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Saturday, December 11, Second Week of Advent
ST. DAMASUS (POPE DAMASUS I, 366-384) (b Lusitania [Portugal] ca 305, d Rome 384)
The son of a Roman priest, Damasus was described by his secretary St. Jerome as
“an incomparable person, learned in the Scriptures, a virgin doctor of the virgin
Church, who loved chastity and heard its praises with pleasure.” He served Pope
Liberius and was elected to succeed him in 366. But opponents elected an anti-Pope
Ursinus, and violent battles between the two camps followed, that ended only after
Valentinian became emperor and exiled Ursinus. Damasus commissioned Jerome to
translate the entire Bible into what became the first standard version of all 72 books,
the Vulgate. Damasus is also remembered for uncovering the Roman catacombs to pay
proper homage to the early Christian martyrs. He defended Christian orthodoxy
against Arianism and other heresies and was upheld by the Council of Constantinople
in 382. He strengthened the faith after it became the official religion of empire
with his liturgical and esthetic enhancement of the churches of Rome, and defended
the rights of the Papacy in the imperial setting.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/121110.shtml
OR today.
The only papal story in this issue is the Pope's meeting yesterday with the President of the Ukraine. Other Page 1 stories: Uncertainty in Cancun over whether the international conferenc on climate change will be able to agree on any meaningful measures, just as it failed to do last year in Copenhagen; a commentary on the trend in the US to legalize the use of medical marijuana points out that the single substances responsible for any perceived medical effects such as pain reduction do not justify the harmful effects of all the other active ingredients in cannabis; student protests continue in London against planned university tuition hikes; and the African Union suspends the Ivory Coast from all AU activities because the defeated president will not accept the election results . In the inside pages, a major article on the Vatican initiative called STOQ (science, theology and the ontological quest) with lectures on man and his place in the cosmos, in the light of continuing astrophysical discoveries; a lecture by Cardinal Sandri on the cooperation of the Christian churches of Europe in the new evangelization, given at a seminar on the cooperation between the Holy See and the Ukraine to preserve a Christian Europe; and the preface by Cardinal Dsiwisz to a new book that puts together John Paul II's homilies on Christmas from when he was Archbishop of Cracow through his years as Pope.
No events announced for the Holy Father today.
VATICAN STATEMENT
ON WIKILEAKS DISCLOSURES
The Vatican Press office released this statement today:
Without venturing to evaluate the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences, the Holy See Press Office observes that part of the documents published recently by Wikileaks concerns reports sent to the U.S. State Department by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.
Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials. Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind.
NB: The MSM today is full of the leaked documents which, on the whole, do not substantially reveal anything that was not already reported in the news at the time individual events were happening or developing. The only new element is the subjective comments attached by US embassy officials in Rome to their reports.
- From a quick review of what's online so far about the Wikileaked documents, the only new information seems to be a warning to the Vatican by the UK ambassador to the Holy See last year that the Pope's decision to facilitate the entry of disaffected Anglicans to the Catholic Church would trigger violence in the UK. None of that happened, of course, but was Ambassador Campbell perhaps simply reacting literally to a now-infamous London Times headline regarding 'Vatican tanks parked in Westminster'? The US State Department cables disclosed so far appear to show that many diplomats are no better equipped to evaluate current affairs than the average informed man on the street.
- The most potentially 'damaging' of the leaked cables - the one regarding the Vatican's 'refusal to cooperate' with the Murphy Commission in Ireland, already reported and commented on at the time - is already being re-spun and re-headlined in the world media, but a review of the lengthy report-cum-assessment of the affair by the present US ambassador to the Vatican actually puts the Vatican in a good light. The UK's The Guardian has reproduced Diaz's report:
www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/251110
- It doesn't pay to reproduce the news items on these leaks, but the ones on which the MSM have focused so far, besides the two above are:
o The Pope helped to free British sailors held by Iran in 2008 (known), but the UK government was reluctant to acknowledge the Pope's role publicly (not previously known)
o The Vatican wanted Turkey kept out of the European Union (a misleading headline, since the cables actually trace the Vatican's position - as opposed to Cardinal Ratzinger's personal opinion - from 'no objection provided Turkey fulfills all the conditions about respect for human rights, including religous freedom' to 'the best arrangement would be a separate EU agreement with Turkey outside of membership'.
o The Vatican is so averse to modern communications technology that Fr. Lombardi is the only Vatican official to have a Blackberry and most Vatican officials do not even have an e-mail address. [Very likely a malicious exaggeration. As for e-mail, most of the Vatican organisms on the Vatican site post their e-mail addresses, and even the Curial officials older than 60 (i.e., 'old dogs' who can't be expected to learn 'new tricks') surely have qualified subordinates handling their IT needs.]
- In his Friday column, John Allen on NCReporter posts his recent interviews with the OR editor and with Mons. Tobin, the new #2 man at the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life etc, which oversees religious orders throughout the world.
ncronline.org/blogs/all-things-catholic/thoughts-rome-vatican-newspaper-religi...
IMHO, the interview with Vian does not confront the major journalistic problems with the OR and generally serves to provide Vian a self-serving platform. Tobin, on the other hand, makes nice with the sisters' orders under apostolic visitation in the United States.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 11/12/2010 18:01] |