BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Pope uses Holy Thursday homily
to chastise dissident priests
By Nicole Winfield


vatican city , April 5 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI denounced priests who have questioned Church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying Thursday they were disobeying his authority to try to impose their own ideas on the church.

[Winfield's statement 'disobeying his authority' is blatant misrepresentation of what the Pope clearly said, namely "disregarding definitive decisions of the Church’s Magisterium". Nothing in the Pope's statements imply - or would ever imply - in any way that he is accusing the dissidents of disobeying his authority - since the authority is not his, as by personal title, but that of the Church.]

Benedict made the rare and explicit criticism from the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises they made when ordained.

In 2006, a group of Austrian priests launched the Pfarrer Initiative, a call to disobedience aimed at abolishing priestly celibacy and opening up the clergy to women to relieve the shortages of priests.

Last June, the group essentially threatened a schism, saying the Vatican's refusal to hear their complaints left them no choice but to "follow our conscience and act independently."

They issued a revised call to disobedience in which they said parishes would celebrate Eucharistic services without priests, that they would let women preach, and they pledged to speak out publicly and frequently for a female and a married priesthood.

The group now reportedly numbers more than 300 Austrian priests and deacons as well as supporters in other countries, and its influence has grown to such an extent that top Austrian bishops met with Vatican officials in January to discuss how to handle them, Italian news reports said.

So far, neither the Vatican nor the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, have imposed any canonical penalties on them.

In his homily, Benedict said the dissidents claim to be motivated by concern for the Church. But he suggested that in reality they were just making "a desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with (their) own preferences and ideas."

"We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date," he said. "But is disobedience really a way to do this?"

He said Jesus always followed true obedience to God's will, not "human caprice."

The head of the initiative, Rev. Hellmut Schueller, downplayed the severity of Benedict's message and said the Pope was merely asking for reflection on whether disobedience can reform the church.

In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Schueller noted that Benedict didn't forbid what the dissident priests were doing or advocating. {Oh, please! What was the Pope supposed to do? Issue explicit prohibitions from the pulpit on Maundy Thursday? None are so deaf as those who will not listen to anything but their own will!]

"We are listening with interest to this message," he said. "I cannot see it as a very sharp wording."

The members of the initiative, he said, will reflect on Benedict's words as part of a dialogue he said he hopes to open with Austrian bishops.

"We have decided to go this way because it's the way of our conscience, as faithful, and we are expressing only the opinion of the people at the base of the church."

He said the initiative did not seek to split the Church or create schism, saying the positions articulated in the call for disobedience increasingly reflected the will of ordinary Catholics.

Any divisions that are being created, he said, are between the base of the church and the hierarchy.

[Once again, of course, the AP is, in effect, giving a moral equivalence to what the Pope says in a homily to a dissident's partisan view, in which the basic flaw is to think that the Church is a democracy whose Tradition and practices can be altered at will by its 'base'! What faith deserves to be called a faith that would allow its precepts to be altered at will? That is one of the main reasons the Church of England is now foundering.]

Holy Thursday homilies are often a bit unusual in that the Pope uses them to issue direct messages to priests. In 2006, Benedict read a letter written by a cleric who was killed as he prayed in Turkey.

And on Holy Thursday in 2002, Pope John Paul II broke his silence over the explosion of the U.S. sex abuse scandal, denouncing the sins of priestly abusers and the "grave scandal" that was casting a "dark shadow of suspicion" over all priests.

Very predictably, the MSM dribbles the ball - a first sampling:



Pope assails ‘disobedience’
among priests
By RACHEL DONADIO

April 5, 2012

ROME — Striking the tone that once earned him the moniker “God’s Rottweiler,” Pope Benedict XVI in a stern Holy Thursday homily denounced “disobedience” in the Church, chastising reform-minded priests who seek the ordination of women and the abolition of priestly celibacy. [The writer gives the impression that the Pope barked out his reprimand, or that this was the first time he has ever been stern towards priests and bishops!]

Referring to recent initiatives by clerics in Austria and elsewhere, Benedict said that while such priests claim to act “for concern for the church,” they are driven by their “own preferences and ideas,” and should instead turn toward a “radicalism of obedience” — a phrase that perfectly captures the essence of the theologian Pope’s thought. [I am actually surprised Donadio grants this, even though the idea of the 'radicalism of obedience' would strike anyone who considers Benedict's use of words.]

While there was nothing new in the contents of Benedict’s message, it was one of the strongest — and most direct — speeches of a seven-year-old reign that has more often been dominated by a sexual abuse scandal, repeated tangles with other faiths and a Vatican hierarchy in disarray.

[And that is how, unfortunately, MSM will seek to characterize (and therefore diminish) the seven exalting and inspiring years of a Pontificate whose radical actions to restore the faith would appear to be completely ignored by the MSM, who prefer to see only everything negative that they themselves mostly generated.

1) The sexual abuse scandal has not dominated this Pontificate - it's the media that has made the issue 'dominate'. To begin with, most of the 'scandal' occurred before Benedict XVI became Pope.
2) What 'repeated tangles with other faiths'? The Regensburg lecture opened up a dialog with thinking Muslims for the first time in history. Outstanding issues with the Jews are fairly minor, chronic and political - the Good Friday prayer and their hostility to Pius XII. There was no 'tangle' with Anglicanism. It was the disaffected Anglicans who more than a decade ago, started asking Rome for a mechanism to convert en masse. And what could the Church of England do to stop those who wished to convert and did? And
3) What, pray, is in disarray with the Vatican hierarchy, except some unfortunate mismanagement at the Secretariat of State? Everything else is in place, and the present Roman Curia cannot possibly be faulted more than any preceding Curia in the modern age. And yet, notice how a malicious (or at the very least, hopelessly biased) writer can manage to diminish if not dismiss a Pontificate in a few choice phrases!]

It also showed Benedict, who at almost 85 has been showing his age, in fighting form as a defender of orthodoxy, favoring a smaller church of more ardent believers over a larger community that relies on diluted doctrine. [Thank you for seeing that!]

The Pope delivered his homily from a golden throne in Saint Peter’s Basilica on Holy Thursday, the day priests recall the vows they made when ordained.

He was clearly referring to an Austrian group called Preachers’ Initiative [Pfarrer in Pfarrer-Initiative means 'parish priest' not preacher], which has issued a “Call to Disobedience,” asking the Church to allow the ordination of women, to remove the obligation of priestly celibacy and to permit priests to allow divorced people to receive Communion.

The initiative was started in 2006 by Father Helmut Schüller, a former director of the Catholic aid agency Caritas in Austria, to combat a shortage of priests. Since then, more than 400 Austrian priests have endorsed him, according to media reports, including priests in the United States and across Europe. [Considering that there are 400,000 priests worldwide, 400 is truly an impressive figure, right?]

The Vatican fears that the initiative could cause a schism in the Church. For his part, Father Schüller has called the Vatican an “absolutist monarchy” and said that the Church’s resistance to change might lead to rupture anyway.

In a telephone interview on Thursday, Father Schüller said he was surprised by Benedict’s words. “But I don’t think they were very harsh. There was no threat or sanction implied,” he said.

“I think that in the history of the Church, a lot has changed, even if not always voluntarily,” Father Schüller said. “There has been new science, new technology, new practices. The teachings are always changing.” [REALLY! Name one!]

Allowing women or married men to enter the priesthood “is not a question of faith, but one of tradition,” Father Schüller added. “It is not a matter of theology, but of history and tradition. And those are constantly evolving.”

In his homily, Benedict made clear that reforms cannot go against Church doctrine. He singled out “a group of priests from a European country” who had recently “issued a summons to disobedience.”

They had done this to the point of disregarding church teaching and encouraging “women’s ordination, for which Blessed Pope John Paul II stated irrevocably that the Church has received no authority from the Lord,” Benedict said.

In 1994, John Paul issued an apostolic letter saying that that the Church “has no authority whatsoever” to ordain women, citing among its reasons that the apostles of Jesus Christ were all men.

“We would like to believe that the authors of this summons are motivated by concern for the Church, that they are convinced that the slow pace of institutions has to be overcome by drastic measures, in order to open up new paths and to bring the Church up to date. But is disobedience really a way to do this?” Benedict continued.

Striking a characteristically inquisitive [The adjective is obviously inappropriate -'rhetorical' is probably the best word for what the writer means - but the writer chose it nonetheless because it recalls the Inquisition and other dark associations that the MSM have built around the figure of Joseph Ratzinger], if yet uncompromising stance, he asked whether such moves were aimed at “true renewal,” or “do we merely sense a desperate push to do something to change the Church in accordance with one’s own preferences and ideas?”

Instead, the Pope said, Christ’s concern “was for true obedience, as opposed to human caprice.”

Benedict said that priests should look to renewal in a “radicalism of obedience,” and turn to the saints, not modern convention, for guidance.

Vatican watchers said that the Pope’s remarks pointed to a growing battle in the Catholic world. “In spite of the ‘tough’ response of the Pope, I think that the calls for reform won’t diminish, they will only grow,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert at the Italian daily Il Foglio. “It’s a problem that the Vatican will increasingly have to come to terms with.”

[Rodari notoriously takes a very a-historical, short-term view of the beat he covers. When did the Church ever not have calls for reform to one degree or other? This Austrian initiative is the latest version of the 'We are Church' manifesto and many similar dissident manifestos that have sprung up since Vatican II. None of these dissident groups have ever had the courage to leave the Church for the most obvious reasons - they will cease to have much news value once they step out, and it's not all that easy to set up a new 'church'. It's so much easier to stay within the Church and become media favorites for dissenting against a Church that MSM in general are rooting to fail, and exultantly ride a monumental ego trip with the delusion that they can change this 2000-year-old Church by thesmelves.

What a paradox that the Lefebvrians stand apart from the Church because they oppose some precepts of Vatican II, whereas the liberal dissenters set themselves apart because of a mistaken [deliberate, I think] understanding of Vatican II.]