NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

I have, of course, studiously avoided posting - or even reading, except for a cursory speed-read - the vicious stories that have been out there in the MSM since January 24, aimed directly at Benedict XVI and the Church by virtually all and sundry. It seemed everyone couldn't wait for the chance to take his meanest swing at the Pope - iconoclasts gone hysterically, blood-curdlingly, bestially wild.

Here's an article that mentions some of those calumnious 'slings and arrows', many of which are really over-the-top unimaginable, too ludicrous, were they not so obviously nasty and totally wrong - take an anti-apoplexy pill before reading! But after it has gone through the ludicrous, the article also offers a reflection on the mission of Peter in the light of how Jesus conferred this mission on him singularly.


The insidious opposition to Benedict XVI
conducted through pitiless lies
by Alberto Giannino
Translated from

Feb. 12, 2009


Benedict XVI has been brought to the bar by secularists, anti-clericalists, leftist Catholics and Protestants - piling on after the Jews - as he rounds up four years of a far-seeing Pontificate.

The Financial Times of London, and Italy's L'Espresso and La Stampa, have been downright gross and disrespectful - speaking of him as if he were born yesterday, as if he were not the Successor of Peter [let alone Vicar of Christ on earth!].

Lucia Annunziata who works for both RAI (Italian state TV) and La Stampa, interviewed Hans Kueng, who spoke of "empty churches, restoration, a Pope who no longer lives in this world, who has isolated himself from other human beings, screened off by his grand processions and pompous ceremonies from the problems of the faithful, such as sexual morality, the pastoral care of souls, contraception."

The Church, Kueng said, "is in crisis. I hope the Pope realizes that. [DUH! Let me count the books he has written about it since 1967!]
I would be happy if he took steps to reconcile with the faithful who are progressive. But Benedict XVI does not see that he is alienating himself from the great majority of the Catholic world and of Christianity. He does not see the real world, only the world of the Vatican" [Oh, why am I bothering to comment on this bitterly envious blathering dodo? Someone please taser him the next time he opens his trap!]]

La Stampa has its senior Vaticanista Marco Tosatti to attack the Pope ad hominem - claiming that Benedict XVI has been living in solitude surrounded by very few co-workers and dedicated only to finishing his book on Jesus and his social encyclical. [So who's the guy we see in the daily videos and photographs granting all those audiences and addressing all those people? A double? After decades of long working days and a routinely multi-tasking work ethic, suddenly he has turned into a selfish monomaniacal recluse?] As much as to say he has only been thinking of his personal affairs while ignoring the Church! [I'd like to know what Tosatti has been reporting the past four years, then - all of a sudden, the subject of his beat turns him into a do-nothing, not-there, out-of-it Pope, and he was never aware of this before? The caricature is not even plausible!]

Barbara Spinelli, also in La Stampa, speaks of a collapse of Benedict's authority, of a loss of his leadership, and of incapacity to govern.

L'Espresso and Il Mattino of Padua published a letter from an alleged priest who mocks the Pope as 'mio nonno' [my grandfather], and not having any real point to criticize him on, attacks him for his elegance, for the Fisherman's Ring, for the liturgies he celebrates (as though they were for his glory and not a reflection of the splendor of God for the glory of God and the spiritual upliftment of the faithful).

This young priest does not know that in his career and in his life, Joseph Ratzinger never once sought higher office: it always sought him out, and he always obeyed. He does not know he thrice asked John Paul II to let him retire, and each time, agreed to stay on, in the name of service to the Pope and the Church. He does not know that Cardinal Ratzinger was accessible and generous with his time to anyone who approached him, that even as the second most important man in the Vatican, he fed stray cats and led the simplest life.

The priest from Padua claims to be scandalized by the vestments that the Pope wears for liturgical rites - as if he were the first Pope ever to wear such garments. What would he have the head of the Catholic Church do - walk around unkempt and scruffy, in slovenly robes and worn-out shoes?

And he asks how he can continue carrying on his priestly ministry for his faithful if Benedict XVI does not change! To regain 'his' trust, the priest believes Benedict XVI, all of 81 and almost 82, should sleep out in the open or under a bridge. What seminary did this priest attend? Did he learm anything at all? How did he ever come to be ordained?

If some men of the cloth themselves indulge in this sort of nonsense against the Pope, then what outrages can we not expect from the secular sectors of public opinion?

Here's the Financial Times of London, Protestant and liberal, which wrote that "Benedict XVI has bumbled into the worst crisis of his four years in the Papacy.... Cardinals and bishops are mobilizing to revolt against him, even if, for now, the object of their disquiet is the handful of figures who surround the Pope [Who? The Memores Domini? The two private secretaries? Or imaginary bugbears?] who, they fear, is becoming an 82-year-old recluse, buried in his reading and writing, vulnerable to manipulation". [Do they really think age has suddenly robbed him of all his senses and faculties? It is obvious these guys have never bothered to watch any videoclips of his events or look at the news agency photos, no matter how perfunctory, that capture a dynamism that would put men half his age in the shade!]

This, says the Financial Times, "is the indulgent explanation of why the Pope revoked the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist bishops". {And what would be the non-indulgent explanation? That he set out to self-destruct?]

It goes on: "The Williamson affair has reduced the Pope to an ill-treated Rottweiler of God....The truth, our sources say, is that the Pope is timid to the point of reclusion, and therefore one who can potentially be intimidated easily". [Hmm, these clueless types need to read something like Fr. Di Souza's recent peace on the fearless fighting Ratzinger!]

Truth to say, the Times continued, "the image of a rottweiler was wrong... (for) a timid isolated Pope", an image far from the 'Rottweiler of God' that the international media themselves had coined for him when he was a cardinal.

Such criticisms are laying the groundwork to support the idea that Benedict XVI is incapable of will or understanding. That he is not in full possession of his faculties. Which is what all the articles and opinions in the past two weeks have tried to evok - and it does not take close reading to see the intention.

That is, if Benedict XVI is manipulable, fearful, even terrified, how could he possibly carry out his mandate? If, before he has turned 82, they are already floating these suggestions, imagine what they will be saying when he reaches 85.

Benedict does not evangelize. Hhe is not proclaiming the Gospel to everyone as he should. He is all alone in his ivory tower. He's a misanthrope. He never speaks to anyone, much less seek any counsel. Lie after lie reported as fact, that only mean journalists currying favor with their editors would think of.

Why don't they watch the videos of his trips around Italy and to foreign countries? Have they forgotten his two unparalleled encyclicals, don't they read his numerous messages, his seminal catecheses on Wednesdays, his homilies during the past four years?

Why don't they watch him when he visits the parishes of Rome, when he meets with priests, seminarians, young people, all the faithful?

No, mesdames and sirs! You know quite well that Benedict XVI is a true worker in the vineyard of the Lord, a Church that continues to be the 'mother and teacher' as John XXIII defined her.

He is placing rational order back in the seminaries. He is asking that would-be priests be psychologically fit. He has asked zero tolerance for priests who commit sex offenses.

This is a Pope who reviews the available files of every man who is proposed to be a bishop - a chain in the apostolic succession - unlike John Paul II who depended completely on the work of Cardinal Re.

Benedict XVI is attentive to Scriptures as well as Tradition, and the continuing Magisterium of the Church. But secularists and Protestants bristle when they hear the word 'Tradition' - they break out into hives.

But that is why he lifted the excommunications. Among other things, he is reminding all instant theologians that there are things in the Conciliar texts of Vatican II which they do not know or have chosen to ignore, although they cite Vatican-II with ever breath

He is proceeding with inter-religious dialog with the Muslims and tge Jews, and ecumenical dialog with the Orthodox and the Protestants.

But some Muslims and Jews do not like his teaching. Like many Protestants, they will not forgive Joseph Ratzinger for the 2000 Declaration Dominus Iesus about the uniqueness and universality of salvation in Jesus Christ.

And then there is is his insistence on certain basic non-negotiable principles about life, marriage, the family and the right of parents to provide a Catholic education for their children if they so choose. This has earned him the rage of rabid secularists who accuse him of interference in public affairs simply because he expresses the positions of the Church.

One woman politician (one of those self-styled 'adult Cathiolics) said last year that the Pope should limit himself to speaking only of 'the things above', not life on earth.

They forget he is the Successor of Peter and the Vicar of Christ on earth, and that it is his duty to preach Christ's message - to proclaim God's Word to each and everyone to the very ends of the earth.

He does not care about their corrosive words, or about being popular. But he does what he believes to be right. He governs the Church observing collegiality with his cardinals, listening to the bishops' conferences and the bishops' synods. And obviously, he does not make his decisions in isolation.

He is a gentle person but firm about what he believes. Among this is Jesus's words to Peter, of whom he is in the direct line of succession, as the rock on which he was building the Church, and his words to him after the Resurrection: "Feed my lambs".

There is an objective relationship between the mission attested in John's Gospel and the promise cited by Matthew in his (cfr Mt 16,18-19). In Matthew's text was the announcement. In John's text, the complement of that proclamation.

The words "Feed my lambs' manifest the intention of Jesus to assure the future of the Church he had founded, under the leadership of a Universal Pastor, Peter whom he named the rock, who would receive 'the keys of the kingdom' with the power to 'bind and loosen'.

Jesus, after the resurrection, gives concrete form to that proclamation and promise at Caesarea Philippi, by instituting the authority of Peter in the pastoral ministry of the Universal Church. Peter's mission includes the task of "confirming the brothers" in the faith as a primary function.

'Confirm the brothers' and 'feed the lambs' thus make up the mission of Peter - one might say the proprium of his universal ministry.

As the Second Vatican Council affirms, the constant tradition of the Church has rightly maintained that the apostolic primacy of Peter includes the supreme power of Magisterium (cf. Denz.-S.3065).

Both primacy and the power of the Magisterium were directly conferred by Jesus on Peter singularly, though both prerogatives are given to the Church as a whole, without however deriving from the Church, but only from Christ.

Primacy was given to Peter (cf. Mt 16, 18) as - to use Augustine's term - “totius Ecclesiae figuram gerenti” (Epist., 53,1.2), in that he personally represents the entire Church. And the task and power of the Magisterium is conferred on him as confirmed faith so that he may be confirming for all the 'brothers' (cf. Lk 22, 31 s).

But everything is in the Church and for the Church, of which Peter is the foundation, holder of the keys and pastor of its visible structure, in the name and through the mandate of Christ.

Jesus conferred on Peter his pastoral mission: "Feed mu lambs" - like an extension of the mission of Jesus who said of himself: "I am the Good Shepherd" (Jn 10,11). Jesus, who gave Simon his quality as 'rock' also communicates to him his mission as 'shepherd'.

It is a communication that implies an intimate communion which appears even in Jesus's formulation: "Feed my lambs", as he had said, "On his rock I will build my Church" (Mt 16,18).

The Church is the property of Christ, not of Peter. Sheep and lambs belong to Christ, and tn no one else. They belong to him as the 'good Shepherd' who "offers his life for his sheep' (Jn 10,11).

Peter assumes the pastoral ministry for all men redeemed "with the precious blood of Christ" (1 Pt1,19). The character of the service which marks the power linked to the mission conferred on Peter is based on the relationship between Christ and men, who have become his through redemption: a service to him who alone is 'pastor and guardian of our souls" (1 Pt 2,25), and at the same time, to all whom Christ the Good Shepherd has redeemed at the price of his sacrifice on the Cross.

Thus, the content of the service that Benedict XVI renders today is clear: as the shepherd leads his sheep to places where they can find food and security, so the pastor of souls must offer them the food of God's Word and of his holy will (cf Jn 4,34), assuring the unity of the flock and defending it from any hostile incursion.