'Francis is fully in line
with Benedict XVI, even if
his style if very different''
Interview with Vittorio Messori
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from
March 19, 2013
"The honeymoon with Pope Francis by a certain agnostic and atheist clerical culture which is spilling over from all the media = of which Eugenio Scalfari
[publisher and former editor of Italy's most anti-Church newspaper La Repubblica] is pope - will be brusquely interrupted when the Pope starts to speak seriously about ethical matters".
Vittorio Messori, the most-translated Italian Catholic author who has been a personal friend of the two recent Popes, is absolutely certain that Papa Bergoglio is in continuity with Papa Ratzinger on Catholic teaching, even if their personal styles are very different.
He expresses this conviction in one of the articles in an instant book published by Corriere della Sera entitled
La chiesa di Francesco (The Church of Francis) and issued with the 3/19/13 issue of the newspaper (it will also be sold in news stands and bookstores) diversi.
[The title is not felicitous at all - as Benedict XVI reminded everyone again and again in the final days of his Pontificate, it is the Church of Christ. And while one understands the sense of how it is used in the book title - i.e., the Church under Pope Francis - isn't it too early to use the term, since he has only been in office a week?]
Benedict XVI, in renouncing the Pontificate, referred to the challenges that the Church faces today which require great strength to confront. What are the major challenges faced by Pope Francis?
First of all, I must make it a premise that, unlike Scalfari, it is certainly not my intention to suggest to the Pope what he ought to do. But as a humble journalist, I can say that I have always agreed with Papa Ratzinger who always said - as cardinal and Pope - that the true problem of the Church is that the faith, especially in the West, is being extinguished like a candle that is guttering out.
The true problem from which everything arises is just that - the eclipse of the faith, the fact that we no longer believe. We are no longer able to commit ourselves to the divinity of Christ, and to the life beyond death that awaits us. And in all this, the clerical intelligentsia do not help at all.
Think of the Biblicists, for example, who a-critically accepted the method invented by Protestantism that one might call agnostic - the so-called historico-critical method, according to which only what the Biblicists conclude would remain of the Gospels. If you take the Gospels seriously at all, you would be considered reactionary, but woe unto you if you do not take the Biblicists' word seriously!
That is why I have thought for so many years that the Church ought to rediscover serious apologetics that is carried out as Peter says in his letter, with obedience and respect, an apologetics that is at once calmly and rigorously reasoned.
In fact, Benedict XVI did dust off the word itself...
Apologetics as the reasons for our belief, yes. [Making clear] the reasons for our faith is the first task of the Church today, therefore, it is what the Pope must propose. I repeat, I am not giving advice to the Pope like Scalfari, but it is what Joseph Ratzinger has said all his life, and what, as cardinal and Pope, he, poor man, sought to do!
For example, his three books on JESUS OF NAZARETH are pure apologetics in the best sense: to seek to confirm the roots of the tree of faith, because it seems that Christianity has become an oak without roots.
Meanwhile, the world, including most Western Catholics, love to hear words about social commitment, about the poor...
But that is what I would call secondary Christianity. Social commitment, social work, these are good things, but if they do not come from faith, then they are meaningless. The best gift Papa Ratzinger has given us - besides the books on Jesus, which are a treasure because while he follows modern exegetical methods, he also shows that they do not at all destroy the foundations of Christianity - is the Year of Faith which began last October, and which Pope Francis must now complete.
For those who would be 'clerically correct', the term 'apologetiss' sounds bad because they think it means regression. In fact, the word has disappeared in seminaries, where it is now subsumed into 'fundamental theology'.
But in the fundamental theology that is being taught - I have looked through the textbooks used - there is noting to reinforce the faith, which, as has now become usual, is taken for granted. Instead, all sorts of fine-sounding considerations are discussed around it.
But, as Papa Ratzinger said in the Apostolic Letter with which he decreed the Year of Faith, today, bishops and priests go on about the duties of Catholics in the social, charitable and humanitarian fields, while taking the faith for granted in that no one is questioning himself about what he believes and why he believes. Very often, the faith is no longer there, even.
And so, the Church must put things right - first the faith, then morals. First, primary Christianity, which is the announcement of the kerygma
[as the term is now used, it refers to 'the irreducible essence of Christian apostolic teaching'], then secondary Christianity, which are the works - including social work - that come from accepting the kerygma.
Do you think Pope Francis will be in continuity with Benedict XVI?
Yes. Even if these days, what has been over-emphasized, almost grotesquely, are elements of 'discontinuity' - all about having returned to Domus Sanctae Marthae after the Conclave in the same minibus as other cardinals, or that he went to pay his bill at the hotel where he was staying before the Conclave (a hotel, by the way, that is owned by the Vatican and run for the benefit of visiting bishops and priests), etc.
These are rather grotesque details, and I am sure that this honeymoon between a certain agnostic and atheist clerical culture of which Eugenio Scalfari is the Pope, with which media reporting spilling over, will be brusquely interrupted soon when the Pope starts to speak on serious issues, in ethics and morals, to begin with.
He is 76, and he is not exactly a novelty as far as the things that he has said quite often, on the moral level as well as on the catechetical level. On the level of faith, he was always perfectly in agreement with Benedict XVI. So this honeymoon is destined to end with a bang.
But there is this huge emphasis on his commitment to the poor...
I think that there is great equivocation about this. The media seem to forget that all the 'social saints' of the 19th century - in Turin alone, we had Don Bosco, Cottolengo, Faa di Bruno - all those who did their best to help the poor, who sought to give material bread to the unfortunate ones who were around them, were considered in their time to be reactionaries. They were all devoted sons of Pius IX and then of Leo XIII.
Social commitment does not mean being a priest alla Don Gallo [....] or agreeing with theologians like Hans Kueng. Social holiness is all about, yes, giving material assistance if you can, but at the same time, loving, respecting and teaching the catechism of faith. And so, all the facile reporting and commentary in the media about 'social commitment' comes from not understanding anything about the dynamics of Catholicism.
Cardinal Bergoglio went into Buenos Aires's poor neighborhoods even as Don Bosco and the other Torinese saints worked among Turin's poor people. As many other saints and saintly people have done before them. Did anyone call Don Bosco an innovator?
But that Cardinal Bergoglio worked in what he calls the 'villas miserias' (poor cities) does not mean that he is contesting anything theological. Indeed, everything he has said about morals and catechism before becoming Pope was perfectly in line with Benedict XVI's thinking.
Don Bosco had a beautiful motto,
'Pane e Paradiso' (bread and paradise). Of course, one must give bread to the hungry, but they also need bread for the spirit. He took in homeless boys and cared for them, he trained them in skills so that they could go out and earn a living eventually, but all the boys were also formed with extreme attention to their catechism - catecheses which were perfectly in line with Pius IX.
These people who know nothing about the Church have immediately categorized the Pope as a 'social priest'. All very well, but wait until he starts to speak of ethics and morals - he will say exactly what Benedict XVI has been saying.
Much emphasis has also been made about his style which seems to do away with many formalities of the Papacy, seeming to forget that in his time, John Paul II caused some anxiety among his security men and his liturgical assistants...
That's all part of the grotesquerie. It is true that there are too many newspapers, too many TV channels, too much radio, giving out hyper-information obsessively, and that includes focusing on the more 'picturesque' details they can report on.
But they forget a simple fact: God created us equal but not uniform - he made each of us different from one another. Everyone has his own character, his own style, but that is not what counts in Popes.
The Pope is, above all,
magister et custos fidei, teacher and guardian of the faith - all his other functions are accessory. So I look at Papa Bergoglio as our teacher and guardian of the faith, and as long as he is that, I do not care if he has his own personal tastes and style, his own way of moving and speaking, which are all part of the extraordinary and marvelous variety that God has wanted men to be.
A Pope must not be judged by his style nor even by his character, but by what he teaches, because that is his primary task. I often cite the example of Papa Borgia (Alexander VI), who acted terribly, was very evil, but he preached well, he preached the right things. In his time, I would have followed what he taught
[because at the time, the ordinary Catholic would have had absolutely no idea of his evil life], certainly not his example. The faith he preached was very orthodox, even if it was later said that among other evils, he went to bed with his own daughter. Which is terrible, because he ought to have been consistent with what he preached. He did not, but he did his duty as Pope by preaching good doctrine.
It has also been pointed out that Pope Francis has been 'insistent' on referring to himself as the Bishop of Rome, hardly ever as Pope. I don't think that is bad in itself, In fact, I had almost forgotten that once, in an article for Corriere, I had said that I would not object if the Pontificate went back to being based at the Lateran, which is the seat of the Bishop of Rome. In fact, the Popes have been at the Vatican only for the last few centuries. Up to the Avignon exile and even for a period after that, they were based at the Lateran.
And I think one can even hypothesize now on such a transfer. By the Catholic logic of
et-et, the Pope is both the leader of the universal Church, as well as a bishop among other bishops - the bishop of what used to be the capital of the Roman empire and therefore he had the most authority.
I do not object to the emphasis on the Pope as Bishop of Rome - who exercises authority over the entire Church because of the See over which he presides - because basically, it is an aspect that we have forgotten. The Vatican only happens to be at or near the place where Peter was martyred, and apart from having the relics of Peter therein, there are no other reasons for Popes to be 'bound' there. Rather, the Pope should be bound to his 'cathedra', his seat, which is the Lateran.
But I do not see the present situation at all as Scalfari does, who maintains that Francis will finally give birth to a federal Church, something like the Lombard League [...] Imagine if Bergoglio had a federal Papacy in mind, which would make the primacy of the Pope an issue! But for him to underscore that the Pope is the Bishop of Rome means that he feels called first to tend to the sheep entrusted to him directly in the Church of Rome - and this does not raise any questions about the essential unity of the Church.
But other than Scalfari
[who has nothing to do with the Church, does not want to have anything to do with the Church which he constantly ridicules and denigrates. but is obsessed with her and thinks he alone knows best what the Church 'ought to do', there are some episcopal conferences and individual bishops who speak about 'regionalizing' the Church, advocating a 'collegiality' that would give more powers to the bishops' conferences.
And I must say that the more I look at the documents of Vatican II, the more I appreciate them. Unfortunately, we have all been misled by erroneous interpretations coming from both the left and the right.
In fact, the collegiality referred to in Vatican II is described in
Lumen gentium, which is the dogmatic constitution on the Church, and one might say, part of the Church's DNA. And according to
Lumen gentium, collegiality does not at all mean that the Church should become federated. There already is a federal Church - the Orthodox Churches, each of whom is autonomous. The Patriarch of Contantinople only has a primacy of honor, not authority.
Vatican II is clear that the Pope does not preside solely in name, or only as an honorific. The cardinals and bishops around him are his brothers in the episcopate
[as Benedict XVI always addressed them], not his servants, and this is very beautiful, even in the theological sense.
But even with this, there is no rupture with the past. Papa Ratzinger was one of the theological fathers of Vatican II, and he has always said: You are wrong and you have fallen into equivocal speculation, you from the right and from the so-called left, when you speak about
a Vatican II as it never was.
If we have followed Papa Ratzinger, we know that he has always acknowledged these documents of Vatican II, seeing his thoughts in them (in fact, he contributed to drafting some of the documents). And he could never think of the Church other than what
Lumen gentium describes her - local churches with some autonomy but all united in the universal Church under the Successor of Peter.
[Apropos, Ifind it remarkable that Pope Francis has so far not referred to Vatican II at all, and I think only once to the Year of Faith.]
Mark Shea has written something similar about the continuity between the new Pope and his predecessor, although I have yet to read or hear a cardinal elector say so - their immediate post-Conclave statements were all to the effect that Francis was the answer to creating the 'much-needed reforms' in the Church - by which they all meant the Roman Curia, when they of all people should know how fallacious it is to equate the Roman Curia with the Church! Or perhaps they really meant that Francis has to change the Church left behind by Benedict XVI, but change her how and to what? And I must say again, why did the cardinal electors seem to blame the Curia in Rome exclusively for perceived ills (other than the scorched earth left behind by Vatileaks) when everything that happens concretely in the dioceses is the direct result of the bishop's pastoral and doctrinal choices, and that bishops can and often do ignore any directive from Rome that they disagree with?
Francis and Benedict
are on the same page
by Mark Shea
March 20, 2013
I’m seeing an increasing number of people who are worried that a dichotomy and opposition is being manufactured by the Father of Lies, working both through the press and through various sectarians, to the effect that “liberal” Francis is somehow going to be the antithesis of “conservative” Benedict. It’s crude and ridiculous, of course. But we are a crude and ridiculous people here in America, so that stuff plays.
In this fantasy world, Benedict (who was the author of
Caritas in Veritate, recall) is supposed to have cared nothing for “social justice” while Francis is all about social justice.
Yeah. About that. Here’s the thing: Francis is not somebody who threatens the legacy of Benedict. Francis is somebody who threatens the legacy of neoconservatives and libertarians who are convinced they can, like George Weigel
[who quite stridently opposed CIV on the grounds that much of it was 'imposed on Benedict XVI' - can you believe it? - by liberal types in the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, and as though CIV hadsomehow called into question John Paul II's social encyclicals, just because its primary reference to a papal encyclical was Paul VI's Populorum progressio], just snip up the Church’s social teaching like Thomas Jefferson editing the New Testament. As Daniel Nichols astutely notes, here are just two quotes from Francis that are already proving deeply threatening, not to
Caritas In Veritate, but to the people described in Dale Ahlquist’s classic little essay, “The Trouble with Catholic Social Teaching“:
“When you pick up a volume of the social teaching of the Church you are amazed at what it condemns. For example, it condemns economic liberalism. Everyone thinks that the Church is against Communism, but it is as opposed to that system as it is to the savage economic liberalism which exists today. That is not Christian either and we cannot accept it. We have to search for equality of opportunities and rights, to fight for social benefits, a dignified retirement, holidays, rest, freedom for trade unions. All of these issues create social justice. There should be no have-nots and I want to emphasise that the worst wretchedness is not to be able to earn your bread, not to have the dignity of work.”
He also said, just the other day:
“And those words came to me: the poor, the poor. Then, right away, thinking of the poor, I thought of Francis of Assisi. Then I thought of all the wars, as the votes were still being counted, till the end. Francis is also the man of peace. That is how the name came into my heart: Francis of Assisi. For me, he is the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation; these days we do not have a very good relationship with creation, do we? He is the man who gives us this spirit of peace, the poor man … How I would like a Church which is poor and for the poor!”
That last line in particular has caused some shrieks of panic, as well as head-patting condescension to the Pope over on FB. One insightful person was explaining that advocacy for the poor is satanic. Another mini-conclave convened to explain at great length that the hope for the poor lies in the rich, not in a pope (or presumably, a Messiah) who identifies with the poor and joins them in their poverty. Good to know.
[My first reaction, of course, (which I inhibited myself from expressing at the time) to Pope Francis's anecdote about how the name of Francis came to him in a flash at the Conclave was that the description he gave of him - "the man of poverty, the man of peace, the man who loves and protects creation" - reiterated the popular image of St. Francis, which Benedict XVI always sought to make right by pointing out that Francis was much more than all that; that Francis's greatest virtue was how he sought to imitate Christ in every way, that he was the 'alter Christus', not the picture postcard saint of recent mythology.]
And that whole anti-war thing? Yeah. The total opposite of John “No more War. Never again war!” Paul II and Benedict, who coolly explained “Preventive War is not in the catechism” to the Americans led by Michael Novak who came to explain to the Pope
[??? or the then-cardinal?] his duty to support our glorious war in Iraq ten years ago.
[With due respect to Mr. Shea, the quotation he attributes to John Paul II was made by Paul VI when he addressed the United Nations- "Jamais plus la guerre!"]
Don’t buy the banana oil. There is remarkable continuity from JPII, through Benedict, to Francis. There is, however, going to be a bumpy road ahead for those trying to baptize Randian economics and the neoconservative devotion to war as the health of the state. The spin machines will have to go into overtime to try to square that circle.
It's absurd to even think of 'discontinuity' among the Popes. Their primary duty is to uphold and defend the 'deposit of taith' as it has come down to them through the centuries, and to confirm their brothers in that faith. How could they possibly be discontinuous in carrying out that mission?
On the subject of 'the poor' and 'helping the poor' (about whom Jesus said "you will always have the poor among you" - which I take literally not just about material poverty but about spiritual poverty as well - I personally consider that citstion the strongest argument against the erroneous liberal and Marxist notion that Jesus was primarily and most importantly, a social worker, that God had sent his son to rescue the materially poor and not the spiritually poor!), Benedict XVI formulated his thoughts very well in both Deus caritas est, Part 2, and Caritas in veritate, not to mention the recent apostolic letter on Catholic charity.
Except of course that MSM for the most past homed in only on the 'eros-agape' part of DCE and on the proposal for a world financial authority in CIV, in both cases, missing the whole point of the encyclicals. (Not to mention, I cannot fail to point out, the comparatively slight attention they gave to Spe salvi and the concept of Christian hope - from which they could not extract a 'thought bite' - and yet, IMHO, it is the 'best' of the three encyclicals, for many reasons that every successive re-reading of it confirms.)_
Bleeding-heart Catholics facilely sling about platitudes about the poor, knowing full well they themselves cannot really do much beyond short-term relief at best, and yet they lecture the Church constantly about 'not helping the poor' when she is doing so in many more direct and concrete ways by providing education, health care and emergency necessities to the extent that she can around the world.
Perhaps they ought to learn from Cardinal Bergoglio's pastoral apostolate which consisted, it seems, not in doling out material aid, but of his constant physical and spiritual nearness to 'the poor' and patient preaching of the faith that can help transcend present difficulties and inspire men to help themselves.
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And speaking of the opportunistic and selective amnesia that has overtaken much of MSM, it has spilled over even to Vatican Radio, which has apparently decided on what is to be its current logo during the Pontificate of Pope Francis. Here is a comparison of the logo used during the years of Benedict XVI, and with the two versions they have come out so far for Francis - one was the 'Habemus Papam' version, and I could understand they had to come out with one in haste, which could explain its stylistic incongruity with the previous logo (based on a mural in Vatican Radio headquarters) since all they could do was to super-impose a photo of the new Pope.
]The new version, below, has not changed much. The photograph of Francis is still the one that was shot with his face too dark compared to the rest of the photograph (any attempt now to brighten it, as it appears on the logo, ends up washing out the figures in the background); the caption is now 'Papa Franciscus', not that it needs to be captioned at all, instead of 'Habemus papam'. But the super-imposition was tweaked not to 'uncover' Benedict XVI's image but it looks like it covers more of it.[/C]
As someone who has become quite adept at reducing and enlarging images several times a day to fit as and where I want them to be, it would have been fairly simple to simply reduce the Francis image enough for it not to cover half of Benedict XVI's image, and the reduction would not have been perceptible at all (it was disproportionately large to begin with). Or, more easily, they could have moved the image a bit more to the right - enough space there before getting to JP2's image - thus uncovering Benedict XVI's whole image and centering the Francis image better!
OK, fine, so maybe RV's graphic artist has better things to do and couldn't be bothered to rectify the obvious 'anomaly'. Then what about this headline from RV's English service yesterday:
'Everyone's Pope?' - Whether the tag Implies that previous Popes were not 'everyone's Pope', or that more directly, Francis is a Pope 'everyone likes' unlike other Popes, the evident comparison is completely gratuitous and unnecessary! (But is it not an honored dictum in media mythology that John XXIII and the two John Pauls were 'everyone's Pope', where Pius XII, Paul VI and Benedict XVI were far less 'universally liked'? Suddenly, the other Popes previously considered 'everyone's Pope' are no longer so? But why must Vatican Radio show partisanship in any way, to begin with???? Or reflect the dominant and oh-so-perverted thinking of the media, for that matter?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/03/2013 01:03]