NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Uphill Fight for Pope Among Secular Czechs

By DAN BILEFSKY
The New York Times
September 27, 2009

PRAGUE — As Pope Benedict XVI arrived in the Czech Republic on Saturday on a three-day pilgrimage aimed at battling against the forces of secularism, religious leaders warned that he faced a daunting challenge in a nation of mostly natural-born skeptics.

When the pope comes to town, a city usually pulls out all the stops. Not so here in the Czech capital, where banners heralding the pope’s visit and large crowds were conspicuously absent. The local newspapers that highlighted the trip seemed more preoccupied with the pope’s penchant for bright red loafers than with the substance of his religious mission. [Hasn't even the New York Times figured it out yet that red loafers are standard papal footwear? My gosh!!!]

“If the pope wants to create a religious revival in Europe, there is no worse place he could come to than the Czech Republic, where no one believes in anything,” said Jaroslav Plesl, a self-confessed lapsed Catholic who is deputy editor of Lidove Noviny, a leading daily newspaper here. “Add to that the fact that the pope is German and socially conservative and he might as well be an alien here.”

Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution that overthrew Communism in Czechoslovakia, the pope is visiting what many religious observers, unfairly or not, consider the ground zero of religious apathy in Europe. Vatican officials said that he had chosen the Czech Republic for a mission central to his papacy: fomenting a continentwide spiritual revolt against what Benedict labeled Saturday as “atheist ideology,” “hedonistic consumerism” and “a growing drift toward ethical and cultural relativism.”

The pope touched down in Prague after a send-off from Rome’s Ciampino Airport by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose popularity among Roman Catholics has dropped after a summer of sex scandals.

At a welcome ceremony at the Ruzyne Airport here, the pope lauded the fall of the Berlin Wall as a “watershed” in world history, while underlining the toll of 40 years of political repression. “A particular tragedy for this land was the ruthless attempt by the government of that time to silence the voice of the church,” he said.

On his first trip here as pope, Benedict faces inevitable comparisons with Pope John Paul II, who in 1990 made Prague his first stop in the former Eastern Bloc after the fall of Communism.

Yet while John Paul, who was Polish, is revered for his role in helping to overthrow Communism, many Czechs said they were skeptical of Benedict, 82.

According to the latest census, fewer than three million of the country’s 10.5 million people identify themselves as Roman Catholics.

Also casting a shadow over the visit is the issue of church property confiscated under Communism and given to the state, which Roman Catholic Church officials value at about $15 billion. In 2008, the government drafted a bill calling for one-third of that sum to be paid to the church, with the balance paid over 70 years. But the bill was never passed by Parliament.

The Rev. Tomas Halik, a Roman Catholic leader who was secretly ordained under Communism and now lectures at Charles University in Prague, noted that the repression of the Roman Catholic Church during the cold war had given the church a certain moral authority because religious adherence was viewed as a cultural rebellion against the government.

He added that while some traditionalists and religious intellectuals were energized by the pope’s visit, many Czechs inhabited a “spiritual desert.”

“A majority of people have no interest in the pope’s visit and are more concerned about traffic congestion,” he said.

On Saturday, Benedict visited the Infant of Prague, a popular religious icon in the city’s Church of Our Lady Victorious. President Vaclav Klaus greeted him at the airport, and Benedict later met Vaclav Havel, the former president who led the Velvet Revolution in 1989. The main event of the pope’s visit is an open-air Mass in Brno on Sunday in the country’s Roman Catholic heartland. During the trip, a group called Condom Positive said it planned to distribute condoms with a likeness of the pope and the question, “Papa said no! And You?”

Benedict is also scheduled to celebrate a Mass in Stara Boleslav, which is about 15 miles northeast of the capital, in honor of the country’s patron saint, St. Wenceslas. Throughout, he is expected to emphasize the moral imperative that the Continent rediscover its religious roots.

Religious experts have noted that the Czechs’ abiding religious skepticism stretches to the 15th century, when Jan Hus, a revolutionary preacher, preached against what he saw as the corrupted practices of the church at a time when indulgences absolving sins were up for sale. Hus, whose teachings anticipated the Protestant Reformation, was burned at the stake and is a hero to many Czechs. In 1999, John Paul called Hus’s violent death “a sorrowful page” in Czech history.

Czech antipathy for the Roman Catholic Church was fanned further during the Austrian-Hungarian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries, religious scholars say, when the church supported the emperor’s efforts to repress Czech nationalism.

After the Communists seized power in 1948, they persecuted many priests, who could fulfill their pastoral duties only with the approval of the government. Demonized by the state, many were forced to go underground.

Father Halik argued that Benedict’s fierce intelligence and moral resolve made him a worthy opponent of pervasive secularism. But he was philosophical about the chances of his success. “The reanimation of the Catholic Church is a long-term goal,” he said. “And even the pope can’t work miracles that quickly.”

Rachel Donadio contributed reporting from Vatican City.

Czech trip was low-key, but pope is 'very happy'

By WILLIAM J. KOLE (AP)
Sept. 28, 2009

PRAGUE — Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up a low-key pilgrimage to the fiercely secular Czech Republic on Monday, reaching out to nonbelievers and calling on an increasingly diverse Europe to embrace Christian teachings.

Throughout the three-day visit, the crowds were contained, and so was the pope's rhetoric.

Although he often wades into contentious issues such as abortion or same-sex marriage, this time a conciliatory Benedict — apparently unwilling to antagonize already apathetic Czechs — made no direct mention of either.

But the Vatican pronounced the pontiff's 13th foreign trip a success. So did President Vaclav Klaus, a non-Catholic, who called it "extraordinarily successful."

Benedict's spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the 82-year-old pope was "very happy" with the response in the ex-communist country, one of Europe's most secular nations.

While acknowledging there is little the Vatican can do to radically change the situation, Lombardi said the church must send a loud and clear appeal as a "minority" and get out its message of love and hope.

"The solution is to encourage," Lombardi told reporters.

Benedict visited less than two months before Czechs celebrate the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Velvet Revolution, which peacefully toppled a communist regime that had persecuted Roman Catholics and confiscated church property.

On Monday, a national holiday honoring St. Wenceslas, the nation's martyred patron saint, the German-born pope held an open-air Mass in the town of Stara Boleslav, just northeast of Prague.

At least 40,000 faithful — some from nearby Austria, Germany, Poland and Slovakia — packed a meadow to hear the pope point to Wenceslas as a model for leaders and urge the world to follow the ethical principles of Christianity.

"The last century — as this land of yours can bear witness — saw the fall of a number of powerful figures who had apparently risen to almost unattainable heights," Benedict said, speaking in Italian.

"Suddenly they found themselves stripped of their power," the pope said.

Those who deny God and appear to lead a comfortable life are in reality "sad and unfulfilled" people, he added.

The pope called Wenceslas, murdered by his pagan brother in 935 A.D. at the gate to a church, "a model of holiness for all people."

"We ask ourselves: In our day, is holiness still relevant? Or is it now considered unattractive and unimportant? he said.

The Vatican said 40,000 people turned out; Czech organizers put the crowd estimate at 50,000.

Some 30 people needed treatment during the Mass, mostly for dehydration and exhaustion, said Tereza Janeckova, a regional emergency services spokeswoman. Seven were hospitalized, including two who apparently suffered heart attacks.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of Krakow, Poland, who served as secretary to Benedict's predecessor, the late John Paul II, urged Europeans to heed Benedict's message.

"It is a crucial moment for the future of Europe, and Benedict speaks like a prophet," he told Sky TG24 television. "Don't abandon the roots from which you grew, because a tree without roots dies. If Europe abandons these roots, the future is uncertain."

In a special message to young people, the pope urged them not to be seduced by consumerism.

"Unfortunately, many of your contemporaries allow themselves to be led astray by illusory visions of spurious happiness, and then they find themselves sad and alone," he said.

And in his farewell before returning to Rome, Benedict quoted the great Czech writer Franz Kafka — "anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old" — and encouraged people to see beauty in God's creation and truth.

On Sunday, an open-air Mass in Brno in the southern Czech Republic, the country's Catholic heartland, drew 120,000 pilgrims.

Overall, though, the pope got a tepid response: No posters or billboards promoted his visit, and local media coverage was thin.

That came as no surprise in this nation where polls suggest half the population of 10 million don't believe in God.

Even the nation's top churchman seemed stuck in a funk.

In an astonishingly public display of self-deprecation, Cardinal Miloslav Vlk made his confession to reporters, saying: "I have achieved almost nothing during my 20 years" as archbishop.

But Lukas Jasa, 21, who trekked more than 300 kilometers (200 miles) from the country's east to glimpse the pope Monday, said he felt it was important to buck the secular trend.

"It's important for us to show that we're not just an atheist nation — that there are believers here," he said.


AP correspondents Victor L. Simpson in Prague and Karel Janicek in Stara Boleslav contributed to this report.

A great weekend for affirmative orthodoxy in Prague

By John L. Allen Jr.
National Catholic Reporter
Sept. 28, 2009

Pope Benedict XVI’s Sept. 26-28 trip to the Czech Republic in some ways loomed as a potential minefield, given that it’s one of the most secular societies on earth, as well as a land that harbors a traditional animus against both Germans and the Catholic church.

For a one-sentence summary of how things went, here it is: Affirmative orthodoxy is alive and well, and it had a great weekend in Prague.

That one sentence is a bit of linguistic sleight of hand, of course, because it requires explaining what “affirmative orthodoxy” means: No compromise on essential points of doctrine and discipline, but the most positive, upbeat presentation possible. Christianity is framed not as a dry book of rules, but as the answer to, as Benedict put it Monday morning, “the profound thirst for meaning and happiness in the heart of every person.”

Over his three days here, Benedict XVI repeatedly offered variations on a core theme: Congratulations to the peoples of Eastern Europe on recovering their freedom two decades ago, along with an invitation to ponder what goals that freedom is meant to serve. In effect, Benedict presented himself as a sort of Erasmus for the 21st century, pitching Christian humanism as the key to integrating freedom and truth, faith and reason, and creating a common set of values in an increasingly complicated world.

The three-day swing began on Saturday with a speech to politicians and diplomats in Prague, then continued on Sunday with an open-air Mass in Brno, the largest city in the heavily Catholic Moravia region, which drew an estimated 120,000 people, including large numbers of Poles, Slovaks, Austrians and Germans. It was described by organizers as the largest Catholic Mass in the history of the Czech Republic. (Bear in mind, however, that this history only dates from the so-called “Velvet Divorce” with Slovakia in 1993.)

Benedict also delivered major addresses to ecumenical leaders and to academics on Sunday evening, and closed the trip with a Mass marking the national feast of St. Wenceslas, the “Good King Wenceslas” of the popular Christmas carol, on Monday before returning to Rome.

Popular enthusiasm for the pontiff sometimes seemed tepid, symbolized by the fact that, unlike other cities that host papal visits, Prague did not festoon its streets with Vatican flags or posters with Benedict’s image. Events were broadcast live on national television, but otherwise media discussion was limited. Nevertheless, Fr. Jan Balík, press coordinator for the visit, told NCR that what coverage the trip drew was largely positive.

The pope’s commitment to affirmative orthodoxy over these three days seemed to embody a deliberate effort to get back “on message.”

In many ways, Benedict’s surprisingly positive tone was the early storyline of his papacy. It seemed to go into eclipse in early ’09, however, with a furor over lifting the excommunications of four traditionalist bishops, including one who’s a Holocaust denier, and controversial comments on AIDS and condoms during a trip to Africa. Pundits hinted that the “real Ratzinger,” the hard-line figure familiar from his years as the Vatican’s top doctrinal enforcer, was finally coming to the fore.

Prior to arriving in Prague on Saturday morning, Benedict’s trip here likewise seemed fated to beckon the finger-wagging, fire-breathing pope of popular stereotypes.

The Czech Republic is perhaps the mothership of European secularization, a point even the Mayor of Prague, Pavel Bem, conceded when he told Benedict on Saturday that his country “has the reputation of being one of the most atheistic societies on earth.”

This nation of 10 million also has the worst track record in church-state relations in the former Soviet sphere. Some $8 billion of church property confiscated under the Communists still has not been returned or paid off, and the Czech Republic is the lone post-Communist state that hasn’t approved a basic treaty with the Vatican.

Consider, too, that the Czech Republic has approved a whole rafter of social policies at odds with Catholic moral teaching. Abortion is legal, cheap, and widely available here. The country approved a domestic partnership law for gay couples in 2006, and the Czech parliament is currently considering a measure to legalize euthanasia.

In that context, perhaps the most striking development over these three days is what didn’t happen. Not a single word, not even one, flowed from the lips of the pope of any of those subjects.

During a Saturday visit to the famed statue of the Infant of Prague, Benedict delivered an entire address devoted to the family without so much as mentioning abortion or gay marriage – normally staples of Vatican rhetoric on family matters. When the pope’s lieutenants touched on church/state disputes, it was merely to confirm comments from interim Prime Minister Jan Fischer to the effect that the two sides agreed that resolving their standoff is not an “urgent priority.”

(That lack of urgency was apparently not shared by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk of Prague, who described his 18-year tenure as a “failure” on national television Sunday because of his inability to reach a deal on the restitution of property and a Vatican/Czech treaty.)

Lest any of this seem accidental, Vatican spokesperson Fr. Federico Lombardi all but acknowledged that “affirmative orthodoxy” was the marching order for the trip in a Sunday evening session with reporters in Prague.

“It’s important for Czech society to understand the positive attitude of the Catholic church,” Lombardi said, describing the spirit with which Benedict XVI approach the visit. “We want to collaborate in a positive way and contribute to the life of the society.”

“The church has a friendly attitude, and the pope is demonstrating this with his presence,” Lombardi said. “The focus is not on tensions and debates, but on working together.”

In part, this option for affirmative orthodoxy may be little more than a return to form for Benedict XVI after what has been, by most accounts, a rocky year so far. In part, too, it was a no-brainer for a German pope coming into the Czech Republic, where nationhood is often defined in terms of resistance to 300 years of rule by the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire and occupation by the Nazis, and whose national hero, medieval preacher Jan Hus, was burned at the stake by the Council of Constance in 1415.

More basically, however, affirmative orthodoxy seems to be one component of Benedict’s two-pronged strategy for meeting the challenge posed by secularization and the contemporary crisis of faith in Europe.

For secular society, Benedict’s aim is to present Christianity as the best guarantee of the values which even the most ardently secular agnostic also prizes: peace, tolerance, dialogue, and freedom. To make that case, the pope seems to believe he can’t start the conversation with flash-points of controversy, but rather with a positive vision of what Christianity has to offer.

For the local church, meanwhile, Benedict’s prescription boils down to embracing life as a “creative minority.” Gone are the days of Christianity as the culturally dominant force; today it’s fated to be a subculture, with fewer priests and nuns, lower levels of Mass attendance, and a generally shrunken sociological footprint. The key question, from the pope’s point of view, is what kind of subculture it will turn out to be.

Borrowing a phrase from the British historian Arnold Toynbee, Benedict is pressing the church to be a “creative minority.” Toynbee’s contention was that in any civilization, renewal happens when a small subgroup works out fresh responses to new challenges, which are eventually copied by the majority.

On the papal plane en route to Prague, the pontiff was asked what his message would be for a thoroughly secularized country where Christians have been reduced to a minority. His answer was vintage Benedict: “It’s normally the creative minorities that determine the future,” he said.

The key question, of course, is whether that strategy will succeed. It’s not clear in the immediate aftermath of Benedict’s trip that the outing offered any clear evidence one way or the other.

Trying to reach such snap judgments is especially complicated with this pope, given his penchant for thinking in the long run. Benedict is legendarily indifferent to tomorrow’s headlines; his tendency is instead to be concerned with how things will stand two or three centuries down the line. That’s probably just as well in the Czech Republic, where the ambivalence of several centuries vis-à-vis the Catholic church was always unlikely to dissolve over a lone weekend in late September.

Alas, however, it also means that we may have to wait a couple of centuries to know whether affirmative orthodoxy actually worked.

Pope to attend concert marking WWII

September 30, 2009

ROME (JTA) -- Pope Benedict XVI will attend a concert to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, the Vatican announced.

The concert, scheduled for Oct. 8 in a major Rome concert hall near the Vatican, is being organized by the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the German Embassy to the Holy See and a German cultural association.

A German youth orchestra will perform pieces by the Jewish-born composers Gustav Mahler and Felix Mendelssohn. In addition, according to the Catholic news agency Zenit, poetry will be recited, including works by Holocaust survivor Paul Celan and children held prisoner in the Terezin ghetto-concentration camp near Prague.

The concert is part of a series of Vatican events to mark the anniversary.

"We cannot forget the dramatic events that led to one of the most terrible wars in history that caused millions and millions of deaths and so much suffering," the pope said earlier this month in a sermon given in Viterbo, Italy. The war, he said, was "a conflict that saw the tragedy of the Holocaust and the extermination of throngs of other innocents."

The pope added, "The memory of these events impels us to pray for the victims and for the people who still bear the wounds in their body and heart. May it also be a warning to all never to repeat such barbarities and, in our time still marked by conflicts and opposition, to redouble efforts to build lasting peace, passing on especially to the new generations a culture and lifestyle marked by love, solidarity and esteem for the other."

My gosh, he is going to be on the move in 2010. Here's the latest trip announcement.


Benedict XVI to visit Cyprus in June of 2010

Rome, Italy, Oct 2, 2009 / 12:46 pm (CNA).- The government of Cyprus announced on Thursday that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted an invitation to visit the country made by President Demetris Christofias during an audience with the Holy Father at the Vatican on March 27.

The papal trip could take place in June of 2010, according to a story published by Vatican Radio.

According to the report, Maronite Archbishop Josef Souaef of Cyprus, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal of Jerusalem, and Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Custodian of the Holy Land, have expressed their joy at the announcement of the Pope’s visit.

Pope launches synod on Africa's woes

(AFP) – Oct. 4, 2009

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday celebrated a special mass to open a month-long synod of African bishops to discuss their continent's conflicts, social injustice and grinding poverty.

Saint Peter's Basilica swelled to the strains of a hymn in the Congolese language Lingala, while prayers were also said in Swahili, Portuguese, Amharic, Hausa, Kikongo and Arabic to start the synod, which will run through October 25.

Benedict prayed that the synod of 197 Roman Catholic bishops from Africa's 53 states would "renew and reinvigorate (Africa's) Church, the sign and instrument of reconciliation, justice and peace."

The synod will build on the last such meeting, convened in 1994 by Benedict's predecessor John Paul II, said Monsignor Nikola Eterovic, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, on Friday.

He said evangelisation was "urgent" in Africa, which counted some 146 million Roman Catholics as of 2007.

Africa is second only to Oceania in the rate of growth of the Catholic population, from 12 percent of Africans in 1978 to 17 percent in 2006.

A planning document for the talks, released in March during the pope's tour to Cameroon and Angola, warns that "a process organised to destroy the African identity seems to be taking place under the pretext of modernity" leading to "moral laxity, corruption (and) materialism."

During his first official trip to Africa, the pope angered many AIDS activists by remarking that the use of condoms could "worsen" the problem.

The working paper suggests that training in the "promotion of moral social behaviour" was a key to combatting AIDS.

The document denounces the conflicts and wars ravaging the continent, as well as political and economic corruption, human rights violations, the plight of women -- citing polygamy and sexual mutilation -- and the exploitation of children in warfare or prostitution.

Pope Benedict sees changing hearts as ultimate challenge for African Church

Vatican City, Oct 5, 2009 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- The Synod for Africa held its first full meeting on Monday morning at the Vatican, with 226 of the Synod Fathers and the Pope present. The Holy Father told the assembly that while it is important to gather statistical data to understand the problems facing the African Church, the most important analytical approach is to “see everything in the light of God.”

The Pontiff began the session by making some brief opening remarks in which he referred to the problems of Africa and to the goals of reconciliation, justice and peace.

"It is right to carry out empirical studies," he said, "yet practical analyses, though conducted with precision and competence, do not indicate the true problems of the world if we do not see everything in the light of God."

However, Pope Benedict cautioned, "our analyses are deficient if we do not realize that behind the injustice of corruption, and all such things, is an unjust heart, a closure towards God and thus a falsification of the fundamental relationship upon which all other relationships are founded."

The assembly was then addressed by Cardinal Francis Arinze, followed by Archbishop Nikola Eterovic, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops, who explained the activities of the council of the secretariat general since the last synodal assembly (First Special Assembly for Africa of 1994) and illustrated the preparations for the current synod.

Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson, archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana, then took the floor and gave a report on the current state of the Church in Africa. Cardinal Turkson is serving as the relator general for the synod, which involves facilitating and moderating the discussions.

Cardinal Turkson recalled the history of the last synod on Africa in 1994, saying that the meeting “inspired a message of hope for Africa” when it was confronting a dark chapter of its history.

Fourteen years later, the cardinal said, “the Church still bears some of the 'lights and shadows' that occasioned the first Synod, it has also 'changed considerably. This new reality requires a thorough study in view of renewed evangelization efforts, which call for a more in-depth analysis of specific topics, important for the present and future of the Catholic Church on the great continent.'"

The leader of the Church in Cape Coast described the positive growth of the Church but noted that it is confined to the 48 Sub-Saharan nations of Africa. In addition, the Church is being confronted with failures in “fidelity and commitment of some clergy and religious to their vocations,” as well as the “loss of members to new religious movements and sects."

Despite the mixed results, Cardinal Turkson noted that there is “an emerging continental desire on the part of African leaders themselves for an 'African renaissance.'” There is, he explained, a radical relationship between governance and economy: “bad governance begets bad economy. This explains the paradox of the poverty of a continent which is certainly the most richly endowed in the world.”

Another phenomenon that the Church must vigilant about is the “global emergence of lifestyles, values, attitudes, associations, etc.” that destabilize society. “These attack the basic props of society (marriage and family), diminish its human capital (migration, drug-pushing and arms' trade) and endanger life on the planet," the cardinal said.

"It is clear that, although the continent and the Church on the continent are not yet out of the woods, they can still modestly rejoice in their achievement and positive performance, and begin to disclaim stereotypical generalizations about its conflicts, famine, corruption and bad governance,” he stated.

"The truth is that Africa has been burdened for too long by the media with everything that is loathsome to humankind; and it is time to 'shift gears' and to have the truth about Africa told with love, fostering the development of the continent which would lead to the well-being of the whole world.”

The solution proposed by the Ghanaian cardinal was the same as Pope Benedict's, namely, to pursue “reconciliation, justice and peace, made particularly Christian by their rootedness in love and mercy.”

This path, he said, “would restore wholeness to the Church-Family of God on the continent, and that the latter, as salt of the earth and light of the world, would heal 'wounded human hearts, the ultimate hiding place for the causes of everything destabilizing the African continent.'”

The task demanded of the African Church, Cardinal Turkson explained, is to sow seeds of life on a continent where some people “live under the shadow of conflict and death.” “She must preserve the continent and its people from the putrefying effects of hatred, violence, injustice and ethnocentrism. The Church must purify and heal minds and hearts of corrupt and evil ways; and administer her life-giving Gospel message to keep the continent and its people alive."

I wonder if she was sitting anywhere near benevolens. The audience today must have been really colorful and exciting.


Pope Benedict XVI greets Hawaii's 'miracle woman' in Rome

By Mary Vorsino
Honolulu Advertiser Staff Writer
Oct. 7, 2009

ROME — Aiea resident Audrey Toguchi, the woman at the heart of the second miracle attributed to Father Damien, met Pope Benedict XVI today during a general audience in St. Peter’s Square.

Toguchi was in a special section of VIPs who sat in a section on the steps, near the pope.

“In my whole life, I never thought I’d be so close to the pope,” said Toguchi. “I’m numb.”

About 500 Hawaii pilgrims were in the general seating area in St. Peter’s Square. They cheered when the group was mentioned as among those visiting the Vatican.

The Hawaii residents are on a pilgrimage for Father Damien’s canonization, which will take place Sunday in St. Peter’s Square.

Toguchi said Pope Benedict XVI struck her as a very kind person. He greeted her and others in the VIP section after the general audience.

Toguchi said she thanked the pope for canonizing Father Damien. She also asked him to bless a packet of Father Damien medals.

Toguchi and her husband, Yukio, kissed the pope's ring.

Toguchi’s cure from lung cancer after praying to Father Damien was the second miracle attributed to the priest, assuring his canonization.

Pope elevates 5 new saints

Benedict praises Father Damien, who worked with leprosy patients

The Associated Press
Sun., Oct . 11, 2009

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI canonized five new saints Sunday, including a 19th century priest whose work with leprosy patients on a Hawaiian island has been hailed by U.S. President Barack Obama as inspiring those helping AIDS sufferers in today's world.

Among the pilgrims packing St. Peter's Basilica was Hawaii resident Audrey Toguchi, an 80-year-old retired teacher whose recovery from lung cancer a decade ago was called miraculous by the Vatican.

She had prayed to Belgium-born Jozef De Veuster, more commonly known as Father Damien, who himself died from leprosy in 1889 after contracting the disease while working with leprosy patients who were living in isolation on Molokai island.

Toguchi and her doctor, Walter Chang, joined a procession of faithful bringing relics of the new saints to Benedict at the central altar of the basilica.

‘Calculation or personal gain’

The pontiff said the newly canonized had given of themselves totally without "calculation or personal gain."

"Their perfection, in the logic of a faith that is humanly incomprehensible at times, consists in no longer placing themselves at the center, but choosing to go against the flow and live according to the Gospel," Benedict said in his homily.

Official delegations for St. Damien included King Albert II and Queen Paolo of Belgium and, for the United States, President Barack Obama's new envoy to the Vatican, Miguel H. Diaz, and Hawaii Sen. Daniel Kahikina Akaka.

Obama, who was born and spent part of his childhood in Hawaii, has said he remembers stories about Damien caring for people suffering from leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, and its stigma.

In a message for the canonization, Obama noted that millions worldwide suffer from disease, especially HIV/AIDS, and urged people to follow the Damien's example by "answering the urgent call to heal and care for the sick."

Those with the disease, which can result in disfigurement, had been ostracized for centuries by societies and even families. Two leprosy patients participated in one of the basilica processions.

"The way leprosy was perceived then is how AIDS is perceived today" by many people, said Gail Miller, a pilgrim from Auburn Hills, Mich. Her parish church, St. Damien of Molokai, in Pontiac, Mich., became the first U.S. church to be named in the saint's honor.

Benedict praised the missionary, saying that "not without fear and repugnance, he chose to go to Molokai to serve the lepers who were there, abandoned by all," exposed himself to leprosy, and "felt at home with them."

‘He was a servant of the outcast’

A Honolulu pilgrim, Gloria Rodrigues, said she saw a connection between Damien and the AIDS problem today. "He was a servant of the outcast and should be an inspiration for us today to do as he did," said Rodrigues, who added she had relatives with leprosy who had been cared for on Molokai, although years after Damien's work there.

After the ceremony, the pope came out on the basilica's central balcony to greet some 40,000 faithful in the square. Speaking in French, he urged people to pray and help those involved in the battle against leprosy and "other forms of leprosy caused by lack of love or cowardliness."

Another new saint is Zygmunt Szcezesny Felinski, a 19th century Polish bishop who defended the Catholic faith during the years of the Russian annexation, which had led to the shutdown of Polish churches.

Two Spaniards were honored — Francisco Coll y Guitart, who founded an order of Dominicans in the 19th century, and Rafael Arniaz Baron, who renounced an affluent lifestyle at age 22 to live a humble life in a strict monastery and dedicate himself to prayer.

The fifth new saint is Jeanne Jugan, a Frenchwoman described by Vatican Radio as an "authentic Mother Teresa ahead of her time." A nun, she helped found the Little Sisters of the Poor, which today runs homes for indigent elderly worldwide. She died in 1879.

Benedict’s Gambit

By ROSS DOUTHAT
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The New York Times
October 26, 2009

The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.

But the invitation is a bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce only a few conversions; it may produce a few million. Either way, it represents an unusual effort at targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the Church of England’s leadership.

This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.

This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.

At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.

Along the way, he’s courting both ends of the theological spectrum. In his encyclicals, Benedict has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians. But instead of stopping at a place of broad agreement, he has pushed further, trying to persuade his more liberal readers that many of their beliefs actually depend on the West’s Catholic heritage, and make sense only when grounded in a serious religious faith.

At the same time, the pope has systematically lowered the barriers for conservative Christians hovering on the threshold of the church, unsure whether to slip inside. This was the purpose behind his controversial outreach to schismatic Latin Mass Catholics, and it explains the current opening to Anglicans.

Many Anglicans will never become Catholic; their theology is too evangelical, their suspicion of papal authority too ingrained, their objections to the veneration of the Virgin Mary too deeply felt. But for those who could, Benedict is trying to make reunion with Rome a flesh-and-blood possibility, rather than a matter for academic conversation.

The news media have portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war politics — as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who joins the Vatican in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.


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

And here is a beautiful piece from an ex-Catholic.


Benedict taking the Benedict Option?

Rod Dreher
Crunchy Con
Beliefnet
Monday, October 26, 2009

Here's some diverse, intelligent commentary on the Benedict-Anglican story to wash the idiotic MoDo rant out of your head.

"Episcopal Cafe" floats the idea that this move is designed to strengthen the hand of Anglican traditionalists over the female bishops issue, hoping to keep the Anglican episcopate all-male in anticipation that Canterbury will eventually collapse, and those bishops who are left will reunite with Rome.

Ross Douthat today speculates [see story above] that the pope is really seeking to form a solid alliance with serious Anglicans to confront rising Islam. Writes Ross, "There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict's approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him."

Writing from the Catholic left, David Gibson observes that Benedict has not been the status quo transitional pontiff many expected, but rather something of a conservative revolutionary. Excerpt:

Thus far, Benedict's papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics -- or Protestants -- are usually criticized for pursuing. In Benedict's case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda. But his activism should not be surprising: As a sharp critic of the reforms of Vatican II, Ratzinger has long pushed for what he calls a "reform of the reform" to correct what he considers the excesses or abuses of the time.

Finally, Inside the Vatican's Robert Moynihan, in his e-mail letter today, offers the fascinating opinion that Pope Benedict may be undertaking a sort of Benedict Option, to prepare the church universal for a dark night. Excerpt:

If one looks at these meetings in the context of recent events, the essential point is this: Benedict XVI, though now 82, is moving on many different fronts with great energy in a completely unexpected way, given his reputation as a man of thought, not of action. (We are going to have to revise our understanding of his pontificate.) He is clearly reaching out to reunite with many Christian groups: the Lefebvrists, as these meetings show, but also Anglicans, the Orthodox, and others as well. He seems to be trying to make Catholic Rome a center of communion for all Christians. This activity, occurring at an accelerating speed over recent months, looks almost like a "rallying of the troops" before some final, decisive battle.

More:
In short, many eyes are now on Benedict, wondering what he really intends here.
The answer seems simple enough: Benedict is trying energetically to "get his house in order."

But which house?

On one level, it is the Christian Church -- a Christian Church under considerable pressure in the highly secualrized modern world.

In this "house," this "ecclesia Dei" ("church of God" or "community of God"), dogmas and doctrines, formulated into very precise verbal statements, are held as true. These verbal formulas are professed in creeds. Benedict is seeking to overcome divisions over the content of these creeds, these doctrinal formulas, in order to bring about formal, public unity among separated Christians.

He is trying to find unity not only with the Lefebvrists (and all Traditionalists within the Church) but also, as we have seen in recent days, with the Anglicans and the Orthodox Churches.

So this dialogue with the Lefebvrists must be seen in the context of multiple dialogues, all occurring at once: Catholic Traditionalists, Protestant Anglicans, the Orthodox Churches.

One might almost say this pontificate is become one of "all dialogue, all the time."

But on a second level, considering world events and the evolution of the world's economy and culture, something else is also at stake.

Benedict is rallying his troops. He is trying to reunite all those factions and denominations and groups in the West that share common beliefs in the eternal destiny of human beings, in the sacredness of human life (since human beings are "in the image and likeness of God"), in the existence of a moral standard which is true at all times and in all places (against the relativism of the modern secular culture), in the need for justice in human affairs, for the rule of right, not might.

And so he is doing his best, in what seems perhaps to be the "twilight of the West," to build an ark, centered in Rome, to which all those who share these beliefs about human dignity may repair.

And this means that what Benedict is doing in this dialogue which got underway today is also of importance to Jews, to Muslims, and to all men and women of goodwill. Mankind seems to be entering a new period, a period in which companies and governments may produce, even for profit, "designer humans," a period of resource wars, a period of the complete rejection of the traditional family unit.

Benedict, from his high room in the Apostolic Palace, seems to be trying to rally the West in the twilight of an age, so that what was best in the West may be preserved, and shine forth again after the struggles of our time are past.

Benedict's Benedict Option, in other words. What an amazing man, exactly the man I would hope to see on the Throne of Peter at this time in our history.

Here's an item with more of an English slant.


Will Queen Elizabeth give the pope a warm welcome next year?

Posted by: Avril Ormsby
Reuters Blogs
Oct. 27, 2009

One can guess what Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will say to Pope Benedict when the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion travels to the Vatican later this year. The more interesting question might be what Queen Elizabeth is likely to say when she hosts the pope next year.

The timing of the trips couldn’t be more intriguing, especially the second one. The pope is due to visit Britain in September 2010 and is expected to preside there over the beatification of the late Cardinal John Henry Newman, a famous 19th-century convert from Anglicanism to Catholicism.

The queen is, after all, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, many of whose flock the pope is seeking to poach with his offer last week allowing Anglicans to convert en masse while keeping many of their traditions. And among her honorifics is “Defender of the Faith.” While that sounds impressive, it pales in comparison to Benedict’s long string of titles including “Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles and Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church.” But oneupmanship is a British sport, so one never knows how these things can turn out.

It is unclear how many CofE traditionalists, upset at moves to ordain women bishops and the issue of homosexuality, will move over to Rome, but the conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith suggested 12 Church of England bishops may switch - more than a quarter of their total.

It was suggested by the Daily Telegraph newspaper earlier this month, before the Vatican effectively sabotaged decades of dialogue between the two churches, that the pope would receive a warm welcome at Buckingham Palace. “The warmth of her welcome will come as no surprise to the pontiff,” it said.

Citing sources speaking to the Catholic Herald weekly, the Telegraph said the queen has “grown increasingly sympathetic” to the Roman Catholic Church over the years while being “appalled,” along with her son and heir Charles, at developments in the Church of England.

The Sunday Telegraph in July said the queen had told the heads of a traditional group that she “understood their concerns” about the future of the 77 million-strong global church.

But whether the warmth will stand up to the pope parking his tanks on her lawn, as Ruth Gledhill described it in The Times — especially Buckingham Palace’s lawns — would be astonishing.

As head of her faith she must defend her church, and can do so on an equal footing in both political and spiritual terms, Vicki Woods of the Telegraph wrote. “When Pope John Paul II met the queen on his visit to Britain, he was for once wrong-footed,” she pointed out. “She spoke to him not as a fellow head of state but as a fellow head of the church: her church. Her faith. Which she defends. He was quite taken aback.”

It is not only her church’s clergy and laity which are up for grabs, but possibly also the buidlings.

And it was Queen Elizabeth I, after all, who so staunchly defended the English Reformation introduced by her father Henry VIII in 1534 in his dispute with Rome over his desire to divorce one wife and marry another.

The queen has already potentially been slighted by her Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who it has been reported in the media, apparently personally invited the pope to visit Britain during a private audience last February.

“He should read Carla Powell’s diary in The Spectator,” Woods wrote. “Gordon Brown says he invited His Holiness, which if true would represent a gross breach of protocol. Only the queen can invite a head of state to Britain.”

The queen, needless to say, has said even less than her archbishop. The older royals don’t often leave themselves open to be quoted. On one of the rare occasions they have, the late queen mother was reported to have only commented that church services should not last beyond an hour. The archbishop has barely said much more in response to the pope other than he did not see it as “an act of aggression” and that it would not derail dialogue between the two churches.

But when you become the focus of general sympathy, you must know that you have probably been dealt a rum deal.

The fact that the archbishop was only notified two weeks before the pope revealed just how far he was prepared to go in accommodating the Anglo-Catholics must have left him “starting to wonder if he has any friends left,” Gledhill wrote in the Times over the weekend. “He is like the academic boy at school who no one wants to play with because he doesn’t understand the rules of fisticuffs,” she added.

Many religious figures have been indignant at the way the Vatican has behaved towards Williams, with his predecessor George Carey urging him to protest at its “appalling” injustice.

The Vatican is expected to reveal more details about the offer in the next week or two. The conservative Anglican group Forward in Faith debated the offer in London at the weekend and decided its members would be consulted, with a decision due in late February after the CofE general synod.

Some women priests say that timing is cynical, based on emotional blackmail.

“It is beginning to sound like an abusive marriage,” said the pro-women ordination spokeswoman Reverend Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, chaplain at University College, Durham, in northern England. She suggested the disaffected will threaten to leave unless concessions are made on the possible ordination of women bishops, which is due to be discussed at the synod.

The Vatican made moves 17 years ago to attract Anglicans when the ordination of women priests was being discussed. “They could say we will leave unless you do this and that,” she said.

What do you think? Will Queen Elizabeth surprise Pope Benedict and defend the faith, as she did with Pope John Paul? Or will diplomacy prevail?

Are we shocked? Guess who's blasting the pope...again.


Dissident theologian criticizes pope's opening to Anglicans

By Sarah Delaney
Catholic News Service
Oct. 28, 2009

ROME (CNS) -- Dissident theologian Father Hans Kung criticized Pope Benedict XVI for his recent opening to discontented Anglicans, charging the pope was "fishing" for the most conservative Christians to the detriment of the larger church.

Father Kung said the invitation to traditionalist Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church went against years of ecumenical work on the part of both churches, calling it instead "a nonecumenical piracy of priests."

The pope's basic message is: "Traditionalists of all churches, unite under the dome of St. Peter's!" Father Kung wrote in an editorial Oct. 28 in the Rome daily La Repubblica.

"Look: The fisherman is fishing above all on the 'right' side of the lake. But the water is muddy," he said.

The Vatican announced Oct. 20 that the pope was establishing a new structure to welcome Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining some of their spiritual and liturgical traditions. Many of the Anglicans who have asked the Vatican for such a provision are dismayed by the ordination of women and by the blessing of homosexual unions and the ordination of openly gay bishops in some provinces of the Anglican Communion.

While emphasizing the importance of celibacy for priests, the Vatican said a dispensation would be made for former Anglican priests who are married to be ordained Catholic priests. However, they will not be able to become bishops.

Father Kung, a Swiss theologian who has taught in Germany for decades, warned that married newcomers will cause resentment on the part of celibate Catholic clergy.

In 1979 the Vatican withdrew permission for him to teach as a Catholic theologian, although it did not restrict his ministry as a Catholic priest.

In the editorial, Father Kung also lambasted Pope Benedict's recent efforts to bring back into the fold members of the Society of St. Pius X, a group of breakaway Catholics opposed to the changes in the church following the Second Vatican Council.

"After reintegrating the anti-reformist Society of St. Pius X, now Benedict XVI wants to flesh out the thinning ranks of Roman Catholics with like-minded Anglicans," Father Kung wrote in the editorial.

He also criticized Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion, who "in his desire to ingratiate himself with the Vatican apparently didn't understand the consequences of the papal fishing trip in Anglican waters."

PAPAL CELEBRATIONS (NOVEMBER 2009-JANUARY 2010)



VATICAN CITY, 29 OCT 2009 (VIS) - This is the calendar of celebrations that the Holy Father will preside over from the end of November 2009 until January 2010.



NOVEMBER



- Saturday 28. At 17 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, celebration of first Vespers for the First Sunday of Advent.



DECEMBER



- Tuesday 8. Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary. At. 4 p.m. in Piazza di Spagna, veneration of the Virgin.



- Thursday 24. Solemnity of the Lord's Nativity. At 10 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica the Pope will celebrate Midnight Mass.



- Friday 25. Solemnity of the Lord's Nativity. At 12 p.m. the Pope will impart the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the central balcony of the Vatican Basilica.



- Thursday 31. At 18 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica the Holy Father will preside over first Vespers in thanksgiving for the closing year.



JANUARY



- Friday 1. Solemnity of Holy Mary, Mother of God, and the 43rd World Day of Peace. At 10 a.m. in the Vatican Basilica, celebration of Holy Mass.



-Wednesday 6. Solemnity of the Lord's Epiphany. At 10 p.m. in the Vatican Basilica, celebration of Holy Mass.



- Sunday 10. Feast of the Lord's Baptism. At 10 p.m. in the Sistine Chapel, celebration of Holy Mass and baptism of children.



- Monday 25. Feast of the conversion of St. Paul the Apostle. At 5:30 p.m. in the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls, celebration of Vespers.

Papal visit to Scotland next year 'probable', says Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy after visit to Rome

By Dave King
DailyRecord.co.uk
Oct 29 2009

A VISIT to Britain by the Pope next year is "probable", Scots Secretary Jim Murphy said yesterday.

He made the forecast after meeting Pope Benedict in St Peter's Square, Rome.

Murphy said later: "We talked about international development, climate change and the proposed papal visit to Britain, including Scotland.

"It is, of course, for the Vatican to confirm but, after today's discussions, the prospects of the Pope visiting Scotland next year have gone from possible to probable.

"It is something I know that people throughout Britain, including Scots of all faiths, will welcome." Murphy also met Vatican deputy prime minister Archbishop Fernando Filoni and Scottish Cardinal Keith O'Brien for a working lunch to discuss the papal visit.

Cardinal O'Brien, President of the Bishops' Conference of Scotland, has already said he is "delighted" at the prospect of a visit to Scotland by Pope Benedict XVI.

The prospect of a visit to Britain by the Pope emerged last month but there has been no formal confirmation yet.

It would be the first papal visit to the UK since Pope John Paul II came here in 1982.

Church must adapt to the way media are impacting culture, pope says

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
Oct. 29, 2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- New media are not just instruments for communicating, but they are having a huge impact on culture -- on the way people interact and think, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"This constitutes a challenge for the church, called to proclaim the Gospel to people of the third millennium," the pope said Oct. 29 during a meeting with members of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.

The content of the Gospel message remains unchanged, he said, but the church must learn how to transmit that message to new generations and must do so by taking advantage of the new technology and new attitudes toward communications.

Pope Benedict said one of the marks of the new media culture is its multimedia and interactive structure.

New technology is not leading to developments only in television or radio or the Internet, but is "gradually generating a kind of global communications system" in which media are used together and the audience participates in generating content, he said.

"I want to take this occasion to ask those in the church who work in the sphere of communications and have responsibility for pastoral guidance to take up the challenges these new technologies pose for evangelization," the pope said.

Pope Benedict encouraged all producers and users of media "to promote a culture of respect for the dignity and value of the human person, a dialogue rooted in the sincere search for truth (and) for friendship that is not an end in itself, but is capable of developing the talents of each person to put them at the service of the human community."

The pontifical council, he said, is called to study the new media culture and offer Catholics ethical guidance so that they recognize the importance of the communications media and use it effectively to spread the Gospel.

Uh-oh!


Anglican leader to meet pope on November 21: Vatican

(AFP)
Oct. 30, 2009

VATICAN CITY — Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of the world's Anglicans, will meet Pope Benedict XVI on November 21, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi confirmed Friday.

Lombardi told AFP that Rowan's visit to the Vatican was "already planned" before the Vatican's October 20 announcement of a structure for welcoming Anglican converts into the Roman Catholic Church.

Williams will be on hand for celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Johannes Willebrands, a Dutch cardinal who was a pioneer in Catholic ecumenism and who died in 2006.

The Vatican announced last week that Pope Benedict XVI has approved a new structure to ease the way for Anglicans -- including married priests -- to join the Roman Catholic Church.

The Holy See said the move was a response to "numerous requests to the Holy See from groups of Anglican clergy and faithful in various parts of the world who want to enter into full and visible communion."

The Anglican church has been confronted by a growing split over the ordination of women and gay marriage.

Several conservative Anglican priests have defected to Catholicism since the ordination of women was adopted from 1984 in various branches of the Anglican Communion and by the Church of England as a whole in 1992.

Most vocal on the issue has been an Australia-based group, the Traditional Anglican Communion, whose leader Bishop John Hepworth made a formal request to the pope in 2007 for its members to be allowed into the Catholic fold.

The TAC, which split from the Anglican Communion in 1991, claims a membership of some 400,000 -- of whom several hundred are thought to want to convert to Catholicism.

The Church of England is the mother church of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which has about 77 million followers. The Catholic Church counts some 1.1 billion faithful.

Awe for creation, pursuit of truth benefits science, pope says

By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
Oct. 30, 2009

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The same awe and amazement for creation and the quest for truth that underlined the work of early scientists would bring huge benefits to scientific discoveries today, Pope Benedict XVI told a group of astronomers.

The fathers of modern science, who included the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, did not limit their studies to the realm of reason, but were also motivated by a sense of wonder and the search for truth, he said.

"Our own age, poised at the edge of perhaps even greater and more far-ranging scientific discoveries, would benefit from that same sense of awe and the desire to attain a truly humanistic synthesis of knowledge, which inspired the fathers of modern science," the pope said.

The pope made his remarks Oct. 30 to an international group of distinguished astronomers, including the Vatican's own astronomers, as well as friends and benefactors of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.

The modern scientific method of observation, testing hypotheses and critical analysis, requires patience and discipline and is essential if science is to benefit humanity and respect the natural world, he said.

"At the same time, the great scientists of the age of discovery remind us also that true knowledge is always directed to wisdom, and, rather than restricting the eyes of the mind, it invites us to lift our gaze to the higher realm of the spirit," he said.

Knowledge is more than calculations and experiments, he said. It must also "be committed to the pursuit of that ultimate truth which, while ever beyond our concrete grasp, is nonetheless the key to our authentic happiness and freedom."

The pope said he hoped the International Year of Astronomy would help people try to experience "the extraordinary wonder and amazement which characterized the great age of discovery in the 16th century."

The year of astronomy, which runs until Jan. 10, 2010, celebrates the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of the telescope to observe the cosmos.

While the 17th-century scientist was condemned for suspected heresy for maintaining that the earth revolved around the sun, he was "rehabilitated" in 1992 by a special Vatican commission established by Pope John Paul II.

Pope Benedict said the church has attempted since then "to attain a correct and fruitful understanding of the relationship between science and religion."

He expressed his appreciation "not only for the careful studies which have clarified the precise historical context of Galileo's condemnation, but also for the efforts of all those committed to ongoing dialogue" concerning the role faith and reason both play in understanding truth and the human being's place in the universe.

The pope praised the work of the Vatican Observatory staff for furthering dialogue between the church and the world of science through their research and educational projects.

He said he hoped the jubilee year would lead people beyond the study of nature to the contemplation of the Creator and his love, "which is the underlying motive of his creation."

Bravo, Vian!


L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO DISMISSES KUNG CRITICISM

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 30, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Criticism from dissident theologian Hans Kung about Benedict XVI's move to welcome Anglicans is harsh and baseless, according to the editor of L'Osservatore Romano.

Gian Maria Vian thus responded to an editorial by Kung printed in the Italian and British press.

While Kung characterized the Pope's move as an example of "Roman thirst for power," Vian brushed aside the criticism as "dismal" and "unfounded."

The director of the Vatican daily recalled how the Holy Father wished to meet with Kung -- his "former colleague and friend" -- just after his election to the See of Peter. Nevertheless the theologian, "infallibly reported by influential media," has criticized the Pope many times.

Vian affirmed that Benedict XVI's forthcoming apostolic constitution to establish personal ordinariates for Anglicans who have requested communion with the Holy See is about "reconstructing unity."

Kung distorts it, he said, "as if it were an astute power play that must be read in a political vein, of course of the extreme right."

Vian described Kung's statements as "a dismal as well as unfounded representation of the Catholic Church and of Benedict XVI."

He characterized it as the "umpteenth gratuitous attack against the Church of Rome and her indisputable ecumenical commitment."