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Among the 'embarrassment of riches' one has to choose from these days in terms of personal tributes to the Holy Father, I have chosen to translate first excerpts from a new interview book with the Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois, that Beatrice has very kindly shared on her site.
I gave given it translation priority over a birthday letter to the Holy Father written by Cardinal Joachim Meisner for today's issue of BILD, because Cardinal Vingt Trois is not and never was considered a 'Ratzingerian' as Cardinal Meisner, who also has a deep and long-lasting personal friendship with Joseph Ratzinger.
But I must also point out that Cardinal Vingt Trois was one of the very first cardinals, in the Roman Curia or out of it, who spoke out promptly for Benedict XVI when the current media-rigged outcry first began, and that even in the matter of Summorum Pontificum which most French bishops oppose, he eventually indicated his 'communion with the Successor of Peter'...
Below is my translation of Beatrice's intro and the excerpt she shares with us:
Cardinal Vingt-Trois speaks about
Benedict XVI in a new book
Under the title Une mission de liberte, Cardinal Vingt Trois has just published through Denoel [publishing house] an interview book with an 'atheist' journalist, Pierre Jouve....
This is not the place to discuss Cardinal Vingt-Trois, so I will limit myself to his responses about his relations with Benedict XVI.
The cardinal is not a 'mediatic' man, he is an introvert, he is not expansive, he does not seek to 'seduce' his listener, which is in his favor....
Right photo: Benedict XVi and Cardinal Vingt-Trois outside Notre Dame Cathedral at an encounter with French youth in September 2008.
The choice of an atheist interviewer was perhaps judicious, because readers cannot say that the cardinal gets a free ride as they could if the interviewer were a Catholic...
Although I consider it positive that the cardinal does not aim to seduce, I also regret somewhat his reserve when he speaks about the Pope. Even if his admiration is clear - there are even some beautiful passages - one does not sense real sympathy. I would have appreciated more warmth....
Here is the only place where the Pope is discussed....
What are your ties with Benedict XVI?
We know each other, but not intimately. I met him several times for one-on-one conversations before he became Pope and afterwards. It is a very pleasant experience to talk to him. He is very cultured, courteous and sensitive.
Do you feel close to him?
I do not have the academic credentials nor the intellectual caliber of Joseph Ratzinger, so on this level, we are not in the same category. But because of this, I admire him all the more.
Is it difficult to make an appointment with him?
The Pope is not inaccessible, but he follows a schedule of audiences which is relatively limited. At 82, he cannot be expected to meet people ten hours a day. So his audiences are limited to a minimum, I would say, to the inevitable.
He gives priority to the bishops who come on ad-limina visit, when they come once every five years to report to the Pope. He meets with each one individually, and the Pope has long conversations with them.
He receives visitors of state because he has to. [I agree with Beatrice's parenthetical comment that one cannot really say this, since "the Pope appears to enjoy the fact that his study is a crossroads for political and intellectual personalities"]. And he meets with his co-workers.
If I have a serious matter to take up with him, I can always ask for an audience, though I cannot always be sure that he will see me within two weeks.
What is the difference between Benedict XVI and John Paul II?
Benedict XVI is a theologian and professor above all else. [I disagree. I have always thought he is a priest, in persona Christi, first and foremost.]
Like him, John Paul II was also a university professor, a theologian, a philosopher, a teacher, an intellectual, but he had a different personality. Joseph Ratzinger is truly the product of the German university in all its splendor.
They are two personalities who are completely different in their origin, their history, their culture, their personal itinerary. And each of them, in his own way, is exceptional. Karol Wojtyla in Poland and Joseph Ratzinger in Germany both had considerable personal visibility before coming to Rome.
Benedict XVI dedicated the greater part of his life to teaching and research. When he became Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is also a domain of research, it did not change his role in this respect. He remained at the heart of the Church's intellectual investigations.
And he continues to work this way, to reflect, in publishing his books. It's inescapable with Benedict XVI. It would be wrong to see him as other than a professor. [As Beatrice says: "With all due respect to the cardinal, I believe that Benedict XVI has become above all a Pastor, and he has not stopped proving that".]
He is a pedagogue, a searcher, who has been placed into the position of Universal Pastor. But his pedagogical qualities and for inter-personal relationship with others allow him to speak to many different audiences.
As we all do, he does his best with who he is, with his history, with his personal temperament. So it is also up to us to see that we cannot ask him to be someone else. It is fortunate for the Church that she can have as her leader personalities who are so rich as well as so different. Each one brings a new approach, a new way of understanding and of acting. So it will be, even for those who follow after them.
But in any case, Benedict XVI seems less gifted for communication than John Paul II.-
This Pope does not have an actor's charisma. And thank God, he does not try to act! But even if he is not an actor in the theatrical sense, he is truly able to reach the crowd - through an interior contact, an inner accessibility that people can feel.
He is a man made for personal contact, completely available and accessible to duscussion, to dialog, perfectly courteous and respectful, a pleasure to be with. He is not very expansive but he always expresses himself thoughtfully, never in an ill-considered manner.
When we were preparing for his trip to France, I sent him notes in order to present the situations that he would find himself in. He went over them with me, after which I heard nothing more about it for three or four months. But when he arrived in France, it was clear he had integrated my notes without needing to ask me for further explanations.
We should accept that that is how he functions. He receives reports, assimilates them, makes them his, but he is always himself. He has an interiority, a profundity of expression, a refinement of sensibility that are truly singular. As an artist, he feels things and finds the way to express them.
I have a particular memory: Not long after I was named Archbshop of Paris, I had to go to Rome for John Paul II's funeral. After the funeral Mass offered by Cardinal Ratzinger, I went back to the French seminary where I was staying, and I said to myself with a smile, "What a pity he is 78! He would make such a good Pope!"
I think that for someone normally reserved and 'not expansive', Cardinal Vingt Trois's portrait of the Benedict XVI he knows is unexceptionable, and he ends it with a perfect anecdote!
P.S. Cardinal Ratzinger set a trend for the interview book with The Ratzinger Report which he did with Vittorio Messori and the two subsequent ones with Peter Seewald. To the point that John Paul II himself adapted the format in his own interview book with Messori. Last year Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini used it in his interview book with a German Jesuit.
And here is Cardinal Meisner's letter, throughout which he addresses the Pope in the familiar form of the second person singular
- 'du' instead of 'Sie' - Benedict XVI told his German cardinal friends that they must continue to address him as they did before he became Pope.
CARDINAL MEISNER'S
BIRTHDAY LETTER
TO THE POPE
April 16, 2010
Cardinal Meisner with the Pope on April 22, 2005.
Dear Holy Father!
Today, April 16, you will mark your 83rd birthcay, and three days later, the sixth year of your Pontificate will begin.
Looking back over the five years of your Pontificate, I naturally have before my eyes your visit to Cologne for World Youth Day a few months after you inaugurated your work as the Successor of St. Peter, and your visit the following year to your Bavarian homeland.
In view of the many attacks and the gloating that for some time has beset our Church and especially your person, it might seem that in the meantime, there is a totally different attitude towards you – no longer ‘Wir sind Papst’. But you surely must know that many many people in Germany - above all, in the Church here in our country - are as happy as they have been to have a Pope like you!
You know that the accusation of wanting to turn the Church back to before the Second Vatican Council is downright ridiculous, especially since you are, more than ever, one of the few still living eyewitnesses to this important event, at which you worked as a theological expert with my predecessor Cardinal Frings.
We bishops also must thank you especially because you have brought about a new style of brotherly collegiality. You have called us not only to Bishops’ Synodal assemblies, but you have alro written us enlightening letters on important events.
Above all, countless men consider themselves richly gifted with your words and your writings like Deus caritas est but even with works you wrote before 2005!
I can still remember being with you at your home a week before your election: You were at your desk, almost hidden behind a giant pile of pending documents that your saintly predecessor was no longer able to work upon. A mountain of documents to be quarried, representing the burden of responsibility. At that time, I really felt very sorry for you.
With your election as the Successor of Peter, the responsibility grew far greater, but obviously, God’s mercy also grows. “Our joy in the Lord is our strength” – in you, we experience these Biblical words.
That is why not just the bishops and not just Germans feel bound to you with familiar warmth. From this spiritual communion, we send you our best wishes and promise you our continuing prayers.
Since your first visit as Pope to our cathedral, when you extolled Cologne, and since Cologne residents have never had an inferiority complex, we feel justified to say, as they said in medieval times, “Cologne is the ever-loyal daughter of the Holy Roman Church”. Especially so on your feast days!
In warmest communion, I greet you on your birthday.
+JOACHIM CARDINAL MEISNER
Also from today's BILD:
Berlin collage artist Lenzner, who created a pop art lithograph based on Bild's WIR SIND PAPST 2005 headline, presented one of the lithographs to the Holy Father after the GA last Wednesday.
The Pope's birthday featured on a front page that leads off with the literal volcanic ash fallout from Iceland and the resulting chaos on all flights in Europe.
The Marktl schoolchildren on the video singing a birthday greeting for the Pope in front of the natal house:
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/04/2010 02:32] |