BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI



Please see preceding page for earlier posts today, 3/29/15.




My 'chronologic' lookback today is to the penitential liturgy which Benedict XVI led for 15,000 young people of Rome on March 29, 2007, picking up the posts I made at the time in the PAPA RATZINGER FORUM... Benedict XVI's homily on the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the full message....

Benedict XVI leads a penitential liturgy
for the young people of the Diocese of Rome
March 29, 2007



The following is a composite from ZENIT and APCOM reports (translated).

Fifteen thousand young people from the Diocese of Rome turned up today for the Penitential Liturgy to which the Pope had invited them. Half of them had to be accommodated in the Aula Paolo VI, in addition to St. Peter's Basilica.

"There are so many of you the Basilica of St. Peter's cannot hold all of you," a smiling Pope Benedict XVI greeted those who were in the audience hall.

"I thank you for the sacrifice you are making in being here instead of with your friends inside the Basilica," he added.

"But we will be in communion in prayer and through the video link, but above all, thanks to the many priests who will be administering the sacrament of confession, you will all be having the same experience of encountering the mercy of God."

The Pope then proceeded to the Basilica where he celebrated Mass. But the culmination of the day was when he took off his purple chasuble, put on his eyeglasses, and like an ordinary priest, entered one of the wooden confessional boxes in the Basilica to hear confessions from at least six of the young people present.



The penitential vigil was called by the Pope to prepare for the XXII World Youth Day which will take place on the diocesan level on Palm Sunday, April 1. In the past, the pre-WYD event was a song-and-dance celebration held in St. Peter's Square.

More than 200 priests, wearing the violet stole for Lent, heard confessions in the Basilica after the Mass. Some sat in simple chairs because there are not that many confessional booths.

While the confessions took place, the choir and orchestra of the Diocese of Rome performed meditative music for Lent alternating with spiritual readings, including the message of the Pope for this World Youth Day.

Earlier, the Pope described the penitential liturgy as "an encounter around the Cross, a celebration of the mercy of God whom each of you can experience personally through the sacrament of confession."

"God's love for man," the Pope said in his homily, "is best described by the word agape - which is sacrificial love, which seeks only the good of the other."

But it can also be described as eros, he continued, citing his Lenten message. "The heart of God, the omnipotent, waits for the Yes from his creatures as a young husband awaits his wife's yes."

And on this subject, he aded, "Christianity has never rejected eros as such, but only its destructive misuse."

In the heart of every man, "there is a thirst for love," the Pope said in his homily. "Even more so, the Christian cannot live without love - rather, unless he meets true love in Christ, he cannot even call himself Christian."

"Christ draws us to Him to unite with each of us so that, in turn, we can learn to love our brothers the way He loves them."

"There is such need," he said, "for a renewed ability to love our brothers."

The Pope then went on to the subject of Confession, reminding the faithful that the 'new life' which begins with baptism does not suppress human nature nor the tendency to sin. But from the forgiveness of sins, he said, a new impulse for love is born.

The Pope expressed the hope that "the love and he mercy of God may move your hearts." In confession, he said, "you will experience the forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with the Church, the recovery - if you have lost it - of a state of grace."

"Coming out of this celebration," he told them, "with your hearts filled with the experience of God's love, be prepared to dare to love in your families, in your relationship with friends and even with those who have offended you."

Addressing himself to engaged couples, he said, "Live your engagement in true love, which means reciprocal respect that is chaste and responsible."

And to those who may have a vocation, he said, "If the Lord calls any of you to a life of particular consecration, be ready to respond with a generous Yes that allows no compromise."

On Sunday, April 1, the Pope will lead the procession and blessing of palms and olive branches on St. Peter's Square, followed by the celebration of Holy Mass.

---

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
PENITENTIAL LITURGY WITH THE YOUTH
OF THE DIOCESE OF ROME
IN PREPARATION FOR THE 22nd WORLD YOUTH DAY
St Peter's Basilica
Thursday, 29 March 2007

Dear Friends,

We are meeting this evening just before the 22nd World Youth Day whose theme, as you know, is the new commandment that Jesus bequeathed to us on the night he was betrayed: "Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another" (Jn 13: 34).

I cordially greet all of you who have come from the various Roman parishes. I greet the Cardinal Vicar, the Auxiliary Bishops and the priests present here, with a special thought for the confessors who will be available to you shortly.

Today's event, as your spokesperson, whom I thank for her greeting at the beginning of this celebration, has already announced, has a profound and lofty significance. It is in fact a meeting around the Cross, a celebration of the mercy of God which each one of you will be able to experience personally in the Sacrament of Confession.

In the heart of every man, begging for love, there is a thirst for love. My beloved Predecessor, the Servant of God John Paul II, wrote formerly in his first Encyclical Redemptor Hominis: "Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it" (n. 10).

Even more so, the Christian cannot live without love. Indeed, if he does not encounter true love he cannot even claim to be fully Christian because, as I pointed out in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est, "being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (n. 1).

God's love for us, which began with creation, became visible in the mystery of the Cross, in that kenosis of God, in that self-emptying, that abasement of the Son of God which we heard proclaimed by the Apostle Paul in the First Reading, in the magnificent hymn to Christ in the Letter to the Philippians.

Yes, the Cross reveals the fullness of God's love for us. It is a crucified love which does not stop at the scandal of Good Friday but culminates in the joy of the Resurrection and the Ascension into Heaven and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, a Spirit of love through which, this evening too, sins will be forgiven and pardon and peace granted.

God's love for man which is expressed in its fullness on the Cross can be described with the term agape, that is, "the self-giving love of one who looks exclusively for the good of the other", but also with the term eros.

In fact, while it is love that offers man all that God is, as I observed in the Message for this Lent, it is also a love where "God's very Heart, the Almighty, awaits the "yes' of his creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride". Unfortunately, "from its very origins, mankind, seduced by the lies of the Evil One, rejected God's love in the illusion of a self-sufficiency that is impossible (cf. Gn 3: 1-7)" (ibid.).

However, in the sacrifice of the Cross, God continues to present his love, his passion for man, that force which, as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it, "does not allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the beloved" (De Divinis Nominibus, IV, 13; PG 3, 712; Message for Lent 2007, L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 21 February 2007, pp. 6, 7), coming to "beg" for his creature's love.

This evening, in receiving the Sacrament of Confession, you will be able to experience the "gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 1999), so that, united to Christ, we may become new creatures (cf. II Cor 5: 17-18).

Dear Young People of the Diocese of Rome, with Baptism you are already born to new life in virtue of God's grace. Nonetheless, since this new life has not eliminated either the weakness of human nature or the inclination to sin, we are given the opportunity to receive the Sacrament of Confession.

Every time that you do so with faith and devotion, after an attentive examination of conscience, God's love and mercy open your heart to Christ's minister. To him, and thereby to Christ himself, you express your sorrow for the sins you have committed with the firm determination to sin no more in the future and the readiness to accept joyfully the acts of penance to which he will direct you, to make reparation for the damage caused by the sin.

Thus, you will experience "the forgiveness of sins; reconciliation with the Church; recovery, if it has been lost, of the state of grace; remission of the eternal punishment merited by mortal sins, and remission, at least in part, of the temporal punishment which is the consequence of sin; peace, serenity of conscience and spiritual consolation; and an increase of spiritual strength for the struggle of Christian living" for every day (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 310).

With the penitential cleansing of this Sacrament, we are readmitted to full communion with God and the Church, a trustworthy companion because she is the "universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium, n. 48). In the second part of his new commandment, the Lord says: "you also love one another" (Jn 13: 34).

Of course, he waits for us to let ourselves be attracted by his love and to experience all its grandeur and beauty, but that is not enough! Christ draws us to him to unite himself with each one of us so that, in our turn, we may learn to love our brothers and sisters with this same love, as he has loved us.

Today, as always, a renewed ability to love our brethren is very necessary. As you leave this celebration, your hearts filled with the experience of God's love, be prepared "to dare" to love in your families, in your relationships with your friends and also with those who have offended you.

Be prepared to make an impact with an authentically Christian witness in the contexts of study and work, to be committed to the parish community, to groups, movements, associations and every social milieu.

Young engaged couples, live your engagement in true love which always entails reciprocal, chaste and responsible respect.

If the Lord calls some of you, dear young people of Rome, to a life of special consecration, be prepared to respond with a generous "yes" without compromise.

In giving yourselves to God and to your brothers and sisters, you will experience the joy that does not withdraw into itself into an all too often asphyxiating selfishness.

However, all this certainly comes at a price, that price which Christ paid first and which every one of his disciples must also pay, although at a far cheaper price than the one paid by the Teacher. It is the price of sacrifice and self-denial, of faithfulness and perseverance, without which there is not and cannot be true love, which is entirely free and a source of joy.

Dear young men and women, the world is waiting for your contribution to building the "civilization of love". "The horizon of love is truly boundless: it is the whole world!" (Message for the 22nd World Youth Day).

The priests who look after you and your teachers are certain that with the grace of God and the constant help of his divine mercy you will be at the height of the demanding task that the Lord is asking of you.

Do not lose heart and always trust in Christ and his Church! The Pope is close to you and assures you of his daily remembrance in prayer, entrusting you in particular to the Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, so that she may accompany and sustain you always. Amen!

---

The CNS report had other details of the unprecedented service:

Pope tells young people that penance
is the sacrament of God's mercy and love
By Cindy Wooden




VATICAN CITY, March 29, 2007 (CNS) -- The sacrament of penance is the sacrament of God's mercy and an outpouring of God's healing love, Pope Benedict XVI told young people from Rome.

"With this sacrament's penitential cleansing, we are readmitted into full communion with God and with the church," the pope told the young people attending a March 29 penance service.

The evening prayer service was held in a packed St. Peter's Basilica where Pope Benedict and some 200 priests heard individual confessions and offered absolution.

So many young people requested the free tickets to the liturgy that hundreds of them had to watch on television screens in the Vatican audience hall; they were joined by dozens of priests who ensured they, too, had an opportunity to receive the sacrament.

In his homily, Pope Benedict said the service was "an encounter around the cross, a celebration of the mercy of God, which each of you can experience personally in the sacrament of confession."

"Yes, the cross reveals the fullness of God's love for us, a crucified love that does not end with the scandal of Good Friday, but culminates in the joy of the Resurrection and Ascension into heaven and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spirit of love through whom, including this evening, sins will be forgiven and pardon and peace will be given," he said.

After the communal prayers, Pope Benedict removed his heavy purple cope and, dressed in an alb with a purple stole, went into a confessional where he spent 35 minutes offering the sacrament to penitents behind a screen.

In addition to the pope's homily, the young people were led in their examination of conscience with "requests for forgiveness" based on the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy and pride.

Seven young people took turns reading the prayer while seven of their peers lighted candles at the foot of a crucifix.

Sins connected with lust, the prayer said, "make us slaves of sex," place "individuals, families and society at risk," and fuel prostitution and pedophilia.

It included a plea for forgiveness for watching pornography on video or over the Internet and for believing that "every instinct must find immediate satisfaction."

"Help us to keep our hearts and minds chaste and not to have sexual relations before or outside of matrimony (and) to avoid perversion and the bizarre," it said.

"Teach us modesty and dignity in the way we dress, watch over our gazes and fantasies," it said.

Turning to gluttony, the prayer asked pardon not just for overeating, but also for smoking and for alcohol and drug abuse -- "dependencies that make us slaves."

The prayer asked God's help in practicing abstinence to "detoxify the body and the mind. Help us discover the healthy pleasure of life."

In asking forgiveness for greed, the prayer included a request for pardon for working on Sundays, for being dishonest and for not giving to charity.

"Forgive the terrible consequences of an obsession with money: family fights, anxiety and false fears, betrayal, fraud, cheating, lying, violence and hardness of heart," it said.

"Forgive the injustices of society, the dramatic inequalities between rich and poor countries, the wars, the inhuman exploitation and the confusion of consciences produced by a system of accumulation and consumption that does everything to excite the longing to possess," the prayer said.

In reflecting on sloth and laziness, the prayer asked forgiveness for dependency on "stimuli and exterior pleasures" and for the times when boredom leads to distraction during prayer.

"Forgive us when sloth generates disgust and boredom for every healthy and spiritual activity," it continued.

The prayer of pardon for envy also asked forgiveness for the selfishness that prevents the people from loving others and wanting only the best for them, and for the times "we call envy 'healthy competitiveness.'"

The reflection on wrath also asked forgiveness for anger, animosity, aggressiveness, the desire for vengeance, "the temptation to make those who humiliate us pay" and sharp, cutting remarks made about others.

Asking forgiveness for pride, the prayer also asked God's pardon for times when participants acted only to win praise and approval, for seeking power and fame or for showing off their physical beauty or talents "given to us by God."

Then, as a sign of the call for mercy, another seven lighted a lamp near the Cross, in this particular case the Crucifix of the Sistine Chapel, which was brought in for the occasion. Individual confessions followed, performed in addition to the Pope by 200 priests from the Pontifical basilicas and the diocese.



In hindsight, I really appreciate the fact that Benedict XVI did not make a show of going to confession himself at the liturgy, not making the event about himself!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 30/03/2015 04:18]

The odious David Gibson, whose prose and ideas I find reprehensible, has written an article for Religion News Service about Cardinal Burke
www.religionnews.com/2015/03/27/cardinal-raymond-burke-gay-remarried-couples-like-mu...
that one commentator has characterized as 'a new low' in the adversary reporting on the cardinal. A Catholic Post commentator denounces Gibson's fallacious and malicious characterization evidently meant to demonize Burke as the liberal media have been doing...



'Distorted, snarky' article on Cardinal Burke
typifies stereotype against those who dissent
from 'the spirit of the times'
by Mark D. Tooley
President, Institute on Religion and Democr

March 28, 2015

Lifesite News has a nearly 5,000 word interview with a traditionalist Cardinal about Catholic controversies and doctrine, which a Religion News Service headline remarkably distilled down to "Cardinal Raymond Burke: Gays, remarried Catholics, murderers are all the same."

This characterization of Burke's supposed view was quickly echoed in Huffington Post and the liberal Twittersphere.

Here's the actual Lifesite News interview text on which the RNS headline is based:

---

LSN: Among the viewpoints of Cardinal Kasper and, more recently, Bishop Bonny of Antwerp, and others, was the consideration that "faithful" homosexuals, "remarried" divorcees and non-married couples show qualities of self-sacrifice, generosity and dedication that cannot be ignored. But through their choice of lifestyle, they are in what must be seen by outsiders as an objective state of mortal sin: a chosen and prolonged state of mortal sin. Could you remind us of the Church's teaching on the value and merit of prayer and good actions in this state?

CB: If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn't any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin. We believe that God created everyone good, and that God wants the salvation of all men, but that can only come about by conversion of life. And so we have to call people who are living in these gravely sinful situations to conversion. And to give the impression that somehow there's something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the Church has always and everywhere taught.

LSN: So when the man in the street says, yes, it's true these people are kind, they are dedicated, they are generous, that is not enough?

CB: Of course it's not. It's like the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people…

---

Judge for yourself whether the RNS headline is justified. My own view is that the characterization is distorting and snarky of a sort that is common towards religious traditionalists.

Cardinal Burke and kindred spirits, whether Protestant or Catholic, are stereotyped and lampooned as buffoonish reactionaries who dare to dissent from the spirit of the age.

As a theologian, if asked, doubtless Burke would articulately explain that murder as a sin is of a different order than sexual immorality, although both are grave. He obviously cited murder as an example only for the sake of stark clarity: Should the Church be permissive towards a murderer just because he is nice?

The RNS story reports that Catholicism teaches that "sin is sin," which is true for all orthodox Christianity, which warns that all sin, even if minor by earthly standards, still separates humanity from God's perfection and holiness. Hence all stand in equal need of divine forgiveness and grace.

Christianity is the most democratic, egalitarian, humbling force in the world because it teaches that all are equally sinful, unworthy, and needing divine forgiveness. No one really easily takes to this message because everyone in their pride prefers belief in their own superiority. At least we are not as bad as others!

In our own secular, relativistic age, moral and spiritual superiority are established by having politically correct views on issues like the environment, with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, hardly a proponent of moral absolutes, recently denouncing climate change skepticism as sinful.

Superiority is also achieved by contempt and mockery for cultural dissidents, like Cardinal Burke, who adhere to a transcendent authority beyond The New York Times editorial page or the latest chatter on "The View."

Religious traditionalists like Burke at least offer a plan to all for redemption, even for murderers. Secularized political correctness offers no such hope, instead just demanding accelerated dogmatism, intolerance for any challenge, increased activism, and substituting smug ridicule for reasoned argument.

In the long term, transcendence and hope prevail over transitory cultural fads. But advocates for the former need patience, courage and constancy in every age.

Here's a more hard-hitting reaction from a secular blogger...

Dumbing Down Cardinal Burke
by NICHOLAS FRANKOVICH

March 29, 2015

I appreciate a punchy headline as much as the next reader, but whoever wrote this one was trying too hard: “Cardinal Burke: Gays, remarried Catholics, and murderers are all the same.” It’s childish and not just overstated but false. It announces an article by David Gibson and was used verbatim by several outlets, suggesting that it originated with the Religion News Service (RNS), the agency that distributed the piece.

Gibson writes about the interview that Cardinal Raymond Burke gave to Jeanne Smits, the Paris correspondent of LifeSiteNews.com. The published text is 4,800 words. The headline that LifeSiteNews gave it is “Cardinal Burke says confusion spreading among Catholics ‘in an alarming way.’” RNS has spread a little more.

Let’s look at the primary source, the interview itself. Smits at one point asked Burke about the argument that Catholic teaching on homosexuality and the indissolubility of marriage should be discounted in light of the obvious kindness, generosity, and other virtues of many people who violate the Church’s understanding of the moral law:

---

LSN: Among the viewpoints of Cardinal Kasper and, more recently, Bishop Bonny of Antwerp, and others, was the consideration that “faithful” homosexuals, “remarried” divorcees and non-married couples show qualities of self-sacrifice, generosity and dedication that cannot be ignored. But through their choice of lifestyle, they are in what must be seen by outsiders as an objective state of mortal sin: a chosen and prolonged state of mortal sin. Could you remind us of the Church’s teaching on the value and merit of prayer and good actions in this state?
CB: If you are living publicly in a state of mortal sin there isn’t any good act that you can perform that justifies that situation: the person remains in grave sin. We believe that God created everyone good, and that God wants the salvation of all men, but that can only come about by conversion of life. And so we have to call people who are living in these gravely sinful situations to conversion. And to give the impression that somehow there’s something good about living in a state of grave sin is simply contrary to what the Church has always and everywhere taught.

LSN: So when the man in the street says, yes, it’s true these people are kind, they are dedicated, they are generous, that is not enough? CB: Of course it’s not. It’s like the person who murders someone and yet is kind to other people . . . . . . like the oddly sympathetic character of Don Corleone, I immediately thought. But I hear the howls of protest already, so let me suggest another analogy. Let’s say you work for Planned Parenthood and do so with great moral conviction. And let’s say I work for the pro-life movement. I recognize that you’re warm and well intentioned, but that doesn’t change my view that your work has the effect of promoting injustice. You’re wrong. You’re nice. Those two facts coexist. Distinguishing between sinner and sin is usually easy: The sin doesn’t define the sinner, and neither does the sinner define the sin. The David who committed adultery with Bathsheba was still, after all, David the apple of God’s eye. But the adultery he committed was still adultery.

---

Our ability to think both thoughts simultaneously may be waning, although some people only pretend that they don’t understand. Their aim is to dumb down the conversation to the point that thinking has no place in it anymore.

If their opponent has won the debate intellectually, what can they do? Ignore his ideas, deplore ideas generally (oh, those “doctors of the law,” those “Pharisees”!), and push sentiments (cheap “mercy,” the Catholic version of cheap grace) that they hope will appeal to the soft-headed child in us all.

Burke’s very point was to stress the importance of maintaining the sinner–sin distinction. The headline writer blurred it and ascribed the blurring to Burke. No one even remotely familiar with Catholic culture would find credible the assertion that a cardinal said that “gays, remarried Catholics, and murderers are all the same,” and no one with reading comprehension above the Mendoza line would see in the interview any evidence that Burke said it.

He said that any virtues possessed by the person who violates moral laws pertaining to sex and marriage no more justify the violation of those laws than the virtues of a murderer justify the murder. It’s hardly click bait, but it’s what he said.

Those who, on the left and on the right, are accused of misrepresenting Pope Francis in the media might be doing so knowingly in many cases, but representing him in a way that is indisputably fair is hard because his words are so often ambiguous.

Burke is a straight shooter, by contrast. His thought and speech are linear — and, to the minds of many, compelling. If his adversaries in the media were confident that we would think his message was outrageous if we only knew what it was, they would be content to quote him accurately.

Three words omitted from the Collect
of the Novus Ordo today exemplify
the cavalier attitude of the liturgical reformers

March 30, 2015

"Da quaesumus, omnipotens Deus: ut, qui in tot adversis ex nostra infirmitate deficimus; intercedente unigeniti Filii tui passione respiremus".

Thus today's ancient Collect: "Grant, we beg, almighty God: that we, who, among so many adversities, faint on account of our weakness, may through the mediation of thy Son's passion, get our breath back".

How extraordinarily up-to-the-moment those ancient prayers are.

The Church is at this very minute under a great Satanic onslaught: she is still reeling from the wounds inflicted by the monstrous evil of pedophilia: men privileged to take the Lord into their own hands morning by morning so as to offer the immaculate oblation with the purest of hearts became ... filth. [The word Cardinal Ratzinger used in his memorable Via Crucis meditations and prayers for Good Friday 2005.]

Demonic cunning is putting the Church's doctrine of Marriage is under attack in some of the highest quarters of the Church. Sexual perversion is Proudly paraded before us, and woe-betide any who dissent. And, outside the gates, Christians are hounded to Martyrdom by a foul and murderous superstition. 'Among so many adversities' puts it mildly.

The new Rite retains this Collect. But it misses out the words in tot adversis [among so many adversities]. In the breezy and optimistic confidence of the post-conciliar years, we felt that as the Church made herself up-to-date, threw open her windows to the world, and blew her cobwebs away, old liturgical phraseology about her being besieged by afflictions was not particularly ben trovato (found acceptable).

Oh dear. How the chickens so carefully nurtured by the fashionable liturgists of the 1960s really are coming home to roost! One recalls the Lord's words about the yet greater demonic infestation which can occupy the swept and garnished house. [Despite any and all structural and cosmetic reforms which do little to convert the hearts and minds of the men of the Church who must carry out these reforms!]

And a spot-on commentary from a blogger on the Palm Sunday gospel on the Passion of Christ, with special attention to the narrative on Judas and his criticism of the woman who poured costly perfumed oil to anoint the head of Jesus...A most relevant reminder of the message of Jesus Christ which was not limited to Matthew 25 as our most erudite Pope has it.


JUDAS AND THE PREFERENTIAL
OPTION FOR THE POOR
by StumblingBlock
March 30, 2015

The Palm Sunday Gospel, the story of Jesus’s Passion, begins with the a clear example of the difference between the true Church and the 'thing' that lurks around today.

---

When he was in Bethany reclining at table
in the house of Simon the leper,
a woman came with an alabaster jar of perfumed oil,
costly genuine spikenard.
She broke the alabaster jar and poured it on his head.
There were some who were indignant.
“Why has there been this waste of perfumed oil?
It could have been sold for more than three hundred days’ wages
and the money given to the poor.”
They were infuriated with her.
Jesus said, “Let her alone.
Why do you make trouble for her?
She has done a good thing for me.
The poor you will always have with you,
and whenever you wish you can do good to them,
but you will not always have me.
She has done what she could.
She has anticipated anointing my body for burial.
Amen, I say to you,
wherever the gospel is proclaimed to the whole world,
what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

---

Although this passage doesn’t mention Judas's name, the other Gospels indicate is was Judas Iscariot who protested that the perfume should have been sold off and given to the poor.

Judas was jealous. He was embarrassed by the woman and he thought this an ostentatious show. He was materialistic and openly challenged Jesus to make a ‘preferential option for the poor.’

The woman was focused on Jesus, on his life, his body, and, as Our Lord says, His burial. She was worshiping Him for His own sake and sparing no expense to do it.

Is this woman not like those who love the Holy Mass said in beautiful churches, where we honor God in the way He wants, being present before His sacrifice?

And is Judas not like those who want to make the Mass ‘for the people’- stripped down, profane, and vulgarized, in ugly utilitarian buildings? Such Christians would also replace loving doctrinal obedience to God with simple ‘service’ to others.

Finally, like Judas, those who make the Faith into ‘a Church of the poor and for the poor’ where ‘the poor are the center of the Gospel,’ always seem to be the ones who want to control other people’s money, to enable the state [to exercise wide-ranging powers over its citizens], and participate in their ‘service’ programs. They attack profit and ownership, calling it oppression.

Judas held the money, so he felt bold enough to tell even Christ what to do with possessions. Judas also stole from the purse just as governments steal through high taxes, unjust regulations, debt, and inflation; all in the name of ‘the poor’ and service.

In the next passage of the Passion Gospel, Judas moves to betray Jesus. Is this not perhaps how our Church is betrayed from within in our day – by materialists and thieves?

In His time Our Lord would not allow the woman's worship to be denied. Who defends her today in His name?

More to the point, I don't think this is a Gospel narrative that our most beloved 'Pope of the poor' of a 'poor church for the poor' - who tells us that the Gospel is a 'Gospel for the poor' who are 'the center of the Gospel' - will ever ever refer to in public! In which Jesus himself contradicts the entire kernel of Bergoglian preaching...

Sorry for the delay in posting this item, which appears to answer why the Vatican (i.e., the Pope) did not bother to react to criticisms of the Pope's appointment of a bishop who has questionable links to a notorious sex-abuse scandal in Chile...

Nuncio to Chile and a Chilean archbishop say
Pope was 'confident' in naming controversial prelate
who has been consecrated Bishop of Osorno

Concepcion, Chile, Mar 27, 2015 (CNA/EWTN News).- Both the Archbishop of Concepcion and the apostolic nuncio to Chile have maintained that Pope Francis understood all the facts in the case when he made a bishop appointment in the country earlier this year which has met with protests.

The Chilean Archbishop Fernando Chomali Garib of Concepcion said Thursday that Pope Francis “told me he had analyzed all the past records and that there was no objective reason at all” that Bishop Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid “should not be installed as the diocesan bishop.”

In an interview with the Chilean newspaper El Sur published March 26, the Archbishop of Concepcion disclosed the details of a meeting he had with Pope Francis March 6, shortly before Bishop Barros was to be installed as head of the Diocese of Osorno.

Bishop Barros's installation on March 15 was marred by a group of protesters who are accusing him of having covered up sexual abuses committed by Father Fernando Karadima, a charge Barros has denied numerous times. Bishop Barros's vocation was fostered by Fr. Karadima, and he was among his closest friends decades ago.

Archbishop Chomali explained that he gave Pope Francis a “document with detailed information on the consequences of the appointment he had made. All the documentation that I cited came to him, whether through the nunciature or the Chilean embassy to the Holy See. He was very much up to date on Bishop Barros’s situation, and in fact a few days prior he had spoken with him.”

“With firmness and much conviction he told me that he had analyzed all the past records and that there was no objective reason that Bishop Barros should not be installed as diocesan bishop,” Archbishop Chomali explained.

Concerning the violent incidents inside the cathedral the day of the installation Mass, Archbishop Chomali said, “we never even imagined that. It was absolutely surprising. It had a deep impact on us.”

“It is certainly a sad episode … clearly those who profaned the church and the Mass and attacked are not Catholics.” In fact, only 52 percent of the population of the Diocese of Osorno is Catholic, making it one of Chile's least-Catholic regions.

The violence at the Mass, the archbishop said, “is a symptom more of the level of violence that there is in the country, and it demonstrates that we are far from an authentic democracy and mutual respect.”

Reflecting on the larger context of the case of Fr. Karadima, Archbishop Chomali said it “profoundly affected individuals and society. What happened is a wake up call for the whole Church concerning the consequences of abuse, which lasts for years and inflict wounds that need to be healed.”

The judge in Fr. Karadima's civil case dismissed the abuse charges, as they were from too far in the past. Nevertheless, in February 2011, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith completed its own investigation and declared 84-year-old Fr. Karadima guilty. He was sent to a life of solitude and prayer.

Archbishop Chomali explained that he had a telephone conversation with Juan Carlos Cruz, one of Karadima's victims [who has claimed that Barros was present on a few occasions when Karadima's molestations took place], and that he will meet with him soon. “What’s most important is that once and for all Karadima ask the victims for forgiveness and wishes to repair the evil he caused before he dies,” the archbishop said.

The prelate then asked those who have opposed Bishop Barros’s appointment to “give him an opportunity, that they can get to know one another and that they help him in his pastoral ministry. Bishop Barros has hope in the future.”

In an interview with La Tercera newspaper the same day Archbishop Chomali made his comments, the Apostolic Nuncio to Chile, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, stated, “everything that was said in the letter that the congressional representatives delivered to the nunciature was given to the Holy Father. Everything was passed on to him. Nothing was hidden from the Holy See.”

Regarding the violence at the installation ceremony, Archbishop Scapolo said, “the great majority of those who were in the church had white balloons (while the protesters had black balloons). They were people who love their bishop.”


You can tell the Barros appointment is a cause for worry to some in the Francis fanworld when John Allen goes out of his way to issue an alarm despite the explanations offered above...

Pope Francis may be nearing
a tipping point on sexual abuse
By John L. Allen Jr.
Associate editor

March 27, 2015

Staffers in the Vatican paid to think about such things sometimes sit around trying to identify possible tipping points in the public romance with Pope Francis, meaning a calamity that might put a serious dent in his high approval ratings. [Allen does not seem to realize that his lead paragraph makes it appear that PR and high approval ratings are all that matter to the Vatican. What about tipping points in terms of the Pope's implicit and overt heterodoxies, and his hardly veiled intentions to 'tamper' somehow with the deposit of faith?

One no-brainer on the list would be a perception that he’s backtracking on “zero tolerance” when it comes to sexual abuse in the Church, and two recent story lines suggest it’s not an abstract worry.

First, Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reported on Thursday that five members of the pope’s own anti-abuse commission have expressed “concern and incredulity” that Bishop Juan Barros has been given command of the Diocese of Osorno in Chile, despite his public record of defending the country’s most notorious abuser priest.

Those objections came on top of protests that forced Barros’s installation Mass to be cut short, as well as ongoing efforts by clergy and laity to ask Francis to rethink the appointment.

Second, an Argentine woman named Julieta Añazco, who alleges abuse by a priest in the La Plata archdiocese more than 30 years ago, recently said that she sent a letter to Francis asking for his help, but has not received a response.

Añazco, who says she repressed memories of the abuse until recently, has told reporters that she has tried to meet Church officials back home but got the impression they’re not interested. (Church officials claim they tried to schedule a sit-down three times, without success.)

In a recent statement, Añazco asserts that “zero tolerance” doesn’t apply in Argentina.

Of the two developments, the second seems less serious in terms of raising questions about the pope. The abuse did not take place in Buenos Aires, the archdiocese Francis led prior to his election, so there’s no question of his role in supervising the priest.

Further, Añazco says she dropped her letter in a mailbox in St. Peter’s Square, so it’s not even clear if it reached the pope. It would be a relatively simple matter for Francis to ask someone to hear her out, though since she’s communicating through attorneys, it might require a bit of back-and-forth.

The Barros case, on the other hand, appears graver.

In the first place, it raises questions about the vetting process for bishops. How is it that Italian Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, the pope’s ambassador in Chile, didn’t see this coming and spare everyone the embarrassment?

In an interview with a Chilean news outlet on Thursday, Scapolo insisted that he didn’t hide anything from the Vatican in preparing the appointment. He said Francis confirmed it, and claimed that calls for Barros to be ridden out of town on a rail violate religious freedom.

All that may well be the case, but it still doesn’t explain why a clean record on the abuse scandals isn’t an absolute prerequisite for a leadership position in the Catholic Church in 2015. (Barros was already a bishop, so the move to Osorno was a transfer.)

In addition, the situation also raises questions about the oft-proclaimed commitment of Pope Francis and his Vatican team to accountability, not just for personnel who commit abuse, but also for bishops and other supervisors who cover it up or defend the guilty.

A perceived lack of accountability is “Exhibit A” for critics who believe the Church hasn’t done enough, and both Pope Francis and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley of Boston, the president of the pope’s anti-abuse commission, have pledged that the gap will be filled.

In this case, Barros has said he never knew of abuse committed by his mentor, the Rev. Fernando Karadima, and that when the Vatican found Karadima guilty in 2011, he accepted the verdict. Some victims, however, claim that Barros was present when some of the abuses occurred.

The bishop’s defense obviously should be part of a serious inquest, but the question remains of why Francis would assign Barros a new position before doubts have been laid to rest.

Finally, the Barros situation is worrying for Francis because members of his own anti-abuse commission have broken ranks, including the two abuse survivors on the panel: Marie Collins of Ireland and Peter Saunders of the United Kingdom.

It’s not clear if Francis fully grasped this at the time, but when he named survivors to that group, he was handing them significant control over his reputation. If Collins and Saunders were ever to walk out, saying they’d lost confidence or feeling that they’d been exploited for a PR exercise, it would have a vast media echo.

No member hinted at such a step in their comments to the AP. Collins, however, was sharply critical: “The voice of the survivors is being ignored,” she said, “the concerns of the people and many clergy in Chile are being ignored and the safety of children in this diocese is being left in the hands of a bishop about whom there are grave concerns for his commitment to child protection.”

Left unaddressed, it’s not difficult to imagine a scenario in which her frustration mounts to a point where she feels she has no choice but to quit.

Of course, popes can’t make decisions merely on the basis of public opinion, and in any event, when it comes to fighting sexual abuse, it shouldn’t require a poll to discern the right thing. Yet popes can’t afford to ignore popular sentiment either, and this may be a time when Francis needs to send a signal that he’s listening.

It's not about public opinion per se, but of the public perception that Barros's past behavior may have been questionable. Especially in a pontificate that has been portrayed as simonpure and lilywhite as none before has been, the very perception of a bishop's possible involvement in a sex abuse case should have been enough to temporarily stop the nomination pending a full investigation. Apparently, no such investigation has been made, just anecdotal reports.

This is very reminiscent of the case of Mons. Battista Ricca, whom Francis appointed prelate to the IOR despite documented evidence of some of his openly homosexual conduct and lifestyle while in the Vatican diplomatic service. The Pope personally told reporters that he had looked into the reports and had found no reason to revoke Ricca's nomination. Significantly, no one in the Catholic media (much less, in MSM) bothered to look into Ricca's record other than Sandro Magister whose reporting on Ricca, for all of Magister's reputation, was called 'unreliable'by Fr. Lombardi himself and therefore dismissed out of hand.

It might have been helpful if, in the immediate uproar that followed the announcement of Barros's nomination, the Vatican itself had issued a report saying what the Nuncio and Mons. Chomali now say about what the Pope was told, and that the Pope was not just satisfied but 'confident' he made the right appointment.

Pending a formal investigation of the accusation made by three of Karadima's victims against Barros, the latter remains under a cloud of suspicion that the statement of confidence attributed by Chomali and Scapolo to the Pope does nothing to lift.


Since the two articles above have to do with some criticism of Pope Francis, I shall add on the following item cited by Beatrice on her website. Of course, the Pope's apparent strategy for getting the second family synod behind his 'communion for everyone' initiative - a more general and frightening objective than just pastoral mercy for persons living in a chronic state of sin - has been none too subtle, because his chosen lieutenants wield sledgehammers to make their point (and his). But this French commentator articulates it anyway and offers his thoughts...


The Bergoglian strategy?
by Denis Crouan
Translated from
ASSOCIATION PRO LITURGIA
March 29, 2015

The objectives and the strategy of Pope Francis have now become more and more clear.

He intends to allow communion for remarried divorcees [who have not had their Church marriage(s) annulled. Which would mean saying that the idea of sin - and consequently, of sacramental forgiveness – is merely relative.

One also gathers, from some of his statements, that he would not object to marriage for priests.

But he knows that he himself cannot lead the Church to accept such changes which would lead, sooner or later, to changing Catholic doctrine. ][Which not even he can do.]

So he keeps mum. He does not say anything [about the controversial issues]. Or, if he speaks, it is to reaffirm the Church’s traditional teaching. [He may be trying not to say anything, but he has already said more than enough in his informal statements, as well as in his morning homilettes in which he uses Gospel citations to denounce those who would insist on citing Church doctrine about these issues and on pastoral discipline that does not exempt anyone from being accountable for living in a chronic state of sin. More importantly, his ‘communion for everyone’ example when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires is far and away the best indication of his personal position on pastoral and sacramental leniency for 'chronic sinners' against the sacrament of matrimony and Catholic teaching on chastity and sexuality.]

But though he may prudently say nothing [i.e., appears to be noncommittal one way or the other], he allows the cardinals he has chosen to be his closest associates to speak out – cardinals whose ideas are hazardous for the doctrine. These cardinals are now being echoed by a number of bishops. So the Pope has achieved one goal.

What will happen now? Francis will not say anything that could contradict doctrine. But he will continue to let his collaborators speak in his place and suggest new Church practices in the name of being ‘pastoral’.

Then he will ask priests and bishops to ‘contextualize’, or decide about these problems case by case without having to worry about doctrine. [He has already told some bishops in the past to do what they think is right without worrying that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith may object – which is equivalent to saying “Don’t worry about doctrine”. If priests and bishops are told 'don't worry about doctrine', those inclined towards the Bergoglian brand of mercy will simply ignore doctrinal discipline across the board and apply leniency to everyone rather than case to case!

This Pope has given the same message to the couple of women he has advised long-distance about going to communion even if they are not qualified to do so under the Church’s communion ban. If he can say that about adultery, which is the chronic state of mortal sin which the communion ban seeks to penalize and correct, what will stop others from deciding they can go on doing whatever pleases them even if the Church considers these actions sinful, and not have to confess them at all nor change their conduct in any way? It is almost, as some have pointed out, a license to sin, given by the Pope no less. Or, to put it another way, it is tantamount to Scalfari's interpretation of Bergoglio's inclinations as, effectively, the abolition of sin! Which is also the ultimate effect of the Bergoglian preaching that no one will be condemned to Hell, i.e., no one would have committed any unrepented sin at all and/or everyone gets a chance to repent with the very last breath, so there is no need for Hell. Of course, this pretty prospect would also mean that there is no need for Christ's Last Judgment at all since everyone is already assured of eternal salvation. How does our theologically creative Pope square that? ]

In the process, it reinforces the idea that the only thing that matters is ‘charity’ [No, the politically correct term today is ‘mercy’ - in this Pontificate, it appears to have replaced caritas as the third theological virtue! I almost suspect it's a deliberate attempt to eclipse the 'Pope of love' appellation for Benedict XVI after Deus caritas est, to which, it appears, the Bergoglian counterpunch is Walter Kasper's book on mercy] which does not judge anything or anyone and accepts everything. [To which Benedict XVI had earlier said, "Love also means having to say NO when you have to", or words to that effect. But 'tough love' or tough anything at all is not in the Bergoglian playbook of Nice-and-Easy.]

And that is why the second family synod in October 2015 could well lead to a schism. A schism that already exists de facto because the divisions between some cardinals – Marx and Mueller, to take just one example – already exist. [Still, I am loath to bandy around the idea of ‘schism’ or even use the word loosely. At least, not formal schism, because I think orthodox Catholics will not be driven away from the one true Church of Christ and will uphold it in their own way, even if, God forbid, the man who was elected to lead that Church, decides instead to ‘transform’ her into ‘his church’, the church of Bergoglio. Hey, if the Vatican II progressivists and We are Church types have refused to leave the Church and declare themselves in formal schism - because they believed they could change the Church as they want to - we orthodox Catholics have no cause at all to leave our Church. Of course, it seems as if the progressivists' sticking to the Church has paid off, now that they have a leader who can probably give them most of what they want, or more, and he happens to be Pope.

If such a schism openly erupts – as some cardinals have predicted [WHO??? I think the cardinals who have been outspoken against the Bergoglian initiatives have also been very prudent in avoiding the use of the word ‘schism’], Francis will always have the possibility of retirement (he has referred several times to retirement). In which case, having known exactly how to make himself popular, he would then appear in the eyes of many as a very great Pope who wished to reform the Church but could not achieve his goal because of that faction of old cardinals who are incapable of evolving… [But were it not that reform of the Curia is supposed to be the primary 'mandate' for this Pope, that 'faction of old cardinals...' would simply be called 'the Curial old guard' or 'the Curial establishment'.]

Last December, the Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales issued a document meant to 'orient' clergy and faithful towards the Bergoglio-Kasper initiative of sacramental leniency for Catholics living in a chronic state of sin - after that initiative was resoundingly rejected by at least 70% of the bishops who took part in the October 2014 synodal assembly of the family. Of course, as we know, the Pope, exercising his supreme authority, overrode the assembly's veto of the three paragraphs intended to advance the B-K initiative, so that the issues would remain on the agenda for the October 2015 assembly.

That CBCEW document in December brought up St. Augustine's fifth-century fight against advocates of the Donatist heresy, in an effort to show that the saint supported 'patience and tolerance for sinners' [What Christian does not, after all? But sinners are supposed to repent and turn away from sin, not persist in a chronic state of sin for which the B-K crusaders would give them communion!] and that the Church today should adopt what they misrepresent to be St. Augustine's whole attitude about the Donatists. Not surprising, of course, since their master, our beloved Pope (as Fr H usually refers to him), loves to quote even Jesus's words partially or incompletely, using only those that serve his agenda.

Yet here is what a modern biographer of Augustine says about the saint and the Donatists:

---

St. Augustine of Hippo campaigned against this unorthodox belief [Donatism] throughout his tenure as Bishop of Hippo, and through his efforts the orthodox Catholic Church gained the upper hand. Augustine's view, which was also the majority view within the Church, was that it was the office of priest, not the personal character of the incumbent, that gave validity to the celebration of the sacraments.

...Augustine was convinced that men needed firm handling. He summed up this attitude in one word: disciplina. For him this was an active process of coercive punishment, a per molestias eruditio or teaching by inconveniences. He based his view on the Old Testament – where it is described how God had taught his wayward Chosen People by checking and punishing their evil tendencies by a whole series of divinely-ordained disasters.
- Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 1967, London, Faber & Faber

---

What could be more contrary to the all-mercy-no-justice that the B-K crusaders espouse!

Some UK commentators reacted immediately to the CBCEW document's taking Augustine's name in vain at the time, and I know I 'held' a couple of the good commentaries to post, but I didn't get around to it. Here, Fr. Hunwicke brings it up in connection with Cardinal Nichols's recent rebuke of the priests who signed a letter upholding the Church doctrine on marriage and sexuality...

Invoking Augustine's name in vain:
More on the partisan attitude
exemplified by Cardinal Nichols
towards those who signed
the '500 Priests' Letter'

30 March 2015

I here repeat parts of a piece of mine from last December. Its context was the issuing, by the CBCEW (Catholic Bishops Conference of England and Wales) of a document giving no hint of authorship. Worse, it appeared to me to be designed to advance strategically the theological opinion of Walter Kasper (contrary to the Magisterium as expressed by Benedict XVI) [and earlier by Cardinal Ratzinger in an ongoing debate-through-articles with Kasper in the 1990s], that the Local Church (which appears to some theologians to mean the Episcopal Conference) has an ontological priority over the Universal Church.

Readers will recall the practical conclusion to Kasper's argument: that the bright and sparkling Local Church can make its own decisions about certain matrimonial matters without waiting for the sclerotic Universal Church to catch up. [A view bluntly asserted recently by Cardinal Reinhard Marx of the Bergoglian advisory Council of 9 Cardinals.]

It seemed to me that when a document emerges from the bureaucracy of an episcopal conference with an at least prima facie appearance of calling into question Magisterial teaching, there should be some indication of who is taking responsibility for it.

The abiding topicality of Kasper's errors has recently been highlighted by its vigorously crude reassertion in statements from Cardinal Marx, and - on the opposite side - by the superb interview given by the Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; the fine Letter from Cardinal Cordes; a most useful intervention by Cardinal Koch, and the courageous Letter of the English Priests.

The, frankly, sinister revelation (itself an act of courage) that some of those English priests were subjected to "pressure and intimidation" not to sign the Letter suggests that the anonymous person who wrote last December's deplorable CBCEW document has, in the memorable words of Gerry Adams, "not gone away".

That anonymous document suggested that we should derive from the Donatist controversy a way to "reach out to people in their very diverse situations". The Donatists died out a long time ago; they were opponents of St Augustine of Hippo. Yet, apparently, St Augustine, in his dealing with the Donatists, "offers us a way of looking at the Church from his age which is still relevant today".

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that I am in favour of learning from the past and that I deplore any inadequacy of Formation which leaves clergy without enough Latin to be able actually to read for themselves all these interesting, and, apparently, now immensely important documents relating to St Augustine's long battle with the Donatists.

The question, however, which does have to be asked, is: what is the motive here for dragging in the Donatists and, for that matter, St Augustine? There does appears to be a subtext. Could it possibly be to imply that those who stand by the currently well-established disciplines of the Church are behaving like the Donatist heretics whom Augustine condemned?

As far as I can make out, the message which the anonymous author wishes to derive from the case of St Augustinus versus Donatum, is that sinners should not be excluded from the Church; the Church should not attempt to be the Pure Few. St Augustine, we are told, favoured "patience and tolerance"; not the exclusion of sinners from the Church. I certainly buy that. 100%.

But ... neither, as far as I am aware, does anybody in our present debates make any such proposal. It is true that a question arises (in fact, is raised by St Paul 1Cor 11:27) about the reception of Holy Communion by those who, without repentance and a purpose of amendment, live in sin, whether that sin be adultery or fornication or homosexual genital relationships or embezzlement or pride or theft or mendacity or murder or spite or people-trafficking or torture or arbitrary imprisonment or slavery or sexual and economic exploitation - I think I must have been reading Gaudium et Spes and Veritatis Splendor - or whatever other common sins you care to name.

But that is not the question which St Augustine is addressing. He condemns, it is very true, the error of "making rash or premature conclusions" about who will, on the Day of Judgement, be saved ... and I do most certainly agree that "we are not in a position in this life to pass judgement on others".

But there is a gap in logic between that, and the conclusion that "such key words of St Augustine can help us move the debate beyond particularly difficult issues* and set these same issues* in a wider context."

I wonder what you think those 'particularly difficult issues*' are which, in view of the anonymous writer, will benefit from the 'wider context' of St Augustine and the Donatists a millennium and a half ago? Could they ... just possibly ... I make a wild guess ... be the 'issue' of the admission to Holy Communion of those living in the objectively disordered and unrepented states of moikheia, adultery ('remarried divorcees') or malakia, homosexuality genitally expressed ('Gay Marriage')? If not this, then whatever else can possibly be in the anonymous mind?

In a word, how can the rather obvious fact that we do not know who will end up saved, have anything to do with the question of whether or not the Church should adjust her teaching or her rules?

Consider these words, also from the same anonymous document: "Can charity allow us to live with difference, without diminishing what is essential in our Catholic faith?** ... Liberty in what is doubtful, unity in what is essential, and charity in everything".

This reminds me disturbingly of Walter Kasper's claim that "the disagreements at issue fall into the category of those where the Church has historically recognised legitimate differences of opinion" - and he was writing about the admission to Communion of 'remarried divorcees', a policy which he had tried to implement in Rottenburg-Stuttgart when he was its diocesan bishop. (Who put the stoppers on him? Joseph Ratzinger. Eis polla ete despota![Many years to you, Master!])

I will, indeed, let St Augustine, Hammer of the Donatist Heresy, have the last word. We will take him up, in translation, as he quotes the Lord's words to the Woman Caught in Adultery:

---

'Neither will I condemn you'. What is this, Lord? Do you therefore favour sins? Not so, evidently. Mark what follows: 'Go, henceforth sin no more'. Therefore the Lord did also condemn, but condemned sins, not man.

For if he were a patron [fautor] of sin, he would say 'Neither will I condemn you; go, live as you will: be secure in my deliverance; how much soever you will sin, I will deliver you from all punishment even of hell, and from the torturers of the infernal world'. He said not this. [Don't the words Jesus did not say sound very much like Bergoglian preaching???]

Let them take heed, then, who love his gentleness in the Lord, and let them fear his truth [veritatem]. For 'The Lord is sweet and right [rectus]'. You love him in that he is sweet; fear him in that he is right. As the meek, he said 'I held my peace'; but as the just [iustus], he said 'Shall I always be silent?'

'The Lord is merciful and pitiful'. So he is, certainly. Add yet further: 'Long-suffering'; add, even further still: 'And very pitiful'. But fear what comes last: 'And true [verax]'. For those whom he now puts up with [sustinet] as sinners, he will judge as despisers.

'Or do you despise the riches of his long-suffering and gentleness, not knowing that the forbearance of God leads you to repentance? But you, after your hardness and impenitent heart, treasure up for yourself wrath against the Day of Wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgement of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds' [Romans 2:4-6].

The Lord is gentle, the Lord is long-suffering, the Lord is pitiful; but the Lord is also just, the Lord is also true. He bestows on you space for correction; but you love the delay of Judgement more than the amendment of your ways.

---

Footnotes:
*Notice this very modern use of the word 'issue' here instead of the older term 'problem'. 'Problem' would admit, give away, the fact that there is a problem. By calling a thing an 'issue', it is turned into something much more neutral ... something to discuss.

** Another very useful rhetorical dodge here, not to be missed by the connoisseur: the anonymous writer desires to promote a certain agenda, but he or she sets his or her desired innovation in the form of a question, so that, if it becomes politic, he or she can hide behind the the formula "I didn't argue in favour of X; I just asked the question".

This is often combined with another common modern rhetorical trick: the implication "I just want to make a contribution to debate". But the implication, smuggled in here like the illegal immigrant underneath the chassis of the lorry, is the idea that the subject concerned is truly open to discussion. Those who are inclined to doubt this are thus cast in the role of nasty rigid inflexible legalistic people who 'refuse to listen'. Which is to be unmodern.)

The point here is that apologists for the B-K initiative are not above lying outright in a vain effort to buttress their losing cause [at least, I hope the October 2014 outcome was an indication that it is a losing cause] which is losing because it is simply wrong.

Father Z said this about the two 'spittle-flecked nutties' Gibson and Winters who attacked Cardinal Burke for his recent interview with Lifesite News.

Lying about Cardinal Burke

by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf
March 30, 2015

Both Michael Sean Winters of the Fishwrap and David Gibson of RNS posted intellectually dishonest hit pieces against Card. Burke. They purposely misread what Card. Burke said in order to put him in the worst light they could. At least I think this was purposeful. If not, then they would be just plain stupid, but we all know that that isn’t the case. Thus, they intentionally twisted what the Cardinal said to suit their ideological aims.

[Fr. Z goes on to quote Nicholas Frankovich's commentary in NRO (I posted the item on this page earlier) and he ends with this citation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:]

---

A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving… By its very nature, lying is to be condemned. It is a profanation of speech, whereas the purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to others. The deliberate intention of leading a neighbor into error by saying things contrary to the truth constitutes a failure in justice and charity. (CCC 2482, 2485)

---

Of course, I doubt that either Winters or Gibson have read the Catechism lately, or at all. They are so sanctimonious they do not have to do that because they know everything!

Last month, Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke visited four cities in northern Italy to promote the Five Cardinals Book. A journalist in Correggio, the last of the four cities he visited, wrote an account of his visit there entitled "Who's afraid of the bishop from Wisconsin?" accompanied by an interview. Thanks to the link provided by Beatrice who posted the items on her site, here are my translations of the article and the interview.

Who's afraid of Cardinal Burke?
by Andrea Zambrano

March 21, 2015



Who is afraid of Cardinal Burke? The church in Correggio was almost full on Sunday, March 15, but most of those present came from outside the diocese or the vicariate.

Among those not present were all the faithful who had not been informed by their parish priests of the event. With the improbable reason of Burke’s supposed opposition to Papa Bergoglio.

Yet those who were present would be quick to testify that Burke simply spoke along the lines of Catholic doctrine as it has always been, faithful to the Gospels and to the Magisterium. Evidently, this is not good enough, especially if priests and religious workers have their minds shaped and prejudiced by reading La Repubblica rather than the documents of the Church.

So how is it possible that a cardinal is humiliated when arriving at a place where he is scheduled to speak? This is not about ecclesial etiquette, but the need for serene judgment at a time when it is quite evident that the Church is not going through a crisis of disaggregation [at least not yet!] but through one of those periodic shake-ups in her history.

On the other hand, no one would ever have questioned the orthodoxy of a cardinal like Burke, who appears to understand, with suffering and serenity, the role that media have improperly tagged him with as the anti-Bergoglio.

Especially since the local newspapers in Piacenza reported that during a diocesan priests’ meeting, it was decided that they would not take part in the events with Burke. Indeed, only eight priests showed up at the event.

At this point, the question is: Who is afraid of a cardinal who simply sets things out neatly and does not express his personal opinion but cites the Gospel, papal encyclicals and St. John Paul II’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation of 1981, Familiaris consortio, to say what the Church has always said?

Instead, one gets the impression that a large part of the Italian clergy and consequently, of the faithful, are terrified of opposing a tendency which gives priority to the need for change – always, in everything, in any way.

So we have a second question: Does the Church today accept and provide a free space for defending the Magisterium of always, or has her hierarchy decided to descend into the public square with a guillotine?



Zambrano then had an exclusive interview with Cardinal Burke. His questions elicit not just what Burke opposes but what he thinks ought to be proposed – by the Church in general, and by the family synod in particular – in terms of promoting marriage and the family.


Interview with Cardinal Burke
by Andrea Zambrano

March 21, 2015

“I am not an ultra-conservative. I am a Catholic. Those who call me ultra-conservative think they can intimidate me”.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke concluded his lectio magistralis at the church of San Pietro in Correggio at the end of his brief tour of Northern Italy to speak of family and the communion ban for unqualified remarried divorcees – one of the red-hot topics of the family synodal assembly which takes place next October. His last line was a blunt response to those who, in the Church and in the media, have painted him as the Anti-Bergoglio.

Burke, until a few months ago, was Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura [the Church’s highest canonical court]. On this visit, he was a guest of the Circolo Frassati [dedicated to the cult of Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati], arriving March 20 from Piacenza, which he had visited earlier, along with Biella and Verona, to present the Five Cardinals’ Book, Premanere nella verita di Cristo [Italian edition of ‘Remaining in the Truth of Christ’].

The book includes essays by Burke as well as four other authoritative cardinals like Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, Prefect of the Congtrgeation for the Doctirne fo the Faith, and Cardinal Carlo Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna, to contest the theses of Cardinal Walter Kasper, who had proposed a change in Catholic practice on the communion ban for remarried divorcees, a subject which was on the agenda of the synodal assembly on the family held last October.

In this interview with Prima Pagina, which is a faithful recap of what he said in Correggio, Burke illustrates what is at stake in this conflict, responds to Kasper, and seeks to dispel the suspicions of those who paint him as an anti-Pope.

Eminence, why a book on the family?
Because, as Vatican II said, the family is the domestic church, but today, more than ever, it is under attack by a secularized culture which has abandoned the faith and thus, all respect for the objective reality of matrimony as God instituted it from the beginning.

What are the evils that afflict the family today?
The phenomenon of divorce at will, motivated by personal whim, and which Vatican II called an open wound; but also widespread cohabitation without a marriage contracted before God; sexual promiscuity which does not respect the conjugal act; and the attempt to equiparate sexual relationships between persons of the same sex to the conjugal love in matrimony. These are all troubling signals that indicate losing the sense of human nature.

What happened at the October 2014 synod that polarized the cardinals and bishops present?
The discussions at the extraordinary synodal assembly were preceded by a lengthy discourse by Cardinal Kasper to the College of Cardinals at the secret consistory called by the Pope in February 2014, in which Kasper questioned what the Church has practiced till now with regard to Catholics who divorce and then enter into a new matrimony without seeking an annulment of their Church marriage. This is a situation that the Church has called irregular.

Kasper has proposed abandoning what has been the perennial Church practice based on the words of the Lord in the Gospel, claiming that his proposal does not touch the doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage, which has an incontrovertible basis in Jesus’s words. He and those who think like him would change the discipline of the Church to show more mercy towards Catholics who are in irregular situations. [The blunt term is, of course, ‘who are living in a chronic state of sin’.] But all that would inevitable provoke a change in doctrine - what the Church teaches.

Why?
Because of a logical principle. A thing cannot be and not be at the same time. Either persons who live in an irregular union as husband and wife are living in adultery, as Jesus defined it, or they had no [consecrated] matrimonial link, which means that ‘marriage’ is not indissoluble???

This debate has taken on revolutionary dimensions...
But the Church is an organic reality, in which there is no place for any revolution without damaging the organism most severely.

Five cardinals including yourself, have responded to Kasper’s thesis…
The book is not polemical, even if it shows that Kasper’s thesis rests on a falsified interpretation of the Council of Nicaea and makes inaccurate use of the Fathers of the Church. Our book simply seeks to illustrate the beauty of the truth in marriage.

But don’t you think the world is going the other way?
One must have the correct understanding of the relationship between faith and culture. Indeed, some maintain that the Church can no longer speak of natural law, of acts which are intrinsically evil, of irregular unions - because such language would cause the dominant culture to be hostile to the Church. But in doing any of that the Church would lose her sense of identity and what she has to say to the wider culture.

Yet Pope Francis has often spoken about the peripheries…
The Church should go to the peripheries of the present culture, but she must remain firm in her identity. She must manifest compassion, but she also has the duty to call things by their name in order not to help increase confusion. It would be serious lack of charity. Jesus was full of understanding for the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, but at the same time, he was careful to remind her of the need to leave a life of sin.

But it cannot be denied that irregular unions can bring on suffering…
Of course, but we cannot fall into sentimentalism, which is not compassionate but is harmful to the person. Sentimentalism blocks off the encounter with Christ and sees the truth of Christ as dangerous for the individual. And so, by concentrating on the sorrowful situation of someone, we fail to see reality in its totality.

What do you say to those who recommend that the Church should modify and make the annulment process more accessible?
Kasper has said that annulments have nothing to do with divine law, but a process that was designed to discover the truth about a marriage that is sought to be nullified is absolutely required by divine law.

And yet the Pope in the fullness of his authority could dissolve any matrimony…
Those who claim so do not distinguish between the fullness of authority and absolute power. The first is in the service of doctrine. But even the Holy Father cannot take any measures contrary to the truth of Christ by claiming absolute power which is necessarily arbitrary.

What does it mean exactly 'to show the truth and the beauty of matrimony in all its richness'?
The Church and the synod should give special attention to the holiness of matrimony, to fidelity, to its indissolubility, to the procreativity of the union. Christian family life today is a sign of contradiction.

What then should the family synod do?
It should be of help to Christian families as ‘domestic churches’, and must strengthen and encourage Catholic couples in bearing witness to the truth of Christ, which is what our culture needs.

What is it that you do not share about the contemporary thinking that has infiltrated the Church?
Obscuring the truth about the indissolubility of marriage. Accepting the violation of the conjugal union in the name of pastoral understanding. Even denying that married couples receive a special grace through matrimony that can enable them to live a faithful love heroically, if necessary. And in all this, the testimony from Catholic spouses should be limpid and courageous.

It will be difficult – the world seems to be going the other way…
The only thing we know is that the last chapter has been written –and that is the ultimate victory of Christ….

But what remains to be done is how to get there…
We must be ready to suffer, as our brothers have suffered in the course of centuries, to honor and promote holy matrimony. Let us take us our models St. John the Baptist, St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More [dim=9pt[who were all martyred for opposing adulterous ‘marriages’] In the face of the confusion that Satan is spreading, we must follow their example.

Is it because of words like these that you have been accused of being an ultra-conservative?
I am not an ultra-conservative. I am a Catholic. To depict me as an ultra-conservative is nothing but an intimidation of my right and duty to proclaim the truth.
 

'There can be no mercy without truth,
no secret ways or shortcuts to salvation':
Cardinal Mueller on the Holy Year
of Mercy and the next 'family synod'
Translated from


ROME, March 31, 2015 (kath.net) – The Holy Year of Mercy decreed by Pope Francis begins on December 8, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

“The Holy Year serves to remind us that there can be no mercy without truth,” said Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, who observed that “Man and the Church are often tempted to separate from from the other”.

He said that God’s love is very closely bound to the truth, and that this is true even about his love for broken families, or those couples who find themselves in an irregular conjugal situation. He underscored that they deserve attentiveness from the Church, not through so-called ‘pastoral’ ways but with the truth.

Cardinal Mueller said this in a conversation with a reporter from the Italian news agency ANSA about the coming Holy Year. He had taken part in the extraordinary synodal assembly on the family last October and was among the strongest defenders of the Catholic doctrine on matrimony.

Looking forward to the ordinary synodal assembly in October which will conclude the two ‘family synods’ convoked by Pope Francis, Mueller once more underscored the Catholic position on the sacrament of matrimony as Christ taught and as the Church has taught it for more than 2000 years.

Cardinal Mueller said that the extraordinary Holy Year must ‘include’ everything' about God’s mercy. God loves us, he said, and intervenes in human history through his mercy, but not as a favor, a sign of kindness, sympathy, or preferential treatment, much less of approval.

God intervenes, he said, not to leave things as they are, but in order that man “may experience a renewal, a conversion, a true change of heart, and thus truly amend our lives. And that is why during this Holy Year of Mercy we must always remember that we cannot speak of mercy without speaking of truth”. And that this goes for all matters concerning the family.

“It is true that the Church welcomes everyone, including sinners, because we are all sinners, but we do so according to God’s Word, not according to human considerations, because men see things not as God sees”.

It is very much worth demonstrating that ‘sacramental marriage still exists’ and that the lifelong, indissoluble marriage between a man and a woman is not only desirable but that it is also a grace for the spouses and their children.

“God in his mercy sees us as we are but he does not leave us as he finds us”, Mueller underscored.

Referring to the extraordinary interest in the issue of communion for unqualified married divorcees that the next family synod will decide on, Mueller said that the aim of every intervention by God is man’s salvation, which comes by way of changing one’s life according to his Word.

“We cannot announce the Resurrection without first announcing the Cross. There is no second or third way other than the way of the Cross,” the CDF Prefect said, making it clear that about this, there are no secret paths or short cuts. [i.e., Jesus never said that his way would be nothing but 'nice and easy'!]


Talking about the Holy Year of Mercy inevitably leads to the synodal assemblies on the family for the simple reason that the Bergoglian family synods were meant to showcase and give 'universal validity' to the Bergoglio-Kasper concept of mercy as, seemingly, nothing more than what Cardinal Mueller describes above as pastoral "kindness, sympathy, preferential treatment and approval" of otherwise sinful conduct, rather than Christ's "Go and sin no more" inseparable corollary to his forgiveness - the part of divine mercy that Pope Francis habitually and consistently omits...

Conversely, it seems that the Holy Year of Mercy was conceived to backstop the family synod, whether or not the assembly in October ratifies the B-K line or not. If it does, then the HYOM will celebrate the B-K idea of mercy. If it does not, the HYOM will be used as a bludgeon to rebuke everyone who does not buy that brand of mercy, and to peddle it some more...



Enter now Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, one of the most stalwart advocates of the B-K brand of mercy and its application to Catholics living in a chronic state of sin. Whose principal message in his Chrism Mass homily today was the equivalent of digging his heels in really deep in his ill-considered censure of the 500 English and Welsh priests 'for conducting a debate in the media' when they simply signed a letter stating their position upholding Catholic teaching on marriage and sexuality.

Is it not too late now, over 12 months too late, to warn about conducting a debate in the media on the heterodox proposals that have been virtually 'forced' on the Bergoglian family synods - after all, the debate began promptly after the Pope's main surrogate on these issues, Cardinal Kasper, articulated the proposal for pastoral leniency towards remarried divorcees by allowing them to receive communion? [Which, amazingly, Kasper himself described as a way of "tolerating, but not accepting" their lifestyle] That horse has been long out of the barn and galloping headlong far from home wherever it is headed.

Today, he says the family synod is 'not a battle between contesting sides'. That's news to everyone! The Pope's men are certainly fighting it as a battle to the death against 'traditionalists'. And for orthodox Catholics fighting to keep the deposit of faith intact, it certainly is very much a battle - and why should it not be a battle to fight for what is right according to the Word of God?

Then he says this should be a time for 'prayerful discernment'. Of course, it ought to be a time of constant, tireless prayer. about which no right-thinking Catholic (that is after all what 'orthodox' means) has to be reminded. But who says that prayer and open discussion of positions, pro and con - as long as it remains respectful and not abusive - are mutually exclusive?

Besides, we are not praying for right discernment ourselves, as we have no problem 'discerning' what Jesus clearly said about marriage and adultery, and about divine forgiveness and the human responsibility to 'go and sin no more". What we pray for is that the Holy Spirit grants the gift of spiritual discernment to the other side (which is bent on re-interpreting divine mercy and divine forgiveness), so that the deposit of faith may remain intact.

Cardinal Nichols:
'We must not see family synod as a battle -
it should be a time of prayerful discernment'

April 1, 2015

LONDON - Cardinal Vincent Nichols has said October’s synod on the family should not be viewed as “a battle between contesting sides”.

Cardinal Nichols made the comment in his homily during Chrism Mass for the Diocese of Westminster at Westminster Cathedral earlier today.

He told the congregation that their prayers were needed as “the Church prepares for the next Synod of Bishops”.

“It is wrong, in my view, to think or speak of this Synod as a battle, a battle between contesting sides. Battles have winners and losers. And often ‘collateral damage’ is the most tragic consequence of hostilities,” Cardinal Nichols said. [Of course, there have to be winners and losers. On the issues in question, there is no neutral ground! Collateral damage, whichever way the battle goes, is inevitable. Much damage has already been done by the very elevation of what used to be an issue involving a fringe minority into a crucible for testing whether one is 'merciful' or not!]

“This synod is a time of prayerful discernment, discernment about how we are to bring the love, mercy and truth of God to all people in need, in so many different and difficult circumstances. So please do pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit.”

Last week, the Archbishop of Westminster urged priests not to conduct a debate about the October Family Synod through the press, following the publication of a letter sent to the Catholic Herald signed by 461 priests, urging the synod to issue a “clear and firm proclamation” upholding Church teaching on marriage.

Last month, however, Cardinal Walter Kasper said there was a “battle going on” over the family the synod. [Perhaps the Pope's surrogates should keep in touch with each other to coordinate their tactics, strategy and language!]

Speaking at the launch of his latest book, Cardinal Kasper said Catholics should let their bishops know their hopes and concerns for the forthcoming synod, but even more importantly they should pray that the Holy Spirit guides the bishops’ deliberations.

“We should all pray for it because a battle is going on,” he added....

Read the rest of the story on
www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2015/03/31/cardinal-nichols-we-must-not-see-family-synod-as-a...

The folks at CREATIVE MINORITY REPORT earlier had a brief comment on the two-way standard regarding parrhesia or frank adn open discussion:

"Shut up", the other side prays
about those who uphold Church teaching
by Patrick Archbold

March 26, 2015

It seems it is all hunky dory for endorsers of the new 'mercy' to give public testimony at will. We are subjected to a never ending stream of it. But when a few good men publicly stand up for the truth:

Nearly 500 priests in Britain urge synod to stand firm on Communion for the remarried or

On Marriage and Bishops' Conferences, Cardinal Müller teaches Cardinal Marx the true Catholic lesson or

Exclusive interview: Cardinal Burke says confusion spreading among Catholics ‘in an alarming way’...

When these Catholic men stand up for Catholic Truth, well, that cannot stand!!!!!

Cardinal Nichols attempts to silence faithful priests.

Francis: Don't gossip about the synod! Pray for it!

Rhetorical mercy is a one way street and orthodox Catholics are going the wrong way.


Sidebar about Pat Archbold: On March 31, he announced that he has been fired from the National Catholic Register where he had been blogging for several years with his brother Matthew. Donald McClarey comments upon it:

Well this is no surprise. Pat Archbold was repeatedly guilty of telling truth out of season which is apparently a mortal sin these days in the Catholic Church...

In the current pontificate of love and mercy, if you are an orthodox Catholic who seeks to defend the traditional faith, do not be surprised when you get it in the neck...

Pat Archbold announced his firing in CREATIVE MINORITY REPORT thus:

---

Saying Goodbye To The National Catholic Register

It is with some regret that I must inform you that my employment as a contributing blogger at the National Catholic Register has been terminated.

Yup, they fired me.

I am grateful for the five years I spent as a contributor to the Register, the online presence of which has grown immensely during my tenure and that of the other original group of contributors. There is a lot to be proud of there...

There are many things I could say about why this happened and how and maybe one day I will say more. But for now, suffice it to say that my particular contributions have not been well received over the last year or so and that has lead to increasing tension. I suppose that is plain to anyone with eyes to see. I will note that upon my departure, among the top 10 posts for the last 3 weeks, you will find three of my contributions.

I am proud of my writing at the Register. I feel I have been consistent in my approach to writing and the topics I cover. I think I brought a viewpoint to the Register that is otherwise not well represented among their stable of good writers.

The Church has been going through some tough times and as a consequence I have sometimes tried to tackle some tough issues. I have always tried to do so fairly and as a loyal son of the Church. I will leave it to others to decide whether the Register is better off without my writing or viewpoint.

Most of all, I want to thank all of you that supported my writing there over the years by clicking on links from CMR. I will forever grateful for it and I hope you will continue to support my brother Matthew as he continues as a contributor there.

---

Perhaps the NCReg took particular exception to Archbold's reasoned opposition to the abolition of the death penalty, which the magazine supports editorially?... Interestingly, some of Archbold's admirers who posted reactions to McClarey's post on Archbold wondered whether we are not now seeing the parisan convergence of two NCRs (the NCReporter and the NCRegister). It seems Archbold's criticism of Pope Francis from time to time was also part of the reason behind his firing.

In his combox, McClarey adds this very relevant statement by the great Council of Trent theologian, the Dominican Melchior Cano:

---

Peter has no need of our lies or flattery. Those who blindly and indiscriminately defend every decision of the Supreme Pontiff are the very ones who do most to undermine the authority of the Holy See — they destroy instead of strengthening its foundations.

---

On the eve of Maundy Thursday, I am re-posting yet again Fr. Giovanni Scalese's article in 2013 explaining the whys and wherefores of the post Vatican-II Ceremonial Manual about the Paschal Triduum, and how JMB, since he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, has chosen to disregard the indications for the Mass of the Lord's Supper (thereby downgrading its significance and reducing it to focus on the footwashing ritual which is simply an accessory aspect of that Mass). Tomorrow, Pope Francis will celebrate the Cena Domini Mass in Rebibia, Rome's largest prison, where he will wash the feet of male and female prisoners.

Relativism in the Church?
Translated from

by Fr. Giovanni Scalese
March 24, 2013

Until a few years ago, I was involved more or less directly with the 'formation' of priests within my religious order. During which I often lamented the 'multiplicity of formations' because in practice, there seemed to be as many ways of training priests as there were formators.

Despite the existence of appropriate Constitutions, the Ratio institutionis [statement on the reasons for the establishment of a religious order], the deliberations in the Chapters-General and homegrown traditions, each novice or student was in fact trained according to the personal whims of the Father-Teacher to whom they happened to be assigned. You can imagine what consequences it has had for the unity of the Congregation!

In all the meetings among the 'formators' and of the Chapters-General, I always insisted on the need for a unity in the formatiVe process, and I must admit that this met with approval even in the Chapter meetings. But i have the impression that despite all that, the situation has remained virtually unchanged.

But what I lamented about the process of formation in my Order really constitutes a general problem that touches every aspect of Christian life and which has become widespread across the Church. Especially after Vatican II, when it seemed as if everyone believed he was authorized to do as he pleases.

Let me not be misunderstood. I am not criticizing Vatican II - I accept with conviction all the reforms it promoted some of which were subsequently realized - reforms which were made necessary by changing times.

In the years after the Council, the Popes and the dicasteries of the Roman made an enormous effort of 'aggiornamento' - bringing up to date - in all sectors of the Church, leaving room for the possibility of further adaptations to local situations, but always within the limits set by the new standards.

The problem is that such norms are often almost completely ignored by the 'base', where the common opinion is that the Council had swept away all legalisms and that the only criterion for action would now be to heed the Holy Spirit, whose urgings would seem to be identical to the personal goals of those who invoke his name! [But if only they were! Instead, the 'spiritists' invoke a 'spirit of Vatican II' - as if the Holy Spirit had nothing to do with the Council (ditto for the 'spirit of Assisi). Why do the progressivists invoke an amorphous undefined spirit, a secular phantasm, instead of the Holy Spirit himself?Perhaps because even they feel it would be sacrilege to invoke the Third Person in support of ideas that are not that of the Church he created at that first Pentecost.]

Why this long introduction, you might ask: What is Fr. Scalese leading to? It is the reflection that came to mind when the other day, I read the news that left me somewhat perplexed: the Pope, on Maundy Thursday, would celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper at the juvenile detention center of Casal del Marmo in Rome.

So how could that be a problem? Is it not a most beautiful gesture decided on by Papa Bergoglio? Isn't visiting those in prison one of the corporal works of mercy? And can the Pope not freely decide where to celebrate the evening Mass of Maundy Thursday?

I would like to start by responding to the last question, because I believe that all the rest will depend on a correct answer. It is true that the Pope can decide as he wishes - he is the supreme legislator in the Church.

But he can so decide, in fact, by legislating. If there is any law that he dislikes, he may change it. Until then, if there is an existing law, made by him or his predecessors, in my opinion, I do not think he can simply choose to ignore it.

I am not a canonist, but I do not believe the Pope can apply the principle “Princeps legibus solutus” (The sovereign is above the law). It would not be correct at all with respect to those who are held to observe a law. This, as a general principle.

In this case, it is not really about laws, but of pastoral instructions which nevertheless, in my opinion, are binding in nature. Some thirty years ago, the Ceremoniale Episcoporum was published - which I do not think was intended primarily for the diocesan liturgical masters but above all, for the bishops themselves.

I would point out that I am not referring here to the Ceremonial of 1600 (after the Council of Trent) but to that of 1984, “ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II instauratum, auctoritate Ioannis Pauli PP. II promulgatum” - as decreed by the Second Vatican Council to build the sacred, and as promulgated by the authority of John Paul II.

So what does this Ceremonial Manual say with regard to the rites of the Paschal Triduum?

"Bearing in mind the special dignity of these days and the great spiritual and pastoral importance of these celebrations in the life of the Church, it is supremely fitting that the Bishop, presiding in his cathedral church,`celebrates the Mass of the Lord's Supper, the liturgical acts of Good Friday recalling the Passion of the Lord, and the Easter Vigil, especially if the latter will include the celebration of the sacraments of Christian initiation" (No. 296).

Specifically, regarding Maundy Thursday, the Ceremonial Manual proceeds: "The Bishop, even if he has already celebrated the Chrismal Mass in the morning, must also take to heart the celebration of the Mass of the Lord's Supper with the full participation of priests, deacons, ministers and the faithful around him" (No. 298).

These are not in any way compulsory norms, but instructions that are urgent, and from which, in my opinion one can deviate only for the most serious of reasons. According to the report, Pope Francis would only be continuing a practice he began as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, which implies that he intends to do the same thing every year as Pope.

It is clear that the problem has not emerged only now that Cardinal Bergoglio has become Pope, but that it began when he was an Archbishop. I can imagine his reason for doing so: "I already celebrated the Chrismal Mass this morning with all my clergy. This evening, the Mass of the Lord's Supper will be said in the various parishes. So who will I be celebrating with in the Cathedral? Even the seminarians will not be there because they are ordered to serve in their respective parishes. So I will go and celebrate the Mass for the sick, those in prison, and I shall also be carrying out a work of mercy".

It is a reasoning that is quite understandable, if not outright praiseworthy, but which also risks 'dismantling' in one act everything that Vatican II authoritatively stated:

"The Bishop must be considered as the high priest of his flock. In a certain way the life of the faithful in Christ derives from him and depends on him. That is why bishops are dutybound to give great importance to the liturgy of the diocese which takes place around the figure of the Bishop, principally at his 'cathedral' church (i.e., the church where he occupies the cathedra), in the belief that the Church manifests herself in a special way in the full and active participation of the People of God in the same liturgical celebrations, especially in the same Eucharist, the same prayers, the same altar at which the Bishop presides, surrounded by his priests and ministers" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 41).

The text is reprised in the Ceremoniale which says: "Therefore the sacred celebrations presided over by the Bishop, manifest the mystery of the Church in which Christ is present, and are not just a simple matter of ceremonial... At certain times and on the most important days of the liturgical year, this full manifestation of (each) local Church is called for, to which shall be invited all the people coming from different parts of the diocese, and as much as possible, its priests"(Nos. 12-13).

"The principal manifestation of the local Church takes place when the Bishop, as the high priest of his flock, celebrates the Eucharist, most especially in his cathedral church, surrounded by his priests and ministers, with the full and active participation of the entire holy People of God. .. This Mass, which is called 'stational' [i.e., referring to a specific location, or 'station'], manifests the unity of the local Church and the diversity of the ministers around the Bishop at the sacred Eucharist. Therefore, as many faithful as possible should be invited to the Mass, the priests concelebrate with their Bishop, the deacons lend their particular service, and acolytes and readers exercise their functions" (No. 119).

"This form of the Mass shall be observed most especially at the major solemnities of the liturgical year, when the Bishop prepares the sacred Chrism and in the evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, in the celebrations of the holy founder of the local Church and the patron saint of the diocese, on the anniversary of the bishop's ordination, in the large assemblies of the Christian people, and in his pastoral visits" (No. 120).

The Vatican statement on March 21 about the decision of Pope Francis to celebrate the Mass of the Lord's Supper in a Roman detention center for minors, said, "As we all know, the Mass of the Lord's Supper is characterized by the announcement of the commandment of love and the ritual gesture of 'washing feet'."

With this, too, the Ceremonial Manual for Bishops is more complete and precise: "With this Mass, therefore, we commemorate the Eucharist, in memory of the Lord's Passover, through which the sacrifice of the New Covenant is made perennially present among us under sacramental signs. It also commemorates the institution of the priesthood, through which the mission and sacrifice of Christ are made present in the world. And finally, it commemorates the love with which the Lord loved us to the extreme of dying for us. The Bishop must concern himself with taking the opportunity to propose all these truths to his faithful through the ministry of the word, so that the faithful in their piety may penetrate more profoundly these great mysteries and may be able to live them more intensely in their actual lives". (No. 297) [Nothing there about the 'washing of the feet'! And one might be led to conclude, after being given chapter and verse of the Bishops' Manual and Sacrosanctum Concilium, that Cardinal Bergoglio never really read these injunctions, or if he did, decided he could well ignore the parts he chooses to ignore.]

The washing of the feet is certainly a significant feature in the celebration of Maundy Thursday but it would be a mistake to consider it an essential element. Indeed, it is not an obligatory rite - it is to be carried out only "when pastoral reasons make it advisable" (No. 301). Unfortunately, in recent years, and in various places, it has been loaded with meanings that far exceed its original value.

Some will say that I am making a mountain out of a liturgical molehill, some will accuse me of fussiness, if not of outright rubricism or legalism. And some will certainly liken me to the Pharisees, who accused Jesus of not observing the Law when he healed on the Sabbath. While some will protest that I am trying to tell the Pope how to be Pope.

Let them say what they want.But no one can certainly hinder me from thinking that some decisions, apparently innocuous, could have devastating consequences.

a. First of all, in ignoring existing norms in the Church - even those that may seem merely secondary - there is a risk of placing some fundamental values into question, values that Vatican II has shed light on and which it intended to become the common patrimony of the Church.

b. In the second place, the thought could be encouraged that yes, certain norms exist, but it is not that important to respect them. So if the Pope considers that it is possible to ignore them, it means they cannot be all that important. And if he can do it, why can I not do the same?

c. That, in turn, would give the impression that there are no objective and stable standards that are valid for everyone and for always, but that everything depends on personal discretion of the person who happens to be the responsible authority.

d. Finally therefore, there is the risk that relativism, so much opposed in words by today's society, does indeed become the supreme standard even within the Church.

Two years have gone since Fr. Scalese's article, and unless we have not been informed, I don't believe Pope Francis has legislated anything that supersedes the provisions of Sancrosanctum Concilium and the Ceremoniale Episcoparum with regard to the celebration of the Mass of the Lord's Supper...

Today, a blogger tackles the same topic with less authoritativeness than Fr. Scalese, starting with an inexcusable error about where the Bishop of Rome is supposed to celebrate the Cena Domini Mass. However, the error does not invalidate the other points he makes...


Why has Pope Francis reduced
the Mass of the Lord's Supper
to nothing but the setting
for a ritual footwashing?
And apparently thinks there is nothing wrong with that!

April 1, 2015

Pope Francis has again made headlines by announcing he will spend Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates at the Rebibbia prison in Rome. This is the third time the Holy Father has chosen to perform the foot washing ceremony in such facilities, visiting the Casal del Marmo prison in 2013 and the Don Gnocchi center for the elderly and disabled in 2014.

Saying the Holy Thursday Mass in the prison in 2013 was one of the first gestures of Francis's pontificate, which earned him the respect of many [Respect? That's a monumental understatement! 'Gushing adulation for his humility and sense of service' was more like it!] while provoking apprehension among traditional Catholics. This misgiving among traditionalists provoked (and continues to provoke) ire among those who "don't see what the problem is" and can't understand why this is such a "big deal."

I would say this is one issue where the traditionalist objection is totally misunderstood - willfully, I believe. "Don't like it when Peter goes around with tax collectors and sinners, huh?" "Yeah, Jesus was offensive to the Pharisees, too." These are the sorts of shallow rebuttals our criticisms have been met with, as if there is really nothing deeper to traditionalist objections beyond the stupid old "tax collectors and sinners" trope.

So - even though I know they will not listen - let me once and for all clarify what the "big deal" is about the pontiff spending Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates.

First off, let's clear the air about one thing: there is no problem with the pope celebrating a Mass at a prison or other such facility. Benedict XVI celebrated a Mass at Casal del Marmo prison during Lent of 2007 - the same location Francis used in 2013. The issue is not the location of the Mass, or that the pope wants to celebrate with prisoners, elderly, indigent, whatever. Not an issue.

Benedict, however, did not celebrate this Mass on Holy Thursday, and that is a big difference. This brings me to my first objection: The traditional location of the Holy Thursday evening Mass is St. Peter's basilica, which made the Holy Thursday Mass much more available to the faithful. [And here, the blogger commits a most embarrassing error. In Rome, the Mass of the Lord's Supper is supposed to be held at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, which is the cathedral church of the Bishop of Rome, not St. Peter's. I find the blogger's error inexplicable, other than, maybe, that he is not familiar with the book that prescribes the rituals for the Paschal Triduum that Fr. Scalese referred to in his ever-relevant, ever-actual, most informative and objective criticism of Jorge Bergoglio's idiosyncratic insistence on reducing the Mass of the Lord's Supper to the foot-washing ritual - seemingly disregarding that the Mass commemorates both the institution of the Eucharist and of the priesthood, to which the footwashing was simply an accessory - Christ underscoring the cleanliness that his ministers must bring when they celebrate the sacrifice he made for our salvation.

An even simpler explanation for the blogger's ignorance of a detail as fundamental as where the Mass of the Lord's Supper should be held in Rome is that he did not pay attention to where Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI celebrated the Cena Domini Mass.]

St. Peter's Basilica (according to its website) is capable of seating 15,000 people; if Mass is held in the square, it can accommodate 80,000. Whatever one may want to say about Masses of that magnitude, it cannot be denied that a Mass in a basilica offers a much greater opportunity for participation of the faithful than a Mass in a small prison or nursing home. [The choice of the cathedral church as the site for the Cena Domini Mass does not have to do so much with its size as with the fact that it is where the faithful, anywhere in the world, can be with their bishop and clergy during this most important Mass.]

[coloe=#000000]The Holy Thursday Mass, which inaugurates the sacred Triduum and which (until 1642) was a holy day of obligation is in a totally different category than, say, a daily Mass. This is why when Benedict XVI wanted to celebrate Mass in the Casal del Marmo, he did so in a daily Mass, not the Holy Thursday Mass, which as part of the sacred Triduum, is of a much more solemn and public nature than a mere daily Mass.

Remember, the pope is also Bishop of the diocese of Rome. This means that for the past three years, the faithful of that diocese have been deprived of access to the celebration of one of the most sacred Masses of the year by their bishop. I admit this is not a huge issue or a monumental scandal - but it is something.

Regarding the importance of this inaugural Mass of the Sacred Triduum, it is well to recall that its proper name is the "Mass of the Lord's Supper." The "theme" or focal point of this Mass has always been the double institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood by our Lord Jesus Christ at the Last Supper.

In his last Holy Thursday homily delivered in 2004, St. John Paul II preached on the centrality of the Eucharist and its connection to the priesthood in the context of Holy Thursday:

---

While we fix our gaze on Christ who institutes the Eucharist, we have a renewed awareness of the importance of the priests in the Church and of their union with the Eucharistic sacrament. In the Letter that I wrote to priests for this holy day, I wished to repeat that the Sacrament of the altar is gift and mystery, and that the priesthood is gift and mystery, both having flowed from the Heart of Christ during the Last Supper.

---

This is why one of the readings from the Holy Thursday Mass has always been the institution of the Eucharist as described in 1 Cor. 11:23-32. This has been part of the readings for the day as far back as we have records.

In Pope Francis's Holy Thursday celebrations, there is little emphasis on these traditional themes. For example, Francis's 2013 homily does not mention the Eucharist at all; the refrain was a very generic message of "Help one another"; his 2014 homily focused entirely on the foot washing ceremony and admonished Christians to "be servants to one another." No mention of the priesthood at all, and only a passing comment on the Eucharist, which he strangely subordinates to "service" as the main theme of the Cena Domini Mass, as if the Eucharist were an afterthought to service. This is an inversion of the familiar formula that the Eucharist, in fact, is the source and summit of the faith. [Anyway we look at it, Jorge Bergoglio - from the time he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires - has inexplicably imposed his own idiosyncratic inclination to demonstrate his own personal virtues of humility and service and has effectively downgraded the Mass commemorating the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood to, as one wag outs it, being all about dirty feet.]

[colore=#000000\It must be remembered that though foot washing in general is a sign of service (cf. 1 Tim. 5:10), the Holy Thursday foot washing in particular is much more than that. Christ did not just wash His disciples' feet as a sign of service to mankind in general, but of the service that the hierarchy renders to the clergy in particular. This is why most liturgical foot washing in the Church's history has always focused on the bishop's service to his clergy; priests, canons, deacons and subdeacons have been the recipients of foot washing; this was true of diocesan bishops as well as the pope. It is an ecclesiological ritual relating to the clergy and their superiors, not a general sign of service to mankind.

It is certainly not "wrong" to wash the feet of lay persons; obviously as the parish level, a priest does not have any clergy beneath him whose feet he can wash, and the washing of laymen's feet is the norm (still, in some parishes, the priest will not wash the feet of anybody willy-nilly; he will choose representatives of different parish apostolates - Knights of Columbus, the DRE, ushers, etc). As mentioned above, foot washing was a sign of general obeisance in the early church.

But at a pontifical Holy Thursday Mass, we would expect a bishop or the pope especially to recognize this clerical aspect of the rite by performing the Mandatum on the clergy subject to him. This gets obscured when the focus of the rite is reduced to mere "service" without reference to the clergy.

An interesting side note: it was always understood that the Lord's command to serve, while understood primarily in terms of the clergy, also had a broader significance. For this reason, beginning in the Carolingian era, there used to be two foot washing ceremonies, one for the poor, one for the clergy. This was practiced in monasteries as well as in the papal liturgies of Rome. The Mandatum of the poor was eventually discontinued, however, and only the Mandatum of the clergy remained. This illustrates the point that the "service to the poor" aspect of the Holy Thursday Mandatum was always secondary to the clerical aspect.

If the Holy Thursday foot washing is supposed to signify the service of the hierarchy to the Church - and to the clergy in particular - then we can easily understand why it is totally inappropriate that non-Christians should be the recipients of the ceremony. In what fantasy land can a Muslim or atheist in any way represent the Church?

Finally, of course, we all know that the rubrics for Holy Thursday say the recipient of the foot washing must be a vir (Lat. "man"). In 2013, the decision of the Holy Father to wash the feet of women prompted some apologists to simply shrug and say, "Well, the Holy Father is the supreme interpreter of the Church's liturgical law and canon law. He can change it how he sees fit."

That's true to an extent. But it seems lost on many that to say one has an authority to change a law is not the same thing as suggesting he can simply break the law. We all understand this. If the Holy Father does not like the current legislation, he has the power to change it. He can promulgate new rubrics or new norms if he so chooses. But for law to be law, this is accomplished by an act of law; i.e., the lawgiver changing the law by an legitimate exercise of his legislative power. The law is not changed by the lawgiver simply breaking the law. [Fr. Scalese argues this very well in his 2013 article].

Suppose the speed limit in your town was 30 mph. Suppose your small town Mayor decided he did not like that speed limit. Suppose, on the premise that he was the "supreme authority" in your small town, he just decided to start breaking the speed limit with impunity. How would you react? You would be indignant! You would say, "If the Mayor doesn't like the speed limit, then change the law, but for heaven's sake, don't just break it!"

Since the rubrics for Holy Thursday have not changed, the fact remains that Pope Francis is simply violating the rubrics. You may say the law should change. You may applaud his inclusiveness. You may affirm that he has the power to change the law. But you cannot deny that he is breaking the law every time he washes the foot of a female on Holy Thursday. There's no other way to explain it.

Let us also remember that the conservative apologists who are now saying that the pope can do whatever he wants are the very same who, under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, loudly insisted that the letter of the law must be observed when it came to liberal priests washing women's feet.

It is not because I or anyone else has a "problem" with the pope fraternizing with the poor, or prisoners, or whatever. It is not because we think women are inferior or any nonsense like that.

The substance of the traditionalist critique of Pope Francis' venues for Holy Thursday is that this is a violation of liturgical law and hence an abuse of power; that it obscures the ecclesiological symbolism of the Mandatum rite and constitutes a detraction from the Eucharistic and clerical focus of the Mass of the Lord's Supper; and that it deprives the Catholics of the Diocese of Rome from the ability to publicly celebrate the beginning of the Triduum with their bishop, thus depriving them of special graces.

You may read all this and shrug and say, "Eh. You're nitpicking." Maybe you think that. Maybe you are right. God knows. But it is definitely not a matter of traditional Catholics somehow objecting to the poor, or women, or prisoners receiving papal attention. You may think the objections are not worthy of consideration; but at least acknowledge that there are legitimate objections that go far beyond the tired old "tax collectors and sinners" mantra. It was never about that anyway.

Earlier, Fr. Z had his say - though he appears to 'condone' JMB having his way as Pope on this issue, i.e., he can do it because he is Pope, but no other bishop or priest can. Perhaps it is Father Z's way of trying not to be 'uncharitable' during Holy Week...

Wherein Fr. Z rants on
foot washing on Holy Thursday
by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

March 31, 2015

In the Roman Rite, the washing of feet on Holy Thursday is an option. It may be left out without disturbing the integrity of the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper (otherwise, it wouldn’t be a legitimate option). [Which goes to show how, as I remark later below, JMB/PF's choice to make the footwashing ritual not just the the highlight but the focus of the Mass of the Lord's Supper is literally having the liturgical tail wagging the dog!]

Watch now as all sorts of people demand that bishops and priests violate the law because of what His Holiness Pope Francis did last year and plans to do this year. Watch as all manner of clerics hide behind the Pope when they choose openly to break the law and violate their promise to uphold the Church’s laws.

The problem with that is, liturgical law is real law. It must be obeyed.

The Church’s liturgical law is not ambiguous: only males can be chosen for this optional rite, and they should be men: viri selecti. Vir means “man”. Vir cannot, period, mean a female. And despite what Facebook says, there are two sexes, not dozens. Also, you really don’t get to choose which you are. Vir is male.

Also, lest it go unsaid, I am not speciesist, but the Church still limits this foot-washing rite to human beings.

Next, the Pope, who is the Church’s Legislator, can do A, B or C as it pleaseth him to do. If he wants to set aside the law, so be it. [On this, I am with Fr. Scalese and others who say that the Pope cannot set aside the law - but if he wants to change it, he can always do so to suit his preferences. Yet, isn't it equally relativistic, and objectively wrong, to simply set aside the law if it does not suit you, even if you are the Pope, as to change the law to suit you because you are Pope?]

The rest of us, however, are obliged, to obey the law. The ordained made promises at ordination to obey the Church’s laws.

So, we have a couple choices when it comes to the foot-washing rite (the “Mandatum” or “Command” – whence the word Maundy): don’t do the rite, or do the rite properly.

Two main excuses are offered in defense of the abuse of washing the feet of women.

The first excuse is that of “hospitality”. “Hospitality” suggests women must be “included”. Never mind that Mass isn’t that sort of “meal”. In the USA some might obtusely cite a note – having no canonical authority – from the (then) NCCB’s Committee on Liturgy in 1987 which uses this “hospitality” argument.

The second excuse is that of “inclusive” language, to which some of a certain age still cling. Keep in mind that quite a few clerics, of a certain age, haven’t really updated themselves by looking at the most recent edition of the Roman Missal, in English much less in Latin. They are snug in their fading memories that the English words in the now long-obsolete ICEL Sacramentary, “men” and “man”, couldn’t possibly mean “males”! That would be sexist! Again, Latin “vir” means “male”.

To repeat, when the Pope decides to derogate for himself from the liturgical law, that derogation doesn’t abolish the law for everyone else. [Nor for the Pope!] The law remains.

We priests – and bishops – must obey the liturgical law which we do not have the authority to break or change.

The Church is not lawless. The Church is not merely a display case for people’s passing whims and changing fashions.

When and if the Holy Father wants the law to change for everyone, he will make sure that it is changed for everyone in the proper way and he will let everyone in the world know about it. The Holy Father knows how to change laws and promulgate the changes. Doing something in private on his own doesn’t change the law. [But his choice to 'misuse' the Mass of the Lord's Supper to demonstrate his own personal virtues has not been done in private!. It's been a most public act earning him headlines since he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires. He is obviously very sure he is right that virtually ignoring the primary significance of the Cena Domini Mass has to do with the institution of the Eucharist and the priesthood, in favor of the purely accessory, optional and non-obligatory foot-washing ritual during the Mass - the liturgical tail wagging the dog. Yet if he does not promulgate the proper amendment 'institutionalizing' his view, it must be because he does not want to formally go on record as breaking with what would seem to be an incontrovertible fact about the Mass of the Lord's Supper.]

Until the Roman Pontiff changes the law, the law stands.

Men only, or no foot washing at all. Those are the two legitimate options.

Fathers, if you are afraid of the women in your parish, just opt out of the foot washing rite entirely. It is only an option. Fathers, if you don’t want the headaches and complaints and threats and tears and anger and hate-mail and voice-mail and glares and accusations, just say “no” to the foot washing option. Let the Mass be the Mass without the controversy. You are not obliged to violate the law and your promises.

P.S. It turns out JMB/PF rationalized his personal interpretation of the Mass of the Lord's Supper in his catechism on the Paschal Triduum at the General Audience yesterday, April 1. Was the meaning of Jesus's life and passion 'service', or was it not the greater objective of saving men's souls?

'Footwashing explains the meaning
of Jesus's life and Passion'


VATICAN CITY, April 1 (zenit.org) - The Easter Triduum is a time to not only commemorate the Passion of the Lord, but to enter in its mystery. This was the reflection given by Pope Francis at today's General Audience in St. Peter's Square.

The Pope said that with tomorrow's Mass of the Lord's Supper, the summit of the liturgical year begins. Speaking on the act of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples, the Holy Father said that Christ expresses the meaning of His life and Passion, who came not to be served, but to serve.

"This happens every time we make the memorial of the Lord in the Eucharist: we make communion with the Servant Christ to obey his commandment, that of loving one another as He has loved us," the Pope said.

"If we approach Holy Communion without being sincerely willing to wash one another's feet, we do not recognize the Body of the Lord. It is Jesus' service, donating one's self totally...."

Since we are all supposed to receive communion in a state of grace - hence the contradiction of the Bergoglian 'communion for everyone' - does not that imply that in a state of grace, we are well aware of God's commandment to love one another and that in our own way, we do so as best we can? Or does 'communion for everyone' imply that everyone is 'sincerely willing to wash one another's feet', and therefore, the state of grace resulting from the absence of mortal sin and if possible, regular confession, is not necessary? In any case, JMB's rationalization is inherently contradictory.]

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/04/2015 06:42]

Benedict XVI explains
the Paschal Triduum
April 12, 2006

Because he was elected Pope after Easter 2005, Benedict XVI observed his first Holy Week as Pope in 2006. Here is a translation of his catechesis at the General Audience on April 12, 2006, Wednesday of Holy Week:

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

Tomorrow is the start of the Paschal Triduum, the fulcrum of the entire liturgical year. Aided by the sacred rites of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the solemn Easter Vigil, we will relive the mystery of the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord.

These are days to re-instill in us a more vivid desire to adhere to Christ and to follow him generously, knowing that He loved us to the point of giving his life for us. What indeed does the the holy Triduum remind us if not this sublime manifestation of God’s love for man?

Let us learn therefore to celebrate the Paschal Triduum taking to heart St. Augustine’s exhortation: “Now let us consider attentively the three holy days of the crucifixion, the burial and the resurrection of the Lord. Of these three mysteries we fulfill in the present that which is symbolized by the Cross, while we fulfill through faith and hope that which is symbolized by the burial and resurrection.” (Ep 55, 14,24: Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana (NBA) XXI/II, Roma 1969, p. 477).

The Paschal Triduum opens tomorrow, Maundy Thursday, with the morning Mass “in Cena Domini” (at the Lord’s Supper), even if on the morning of this day, another liturgical celebration is normally held, the Mass of the Chrism, during which, gathered around their Bishop, all the priests in every diocese renew their sacerdotal vows, and take part in the blssing of the oils for the catechumens (for baptism), for the sick, and for Chrism, and so we shall do that tomorrow here in St. Peter’s.

Besides the institution of the priesthood, we commemorate on this holy day the total offering that Christ made of himself to mankind in the sacrament of the Eucharist. On the same night when he was betrayed, He left us, as the Sacred Scripture reminds us, the “new commandment”, mandatum novum, of fraternal love, by performing the moving gesture of washing the feet (of his apostles), recalling a humble service that was rendered by slaves.

This singular day, which evokes great mysteries, will close with a Eucharistic adoration, in memory of the Lord’s agony in the garden of Gethsemane. Gripped by great anguish, the Gospel tells us, Jesus asked his people to keep watch with Him in prayer: “Stay and pray with me” (Mt 26,38), but the disciples fell asleep.

Even today, the Lord tells us, “Stay and pray with me.” And we see how we, his disciples today, often fall asleep. That was, for Jesus, the hour of his abandonment and solitude, which was followed during the night, by his arrest and the start of his sorrowful path to Calvary.

Focused on the mystery of the Passion, Good Friday, a day of fasting and penitence, is entirely oriented towards the contemplation of Jesus on the Cross. In the churches, the story of the Passion is retold and the words of the prophet Zachariah resound: “They will turn their eyes on him whom they have pierced.” (Jn 19,37).

So on Good Friday we want to truly look on the pierced heart of Christ, in which, St. Paul writes, “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge” (Col 2,3), indeed in which “all the fullness of divinity resides corporally” (Col 2,9).

For this, the apostle could affirm decisively that he did not want to know anything else “except that it is Jesus Christ who was crucified.” (1 Cor 2,2).

It is true. The Cross reveals, “the width, the length, the height and the depth” – the cosmic dimensions, that is – of a love that surpasses everything known, beyond everything that was known, which fills us with “all the fullness of God” (cfr Eph 3, 18-19).

In the mystery of the Crucified Lord is fulfilled “that turning of God against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him – this is love in its most radical form.”(Deus caritas est, 12). The Cross of Christ, Pope St. Leo the Great wrote in the 5th century, “is the fountain of all blessings and the origin of all graces” (Disc. 8 on the passion of the Lord, 6-8; PL 54, 340-342).

On Holy Saturday, the Church, uniting itself spiritually with Mary, remains in prayer at the sepulcher where the body of the Son of God rests inert as if at rest after the creative labor of redemption realized through his death (cfr Heb 4,1-13).

Late at night, the solemn Easter vigil begins, during which in every Church the joyous chanting of the Gloria and the Paschal Alleluia will rise from the hearts of the newly baptized and from the entire Christian community, rejoicing because Christ is risen and has triumphed over death.

Dear brothers and sisters, for a fruitful celebration of Easter, the Church asks the faithful these days to approach the sacrament of Penitence, which is like a kind of death and resurrection for each of us. In the early Christian community, the rite of Reconciliation of the Penitents, presided by the Bishop, was held on Maundy Thursday.

The historical conditions have certainly changed, but to prepare oneself for Easter with a good confession remains an obligation to value in full, because it offers us the possibility to start life anew and to truly have a new beginning in the joy of the Resurrected Christ and in communion with the pardon that He gives us.

Knowing that we are sinners but trusting in divine mercy, let us reconcile ourselves with Christ in order to taste more intensely the joy that he communicates to us through His resurrection. The pardon that is given to us by Christ in the sacrament of Penitence is the fountain of an interior and exterior peace which makes us apostles of peace in a world which unfortunately continues to see divisions, suffering, the drama of injustices, hate and violence, of the incapacity to reconcile among ourselves in order to start anew with sincere forgiveness.

But we also know that evil does not have the last word, because Christ, who was crucified and resurrected, triumphs, and his triumph is manifested in the power of divine mercy. His resurrection gives us this certainty: Notwithstanding all the darkness in this world, evil does not have the last word. Sustained by this certainty we can commit ourselves with more courage and enthusiasm so that a more just world can be born.

I wish this with all my heart for all of you, dear brothers and sisters, that you may prepare yourselves with faith and devotion for the coming Easter festivity, in the company of the Most Holy Mary who, after following her divine Son in His hours of passion and on the cross, shared the glory of His resurrection.

Later, he gave this synthesis in English:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Tomorrow evening, we begin the Easter Triduum, the fulcrum of the entire liturgical year. Through the sacred rites we relive the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord, reawakening the desire to follow Jesus more closely.

Holy Thursday commemorates Christ’s total giving of himself to humanity in the sacrament of the Eucharist. Through ‘the washing of feet’, it also recalls in a dramatic way the new commandment to love one another.

On Good Friday, we listen to the account of the Passion and contemplate Christ on the Cross. This is love in its most radical form: God gives His very self, in order to raise us up and save us.

During Holy Saturday the Church is spiritually united with Mary, praying by the tomb of the Son of God who lies at rest after completing his work of redemption.

Then, at the solemn Easter Vigil, the joyful Gloria and Easter Alleluia rise forth from the hearts of the whole Christian community, because Christ is risen and has defeated death!

Dear friends, to prepare for Easter the Church asks us to approach the sacrament of Penance. Trust in the mercy of God! The gift of Christ’s pardon is the source of peace! Indeed, this sacrament makes us apostles of peace for our world which longs to be healed of divisions, suffering, injustice and violence. Evil does not have the last word. Christ, crucified and risen, has triumphed. Encouraged by this truth, let us, with enthusiasm, build a society inspired by the Gospel!

I invoke an abundance of God’s blessings upon you and your families, and I wish everyone a happy and holy Easter!

---

---

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
CHRISM MASS IN SAINT PETER'S BASILICA
Holy Thursday, 13 April 2006

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate
and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Holy Thursday is the day on which the Lord gave the Twelve the priestly task of celebrating, in the bread and the wine, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood until he comes again. The paschal lamb and all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant are replaced by the gift of his Body and his Blood, the gift of himself.

Thus, the new worship was based on the fact that, in the first place, God makes a gift to us, and, filled with this gift, we become his: creation returns to the Creator.

So it is that the priesthood also became something new: it was no longer a question of lineage but of discovering oneself in the mystery of Jesus Christ. He is always the One who gives, who draws us to himself.

He alone can say: "This is my Body... this is my Blood". The mystery of the priesthood of the Church lies in the fact that we, miserable human beings, by virtue of the Sacrament, can speak with his "I": in persona Christi. He wishes to exercise his priesthood through us. On Holy Thursday, we remember in a special way this moving mystery, which moves us anew in every celebration of the Sacrament.

So that daily life will not dull what is great and mysterious, we need this specific commemoration, we need to return to that hour in which he placed his hands upon us and made us share in this mystery.

Let us reflect once again on the signs in which the Sacrament has been given to us. At the center is the very ancient rite of the imposition of hands, with which he took possession of me, saying to me: "You belong to me".

However, in saying this he also said: "You are under the protection of my hands. You are under the protection of my heart. You are kept safely in the palm of my hands, and this is precisely how you find yourself in the immensity of my love. Stay in my hands, and give me yours".

Then let us remember that our hands were anointed with oil, which is the sign of the Holy Spirit and his power. Why one's hands? The human hand is the instrument of human action, it is the symbol of the human capacity to face the world, precisely to "take it in hand".

The Lord has laid his hands upon us and he now wants our hands so that they may become his own in the world. He no longer wants them to be instruments for taking things, people or the world for ourselves, to reduce them to being our possession, but instead, by putting ourselves at the service of his love, they can pass on his divine touch.

He wants our hands to be instruments of service, hence, an expression of the mission of the whole person who vouches for him and brings him to men and women. If human hands symbolically represent human faculties and, in general, skill as power to dispose of the world, then anointed hands must be a sign of the human capacity for giving, for creativity in shaping the world with love. It is for this reason, of course, that we are in need of the Holy Spirit.

In the Old Testament, anointing is the sign of being taken into service: the king, the prophet, the priest, each does and gives more than what derives from himself alone. In a certain way, he is emptied of himself, so as to serve by making himself available to One who is greater than he.

If, in today's Gospel, Jesus presents himself as God's Anointed One, the Christ, then this itself means that he is acting for the Father's mission and in unity with the Holy Spirit. He is thereby giving the world a new kingship, a new priesthood, a new way of being a prophet who does not seek himself but lives for the One with a view to whom the world was created.

Today, let us once again put our hands at his disposal and pray to him to take us by the hand, again and again, and lead us.

In the sacramental gesture of the imposition of hands by the Bishop, it was the Lord himself who laid his hands upon us. This sacramental sign sums up an entire existential process.

Once, like the first disciples, we encountered the Lord and heard his words: "Follow me!" Perhaps, to start with, we followed him somewhat hesitantly, looking back and wondering if this really was the road for us. And at some point on the journey, we may have had the same experience as Peter after the miraculous catch; in other words, we may have been frightened by its size, by the size of the task and by the inadequacy of our own poor selves, so that we wanted to turn back. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord" (Lk 5:8).

Then, however, with great kindness, he took us by the hand, he drew us to himself and said to us: "Do not fear! I am with you. I will not abandon you, do not leave me!".

And more than just once, the same thing that happened to Peter may have happened to us: while he was walking on the water towards the Lord, he suddenly realized that the water was not holding him up and that he was beginning to sink. And like Peter we cried, "Lord, save me!" (Mt 14: 30). Seeing the elements raging on all sides, how could we get through the roaring, foaming waters of the past century, of the past millennium?

But then we looked towards him... and he grasped us by the hand and gave us a new "specific weight": the lightness that derives from faith and draws us upwards. Then he stretched out to us the hand that sustains and carries us. He supports us. Let us fix our gaze ever anew on him and reach out to him. Let us allow his hand to take ours, and then we will not sink but will serve the life that is stronger than death and the love that is stronger than hatred.

Faith in Jesus, Son of the living God, is the means through which, time and again, we can take hold of Jesus' hand and in which he takes our hands and guides us.

One of my favourite prayers is the request that the liturgy puts on our lips before Communion: "...never let me be separated from you". Let us ask that we never fall away from communion with his Body, with Christ himself, that we do not fall away from the Eucharistic mystery. Let us ask that he will never let go of our hands....

The Lord laid his hand upon us. He expressed the meaning of this gesture in these words: "No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you" (Jn 15: 15).

"I no longer call you servants but friends": in these words one could actually perceive the institution of the priesthood. The Lord makes us his friends; he entrusts everything to us; he entrusts himself to us, so that we can speak with he himself - in persona Christi capitis.

What trust! He has truly delivered himself into our hands. The essential signs of priestly ordination are basically all a manifestation of those words: the laying on of hands; the consignment of the book - of his words that he entrusts to us; the consignment of the chalice, with which he transmits to us his most profound and personal mystery.

The power to absolve is part of all this. It also makes us share in his awareness of the misery of sin and of all the darkness in the world, and places in our hands the key to reopen the door to the Father's house.

"I no longer call you servants but friends". This is the profound meaning of being a priest: becoming the friend of Jesus Christ. For this friendship we must daily recommit ourselves.

Friendship means sharing in thought and will. We must put into practice this communion of thought with Jesus, as St Paul tells us in his Letter to the Philippians (cf. 2: 2-5). And this communion of thought is not a purely intellectual thing, but a sharing of sentiments and will, hence, also of actions. This means that we should know Jesus in an increasingly personal way, listening to him, living together with him, staying with him.

Listening to him - in lectio divina, that is, reading Sacred Scripture in a non-academic but spiritual way; thus, we learn to encounter Jesus present, who speaks to us. We must reason and reflect, before him and with him, on his words and actions. The reading of Sacred Scripture is prayer, it must be prayer - it must emerge from prayer and lead to prayer.

The Evangelists tell us that the Lord frequently withdrew - for entire nights - "to the mountains", to pray alone. We too need these "mountains": they are inner peaks that we must scale, the mountain of prayer.

Only in this way does the friendship develop. Only in this way can we carry out our priestly service, only in this way can we take Christ and his Gospel to men and women.

Activism by itself can even be heroic, but in the end external action is fruitless and loses its effectiveness unless it is born from deep inner communion with Christ. The time we spend on this is truly a time of pastoral activity, authentic pastoral activity. The priest must above all be a man of prayer.

The world in its frenetic activism often loses its direction. Its action and capacities become destructive if they lack the power of prayer, from which flow the waters of life that irrigate the arid land.

"I no longer call you servants, but friends". The core of the priesthood is being friends of Jesus Christ. Only in this way can we truly speak in persona Christi, even if our inner remoteness from Christ cannot jeopardize the validity of the Sacrament. Being a friend of Jesus, being a priest, means being a man of prayer. In this way we recognize him and emerge from the ignorance of simple servants. We thus learn to live, suffer and act with him and for him.

Being friends with Jesus is par excellence always friendship with his followers. We can be friends of Jesus only in communion with the whole of Christ, with the Head and with the Body; in the vigorous vine of the Church to which the Lord gives life.

Sacred Scripture is a living and actual Word, thanks to the Lord, only in her. Without the living subject of the Church that embraces the ages, more often than not the Bible would have splintered into heterogeneous writings and would thus have become a book of the past. It is eloquent in the present only where the "Presence" is - where Christ remains for ever contemporary with us: in the Body of his Church.

Being a priest means becoming an ever closer friend of Jesus Christ with the whole of our existence. The world needs God - not just any god but the God of Jesus Christ, the God who made himself flesh and blood, who loved us to the point of dying for us, who rose and created within himself room for man. This God must live in us and we in him. This is our priestly call: only in this way can our action as priests bear fruit.

I would like to end this Homily with a word on Andrea Santoro, the priest from the Diocese of Rome who was assassinated in Trebizond (Turkey) while he was praying.

Cardinal Cé recounted to us during the Spiritual Exercises what Fr Santoro said. It reads: "I am here to dwell among these people and enable Jesus to do so by lending him my flesh.... One becomes capable of salvation only by offering one's own flesh. The evil in the world must be borne and the pain shared, assimilating it into one's own flesh as did Jesus".

Jesus assumed our flesh; let us give him our own. In this way he can come into the world and transform it. Amen!

---

Benedict XVI's first Mass of the Lord's Supper homily as Pope takes the significance of the footwashing before the Last Supper far above and beyond an act of humility and service, but of purification - God cleanses us so we may be worthy to come to his table.

---

HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
MASS OF THE LORD'S SUPPER
Basilica of St John Lateran
Holy Thursday, 13 April 2006

Dear Brothers in the Episcopate
and in the Priesthood,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

"Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (Jn 13: 1).

God loves his creature, man; he even loves him in his fall and does not leave him to himself. He loves him to the end. He is impelled with his love to the very end, to the extreme: he came down from his divine glory.

He cast aside the raiment of his divine glory and put on the garb of a slave. He came down to the extreme lowliness of our fall. He kneels before us and carries out for us the service of a slave: he washes our dirty feet so that we might be admitted to God's banquet and be made worthy to take our place at his table - something that on our own we neither could nor would ever be able to do.

God is not a remote God, too distant or too great to be bothered with our trifles. Since God is great, he can also be concerned with small things. Since he is great, the soul of man, the same man, created through eternal love, is not a small thing but great, and worthy of God's love.

God's holiness is not merely an incandescent power before which we are obliged to withdraw, terrified. It is a power of love and therefore a purifying and healing power.

God descends and becomes a slave, he washes our feet so that we may come to his table. In this, the entire mystery of Jesus Christ is expressed. In this, what redemption means becomes visible. The basin in which he washes us is his love, ready to face death. Only love has that purifying power which washes the grime from us and elevates us to God's heights.

The basin that purifies us is God himself, who gives himself to us without reserve - to the very depths of his suffering and his death. He is ceaselessly this love that cleanses us; in the sacraments of purification - Baptism and the Sacrament of Penance - he is continually on his knees at our feet and carries out for us the service of a slave, the service of purification, making us capable of God.

His love is inexhaustible, it truly goes to the very end.

"You are clean, but not all of you", the Lord says (Jn 13: 10). This sentence reveals the great gift of purification that he offers to us, because he wants to be at table together with us, to become our food. "But not all of you" - the obscure mystery of rejection exists, which becomes apparent with Judas's act, and precisely on Holy Thursday, the day on which Jesus made the gift of himself, it should give us food for thought. The Lord's love knows no bounds, but man can put a limit on it.

"You are clean, but not all of you": What is it that makes man unclean?

It is the rejection of love, not wanting to be loved, not loving. It is pride that believes it has no need of any purification, that is closed to God's saving goodness. It is pride that does not want to admit or recognize that we are in need of purification.

In Judas we see the nature of this rejection even more clearly. He evaluated Jesus in accordance with the criteria of power and success. For him, power and success alone were real; love did not count. And he was greedy: money was more important than communion with Jesus, more important than God and his love.

He thus also became a liar who played a double game and broke with the truth; one who lived in deceit and so lost his sense of the supreme truth, of God. In this way, he became hard of heart and incapable of conversion, of the trusting return of the Prodigal Son, and he disposed of the life destroyed.

"You are clean, but not all of you". Today, the Lord alerts us to the self-sufficiency that puts a limit on his unlimited love. He invites us to imitate his humility, to entrust ourselves to it, to let ourselves be "infected" by it.

He invites us - however lost we may feel - to return home, to let his purifying goodness uplift us and enable us to sit at table with him, with God himself.

Let us add a final word to this inexhaustible Gospel passage: "For I have given you an example" (Jn 13: 15); "You also ought to wash one another's feet" (Jn 13: 14). Of what does "washing one another's feet" consist? What does it actually mean?

This: every good work for others - especially for the suffering and those not considered to be worth much - is a service of the washing of feet.

The Lord calls us to do this: to come down, learn humility and the courage of goodness, and also the readiness to accept rejection and yet to trust in goodness and persevere in it.

But there is another, deeper dimension. The Lord removes the dirt from us with the purifying power of his goodness. Washing one another's feet means above all tirelessly forgiving one another, beginning together ever anew, however pointless it may seem. It means purifying one another by bearing with one another and by being tolerant of others; purifying one another, giving one another the sanctifying power of the Word of God and introducing one another into the Sacrament of divine love.

The Lord purifies us, and for this reason we dare to approach his table. Let us pray to him to give to all of us the grace of being able to one day be guests for ever at the eternal nuptial banquet. Amen!

---

As I had to create this retrospective post from scratch, I have used the only two photos from that day that I have been able to retrieve online - I am sure I would find more with a bit more time, but for now, I apologize I have to make do.

A Good Friday reflection
from Joseph Ratzinger

It is significant - and most welcome - that Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, chose to mark Good Friday today, with, among other things, a 1973 reflection by Joseph Ratzinger which until now, had only been printed in the original German edition of his COMPLETE WORKS...


The spectators of evil do not see God:
Christ, Auschwitz and the demons of history
By JOSEPH RATZINGER
Translated from

April 3, 2015

The Good Friday of history is in the stories of horror in the 20th century, from the Shoah (Holocaust) to the cry of the poor, “the slums of the hungry and the desperate”, in the words of Joseph Ratzinger.

The text we publish here is the first part of the opening essay from the book Gesù di Nazaret. Scritti di cristologia (Jesus of Nazareth: Writings on Christology), second book of Volume VI of the Complete Writings of Joseph Ratzinger. The book will be published in its Italian edition this November by the Vatican publishing house.



Written in 1973, the text first appeared in the German edition of Volume VI-2 from Herder which has been publishing the Complete Writings, edited by Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Mueller for the Regensburg-based Institut Papst Benedikt XVI. [This text was translated to Italian for LEV by Pierluca Azzaro.]

This is a vertiginous reflection on a response to the cry of the ‘least’ in the world: “Where are you, Lord, that you could have created a world like this?”


In the great compositions on the Passion of Christ by Johann Sebastian Bach that we listen to every year during Holy Week, and always with new emotion, the terrible event of Good Friday is immersed in a transfigured and transfiguring beauty. Certainly, these Passions do not speak of the Resurrection – they conclude with the burial of Jesus - but in their limpid serenity there lives the certainty of Easter Sunday, the certainty of hope that never disappears even in the dark night of death.

Today, this trusting serenity of faith – which does not even have to speak of the Resurrection because the faith lives in and by the Resurrection – has become strangely alien to man.

In the Passion composed by the Polish Krzysztof Penderecki, the quiet serenity of a community of faithful who daily live in Easter has disappeared. In its place is the heart-rending cry of those who were persecuted in Auschwitz, the brutal command tones of the masters of that hell, the zealous promises of those who thought to be saved thereby from the horror, the hissing of the whiplashes from the omnipresent and anonymous powers of darkness, the desperate moans of the dying.

It is the Good Friday of the 20th century. The face of man is taunted, covered with spittle, repeatedly struck by other men. “The head covered with blood and wounds, full of pain and mockery” looks at us from the gas chambers of Auschwitz. It looks at us from the villages devastated by war and the faces of suffering children in Vietnam [the essay was written in 1973]; from the mega-slums of India, Africa and Latin America; from the concentration camps of the Communist world which Alexander Solzhenitsyn placed before our eyes with striking vividness. And it looks at us with a realism that defies any esthetic transfiguration.

If Kant and Hegel had been right, the Enlightenment they promoted should have made man ever freer, ever more reasonable, ever more just. But from the depth of his being have emerged instead those demons that with such zeal we had thought dead, teaching man to be fearful of his own power as well as of his impotence – of his power of destruction, and of his impotence in finding his true self and to master his dishumanity.

The most tremendous moment of the Passion narrative is certainly when, at the peak of his suffering on the cross, Jesus cries out loudly: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” They are the words of the Psalm in which Israel – suffering, abused and derided because of her faith – cries out to God her need for help.

But this cry of prayer from a people, whose election and communion with God seemed to have turned into a curse, acquires all of its tremendous magnitude only on the lips of he who is God’s redeeming nearness to man.

If he felt himself to be abandoned by God, then where can God be found? Was this not perhaps the true solar eclipse of history in which the light of the world is extinguished?

Today, the echo of that cry resounds in our ears in a thousand ways: from the hell of the concentration camps,from the battlefields, from the slums of the hungry and the desperate: “Where are you, God, who could create a world like this, if you passively allow the most innocent of your creatures to undergo the most terrible sufferings, like lambs led to slaughter, mute and unable to open their mouths?"

Job’s ancient question has been heard at other times before. Sometimes, it takes a tone that is arrogant and betrays a malicious satisfaction. Thus, for example, when some student newspapers repeat what has been presumably taught to them – namely, that in a world which has had to learn the words Auschwitz and Vietnam, it is no longer possible to speak of a ‘good’ God.

In any case, the false tone that often accompanies this does not detract from the authenticity of the question: In the present historical moment, it is is as if all of us are at that point in the passion of Jesus in which the question becomes a cry of help to the Father: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

What can we say? It is basically a question which cannot be answered with words and arguments because it is so profound that pure rationality and the words to express it are unable to plumb it. The failure of Job’s friends is the inevitable destiny of those who think they can resolve the question, positively or negatively, with facile reasoning and words.

It is a question that can only be lived and suffered – with him who up to the very end suffered for all of us and with all of us.

A prideful belief in being able to resolve the question – whether in the sense of those student newspapers, or in the sense of theological apologetics – ends up by not focusing on the essential. At best, one can offer a few points for reflection.

It must be noted, first of all, that Jesus does not declare the absence of God – he transforms his cry into a prayer. If we wish to consider the Good Friday of the 20th century within the context of the Good Friday of Jesus, we must make the cry for help of the 20th century be a cry addressed to the Father – transform it into a prayer to God who is always near regardless.

One could ask next: Is it truly possible to pray with a sincere heart when nothing has been done to wash off the blood of the oppressed and to dry their tears? Is Veronica’s gesture not the least that should happen before we can start talking about prayer? But above all, can one pray only with the lips, and isn’t it always necessary to do so with one’s whole being?

Let us limit ourselves to this last question before considering a second aspect: Jesus truly took part in the suffering of all the damned, whereas, we, in general, most of us, have been simply spectators who have more or less ‘taken part’ in the atrocities of this century.

A rather important observation goes with this. It is in fact curious that the affirmation that there could ever be any God, that God has therefore disappeared, is raised more insistently by the spectators to the horror, by those who watch such monstruosities from the comfortable armchairs of their own wellbeing and think they have paid their dues, keeping such horrors away from them by saying: “If such things happen, then there is no God”.

But for those who are immersed in these atrocities, the effect is often the contrary: It is there that they get to know God. Even today, in this world, the most ardent prayers are raised from the fiery furnaces of living corpses, not from the spectators of the horror.

It is not by chance that it was those very people who throughout history had been most condemned to suffer, who had been struck more often and reduced to utter deprivation – and not only from 1940-1945 in Auschwitz – became the people of Revelation, the people who recognized God and manifested him to the world.

And it is not by chance that the man who has been most sinned against, the man who has most suffered – Jesus of Nazareth – is the Revealer himself, or rather, the Revelation himself.

It is not by chance that faith in God arises from a head covered in blood and wounds, from a Crucified Man. And that, on the other hand, atheism has its father in Epicurus, who represents the world of the contented spectator.

Suddenly we are struck as by lightning with the disquieting, menacing seriousness of those words of Jesus which we have often set aside because we have thought them inconvenient: That it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.

‘Rich’ here means one ‘who is well off’, one who is sated with material wellbeing and knows of suffering only from TV. And on Good Friday, we cannot take these words lightly which interpellate and admonish us. Certainly, we do not wish and should not incur pain and suffering for ourselves. It is God who inflicts Good Friday when and as he wants to.

But we should always learn – not only on the theoretical level but in living our lives – that everything good is a ‘loan’ that comes from God for which we must answer to him. And we must learn – once more, not just theoretically, but in how we think and act – that alongside the real Presence of Jesus in the Church and in the Sacrament, there is also his other real presence in the least of men, the most downtrodden in the world, in whom he wants us to find him.

Year after year, Good Friday exhorts us definitively to harbor this knowledge within us.


"It is God who inflicts Good Friday when and as he wants to" - I think perhaps that is the only answer we must face and accept when things seem to be at their worst. Suffering is an inevitable part of human life - it is a consequence of the Fall - but our faith gives us prayer as a recourse. For me, just to know that I can pray, and that there is a God to pray to, is comfort enough to carry on. I often wonder what I would do if I did not believe in God, a God to whom I can always turn to. It would be true despair, a death of the soul, from which I alone would be unable to ever emerge... The corollary is that as bad as my suffering might be, there are always those - countless more - who are suffering more than I do, worse sufferings than I could ever imagine, and who are there to remind us that life is a way of the Cross leading to our celestial home with God, and that along this way, we are fortunate that some of us can and should be Veronica, Simon of Cyrene, the compassionate women of Jerusalem...



As we know, Pope Francis celebrated the Mass of the Lord's Supper last night at Rebibbia, Rome's largest prison. In which his homily was, as expected, all about Jesus washing the feet of his disciples before the Last Supper - a sign, he said, of Jesus's infinite love for all men that expresses itself in doing the service which in his time was normally done by slaves. He ended the homily by asking the prisoners to pray for him because "I too need to be washed by the Lord, and because of this, pray for me during this Mass so that the Lord may wash away even my own filth, that I may be more of a slave to you, more of a slave in the service of the people as Jesus was".

I wish to call attention to Benedict XVI's letter to the inmates of Rebibbia for Good Friday 2012 - his last as Pope - on the occasion of the Way of the Cross at the prison in which 300 prisoners took part.





Pope sends message to prisoners
taking part in a Via Crucis
Translated from

March 30, 2012

"Today you will be with me in Paradise" is the theme for the Via Crucis held Saturday afternoon at the new prison complex of Rebibbia in Rome.

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar General for Rome, presided at the Lenten rite held in the area in front of the prison chapel and attended by 300 inmates. They were joined by prison director Carmelo Cantone, the director of diocesan Caritas, Caritas volunteers, seminarians who carry out daily assignments in Rebibbia, and faithful from various Roman parishes.

The Holy Father, who visited Rebibbia last December 18, sent the prisoners a message for Holy Week.

---

Dear brothers:

I was happy to hear that, in preparation for Easter, you will be giving life in Rebibbia to a Via Crucis to be presided over by my Vicar in Rome. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, with the participation of the inmates, the prison staff and groups of faithful from various parishes of Rome.

I feel particularly close to this initiative, because I hold vivid memories of the visit I made to Rebibbia shortly before Christmas last year. I remember the faces of those whom I met and the words I heard from them that have left a profound mark on me.

Therefore, I profoundly join you in prayer and thus give continuity to my presence among you, for which I wish to thank your chaplains.

I know that this Stations of the Cross also represent a sign of reconciliation. Indeed, as one of you said during our meeting, prison serves to raise you up after having taken a fall, to reconcile with your own self, with others and with God, in order to be able to re-enter society with a fresh start.

When, during the Via Crucis, we see Jesus fall to the ground - one, two, three times - we understand that he shared our human condition, and that the weight of our sins caused him to fall. But three times, Jesus got up again to resume his journey towards Calvary.

Thus, with his help, we too can rise again after we fall, and perhaps help someone else, a brother, to get up, too.

What gave Jesus the strength to go on? It was the certainty that the Father was with him. Even if his human heart may have held all the bitterness of abandonment, Jesus knew that the Father loves him - that it is this immense love, this infinite mercy of the heavenly Father, that consoled him and was greater then all the violence and insults that surrounded him.

Even if everyone mocked him and no longer treated him as a man, Jesus, in his heart, had the firm certainty that he was the son, the beloved Son of God the Father.

This, dear friends, is the great gift that Jesus gave to us with his Way of the Cross: to reveal to us that God is infinite love and mercy. He carries the weight of our sins to the very end in order that we can rise up when we fall, reconcile ourselves and find peace again. And so, we too should not fear get on with our own 'via crucis', of carrying our cross along with Jesus.

He is with us, and so is Mary, his Mother and ours. She remained faithful, following him to the foot of the Cross, and prays for our resurrection in the belief that even in the darkest night, the last word is God's light and love.

With this hope, based on faith, I wish that all of you may live the coming Easter in the peace and joy that Christ has acquired for us with his blood. And with great affection, I impart to you the Apostolic Blessing, extended it to your families and persons dear to you.

From the Vatican
March 22, 2012

---

I thought the Holy Week message to the inmates of Rebibbia was just as moving as the visit he made to the prison the preceding Christmas, at which time he had a Q&A session with some of the inmates. Most memorably, he told one of them who spoke about the social stigma and mockery that ex-prisoners often face in the world, that he understood him very well because he himself has often been the object of public mockery and calumny.








For the record, here is a translation of Pope Francis's brief homily to the inmates of Rebibbia on Maundy Thursday:

---

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

Mass of the Lord's Supper
Rebibbia Prison, Rome
April 2, 2015


On this Thursday, Jesus was at table with his disciples, celebrating the feast of Passover. And the Gospel passage we heard contains a phrase which is truly the center of what Jesus did for all of us: "He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end" (Jn 13, 1).

Jesus loved us. Jesus loves us. Without limits, always, to the very end. Jesus's love for us has no limits: he always loves us more, more. He does not tire of loving anyone. He loves us all to the point that he gave his life for us: Yes, he gave his life for all of us, he gave his life for each of us.

And each of us can say, "He gave his life for me". Each of us. He gave his life for you, for you, for you, for me, for him... for everyone, with name and last name. That is what his love is - personal.

Jesus's love never disappoints, because he never tires of loving, as he never tires of forgiving, he never tires of embracing us. And this is the first thing I want to tell you: Jesus loved us, each of us, to the very end.

Then he does something that his disciples did not understand: he washed their feet. At that time, it was the custom because when people arrived anywhere, their feet were dirty from the dust on the streets - there were no paving stones then*[???]... just the dust on the street. So when guests entered a house, their feet had to be washed. But it was not the master of the house who did this - his slaves did it. This was a task for slaves.

Jesus washes our feet, the feet of his disciples, like a slave, and therefore he says: “What I am doing, you do not understand now", he said this to Simon Peter, "but you will understand later" (Jn 13,7) Such was the love of Jesus that he became a slave to serve us, to heal us, to cleanse us.

Today in this Mass, the Church wishes that the priest wash the feet of 12 persons in memory of the Twelve Apostles. But in our heart, we must have the certainty, we must be sure, that the Lord, when he washes our feet, washes all of us, he purifies us, he makes us feel his love.

In the Bible, there is a statement by the prophet Isaiah that is very beautiful: "Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget, I will never forget you" (Is 49,15). Such is God's love for us.

Today I will wash the feet of twelve among you, but you are in all these brothers and sisters, all of you, all of you. All who live here. They represent you. But I, too, need to be washed by the Lord, and because of this, pray for me during this Mass so that the Lord may also wash away my dirtiness [he uses the Italian word sporcizie, a plural form fof sporcizia (dirtiness, filth), a word which is normally never used in the plural], so that I may become more of a slave to you, more of a slave in the service of people, as Jesus was...

---

Quibbles: Shall I be my usual 'stern' self about JMB and comment that even on Maundy Thursday, he cannot avoid being 'self-referential'? When everything seems to end up being about him? What about saying, at least, "Pray for me as I pray for you"? - It may be implicit, understood, taken for granted, but what's wrong with adding those five words?... And not to be petty, but to say 'there were no paving stones' in Jesus's time contradicts all the evidence of archeological sites uncovered even from pre-Christian times, not to mention the civic engineering record of the Romans which was quite advanced... In short, never under-estimate the importance of preparing a homily, even if you are Pope!

Holy Week is obviously the worst time, other than the Christmas season, for any controversy involving religion, particularly the Catholic religion and how it intersects the secular world. But that did not stop the world's major media powers in 2010 from revving up their heaviest steamrollers to try and force Benedict XVI to resign - over the media's insane obsession that he more than any other single person was responsible for the entire scandal of sex-offender priests - when he more than any other single person was, in fact, responsible for getting it under control and ensuring that, as much as possible, such shameful abuses would never again be committed by priests nor covered up by their bishops. And so Holy Week in 2010 was dominated by a number of bishops speaking up for Benedict XVI - rather unusually, one might say, because among those who did speak up was Cardinal Roger Mahony of San Francisco who attested on his blog what Cardinal Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) had contributed to setting the situation straight (and now is not the time to remark that as late as 2006, by his own admission in 2012, Mahony had been actively covering up for some rogue priests)...

This Holy Week, in the United States, the big news has been the Pavlov-dog reflex outcry from outraged seculars - especially LGBTs and their powerful lobbies - against Indiana's version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was legislated twenty years ago and since reprised on the state level in more than 20 other states. But the outraged - politicians, pundits and the man on the street alike - are raising hell out of sheer ignorance, misinformation and disinformation about the law they have been casting as one discriminating against LGBTs.

In a nation where local courts are penalizing mom-and-pop bakers, florists and photographers who refuse to provide service for same-sex 'weddings', the nationwide backlash against the Indiana law proves definitively - if you ever doubted it at all - the unbelievable stranglehold that the LGBT community has on society and those who think they shape and move this society. How has it come to this? One headline says that the homosexualist movement has gone from libertarian to totalitarian in just the past two decades. How has this numerically insignificant minority come to have so much cultural power that in many cases translates to political power?

And it seems, lamentably, that the Catholic bishops of Indiana have chosen to take cover and dodge the bullets. What was it Cardinal Ratzinger once said - that the most dangerous bishops are those who will do everything to 'keep the peace' and refuse to commit themselves. R.R. Reno, editor of FIRST THINGS, has tough words for these bishops.


Indiana bishops display
'duck and cover' Catholicism
over the state's religious freedom law
by R. R. Reno

April 2, 2015

As I expected, the leaders of the Catholic Church [in Indiana] have done everything they can to avoid saying anything in response to the furor over the Indiana RFRA. Their counsel is “dialogue,” an unfortunate weasel word long used by administrators who don't want to take a stand.

On its face, the wording of this bland statement suggests the bishops believe the Indiana law could permit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. (They're calling for “dialogue” to make sure that doesn't happen.) But this is an over-reading of the statement. It's really just a political evasion of responsibility searching for words.

Some months ago, I predicted that Catholicism in America would basically accommodate itself to whatever sexual regime dominates our society. The accommodation won't be explicit. The Church won't endorse homosexuality or gay marriage. Instead, the bishops will step aside, avoid controversy, and just stop talking about things that carry a high price for dissent. This duck-and-cover non-statement fits perfectly into this trajectory.

My first impulse is to laugh. The statement tries to signal support for religious freedom, but qualifies. “The rights of a person should never be used inappropriately in order to deny the rights of another.” And so maybe Tim Cook is right to denounce the Indiana law. Time for dialogue. Oh, “justice and mercy” too. But wait, religious liberty is important. Except when it's not. But sometimes it really is . . .

But I can't laugh, because the tragedy is too poignant. Doubtless there are faithful Catholics in Indiana who think marriage is only possible between a man and a woman. Doubtless they resist the pro-gay propaganda their children are subjected to by the media and often in school. Doubtless they try to support the Church's teaching on sex, family, and marriage. In the midst of a propaganda blitz denouncing all dissent from the coming regime of gay rights, this anodyne non-statement says to them, “You're on your own.”

I'm sure that's not the intent of the Indiana bishops. They're undoubtedly faithful men trying to be good pastors. But they're also disoriented by the rapid pace of cultural and political change in America (aren't we all).

And, to be frank, they're also disoriented by mixed messages from Rome. (Who are they to judge?) They're as frightened as the rest of us of being denounced as “homophobic bigots.”

Furthermore, it's surely true that many Catholics under their care believe the hyper-denunciatory propaganda campaign against the Indiana law and would respond with anger and outrage to any clear statement supporting it.

Every option has a price. So they find a way to do nothing. Duck-and-cover.

I'm all for sober, dispassionate, and non-partisan church leadership that stays focused on core moral and religious principles rather than allowing itself to be drawn into the partisan fray. But connection to reality is important too.

Right now the propaganda against the Indiana RFRA has made it clear that any resistance to the magisterium of the gay rights movement will be denounced as anti-American bigotry. Can the Church survive as a public institution in such a context without capitulating?

What they should have done is patently obvious. We need religious leaders to denounce the hyperbolic propaganda for what it is and express unequivocal support for the Indiana RFRA. Such a statement would reflect a sober assessment of what best serves the common good and promises to protect, however imperfectly, the freedom of Christians (and Jews and Muslims and others) to teach, educate, and serve in accord with traditional moral teaching about sex, family, and marriage.


The following is one of the best rejoinders I have read so far to the Know-Nothing 'boycott Indiana and hang Governor Pence' LGBT-intimidated hordes...

Religious freedom laws have
never harmed any gay person
Not a single person who identifies as homosexual has been harmed
by the federal or dozens of state religious freedom laws
By Casey Mattox

APRIL 2, 2015

It has been 22 years since President Clinton signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law. For two decades it has applied to every law in the District of Columbia and the federal government. In the intervening decades, 20 other states have followed suit with their own state RFRAs.

These RFRAs hold government to a high burden of proof when it burdens religious exercise. Under RFRA, there are no guaranteed outcomes, but the government cannot take burdens on religious exercise lightly.

In two decades of RFRAs, the world has not ended. In fact, not a single person who identifies as homosexual has been harmed by these RFRAs. None.

This may come as a surprise to you if you have watched any of the media coverage or been on social media for the last several days. The unhinged claims from the Left have been entirely detached from the reality that these laws have actually existed for decades and have never resulted in any of the things they worry will happen. This is not new. Dire warnings that are unsurprisingly not confirmed by future events have been a common theme in arguments from the Left in recent years.

Prophesying Doom that Never Materializes
The Equal Access Act is the reason your child can have a Fellowship of Christian Athletes group at school. Most Americans would think that permitting students to voluntarily get together before school to pray is a good thing. But when Congress considered the act in 1984, some Democrats, including then-Rep. Barbara Boxer, opposed it because allowing Christian students to gather to pray “could usher in KKK and Nazi” student groups. More than 30 years later, it is clear Boxer was on the wrong side of history. Her worry that letting kids study the Bible would lead to “Mein Kampf” has not been realized.

Boxer’s worry that letting kids study the Bible would lead to ‘Mein Kampf’ has not been realized.

When the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in 2006, abortionists argued that approximately 2,200 partial-birth abortions per year were necessary for health reasons. This was important because the law lacked any health exception (except to save the mother’s life). When the Supreme Court issued its opinion eight years ago in April 2007, it held that the law was generally constitutional.

However, the Court invited any abortionist or woman filing a new challenge to show why a partial-birth abortion was necessary in one of those 2,200-per-year instances.

Planned Parenthood warned of consequences for women’s health from the decision, just as Justice Ginsburg wrote in a dissent: “One may anticipate that such a pre-enforcement challenge will be mounted swiftly, to ward off serious, sometimes irremediable harm, to women whose health would be endangered by the intact D&E prohibition.”

Eight years later, no such complaint has been filed. I’m not aware of a single example of any woman who was harmed by not being able to have a partial-birth abortion procedure in that time.

There are three possible reasons: (1) by incredible fortune, the threats to women’s health making partial-birth abortion necessary ceased on April 18, 2007; (2) Women are harmed daily, but Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry lack the resources to file the invited lawsuits; (3) the claim that partial-birth abortion was necessary to protect women’s health was a lie.

Finally, when Texas passed HB2, the pro-life law that brought stardom to Wendy Davis, a primary focus of abortion supporters who opposed the bill was its prohibition on abortions after 20 weeks gestation, when the unborn child is capable of feeling pain. This provision was the centerpiece of the controversy, and Davis opposed it at length.

But while virtually every part of the Texas law has been challenged in the intervening two years, the prohibition on abortions after 20 weeks has never been challenged. It has been Texas law since October 2013.

Time to Stop Listening
And Texas isn’t alone. Laws like it have been enacted in 13 states. But despite their cries of harm to women’s health, abortionists have only challenged these laws in the Ninth Circuit and in a now-pending Georgia state court case. At least 10 of these laws, including Texas’s, are in effect without legal challenge.

As MSNBC reported, there is a strategic reason to avoid challenging that [20-week] ban…. [A] Texas challenge would go to the conservative Fifth Circuit. Not only would that court potentially uphold the law…, the combination of decisions would create a split in the circuits that would make the Supreme Court likelier to hear it. This is their choice.

But at some point when your warnings of imminent harm are stifled by your own prudential choices, and none of the bad consequences you warn about ever happen, perhaps your claims just aren’t true. That’s critically important to keep in mind with the needless hysteria happening now over completely mischaracterized state religious freedom laws.

But history need not repeat itself. In the children’s story, when Peter repeatedly cries, “Wolf!” the townspeople finally stop listening. It’s time to stop giving credence to the Left’s cries.

Finally, this writer sums up the effects of the sexual revolution that was the central 'freedom and right' of the "do as I please' Cultural Revolution that literally took the world by storm and virtually overnight in 1968...

Indiana’s RFRA controversy:
The sexual revolution’s next stage
BY Rickard Newman

April 1, 2015

What if I told you that a new law labeled as anti-gay by the New York Times and CNN was going to take effect soon. What if I also told you that Apple CEO Tim Cook compares it to Jim Crow laws, that Connecticut’s Governor has issued an executive order banning state-paid travel to Indiana because of it and that NCAA has threatened to move future events from the state all together. You would think it must be an outright crazy law, right?

But what if I also told you that this law has nothing to do with gay people, or that the words “gay,” “lesbian” and “sexual orientation” in fact don’t appear in this law or any of the other Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. And what if I told you that no RFRA has ever been used successfully to defend anti-gay discrimination in 20 years.

I wouldn’t blame you for being confused. So what is going on here? This outrage must be understood in the context of the Sexual Revolution. A revolution is defined as a “forcible overthrow of a social order in favor of a new system” and destroying religious liberty is a necessary step for a revolution that favors adult sexual desires above all.

Since the middle of the twentieth century almost everything marriage once brought together has been split apart to accommodate for these sexual desires, the ultimate goal for Sexual Revolutionaries:

1. Sex has been divorced from children.
The invention and proliferation of the contraceptive pill in the 1950s and 1960s made it possible to spread the lie that sex could be conducted for pleasure alone, without any unwanted consequences — like babies. As described by Saint John Paul II in Evangelium Vitae, the danger with contraception is how it puts personal fulfillment [Satisfying the urge to have sex when and as one wants it is fulfillment???] at the center of life’s meaning and fosters a self-centered concept of freedom, a freedom divorced from truth.

Freedom is not the ability to do whatever you want to do, but to do what one ought to do. This is the difference between a freedom that will make you a slave under your sins or a freedom that will set you free through discipline and self-mastery. When pretending that sex is sterile we are no longer living according to the truth of the human person, and that puts us on a path to self-destruction.

The fact that about 60 million children have been aborted [in the United States alone] since 1973 should be evidence enough.

2. Sex has been divorced from love.
In his book Three to Get Married, Fulton Sheen makes the following distinction: “In sex the male adores the female. In love the man and woman together adore God. Sex seeks the part; love the totality.” In the hook-up-culture, ubiquitous on college campuses today, sex is seen as just another recreational activity with no deeper meaning. It essentially favors male sexual desires while leaving females feeling disconnected and jaded. This has led to more STDs and unintended pregnancies, increased sexual violence as well as introduced a range of emotional and psychological problems that become barriers to authentic love.

3. Love has been divorced from commitment.
Love is not seen as an action, a promise and commitment anchored and sustained in the will. It’s rather based on a hedonistic mindset that sees love as an emotion, an intangible sentiment constructed in the mind and backed up by some butterflies in the stomach and physical attraction. With the introduction of “no-fault” divorce in the late 1970s and early 1980s, couples could split up for any reason, like “falling out of love,” or no reason at all. This legislative policy is erroneously based on the idea that marriage is primarily about adult romance.

4. Marriage has been divorced from children.
Almost half of all “first babies” in the U.S. are now being born to unwed mothers. For Millennials, out-of-wedlock childbirth is the norm. With more cohabitation comes less family stability, which in turn creates more single parents. Single parent families are more prone to poverty, and children who grow up without their fathers are much more likely to use drugs, commit crimes, become teen parents and spend time in jail. With the introduction of same-sex “marriage” the idea of marriage as a union with unique and distinct procreative features is effectively being abolished.

5. Children have been divorced from sex.
The inverse of contraception and abortion is children as entitlements. With reproductive technologies and practices such as egg and sperm donation, IVF and surrogacy, it is no longer sex that makes babies but doctors and fertility agencies. Parenthood today is becoming a commercial enterprise, not determined by the biological union that created the child, but rather legally assigned according to adult intentions and desires.

As marriage is redefined and as beliefs about human sexuality continue to change, will the right to dissent be protected? Don’t count on it. For the Sexual Revolutionaries, the revolution is not over, and after dismantling marriage, with the help of the Supreme Court that most likely will determine same-sex “marriage” to be a constitutional right this summer, religious liberty is next.

As President Obama continues to reassure us that “same-sex marriage poses no threat to religious liberty,” photographers, bakers and florists are being sued for declining to provide services to same-sex ceremonies in violation of their religious beliefs. And losing.

This brings us back to the RFRA law in Indiana. What this law de facto does, is establish a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases. No side automatically gets a victory. Therefore the law can and should be seen as a shield, not a sword.

But the Sexual Revolutionaries are now turning it into a sword by rallying and advancing their troops. For them “religious liberty” is a contradiction in terms and they will use every opportunity they can to label, penalize and punish anyone who disagrees with their view on sexuality.

In light of this, we have two questions we need to be able to answer. First, we need to be able to answer the question “What is marriage?”

To echo the words of Ryan T Anderson, co-author of What is Marriage: Man and Woman: A Defense, marriage has always existed to unite a man and a woman as husband and wife to be mother and father to any children that their union might produce. It’s based on the anthropological truth that men and women are distinct and complementary. It’s based on the biological fact that reproduction requires a male and female. It’s based on the sociological reality that children deserve a mother and a father and do best when raised by their biological parents.

For Catholics, marriage has also been elevated to a sacrament making it a theological truth. Marriage is a covenant, a sign of Christ’s love for his bride, the Church. The grace of the Holy Spirit empowers us to give ourselves to each other the way Christ gives himself to the Church — freely, faithfully, fruitfully and totally. With Lent coming to an end, we are once more reminded of what that self-sacrifice looks like.

The second question we must face is even tougher. Just as Thomas More did when he was executed for standing up against Henry VIII’s personal view on sexual morality, are we also ready to leave fear behind and proudly stand up for our faith, even if the price might be persecution and martyrdom?

April 4, 2015, Holy Saturday

Greek Orthodox icons: From left, Jesus is prepared for burial, with the Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, the Apostle John and Joseph of Arimathea; other icons show Jesus's descent to Hades.
Holy Saturday is celebrated with elaborate rituals in the Orthodox Church.

---

Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then?

Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate.

Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!”

The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death.

The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12).

- Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil homily, 2007

---

Holy Saturday is usually the 'neglected' day in the Paschal Triduum, because no special liturgy marks the day, until the Easter Vigil Mass in the late evening or midnight. Benedict XVI has reflected a few times during his Pontificate on the significance of Holy Saturday, and not just because he was born on a Holy Saturday. Perhaps the most significant of these reflections, and particularly beautiful and poignant, was his meditation upon visiting the Shroud of Turin in May 2010. Here is that reflection in full:




The Shroud of Turin:
Icon of Holy Saturday
by BENEDICT XVI
Meditation on his Visit to the Shroud
May 2, 2010

---

Dear friends,

This was, for me, a much-awaited moment. I have been before the Holy Shroud on other occasions, but this time, I am living this pilgrimage and this occasion with particular intensity.

Perhaps it is because the passage of years has made me even more sensitive to the message of this extraordinary icon. Perhaps - I would say, above all - it is because I am here this time as the Successor of Peter, and I carry in my heart the entire Church, and even all of mankind.

I thank the Lord for the gift of this pilgrimage, and for the opportunity to share with you a brief meditation, the theme of which was suggested to me by the subtitle of this solemn Exposition, namely, the mystery of Holy Saturday.

One can say that the Shroud is the icon for this mystery, the icon of Holy Saturday. Indeed it is a burial cloth which wrapped the remains of a man who was crucified, corresponding in every way to what the Gospels say of Jesus, who, having been crucified at noon, expired around three in the afternoon.

When evening came, since it was Parasceve, or the eve of the solemn Paschal Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a rich and authoritative member of the Sanhedrin, courageously asked Pontius Pilate for permission to bury Jesus in a new tomb that he had ordered excavated not far from Golgotha.

Having obtained the permission, he bought a burial cloth, and after Jesus was taken down from the Cross, he wrapped him in that cloth and buried him in the sepulcher (cfr Mk 15,42-46). Thus says the Gospel of St. Mark, with whom the other evangelists concur.

Jesus remained in the tomb until the dawn of the day following the Sabbath, and the Shroud of Turin offers us the image of how his body lay in the tomb during that time - which was chronologically brief (about a day and a half), but immense, infinite, in its value and its significance.

Holy Saturday is the day when God was hidden, as one reads in an ancient homily: "What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps... God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled" (Homily on Holy Saturday, PG 43, 439).

In the Credo, we profess that Jesus Christ was "crucified under Pontius Pilate, died and was buried; he descended into hell, and on the third day, he rose again from the dead".

Dear brothers and sisters, in our time, especially for those who have experienced the past century, mankind has become particularly sensible to the mystery of Holy Saturday. Hiding God is part of contemporary man's spirit, in an existential manner, almost unconscious, like a void in the heart that has grown increasingly larger.

Towards the end of the 19th century, Nietzsche wrote: "God is dead! And it is we who killed him". This famous statement, is clearly taken almost literally from the Christian tradition - we often say it in the Via Crucis, perhaps without fully realizing what we are saying.

After the two world wars, the lagers and the gulags, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, our age has become increasingly a Holy Saturday: the darkness of that day challenges all those who ask themselves about life, and it particularly challenges us believers. We too have something to do with this darkness.

Nonetheless the death of the Son of God, of Jesus of Nazareth, has an opposite aspect, totally positive, that is a source of comfort and of hope.

This makes me think of the fact that the Holy Shroud is like a 'photographic' document, with a 'negative' and a 'positive' image. Indeed, it is precisely that: the deepest myetery of the faith is at the same time the most luminous sign of unbounded hope.

Holy Saturday is a 'no man's land' between death and resurrection, but into this 'no man's land' entered someone, the Only One, who passed through it with the signs of his Passion for man: Passio Christi, passio hominis.

And the Shroud speaks to us precisely of this moment - it testifies precisely to that unique and unrepeatable interval in the history of mankind and the universe, in which God, in Jesus Christ, shared not just our dying, but also our remaining in death - it is the most radical solidarity.

In that 'time beyond time', Jesus Christ 'descended into hell'. What does this statement mean? It means that God, having made himself man, reached the point of entering man's extremest and absolute solitude, there where no ray of love enters, where total abandonment reigns without any word of comfort: the underworld.

Jesus Christ, remaining in death, went beyond the door of that ultimate solitude in order to lead even us to surpass it with him.

All of us have felt at some time the frightening sense of being abandoned, and what we most fear about death is precisely that, just as when we were children, we were afraid to be a in the dark, and only the presence of a person who loved us could reassure us.

This is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday: the voice of God resounded in the kingdom of death. The unthinkable had occured, namely, that Love had penetrated into the bowels of Hell. Even in the extreme darkness of the most absolute human loneliness, we can hear a voice that calls us and find a hand that leads us out.

The human being lives for the fact that he is loved and he can love - and if, love has penetrated the space of death itself, then even there, life has arrived. In the hour of extreme solitude, we shall never be alone: Passio Christi, passio hominis.

This is the mystery of Holy Saturday. Precisely from the darkness of the death of the Son of God, has emerged the light of a new hope: the light of the Resurrection.

And it seems to me that, in looking at this sacred cloth with the eyes of faith, we can perceive something of that light. In effect, the Shroud was immersed in that profound darkness, but it is at the same time luminous.

I think that if thousands upon thousands of people come to venerate it - without counting those who contemplate it in images - it is because they see in it not just darkness but also the light. Not so much the defeat of life and love, but rather victory, the victory of life over death, of love over hatred.

Yes, they see the death of Jesus, but they also see his Resurrection. In the bosom of death, life now pulses insofar as love is present.

This is the power of the Shroud: from the face of this 'man of sorrows', who carries on him the Passion of man in every time and in every place, even our passions, our sufferings, our difficulties, our sins.

“Passio Christi. Passio hominis”. From this face emanates a solemn majesty, a paradoxical lordship. This face, these hands, these feet, this chest, this whole body speaks - it is itself a word that we can hear in silence.

How does the Shroud speak? It speaks with blood, and blood is life! The Shroud is an Icon written in blood - the blood of a man who was flagellated, crowned with thorns, crucified and wounded on the left side.

The Image impressed on the Shroud is that of a dead man, but the blood speaks of his life. Every trace of blood speaks of love and life. Especially that abundant stain near his rib, made by the blood and water shed copiously from a major wound caused by the tip of a Roman lance.

That blood and water speak of life. It is like a spring that murmurs silently, and we can hear it, we can listen to it, in the silence of Holy Saturday.

Dear friends, let us always praise the Lord for his faithful and merciful love. When we leave this holy place, let us carry in our eyes the image of the Shroud, let us carry in our hearts this word of love, and let us praise God with a life full of faith, hope and charity. Thank you./DIM]

---

The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will be visiting Turin on June 21 to venerate the Holy Shroud which will be on public exposition from April 19-June 24. Five years ago, when it was last exposed for public veneration, Benedict XVI paid a memorable pastoral visit to Turin, at which he gave the magnificent meditation quoted above.

On the occasion of the next exposition, Church historian Roberto De Mattei offers this reflection on the Shroud....

Let us go to Turin
to venerate the Shroud
by Roberto De Mattei
Translated from

April 2, 2015

The next exposition of the Holy Shroud of Turin will be from April 19 to June 24 this year. Five years after the last exposition, pilgrims can once more venerate the Shroud at the Cathedral of Turin, on the occasion of the 200th birth anniversary of San Giovanni Bosco.

The Shroud is the funeral sheet in which the Body of Our Lord was wrapped for burial. It is referred to in the synoptic Gospels (Mk 13,46; Mt 27,59; Lk 23,53), and as a soudarion, in the Gospel of St. John.

It is not a simple icon, not one of the innumerable ‘images’ of our Lord Jesus Christ that can be seen around the world, but an authentic relic, the most precious in Christianity, before which in the course of centuries, Popes, saints and millions of simple faithful have prayed.

The invention of photography raised the veil on the mystery of the Shroud which for almost 2000 years had kept its ‘content’ hidden. Indeed, the figure of our Redeemer on the textile is a photographic negative that records a great quantity of details that no painter could have imagined or depicted without knowledge of the photographic process.

The Man of the Shroud, who is Jesus, assumes and concentrates in himself all the drama of the Passion. The historic precision of the Gospels regarding the flagellation, the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion, the wound on the side of Our Lord, receive extraordinary proof in the Shroud.

The image on the Shroud confirms the prophecy of Isaiah: “From the sole of the foot to the head, there is no sound spot in it; Just bruise and welt and oozing wound, not drained, or bandaged, or eased with salve” (1,6).

Why such suffering? Our faith teaches us that Jesus came to the world to redeem man from the sin of Adam, because of which man is prey to all the physical and moral evils of the universe.

“Therefore, just as through one person, sin entered the world, and through sin, death - and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned...” (Rom 5,12).

So man is born, lives and dies in suffering. But all of suffering humanity was ransomed by Jesus Christ. The Shroud reminds us that human life, after Original Sin, is suffering, but that all of our sufferings were assumed by He who is without sin, and that in him we can find the answer to our pain.

Nothing elevates man more than suffering which is freely accepted and courageously borne. One of the major deceptions of life consists in thinking that it is possible to be happy by evading suffering. Actually, the man who does not suffer is unhappy, because he is deprived of the joy that is born from giving a meaning to one’s suffering.

Irrational creatures suffer without being able to give a meaning to their suffering. But man, through his intelligence, can understand that suffering is a consequence of sin – original and actual – and that suffering can serve as reparation for sin, to expiate sin, in union with Jesus Christ.

The Shroud, which is the true image of God-become-man, teaches us how to suffer. In moments of anguish and pain, physical or moral, let us look at the Man of the Shroud. His face is disfigured, but what is striking is the contrast between the effects of the abuses he has suffered and the pacific majesty of his face.

Jesus offers us the model of that attitude of patience, gravity, recollection, with which we must learn to bear those trials and tribulations, sacrifices and adversities that mark our life. But this must always be accompanied by immense trust in him who, in dying, defeated death.

The Holy Shroud of Turin does not only demonstrate the truth of the Passion of Christ but it offers an impressive proof of his Resurrection. Scientists who have studied the Shroud have concluded that only a mysterious energy, a sudden and lightning-like irradiation could have impressed that negative image on the fabric. In short, only the Resurrection from the dead of the man who was scourged and crucified under Pontius Pilate, could explain the mysterious origin of the Holy Shroud.

He had promised he would rise again on the third day, and the Resurrection constituted the supreme proof of his divinity - the great miracle that reunites and recapitulates all miracles and all prophecies.

Jesus rose again triumphant, not allegorically or spiritually, as a certain progressivist theology would have it, but visibly – in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

The Holy Shroud registered the photographic negative of the Resurrection, offering us a new argument to affirm that only in the Catholic Church can we find our salvation.

In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul recalls the fundamental truths that the Apostles announced from the beginning in their preaching, namely, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Christ had not died and risen again, Redemption would not have come. The Resurrection is the foundation of our faith.

From one man, Adam, came death; and from another man, a God-man, came life. As in Adam, all of us died, in Christ we are all revived. All of humanity, says St. Augustine, is recapitulated “in the story of two men, of which one lost all of us by doing his will and not that of him who had created him; and the other has saved us in himself, not doing his own will but that of him who had sent him. All of Christian faith is in the story of these two men”.

Holy Week recapitulates this drama, and at the Easter vigil, the liturgy of the Church entrusts us her message of hope and victory.

Easter, said Dom [Prosper] Gueranger is the proclamation of the kingdom of the immolated Lamb. It is the cry of the elect who are in heaven: “The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed” (Rev 5,5).

Jesus has risen, “like a lamb for us, like a lion for his enemies”, uniting henceforth the attributes of strength and gentleness. The strength with which we must fight the enemies of our faith, and charity, which we must exercise towards our brothers.

The Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the hinge of apostolic preaching and should be the foundation of our faith. The Holy Shroud of Turin represents its visible and moving compendium. And that is why we too must ‘go to Turin’ to venerate the sacred relic.

What a sublimely beautiful reflection Fr. H offered his readers for the Easter Vigil on the ineffable cosmic singularity that was the Resurrection of Christ...

Haec nox est ...
(This is the night...)

April 4, 2015

Even churches where the kiddies have been persuaded to create an Easter Garden do not attempt a physical portrayal of the words in the Exsultet - destructis vinculis mortis, Christus ab inferis victor ascendit. (Rejoice - Christ broke the chains of death, and ascended victorious from hell}.

The most stupendous event in the history of the cosmos - the most terrible wonder in the lapse of time between the initial and final big bangs - is never actually attempted by artists or even described in words. The Lord's Resurrection is, as it were, wrapped in veils.

Jesus's burial may be described; lightning and earthquakes may be mentioned; women and men meet the mysterious stranger in the garden or on the road to Emmaus; but no television camera, no recording historical pen, no purported eyewitness, intrudes into the darkness and mystery of that cave-tomb.

No Gospel writer claims to discern a tremor beneath the winding-cloth, no chronicler pretends to be able to describe the aweful countenance of the One who was dead and en atomoi, in a moment, is alive. It is as if to do so would mar the unimaginable wonder and terror of such a ... did I call it an 'event'?

I think that was a category error: what we are talking about is not in any cataphatic word-bag. No, for the Gospel writers, it is as if even to try to imagine it is an unspeakable vulgarity. And the Church's liturgy is marked by the same awed reticence: in the Song of the Candle, the deacon exclaims with fearful wonder: 'O Night truly blessed, who alone wast worthy to know the time and the hour'.

The greater the miracle and the greater the wonder, then the more need for a veil to shield our eyes. St Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the greatest Christian thinker since St Paul, described what Christ did at the Last Supper as 'the mightiest miracle that he ever worked during his life on earth'.

That same miracle is repeated every time that Mass is offered; at every Eucharist the stone is rolled from the darkness of the tomb; when the words of consecration 'This is my Body' are uttered, the Easter Lord who was dead and is alive walks out of eternity and comes among us; and the veil which prevents us from being consumed by such a wonder is the forms of bread and wine.

The naked brightness of the divine reality would be too much for such as now we are. But as we kneel at the altar, every Mass is Easter and the Lord is the risen and invincible One and He whispers to each of us, as He whispered to Mary in the garden, the name He has given us; and for a moment the veil becomes wafer thin.

A MOST BLESSED AND


HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!

April 5, 2015, EASTER SUNDAY
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS

The Resurrection, from left: Duccio, 1308; Fra Angelico, 1400; Titian, 1520; El Greco, 1590s; Di Giovani, 15th-cent.

Greek Orthodox and Russian icons; extreme right, Coptic icon.

Left, Johann Tischbein the Elder, 1763; right, Raphael, 1502. [NB: The Tischbein painting, which is at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, illustrated Benedict XVI's Easter greeting card in 2012.

JESUS'S RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD
by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI
from JESUS OF NAZARETH, Vol. 2

---

“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:14-15).

With these words Saint Paul explains quite drastically what faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means for the Christian message overall: it is its very foundation. The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead.

If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man’s being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead.

Jesus would be a failed religious leader, who despite his failure remains great and can cause us to reflect. But he would then remain purely human, and his authority would extend only so far as his message is of interest to us.

He would no longer be a criterion; the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from his heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be the highest instance.

Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then he becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself.

To this extent, in our quest for the figure of Jesus, the Resurrection is the crucial point. Whether Jesus merely was or whether he also is – this depends on the Resurrection. In answering yes or no to this question, we are taking a stand not simply on one event among others, but on the figure of Jesus as such.

Therefore it is necessary to listen with particular attention as the New Testament bears witness to the Resurrection. Yet first we have to acknowledge that this testimony, considered from a historical point of view, is presented to us in a particularly complex form and gives rise to many questions.

What actually happened? Clearly, for the witnesses who encountered the risen Lord, it was not easy to say. They were confronted with what for them was an entirely new reality, far beyond the limits of their experience. Much as the reality of the event overwhelmed them and impelled them to bear witness, it was still utterly unlike anything they had previously known.

Saint Mark tells us that the disciples on their way down from the mountain of the Transfiguration were puzzled by the saying of Jesus that the Son of Man would “rise from the dead”. And they asked one another what “rising from the dead” could mean (9:9-10). And indeed, what does it mean? The disciples did not know, and they could find out only through encountering the reality itself.

Anyone approaching the Resurrection accounts in the belief that he knows what rising from the dead means will inevitably misunderstand those accounts and will then dismiss them as meaningless.

Rudolf Bultmann raised an objection against Resurrection faith by arguing that even if Jesus had come back from the grave, we would have to say that “a miraculous natural event such as the resuscitation of a dead man” would not help us and would be existentially irrelevant (cf. New Testament and Mythology, p. 7).

Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’s Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed.

The miracle of a resuscitated corpse would indicate that Jesus’s Resurrection was equivalent to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:22-24, 35-43 and parallel passages), and Lazarus (John 11:1-44). After a more or less short period, these individuals returned to their former lives, and then at a later point they died definitively.

The New Testament testimonies leave us in no doubt that what happened in the “Resurrection of the Son of Man” was utterly different. Jesus’s Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it – a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence.

Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an “evolutionary leap” (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood). In Jesus’s Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.

So Paul was absolutely right to link the resurrection of Christians and the Resurrection of Jesus inseparably together: “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. . . . But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:16, 20).

Christ’s Resurrection is either a universal event, or it is nothing, Paul tells us. And only if we understand it as a universal event, as the opening up of a new dimension of human existence, are we on the way toward any kind of correct understanding of the New Testament Resurrection testimony.

On this basis we can understand the unique character of this New Testament testimony. Jesus has not returned to a normal human life in this world like Lazarus and the others whom Jesus raised from the dead. He has entered upon a different life, a new life – he has entered the vast breadth of God himself, and it is from there that he reveals himself to his followers.

For the disciples, too, this was something utterly unexpected, to which they were only slowly able to adjust. Jewish faith did indeed know of a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. New life was linked to the inbreaking of a new world and thus made complete sense.

If there is a new world, then there is also a new mode of life there. But a resurrection into definitive otherness in the midst of the continuing old world was not foreseen and therefore at first made no sense. So the promise of resurrection remained initially unintelligible to the disciples.

The process of coming to Resurrection faith is analogous to what we saw in the case of the Cross. Nobody had thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the “fact” was there - and it was necessary, on the basis of that fact, to take a fresh look at Scripture. We saw in the previous chapter how Scripture yielded new insights in the light of the unexpected turn of events and how the “fact” then began to make sense.

Admittedly, the new reading of Scripture could begin only after the Resurrection, because it was only through the Resurrection that Jesus was accredited as the one sent by God. Now people had to search Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.

This also presupposes that for the disciples the Resurrection was just as real as the Cross. It presupposes that they were simply overwhelmed by the reality, that, after their initial hesitation and astonishment, they could no longer ignore that reality. It is truly he. He is alive; he has spoken to us; he has allowed us to touch him, even if he no longer belongs to the realm of the tangible in the normal way.

The paradox was indescribable. He was quite different, no mere resuscitated corpse, but one living anew and forever in the power of God. And yet at the same time, while no longer belonging to our world, he was truly present there, he himself.

It was an utterly unique experience, which burst open the normal boundaries of experience and yet for the disciples was quite beyond doubt. This explains the unique character of the Resurrection accounts: they speak of something paradoxical, of something that surpasses all experience and yet is utterly real and present.

But could it really be true? Can we – as men of the modern world – put our faith in such testimony? “Enlightened” thinking would say no.

For Gerd Lüdemann, for example, it seems clear that in consequence of the “revolution in the scientific image of the world . . . the traditional concepts of Jesus’s Resurrection are to be considered outdated” (quoted in Wilckens, Theologie des Neun Testaments 1/2, pp. 119-20).

But what exactly is this “scientific image of the world”? How far can it be considered normative? Hartmut Gese in his important article “Die Frage des Weltbildes”, to which I should like to draw attention, has painstakingly described the limits of this normativity.

Naturally there can be no contradiction of clear scientific data. The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented – a new dimension of reality that is revealed.

What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known. Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new?

If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest “evolutionary leap”, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?

Throughout the history of the living, the origins of anything new have always been small, practically invisible, and easily overlooked. The Lord himself has told us that “heaven” in this world is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds (Matthew 13:31-32), yet contained within it are the infinite potentialities of God.

In terms of world history, Jesus’s Resurrection is improbable; it is the smallest mustard seed of history.

This reversal of proportions is one of God’s mysteries. The great – the mighty – is ultimately the small. And the tiny mustard seed is something truly great.

So it is that the Resurrection has entered the world only through certain mysterious appearances to the chosen few. And yet it was truly the new beginning for which the world was silently waiting. And for the few witnesses – precisely because they themselves could not fathom it – it was such an overwhelmingly real happening, confronting them so powerfully, that every doubt was dispelled, and they stepped forth before the world with an utterly new fearlessness in order to bear witness: Christ is truly risen.

---

OUR THOUGHTS, PRAYERS AND LOVE

ARE WITH YOU ALWAYS!

The Resurrection, Tintoretto, 1581.

Some secular scholars and progressivist theologians, of course, have long peddled the notion that the Resurrection is a myth, something that Christianity has in common with many pagan myths of Egypt and Greece, with their stories of God-men who, like Jesus, had been born of a virgin, had died in an act of sacrifice, and had then resurrected. As one writer concluded,

---

The gospels' resurrection stories about Jesus are not factual accounts, but rather made up ones to support the theological agendas of their authors. They were "recorded in order that you may hold the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this faith you may possess life by his name" (John 20:31). The gospel accounts are not veridical history. They are myths.

---

Fr. Schall tackles these deniers and skeptics.

Why even some believers would deny the Resurrection
The hidden fear that betrays our greatest hope
by JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

April 5, 2015

---

"Where were the sinners, what were they, when Christ died for them? When Christ has already given us the gift of his death, who is to doubt that he will give us the gift of his own life? Why does our human frailty hesitate to believe that mankind will one day live with God?”
-St. Augustine, Sermon

---

The real objection to Christianity is not hell, sin, or death, but heaven and eternal life.

Chesterton once remarked that the difficulty with Christianity, when seriously examined, was that it was “too good to be true.” One might turn this observation around to read: “Since I do not want Christianity to be true, it is good that I do not know the evidence that it is true.”

And why would anyone not “want” Christianity to be true? The most obvious answer is that “Its truth would require me to reckon with it in my life.” Thus, it is better that the argument or evidence for the truth of Christianity be not known, best that it be ridiculed or impeded so that no one really has a chance seriously to consider the validity of its claims on intelligence.

In this context, St. Augustine asked the remarkably penetrating question: “Why does our human frailty hesitate to believe that mankind will one day live with God?” Why, after all, would anyone not want to believe this final purpose for the life of our kind?

St. Augustine attributes the answer to “human frailty." We look at the relative shortness of our lives, to our being subject to illness, injustice, and sundry other limitations of mind and body. With some sense, we can certainly conclude that we are indeed frail. On the surface, it would be a presumption to think that some higher destiny exists for us in the light of the “messiness” of much human life and history.

But this cannot be the complete answer. Of itself, human frailty is not a sin, but a description of our normal condition and status in being. Obviously, human beings cannot just “decide” on their own authority or with their own power to “live with God." To live with God evidently requires an invitation into “the house of the Lord."

That “invitation”, like any invitation, cannot be something that God “must” offer to us. If God were “obliged” to create us and make us “like gods”, it would follow that we are already gods and need not bother with anything else. In other words, our fragility includes the possibility that we need not exist at all.

Thus, if we do exist, as we obviously do, we must look for a reason outside of ourselves to explain ourselves. We could, I suppose, maintain that there is no such explanation, but this is but another attempt to give a reason. No one can seriously reflect on his own existence for long and not realize that he really had nothing to do with it. And while we can trace our existence to our parents, this just pushes the issue one step back. Our parents are faced with the exact same problem with regard to their existence. To explain our existence, we cannot avoid seeking an explanation for existence itself.

But resurrection does not concern “why we exist as human beings." It concerns the abidingness of our existence even in the face of death, which all men undergo.

However difficult it may be to explain our initial existence from nothing, it seems even more difficult to propose that, when we die, we will rise again to live in the house of the Lord. The mere proposal of such an eventuality is, in its own way, defiant. It defies all the deniers of the resurrection of the body. And it makes this defiance not merely because the resurrection of Christ is a fact, but because it has a reason why it is not absurd. It makes good sense. This reason for the resurrection was implicit in what-it-is-to-be-a-human-being in the first place. How so?

The doctrine of the fullness of the life within the Trinity means that God did not need anything but His own life. If there was life other than that of God, it must have had its origin in what alone could bring life into being. This consideration means that, if something besides God exists, it is the result of a choice, not a necessity, in God. Something that cannot exist cannot up and decide to exist.

What came to exist outside of God was not itself God. The central beings outside of God were those who could know both what is not God and, in some way, God Himself, thus, angels and men. All else, including the cosmos itself, was created for man and his final purpose.

If beings with reason were invited to participate in the life of God, as they were, they, on accepting this invitation, did not cease being what they were, angels or men. Thus, if man were to be offered a participation in the inner life of God, he accepted this invitation as what he was. He was not just a soul or just a body. His completeness included body and soul in such a way that he could not be what he was unless both body and soul were present in a unified whole. He was capable of knowing and choosing.

Among the things that he needed to choose was himself. That is, he needed to know what he is and what he is for. His perfection in that sense depended on his understanding and choosing of himself, his purpose and his limits.

If we deny the resurrection or its possibility, what we implicitly do is to deny the kind of being we are instituted to be. The resurrection of the body is, in essence, God’s response to any doubt we might have about what we are.

We will rise again whether we like it or not. We will be judged on the basis of how we lived and chose to live. We are not given any choice here. We are only given information of what our existence is about.

We are men, not gods. But as men, we are intended to be more than is possible to our nature. Not only is our initial being a gift, so is the elevation of our nature. We are created men but with an invitation to live a life that is beyond human nature without, at the same time, destroying it.

This invitation to participate in God’s inner life, however, is paradoxical. It shows the vulnerability, as it were, of God. He created us without our permission. He had no other choice. He simply arranged that we each exist as a person. His only other choice was not to create anything at all. He chose existence with its glory that may be seen, appreciated, and seen in its origins.

God could not “force” us to love Him or participate in His inner life. To do so, would be to deny our freedom. God had to risk the possibility of being rejected. And once this rejection took place in the Fall, with its consequences, of which death was one, God had, as it were, to “devise” an alternate way to restore us to His original purpose in creating us, a way that would, again, not deny our freedom.

This alternate way is what the Incarnation was about. The Incarnation, with its subsequent history in the life and Crucifixion of Christ, true man and true God, was designed to direct our freedom back to its original purpose. That is what redemption means.

This is why the Resurrection of Christ took place both in time and eternity. It was God’s way to repair the disorder caused by an initial free rejection of God that implicated all men. But this repair had itself to leave us free to deny God and His plans for us.

In doing so, God depended on our seeing and understanding what our lives were about, what God had intended for us. The denial of the resurrection, whether it be Christ’s or our own, then, is, at bottom, a refusal to acknowledge what we are.

In thinking about the Resurrection of Christ, we are also directed to ourselves. Christ’s resurrection was not for Himself alone. In a sense, He did not need it. He "suffered” death for us, to teach us what we really are. The two disciples at Emmaus were amazed and delighted to hear Christ explain the Scriptures and, in effect, who He was.

To think about denying the Resurrection of Christ and about the reality of our own resurrection is a worthwhile effort. Nothing more clarifies for us what is left of man when we insist in denying this possibility. But looked at positively, the Resurrection is but the reaffirmation that it is all right to be a human being.

It insists, all appearance to the contrary, that human life is not complete, here or hereafter, unless it is whole. For only if it is finally whole can the invitation to be friends with God make any sense at all. It is for this purpose that we are created.

The denial of the Resurrection is a denial of what it is to be a human being. In rejecting the resurrection, we reject what we are in our creation. The efforts to kill Christ, whether those recounted in the Gospels or those which take place in killing or persecuting His disciples, are rooted in a free rejection of why God created and redeemed us in the first place, each of us.

An excerpt from
God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald
(Ignatius Press, 2002)

Properly, I should have posted this before Easter but I came across it too late. The ideas expressed herein by Cardinal Ratzinger are, of course, timeless - and this excerpt also calls attention to the personal, psychological necessity of suffering that supplements the theological and existential meaning of it as a consequence of the Fall. Especially since, in this Pontificate, strangely, suffering seems to be considered an evil no one should be burdened with!

Seewald: We are used to thinking of suffering as something we try to avoid at all costs. And there is nothing that many societies get more angry about than the Christian idea that one should bear with pain, should endure suffering, should even sometimes give oneself up to it, in order thereby to overcome it. "Suffering", John Paul II believes, "is a part of the mystery of being human." Why is this?
Cardinal Ratzinger: Today what people have in view is eliminating suffering from the world. For the individual, that means avoiding pain and suffering in whatever way. Yet we must also see that it is in this very way that the world becomes very hard and very cold.

Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wants to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain.

When we know that the way of love – this exodus, this going out of oneself – is the true way by which man becomes human, then we also understand that suffering is the process through which we mature. Anyone who has inwardly accepted suffering becomes more mature and more understanding of others, becomes more human. Anyone who has consistently avoided suffering does not understand other people; he becomes hard and selfish.

Love itself is a passion, something we endure. In love, we experience first a happiness, a general feeling of happiness.

Yet on the other hand, I am taken out of my comfortable tranquility and have to let myself be reshaped. If we say that suffering is the inner side of love, we then also understand it is so important to learn how to suffer – and why, conversely, the avoidance of suffering renders someone unfit to cope with life. He would be left with an existential emptiness, which could then only be combined with bitterness, with rejection and no longer with any inner acceptance or progress toward maturity.

What would actually have happened if Christ had not appeared and if he had not died on the tree of the Cross? Would the world long since have come to ruin without him?
That we cannot say. Yet we can say that man would have no access to God. He would then only be able to relate to God in occasional fragmentary attempts. And, in the end, he would not know who or what God actually is.

Something of the light of God shines through in the great religions of the world, of course, and yet they remain a matter of fragments and questions. But if the question about God finds no answer, if the road to him is blocked, if there is no forgiveness, which can only come with the authority of God himself, then human life is nothing but a meaningless experiment. Thus, God himself has parted the clouds at a certain point. He has turned on the light and has shown us the way that is the truth, that makes it possible for us to live, and that is life itself.

Someone like Jesus inevitably attracts an enormous amount of attention and would be bound to offend any society. At the time of his appearance, the prophet from Nazareth was not only cheered, but also mocked and persecuted. The representatives of the established order saw in Jesus's teaching and his person a serious threat to their power, and Pharisees and high priests began to seek to take his life. At the same time, the Passion was obviously part and parcel of his message, since Christ himself began to prepare his disciples for his suffering and death. In two days, he declared at the beginning of the feast of Passover, "the Son of Man will be betrayed and crucified."
Jesus is adjusting the ideas of the disciples to the fact that the Messiah is not appearing as the Savior or the glorious powerful hero to restore the renown of Israel as a powerful state, as of old. He doesn't even call himself Messiah, but Son of Man. His way, quite to the contrary, lies in powerlessness and in suffering death, betrayed to the heathen, as he says, and brought by the heathen to the Cross. The disciples would have to learn that the kingdom of God comes into the world in that way, and in no other.

A world-famous picture by Leonardo da Vinci, the Last Supper, shows Jesus's farewell meal in the circle of his twelve apostles. On that evening, Jesus first of all throws them all into terror and confusion by indicating that he will be the victim of betrayal. After that he founds the holy Eucharist, which from that point onward has been performed by Christians day after day for two thousand years.

"During the meal," we read in the Gospel, "Jesus took the bread and spoke the blessing; then he broke the bread, shared it with the disciples, and said: Take and eat; this is my body. Then he took the cup, spoke the thanksgiving, and passed it to the disciples with the words: Drink of this, all of you; this is my blood, the blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in remembrance of me." These are presumably the sentences that have been most often pronounced in the entire history of the world up till now. They give the impression of a sacred formula.
They are a sacred formula. In any case, these are words that entirely fail to fit into any category of what would be usual, what could be expected or premeditated. They are enormously rich in meaning and enormously profound. If you want to get to know Christ, you can get to know him best by meditating on these words, and by getting to know the context of these words, which have become a sacrament, by joining in the celebration. The institution of the Eucharist represents the sum total of what Christ Is.

Here Jesus takes up the essential threads of the Old Testament. Thereby he relies on the institution of the Old Covenant, on Sinai, on one hand, thus making clear that what was begun on Sinai is now enacted anew: The Covenant that God made with men is now truly perfected. The Last Supper is the rite of institution of the New Covenant. In giving himself over to men, he creates a community of blood between God and man.

On the other hand, some words of the prophet Jeremiah are taken up here, proclaiming the New Covenant. Both strands of the Old Testament (Law and prophets) are amalgamated to create this unity and, at the same time, shaped into a sacramental action. The Cross is already anticipated in this. For when Christ gives his Body and his Blood, gives himself, then this assumes that he is really giving up his life. In that sense, these words are the inner act of the Cross, which occurs when God transforms this external violence against him into an act of self-donation to mankind.

And something else is anticipated here, the Resurrection. You cannot give anyone dead flesh, dead body to eat. Only because he is going to rise again are his Body and his Blood new. It is no longer cannibalism but union with the living, risen Christ that is happening here.

In these few words, as we see, lies a synthesis of the history of religion — of the history of Israel's faith, as well as of Jesus's own being and work, which finally becomes a sacrament and an abiding presence. ...

The soldiers abuse Jesus in a way we can hardly imagine. All hatred, everything bestial in man, utterly abysmal, the most horrible things men can do to one another, is obviously unloaded onto this man.
Jesus stands for all victims of brute force. In the twentieth century itself we have seen again how inventive human cruelty can be; how cruelty, in the act of destroying the image of man in others, dishonors and destroys that image in itself.

The fact that the Son of God took all this upon himself in exemplary manner, as the "Lamb of God", is bound to make us shudder at the cruelty of man, on one hand, and make us think carefully about ourselves, how far we are willing to stand by as cowardly or silent onlookers, or how far we share responsibility ourselves.

On the other side, it is bound to transform us and to make us rejoice in God. He has put himself on the side of the innocent and the suffering and would like to see us standing there too.

This interview is from last week but because it was Holy Week, I postponed posting it.

New interview with Cardinal Burke
by Riccardo Cascioli
Editor
Translated from

April 1, 2015

“I am not against the Pope. I have never spoken against him. I have always thought of my activity as a support for the Petrine ministry. All I want is to serve the truth”.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke regrets the negative campaign that is being carried out against him. Now 66, ordained bishop by John Paul II, an esteemed expert in canon law, he was called to Rome in 2008 by Benedict XVI to be Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, and elevated to cardinal in 2010.

In recent months, he has been portrayed as a fanatic ultra-conservative, anti-Vatican II, conspirator against Pope Francis, and even someone ready for a schism in case the next family synod has less-than-pleasing results.

The campaign has been so strong that even in Italy, some bishops have refused to host his lectures in their dioceses. And when he is allowed to hold public meetings – as he did recently in some cities in northern Italy – he has unfailingly met with priests who protest against him, accusing him of creating propaganda against the Pope.

“This is all nonsense, and I really do not understand this attitude. I have never said a single word against the Pope, I have been trying only to serve the truth, which is a task we all have. I have always considered my interventions, my activities, as a support to the Petrine ministry. The persons who know me can say that I am not an anti-papist. On the contrary, I have always been very loyal, and I have always wanted to serve the Holy Father which I am doing even now”.

Indeed, meeting him in his apartment just off St. Peter’s Square, the cardinal, with his affable manners and his very spontaneous way of speaking, seems thousands of miles distant from the image created of him by the MSM of a grim and scowling defender of ‘cold doctrine’.

Cardinal Burke, in the debates that preceded and followed the first family synod, some of your statements did sound like a criticism of Pope Francis, or at least, were interpreted as such. For example, there was much outcry when you answered “I will resist” when asked what you would do if the Pope decided to allow communion for ‘unqualified’ remarried divorcees.
But that was a distortion. There was no reference at all to Pope Francis. But I believe that since I have spoken very clearly on matrimony and the family, there are those who wish to neutralize me by depicting me as an enemy of the Pope, or even as someone ready for schism, using the answer that I made in an interview for a French TV station.

So how should your response be interpreted?
Very simply. The journalist asked he what I would do if, hypothetically, not referring to Pope Francis, a Pope made a decision that is against Catholic doctrine and against established Church practice. I said I would resist, that I would be dutybound to resist, because we are all in the service of the truth, starting with the Pope, whoever he is.

The Church is not a political organism in terms of power. Her power is Jesus Christ and his Gospel. That is why I replied that I would resist, and it would not be the first time that this happens in the Church. There have been various moments in history when someone had to resist the Pope, starting with St. Paul with regard to St. Peter in the dispute over the Jewish Christians who wished to impose circumcision on Greek converts.

In my case, I am not resisting Pope Francis because he has not done anything against doctrine. I don’t see myself in a battle with the Pope as I am being portrayed. I am not promoting the interests of a group or a party – all I am doing, as a cardinal, is to be a teacher of the faith.

Another major accusation against you is your supposed passion for lace and finery, which is said depreciatively, since the Pope cannot tolerate ecclesiastical finery…
The Pope has never let me know that he is not pleased with my vestments which have always been within the norms of the Church. I celebrate liturgy in the Extraordinary Form as well, which requires liturgical vestments that are not used in the Ordinary Form, and I always use vestments according to the form I am celebrating.

I have not made an issue of the Pope’s style of vesting. Every Pope has his own style, and it is not as if he imposes this on all other bishops. I don’t understand why this is a controversy at all.

But the newspapers often use a photograph in which you are using headgear that is definitely anachronistic…
Oh, that! It’s incredible, but I can explain. The photo was disseminated after Il Foglio used it to illustrate an interview with me during the synodal assembly last October. The interview went very well, but unfortunately, they used a photo that was out of context, and I regret that, because it gave the wrong impression of me as someone who lives in the past.

What happened was that shortly after I was named cardinal I was invited to a diocese in southern Italy to give a lecture on liturgy. For the occasion, the organizer gifted me with an antique cardinal’s hat that he had found somewhere. So I was holding it, and had no intention of using it at all, but he asked me to wear it at least for one photograph. And that was the only time I used the hat.

Unfortunately, the photo went round the world and it has since been used to give the impression that I go around wearing that hat. But I have never used it, not even for a ritual.

You have also been identified as the inspiration, if not the promoter, of the “Appeal to Pope Francis on the Family” which was posted on many websites of the ‘traditionalist’ world in order to invite signatories.
I signed the document, but it was not my initiative nor my idea. Much less did I write or collaborate on the text. Those who say otherwise are wrong. As far as I know, it was a lay initiative. The text was shown to me and I signed on, as many other cardinals have done.

One other accusation is that you are anti-Vatican II…
There are labels that are easily given but they do not correspond to reality. All of my theological education in major seminary was based on the documents of Vatican II, and even today, I continue to study these documents in depth. I am not at all against Vatican II, and if anyone reads my writings, they will see that I cite Vatican II documents frequently.

That with which I do not agree is the so-called ‘Spirit of Vatican II’, this interpretation of the Council which is not faithful to its documents and claims to have created something totally new, a ‘new church’ which they say has nothing to do the any of the so-called aberrations of the past.

In this, I follow fully the luminous presentation made by Benedict XVI in his Christmas address to the Roman Curia in 2005. The famous address in which he explained the correct hermeneutic for Vatican II, which is that of reform in continuity, against the hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity that many sectors have been carrying on. Benedict XVI’s intervention was really brilliant and explains everything.

Many things that happened after Vatican II and attributed to it in fact have nothing to do with the Council. That is the simple truth.

Still, it remains that Pope Francis has seemingly ‘punished’ you by transferring you from the Apostolic Signatura to being Patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta.
The Pope gave an interview to the Argentine newspaper La Nacion in which he explained his reasons. That says it all, and it is not for me to comment. [The Pope said he had told Cardinal Burke that the persons he had charged with proposing Curial reforms were considering merging the Vatican's judicial dicasteries together and that therefore, Burke had not been confirmed to stay on as Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, but that meanwhile, the position of patron of the Sovereign Order of Malta had become vacant, and so he decided to appoint Burke to it.

---

"We needed a smart American who would know how to get around and I thought of him for that position. I suggested this to him long before the synod. I said to him 'This will take place after the synod because I want you to participate in the synod as Dicastery Head.' As the chaplain of Malta he wouldn´t have been able to be present. [Sorry, Your Holiness, but that is a bit disingenuous: It is your prerogative to name any bishops or cardinals to the synodal assemblies: the cardinals you appoint do not have to be members of the Curia - consider Cardinal Caffarra of Bologna!] He thanked me in very good terms and accepted my offer, I even think he liked it. Because he is a man that gets around a lot; he does a lot of travelling and would surely be busy there. It is therefore not true that I removed him because of how he had behaved in the synod."

---

The explanation sounded to to me at the time more convenient than convincing.] I can only say, without violating any secret, that the Pope never told me nor gave me the impression that he wished to punish me for anything.

But certainly, your ‘bad image’ has something to do with what Cardinal Kasper in recent days has called ‘the synodal battle’ – which seems to be growing in intensity as the October synodal assembly approaches. At what point are we?
I would say that there is now a much broader discussion on the themes to be taken up at the synod, and this is a very positive development. But that is why I do not understand all the hue and cry last year about the book Remaining in the truth of Christ, to which I had contributed, along with four other cardinals and four specialists on the sacrament of matrimony.

It is that which gave rise to the theory of a conspiracy against the Pope, something recently reiterated in Corriere della Sera by Alberto Melloni, which resulted in a judicial complaint from the Italian publishing house Cantagalli.
It’s simply absurd. How is it possible to charge with conspiring against the Pope persons who simply present what the Church has always taught and practised on matrimony and communion?

Of course, the book was written as an aid in view of the family synod, in order to rebut the line proposed by Cardinal Kasper. But the book is not polemical at all. It is a presentation that is most faithful to tradition, and is of the highest possible scientific quality in terms of the arguments employed. I am absolutely willing to receive criticism about its contents, but to say that we are part of a conspiracy against the Pope is unacceptable.

But who has been fomenting this witch hunt?
I have no direct information but surely, there is a group that wishes to impose on the Church not just Cardinal Kasper’s line on remarried divorcees or other couples in irregular situations, but also their position on other themes to be discussed at the synod.

For example, the notion of finding positive elements for extramarital or homosexual sex relations. It is obvious there are forces pushing in this direction, and therefore they wish to discredit those of us who are seeking to defend the teaching of the Church.

I have nothing personal against Cardinal Kasper. For me, the question is simply to present the teaching of the Church, which in this case, comes from words said by the Lord himself.

In view of some themes that have come up forcefully during the 2014 synod, there is new talk about the gay lobby in the Vatican.
I am not in a position to specify precisely, but I am seeing increasingly that there is a force in that direction. I am seeing individuals who, consciously or unconsciously, are carrying forward a homosexualist agenda. I don’t know if this is organized, but it is obvious there is a force of this kind.

In the October synod, we said that homosexuality really had nothing to do with the family, that a synod dealing with it should be called if the subject is to be discussed properly. Instead, the subject turns up in the final Relatio from October 2014, even if it had not been discussed by the synodal fathers. [Which makes it even more questionable that the Pope himself restored that particular topic to the final Relatio although the paragraph concerning homosexuality had failed to receive the required two-thirds majority vote. This objection - that it had not even been discussed at the synodal assembly - was first brought up by many of those who stood up to protest that the intermediate Relatio had included subjects and/or positions that had not been discussed at all!]

One of the theological justifications in support of Cardinal Kasper that is often repeated today is ‘development of doctrine’ – not a change, but a deeper study that could lead to a new praxis.
There is a great mistake here. The development of doctrine, as it has been presented, for instance, by Blessed John Newman or other good theologians, means a deeper appreciation of the doctrine, not changing it. In any case, [in the Church] development does not lead to change.

One example would be the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Eucharist by Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis, in which he presents the development of the acknowledgment of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, which can be expressed in Eucharistic Adoration, because the Eucharist is to be received within us.

Benedict XVI explained, citing St. Augustine, that if it is true that the Lord gives himself to us in the Eucharist to be consumed, it is also true that we cannot acknowledge the reality of the presence of Jesus in the form of the Eucharistic species (bread and wine) without adoring the species. This is an example of doctrinal development, but that does not change the doctrine of Jesus’s presence in the Eucharist.

One of the major controversies in the synod is the presumed contraposition between doctrine and practice, doctrine and mercy. Even the Pope often hammers on the pharisaical attitude of those who use doctrine and thus block off love of neighbor.
I think one must distinguish between what the Pope says on some occasions and those who claim a contraposition between doctrine and praxis. A conflict between doctrine and practice can never be allowed in the Church, because we live the truth that Christ communicates to us through his holy Church, and truth is never a cold thing. It is truth which opens up room in us for love, and to truly love, one must respect the truth of persons, in the specific situations in which they are found.

And so, to establish any kind of contraposition between doctrine and praxis does not reflect the reality of our faith. Those who support Cardinal Kasper’s thesis – changing discipline without ‘touching’ doctrine – must explain how that can be possible.

If the Church allows communion to a person who is bound in holy matrimony [by his/her Church marriage] but is living with another person in a conjugal relationship – therefore, in a state of adultery – how can that be allowed, and say at the same time that marriage is indissoluble? A contraposition between doctrine and praxis is a false one which must be rejected.

But it is true that doctrine can be employed without love…
Of course, and that is what the Pope is denouncing – a use of the law or of doctrine to advance a personal agenda, to dominate others. But this does not mean that there is a problem with doctrine and discipline. Only that there are persons of ill will who can commit abuses, for instance, by interpreting the law or doctrine in a way that harms persons. Or applying the law without love, by insisting on the reality of the situation in which a person is, but without charity.

Because even if a person is in mortal sin, we should love the person and help him as the Lord helped the adulterous woman and the Samaritan woman. He was very clear in announcing the state of sin in which they had been, but at the same time, he showed great love in asking them to get out of that situation. Which is what the Pharisees did not do, who instead demonstrated a cruel legalism: They denounced the violation of the law but without giving any assistance to the culprit to emerge from a state of sin and thus recover peace in her life.

In his own way, of course, Cardinal Burke has been as jesuitical in his statements about Pope Francis as the latter has been in any statement that might be considered doctrinally heterodox (i.e., knowing how to stay just within the line that delimits orthodox doctrine, and in most of his statements about his pet agenda for Catholics living in a state of chronic sin (a condition he never verbalizes about them, of course).

So Cardinal Burke has been very careful to keep his criticisms of Kasper and his followers very general, never personalizing it (he has identified Kasper by name) - and if many (especially his critics) are clicking their heels and making a reflexive genuflection to Pope Francis every time they hear or read one of Cardinal Burke's general criticisms, claiming that Burke is thereby opposing the Pope, it can only mean that they fully believe the Pope is on their side, and that for Burke to criticize their views is to criticize the Pope himself.

I'm not faulting Cardinal Burke for his prudence in not directly criticizing the Pope - he is still a cardinal, after all, and any open indication that could be misconstrued as disloyalty to the Pope - as he is already being accused of even without objective evidence - would be quite unseemly.

His critics are willfully blind to the fact that when Cardinal Pell led the synodal fathers who took the floor, in the presence of Pope Francis, last October, to protest the trumped-up interim Relatio of the Synod, the #2 man at the Vatican clearly indicated he was on the side of orthodox doctrine. Yet none of Burke's critics piped up at all to accuse Pell of opposing the Pope. He has since written an article stating his position on these controversial issues, but since he is now the Pope's principal lieutenant in the Curia, Burke's critics cannot take aim at him. Nor can they take aim at Cardinal Mueller, who has been staunchly reiterating the orthodox position on marriage and the Eucharist, because they know he is the Pope's trump card to show up Catholics who now accuse the Pope directly of heterodoxy, to whom he can say, "Look, Mueller is still my CDF Prefect!" (i.e., guardian and guarantor of his orthodoxy).

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 06/04/2015 20:10]

Apparently, the Vatican is confident that JMB/PF will continue to be the 'Teflon Pope', against whom nothing negative or even potentially negative could stick, at least in the eyes of the media (Catholic and secular) and in the public opinion that media largely shape. It said so when it made the announcement during Holy Week that

---

Prior to the recent appointment of His Excellency, Msgr. Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid as Bishop of Orsono, Chile, the Congregation for Bishops carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find any reasons to preclude the appointment.

---

'Confident' is also the word that JMB/PF reportedly used when assuring a Chilean Archbishop that he had made the right decision in his appointment of Barros.

But some in the Catholic media have surprisingly spoken out about the potential backlash to JMB of the Barros appointment. John Allen was the first to articulate it, but I doubt he will be referring again to the matter - too embarrassing to harp on, especially if, as it seems to be, JMB is as adamant about this decision as he was with appointing Mons. Ricca to the IOR. More recently, big-name commentators for the Catholic Herald and First Things have weighed in on the issue, saying the Pope should reconsider the appointment, or risk doubts about the sincerity of his 'zero tolerance' declarations about sexual abuses by priests and the complicity of bishops who cover up for abusive priests....


Pope Francis and 'zero tolerance'
by William Doino Jr.
FIRST THINGS
April 6, 2015

The outcry against Pope Francis’s appointment of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros, who has long been associated with a child-abusing priest of the Diocese of Osorno, has placed the pope’s “zero tolerance” policy against sexual abuse into question.

As Pope, Francis has taken many decisive actions against sexual abuse. He created a special Vatican Commission to combat it, and soon thereafter met with a group of victims, expressing his pain over their suffering:

---

I feel the gaze of Jesus, and I ask for the grace to weep, the grace for the Church to weep and make reparation for her sons and daughters who betrayed their mission, who abused innocent persons.

---

Francis has defrocked abusive clergymen, disciplined Catholic prelates who were believed to have covered up for them, and stripped an abusive Cardinal of all his authority. [Doino is factually wrong here - the (ex)cardinal in question, Keith O'Brien of Scotland, voluntarily asked to be stripped of his rank and privileges.] The Pope has also personally intervened in other abuse cases, ordering investigations and encouraging the public authorities to take strong action against evildoers. [DIM=9pt][All right, already, Mr. Doino, the Church has never seen anyone deal with the sex abuse scandal the way Pope Francis is now doing! That is the burden of your premise, isn't it?]

Given these actions, the Pope’s decision to appoint Barros as bishop of Osorno — even as Barros has been accused of covering up sexual abuse, and of being an eyewitness to the abuse — has been a source of consternation, not least among members of Francis’s own anti-abuse Commission.

Barros was a long-time colleague and supporter of Rev. Fernando Karadima, a notorious abuser in Argentina. After Karadima was first accused of sexual abuse, Barros publicly defended his friend and mentor, and reportedly “tried to discredit the victims—even after the Vatican ruled against him [Karadima]” in 2011. The Chilean Bishops Conference subsequently ordered Barros, and three other bishops who had defended Karadima, to apologize.

Once Karadima’s guilt was established, Barros denied any knowledge or involvement in the abuse, and continues to do so. His supporters say he is innocent, and is being railroaded by an angry mob, but many believe the evidence weighs against him.

During his installation ceremony, as bishop of Osorno, hundreds of demonstrators stormed the cathedral, shouting, “Barros, get out of the city!” Many prominent Chileans have protested the appointment, and have appealed to the Pope to reverse it.

German Father Peter Kliegel, who has served in Chile for nearly fifty years, has stated that Barros “has no credibility,” and led a petition, signed by thirty-one priests of the diocese, requesting that the Vatican rescind the appointment.

Pressed on why Francis would ever elevate such a controversial figure, especially in light of his zero tolerance policy, the Vatican responded with a curt press release: “Prior to the recent appointment of His Excellency, Msgr. Juan de la Cruz Barros Madrid as Bishop of Orsono, Chile, the Congregation for Bishops carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find any reasons to preclude the appointment.”

But that explanation is hardly persuasive. As mentioned, the Vatican itself found Karadima guilty of sexual abuse — and at least three of Karadima’s victims claim that Barros personally witnessed the molestation. Why would the Vatican believe these victims are telling the truth about Karadima, but not about his long-time associate, Barros?

If the Holy See thinks it can ride through this controversy on the wave of the Pope’s popularity, it is mistaken. Nothing will so damage Francis and his pontificate as the perception that he is backing away from his unequivocal statements on abuse and accountability. His widely praised agenda for reform will collapse, or be seen as disingenuous. [I am not too sure about that. In a world that is as celebrity-driven as the world today - where the Paris Hiltons and Kim Kardashians manage to create their own celebrityhood by achieving nothing, and where Jorge Mario Bergoglio instantly filled the celebrity-driven world's need for a giga-celebrity after the Obama balloon deflated so disgracefully - celebrity itself exerts a demagogic power which blinds the captive public to anything that could possibly tarnish the shining images they have of their celebrity idols. I would not under-estimate the demagogic power of JMB's celebrity as the most popular human being who ever lived - inspite of 'incidents' like Ricca and Barros!]

Now, more than ever, it is crucial that faithful Catholics make their objections known, and that they ask the Holy Father to replace Barros with a bishop the local Chilean community and all the world’s faithful can fully trust.

William Doino Jr. is a contributor to Inside the Vatican magazine, among many other publications, and writes often about religion, history and politics. He contributed an extensive bibliography of works on Pius XII to The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII.

Days earlier, Fr. Lucie-Smith at the Catholic Herald wrote something similar, but because it was the middle of Holy Week, I held off using it... But meanwhile, his premise that the Barros appointment was a 'huge unforced error' has been shot down by the Vatican's confident announcement about how confident it is that there is nothing wrong with the appointment.

The disastrous appointment of Bishop Barros
could spell trouble for Pope Francis
The Vatican has made a huge unforced error
and it doesn't seem to realise it
by Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

April 1, 2015

What on earth is happening in the Diocese of Osorno, Chile? Quite a few observers are bewildered by the recent appointment of Bishop Juan Barros to the diocese.

Let us start with what happened when the newly appointed bishop was enthroned in his cathedral this Saturday last. A fight – yes, you read that correctly – broke out as His Lordship entered the cathedral, between the rival factions in the diocese, those who support the new bishop and those who oppose him.

This is hardly what you would expect to see in any church, let alone in a cathedral, let alone at the show of unity that the entry of a new bishop is supposed to be.

Moreover, one sees that no less than 30 priests and deacons of the diocese wrote to the papal nuncio to make clear to him that they did not want Bishop Barros as their bishop.

One thing is certainly clear: Bishop Barros, perhaps through no fault of his own, is a divisive figure. As bishop, he is meant to be the focus of unity. Even before he has started his time as bishop, he has failed. So, why was he appointed?

At this point things become murky. Bishop Barros was already Bishop of the Armed Forces, so this was a transfer, not a promotion. It seems he was a protégé of one Fr Fernando Karadima, who was found guilty of child abuse. While there is no suggestion that Mgr Barros is a child abuser, some allege that he was too close to Karadima and complicit in the cover-up of Karadima’s crimes. He firmly denied this.

That much can be said without fear of contradiction. But why, then, did the papal nuncio, with the full consent of the Vatican, decide to move the bishop to Osorno, against the will of a large section of the people? And why is it the official Church line that this was the correct thing to do?

The Huffington Post draws several conclusions from this fracas that may or may not be correct. The appointment may well be an indication that Bishop Barros has powerful and important friends in high places, both in Chile and in Rome.

But it may be a simple miscalculation on the part of the Church, namely, that moving the bishop to Osorno would be something that would attract little notice. (It is, from what I can determine, a pretty small diocese.) If that is the case, how wrong that calculation proved to be!

The best commentary I have read on the matter comes from the ever-excellent John Allen... My own reflections are as follows.

First, someone, somewhere, the person with whom the idea of this appointment originated, simply does not get it. Anyone perceived to have a poor record on clerical abuse is toxic. Any attempt to place someone like Bishop Barros over a diocese is going to lead to a strong reaction. This should have been foreseen.

Which leads to the question: given that this was such a huge unforced error, where were the checks and balances that should have kicked in and effectively stopped this appointment getting beyond the very first stage?

So what we have here, not for the first time, is clear evidence that the process of consultation that leads to the appointment of bishops is not working.

Secondly, the Vatican has set up a child protection commission. This was seen as a hopeful sign. But if you are going to have a commission that you yourself set up, you have to take its advice seriously. There is now the serious risk that the Pope will lose the confidence of his own commission, for several members of it are not happy. This would be catastrophic.

Allen puts it better than I could:

---

The Barros situation is worrying for Francis because members of his own anti-abuse commission have broken ranks, including the two abuse survivors on the panel: Marie Collins of Ireland and Peter Saunders of the United Kingdom. It’s not clear if Francis fully grasped this at the time, but when he named survivors to that group, he was handing them significant control over his reputation. If Collins and Saunders were ever to walk out, saying they’d lost confidence or feeling that they’d been exploited for a PR exercise, it would have a vast media echo.

---

Long gone are the days when problems like these could have been solved in the corridors of power. The world is watching. My guess is that Bishop Barros will be removed sooner or later, simply because he has been handed an ungovernable diocese.

But the truth is he should never have been appointed in the first place. Can you imagine the uproar there would have been if this had happened under Benedict XVI’s watch? As it is Pope Francis still has the media onside – but that will not last forever. As Allen says, a tipping point may have been reached.

Pardon me for being skeptical about tipping points. If almost all of the Vaticanistas with the exception of Sandro Magister have ignored and continue to ignore that Jorge Bergoglio in Buenos Aires asked his priests to give 'communion to everyone', as they pretend that he has not taken sides in the synodal hot issues he himself presented for their consideration and anticipated ratification, Barros's appointment is an anthill they can easily tread on and grind out of existence underfoot! Back at the Vatican, everyone seems to complacently assume the MAD attitude, "What, me worry?"

Two more observations:
1. JMB obviously has the courage of his convictions all the way, and will not back down for whatever reason, once he has decided anything. So it was for the Ricca and Barros appointments.
2. JMB obviously does not believe in the sage old adage that "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion" (ie, you cannot set yourself as a shining model when your close associates are associated with any wrongdoing.)

Fr. Schall demonstrates here how to fisk JMB/PF indirectly as he examines some of the statements that the Pope made in a recent letter to the Theological Faculty of the Catholic University of Argentina. In the process, he comments on JMB's notions of theology, mercy, and ideas or thinking in general. I am most particularly happy that in underscoring all the elements of a 'full theology of mercy', he verbalizes what I have always protested as JMB's incomplete or partial preaching of mercy...

Being a philosopher-professor, of course, Fr. Schall upholds the power and primacy of ideas in a way that refutes what JMB recently said that "Reality is more important than ideas", a statement no commentator before him has bothered to question and analyze, as if to prove that for many today, ideas - and the very process of thinking through anything, including reality - are merely secondary.

The subtitle for the essay, in fact, is Schall's idea, expressed therein, that "The world is like a school that the students refuse to attend because they do not want to know what they need to know to be saved", which is the basic problem faced by the Church today in her mission of evangelization. But I did not put it under his title because it would imply that the idea is Pope Francis's rather than Schall's.


On Pope Francis and understanding theology
by James V. Schall, S.J.

March 30, 2015

---

Without mercy, our theology, our law, our pastoral care run the risk of collapsing into bureaucratic narrow-mindedness or ideology, which by their nature seeks to domesticate the mystery. Understanding theology is understanding God, who is love.
— Pope Bergoglio
Letter to the Theological Faculty, Catholic University of Argentina, On the Occasion of Its 100th Anniversary, March 3, 2015 (L’Osservatore Romano, March 13, 2015)

We can talk about God because He has talked to us; so the first condition for speaking about God is listening to all that God himself has said. God has spoken to us! God is not therefore a distant hypothesis concerning the world’s origin; he is not a mathematical intelligence far from us. God takes an interest in us; he loves us; he has entered personally into the reality of our history; he has communicated himself, even to the point of taking flesh.
— Pope Ratzinger
“How to Speak about God,” The Transforming Power of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2013), 42.

---

I.
On March 3rd, Pope Francis wrote a short letter to the Theological Faculty at the Catholic University of Argentina, an institution with which he is no doubt most familiar.

Pope Francis is not a speculatively-orientated man. He sees theology in practical terms. Vatican II, he tells the Argentine Faculty, is a “re-reading of the Gospel from the perspective of contemporary culture.” He does not say that it is a “re-reading” of contemporary culture from the perspective of the Gospel. The Council produced an “irreversible movement of renewal which comes from the Gospel. And now we must go forward.”

What, one wonders, does “forward” imply? The notion of “progress” for the sake of “progress” avoids the question of “progress to what?” or “forward to where?” [Questions that immediately popped up to mind when JMB said recently about liturgy - when marking the 50th anniversary of the Mass first celebrated in the vernacular by Paul VI - that in matters of liturgy, the Church must 'go forward' and not look back to the past.]

To go “forward”, we must first look backward to the Gospel. Chesterton said progress can only be made by looking backwards. The future is blank, but history contains real people, real choices for good or bad.

In answering his own question of going “forward”, Pope Bergoglio writes: “Teaching and studying theology means living on the frontier, one in which the Gospel meets the needs of the people to whom it should be proclaimed in an understandable and meaningful way.”

[But]The first “need” of the people, as the Gospels suggest, is the need to “repent”. The Gospel was not sent into the world to tell the people that they were hungry or disordered. They already knew this. Nor was it to teach them economics, which they could learn without the Gospel. What they needed to know most was “to where does the journey of life lead?” It leads to “eternal life”, as the Gospel of John teaches. No one is likely to know this truth unless he is taught by some power that is not, in fact, merely human.

Ever since Socrates, philosophy and intelligence have often been deemed to be “useless” because they were concerned with questions that seemed insolvable, such “What is the meaning of man?” “What is death?” “Has God spoken to us?” — questions often asked in the documents of Vatican II.

The fact that many people think they have more pressing needs than their own salvation or that they do not need to be aware of such issues does not mean they are not fundamental. God came into the world not primarily to teach us what we know by our own powers but for what we do not know.

“We must guard against a theology that is exhausted in academic dispute or one that looks at humanity from a glass castle. You learn so as to live, theology and holiness are inseparable.” Academic disputes, no doubt, have their purpose.

One might even argue, as I often do, that the disorders in economics, politics, and culture are usually the results of disputes in ideas. The wars of the world are first fought in the minds of academics and clerics. It is from there that order and disorder originates in the world. The reason St. Thomas is so important, I think, is precisely because he took academic disputes seriously.

Or as John Maynard Keynes once famously wrote: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

As Richard Weaver put it, “Ideas have consequences.” Marx wanted to argue that “Consequences produce ideas.” They do, but only after we understand the ideas that produced the original consequences about which we now think.

II.
Pope Francis then exhorts the faculty and students of the Argentine University: “Let the theology that you elaborate, therefore, be rooted and based on Revelation, on Tradition, but also correspond with the cultural and social processes in particular, difficult transitions.”

Christian revelation is, indeed, directed to the human person, to the human mind, insofar as it seeks to understand itself, God, and the world. Some ideas that people live by will be sensible; others will not.

Revelation was sent into the world also, as Pope Benedict often said, to “heal” reason as well as to expand it. Both revelation and tradition will contain elements that cannot be previously found in any culture. What of reason that can be found is simply to be accepted and woven into a higher order.

“At this time,” Pope Francis adds, “theology must address conflicts, not only those we experience within the Church, but also those that concern the world as a whole and those which are lived on the streets of Latin America.”

No doubt, this admonition reflects the abiding concern of evangelization that Pope Francis and other recent popes have stressed. Probably, one should add, the primary reason “evangelization” has such a problem in making the Gospel known throughout the world is due to the ideas that control Chinese, Muslim, Indian, tribal, and western liberal thought. Each of these in its own way prevents any open or successful presentation of the faith within the limits of its power.

So, we should not settle for “desktop theology. Your place for reflection is the frontier.” One can only be amused by this joining of “desktop”, which comes from computer-land, with a “place on the frontier”, which comes, in American movie terms, from the Wild West. [I was surprised, frankly, that in the letter, JMB does not mention the alternative to desktop theology, which is 'theology on bended knee', as Hans Ur von Balthasar advocated and Joseph Ratzinger has practised - and which JMB himself even used, rather inappropriately considering what was said, to describe Walter Kasper's heterodox 'Gospel on the Family' preached to the 'secret' consistory of cardinals in February 2014.]

The notion of not “doing” theology at the “desk” but on the frontier is probably more Jesuit than Dominican. The Jesuit motto implies that we can theologize while on active duty, whereas the Dominican motto suggests that we need to figure things out before we are turned lose on the world. Both have their point.

Cardinal Christoph von Schönborn once said that Aquinas was the only saint ever canonized simply for thinking. Probably we must now add Newman. The point of Christianity, no doubt, is that the world is full of things to think about. Unless you think about them, you probably will not know what to do with them.

Christian theology adds that the most important things that are around to think about are revealed to us, beyond our natural powers. Not to think about them will result in not knowing what to do or what reality is about.

For those of us who were born on farms, as I was, the following remark of Pope Francis will recall the sense of smell that Aristotle considered. “Even good theologians, like good shepherds, have the odour of the people, and of the streets and, by their reflection, pour oil and wine onto the wounds of mankind.” [An idea JMB first expounded at length, in relation to priests, at his first Chrism Mass homily as Pope in 2013.]

This last phrase refers to the Good Samaritan. I suppose, with modern health laws, one must be very careful what he does upon coming upon an accident or a person in stress. Moving a wounded body can get one into serious problems. But the main point is well-taken. Good shepherds know the actual “smell” of their sheep; they do not just imagine it or talk about it.

Pope Francis then changes metaphors. He returns to his oft-repeated remark that the present world is like a battle-field, or, as he puts it, “Theology is the expression of a Church which is a ‘field-hospital’, which lives her mission of salvation and healing in the world.”

Over the years, I recall reading of “field-hospitals” in the American Civil War, in World War I, and World War II, as well as the dealing of the wounded in more recent combats. In the earlier wars, the great killers were not the swords or bullets of the enemy, but gangrene, influenza, and various forms of infection and disease. The invention of sulfa drugs, blood transfusion, and antibiotics makes a different scene, no doubt still tragic.

The image of the world as a “field-hospital” with patients needing immediate spiritual care is in some instances a useful one. The major spiritual problems of the world exist among the well-off. Some think an asylum might be a better image. But I tend to think of the world as a school that the students refuse to attend because they do not want to know what they need to know to be saved.

III.
The central theme of Pope Francis, as it was often of Pope Wojtyla [the Pope of Divine Mercy, after all!], is mercy. Pope Francis put it this way in his letter to Argentina: “Mercy is not just a pastoral attitude, but it is the very substance of the Gospel of Jesus.”

This position is true, provided that we recall that the God of mercy is also the God of justice, the God who insists that we keep the Commandments, and the God who cannot forgive us or have final mercy on us unless we repent of our sins. Such things are also elements in any full theology of mercy.

Pope Wojtyla, in his reflection on the Divine Mercy, said that God would forgive everything that could be forgiven. Scripture itself informs us of what cannot be forgiven. We are not free to change this root position as it is itself rooted in our freedom. This admonition is not contrary to what mercy is, but essential to its full understanding. As Pope Francis implies: mercy is more than “just a pastoral attitude.” It is something that first must be thought about.

All the divisions of theology — dogmatic, moral, aesthetical, legal, spiritual — are to be aware of mercy. Thus, “understanding theology is understanding God, who is love.” That God is love is the great theme of the Gospel of John. Aquinas wrote of it. Benedict’s Deus Caritas Est concerns mercy and love.

Pope Bergoglio does not want a “'museum’ theologian who gathers data and information on Revelation without, however, really knowing what to do with it.” Certainly this remark also implies that a theologian who has no information or data on Revelation would hardly know what to do with his activity.

A theologian should not be a “passive onlooker on history.” There are things to be done as well as things to be thought about. The whole history of our kind from at least Plato is that the origin of things to be done lies in things first thought about.

Theology tells us that unless we “listen” to what is handed down, we will not know what it is we are asked to know and do. “The theologian…should be a person capable of building humanity around him, passing on the divine Christian truth in a truly human dimension, and not a talentless intellectual, an ethicist lacking in goodwill, or a bureaucrat of the sacred.”

I would myself shy away from expressions like “building humanity around me”. Such wording sounds too much like Rousseau’s saving mankind but indifferent to the real persons next door.

Yet, we do exist to “pass on the divine Christian truth in human way.” This awareness is surely what the Incarnation was about. We not only pass on divine truth in a human way, but the divine Truth was the Word made flesh. He told us things that were human, but He also told us things more than human — “Take this and eat, for this is my body.” There are, to be sure, dried up intellectuals, ethics professors who practice vice, and bureaucrats who treat the sacred as their private property.

The last words are those of Pope Francis: “Understanding theology is understanding God, who is love.” We only know this truth because it was revealed and passed on down to us in Tradition. But once it was revealed and reached our ears, we found that we could think about it and everything else in a new light.

Indeed, as Popes Wojtyla, Ratzinger, and Bergoglio intimate, each in his own way, we can never stop thinking about it and, in its light, doing something about it.