trigger sustainable growth processes.

I wish to conclude by mentioning two points that could almost represent two areas of 'common work' for the various diplomacies in the coming months.

From a general point of view, and even in the perspective of that 'planetary geopolitics' which animates the Pontiff's actions, I submit that the great objectives we set for ourselves - international stability, peace, and development - can be achieved only with a renewed commitment to realize a true and effective multilateralism.

By this term, we mean, substantially, putting to work the truly effective mechanisms of democratic and transparent agreement among the principal players in the international community. This is the sense, for instance, of our proposal to reform the Security Council of the United Nations.

But I would like to go into the details of a subject - which I know to be equally dear to the Holy See - to conclude my intervention, reiterating the commitment of the Italian government to its request for the remand of the verdict on the display of the Crucifix in Italian schoolrooms that we have presented to the European Court of Human Rights.

I maintain that this is a battle of civilization that the Government will fight with conviction. This is not about lamenting that the Court has no jurisdiction over the question nor to present arguments about Italy's internal rights.

It has to do, rather, with affirming that every State is free - and should remain free - to regulate as it thinks best the relationship between the public and the dimension of the sacred, as a function of its history, its culture and its tradition.

TWO READINGS OF CIV



Editor's Note: There was a recent roundtable in Pavia on the subject of "The encyclical Caritas in Veritate speaks to the world" organized by the diocese and introduced by Bishop Giovanni Giudici. Two of-the speakers were Mons. Arrigo Miglio, Bishop of Ivrea, and Andrea Olivero, the president of Associazione Cristiana Lavoratori Italiani [ACLI, one of the major labor unions in Italy].


A new perspective on justice
by Mons. Arrigo Miglio
Bishop of Ivrea
Translated from
the 2/8-2/9 issue of



The European and world situation and the financial and economic crisis of the past two years led many - not only Catholics - feel the need for an authoritative statement from the Church in order to learn "to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new roles and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future" (CIV, 21).

The expectation was not let down, even as the encyclical addresses a horizon much broader than the problems and concerns of the moment.

What we have is a social encyclical which follows the course started in modern times by Rerum novarum, but is also a text of great theological and anthropological richness, which announces all the richness of the Gospel for the life of man and the society of our time. With the two other Benedictine encyclicals, it forms a trilogy to be considered together in their entirety.

First of all the word love - caritas or agape - the key word that the Pope uses to introduce us to the heart of the social doctrine of the Church: Deus caritas est, Caritas in veritate. God is love: love in truth.

The social doctrine of the Church is rooted here - love is th terue name of God, Truth which cannot be twisted by anyone, and "love shines only in truth (CIV, 3), in which it manifests its power of liberation and salvation.

The encyclical recalls that "all men feel the interior impulse to love in an authentic way: love and truth never abandon them completely because they are the calling placed by God in the heart and mind of every man".

But this impulse must be purified and released by Jesus Christ - every experience of human love needs such purification.

Love is a gift, God who gives himself, a gift that becomes calling, a vocation to let ourselves love, to accept love as a gift of the Holy Spirit.

The Eucharist is the sacrament that enriches us with divine love. "The social doctrine of the Church responds to this dynamic of love received and given" (CIV,5) - it is not an appendix of its teaching.

Love and justice - how many times have these two words been placed in opposition as if they were alternatives! And the result has been a merely 'legal' view of justice, with love reduced to a voluntary, facultative option.

If, rather, justice is 'the first way of charity" (CIV, 6) which completes and surpasses justice, then a new perspective opens. Already in Deus caritas est, the Pope recalled (DCE, 28) that even if the State or society achieved a perfect realization of justice, this would still need charity: love-charity will always be necessary even in the most just society.

And that is why the word 'gift' can and should enter rightfully into a new view of the economy. A principle already enunciated in Deus caritas est is developed and applied here: the social doctrine of the Church illumines and purifies reason, it impels it to find, see and realize what is just.

Therefore Christians can and should bring into their political commitment all of their faith which illumines reason and helps them "bring reasons" to find solutions that are truly at the service of the whole man and of every man.

Caritas in veritate seeks to make us understand the need to rescue the word 'charity' from the irrelevance to which it is often condemned in the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields. It is reduced to "an empty shell to be filled arbitrarily", to a "reservoir of good feelings that are useful but marginal to social coexistence".

The clear New Testament view of charity presented by Benedict XVI, along with the complete vision of authentic human development presented earlier in Paul VI's Populorum progressio, should finally help to overcome the still widespread dichotomy between 'ethical' and 'social' values.

Both groups of values are irrenunciable but above all inseparable, because they arise from a complete non-reductive anthropological viewpoint such as that, for example, which permeates all of Gaudium et spes.

The crisis we are experiencing has made many feel the need for ethics in the market and in finance: the encyclical widens the perspective to the entire globalized world, underscoring that this new context has placed strong limitations to the political power of States.

But on the other hand, there is greater need still for a governance that can assure an ethical dimension at all levels, through public authorities and national and international actions carried out by organizations functioning civilian society.

Paragraph 57 refers to an authority that would be organized in a subsidiarial and polyarchic way, which would keep the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity closely united.

I wish to conclude this brief note by pointing to two paragraphs of great actual relevance, which refer to challenges that are the object of daily discussion: Paragraph 56 helps us to understand the value of true secularity beyond secularism, while Paragraph 57 touches on the problem of dialog between faith and reason which is necessary to incentivize collaboration between believers and non-believers who are called on to work together for the common good.

Today, two opposing views of freedom are in confrontation as alternatives for the human development of every man and woman. The encyclical clearly places itself squarely, in veritate, against a mentality and culture which have produced in the past few decades an unbalanced development which has generated new injustices responsible for millions of deaths - deaths which have not troubled our sleep only because they are happening quite a distance from our own doorsteps.

This has been the outcome of a culture that confuses desires for rights, which exalts individual liberty without considering man in his relational and social dimension.

The Pope speaks in truth, and truth is not always easy to accept, but he also instills hope when he speaks, inviting us never to lose sight of that caritas which is at the origin of life itself and continues to offer us its extraordinary power.



A compass in the chaos
of politics and the economy
by Andrea Olivero
President
Associazione Cristiana Lavoratori Italiani
Translated from
the 2/8-2/9 issue of



The more I re-read and reflect on the last encyclical of Benedict XVI, the more I realize that it is a truly innovative text, a social Christian handbook for the 21st century" (Bartolomeo Sorge), a compass to orient us on issues in politics and economy, work and technology - those social questions of yesterday transformed into anthropological questions for today.

To realize this mission of truth, it is necessary first of all to achieve a cultural pivot that can give life to a 'new thinking', a new mentality, a metanoia, as the Gospel says, because without such a discontinuity, everything will remain unchanged.

We need new thinking which goes beyond modern individualism and is open to a new anthropology of relation and interdependence. This 'deficiency of thought' that was already denounced more than 40 years ago by Paul VI in Populorum progressio (No. 85) has become today, as Benedict XVI says, "a lack of brotherhood among men and among peoples" (CIV, 19).

This encyclical shows an unusual courage calling things by name and introducing categories of thought that are are not habitually found in political language.

The word 'brotherhood', for instance, appears 39 times in the text, which affirms that justice is the minimum standard of charity, but that the latter surpasses justice and completes it with the logic of gift, of gratuitousness and of forgiveness.

And it is in the light of this broader and more dynamic concept that the ensemble of the phenomena connected to development, labor, globalization, the economic crisis, the environment, must be seen and analyzed.

Precisely because love is the "principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity", it is right to avoid, as the Pope says, that charity that "has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning, with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted" (CIV,2).

There is a sentimentalism, for example, that empties the concept of charity from the inside, "prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions".

"As society becomes even more globalized, it makes us neighbors but does not make us brothers" (CIV, 19). Brotherhood itself is thus the decisive criterion, which is capable of highlighting even those criteria for moral action that are presented towards the end of the encyclical, like the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity and reciprocity, which are closely linked to justice and the common good (CIV, 57-58).

"Reason, by itself, is certainly able to grasp the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence among themselves, but it cannot establish fraternity" (CIV, 19).

About the renewal of politics, I wish to make another observation, recalling the appeal of the president of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI), Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, to "Catholics involved in politics to always be consistent with the faith which includes and elevates every instance and value that is truly human".

Being brothers expresses a constitutive bond which 'precedes' our free decision to act in a mutually supportive way. In other words, we can say that brotherhood (which we receive from God) establishes true solidarity.

To open the doors of politics and economics to the principle of brotherhood thus means to upgrade the civilization of politics and economics, ending the ideological friend-foe scheme and the climate of continual delegitimization which is the antipode of common good.

In Caritas in veritate brotherhood is also translated secularly into the culture of gift which is linked to the anthropology of personal relationships, the theme of sharing, the gesture of 'breaking bread' together - in a word, to the Franciscan tradition of the civil economy.

"The human being is made for gift", the Pope says, "which expresses and makes present the dimension of transcendence" (CIV,34).

Benedict XVI wants the logic of gift to 'enter into' the market and bluntly says NO to the myth of efficiency which discriminates among persons and rewards the strongest. It is a perspective that not only unhinges the traditional view of capitalist economy, but also broadens responsibility in civilian society.

The encyclical praises non-profit activities even beyond the so-called third sector, equitable and fraternal commerce, mutualistic and social activities, micro-credit and the so-called civilian economy, which have appeared in the past few decades and which have not found room in the traditional market.

Unfortunately, these activities are not adequately favored by the fiscal and juridical system which are too closely tied in to the logic of profit.

This is not just about creating ethical sectors or segments in economy and finance, but as the Pope says, "to ensure that the whole economy, the whole of finance, is ethical, not merely by virtue of an external label, but by its respect for requirements intrinsic to its very nature" (CIV, 45).

The issue of 'decent labor' is particularly dear to ACLI which has taken it on for a decade now, following the recommendation that John Paul II made to the workers of Rome in 2000. It must be recalled that this same theme was taken up by a world coalition for dignified labor, for which ACLI organized an international forum with the participation of all the Christian labor organizations in every part of the world.

The Pope praises development - "man is constitutionally oriented towards 'being more'" (CIV,14) - but "without the prospect of eternal life", development "remains devoid of breath, enclosed within history and exposed to the risk of reducing itself only to an increase of 'having'".

Tuesday, February 9

ST. GIROLAMO (JEROME) EMILIANI (Italy, 1481-1537)
Priest, Founder of Somaschi Fathers, Patron Saint of Orphans and Abandoned Children
As a young man, Jerome served as a soldier for the city state of Venice, and was imprisoned
after being captured at a skirmish. In jail, he learned to pray, and upon his release, he
prepared for priesthood. After being ordained in 1518, he spent most of his time attending
to the poor and the sick, particularly orphans. When Venice was struck by plague and famine,
he sold all his possessions to care for the poor, and founded three orphanages, a shelter
for penitent prostitutes and a hospital. In 1532, he founded an order called Clerks Regular
of Somasca, after its first location in a city between Milan and Bergamo. The Somaschi
fathers dedicated themselves to caring for orphans and educating the poor. Jerome was
canonized in 1767. In 1928, Pius XI named him patron of orphans and abandoned children.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/020910.shtml


OR today.

Center photo: Italian workers at the Angelus thank the Pope for defending their jobs.
At the Sunday Angelus, the Pope reiterates that human life must be defended at every stage:
'Man's aim is God'
The other papal news in this issue: the Holy Father's address to the plenary assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family. Also,
two readings of Caritas in veritate from a Pavia symposium; and an essay on geopolitics in the Pope's perspective by the Italian
foreign minister (all three articles translated and posted in the preceding posts on this thread). There is a prominent Page 1
commentary on the work of the Pontifical Council for Ministry for Health Care Workers, which celebrates its 25h anniversary this year;
and in international news, Ukraine elects a new president, marking the end of the so-called Orange Revolution; and Iran's Ahmadinejad
once again says Iran is ready to cooperate with the UN regarding its nuclear program.


No scheduled events for the Holy Father today.



Secretariat of State denies
media speculation on its role
in Boffo resignation

After almost three weeks of silence, the Vatican Secretariat of State issued an unsigned statement today flatly denying the involvement of Cardinal Bertone or the editor of L'Osservatore Romano in the events that led to the resignation of Avvenire editor Dino Boffo last September, and stating that the Holy Father reaffirms his confidence in his co-workers and hopes that the interest of justice and truth will be served in this affair.