BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Wednesday, December 14, Third Week of Advent

ST. JUAN DE LA CRUZ (John of the Cross) (Spain, 1541-1591)
Carmelite, Reformer, Mystic, Theologian, Poet, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on February 16, 2011, to this towering figure from 16th century Spain.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2011/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20110216...
There is probably no spiritual partnership as blessed and endowed with grace as that of the two great mystics and writers who flowered in the Spain of the Counter-Reformation - Teresa de Jesus and Juan de la Cruz, both sprung from the soil of Castile, the female and male faces of 16th century spirituality. Contemporaries and friends, they worked together to reform the Carmelite Order and experienced the fate of all reformers who are rejected by the establishment. Juan's life was a true identification with the Cross from which he took his name, producing his best poems and writings while languishing in prison, turning his 'dark night of the soul' into luminous prose and verse that continue to be models of mystical theology as well as undying literature.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/121411.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - At the Aula Paolo VI, the Holy Father reflects on Jesus's praying before he performed his miracles such as the healing of the deaf-mute recounted in the Gospel of Mark and raising Lazarus from death. He pointed out the profound link between Jesus's divine relationship with the Father from whom he derives his powers and his human compassion for the suffering of his fellowmen.


OR today.

Papal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica to celebrate the bicentennial of independence for the Latin American nations
'A new vocation for hope'
The Holy Father announces he will travel to Mexico and Cuba before Easter next year
Other Page 1 news: An editorial on the presence of the Latin American national flags at St. Peter's at the Monday Mass; and stories on the annual awarding of the Nobel Prizes in Oslo, with a tribute to this year's Nobel Prize for Literature, the 80-year-old Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer; European Council president says recent European accord on uniform budgetary regulations do not suffice for stability, but new measures are needed to make the economy grow again; President Obama meets the Iraqi Prime Minister in Washington as the US prepares to withdraw its last 6,000 soldiers from Iraq in the next few days.




A most unpleasant shock in reviewing the papacy-and-Vatican headline summaries online yesterday was the alacrity with which the Anglophone media played up an AP story whose headline every outlet adapted verbatim: "Mexican worshippers underwhelmed by papal visit".

The Daylife roundup had no less than seven pages of sumamries like the above, purveying a mean-spirited story in which the AP writer extrapolates the comments elicited from a couple of pilgrims and a storekeeper to draw the fallacious conclusion that all the millions of pilgrims who came to honor Our Lady of Guadalupe at her shrine outside Mexico City on Monday were all 'underwhelmed' by the news that the Pope would visit Mexico; and on the testimony of the aforementioned shopkeeper, that no one is interested in Benedict XVI compared to his predecessor, whose merchandise are bestsellers whereas the interest in Benedict XVI is so insignificant there are even no Benedict items for sale. The story is in the same denigratory vein as preparatory stories from Lourdes before the Pope visited in September 2008 - so negative that one almost feared there would only be a scattering of pilgrims to welcome Benedict XVI! Yet how can one forget the fervent pilgrims who thronged the Marian procession and the two papal Masses in Lourdes... The Schadenfreude dripping from the AP story on the Mexico visit is so patent it is disgusting. And it is very sad, indeed, when any Catholic takes the kind of partisan favoritism regarding Popes as the AP writer describes. As if devotion to one Pope means disregard or dismissal of any other Pope, who is as much the Vicar of Christ as the 'favorite', and in the case of Benedict XVI, he is, of course, the only Vicar of Christ on earth at this time. To disregard or dismiss him is to disregard or dismiss Christ - or at the very least, not to understand what the role of the Pope is.