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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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26/03/2013 22:54
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Weathercocks are extremely sensitive to the slightest breeze that stirs the air, and so they can really do a jig when the weather shows unusual activity - and that's the derivation for the title of this piece, which I owe to Beatrice who has opened a new page of her site benoit-et-moi.fr to reflect the post-Papal period for Benedict XVI.


The new dance of the weathercocks
by Philippe Maxence
Editor, L'Homme Nouveau*
Translated from his blog


I am not a Vaticanista, and seeing what has been happening in the past several days, thank God I am not. A Vatican reporter's occupation is not easy. He must know not just all the cogs in the 'machinery' of the Church but also the men of the Church - those who have served in Rome, those who never did, those who could come to Rome, and those who dream of working in Rome.

But he must also know the doctrine of the Catholic Church. At the very least, with the basic catechism, even if this has disappeared. One could say they ought to read at least the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but how many of them have done that?

Quite apart from perhaps a very small number of Vaticanistas [and those who purport to know everything about the Vatican, or at least, write as if they do], no one had predicted the election of Cardinal Bergoglio as the successor of Peter.

Nor did I, who am not a Vaticanista. But I couldn't have predicted what has followed since then. How shall I say it? We are witnessing, in effect, a strange spectacle.

To begin with, there are cardinal electors calmly and publicly recounting episodes from the Conclave on their blogs or with the media. Yet did they not swear on the Gospel that they would not reveal an iota of what took place during the Conclave?

I am a father, and I taught my children that a promise, even one that is now sworn, must be kept, and that the Gospels are not just a book like any other book but the Word of the Lord himself. What can I tell them now? That there is a law for us and a different one for the cardinals?

But the spectacle is not limited to that. Words are hard to find for the strange situation we have been witnessing. So strange that I myself must take precautions to make sure that what I shall say is not to be understood as a criticism of the new Pope. But it is a criticism of this new dance of the weathercocks that we are witnessing.

We read even the 'best' of the Vaticanistas - none of whom got the Conclave right - saying that Francis is the Pope of simplicity and the Pope of rupture.

The Pope of simplicity! Is that meant to say that his predecessor, Benedict XVI, was neither humble nor simple? Or that St. Pius X was not? That no Pope before Francis had ever been humble and simple? What we have is not just a flood of enthusiasm in the media narrative - everyone is writing the same thing - but outright falsehood.

The website 'Benoit et moI' showed this with a concrete example, and I would advise you to read the accounts. [The Rome correspondent of the French agency I-media made a big to-do about the fact that Pope Francis chose to remain in the room at Domus Santae Marthae that had been assigned to him for the Conclave, refusing to occupy the VIP suite. (That, of course, has now changed.) But Beatrice cited an item by Vaticanista Salvatore Izzo who said that Benedict XVI, upon his election, remained in his assigned Room 411 all the time that he was in residence at the Domus.]

What about Francis as the Pope of rupture? ['Revolution' is the other favored meme, and Jose Luis Restan has dealt that in a previous post on this thread.] Do those who write these things understand the words they use? To thus describe a Pontificate that has hardly begun, of a Pope about whom they know little more than we know - do they realize that in doing so, they are torpedoing, with respect to Catholic doctrine, the very person they are incensing?

Rupture has never been the Catholic way because the Church rests precisely on apostolic transmission and continuity. Of course, a Pope can give his own inflections and new directions, but if he breaks with his predecessors in matters of faith [not external details], he would be off course.

Even Paul VI, having said that he was introducing a 'new Mass', emphasizes nonetheless that he was doing so in continuity with the traditional Mass (which some of us could not really see, it must be said).

The chattering media and, especially, prelates today, are an afflicting spectacle. Yesterday, they cited Benedict XVI's authority to legitimize their positions and actions. Today, all they can talk about is rupture, change, transformation. One Vaticanista even contrasted 'yesterday's authoritarian clerical authority' with the 'authority of respect' of someone who has not even had time to make a substantive decision as Pope.

The media have become so obsessed with the event of having a new Pope that they have been submerged by their emotions and incapable of taking the least step backwards to be dispassionate. Yesterday, they all praised Benedict XVI for resigning. Now they are comparing him unfavorably to Francis.

They seem to have burnt everything from the past (even if some of them were more than approving of Benedict XVI), going from the known to the unknown, seemingly drugged by their own effervescence and the Roman heat. Instead of keeping an objective distance, they are swimming within the events they are reporting. Where will this dance of the weathercocks lead?

And it is stunning to see their reaction when anyone proclaims loyalty to the Papacy itself - as if it meant opposition to the new Pope - and consider it with derision and cheap psychoanalysis.

But aren't they the ones who went delirious over the fact that Francis said 'power means service'? When the Pope was merely enunciating the traditional Catholic view of power? Must we remind these brilliant experts that one of the titles of the Pope is 'servant of the servants of God'? [Could the new Pope therefore say otherwise? Benedict XVI liked to recall that it was Gregory the Great who formulated the title, and the 'title' he himself likes best. I would also want to recall that Joseph Ratzinger's motto for his ordination, quoting St. Paul, was "We are not lords of your faith but rather, servants for your joy" (2Cor 1,24), and that his book on priestly spirituality was entitled "Servants of your Joy".]

As Catholics, we have a duty to be attached to our Pope and to his person. Not because he is a magician or the super-pastor of the world or arguably the most charismatic personality on earth. But simply because he is the Vicar of Christ on earth and the Successor of Peter.

It goes beyond the Pope's personal merits and failings, whoever he is. The function of Pope does not belong to the person who is Pope at the moment. The Pope is the common asset of the Church, which he makes visible in his own way. True humility consists in dissolving oneself in the office, allowing oneself to be wedded to it, as in a physical marriage. And it requires time.

Mons. Domenico Tardini wrote that Pius XII - although he had been in the service of the Roman Curia since he was ordained a priest and was Secretary of State for a long time - needed several weeks before he could consider himself settles=d completely in his new role, which as Benedict XVI has often recalled, surpasses human capacity. As much as he had been prepared for the office [and knew the Vatican milieu thoroughly], Papa Pacelli still needed time to feel at home as Pope.

And so it was with Benedict XVI, as it will be today for Francis, before he can be fully invested in and with his being Pope.

The papacy is too important to be abandoned to the ratiocinations of the media, to mediatic blazes, and to the dance of the weathercocks. After these important weeks for the Church, perhaps it is time the media shut up and go on a spiritual retreat.

*I always perk up when I see 'L'Homme Nouveau' mentioned anywhere because one of my favorite pictures of Joseph Ratzinger is this one showing him reading the newspaper, beside a teddy bear wearing a pectoral cross, a touch of whimsy telling us, if we did not already know it from his years as Pope, that the boy Pepperl, growing up, never lost his childlike joy and wonder for simple things that warm the heart (like a Nativity scene, for instance)...

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 27/03/2013 15:08]
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