I have belatedly discovered that Italian Vatifcanista Andrea Gagliarducci, who began covering the Vatican in 2007, writing for Il Tempo, and now for korazym.org, who also runs a blog on the site of National Catholic Register, has an independent blog curiously called ;Monday Vatican'. I posted a recent NCReg blog of his in which he went against his mainstream colleagues not to ignore Pope Francis's remarks to the CLAR leaders about, in effect, leaving the reform of the Curia for his cardinal advisers to attend to, since management is not his strong suit. I haven't had a chance to review the 'Monday Vatican' file, but here's another recent blog post which is clearly countercurrent - in not crediting Pope Francis for breaking new ground with every statement he makes -and is therefore quite welcome!
Challenging men of the Church
to get rid of worldliness:
Benedict XVI did it before Francis
June 9, 2013
«In the concrete history of the Church, however, a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes self-satisfied, settles down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world.»
Moreover: «Not infrequently, she gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness towards God, her vocation to opening up the world towards the other.»
And finally: «Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world.»
Who said this?
A first – instinctive – answer
[instinctive' only to those who allow the media to shape their thinking!] to this question would be: Pope Francis. He made «a Church of poverty and for the poor» his slogan from his very first meeting with journalists. He, who has increasingly often repeated that «institutions are useful, but up to a point».
The statements at the beginning of this article are actually not Francis’s. They are Benedict XVI’s. The now Pope-emeritus made those remarks in Freiburg, on September 25, 2011, to German Catholics engaged in pastoral work.
Benedict XVI’s words are relevant beyond the German context, even if it is true that the German Church experiences this pitfall in a very specific way. The German Church is wealthy thanks to the kirchensteuer, the State tax – of a considerable amount – on religion. It has been able to multiply social structures and charities, becoming almost self complacent.
Thus, [it would seem] the German Church has lost sight of God, while social structures have become the center of its work. The most painful thing is that an ever smaller number of Christians is employed in the Catholic-inspired social institutions that have been set up. In the name of social services, the Catholic identity is lost. And, lacking identity, the orientation of the mission of the Church is also lost.
As we noted earlier, this is not only a problem in Germany. Recently, Archbishop Mariano Crociata, Secretary General of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, standing before 200 workers from Catholic-inspired health facilities, underlined the need for all – workers and institutions – to preserve their identity and to have workers properly formed about Catholic principles.
More generally – in the wider context comprising all services and institutions that claim to be Catholic inspired – much has been debated, for example, about the identity of Catholic universities. A debate that has been fierce in the United States.
The Cardinal Newman Society is one of the associations that is carrying on the quest for identity: its website is full of denunciations of government intromission in the hiring of teachers in Catholic schools and universities. At the same time the Cardinal Newman Society does not hesitate to call attention on universities that are ever more detached from their own Catholic heritage.
A recently released book in Germany addresses these issues. Written by the journalist Manfred Luetz and Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes, President Emeritus of Cor Unum (the Vatican “dicastery” supporting Catholic charities), “Benedict’s legacy and Francis’s mission” (Benedikts Vermächtnis und Franziskus Auftrag: Entweltlichung, Eine Streitschrift, Verlag Herder) delineates a certain continuity between Benedict’s speech in Freiburg and Pope Francis’ words.
Cordes and Luetz presented a copy of the book to Benedict XVI, whom they met at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery where ne now lives within the Vatican. It is still uncertain how Pope Francis will transform his message, expressed in well-meaning slogans, into concrete endeavors.
During his pontificate, Benedict XVI not only maintained how important it was for the Church to become «less worldly ». He used the word «demondanization» ]getting rid of worldliness]. Ultimately, it is a matter of faith. How can faith be nurtured if there is no genuinee adherence to the Gospel when teaching, caring, or carrying on works of charity in the name of the Church?
Benedict XVI decreed a reform of the Caritas Internationalis constitution, based on the motto Caritas in Veritate, Charity in Truth (not accidentally the title of Benedict XVI’s social encyclical) and issued the motu proprio
Intima Ecclesiae to regulate diocesan charities and reinforce the bishops’ oversight over them.
That is the starting point Pope Francis has inherited [in terms of 'Catholicizing' the Church's social activities], He looks forward to a reform of
Pastor Bonus, the apostolic constitution that regulates the work of Curial offices. Will this reform achieve a change of hearts or will it merely be an organizational restructuring?
Ultimately, as Benedict XVI said in Freiburg, «it is not a question here of finding a new strategy to re-launch the Church. Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency, not bracketing or ignoring anything from the truth of our present situation, but living the faith fully here and now in the utterly sober light of day, appropriating it completely, and stripping away from it anything that only seems to belong to faith, but in truth is mere convention or habit».
Benedict XVI said it in Freiburg. But it seems hardly anyone took note of it at the time.
[No. As strong as that speech was, it got completely overshadowed (except perhaps in Germany) by Antonio Socci's ill-timed speculative story that Benedict XVI would resign in April 2012 on his 85th birthday! And when Cardinal bergoglio became Pope and started denouncing 'spiritual worldliness', everyone in the media greeted it as if it were a brand-new concept.
I don't remember anyone referring back to Freiburg 2011 at all, other than dedicated Benaddicts like Lella on her blog, Beatrice on her website, and this Forum. Peter Seewald has since pointed out that Joseph Ratzinger denounced all worldliness in men of the Church as early as the late 1960s in a major article where he first called for Entweltlichung, casting off this worldliness, material as well as spiritual.]
The Freiburg address comes up, too, in Jose Luis Restan's commentary on the 'four-hands encyclical, about which I must interpose this demurral:
Whoever it comes from, I find myself gagging in apoplexy when I read anyone - even Restan whom I admire a lot - touting the 'continuity' between Benedict XVI and Pope Francis. Of course, there is continuity - a Pope is dutybound to uphold, defend and protect the deposit of faith handed to him. To expect any doctrinal discontinuity between this Pope and his predecessor is to assume that Francis will somehow step out of the doctrinal line of the Church - and that is simply not just absurd, but also out of the question! He may have a completely different personal style and idiosyncratic (i.e., very personal) points of emphasis about the Gospel, but he can only preach the same Gospel that the Apostles did, that all his predecessor Popes did.
Benedict'x legacy
and Francis's mission
Translated from
June 18, 2013
The news, communicated directly and unscripted by the Pope himself, that a new encyclical dedicated to faith will soon see the light - the result of work begun by Benedict XVI that Francis will bring to completion - is very significant.
"It is a powerful document," the Pope commented, referring to the text that was personally handed over to him by Benedict XVI, adding with more than just a wink, "It will be an encyclical by four hands".
We know it is normal that any Pope seeks help and contributions in weaving together the text of an encyclical which bears only one signature, but now, we have something new.
Pope Francis has explicitly taken up the work of his predecessor - and in this, continuity does not have be theorized. It simply becomes a quite eloquent fact.
It is no trivial matter, considering that everyday we are witnessing 'smoke and mirrors' games that insist on creating two images that are diametrically opposed, with the pernicious conclusion (false, but effective for the popular imagination) of a sort of rupture, of a new season for the Church that is discarding the legacy of thirty years of papal leadership [the combined Pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI].
It is interesting to note here a comment attributed to Benedict XVI by his friend, the psychiatrist-theologian Manfred Lutz, who visited him at Meter Ecclesiae, that "From the theological point of view, we[Francis and he] are perfectly in tune". No one must think the comment was simply made out of courtesy.
Lutz has just written a book with Cardinal Paul Josef Cordes (another longtime friend of Benedict XVI) entitled "Benedict's legacy and Francis's mission" on the concept of 'demondanizing' the Church.
This idea, which has been so explicitly reiterated by Francis in the first three months of his Pontificate, was already very much present in the Magisterium of Pope Benedict.
Cordes and Lutz focus on the September 2011 address given in Freiburg by Benedict XVI to German Catholics engaged in pastoral work. In decidedly severe tones, which nonetheless earned him little resonance in the media, Papa Ratzinger denounced "a Church (that) becomes self-satisfied, settles down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world... (and) gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness towards God, her vocation to opening up the world towards the other."
Moreover, Benedict XVI added a historical judgment which, if it had been heard at all, would have left the media open-mouthed in amazement: "Secularizing trends – whether by expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like – have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she, as it were, sets aside her worldly wealth and once again completely embraces her worldly poverty... Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world. She can live more freely her vocation to the ministry of divine worship and service of neighbor".
[I understand Pope Francis needed to assert himself as completely his own man from the moment he stepped on to that loggia on March 13, 2013 - and in ways distinctively unlike all his predecessors - but could he have not cited Benedict XVI in his initial sallies about 'worldliness' in the Church? (Unless he never read the Freiburg speech or about it, at all! There was an article claiming that Bergoglio derived all his ideas and words about 'spiritual worldliness' - an awkward term I find restrictive - from a 19th-century British Jesuit who worked in Argentina.) Benedict XVI used every occasion he could to cite John Paul II in the early months of his Pontificate!]
It would be difficult to find greater accord than that which is obvious here, with respect to Francis's call for a poor Church, free of worldly certainties and oriented towards the peripheries of the world.
[But in stronger, more precise and more elegant words!]
But the basic continuity is not concentrated only on this point. Recently, Francis expressed anew his concern for a kind of Pelagian revival in the Church. Pelagius, who was harshly criticized by St. Augustine and condemned by the Council of Ephesus, rejected that grace was necessary to do good and obtain salvation. That basically, man is self-sufficient and only needs the example of Jesus - Christianity reduced to speeches and good examples.
On both the right and the left, the Pelagian temptation is very actual, whether it is reducing Christianity to a program of political-social transformation or to efforts at individual moral perfection.
Even in this, the accord between the two Popes
[Pope and ex-Pope!] is complete: Benedict XVI, as a good Augustinian, was hypersensitive to this temptation that Francis has pointed to from the beginning as one of his great concerns..
Allow me to add another nucleus of great accord, namely the need to open new paths, not to be content with what we already have, to learn a new form of presence that communicates Christ in a world that is ever changing. Evangelical poverty and freedom, the priority of grace, the wonder of a new mission, are three strong threads to further weave the profound continuity which many seem determined to dissolve.
Perhaps the coming and imminent encyclical on faith will help us to document this in a truly attention-getting way.
[I didn't see it earlier, but guess what Sandro Magister's piece was on www.chiesa on June 17:
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350539?eng=y
"Benedict wanted a 'poor' Church, too"
I was going to remark - "Why all of a sudden are three Vaticanistas pointing out something they ought to have done three months ago when this 'poor Church' thing first came up (though without any elaboration on the part of Pope Francis, and was, for three months, considered only in its literal meaning)? Surely, all three did not just suddenly remember about Freiburg this week! But it turns out Magister got his idea from Gagliarducci's blog (the one I posted above)_ - though Magister refers to the Freiburg speech as one of the 'major' ones in Benedict XVI's Pontificate!
Well, you see why I have felt very let down and put upon intolerably by these Vaticanistas, even the best of them. Why did it take these three intelligent, super-informed persons three months to wake up from the universal stupor-torpor that seems to have overcome their brains about Francis and Benedict????? Have they really waken up now, and will they point out all the other obvious oversights by their colleagues on the entire matter of Benedict XVI's record and person? Will other commentators wake up, too, from their self-imposed Rip-van-Winkling?
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 10/08/2013 15:23]