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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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16/12/2012 15:25
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I inadvertently erased this post some time in the past few hours, and it is particularly important because Fr. Lombardi did react - almost immediately, i.e., the next day - to the downright lies told by some Italian media outlets, including La Repubblica, seeking to extrapolate from the Pope's general statements against same-sex 'marriage' in his 2013 Message for the World Day of Peace, to disseminate the canard that he supports a proposed Uganda law that would impose the death penalty for homosexuality - all because a Ugandan official known to support the proposal was among those who were presented to him in the usual 'baciamano' after the General Audience last Wednesday. [Which simply means one has enough clout somehow to pull the right strings that get you a 'privileged' section ticket at the GA, and is by no means, a sign of papal favor, much less, of endorsement.]

Anyway, the story is so ludicrous prima facie - the Church opposes the death penalty under any circumstance, to begin with - and it was only sheer unadulterated malice on the part of the usual hate-the-Church/crucify-the-Pope rabble in the Italian media that made them peddle the outright lie, if only for a day. Because it is completely unfounded, it had a very short shelf life (so I hope, and so I think, since there have been no new volleys or even repercussions from that extremely long shot).

Fr. Lombardi used his weekly editorial for Vatican Radio as the vehicle for his reply, of which the more important point is how the media tend to miss the main messages in their single-minded obsession to find something 'headline-worthy' (read 'scandalous' and 'controversial') in anything the Pope says or writes:


Benedict XVI's World Peace Day
message deserves to be read
in full and objectively


December 15, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI has given us a rich and important document in his Message for the 2013 World Day of Peace – a message that many voices within the Italian media, in particular, have presented in an extremely partial and distorted way.

This has happened because the Pope, in a short passage, returns to the vision of marriage between a man and a woman as profoundly different from radically other forms of union, and states that this difference is recognizable by human reason.

Along with other fundamental principles of a correct view of person and society, primarily the dignity of all human life, we need to defend the institution of marriage if we would build peace on solid foundations and seek the good of human society with foresight.

This is the view that the Church never tires of stressing, at a time when this point is being challenged and even attacked from several quarters in many different countries. This is all well known. It is not in the least surprising.

The reaction is therefore lacking in decent composure and sense of proportion: it consists in shouting [AND LYING SHAMELESSLY!], not in reasoning; it is intended to intimidate those who want to support this view freely in the public arena.

Not only that: such a reaction is meant to obscure many of the aspects of the Papal Message, which are of an extraordinary relevance and strength. These merit careful consideration and rather deserve to have our attention called to them.

In times of rampant unemployment, the clear statement by the Pope of the right to work as essential to the dignity of the human person sounds like a cry of alarm, calling for a much deeper and more serious reflection on the transformation of “models of development” that have brought us to where we are – models from which those principles of fraternity and solidarity, are conspicuous by their absence, along with that spirit of grateful generosity, which alone can ensure that the economic, social and political spheres of life are ordered to the authentic human good.

The Pope also forcefully recalls that the food crisis is far more serious than the financial crisis: hunger continues to spread in the world and we forget too easily. Too many people are dying of hunger.

Pope Benedict’s encyclical letter, Caritas in veritate, and John XXIII’s famous Pacem in terris, which will have its fiftieth anniversary soon, already guided us to engage in these directions.

In essence, the message says something urgent and essential for contemporary humanity, which should not be forgotten just because it also makes a reasonable case against and calls for opposition to “legal equivalence” between marriage – always and of its nature a union of one man and one woman – and “radically different forms of union”.

We invite everyone to read the document in full, and objectively.

IMHO, Fr. Lombardi's response is appropriate and relatively prompt by Vatican standards. He is not polemical and does not lock horns or get into any name-calling of the risible and pathetic but pernicious opposition. He does not threaten the Pope-haters' freedom of expression, only their facts and their motivation.

However, the Vatican should have an effective system in place for responding to the many categories and levels of vicious unfair attacks against the Pope and the Church, and not just depend on ad-hoc reactions like Fr. Lombardi's editorial. The Vatican communications people should define the trigger points for immediate response and how to calibrate such responses, so that we the faithful are not left perplexed and wondering if anyone in the Vatican will speak up for the Pope at all, and worse, why the Pope is left out there in the open with no one even trying to shield him from these periodic and too frequent assaults on his person.


The 12/15/12 issue of L'Osservatore Romano carried this editorial on the Message itself:

The Pope's peace message:
Almost a mini-encyclical

Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 12/14/12 issue of


For the breadth of its outlook, one is tempted to call Benedict XVI's Message for the World Day of Peace in 2013 a mini-encyclical.

The background for the text is provided by two events half a century ago: the start of the Second Vatican Council which opened on October 11, 1962, and Pacem in terris from 1963, the last encyclical by John XXIII which defined the four fundamentals for peaceful coexistence - truth, freedom, love and justice.

The global picture today is marked by conflicts and winds of war, caused and reinforced by phenomena that have been denounced countless times, not just by the Holy See, and which are underscored once more in the Message: from unregulated financial capitalism to terrorism, and the forms of fundamentalism and fanaticism that disfigure the true face of religion.

Nonetheless, the Pope underscores yet again, one must not be resigned to the hardships arising from the criteria of power and profit, as he relaunches one of the most effective 'slogans' coined by Paul VI, which makes for a perfect tweet: "Peace is not a dream. It is not utopia. It is possible".

A precondition for peace is an acknowledgment of the natural moral law, undermined by current tendencies that would codify arbitrary novelties such as the claimed 'rights' to abortion and to euthanasia which are clearly threats to the fundamental right to life.

In the same way, the attempts to grant juridical equivalence to forms of union that are not the natural structure of matrimony actually destabilize the institution of marriage and damage its irreplaceable social function. [Not to mention its natural function to bring children to the world!]

Explicitly, the Pope's message says that these principles are not truths of faith nor do they derive from the primordial right to religious freedom, but they are inscribed in human nature, and are recognizable by human reason and common to all mankind.

Thus, the action of the Church in promoting these principles is not 'confessional', but "it is addressed to all persons, regardless of their religious affiliation".

The Pope's emphasis is certainly nothing new, but it is very significant today as an evident confirmation of the line taken by those Catholics in some countries who have been and are capable of encoluraging - in this cultural battle in defense of principles common to all men - the convergence of believers and non-believers with diverse religious or ideological affiliations.

That is happening in France, where orthodox Christians and Protestants, Jews, Muslims and lay intellectuals have rallied to the Catholic Church position against same=sex 'marriage' [which President Hollande's government is determined to push through by next year].

Likewise, constructing peace is also aided by acknowledging the principle of conscientious objection to laws that directly threaten human dignity, like abortion and euthanasia, even as religious freedom - a theme especially dear to our sister Churches in the Orthodox world, as Patriarch Bartholomew underscored during the recent Feast of St. Andrew - must be promoted not just as freedom from constraint of any sort, but from a positive viewpoint, as the freedom to publicly express one's religion.

Alongside biopolitical issues and those that have to do with the inseparable social dimension of faith, Benedict also criticizes radical liberalism and the primacy of technocrats, while defending the right to work.

In the hope that issues like an ethical structure for markets and the global food crisis can be the focus of the international political agenda. And in the belief that the role of the family and of education must remain fundamental for peace, which truly concerns everyone.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/12/2012 05:15]
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