BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

That ’homiletic directory’
Pope Francis wanted to ditch
Translated from

February 10, 2015

The Direttorio omiletico published today by the Congreegation for Divine Worship has had a curious history. It has the approval of Pope Francis [dim=9pt[otherwise it could not have been published], and therefore his ‘paternity’. But it is completely different from what Jorge Mario Bergoglio would have wanted it to be, going by what he said about it in 2006.

On March 1 that year, a month before the death of John Paul II, the CDW of which Cardinal Bergoglio was a member, held a plenary in Rome to discuss the publication of a directory [’directory’;in this sense does not mean a list of names but rather an ‘instruction manual’, a manual of directions (or orientations] on the ars celebrandi, the art of celebrating Mass, with particular attention to the homily. At which Bergoglio was assigned to write the ‘Ponenza’, or introduction.

Such a book had been planned for years, but in 2005, it was still ‘out at sea’, and the cardinals and bishops of the CDW had two drafts in mind.

Well, Bergoglio suggested that both drafts should be thrown into the wastebasket the Italian verb used by Magister is ‘cestinare’], suggesting a new draft that would be ‘more meditative, fresh and vital’.

He added: “I think that the document should not be an instruction, and probably should not even be called a ‘directory’ which would make it too burdensome”. [So, he was always the advocate of Nice-and-Easy!]

The remarkable thing about that 2005 intervention by Bergoglio is that in recent days, it has been published on the Vatican website, ten years after the fact [normally, these interventions are kept secret]
http://www.vicariatusurbis.org/SITO/L%27ars%20celebrandi.pdf[//dim]
and printed for distribution to all the priests of Rome before their start-of-Lent meeting with the Pope on Thursday, February 19. A meeting which is supposed to focus on the [ars celebrandi’, particularly the homily.

Ten years have passed, and it is only now that the CDW book has finally been published.

Cardinal Bergoglio said then that it should not be a ‘directory’, but it is, from its very title. He said it should be ‘brief’, but it is 156 pages long. [Actually,I consdiering that there are 52 Sundays in a year, then and a directory covering the three-year lectionary cycle would mean excatly 156 Sunday readings to be commented on Scripturally and exegetically. Which means that the directory gives no more than one page to each Sunday. Which suggests a directory of orientations, not of specific instructions.]

Pope Francis [must have] formally approved it. But whatever he has wished to say about the homily he said in an ‘ad hoc’ section ofhis programmatic Apostolic Exhorattion Evangelii gaudium.

And he gives an example every morning at Casa Santa Marta of what he wants homilies to be. [Which, I remarked when the Direttorio Omiletico first came out, contravenes many of the points he makes in EG about what a homily ought to be. Notably, his daily homilettes seem to be singularly lacking in preparation – and one has the impression he so prides himself on his homiletic skills that he thinks he does very well speaking off the cuff in his matutinal pontifications.]

POST SCRIPTUM – After this post went online, the CDW hastened to note that in fact, there is no direct continuity between the Direttorio omiletico and Cardinal Bergoglio’s 2005 ‘Ponenza’.

That, on that occasion, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires proposed a document on ‘Ars celebrandi’in general, a suggestion that was not followed up. That, for the book focusing on the homily, the introduction was assigned instead to Cardinal Ivan Dias, thenPrefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

In the CDW’s official organ Notitiae for 2005, 8it is said that there was no existing draft about the homily in 2005, but that at the plenary, it had been suggested that “if a text on the homily is elaborated, it should be contained within an eventaul document about the ‘ars celebrandi'.” [i.e., Cardinal Bergoglio's suggestion.]
.
But it didn’t happen that way. The book on the homily took on a life of its own and has now come out as a book. [What Magister does not mention is that, as recounted at the presnetation news conference of the Direttorio omiletico, the initiative for the ‘homily project’ took new life with a provision about the homily Benedict XVI’s historic post-synodal Aposortlic Exhortation on the Synod on the Eucharist, Sacramentum caritatis , furhter reinforced by a provision in his post-
Synodal Apostlic Exhortation on the Word of God, Verbum Domini... JMB/PF could not have denied his imprimatur for the book because it would have meant not just jettisoning more than 10 years of work by the CDW but also directly contravening synodal recommendations endorsed by Benedict XVI in his post-synodal Apostolic Exhortations. So, he has sought to assert himself, beign Pope now, through the publication and dissemination of his 2005 intervention.][/coiore]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 20/02/2015 00:57]

I thought I could ignore Cardinal Wuerl's by-now much-discussed blogpost - in which he referted to "an interview and an article by brother bishops who are less than enthusiastic about Pope Francis" - as just another blip on the FOF radar screen. Everyone interpreted it, of course, as a reference to Cardinal Burke.

So I finally read the blogpost, which starts out as a gushy sycophantic fan endorsement from a true believer in Pope Francis and then seeks to show that dissent with the Pope is not new in the history of the Church. So why does he make an exception this time? Because, Wuerl says, there are those who disagree with the Pope "because he does not follow their views"! He fails to see the distinction that Cardinal Burke, for instance, is not standing up for his 'views' or personal opinion about marriage and respect for the sacraments, but standing up for what Jesus himself said in clear and unequivocal terms about marriage, divorce and adultery. That is a singular distinction from all the historical instances of dissent with previous Popes that Wuerl mentions, which, we might say, are all oranges that he compares to an apple!

Even worse, as the fifth reply to the post on the archbishop's comboxes pointed out:

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“They disagree with the Pope because he does not agree with them and therefore follow their position.”

Really, is that why you ignore Canon Law and give communion to Catholic politicians who voted for and promote abortion even though Popes John Paul and Benedict said this is a scandal, causes confusion and isn’t to be done?

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Of course, of course! Why didn't I think of that right away? For years, Wuerl has been notorious for giving Communion to Washington's most egregiously pro-abortion politicians - so why are we surprised he shares the Bergoglio-Kasper eucharistic leniency towards remarried divorcees whose church marriages have not been annulled, unmarried cohabiting couples and practising homosexuals?

Rorate caeli tells us that, in fact, Wuerl has not allowed Cardinal Burke to celebrate Mass in Washington at all because as Archbishop of St. Louis, Burke had been publicly critical of all bishops and priests who persist in giving communion to pro-abortion politicians despite what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about this, and John Paul II's and Cardinal Ratzinger's instructions to the contrary.

Anyway, let me post Wuerl's blog, for the record. For those of you who are familiar with Wuerl's not infrequent appearances on American TV, you can almost hear him speaking out his unctuous lines and flimsy arguments...

The Pope, Touchstone of Faith and Unity
by Cardinal Donald Wuerl
Archbishop of Washington, DC
February 10, 2015

Early Sunday morning I watched our Holy Father, Pope Francis, give his Angelus talk – the comments he shares before praying the Angelus with the huge crowd – tens of thousands – gathered in Saint Peter’s Square each Sunday. [As if this Pope was the first ever to draw 'huge crowds' to St. Peter's Square!]

Here, this enormously popular and revered successor to Peter spoke about the tenderness of Jesus, his loving compassion and at the same time our need to be caring and compassionate to our fellow human beings. The Holy Father clearly is admired not only by the crowds in Saint Peter’s Square but by people around the world. But apparently that admiration is not shared by all. [[Apparently'? Surely, our cardinal is in deep denial! Also, is popularity the new gauge for how Catholics should regard the Pope? The cardinal forgets what Christ said about "when everyone speaks well of you..." And is it ever acceptable for the Vicar of Christ to preach his Gospel selectively to fit his own agenda? Do you speak the truth at all if you do not preach the whole truth? Surely truth and fidelity to the word of Christ are what matters, not the preacher's personality or popularity! ]

As I was watching the Holy Father on TV, my inbox was filling with a number of emails including an interview and an article by brother bishops who are less than enthusiastic about Pope Francis. Those emails reminded me of a much, much earlier time in my life when I first experienced dissent from the teaching and practice of a pope.

As a young seminarian (20 years old) doing graduate work at The Catholic University of America, I read for the first time the encyclical letter of Saint John XXIII, Mater et magistra. Its teaching was not well received by some. One of the pundits offered the observation that became rather widespread in those circles, “Mater si, Magistra no,” – Latin for “Mother yes, Teacher no.”

Along with a number of my classmates, I remember being so scandalized by this rejection of the encyclical that we spoke to one of the priests at the seminary. He gently chided us for our naivety and pointed out that there has always been a current of dissent in the Church, some of it as high as the College of Cardinals.

It was then that I first heard of Cardinal Louis Billot who was less than discreet in his opposition to Pope Pius XI who had condemned the political and religious movement, Action Française, which involved many people who longed for the restoration of the monarchy in France and a stronger role for the Church in civil government. In 1927, as the Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, Cardinal Billot “was persuaded to renounce his cardinalitial dignity.” [One combox writer noted that Billot's opposition to Pius XI was political in nature, not about fundamental Christian doctrine which is what Cardinal Burke is upholding because Jorge Mario Bergoglio seems bent on 'bending' that doctrine with respect to persons in what the church considers 'a chronic state of sin'. It seems however that Wuerl cites Billot and his renunciation of his cardinal's rank as an example that Cardinal Burke and other cardinal-dissenters with Pope Francis ought to do!]

Unhappiness with a Pope’s position on issues whether doctrinal, pastoral, canonical or as simple as clerical vesture, seems always to be present in some form. In 1963 Saint John XXIII again became the object of wrath of those who disliked his encyclical Pacem in terris, as did Blessed Paul VI for his encyclical, Populorum progressio in 1967 and certainly for his encyclical Humanae vitae in 1968.

[Of these examples, only the progressivist dissent over HV is comparable to the orthodox dissent against any possible relaxation of sacramental discipline with respect to marriage, communion and chastity. But the progressivists protested the orthodoxy of HV, whereas today, orthodox Catholics are upholding orthodoxy and orthopraxy which must go together. 'Pastoral leniency' bends bends orthodox teaching and such leniency in practice ultimately dilutes and defeats orthodox teaching. Heterodox practice inevitbly engenders heterodoxy.]

Dissent by some priests from the teaching in Humanae vitae led to their departure from priestly ministry.

On a much less important level, there was, nonetheless, considerable dismay among some in 1969 when the Secretary of State of Pope Paul VI issued an instruction concerning the vesture of bishops and cardinals. The effort to streamline and do away with things like the cappa magna (long outer garment of bishops and cardinals with a long, long train) upset some. [This statement promoted at least four combox corrections - 1) that the cappa magna was never done away with, but that both John XXIII and Paul VI specified it was to be used on solemn occasions; 2) that not just Cardinal Burke but Cardinal Pell, now the #2 man to Pope Francis, has worn the cappa magna on appropriate occasions; 3) that, in fact, Pius XII had shortened the length of the cappa magna and eliminated its ermine trim, but John XXIII restored the length; and 4) how many Catholics even know about the cappa magna to care about whether it is worn or not? And for my part, I would add: Surely Wuerl would not compare a quibble about vesture to have the same order as a doctrinal objection to tampering with sacramental disciplinhe!]

Even the short reign of Pope John Paul I was not without critique. Some wrote that they found his smile unbefitting a Pope since it diminished the gravitas (gravity or seriousness) of his office. One commentator lamented that this dear and kind Pope actually waved at people as he processed to celebrate Mass. [Surely any such comments were isolated and extremely rare - and not to be compared with the concern manifested by many orthodox Catholics continually over the past 22 months against the apparent heterodox predilections of Pope Francis!]

Then of course came Saint John Paul II. Everything he wrote had some critic whether it involved his social encyclicals such as Laborem exercens in 1981 or Sollicitudo rei socialis in 1987 or Centesimus annus in 1991 or his encyclical on the permanent validity of the Church’s missionary effort, Redemptoris missio. There were some who continually criticized him for his travels even though he helped in his nearly 27 years as Pope revitalize the Church. Again, none of the 'dissent' Wuerl cites disputed John Paul II's statement or interpretation of Catholic doctrine.]

Personally, I always found the criticism of Saint John Paul II particularly painful because I have such an affection and admiration for him. In fact, the brand new seminary in this archdiocese that was opened just a few years ago bears his name, Saint John Paul II Seminary.

I will not belabor the point by going through the critiques, challenges, disapproval and dissent that faced so much of what Pope Benedict XVI taught and published during his pontificate. [And Wuerl does not seem to think that this applied to his open defiance of the Catechism and the teaching of the two last Popes about giving communion to pro-abortion politicians! In fact, Wuerl's defiance has been worse than 'dissent' - it is dissidence, which has no Scriptural or theological justification!]

Again, I find myself greatly perplexed at the negative critique of him whom I saw as such a good, brilliant and holy Shepherd of the Church. [Oh, stop it!]

Hardly then should we expect that Pope Francis would be immune from [what appears to be something that “comes with the territory.” [So why are you making so much of the fact that 'apparently, not everyone share.]

One of the things I have learned though over all of these years since those early naïve days in 1961 is that on closer examination there is a common thread that runs through all of these dissenters. They disagree with the Pope because he does not agree with them and therefore follow their position.

Dissent is perhaps something we will always have, lamentable as it is, but we will also always have Peter and his successor as the rock and touchstone of both our faith and our unity. [Yes, but if the touchstone itself slips out of place, then one hard push and the whole structure could collapse!]

It turns out that at LifeSite News, editor John Henry Westen wrote at length yesterday about Wuerl's egregious hypocritical silence regarding his own long-standing dissidence in giving communion to pro-abortion politicians. But I do strongly protest the headline given to Westen's article about 'the pot calling the kettle black' - a most inappropriate metaphor because the doctrine Burke upholds is solidly orthodox 9and therefore is no 'black kettle' at all), whereas Wuerl has been openly defying what the Catechism teaches and what two Popes have actively exhorted.

Cardinal Wuerl forgets that for years,
he defied the Catechism and two PopesPaul II and Benedict XVI
by giving communion to pro-abort politicians
by John Henry Westen

February 18, 2015

On his official blog, Washington, D.C., Cardinal Donald Wuerl made a rather obvious reference to Cardinal Raymond Burke, calling him a “dissenter.” Referring to “an interview and an article by brother bishops who are less than enthusiastic about Pope Francis,” Cardinal Wuerl was unmistakably pointing to Cardinal Burke, whose interview with France2 days earlier was making the rounds on the Internet.

While newsworthy, the interview with Cardinal Burke was rather mundane in that he merely said he would be willing to “resist” Pope Francis, if the pontiff were to attempt to change the Church's practice of denying Communion to those in “second marriages.” Pope Francis has never said he would change the current Church practice, even though powerful cardinals surrounding him have suggested the move.

After introducing the unnamed bishop who was critical of Pope Francis in an interview, Cardinal Wuerl runs through dissenters from papal teaching in recent history, noting, “a common thread that runs through all of these dissenters” is that “they disagree with the Pope because he does not agree with them and therefore follow their position.”

Cardinal Wuerl is here on new ground. [???? Isn't he really treading the same ground of dissent that he has done for years without realizing that he is doing so because, this time, someone else is doing the dissenting from the Pope he adulates?] For years he was, by his own definition, the “dissenter” under Popes John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI.

The issue also revolved around Holy Communion. However, rather than giving Communion to divorced and remarried, the previous popes were asking that Communion be denied to pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

In 2004, Pope John Paul II had the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith intervene in the US Bishops deliberation over the question of Communion for pro-abortion politicians. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his letter entitled "Worthiness to receive Holy Communion," that a Catholic politician who would vote for "permissive abortion and euthanasia laws" after being duly instructed and warned, "must" be denied Communion.

Ratzinger's letter explained that if such a politician "with obstinate persistence, still presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, the minister of Holy Communion must refuse to distribute it."

As pope, Benedict XVI confirmed this position. Answering a reporter on an in-flight press conference in 2007, Pope Benedict addressed a question on the Mexican bishops excommunicating politicians who support legalizing abortion.

"Yes, this excommunication was not an arbitrary one but is allowed by Canon law which says that the killing of an innocent child is incompatible with receiving communion, which is receiving the body of Christ," said the pope.

In the comment, Pope Benedict was referring to the Church's Canon law 915, which states: "Those upon whom the penalty of excommunication or interdict has been imposed or declared, and others who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, are not to be admitted to Holy Communion."

Archbishop Wuerl repeatedly refused to comply with that directive. In fact, he was open in his dissent. Asked by various media since the mid-1990s, he said it was not his pastoral style, and also claimed that denying Communion is tantamount to wielding the sacrament as a weapon.

But for the Washington archbishop it wasn’t only a matter of words – he backed up his rhetoric against the pope’s wishes with action. In March 2012, he stripped a priest of his faculties to publicly celebrate Mass for refusing Communion to a woman who was known to have been living in a homosexual relationship. {colore=#0026ff][This was a full two and a half years before the October 2014 family synod at which Wuerl and his fellow progressivists voted, in effect, to 'recognize positive values' in homosexual relationships while keeping silent about the sinfulness in unnatural homosexual practices.]

Fr. Marcel Guarnizo was “placed on administrative leave” by the archdiocese after he refused to distribute Communion to Barbara Johnson, a self-identified Buddhist who had reportedly introduced her lesbian “lover” to the priest in the sacristy right before her mother’s funeral Mass.

The archdiocese issued an apology to Johnson and said that Fr. Guarnizo’s actions were “against policy” and that an investigation was underway.

In 2012, when asked about refusing notorious pro-abortion politician Nancy Pelosi Communion, Wuerl opined, “I stand with the great majority of American bishops and bishops around the world in saying this canon was never intended to be used this way.''

At that time the head of the Catholic Church’s highest court dealing with canon law was none other than Cardinal Raymond Burke. Burke told LifeSiteNews unequivocally at the time: “The Church’s law is very clear.”

“The person who persists publicly in grave sin is to be denied Holy Communion, and it [canon law] doesn’t say that the bishop shall decide this. It’s an absolute.”

So perhaps Cardinal Wuerl is savoring a little revenge with his dissenter remark. But, the hypocrisy is so very blatant.

There is also a very strong article reubuking Wuerl for his sanctimony over Burke's 'dissent' by 'La strega cacciatore' [The hunting witch] on the Italian blogsite PAPALE PAPALE that I will post when translated.

In this post, Fr. Hunwicke assures us that although the Pope may be an absolute monarch in his capacity as sovereign of Vatican City state, i.e., in his temporal powers, he is limited to what he can do as Supreme Pontiff in matters of the faith even if he may temporarily have his way about certain things. Or so I understand his presentation.

However, Fr. H does not touch on what a Pope may do in terms of overhauling the traditional hierarchical order of the Church so that its table of organization is no longer pyramidal as it always has been, but sort of a horizontal array of structrues - the Pope and his advisory councils, bishops' conferences, curial dicasteries, the Bishops' Synod, etc. with co-equal or shared powers, as JMB/PF seems intent on creating. [I answer myself by saying that if JMB can change the structures defined by Paul VI and John Paul II, then surely a successive Pope or Popes may equally change whatever structrues JMB defines, and hope I am realistic about this, not just thinking wishfully].

On papal authority

February 19, 2015

I doubt whether acceptance of the authority of the Roman Pontiff has been in as weakened a state as it is now, at least since the Reformation. His authority is questioned on all sides.

During a recent Home Service Sunday programme, the BBC had a Tablet journalist for interview. ]DIM=9PT]She said very openly that S John Paul's proscription of the idea that women could receive sacerdotal Ordination was a great shame, but that she had no doubt that, eventually, Women's Ordination would come. She exhibited no nervousness that she was thereby contradicting, fully frontally, the requirement that this judgement, as an authoritative expression of the Church's infallible Ordinary Universal Magisterium, must be seen as definitive tenendum. She did not sound like somebody speaking defiantly in the fear that she would be carpetted the next morning by Authority!

On the other wing, we have among many people a great fear that the Holy Father will oversee either a reversal of Christ's and the Church's teaching that Marriage is indissoluble, or else a relaxing of the principle that unrepented adultery, like any other unrepented grave sin, has to be seen as a factor excluding those concerned from the Lord's Table.

I have read on the Internet an observation: "I would become sedevacantist and go off to the SSPX".

This is an extraordinarily odd thing to say, because the SSPX has a wise long-term policy of excluding sedevacantists from its ranks. But, apart from that, there is here a bad misunderstanding of what Sedevacantism is.

Catholic theologians are agreed that a heretic cannot be pope, but have differed about how this principle is to be given practical effect. Some have argued that a heretical pontiff ceases to be pope when he adopts his heresy, but that a direct intervention by the Church is needed to certify that the See of St Peter has thus become vacant.

Others judge that the heretical pope does not ipso facto cease to be pope, but has to be deposed by a direct intervention by the Church. In either case, this is not an area for Do-it-yourself experts on heresy.

Sedevacantism is not an option. If you are the sort of person who can see no reason to accept my authority on this point ... because, after all, I do talk a lot but how can anybody be sure my judgements aren't dodgy? ... this might mean that you are also the sort of person who would be more impressed by a series of posts on Bishop Richard Williamson's blog a few weeks ago in which he exposed the complete inviability of Sedevacantism, its radically vitiating ecclesiological deficit.

Two points. Despite the anxieties entertained by the Intellectuals on both sides of this question ... the Traditionalists and the Tablettentendenz [referring to the ultra-liberal tendencies of the UK Catholic publication The Tablet]...

I see no grounds for panic. I see no practical likelihood whatsoever that anything will happen to put into doubt our duty, in our
day-by-day Christian life, to adhere obediently to the judgements of the Roman Pontiff.

But ... let's be honest ...there have been in history occasions when Roman Pontiffs have wobbled in their adherence to orthodoxy .... Liberius and all that. In these circumstances, there does have to be a duty to resist that wobble and to decline to give effect to edicts purporting to enact the wobble.

But here is the Red Line: At Vatican I, a great deal of historical work was done to ensure that the Decree on the Infallibility of the Roman Pontiff was so worded as not to be vulnerable on such historical grounds. It is watertight.

We can be sure that whatever a pope says ex cathedra is protected by the Holy Spirit from any error (but even here, we are not obliged to believe either that the decree concerned was necessary, or that it expressed things in the best of all possible ways). But it is not unknown for a papal decree which falls short of the ex cathedra status to be flawed.

Of course, that cannot be a good position for the Church to be in. But it is not some sort of Ultimate Catastrophe! The Church survived Liberius! And so did the Papacy! And, to the end of time, both will survive!

It is very important to remember the limits of the Papal Magisterium. This is best done by a careful reading of the decree Pastor aeternus of Vatican I. That is the touchstone.

Do not exaggerate, overestimate, what a pope can do, and then, when some pope or other goes a bit off the rails, or you think he has, start running around in a frantic fear that you have "lost your faith".

The pope is not an Absolute Monarch. Bl. Pius IX made this very explicitly clear. Benedict XVI taught this with determined vigour. This is serious!

The Pope is not some God-on-Earth who can never make a mistake!
Not a few of them have made quite a lot. There is no reason why the same should not be true in the future.

Learn not to fret! Learn to live with it, as so many Catholics in previous generations have done! And if you're the sort of person who can laugh at it, laugh. In any case, sit yourself down comfortably, pour yourself a drink ... and learn the following off by heart:

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The Holy Spirit was not promised to Peter's successors so that they should, by His revelation, disclose new teaching, but so that, with His assistance, they should devoutly guard and faithfully set forth the revelation handed down through the apostles, the Deposit of Faith.

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Since JMB/PF came along and posed cotinuing questions as to whether hs is really wobbling on some aspects of the deposit of faith handed down for him to uphold, safeguard and defend, my personal attitude has been that if, God forbid!, any, some or all of our apprehensions do materialize, I shall simply go on iiving by the depsit of fith we have all known till now - even if, as a 'commentator' perforce of the church scene, I may take issue as I have done since March 12, 2013, with whatever it is I find faulty, objectionable or simply wrong about what this Pope says, writes and does.

But I would not necessaraily feel myself bound to agreement or obedience. (I think I may be completely safe doing this, since I am very orthodox and traditional, but am not a remarried divorcee, an unmarried person cohabiting with someone, or a homosexual, for which he may relax sacramental discipline. Nor am I a priest or religious who must worry about any vows of obedience I may have made. Though I would take issue just as much with the latest category that JMB/PF told Roman priests yesterday that is on his agenda - married priests. I can see [viri probati] as a possibility, since it is assumed that at the time they are chosen, they have already completed their families and their children are on their own or otherwise provided for, so they can carry out a priestly ministry with minimum encumbrance. But this very condition makes it unlikely that there will ever be enougn viri probati to make up for the priest shortage.)

But I digress. I am sure that Benedict XVI's prayers for the Church must include unending supplications that the Holy Spirit may not fail to guide the Church and her leaders against error.

For the moment, it is not papal authority that worries me at all, but this Pope's judgment which seems to be flawed in favor of political correctness, niceness as a criterion rather than doctrinal truth and pastoral justice, and inappropriate interventionism in worldly affairs.

A letter from Benedict XVI



From the website of UNITALSI (Unione Nazionale Italiana per Trasporto Ammalati), the Italian organization that helps sick patients make pilgrimages to shrines outside Italy, and thanks as suual to Beatrice for finding it:

It is a letter to Alessandro Simon, secretary of UNITALSI's Rome section, who had written Benedict XVI after the visit on January 19, 2015, of Mons. Georg Gaenswein [one presumes on behalf of Benedict XVI] to Casa Bernadette, a lodging house run by the association for parents of children hospitalized at the Bambino Gesu Hospital.

The letter says:

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I thank you with all my heart for your moving letter dated January 20, which manifests your commitment for the least in society, especially for children who suffer.

It is touching that the compassion of the Good Samaritan lives in a society with so many disquieting aspects, a compassion which is ultimately God's presence among us: The true Samaritan is the child of the suffering God who was crucified for us.

To follow Christ means precisely to enter into such compassion, which is not sentimental but serious and concrete.

Thank you for all the work you do.
May the Lord bless you.

Your
BENEDETTO XVI

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A letter that is a homily in itself.

Just what we needed for Lent! - and from the #2 man at the Vatican Press Office, no less! Perhaps Fr. Rosica should advise Vatican lawyers to go ahead and sue each and every blogger who criticizes Pope Francis as well - because if he could threaten a lawsuit over criticisms of him (like the criticisms of the Pope, based entirely on statements they have made in public, and often, repeatedly), how much more reason the pope would have! But whoever heard of Popes suing anyone for exercising free speech? And yet someone like Fr. Rosica would...

VOX CANTORIS, by Canadian blogger David Domet unleashed a whirlwind in the Catholic blogosphere by reporting and criticizing some statements made by the Vatican's English-lanuggae press officer, Fr. Thomas Rosica, whose lawyers have sent the blogger a letter threatening a lawsuit unless he removes every mention of Fr. Rosica on his blogsite and makes a public apology... I have not posted about this before, but it seems that Vox Cantoris post criticizing Rosica for tweeting that "Cardinal Wuerl criticizes Cardinal Burke (and other dissenters)" with a link to the Wuerl blog was the push that came to shove for Rosica... Father Z took note of this whole episode for the first time in this post:

Canadian Fr. Rosica threatens
to sue Canadian blogger (Vox Cantoris)
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

February 21, 2015

There is a piece at Breitbart by Austin Ruse (who runs C-FAM) about how Canadian Fr. Thomas Rosica, who does a lot of work with the Holy See Press Office, has threatened to sue a Canadian blogger. My emphases:

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VATICAN SPOKESMAN THREATENS
TO SUE CATHOLIC BLOGGER[/di,]
by Austin Ruse

Father Thomas Rosica, a Vatican spokesman who works in the media, has sent a menacing legal letter to a little-known Canadian blogger, threatening a lawsuit for allegedly criticizing him unfairly.

Father Rosica serves as assistant in the Holy See Press Office in charge of speaking to the English language press. A Canadian himself, Rosica is also founder of the Canadian Catholic cable network called Salt & Light. Though Rosica publicly defends the right to freedom of speech and press, he is attempting to silence the blogger who has criticized him.

On February 17, Rosica’s lawyers sent a letter to David Domet, who blogs at a site called Vox Cantoris, demanding that Domet take down certain blog posts they say malign Rosica’s character. The letter says:

Each of the said statements, separately and collectively, expressly and by way of innuendo, are false and defamatory in that they suggest that Fr. Rosica is dishonest; they suggest that Fr. Rosica is untrustworthy; they suggest that Fr. Rosica is willing to act unethically to further his own agenda and to do so at the expense of others.

At issue are a number of posts criticizing Rosica for his role in the unusually contentious Extraordinary Synod on the Family at the Vatican last October, which drew global attention to the debate within the Catholic hierarchy over communion for the divorced and civilly remarried and the Church’s approach to homosexual unions. Some feared, and others hoped, that the Church was set to change traditional doctrine. The blog Vox Cantoris claimed that Father Rosica, who was one of the official spokesmen of the Synod, was central to efforts to change at least Church practice, if not Church teaching.

Rosica’s letter pointed to nine specific posts, among them:

"Make no mistake friends, Tom Rosica and the rest of them are not going to go quietly in the night. They are going to work insidiously over the next year so that there (sic) heterodox view of Catholicism is enacted, not in doctrine, but in praxis. For Father Rosica, it is but a continuing journey."

"In a stunning rebuke of President of the Internet Father Thomas Rosica’s pronouncement that the Holy Family was “irregular” in order to justify the homoheresy of the Synod on the Family; Pope Francis today at his audience contradicted the earlier reports by the Vatican English-language spokesman and Executive Director of Canada’s Pepper and Darkness Catholic Channel of No Hope and has pronounced the Holy Family was indeed, “regular.”"

"merican audiences might find te posts inflammatory and perhaps uncharitable, but not legally actionable. In the United States, bloggers may say practically anything they want about a public figure. But this case is being brought in Canada, where Father Rosica is a priest, against a Canadian blogger."

...Father Rosica is no stranger to intramural Catholic hostilities. He has criticized LifeSiteNews and other conservative Catholic outlets for what he considers their uncivil approach to public discourse. This came to a head when Cardinal O’Malley of Boston allowed, and even participated in, a public Mass of burial for Senator Edward Kennedy, who had been perhaps the most visible Catholic abortion supporter in the United States.

In their letter, Father Rosica’s lawyers say that Rosica “is incurring and has incurred damages as a result of the aforementioned false and defamatory statements. These damages include damages to his reputation, work and service to the church.” They charge that the blog posts have also caused Rosica’s television network to lose subscribers.

Rosica’s lawyers are demanding that the blogger “immediately and publicly retract all statements on the blog regarding Fr. Rosica and apologize to him on the blog.” If the demands are not met by February 22, “we will seek instructions to commence an action against you,” they state. They have given him five days to comply, but even if he does, the lawyers say they may still sue.

It is not clear at this point what the proprietor of Vox Cantoris will do. He identifies himself as a Catholic family man without the means to defend himself against such charges.

---

Father Z has chosen not to comment on the wholew thing, and has turned his comments box off.

On his blogsite yesterday, Domet posted links to numerous blogs that have expressed support for him and outrage at Rosica's threatened lawsuit:
voxcantor.blogspot.com/2015/02/blog-post-collections.html

One blog listed a series of eyebrow-raising statements and actions by Fr. Rosica that indicate, among other things, his sympathy, to say the least, for the LGBT community, his propensity to tweet controversial ideas and links to those where succh ideas are expressed (as, for instance, that Mary and Joseph represented an 'irregular union' in Palestinian society at that time), and of course, and of course, his over-the-top sycophancy at the feet of Pope Francis. (I personally reproach him for having written anarticle last year marking the first anniversary of Benedict XVI's resignation, in which, after requisite praise of Benedict XVI, he states outright that we can all thank him for resigning because he allowed Jorge Mario Bergoglio to become Pope. Since then, I have looked askance at him. He was not, of course, the first FOF to say that - even a once-reputed-Ratzingerian Cardinal Ouellet said the same thing after Bergoglio was elected, and there are probably hudnreds of commentators who have said the same thing. It's just hockingly insensitive and heavy-footed of Vatican functionaires like Ouellet and Rosica to be part of that chorus.]

February 22, 2015, First
Sunday of Lent
SOLEMNITY OF THE CHAIR OF ST. PETER


The feast commemorates Christ’s choice of Peter to sit in his place as the servant-authority of the whole Church. Already in the second half of the 8th century, an ancient wooden Chair
inlaid with ivory was venerated and traditionally held to be the Episcopal chair on which St. Peter sat as he instructed the faithful of Rome. In fact, it is a throne in which fragments
of acacia wood are visible, which could be part of the chair of St. Peter, encased in oak and reinforced with iron bands. Several rings facilitated its transportation during processions.
Pope Alexander VII commissioned Bernini to build a sumptuous monument which would give prominence to this ancient wooden chair. Bernini built a throne in gilded bronze, richly
ornamented with bas-reliefs in which the chair was enclosed: two pieces of furniture, one within the other. It was installed in 1666 on the altar just below the alabaster window
depicting the Holy Spirit. Every February 22, the altar of Peter's Chair is decorated with dozens of lighted candles, while the familiar black sculpture of St. Peter is dressed in full papal
regalia. Quite ironically, it was the last significant feast day of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, and it fell in Lent.

Left, Bernini's altar of Peter's Chair - the Church Doctors holding up the Chair are, on the left, Augustine and John Chrysostom, and on the right, Athanasius and Ambrose. Center, the altar with the lighted candles
on Feb. 22; right, Arnolfo di Cambio's sculpture of St. Peter, dressed in papal regalia every Feb. 22.

AT THE VATICAN TODAY
Pope Francis led the midday Angelus at St. Peter's Square and soke about the significance of Lent, commenting on the temptaiton of Jesus by Satan. He made no mention about the Feast of Peter's Chair today.
[[I had to Google if somehow, the Feast of Peter's Chair is celebrated on another day this year because it coincides with the first Sunday of Lent. But all the information says it is celebrated February 22 this year. Father Z blogs about it, a traditionalist site features a homily that ties up the first Sunday of Lent with the Feast of Peter's Chair, so there must be another explanation for why the Pope did not say anything about it today...However, looking back at the reports from last year, when the Pope Francis's first cardinal-makign consistory fell on the Feast of Peter's Chair, the first for Francis as Pope, he made no reference at all to the pccasion in his allocution to his new cardinals. Why would the 266th Successor of Peter apparently ignore this solemnity?]

In the afternoon, the Pope and officials of the Roman Curia began their annual Lenten retreat at a retreat house in Ariccia, 16 miles from Rome. It will last till February 27.


Benedict XVI at the 2015 cardinal-naming consistory... Unlike this year, the emeritus Pope's appearance last year came as a complete surprise... The photos are truly moving.
















2 Popes on hand in a historic first
for a cardinal-making consistory
by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, February 22, 2014 (AP) — Retired Pope Benedict XVI joined Pope Francis at a ceremony Saturday creating the cardinals who will elect their successor in an unprecedented blending of papacies past, present and future.

Benedict discreetly entered St. Peter's Basilica from a side entrance surrounded by a small entourage and was greeted with applause and tears from the stunned people in the pews. He smiled, waved and seemed genuinely happy to be there, taking his seat in the front row, off to the side, alongside the red-draped cardinals.

It was the first time Benedict and Francis have appeared together at a public liturgical ceremony since Benedict retired a year ago and became the first pope to step down in more than 600 years.

The significance of his presence was multifold, signaling both continuity and even a sign of Benedict's approval of the 19 men Francis had chosen to join the College of Cardinals, the elite group of churchmen whose primary job is to elect a pope.

Francis's choices largely reflected his view that the church must minister to the peripheries and not be a closed institution of rules but rather a place of welcome and mercy. He named cardinals from some of the world's poorest countries, Haiti, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast among them, tapping many pastors like him. [Yuuuuuk! This kind of mindless and basically malicious commentary still manages to drive me nuts!]

In a sign that Benedict still commands the honor and respect owed a pope, each of the 19 new cardinals — after receiving his red hat from Francis at the altar — went directly to Benedict's seat to greet him before then exchanging a sign of peace with the other cardinals. [God bless them for doing so, and because of the occasion, I will refrain from my usual jeremiad against the cardinal electors of 2013. Even if some of the new cardinals may have had the same treacherous anti-Benedict mindset at the time.]

After processing down the central aisle at the start of the service, Francis went directly to Benedict, clasped him by his shoulders and they embraced. Francis greeted him in the same way at the end of the service, and Benedict removed his white skullcap in a sign of respect as Francis approached.












Over the summer, Francis and Benedict appeared together in the Vatican gardens to unveil a statue, but Saturday's event marked one of the most important liturgical ceremonies a pope can preside over: the formal installation of new cardinals.

Saturday's ceremony was thus the latest step in the evolving reality of having two popes living side-by-side inside the Vatican: Benedict's presence marked the a new phase of reintegrating him back into the public life of the church after a period of being hidden away that began almost exactly a year ago with his Feb. 28, 2013 resignation.

With Saturday's precedent, chances grew that Benedict would also appear at the April 27 canonization of his pope, John Paul II, and Pope John XXIII. [I never had any doubts that Benedict XVI would attend the canonization cven if unknown to everyone else - even if Mons. Gaenswein has to get the Memores to slip him in somehow in a black cassock. somewhere near enough so he can see the altar. In fact, one of the idle conjectures that went through my mind last year when considering the timing of his renunciation was that he must have felt truly unable to go on serving as Pope the way a Pope ought to serve if he could not postpone it long enough till after he could canonize his friend.]

The crowd erupted in polite applause when one of the new cardinals, Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, greeted Benedict in his introductory remarks at the start of the service, saying "We are grateful for your presence here among us."

Benedict, dressed in his white cassock with a long double-breasted overcoat, again smiled and waved.

[How exactly does a crowd 'erupt in polite applause'? If the applause is only 'polite', i.e., pro forma, surely one cannot use the verb 'erupt'. And why not simply say "the crowd broke into applause' without characterizing the applause at all? Or is it Winfield's idea to diminish any impression that, God forbid the faithful should even acknowledge the 'ex-Pope' in the presence of the Pope gloriously reigning, as the expression has it? Actually, she does not ,judging by her next paragraph below. Now, Cardinal Parolin's statement - yes, that one I would consider as made out of obligatory politeness, truly pro forma, for appearances' sake. Doesn't it just express all the warmth, graciousness and sincerity` of the retirement telegram sent by the cardinals to Benedict XVI last March?]

Some people reached out to try to touch Benedict as he passed by, others tried to approach him to take his photo, but were restrained by ushers.

The occasion for this historic first was Francis's first cardinal-making ceremony to formally welcome 19 new "princes of the church" into the College of Cardinals.....


Pope Francis bids farewell to Benedict XVI before the recessional at the end of the rites.

[The AP story runs for a few more paragraphs more, and I am sorry for the new cardinals that the media focused on Benedict's unexpected presence in their accounts of the event, but then the news reports also gave short shrift to the Pope's allocution to the new cardinals.

I have not sorted out all my feelings about today, but I thank God for a blessed day in the life of the Church. Personally, I think Benedict XVI wished to honor the Petrine ministry today on the Feast of Peter's Chair, as someone who has occupied it... And I am thankful once again to Pope Francis for making the invitation that made this possible. God bless the Popes!






Forgive my self-indulgence, but that last photo of Benedict XVI with Pope Francis made my mind flash back right away to one of my favorite photographs of Cardinal Ratzinger in a suit. It was taken in 1994 at a facility of the Knights of Malta located in the Tyrolean Alps, when he and his brother were on a vacation. Those features are ageless - still the most beautiful man in the world as we used to rave at the time he became Pope when most of us 'discovered' him (and in a reverse process, were not oblivious of his physical beauty and saw it as most fitting and complementary to the spiritual beauty that he so obviously radiates).

Looking back another year beyond...
To the last Solemnity of Peter's Chair that he would observe as Pope, Benedict XVI was on the sixth day of a weeklong Lenten retreat with officials of the Roman Curia. It would end at noon the following day, after a final morning meditation and the Holy Father's traditional closing remarks. All in all, there were 22 meditation sessions, each lecture preached by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture.

Benedict, dressed in his white cassock with a long double-breasted overcoat, again smiled and waved.

[How exactly does a crowd 'erupt in polite applause'? If the applause is only 'polite', i.e., pro forma, surely one cannot use the verb 'erupt'. And why not simply say "the crowd broke into applause' without characterizing the applause at all? Or is it Winfield's idea to diminish any impression that, God forbid the faithful should even acknowledge the 'ex-Pope' in the presence of the Pope gloriously reigning, as the expression has it? Actually, she does not ,judging by her next paragraph below. Now, Cardinal Parolin's statement - yes, that one I would consider as made out of obligatory politeness, truly pro forma, for appearances' sake. Doesn't it just express all the warmth, graciousness and sincerity` of the retirement telegram sent by the cardinals to Benedict XVI last March?]

Some people reached out to try to touch Benedict as he passed by, others tried to approach him to take his photo, but were restrained by ushers.

The occasion for this historic first was Francis's first cardinal-making ceremony to formally welcome 19 new "princes of the church" into the College of Cardinals.....


Pope Francis bids farewell to Benedict XVI before the recessional at the end of the rites.

[The AP story runs for a few more paragraphs more, and I am sorry for the new cardinals that the media focused on Benedict's unexpected presence in their accounts of the event, but then the news reports also gave short shrift to the Pope's allocution to the new cardinals.

I have not sorted out all my feelings about today, but I thank God for a blessed day in the life of the Church. Personally, I think Benedict XVI wished to honor the Petrine ministry today on the Feast of Peter's Chair, as someone who has occupied it... And I am thankful once again to Pope Francis for making the invitation that made this possible. God bless the Popes!






Forgive my self-indulgence, but that last photo of Benedict XVI with Pope Francis made my mind flash back right away to one of my favorite photographs of Cardinal Ratzinger in a suit. It was taken in 1994 at a facility of the Knights of Malta located in the Tyrolean Alps, when he and his brother were on a vacation. Those features are ageless - still the most beautiful man in the world as we used to rave at the time he became Pope when most of us 'discovered' him (and in a reverse process, were not oblivious of his physical beauty and saw it as most fitting and complementary to the spiritual beauty that he so obviously radiates).



Looking back to Benedict XVI's last observance as Pope of the Feastof Peter's Chair, and a homily that explains the significance of the feast and what it means for the Petrine ministry... It was in 2012. Benedict XVI's fourth consistory to create new cardinals took place on the eve of the Solemnity, and he concelebrated the Mass of the Solemnity itself the next day with the new cardinals. He would call a second cardinal-making consistory in November that year, bestowing the red biretta on six more prelates.



SOLEMNITY OF PETER'S CHAIR
Holy Mass concelebrated
with the new cardinals

February 19, 2012


Libretto cover: The Chair of St. Peter, sculpture by Bernini, 1665, enclosing a traditional relic, Altar of the Chair, St. Peter's Basilica.


It's a rare occasion when the Pope gets to celebrate the Feast of Peter's Chair in a public Mass!


Pope Benedict XVI concelebrated Mass this Sunday morning in St. Peter’s Basilica, on the SoLemnity of Peter's Chair, with the twenty-two Cardinals he created yesterday in the fourth cardinals' consistory of his Pontificate.

In his homily, the Holy Father stressed the centrality of the Petrine ministry – the Pope's special office of care and responsibility for the whole Church everywhere in the world as the Successor to St. Peter. Focusing on the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, which was moved forward to Sunday from its usual calendar place on February 22nd, since this coming February 22nd is Ash Wednesday, the Holy Father described the great chair surmounting the Altar of the Chair in the Basilica, behind the High Altar, Pope Benedict noted that it is supported by the Fathers of the Church – symbolically represented in statues that bear the chair.

“The two Eastern masters, Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Athanasius, together with the Latins, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, represent the whole of the tradition, and hence the richness of expression of the true faith of the one Church,” said Pope Benedict.

“This aspect of the altar teaches us that love rests upon faith. Love collapses if man no longer trusts in God and disobeys him. Everything in the Church rests upon faith: the sacraments, the liturgy, evangelization, charity. Likewise te law and the Church’s authority rest upon faith.”

It was a theme to which the Holy Father returned in his Angelus address to the thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the occasion.



Here is the Vatican's English translation of the Holy FaTHer's homily today:

---

Dear Cardinals,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

On this solemnity of the Chair of Saint Peter, we have the joy of gathering around the altar of the Lord together with the new Cardinals whom yesterday I incorporated into the College of Cardinals.

It is to them, first of all, that I offer my cordial greetings and I thank Cardinal Fernando Filoni for the gracious words he has addressed to me in the name of all.

I extend my greetings to the other Cardinals and all the Bishops present, as well as to the distinguished authorities, ambassadors, priests, religious and all the faithful who have come from different parts of the world for this happy occasion, which is marked by a particular character of universality.

In the second reading that we have just heard, Saint Peter exhorts the “elders” of the Church to be zealous pastors, attentive to the flock of Christ (cf. 1 Pet 5:1-2).

These words are addressed in the first instance to you, my dear venerable brothers, who have already shown great merit among the people of God through your wise and generous pastoral ministry in demanding dioceses, or through presiding over the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, or in your service to the Church through study and teaching.

The new dignity that has been conferred upon you is intended to show appreciation for the faithful labour you have carried out in the Lord’s vineyard, to honour the communities and nations from which you come and which you represent so worthily in the Church, to invest you with new and more important ecclesial responsibilities and finally to ask of you an additional readiness to be of service to Christ and to the entire Christian community.

This readiness to serve the Gospel is firmly founded upon the certitude of faith. We know that God is faithful to his promises and we await in hope the fulfilment of these words of Saint Peter: “And when the chief shepherd is manifested you will obtain the unfading crown of glory” (1 Pet 5:4).

Today’s Gospel passage presents Peter, under divine inspiration, expressing his own firm faith in Jesus as the Son of God and the promised Messiah. In response to this transparent profession of faith, which Peter makes in the name of the other Apostles as well, Christ reveals to him the mission he intends to entrust to him, namely that of being the “rock”, the visible foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice of the Church is built (cf. Mt 16,16-19).

This new name of “rock” is not a reference to Peter’s personal character, but can be understood only on the basis of a deeper aspect, a mystery: through the office that Jesus confers upon him, Simon Peter will become something that, in terms of “flesh and blood”, he is not.

The exegete Joachim Jeremias has shown that in the background, the symbolic language of “holy rock” is present. In this regard, it is helpful to consider a rabbinic text which states: “The Lord said, ‘How can I create the world, when these godless men will rise up in revolt against me?’ But when God saw that Abraham was to be born, he said, ‘Look, I have found a rock on which I can build and establish the world.’ Therefore he called Abraham a rock.”

The prophet Isaiah makes reference to this when he calls upon the people to “look to the rock from which you were hewn ... look to Abraham your father” (51:1-2).

On account of his faith, Abraham, the father of believers, is seen as the rock that supports creation. Simon, the first to profess faith in Jesus as the Christ and the first witness of the resurrection, now, on the basis of his renewed faith, becomes the rock that is to prevail against the destructive forces of evil.

Dear brothers and sisters, this Gospel episode that has been proclaimed to us finds a further and more eloquent explanation in one of the most famous artistic treasures of this Vatican Basilica: the altar of the Chair.

After passing through the magnificent central nave, and continuing past the transepts, the pilgrim arrives in the apse and sees before him an enormous bronze throne that seems to hover in mid air, but in reality is supported by the four statues of great Fathers of the Church from East and West. And above the throne, surrounded by triumphant angels suspended in the air, the glory of the Holy Spirit shines through the oval window.

What does this sculptural composition say to us, this product of Bernini’s genius? It represents a vision of the essence of the Church and the place within the Church of the Petrine Magisterium.

The window of the apse opens the Church towards the outside, towards the whole of creation, while the image of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove shows God as the source of light.

But there is also another aspect to point out: the Church herself is like a window, the place where God draws near to us, where he comes towards our world. The Church does not exist for her own sake, she is not the point of arrival, but she has to point upwards, beyond herself, to the realms above.

The Church is truly herself to the extent that she allows the Other, with a capital “O”, to shine through her – the One from whom she comes and to whom she leads. The Church is the place where God “reaches” us and where we “set off” towards him: she has the task of opening up, beyond itself, a world which tends to become enclosed within itself, the task of bringing to the world the light that comes from above, without which it would be uninhabitable.

The great bronze throne encloses a wooden chair from the ninth century, which was long thought to be Saint Peter’s own chair and was placed above this monumental altar because of its great symbolic value. It expresses the permanent presence of the Apostle in the Magisterium of his successors.

Saint Peter’s chair, we could say, is the throne of truth which takes its origin from Christ’s commission after the confession at Caesarea Philippi. The magisterial chair also reminds us of the words spoken to Peter by the Lord during the Last Supper: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk 22:32).

The chair of Peter evokes another memory: the famous expression from Saint Ignatius of Antioch’s letter to the Romans, where he says of the Church of Rome that she “presides in charity” (Salutation, PG 5, 801).

In truth, presiding in faith is inseparably linked to presiding in love. Faith without love would no longer be an authentic Christian faith. But the words of Saint Ignatius have another much more concrete implication: the word “charity”, in fact, was also used by the early Church to indicate the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the Sacramentum caritatis Christi - the sacrament of Christ's love - through which Christ continues to draw us all to himself, as he did when raised up on the Cross (cf. Jn 12:32).

Therefore, to “preside in charity” is to draw men and women into a eucharistic embrace – the embrace of Christ – which surpasses every barrier and every division, creating communion from all manner of differences.

The Petrine ministry is therefore a primacy of love in the eucharistic sense, that is to say solicitude for the universal communion of the Church in Christ. And the Eucharist is the shape and the measure of this communion, a guarantee that it will remain faithful to the criterion of the tradition of the faith.

The great Chair is supported by the Fathers of the Church. The two Eastern masters, Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Athanasius, together with the Latins, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine, represent the whole of the tradition, and hence the richness of expression of the true faith of the one Church.
-
This aspect of the altar teaches us that love rests upon faith. Love collapses if man no longer trusts in God and disobeys him. Everything in the Church rests upon faith: the sacraments, the liturgy, evangelization, charity. Likewise the law and the Church’s authority rest upon faith.

The Church is not self-regulating, she does not determine her own structure but receives it from the word of God, to which she listens in faith as she seeks to understand it and to live it.

Within the ecclesial community, the Fathers of the Church fulfil the function of guaranteeing fidelity to sacred Scripture. They ensure that the Church receives reliable and solid exegesis, capable of forming with the Chair of Peter a stable and consistent whole.

The sacred Scriptures, authoritatively interpreted by the Magisterium in the light of the Fathers, shed light upon the Church’s journey through time, providing her with a stable foundation amid the vicissitudes of history.

After considering the various elements of the altar of the Chair, let us take a look at it in its entirety. We see that it is characterized by a twofold movement: ascending and descending. This is the reciprocity between faith and love.

The Chair is placed in a prominent position in this place, because this is where Saint Peter’s tomb is located, but this too tends towards the love of God. Indeed, faith is oriented towards love. A selfish faith would be an unreal faith.

Whoever believes in Jesus Christ and enters into the dynamic of love that finds its source in the Eucharist, discovers true joy and becomes capable in turn of living according to the logic of gift.

True faith is illumined by love and leads towards love, leads on high, just as the altar of the Chair points upwards towards the luminous window, the glory of the Holy Spirit, which constitutes the true focus for the pilgrim’s gaze as he crosses the threshold of the Vatican Basilica.

That window is given great prominence by the triumphant angels and the great golden rays, with a sense of overflowing fulness that expresses the richness of communion with God. God is not isolation, but glorious and joyful love, spreading outwards and radiant with light.

Dear brothers and sisters, the gift of this love has been entrusted to us, to every Christian. It is a gift to be passed on to others, through the witness of our lives. This is your task in particular,

dear brother Cardinals: to bear witness to the joy of Christ’s love. We now entrust your ecclesial service to the Virgin Mary, who was present among the apostolic community as they gathered in prayer, waiting for the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:14).

---

And here was Benedict XVI's catechesis at the General
audience on the first Feast of Peter's Chair of his Pontificate, on February 22, 2006:

---

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

The Latin liturgy celebrates today the feast of the Chair of Peter. It is a very ancient tradition, witnessed in Rome since the end of the fourth century, which renders thanksgiving to God for the mission entrusted to the Apostle Peter and his successors.

"Cathedra" literally means the established seat of the bishop, located in the mother church of a diocese, which for this reason is called "cathedral," and it is the symbol of the authority of the bishop and, in particular, of his "magisterium," that is, of the evangelical teaching that he, insofar as a successor of the apostles, is called to guard and transmit to the Christian community.

When the bishop takes possession of the local Church that is entrusted to him, he, bearing the miter and the shepherd's crosier, sits on the cathedra. From that seat he will guide, as teacher and shepherd, the journey of the faithful in faith, hope and charity.

Which was, then, the "cathedra" if St. Peter? He, chosen by Christ as the "rock" on which to build the Church (cf. Matthew 16:18), began his ministry in Jerusalem, after the ascension of the Lord and Pentecost. The first "seat" of the Church was the Cenacle, and in all probability in that room, where Mary, the Mother of Jesus, also prayed with the disciples, a special place was reserved for Simon Peter.

Subsequently, the see of Peter was Antioch, a city situated on the Oronte River in Syria, today Turkey, which at the time was the third metropolis of the Roman Empire after Rome and Alexandria in Egypt. Of that city, evangelized by Barnabas and Paul, where "for the first time the disciples were called Christians" (Acts 11:26), Peter was the first Bishop.

In fact, the Roman Martyrology, before the reform of the calendar [part of the 1969-70 liturgical overhaul], also established also a specific celebration of the Chair of Peter at Antioch. From there, Providence led Peter to Rome, where he concluded with martyrdom his course of service to the Gospel.

For this reason, the See of Rome, which had received the greatest honor, received also the task entrusted by Christ to Peter of being at the service of all the local Churches for the building and unity of the whole People of God.

In this way the See of Rome came to be known as that of the Successor of Peter, and the "cathedra" of its Bishop represented that of the apostle charged by Christ to feed all his flock. It is attested by the most ancient Fathers of the Church, as for example St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, who in his treatise "Against Heresies" describes the Church of Rome as "greatest and most ancient, known by all … founded and constituted at Rome by the two glorious Apostles Peter and Paul"; and he adds: "With this Church, because of her outstanding superiority, the universal Church must be in agreement, that is, the faithful everywhere" (III, 3, 2-3).

Tertullian, for his part, affirms: "How blessed this Church of Rome is! The Apostles themselves shed on her, with their blood, the whole of the doctrine" ("La Prescrizione degli Eretici," 36). The Chair of the Bishop of Rome represents, therefore, not only his service to the Roman community, but also his mission of guide of the whole People of God.

To celebrate the "Chair" of Peter, as we do today, means, therefore, to attribute to it a strong spiritual significance and to recognize in it a privileged sign of the love of God, good and eternal Shepherd, who wants to gather the whole of his Church and guide her along the way of salvation.

Among so many testimonies of the Fathers, I would like to refer to that of St. Jerome, taken from a letter of his to the Bishop of Rome, particularly interesting because he makes explicit reference in fact to the "chair" of Peter, presenting it as the safe harbor of truth and peace.

Jerome writes thus: "I decided to consult the chair of Peter, where that faith is found exalted by the lips of an Apostle; I now come to ask for nourishment for my soul there, where once you received the garment of Christ. I follow no leader save Christ, so I enter into communion with your beatitude, that is, with the chair of Peter for this I know is the rock upon which the Church is built! ("Le Lettere," I, 15,1-2).

Dear Brothers and Sisters, in the apse of St. Peter's Basilica, as you know, is found the monument to the Chair of the Apostle, a mature work of Bernini, made in the shape of a great bronze throne, supported by the statues of four Doctors of the Church, two from the West, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, and two from the East, St. John Chrysostom and St. Athanasius.

I invite you to pause before that evocative work, which today it is possible to admire decorated with so many candles, and pray in a particular way for the ministry that God has entrusted to me.

Raising one's gaze to the alabaster glass window that opens precisely above the chair, invoke the Holy Spirit, so that he will always sustain with his light and strength my daily service to the whole Church. For this, as for your devoted attention, I thank you from my heart.

May she, Mother of the Incarnate Word, protect the Church’s path, support the work of the pastors by her intercession and take under her mantle the entire College of Cardinals. Amen!

---

Here is a Vatican Radio translation of the address given by Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, on behalf of the 22 newly created Cardinals, before today's Mass began:

---

The scarlet bestowed on us reminds us, Holy Father, not about the greatness of the wearer nor as a symbol of power and domination, but of the profound mystery of the suffering of Jesus: Covered by his captors with a scarlet cloak, and thus presented to the crowd before Pilate, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2.8).

Even today in the Church, for their loyalty to his Lord, many of its members face martyrdom, trial and persecution.

Most Holy Father, at this most meaningful moment in our life’s journey, we would like, together with our feelings of gratitude, affection and dedication, to present you as a gift, our renewed commitment of fidelity, our complete willingness in the performance of the specific tasks entrusted to us in the Roman Curia, in the particular Churches or in the service of truth and knowledge. We too wish to wear our robes usque ad effusionem sanguinis - to the point of shedding our own blood.

Our gratitude today is joined by that, no less profound and joyful, of our relatives and friends, the churches where we come from, and the peoples to which we belong.

Every vocation, in fact, is born in a human context and is practiced in the context in which our people live, with whom we build pastoral relationships that can never be erased.

They too, Holy Father, thank you and ensure their prayer for Your person (Conservet eum Dominus - Keep him, Lord) and support for Your supreme and universal ecclesial ministry (TC]Tu es Petrus).

We entrust our service as cardinals to the protection of Mary Mother of Grace. Indeed it is Christ himself, who from the Cross places us under his protective mother, "Woman behold your son!" (Jn 19, 26). And we ask you, our Mother, come abide with us.

To God blessed for ever, our prayerwill be raised with the same Marian words: "My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior" (Lk 1.46 to 47).

---

I have been sparing about posting 'analyses' by Vaticanista Andrea Gagliarducci on his weekly blog (whose title I cannot explain) because I often find his working hypothesis questionable or even unlikely to begin with, and because in such cases, I also find his arguments weak, unconvincing or irrelevant. I am posting this item because it is very typical of all the major objections I have to his so-called 'analyses'. So, there will be a great deal of fisking here.

I will start with his working hypothesis as stated in his title:
"Pope Francis: Is there an agenda behind his back?" It's a meaningless question - there is always some agenda somewhere other than the agenda of the reigning Pope. Except that Francis was supposed to be the Pope like no other before him, whose universal approval begins right within the Vatican itself, where his election was seen as 'finally, the end" to all bickering and discord in the Curia.

Until several months ago, when the staunchest propagandizers of the Pope in the media - the likes of Andrea Tornielli, John Allen and the Fishwrap gang - started to comment about internal dissent against Francis in the Curia, which set the stage for portraying Caridnal Burke as the proto-dissenter just in time for the October 2013 family synod, and a resulting virtual ostracism of the Cardinal in FOF circles.

When the first reports started coming out, I remarked that they seemed to be setting up scapegoats for any delay or hindrance to the much-ballyhooed reform of the Curia - which I continue to think is the major reason for the harping in recent weeks on 'cardinals and Curial officials against Francis' - to the point that in December, France's Le Figaro, at the initiative of its longtime Vaticanista Jean Marie Guenois, published a dossier on "the secret war on the Vatican'. All but officially confirming the existence of opposition to some of the Pope's initiatives.

Lately, even a respectable cardinal like Cardinal Napier of South Africa fuelled the impression by remarking that many Curial offices - especially the more significant ones, like Propaganda Fide - are resisting the Pope's reforms because they are loath to lose the autonomy they have enjoyed for decades, and that "they are not accustomed to accountability" (which I thought was a rather uncharitable remark from Napier).

In the case of Propaganda Fide, which has had its own patrimony for centuries to fund missions, parishes and dioceses in mission lands, surely, they have not been criminally remiss in accounting for their annual disbursements and for the assets that make up their patrimony. That they must now follow Cardinal Pell's accounting guidelines will require some adjustments to the new methodology but should not change what they have to report, regardless of what accounting method they use. No other dicastery in the Roman Curia has the assets hatPropaganda Fide has (I believe it has even more assets than IOR), nor does any other dicastery need it.

So, let us assume there is internal opposition in the Curia to some of the reforms proposed by the Pope's advisers. That does not necessarily mean that the opponents have a separate agenda - understood as a plan and program of action - from the Pope. It can simply mean that they wish to keep as much of the status quo the way it is. Which does not mean they will be able to resist an overall reform imposed by the Pope. They may not want it but they can hardly fail to accept whatever the Pope decrees (even if they may then work as hard as they can to undermine the reform).

If there were any 'major agenda' being pushed by some cardinals and curial officials at the Vatican, it is certainly not anything that the agenda-holders can be pro-active about. What could it possibly be? Gagliarducci implies it has to do with sabotaging Francis by influencing the way he is portrayed in the media. That is so absurd - media have always reported about any Pope, the Vatican and the Church in ways that best promote the secular liberal agenda. They need no cardinals to influence them to do that... And has Pope Francis lost so much of his much-vaunted mojo that he can now be subject to manipulation by unnamed cardinals and Vatican officials - or was it that he was always manipulated by them?

I find the latter most unlikely, as Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope always struck me as a man with an agenda and a single-minded resolve to transform the Church to his image and likeness, which his closest friends like Cardinal Hummes and JMB's theological brain, Mons.Victor Fernandez, have confirmed - even before the release of Evangelii gaudium which is the unabashed blueprint for the church of Bergoglio. To think otherwise is sheer naivete or deep denial... But let us go on to the post.

Pope Francis:
Is there an agenda behind his back?
By Andrea Gagliarducci

February 23, 2015

Is there an agenda at work behind Pope Francis’ back? As he carries out his plan of renewal for the Church, one that is based on the purification of hearts, on pastoral efforts and on evangelization through attraction, [Gagliarducci's precis of the Bergoglian 'plan of renewal' ignores the main points of EG, which is the diminution of the Pontificate and the elevation of bishops' conferences to a juridical status that would even give them doctrinal authority!, and to use the generic term 'pastoral efforts' is a deliberate reduction that glosees over JMB's ambitious program to circumvent inconvenient teahcings of the Church through lenient pastoral practice], many individuals are trying to exploit his spontaneity, and also his naivete, in order to advance their personal, political agenda for the Church. [1) One expects that Gagliarducci would name such individuals somewhere in this article, but he does not. 2) The statement assumes that 'naivete' is a characteristic of JMB. That's not flattering at all to the Pope, is it? But the entire Francis fanworld would rise up in revolt against Gagliarducci for even thinking to write such a statement. What is naive is to think JMB is naive in any way. From all accounts, he appears to be most astute, and part of that astuteness is to play 'faux naif' when he has to. But JMB naive? No way!]

How much the Pope has understood the cross-interests at work behind his back is yet to be determined. [Back to back with sayign he is naive, Gagliarducci seems bent on downgrading JMB's acuity! If the Pope has been uncommonly obsessed with denouncing gossip and people who gossip, one gathers it is because he has had too much experience of gossip himself. Surely, not a person who would miss whatever is happening behind his back, because he would always have 'eyes and ears' to report to him all the scullery talk they can gather - as he has Mons. Ricca at IOR, for example, or Mons. Petacchia (was it?), his longtime 'mole' within the Congregation for Bishops from when he was still a cardinal, and now his principal private secretary.]

Certainly, the way his words have so often been taken out of context and misinterpreted may have alerted him to some degree that this is going on. [Here, Gagliarducci really strains credulity by suggesting that the Pope's words have been reported as they have been reported because of the 'cross-interests' at work behind his back. 1) The statement appears to assume that much of what JMB says is reported out of context and misinterpreted. That is simply not the case. There are full transcripts of his off-the-cuff statements (and homilettes) that cnanot possibly be misinterpreted or taken out of context. And only in very few cases has the Vatican officially sought to 'correct' any such reporting - notably with a couple of statements he made to Scalfari. Otherwise, it has been the true-believer FOFs who have rushed instantly to the Pope's aid by offering explanations of "what the Pope really meant to say", that at time has taken on the dimensions of a subsidiary media industry.

In fact, his closest collaborators have understood this risk. There was wide reaction in the Church after the Pope uttered the famous phrase “Don’t breed like rabbits” during the flight back from the Philippines. What? - after 22 months, they only 'understood the risk' after the rabbits comment? That's rich! And here I was thinking that I ought to have kept a diary of the questionable statements this Pope has made, because there seems to be one almost every day, starting with his morning homilettes. Except that it would mean having to read every text attributed to him, and I don't think I can subject myself to such an ordeal just to say 'Gotcha!' in effect. God knows there are more than enough as it is, just with the ones that inevitably and unfailinlg make the news.]

Many people wrote to the Secretariat of State to ask for an explanation and to express concern. They did this not because they had misinterpreted Pope Francis’s words, but because they feared his words might be misinterpreted by others.[Excuse me for being skeptical about that statement! Even if I myself thought from the beginning that JMB was just 'mindlessly' speaking his mind when he made the rabbits statement - I never thought he meant to disparage large families (and I regretted the indignation expressed by many Catholic commentators as misplaced); he knew it could be taken amiss and apologized for his words before he said them, yet he said them anyway.]

There is a whole world of expectations behind Pope Francis. It’s as if the Church of 1968 has broken out again. With one difference. The Church’s ’68 was characterized by the publication of the controversial Dutch catechism and by post-Vatican II theological drifts. Paul VI responded to this crisis by issuing the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” [How odd and unseemly to see HV as a 'response' to the crisis! It was a document that the Church needed at the time - the early years of the contracpetive pill - especially as Vatican II had decided not to touch the issue at all] and by proclaiming the Year of Faith that culminated with the Creed of the People of God. This time Pope Francis began his pontificate with the Year of Faith and in the end faces the typical hot button issues of the post-conciliar period that are colore=#b200ff]now in vogue again [They were never out of vogue - they were always current and hot for liberals who want the Church to go the way of the world, and the issues have since been expanded and updated with homosexualism, gender theory, euthanasia, and reproductive experimentation.]

And so outdated topics of debate have returned to center stage in the Church. [colore=#@0026ff][Again - the issues have never been outdated for those who raise them and will never relent until their positions are adopted by the Church].

The need for the Church to be less centralized formed the agenda of many progressive theologians after the Second Vatican Council. Decades later a dossier with the reforms needed to achieve this goal was compiled by the Bologna School, a group of scholars that interprets the Second Vatican Council as a rupture with the Church’s tradition, and this file was sent on at least three occasions to the Cardinals before they gathered for the conclave that elected Francis.

Other current topics that can be traced back to the debates immediately following Vatican II include the need for a more merciful opening to homosexual couples and a more compassionate application of the doctrine of marriage. [What exactly is 'a more compassionate application of the doctrine of marriage'? The doctrine is, or it isn't. 'Compassionate application' has nothing to do with it.]

These – and many other – doctrinal leaps forward were halted by Blessed Paul VI. St. John Paul II blocked them with the enthusiasm of one who loved the Church’s teachings but who, at the same time, was able to be close to people. [So, St JPII showed it is possible to love the Church's teachings and uphold them, and still be close to people: he didn't need tg accommodate himself to the world for the faithful to acclaim him.] Benedict XVI elevated doctrine to a higher level, with the energy of one who loves the truth and thinks that the greatest mercy possible is to equip people with the truth. [Thank you, Mr. Gagliarducci. It's the one statement in this whole post that I can endorse wholeheartedly!]

Three Popes were not enough to shelve a whole generation of post-conciliar theology intended to foster a non-Roman Church – despite the fact that it bears the title of the Apostolic Roman Catholic Church. [dim=9pt[And a 'non-Roman church'is great formulation for the kind of 'church' the progressivists want.]

During the 2013 Conclave, supporters of this renewed “sixties” agenda used widespread criticism over the functionality of the Curia, and the push among Cardinals toward a needed renewal, as impetus to find a candidate able to back their plan. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was considered the ideal candidate.

The space for a behind-the-scenes manipulation opened when the new Pope expressed his wish to go to peripheries and to foster pastoral care for the marginalized, on which – he recently explained to the new Cardinals – the credibility of the Church depends. [I do not follow the logic at all. Why should JMB's obsession with 'the peripheries' (which I have always found quite artificial (seemingly limited to 'the marginalized'] - as B16 said, "the center is wherever Jesus is", so in this sense, there can be no peripheries other than missionlands, which the Church has not been remiss with its work, and with the post-1960s wave of secularization, all the deChristianized lnads of the Western world.]

Pope Francis is very capable of judging the mood of the crowd; he knows how to bring the Church close to people. [How exactly does Gagliarducci know about the Pope's capability to judge the mood of a crowd? Is he saying that the Pope addresses the crfowd according to what he thinks their 'mood' is, and not according to what they must hear fromh im about the faith? And did other Popes before him not know how to bring the Church 'close to people'? What people? - faithful Catholics, or just generic people? Did the preaching and actions fo JPII and B16, for instance, alienate the faithful from the Church?

But there are others behind him who have a strong agenda and are quite accomplished at courting media support. [Aha! Are we finally going to see some names?]

Some episodes this last week showed how the expectations surrounding Pope Francis may be reversed against his pontificate. [????]

First episode. Sr. Jean Grammick is an American nun who in 1997 co-founded New Ways Ministry, a group committed to the inclusion of LGBT Catholics in the Church. Because of her commitment, she encountered some problems with her religious order, and was later welcomed by the Sisters of Loretto, a congregation with a strong tradition of helping the world’s marginalized. Fr. Robert Nugent, co-founder of New Ways Ministry, retreated [???] once the Vatican published a Notification criticizing his work.

One year ago, Sr. Grammick planned a pilgrimage of 50 Catholic homosexuals to Rome, and Francis Di Bernardo – CEO of New Ways Ministry, who announced the pilgrimage in July, 2014 – acknowledged that they had asked for an audience with Pope Francis, since “with this Pope, one can never know.”

Earlier, Di Bernardo had given an interview to the “Ways of Love” organization that set up a conference on the inclusion of homosexuals in the Church last October in Rome, as the Synod on the family was taking place.

The private audience they asked for was not granted. Nor did the group even gain access to the “baciamano” following the general audience to which they did secure tickets. But, Sr. Grammick, who led the 50 members of the pilgrimage group, was able to get tickets for the so called “reparto speziale” (special section) in St. Peter’s Square. Hence, her group was placed not far from ecclesiastical authorities, who had the closest seats, but it was not given VIP treatment.

Nevertheless Sr. Grammick claimed that they had been given VIP treatment, that her group was welcomed with full honors in the Vatican, and that whereas this could never have happened under the two previous popes, it was possible now because of the new spirit brought into the Church by Pope Francis.

Too bad that – according a press aide of the Holy See Press Office – the group had not been admitted to the ‘baciamano’, that they had not been granted special tickets as “New Ways Ministry,” but instead as a group of American pilgrims accompanied by “a Sister of Loretto.”

But, the Press Office insisted, even if they had presented themselves with their real name, they would not have been denied tickets, because papal audiences are free and accessible to everyone. [Well, quite a long apologia for a curious episode that was screaming to be noted and reported.With great success. Which the Vatican explanation will do nothing to neutralize.]

The secular press was nevertheless able to declare that the Pope had now opened the doors to homosexuals, and that the sign of this opening was clear ever since the Pope had famously declared “Who am I to judge?” on the flight back to Rome from Rio de Janeiro.

This declaration by the Pope was even deemed a “positive statement” in the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child Report on the Holy See. The report asked for a change in the Church’s doctrine and canon law, and quoted Pope Francis’s words as a sign of good will on the part of the Holy See in improving its position on homosexuals. [But the Pope chose not to say a word denouncing that infamous dressing-down of the Holy See and the Church by the UN, leaving it to his lieutenants at the UN to issue pro-forma protests which did not and could not possibly have the least countervailing effect on the outrageous accusations contained in the UN document. Only the Pope himself could have countered it effectively enough.

Wasn't it a providential occasion for the Pope to have said, "Now, look here, the record of what the Vatican has done about the secual offenses committed by some priests is clear and well-documented. No other institution has gone to the lengths that the Church has done in this respect, and yet the incidence of sexual abuse by priests is certainly much lower than that committed by family and close relatives, or by teachers and sports trainers of any religion." But no, he let it pass. Was it because he didn't want to have to speak about Benedict XVI's record, since at that point, he himself had not added anything to it?]

The secular media were also quite excited over the closed-door conversation that the Pope had this past week with the clergy of Rome. This meeting is traditionally held after Ash Wednesday: the Pope chooses a topic for a lecture, and then a question-and-answer session follows.

This year the Pope spoke about the art of preaching, and asked – for the second consecutive year – that the meeting be held behind closed doors, in order to permit greater freedom in discussion.

But this lack of transparency paved the way to speculation – as had already happened during the Synod of Bishops – because every participant in the meeting feels free afterward to quote the Pope in whatever way he wishes. The fact that there is not – nor will there be – an official transcription of the conversation issued by the Holy See Press Office means that it is difficult to contradict the media reports which reported that the Pope said the issue of married priests was “on my agenda”.

Is this true? Not really, according to witnesses. Here is what they report. Fr. Giovanni Cereti – a priest strongly committed to a movement favoring the renewal of the Church – asked the Pope if there will be some opening on the issue of married priests, and he mentioned the example of the Eastern Churches which allow married men to be ordained to the priesthood. Cereti specifically referred to former priests who had been granted dispensations and allowed to marry, but who would now like to return to celebrating Mass, which they can no longer do. The Pope – sources reported – said that the issue was not going to be shut away in a desk drawer, but that it will be considered, even if it is difficult to find a solution. These words expressed the Pope’s concern over the issue, but they did so vaguely. Nevertheless, from this vagueness, the secular media concluded that the great Pope Francis was leaning toward the possibility of married priests. 1) If the Pope did not really say that the issue of married priests was on his agenda, why did not Fr. Lombardi deny it, the same way he denied last year that the Pope never said some cardinals were guilty of sexual abuses? He could simply have released the part of the transcript where the Pope responds to the question. 2) Gagliarducci says nothing about the Pope's exploration of the idea of fielding 'viri probati' in Brazil's Amazonia region - which could well be the camel's nose slipping into the tent of optional celibacy for priests? 3) What JMB was reported to have told the Roman clergy was almost verbatim what he told Scalfari that priestly celibacy was a problem 'and I have the solution'. It is just astounding that very few even protested at the time that he referred to celibacy as a 'problem' at all]

The secular frenzy to portray a non-existing Pope also arises despite its awareness that in the end the Church is much greater than any secular or secularized agenda will allow.[1) A 'non-existent' Pope? Which elements of the Francis myth does Gagliarducci deny? If he accepts the simple Pope, the humble Pope, the pluperfect Pope, how much more mythical is the liberal Pope, the progressivist Pope, the "with-it-with-the-world' Pope, not to mention the non-mythical aspects of the Pope reported in his own words by the media - who is much too talkative and gets caught into the word traps he sets himself, who does preach the gospel selectively and distorts it deliberately for his own purposes to make it appear it is only for the poor and about the poor? 2) Gagliarducci credits the secular media for 'awareness that the Church is much greater than any secular agenda will allow'?

The Synod of Bishops was the first test.[Test of what?] Despite strong attempts By whom, Mr. Gagliarducci? Was it not by the Pope himself through Kasper, Baldisseri and other surrogates? You can't gloss over the identity of responsible parties by using an impersonal or passive verb!] to push certain positions forward, the bishops themselves proved to be very conscious of the current challenges; they defended the tradition and were not afraid to speak out in favor of it. Only as a result of a coup was it possible for paragraphs that did not attain the Synod’s consensus to be kept in the final report. This happened as a result of Pope Francis’s intervention. But who advised him? This is outrageous. Why does Gagliarducci persist in portraying JMB as an unwitting victim of circumstances? Why does he persist in the fiction that anything untoward that happened at the Synod happened without the Pope's knowledge and/or approval? Who chose Kasper to keynote the February 2014 consistory that was preparatory to the Synod and praised his presentation lavishly even after several cardinals had spoken out against Kasper's proposals? Who chose Baldisseri to run the Bishops' Synod, knowing that he, JMB, wished to use the Synod as an instrument to rubberstamp the changes he wants to institute in the Church? JMB himself has justified his override of the synodal vote to restore the controversial paragraphs - doesn't Gagliarducci diminish him by advancing the preposterous claim that anyone had to advise him to restore those paragraphs? They are the core of his 'family' agenda, the reason he called the synods to begin with. How could he allow the synod to vote them out of the final Relatio and therefore not include them in the agenda for the 2015 Synod?]

The second test was the recent Consistory on curial reform. As happened in November during the meeting with the heads of Vatican dicasteries, and despite the fact that the reform draft presented by Bishop Marcello Semeraro had later been buttressed with a theological foundation, many Cardinals during the Consistory expressed their concern about the way the reform was outlined. They accepted its basic guidelines (rationalization, subsidiarity, better employment of funds), but also insisted on the need to make clearer distinctions among certain curial structures (the first distinction to be made is between the Holy See and Vatican City State) and to provide a unified design. This reaction by the Cardinals proves that what had at first been designated by many as a “revolution” had by now become yet another “renewal” which would require a great deal more time. [Well, since everything that has to do with JMB/PF must be, by the standards of his media adulators, on a monumental unprecedented scale, they were not going to call his work by anything as mundane as 'reform' - No! it has to be a 'revolution', like Lenin creating the Soviet Union, Mao transforming China, or for that matter, Jesus creating the Church!]

The third test will come in October during the second session of the Synod of Bishops on family issues. The game has already begun. While Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, General Secretary of the Synod of Bishops, takes part in many round tables and conferences intended to carry forward Cardinal Kasper’s agenda [No, Gagliarducci will never be honest enough to acknowledge that the Kasper-Baldisseri agenda is really the Bergoglio agenda, fobbed on to the surrogates for now, because it proved to be shockingly unpopular with the bishops of the October 2014 synod!]and while Cardinal Kasper is currently publishing a second book on mercy praising the Pope Francis’ “radical papacy”, bishops conferences around the world are electing their representatives to the Synod.

Representatives chosen up to now seem to lean more toward the conservative wing, but later Pope Francis will re-balance everything through his own appointments. Who knows if Cardinal Godfried Daneels, emeritus primate of Belgium, will be chosen once again as a papal delegate? ]So Gagliarducci tacitly admits that Francis could offset the 'conservative' delegates by his own delegates like Danneels?]

Daneels is a champion of the progressive world, and already said he is worried that curial reforms have come to a halt, but he also said that he is confident that the required steps forward will be made. And the change of perspective will include the Synod of Bishops, step by step.

All of these declarations show a certain nervousness, combined with the idea that the Pope has been misinterpreted. It seems that Pope Francis is driven mostly by a peculiar kind of behavior, rather than a specific agenda, and that this behavior is what lies behind his words, behind his sometimes controversial gestures (as the recent meeting with a transsexual and his fiance; or the conversation with the leader of the secular press, Eugenio Scalfari). What do you mean he does not have a specific agenda? What was Evangelii gaudium - a mere exercise in papal text writing? He has both an agenda as well as 'a peculiar kind of behavior' - I call it Bergoglian idiosyncracy, which is the right word for his very individual behavior, which is fundamentally narcissistic, with the smug certainty of someone who believes he knows everything about any subject and knows it better than anyone. Which is, I think, Jorge Bergoglio's besetting problem.][dim]

It also seems that his choices for church government are mostly intended to follow the mandate he believes he received from the Cardinals prior to his election. [So Gagliarducci subscribes toi the Ivereigh account of a pre-cooked Conclave! I still have not read any explanation for why it still took five ballots to elect the pre-crowned candidate - and which cardinal(s) might have received enough votes to deny Bergoglio the 77-vote majority needed until the fifth ballot.

This is probably the reason his positions seem to fluctuate from one statement to another, from being hyper-conservative to being hyper-progressive, from being devotional, but at the same time from being so careless with Church tradition. {I may be obtuse, but surely the statement makes no sense? Surely he didn't receive a schizophrenic mandate - the agenda he was supposed to carry out was, in simple terms, "do everything you can to correct all the evils Benedict XVI did not act against or even caused to begin with!".]

There is just one final question: who wants Pope Francis to be misinterpreted? Which interests are moving behind this pontificate? And why have these interests seemingly found fertile ground under this pontificate?] [Those are three final questions. And NOTHING WHATSOEVER in Gagliarducci's presentation substantiates his hypothesis of a significant behind-the-scenes faction with an anti-Francis agenda. "Who wants Pope Francis misinterpreted?" is a stupid question. And if Gaglairducci has no clue as to who these behind-the-scenes interest are, perhaps they are imaginary, or if real in any way, then is=nsignificant if Gagliaducci cannot even name one name in this supposed lobby. How can we say these interests have found 'fertile ground' in this Pontificate if we do not even know what they have been doing? The only direct accusation that Gagliarducci makes is preposterous - influencing the media to distort and misinterpret the Pope's words. And what do they gain if the media image of JMB remains that of the secular-liberals' ideal Pope? These 'influential' interests presumably do not include Cardinal Burke who has been exiled from the Vatican, so are they 'conservatives' like him, and if so, why would they wish to reinforce JMB's liberal image in the media? You see the problems I have with Gagliarducci's so-called 'analyses'. Too many questionable premises, too many non sequiturs, little or no substantiation at all for his hypotheses.]

Perhaps only the Cardinals who lobbied for Pope Francis’ election – in Austen Ivereigh’s words, ‘Team Bergoglio’ – can answer these questions. For unlike the Pope, they really do have an agenda for the Church. [And Gagliarducci persists in saying Francis has no agenda for the Church! Oy veh! Mons. fernandez labored in vain over EG, if a veteran Vaticanista does not recognize EG as an agenda for this Pontificate and this Pope!]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2015 03:57]

I shall take advantage of this week when there will be litte or no papal news (the Pope and Curial officials are holding their annual Lenten retreat in Ariccia), to re-post a few more of the more important articles that were published following Benedict XVI's announcement that he was renouncing the Pontificate.[/dim\




This time in 2013, by coincidence, the only two journalists who have been privileged to publish interview books with Josehh Ratzinger came out on the same day with their impressions of him - Vittorio Messori going back to when he first met him and got him to agree to do the interviews that would be published in 1985 as Rapporto sulla fede (The Ratzinger Report)l and Peter Seewald, who is working on a biography of Benedict XVI that will include the years of his Pontificate, recalls how in the year before Benedict announced he was giving up the Papacy, had become noticeably weaker...

Famiglia Cristiana online has started to compile a dossier on Benedict XVI's renunciation, and one of the first contributions is this brief memoir by Vittorio Messori...

Joseph Ratzinger:
The gentle modest man
I've known for over 25 years
by Vittorio Messori
Translated from

February 19, 2013

More than 25 years ago in Bressanone, I met a person who is among the most courteous = even the most modest - that I have ever known.

My colleagues have asked me to recall at least how the first meeting came to be, an encounter more than a quarter-century ago with the man whose renunciation of the Petrine ministry has stirred up the sentiments of a billion and a half Catholics and caused worldwide uproar.

And they have asked me not to hesitate to "take a personal line'.

I do so willingly, but with some melancholy: The unexpected end of Benedict XVI's Pontificate also ends, for whatever it is worth, the central and most committed part of my professional life.

I am a bit uneasy at getting into autobiographical mode, but I agreed to do this because my little story is also tied in with the story of the group that publishes Famiglia Cristiana [Italy's most widely-circulated weekly magazine].

At the end of 1978, having left a city and a newspaper that I loved (Turin and La Stampa), I accepted the invitation of the unforgettable don Zilli to create a monthly religious magazine for Famiglia Cristiana, giving it a more committed name. In fact, nothing less than JESUS - said in the Latin manner, not English as I often hear it pronounced.

My meeting with don Zilli in Milan was due to the singular and unexpected success of my first book, Ipotesi su Gesù (Hypothesis on Jesus), which called attention to who I was, and which naturally did not displease me - a simple, quiet man who had been the editor of the cultural supplement to the daily newspaper (La Stampa) of the House of Agnelli [the Fiat family].

The original editorial staff of the new monthly was originally limited to don Attonio Tarzia, the editor; myself, and a young but very competent secretary, Maura Ferrari. With don Toto (as his friends called him), I decided that the strong point of each issue would be a long, in-depth interview with the leading thinkers of the day - Christian of other faiths, agnostics or atheists - that would be called 'Dialoghi su Gesu' (Dialogs on Jesus).

After a few years, this gave rise to a book, that is still in the Mondadori catalog, entitled Inchiesta sul cristianesimo (An investigation of Christianity). Every month, I added the portrait of an authoritative thinker to my collection, but at a certain point, I started to have a dream: Since all of my inquiries revolved around faith, why not interview the man who, in the Catholic Church, was the guardian of orthodoxy?

Paul VI had profoundly renewed what had once been the Holy Office [of the Inquisition, as others might add]. To 'replace' the feared institution, he created the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

To lead it, John Paul II in his time called on the Archbishop of Munich, who had been a professor of theology, Joseph Ratzinger. I had read his Introduction to Christianity, which I appreciated as much as I came to appreciate the declarations and documents that he started to issue in his new Roman service.

I was gripped by an idee fixe: This Bavarian cardinal was the man who would put a grand finale to my series of testimonials to faith. The few to whom I expressed this thought looked at me with an ironic smile. Someone even advised me, a bit in jest, to take time off for rest and recreation because it was evident that I was delirious.

Don't you realize, they asked me, that despite the change in name, the CDF was still the direct heir of the Holy Office of the inquisitors, the only congregation in the Church whose archives were still hermetically sealed? That this institution had made secrecy and silence its very essence?

And yet, and yet... It came to pass that on the eve of Ferragosto (Assumption Day) in 1984, I found myself pacing in front of the main door to the major seminary in Bressanone awaiting His Rminence Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who had agreed to talk to me not for just a couple of hours but over a period of three days.

The project was no longer a brief interview for a newspaper, but a conversation across the board that would become a book to be published, obviously by San Paolo, if only because, my editor, don Toto, was among the few who did not think I was lunatic but did all he could to achieve what had seemed like a utopian goal.

So I was pacing in that little square in Brizen/Bressanone expecting the arrival of a limousine with SCV (Stato della Citta del Vaticano) tags. Instead, there came a Volkswagen with Regensburg plates driven by a good-natured man (whom I learned later was his brother), and out came a priest in the modest clergyman outfit of a parish priest, with a boyish face that was in stark contrast to his crown of hair which was already totally white. It was 'him'.

Three days later, I would be leaving that front door carrying in my suitcase some 20 hours of tapes that would agitate the entire Church through a book which continues to be reprinted in multiple languages, under the title Rapporto sulla Fede(Report on Faith, published in English as The Ratzinger Report).

Thus began a friendship that, although in an obviously discontinuous way, lasted through the years, which (except for our latest brief encounter - after a GA in St. Peter's Square) allowed me to deepen my knowledge of the man.

The man who had struck me right away as being the opposite of the 'black legend' that had been created about him. Instead of a fearsome Grand Inquisitor, I found a person who is among the most courteous and gentle, even downright shy, persons whom I have ever met.

Instead of a fanatical ideologue, I found a man ready to listen, to understand, to interpret in the best way what his interlocutor says, firm on the essentials but elastic on accessory matters.

Instead of a somber and severe priest, I found a person gifted with a pleasant sense of humour, ever ready to smile and to respond, with finesse, to any joke or punchline.

Instead of a man smugly ensconced in the past, I found a curious person who was informed not only about current studies in theology and philosophy, but about everything significant that was happening in the world.

Instead of a cardinal who had climbed his way to getting a red hat, I found a priest surprised at what had happened to him, who had accepted higher assignments only for love of the Church, and who spoke with some regret about his interrupted research and plans for books that had to be postponed indefinitely.

It would not be easy, in the ecclesial atmosphere of the time (mid 1980s) to convincingly present this image - the true one - of the presumed heir of the Inquisitors, who was moreover German and who had been mandatorily enrolled in the Hitler Youth like other boys his age in Nazi Germany.

Indeed, it was probably only after he had been elevated to the Papacy that the Church and the world started gradually to discover the authentic Joseph Ratzinger.

Many, a great many, discovering him, came to love him. And now, they respect his decision but they grieve at the prospect of not seeing him again and not to hear him repeat as he often has - lovingly and not menacingly - the truths that the Church announces.




The Pope and Seewald in July 2010, and in November 2010 (extreme right).

This is the translation of a translation, as I have not seen the German original. Nonetheless, thank you, Peter Seewald, for bringing our beloved Benedict closer to us, if only in a virtual way...

Benedict XVI:
'I am the end of the old
and the beginning of the new'
by Peter Seewald
Translated from the German by Franca Elegante for

February 19, 2013

Our last conversation took place ten weeks ago. The Pope welcomed me to the Apostolic Palace to resume our conversations aimed at a work on his biography.

His hearing had deteriorated, his left eye can no longer see, he had lost weight so much that his tailors have been hard put to provide him with right-fitting clothes.

He had become very fragile, but even more amiable and humble, and still very reserved. He did not appear sick, but weariness appeared to have taken over his person - body and spirit - and this could not be ignored.

We spoke about when he deserted from Hitler's armed forces; his relations with his parents; the records from which he learned other languages; his 'fundamental' years on Mons docto, Freising's Hill of Learning, where for 1,000 years, the spiritual elite of Bavaria were introduced to the mysteries of the faith.

It was there he gave his first lectures to an audience of scholars. As a parish priest, he helped students, and he listened to the faithful in the chilly confessionals of the Freising cathedral.

In August last year, during a conversation in Castel Gandolfo which lasted an hour and a half, I asked him how much the Vatileaks episode had affected him.

"It didn't send me into any kind of desperation or universal sorrow," he answered. "It simply appeared incomprehensible to me. And as far the person concerned [Paolo Gabriele], I did not know what to expect. I cannot penetrate his psychology".

But he maintains that the episode did not make him 'lose the compass', nor did it particularly make him feel the weight of his office, "because these things can always happen".

What was important to him was that "the independence of the judiciary is guaranteed in the Vatican, that the monarch does not say, 'Just let me deal with this'."

I had never seen him look so exhausted. With the strength left to him, he had completed his work on Jesus - 'my last book', he told me, with a sad look as we said farewell.

Joseph Ratzinger is an unbreakable man, someone who has always been able to 'recover' rapidly. Two years ago [the July 2010 interviews that became Light of the World], despite the first infirmities of age, he still seemed agile, almost youthful. This time, he perceives every new memorandum that comes to him from the Secretariat of State almost like a physical blow.

"What else can we expect from Your Holiness, from your pontificate?" i asked.

"From me? Not much. I am an old man and my strength is abandoning me. I think I have done enough".

Are you thinking of resigning? "It depends on what my physical energies impose."

That month (July 2012), he had written one of his former doctoral students that the Schuelerkreis meeting in August would be the last one. [These annual reunion=seminars began in 1977 and were uninterrupted, even after he became Pope.]
[P.S. 2015 It would be the last reunion-seminar he would participate in, as obviously, his former students have decided to carry on with it.][colore]

It was a rainy day in Rome, that November of 1992, when we first met each other at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. [Seewald had asked for an interview he would use for an article in a Bavarian magazine.] His handshake was not bone-crushing, and the voice, gentle and sensitive, was hardly that of a Panzerkardinal.

I liked the way he spoke of small things as well as of serious matters. And how he questioned the world's notion of progress, saying it must reflect on whether man's happiness could really be measured by GNP (gross national product).

The years have subjected him to heavy testing. He has been called a persecutor, whereas he was the persecuted. The scapegoat for every perceived injustice in the Church. The 'Grand Inquisitor' by definition, something as accurate as mistaking a cat for a bear.

But no one has ever heard him complain. No one has heard him say anything bad about anyone, nothing negative, not even about Hans Kueng.

Four years after our first meeting, we spent many days together to discuss a book about the faith and the Church, in general, and topics like priestly celibacy and insomnia.

As an interlocutor, he did not pace about the room like most professors do. There was not the slightest trace of vanity nor presumption in him.

I was struck by his clearly superior qualities, and that his thinking owes nothing to the times. I was somewhat surprised to hear him give pertinent answers about the problems of our time that are almost irresolvable; how he spoke of the great treasure of Revelation; of the inspiration he drew from the Fathers of the Church. All the reflections of the guardian of the faith sitting in front of me.

A radical thinker - this was my impression - and a radical believer who, nonetheless, in the radicality of his faith, never draws his sword, but uses a weapon that is far more potent: the power of humility, simplicity, and love.

Joseph Ratzinger is a man of paradoxes. His speech is subdued, but the effect of his voice is strong. Gentleness as well as rigor. He thinks big but he pays attention to detail. He embodies a new intelligence in recognizing and revealing the mysteries of the faith. He is a theologian but he defends the faith of the people against the cold-as-ashes 'religion' of the professors.

As he himself embodies equilibrium, that was the way he taught. With the lightness that is characteristic of him [He said once that angels can fly because they are so light]. With his elegance. With his ability to penetrate the essential that can render serious things light, without depriving them of mystery or banalizing the sacred.

His is a thought that prays, for whom the mysteries of Christ represent the determinative reality of all creation and the history of the world. A lover of mankind who does not hesitate to answer when asked how many paths lead to God, "As many paths as there are human beings".

He is the 'little' Pope who has written great works with a pencil. No one before him - the greatest German theologian of all time - has left the People of God during his pontificate such an important work on Jesus nor had been so devoted to Christology.

His critics have said that his election as Pope was a mistake. The truth is that there was no other choice. Yet, Joseph Ratzinger never sught power. In the Curia, he chose not to take any part in the games and intrigues at the Vatican.

He has always lived the modest life of a monk. Luxury is strange to him, and he is indifferent about living in an environment with comforts that are above bare necessity.

But let us stick to the so-called small things, that are often more eloquent than grand declarations, congresses and programs. I liked his style of being Pope; that his first official document as Pope was a letter to the Jewish community; that he took away the tiara - symbol of the Pope's earthly powers in the past - from his papal coat of arms; that he asked the Bishops' Synod to allow their guests from other faiths to address them - this was a novelty.

With Benedict XVI, a Pope for the first time took part in Synodal discussions without speaking as a superior but to colleagues, introducing in practice the collegiality much touted in Vatican II.

Feel free to correct or criticize me, he said, when he presented his first volume about Jesus, which was not announced as dogma or Magisterium, and did not carry the seal of his maximum Magisterial authority.

Doing away with the baciamano [literally, 'kiss the hand'] has been the most difficult. [Even many bishops continue to kiss the papal ring as a sign of obeisance and respect.] Once, when one of his students bent to kiss his hand, he took him by the arm and said, "Let us behave normally".

So many firsts. For the first time, a Pope visited a Germany synagogue, and ended up going to more synagogues than all the Popes before him combined. And for the first time, a Pope visited Martin Luther's former monastery, an unprecedented historical gesture.

Joseph Ratzinger is a man of tradition, who entrusts himself willingly to what has been consolidated, but he knows to distinguish between what is truly 'eternal' from that which is valid only for the time during which it emerged. And if necessary, as in the case of the Tridentine Mass, he adds the old to the new, so that together, they can amplify the space for liturgy and not reduce it.

He has not done everything right, but he admits errors committed, even those (like the Williamson case) for which he has absolutely no responsibility.

But no failing has caused him as much suffering as that of the sexual offenses of priests, even if, as Prefect of the CDF, he had already initiated measures to make sure that these offenses were uncovered and that the guilty would be punished.

Benedict XVI is leaving the Papacy but his legacy remains. And the successor of this humblest of Popes in the modern era will walk in his footsteps. He will have a different charism, and his own style, but it will be the same mission: Not to incentivize the centrifugal forces that would tear the Church apart, but the forces that will hold together the patrimony of the faith, those who remain courageous in announcing a message of which they themselves are authentic witnesses.

It is not accidental that the outgoing Pope chose Ash Wednesday as his last great liturgy. See, he seemed to say, this is where I have wanted to lead you from the beginning. This is the way. Detoxify yourself, get rid of dead weight, do not allow yourself to be swallowed up by the spirit of the times, do not waste time, de-secularize yourself!

To slim down in order to increase its actual weight in the world is the program of the Church today. 'Losing the fat' in order to gain vitality and spiritual freshness, and just as important, to regain inspiration and appeal.

"Convert, and believe the Gospel," he said as he laid ashes on cardinals and abbots.

At our last meeting, I asked the Pope, "Are you the end of the old or the beginning of the new?" He answered. "Both".

The best thing about the coming biography by Peter Seewald - apart from the great joy (and unbearable nostalgia) we can look forward to - is that for the first time, a Pope will have been able to present his own perception of the events that have marked his Pontificate. Which means that the 'first draft', as it were, of the history of his Pontificate, will have his input, and not just that of observers (hagiographers and detractors alike), most of whom will be depending on second-hand or even more remote references, including media reports, as their primary sources.

For Benedict XVI, a biography that covers the years of his Pontificate and published while he is still around to speak for himself, is not a vanity project, but a rightful effort to present his side truthfully (given who he is, it cannot be other than truthful!) against all lies, distortions and malicious interpretations... This, too, we must see as part of God's design for him to whom he has already given so many graces... and as many trials as humans can bear. And the Vicar of Christ, who will soon be nobody's vicar, is doubtless just as joyful to be back to being simply Joseph Ratzinger, priest, who is also BenedictXVI, emeritus Pope.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/02/2015 11:01]

More 'first reactions' to THE RENUNCIATION by two who have studied the thought of Joseph Ratzinger very well...




I had wondered what form Fr. Schall's first reaction to Benedict XVI's resignation - or retirement, as he calls it - would take. He tries to be light about it, given that he is in the same stage of life as the Pope. But he homes in on what has always fascinated him about Benedict XVI - a mind that brings the unique characteristics and history of Catholic thought to bear on the problems of the world and the Church in a way that no one else has done since, perhaps, John Henry Newman in the 19th century (or, more recently and on a different plane - popular and literary - G.K. Chesterton) but much more comprehensively, and given the times, far more widely read.

On the mind of the Pope
Benedict XVI has, among other things,
spelled out the nature of modern disorder
By James V. Schall, S.J.

February 18, 2013

It so happens that the Holy Father, who is six months older than Schall, announced his retirement about six months after Schall announced his. As far as we know, no causal connection can be established, though several of my friends suspect collusion.

In fact, the Pope’s intentions to retire have been hinted at all along by his attention to previously resigned Popes. His given reasons are pretty much the same ones that I use — one grows weaker with age; no one wants to leave an institution in emergency situations.

When Benedict first announced his resignation, I assumed that he would return to some appropriately quiet convent in Germany for his last years, perhaps with his priest brother. Or he might go to the Villa Helios, run by some German nuns on the Isle of Capri, at which the German Jesuits at the Gregorian University in Rome liked to stay when I was there.

On second thought, Benedict is also a historian. Any reader of Tacitus would know about the unsettling residence of the Emperors Tiberius and Caligula on Capri. Too much unwelcome symbolism would be seen in such a move. Evidently Benedict will stay in the Vatican.

The mechanism for the election of a successor to Benedict is now in place. My chances of accurately picking the new pope are about the same as my chances of picking the winner of the NCAA basketball tournament in March or the winner of the Kentucky Derby in May. We presume that something more is at work in the selection of a new pope than pure luck.

Since at least Pius IX in the 1800s, the Catholic Church has had at its helm a series of rather outstanding men. The last two Popes certainly have been extraordinary, almost as if they were “chosen” by powers beyond the capacities of the men who selected them. No political institution with its “democratic” or hereditary processes for selecting presidents and leaders can match that record over time.

Over the years of his life, Benedict has produced an enormous amount of writings. I suspect his Opera Omnia, when finally published in a German critical edition, will equal or surpass the collected works of Augustine or Aquinas, both of which are enormous.

It would take most of an ordinary person’s lifetime just to read the works of Aquinas or Augustine or Benedict, let alone write and understand them. We now have the works that Joseph Ratzinger produced as a philosopher and theologian, together with that which he wrote and spoke as part of his Petrine office. As Pope he gave hundreds and hundreds of talks, wrote encyclicals, exhortations, letters, even books.

Benedict’s three volume work, Jesus of Nazareth, begun before he was elected Pope, is one of those fundamental works bearing the stamp of this remarkable man. He wrote it as a personal, scholarly, yet readable and direct document.

In a way, these volumes have always amused me. In effect, the Pope says to an uncomprehending world: “Look, fellas, this is what I hold and the reasons for it. You do not have to take it on authority. Just read it and see if it makes sense. If you have any arguments or evidence that what I maintain is not so, let me know. I will respond to it.” This is a personal challenge which few are humble enough or learned enough to take up.

For this book does nothing less than affirm that Jesus Christ is who He said He was and that all the “evidence” of classic and modern times presented to show that He was not, is un-sustained or incoherent at some point.

II.
What is the significance of the work, and of the mind of Joseph Ratzinger? Several commentators inform us that he is a shy man who never succeeded in coming out of the shadows of John Paul II. The two men were friends and in many ways possess very similar minds. Probably the work of both of them should be taken together as a whole.

But what I think that Benedict has done, if I might put it this way, is to think through and put in order the basic features of the modern mind in the light of standard Catholic teachings about man, cosmos, and God.

Benedict is a Thomist in the sense that he understands and states clearly and fairly that with which he disagrees. He is familiar not merely with classical and medieval thought, but most modern thought. Indeed, he knows personally a good number of the leading lights of the intellectual world in our own time. Anyone who is not aware of the intellectual caliber of Benedict simply reveals his own incompetence or incomprehension.

In Spe Salvi and in the Regensburg Lecture, in particular, Benedict has explained the modern mind in terms of its deviation from basic Catholic teachings.

Almost any modern movement has its root explanation in its seeking ends and purposes that are essentially Christian but by means that reject the theological description and substitute a this-worldly, usually political and evolutionary hypothesis, that relocates the transcendent goods in this world.

Once we understand this deeper root of modern thought, we will see that the work of Joseph Ratzinger has been a re-presentation of the classical Catholic views, though now in the light of those ideologies that proposed alternatives to transcendent ends.

What is clear is that, once it claims independence of revelation and increasingly of reason, the modern mind will claim the “right” to do something that is evil in order to achieve its inner-worldly goal. Almost all the attacks on family, abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, and human experimentation come from this origin. They are all presented in the name of benefiting mankind in this world. [The 'false good' that Satan sought to tempt with, as Benedict so compellingly presented in just a few words, before the Angelus prayers last Sunday.]

The claim that they are not for the real good of actual human beings is rejected on the grounds of “rights” and “betterment” of human life and society. The Pope spells out how we have in effect recreated in this world heaven, hell, purgatory, and death.

The fact that what we in effect bring about is something much more terrible than anything we have yet known for man is rejected on the grounds of necessity and idealism.

We are about producing a death, life, hell, and purgatory in this world considerably worse than the worst Christian descriptions of the four last things. We do this “work” in the name of science, technology, and human “rights.”

Once it becomes clear in thought that such problems are really those at work in our reconstruction of society, we begin to realize that Benedict has in fact spelled out the nature of modern disorder.

He has shown intellectually the superiority of the basic Christian understandings of human dignity founded on the faith that guides the plan of salvation that is involved in the Incarnation of Christ Himself.


CWR also provides this analysis by Tracey Rowlands, one of the most perceptive and knowledgeable writers about Benedict XVI during his Pontificate. This article is a first overview, as it were, of his achievements as Pope, so it is unfortunate she starts out with a familiar riff about the 'Vatican bureaucracy' in keeping with the title of the essay, I suppose. I do not know who provided the headline, but the judgment it implies is too pedestrian for someone like Ms. Rowland, and does a rank injustice to the rest of the article.


The Pope and the Philistines
Benedict XVI’s papacy has been one of imagination
and urbanity hampered by bureaucracy
by Tracey Rowland

February 18, 2013


In Called to Communion, published in 1996, a decade before the beginning of his papacy, Joseph Ratzinger had some strong words to say about the bureaucratic machinery of the Church.

He wrote: "The more administrative machinery we construct, be it the most modern, the less place there is for the Spirit, the less place there is for the Lord, and the less freedom there is".

He added that in his opinion, "we ought to begin an unsparing examination of conscience on this point at all levels of the Church". In a later collection of essays, titled Images of Hope, he observed that “the saints were all people of imagination, not functionaries of apparatuses.”

In recent days one senses that this unsparing examination of conscience might finally have begun. One also senses that in the papacy of Benedict XVI the Church had one of the greatest theologians occupying the Chair of Peter in centuries, but that for all his high intelligence, he never quite managed to contend with the bureaucratic machinery and it often let him down. [But he has always maintained, as Ms. Rowlands cites - and as he reaffirmed forcefully to German lay Catholic leaders during his 2010 visit to Germany - that it is more important to attend to the essentials first (meaning, the faith) and that if this is done right and well, then the rest will follow. And he practised what he preached, entrusting the housekeeping duties of the Pontificate to someone he completely counted on to do the job but was unfortunately unable to.]

The decision to abdicate would not have been a decision made lightly given Benedict’s respect for historical precedent and the sacramental nature of his office. He is the last person on the planet to think of the papacy as a job.

He never thought of himself as the CEO of a multinational corporation and he sharply rebuked those whose ecclesiology was borrowed from the Harvard School of Business or, worse, some Green-Left women's collective. Christ was and is a Priest, a Prophet and a King, not a business manager.

Benedict believes that the Church is nothing less than the Universal Sacrament of Salvation and the Bride of Christ. For him the keys of Peter are no mere mythic symbol. So a decision to abdicate could only have been made on the basis that he thought worse things might happen to embarrass and confuse the Church's 1.2 billion faithful if he lacked the strength to govern.

The challenge in choosing Benedict’s successor is finding someone who has the strength and ability to deal with the administrative side of the office of the papacy while retaining at least some of the intellectual flair and imagination of Benedict and his predecessor.

[I beg to disagree. First, the statement contradicts Benedict XVI's own thought as quoted by Ms. Rowlands earlier. More importantly, the administrative challenge is not for the Pope to confront, but the man he appoints to be responsible to do it for the Church. In this sense, IMHO, Benedict XVI's one wrong judgment was to think Cardinal Bertone could do it. He clearly could not, and worse, was often missing in action whenever the crap hit the fan. I know I sound like a broken record on this issue, but Bertone, facing a hostile bureaucracy, was incapable or unable to deal with them creatively, resorting instead to installing his own rival bureaucracy who, like him, were considered outsiders and therefore deeply resented by the resident bureaucracy. Benedict XVI stayed loyal to him, but he himself did not show the same loyalty to the Pope by the ultimate disservice caused by his inability to administer the Vatican bureaucracy properly, regardless of his indubitably good intentions and love for the Pope...

There are many who think that either Cardinal Angelo Scola or Cardinal Marc Ouellet could carry these responsibilities. Certainly both are exceptionally intellectually gifted and are men of imagination, not functionaries. They are also in a similar intellectual mould to Benedict. They share the same interpretations of the Second Vatican Council and they are very much across the theological anthropology and moral theology of Blessed John Paul II.

Scola's most important book, The Nuptial Mystery, and Ouellet's most important book, Divine Likeness: Towards a Trinitarian Anthropology of the Family, build on the foundations of John Paul II's Catechesis on Human Love, his trilogy of encyclicals devoted to each Person of the Trinity, the moral theology of Veritatis Splendor, and the vision of a culture of life and love set forth in Evangelium Vitae. They and quite a few other members of the College of Cardinals are completely on team with this theological project.

Cardinal James Stafford, Cardinal Francis George and Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, for example, are also men who are exceptionally intellectually gifted and have devoted themselves to following the leadership of Blessed John Paul II and then Benedict XVI.

Caffarra was so strongly attacked in the press for defending Humanae Vitae he received a letter of support and encouragement from Sr. Lucia of Fatima. (When you start receiving support letters from someone who has private audiences with the Mother of God you know that you must be very high on the devil's hate list.) [Caffarra has also been one of the most consistently orthodox and Ratzingerian of Italian bishops, and a very articulate one.]

Cardinal Peter Erdo of Hungary, who is the second youngest member of the College of Cardinals, has also distinguished himself in battles for a civilization of life and love against those caught up in the culture of death, as has Cardinal Peter Turkson who also has a reputation for leonine courage.

It is worth mentioning these names in a piece about Benedict, not to get side-tracked but to make the point that one thing that Benedict has achieved, at great personal cost to himself, is that in soldiering on — accepting the keys of Peter while the Church is attacked by sexual perverts from within and militant atheists from without, and while the Church is still contending with loopy interpretations of the Second Vatican Council — he has given the younger men, the Scolas, Ouellets and Caffaras, time to gain the administrative experience of running important archdioceses. He has held on until the next generation of hero-Cardinals is capable of moving forward.

He has also had some significant achievements on the ecumenical front and in so many ways one can say that his was a papacy dedicated to Christian unity. Since the divisions within Christianity often occur precisely because of bureaucratic heavy-handedness and intellectual narrowness it takes someone like a Ratzinger/Benedict with a deep sense of history and nose for cultural sensitivities to set about mending the bridges.

It would be an interesting exercise to collect a list of names of prominent Protestant scholars who converted during this pontificate precisely because they could relate to Benedict intellectually. He spoke their Christocentric dialect and was equally at home with them in the field of Scripture studies. He broke the mould of the Catholic leader who cites dogma more often than Scripture. [HEAR! HEAR! That is why for Bible illiterates like myself, his homilies and religious writings have been such inspiring and uplifting eye-openers to what is meant by 'Revelation'.]

Two disaster fronts on which he worked particularly hard were those of the English schism of 1570 and the Lefebrvist schism of 1988. His provision of an Anglican Ordinariate for members of the Church of England and its international affiliates who were doctrinally 99% Catholic and who were prepared to become 100% Catholic if they were allowed to bring their high Anglican liturgy and a few other English cultural accoutrements with them, is one example of his use of imagination to help a whole group of people to enter into full Communion.

When it comes to the Lefebnrists it is sadly the case that they can be incredibly narrow minded and neurotic. They are into conspiracy theories and many are latently Jansenist (and some not so latently).

Nonetheless, on their behalf one could say that prior to the Second Vatican Council, France had a very high Catholic culture. One can still find vestiges of it in the great Benedictine monasteries and the villages that surround them.

The Church in France had many martyrs during the Revolution. Some estimates of the revolutionaries’ death toll are as high as one million. Given this it is not surprising that a significant proportion of the French Catholic population was deeply indignant when in the 1960s, after the Council, clerical leaders were going out of their way to affirm the values of the Revolution and to destroy the solemn liturgical traditions.

Anyone who has read The Dialogues of the Carmelites by George Bernanos, based on the story of the martyrdom of the Carmelite nuns from the convent of Compiègne, will readily appreciate how daft it would be to try and wipe this heroism from the French historical memory [not the 'French historical memory' but more correctly and specifically, the 'historical memory of France's genuine Catholics'] or otherwise trivialize the sacrifices made at the time of the Revolution.

This is all to say that when dealing with schisms one really has to address the historical memories, not just the doctrinal formulae, and Benedict XVI was very good at this. He did however take an enormous amount of flak for trying to bring home lost sheep.

Hans Küng, for example, grabbed the tabloids' interest by saying that in creating the Ordinariate and holding out olive branches to the Lefebvists, Benedict was fishing for converts in the muddy waters of right-wing extremism. It probably says an enormous amount about where Hans Küng sits theologically when he regards common, garden- variety high-Church Anglicans as right-wing extremists.

In both cases, that of the creation of the Ordinariate, and that of the issue of Summorum Pontificum (which wasn't just for Lefebvrists, but for all those who loved the Missal of St Pius V), the most common criticism inside the Church came from canon lawyers who thought these gracious gestures created a lot of administrative untidiness.

However, as Benedict XVI observed when he was a Cardinal, those who preferred the Rite of antique usage had been treated like lepers, and this was just not right. One cannot, on the one hand, honor the memory of the English martyrs who were sent to the scaffold because they attended this Rite contrary to the edict of a Protestant monarch, and, on the other hand, ban Catholics of the contemporary era from attending the same Rite as if there were something defective about it.

This point was made by Cardinal Heenan of Westminster to Pope Paul VI [Who apparently had no answer to it. But the Novus Ordo was Paul VI's 'Bertone moment', with more far-reaching and damaging consequences than just failing to shake up and motivate a Vatican bureaucracy that had fossilized over the decades! Fortunately, Benedict XVI has shown us how to make the most of a defective product which is, for all its Protestantizing defects, still an authentic celebration of the Eucharist.]

Similarly, there is something very illogical about tolerating the use of pidgin-English in the liturgy (banal modern hymns, etc.), while balking at the Anglicans' King James English.

Ratzinger had always made the point that there is nothing wrong with having a number of different Rites in use, providing each particular Rite is of apostolic provenance rather than something cooked up by a committee of academics or the parish liturgy team last Saturday. He was a liturgical pluralist, not someone with a mania for bureaucratic tidiness.

The members of the Anglican Ordinariate are likely to revere his memory for a very long time, and the Lefebvrists may well be wishing that they treated him with more respect and were not so recalcitrant.

He will also be remembered with great affection by the leaders of the Eastern Churches. He went out of his way to include quotations from the Eastern Church Fathers in his homilies, and he invited Patriarch Bartholomew I to the Synod on the Word held in 2008. Patriarch Bartholomew described the gesture as “an important step towards restoration to full Communion”. [And who can forget the original beauty of the Patriarch's awesome address to the Synod, held fittingly in the Sistine Chapel! I say original because it revealed to me, in the course of a few minutes, the strong aesthetic foundations of Orthodox theology.]

In terms of his magisterial teaching, Benedict XVI wrote three encyclicals and four apostolic exhortations. Sadly, a fourth encyclical on the theological virtue of faith remains in draft form and may never be released. It would have completed the suite of encyclicals on the theological virtues. [Of course, we now have it as Lumen fidei, not signed by him but acknowledged within the encyclical itself as largely his work by the Pope who signed it.]

The first, Deus Caritas Est, was focused on the theological virtue of love, and the second, Spe salvi, on the theological virtue of hope. Deus Caritas Est dealt with the relationship between eros and agape and offered a reply to the Nietzschean charge that Christianity had killed eros. It also reiterated the central idea of the Conciliar document Dei Verbum, which the young Fr. Ratzinger had helped to draft, that Truth is a Person.

Spe salvi was the antidote to the liberal reading of Gaudium et spes. [I like that formulation, even if I never thought about Spe salvi that way - which I read completely on its own terms. And it is so beautiful and powerful, with its compelling survey of the history of ideas synergizing its theological content, that I marvelled at how 'easily' Benedict XVI had managed to outdo himself after Deus caritas est.]

It makes the point that the only "thing" in which we may legitimately hope is Jesus Christ and that modern ideologies, which can be lethal, are mere mutations of Christian hope.

The third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, was a masterful synthesis of late twentieth-century papal social teaching, with a special emphasis on the social implications of the Trinitarian anthropology of John Paul II.

At its core was the principle that a “humanism without Christ is an inhuman humanism”. It made the point that social justice without Christ is a recipe for secularism.

In many of his addresses Benedict also emphasized that love and reason are the twin pillars of all reality. The love and reason relationship and the faith and reason relationship were themes to which he often returned. One sensed that he was trying to reconcile the Thomist and Franciscan traditions in a higher synthesis. [Thanks for this wonderful insight, which would never have occurred to a theological illiterate like me, with only scant and sporadic acquaintance with Church history!]

Rather than a system which gives typical Thomist priority to truth or one which gives typical Bonaventurian priority to love, he insisted that love and reason are equally foundationally significant — thus the notion of 'twin pillars'.

Although at the time of its delivery the Regensburg Address was regarded as a public relations disaster, for those who take the time to read the whole academic address, what it offers is a deep analysis of the faith and reason relationship.

As Fr. James V. Schall, SJ, explained in his book, The Regensburg Lecture, the central thesis of the Address is that both contemporary militant Islam and contemporary militant western liberalism share the same voluntarist starting point.

Each one makes the mistake of thinking that what is true is linked to someone's will, rather than what is true being linked to what is good. For the militant Islamists truth is linked to the will of Allah, for the militant liberals truth is linked to the will of the individual.

The point Benedict was making was that an irrational voluntarism is a common pathological property of Eastern Islamists and Western Liberals.

The problem however is that the average journalist has no anthropology, no conceptual scaffold in which to plug ideas like the will and goodness, the will and truth, truth and goodness etc. The low level of education of newspaper journalists makes it very difficult for world leaders to communicate anything more than shallow sound-bites. This was not merely a problem for Benedict but it remains an issue for any deep-thinking world leader. [Ahem! Please name anyone who answers to that description today!... At any rate, Regensburg, Bernardins, Westminster and Bundestag constitute the inseparable tetralogy of Benedict XVI's great discourses to the secular world.]

The Apostolic Exhortations addressed the topics of liturgical theology, revelation and Scripture, the situation of the Church in Africa and the situation of the Church in the Middle East. The first two reflect Benedict's own theological priorities and interests, the last two the distinctive problems of the faithful in Africa and the Middle East.

Of these the first two will be of enduring theological value, while the last two are likely to provide something of a pastoral plan or at least a significant briefing paper for the new Pontiff.

In his first Apostolic Exhortation, Sacramentum Caritatis, Benedict summarized the high drama of the Eucharist in the following terms: The substantial conversion of bread and wine into His body and blood introduces within creation the principle of a radical change, a sort of "nuclear fission," which penetrates to the heart of all being, a change meant to set off a process which transforms reality, a process leading ultimately to the transfiguration of the entire world, to the point where God will be all in all (cf. 1 Cor 15:28).

In the same document Benedict concluded that everything pertaining to the Eucharist should be marked by beauty.

There is no doubt that beauty is Benedict's “favorite transcendental”. He shares St. Augustine's and St. Bonaventure's and closer to our own time, Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar's attraction to the transcendental of beauty and this comes across very strongly in his liturgical theology.

As a Cardinal he coined the expressions “parish tea party liturgy”, “primitive emotionalism” and “pastoral pragmatism” to refer to the post-1968 trend to make the Mass more like a Protestant fellowship gathering. He said that this was analogous to the Hebrews' worship of the Golden Calf — a pathetic attempt to “bring God down to the level of the people” that is nothing short of apostasy.

Although it is taking time for his liturgical theology to reach suburban parishes, it is being taken up by the BXVI generation of seminarians and taught in the more serious academic institutions such as the Liturgical Institute at Mundelein [Australia, where Rowland lives]. The effects should start to filter down to the parochial level within a decade.

Verbum Domini, the second Apostolic Exhortation, addressed the issue of how God relates to the human person through revelation, Scripture and Tradition. Themes included the cosmic dimension of the word, the realism of the word, Christology and the word, the eschatological dimension of the word, the word of God and the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, source and origin of the word. This particular exhortation amplified the central theses of Dei Verbum and the general Trinitarian Christo-centrism of the Council.

[Both theological Apostolic Exhortations are sublime! Sacramentum caritatis even had sales of more than a mllion within two weeks of its publication, almost tying the record for Deus caritas est. This is the other little-cited but historical aspect of Benedict XVI's writings as Pope, significant not just for the history of the Papacy but for cultural history in general. Never before had an encyclical, much less an apostolic exhortation, become a best-seller of any kind. And it's hard to see it happening again in our lifetime or the conceivable future. (The best analogy I can think of is that, if the printing press had been invented by then, it's as if St. Paul's Epistles had sold like hotcakes among the Romans, Corinthians, Ephesians, Rgessalonians. etc!)... I was disappointed that Verbum Domini failed to catch on more, but perhaps it reflects continuing uneasiness among Catholic laymen vis-a-vis Scriptures, an aspect of doctrine and catechesis that had been virtually ignored in Catholic instruction until Vatican II chose to focus on it.]

Finally, though not of magisterial standing, the Jesus of Nazareth books were read by millions of people and helped to repair some of the damage of so-called scripture scholars who approach the sacred texts without faith. [In the process, he also introduced his unequipped readers like me to the how and why of Biblical exegesis, as he transfigured dry-as-dust scholarship into the vivid and thrilling adventure of ideas that Biblical exegesis is to adepts.]

Even here however, journalists tried to spin paragraphs in ways they were never intended. Thus, Benedict's statement that the ox and the ass at the Christmas crib are symbolic of the Jews and the Gentiles was reported as, "Pope says that there was no donkey". [It wasn't so much spin, because what's the point of spinning something they virtually dismissed (The Infancy Narrative0s) as nothing but papal self-indulgence? Ir was a crude and deliberate effort to trivialize the Pope's thought - and set him up for public scorn - by making him sound picayune!]

When his magisterial teaching is combined with his scholarly output of over fifty books and God alone knows how many academic articles and scholarly homilies, Ratzinger/Benedict has offered future generations of Catholics an intellectual treasury.

As it is commonly said of St. Augustine, if anyone says that they have read everything Ratzinger/Benedict has written, they are stretching the truth. It may also be the case that just as today we only know about Donatists because Augustine had to contend with them, future generations may only know about parish tea party liturgy because it was a strange late 20th-century phenomenon with which Ratzinger had to contend.

In his early life he went to war against the dualistic tendencies in neo-scholasticism, then in the late 1960s he took on the fight against "correlationism" (accommodating ecclesial belief and practices to the spirit of the times). After that it was liberation theology, various problems in Christology, ecclesiology and moral theology and finally militant atheism.

Given the successive waves of intellectual combat he has endured in the service of the Church he loves, a future Pope may well declare Benedict XVI a Doctor of the Church. [Contemporaneous with his canonization not afterwards!]

If that happens, I think he should also be honored as the patron saint of people who are oppressed by bureaucracy, especially bureaucracies run by philistines. [Somehow, I think this last sentence is not just unnecessary, and anti-climactic to the Doctor of the Church suggestion, but it also implies that Benedict XVI, in effect, was a 'victim' of the Vatican bureaucracy. If he was not well-served in some ways, he was not worse-served than his predecessors either.]

Professor Rowland is Dean and Permanent Fellow of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (Melbourne). She earned her doctorate in philosophy from Cambridge University and her Licentiate in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. She is the author of Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (2003), Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI (2008) and Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010).

There's a commentary written for the February 25 issue of the conservative US newsmagazine The Weekly Standard that builds on the public perception, at least in the United States because of the dominant media bias and ignorance, that Benedict XVI was forced to resign because of the 'scandals' in the Church and the pressures of the job. Nothing unusual or surprising with that perception of the public perception.
www.weeklystandard.com/articles/papal-abdication_701317.html?n...
But going on little more than the information that's available to the public through the media (and what they say people 'inside the Vatican' say), the writer, Joseph Bottum - who used to be editor of First Things - basically is disputing that Benedict should have resigned at all and the reason he gave for resigning, and saying outright that "he has been, all in all, a terrible executive of the Vatican... but as bad as a Pope has been for 200 years". He hedges the qualifying phrase very carefully, but it still has the effect of saying, as even the editor of the UK Catholic Herald summarized the article in one line, that Benedict was the worst executive at the Vatican in 200 years. And that is the soundbite that people will take from this outrageous article. But there are even worse things.

Such as that 1) resignation was a smart thing to do under the circumstances, but not the wise thing at all; 2) that Benedict's age has nothing to do with why he resigned ("his advanced age is not a cause for his incapacity"; "we are not incapacitated as human beings when we age and prepare to die"), nor do the problems of today's world ("Benedict speaks of the unique pressures of 'today’s world' which he insists require a younger man’s strength of mind and body. But today’s world is unique only because we say it is"; 3) that his having to stay on within the Vatican will be counter-productive.

For all its veneer of erudition and 'serious' analysis, it is probably the worst piece I have come across so far about Benedict's renunciation, which Bottum does not see as renunciation but abdication, i.e., a desertion of duty. About the only good thing I can say about it is that he also presents how John Paul II did an 'end run' about the Vatican bureaucracy by leaving it all to his own people to deal with.

And what to say about the wavering of someone like William Oddie
http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2013/02/18/how-during-the-lifetime-of-a-pope-can-his-successor-gain-the-authority-he-needs-we-are-in-a-time-of-uncertainty-but-we-are-also-in-gods-hands/
who now feels compelled to question for himself, besides citing other Catholic commentators, Benedict XVI's decision to renounce, and to claim moreover. that it will be impossible for the next Pope to exercise his authority with Benedict in the background! With the titanic image of John Paul II constantly made to loom over him, Benedict did it - and with an outstanding record that is in many ways precedent-setting - despite the callous certainty of many that no one could possibly follow John Paul II with any degree of success.

There is only one Pope at a time - and it does not matter if the previous Pope is dead or alive, the Vicar of Christ and Successor of Peter holds all the keys and all the powers and prerogatives that belong to him alone. The living presence of Joseph Ratzinger can only be an inhibition to a Pope who has not internalized the unique significance and implications of his sacred office, and why should we think that the new Pope would be anyone incapable of that? ]No one thought at the time, of course, that within less than two weeks after Benedict XVI stepped down, the world was going to get the first pluperfect Pope!]

Though this post is already quite long, I must add the following short piece which, in reaffirming the important points to remember about Benedict's decision, acts like a gust of ozone to clear out the suffocating smoke of obfuscation from articles like the two I cite above but did not think it worthwhile to post.

Pope Benedict’s greatest lesson
by William Doino Jr.

February 18, 2013

However history remembers Pope Benedict, one thing is assured: his reign will be remembered as one of the great teaching pontificates. Even those who question other aspects of it, praise it for that.

“Where the Church has emerged especially strong under Benedict,” wrote the Los Angeles Times, “is in its intellectual discourse, elevated by a professorial pope who dedicated considerable time and energy to a series of highly regarded encyclicals and three books on the life of Jesus.”

The Acton Institute’s Samuel Gregg hails Benedict as “Reason’s Revolutionary,” and John Allen notes his intellectual achievements, too: "Many observers believe four cornerstone speeches delivered by Benedict XVI — at Regensburg, Germany, in 2006; at the College des Bernardins in Paris in 2008; at Westminster Hall in London in 2010; and at the Bundestag in Germany in 2011 — will be remembered as masterpieces laying out the basis for a symbiosis among faith, reason and modernity".

George Weigel believes Benedict’s rich insights have “turned the Church definitively toward the New Evangelization — the evangelical Catholicism of the future,” and thus placed Catholic orthodoxy in a far stronger position than his critics realize.[P.S. 2015 Sadly, after a new Pope was elected, Weigel, in lockstep with 'the rest of the world', changed his tune to saying, in effect, that the new Pope's orientations perfectly met his, Weigel's, ideas on 'the evangelical Catholicism of the future".]

Given his reputation, it is fitting that Benedict’s decision to abdicate has served as an extraordinary teaching moment itself. The decision is at once humble, wise, and courageous.

It is humble because it reveals Benedict cares more about the strength of the Church than he does about his own personal position or privilege (unlike numerous other prelates).

It is wise because it shows that he understands that the current demands of the office are better served by someone in vibrant health.

And it is courageous because, as the first Pope to step down from the papacy in six centuries, he is bringing true reform to the contemporary Church, making it easier for future pontiffs to follow suit, should they, too, believe that is the best course to follow.

But the greatest lesson to take away from Benedict’s momentous act is its fearlessness and expression of freedom — above all, the freedom to follow one’s conscience as the Lord leads it, regardless of secular expectations. [YES!]

In today’s world, there are tremendous pressures — political, cultural and religious—to change one’s convictions, and conform to certain mass patterns of thought and behavior. We also face an attack on religious freedom throughout the world — and now, to a lesser extent, even in our own country. Benedict has met both challenges with firm resistance, and a clarion call for freedom.

Pope Benedict’s belief in the fundamental dignity and freedom of every human being is at the heart of his papacy, and yet it is usually either overlooked or contested by critics. They accuse him of being inconsistent — preaching about tolerance, while supposedly acting as an “authoritarian” and “oppressor” of those seeking more freedom in the Church.

This is to profoundly misunderstand the true nature of freedom, as the Church expounds it. True freedom is not the freedom to do whatever we please, but the freedom to abandon sin and error, and pursue objective truth, and commit ourselves to Christ unreservedly in the service of that truth.

The charge that the Catholic Church inhibits authentic freedom is unjust. Catholic orthodoxy holds that membership in the Church is an entirely free act, i.e., completely voluntary, not mandatory, and that anyone in the Church is perfectly free to leave it, who objects to its essential teachings and beliefs.

Benedict is the first to proclaim this: the Catholic Church proposes; it does not impose. Further, when people freely enter or retains their membership in the Church, they simultaneously accept and understand — if they are knowledgeable and faithful Catholics — that the role of a Pope is precisely to uphold, preserve, and develop the Deposit of Faith — but never contradict or undermine it in any fundamental way.

If there is one area where Pope Benedict’s “holy freedom” can be found, it is in his teachings on the liturgy, and his commitment to its renewal. In her book, Ratzinger’s Faith, Dr. Tracy Rowland explains Benedict’s understanding of the liturgy as a priceless treasure to be cherished and revered—and reformed only with painstaking care, not with endless experimentation:

---

Ratzinger believes that showing respect for faithfully transmitting the Liturgy to the next generation has the effect of guaranteeing the true freedom of the faithful. It makes sure that members of the laity are not victims of something fabricated by an individual or group, it guarantees that laity are sharing in the same liturgy that binds the priest, the bishop, and the Pope.

---

If liturgical innovators or dissenters are allowed to violate sacred boundaries, warns Benedict, an unholy “dominion” will overtake and offend the faithful, and bring harm to the Church. Real Christian liberation must always be rooted in humility, and obedience to the timeless truths of the magisterium.

The Pope’s decision to retire, rooted in this genuine concept of Christian liberty, is widely said to have “shocked the world,” and even much of the Church. But it really is not that shocking to anyone who has followed the life and beliefs of Joseph Ratzinger. For both before and after he became Pontiff, he has always marched to the beat of his heart and inner conscience, guided by total devotion to Christ and His Church.

For faithful Catholics (and not only them), Benedict’s last major papal act, like his beautiful teachings, are a source of profound inspiration.

William Doino Jr. writes often about religion, history and politics. He contributed an extensive bibliography of works on Pius XII.

Pope proclaims 10th-century Armenian saint
Gregory of Narek the 36th Doctor of the Church
by David V Barrett
CATHOLIC HERALD
23 Feb 2015

Pope Francis has declared a 10th-century Armenian mystic, poet and monk to be a Doctor of the Universal Church.

Born around AD 950, St Gregory of Narek “is widely revered as one of the greatest figures of medieval Armenian religious thought and literature”, Vatican Radio reported today.

St Gregory was educated by his father, Bishop Khosrov, author of the earliest commentary on the Divine Liturgy, and by the abbess of Narek Monastery, Anania Vartabed. He became a priest at the age of 25 and spent most of his life at Narek monastery.

His first written work was a commentary on the Song of Songs. A later work, the Book of Lamentations, which he called an “encyclopedia of prayer for all nations”, consists of 95 prayers on man’s separation from God and his quest to reunite with him.

Many of the prayers that St Gregory wrote are still used in the Divine Liturgy in Armenian churches today.

Pope Francis was close to the Armenian community in Buenos Aires when he was Cardinal Bergoglio. The announcement comes two months before he is expected to celebrate a Mass commemorating the 100th anniversary of the massacre of over a million Armenians by Ottoman Turks, an event which led to the coining of the word “genocide”.

St Gregory brings the number of Doctors of the Church, recognised for their contribution to theology or doctrine, to 36. He is the third to be given the rare honour this century, following St Juan de Ávila and St Hildegard von Bingen, both in 2012.


NB: Rorate caeli notes that St. Gregory was a saint in the Armenian Church, but not in the Catholic Church, so the Pope must have also canonized him 'equipollently' as a saint in the Church before proclaiming him a Doctor of the Church.

Two days ago, Beatrice posted an alert on her website, benoit-et-moi.fr, about a new book by Cardinal Robert Sarah published in France entitled Dieu ou rien {God or nothing), and posted an image of the book cover that came with the publisher's blurb.

The cover said the Preface to the book was written by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. To her surprise, she got a note from a Fayard editor claiming that the published book does not contain any such
Preface and provided the photo of the new (and actual) book cover...
(See banner above for the two cover versions.]

Obviously, a preface had been written by Benedict XVI and had been planned to be used in the book, otherwise, the book cover sayign so would never have been designed or used for pre-publicity. Why the Preface was withdrawn is a mystery. What 'politically correct' thinking at Fayard prevailed that deemed it would be unwise to use a Preface by the Pope emeritus on a new book?

One hopes Cardinal Sarah will thresh this out with his publishers - and more importantly, allow the public to see the Preface that Benedict XVI had written.

Rorate caeli had this item about the book:

Cardinal Sarah:
'To detach doctrine from pastoral practice is heresy'
and the African Church will firmly oppose it
RORATE CAELI
February 21, 2015

French publishing house Fayard is publishing a book-length interview with one of the most impressive Cardinals in the College, the ecently-named Prefect for Divine Worship, Cardinal Robert Sarah. ng"

Dieu ou rien has the very interesting subtitle "Entretien sur la foi" (Conversation on faith), which certainly calls to mind the groundbreaking book-interview of another Cardinal published three decades ago -- ]g]Rapporto sulla fede with Vittorio Messori, published in English as The Ratzinger Report and published in French as Entretiens sur la foi.

From its presentation by French magazine Famille Chrétienne, we find the following remarkable extract of Cardinal Sarah's words on a concept that is absolutely central in the current debate initiated from the very top of the hierarchy that is shredding the Church in pieces:

---

The idea that would consist in placing the Magisterium in a nice box by detaching it from pastoral practice -- which could evolve according to the circumstances, fads, and passions -- is a form of heresy, a dangerous schizophrenic pathology. I affirm solemnly that the Church of Africa will firmly oppose every rebellion against the teaching of Christ and the Magisterium.

---

The item ends with the note that French blogger Yves Daoudal had commented on the book cover ?F abracadabra.

I do not know if Cardinal Sarah gave the inerview before he was named to head the CDW , but since he came from being president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, he gave it as a ranking Curial official. One must salute Cardinal Sarah for saying what he did in no uncertain terms, even if he does not name any 'villains'. The reference is nonetheless obvious to the current trend in what some critical websites have started to call the 'FrancisChurch' and which I have been calling 'the church of Bergoglio' (because I do not want to associate the name Francis with an ersatz church that seeks to replace the Church of Christ faithfully loved, served and upheld by the great saints Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, and Francis de Sales).

One can only pray that, for speaking truth to pwoer, Cardinal Sarah will not get the Burke treatment from the Pope, the rest of the Vatican and the FOF media.

Father Z blogged earlier more extensively on what Cardinal Sarah says in the book regarding the overall thinking in the African Church regarding the current attempt to 'detach' doctrine from pastoral practice.

The ugliness beneath that much-vaunted
veneer of 'mercy' in this Pontificate...

It turns out that Fr. Hunwicke did take exception to that outrageous bias-laden remark by the Pope to the clergy of Rome last week that seminarians who have a 'traditionalist' orientation eventually end up being problems for their local bishops because as priests, they have 'major psychological problems'. (I remarked at the time that JMB is attributing to 'traddie' seminarians what the Church, with Benedict XVI's 2005 instructions on discerning candidates for the priesthood attributed to seminary applicants with homosexual tendencies.) Fr. H's title - and his metaphors in the piece - are unusually strong for him...

It's a gun culture out there
in the Wild West of the Vatican

21 February 2015

It's a gun culture down there in the Wild West of Rome ...
Having discharged his Kalashnikov at the curial cardinals and their staffs just before Christmas, our beloved Holy Father has now loosed off his twelve-bore into traddy seminarians!

From Most Eminent Suburbicarian Cardinal Bishops, primores inter patres purpuratos, right down to the very humblest aspirant for the tonsure, he's got you all in his sights! Bang bang!

Both the Urbis and the Orbis must be seething with clerics whose keyboards are positively itching to deliver an extensive response in kind to the Sovereign Pontiff's own practised and laudable parrhesia!

I would like to think Fr. H is being ironic with the adjective 'laudable'. But I would like to qualify JMB/PF's freewheeling, scattershot 'parrhesia' (speaking frankly and openly) as being excessive logorrhea as well - just talking too much! He must be chafing every minute that he is on retreat for being unable to indulge his parrhesia/logorrhea.

Lawrence England uses an even harsher title in commenting on Father Rosica's threat to sue a Canadian blogger for citing statements and actions by Fr. Rosica that are, at the very least, eyebrow-raiisng, and at worst, heterodox bordering on heretical... England also reacts to JMB/PF's slur on 'traditionalist' seminarians... I must note that England is one of the most consistent critics of JMB/PF for actions and statements that much of the orthodox Catholic blogosphere find questionable, but he has always kept his language within proper bounds...

A Pontificate for Thugs
by Lawrence England
From his blogsite
THAT THE BONES YOU HAVE CRUSHED...
February 23, 2015

The Fr Thomas Rosica 'case' now covered by quite a few sites disturbs me greatly. The idea that a Catholic layperson can voice his concerns at what certainly appears to be the public statement of doctrinal positions that deviate from the Magisterium, only to then be issued with a lawsuit from a priest is quite unbelievable.

This news ties in with the latest reports of the wrecking ball approach of the Commissioner of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. This is getting really very ugly.

A papacy that was meant to embody 'mercy' more and more appears to be used - by some at least -as a smokescreen for a new and brutal era that seems well suited to thugs or nightclub bouncers.

Nightclub bouncers - I am sure there are many good ones - have a reputation for being rough around the edges and every now and then giving someone a 'good going over' if they've stepped out of line. They look quite respectable a lot of the time, but know how to pack a good punch and can leave you with a broken nose. Laws like those which forbid grievous bodily harm are known to go out of the window in the heat of the moment, when it is convenient.

Pope Benedict XVI was - in an age in the Church that probably demanded 'tough love', really very gentle with those who sought to oppose him. He would never - unlike Fr Thomas Rosica - think Lent - or any other time - was a time for getting even with your enemies. What a way to start Lent!

'That man criticised me, because my own words make me look and sound heretical. Sue that man!'

Apparently, Fr Thomas Rosica can spout whatever nonsense he likes on Twitter - or other media outlets - and everyone has to accept it without complaint, even if it insults God, Our Lady and St Joseph. What we are seeing now is in stark contrast to the Benedictine approach.

The new regime seems to talk the talk about mercy, but walk a different walk that sees might as right, even though if you ask them to give a clear answer on good and evil, and the difference between the two, they offer very little advice. Strange that, isn't it? I suppose that a new atmosphere and a new 'springtime' in the Church regarding moral and doctrinal issues could leave certain prelates and priests confused, giving them a conducive environment in which to exercise their baser, more brutal, more violent sides.

People are still confused as to what STFU means. Does it mean 'Surrender to Francis Unconditionally?'

Cardinal Donald Wuerl and others are very good at talking about compassion and mercy but then go onto attack other bishops as 'dissenters', while not taking time to tell us who or what they are dissenting to.

Is it the Bishop of Rome they are dissenting to or the timeless teaching of the Eternal Word of God, Jesus Christ and His Church? It is rather important to ascertain whether 'dissenting' bishops are being loyal to Jesus Christ by voicing concern over the 'agenda' promoted in the pontificate of Pope Francis.

While we are on the subject of 'agendas', is it really appropriate for the Pope to say that the issue of married priests 'is on my agenda'? Does the Vicar of Christ really have an 'agenda'?

I think it is safe to say that Pope Francis does have an agenda, not far down the list of which seems to be the habitual insulting and public denigration of priests, seminarians and other Catholic Christians he thinks don't live up to the mark.

Questioning, in public, the psychological state or moral state of 'traditionalist' seminarians is, I think, pretty outrageous and an insult to the intelligence of Catholics. Has it escaped His Holiness's notice that the former Bishop of our Diocese and others now known as notorious were not particularly 'traditionalist'.

I don't recall the abusive priests and scandalous bishops or those who covered up serial abuse in Belgium and Ireland and the US being 'traditionalist', but I suppose it would be unhelpful to let truth get in the way of a good old fashioned smear campaign.

Whatever is going on in Rome, it doesn't appear to be the way of Jesus at all, and stands in stark contrast to the humble way of Francis's predecessor. All this ugliness now starts to make sense if the truth of Jesus Christ is not placed firmly at the top of the Pope's 'agenda' and moral confusion is allowed to flourish in Rome.

It would be nice if goodness and charity always filled a moral vacuum, but in a fallen world, it doesn't seem to be the way things work out as malice and pride fills Rome quicker than ISIS fill a war-zone.

I don't think people should be sued or labelled dissidents or 'thrown to the wolves' for just asking whether the 'agenda in Rome' is the same agenda, if we can use that crass word, as the Divine Head of the Church, Jesus Christ.

Thugs and bullies don't win. The mighty are humbled by God. Those who exalt themselves are brought low. Might is not necessarily right. Though He was innocent, Jesus redeemed the World through an instrument of torture, humiliation and public scorn.

Authority itself does not guarantee justice if those in authority do not exercise clemency. Authority can be abused. There is nothing Christian about thuggish and bullying, intimidatory behaviour towards those who are in your care.

Yes, Fr Rosica, you really are suing your own spiritual son, who felt compelled to offer you some correction, even if he lives miles away! I hope and pray such behaviour in Rome stops soon, but I'm not holding my breath. We might have to wait for another time for that, another era.

After all, Pope Francis can read the riot act as much as he likes to the mafia in Sicily, but if he can't reign in the mafia in Rome, why should even the members in Sicily take him seriously?

So, let's go on to another infamous one of 'the Pope's men' who was actually found guilty of defamation recently, or as the story clarifies, who admitted to a court mediation panel publishing defamatory lies about the family of Fr. Stefano Manelli (born 1933), FFI founder and superior-general whom Volpi was appointed by the Pope to 'replace', and who has been placed under house arrest since July 2013 when the Vatican decided to crack down on the FFI.

Manelii's family, one must recall, had close links to Padre Pio in his lifetime; Fr. Manelli himself was a pupil and protege of Padre Pio. His parents, who worked with Padre Pio, have been proclaimed Servants of God whose beatification cause is pending. (They had 21 children, by the way - did you know that, Papa Bergoglio? Stefano was the sixth child). This is the family that Volpi accused in a circular letter to all FFI members of illegally holding assets of the FFI that Volpi claims Fr. Stefano trasnferred to his brothers and sisters, and to some of his spiritual childrne, soon after the crackdown,in order to deprive Volpi of any control over said assets.


FFI Commissar Volpi rats out of
court-ordered agreement with Manelli family
by Giuseppe Nardi
Adapted from his post on
THE EPONYMOUS FLOWER
February 21, 2015

ROME - Father Fidenzio Volpi, who was appointed in July 2013 by pope Francis to take over the administration of the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate as Apostolic Commissar, has apparently pulled another fast one.

The Apostolic Commissioner has changed his mind andwithdrew his signature on the agreement with the family of FFI Founder Father Stefano Maria Manelli.

On February 12, Volpi and the family Manelli had come to an agreement following a mediation in civil matters (mediazione civile). The blog 'Le pagine di Don Camillo', who first reported on the agreement, mistakenly wrote about a "patteggiamento", which refers to a special agreement defined by the Italian Code of Criminal Procedure, and has since apologized.

Since 2010, Italy has recognized in implementation of an EU directive mediation in civil matters, which serves to resolve disputes wherever possible on a voluntary basis, without letting it come to a trial. The mediation takes place before court-appointed mediators at the registered office of the competent court.

The following apparently took place:
On February 12, at 11 clock before the Court Mediator at the District Court of Rome, the family members of Father Manelli and their lawyer Davide Perrotta as plaintiff on the one side and on the other side the Apostolic Commissioner Fidenzio Volpi and his lawyers Alessandra Böcklin and Edoardo Boitani as defendant. The mediation took place in the proceedings pending before the District Court of Rome, First Civil Chamber of litigation for defamation of Manelli family by Commissioner Volpi.

At the end of the mediation, both parties signed an agreement with Commissar Volpi who apologized and explained that with respect to the family Manelli "nothing applied to what he had written in his circular letter dated 8 December-2013, and that the Manelli family had absolutely nothing to do with any unlawful act."

In addition, Volpi was to publish a public apology by March 3rd nd it was to be published on the Italian news agency AGI and on the website of the Order immacolata.com. On the website it would have to be visible for at least three consecutive months in a clear presentation as other published notices on the issue.

Moreover, the Commissar was to have informed all monks and nuns, with his apology in a circular. Volpi undertook all attorneys' fees and agreed to pay the family Manelli a compensation of 20,000 euros. Everything by 3rd March.

Volpi's admission is legally and morally significant. In addition to a legal admission of guilt to a court institution, the Commissar has thereby admitted to having violated the Eighth Commandment {Thou shalt not bear false witness").

Many blogs have pointed this out following the mediation agreement.

But the publicity seems to have angered Volpi because of the 'damage to his image', it has been reported that on February 18, Volpi withdrew his signature to the agreement. [How exactly does one withdraw a signature from a legal document?]

Instead of writing the court warranted apology, Volpi sent a new urgent letter to all members of then which he withdrew his admission of guilt and has told the Manelli family that he will not comply with the court-mandated statement because he "no longer considers it valid because of serious non-compliance by the other party."

But Volpi does not say just what the "serious non-compliance" is. In the the written mediation agreement, there is no statement obliging the family Manelli as the complainant in the proceedings to anything.

[Earlier, Volpi's first reaction was to say that the news about the mediation agreement was not cfrom any actual news report but only from a blog.]

The Commissar, as is evident from his incendiary letter, is incensed because the matter became public. "The fact that the news of the agreement signed by Commissioner Volpi would reach the public, was easily foreseeable," said Corrispondenza Romana. However, Volpi may have hoped that certain details, such as the payment of € 20,000 to the family Manelli, would not become known.

In addition, Volpi faces new demands for his resignation. In the circular letter of 18 February he writes now that he has always been considered "innocent". He only agreed "pro bono pacis" (for the sake of peace) and signed the mediation agreement "in a spirit of seraphic brotherhood".

Volpi has not been convicted by any court. The mediation was voluntary. "However, the agreement of 12 February exists and is signed by Father Volpi. The signature may indeed be withdrawn, so is no longer in effect," said Cristiana Riscossa.

Commissioner Volpi is receiving a monthly €5,000 allowance for his provisional activity, according to Italian media. A message that has never been disowned. The sum is to be paid by the Order of Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.

Soon, the Commissioner will have to stand trial. With his circular letter, he made it clear that he wants it to come to a trial in this dispute. There, too, the mediation agreement will play a role. The legal costs of the Commissioner shall be borne by the Order.


And what defense can be presented about 'all the Pope's men' like Mons. Ricca, Fr. Rosica and Commissar Volpi?The accusations against each of them dwarf by far Paolo Gabriele's stupid pilfring of random documents from the desk of Pope Benedict's secretary. And he was a valet, not someone with any position of authority as that given to Ricca, Rosica and Volpi... No outcry whatsoever, not even the faintest peep, of outrage from establishemnt Catholic media and the MSM about these men, and the man who put them where they are! Whereas in the flimsy house of cards that was Vatileaks, they treated Gabriele like the hero of the episode and reserved their heaviest innuendoes against Benedict XVI, who was not at all tainted in the slightest by any of the documents that Gabriele stole...

Of course, three questionable characters like Ricca, Rosica and Volpi do not by themselves constitute a substantial blot on this Pontificate's copybook, but they are blots, nonetheless, that all the sanctimonious statements we have heard in the past 22 months only serve to make blacker. And why the papal forbearacne for these individuals even as he fustigates the entire Curia for their 'afflictions'? Such a double standard is as arbitr
ary as any authoritarian manifestations of an absolute monarch, which the Pope is, after all.

When I first saw this article a couple of days ago, I knocked my head on the wall quite a few times for not having bothered at all to read the Pope's homily to his new cardinals Sunday before last. I suppose I didn't because until this article in THE REMNANT, no commentator had bothered to call attention to it. Having read it, I am appalled beyond words by the audacity and recklessness of the propositions that Jorge Mario Bergoglio made therein - none of it new, but never before articulated in a pseudo-theological discourse - which confirm the worst fears we orthodox Catholics have about this pluperfect Pope who believes his mission mandate is to remake the Church of Christ into his very own.

How could a homily like this be delivered by the Vicar of Christ, least of all in St. Peter's Basilica - and worst, pass largely unnoticed and unremarked upon? Surely, not all Catholic commentators are as random as I am about 'following' the Bergoglian texts in all their tediousness, and worse, because they could well be 'occasions of sin' - not his alone, but for the reader who must slog, cursing, through his heterodoxies and in this case, the pedantic, sententious formality of his written homilies.

But since the homily appears not to have registered on the radar of persons like Fathers Z and H and Sandro Magister - who, like canaries in a mine pit, are early-warning sensors of DANGER! to the Church - I have had to ask myself conscientiously whether I am over-reacting. But I don't think I am...

In the homily to the new cardinals, he reiterates and articulates as unequivocally as his language allows him what I consider to be his most subversive 'interpretations' of the Gospel to serve his agenda of transforming the Church of Christ into 'his' (Bergoglio's) church. My outrage meter exceeded its limits with this. Read it and weep!

Papal signaling:
Pope Bergoglio and his false dichotomies
by Magaera Erinyes
THE REMNANT
February 18, 2015

Pope Francis’s homily to his new cardinals was
called a re-statement of his programme for his pontificate. Fr. Thomas Rosica, his English language spokesman, wrote on Twitter: “More than anything I’ve heard from (the pope) today’s homily is his mission statement.” [There speaks a true-blue Francis believer, who apparently has always been as heterodox at heart as his present master, although he came to prominence as the press officer for St. John Paul II at his last World Youth Day in Toronto. Rosica's word is almost as 'legal tender' in the Bergoglian LaLa-Land as anything Cardinal Hummes might say about his Argentine friend.]

Let us assume for a moment that the pope knows the implications of what he is saying, and that the people closest to him are telling the truth when they say, repeatedly, that the things that are happening are happening at his behest, and examine what this “mission statement” has to say to the Church.

Francis is clearly signaling, again, his intentions for the Synod and the future envisioned at it by the Kasper faction. The question of Communion for the divorced and remarried is never named, but the terms describing the issue are unmistakable. And they are wholly on the side of the Kasperites, adhering without an iota of divergence from the basic presumption in Kasper’s proposal: that the law of God must be overturned or ignored for the sake of extending the mercy of God. A contradiction that is totally incompatible with all of Catholic theology, with logic and natural reason.

What I hope to offer here is not a detailed theological analysis, but merely a point-by-point clarification, given the context of what the pope means. It can only be described as a volley in an ideological war currently being waged at the highest levels for supremacy in the Church.

I will go through the text of the consistory homily and try to add some clarification for those who might be in the position now of trying to explain what some of us see as the grave danger being posed by this pope.

---

"Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean"… Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out his hand and touched him, and said: "I do choose. Be made clean!" (Mk 1:40-41). The compassion of Jesus! That com-passion which made him draw near to every person in pain! Jesus does not hold back; instead, he gets involved in people’s pain and their need… for the simple reason that he knows and wants to show com-passion, because he has a heart unashamed to have "compassion".

---

It's hard to think of any practising Christian as being 'ashamed' to show compassion! Another one of JMB/PF's strawmen! If one had the initiative and industry to do it, one could make quite a long list of all the unlikely traits and behavior JMB/PF attributes in general to whoever he chooses to categorize contemptuously. He may have known individuals like those he describes, but that does not permit him to generalize as if such unlikely attributes were inexorable in all human beings who are not automatically paragons of virtue because they are not poor!]

Francis uses the starting point, the fundamental premise, of the Kasperites, uses their terminology and repeats their accusations against anyone who would dare to uphold or defend the traditional doctrine of the Church.

We start with the set-up: the Kasperite revolutionaries always present a putative “compassion” or “mercy” as the reason the “rules” of withholding Communion from public sexual sinners – always depicted as essentially meaningless, arbitrary or at least “outdated” – must be overturned or, as in Kasper’s own plan, simply ignored. This is illustrated with the repeated reference to the analogy of the medicinal, curative aspect of God’s mercy, the Church as the “field hospital” of mercy.

What is never mentioned is the necessity of repentance, or what repentance actually is. “Mercy” – with the concept of justice carefully excised – is always depicted as the only action of God’s will for Man. Justice, and therefore the requirement of repentance – the metanoia, the definitive turning away of the individual from his sin – is simply denied. God is depicted as having no interest in justice. The very notion of “justice” is presented as anathema to a “merciful” God. [A key point in any argument seeking to show Bergoglian 'bad faith' in his partial preaching about forgiveness, as if mercy is gift freely given without requiring penitence, whereby the sinner seeks to amend for his transgressions.]

Instead, we have Pope Francis equating obedience to God in his divine law as injustice, lack of mercy, “marginalization”:

---

Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed in the country; and people came to him from every quarter" (Mk1:45). This means that Jesus not only healed the leper but also took upon himself the marginalization enjoined by the law of Moses (cf. Lev 13:1-2, 45-46). Jesus is unafraid to risk sharing in the suffering of others; he pays the price of it in full (cf. Is53:4).

---

[Let me note the non sequitur of the last statement. Jesus was not killed because he 'shared the suffering of others' but because he was considered a dangerous religious upstart by the Jews and a potentially dangerous political leader by the Romans. And what is the sense of saying "Jesus is unafraid to share the suffering of others"? He came to earth to take upon himself all the sins and sufferings of humanity, past, present and future. And he was a man like all of us only in his physical vulnerabilities - otherwise he was perfect and sinless. And if he had compassion for lepers and the sick and the maimed, so too he had compassion for his rich followers, for average persons of his time like his apostles and the family of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. His compassion was not exclusively for the poor and marginalized. Perhaps even more offensive to me than the omission of "Go and sin no more' from JMB's message of mercy is this absurd idea that Jesus came to earth only for the poor, that the Gospel is about the poor, and that they are at the center of it. No one who reads the New Testament can possibly conclude that at all. Haven't Christians always been taught that Jesus was sent by the Father to save all men, not just the poor? And certainly, Jesus didn't pretend that his mission was to bring material and physical 'salvation', but rather the salvation of souls. God would redeem man from spiritual damnation. Not from having to suffer the material and physical evils brought on to the world by The Fall. But the implied message in everything Jorge Mario Bergoglio preaches is that Jesus also meant to dispel all these evils from the earth. He obviously did not, and ]g]that is why the way of the Cross is necessarily the way of suffering. All men and each man must in some way suffer the material and physical consequences of the Fall - but all men and each man can be saved and redeemed from its spiritual consequences if he follows the teachings of Jesus, and strive to lift himself from his human level and all its imperfectons towards the divine.]

In the expression “marginalisation enjoined by the law of Moses” we have an unmistakable conflation. The law of the Church is of no more moment to Francis’s “true” Christians than the old Mosaic dietary laws, to be overturned by this 'primacy' of “compassion” and “mercy”. Of course what is being left out are the words of Christ Himself who said that the Law of Moses was not overturned, but that He was Himself the fulfillment of that old law, and that to love Him we must obey his commandments.

Moreover, what is being forgotten is that Christ Himself said, in so many words, that divorce was allowed by the old law out of “hardness of hearts.” It means that the 'softening of hearts' under Christ’s own new dispensation makes marriage indissoluble.

One of the major problems the Kasper faction has to face is that the injunction against divorce and “remarriage” was clear and explicit and in the very words of the King and Creator of the Universe:

---

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” (Mt 19,3-9)

---

Far from being an act of “mercy” to allow divorce, or as the Kasperites would have it, to simply ignore it as though it was unimportant, here is Our Lord saying that it is important enough for Him to exercise His divine authority on the spot, and in a totally unambiguous manner, to flatly abrogate the Mosaic Law. And he made no bones about it, directly into the faces of the religious authority of his day: divorce was allowed because of hardness of heart.

Here is the Chief Healer of the Church, the God-made-man, dispenser of divine mercy, telling us that we cannot change the order of the universe to suit our momentary expedient or preference. That the attempt to do so is in fact unmerciful.

It is hard to overstate the irony here of a pope suggesting that the plain words of Christ can be overturned or ignored in order to apply the “mercy” of Christ for those who have “marginalized” themselves out of their refusal to obey His commandment – a commandment, moreover, that he gave specifically in order to remedy “hardness of heart”.

If we show our love for Christ by obedience to His commandments, what does the refusal to obey indicate? What does the desire to change the entire practice of the Church to approve that disobedience indicate? It is a frightening thought.

Pope Francis continues:

---

Compassion leads Jesus to concrete action: he reinstates the marginalized! These are the three key concepts that the Church proposes in today’s liturgy of the word: the compassion of Jesus in the face of marginalization and his desire to reinstate.

Marginalization: Moses, in his legislation regarding lepers, says that they are to be kept alone and apart from the community for the duration of their illness. He declares them: "unclean!" (cf. Lev 13:1-2, 45-46).

---

The obvious implication here is that it is the “compassion” of Christ that leads the charge to “reinstate” those who, because of "silly and arbitrary, unmerciful “rules", have been cast out of the Church. [They are not 'cast off' at all - they are canonically punished for their transgression of the indissolubility of marriage, but they were well aware of that risk when they made the decision to divorce and then to remarry - it wasn't a post-facto rule devised by the Church to 'marginalize' them. They 'marginalized' themselves with their own actions, not that they are actually marginalized, but they feel 'marginalized', probably nagged by guilt. And they also know what they must do to be able to receive Communion again - difficult and tough, but it something they must do if they truly wish to rectify their status in the Church. Difficult and tough to admit that one is living in 'a chronic state of sin' when the current marriage may be blissful compared to the 'hell' that led to divorce to begin with.]

[Yet] anyone who says a sinner must repent – to turn permanently away from his sins – is now considered one of those wicked people heartlessly ostracizing poor, sick people who cannot help themselves, pointing at them and shouting “unclean”. [First of all, it is difficult to imagine any modern Christian community ostracizing anyone for having divorced and remarried, which have become such routine events in contemporary life that people do not think it is anything remarkable at all (which is, of course, a basic fact of contemporary society which serious Catholics cannot possibly dismiss, even if they may not express their disapproval by ostracizing anyone. Otherwise, if I were a Kasperite, I would put up a website inviting every divorced-and-remarried Catholic who has expericned any ostracism in his parish or community to tell their stories to the world. Guess how many takers there would be!]

While Pope Francis appears to equate the sexual sinner ['adulterer' perhaps is the more appropriate Biblical word], the adulterer, the co-habitator, the active homosexual – persons who, in reality, has who have willfully refused the forgiving mercy of Christ [Probably not expressly to 'refuse' the forgiving mercy of Christ, but deliberately choosing to violate his law, even knowing the canonical consequence, and probably trusting so much in divine mercy that the sinner thinks he will get it even if he has chosen to live in 'a chronic state of sin']– with the leper who could not help being a leper - the Pope seems to condemn anyone who wants to uphold the need for repentance as a needful precursor to God’s mercy:

---

We are the truly wicked, those who would unjustly refuse – for the sake of a few outdated and incomprehensible “rules” – to welcome back the poor innocent sufferer who has been unwillingly infected by a disease. We are, in effect, wicked enough that we would cast out and condemn someone for being sick.

---

[JMB/PF is saying so many astoundingly objectionable things in this paragraph: 1) What are these 'outdated and incomprehensible rules' applied to remarried divorcees but the words of Christ himself? 2) How can applying Christ's words be 'unjust' in any way? 3) Is he saying that the RCDs, unmarried cohabiting couples and practising homosexuals are 'sufferers unwillingly infected with a disease"? They knowingly and willingly chose their lifestyles which, one presumes, is the one that they find most convenient if not the happiest arrangement, so they don't suffer on that account. And a chronic state of sin is not a disease that is inflicted on them, but a self-inflicted, self-chosen lifestyle. 4) So they are not 'sick' except willfully so - like getting AIDS because one willfully has sex with an infected person. And Catholics - cardinals, bishops, priests, and lay faithful - who uphold the indissolubility of marriage and the need for sacramental discipline are not 'condemning' anybody, simply pointing out that no one can or ought to be be exempt from rules which other Catholics do their best to live by.

If that is 'condemning', then what was JMB doing in that terrible paragraph above but condemning the latter kind of Catholics as 'wicked'? Perhaps more than any other statement of Bergoglio so0 far, this has frightened me the most - for being the most blatant indulgence towards Catholics living in a chronic state of sin (his pet agenda and the only raison d'etre of the 'family' synods, let's not continue pretending otherwise!) and the most outrageous reversal of the order and categories of sin! And no one but THE REMNANT chose to speak up about this????]

But of course, it is all based on a false premise. A leper is someone who suffers from a disease, who does indeed need a doctor. A man living with a woman to whom he is not married has entered into this situation with his will. And it is with his will he can remedy the situation. He can decide, today, to sin no more, and to change his life.

Pope Francis forges on with the analogy, indeed, laying it on a little thick:

---

[Imagine how much suffering and shame lepers must have felt: physically, socially, psychologically and spiritually! They are not only victims of disease, but they feel guilty about it, punished for their sins! Theirs is a living death; they are like someone whose father has spit in his face (cf. Num 12:14).

In addition, lepers inspire fear, contempt and loathing, and so they are abandoned by their families, shunned by other persons, cast out by society. Indeed, society rejects them and forces them to live apart from the healthy. It excludes them. So much so that if a healthy person approached a leper, he would be punished severely, and often be treated as a leper himself.

---

[Our esteemed and totally a-historical Pontiff seems to be speaking of the Middle Ages. As if the modern world had not set up leprosariums to care properly for lepers who have no one else to care for them. As if Saints Damien and Marianne Cope of Molokai - and thousands of unnamed saints - had never lived in Christian dedication to the service of lepers. As if modern public health laws continued to allow lepers to sit at streetcorners begging for assistance. That entire paragraph is an obsolete reproach that is meaningless in today's world.]

It is certainly popular in the writing of the Catholic left to draw a parallel between the Biblical stories of the harsh treatment of lepers with how the Church supposedly treats sinners. The point is to depict the consequences of sin as nothing more than an unjust affliction by evil-minded “Pharisees” and those who would “rigidly” apply the moral law.

Perhaps it was true in first-century Palestine that lepers were treated as though their affliction were shameful, but we all know now that leprosy is a disease. This is actually a simple rhetorical red herring, conflating the affliction of illness and the consequences of sin, and a rather brazen appeal to emotivism.

The purpose is clearly to prompt the pope’s listeners to get the message and start pointing a finger of accusation against those who refuse to go along with the Kasper programme of “mercy”.

But here we have another papal catch-phrase to watch out for: “social exclusion” is a common feature of Latin American Marxist jargon, and organisations to combat “social exclusion” have played a central role in the Marxification of the Catholic Church, relying on precisely the kind of emotional gambit the pope is displaying here. Bergoglio was known in Argentina for having particular interest in the “problem of 'social exclusion” and this has become a feature of this pontificate.

The point, of course, in Marxist discourse, is that only the wicked, the heartless, the rigorists, the wealthy and those with an unjust stake in the status quo are interested in perpetuating the systemic injustices that have created “social exclusion".
[It is a term tha is truly meaningless in any genuine democratic society where in theory, an Abraham Lincoln or a Barack Obama can rise from the most humble beginnings and have risen to become President of the United States. Ask barack Obama if he has ever been 'socially excluded'. Ask Evo Morales, the gung-ho Marxist president of Bolivia if he ever felt 'socially excluded'. Ask Joseph Ratzinger, son of a poor itinerant country policeman, if he ever felt 'socially excluded'. Jorge Bergoglio obviously never felt so, because he came from a solid middle-class family in Buenos Aires. The idea of 'social exclusion' deliberately promotes class war, in the same way that JMB/PF's blind obsession about the poor - to the apparent exclusion from his universe of mercy of everyone who is 'not poor' - is promoting class war in the Church. In the church of Bergoglio, one is automatically virtuous and blessed merely by being poor, and conversely, the non-poor are a priori wicked and sinful, and by their very sinfulness, they are the primary reason why there are poor people. This is stupid sociology and even more mindless theology.]

Of course, it is also to be remembered that this “social exclusion” grievance is commonly extended to include those who suffer it because of their homosexuality. [Which is a supreme irony because the LGBTs are the fair-haired darlings lionized by secular society today, in a perverse elevation of persons violating the most fundamental law of nature to an iconic privileged class, for whom society should create every right that would indulge them and reward them for their unnatural lifestyle.]

Naturally, the one feature of this is still missing in the pope’s homily: that those who have excluded themselves from the Church by their own free choices may “feel shame” but this shame is, frankly, just. A leper being made to feel shame for his leprosy is being treated unjustly. In fact, however, in our current culture, a divorced and remarried person, or even a person living in an unmarried relationship with another, is not even noticed. The Sexual Revolution, that has crept into the Church herself, has settled the matter for the general culture: there is nothing to see here. [Exactly the point I made early on. And as I have been remarking since the whole RCD issue was revived and made into a raging forest fire by this Pontificate. Why don't the bishops make an accounting of exactly how many RCDs in their respective diocese actually 'suffer' genuinely because they cannot receive communion? Proponents of pastoral leniency always make it appear as if all Catholic RCDs necessarily 'suffer' from not taking Communion, when the fact alone that they did knowingly decide to divorce and remarry probably indicates they weren't all that observant about their religion, anyway, and probably didn't even go to Mass regularly. Those who do so genuinely would long ago have sought pastoral guidance and started to rectify their irregular situation - as tough as it is to follow what the Church teaches: that they should abstain from the marital act until their situation is regularized in the Church.

So, enough already with Kasperite crocodile tears for RCDs who 'suffer' because they cannot take Communion. They know what they have to do to be worthy once again to receive it. And an even more practical consideration: Most of those who do take communion and live in the West probably have been receiving communion all along anyway. As JMB/PF counselled the woman in Brazil, "Just go to another church where the priest will give you communion".

In other words, this whole disproportionately inflated crusade in behalf of communion for RCDs is largely an artificial cause, meant primarily to make divorce and remarriage 'acceptable' to the Church as they have become widely acceptable among many Catholics, anyway.]

No! It is not repentance and forgiveness of sins the Church offers the sinner but “reinstatement” while still in his sins:

---

Reinstatement: Jesus revolutionizes and upsets that fearful, narrow and prejudiced mentality. He does not abolish the law of Moses, but rather brings it to fulfillment (cf. Mt 5:17). He does so by stating, for example, that the law of retaliation is counterproductive, that God is not pleased by a Sabbath observance which demeans or condemns a man. He does so by refusing to condemn the sinful woman, but saves her from the blind zeal of those prepared to stone her ruthlessly in the belief that they were applying the law of Moses.

---

['Reinstatement! That's a new one - an original Bergoglio-Fernandez theological concept! Reinstatement from 'a chronic state of sin' to what? 'Reinstatement to a state of non-sin' by virtue of pastoral mercy that will turn a blind eye to the chronic state of sin, and therefore to the basic sin itself? (Bergoglio has 'abolished sin', as Scalfari intuited.)

And how can calling sin 'sin' and asking the sinner to be penitent and make amends be considered 'retaliation' in any way? On the contrary, it is genuine mercy, because the Church is thus helping the sinner get on the right path to God's grace. That is not 'reinstatement' but observing the just order God has established. The writer takes up the rest of the obvious argument.]

Perhaps it should be stated here that orthodox Catholics opposing the Kasper Plan do not call for the stoning of adulterers, but their conversion and salvation through sacramental grace [which comes from genuine confession with consequent 'amendment of life'], through repentance and a determination to live according to the laws of God, in righteousness and justice in the sight of God and their fellow men.

And it might be worth repeating that when Christ saved the woman from stoning, his last words to her were not, “Sorry these unpleasant fellows were bothering you, miss. Go home to your adulterous affairs in peace.”

Perhaps Jesus, by insisting that the woman give up her sinful lifestyle choices, was being momentarily “hemmed in”: "Jesus, the new Moses, wanted to heal the leper. He wanted to touch him and restore him to the community without being "hemmed in" by prejudice, conformity to the prevailing mindset or worry about becoming infected."

This is another common slander from the Kasperites: that the only reason anyone would have to oppose the Plan is a personal nausea or distaste for those in sinful situations.

Moreover, watch for what may be a hidden subtext in the expression “worry about becoming infected.” We can be confident that no one thinks that hanging around with a divorced person or an adulterer can result in being “infected” with adultery. But it is a common accusation against those who try to live according to the moral law – being ignorant troglodytes – that we imagine homosexuality is “catching”. So here we see perhaps a hint at a wider application of the new definition of “mercy.”

But of course, in the Pope's view, it is “scandalous” to insist that a person give up his sins:

---

Jesus responds immediately to the leper’s plea, without waiting to study the situation and all its possible consequences! For Jesus, what matters above all is reaching out to save those far off, healing the wounds of the sick, restoring everyone to God’s family! And this is scandalous to some people!

Jesus is not afraid of this kind of scandal! He does not think of the closed-minded who are scandalized even by a work of healing, scandalized before any kind of openness, by any action outside of their mental and spiritual boxes, by any caress or sign of tenderness which does not fit into their usual thinking and their ritual purity. He wanted to reinstate the outcast, to save those outside the camp (cf. Jn 10).

---

[And pray tell who, in the above paragraph is speaking from his own "mental ansd spiritual boxes" and 'scandalized by what does not fit into his usual thinking and ritual insouciance'??? A beam in the eye can really blind one to his own failings!]

The papal insult machine is kicking into gear here in its familiar fashion, but within the context of what has come before, the identity of the targets is clear.

'Next we come at last to the real philosophical meat of the sandwich, the heart of the “mission statement”:

---

There are two ways of thinking and of having faith: we can fear to lose the saved and we can want to save the lost.

Even today it can happen that we stand at the crossroads of these two ways of thinking. The thinking of the doctors of the law, which would remove the danger by casting out the diseased person, and the thinking of God, who in his mercy embraces and accepts by reinstating him and turning evil into good, condemnation into salvation and exclusion into proclamation.

---

And it is yet another example, so frequent in this Pontificate, of the pope being apparently blind to the shortcomings and internal contradictions of his ideas. Francis has proved himself many times to be fond of creating a false dichotomy, and this is a classic. Simply put, it’s not “either/or” it’s “both/and”.

The idea that it is even possible to “go to the peripheries” with anything meaningful to offer the “marginalized” while simply abandoning the existing flock should strike even the simplest and most credulous FOFs as an odd and contradictory statement. [But the point is no serious commentator has seen fit to put out that most obvious fallacy of Bergoglio's 'going to the peripheries' - which is, of course consistent with his obsession about the poor. Just as he thinks the Church must minister primarily if not exclusively to 'the poor', he also wants priests to leave their flocks for the peripheries, letting the 'central' flock fend for itself while the shepherd is out in the peripheries. As I said from the start, Bergoglio obviously does not think charity begins at home.]

He seems to be saying that a person who already holds the Faith in its entirety will necessarily want to “cast out the diseased person,” that it is in the nature of the faithful to be cruel and exclusionary. But this is logically absurd, since it is that Faith, that divine law that requires (genuine) mercy and compassion for both the sick and the sinner. [The sanctimonious rarely if ever see the absurdity of their position, so sure are they that they and they alone are right.]

After this, things start to deteriorate, and it actually becomes difficult to understand his point: "These two ways of thinking are present throughout the Church’s history: casting off and reinstating."
An excellent encapsulation of the Marxist accusation against the Catholic Church: that her ministry has been inconstant, changeable, oscillating between a spiritual purity and a gross materialist corruption.

But then:

---

Saint Paul, following the Lord’s command to bring the Gospel message to the ends of the earth (cf. Mt 28:19), caused scandal and met powerful resistance and great hostility, especially from those who demanded unconditional obedience to the Mosaic law, even on the part of converted pagans. Saint Peter, too, was bitterly criticized by the community when he entered the house of the pagan centurion Cornelius (cf. Acts 10).

The Church’s way, from the time of the Council of Jerusalem, has always been the way of Jesus, the way of mercy and reinstatement.

---

This would be some other Church? Different from the one that’s always moving between “casting off and reinstating”? How many Churches are there? [Remember, Bergoglio does not believe in Dominus Iesus which reaffirms and upholds the Roman Catholic Church as 'the one true Church of Christ' - and believes that all other non-Catholic Christian denominations and sects are equally valid ways of 'reaching Jesus". That ecumenism is simply a matter of saying "we all believe in Christ, and therefore we are one Church, but we must not stop to dialgo with one another". Ecumenism as an endless dialog among Christian communities that will never acknowledge 'the one true Church of Christ' and what she teaches.]

---

This does not mean underestimating the dangers of letting wolves into the fold, but welcoming the repentant prodigal son; healing the wounds of sin with courage and determination; rolling up our sleeves and not standing by and watching passively the suffering of the world.

---

He seems to imply that any effort to bring the sinner to genuine repentance, to radical conversion and a total change of direction in the moral life, is “watching passively the suffering of the world”.

The material suffering of the world appears to be the beginning and end of the pope’s concern. He nods towards Catholic doctrine by eferring to the “wounds of sin” Never spelling out, of course, how such wounds are to be healed, because that would mean calling for penitence and conversion, never 'nice and easy' proposals to make][/dim - but he clearly expects that those of us concerned with the supernatural effects of sin on the soul of the sinner are not interested in caring for the poor.

Next we have more expressions of contempt for those who would insist on the compatibility of divine mercy with divine justice:

---

In a word: charity cannot be neutral, antiseptic, indifferent, lukewarm or impartial! Charity is infectious, it excites, it risks and it engages! For true charity is always unmerited, unconditional and gratuitous! (cf. 1 Cor 13). Charity is creative in finding the right words to speak to all those considered incurable and hence untouchable… [I cringe to read him keep using the anachronistic leper analogy. The average Catholic cannot possibly think that other sinners are 'untouchable' whatever their sin may be, because it means that being a sinner himself, others would consider him untouchable! Oy veh! Such thinking would the death of human contact! See why I often say Bergoglio does not seem to think his ideas out or think them through, because if he did, he would see the absurdity and illogic inherent in the most questionable of them.]

We will not find the Lord unless we truly accept the marginalized! May we always have before us the image of Saint Francis, who was unafraid to embrace the leper and to accept every kind of outcast. Truly, dear brothers, the Gospel of the marginalized is where our credibility is at stake, is discovered and is revealed!

---

Every day he's telling us what he's got planned for the Church. Presenting the mercy of Christ as a justification for breaking the law of Christ, setting the mercy of God in opposition to His justice, affirming the insane, anti-rational proposal that they are naturally opposed and irreconcilable.

If we look at the evidence [of Bergoglio's words and actions] played out 24/7 in the world's media - the gravity of a looming crisis for the Church cannot be overstated. [Even with the best of intentions to go on giving JMB the benefit of the doubt - i.e., surely he cannot possibly subvert the Church of Christ as he is doing, and perhaps ultimately, on the issues he insists in having the family synod decide, he will affirm Church doctrine as immutable in teachign as well as in practice - this homily has confirmed to me, at least, that he really intends to have his way and will not be hindered by any thought of orthodoxy (straight thinking), much less, of orthopracy (straight practice).]

If the Kasper proposal is adopted, it will be more far-reaching than any other of the post-Conciliar manipulations like Communion in the hand or altar girls. This will strike, in one blow, against the very pillars of the Faith: the Eucharist and the priesthood.

The Eucharist, the presence of which is barely preserved in the New Mass,[I am no lover of the Novus Ordo, but that is not true! The New Mass is still a celebration of the Eucharist, even if much of the awe and veneration inherent in the traditional Mass were traded away for a false 'intimacy' with the congregation. But how a priest celebrates the New Mass makes all the difference - as we know very well from the Masses Benedict XVI celebrated] and will be systematically desecrated [A reference to the Bergoglian 'communion for everyone' which, in effect, allows sacrilegious Communion, as would be the case if RCDs, unmarried co-habiting couples and practising homosexuals are allowed communion without changing their lifestyle. And those who will be expected to do the desecrating will be the priests, who will certainly be punished if they refuse.

It will also put paid to whatever hopes we have of restoring the Faith by the work of an up-and-coming young faithful priesthood, since only men who have demonstrated their willingness to desecrate [the Holy Eucharist will be considered suitable for the seminary. [I don't know about that last conclusion, although certainly, I expect that criteria for selecting seminarians will also be overhauled drastically in this Pontificate. As terrible a prospect as the possibility of making priestly celibacy optional, which is increasingly hinted at.]

Thanks to Ms. Erinyes for the admirable initiative she had in writing this article.

The following has nothing to do with the February 17 homily but with the insidious overall orientation and direction of this Pontificate. Donald McClarey is commenting on the line in Andrea Gagkliarducci's Monday column that "The Church of '68 is back":

1968 redux[/colore[

February 24, 2015

1968 is on the line and it wants its chaos back:..
For those of us of a certain vintage, the current pontificate is so disheartening because we have sat through this all before. The attempt during the sixties and early seventies to modernize, make the Church more relevant and “pastoral”, and what crimes have been committed in the name of that word, was a flat disaster with the emptying of pews, plummeting ordinations and the sacrifice of the Mass celebrated in many places with all the awe and ceremony of a Tupperware party.

We do not want to repeat that performance again and Pope Francis gives every sign of assuming, just like the advocates of socialism, this time we will get it right. No, you will not. You will merely neuter the Church for a time, spread chaos and destroy the faith of hundreds of millions.

In my practice of Law I ever tell my clients that one of the secrets of life is to learn from our mistakes. Those who have no learning curve are doomed to ever repeating their folly. [Also a definition of insanity.]

I am beginning to suspect that many of our higher level clergy either have no learning curve or they wish to dramatically reshape the Church into a parody of herself. ['Travesty' is perhaps the more appropriate word.]

The first comment to McClarey's post said this:
[Hillaire] Belloc wrote of the Church as “an institution run with such knavish imbecility that if it were not the work of God it would not last a fortnight.”

Also tangentially related - it has to do with one of the words that have occured quie frequently since October 2014 in JMB/PF's vocabulary: Father H has this amusing comment - with an unexpected kick:

On parrhesia

February 25, 2015

I am not going to apologise for using, untranslated, the term Parrhesia because in doing so I am simply following our beloved Holy Father, who, in his fearless way, uses it, untranslated, quite often. If an apology is called for, I'm sure he would be happy to apologise on behalf of both of us.

It is a Greek term signifying a willingness to speak openly, boldly, fearlessly, especially in contexts where it might be apprehended that some powerful person could turn nasty. Thus, when the Holy Father told the Synod Fathers to speak with parrhesia, his friend Archbishop [Victor] Fernandez [Bergoglio's theological brain and alter ego][/cim] interpreted this for the edification of common ordinary bishops as meaning "Mueller [Cardinal Prefect of the CDF] won't come after us".]

Quite common in the NT. S Mark 8:32; S John 7:4,13,26; 10:24; 11:14,54; 16:25,29; 18:20; Acts 2:29; 4:13,29,31; 28:31; etc. etc.. For the verb ]c\parrhesiazomai], mainly in Acts, see 9:27,28; 13:46; 14:3; 18:26; 19:8; 26:26 ...

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/02/2015 05:07]

UKRAINE BISHOPS KNEEL
FOR BENEDICT XVI'S BLESSING

An Italian website called fanpage.it posted this photograph and the story about it yesterday, 2/24/15. It is not dated but it is known the Ukrainian bishops were at the Vatican last week for an ad limina visit and had their audience with Pope Francis on February 20.

The photo may have been taken on the same day because the accompanying story says that after the audience, the bishops then decided to make a visit to Benedict XVI at Mater Ecclesiae.

It must be remembered that the Bishop of Leopoli is Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki - whom Benedict appointed coadjutor Bishop and eventually Bishop of the mostly Polish diocese formally known as of Lvov of the Latins (leopoli) in eastern Ukraine back in 2007. Before that, 'don Mietek' as he was known at the Vatican, had been Benedict XVI's second private secretary, having served John Paul II in the same capacity during the final years of the saint's life.

The story says it was his idea for the group to visit Benedict XVI - apparently an unscheduled visit because they met up with him during one of his daily walks in the Vatican Gardens. The bishops knelt on the pavement when the emeritus Pope imparted his blessing.

Mons. 'Mietek' also took the occasion to ask Benedict XVI to bless the first stone for a Benedictine convent to be erected in Leopoli.

Here is a translation of the fanpage.it article:

Bishops kneel before Benedict XVI
by Michele M. Ippolito
February 24, 2015

Some photographs speak for themselves and can say much more than thousands of words.

The bishops of Ukraine, visiting Rome for their ad limina visit principally to Pope Francis, also decided to greet Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI, and met up with him in the Vatican Gardens during his afternoon walk.

After conversing with him, the bishops asked for his blessing. At which point, the bishops most unusually knelt down on the pavement as if they were ordinary faithful, while Benedict invoked God’s blessing for them and their country.

Although most of the bishops are quite elderly, they didn’t seem to have any problem getting down on their knees on the street. The image, taken by a photographer with the group, was posted by him on Facebook and promptly made the rounds of the social networks.

The Ukrainian bishops had their audience with Pope Francis on Saturday, February 21. Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki of Lvov (Leopoli) in the eastern Ukraine, suggested that they avail of the occasion to pay a visit to Benedict XVI, whom he also asked to bless the first stone for a Benedicttine convent to be erected in Lvov.

In the past two years, the Roman Catholic Church in the Ukraine – a small minority compared to the overwhelming Orthodox population (mostly Russian Orthodox, but there iare also many Greek Orthodox) – have been living through one of the most difficult times in her history.

Fighting has been going on in eastern Ukraine, where militant separatists threaten to suppress the freedoms of the Catholic church in favor of the Orthodox loyal to the Patriarchate of Moscow.

Several months ago when pro-Russian factions and Ukrainian nationalists clashed openly in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine, the head of the Greek Catholic Church of the Ukraine, Cardinal Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said: “The Church has the right to judge the situation in the country, when there are violations of human rights and of the principals of public ethics emanating from the law of God as reflected in the Social Doctrine of the Church”.

I really was remiss in failing to pot anything about the Ukrainian bishops' visit with Pope Francis earlier. Here is an account:

Pope backs peace in Ukraine,
avoids criticism of Russia,
in meeting with country's bishops
CATHOLIC WORLD NEWS
February 20, 2015

Pope Francis expressed his solidarity with the people affected by continued violence in Ukraine, but stopped short of condemning Russian-backed separatists, in meetings with the country’s bishops on February 20.

In a prepared statement that was distributed to all the Ukrainian bishops, the Pope lamented the conflict that “continues to claim many innocent victims and to cause great suffering to the entire population.”

However, breaking from his prepared text, he said that he is pained by calls for the “defeat” of rebels or a “victory” for Ukrainian independence. “Those are not the right word,” the Pope said. “The only right word is peace.”

In his statement the Pope said:

---

dim=10pt]In this period I am particularly close to you in my prayers for the deceased and for all those who have been afflicted by violence, with my plea that the Lord might grant peace soon, and with my appeal to all interested parties to implement joint agreements and to respect the principle of international law, and especially to observe the recently signed armistice and all other commitments that are conditions for avoiding a resumption of hostilities.

---

The Pope said that the bishops, as citizens, have every right to express their opinions on the country’s difficulties. But he said they should speak out “not in the sense of promoting concrete political action, but in the indication and reaffirmation of the values that constitute the binding element of Ukrainian society.”

The Pope’s insistence on peace negotiations, and the absence of any affirmation of Ukrainian independence, was undoubtedly a disappointment to some Ukrainian prelates, notably including those of the Byzantine-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church.

In earlier meetings with the Secretariat of State, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kiev had said that the first duty of Church leaders is to tell the truth about the conflict, which he has characterized as an invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces.

“This is what the citizens of Ukraine expect today from the Holy See as the highest moral authority,” the Ukrainian prelate said.

Pope Francis held separate audiences for the Ukrainian bishops of the Roman rite and those of the Byzantine rite. All of the bishops received the same written statement, however.

In that statement the Pope alluded to conflicts between the two Catholic rites, saying that he was “personally saddened to hear that there are incomprehensions and that harm has been done.” He reminded them: “Whether Greek-Catholics or Latins, you are sons of the Catholic Church, which has been subject to martyrdom in your land too.”

The ugliness beneath
'the new and better,
kindler and gentler' Vatican (2)

The other day, Lawrence England referred to a 'Pontificate of thugs'. Now it seems one must also talk about a 'Pontificate of thieves'. [In my mind, I have been thinking of it as 'the Pontificate of Sham(e)'].

So Paolo Gabriele was convicted for pilfering papal documents, but he was a valet, not a cardinal, and in this story, the chief culprit and mastermind of the 'thefts' was one of the Pope's favorite cardinals - someone he asked to be by his side the night he first came out to greet the world as Pope and to whom he gave a cardinal's biretta to wear for that historic moment. And he subsequently put him to head the Secretariat of the Bishops' Synod, i.e., the office that administers and coordinates all the activities of the Synod both during synodal assemblies and in the long intervals in between...Betcha the establishment Catholic media and the MSM will ignore this and pretend it never happened nor have they heard of it at all.

'Five Cardinals Book' stolen
from participants’ mailboxes
at last year’s Synod on Family
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

February 25, 2015

I have wanted to write about this for soooooo long now.
[And now] Kathnet broke this in German.

Remember the Five Cardinals Book™? Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church helped to turn the tide – in a good way – during last October’s Synod of Bishops.

It was simultaneously released in English, Italian, French, German and Spanish. It is going to be issued in: Polish, Portuguese, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak, and Czech. It contains essays of five cardinals, of the archbishop secretary of the Vatican congregation for the Oriental Churches, and of three scholars direct at the notions suggested by Walter Card. Kasper in the opening discourse of the consistory in February 2014. It blew the Kasper proposals and arguments out of the water.

You will also remember that Synod members were up in arms because of the manipulations and machinations of the staff of the Synod office. Remember all the controversies about whether texts of speeches would be released? About what could be reported? About how the mid-term report was produced? About certain strange paragraphs that didn’t reflect the discussions of the Synod?

There’s more. Here is something of the story that you don’t know, because at the time it couldn’t be told.

The people who crafted the Five Cardinals Book™ wanted to make sure that Synod members had copies, at least in English or Italian, as the Synod was starting up. Therefore, they sent copies to every member of the Synod (quite a few) through the Italian post to each member’s personal mailbox near the Synod Hall which was set up individually by the Vatican Post.

Remember, Vatican Post is the postal service of a sovereign nation that has laws. The Book was sent in individually addressed and franked envelopes. They weren’t just envelopes with someone’s name on them shoved into the slots by whomever. They were properly sent postal items.

When the organizers of the Synod realized what had been sent to the members of the Synod, someone removed all the envelopes from the members’ mail boxes!

That’s called theft. That’s called illegal. They stole people’s mail. Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t that a crime in, I think, every country? The Vatican City State… that’s a country… isn’t it.

That’s how frightening the Book is to those who want to overturn the Church’s practice and, therefore, teaching. [And that's how frightening is the prevailing mentality of a Pontificate in which a major official could arbitrarily and nonchalantly decide to steal mailed items from the bishops' mailboxes - - to deliberately commit a crime, in short. bishops' mailboxes.

With the Pope himself leading the charge to push the 'pastoral leniency' agenda so dear to his heart, his minions at the Synod Secretariat shamelessly stacked the deck as much as they could to ensure 'victory'. Yet even despite despicably base tricks like those cited by Fr. Z and stealing books mailed to the participants, the Pope and his followers lost that round - even if, because he is Pope, Bergoglio managed to restore his trifectal agenda to the final Relatio so that the issues on remarried divorcees, unmarried cohabiting couples and practising homosexuals would continue to be discussed at the October 2015 synodal assembly even if these items wree voted down by the bishops last October. One has to be blind, deaf and dumb as the proverbial three monkeys to continue to insist that the Supreme Pontiff, the world's first pluperfect Pope, has stayed above the fray in this all-out and pivotal battle against Catholic orthodoxy, or that he intends to lose it in any way!]

The Kathnet piece, by Manfred Ferrari, indicates that the heist was ordered by Card. Baldisseri, who is the head of the office of the Synod of Bishops. [Instead of stelaing the 'Five Cardinals Book' from the participants' mailboxes, wouldn't it have been more civil to put a copy of Kasper's Gospel on the Family (the lecture at which he spelled out the 'Kasper proposal' to the secret consistory in February 2015, and which was rushed into print shortly thereafter, with glowing words of praise from the Pope who went out of his way to do that when he closed that secret consistory, even if - or perhaps because - several cardinals had spoken out at the consistory to dispute Kasper's proposals. Baldisseri could have gifted the participants with a second Kasper book, the one on Mercy. Perhaps the Kasper double-whammy could have 'neutralized' any effect the Five Cardinals Book could have!]

At the end of the piece, Ferrari adds:

---

This episode took place in the Vatican and not in the Kremlin. As I told it to a friend who, in those days, traveled back to Africa, he smiled at me mildly and said, “Manfred, what’s bothering you. Here in South Sudan things aren’t any better…“

---

There were inquiries made about what happened to the Book. Only a few of the Synod participants out of the some 200 received their copies… before they were boosted. The Governor of the Vatican City State would have a legal obligation to look into the situation. No? [[It just so happens the Governor of SCV is on the Brgoglian Crown Council of advisers, so perhaps that's not forthcoming at all. Meanwhile, will Fathers Lombardi and Rosica deny this story or seek to explain it away?]

I cannot underscore enough how important the Five Cardinals Book™ was during the Synod. It is still important. It is still under attack.

The Five Cardinals Book™ addressed the foundations of the odd proposals made about Communion for the divorced and remarried, and it demolished them. Since then, pretty much everything that has come out in favor of the Kasper proposal has not actually dealt with the arguments in the Book.

Instead, they just repeat the same ol’ same ol’ and then suggest that anyone who doesn’t agree is the enemy of mercy and of Pope Francis. [CUE DIABOLICAL SURPRISE MUSIC HERE]

Do you have your copy yet? [Fr. Z provides links to how you cna get the book on line in the USA and in the UK.]

REMINDER of what is in this pivotal book.

---

Remaining in the Truth of Christ: Marriage and Communion in the Catholic Church contains nine chapters -
o The Argument in Brief- Robert Dodaro, O.S.A.
o Dominican Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage: The Biblical Data – Paul Mankowski, S.J.
o Divorce and Remarriage in the Early Church: Some Historical and Cultural Reflections – John M. Rist
o Separation, Divorce, Dissolution of the Bond, and Remarriage: Theological and Practical Approaches of the Orthodox Churches – Archbishop Cyril Vasil’, S.J.
o Unity and Indissolubility of Marriage: From the Middle Ages to the Council of Trent – Walter Cardinal Brandmüller
o Testimony to the Power of Grace: On the Indissolubility of Marriage and the Debate concerning the Civilly Remarried and the Sacraments – Gerhard Ludwig Cardinal Müller
o Sacramental Ontology and the Indissolubility of Marriage – Carlo Cardinal Caffarra
o The Divorced and Civilly Remarried and the Sacraments of the Eucharist and Penance – Velasio Cardinal De Paolis, C.S.
o The Canonical Nullity of the Marriage Process as the Search for the Truth – Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

---

One day late for this lookback... In 2013, Benedict XVI began his last week as Pope with the Sunday noon Angelus at St. Peter's Square, after ending a weeklong Lenten retreat with Curial officials at the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace... And thus we began the poignant bittersweet countdown to the untimely end of a Pontificate I would have wanted never to end as if that were possible...



Benedict XVI's last Angelus from
the world's most famous window
February 24, 2013




'I will continue to serve the Church
with the same love and dedication but
in a way more suited to my age and strength'


"The Lord is calling me to 'climb the mountain', to devote myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church, indeed, if God is asking me to do this, it is so I can continue to serve the Church with the same dedication and the same love with which I have tried to do thus far, but in a way that is better suited to my age and my strength... We will always be close in prayer!"

This was Pope Benedict XVI’s parting message on Sunday, during his last Angelus address. At noon the canons sounded from the Janiculum hill and the great bells of St Peter’s basilica rang out. And as the curtains were drawn from his study windows and the red papal banner unfurled, the ocean of pilgrims waiting below erupted into acclamation.

They had come in the thousands, pouring into the square since early dawn, men, women and children, old and young, religious and lay Catholics. They held banners, emblazoned with messages of gratitude and farewell for the 85-year old Pope, who had guided them in the faith over the past eight years.

Pilgrims such as a father and his young son from the earthquake devastated city of Aquila, central Italy, who held aloft a homemade sign, thanking Pope Benedict for having visited the city’s people in their time of need, for his material support and spiritual solidarity.

The Dominican nuns from the Philippines who had held vigil since dawn praying the rosary. And beside them the young people in their sleeping bags, from Spain, Brazil, Mexico, with their banner that read “the gates of hell will never prevail”.

With outstretched arms and visibly moved, Pope Benedict greeted them all, repeating ‘Grazie, Grazie,’ as he attempted to quiet the crowds. An almost impossible task.



Here is a translation of Benedict XVI's last Angelus reflection as Pope:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:
Thank you for your affection.

Today, the second Sunday of Lent, we have a particularly beautiful Gospel account, that of the Transfiguration of the Lord.

The evangelist Luke especially highlights the fact that Jesus was transfigured as he prayed: His was a profound experience of relationship with the Father during a kind of spiritual retreat that Jesus had on a mountain in the company of Peter, James and John - the three disciples who were always present at the moments of the Master's divine manifestation (Lk 5,10; 8,51; 9,28).

The Lord, who had pre-announced his death and resurrection not long before this (9,22), offered the disciples a foretaste of his glory. In the Transfiguration, as at the Baptism, the voice of the heavenly Father rang out: "this is my chosen Son. Listen to him!" (9,35).

The presence of Moses and Elijah, who represent the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament, is just as significant: The entire story of the Old Covenant is oriented towards him, the Christ, who would lead a new 'exodus' (9,31), not towards the Promised Land as in the time of Moses, bot towards Heaven.

Peter's remark, "Master, it is good that we are here" (9,33) the represents the impossible attempt to dwell in such a mystical experience.

St. Augustine commented: "(Peter)... on the mountain.., had Christ for nourishment of the soul. Why did he have to descend to return to labor and suffering when up there, it was full of holy love for God which therefore inspired holy conduct?" (Discourse 78,3: PL 38,491).

Meditating on this Gospel passage, we can draw a very important teaching. First of all, the primacy of prayer, without which all the commitment of apostolate and charity is reduced to activism.

During Lent, let us learn to give the proper time to prayer, personal as well as communal, which gives breath to our spiritual life. Moreover, prayer is not isolation from the world and its contradictions, as Peter wished it to be on Mt. Tabor, but prayer leads us back to the journey, to action.

"Christian existence", I wrote in the Message for Lent this year, "consists in continuously scaling the mountain to meet God and then coming back down, bearing the love and strength drawn from him, so as to serve our brothers and sisters with God’s own love." (No.3).

Dear brothers and sisters, this Word of God I have felt particularly addressed to me at this time in my life...Thank you!

The Lord has called me to 'climb the mountain', to dedicate myself more to prayer and meditation. But this does not mean abandoning the Church. Rather, is God is asking this of me, it is so that I can continue to serve her with the same dedication and the same love that I have tried to do till now, but in a way that is more suitable to my age and strength.

Let us ask the intercession of the Virgin Mary, she who helps all of os us to always follow the Lord Jesus in prayer and in charitable acts.

---

'WE HAVE UNDERSTOOD YOU AND WILL CONTINUE TO LOVE YOU..
THANK YOU' - YOUR YOUNG PEOPLE

A final Angelus blessing
by Frances D'Emilio


VATICAN CITY, February 24, 2013 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI gave his pontificate's final Sunday blessing from his studio window to the cheers of tens of thousands of people packing St. Peter's Square, but sought to reassure the faithful that he wasn't abandoning the church by retiring to spend his final years in prayer.

The 85-year-old Benedict is stepping down on Thursday evening, the first pope to do so in 600 years, after saying he no longer has the mental or physical strength to lead the world's 1.2 billion Catholics. [I don't know why the AP keeps using this phrase!]

But while he has lately looked tired and frail, the crowd filling the cobblestone square seemed to energize him, and he spoke in a clear, strong voice, repeatedly thanking the faithful for their closeness and affection as they interrupted him, again and again, with applause and cheers. Police estimated some 100,000 people turned out.

Benedict told the crowd that God is calling him to dedicate himself "even more to prayer and meditation," which he will do in a secluded monastery being renovated for him on the grounds behind Vatican City's ancient walls.

"But this doesn't mean abandoning the church," he said, as many in the crowd looked sad at his departure from regular view. "On the contrary, if God asks this of me, it is so I can continue to serve it (the Church) with the same dedication and the same love which I have tried to do until now, but in a way more suitable to my age and to my strength."

The phrase "tried to" was the Pope's adlibbed addition to his prepared text.

Benedict has one more public appearance, a Wednesday general audience in St. Peter's Square.

Benedict smiled at the crowd after an aide parted the white curtain at his window, telling the people, "thank you for your affection."

Heavy rain had been forecast for Rome, and some drizzle dampened the square earlier in the morning. But when Benedict appeared, to the peal of church bells as the clock struck noon, blue sky crept through the clouds.

"We thank God for the sun he has given us," the Pope said, sounding cheerful.

As cheers continued in the crowd, the Pontiff simply turned away from the window and stepped back down into apartment, which he will leave on Thursday, taking a helicopter to the Vatican summer residence in the hills outside Rome while he waits for the monastery to be ready.

A child in the crowd held up a sign on a yellow placard, written in Italian, "You are not alone, I'm with you." Other admirers held homemade signs, saying "Grazie."

No date has yet been set for the start of the conclave of cardinals, who will vote in secret to elect Benedict's successor.

One Italian in the crowd seemed to be doing a little campaigning, hoisting a sign which mentioned the name of two Italian cardinals considered by observers to be potential contenders in the selection of the next pontiff.

Flags in the crowd represented many nations, with a large number from Brazil.

The cardinals in the conclave will have to decide whether it's time to look outside of Europe for a Pope.


The last Angelus blessing from Benedict XVI as Pope...
and Georg Gaenswein closes the 'Angelus window'
for the last time in this Pontificate...

Re-posting this item from last year, as what the article brings out - and the remarks it elicited from me about Benedict's Pontificate and the disgraceful way that the Church hierarchy chose to reduce him to a virtual cipher, especially after March 13, 2013 - will always be valid.

*****

I'm glad I checked out this item, because based only on the headline that came up in one of the online Catholic news summaries, I thought it would be about Pope Francis. Instead. it is about Benedict XVI as the true revolutionary, the man who has been portrayed by uninformed and/or negatively predisposed persons in the media and in secular society as the Church's quintessential ultra-reactionary.

And this is one of the few commentaries that does not say he was revolutionary because he made 'the Francis revolution' possible, which is just about the most condescending and dismissive appraisal of his renunciation that has been expressed by too many commentators, and worst, by the Church hierarchy, including supposedly intelligent ones. Some prelates, in their rush to be counted among Pope Francis's most ardent followers, have lost sight of charity, it seems, because they do not realize that their way of praising Pope Francis at the expense of Benedict XVI is most uncharitable and un-Christian, and most possibly, even downright careeristic!

Rome had the right man
to bring forth historic change
by Michael Swan

Sunday, 23 February 2014

Anybody who ever thought the Church never changes must have had another thought crash their party a year ago when Pope Benedict XVI stepped down from the throne of Peter.

The Church does change and Pope Benedict XVI was just the man to change it.

“When we look back on Pope Benedict’s eight-year pontificate, I really think the resignation itself is going to be the most significant thing people remember,” said Robert Dennis, Queen’s University lecturer and president of the Canadian Catholic Historical Association.

[I certainly hope not. It would be a most offensive historical injustice and a great pity. Because how can anyone overlook two signature reforms he undertook that were truly revolutionary in nature? 1) His virtual one-man fight to redress the scourge of sex abuses by priests, by which he reversed the decades-long culture of omerta within the Church on this issue; and 2) His decision to open Vatican finances to the scrutiny of the outside world, with the first Vatican legislation in 2000 years to decree 'financial transparency'? Oh, BTW, these were only by way of administration. What he did to bring God to men, and men to God, and to bring back the basics of the faith to the faithful, are not as easily categorized, much less quantified. But even many of his detractors concede that he was 'a great teaching Pope' (although when John Allen acknowledges this, he makes it appear as if that was 'all' that 'distinguished' Benedict XVI, and which he immediately diminishes by citing "on the other hand, there are his famous gaffes..."]*

By resigning on Feb. 28, 2013, Pope Benedict changed the way people think of the office of the papacy and changed the internal dynamic of papal elections, he said.

“It did bear influence on the conclave itself,” said Dennis. Any attempt to project how long the next pope would remain in office on the basis of his likely lifespan became a non-issue at the conclave that elected Pope Francis.

At previous conclaves, fear of electing someone too young who might remain in office over generations or too old who might not stay long enough to carry out a program was real. Electors may have been looking for “that sort of sweet spot in the mid-to-late 60s, 64 to 67, where you have a little bit of in-between,” said Dennis. Now, cardinal-electors know that there’s no predicting how long the next pope will be there.

“Now everything has changed,” he said. “Not just with the provisions of canon law but the convention of having had a pope resign.” [Strangely, even some in the Francis fanworld, a few months back - I do not recall what triggered it - have openly considered the possibility that PF too may do a Benedict, and even Father Z brought it up fleetingly ('because he may decide to resign when he turns 80...") in connection with the Pope's insistence on renewing his Argentine passport and identity card last week "because I want to travel as an Argentinian" (??? When he travels, he travels as the Pope, i.e., sovereign of a sovereign state, the Vatican. It's hardly the time to go all nationalistic. But it's yet another manifestation of our dear Pope's self-assertiveness. And he's only been Pope for just under a year now - what's with the resignation talk? Very unrealistic and uncalled for!]

The implications for cardinal electors may be less important than the change we’ve seen in how Catholics around the world understand the office of the papacy. The decision to step down refocused attention on the idea of the bishop of Rome as a bishop among the world’s bishops and at the service of the world’s bishops.

“(Benedict) understood the demands of the job. He obviously made this as a very prayerful decision and felt in his own conscience that it was right,” said Dennis.

He was also teaching the world something about how a Christian faces old age and mortality, said Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute executive director Moira McQueen.

“What he did was extremely brave,” said McQueen. “It’s a courage that comes from knowing himself.”

Benedict’s decision to put the interests of the Church and the office of papacy before any conventional notion of tradition [and his own ego, more importantly] was a perfect example of the humility and courage that old age eventually demands of all of us, she said.

“It must take extreme humility,” she said. “To come to the conclusion that it was better for somebody else to take over the reins and for him to retire quietly and to let it be like that — that is actually mind boggling for most of us.”

[Not that it may have necessarily figured in Joseph Ratzinger's decision-making process, but to admit to the limits of your mortality when all your life, you have always been the best at what you do, as he was, that can be truly humbling! It takes an honest and realistic man to accept that at some point, 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak' becomes the literal truth. "If I can no longer the best that I can be for the Church, it's time for me to go, because the Church deserves only the best."]

The end of Benedict’s papacy was the perfect counterpoint to the very public decline and death of Pope John Paul II, said McQueen.

“Both of them strike me as being extremely authentic in terms of having the courage of their convictions,” she said.

Pope John Paul II was certainly aware of how Parkinson’s disease and the ordinary ravages of time had limited him over the years. But he wanted people to see that every stage of life was to be lived and valued.

“He knows that death is there, but his whole focus, his whole trajectory, is from life to life,” said McQueen.

By opening up his mortality to the world, John Paul was teaching the world about the power of the Resurrection.

“In his actual person, he really conveyed in a powerful way what he called living life to the end,” McQueen said. “He doesn’t really talk much about dying. He talks about living life to the end and then moving from life to life. I don’t see how we can fail to draw a lesson from the way that he acted.”

[Benedict XVI, ever the realist, may have thought, "John Paul II gave us a living lesson in the grace of suffering that the world will not forget. He gave us the personal witness of a saint. After the great John Paul II, the world does not need another example of grace in suffering, and certainly not from me. They would only mock me. What fruit could be expected from my going on as Pope, inevitably from one infirmity to another progressively, and what good will that do the Church at a time of deep crisis for the faith?"]

In a different way, as Benedict declared he no longer had the strength to lead, he demonstrated the grace of accepting the natural limits of age. He also prompted us to think about the value of our lives beyond the roles we fill in our younger years.

A utilitarian culture would simply dismiss old people as no longer useful, but Pope Benedict continues to live as a prayerful witness in the world.

“If we think in terms of people being relational, of grandparents and relationships like that, those relationships have always been important and deserve to be valued just for their relational aspects. Usefulness should be secondary for all of us,” said McQueen.


*Let me go on about this serious problem that at the time of the Conclave last year, all the Cardinals were so down on Benedict XVI that when describing what they would be looking for in the next Pope, they sounded as if Benedict XVI possessed not a single one of those virtues at all!

In all the pre-Conclave palaver and melodrama by the princes of the Church, wringing their hands in despair over the supposedly sorry state in which Benedict had left the Church (their only criterion being the supposed 'evil and corruption' in the Curia, about which they sought no substantiation at all), both achievements were completely overlooked and/or deliberately ignored - the sex abuse issue because they truly seemed to take it for granted ("Ho-hum! so he did some housecleaning - well, about time. wasn't it?"); and the financial revolution, which was as uniquely historical as his resignation, because few of them appreciated it for what it was ("Oh, he was just trying to make IOR respectable by getting the European Council's seal of approval" . Though that seal of approval from Moneyval did not stop everyone and his grandmother - and the Italian government - from still treating IOR as if it were the disreputable agency that lost $250 million in assets in 1982 because of an inexplicable high-level decision to partner with questionable Italian bankers.]

Imagine if Benedict XVI had not dealt with the sex abuse 'scandal' as decisively and as sweepingly as he did, he would have been consigned to the worst circle of Hell by all those red-robed men who had sworn him loyalty to the death if need be. And if he had not started the ball rolling on financial transparency, they would have portrayed him as a partner of Satan himself "for allowing corruption to fester in the heart of the Church"! As it is, the worst they could say of him was that he did nothing about 'an evil and corrupt Curia', that in fact, he did nothing worth recalling in eight years as Pope. Nothing, at least, that any of them wished to recall.

But forget the silly but outrageous rhetoric they might have expended. Imagine if Pope Francis had to address the priest abuse issue and the financial transparency issue from scratch! Those would have been truly enormous challenges, beside which tinkering about with the structure of the Curia seems more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic [not that the Church is about to sink, but that is how the eminent cardinals made it appear last March!]