Luigi Accattoli, retired senior Vatican correspondent of Corriere della Sera, was the lay presentor of the Pope's new book a tht eVatican news conference this morning.
A guided tour of
Benedict XVI's papal laboratory
by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from
Nov. 23, 2010
I would suggest to my journalist colleagues to read this book as a guided tour to the papal laboratory of Benedict XVI and the vital world of Joseph Ratzinger.
Decisive in this sense was the sudden call to Peter's Chair that caught him by surprise that afternoon in April 2005, wearing a black sweater which he wore under his white papal robes to appear to the world from the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.
This guided tour tells us something about the man in the black sweater, the Pope in the white robes, and the relationship between the two. My presentation will focus on this human side of how he performs as Pope.
We see Joseph-Benedict who, depending on the topic, doubts and questions himself, or is absolutely is sure of himself and his words, who informs us of how he comes to a decision. who admits to errors and second thoughts, or allows us a glimpse of some future orientation.
We can best grasp this man who was called to be Pope in the attitude he takes about the publication of his two books on Jesus of Nazareth, that he offers not as documents of his Magisterium but as a statement about his own personal search for the Face of the Lord.
And in these six hours of friendly conversation with Peter Seewald, he shows his own willingness to do everything he can to win over someone somehow.
He tells us from the beginning that "the Pope can have personal opinions that are wrong" and though he certainly has 'the faculty of making the final decision' in matters of faith, "this doesn't mean that he can continue to produce infallibilities" (pp, 23ff).
It is perhaps in this statement that we must seek the first root of this interview-book in which the Pope faces even thorny subjects with an attitude of freedom and daring - daring in how he bears witness to the faith, that is.
In many instances (pp. 28, 135ff, 161ff, 166, 168) he ponders his 83 years and how many more the Lord will give him, and in our presence, so to speak, he reasons out the appropriateness of resignation when and if he ever finds it impossible to carry out his task.
But on the same page, he denies ever having considered resigning because of the uproar over pedophile priests: "You cannot escape at the moment of danger".
We know that all contemporary Popes - from Pius XII onwards - had faced up to this problem of a papal resignation, but no one had ever done so in public before this.
With similar directness, he asks himself - almost asking us, too - "if it is right at all to be offering oneself to the crowd and be acclaimed as though one were a star", knowing full well that "people have a great desire to see the Pope" (p 110).
He explains the reasons for using the pronouns 'we' or 'I' (p 124) and admits that he is 'timorous' about making personnel decisions (p 125).
He speaks amply on the conflict between the Christian faith and our time, but in at least two places, he acknowledges with convincing words "the morality of modernity' and the existence of 'a good and just modernity' (p 40 and 87).
To these positive statements, one must also add the passages in which he acknowledges the religious lies of the past: of the 'atrocities' committed in the name of truth (p 79) to the 'wars of religion' (p 84) and to the 'rigorisms' with respect to corporality which resulted in 'making man fearful' of their bodies (p 15).
In Christianity's confrontation with modernity, he says it is necessary at every step to ask oneself both "in what way secularism may be right" as well as when it must be resisted (p 88).
Occasionally, he uses fighting words. "So many stupidities have been disseminated, even by supposedly well-informed theologians", he says, commenting on the reaction after he lifted the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops (p 42).
He describes the life of Marcial Maciel Degollado, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, as having been 'adventurous, wasteful, and strange' (p 65).
When the interviewer refers to the argument that "2000 years ago, it would have been unthinkable" for Jesus "to call women to priesthood", the Pope exclaims: "That's just stupid, because at the time, the world was full of priestesses" (p 209).
[All the pagan cults had priestesses, but not the Jews.]
In one of the most felicitous pages, he used a creative expression to help understand the mystery of the Resurrection: "In the resurrection, God was able to create a new form of existence - beyond the biosphere and the noosphere, he brought into being a new sphere, in which man and the world reach unity with God".
[I agree! When I first came across that passage in one of the samplers, I felt shivers down my spine. It is perhaps better than his metaphor of nuclear fission in Cologne 2005. Joseph Ratzinger meets Teilhard de Chardin. What a great metaphysical theologian he would be if he were so minded!]
In the past, he had described love as the 'trace' of the Trinity inscribed in the human genome (June 7, 2009), or found inventive similarities between the Eucharistic mystery and nuclear fission (Aug. 21, 2005.
[There you are!]
He is not afraid to use expressions like 'the sinfulness of the Church" or "how poor and miserable the Church is" ( p 241). The word 'filth' to describe the sin that is within the Church - which was already typical of Ratzinger as theologian and cardinal, from his
Introduction to Christianity (1968) to the Via Crucis of 2005 - recurs at least three times in this book in connection with clerical pedophilia and the 'enormous shock' that it was to him (pp 44ff and 59).
On the subject of this filth, he repeatedly acknowledges the positive role of the media, which he has done on other occasions but never so explicitly: "If only for the fact that they brought the truth to light, we must be grateful" (pp 49 and 61). But he also adds one of the most striking aphorisms in the book: "Because the evil came from within the Church, others could turn it against her" (p. 49).
When the occasion arises, he answers with a dry Yes or No, and answers those questions that we journalists love to ask when we have the chance: He says he understands those who "leave the Church in protest" because of the scandals (p 55). He says he would not have lifted Mons. Williamson's excommunication without further investigation had he known about his Holocaust negationism (p 174). And of Williamson himself, he notes that "He was never a Catholic in the proper sense of the term - he was Anglican, and from there, he went directly to Lefebvre" (p 175).
He explains the course that led him to lifting the Lefebvrians' excommunication, pointing out that he followed the same criteria used for the Chinese bishops who had been ordained without papal mandate, and that this solution for the Lefebvrians had been decided before his Pontificate: "Already under John Paul II, during a meeting of all the dicastery heads, it was decided to revoke their excommunication if they ever requested it in writing", because it would be tantamount to their 'acknowledgment' of the Pope (p 42 and 174).
He explains with precision the reasoning for the changes he made to the Good Friday prayer for the Jews (p 155). He defends Pius XII and calls him one of the great ones among the 'righteous', and explains how he ordered a review of all the archival material pertaining to Pius XII's wartime activities before approving the decree proclaiming his 'heroic virtues' (p 157ff). He also describes what led him to advocate by example that the faithful receive Communion kneeling, and on the tongue (p 219).
With caution and courage, he describes how he is seeking a pragmatic way through which missionaries and other Church workers can help defeat the AIDS pandemic without approving - but also without excluding, in special cases - the use of condoms (pp 160ff).
He reaffirms the 'prophetic' character of Paul VI's encyclical
Humanae vitae but he does not hide there is true difficulty in 'finding humanly practicable ways' to carry out that prophecy, and acknowledges that "in this field (artificial contraception), many things have to be rethought and expressed in new ways" (pp 203-207).
He is confident about possible developments in the 'coming home' of Anglican groups to the Catholic Church, and is almost curious to find out "up to what point they will be able to safeguard their own tradition and way of life" (p 142), which includes married priests.
The Pope does not speak of it, but in other pages, on the subject of celibacy, he says that he 'can understand' how some bishops may 'reflect' about the possibility of ordaining even married men, but adds: "The difficulty comes when one must determine how such a coexistence should be configured" (p 208).
[Sorry, that's not very clear but it's the best I can do. I'd like to know what it was in the original German, or how it was translated in the English edition.]
He says he is "very optimistic because Christianity is facing a new dynamic" which will perhaps lead it to take on "a different cultural aspect" (p 90ff); but also 'disappointed' because "the general tendency in our time is to be hostile to the Church" (183).
Perhaps the most bitter statement in the book is the hostility he feels in his own country: "Among German Catholics, there is a considerable number of persons who, one might say, are only waiting for a chance to strike at the Pope" (p 179).
He dreams that the faithful might recover the 'simplicity' and 'radicality' of the Gospel and of Christianity - these terms recur at least six times and demonstrate what he says is the greatest gift that he can ask of the Lord: "We must go forward with what was begun [by John Paul II - "we are weaving the same piece of cloth"] and to understand the tragedy of our time, remain firm in the Word of God as the decisive word, and at the same time, give Christianity that simplicity and depth without which we cannot function" (p 101; also 114ff, 231ff, 242).
This guided tour to the papal laboratory touches other rooms, but what we have traversed suffices to give an image of a Pontificate that is rich with invocations to God and questions for men.
Reading the interview will help to understand - and if possible, to love - the world of Joseph Ratzinger, his singular destiny as a person, and his service to the Church.
11/24/10
P.S.
In his blog today, Accattoli calls attention to his presentation text which is on the Vatican website, and adds a personal sidelight:
Meeting the Pope
after the presentation
Translated from
Nov. 24, 2010
At the presentation, seated in the front row was don Georg, the Pope's private secretary. At 12 noon, he took us all to the private library of the Pope in the Apostolic Palace - the five of us who made the presentation (Peter Seewald, Mons. Fisichella, Fr. Lombardi, Fr. Costa of LEV, and myself), and the publishers of the
17 other language editions.
[So, more editions are in the works other than the 12 originally annouced.]
When it was my turn to shake hands with the Pope, we had this brief exchange:
B16: Buon giorno, Signore Accattoli. I thank you for your effort to read the book.
LA: And I thank you for the opportunity I was given to read it in advance...
B16: Now you are retired...
LA: Yes, so I was able to read it at leisure...
B16 That was what I dreamed of, too. To go into retirement and be able to read at leisure, but that has not been possible.
Following me in line was don Giuseppe Costa, the Salesian director of the Vatican publishing house:
GC: Holiness, this is the Italian language edition, and I beg your pardon for the errors in translation...
B16: Thank you for all the work you did. Thank you..
GC: Holiness, I apologize for the errors which we are correcting in the first reprint...
B16: I thank you for your work...
I took from this that the Pope was not worked up about the errors. Which moreover, do not really keep from understanding what he meant. Only the case of the 'prostituta' instead of 'prostituto' could have been problematic, but Fr. Lombardi cleared that up authoritatively at the news conference, when he said he spoke to the Holy Father on Monday about this, who authorized him to say that his reasoning in the specific passage applied to both sexes.
******
PPS
As I have not yet had time to get organized for my first entry today, let me just post here first this sad news...
Death in the papal household:
Say a prayer for Emmanuela...
Translated and adapted from
Nov. 24, 2010
One of the Pope's four housekeepers, Emmanuela Camagni, a lay sister of Communione e Liberazione, has died. She was hit by a car last night on via Nomentana in Rome, and suffered severe cranial injury. Attempts to save her by surgery proved futile. She died in the early hours today. She was a native of Cesena on the central eastern coast of Italy.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/11/2010 15:43]