NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Benedict to Visit Synagogue

POSTED BY EDWARD PENTIN
National Catholic Register
Thursday, July 02, 2009 9:14 AM

The date has yet to be fixed, but Pope Benedict XVI will visit Rome’s synagogue in the fall.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told the Register today the visit has been “openly discussed and can be confirmed.” The Pope is expected to make the trip across the Tiber in November.

The Jewish place of worship belongs to the oldest Judaic community in Europe and one of the oldest continuous Jewish settlements in the world, dating back to 161 B.C.

It was also the venue for John Paul II’s historic visit in 1986, when he became the first Pope ever to set foot inside a synagogue. His gesture helped confirm a path of friendship between Christians and Jews, in the conciliar spirit of Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on relations between the Church and non-Christians.

If all goes to plan, Benedict will be welcomed by Chief Rabbi Riccardo di Segni, who is said to be “very pleased” at the news.

The invitation to visit the synagogue has been on the table for more than three years, but only now has it come to fruition, perhaps because of the Williamson affair and other recent issues which have caused tensions in Catholic-Jewish relations.

The Holy Father has been trying to steer relations back on course, thanking some Jewish leaders for their understanding following the lifting of the excommunication on the Holocaust-denying Society of St. Pius X Bishop Richard Williamson and decrying anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial during his recent trip to the Holy Land.

His visit won’t, of course, be as historic as John Paul II’s in 1986. That was appropriately summed up in Il Giornale on the day it took place. In an editorial, the Italian newspaper said, “No trip of this pilgrim Pope to any continent was so long as the one he made today; the short distance between the Vatican palace and the synagogue of Rome took two thousand years to cover.”

Details of Benedict’s visit have yet to be announced, but will be made public soon, possibly before he departs for his July 13-29 vacation in northern Italy.

John Allen wrote a very, very long article today on several topics. Below is the first part, which deals with the pope's upcoming encyclical.


A key to reading Benedict's social encyclical

by John L Allen Jr
All Things Catholic
National Catholic Reporter
Jul. 02, 2009

Italians have a wonderful phrase, chiave di lettura, which literally means a "key to reading." It refers to some core idea, or perspective, that can help make sense of a complex mass of material. Since Benedict XVI's long-awaited encyclical on the economy is finally set to appear next Tuesday, it seems a good time to float a possible chiave di lettura for the document, which I can express in one word: synthesis.

Titled Caritas in Veritate (the English title is "Love in Truth,") the encyclical will be presented Tuesday in a Vatican news conference. I'll be on hand for it, as well as for Pope Benedict's meeting with President Barack Obama next Friday.

Though the pope may not spell it out quite this way, much of Caritas in Veritate could well shape up as an attempt to synthesize three of the most persistent -- and, Benedict would doubtless say, artificial -- dichotomies in recent Catholic experience:

Personal conversion versus social reform;
Pro-life versus peace and justice commitments;
Horizontal versus vertical spirituality.

All three points can be understood as partial versions of one "grand dichotomy," that between truth and love.

To be sure, that idea is unlikely to figure in many news headlines on Tuesday, which will probably focus on the pope's policy recommendations, and/or his condemnations of greed. On the blogs, meanwhile, a slugfest will almost certainly erupt over whether the encyclical skews closer to the political right or left. (Its release just three days before President Barack Obama meets Benedict will probably fuel that cycle of spin.)

For those interested in drilling down, however, I suspect "synthesis" will prove a helpful way of pulling the document's strands together.

Inspiration for this chiave di lettura comes from Benedict himself, in a Q&A session two years ago with priests from the dioceses of Belluno-Feltre and Treviso in Italy. On that occasion, Benedict said: "Catholicism, somewhat simplistically, has always been considered the religion of the great 'et et': not of great forms of exclusivism, but of synthesis. The exact meaning of 'Catholic' is 'synthesis'."

Scrutinizing what's already on the record about Caritas in Veritate, it seems this "both/and" spirit is likely to pulsate through the document.

Personal conversion and social change

Perhaps no single idea is likely to loom larger than the insistence that a real fix to the global economic crisis -- which, of course, has to involve looking at structural matters such as trading relationships, tax policies, lending practices, and so on -- must first be rooted in personal conversion. Unless individual human beings act ethically, and see themselves as accountable to the common good, any system can be hijacked, subverted and corrupted, however noble its design.

A few days ago, unofficial extracts from Caritas in Veritate were published in the Italian press, and this idea figured heavily in those passages.

"Development is impossible without just human beings, without economic and political leaders who live the appeal to the common good strongly in their own consciences," the pope was reported to have written.

We don't need leaks, however, to get a sense of what's on the way, because most of Benedict's public remarks during the past week have seemed like a preview of the encyclical.

In a homily on Monday, Benedict reflected on the link between the personal and the social: "Lack of care for the soul, the misery of the interior person, not only destroys the individual, but it threatens the destiny of humanity in its entirety. … Without healing of the soul, without healing of the person from within, there can be no salvation for humanity."

The day before, during a vespers service at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls to mark the close of the "Pauline Year," Benedict offered another version of the same point: "Paul tells us [that] the world cannot be renewed without new human beings," he said. "Only if there are new human beings will there be a new world, a renewed and better world."

To some extent, this emphasis on holding the personal and the social together reprises a key idea from Benedict's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, in which he argued that programs of social justice can never eliminate the need for individual acts of charity. In a sense, Caritas in Veritate is likely to apply the same insight to the economy: There's no economic justice without individual morality -- rooted, ultimately, in truth.

Pro-Life and Peace-and-Justice Commitments

As he has elsewhere, Benedict is likely to reject any attempt to pick and choose among the church's social teachings, particularly when it comes to the wearily familiar tendency among Catholics to splinter into pro-life and peace-and-justice camps.

During the Sunday vespers service at St. Paul Outside the Walls, Benedict delivered a homily which called to mind his famous "dictatorship of relativism" speech on the cusp of the conclave that elected him to the papacy. Just as four years ago, Benedict on Monday was reflecting on Paul's letter to the Ephesians, urging Christians not to be like infants "tossed by waves and swept along by every wind of teaching arising from human trickery."

In that spirit, Benedict said that spiritual renewal requires "non-conformism," an unwillingness to "submit oneself to the scheme of the current epoch." Benedict recalled Paul's insistence upon an "adult faith," mocking the use of that phrase to justify dissent from official Catholic doctrine.

"The phrase 'an adult faith' in recent decades has become a diffuse slogan," the pope said. "It's often used to mean someone who no longer listens to the church and its pastors, but who chooses autonomously what to believe and not to believe -- a 'do-it-yourself' faith. This is then presented as the 'courage' to express oneself against the magisterium of the church."

"In reality, however, courage isn't needed for that, because one can always be sure of public applause," the pope said. "What takes courage is adhering to the faith of the church, even if it contradicts the 'scheme' of the contemporary world."

Benedict specifically highlighted opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

"Part of an adult faith, for example, is a commitment to the inviolability of human life from its first moment, radically opposing the principle of violence, precisely in the defense of the most defenseless of human creatures," the pope said. "Part of an adult faith is also recognizing marriage between a man and a woman for life as part of the design of the Creator, newly reestablished by Christ."

The leaked portions of Caritas in Veritate suggest that Benedict will come back to this point in the encyclical.

"Openness to life is at the heart of true development," the pope writes, according to the reports. "If personal and social sensibility for welcoming new life is lost, then other forms of welcome which are also useful for social life dry up."

Horizontal and Vertical Spirituality

A third recurrent tension in Catholic life runs between a primarily "vertical" spirituality, focused on the believer's personal faith life and relationship with God, and one that's more "horizontal," emphasizing the community of the faithful and broader engagement with the world. This tension sometimes ends up putting missionary efforts and social justice activism at odds, as if preaching the gospel were a distraction from building a better world.

On other occasions when Benedict XVI has touched upon social themes, he's argued that not only can vertical and horizontal spiritualities be reconciled, but that the former is a sine qua non for the latter. There can be no just world, the pontiff has insisted, without Christ, who is the source of justice.

That theme came across most clearly during Benedict's 2007 trip to Brazil, when he reflected at length on the idea of Latin America as a "continent of hope."

"Not a political ideology, not a social movement, not an economic system," the pope said, "but faith in the God who is love -- who took flesh, died and rose in Jesus Christ -- is the authentic basis for this hope."

Benedict acknowledged that a vertical spirituality "must not serve as an excuse for avoiding the historical reality in which the church lives as she shares the joys and hopes, the grief and anguish of the people of our time, especially those who are poor and afflicted." Yet Benedict insisted that social solidarity likewise must not dislodge proclamation of Christ, participation in the sacraments, and the promotion of holiness.

According to the extracts making the rounds, Benedict will make this point too in Caritas in Veritate.

The truth and love of Christ, the pope is reported to have written, is "the principal resource at the service of the true development of every single person and of all humanity."

* * *

Two footnotes.

First, the line-up for Tuesday's press conference includes Italian Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace; German Cardinal Paul Cordes, president of Cor Unum, the Vatican office that oversees charitable activity; Bishop Giampaolo Crepaldi, the number two official at Justice and Peace; and Stefano Zamagni, a professor of political economy at the University of Bologna, who was consulted in the preparation of the encyclical. Cordes was perhaps the key Vatican influence on Benedict XVI's first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, and both he and Martino were involved in Caritas in Veritate. Notably, American Cardinal William Levada of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who was present at the press conference for Deus Caritas Est, won't be on hand this time -- suggesting that even less than Benedict's first encyclical, this one is not seen by the Vatican as treating strictly doctrinal questions.

Second, it would be silly to suggest that the Vatican somehow timed the release of Caritas in Veritate to coincide with Obama's visit (which will probably not stop someone from doing it), but even so the coincidence does lend the document a particular relevance. On the subject of that July 10 encounter, one thing seems clear: To say that Obama is going out of his way to see the pope is, in this case, not just a political figure of speech. He'll arrive at the Apostolic Palace directly from the Abruzzo region of Italy, where earlier in the day he'll wrap up a G8 summit and also hold bilateral meetings with other leaders. After his session with the pope, Obama will be wheels up within moments -- en route to Ghana for a two-day visit, his first trip to sub-Saharan Africa since his election.

The White House's determination to put a meeting with Benedict on Obama's calendar on such a complicated day, even before the new U.S. ambassador to the Holy See has been confirmed, is striking. Likewise, the Vatican generally schedules meetings with heads of state in the late morning, so its willingness to accommodate Obama's arrival in the afternoon can also be read as a sign of eagerness.

In addition to seeing the pontiff, Obama is also expected to meet briefly with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State, and other senior Vatican diplomats. Those meetings are closed, though typically the Vatican issues a brief statement afterwards.

Schedule for papal trip to the Czech Republic released

Vatican City, Jul 3, 2009 / 09:41 am (CNA).- Today the itinerary for Pope Benedict’s September 26 -28 trip to the Czech Republic was made public. His visit will coincide with the feast day of the country’s patron, St. Wenceslas.

Upon arriving in the capital city of Prague on Saturday, September 26, Pope Benedict will visit the city's Church of Our Lady Victorious where he will venerate the image of the "Infant Jesus of Prague." That afternoon he will then visit the president of the Czech Republic in the presidential palace and, at 5 p.m., meet with the political and civil authorities and members of the diplomatic corps. The Pope’s day will conclude at 6 p.m. with the celebration of first Vespers at the cathedral of St. Vitus, St. Wenceslas and St. Adalbert, where he will address priests, religious, seminarians and members of lay movements.

On Sunday, the Pope will travel to Brno where he will celebrate Mass and the Angelus before returning to the archbishopric of Prague where he will meet ecumenical representatives before addressing members of the academic community at Prague Castle.

The final day of the Holy Father’s visit will include a visit to the church of St. Wenceslas where he will celebrate Mass for the feast of the saint, who is also the country’s patron. He is also scheduled to address the youth of the Czech Republic that morning.

Returning to Prague, Pope Benedict will have lunch with the country’s bishops before departing for Rome at 5:45 p.m. local time.

When Benedict Meets Barack

By Jeff Israely
TIME Magazine
July 5, 2009

When Pope Benedict XVI greets U.S. President Barack Obama at the Vatican on July 10, the symbolism and sheer star power of the encounter will keep the pundits chattering away. The photo op alone is worth a thousand words: The 82-year-old man in white, the world's most recognizable religious leader and head of its largest single denomination comes face-to-face with the charismatic first black President of the world's last superpower. And the scheduling efforts of both the Vatican and the White House suggest a shared appreciation of the symbolic weight the first encounter between Obama and Benedict could carry.

It was confirmed last week that the two would meet during a highly unusual Friday, 4 p.m. slot immediately after Obama finishes the G8 summit in Rome and prepares to depart for Ghana. Pontiffs almost always meet with visiting dignitaries before lunch, but that's not an option for Obama. And the fact that Benedict leaves Rome two days later for his summer holiday in the Italian Alps has some speculating that the pontiff had delayed his departure in order to be there when the new U.S. President comes to town.

Once they've allowed the photographers their opportunity, Benedict and Obama will speak alone and in private for what will likely be less than one hour. To paint the Obama-meets-Benedict dossier in broad strokes, says one senior Vatican diplomat, "It's basically the reverse of Bush." In other words, the Pope tends to appreciate the new President's less aggressive approach to foreign affairs, while clashing on ethical matters such as abortion rights and stem cell research — where President George W. Bush was seen by the Vatican as one of the few like-minded Western leaders on social issues, but whose invasion of Iraq was strongly opposed by the Vatican.

Some of the more zealous Catholic traditionalists, especially among American prelates, have been warning that an Obama presidency would expand abortion rights and deal other setbacks to traditionalist values. Former St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, now a high-ranking Vatican official, went as far as warning that the Democratic Party risks becoming a "party of death." And U.S. Catholics spent the past month arguing over whether the pro-choice Obama should have been invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame commencement.

The Vatican diplomat, however, said the Pope and his top aides view Obama as different from other Western leaders who challenge the Church on social issues. "He's not Zapatero," said the source referring to the series of landmark bills on gay rights passed by the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. "Obama's not motivated with hatred of Christianity or the Catholic Church."

And for each leader, being in the presence of the other can boost their own standing. Obama, whose strong showing with Catholic voters in November were a key to his victory, can pad his popularity on that front by meeting with the Pope, while Benedict's efforts to find his footing in global diplomacy could be helped by having a relatively like-minded partner in the White House.

Vatican sources expect Obama and Benedictd to trade notes on the Middle East peace process, following the Pope's trip to the Holy Land in May and Obama's recent speech to the Muslim world. Expected to coincide with the upcoming publication of the Pope's third encyclical, which covers social and economic matters, we can be sure Benedict will ask Obama about the response to the financial crisis and how to build a more ethical brand of capitalism. After all, while the pontiff is to the right of Obama on social issues and aligned with him on foreign policy, he actually lands quite often to the left of the American president on economic issues.

Here it is, the long-awaited 3rd encyclical:

www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate...


And some of the first comments on the encyclical:


Caritas in Veritate: Why Truth Matters

Posted by SAM GREGG
Acton Institute
on TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2009

Relativists beware. Whether you like it or not, truth matters – even in the economy. That’s the core message of Pope Benedict XVI’s new social encyclical Caritas in Veritate.

For 2000 years, the Catholic Church has hammered home a trio of presently-unpopular ideas into the humus of human civilization: that there is truth; that it is not simply of the scientific variety; that it is knowable through faith and reason; and that it is not whatever you want or “feel” it to be. Throughout his entire life, Benedict XVI has underscored these themes, precisely because much of the world, including many Christians, has lost sight of their importance.

Perhaps Caritas in Veritate’s most important truth-claim about economic life is that the market economy cannot be based on just any value-system. Against all relativists on the left and the right, Benedict maintains that market economies must be underpinned by commitments to particular basic moral goods and a certain vision of the human person if it is to serve rather than undermine humanity’s common good: “The economy needs ethics in order to function correctly — not any ethics whatsoever, but an ethics which is people-centred” (CV no.45)

“Without internal forms of solidarity and mutual trust,” the Pope writes, “the market cannot completely fulfill its proper economic function” (CV no. 35). This surely has been amply confirmed by the recent financial crisis. America’s subprime-mortgage market collapse was at least partly attributable to the fact that literally thousands of people lied on their mortgage application forms. Should we be surprised that mass violation of the moral prohibition against lying has devastating economic consequences? “The economic sphere”, the pope reminds us, “is neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. It is part and parcel of human activity and precisely because it is human, it must be structured and governed in an ethical manner” (CV no.36).

Contrary to the pre-encyclical hype of certain American commentators and the ever-unreliable British press, predictions of papal anathemas against “global capitalism” have – as usual – been found wanting. In economic terms, the pope describes as “erroneous” the tired notion that the developed countries’ wealth is predicated on poor nations’ poverty (CV no.35) that one hears customarily from the likes of Hugo Chavez and whatever’s left of the dwindling band of aging liberation theologians. That’s a pontifical body-blow to a central working assumption of many professional social justice “activists”.

Nor will they be happy with the pope’s concerns about the ways in which foreign aid can produce situations of dependency (CV no.58), not to mention Benedict’s strictures against protectionism (CV no.42) as well as his stress that no amount of structural change can possibly compensate for people freely choosing the good: “Integral human development presupposes the responsible freedom of the individual and of peoples: no structure can guarantee this development over and above human responsibility” (CV no.17).

Nor does Benedict regard the market as morally problematic in itself. “In and of itself,” the Pope states, “the market is not . . . the place where the strong subdue the weak. Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations” (CV no.36). What matters, Benedict claims, is the moral culture in which markets exists.

At the heart of the economy are human persons. People whose minds are dominated by crassly hedonistic cultures will make crassly hedonistic economic choices. “Therefore”, Benedict comments, “it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals” (CV no.36).

The implications of truth for economic life do not, however, stop here. For Benedict, it is a lens through which to assess ideas such as “business ethics”, “ethical investing” and “corporate social responsibility.” The notion that investment and business choices have a moral dimension is hardly new. What matters for Benedict is the understanding of morality underlying these schemes. Merely labeling an investment scheme as “ethical”, Benedict notes, hardly tells us whether it is moral (CV no.45).

A second major truth underscored by Benedict is the indispensability of a strong civil society for both undergirding and limiting the market and the state. By this, he does not mean a plethora of government-funded NGOs, many of whom Benedict identifies as intent upon imposing some of the very worst aspects of Western lifestyle-libertarianism upon developing nations (CV no.28). Certainly, Benedict believes, there is a need to re-evaluate (CV no.24) how the state regulates different parts of the economy. Ultimately, however, Benedict stresses that the virtue of solidarity, he argues, is about people concretely loving their neighbour; it “cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State” (CV no.38). This is reminiscent of Alexis de Tocqueville’s attention to the manner in which the habit of free association both limits the size of government while also discouraging people from retreating into their own little bubbles.

The economist John Maynard Keynes is famous for many things, including the saying that “in the long run, we’re all dead.” The horizon of Benedict XVI’s perspective on economic life is rather different. The pope asks people to live their economic lives in the short, medium, and long-term as if living in the truth is eternally important, not to mention eternally relevant to their soul’s salvation.

That’s change we can all believe in.


*************


Pope says moral values must be part of economic recovery, development

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
July 7, 2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Ethical values are needed to overcome the current global economic crisis as well as to eradicate hunger and promote the real development of all the world's peoples, Pope Benedict XVI said in his new encyclical.

The document, "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth") was dated June 29 and released at the Vatican July 7.

The truth that God is the creator of human life, that every life is sacred, that the earth was given to humanity to use and protect and that God has a plan for each person must be respected in development programs and in economic recovery efforts if they are to have real and lasting benefits, the pope said.

Charity, or love, is not an option for Christians, he said, and "practicing charity in truth helps people understand that adhering to the values of Christianity is not merely useful, but essential for building a good society and for true integral development," he wrote.

In addressing the global economic crisis and the enduring poverty of the world's poorest countries, he said, "the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity."

The global dimension of the financial crisis is an expression of the moral failure of greedy financiers and investors, of the lack of oversight by national governments and of a lack of understanding that the global economy required internationally recognized global control, Pope Benedict said.

"In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth," the pope wrote.

"To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority," he said.

Pope Benedict insisted that the idea of the world's richest nations scaling back development aid while focusing on their own economic recovery overlooked the long-term economic benefits of solidarity and not simply the human and Christian moral obligation to help the poor.

"In the search for solutions to the current economic crisis, development aid for poor countries must be considered a valid means of creating wealth for all," the pope said.

The economic growth of poorer countries and their citizens' demands for consumer goods actually benefit producers in the world's wealthier nations, he said.

The pope said that "more economically developed nations should do all they can to allocate larger portions of their gross domestic product to development aid," respecting the obligations they made to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals aimed at significantly reducing poverty by 2015.

Pope Benedict said food and water are the "universal rights of all human beings without distinction or discrimination" and are part of the basic right to life.

He also said that being pro-life means being pro-development, especially given the connection between poverty and infant mortality, and that the only way to promote the true development of people is to promote a culture in which every human life is welcomed and valued.

"The acceptance of life strengthens moral fiber and makes people capable of mutual help," he said.

He said the environment, life, sexuality, marriage and social relations are inextricably united.

If society does not respect human life from its conception to its natural end, "if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology," he said.

Development programs and offers of aid that encourage coercive population-control methods and the promotion of abortion do not have the good of people at heart and limit the recipients' motivation to become actors in their own development and progress, the pope said.

In addition, he said, an anti-life mentality in the world's richest countries is related to the lack of concern for the poor.

"How can we be surprised by the indifference shown toward situations of human degradation when such indifference extends even to our attitude toward what is and is not human?" the pope asked.

"While the poor of the world continue knocking on the doors of the rich, the world of affluence runs the risk of no longer hearing those knocks on account of a conscience that can no longer distinguish what is human," he said.

Pope Benedict also emphasized church teaching that making money and being wealthy are not sins, but that the way the money is made and the way it is used can be.

The encyclical condemned corruption, the exploitation of workers, the destruction of the environment, the continuing practice of wealthy nations imposing such high tariffs on imports that they shut poor countries out of the international marketplace and, especially, an "excessive zeal" for enforcing patents, especially on medications that could save the lives of thousands of poor people if they were available at a reasonable cost.

Pope Benedict called for "a profoundly new way of understanding business," which recognizes that investors are not a company's only stakeholders, no matter how the business is structured and financed.

Employees, those who produce the raw materials, people who live in the communities where the company is based, where its products originate and where its products are sold all have a stake in the business, the pope said.

He also said that investing always has a moral as well as an economic significance.

"What should be avoided is a speculative use of financial resources that yields to the temptation of seeking only short-term profit without regard for the long-term sustainability of the enterprise, its benefit to the real economy and attention to the advancement -- in suitable and appropriate ways -- of further economic initiatives in countries in need of development," he said.


****************


Pope proposes a 'Christian humanism' for the global economy

New encyclical on the economy offers something for both the political left and right to cheer … and something to be grumpy about

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
National Catholic Reporter
July 7, 2009
Rome

Blending a call for increased aid to developing nations, support for global governance with “real teeth,” alarm at the “unregulated exploitation” of the environment, and staunch opposition to population control programs, Pope Benedict XVI today sketched what he called a “Christian humanism” for the globalized age in his long-awaited social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (“Charity in Truth”).

To be sustainable, Benedict argues, economic policies must be rooted in a comprehensive vision of human welfare, including spirituality – as opposed to a “technocratic” approach, or one driven by “private interests and the logic of power.”

The pope rejects a laissez-faire economic philosophy which would treat the market as largely free-standing. Benedict specifically brushes off the idea that the economy has an in-built “quota” of poverty and underdevelopment required to function successfully.

“The conviction that the economy must be autonomous, that it must be shielded from ‘influences’ of a moral character, has led man to abuse the economic process in a thoroughly destructive way,” the pope writes.

In terms of secular politics, there’s something for both left and right to cheer in Caritas in Veritate, and something for them to be grumpy about. Liberals will likely applaud Benedict’s call for robust government intervention in the economy and his endorsement of labor unions, while conservatives will appreciate his unyielding opposition to abortion, birth control and gay marriage, insisting that such policies are not only morally flawed but poor economic strategy.

Release of the 30,000-word Caritas in Veritate was delayed in order to give the pope time to reflect on the economic crisis that erupted in mid-2007. On the eve of a G8 summit in Italy this week devoted to pondering a new architecture for the global economy, Benedict says the church does not have "technical solutions to offer," but nonetheless issues a slew of specific recommendations:

Resisting a “downsizing” of social security systems;
Support for labor unions and the rights of workers in a global economy marked by mobility of labor;
Combating hunger “by investing in rural infrastructures, irrigation systems, transport, organization of markets, and in the development and dissemination of agricultural technology”;
Enshrining access to steady employment for all as a core economic objective;
Protecting the earth’s “state of ecological health”;
Seeing “openness to life,” meaning resistance to measures such as abortion and birth control, as not only morally obligatory but a key to long-term economic development;
Ensuring that the targets of international aid programs are involved in their design and implementation, and trimming the bureaucracy sometimes associated with those programs;
Lowering domestic energy consumption in developed nations, investing in renewable forms of energy, and adopting new more sustainable lifestyles;
Curbing an “excessive zeal for protecting knowledge” among affluent nations, “through an unduly rigid assertion of the right to intellectual property, especially in the field of health care”;
Opening up global markets to the products of developing nations, especially in agriculture;
Commitment among developed nations to devote a larger share of their gross domestic product to development aid;
Greater investment in education;
More generous immigration policies, recognizing the economic contributions of migrants, both to their host countries and to their countries of origin by sending money home;
Support for micro-finance, consumer cooperatives, and socially responsible forms of business;
Reform of the United Nations and international institutions of economics and finance, in order to promote “a true world political authority ... with real teeth,” though one informed by the principle of subsidiarity – meaning respect for the liberty of individuals, families, and civil society;
Opposition to abuses of biotechnology such as a new eugenics.
Underlying his specific positions, Benedict argues for a view of the human person founded on faith in God and open to spiritual meaning, as opposed to “an empiricist and sceptical view of life.”

“Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space,” the pope writes. Authentic development “requires a transcendent vision of the person, it needs God.”

In that context, Benedict insists on a strong public role for religion, against what Italian Cardinal Renato Martino, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, called "a militant secularism, sometimes exasperated," during a Vatican news conference this morning.

In the encyclical, Benedict XVI argues that both secularism and fundamentalism "exclude the possibility of ... effective cooperation between reason and religious faith."

Signs of the times flagged by the pope include “badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing, large-scale migration of peoples, often provoked by some particular circumstance and then given insufficient attention, [and] the unregulated exploitation of the earth’s resources.” Benedict also laments the juxtaposition of “a ‘right to excess’, and even to transgression and vice, within affluent societies, [alongside] the lack of food, drinkable water, basic instruction and elementary health care in areas of the underdeveloped world and on the outskirts of large metropolitan centres.”

In addition to structural reform, Benedict suggests that a lasting remedy to the present economic crisis will require conversion of individual hearts and minds.

“Development is impossible without upright men and women, without financiers and politicians whose consciences are finely attuned to the requirements of the common good,” the pope says.

Benedict champions organized labor in Caritas in Veritate, arguing that in a global economy marked by massive mobility of labor workers’ rights “must be honoured today even more than in the past.” He calls upon labor unions in developed countries to devote greater attention to “exploited and underrepresented” workers in other parts of the world.

The pope also calls for urgent efforts to alleviate hunger, asserting that food and access to water must be regarded as “universal rights of all human beings.”

To some extent, Caritas in Veritate is styled as an update of Pope Paul VI’s 1967 social encyclical Populorum Progressio, which addressed the newly emerging global order in the era of decolonization. Benedict calls Paul’s document “the Rerum Novarum of the modern age,” a reference to Pope Leo XIII’s landmark 1891 encyclical that launched the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching.

Experts in Catholic social teaching say much of Caritas in Veritate is not exactly new – the call for a true world political authority, for example, reaches back to Pope John XXIII’s 1963 encyclical Pacem in Terris, and has periodically been repeated by popes ever since.

Nonetheless, there are a couple of new wrinkles in Caritas in Veritate.

For one thing, Benedict XVI insists that Catholic social teaching must be seen as a package deal, holding economic justice together with its opposition to abortion, birth control, gay marriage, and other hot-button issues of sexual morality. The pope expresses irritation with “certain abstract subdivisions of the church’s social doctrine,” an apparent reference to tensions between the church’s pro-life contingent and its peace-and-justice activists.

For the first time in a social encyclical, a pope argues that current demographic trends – in particular, population declines and rapid aging in parts of the developed world, especially Europe and Japan – illustrate the wisdom of Catholic sexual morality.

“Decline in births, falling at times beneath the so-called ‘replacement level’, also puts a strain on social welfare systems, increases their cost, eats into savings and hence the financial resources needed for investment, reduces the availability of qualified labourers, and narrows the ‘brain pool’ upon which nations can draw for their needs,” Benedict writes.

Benedict called falling birth rates in the developed world a sign of “scant confidence in the future and moral weariness.”

A second original touch in Caritas in Veritate is Benedict’s description of the emergence of a “broad intermediate area” between private business firms and non-profit initiatives, made up of business enterprises that operate not just from the profit motive but also out of a sense of social responsibility. The pope explicitly cites the “Economy of Communion,” linked to the “Folocare” movement founded by the late Italian Catholic laywoman Chiara Lubich, which links almost 800 businesses worldwide in a commitment to pool a share of their profits in order to find development and formational programs.

“It is to be hoped that these new kinds of enterprise will succeed in finding a suitable juridical and fiscal structure in every country,” Benedict writes. “The very plurality of institutional forms of business gives rise to a market which is not only more civilized but also more competitive.”

Third, despite the argument of some social theorists that the nation-state may become obsolete in a globalized age, Benedict argues that “both wisdom and prudence suggest not being too precipitous in declaring the demise of the State.” In fact, the pope says, the current economic crisis may mark something of a renaissance for the state, as public authorities once again assert control over economic life.

One interesting twist to Caritas in Veritate is that Benedict XVI manasged to pen a 144-page reflection on the globalized economy without once using the term "capitalism."

Caritas in Veritate is the first social encyclical of the 21st century, and the third encyclical letter from Pope Benediot XVI, after Deus Caritas Est in late 2005 and Spe Salvi in 2007. The new encyclical carries the date of June 29, the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul.

I think the last part of this article is kind of cute. For years, the stereotypical picture of a Japanese tourist in the U.S. included a high-tech camera hanging around their neck.


Taro Aso, Japan's first Catholic prime minister, meets with Pope Benedict XVI

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 7, 2009

VATICAN CITY — The first Catholic prime minister of Japan, Taro Aso, met Tuesday with Pope Benedict XVI for talks that touched on topics including the world economic crisis and aid to Africa.

A statement from the Holy See said the "cordial" meeting Tuesday lasted 30 minutes. Aso is the first of the world leaders gathering for the Group of Eight summit in Italy to meet with the pope.

President Barack Obama will visit the Vatican on Friday.

Only 1 per cent of Japanese are Christians, but Catholics play an influential role in areas such as education.

The church, seeking to raise the profile of Catholics, held a major ceremony in Nagasaki last year for Japanese martyred in the 1600s for refusing to renounce their Christian beliefs.

Japan has pushed for Africa to be a major theme of the G-8 summit and the Vatican's communique noted their shared commitment to help the continent.

The statement said that Vatican-Japanese relations as well as church-state relations in Japan were excellent.

As a gift, Aso presented Benedict with a video camera as an example of Japanese technology, brought to the pope on a silver plate. Both men were smiling as Benedict picked it up and Aso explained how to operate it. The exchange was shown on TV footage released by the Vatican.

I'm ordering mine today!

Encyclical breaks new ground on social issues, commentators say

By Nancy Frazier O'Brien
Catholic News Service
July 7, 2009

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI's new encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth"), breaks new ground on such topics as microfinancing, intellectual property rights, globalization and the concept of putting one's wealth at the service of the poor, according to Catholic scholars and church leaders.

In interviews with Catholic News Service and in statements about the encyclical released July 7 at the Vatican, commentators said the more than 30,000-word document takes on a variety of issues not previously addressed in such a comprehensive way.

"I was surprised ... at how wide-ranging it is," said Kirk Hanson, a business ethics professor at Santa Clara University in California and executive director of the Jesuit-run university's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. "It's not just an updating of 'Populorum Progressio'" ("The Progress of Peoples"), the 1967 social encyclical by Pope Paul VI, he added.

Hanson said he also was struck by Pope Benedict's concept of "gratuitousness" or "giftedness," which reminds people "not to consider wealth ours alone" and asks the wealthy to "be ready to put (their money) in service for the good of others."

The encyclical is "a plea for the wealthiest on the planet to put their wealth toward the development of peoples," he said. "In many ways, (Microsoft founder and philanthropist) Bill Gates would be the poster child for this document."

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has donated billions of dollars for health and development programs worldwide, as well as for education and housing programs in the United States.

Terrence W. Tilley, who chairs the theology department at Jesuit-run Fordham University in New York and is immediate past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, said one unique aspect of the encyclical is Pope Benedict's "vision that all flows from the love of God."

"It's unusual as a theological reflection on social justice," he said. "But that's what holds it all together."

Tilley said the encyclical makes a "pedagogical attempt to get people out of the mindset that charity is just giving money to those poor people over there." The pope rejects such a "dismissive attitude," he said.

The Fordham professor also said he was "delighted to see the strength with which (Pope Benedict) supports labor organizations." But the pope also stresses "the responsibility of both management ... and labor to take care of and be responsible to other than their own constituencies," he added.

Tilley said that although the document is "full of principles it really attempts to get in touch with empirical realities."

Bishop Michael P. Driscoll of Boise, Idaho, said that aspect of the encyclical will be particularly helpful in these "difficult times for the poor in Idaho or anywhere around the world."

"The Holy Father, who has seen the terrible toll these times have taken, has given us a new vision on which to build a just economy, where all can thrive, not merely the rich and powerful," he said. "We cannot achieve true prosperity unless it is built upon a foundation of justice and care for all, including the poor."

In a different part of the country, Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit said people in southeast Michigan "are living through profound changes in the social and economic fabric of our community."

"All of us citizens, and especially our leaders, need to make wise and farsighted decisions in order to lay the foundation for the better future we want to hand on to succeeding generations," he said. "The Holy Father's new encyclical, as the latest application of the church's social teaching, offers an important resource for us in the great project we are engaged in.

"In particular, it will give us guidance, 'signposts' as it were, about how to build a society that is grounded in the foundational truths about the human person, wisdom for a future that advances the true dignity and real progress of every individual," Archbishop Vigneron added.

Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl of Washington said the encyclical is "very welcome and particularly timely as our political and economic leaders struggle to address the devastating global economic crisis."

The document also notes that "responsibility does not stop at a nation's borders nor does it fall solely to political leaders," the archbishop said. "Universal human truths about human dignity transcend geographic, economic and political boundaries."

Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the encyclical provides helpful guidance for finding answers to the social, economic and moral questions of the contemporary world in a search for truth.

The document offers sound reflections on the vocation of human development as well as on the moral principles on which a global economy must be based, he added.

"This encyclical offers a powerful warning to the modern world -- especially the West," said Steve Schneck, director of the Life Cycle Institute at The Catholic University of America in Washington. "It speaks to the dangers of commerce, popular culture and technology unhinged from a vision for the common good informed by charity."

Vincent Miller, associate professor of theology at Georgetown University in Washington, said Pope Benedict "rejects the dominant vision of economics as abstract, technological efficiency" and "calls for a revisioning of economics as an essentially moral undertaking."

"His complex thought does not fit easily into our political map, but there is no doubt that Benedict is much more critical of contemporary economics than any political party in our country," added Miller, who was recently named to the Gudorf chair in Catholic theology and culture at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Andrew Abela, an associate professor of marketing who chairs the department of business and marketing at Catholic University, said the pope's main message is "that spiritual development is essential to development, and that 'even in the most difficult and complex times, besides recognizing what is happening, we must above all else turn to God's love.'"

"I hope this core message is not drowned out in the politicizing of this encyclical that will inevitably happen," he added.

Abela said he was "intrigued by the pope putting forward the example" of Economy of Communion, a project launched in 1991 by Focolare movement founder Chiara Lubich that brings together more than 700 companies worldwide committed to pursuing a "higher goal" than just profit.

"I think that the Economy of Communion has the potential to revolutionize the relationship between workers and employers in positive ways," he added.

Officials of International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity, an international alliance of Catholic development agencies known by the acronym CIDSE, hailed the encyclical as helpful to their work, saying that it might convince wealthier countries to "make up for broken promises" to the developing world.

"Political leadership in resolving the (global economic) crisis is lacking and developing countries continue to suffer the direst consequences," said Bernd Nilles, secretary-general of the organization based in Brussels, Belgium. "It's time for true reform and solidarity in the fight against global poverty."

"Economic processes should serve justice, one of the two dimensions of true human development set out by the pope," said Rene Grotenhuis, president of CIDSE and director of Dutch Cordaid. "Every economic decision has moral consequences."

Caritas in Veritate in Gold and Red

The revenge of Justice and Peace (or so they may think).

By George Weigel
National Review Online
July 7, 2009

In the often unpredictable world of the Vatican, it was as certain as anything could be in mid-1990 that there would be a 1991 papal encyclical to commemorate the centenary of Rerum Novarum — the 1891 letter of Leo XIII that is rightly regarded as the Magna Carta of modern Catholic social doctrine. The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which imagines itself the curial keeper of the flame of authentic Catholic social teaching, prepared a draft, which was duly sent to Pope John Paul II — who had already had a bad experience with the conventionally gauchiste and not-very-original thinking at Justice and Peace during the preparation of the 1987 social encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. John Paul shared the proposed draft with colleagues in whose judgment he reposed trust; one prominent intellectual who had long been in conversation with the Pope told him that the draft was unacceptable, in that it simply did not reflect the way the global economy of the post–Cold War world worked.

So John Paul dumped the Justice and Peace draft and crafted an encyclical that was a fitting commemoration of Rerum Novarum. For Centesimus Annus not only summarized deftly the intellectual structure of Catholic social doctrine since Leo XIII; it proposed a bold trajectory for the further development of this unique body of thought, emphasizing the priority of culture in the threefold free society (free economy, democratic polity, vibrant public moral culture). By stressing human creativity as the source of the wealth of nations, Centesimus Annus also displayed a far more empirically acute reading of the economic signs of the times than was evident in the default positions at Justice and Peace. Moreover, Centesimus Annus jettisoned the idea of a “Catholic third way” that was somehow “between” or “beyond” or “above” capitalism and socialism — a favorite dream of Catholics ranging from G. K. Chesterton to John A. Ryan and Ivan Illich.

It was, in a word, a rout — the Waterloo for Justice and Peace. Ever since, Justice and Peace — which may forgive but certainly does not forget — has been pining for revenge.

It didn’t get it during the last years of the pontificate of John Paul II, despite efforts to persuade the Pope to mark the 30th anniversary of Paul VI’s 1967 social encyclical, Populorum Progressio, with a major statement — or, when that stratagem failed, to mark Populorum Progressio’s 35th anniversary. Evidently incapable of taking “No” for an answer, Justice and Peace kept beavering away, with an eye toward Populorum Progressio’s 40th anniversary in 2007. It is one of the worst-kept secrets in Rome that at least two drafts of such an encyclical, and perhaps three, were rejected by Pope Benedict XVI.

That Justice and Peace should imagine a Populorum Progressio anniversary encyclical as the vehicle for its counterattack against Centesimus Annus is itself instructive. For in the long line of papal social teaching running from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, Populorum Progressio is manifestly the odd duck, both in its intellectual structure (which is barely recognizable as in continuity with the framework for Catholic social thought established by Leo XIII and extended by Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno) and in its misreading of the economic and political signs of the times (which was clouded by then-popular leftist and progressive conceptions about the problem of Third World poverty, its causes, and its remedies). Centesimus Annus implicitly recognized these defects, not least by arguing that poverty in the Third World and within developed countries today is a matter of exclusion from global networks of exchange in a dynamic economy (which put the moral emphasis on strategies of wealth creation, empowerment of the poor, and inclusion), rather than a matter of First World greed in a static economy (which would put the moral emphasis on redistribution of wealth). Interestingly enough, Paul VI himself had recognized that Populorum Progressio had misfired in certain respects, being misread in some quarters as a tacit papal endorsement of violent revolution in the name of social justice. Pope Paul tried a course correction in the 1971 apostolic letter, Octogesima Adveniens, another Rerum Novarum anniversary document.

Now comes Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth), Benedict XVI’s long-awaited and much-delayed social encyclical. It seems to be a hybrid, blending the pope’s own insightful thinking on the social order with elements of the Justice and Peace approach to Catholic social doctrine, which imagines that doctrine beginning anew at Populorum Progressio. Indeed, those with advanced degrees in Vaticanology could easily go through the text of Caritas in Veritate, highlighting those passages that are obviously Benedictine with a gold marker and those that reflect current Justice and Peace default positions with a red marker. The net result is, with respect, an encyclical that resembles a duck-billed platypus.

The clearly Benedictine passages in Caritas in Veritate follow and develop the line of John Paul II, particularly in the new encyclical’s strong emphasis on the life issues (abortion, euthanasia, embryo-destructive stem-cell research) as social-justice issues — which Benedict cleverly extends to the discussion of environmental questions, suggesting as he does that people who don’t care much about unborn children are unlikely to make serious contributions to a human ecology that takes care of the natural world. The Benedictine sections in Caritas in Veritate are also — and predictably — strong and compelling on the inherent linkage between charity and truth, arguing that care for others untethered from the moral truth about the human person inevitably lapses into mere sentimentality.


The encyclical rightly, if gingerly, suggests that thug-governments in the Third World have more to do with poverty and hunger than a lack of international development aid; recognizes that catastrophically low birth rates are creating serious global economic problems (although this point may not be as well developed as it was in previous essays from Joseph Ratzinger); sharply criticizes international aid programs tied to mandatory contraception and the provision of “reproductive health services” (the U.N. euphemism for abortion-on-demand); and neatly ties religious freedom to economic development. All of this is welcome, and all of it is manifestly Benedict XVI, in continuity with John Paul II and his extension of the line of papal argument inspired by Rerum Novarum in Centesimus Annus, Evangelium Vitae (the 1995 encyclical on the life issues), and Ecclesia in Europa (the 2003 apostolic exhortation on the future of Europe).

But then there are those passages to be marked in red — the passages that reflect Justice and Peace ideas and approaches that Benedict evidently believed he had to try and accommodate. Some of these are simply incomprehensible, as when the encyclical states that defeating Third World poverty and underdevelopment requires a “necessary openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion.” This may mean something interesting; it may mean something naïve or dumb. But, on its face, it is virtually impossible to know what it means.

The encyclical includes a lengthy discussion of “gift” (hence “gratuitousness”), which, again, might be an interesting attempt to apply to economic activity certain facets of John Paul II’s Christian personalism and the teaching of Vatican II, in Gaudium et Spes 24, on the moral imperative of making our lives the gift to others that life itself is to us. But the language in these sections of Caritas in Veritate is so clotted and muddled as to suggest the possibility that what may be intended as a new conceptual starting point for Catholic social doctrine is, in fact, a confused sentimentality of precisely the sort the encyclical deplores among those who detach charity from truth.

There is also rather more in the encyclical about the redistribution of wealth than about wealth-creation — a sure sign of Justice and Peace default positions at work. And another Justice and Peace favorite — the creation of a “world political authority” to ensure integral human development — is revisited, with no more insight into how such an authority would operate than is typically found in such curial fideism about the inherent superiority of transnational governance. (It is one of the enduring mysteries of the Catholic Church why the Roman Curia places such faith in this fantasy of a “world public authority,” given the Holy See’s experience in battling for life, religious freedom, and elementary decency at the United Nations. But that is how they think at Justice and Peace, where evidence, experience, and the canons of Christian realism sometimes seem of little account.)

If those burrowed into the intellectual and institutional woodwork at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace imagine Caritas in Veritate as reversing the rout they believe they suffered with Centesimus Annus, and if they further imagine Caritas in Veritate setting Catholic social doctrine on a completely new, Populorum Progressio–defined course (as one Justice and Peace consultor has already said), they are likely to be disappointed. The incoherence of the Justice and Peace sections of the new encyclical is so deep, and the language in some cases so impenetrable, that what the defenders of Populorum Progresio may think to be a new sounding of the trumpet is far more like the warbling of an untuned piccolo.

Benedict XVI, a truly gentle soul, may have thought it necessary to include in his encyclical these multiple off-notes, in order to maintain the peace within his curial household. Those with eyes to see and ears to hear will concentrate their attention, in reading Caritas in Veritate, on those parts of the encyclical that are clearly Benedictine, including the Pope’s trademark defense of the necessary conjunction of faith and reason and his extension of John Paul II’s signature theme — that all social issues, including political and economic questions, are ultimately questions of the nature of the human person.

FATHER FESSIO: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE

Pope Places Charity and Truth at Heart of Debate

By Father Joseph Fessio, SJ

NAPLES, Florida, JULY 7, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI has something for everyone in "Caritas in Veritate" -- from praising profit (21) to defending the environment (48). But in these cases, as in all the others, he calls for a discernment and a purification by faith and reason (56) that should temper immoderate and one-sided enthusiasms.

Once again, Pope Benedict shows himself to be a theologian of synthesis and fundamental principles. In the titles of his three encyclicals he has used only five nouns: God, Love, Hope, Salvation, and Truth -- the most fundamental of realities. And in the opening greeting of this encyclical he succinctly describes the contents: "on integral human development in charity and truth."

Note that from this very greeting Pope Benedict has changed the whole framework of the debate on "the social question." This was expected to be -- and is -- his encyclical on "social justice." And indeed "justice" and "rights" find their proper place in a larger synthesis. But the priority is established from the outset, the foundation is laid, with "charity" and "truth." "Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine" (2). "Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power" (5).

Another fundamental principle, and a central theme of this pontificate, is the continuity of the Church and her teaching. Surprisingly, the central ecclesiastical text from the past is Pope Paul VI's "Populorum Progressio," and Pope Benedict makes it clear that we do not have "two typologies of social doctrine, one pre-conciliar and one post-conciliar, differing from one another: On the contrary, there is a single teaching, consistent and at the same time ever new" (12). This principle of continuity was expressed centrally in Benedict's first address as Pope on April 20, 2005, and again to the Roman curial cardinals on Dec. 22 of that year.

Within this fundamental material context of charity and truth, and the fundamental formal context of the continuity of the Church's teaching, Pope Benedict situates the centerpiece of the Church's social teaching: "integral human development." And by "integral" he means "it has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man" (18, quoting Paul VI). Among the important dimensions of this wholeness, he notes that integral human development must be open to the transcendent (11: "authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension. Without the perspective of eternal life, human progress in this world is denied breathing-space.") and it must be open to life (28: "Openness to life is at the center of true development").

The inclusiveness of this integration is emphatically and perhaps surprisingly exemplified in paragraph 39. There, the Pope states that the "logic of the market and the logic of the state," i.e., free economic exchange with political oversight and restraint, are not enough to secure human flourishing. There must also be "solidarity in relations between citizens, participation and adherence, actions of gratuitousness" or, as he says in summary, "increasing openness, in a world context, to forms of economic activity marked by quotas of gratuitousness and communion." Pope Benedict insists on a "third economic factor" in addition to the market and the state: gratuitousness.

Here is a radiant example of the fundamental, synthetic, and discerning character of Pope Benedict's formulation of the Church's social teaching, one which for me is worth the whole encyclical for its clarity, depth, and common sense: "If there is lack of respect for the right to life and a natural death, if human conception, gestation and birth are made artificial, if human embryos are sacrificed to research, the conscience of society ends up losing the concept of human ecology and, along with it, that of environmental ecology. It is contradictory to insist that future generations respect the natural environment when our educational system and laws do not help them to respect themselves" (51).

There are times when one is especially proud of the blessing of the Catholic faith. This is one of them.

* * *

Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio is the editor of Ignatius Press and theologian in residence at Ave Maria University. Father Fessio is also a former student of Joseph Ratzinger and belongs to Ratzinger's "Schülerkreis."

As predicted, besides releasing his new encyclical, the pope has also issued a new motu proprio to deal with the St. Pius Society.


Pope says doctrinal congregation will dialogue with traditionalists

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
July 8, 2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI has placed the commission responsible for relations with traditionalist Catholics under the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

With a brief apostolic letter issued "motu proprio" (on his own initiative), Pope Benedict said he wanted to "demonstrate paternal care toward the Society of St. Pius X," founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, so members could return to full communion with the church.

The apostolic letter, dated July 2 and published July 8, was titled "Ecclesiae Unitatem" ("The Unity of the Church").

In a brief note published separately, Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of 80-year-old Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos as president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei," which since 1988 has been charged with outreach to the Society of St. Pius X and assistance to Catholics attached to the pre-Vatican II liturgy.

As president of the commission, the pope named U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In addition, the pope named Italian Msgr. Guido Pozzo, assistant secretary of the International Theological Commission and a staff member of the doctrinal congregation, to serve as secretary of "Ecclesia Dei."

"The task of safeguarding the unity of the church, with concern for offering everyone assistance in responding to this vocation and divine grace in appropriate ways, is expected particularly of the successor of the apostle Peter, who is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of the unity of both bishops and faithful," the pope wrote.

He said that after Archbishop Lefebvre ordained bishops against the orders of Pope John Paul II in 1988 and the bishops were excommunicated, the pope established "Ecclesia Dei" to "facilitate the full communion" of the priests, religious, seminarians and laypeople who had a bond with the traditionalist archbishop and an attachment to the liturgy as it was celebrated before the Second Vatican Council.

Pope Benedict said his 2007 decision to allow Catholics greater and easier access to the older liturgy was motivated by the same concern.

And, he said, his decision in January to lift the excommunications of the four bishops was done to help overcome "every fracture and division within the church and to heal a wound experienced as increasingly painful."

The excommunications "could have prejudiced the opening of a door for dialogue" with the leaders of the Society of St. Pius X, he said.

Lifting the excommunications was an act limited to the field of church discipline, Pope Benedict said, adding that "doctrinal questions obviously remain and until they are clarified, the society (of St. Pius X) does not have canonical status within the church and its ministers may not legitimately exercise any ministry."

The pope's July letter said that while the president of "Ecclesia Dei" will be the prefect of the doctrinal congregation, the commission would have its own staff. However, the doctrinal questions that arise during the commission's work and in its contacts with the Society of St. Pius X will be handled by the cardinals and bishops who are members of the doctrinal congregation.

In a statement issued by the Vatican, Cardinal Levada "expressed his gratitude to the Holy Father for the trust demonstrated by this decision, assuring the Holy Father -- including in the name of the officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- of the commitment to doctrinal dialogue with the Society of St. Pius X."

In recent interviews, Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the society, said he and the other members have serious concerns about the way the teachings of the Second Vatican Council have been interpreted and implemented, particularly those teachings regarding religious liberty, ecumenism, liturgy and relations with other religions.

In a March letter to the world's bishops explaining why he had lifted the excommunications, Pope Benedict already announced his intention to place the commission under the guidance of the doctrinal congregation.

Placing "Ecclesia Dei" under the doctrinal congregation, he said, "will make it clear that the problems now to be addressed are essentially doctrinal in nature and concern primarily the acceptance of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar magisterium of the popes."

I think John Allen is being a bit harsh here. Cardinal Castrillon-Hoyos is overdue to retire at 80. The move of Eccesia Dei to the CDF has been talked about for quite some time.


Pope removes officials seen as responsible for Holocaust-denying bishop row

By John L Allen Jr
National Catholic Reporter
Created Jul 08, 2009
Rome

In what could be seen as another piece of fallout from Benedict XVI’s January decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, the pope today restructured the Vatican office that handles relations with the traditionalist world -- and, in effect, gently fired the officials who presided over the earlier fiasco.

As a result of a document issued by the Vatican today, titled Ecclesiae unitatem, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos, who had served as President of the Ecclesia Dei Commission since 2000, and Italian Monsignor Camille Perl, the number two official at Ecclesia Dei, are both out of work. The Ecclesia Dei Commission was created by the late Pope John Paul II in 1988 to manage relations with the Society of St. Pius X founded by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Both men played key roles in the decision to lift the ecxcommunications, including that of Bishop Richard Williamson, the traditionalist prelate who denied in an interview with Swedish television that the Nazis had used gas chambers and that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust.

The so-called “Lefebvrites” rejected many of the reforms associated with the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). Most prominently, traditionalists clung to the pre-Vatican II Mass in Latin, but many also have voiced objections to the council’s teachings on ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue and religious freedom.

In broad strokes, the restructuring announced today is seen by most observers as a sign that the Vatican intends to take a more careful, and perhaps a bit firmer, hand in its dealings with traditionalist Catholics.

Issued as a motu proprio, meaning an exercise of the pope’s personal authority under canon law, Ecclesiae unitatem brings the Ecclesia Dei Commission under the supervision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s top doctrinal agency. That means ultimate responsibility for the church’s relationship with the traditionalists will belong to American Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the doctrinal congregation.

The Vatican also announced today that the new secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission will be Italian Monsignor Guido Pozzo, 57, formerly an official in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and deputy secretary of the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the doctrinal congregation.

Levada released a statement today stipulating that as far as the Lefebvrite movement is concerned, “the doctrinal questions remain open. Until they’re clarified, Levada’s statement said, the ‘Society of St. Pius X’ cannot enjoy any canonical status within the church, and its ministers do not exercise in a legitimate way any ministry within the church.”

Although the Vatican issued a similar statement at the time of the controversy surrounding Williamson, today’s repetition from Levada makes clear anew that the lifting of the excommunications in January does not mean that the Lefebvrite bishops are fully “rehabilitated.”

The Society of St. Pius X includes almost 500 priests worldwide, and claims to have a total following of roughly one million.

Castrillon-Hoyos, 80, who was once touted as a candidate to become pope, is widely seen as a doctrinal conservative who had hoped to engineer the full readmission of the traditionalist movement into the Catholic church. When the controversy over Williamson erupted, many Catholic insiders pointed the finger of blame at Castrillon-Hoyos and his staff, suggesting that if anyone in the Vatican should have known William’s track record, it was the Ecclesia Dei Commission.

In early February, the Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, appeared to single out Castrillon for responsibility in an interview with the French daily La Croix, although Lombardi later said that Castrillion-Hoyos couldn’t be expected to know the thinking of everyone in the Lefebvrite movement.

Today’s Vatican statement expressed Benedict XVI’s gratitude to Castrillon-Hoyos and Perl, as well as the pope’s “paternal solicitude” for the traditionalists, “with the aim of overcoming the difficulties that still remain in order to reach full communion with the church.”

And just one more commentator on the new encyclical.


FATHER SCHALL: ENCYCLICAL RECONNECTS RIGHTS AND DUTIES

"Caritas in Veritate" Is a Guide For Temporal Life

By Father James V. Schall, SJ

WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 8, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's new social encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," takes its place in the Church's on-going effort accurately to state the fundamentals of human living. It is not what our eternal life is about, but what our temporal life is about, seen in the light of our eternal life. We do not de-emphasize one or the other, but take them according to their own truth as related to each other.

Though it repeats many of the matters that were dealt with in "Deus Caritas Est" and "Spe Salvi," Benedict's two previous encyclicals, this new document is not really intelligible without the profound analysis of modern ideology and the last things that were found in the earlier encyclicals on love and hope.

In "Spe Salvi," the Pope stated that politics could not be politics if it confused itself with eschatology. That is, if we think that our political life is our transcendent life, we in effect lose the proper dimensions of both. In the present encyclical, Benedict XVI basically states what we can and should do in this world seen now as the arena of the actions that form our souls.

The title of this encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," is significant. Of the three basic kinds of love -- philia, eros and agape -- none is safe if it is not pursued according to the truth of things, of the proper object of love. Just as we cannot love something that is not loveable, so we cannot love something unless we know what it is, which is saying the same thing in other words. The separation of truth and love in the name of love or "kindness" is the characteristic of our times. Love, it is said, covers a multitude of sins. In the modern world, it eliminates them altogether if truth is not a component of love. "Two loves built two cities," very opposite cities, as Augustine said.

One of the first things to note in this encyclical is that everything is seen against a metaphysical and theological background. Much is made of justice; even more of "gift." Our very existence is a "gift." We do not create ourselves, nor does God need to create us for some completion in himself.

The encyclical, distantly following Aristotle on friendship and benevolence, is quite aware that more is needed and expected of us than just what is our "right" or what is "due." An ancient criticism of Christians was that they were so interested in the next world that they did not have time for this world. This encyclical suggests the opposite is true. Only if we have the next world right will we act rightly and nobly in this one.

The encyclical is also a reflection on Paul VI's "Populorum Progressio," written just over 40 years ago. Benedict rethinks the notion of "development," a word that relates to the old Aristotelian notion of habits and how we acquire them. Benedict XVI follows a fine line that seeks to accept everything in modernity that is good and defensible, while at the same time pointing out its real problems. He is a natural law thinker.

But on the other hand, he always begins from where we are. Whether he speaks of business, finance, tourism, political structures, world poverty or economics, he begins with human beings already having acted in their public lives to make themselves into a certain kind of being based on what they are given to be in nature. Catholic social thought is not utopian, even when it insists that things can and ought to be better.

Particularly pleasing was the way in which Pope Benedict finally came to terms with the ambiguity from modern political philosophy in the word "rights." In many ways, nothing has been more destructive to Catholic social thought than its uncritical use of the word "rights." Benedict admonishes us that we first begin with "duties." We can use the word "rights" provided it has a fixed content and does not mean -- what it in fact means in modern philosophy -- whatever we want or legislate.

When it comes to essentials, "Caritas in Veritate" is frank and to the point -- that is, what it means to be "charitable," what it means to be "truthful."


*************



Reflections on Caritas in Veritate

By James V. Schall, S.J.
Catholic World Report
July 9, 2009

This new encyclical contains 79 substantial paragraphs, all numbered. It is 44 pages in manuscript format plus footnotes. It is quite readable, but it is also very carefully and intelligently written. It is a “social” encyclical, that is, one that deliberately follows in the tradition of Catholic social thinking beginning with Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum of 1891 through all subsequent popes.

Christian social doctrine professes to state how the understanding of man in the Christian view exists in the public order for the good of that order.

The Christian religion and other religions can offer their contribution to development only if God has a place in the public realm, specifically in regard to its cultural, social, economic, and particularly its political dimensions. The Church’s social doctrine came into being in order to claim “citizenship status” for the Christian religion. Denying the right to profess one’s religion in public and the right to bring the truths of faith to bear upon public life has negative consequences for true development (#56).

This is not an argument that the Church should become a political entity. The encyclical recognizes the state as a natural and necessary human phenomenon. But to exclude in principle the duty to state and to live the faith in the public order means to reduce religion to a merely private and insignificant affair as if the proper understanding of what man is had nothing to do with how he is to live.

The document is addressed to “bishops, priests, men and women religious, the lay faithful, and all people of good will.” I presume it is also directed to those of “bad” will, just so they won’t feel discriminated against. Its subject matter is the “integral human development in charity and truth.” The word “development” goes back at least to Newman in theology.

But the word “development” is immediately taken from Paul VI’s 1969 encyclical, Populorum Progressio, which was famously devoted to the notion that the new word for social thought is “development.” This word implies, no doubt, that there are both undeveloped and mis-developed things. We have babies who are fine but not yet developed. We have “monsters” who are improperly developed but who are fully grown. Here the word means every aspect of what it is to be human, including his soul, is what it should be.

Benedict XVI is, happily, incapable of dealing with something unless he deals with everything. Journalists will rapidly read this documents looking for items that are “news-worthy,” that is, ones that criticize business, the government, the media, or the Church. They will not concentrate on the overall scope of what Benedict is about here.

The encyclical is wide-ranging and seeks to say something about everything. It is known to be a document initially prepared by others from various disciplines and sectors of the Church and curia, but finally organized by the Pope, no mean feat. Benedict’s first two encyclicals were composed mostly by himself. The difference is telling in reading this document. The document has a kind of “touch on everything” feeling about it. However, what it does consider at some depth, things such as business, profit, life, and the relation of politics to metaphysics and revelation, are very good.

Benedict sets this encyclical within a broader framework so that we can see the limited but important status that public life has. The whole document is concerned with our relation to each other, especially to the poor and weak. It is stronger on what the rich owe to the poor than in what the poor must themselves do if they are to be not poor. The discussion of the other religions in their relation to issues of development is quite frank. The Pope understands that many of their basic beliefs and attitudes are incompatible with a more developed human life. But this criticism is not taken to mean that allowing freedom of religion is not the basic human duty of the state.

This encyclical, moreover, does something that I have been concerned about for many years. It is very careful how it uses the term “rights.” The Pope clearly spells how “rights” and “democracy” in their modern meanings can lead to a violation of human dignity if they are grounded in no standard or understanding of human nature, including fallen human nature.

But the great insight is that all reality is gift-oriented. The very title of the encyclical has to do with the fact that we cannot call “charity” something that is not rooted in the truth of what man is. The terms “mercy” or “compassion” have often lent themselves to a process whereby they overturned what was objectively true in the man.

The encyclical is finally cast in the context of the Trinity, of the relationships in which we are created. The person is not “rights”-oriented but duty- and gift-oriented. The encyclical is a great document that puts things together, metaphysical things, natural law things, revelational things, political things, economic things; all things are seen in relation to each man’s relation to God, to his transcendent destiny which, as is stated in Spe Salvi, is already social. Caritas in Veritate is thus a continuation of Deus Caritas Est, and Spe Salvi. Deus Caritas est. Deus Logos est. Deus Trinitas est.

James V. Schall, S.J. is professor of government at Georgetown University.

The news reports and photos are starting to come in about the meeting between Obama and the pope. Here is a summary from the Catholic News Service.


Pope welcomes Obama to Vatican, discusses results of G-8 summit

By Carol Glatz and Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Junly 10, 2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama to the Vatican July 10, and the two discussed world issues addressed at the Group of Eight summit.

As they met, Obama told the pope, "It's a great honor; thank you so much."

The two sat down at a desk in the papal library and began discussing the G-8 summit -- the meeting of the world's wealthy industrialized countries, which concluded that morning in L'Aquila, Italy. The summit focused on the economic crisis, climate change and global tensions.

Pope Benedict told the president, "You must be tired after all these discussions."

The president responded that the meetings marked "great progress" and "something concrete," although the precise topic they were discussing at that point was unclear.

The private meeting lasted more than 30 minutes.

At the end of the meeting, Pope Benedict told the president, "A blessing on all your work and also for you."

The president responded, "Thank you very much. We look forward to a very strong relationship."

Obama arrived at the Vatican shortly before 4 p.m., and a squad of Swiss Guards saluted him in the St. Damasus Courtyard of the Apostolic Palace.

U.S. Archbishop James Harvey, prefect of the papal household, was the first to greet the president, and he accompanied Obama to a meeting with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state.

Among the hundreds of people waiting to see Obama pass by on his way to the papal meeting were two members of the Sisters of Our Lady of the Apostles from Ghana.

One of them, Sister Felicia Harry, said: "I think it is good he is visiting the Holy Father. They will get to talk face to face on issues they might not agree on. This is a good opportunity for them to share ideas."

After their closed-door meeting, Obama introduced the pope to his wife, Michelle.

President Obama's entourage also included Gen. James Jones, national security adviser; Mona Sutphen, White House deputy chief of staff; Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications; Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary; and David Axelrod, senior adviser to the president.

Pope Benedict gave Obama a mosaic showing St. Peter's Basilica and Square, an autographed copy of the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" ("Charity in Truth") and a medal marking the fifth year of his pontificate.

The president told the pope the mosaic, which was made in the Vatican's mosaic studio, "was very beautiful" and would have "a place of honor" in the White House.

The president gave the pope a liturgical stole that had been on the remains of St. John Neumann, the first U.S. male citizen to be proclaimed a saint.

St. John Neumann, Philadelphia's fourth bishop, is enshrined in a glass casket under an altar at St. Peter the Apostle Church in Philadelphia. New vestments have been placed on his remains four times since his 1860 death -- in 1903, 1962, 1989 and 2008.

The saint was a Redemptorist priest, and the Baltimore province of the order gave Obama the stole, which had been removed from the casket in 2008.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters July 8 that he expected the president and pope to have a frank discussion, but he did not expect it to be focused exclusively on their differences.

"I think that there's a lot that they agree on that they'll get a chance to discuss," including "outreach to the Muslim world" and the reduction of nuclear weapons, Gibbs said.

And, he said, even on the issues related to the sanctity of life, there are ways to move forward together "whether it's on something like unintended pregnancy or adoption -- some of those things that I think the pope and the president will get a chance to discuss, and I assume it will be a very frank conversation."

Patrick Whelan, president of Catholic Democrats, told Catholic News Service in Rome July 10 that with Obama's visit and the nomination of Miguel Diaz, a theologian, as ambassador to the Holy See, "I think there is a new era about to be launched -- a positive, productive one."

"I think people at the Vatican realize he has some grounding in Catholic social teaching" and that he is able to mobilize and motivate young people for good, Whelan said.

On the issue of abortion, "Obama has taken a third way -- the whole abortion-reduction strategy is not just window dressing," he said. "I think they (Obama administration officials) are very committed to doing something to reduce abortions without resorting to criminalization."

Whelan said studies have shown that poverty has a huge impact on abortion rates and "I think the best thing for the unborn was Obama's economic stimulus package."

McDonough told reporters July 9 that "in many ways the visit is not unlike visits with other heads of state -- that is to say that there are issues on which they'll agree, issues on which they'll disagree, and issues on which they'll agree to continue to work on going forward."

McDonough said Obama had been influenced by Catholic social teaching and by Catholic social service programs, particularly when he worked with Catholic-funded programs as a community organizer in Chicago.

Speaking as a Catholic, the deputy said, "The president, in both his words and in his deeds, expresses many things that many Catholics recognize as fundamental to our teaching.

"One is that the president often refers to the fundamental belief that each person is endowed with dignity," he said, adding that Obama "often underscores that dignity of people is a driving goal in what we hope to accomplish in development policy, for example, and in foreign policy."

Carl A. Anderson, supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, told the National Catholic Register the Catholic vision of authentic development includes protecting the dignity of human life, including the unborn.

"There is a way in which both the president's and the pope's view of human dignity coincide, but there's also an area in which they are irreconcilably different," Anderson said in the interview published June 30.

But "there's a possibility for great good to come out of the meeting," he said, especially concerning issues where there is common agreement like the economy, peace in the Middle East and global poverty.

In the early July issue of the Catholic magazine "30 Giorni," Cardinal Georges Cottier, the former theologian of the papal household, said the criticism from the U.S. bishops over Obama's support of legal abortion was justified. But, he said, Obama's expressed commitment to reducing the number of abortions and guaranteeing conscientious objection rights for health workers shows that "his words go in the direction of diminishing the evil."

*****************

Before and during Obama's meeting with the Pope, his family got a special tour of the Vatican.


Obama women tour Vatican grounds

Vatican City, Jul 10, 2009 / 09:04 am (CNA).- Michelle Obama, accompanied by her mother, two daughters and personal assistant, was given a Vatican tour this afternoon as her husband, President Barack Obama, prepares to meet with the Holy Father later in the afternoon.

The 60-minute tour included visits to St. Peter’s Basilica, the tombs of several Popes, the first and second floors of the Loggia and the Sistine Chapel.

She has currently joined her husband in a meeting with Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone and will meet with Pope Benedict at 4 p.m. local time.

Here is a personal observation from a Newsweek Magazine blogger who was with the press corps at the Benedict/Obama meeting.


Obama Meets the Pope, Makes It Out Alive

Holly Bailey
Newsweek Magazine
Posted Friday, July 10, 2009 11:39 AM

President Obama just wrapped up his visit with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. We’ll have to wait for word later from administration officials on what exactly the two talked about in their private sit-down. And no doubt the Vatican will have its own take. But reporters at the White House press file at the G-8 site in L’Aquila were able to see some of the visit on feed provided by official Vatican TV. Obama first met one-on-one with the pope, where the two exchanged the usual greetings as the president was escorted into Benedict's private apartment. The two leaders then went into the Papal Library, where Obama sat on one side of a very fancy wooden desk and Benedict sat on the other. As dozens of photographers captured the moment for eternity, Obama made small talk. “You must be used to having your picture taken,” the president said. The pope, with a faint smile, nodded. “I’m still getting used to it,” Obama told him. The pope gave him a careful look. “You must be getting tired,” Benedict finally said, referring to Obama’s lengthy foreign sojourn his week. Obama’s response was inaudible.

A few minutes later, Vatican TV suddenly cut to a feed that showed Obama and Benedict standing in a corner of the library, and First Lady Michelle Obama, dressed in a black dress and black lace head veil, had joined them. All three were smiling. There was no sign of the Obama daughters on Vatican TV’s footage, though reporters had been told they would be there. Your Gaggler did get to watch Obama introduce the pope to members of his inner circle, who looked collectively thrilled. Among those on hand: National Security Adviser Jim Jones, Deputy Chief of Staff Mona Sutphen, Senior Adviser David Axelrod, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and NSA adviser Denis McDonough. Upon meeting, Gibbs and McDonough kissed the pope’s hand—though other advisers, including Axelrod, who is Jewish, did not. Obama, Michelle and the aides posed for a group picture with the pontiff. For the record, McDonough, who confessed to reporters earlier this week that he was pretty excited about this event, looked the happiest we’ve ever seen him.

Afterwards, Benedict handed out official papal swag: boxes of blessed Catholic rosaries for the women and medals for the men. He presented the president with a painting of St. Peter's Square and an autographed copy of Caritas in Veritate, his recently-published take on the church's social teachings. (Do you think he meant that as a hint?) Obama, meanwhile, presented the pope with his gift: a stole that had been placed on the remains of St. John Neumann, the first naturalized U.S. citizen to named a saint. The group bid their good-byes, and it was done. The whole thing lasted a little less than an hour. The president is now on his way to Ghana, the final stop on his trip.

Pope presses Obama on pledge to reduce abortions

John Allen
National Catholic Reporter
July 10, 2009
Rome

When President Barack Obama came calling on Pope Benedict XVI today, the two men enjoyed a “truly cordial” encounter, according to a Vatican spokesperson, but at the same time there was no diplomatic silence from the pontiff about their differences over abortion and other “life issues.”

Not only did Benedict press his pro-life case with his words to the president, but he even found a way to make the point with his gift, offering the president a copy of a recent Vatican document on bioethics. According to a Vatican spokesperson, the pope drew a repetition from Obama of his vow to bring down the actual abortion rate.

Beyond the life issues, the Vatican’s statement indicated that Benedict and Obama also found “general agreement” on the Middle East peace process and other regional situations. The two leaders also touched food security, development aid especially for Africa and Latin America, immigration and drug trafficking, according to the statement.

Coming away from the meeting, however, it was hard to escape the impression that Benedict wanted to use it to deliver a clear pro-life message.

While Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said after the meeting that it would be wrong to interpret the pope’s message as a “polemic,” he added that the life issues are “important for the American church” and “it would be ambiguous to try to hide these differences, or to put them in second place.”

According to a written statement from the Vatican, the first issues discussed during a 35-minute private meeting this afternoon in the Apostolic Palace were “questions which … constitute a great challenge for the future of every nation and for the true progress of peoples, such as the defense and promotion of human life and the right to abide by one’s conscience.”

The latter phrase was understood as a reference to the current debate in America over protections for health care workers who assert a conscientious objection to participating in abortions or other procedures. During a session with Catholic journalists last week, Obama promised a “robust conscience clause” which would not weaken protections in vigor during the Bush administration.

In a briefing for reporters in Rome, Lombardi said that Benedict XVI said afterwards that Obama had seemed “attentive” to the church’s concerns, and that Obama had reiterated his commitment to adopting policies that will bring down the actual number of abortions.

Lombardi said that Benedict XVI seemed “very satisfied and content” with how the meeting went. For his part, Obama parted company with the pope expressing his determination to forge “a very strong relationship” with the Vatican.

The face-to-face session between Obama and Benedict XVI, accompanied by two interpreters, was scheduled to last around 15 minutes, but in the end the two men were behind closed doors for more than 35 minutes. Afterwards Obama introduced his family to the pope, along with key members of his administration, and the two men exchanged gifts.

Typically that gift exchange is pro-forma, but this afternoon Benedict XVI used it to underscore his message on the life issues. In addition to a signed copy of his recent encyclical on the economy, Caritas in Veritate, which has become the pope’s standard offering to heads of state this week, Benedict also gave Obama a copy of Dignitas Personae, an instruction from the Vatican’s doctrinal agency on bioethics released last December.

Dignitas Personae lays out the church’s position in defense of human life “from conception to natural death,” and also treats a wide range of new bioethical questions such as embryonic stem cell research, cloning, preimplantation diagnosis and genetic engineering.

As reporters waited outside during the private session, a top papal aide approached them to explain that the pope was presenting Obama with a copy of Dignitas Personae. He said, “The reading [of this document] could help the president better understand the church’s position.”

Later, as Benedict pointed the document out to him, Obama said it looked like he had “some reading to do on the plane.”

Prior to his session with Benedict XVI, Obama sat down with the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, for roughly 15 minutes.

Well before Obama even strolled into the Apostolic Palace, both sides had made clear they were committed to making this meeting happen.

Obama called on the pope in the middle of what is arguably among the busiest days of his presidency to date. This morning he wrapped up a G8 summit in the Abruzzo region of Italy, meeting with the heads of state of African nations and then conducting a bilateral meeting with President Jacob Zuma of South Africa. Obama then made his way to Rome to see the pope, en route to the airport for a state visit to Ghana, where he’s due to arrive tonight.

On the Vatican side, two small but telling concessions reflect their eagerness to receive Obama. For one thing, it’s long been diplomatic protocol here that the pope receives heads of state in the late morning, with the afternoon often reserved for meetings with curial officials. For another, the normal procedure is for a head of state to meet first with the pope, in his library on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace, and then to descend to the first floor for a session with the Cardinal Secretary of State in his office. In this case, Bertone came upstairs to meet Obama in the sala d’angolo, or “corner room,” just a few doors down the hall from the papal apartment. In an inversion of the normal sequence, Obama met first with Bertone and then with Benedict XVI.

All these gestures were designed to accommodate Obama’s tight schedule, and although the concessions may seem small, in the carefully orchestrated world of Vatican diplomacy – where nothing is too insignificant to escape notice – they amounted to unmistakable signals that the Vatican wanted the chance to put some matters on Obama’s radar screen.

Despite the weighty nature of the issues at stake, some of the rock-star-like excitment that Obama often induces was evident even in and around the Vatican this afternoon. In the Press Office of the Holy See, for example, a French correspondent displayed a banner above his work space, playing off the famous “Yes We Can!’ mantra of the Obama campaign.

The banner read: “Yes We Vatican!”

What is Mrs. Obama thinking?





"The pope is wearing a hoodie!"

Technological 'absolutism’ could lead to ‘dark scenarios,’ Pope Benedict warns

Vatican City, Jul 12, 2009 / 09:50 am (CNA).- Before Sunday’s Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI reiterated the views expressed in his recently published social encyclical Caritas In Veritate. He reaffirmed the need for a global commitment to development and warned of “dark scenarios” for the world if an absolutist view of technology persists.

The Pope recalled the importance of the just concluded G8 summit, but above all he stressed that "there are social inequalities and structural inequities in the world that are no longer tolerable, which require, in addition to immediate action, a coordinated strategy to find durable solutions." The Church, he said, "has no technical solutions to offer, but, as an expert in humanity, it offers everyone the teaching of Sacred Scripture on truth and proclaims the Gospel of love and justice."

"A new economic plan is required that redesigns development in a holistic way, building on the foundation of ethical responsibility before God and man as a creature of God." Quoting his recently published encyclical, the Pontiff said: "In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family.”

The social question has become an "anthropological” issue, which implies a way of conceiving man in truth, body and soul. Solutions to current problems of humanity cannot only be technical, but must take into account all the needs of the person, who has a soul and body.

"The absolutism of technology, which finds its clearest expression in certain practices contrary to life could draw dark scenarios for the future of humanity."
"Acts that do not respect the true dignity of the person,” the Holy Father said, “even when they seem motivated by a choice of love, in reality are the result of a material and mechanistic conception of human life, which reduces love without truth to an empty shell to fill arbitrarily and can thus result in adverse effects in integral human development."

"Despite the complexity of the current situation in the world,” the Pope concluded, “the Church looks to the future with hope and reminds Christians that the proclamation of Christ is the first and main factor of development."

After the Marian prayer, Benedict XVI expressed his "deep concern” about events in Honduras.

"I would to invite you to pray for that country so dear to the maternal intercession of Our Lady of Suyapa,” he said. “May the leaders of the nation and all its inhabitants patiently walk the path of dialogue, mutual understanding and reconciliation. This is possible if, setting aside personal interests, everyone strives to seek the truth and to tenaciously pursue the common good: this is the condition for ensuring peaceful coexistence and genuine democratic life! To the Honduran people I assure my prayers and impart a special Apostolic Blessing."

Tomorrow, the Pontiff moves to Les Combes in the Valle d'Aosta for a period of rest.
"I call on everyone,” he added, “to accompany me with prayer. Prayer knows no distance and separation: wherever we are, it makes us one heart and one mind."

Who's going to Les Combes for Papa's vacation?

I'm thinking of the usual suspects. Benevolens, benedetto.fan, Paparatzifan, have you girls packed your bags yet? Don't forget your cameras and your poor, miserable friends on the forum who will be stuck at home waiting for even the slightest word about what is going on with Papa. Have a great time and don't get arrested.