NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Thanks Benefan...I've been on the lookout for it since Alejandro Bermudez said on his blog that CNA was going to run the story but I have been away from the PC since 8:30 this AM.
I hope someone runs the full interview or talk - According to John Allen, Magister will be going to other cities in the US to give talks about the Vatican. I am so glad he is on Papa's side!

Thanks to Kirsty in the German section, I can share this article by Uwe Siemon-Netto, a Protestant theologian and journalist who currently lives in Washington, D.C. His name caught my eye because shortly after Benedict's election, he had written for UPI a refreshingly different assessment of the Pope, in which he showed how much he had followed and studied the thought of Joseph Ratzinger. I will post that earlier article after this translation of a piece he wrote in the Christian media magazine PRO in July 2005, at
www.kepnet.info/livecms/51.html?&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=98&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=18&cHash=0c...
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THE POPE IS CATHOLIC -
AND WHAT ARE WE?
By Uwe Siemon-Netto

If there is anything that sends my blood sugar up, it’s all this Protestant belly-aching about the German Pope who is supposedly stealing the show from us evangelicals - that we have been reduced to a minority in the land of the Reformation, and to top it all, by a Bavarian Bishop of Rome, on whom all cameras are focused, someone however who has a lot to say about being Christian.

Let us not begrudge the Pope that he is a proper Catholic. How nice it would be if all Lutheran bishops were proper Lutherans!

That brings me right to (Lutheran Bishop) Maria Jepsen, who is always good for something original. She has let us know that “I myself once celebrated a service with Cardinal Ratzinger and stood with him at the altar together.. But it was clear that he set certain limits – that he appreciated us [by "us", she meant Lutheran female priests like her] as human beings but not as office-bearers.”

This is best commented on in Saxon: Nu guggema!! [I’ll have to ask our German Schwestern to help me out with that!] So she felt a distance – she, who advocated the deletion without replacement of Paragraph 218 regarding abortion; she who instead of the Cross – the redeeming reality in the life of Christians - would hold up the Manger as the central symbol of our belief. Well, I can only hope that Luther authority Ratzinger, while he was up there with Ms. Jepsen on the altar, whispered the Reformer’s words in her ear: “The whole Scripture is nothing else but a word for the Cross, esteemed Sister.” (Die ganze Schrift ist nichts anderes denn ein Wort des Kreuzes, verehrte Amtsschwester.)

Ironically, Madame Bishop Jepsen later said this about Pope Benedict XVI: “He fears the Zeigeist (spirit of the times).” William R. Inge, the “dark dean” of London’s St. Paul Cathedral during World War II, addressed one of his most astute of his most astute aphorisms to that subject: “Whoever goes to bed with the Zeitgeist,” he said, “will soon wake up a widow.”

Jepsen, who praised same-sex love in an article for a Hamburg homosexual magazine, must know herself what it costs when a Church flirts with the Zeitgeist. She lost, in no time at all, a third of her Church members!

I doubt whether the Pope is letting himself be lead by his “fears.” But even if he had fears, they would be understandable. Let us imagine that Benedict had lost, as Jepsen in Hamburg, one-third of his worldwide flock. That would mean losing about 400,000 Catholics. No one would like to face his Judge with such a record!

Being “bedfellows” with the "spirit of the times," which in the Evangelical Church often competes with the Holy Spirit, has always had bad results. The Church makes itself unworthy of belief to outsiders when, for example, it does not have the strength to take away the priesthood from the television preacher Juergen Fliege, whose motto is “God is a gangster”. We know what havoc can be wrought by Zeitgeist theologians who, in World War II, brought all of German Protestantism into worldwide disrepute, somewhat unfairly, because only one third of German ministers were part of the Hitler-friendly “German Christians” of the time. But we all know the saying “Mitgefangen, mitgehangen” (If you are together, you hang together), and unfortunately, that holds true even for the Church.

This is a frightful catastrophe. Because worldwide Christendom needs reform-minded voices. It is not the many preachers who are faithful to the confession who have reduced German Protestantism to a joke. It is those who belie the Truth of Scripture word for word, and then complain that Rome will not go into a cuddly-feast with them in a shared Eucharist.

Just one example: Please tell us, who would respect a Church which, in defiance of all relevant passages in the Old and New Testaments, elects a lesbian President who has just contracted an anti-Biblical partnership with another woman inside a "house of God”, as we saw not too long ago in Hesse-Nassau?

“We evangelicals do not need a Pope,” is the mantra that many of our Church leaders try to use in order to counter the media circus around the German Pope. In principle, that is correct, since the evangelical “Pope” – meaning the authority to whom we should look to – is Holy Scripture alone.

Except there is one catch: in this media age, simple preachers are hardly ever noticed. On the contrary, those who are heard (and often secretly laughed at) are those who are able to call attention to themselves by a lot of twaddle. But these flyweights could never hope to measure up to the solid theologian from Bavaria who sits on Peter’s Chair in Rome!

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Here's the article Mr. Siemon-Netto wrote for Christianity Today in April 2005 the day after Benedict's election:

Upright But No Panzer Pope
Why he was chosen—
and why he's no narrow-minded blockhead.
by Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI | posted 04/20/2005 09:30 a.m.

Now that Josef Ratzinger, the erstwhile "Panzerkardinal," has become the leader of the Catholic Church, some will doubtless be tempted to call him the "Panzerpapst," or panzer pope—just for alliteration's sake.

But those who know him and his work well have an entirely different image of Pope Benedict XVI, as he will now be known after his speedy election Tuesday.

To be sure, he will be a counterrevolutionary, just like John Paul II, with whom Ratzinger collaborated closely. His blunt condemnation of the "tyranny of relativism" in his last sermon before joining 114 colleagues in the conclave that eventually opted for him, indicated as much.

This "tyranny of relativism" is in part the consequence of the youth rebellion of the 1960s, a phenomenon that has turned him from a liberal to a staunch voice for Christian orthodoxy.

It was during his liberal phase as a theological adviser to Cardinal Josef Frings, the hugely popular archbishop of Cologne after World War II, that he called the Inquisition a "scandal to the world." Later John Paul II would make him prefect of this very office now called Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith.

Ratzinger bemoaned the relegation of Christianity to a ghetto since the 19th century; he wrote sadly against the "leaden loneliness and inner boredom of a world emptied of God."

Germany, his own country, is more affected by this gloomy state of affairs than most others. He has watched and fought its decline into godlessness since its darkest hour when he was drafted into the Hitler Youth, the Nazi boy scouts, and had the guts to resign his compulsory membership in this organization—and then to desert from the German army.

You don't have to be a soothsayer to guess why Ratzinger was chosen over Italian, Latin American, and African candidates to lead the church. As the Rev. Anthony Figueirero, an Indian-born former papal adviser, said Tuesday prior to Ratzinger's elevation, "Let the Church in the Third World continue its growth—it is the global North that has to be re-evangelized," meaning it is that part of the globe with which the pope must be particularly familiar.

Hence a pope from an almost post-Christian country was needed to continue the missionary dynamism to which John Paul II gave top priority during his long ministry. John Paul, even as an old man, was stellar in the eyes of young people. He had promised to travel to Cologne, Germany, in August to be with the hundreds and thousands of young people attending World Youth Day in that ancient Roman city on the Rhine.

Now Ratzinger, as Benedict XVI, will undertake his first journey abroad since his election to that very place where he was once a priest. And there he will address his fellow Germans — and others — not in the snarling tone of a Panzer officer but with the mild and melodious voice that always seems to surprise those who meet him for the first time.

He will doubtless baffle many of his former detractors by stressing the need for a return to reason, which is a central theme of his theology. For Ratzinger, the significance of reason was precisely why John the Evangelist used the word, "Logos," in referring to Christ in the opening sentence of his Gospel.

"'Logos' denotes reason and meaning, but also Word," Ratzinger wrote. "The God, who is Logos, assures us of the rationality of the world, the rationality of our being, the divine character of reason, and the reasonable character of God, even though God's rationality surpasses ours immeasurably and appears to us as darkness."

Ratzinger insists, "Rationality has been the postulate and the condition of Christianity and will remain a European legacy with which we can confront peacefully and positively Islam as well as the great Asian religions."

But where this rationality "reduces the great values of our being to subjectivity, then it will endanger and destroy man, it will amputate man."

Hence, he continued, "Europe must defend reason. To this extent we must be grateful to secular society and the Enlightenment. It must remain a thorn in our side, as secular society must accept the (Christian) thorn it its side—meaning the founding power of the Christian religion in Europe."

The tenure of this 78-year old Bavarian on St. Peter's throne may be a relatively short one but it is bound to bring surprises. Coming from the land of the Protestant Reformation, this allegedly doctrinaire Catholic has already made it clear by his very actions the journey out of the "tyranny of relativism," whose properties are suspended ethical principles, must be an all-Christian enterprise.

Almost unnoticed by the world's media looking for sensations at the memorial service for John Paul II, Ratzinger quietly communed with Brother Roger Schutz, the Swiss Protestant pastor and founder of the vibrant ecumenical community in Taizé, France.

Benedict XVI, arguably the foremost Catholic theologian of our time, has always been an ecumenist, though never a fuzzy one. If he gives the Sacrament to a member of another Christian church — and Schutz was not the only one — he makes it abundantly clear he consider this person a fellow member of the mystical Body of Christ, which is the Church.

This is not the way narrow-minded blockheads behave.

There is nothing stiff, hard or dogmatic about Benedict XVI. He is, as those close to him have always insisted, simply a "coherent thinker," and coherence is precisely what the confused secularized world appears to be longing for.

It is well worth listening to the ecumenical tenor of his vision for faith to leave its ghetto by going public with a property that is intrinsically its own — the suffering God (a favorite expression by Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer) who is also judge.

"This God," Ratzinger wrote in a frontal attack on postmodern relativism, "is the God setting standards for us; the God whence we originate and where we shall return."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/02/2006 5.19]

UWE NEEDS TO CONVERT

He's a better Catholic than most that I know. He might as well make it official and convert. We could use his intellect and communication skills.

VATICAN CITY, FEB 15, 2006 (VIS) - At the beginning of the general audience Benedict XVI recalled that today's catechesis was the last "of the long cycle begun years ago by my beloved predecessor, the unforgettable John Paul II," who wished to cover "the entire sequence of Psalms and Canticles that constitute the basic fabric of the Liturgy of the Hours and of Vespers.

"Having reached the end of this textual pilgrimage - like a journey through a flower garden of praise, invocation, prayer and contemplation - we now come to the canticle that closes the celebration of Vespers: the Magnificat."

The Pope went on: "It is a canticle that reveals ... the spirituality ... of those faithful who recognized themselves as 'poor,' not only in detaching themselves from all forms of idolatry of wealth and power, but also in profound humility of heart, free from the temptation to pride and open to the irruption of divine saving grace."

If the first part of the Magnificat, the Holy Father explained, is "the celebration of divine grace which irrupted into the heart and the life of Mary, making her Mother of the Lord," Mary's personal witness was nonetheless "not solitary, ... because the Virgin Mother was aware she had a mission to achieve for humanity, and her own story is part of the history of salvation."

In the second part, "the voice of Mary is joined by the entire community of faithful" who celebrate God's actions in history. "The 'style' that inspires the Lord of history is clear: He takes the side of the least and the lowliest." On this subject, the Pope quoted the words of St. Ambrose: "May each one of us glorify the Lord with the soul of Mary. ... If, according to the flesh, the mother of Christ is one, then according to the faith, all souls generate Christ."

Prior to the general audience, which was held in the Paul VI Hall, the Pope went to the Vatican Basilica to greet a group of Italian students and participants in a pilgrimage promoted by the French religious family, "Freres de Saint-Jean."

Addressing the students, Benedict XVI spoke of his recent Encyclical Deus caritas est, recalling that "the love of God is the source and motive for our true joy. I invite each of you to understand and accept ever more this Love that changes life and renders you credible witnesses of the Gospel."

The Holy Father then turned to the participants in the pilgrimage of the "Freres de Saint-Jean" who are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the foundation of their organization. "May your pilgrimage be a time of renewal, one in which to analyze the experiences you have had, learn the appropriate lessons, and discern with ever greater profundity the vocations that arise and the missions to which you are called, in trusting collaboration with the pastors of local churches."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/02/2006 5.11]

Thanks to Ratzi.Lella in the main forum for putting together a few articles published yesterday In Italy about the Ruini succession. I have translated highlights instead of the full articles, because much of the other stuff is repetitive:
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Who leaked to the press the letter of the Apostolic Nunzio in Italy, dated January 26, sent to the 226 bishops of the Italian Episcopal Conference asking them to name who they would want to succeed Cardinal Camillo Ruini as their president?

The following is said to be the text of the letter:

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Most Reverend Excellency, as you know the mandate of the Most Eminent Cardinal Carmillo Ruini as president of the CEI ends on March 6. The Holy Father, who has always appreciated the service rendered by the most eminent cardinal to the Italian Church, also thinks that a change is also in order because the Cardinal will be celebrating his 75th birthday soon.

To such end, I have been charged with addressing Your Excellency to request you to indicate to me the prelate whicn you would wish to suggest for this position. This consultation, considering its importance and sensitivity, is subject to pontifical secrecy which obliges maximum discretion (about the matter) with anyone. Indeed I request you to return this letter to me along with your answer, and not to make any copy of it.
Until then, I thank you heartily for the help which you, through the office of the Apostolic Nunciature, would be extending to the Successor of Peter in such an important and delicate question.

Paolo Romeo, Apostolic Nuncio
Rome, 26 January 2006

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Gian Guido Vecchi writes:

Many bishops greeted the publication of the news about the Pope’s survey with surprise, unease and even outrage. Some of them claimed they had not even received the letter.

“Clearly I am upset,” said one bishop, who is usually referred to as “authoritative” in news items that identify him, “Very upset. To think that whenever I receive any confidential mail, I don't even show it to my secretary – I personally answer it by hand. Whoever violated the confidentiality and revealed this letter must have known what he was doing. Was it sabotage? I don’t know. This was a gesture of great openness (to us) by the Pope, his decision to consult all the Italian bishops. A precious instrument which it now at risk because of indiscretion – it may not invalidate the survey but it reconfigures it.”

Many other bishops said they respected the Pope’s discreet style, which they know from his time as Cardinal Ratzinger. “He was never one to anticipate anything in public, never!”

Archbishop Tomasso Valentinetti of Pescara said: “To violate a Papal confidence is serious and a grave responsibility. I cannot say anything more.”

Bishop Paolo Urso of Ragusa said: “Of course, there is chagrin at how some secrets could be made public, but the fact remains that the Pope saw the need to hear from the Italian bishops – that’s a beautiful thing, very beautiful and important.”

Mons. Luciano Pacomio, Bishop of Mondovi, theologian and ex-rector of the Collegio Capranica in Rome, said there was nothing unusual in the Vatican announcing yesterday that Cardinal Ruini would remain chairman of the Italian Bishops Conference donec aliter provideatur (until otherwise provided for).

“It was the same formula the Pope used shortly after his election when he confirmed all the members of the Roman Curia in the positions they held under Pope John Paul II. It is similar to the answer nunc pro tunc (now as then) given to all bishops who turn 75 and submit their resignation – that is, the Pope acknowledges they have reached the age limit but reserves the right to name a successor at a time he finds right.

Another aspect of Ruini’s impending departure from his high-profile position is that it may be time to dissociate the double office of CEI president and Pope’s Vicar for Rome. Pacomio comments: “It would seem to many a good opportunity to do that, but it depends on the historical situation, and I can’t say if it will happen or if the Holy Father has even considered the question.”

Two Vaticanistas at Corriere della Sera size up the possible contenders to succeed Ruini.

Luigi Accatoli writes –

Among the favorites are Dionigir Tettamanzi of Milan, Angelo Scola of Venice, Ennio Antonelli of Florence, Tarcisio Bertone of Genoa, and Severino Poletto of Turin. Tettamanzi presents the profile most suited to guarantee continuity in programs as well as a change in management style.

He was secretary to Ruini during one five-year term; he would not be tempted to take alternative attitudes and would know how to introduce new things without throwing off the efficient mechanism that Ruini has set in place. His gift for human relations will help him. On the other hand, Scola would be quite a strong alternative, as a truly new – and very determined – figure at the head of the CEI.

Alberto Melloni writes-

All the obvious names are expected to emerge from the survey of the bishops – Antonelli would be a welcome choice to the bishops, Bertone to the Pope, Scola to the church movements like C&L, Tettamanzi not unwelcome to anyone. The numbers each one gets in the survey, the nuances of the way they are nominated by their colleagues, will be known only to the Pope. He would also be able to gauge the state of health of the Italian episcopate, but ultimately he must decide who he thinks would know best to lead the CEI at a new stage in its history.
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Accatoli adds that it is believed Ruini will still preside at the Italian bishops convention in Verona this October. This takes place once every 10 years, and Ruini has been preparing for it. The Pope will come to Verona to address the bishops, and it is possible he could announce Ruini’s successor then.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/02/2006 14.47]

Father Aidan Nichols, who wrote one of the best introductions to the theology of Joseph Ratzinger in 1988 (reissued in 2005 as "The Thought of Benedict XVI") wrote this commentary on Deus caritas est for the Catholic Herald on 2/3/06 at
www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/lifebelt.htm
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The Pope throws a lifebelt
to a Church drowning in syrup
Commentary by Aidan Nichols OP

A twinge of disappointment followed the discovery that the new Pope’s first encyclical was going to be on love. Those who expected from Benedict XVI the smack of firm governance feared the worst. Certainly the topic of love is a soft option for clergymen. I dare say we have all come across the kind of preacher who, whatever the feast or the biblical text, manages to bring everything back to the theme of general benevolence. That is always safe. No one can possibly object to love, so defined, and it lifts the burden of analytic thinking. The readiness with which “love” lends itself to sentimental treatment was the first reason for anxiety about this encyclical. The second was a niggling worry: had the subject been suggested by a spin-doctor? Cardinal Ratzinger’s image in the secular media, and even or especially sections of the Catholic press, was almost entirely negative. Could it be redeemed by pouring over us a warm, fragrant, bubbly cascade of “luv”? That would be an understandable strategy. It would also be a mistake. At least in the Western world, the Church is drowning in syrup already.

Perusal of the document largely sets these fears to rest. Part the First shows that the Petrine charism has not extinguished the cardinal’s forceful philosophical and theological mind. Part the Second which was, it seems, in preparation under his predecessor shows a willingness to leave (temporarily) the exalted heights of doctrine for more hands-on involvement with possibly malfunctioning elements in present-day ecclesial culture.

So, what then does the Pope have to say? The introduction alerts us to the love-theme’s real urgency, as distinct from saccharine acceptability. At the present time, the life of the world is scarred by vengeful believers in a distortion of the biblical God. As readers of the Guardian will need no reminding, this is getting theism a bad name. The Pope opens, accordingly, by seeking to reconstitute the image of God around the central revealed attribute of the New Testament, which is God’s gratuitous charity, or what the Greek Fathers call God’s “philanthropy”, his loving kindness towards man. The Jews, to their everlasting credit, had already defined as key to right belief an obedient loving response to the merciful goodness of God and they did so without the support of the Incarnation and Atonement to steady them. The second motivation for this letter, so its preamble makes plain, is a desire to get straight the unity of the Bible’s two love commands. Love, we are told, is to be directed both towards God and to our neighbour. But how is it possible to set our face in these two directions simultaneously?

Part One of the encyclical notes the ubiquity of the language of love, and a more Thomistic pope might have signalled that language’s analogical character. C S Lewis, whom the Pope, when Cardinal Ratzinger, did not disdain to cite, claimed there were basically four loves. As Benedict XVI points out, there are a great many more. They have something in common and something that differentiates them (here is where analogy comes in). For the Pope, the prime analogate is the love of man and woman, in comparison with which all other loves pale. With such a starting point, Benedict cannot escape entering the question of the relation between eros and agape, the love that desires fulfilment for itself, crucial to sexual attraction as this is, and the love that seeks to confer fulfilment on another, insensible of the cost to self if need be.

For an understanding of the Pope’s argument, it is essential to grasp that eros, or love that is desirous, has its most palpable instance in sexual love but also reaches far beyond it. When the fourth-century Eastern Father St Gregory of Nyssa tells us that the soul is essentially erotic, he does not mean it is inevitably attracted to soft porn. He means it is filled with a longing which ultimately only God can satisfy. Journalists who have described the Pope¹s language in this letter as itself “erotic” are probably, therefore, missing half the point.

Back in the 20th century, Western theology was polarised by the thesis of a Swedish Lutheran, Anders Nygren, to the effect that eros the impulse to seek fulfilment has nothing to do with agape the self-lavishing love of the New Testament. No more, it was said, has Athens, pagan philosophy and literature, to do with Jerusalem, the biblical revelation. We cannot practise both loves, so we must choose, under grace, which ours is to be. The Pope replies that this is a false antithesis, an unnecessary choice. Or rather, speaking of choice, we must choose both, as God in his plan for us has done. Only if the sacrificial charity-love of the Scriptures, whose origin is in the Redeemer God by way of Jesus Christ, captivates and transforms the desiring eros-love implanted in us by God the Creator can people be fully in the image of God, healed, saved and transfigured.

Naturally, the Pope is not holding a seminar on 1930s theology. He evidently thinks this is the good news contemporary Western culture, which to some extent is global culture, now needs to hear. The letter offers a Gospel of transfigured humanism. Benedict’s message is a mystical relocation of the theocentric, Christ-determined humanism of John Paul II.

Benedict’s mystical doctrine is not, however, a “flight of the alone to the Alone”. Rather is it sacramental and ecclesial. Here is where the issue of the unity of the love commands love of God and love of neighbour enters the picture. If the Eucharist “draws us into Jesus’s act of self-oblation”, then the direction charity-love confers on the drive of eros will be twofold. When the Word incarnate on the Cross loves to the end, his love embraces both the Father and the brethren for whom, by the Father’s good pleasure, he lives and dies and lives again this time, in the Resurrection-life, for ever. The Saviour loves human beings in the Father’s Spirit and for the Father’s sake. In this way Jesus gives us the model for a Christian love directed inseparably to God and neighbour alike.

Part Two of Deus Caritas Est will reveal the Pope¹s concern, no doubt based on accumulating documents in Curial archives, that much of the historic charitable outreach of the Church is currently menaced by secularisation. So he stresses at the end of Part One that heartfelt love of those we either do not know or, if we know do not like, is impossible without accepting the God-informed perspective of Christ. And this is so even if there can be, as he admits, a frozen-hearted piety which only the reawakening of love for our fellow human beings is likely to melt.

The transition from Part One to Part Two of the letter is not flawless, and what has reached the public forum about the mode of preparation of the document explains why. Two texts, one entirely the Pope’s and one not, have been spliced together of course, with his consent and above his name. The mystical charity of Part One turns on participation in the Trinitarian life by holiness through grace. The social charity considered in Part Two is an outworking of that in the body of the Church.

But the historical references provided for the (social) “practice of love” may suggest the intervention of the Pope’s hand. As some Eastern Orthodox are happy to acknowledge, this is a Pope who looks for inspiration to the age of the Fathers of the Church. The organised social charity of the Church which emerged in that epoch (which) was something novel in the context of the Greco-Roman world is for Benedict a crucial aspect of right practice of the faith. Even in an age where state agencies accept a good deal of responsibility for temporal welfare, the Church, he thinks, cannot abandon her charitable activity without undergoing a diminution of her nature. The order of justice, the proper sphere of politics, will never supplant the role of practical charity, since, in a world marked by original sin, no society is ever going to be so perfectly just that hard cases will not abound.

Benedict sees the social role of the Church working out in two ways. The first way is by forming conscience in civil society. Benedict comes close to the Liberal dream of “a free Church in a free State”, but he never quite surrenders to its lure. Without an input from the Church’s revelation-assisted grasp of human norms and human destiny conscience will suffer not its freedom of exercise but in the value of its deliverances. The State can afford to allow that to happen no more than can the Church.

The other form social outreach takes is through the Church’s own charitable agencies, and these Benedict bids to stay faithful. Their essential foundations are faith in the God of Jesus Christ and the exercise of faith’s most tangible organ, which is prayer. Professionalism can mean competence (excellent); it can also signify secularisation (in the optic of this letter, disastrous). A rash of name-changes for erstwhile overtly Catholic organisations in the post-Conciliar period symptomises what the Pope means. Agape as the Gospel tradition conceives it is not likely to survive the entry of secularism by the back door.

The need to re-evangelise, and re-catholicise, agencies that originated in the mystical Body but now operate with a considerable degree of detachment from its life helps to explain why the Pope ends this letter with the saintly patrons of social charity. It has been said that Benedict XVI will emphasise Scripture where John Paul II stressed the saints. But Benedict is not likely to forget the saints. He considers them the empirical verification of the Gospel. Also, I think he will continue to follow a convention established by his predecessor and, as here, end each encyclical with a reference to the Mother of God. Marianism is too deeply rooted in his religious personality for him to discontinue. And no bad thing, for a Church that seeks to be once again a holy Mother.

The great Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac once declared that the hierarchy should be maternal. The pope and bishops exercise in their own mode the motherhood of the Church. This is a warm, nurturing love which, however, is not intended to produce mummy’s boys. Fortunately, and despite initial fears, Deus Caritas Est does not envelop us in a bosomy embrace sufficient to suffocate. It does reassure us that we are loved and meant to love. But it also has backbone. Like counsel from a good parent, it would have us get on with life, which for a Christian means in particular theosis, divinisation (compare Part One of the letter), and (compare Part Two) meeting the myriad needs of the world.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/02/2006 1.57]

Pope names Vatican's Muslim expert
as nuncio to Egypt, Arab League

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI named the head of the Vatican's interreligious dialogue council, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, as the new ambassador to Egypt and the Arab League.

The appointment, announced Feb. 15, placed the Vatican's most experienced Muslim expert in Cairo, where many of the Vatican's Islamic dialogue partners are located.

At the same time, it raised questions about the future of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. No successor was named to head the council, and Vatican sources said the pope was considering combining its functions with another department in a restructuring move.

Archbishop Fitzgerald told Catholic News Service that he knows Cairo well and expects to continue talks with Muslim leaders there "as much as a nuncio does."

"I would hope that as a nuncio I can encourage this," he said.

The archbishop said it was important that he would also be representing the Vatican to the Arab League, which has 22 member states from across the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab League has headquarters in Cairo.

Archbishop Fitzgerald will replace Archbishop Marco Brogi, who has served as nuncio since 2002. Archbishop Brogi will turn 74 March 12; the Vatican did not mention him in the appointment announcement.

A member of the Missionaries of Africa, Archbishop Fitzgerald, 68, said his interest in interreligious dialogue may have stemmed from having a wide circle of friends while growing up who were "not all Catholics and not all Irish."

Born of Irish parents in a small town north of Birmingham, England, he pursued his dream of becoming a missionary priest and heading to Africa.

He spent four years in Tunisia, studying theology and learning Arabic, and two years teaching Christian-Muslim theology in Kampala, Uganda, during the reign of the dictator Idi Amin. The archbishop also lived for two years in northern Sudan, carrying out dialogue with Muslims and proclaiming the Gospel to a small Christian community there.

During this time he was frequently called back to Rome, either to work at the Pontifical Institute for Islamic and Arabic Studies or to hold offices on the general council of the Missionaries of Africa.

In 1987 he was appointed secretary of the Vatican's Secretariat for Non-Christians, which later became the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue; he was named president of the council in 2002.

The interreligious council grew out of a mandate of the Second Vatican Council, which said the church should enter into "discussions and collaboration with members of other religions." In 1964, Pope Paul VI created the Secretariat for Non-Christians; in 1974, he established the Commission for Religious Relations With the Muslims within the secretariat.

The office has established and nurtured contacts with scholars and leaders of Islam, Eastern religions and traditional religions -- including African and native American -- as well as sects and new religious movements. Religious relations with Jews comes under the authority of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Looking back on his work at the council, Archbishop Fitzgerald said one sign of progress was that the dialogue efforts today "are not just from the Catholic side, but initiatives are taken by people of other religions as well."

At the beginning of his pontificate, Pope Benedict held a private audience with religious leaders of other faiths and assured them that "the church wants to continue building bridges of friendship with the followers of all religions, in order to seek the true good of every person and of society as a whole."

At the same audience, the pope said he was particularly pleased at the growth in dialogue between Christians and Muslims on the local and international levels. Last August, the pope met with Muslim and Jewish leaders in special audiences during his visit to Cologne, Germany.
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This CNS story is a straightforward report of a new Papal appointment, but the Italian press have seen in this more far-reaching implications. I am working on translations, but briefly, they see this as 1) a demotion for Fitzgerald and some sort of reproof for past actions (these are described in detail)that were interpreted as being too concerned with promoting "closer" relations with other faiths to the extent of glossing over elements that distinguish Catholicism from other faiths; and 2) a sign that the Pope will indeed cut down the number of Curial departments by consolidating some offices together.

From Radio Vatican's German service today, in translation -

Pope Benedict XVI approves of peaceful demonstrations by Muslims against the Muhammad cartoons, he told Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, whom he saw in private audience today.

Siniora, a Muslim, also told reporters that his government rejects violent demonstrations. Lebanon's population is 60% Muslim and 35% Maronite Christian.

Siniora took over as Prime Minister after the assassination of
Rafik Hariri last year.

Here is how Vatican Information Services reported the audience:

VATICAN CITY, FEB 16, 2006 (VIS) - Given below is the text of a communique released by the Holy See Press Office following today's visit to the Vatican by Fouad Siniora, prime minister of Lebanon:

"Today, February 16, 2006, the Holy Father Benedict XVI received in audience Fouad Siniora, prime minister of Lebanon. The prime minister subsequently went on the meet with Cardinal Secretary of State Angelo Sodano.

"The visit of the head of the Lebanese government and of the official delegation accompanying him, had the aim of confirming the great devotion of the Lebanese people towards the Roman Pontiff, and towards the Holy See in general, which has always remained close to that noble country.

"In the course of the discussions, opinions were exchanged concerning the current situation in Lebanon and in the Middle East in general, highlighting the joint commitment to work towards educating people in reconciliation and peace, while respecting human rights, especially that of religious freedom.

"Particular attention was reserved for the situation of Christians and for the contribution they intend to make to the progress of the country, in keeping with the guidelines laid down, prior to the Jubilee 2000, by the Apostolic Exhortation "A new hope for Lebanon," of Pope John Paul II, of blessed memory."
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[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 17/02/2006 0.35]

Here is an Italian journalist's analysis of the reassignment of Mons. Michael Fitzgerald from head of a Vatican dicastery to Apostolic Nuncio in Egypt.
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Benedict XVI's Reform of the Curia Begins
By Matteo Spicuglia
16/02/2006

The president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialog has been named Apostolic Nuncio to Egypt, and in the Vatican, this seen as Act I of the Curial reform that has been awaited for months.

The Pope’s decision was made known yesterday: The English Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, 59 years old, who has headed this dicastery since 2002, will leave Rome for Cairo, where he will also be the Holy See’s delegate to the Arab League.

After the naming of Archbishop William Levada to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fitzgerald’s reassignment is the first Papal decision which involves one of the key positions in the Curia. His name had figured in the betting over who would be named cardinals in the next consistory, since he was one of five dicastery heads who was not a cardinal. He may not need the red hat now.

Speculation immediately arose over the reasons for the Pope’s decision. Some would frame it in the context of the need to strengthen dialog with Islam by assigning to an influential Arab nation a recognized authority on Islam, who has been involved in the last few years with developing closer relations with other religions. Some say it could be a “punishment” for the arhbishop’s lifestyle.

Salvatore Izzo, of the news agency Agi, has spoken of “a stern policy (by Benedict) that will not allow a personal lifestyle not conforming to the discharge of fundamental responsibilities.” According to the Vaticanista, “The Pope has not shown himself willing to compromise on aspects concerning the personal life of Curia officials.” Ansa, another Italian news agency, also raised the same question.

However, it was impossible to understand what they are alluding to; the agencies have not given a hint but instead have reported what appears to be gossip as news.

In fact, Mons. Fitzgerald’s transfer corresponds to a deliberate choice of governing style by Benedict XVI. The appointment should be seen without a doubt as a demotion (heading the nunciature in Egypt certainly cannot be compared to heading a dicastery), the result of different viewpoints between the Pope and the Englishman about dialog between religions.

On the one hand, we have Benedict, who in his Christmas message to the Curia, upheld the value of religious freedom, but not in the sense of “expressing man’s incapacity to find the truth” and the “canonization of relativism.” On the other hand, the archbishop has been criticized several times for his tendency, according to many, to blur the Catholic identity. Such objections most likely kept him from being nominated a cardinal in John Paul II’s last consistory in October 2003.

Among the questionable episodes attributed to Mons. Fitzgerald: organizing a symposium in Qatar in 2004, at which exponents of the extremist movement Muslim Brotherhood took part, including Sheick Yussef al Qaradawi; his participation in a Festival of Faith in Kentucky, also in 2004, sponsored by the Cathedral Heritage Foundation, which proposes a consensus among religions, advocating that claims to truth should be set aside in the name of peace. In 2003, he made some disputed statements during a congress on sanctuaries which was held in Fatima. At that time, the idea was floated to transform the Marian seacntuary into an inter-religious center, in which members of every confession could meet each other. It was an idea promoted by one of the guests, the theologian Jacques Dupuis (who had already been investigated by the CDF because of his ideas on religious pluralism). Dupuis had said, “The religion of the future will be a general confergence of religions in a universal Christ who will satisfy everyone,” adding that “The Holy Ghost works and is present in the sacred tests of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christians and non-Christians.”

The following day, Mons. Fitgerald had no problem affirming that “Father Dupuis has explained to us the theological basis for stabilizing relations with those who belong to other religions.” This statement was seen as a provocation to many Catholic circles, especially those who are more traditionalist, who organized petitions against Fitzgerald. For instance, the association called Una Vox invited visitors and sympathizers on its Internet site to write a letter of protest to the then-Prefect of the CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger.

Obviously, someone responsible for inter-religious dialog, who is as decidedly liberal as Mons. Fitzgerald, will hardly fit the vision of Benedict, who has committed himself to inter-religious dialog but without glossing over differences and the singular identity of the Catholic Church.

Beyond everything else, the Pope’s decision on Fitzgerald seems to anticipate some orientations which will characterize his reform of the Curia, like the probable dissolution of some pontifical councils. The fact that no successor to Fitzgerald was named appears to support those who say that the council he used to head will be incorporated into the Council for Culture, presided by Cardinal Paul Poupard. A similar consolidation may take place with the Council for Justice and Peace, which would absorb the Pontifical Council for migrants and itinerants as soon as its president, Cardinal Stephen Hamao, is granted his request to return to Japan. A similar consolidation is expected between the Pontifical Council for the Laity and that for family ministry.

Benedict’s Curia will be more streamlined and will have fewer cardinals. Interesting in the light of the comiong Consistory. Most recent speculation now has only 4 curial heads slated for the red hat: Agostini Vallini of Segnatura Apostolica ( the highest church court); William Levada of the CDF; Franc Rode, Prefect of the Congreagation for the Clergy; Stanislaw Rylko, president of the Pontifical Council for the Laity; and Paul Cordes, president of Cor Unum.

The new appointments to the Curia will not come before spring, and if any new appointment gets a post usually occupied by a cardinal, he will have to wait for the next consistory to be elevated. It is said that the Pope wants to follow rules, therefore he does not eant to go beyond the maximum of 120 cardinal-electors set by Paul VI and reconfirmed by John Paul II (who however went beyind the limit).

New cardinals?
Rome buzzes with excitement as rumors fly

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Sometime this year -- perhaps as early as March -- Pope Benedict XVI is expected to create his first batch of cardinals, a prospect that has already generated a buzz of excitement in Rome.

Vatican observers, especially journalists, tend to get overagitated when it comes to new cardinals. Since last summer, there have been at least three false alarms about impending consistories.

The current rumor is that the pope is preparing to name new cardinals in late February and invest them in late March. Holding a consistory during Lent would be unusual but not without precedent; Pope John XXIII did so twice in the 1960s.

The appointment of new cardinals is seen as a leading indicator of any papacy, but it's important to remember that, whenever Pope Benedict announces his choices, it will be a list that he has inherited in large part from his predecessor.

Of the 20 or so prelates most frequently mentioned as likely cardinal appointees, all but two were put in line for the red hat by Pope John Paul II. One of those two is Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, the late pope's personal secretary, who in a sense will also be seen as a Pope John Paul selection.

Only U.S. Archbishop William J. Levada, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is considered a Pope Benedict appointee in this "likely cardinal" list.

Archbishop Levada is one of three Roman Curia officials virtually certain to be named cardinal. The others are Slovenian Archbishop Franc Rode, head of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, and Italian Archbishop Agostino Vallini, head of the Supreme Court of the Apostolic Signature, the Vatican's highest tribunal.

Other Roman Curia possibilities include German Archbishop Paul Cordes, head of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum; U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley, head of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications; and Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, head of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.

From the archdioceses around the world, potential cardinals include Archbishop Guadencio Rosales of Manila, Philippines; Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, Ireland; French Archbishops Andre Vingt-Trois of Paris and Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux; Archbishop Carlo Caffarra of Bologna, Italy; Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley of Boston; Archbishop Joseph Zen Ze-kiun of Hong Kong; Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet of Hanoi, Vietnam; Archbishop Raphael Ndingi Mwana'a Nzeki of Nairobi, Kenya; and Spanish Archbishop Antonio Canizares Llovera of Toledo.

Others occasionally mentioned in the cardinal sweepstakes are archbishops from Monterrey, Mexico; Dakar, Senegal; Brasilia, Brazil; and Barcelona, Spain.

There are a number of things to watch for when the list is announced:

-- The numbers. There are currently 178 cardinals, of whom 110 are under age 80 and therefore eligible to vote in a conclave. Two more cardinals turn 80 before March 25, the rumored date of the consistory.

The technical limit on the number of voting-age cardinals is 120. That means that if the pope respects that ceiling, he could name 12 new ones. The wild card factor is that Pope John Paul set aside the 120 limit more than once, swelling the ranks to as many as 135 under-80 cardinals. Pope Benedict, as supreme legislator, can also derogate, or suspend, this rule, but opinions are divided over whether he will do so.

-- The mix. If he wanted to, the pope could fill half the cardinal vacancies with Roman Curia officials. But the trend under Pope John Paul was toward more archdiocesan cardinals, and not always from places that were traditional cardinal sees.

People also will be looking carefully at the geographic distribution, to see if Pope Benedict continues his predecessor's wider distribution of red hats in the Third World.

-- The over-80 cardinals. Popes often have named one or two elderly cardinals as a sign of respect or appreciation. Often, they have been nonbishop theologians. Given the pope's background in dealing with Catholic theologians, there is great interest in his potential choices.

One rumor reported by The Times of London in early January was that the pope's over-80 cardinal nominations might include Msgr. Graham Leonard, a former Anglican bishop of London who was ordained a Catholic priest in 1994. If that happens, beyond the ecumenical implications, the College of Cardinals would have its first married member in several centuries.

Whenever it happens, Pope Benedict's first consistory will also offer clues about how he intends to use the College of Cardinals during his papacy. Pope John Paul turned to the cardinals several times for advice, convening them in Rome for discussions on such topics as church finances, anti-abortion strategies and pastoral goals for the new millennium.

Given that Pope Benedict, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, helped plan and preside over some of these "extraordinary consistories," many expect him to keep up this type of consultation.

As he looks ahead, the pope no doubt realizes that putting a personal stamp on the College of Cardinals is a long process. During his 26-year papacy, Pope John Paul called nine consistories to create 231 cardinals; in the end, he had named all but two of the 115 cardinals who elected his successor.

Philosophy Behind "Deus Caritas Est"
Interview With Catholic University's Monsignor Sokolowski

WASHINGTON, D.C., FEB. 15, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The theology found in Benedict XVI's encyclical "Deus Caritas Est" draws on and blends with philosophical distinctions of love, and raises questions concerning social and political philosophy and anthropology.

So says Monsignor Robert Sokolowski, a professor of philosophy at the Catholic University of America and author of "Christian Faith and Human Understanding" (CUA Press).

He shared with ZENIT how the two parts of the encyclical engage philosophy in different ways, and how philosophy plays a role in theological reflection.

Q: What distinctly philosophical concepts has the Pope incorporated into his first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est"?
Monsignor Sokolowski: Philosophy does have a role in the document; at one point in the encyclical the Holy Father speaks of his "somewhat philosophical reflections," and he also speaks about a "philosophical dimension" in the biblical vision of love.

The encyclical has two major sections. The first deals with the understanding of the place of love in creation and salvation history. The second deals with the practice of charity in the life of the Church.

In the first section, the Pope surveys a number of ways in which the word "love" is used. He examines contemporary usage, discusses the difference between "eros" and "agape" in Greek thought and in the Bible, and examines Hebrew words for love. He also discusses the difference between justice and love.

Most of this first section is theological: The Holy Father examines the Old Testament revelation of the love of God for his creation and his people, and the deepening of this revelation in the Incarnation and the New Testament.

The theology, however, draws on and blends with the philosophical distinctions one can make concerning human love as it is manifest to human reason, especially the difference between self-centered and benevolent love.

Some of our love is needful and possessive; we love what we need and want. This kind of love was called "amor concupiscentiae" in medieval thought.

But as we exercise our human rationality more deeply, we become capable of a benevolent and thoughtful kind of love, in which we go beyond our own needs and wants and love what is good for others and not just ourselves. We do so through the virtues of justice and friendship. This kind of love was called "amor benevolentiae."

These two Latin terms are used in the encyclical. The discussion of the difference between justice and love is also an important philosophical theme.

In the second section of the encyclical, which discusses the practical exercise of love in the Church, the Holy Father reminds us that active charity is essential to the Church: "The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word." This is a strong statement.

In this section, several philosophical issues are raised: What is justice? How is justice related to charity? How are reason, the common good and natural law related to one another, and how is the Church able to clarify them?

As you know, in the 19th century both Auguste Comte and John Stuart Mill, in the wake of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, wished to replace Christian faith and charity with the religion and love of humanity. Many of the charitable works of the Church were taken over by the state.

The Pope shows in the encyclical that this desire to imitate Christian religion and charity was already found in Julian the Apostate in the fourth century.

A major problem arises in the modern age when the state tries to take over all "charitable" works, because it might then try to govern the souls and minds of people as well; totalitarian regimes did not stop with bodily needs.

The Pope raises the question of how the Church is to carry out her essential work of charity in an age of technology and massive governmental activities. Will she become an agent of the government or exercise an independent role? How is this role to be defined? These questions engage social and political philosophy as well as philosophical anthropology.

Q: Why did Benedict XVI mention the philosophers Descartes and Nietzsche in an encyclical about love, both human and divine?
Monsignor Sokolowski: He also mentions Plato and Aristotle later in the encyclical.

Descartes is alluded to only in an anecdote, but Nietzsche is mentioned right at the beginning, as saying that Christianity has poisoned "eros." He is mentioned here to provide the counter-position to what the Pope wishes to show -- that Christianity does not neglect the deepest wants and needs of human beings.

The love that God reveals to us is not gnostic; it reaches into, heals and elevates all our desires, including those involved in sustenance and procreation.

The Pope uses Nietzsche in the way that St. Thomas Aquinas uses adversaries at the beginning of his treatment of a question: He presents the opposing view fairly as the sharp contrast to what he wants to show. Nietzsche is fundamentally unsound, of course, but he raises very good questions and is always a good foil for philosophical reflection.

Q: Does Benedict XVI adhere to a particular philosophical tradition in the way the Pope John Paul II was known as a Thomist and personalist?
Monsignor Sokolowski: I think that the work of Benedict XVI could be said to resemble the Christian Platonism one finds in the Fathers of the Church.

Also, his extensive and thoughtful survey of the various uses of words, in both current and historical texts and discourse, makes one think of Aristotle's and Heidegger's way of looking for philosophical phenomena in the way people speak about things.

Q: John Paul II's encyclicals were notable because of their strong philosophical foundation, which reflected his training. How does Benedict XVI's "Deus Caritas Est" compare in this regard?
Monsignor Sokolowski: Pope John Paul II was not only a philosopher but also an actor, and I think his sense for the dramatic is evident in his encyclicals. In "Veritatis Splendor," for example, the image of the rich young man gives a vivid and concrete focus to the document.

Benedict XVI's encyclical is less dramatic but very comprehensive, and it is particularly strong in its survey of the nuances of language in different contexts.

He emphasizes the continuity between human experience and divine revelation; he shows that God's word and love complete our human nature, but also go beyond it in ways that we could not have anticipated by our natural abilities alone.

Q: Philosophers have long noted that God is many things, particularly being, truth, beauty, goodness, and unity or oneness. What is the typical reaction of a philosopher upon hearing that "God is love"? How might a philosopher understand this concept?
Monsignor Sokolowski: It would be hard to say that "God is love" apart from the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Even if one were to think that the deity is benevolent, one could still not say that it is love. That sort of divine love would be relative and not substantial in the deity.

Only because the Father gives everything to the Son, and because the Son and Father express their love in the Holy Spirit, can one say, with St. John, that God is love. I don't see how such an understanding of God could have arisen in philosophical thinking.

Q: What role does philosophy play in theological reflection?
Monsignor Sokolowski: It could be considered analogous to the role that mathematics plays in physics. Philosophy tries to arrive at truths that could not be otherwise -- truths that define the boundaries of things and the whole of things.

Theology based on Christian revelation introduces a revision of the whole of things: God is revealed and "understood" in a deeper way, the world is understood differently, and so are we. The ultimate truths that philosophy reaches are then seen in a new context, but their natural truth is not diluted or destroyed.

For example, one might reflect philosophically on what human choice and responsibility are. But these truths become more profoundly understood when we come to know, through faith, that we must make choices and take up responsibilities not just toward one another but toward the God who has spoken and acted toward us in Christ.

Q: Where does love fit into the philosophical discipline of natural theology, or any other area of philosophy where the question of God is addressed?
Monsignor Sokolowski: Love has been a theme in philosophy from the beginning; think of the role it has in Plato's dialogues. When Aristotle speaks about human happiness, he discusses various ways in which we desire and wish for things. Even the theoretic life is a good for us that we can love. Lucretius begins "De Rerum Natura" with a hymn to "alma Venus," who pervades and governs everything. Philosophy gets to ultimates and the good is among them, so our response to the good -- love -- is among the ultimates as well.

How far does this love reach? Is the love in human friendship its highest form? We can contemplate the universe but it seems inappropriate to say that we can love it. But if there is a first principle in the universe, and if it somehow knows us and is benevolent toward us, then a new kind of loving is not only fitting but somehow enjoined on us; we would be remiss and ungrateful if we failed in it.

But if we come to know that this first principle not only knows, loves and hears us, but also chose us to be and redeemed us by becoming one of us, then we would see that we could never respond to him properly by our own efforts; we could respond only through his grace and by sharing in his own love. This would be our participation in the life of the Holy Trinity, the gift of the Incarnation.

In last week's issue of the Tablet, Peter Henriot, SJ, who directs the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Lusaka, Zambia, discusses the social message in Deus caritas est.
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11/02/2006
For the love of justice
Peter Henriot

Much of the reaction to Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical has dwelt on the practice of personal love and less on the practice of charity and social action. But both are crucial to the Pope’s powerful message, particularly amid the poverty of rural Africa.

WHAT DO eros and agape have to do with my everyday work for social justice here in Zambia? That’s the question that came to my mind when I picked up Benedict XVI’s first encyclical letter Deus Caritas Est . Was this just a pleasant theological/philosophical discourse about love without much relevance to the issues facing a Church struggling to share good news in a country with many potentials but also many problems? Would this letter make any difference on a continent where the justice, development and peace agenda is so central to our Catholic Church?

To be honest, I was somewhat concerned because I had heard some comments that the new Pope was not going to be as strong on the promotion of Church social activism based on social teaching as had been his predecessor, John Paul II. Some had even speculated that an emphasis on charity was now being made in order to put into second place an emphasis on justice . A stress on the role of the Church in sharing charitably with the poor would then move away from the Church’s political role of changing the structures of poverty.

My worry was put to rest in a careful reading of the document. I would say that the whole encyclical, not simply the second part which speaks of the “practice of love” in its social dimension, pushes forward the more radical aspects of the Church’s social teaching . If the first part of the letter speaks of a “mysticism” that is social in character, it lays a foundation for charitable activity of the Church that is necessarily orientated towards justice. And this, of course, continues with the best of the social teaching of the past century.

Let me set down what I see to be three major social theses of Deus Caritas Est and describe their implications. I look at these points from the particular perspective of a Jesuit priest serving in a small local language parish in a poor rural area and also directing a very active social research and advocacy centre in a Church strongly committed to justice. What does this encyclical say to me?

First, the entire activity of the Church “is an expression of a love that seeks the integral good of women and men … ”, promoting human beings in all arenas of life and attending to human sufferings and needs, including material needs. Hence the Church’s promotion of love is intimately compatible with the works of justice, development and peace that play such central roles in the mission of the Church in Zambia and throughout Africa (and wider). Some might argue that such pastoral activities should take second place behind more spiritual work such as liturgy and sacramental ministry. But Benedict argues differently: “The Church cannot neglect the service of charity any more than she can neglect the Sacraments and the Word.”

When the Pope’s vision of charity is seen in its widest sense as described above, then an integrated social activism is essential to the mission of the Church. For charity that attends only to alleviating suffering without attempting to do away with it is only partial love at best and destructive love at worst – something open to the Marxist critique that Benedict soundly rejects.

Here Benedict is in continuity with Paul VI’s recognition in his 1967 Populorum Progressio that generous gifts – offered in charity – are not sufficient to eliminate hunger or reduce poverty if not linked to the effort for “building a world where all people, no matter what their race, religion or nationality, can live fully human lives, freed from servitude imposed on them by others or by natural forces over which they have no sufficient control; a world where freedom is not an empty word …”

Second, Catholic social teaching is central to the message and mission of evangelisation. Benedict is very careful in distinguishing action in the political sphere as a “direct duty” of working for a just ordering of society – something proper to the laity – and the promotion of just structures through the “indirect duty” of rational argument and moral sensitisation – something proper to church leaders. The Church has the responsibility to promote rational argument (the Pope calls it the “purification of reason”) and moral sensitisation. Indeed, the Pope argues that without such reawakening of moral forces “just structures are neither established nor prove effective in the long run”. I believe Benedict is emphasising the power of effective use of Catholic social teaching, something we have seen clearly here in Zambia over the years since independence from Britain in 1964. Bishops’ pastoral letters, statements from justice and peace commissions, formation programmes for laity, Religious and clergy: all these efforts have brought the Church’s social teaching into the public sphere of politics and policy.

It is true that many politicians in Zambia (and certainly in other countries as well) assert that social teaching interventions in socio-economic, governance and justice issues are “political” and insist that Church leaders should be silent on such affairs and concentrate only on “spiritual” matters. Can these critics of Church activism find support from Benedict’s position? The answer is an emphatic no, in my opinion. For Benedict’s view is in continuity with the major emphasis of that great social teaching document from the 1971 Synod of Bishops, Justice in the World : “Action on behalf of justice and participation in the transformation of the world” is constitutive (that is, central, essential, necessary, indispensable) to the preaching of the Good News.

Third, solidarity is a basic mark of true charity and a key element in “the struggle for justice and love in the world of today”, as the encyclical puts it. Benedict introduces the notion of solidarity when he discusses the consequences of an increasing globalisation of communication (enabling us to know the needs of others around the world) and of the means of assistance (enabling us to respond to these needs). I would describe solidarity as the sense that moves us beyond the physical reality of economic interdependence to the ethical reality of human interconnectedness. It is a profoundly moral sense that teaches us that our well-being is dependent on the well-being of others and that no matter how materially prosperous some of us may feel, we are spiritually and morally poor when we live in a world of great disparity.

As popular as was this concept of solidarity with John Paul II, it was Paul VI who had earlier defined its message in Populorum Progressio : “There is no progress towards the complete development of women and men without the simultaneous development of all humanity in the spirit of solidarity.” I believe that Benedict speaks of this situation when he makes a very strong statement of what can or cannot constitute the Church as the normative community described in Acts 2: 44-45: “… within the community of believers there can never be room for a poverty that denies anyone what is needed for a dignified life.” That poverty, as noted above, cannot be dealt with by the gift of charity alone but requires also the consequence of charity, the promotion of a justice that changes the structures of society. In Zambia, our Church’s current calls for more integral development and for more accountable governance mean that charity moves into social activism.

These three key arguments, on activism, evangelisation and solidarity reveal a framework for my social activism and that of so many others in Zambia and around the world. I don’t believe I have distorted Benedict’s message to justify my activism. Indeed, I’ve been personally challenged to examine my activism in the light of his call for prayer, humility and hope as necessary elements in effective charitable activity.

I take consolation from the canonisation of a contemporary Jesuit saint just a few months before the new encyclical was released. Fr Alberto Hurtado, a social activist in Chile in the early twentieth century, is reported to have remarked once: “Marx said that religion was the opium of the people. But I also know that charity can be the opium of the rich.” Certainly a charity without justice, without commitment to structural change, can be such an opium. But I see in Deus Caritas Est a beautiful description of a charity that is not an opium. For Benedict’s invitation to charity is never far from the mandate for justice .

If a revised version of this important encyclical were one day to be released (though I don’t think encyclicals come out with revisions), I’d recommend that the precision of its powerful message would be greatly enhanced by a quotation from the 1971 Synod: “Christian love of neighbour and justice cannot be separated. For love implies an absolute demand for justice, namely a recognition of the dignity and rights of one’s neighbour. Justice attains its inner fullness only in love.” What could be clearer?

Here is exciting news reported by Paul Badde, Vatican correspondent for the German newspaper DIE WELT, longtime neighbor in Rome and friend of Joseph Ratzinger, in
www.kath.net/detail.php?id=12868 from Rome last night. In translation, I have indicated passages where I am not sure I understood the sense of the words correctly, and for which I hope our native German speakers can help out) -
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For the first time a Pope will visit
the Pilgrim Church of the "Holy Face"
By Paul Badde

John Paul II repeatedly called for the “purification of memory” in the Catholic Church. Benedict XVI will be taking a spectacular new step in this direction in May when he visits the “Holy Face” of Manoppello, first disclosed to the world in September 2004 by Die Welt.

“Should we not see the true destiny of the world and call on God louder and more urgently to show us his face?” this Pope asked years ago when he was a cardinal. Recently he explained that Dante’s Divina Commedia had inspired him in his first encyclical (on love), in which, what in the end we meet in the innermost light of Paradise is not just a more blazing light but the tender face of a man: the face of Jesus Christ. That God has “a human face” is the all-moving high point of the “cosmic excursion.”

Dante’s poem from 1320, along with the Pope’s travel plans, remind us that the current “war of caricatures” is truly a caricature of earlier picture storms. The true conflict over the true picture of God has a history of insane frenzy behind it, in which thousands have been killed, though at the hand of Christians, not Muslims. Countless icons have been burned or chopped to pieces, and those who honored these icons banned, persecuted, and murdered.

In the year 730, Emperer Leon III, the Isaurian, wanted to destroy all the icons of the Byzantine kingdom in order “to purify” the Christian cult. After him, the same fever has infected Christianity every so often, accompanied by heated debates.

The central point made by stubborn defenders of sacred images has always been the same: Christians have an original image of God. In Jesus Christ God showed his face. Therefore Christians must illustrate Christ.

In the beginning of Christianity, therefore, was not something written but a picture. Until the Gospels were written, the early Church only had the Jewish Bible. But that did not make Christianity a religion by the book. For example, Ethiopian Christians up to the 9th century were able to grow and develop only using icons and oral narrations, totally without written materials.

The original experience of a God that showed himself to man was soon coupled to reports of a secret original picture that has been passed on in the innermost sanctums of Christianity from generation to generation.

Such a “picture of King Abgar” with “many creases”, from Edessa in north Anatolia (now Turkey), was first described in early Roman texts in the 6th century. Immured securely within a city gate, it reportedly had withstood several assaults. Later its presence was documented in Constantinople where it reportedly served as a model for the great Christ mosaic on the dome of St. Sophia.

Then in the 8th century, (references to) the picture dropped out of Byzantine texts altogether, at the same time as a similarly enigmatic portrait on a soft filmy cloth suddenly appeared in Rome, where soon it was called “Veronica’s sudarium" (Schweisstuch - literally, sweat-sheet). In the grottoes under St. Peter’s Basilica are five frescoes which show the “Ciborium” which Pope John VII ordered made for this “most holy sudarium.”

The pillared altar was the most important reliquary shrine of the old Basilica. In 1506 when the construction of the present Basilica started, Donato Bramante erected over the foundation stone a new treasure chamber for the crown relics. The first of the four towering columns on which the dome of St. Peter’s rests was built as a high-security repository for “Veronica’s veil,” which was reportedly placed in it in 1608 when the old shrine was torn down.

Then once again, later in the 17th century, the Ur-icon once again “disappeared” – although since then, once a year for a few seconds, a “Veronica relic”* is shown on the Loggia of this column. (As correspondent for Die Welt, having “seen” this relic on March 13, 2005, I am convinced that the naked eye cannot see anything on this “portrait.”)[Badde describes that experience in a story I translated and posted in the RFC forum last year.]

Has the Mother-Icon of Christ disappeared from this world? Perhaps not. In the meantime, a whole series of indicators have now shown overwhelmingly that the "Holy Face” of Manoppello which Pope Benedict will visit in May is identical to “Veronica’s sudarium” and to the even older Abgar picture. It has, all at once, the qualities of a photograph, a holograph, a painting, along with signs of puzzling impossibilities and imprecisions.

The material is finer than nylon. Above all, however, the Face of Christ does not resemble any known art work. The shadowing on the portrait is delicate, as only Leonardo could magically create with sfumatura.

In many ways the picture looks like a photograph, but the right pupil (of the eye) is slightly raised upward ["in der Iris ist die rechte Pupille leicht nach oben verschoben" - this is the phrase that I particularly cannot make sense of],
which is not possible in any photograph. Neither can it be a holograph, which it resembles when the veil is lit from behind. Four clear creases mark the piece of cloth, as though it had been for a long time folded (once lengthwise and then twice horizontally).

The colors shimmer, changing from umber, sienna, silver, slate, copper, bronze or gold, like butterfly wings [and I might add, exactly like Benedict's eyes!]; but under the microscope, no trace of color can be seen in the texture of the cloth, and if one holds it against the light, it appears transparent as clear glass and even the folds disappear! This last phenomenon can only be seen in so-called “mussel silk.” the most precious fabric in antiquity.

The difference from other "normal" fabrics however can be appreciated with the naked eye. On the upper part the portrait has no right and left corners where at some time, a patch of finest silk was placed. [Denn links und rechts oben fehlen dem Bild zwei Ecken, die irgendwann durch Flicken aus feinster Seide ersetzt wurden.] Against the light these patches look gray, while the veil is transparent as only mussel-silk can be.

In Manoppello the Portrait is highly venerated. Here they believe the legend that in 1506 an angel brought the portrait there. This legend was not questioned until a few years back when Sister Blandina Schloemer and Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, a German Trappist nun and a German Jesuit, began to investigate where “the angel” came from.

Certainly from Rome. But even the German Pope can have no answers for where it really came from before it survived the past few centuries in Italy. Here he will confront the question for the first time, kneeling before the icon.

The face has a peculiar mirror effect {Spiegelwirkung] It seems far and near at the same time. It most resembles the man who was wrapped in the Shroud of Turin. It is as majestic and puzzling as the Shroud – that other fabric, though far far coarser than Veronica’s Veil, which has been described since earliest times as “not made by human hands.”

But no two fabrics could be less like each other than these two: one is linen, the other mussel-silk – each of completely different density, thickness, structure and weave. Each one “twists” differently.

Imprecision and highly problematic measurableness are almost "woven" into both materials. Thus. the congruence between the two images found on such completely different fabrics is even more stunning.

The Holy Face of Manoppello

Both fabrics show an identical face, both are original images, but are completely different otherwise. All others are copies. However, if there is any other fabric in the world that can lay claim to be the “second shroud”, then it is this one which the 265th successor to Peter will be coming to kneel before.

John the Evangelist wrote that Peter was the first to see “the linen bindings and sudorium” in the empty grave (after the Resurrection). Right after him, John had gone in, “saw and believed.” What did he see that made him believe immediately? And what will Benedict XVI see this time?

He knows that in the 6th century, Byzantine army generals carroed a secret portrait of Christ as victory flags in their wars and massacres against the Persians, just as the Israelites carried the Ark of the Covenant in their battles against the Philistines. The Ark of the Covenant itself – Israel’s most holy relic containing the Commandments from Sinai - has been lost and found again in adventurous manner until it finally disappeared. Will the reappearance of God’s Face inspire the Pope as a rediscovery of the Ark? [Muss das Wiederauftauchen des Göttlichen Gesichts den Papst da nicht noch mehr beflügeln als eine letzte Wiederentdeckung der Bundeslade?]

Christianity today cannot and should not fight any more wars, whether against the Persians or th[e Philistines. But on the day he was elected, Benedict XVI did take on tremendous challenges in which Christianity can well use its ancient battle flag: the divine measure of man, whom Dante glimpsed in the light of love, Him who “moves the sun and stars.
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Paul Badde has written a book about the Manoppello icon. More information about it can be found on the quadrilingual website www.voltosanto.it/
I have also posted a brief backgrounder from the site in ODDS AND ENDS.

P.S. The Vatican possesses the so-called "Mandylion of Edessa" which for centuries was believed to be "Veronica's veil" but it now appears that the relic in Manoppello may be the authentic relic.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 18/02/2006 17.12]

ANOTHER DISSIDENT THEOLOGIAN WARMS A BIT TO THE POPE

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Pope’s report ‘pleasant surprise’

Rev. Curran discusses dispute with Vatican at Holy Cross

By Kathleen A. Shaw TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER— The Rev. Charles Curran, a Catholic priest who was told by Pope Benedict XVI, while he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that he could not teach theology in a Catholic institution, told a gathering at the College of the Holy Cross Thursday that he is “pleasantly surprised” by the content and tone of the recent encyclical by the pope.

The pope’s first encyclical, called Deus Caritas Est (God is Love), was recently published and is available on the Vatican Web site. An encyclical is a writing from the pope to members of the church on a topic of concern.

Cardinal Ratzinger, before he was elevated to the papacy and took the name Benedict XVI, headed the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when the writings of Rev. Curran, who was teaching moral theology at Catholic University of America, came to his attention.

Rev. Curran, who remains a priest in good standing with the Rochester, N.Y., diocese and teaches at Southern Methodist University in Texas, told a standing-room-only audience at Holy Cross that he first knew he had problems when Cardinal Ratzinger was quoted in an Italian publication as saying “ethics” was the concern of the church in North America.

Rev. Curran takes a more progressive view of sexual ethics than either the late John Paul II or Benedict XVI. He was among theologians who, in 1968, wrote a response to Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which said using artificial birth control methods was not moral. He was fired from his position at Catholic University in 1986 after Cardinal Ratzinger said he could not teach theology in a Catholic institution.

The priest said he got to know quite a bit about the new pope during the 10 years his writings were being studied by Cardinal Ratzinger and his congregation. The cardinal drew his theology from St. Augustine, an early Christian thinker, while Rev. Curran said he tends to be more in line with the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas, a major theologian of the Middle Ages. Augustinians take the view that it is “us against the world,” while followers of Aquinas, often called Thomists, see the goodness of the world and of creation.

Rev. Curran said Benedict shows none of the “us against the world” philosophy in his new encyclical.

In assessing the 26-year papacy of John Paul II, Rev. Curran said the pope did many good things. One of his best achievements was standing up for the world’s poor, he said. Rev. Curran said the pope never stopped talking about how the wealthier nations had to help those in Third World countries.

Noteworthy in the 2006 Annuario Pontificio, the official annual directory of Catholic prelates,
released yesterday, is the fact that the title "Patriarch of the Occident" no longer appears
among the formal titles of the Pope.

Benedict XVI is described in the directory as -
Bishop of Rome
Vicar of Jesus Christ
Successor of the Prince of Apostles
Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church
Primate of Italy
Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Rome
Sovereign of Vatican City
Servant of the Servants of God

This is followed by data on Joseph Ratzinger's ecclesiastical biography up to his election as Pope.

The title "Patriarch of the Occident" has been abolished, it seems, because it appeared
to discriminate in favor of only the Western Church, but the Pope is head of the
Universal Church,but better still, in the spirit of ecumenism, to avoid any contraposition
with the Patriarchs of the Eastern Churches.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/02/2006 17.16]

FROM A MORMON NEWSPAPER, PRAISE FOR PAPA

Benedict's encyclical offers hope for world

By Jerry Johnston
Deseret Morning News

Popes don't deliver general conference talks. They write "encyclical letters" — epistles to the Catholic faithful. Their writing is even divided into verses.

And last Christmas, Pope Benedict XVI sent out a Christmas newsletter to his family of 1 billion members. In the letter, which ran to 24 pages, the news — in the tradition of Christmas letters — was all good. The news was "God is love."

I read it the other evening. The message teaches much about love but much more about the man, Benedict XVI.

Back when the pope was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, he had the reputation of a "doctrinal drill sergeant." He was a papal guard dog. "God's Rottweiler," they called him. But this encyclical displays another side. Beneath the firm, outer shell, the pope has a soft soul.

And I think there's a lesson there. Often we see someone who is rigid about rules and behavior and figure they must be brittle all the way through. But that's not always the case. Usually, I think, that firm crust on the outside simply shields the vulnerable bread within. At least such seems to be the case with Pope Benedict XVI. His encyclical seems to have something positive for everybody — Mennonites, Muslims, Methodists and Mormons. Here are a few kernels of wheat that I gleaned from him:


"We contribute to a better world only by personally doing good now, with full commitment, wherever we have the opportunity . . . A Christian knows when it is time to speak of God and when it is better to say nothing and let love alone speak.

Faith, hope and charity go together. Hope is practiced through the virtue of patience, which continues to do good, even in the face of apparent failure . . . Faith tells us that God has given us his son for our sakes . . . Love is the light — and, in the end, the only light — that can always illuminate a world grown dim and give us the courage to keep living and working.

It is time to reaffirm the importance of prayer in the face of activism and the growing secularism of many Christians engaged in charitable work. Clearly, the Christian who prays does not claim to be able to change God's plans or correct what He has foreseen. Rather, he seeks an encounter with the Father of Jesus Christ, asking God to be present with the consolation of the Spirit.

When people claim to build a case against God in defence of man, on whom can they depend when human activity proves powerless?

Mary's greatness consists in the fact that she wants to magnify God, not herself. She is lowly . . . she places herself completely at the disposal of God's initiatives."


Needless to say, there's more. The rest of the encyclical can be found on the Vatican Web site: www.vatican.va. Click on "God Is love" (Deus Caritas Est). Still, the above quotes do give a feeling for what Benedict XVI is about. In a world of woe, he's determined to offer hope. Life beats us all up. At times, even religious leaders have to scold. But for me, nothing is more motivating than someone preaching optimism with firm conviction. I know what needs to be done. I just need someone to help me find the courage to do it.

Pope Benedict XVI, I think, is one of those people.

[Modificato da benefan 19/02/2006 18.33]

AND SO, IT'S OFFICIAL....
Here is how the Pope announced it at the end of the General Audience today,
Feast of Peter's Chair. In translation from the Italian-
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The Feast of the Chair of Peter is a day particularly appropriate to announce that a Consistory will take place on March 24 at which I will name the new members of the College of Cardinals. This announcement is attached to this feast day because the Cardinals have the task of supporting and helping the Successor of Peter in the fulfillment of the apostolic office which has been entrusted to him in the service of the Church.

It is not by chance that in ancient ecclesiastic documents, Popes have described the College of Cardinals as pars corpori nostri (cfr F.C. Wernz, Ius Decretalium, II, n. 459). The cardinals, indeed, constitute for the Pope a kind of Senate, whose services he avails of in the discharge of the tasks connected to his ministry as "perpetual and visible principle and basis of the unity of the faith and of communion" (cfr Lumen gentium, 18).

With the creation of the new cardinals, I mean to complete the number of 120 member electors of the College of Cardinals fixed by Pope Paul VI of venerated memory (cfr AAS 65, 1973, p. 163).
Here are the names of the new CArdinals:

1. Mons. WILLIAM JOSEPH LEVADA, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

2. Mons. FRANC RODÉ, C.M., Prefect of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Society of Apostolic Life;

3. Mons. AGOSTINO VALLINI, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signature;

4. Mons. JORGE LIBERATO UROSA SAVINO, Archbishop of Caracas;

5. Mons. GAUDENCIO B. ROSALES, Archbishop of Manila;

6. Mons. JEAN-PIERRE RICARD, Archbishop of Bordeaux;

7. Mons. ANTONIO CAÑIZARES LLOVERA, Archbishop of Toledo;

8. Mons. NICOLAS CHEONG-JIN-SUK, Archbishop of Seoul;

9. Mons. SEAN PATRICK O'MALLEY, O.F.M. Cap., Archbishop of Boston;

10. Mons. STANISLAW DZIWISZ, Archbishop of Cracow;

11. Mons. CARLO CAFFARRA, Archbishop of Bologna;

12. Mons. JOSEPH ZEN ZE-KIUN, S.D.B., Archbishop of Hong Kong.

I have also decided to elevate to the honor of cardinal 3 ecclesiastics older than 80 in consideration of the services they have rendered to the Church with exemplary loyalty and admirable dedication.They are:

1. Mons. ANDREA CORDERO LANZA DI MONTEZEMOLO, Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Paul outside-the-walls;

2. Mons. PETER POREKU DERY, Archbishop emeritus of Tamale (Ghana);

3. P. ALBERT VANHOYE, S.J., who was the Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Isntitute and Secretary of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

The new cardinals reflect the universality of the Church. They come from various parts of the world and inhabit diverse mansions in the service of the people of God. I invite you all to raise to God a special prayer for that the Lord may grant the, the necessary graces to carry out their mission with generosity.

As I said at the start, the Consistory will take place on March 24 and the follwing day, March 25, Feast of the Annunciation, I will have the joy of presiding at a solemn Concelbration of the mass with the new cardinals. For this occasion I am invite all ingthe members of the College of Cardinals, with whom I plan to have a reunion of reflection and prayer on March 23.
----------------------------------------------------------------

There were practically no surprises. The names had been mentioned in speculative articles preceding the announcemment. One notable absence, Andre Vingt-Trois, archbishop of Paris.
(Could it be because the Pope could not name 2 French bishops in a short list of 13? He did name two Americans, but Mons. Levada was named by virtue of the position he occupies, not because of geographical considerations). On the other hand, there are three Oriental names - the Archbishop of Seoul was not on most speculative lists, but he joins the Archbishops of Manila and Hongkong. A Papal nod to Asia. Africa is represented in the over-80 group.

P.S. The list does include a new cardinal from Latin America. Thanks to Benefan, for correcting my mistake. Also, two Curial heads are among the other notable non-nominees - German Archbishop Paul Cordes of Cor Unum and Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko of the Congregation for the Laity. Very curious to see what the Vatiscanistas will speculate about this!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/02/2006 17.00]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/02/2006 5.22]

Teresa, there was one from Latin America, the cardinal from Caracas, Venezuela.

OOPS! MY MISTAKE!!! - SORRY...

Thank you Teresa for the total translation. I know little Italian, but I had an idea of what he was saying...

[Modificato da loriRMFC 23/02/2006 3.26]