And how serendipitous is it that in searching for the Pope's catechesis on the two best known martry saints of Auschwitz, I came across a spate of post-WYD Sydney material that make remarkable reading even now... Prepare for a lengthy treat. These are all lifted from my posts at the time in PAPA RATZINGER FORUM...
[
C]In the absence so far of a truly good appreciation of Benedict XVI post-WYD in the Australian press, forgive me for re-posting a recent article which is the kind of writing one hopes to find more often in MSM, by someone who can buck MSM's prevailing herd mentality. I have also added two other articles written for WYD but significantly relevant beyond WYD.[/C
The young lead the way
by Christopher Pearson
July 12, 2008
Christopher Pearson is an Australian journalist who writes for The Australian. He is currently a member of the Council of the National Museum of Australia and a member of the Board of the government-owned SBS television station. He served as a speech writer to former Prime Minister John Howard, Kevin Rudd's immediate predecessor.
Pearson writes commentaries and articles that cover a wide variety of cross- cultural & religious matters pertaining to Australian society. He has on occasion turned his pen toward more more international issues such as Global Warming, a matter over which he is highly critical. After this article, Pearson also wrote 'Pell war: a cardinal shame' unmasking the machinations of anti-Church elements led by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to try to steal the thunder from WYD and the Pope with drummed-up stories on priestly offenses..
FOR some of the pilgrims to World Youth Day, the new friendships they strike up will be the highlights of the event. For others, it will be the travel or events on the program such as the choral workshops or more inspiring preaching than they're used to at home.
But for most, the presence of the Pope is the main attraction.
Three years ago it would have been hard to credit. At that time Benedict XVI was generally regarded as a reserved, rather formal figure; a scholar rather than a pastor. However, even his fiercer critics now concede he has grown in the office and that the PanzerKardinal formerly charged with enforcing theological orthodoxy has come to project great personal warmth.
It was thought that he could never compete with the theatrical panache and crowd-pulling capacity of John Paul II. It turns out that Benedict is a mesmerising speaker who takes the trouble to convey complex ideas using simple language. His weekly Wednesday audiences regularly draw even larger numbers than those of his predecessor.
He has other attributes that particularly attract young people, irrespective of whether they're Catholics. Like the Dalai Lama, his presence is such that the courtesy title "His Holiness" doesn't generally strike them as misplaced. He's also grandfatherly without being in the least condescending, interested in them and constantly assuring them that they're capable of great things.
The Pope understands the constants in human nature. He knows that each rising generation - however defensive about admitting the fact - has a kind of spiritual hunger, the need for a sense of the numinous. It is widely regarded by neuro-scientists as hardwired in the brain, though most of them deplore the fact.
In part, it's wanting a sturdy worldview to underpin the intimations of order and beauty in nature. In part, it's craving reassurance that suffering and death are not what they seem.
Religious hope springs eternal. In Australia, for example, the current crop is without doubt the most inadequately catechised in seven generations, but they'll turn up in droves to see and hear him.
Bizarre new age cults may have become so popular that some sections of Australian Catholicism are reinventing themselves along pagan lines and junking core beliefs and traditions in the quest for relevance.
Yet CDs of monks singing Gregorian plainchant turn up regularly at the top of the charts, because the music reaches the hearts of thousands who've scarcely darkened a church door.
The Pope recognises that most young people still aspire to lead a moral life, to be faithful spouses, loving parents, to enjoy the trust and affection of their friends and workmates. He sees them as more often capable than their elders of rising above the snares of consumerism. They're apt to pay closer attention to his warnings about selfishness and his encouragement of high ideals.
Another thing the Pope instinctively grasps is that man is a ritual animal.
Unlike many modern clerics, he sees that rituals that are supposed to enact supernatural truths have a radically different character from the rites of ordinary sociability.
A fortnight ago, in a live-streamed sermon to the Eucharistic Congress in Canada, he startled many of the clergy present by flatly contradicting what they'd been teaching since the late 1960s. He said: "The mass is not a meal among friends. It is a mystery of the covenant."
The fundamental problem in Catholicism's 40 years in the wilderness has been the erosion of a sense of the sacred. As the church itself began to lose confidence in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, it began to look for less demanding and more contemporary ways of construing the mass.
Belief in a bloodless but nonetheless material re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary and the mysterious transubstantiation of the bread and wine were thought too much to expect of baby boomers and in any case an alarmingly large percentage of clergy had come, more or less openly, to doubt it all.
A community meal, a function where the congregation's presence is seen as in itself incarnating the body of Christ, seemed so much more modern and plausible, planing down the supernatural to mere metaphor. The Pope calls these self-preoccupied celebrations, devoid of their proper focus, "parish tea-party liturgies".
American commentator Amy Welborn, has referred to them in comparably scathing terms as manifestations of "The Church of Aren't We Fabulous!".
The Pope has no objection to tea parties, of course, but in their proper place, rather than around a high altar. His principal reforms in the past three years have been concentrated on the liturgy and church music.
Many of the World Youth Day pilgrims will be young or youngish people who've grown up in bleak, modern churches devoid of careful ritual or the canon of sacred music. They know from the Catholic blogosphere that he's trying to recover the sacramental theology, along with the beauty and inspiration, that traditionally characterised worship and it's a project a lot of them consciously support.
Before turning to some of the recent reforms, there are a few points to be made about the overall project. To liberal-minded clerics, the prospect of young Catholics who are keen as mustard about the classic Latin rite or the "reform of the reform" push, who want the newer rite celebrated with greater solemnity and traditional music, can seem very threatening.
They're inclined to assume that the kids have signed on to a package deal involving a wholesale rejection of the Second Vatican Council, doubts about the legitimacy of any Pope since Pius XII, a return to the aridity of 1910-style Thomism, political ultra-conservatism and much else besides.
In fact, one of the noteworthy things about the youthful devotees of the old rite - who in Australia border on being the majority of its adherents - is that they mostly come without the cultural and ideological baggage associated with older die-hard traditionalists.
Many say they come for the sake of a more reverent atmosphere, or for the ritual silences that aid concentration or just for a mass done strictly by the book, with no novelties or abuses. That is to say, they take the liturgy itself as a given but that's all. A higher percentage were home-schooled but very few of them, for example, are likely conscripts to the right wing of the NSW Liberal Party, let alone neo-Hansonites in the making.
Gradually the Pope has been restoring Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony to pride of place in papal liturgies in Rome, despite the uncooperative attitude of the Sistine Chapel Choir. Distinguished composers of the recent past, such as Bruckner and Messiaen, are also restored to favour.
It would be nice to be able to announce that the era of soft Italian pop and 1960s kitsch is almost over. Alas it's not true, because the leading exponents are well entrenched. However, the Pope's own standards, especially those that can be observed on television broadcasts, set the overall tone for the rest of the church.
WYD tends to bring out the very worst in baby boomer musicians and liturgists hell-bent on
designing celebrations according to their own preferences and, in a sense, in their own image. A great many lapses of taste and judgment are par for the course, usually justified on the grounds that "it's what young people want".
Whatever the compromises in store at Randwick racecourse, there is one recent reform in papal liturgies that will provide an edifying example next Sunday. The Pope has long argued that, for the laity, receiving communion kneeling rather than standing and on the tongue rather than in the hand is more fitting and conducive to devotion.
It will come as news to most Australian Catholics but the older practice is still normative. On the feast of Corpus Christi, some weeks back, his new master of ceremonies announced that it would once more be the normal mode in which the Pope would personally administer the sacrament.
At Randwick, we can expect to see a kneeler for Benedict's communicants and a precedent set for the millions who will be watching the broadcast.
[And certainly none of us anticipated the introduction at Randswick [site of the Prayer Vigil and Closing Mass] of those stunning moments of silence after the homily and Communion! I timed them during the Mass replays - each lasted at least two minutes long, not the perfunctory 15 seconds usually given to such public 'moments of silence'.
The innovation builds on the highly successful conversion by Pope Benedict in Cologne of the WYD vigil, which used to be what the MSM call a Catholic Woodstock - a fun-and-music fest - into a Eucharistic vigil. Hundreds of thousands of young people together can and do fall silent as an expression of worship and focus on the Lord. [The word that immediately comes to my mind is the Italian word for meditation, 'raccoglimento' - which is literally a gathering together of oneself, with the logical connotation of then offering it up to God.]
Nor would I call the resulting liturgy we experienced in Randwick 'compromise' at all, but rather an illustrative and felicitously successful synthesis of what Benedict XVI meant in Summorum Pontificum by a mutual enrichment of the two forms of the Roman rite. A much more seamless synthesis, I thought, than the New York Masses of the papal visit, as admirable as those were. Plus, Randwick also featured the incorporation of Latin for the more familiar prayers (including the Angelus after the Mass).
One Stateside blogger has noted that even the Mass parts sung by the choir consciously used the Latin words alongside the English. This was a feature that had also struck me forcefully - and happily - in the Mass parts sung at the much-maligned Nationals Stadium Mass in Washington (but no one else seemed to notice that, in the all-but-unanimous sweeping dismissal of its American-musical-history eclecticism).
Also, except for a questionable 'blues' number by a female singer during Communion, there was no concession at all to pop music in the Randwick Mass. No room within the Mass (rightly, I thought) even for the WYD08 anthem, 'Receive the power' - which is, after all, meant to be a pop 'mating call' (in the general sense) among WYD participants, not a sacred song.
Here is a secular view on a particularly regrettable if not reprehensible aspect of secularism which he calls by its right name - sectarianism, and puts a few Catholic-bashing Australian journalists in their place.
The sorry sport of Pope bashing
by Gerard Henderson
July 15, 2008
Henderson is executive director of the Sydney Institute, a privately funded not-for-profit current affairs forum devoted to encouraging debate and discussion. The Institute conducts about 60 policy forums a year on a wide range of issues with national and international figures as featured speakers.
The new sectarianism is quite different from the old sectarianism. Yet it is real enough. From European settlement in 1788 until about the mid 1960s, Australia was afflicted with a prevailing distrust of Catholics - many were of Irish descent - who formed the nation's largest minority. In those days sectarianism was essentially driven by Protestants.
Not any more. As the visit of Pope Benedict demonstrates, the non-Catholic Christian churches have either been welcoming to the Pope or indifferent in his presence.
Nowadays sectarianism in Western democracies is fuelled by what Michael Burleigh terms the "sneering secularists". In his book Sacred Causes Burleigh writes that "much of the European liberal elite regard religious people as if they come from Mars" except when they advance such left-liberal fashionable causes as nuclear disarmament.
The sneering secularists in our midst oppose all the Judeo-Christian beliefs. However, Catholicism cops much of the ridicule because it is universal and the strongest of the Christian faiths.
In Australia the sneering secularists - a combination of proselytising atheists and Green Left Weekly reading leftists - have indicated their opposition to the Pope on the occasion of his visit to Australia for World Youth Day. Hence the formation of the NoToPope Coalition.
So far the award for the leading sneerer goes to The Age columnist Catherine Deveny. Writing on June 18, she declared: "It's official. The Catholic Church is fully sick. And so is George Pell."
Apparently this was some kind of joke. She depicted World Youth Day as a "week of prayer, trust exercises and rosary bead trading". And Deveny went on to advise that, since the Pope will be celebrating Mass at Randwick racecourse, "all the Bernadettes and Gerards will be able to chill out with The Main Dude". It is inconceivable that The Age would have run a similar article mocking Islam and slagging off all the Aishas and Muhammads.
Although a professing agnostic, I was brought up a Catholic and attended a Catholic school where I received a fine education. Like all organisations, it had its strengths and weaknesses. Yet I retain admiration for the priests involved in my upbringing. Most were fine, intelligent men who gave up material pleasures - including sex and family life - for the God in which they believed. I readily acknowledge that some of the cleverest men and women I have met, or read about, were believers in one of the great religions. They do not warrant mockery.
On the occasion of World Youth Day, the sneering secularists have been given succour by disillusioned and former Catholics who are very strong in the media, especially the ABC.
Last year I sent Jane Connors, the manager of ABC Radio National, a note suggesting that it was somewhat imbalanced for Stephen Crittenden to line up three critics of Cardinal George Pell to take the only interview slots on one program of The Religion Report. All Connors wanted to know in her reply was whether this was a formal complaint. I responded in the negative.
Complaining to the ABC's audience and consumer affairs department is a waste of time since it upholds (in whole or in part) a mere 4 per cent of complaints compared with the Press Council's 47 per cent. And there the matter rested.
It seems that Crittenden set some kind of precedent for the ABC. Last week Lateline began a campaign against Pell concerning his handling of a complaint of Anthony Jones who, at the age of 29, was sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest, Terence Goodall.
Last Tuesday Pell admitted that he had made a mistake in the manner in which he handled the case. That evening Lateline interviewed a Canberra lawyer, Jason Parkinson, and the American journalist Robert Blair Kaiser. Both were critical of Pell. The former Catholic priest Paul Collins was also heard on Lateline that night. So was the academic Mark Findlay. They were also critical of the cardinal. Apparently Lateline could not find anyone who would put an alternative view.
The likes of Goodall deserve to be condemned. It is a matter of record that Pell stood him down from priestly activity in early 2003. Goodall was convicted in the District Court after pleading guilty to indecent assault, following a trial which was reported in the media at the time.
Such crimes should not diminish the good that priests, brothers and sisters - and bishops - have done over the years. The Canberra Times columnist Jack Waterford is a critic of contemporary Catholicism. Yet, in a column on June 26, he conceded that the stigma ignited by a few offenders had cast a grossly unfair burden on up to 80,000 Catholics who signed up for religious duties in Australia over the past century.
If you only listened to the sneering secularists you would get the impression that Catholicism is somehow responsible for high birth rates and the spread of HIV/AIDS.
In fact, population growth is highest in the Middle East and sub-Sahara Africa where the Catholic Church is not strong. Likewise, there is no correlation between the spread of HIV/AIDS and the strength of Catholicism.
It is welcome that the Pope has said sorry for the sexual abuse perpetuated by some Catholic priests and brothers. But it is appropriate for others to say a warm thank you for what the Catholic religious have done in educating the young, looking after the sick and caring for the dying here and overseas.
You will not hear such praise from the sneering secularists. Nor will you find a school or hospice in a foreign land that is run by the Green Left Weekly or the New Left Review.
Lest there be rock: Benedict
by Tracey Rowland
July 11, 2008
Rowland is dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne and the author of Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI.
SOME people have described World Youth Day events as Woodstock for Catholics, and to some degree this is true. There is usually a lot of sleeping on the ground and getting rained on while listening to music, making friends and even falling in love.
What will Pope Benedict XVI, successor of St Peter, the "vicar of Christ" and the head of the Vatican state, make of this? It is well known that when it comes to liturgy, he has no time for happy-clappy masses.
He teaches that
dumbing down the liturgy so that people can better relate to it is a form of apostasy, analogous to the Hebrews' worship of the golden calf.
For Pope Benedict, the liturgy is about the worship of God, not self-worship or the worship of the parish or school community. While he has nothing against building up the emotional bonds between members of a parish, he recommends that this be done at barbecues, picnics or nights at the pub, not in the middle of Mass.
In his pre-papal works, Benedict wrote that rock music had no place in a liturgical context, that rock concerts were pseudo-liturgies that lifted people out of themselves but gave them
a counterfeit mystical experience that didn't link them to God.
In scholarly essays he compares contemporary rock music to the music of the Dionysiac cults in ancient Greece, as does the English philosopher Roger Scruton, who is not a Catholic, but shares the Pope's concerns about this musical form. Scruton argues that rock music arrests people in a state of adolescent psychological immaturity.
Some Christians, particularly evangelical Protestants, take the view that there is nothing wrong with rock music per se, just that the lyrics can be a bit crude. This has given rise to Christian rock bands that substitute biblical lyrics for explicit sexual references. Benedict and Scruton argue that there is something wrong with the form of the music itself, quite apart from the lyrics.
Critics of Benedict say he is a middle-class Bavarian snob who plays the piano, was raised on a diet of Beethoven and Mozart and needs to broaden his cultural horizons. Whatever one makes of the criticism, it is true that Benedict has had a very strong classical education with an emphasis on languages, history, literature and music and has been immersed in the world of European high culture and the great European universities.
In our postmodern times, members of generation Y tend to be open to an expansion of their own cultural horizons and find Catholic high culture fascinating. They are like children in an attic, rummaging through old boxes and finding treasures. Benedict is like a venerable grandfather who recounts the milestones in the family history and talks about things other people are too scared to mention.
In his homilies he presents youth with the historical and cultural capital they need to make sense of their place in history, including their place in the history of the church. He helps to meet their need to establish their own identity. It's impossible for them to do this if they live in a twilight zone cut free from historical moorings.
However, if Benedict is right that rock festivals are a symptom of a universal human need for an experience of self-transcendence, then the Catholic church needs to rediscover its own ways of meeting this need.
Benedict's prescription is a combination of rigorous catechesis, which presents the Christian vision in its synthetic totality, with elevated liturgy, and of course, plenty of opportunities to meet other young Catholics and realise that one isn't the last surviving practising member of the church on the planet.
World Youth Day engenders a sense of belonging to something greater than oneself, of being a member of a vast universal family that transcends all national boundaries. The spiritual highs come not from drugs but from meeting people who are brothers and sisters in Christ from all over the world. Email addresses are exchanged, along with pilgrim memorabilia.
There is Christ's saying that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. In other words, you don't get in if you are sitting around like Eeyore on a bad day, bored with life and feeling sorry for yourself.
While rock music might be off the agenda, at least at the official events with Benedict, there is nonetheless some common ground to be found with the spiritually lost generation of Woodstock.
While Benedict would not agree that one can find the answers blowing in the wind, he would probably empathise with the lyrics of Bob Dylan's
Forever Young: May you grow up to be righteous, may you grow up to be true, may you always know the truth, and see the light surrounding you, may you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong, and may you stay forever young.
Perhaps one of the unpredictable consequences of WYD/SYD is that for a week at least we might all remember how it felt to be young and idealistic, and we might put aside our own personal psychological baggage and allow ourselves to be awed by the presence of someone who, (even if we don't think he is the successor of St Peter, or the vicar of Christ) is a person of great wisdom and warmth that transcends denominational boundaries.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 14/08/2013 19:47]