I am confused - but pleasantly so. This unsigned piece comes under the newspaper's rubric 'Telegraph View', as opposed to 'Private View' which are opinions epxressed by individuals who sign their name. Does it mean that this is the editorial position of the newspaper? The sheer commonsense logic of it - and the fact that there is not a single negative statement in it about the Church or the Pope - seem almost miraculous! Deo gratias for this...
The success of the Pope's visit
matters to all of us
Any attempts to humiliate the Pontiff
during his visit would damage Britain
06 Aug 2010
We are now little more than a month away from the first state visit to Britain by a Pope. On September 16, Benedict XVI will fly to Scotland, where he will be received by the Queen at Holyrood House.
His predecessor, Pope John Paul II, also met Her Majesty when he visited this country in 1982 – a historic meeting, but essentially a courtesy call during a pastoral visit to the Catholics of Britain.
This time, the Queen will be playing the formal role of host to a fellow head of state, who is also the spiritual leader of a billion people.
Pope Benedict XVI will be, to use the traditional phrase, the honoured guest of the British people. But will he be honoured – or will his enemies in public life use the opportunity to humiliate him?
One might imagine that this Pope would be safer from attack than his predecessor. Old-fashioned anti-Popery is not the force that it was in 1982, because
the community of anti-papal fundamentalists has shrunk, along with the Christian community in general.
But alongside religious indifference has arisen a strident secularism that actively despises Christianity. (On the whole it is too nervous to attack Islam.)
According to this school of thought, Roman Catholicism is the most contemptible of Churches, and its leader, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the ideal target for criticism.
Like millions of German men born in the 1920s, he was dragooned into the Hitler Youth and served in the German Army at the end of the Second World War. This allows his cruder critics to label him, libellously, as a Nazi.
His more sophisticated critics argue that, as a senior cardinal, he covered up child abuse. This charge – levelled obsessively by sections of the media – falls apart under scrutiny.
Moreover, since taking office, Benedict XVI has done far more than John Paul II to address this scandal. Even so, a double misconception has taken hold.
First, that the Pontiff is complicit in crimes of paedophilia; second, that in welcoming him here, the Government, and therefore the taxpayer, is turning a blind eye to wicked abuse.
It was Gordon Brown who initiated this state visit, but it falls to the current Prime Minister to ensure its success. Already David Cameron has saved it from organisational chaos by appointing Lord Patten of Barnes to co-ordinate the secular and religious aspects of the exercise.
More needs to be done, however. Freedom of speech must be respected; but it would be wrong for the licence fee or any other public money to be used to pay for biased and mean-spirited attacks on the Pope.
Both the BBC and the Government set great store by "celebrating other cultures". Benedict XVI's arrival is an opportunity to celebrate a culture that planted our Christian roots; for it was a Pope who sent St Augustine to Britain.
This state invitation does not require Anglicans and other Christians to recognise papal authority.
But, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recognises,
if Benedict XVI is greeted with hostility and manufactured scandals, then British Christianity as a whole will be weakened. And, in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world, our national reputation will be damaged.
The Pope's visit is more than a great event for Catholics: it is a test of Britain's professionalism, hospitality, tolerance and maturity.
Bishops and Pope will pose
for historic photograph at Oscott
By Anna Arco
Friday, 6 August 2010
When Pope Benedict XVI goes to St Mary’s College in Oscott near Birmingham at the end of his visit to Britain, he will sit at the middle of a circle of bishops for a photograph that will recreate a historic moment in the British Church’s history.
Left, the chapel at Oscott; right, the historic painting.
The painting, which will be recreated with Pope Benedict at its heart features the first Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster Nicholas Wiseman and other bishops. Cardinal Newman is also part of the meeting, which was the first Provincial Synod of Westminster to take place after the hierarchy was restored in 1850.
Pope Pius IX issued a papal bull
Universalis Ecclesiae establishing the hierarchy in England. Until then Britain had been treated as mission territory.
Cardinal Wiseman was called to Rome where he was told he would become Archbishop of Westminster. He stirred up anti-Catholic sentiment in England when he issued his first pastoral letter about the restoration of the hierarchy from Rome entited From out of the Flaminian Gate.
The meeting depicted in the painting took place in 1852 at Oscott. At the event, Cardinal Newman preached his now famous Second Spring sermon about the return of English Catholicism.
In 2002, the bishops of England and Wales also sat for a portrait photograph based on the painting to commemorate the 150th anniversary of that first Synod of Westminster.
Oscott is the seminary of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, and serves the dioceses of England and Wales.
The meeting with the bishops of England and Wales will be the last event on the final day of the Pope's visit to England.
A few more items from the online Shop:
The program booklet, the Swarowski crystal bracelet, and folding icons of the Holy Father and Blessed Newman.
Prayer cards:
I must confess I am taken aback by the prayer on the papal card! Is there a theological basis to invoke a living person, to pray to a living person? My idea of a prayer card for the Pope would be a prayer that we, the faithful, can say for him, not to ask him for anything.
Some commentators have gone to town on the subject of tackiness in most Catholic devotional items. I have to read up somewhere on the psychology behind the creation of kitsch and schlock. Mind you, in the realm of religion, it's not limited to Catholic tschotchkes.
But at a certain point, kitsch can actually become'attractive'. I am thinking of the colorful panoply of Hindu ceramic tchotchkes depicting the remarkable pantheon of Hindu divinities, both anthropomorphic and zoomorphic, that one can acquire very cheaply outside most Hindu temples in India. They are wonderful inexpensive cultural souvenirs, and if one were so minded, they can well be used as teaching aids for a crash cultural course in Hinduism 101.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/08/2010 11:25]