Thanks to Beatrice on her site
who called atention last week to a new book that has come out in France in support of Benedict XVI, entitled in fact,
POUR BENOIT XVI.
by the monthly Catholic newspaper Le Nef (The Nave), which is traditonalist in its support of the pre-Conciliar liturgy, but also supportive of Vatican II according to Benedict XVI's 'hermeneutic of continuity'.
I find the initiative most admirable and wish there could be something comparable in countries with a significant Catholic Population, even if many of them are nominal or dissident.
Why hasn't anyone thought of something similar in the United Sates, or even in Italy? I don't expect any such initiative in Germany where even bishops I had believed close to the Pope like Regensburg's Bishop Mueller turn out to be problematic for him.
Here is a translation of the introduction to POUR BENOIT XVI by the newpsper's editor:
On behalf of Benedict XVI
by Christophe Geoffroy
Editor
June 2009
Within a few weeks in January to March 2009, the small world of the intelligentsia and the media unleashed an assault as never before against the Pope and the Catholic Church.
Through a disquieting phenomenon of mimetism, each one let off with his own little deadly statement or outraged commentary, even if most of the critics obviously had no clear idea of what they were dealing with.
It all began with the lifting of the excommunications on January 21 of four bishops belonging to the Fraternity of St. Pius X. The step in itself was already hard to understand for a media world that was a priori hostile to a movement they had always described as ‘fundamentalist’.
But the scandalous negationist statements by Mons. Williamson, one of the FSSPX bishops, then fuelled an unbelievable polemic which targeted the Pope himself, who was accused of being too weak with regard to the ‘fundamentalists’, by which they really implied that he was complaisant to negationism.
Others professed concern that this was no less than a turning back on the second Vatican Council and the liturgical reform that followed it.
Then there was the terrible tragedy in Recife, Brazil, where a nine-year-old girl, raped by her stepfather, was constrained to abort the resulting teen pregnancy. In this case, more than Benedict XVI himself, the Church was the main target of the media assault
[though, strangely, this case seemed to have journalistic 'legs' only in France] – that she was too harsh, that she lacked compassion, and even that she was betraying the truth of the Gospel message.
Once again, most of those who professed indignation did not really know the complexity of the case nor did they take account of the presence and support of the local Church for the family of the unfortunate girl and for the girl herself.
Finally, the violence of the attacks reached paroxysm when, on the flight taking him to Africa on March 17, Benedict XVI said in a mature well-considered way, in response to a newsman’s question: “If we do not put soul into it, if one does not help the Africans, we cannot resolve this scourge (AIDS) simply by distributing condoms; on the contrary, it can even increase the problem”.
These three episodes were textbook cases of disinformation. But to measure the magnitude of the assault and respond in a detailed manner, one must know the facts and the position of the Pope and the Church. That is the objective we have set out to do with this book in approaching these three episodes.
For this, we have taken some of the articles published in
La Nef in March and April 2009. But above all, we have widened the analysis, with original contributions, to the different criticisms that have been made regularly against Benedict XVI.
Aftr his remarkable lecture in Regensburg on Sept. 12, 2006, one recalls the hue and cry which followed, which said nothing of his real message that the commentators appeared not to have grasped at all.
Many of our colleagues do not understand his insistence on condemning the relativism in Western democracies, in defending an elevated concept of reason which does not oppose itself to faith, in recalling that there is a natural law which imposes itself on everyone to the point that there are ‘non-negotiable points’ in policy.
This notion came up in the publication on November 24, 1992, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, of a “Doctrinal Note regarding questions on the involvement and conduct of Catholics in political life”.
This Note evoked “the fundamental ethical demands which cannot be renounced”: rejecting of abortion and euthanasia; affirming the right to life from conception to natural death, with the duty to respect the human embryo; defending the stable family as an institution; freedom to educate one’s children; the social protection of minors; religious freedom; orienting the economy towards service to the individual, the common good, social justice, ub accordance with the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity; the search for peace (cf No.4 ).
Since then, Benedict XVI has often said that there are “certain principles that are non-negotiable”, particularly during his address on March 30, 2006, to the parliamentarians of the European Popular Party. Among these principles, the Pope said, three appear most clear today:
1. Protection of life at all its stages, from the first moment of conception to natural death.
2. Recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family – as a union between man and woman founded on matrimony – and defending it against attempts to make radically different forms of union juridically equivalent to it, which would prejudice the family itself and contribute to its destabilization by obscuring its specific character and its irreplaceable social role.
3. Protecting the right of parents to educate their children as they think best.
These principles are not truths of the faith, but they are enlightened and are confirmed additionally by faith – they are inscribed in human nature itself and are therefore common to all mankind. Thus, the activities of the Church to promote them do not have a confessional character, but are aimed at all men, without distinction of religion.
Singling out these three non-negotiable points does not mean that the other points raised in the doctrinal Note of 2002 are no longer on the agenda.
Nonetheless, this notion of ‘non-negotiable points’ has split the Catholic world itself
[it had been split on these points long before they were labeled ‘non-negotiable’] – one saw this in France in 2007, and in the United States in the year that followed both of the last two presidential elections – and has contributed to mobilize part of public opinion against the ‘intransigence’ of the Church.
In short, we want to broaden reflection and respond to the most common attacks that the Holy Father has had to endure: Is he against Vatican-II and the new liturgy? Is he a doctrinaire Pope who favors ‘the clash of civilizations’? What does his rejection of relativism and his defense of natural law mean? Etc.
Ultimately, it is the consistency of the entire Magisterium that we seek to defend here. When one comprehends this consistency, one can also comprehend that all these cases are not basically due to a ‘communications deficit’ in the Holy See – even if there doubtless needs to be much done in this respect – but they are the consequence of the hardcore opposition in modern societies to the vision of man defended by the Church.
One must not have any illusions, one must be conscious of this abyss - not to spit on the world nor to try to isolate the Church in some protected place which can only end up being a ghetto, but to use the appropriate weapons for a battle that concerns all Christians.
Because the latter, even if they may be a minority – most of all because they are a minority – can, like yeast in dough, through their witness and their actions according to the teaching of the Church, save a world that has gone mad.
If the attacks against the Pope have reached such violence, it is because he opposes, almost by himself, through strong and consistent language, the ‘culture of death’ which seeks to extend its tyrannical hegemony everywhere.
It [the media assault against the Pope] is a reaction of fear, fear of seeing the imposition of a truth they reject and which they have been fighting to the teeth: the Church’s advocacy of life, of the family, of true love, its compassion for the weakest and the poorest even if this is demanding. Everyone senses that all this is accessible to every man of good will and that the Church alone is capable of saving man from himself and from the deadly relativistic drift in our societies.
In response, the opposition fights furiously to persuade us that there is no such thing as human nature – and therefore no natural law over man; that the difference between man and woman rests basically on social conditioning (gender theory); that the concept of family is evolving and must be left to individual choice since everything is equally valid.
We Christians know that such a trend can only lead to unhappiness. But, they counter, is not each person free to live as he pleases? No one, among these sorcerer’s apprentices, has asked himself about the consequences to the common good of such a vision of man: the absence of a stable morality based on a transcendent standard, which leads to an idea of ‘good’ that fluctuates according to the dominant opinion of the moment; the destruction of the stable family that unites a man and a woman for life; the attempts against life itself - these all contribute to deconstruct and finally destroy society by enclosing each man in his own individualism or regrouping them in closed communities; by breaking the transmission of life on which civilization depends; by generating violence and finally death itself. Such a society cannot generate enough children to assure the renewal of generations.
The virulence shown against the Pope and the Church is not about to die out, because it manifests the hardcore opposition between Christian anthropology – the basis for the dignity of each man is that he is created in the image of God, but also a fallen creature redeemed by the Blood fo Christ – and the dominant ideology which has tended more and more to pull down man to the level of a common animal.
Here is the book's Table of Contents:
Preface, by Mgr Dominique Rey, Bishop of Frejus-Toulon
Introduction, by Christophe Geffroy
Chapter I – Benedict XVI, a Pope cut off from the world?
Chapter II - Benedict XVI, a Pope close to the 'extreme right'>
Chapter III - Benedict XVI, a Pope of moral order?
Plus previous articles:
- Storm over AIDS
- The Maputo protocol
- Benedict XVI against relativism
- A lesson in moral philosophy
- The Recife affair: Where is the scandal?
Chapter IV – Benedict XVI, Pope of the 'clash of civilizations'?
Chapter V - Benedict XVI, doctrinaire Pope?
Chapter VI - Benedict XVI, Pope against Vatican-II?
Chapter VII - Benedict XVI, Pope against the new liturgy?
Chapter VIII - Benedict XVI, Pope of the 'fundamentalists'?
Plus previous articles:
- The end of a dissidence
-'A father's gesture"
- The Pope's letter to the bishops (analysis)
- A masterful Letter
- The Church of saints
- A question of faith
- Now what happens?
La Nef published two earlier volumes about Benedict XVI and the liturgy: in 2007,
Benedict XVI and the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum (168 pp), in which Cardinal Rciard and a number of other French prelates analyze the Motu Proprio; and earlier this year,
Benedict XVI and Liturgical Peace (311 pp), with the ff blurb:
On July 7, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum which liberalized the use of the so-called Pius V Missal [in its latest edition in 1963 by John XXIII].
What was the reason for such a document and what was its objective? To understand it better, this book goes back to the writings of Cardinal Ratzinger and analyzes his positions on the liturgy.
It also explains the historical context of Vatican II and the post-conciliar period, a difficult time during which the Roman rite of the Mass was brutally reformed, resulting in important shake-up of the liturgy.
These changes were produced at a time of crisis, when many within the Church, as in the general society, sought,as it were, to cancel out the past and start from scratch. This had its effect on the liturgy: in the face of such radical demands, the Magisterium progressively took note of its 'losses' and published a number of important documents which are analyzed in this work.
Ultimately, the crisis provoked reactions, the best-known of which was that of Mons. Marcel Lefebvre who ended up breaking off from Rome in 1988. The origins and the reasons for this break are likewise dealt with in this book which ends with a prospective look at the future of the Latin liturgy.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/06/2009 02:13]